Review of KanColle

When the anime for Kantai Collection was announced and a trailer was released, a milestone was placed for a million fans already set in place. While most were happy and excited for the adaption of the most popular casual game in Japan, people who were already familiar with anime and the tropes associated with the media were worried. This was because the production company was a relatively unknown studio, the art was vastly different from the pixiv artists that make the original character pictures, the ever infamous CGI was going to be used, and with all things that attempt to cater to too many people,artistic liberties were likely to be protracted for a generic anime. Unfortunately, generic is exactly what Kantai Collection is and even as an original fan of the game who went in with little expectations I felt disappointed.

For those unfamiliar with the series, Kantai Collection (Or Kancolle short) is an online game about ship girls that take their designs based on World War 2 Japanese naval war vessels. Destroyers, battleships, aircraft carriers, you name it. Heavily reliant on moe and the popular concept of girls with war machines (Like Strike Witches and Girls und Panzer), it has become arguably the most popular game in Japan and even parts of Asia not only for otakus but for the casual people as well. The girls fight monstrous demons that rise from the ocean... And well, that's about it for the plot and setting. Not much information on the world is really given and the different sources like the manga and light novels are not official.

This is perhaps the biggest problem with the Kancolle anime. Perhaps in order to stay faithful to the game, no real world exploration, setting, or story is set in place. It isn't exaggeration to say the plot of Kancolle is literally just naval fleet girls fighting against monsters with added slice of life in the mix. There is no explanation for how the girls “inherit” the souls of World War 2 ships, no exposition on the current state of the world, no details on what humanity is doing and why they have to rely on the girls, no details on how the Abyssals work. The show blatantly just puts out “it's just how it is” and ends the plotline there. And sadly all of this lacking information makes the Kancolle anime feel that it is devoid of substance and leaves many questions unanswered not only for the fans of the original game but for newcomers as well.

This may have not been so bad if the presentation of the show was well done (As sometimes leaving the audience to their imaginations can be entertaining) but the show simply isn’t. It starts off with the inexperienced girl Fubuki who joins a naval base and slowly pushes herself to become better and be accepted as a regular fleet girl. She makes comrades, goes through training montages, and becomes one of the top fleet girls through hard work and determination. Sound familiar already? It should be as this type of story has been done an exuberant amount times before in anime (especially shounen) and any other type of media really. The plot and script follows a terribly formulaic procedure that is it almost insultingly lazy. And sadly as the episodes drag on they become more and more predictable for any anime veteran that has seen the tired recycled tropes that Kancolle constantly uses.

With respect to spoilers, there is a particular early episode in the series that attempts a terrible gimmick to grab the interest of the audience (You will know when you see it). It is perhaps one of the worst written, predictable, and incredibly asinine things to have been done in anime and even the most hardcore fans are likely to be put off by it. Sadly, most of the episodes fail to improve where a chunk of the time is spent on low-tier generic dialogue, fan joke “inside” comedy memes, and then a few terrible build-up of melodrama that’s more cringey than B- movies.

I do by no means hate slice of life, Kancolle just does a terrible job at it as it is filled with a main cast of girls who are uninteresting, boring, and unappealing, arguably even for the fans of the game, and the interactions they have with one another are incredibly bland. When the girls aren’t spouting lines from the online game, they are droning on endlessly about the food they just ate, how nice looking someone’s room is, or regurgitating repeatedly and unnecessarily about the mission they are undertaking. The writing feels as though the script maker and director wanted to waste time and fulfill their 20-minute-a-episode quota rather than try to make enjoyable interactions. The main cast is dull, the side characters are dull, the script is dull, and the anime constantly reuses the same jokes over and over again as cumbersome service to the game fans. The sad part is that the anime should be a platform to better develop the girls from the game and give a wider outlook to the depth of characters, but you would find more characterization and details in to personalities looking at a fleet girl’s Wikipedia page than the entirety of this anime.

In regards to other production values, the battles are all done in CGI which for the most part look fairly fine and is actually done well, at least when you can ignore the awkward looking faces and the strangely placed transition between drawn scenes and CGI that happen from time to time. When the girls are fighting the CGI is acceptable, but tends to look horrible when the girls are talking and out of the battle transitions. Those who detest CGI in their anime best stay away. While the first few episodes are interesting to see exactly how the water-skating fleet girls fight, especially the first episode that shows a beautiful amount of details and work, the future battles are sadly not the same. Do not be misled by the first episode’s battle; past the opening episode the battles become mundane with generic looking enemies and lazily-made shooting sequences that fail to make full potential naval warfare can have.

The art itself is mediocre at best and fans may notice a rather drop in quality of their favorite girls (Which may not be entirely blamed on the production company as the online game pictures use various different pixiv artists). There is a number of musical scores within the anime that are soundly produced and pleasing to the ears, and some of the pieces do well to convey the emotions of a scene where the bad script of Kancolle fail. There is a plethora of good voice actors like Nao Touyama and Yuka Iguchi as those who are familiar with the game may know. Unfortunately, the musical ensemble and voices are the best praise this show can receive.

Overall, Kantai Collection is everything that is to be expected for good or bad. It's a below average generic show with mediocre writing mostly due to the fact that the producers and director of the show have to cater to an existing fanbas. It is a show that refuses, or is forced not to break out of the mold for any bit of artistic integrity and originality. There are a number of definite fanservice that only the game fans may appreciate; but they are so awkwardly placed within the frame of the anime they feel asinine rather than anything clever and certainly fail to aid new people to the franchise understand Kancolle. With gimmicky writing and no sound source to draw from besides the game which already lacks information on the setting, Kantai Collection simply cannot pass that line to be exceptional or anything ground breaking. It's not a show that I could recommend to someone who isn't a fan of the game or for those that have already watched a lot of anime and can easily predict how the show will proceed. For those who are fans I can only say keep your standards low and expect the expected.