The fourth episode is out this week but I haven't watched it. And I'm not going to watch any more of the series. A discussion of why, with spoilers, below the fold.

There are blatantly obvious parallels between Kancolle and Strike Witches. Strike Witches has references to the real events of WWII. For instance, the first SW series was mostly based on the Battle of Britain. But it didn't really end the same way. The good guys won (yay!) but there's no equivalent to the liberation of Gaulia. There's no equivalent to the Warlock. And there wasn't any Japanese carrier in European waters, then or ever.

The Second SW series was based on a battle for northern Italy, and there was no equivalent in WWII. The SW movie is a reference to the Battle of the Bulge, but only distantly so.

Plus, SW actually acknowledged this. In one episode in the first series, Wilcke and Sakamoto are talking and Sakamoto says that if it weren't for the Neuroi invasion, probably all the countries of the Earth would be fighting one another by that point.

It looks like Kancolle is doing the same thing, but not as adroitly. The battle in ep 3 happened at a thinly disguised version of Wake Island, and at the end of it Kisaragi was sunk. The real Kisaragi was sunk on Dec. 11, 1941 while withdrawing from a battle at Wake Island. Four American F4F's carrying bombs did it in.

Does that mean the Kancolle monsters are actually the Americans? And does it mean that the entire Kancolle timeline will take place in the first few months of the war -- which is to say, before Midway? Akagi is one of the main characters in Kancolle, and the real Akagi was sunk at Midway.

Before the war was over nearly every warship belonging to the Japanese was gone. Damned few survived. For instance, of the 24 Fubuki-class destroyers only Hibiki and Ushio escaped destruction.

The main character in the Kancolle anime so far has been Fubuki. The real Fubuki was sunk 10/11/1942 at the Battle of Cape Esperance.

I'm a little offended that the monsters are implied to be American, but that's not my real gripe. My biggest complaint is that the characterization is so thin.

Leave us face it: the basic concept behind Strike Witches is really silly. The source for the show is a series of statuettes. In one of them they included a DVD with a 20-minute OVA about all the characters.

And it was magnetic enough so that they eventually did the first series. What saved it was characterization. (And fan service.) 11 main characters is a bit fat, but they're all so vividly conceived and well acted, and so distinct, that I don't think anyone ever got confused by them.

If you're familiar with the franchise, then you know who this is. And you know why she's sleeping on the floor, surrounded by junk.

About the fan service, obviously it was an important part of the series -- but it wasn't the foundation of it. The SW Movie didn't have any fan service (beyond the inevitable panty shots); it wasn't needed.

I won't say that SW was a top-drawer series, but they had the budget to do a decent job, like hiring top-drawer voice talent. And they paid a lot of attention to the voice acting, and it made a huge difference.

I think that's where Kancolle suffers the worst. If you look at the credits, the main character are all voiced by unknowns, and several of the ships share the same seiyuu. And I felt it when watching the eps I did watch. It all feels like a half-rate effort, like the people involved were just doing it for a paycheck and didn't really care.

The people who worked on Strike Witches knew that their story's foundation was a joke, but they were determined to try to do their best with it, and IMHO they did an amazing job surmounting it. I'm not feeling that same commitment in Kancolle.

And if they don't care, I don't see why I should.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 12:03 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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