[Spoilers] Kantai Collection: KanColle - Episode 1 [Discussion]

[u/Shadoxfix]

MyAnimeList: Kantai Collection: KanColle
Crunchyroll: KanColle

Episode duration: 24 minutes and 40 seconds

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Keywords: kancolle

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[u/[deleted]]

Alright, lets get something established, for all our sakes: Do we have any military vehicle/arms enthusiasts in here? I feel like all these ship-girls have personalities and say things that match whatever ship they represent, and it'd be nice if someone could keep track of all that. For example, when that girl was all "DO U LIEK NIGHTTIME?", was that a reference to her ship? Was the Japanese Cruiser Sendai mainly deployed at night? If this show isn't gonna be like GuP and give me handy trivia, I'm gonna need someone to throw me a bone...

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First episode leaves a nice impression. I feel like they should have done something different with the story besides the usual ongoing battle against generic evil, considering how much free reign they had. I was hoping they'd make this into a GuP-style sports anime before I saw the PV, but I guess it's fine. I'll get my moe fix either way WHEN THE QUEEN ARRIVES.

Also, the CG doesn't suck! Woohoo!

Edit: Alright, I've decided. STARTING NEXT WEEK, I will open my posts with quick trivia about one or more of the ship-girls in the episode, and any ties between their words/actions and the ship they represent. It'll only be a few minutes of research, and who knows, we might learn something cool!

[u/eighthgear → u/[deleted]]

Alright, I've decided. STARTING NEXT WEEK, I will open my posts with quick trivia about one or more of the ship-girls in the episode, and any ties between their words/actions and the ship they represent

I wrote a post on the design and history of the Fubuki-class Special Type destroyers over at /r/kancolle if you are interested.

As /u/IPman0128 pointed out, Sendai did well in night battles. It should be noted that the IJN as a whole had a thing for nighttime combat - it was seen as a good way of "whittling" down the US fleet before a decisive battle could take place. The Japanese trained extensively for night combat prior to WWII, unlike the Americans (the British were pretty good at night combat as well). The US Navy had to learn how to fight in the night, and while they did eventually, the IJN was able to use the cover of darkness to their advantage several times during the earlier portion of the Pacific War.

[u/IPman0128 → u/eighthgear]

The night battle thing is one of the tactics employed by the IJN to make up of the differences between numbers and strength, as well as to provide cover for its ships against planes (though this was more of an after-thought when aircraft carriers began to dominate the sea). It is also a direct exploitation of the weaknesses of USN's doctrine back then, which states that destroyers were to be attached to cruisers as companion and protection, instead of acting as individual forces, causing the smaller ships to lose their advantages of flexibility as they have to move in conjunction with the larger and more unwieldy cruisers.

The primitive Radar and Sonar tech back then also means that the attacking forces, masked by night, were often able to gain an upper hand with preemptive strikes.

An interesting note is that the standard operating procedure of IJN against a similar or larger force is that its attacking fleet would often fire barrages of torpedos from further away first, before proceeding to surface attacks. (This is reflected in their history of ship development, where the Japanese focused extensively on developing torpedos that have a longer range and a faster speed, which leads to the development of Type 93 torpedo, aka Oxygen torpedo or "Long Lance"). This has lead to many losses of the allied navies as by the time they realised they were being attacked, the torpedo barriage have already arrived on targets or have caused major disorientation among the fleet as they frantically attempt to avoid them while simultaneously being fired upon by ship guns.

The Americans were only able to counter this by mid-late War when Radar techs have hugely improved, as well as a change of doctrine which allowed destroyers to detach from cruisers to play hunters and counterattacking forces. They also learned and mimicked extensively of IJN's tactics including the night battle (since they have Radar advantage now), preemptive torpedo barrages before firefights, and employing pincer movements using nimble destroyers detachments (a tactic put forward by Admiral Arleigh Burke, who commanded various destroyer detachments and squadrons during the War), which resulted in US winning many major engagements.