KanColle: Itsuka Ano Umi de

What makes a show truly good? Is enough to simply have impressive animation, detailed world building, or good pacing? Before diving into that, let's establish a few basic points. Kancolle 1944 is not a sequel to the original anime or movie. Instead it's set in it's own seperate shared universe. 1944 assumes the viewer has played the browser flash game extensively, is familiar with the entire cast, and has specifically played the Battle of Surigao Strait event. There isn't even a honest attempt to fill in the gaps with exposition or recaps, like so many other shows try to do. Unfortunately, this approach causes nearly everygrading criteria to suffer as a result. The story's pacing feels simultaneously rushed and padded, with characters literally repeating each other round robin fashion and at other times skipping entire battle sequences. The animation quality mirrors this, where clever storyboarding hides the obvious lack of animation budget. So if a show is lacking in almost every area, can it still be considered good? Yes. The anime succeeds at what it set out to do: serving as the ultimate tribute to the game's most dedicated fans. It is simply incredible how the anime seamlessly included nearly all the game mechanics in a natural way. Everything from the events, battles, night operations, dock repair, modernizations, and so much more. The anime choosing to animate the game's Battle of Surigao Strait event was an excellent choice since it was a milestone in the game's history. The event had an almost anime like quality to the final boss battle, complete with special CGs and voicelines. The anime captured this quality and really nailed the "final blow" mechanic to sink the boss. The show has a quite depressing tone with a much more historically accurate Japan in the final stages of WW2. Therefore, having Shigure as the protaganist is also the most fitting choice. Her portrayal in the anime, marked by PTSD, symbolic rain voice lines, survivor's guilt, and a lingering sense of hope, mirrors both her in-game counterpart and real life history beautifully. Her character arc aligns perfectly with the show's emotional conclusion. A conclusion that probably doesn't make any sense unless one is familiar with the above. Kancolle 1944 is undeniably a flawed show. But this was a perfect send off. Thank you Tanaka and C2, for introducing me to over a decade of Kancolle, shipgirls, and WW2 history. Rest in peace, Shigure. I hope to see you again on calmer seas.

I think the poor reception by MAL users is easily explained: the show, like the source material, was not localized. The original adaptation pandered to whales to make as much money as possible at the peak of the game's popularity. This season, made a decade later, was a more genuine attempt to make a show that wasn't a 12-episode ad, and this was (again) done with a domestic audience in mind. Usually, this is not a problem, as the content may be easily translatable or the foreign audience may be filtered by its obscurity, but neither was the case with this show. Foreign audiences (includingthe biggest weebs with no life outside of early 2010's gatcha games) were primed to watch another 8 episodes of video game moe slop shounen drama (like Azur Lane) but instead were faced with something more traditionally artistic, and it wasn't something that a simple "just translate the buttons" localization would work on. Of course, this show was far from perfect. It's clear they were really stretching their budget to make 8 episodes and there are times you feel like you're watching a video at 0.75x speed to pad the runtime. I suspect the original intent was for a movie or 4-6 episode OVA, but some higher-ups stepped in with some forced decisions. There are also some dumb out-of-place parts too, which I also assume were added on in a similar manner. I won't point out specifics just for the sake of spoilers (for those that care). In my opinion, this season far exceeds the first+movie in quality, yet has the lowest rating of the three on MAL. I don't know how else to explain this discrepancy. Looking at the other reviews, it seems like this TV show was probably the first time they had heard of a "she-goo-ray". This is not a thinly-veiled "to be fair, you have to have a very high Jomon admixture, a descendant of Amaterasu, to understand this show" statement (at least mostly). In part, the show does benefit from an audience with prior knowledge and "memberberries", but even excluding that, I don't even think you could adequately localize it. I'm simply not sure how I would explain why I liked this show to a foreign audience in a single MAL review. I genuinely think there is a significant cultural barrier to enjoying this season. In MAL's shitty condensed scoring system, I think I'd give it an 8. Maybe I'm remembering the show too fondly or my brain is conflating it with other similar media (namely, *that* music video). Perhaps my score and opinion would change on a rewatch, but It certainly deserves more than a below average score.

Oranges are featured so heavily in this season that they could be listed as a character. Other than that it was ok I guess, I dunno I think it took itself way more seriously than the first season, although I did like that the little people were shown more that manned the planes and stuff (hehe tiny person fist bump). So yeah if your looking for something that's going to be like the first season, well you'll probably be a tad disappointed cause I feel that it's less 'cute girls doing cute things' and more focused on the story but yeah. Again it was justok, had some trouble keeping my attention and found myself spacing out more often, so if you also have trouble focusing then this might not be for you, I don't know, it's your life, and I'm just someone reviewing an Anime because the oranges were so heavily featured.

Kancolle season two definitely does not feel like a season two. The anime has a way darker tone, actual people, more/less realistic naval battles, different characters and shipgirls that retire instead of sink. You shouldn't watch this with the expectation of getting cute shipgirls doing cute things at the very least. The story is acceptable overall and is mainly about naval battles. The tone is way darker than before and everything seems more depressed. Not everything that happens makes sense and there's a very confusing deus ex machina in the final episode. As far as the naval combat itself goes the anime abandons the ideathat fleets have to consist of 6 shipgirls which the first season probably inherited from the game. Shipgirls now also have Anti-Air and (generally) don't use their main guns to shoot at planes anymore. There are also depth charges now to deal with submarines. On the other hand abyssals can now merge together to form a single huge abyssal which seems like an odd quality for ships to have and completely unrealistic. All of the important characters weren't actively featured in the previous anime. There's also actual humans now. The admiral is a person, there's naval workers on the docks and there's normal citizens living outside of the naval base. Shigure is the main character and she suffers from PTSD. There's some character development but it's limited by the large amount of characters and the decrease in episodes from 12 to 8. The quality of the art depends on the episode you're in. The first episode has stunning art that completely blows the first season out of the water but over time the quality decreases a bit yet still remains above the level of the first season. There is CGI but it's better and there's less switching between CGI and animation making it less disturbing. Overall the second season of kancolle is very different from the first and the movie. The tone is way darker and most things are different. It can be interesting to watch depending on what you're interested in as long as you're aware of the change in atmostphere.

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