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I feel compelled to write a review about this show since it was one of those shows that was fairly hyped during this season and has a unusually high average score for a show this mediocre. As a fan of the game and the general media craze of Kancolle, this show as a whole falls short of being good from any perspective.

Firstly, I'd like to note that unlike a lot of people who like to rate similar to how IGN likes to rate things (i.e. anything below a 7-8 is "meh"), and because of it, I generally dislike number ratings, especially ones as bloated as ... a 1-10 scale, but I will follow the guidelines and base my "average" at a 5/10


Spoilers ahead.

Story: 3/10

The premise of the show is the same as the game: some alien beings called Abyssal (a.k.a American forces) have invaded the waters near Japan and conventional weaponry does not work on them, so they do the next best thing: get adolescent girls to bond with the spirit of old Japanese warships, adopting their names in order to fight this new enemy. The fleet are stationed at a naval base where the admiral (who doesn't make an appearance, but is implied that you, the audience, is the admiral) helps shape them into the war machines they need to be. The premise is over the top and makes the show impossible to take seriously, which is the point. It's meant to tease the WW2 and moeblob demographics and provide a general 23~ minutes of pandering each week, which is fine, I enjoyed Strike Witches for doing practically the same thing.

Where Kancolle differs, and suffers because of it, from Strike Witches, is that the show can't decide if it wants to go full-out fanservice mode and pander to the viewers or make a show with genuine hype and passable writing. A show can do both, but Kantai Collection is not one of those shows. The story starts off giving a really good showcase of the show, with nice action scenes, introductions to the popular ship girls of the game, with some delivering their one-liners and real-life-ship-mirroring personalities, but it never moves forward from that point. From one episode to the next, they keep introducing new ships, sometimes to introduce a new story arc, but most of the time it's just to have them there to cater to anyone who is a fan of that ship.

There was a moment in one of the earlier episodes where they "re-enact" the Battle of Wake Island, which is the battle where the Kisaragi gets scuttled. The episodes ends rather dramatically, building up tension going into the next episode, maybe giving the show a sense of tension and direction, only to have the next episode be a showcase of Kongou and Shimakaze's shenanigans. It was incredibly jarring going from what could have been a moderately emotional story development to a 4-koma esque episode catering to fans of Kongou and Shimakaze, and then going back to conclude Mutsuki's and Kisaragi's arc at the end of that same episode. To put it simply, there were a lot of ideas thrown around in those 2 episodes, but no direction to coherently deliver it.

After that point, the show switches into slice-of-life mode, where, you guessed it, they keep introducing more ship girls for one-off arcs that provides very little to any semblance of a story.

The last third of the show goes back to being a bit more dramatic with the Battle of Midway, the famous battle in which Japan suffered a major loss in the Pacific theatre, and was the battle where one of show's more prominent characters, Akagi, gets sunken. I will say the sinking of Kisaragi did do a good job of baiting the audience into thinking they aren't afraid to stick to historical accuracy, and the episodes leading up to Operation MI did foreshadow Akagi's death, but in true anime fashion, the entire cast comes in to save the day. The final episode also had this theme of "defying fate" which basically translates into "changing real-life history", but the way it was delivered makes the writers of the show come off as being a little salty about WW2, with a little pinch of nationalism.

TL;DR: Story is basically Strike Witches but on water instead of air, but with no actual direction and execution, and any sort of potential that the story did have was wasted to pander to fans of the game (which did not work).

Art: 5/10

The show started off strong. Like, really strong. In the first episode, when the girls deploy for the first time, we're treated to a rather eye-catching magical girl-esque transformation sequence as they equip their guns and armor. This is a good example of CGI being used moderately well. However, the art quality goes south rather quickly.

The show mixes the use of 2D drawn and 3D CGI for normal, day to day scenes, and high-movement battle scenes, respectively. The problem comes in when there's any sort of dialogue during the latter scenes. The scenes like to cut from 2D to CGI and back for very little reason, even when there's no actual, high-budget action going on. It becomes even more jarring when there are visual inaccuracies swapping between the two types of animation within the same scene.

By the end of the show, the budget was obviously running dry with shots like (https://38.media.tumblr.com/5d0dfa0739f4f665b7f76faf19446530/tumblr_nlt5vtpQg11r3fop8o1_500.gif) where assets pop in (and aren't composed properly, as you can tell from the gun barrels cutting off near the edge of the screen after popping in) or shots like this (http://i.4cdn.org/a/1427391382586.jpg) where apparently the girls have 6 fingers on each hand.

There's also the point that many of the characters suffer from same-face syndrome, and as a result, look nothing like their game-art renditions.

TL;DR - Art budget was used mostly in the opening episodes and the girls all look the same, unlike the source game.

Sound: 7/10

The opening and ending themes were rather enjoyable to listen to and the cast is the same as game, which is a really high point of praise considering the skill of some of the seiyuus. I think one seiyuu voiced 6-7 characters in this show, none of which sound the same, and a few of which interact with each other in the same scenes. It's also a nice touch that the characters have lines directly or draw from their lines in the game.

Character: 3/10
Speaking of characters drawing their lines from the game, that's pretty much 90% of the characters outside of the 3-4 main characters. One of the more popular ship girls, Kongou, pretty much serves as a mouthpiece for pandering. Her entire presence can be boiled down to "Hey, look at me! Look at how historically accurate I am! Look at me deliver the same quotes as in the game every time I'm on screen! Buurniing loooove~~~!!!".

As far as development goes, none of the characters actually grow, except for maybe Fubuki, the main character, and even then it takes a horrendously awkward development arc, and it never made care about her throughout the show (apparently, she was chosen to be a part of the admiral's fleet because he had a dream about her in a wedding dress? I get that marrying a ship girl is a part of the game, but did they really have to make a plot point?). And with the supporting cast being so bloated (with new ships being introduced as far as the second half of the last episode), there wouldn't be enough time to make the audience care about them even if the writers wanted to.

Enjoyment: 4/10

I was really hyped for this show when it first aired. The first few episodes were enjoyable, and I went in knowing this show is just pandering to fans of moe and Kancolle, the game. However, as the show went on, it kept getting more and more boring to sit through the 20 minutes of content, as the fanservice kept being recycled and the end of an episode didn't leave me feeling any better about the franchise than when I started.

Overall 4/10

The show would have received a much lower score for its shoddy production quality alone, but being a fan of the game and the general franchise, I'll give it a generous 4/10 as there is some slight enjoyment to be had from the show if you're a fan of the game or the media craze of kancolle.

While the show has its fair share of ecchi, these specials approach hentai-levels of exposure and content. Each of the specials start out the same, but branch into different interactions among the cast.

It's a not-so-standard hot spring episode with extra amounts of fanservice