/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>14848723
Kancolle isn't just a game, it's also a multimedia franchise featuring manga, novels, and an anime probably best left unmentioned. But just because it is first and foremost a game doesn't mean that it gets a free pass on story just because lots of other video games also have dumb stories.

>>14850193
>Every event you see shitty players say something like "I was on the last kill and I decided to take a risk for victory and advance when x was red, and she sunk. I'm sorry, I salute you for your sacrifice o7" or whatever.
Watching the casualty reports come in is actually kind of fun because they're living life on the edge and the sink lines would never get screentime otherwise. On the other hand, I don't really pay too much attention to other players and since I'm a safe and lazy player, my experience with sink lines mostly comes down to videos like "100 Sunk Shipgirls' Lines" set to tasteful music. Kancolle really is nice in that you can win all the prizes and get all the things without spending a cent on the game (unlike many other far shittier games), or even genuinely risking any of your girls if you do the right preparation, and I'm not going to complain about the "unwarlikeness" of what since you really should be able to play without sinking anyone.

>Discussing the history and political climate leading up to WWII or the reasons for the war would just obfuscate the responsibility currently placed on the player.
On the other hand, when I consider the Kancolle franchise as a whole I think more about non-game media, which is usually far more character-centric than the actual game itself (featuring "your fleet" and "your girls) and has actual room for narrative. At the end of the day I got pulled into the franchise by the premise and the promise of the story, the game itself just kind coming along for the ride. So when I'm making these criticisms I'm looking for interesting premises or depth-of-story, or barring that even potential hidden depth that fans can run away with if they want. (Cue again the Touhou comparison, not because I'm out to deliberately invoke a shitfight but because they are the two most prolific sources of Japanese fanwork over the last two years). I guess if you take your duties as admiral seriously, which I definitely don't, you might appreciate the whole war commander aspect a bit more.

>Taking your example of Iowa, the reason I find the fact that she's working with the IJN girls okay is because even in real life, it wasn't the decision of the ships to fight, it was the people who told them to. She doesn't need that extra baggage because it diminishes the whole "sending innocent people off to die" thing if there was actual animosity between them, because now it's not just the fault of the commanders, the girls hate each other too.
The fleet girls know about their history, so they should be allowed have opinions about them too - their captains, their sailors, the war, maybe even the Empire and the IJN. There are a lot of girls where it shows through in their history, girls who still carry around or are haunted by their past, off the top of my head Hiryuu and Hamakaze have it as a major driving force in their character. That's the kind of thing - the history that they carry from WWII - that sets Kantai Collection apart from any number of other cute fighting girl collection games. Sure, nobody should be beaten over the head with the fact that war is serious business because we all kind of know that already, but it's presented with what's almost an air of unreality.

Obviously people want to have fun, enjoy cute girls and play a game rather than sitting through depressing history lessons plastered over with cute girls, so all the fun stuff that Kancolle does like holidays and slice of life shenanigans does have its place... but the shadow of the "real war" seems to have been reduced to trivia. Sure, Iowa and say, Katori don't have to hate each other or even act stupid and awkward around each other just because one of them sank the other back in some other life (and Japanese and American veterans today have met and shaken hands just fine) but it really just seems like a lot of stuff that should be there is just being papered over.

Would anyone here be willing to typeset this? There's already a translation floating around and it's a nice way to tell the story of Commander Kudo's Ikazuchi.

http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=40920354