10 Second Anime - Kantai Collection - Episode 12 [END]

Kantai Collection - Episode 12 [END]



The Fleet Girls find a way to destroy the Abyssal island base. Season finale.

Heh.

That mystery girl on the cliff last episode was the new armored carrier Taihou. As someone who just watched the anime and doesn't know anything about the online card game, my reaction was more along the lines of "Oh, new character introduced in the last episode? She better be the main character for the sequel."

 

The admiral is fine. I mean, I have to take the girls' word for it. We still never saw him.

 

Taihou didn't do that much, but I guess she's important enough to grab the eye catch.

Is she supposed to be a genki girl? Spats means genki, right? She seemed awfully reserved in the time we saw her.

 

All the angst last episode was worth it to see Nagato and her big guns.

I mean her actual big guns. Oh, and Nagato kick!

 

She still got all the right camera angles to display her, ah, strengths.

Yay! Mutsu too!

She got her chance to shine. Better yet, she combined with Nagato to make both their blasts stronger.

All the yuri shipping aside (eheh), the last episode offered not just sexy fanservice, but fanservice to those who enjoy the game. Fleet girls we haven't seen in battle action since the first episode assembled to take down the Abyssal airstrip.

Yamato blasted stuff alongside Nagato.

Yamato gave a weird look when Nagato and Mutsu showed up with the other girls, like she wasn't happy to see them. Was it because she was feeling bad that she had to hide her real orders from Akagi's group and didn't like how much damage they took before they arrived? I figure Nagato thought that group could hold out long enough before the main fleet arrived to keep the enemy confused about their operation.

 

Still, it was dicey. Kitakami was even crying for Ooichi's help at one point.

Ooichi dynamic entry! Kitakami shared a nice yuri moment with Ooichi too. It was all worth the pain, right, Ooichi?

 

Of course, the main characters still had their moments. The irrepressible Kongou and her terrible engrish was there, supporting Fubuki.

The newly confident and mature Yuudachi kai had the poi counter working, but still not as much as before.

And the victory montage gave the viewers all the little moments we've come to expect from our Fleet Girls, especially Atago.

Pan-paka-pan, Naka-chan! You'll have to share the stage with the number one diva.

Meh.

Perhaps the producers had to make some compromises to focus on the battle action, which was pretty fun to look at, but the overall plot at the end was truncated and a lot of exposition was missing.

 

We never found out what happened to the admiral.

 

We didn't hear why Taihou was such a big deal.

 

The ruse Nagato played on the enemy wasn't explained either, because she was fooling her own fleet at the same time. Was this tied in with the weird codes they had picked up during radio transmissions? We don't know.

 

The final one-eyed enemy carrier was supposed to be the sunken Kisaragi, at least the hair looked the same and her hair clip popped back up to the surface after it was defeated, but what was the point of the audience knowing this and not the characters? And what did the death rattle from the Abyssals mean when it was moaning "Give it back?"

 

Fubuki also knew that they had to destroy the carriers before the air strip girl would stop regenerating, because the Admiral told her. But how were they related? What was going on there? It looked like just a tacked on plot point to make things harder for the protagonists to overcome.

 

Maybe they should have just left the curry episode as a DVD extra, redrawn Yuudachi in there to her upgrade version, and explain things more? Rushed and incomplete exposition at the end.

 

 

Hmm.

Other than all the meh plot points, it was a satisfying end to a cute girls do cute things as battleships anime. I don't have to watch this thing again, but I wouldn't mind watching the sequel. Overall, a pleasant diversion.

Final Thoughts.

This show was the very definition of fan service. Not the sexy kind we usually think of, but offering an animated show for the fans of the card game Kantai Collection. I've never played the game, but I've known about the deep devotion to it from all the fan art and brand tie-ins from Japan over the years.

From including all the ship girl relationships, catchphrases and personalities to even adding in key game development scenes and mechanics, it was all for the fans. In the beginning, using the new destroyer Fubuki as the vehicle for viewers who didn't know any of the details for this world, the pacing and explanations felt natural for a cute girls do cute things anime. But after the death of Kisaragi in the third episode, things started feeling rushed or edited out to save time. Much like a game needing to make a deadline, the finished product felt slightly off.

 

The inclusion of Akagi's concerns about fate for a ship girl, and whether they would always live through the same circumstances as their real world Japanese vessel counterparts also felt inorganic. Through almost the entire season, there was not one whiff that the girls were concerned about how the actual ships were sunk, and then only in the penultimate episode before the final set piece, we're introduced to this. That wasn't right. It would have been better to pursue the broken code and missing admiral story line which was tied in with Kisaragi's death and how she became an Abyssal vessel. But ship girls have to fight fate, or something.

 

The cgi versions of the girls and how they meshed with key animation was seamless for the most part. Not as good as Yowamushi Pedal and not the full commitment Arpeggio had, but it didn't detract from the viewing experience.

 

I would say I enjoyed this show fully for 10 episodes before the shoe-horned fighting fate theme added extra drama that was unnecessary. Hopefully, the sequel will have more sustained writing quality and not deliver a videogame sequel with missing parts.