Since most of the shows for winter won’t be airing until the weekend, I may as well share my first impressions on the first episode of Kantai Collection.
To be honest, I have mixed feelings after I watched the first episode. I have a feeling that this adaptation was targeted to those who have some experience with the game (to make this clear, I do not play social or mobile games). The girls throw themselves into a battle against some kind of enemy known as the Abyssal. Besides the narrator giving basically information on what the girls are fighting against, I was somewhat confused since the game is restricted to Japan. Hopefully, the next few episodes will address these shortcoming because I’m 100% sure that Kadokawa wants to get more people interested in this franchise with this show to promote the Vita version of the game, which they plan on releasing in May.
From the looks of it, the show will obviously focus on a girl named Fubuki who is part of the Torpedo Squad Three. She apparently has no experience in combat whatsoever and shares rooms with two other girls named Yuudachi and Mutsuki, who is part of the same team. While the slice of life movements in the first episode was somewhat enjoyable, the main draw was obviously the battles as they fight off against the enemy. While the CG gave me some mixed feelings, I thought the battle scenes were better than expected.
While the first episode left me somewhat confused considering that I haven’t played the game and only know about it with people talking about it or sharing pictures on forums and Twitter. Still, I think the next two episodes will address these shortcomings as more characters get introduced to the show and receive some development since most of them are pretty charming.
As for blogging this show, it really depends on how the next few episodes progress. Otherwise, I’ll share my thoughts for future episodes when I start doing Anime Weekly Digests again.
The episode was more of a roll call and a battle demo than a major character introduction.
Which I can dig for “business purposes”.
I feel that way too, but I think that the show will finally focus on the characters and show more behind the training next episode.
It seems to be really similar to Strike Witches but they’re on the water instead…
I haven’t seen Strike Witches, but I have to admit that it does kind of feel that way.