It was only a week ago that Kantai Collection took a dark and unexpected turn, leaving us to wonder just how the rest of the series is going to go.  Now we get to find out, and I'm thrilled to no end!  Of course, I'm one of the few as more and more it appears that people are less than impressed with the show.  Longtime reader Ben has an interesting discussion about his dissatisfaction over at his place, based at least in part on an ongoing e-mail conversation he's having with me.  He's given the show somewhat more thought than I have... this should come as no surprise to longtime readers of The Pond.  Over-analysis is not my forte.  Indeed, it would probably prove counterproductive to these writeups.  That's not the case for all shows, of course.  High School of the Dead greatly encouraged deeply introspective thoughts, for example... mostly of the "Dear God, why doth thou torment me so" variety, it's true, but still.  But enough of this jibber-jabber, let's get to the good stuff!  And by "good stuff", I mean the anime.  Provisionally.

Mutsuki is pulling Hachiko duty, waiting for her sister to come back from W Island.  If I was feeling particularly cruel, at this point I'd link to a gif from that episode of Futurama.  Yeah, you know the one.  I am not, however, a cruel duck, no matter how people may portray me.  Well, that and I started bawling like a little baby while I was looking for just the right gif to link to.  I'm sure my neighbors upstairs think I'm a morose drunk, crying into my beer at 1:30 in the morning.  No beer, no drunk, just Seymour.

The seasons change around her.  Spring turns to Summer, which changes to Fall.  The snows come in the Winter and the thaw indicates the return to Spring.  Through it all, Mutsuki sits on the quay, waiting for her sister to come home.  Through the passage of time, the base changes, the shipgirls stationed there change, Admirals come and go, but Mutsuki waits.  One day, her eyes get heavy, she rests her chin on her knees, and she goes to sleep.  And she meets her sister again.

...oh.  Holy crap.  I'm sorry.

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1 That "Kongou Desu" video... tried to break my brain, there. Whaaa.

The Kongos (as it were) (did I ever send you that album? because I should) all voiced by the same actress? DUDE. I mean, sure, in a cast of dozens you've gotta save money somehow, but wowza.

I've not had breakfast yet, and now I'm craving scones. Daaamn youuuu! *shakes fist in air*

When Fubuki spends half the episode being the skeptical voice of (something resembling) reason, you know the show's wandered off into some weird territory.

Is it just me, or did the reunion on the pier have some... odd... animation of body movements going on? A certain amount of rhythmic action that almost, but doesn't quite, suggest something else is happening. I was tilting my head going, "wait, what?" a bit, there.

What an odd little show. I don't dislike it, but I'm definitely sticking with it mainly to see what bizarre shenanigans they get up to next at this point.

Posted by: GreyDuck at January 31, 2015 10:42 AM (AQ0bN)

2 did the reunion on the pier have some... odd... animation of body movements

Along with the expression on Frodo's face, it did make for an unfortunate moment or two, yes.

Posted by: Wonderduck at January 31, 2015 11:28 AM (jGQR+)

3 Yeah, I keep right on top of KanColle as soon as possible. Thanks for thinking of me, though

Posted by: DiGiKerot at January 31, 2015 12:31 PM (vrgFm)

4 I liked this episode.  It put the show's reality back firmly in fantasy, which is a much more comfortable location than somewhere between fantasy bizarre-alternate-reality.  I got what I expected from the Kongo ships.  Not what I would have done myself, but what I expected the writers to do.  The voice acting is a real strength, although it looks like the animation budget is running out, fast.  I stepped through some of the frames in the fight scene and it's ugly.  Of course you would expect less budget after the first episode, but...maybe the dvd/blu-ray will clean things up.

If they kept the show firmly in the realm established in ep. 4, I think I would like it a lot more.  I'm gonna have to rewatch 1 - 4 and try to make up my mind what's going on with the writing.  4 was pretty good, but 4 was also almost entirely written by the pre-existing dialogue in the game.  The anime writers just took that, turned it up to 11 and ran.  I'm still inclined toward lazy, but there is a nagging question of "how could they not be doing some of these things on purpose?"

Posted by: Ben at January 31, 2015 06:53 PM (S4UJw)

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I woke up this morning feeling not all that chipper.  Took a shower, felt a little better.  Just a few minutes ago, I realized that I felt horrible... headache, bodyache, stomachache, sinusache, acheache.  As a result, everything I was going to get done today is being bumped to the back burner... which includes the Kantai Collection Ep04 writeup.  I'm sure somewhere, someone is feeling terrible yet working through it... "I may as well feel awful at work and get paid for it"... but I did that for years at the Bookstore and look where it got me.  Oh, and I'm not getting paid to blog, am I?  So here's this instead:

Probably better for you anyway.

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1 Ah, you went and got a flue shot, didn't you?  

Posted by: Ben at January 29, 2015 06:37 PM (S4UJw)

2 Aw, you contracted the blarg. Feel better soon, man!

Posted by: GreyDuck at January 29, 2015 10:34 PM (AQ0bN)

3 ...you went and got a flue shot...

On the plus side, my fireplace works much better now.

Posted by: Wonderduck at January 30, 2015 12:08 AM (jGQR+)

4 When is flue hunting season?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 30, 2015 01:12 AM (+rSRq)

5 Ba-dum tish.

One of these days, I'll learn to stop commenting with my phone.

Posted by: Ben at January 30, 2015 02:22 AM (S4UJw)

6 That's some nice cheesecake.   Are you going to cover the Formula 1 pre-season at all this year?

Posted by: David at February 01, 2015 02:52 PM (+TPAa)

7 Workin' on it... I don't have quite the drive for it this season, but the F1 Pr0n is a-comin'.

Posted by: Wonderduck at February 01, 2015 07:49 PM (jGQR+)

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Because there hasn't been enough Rio Rainbow Gate! around here recently.  No giant holographic space sharks in the shot, though Rio will be jumping on the back of one any second now.

God, I love anime.  It lets me type sentences like that with a straight face.

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Today would have been Momzerduck's 70th birthday.  I don't know how good a son I was to her, but I know she was the greatest mom I could have ever asked for.

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Instead of doing something constructive, I decided to add two new categories to The Pond's sidebar!  Please welcome "Music" and "Anime Writeups"!  In the process of going through every single post ever made here at The Pond, I realized something that really surprised me... Ga-Rei Zero was not my first Episodic Writeup!  I had forgotten about one six episode omake that I had covered.  Which one?  Ah, that would be telling!  Fortunately, you can now easily find out by clicking on "anime writeups" on the sidebar!  It's like a library for The Pond's back content.

Just with fewer guns.

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...to post something from ARIA, now do I?

-ARIA the Origination, Ep01
It's quite amazing, the emotions this show causes.  Just hearing a few seconds of the opening themes can cause tears to well in my eyes.  That's powerful stuff.

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The man known as "Mr Cub", Ernie Banks, passed away this evening.  He was just short of his 84th birthday.

He joined the Cubs in 1953, becoming the team's first black player.  He played every game of his career with the Northsiders, over 2500 and hitting 512 home runs along the way.  He was the first National League player to win back-to-back MVP awards, 1958 and 1959.  He retired in 1971, and was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1977.

I met Ernie Banks once.  No, that makes it sound like it was more intimate than it really was.  I attended a Cubs game and he was riding a golf cart up one of the ramps in the stadium, obviously headed for a luxury box or the broadcasting area or whatever.  As he approached, I waved and said "Good day, Ernie?"  The permanent smile on his face got even larger than normal and he said "Great day!" and high-fived me as he rode by.  From all reports, that wasn't artifice.  For Ernie Banks, every day was a great day.  Cub fans, and baseball fans everywhere, have lost a paragon of the sport.  The world is a lesser place without him in it.

Let's play two.

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Last week, we had a training montage.  Fubuki The Clumsy needed to improve, and fast, before she got kicked out of the fleet.  This was, of course, done, because it's not that sort of show, right?  Also, a fight was brewing to boot... exciting times ahead!  Heck, why wait?  Let's get on with the show!

We begin this brand new episode with...

...a flashback to "a few days ago," aka "the end of last episode."  Nagato has just informed the light cruisers of Torpedo Squadron Three that they and their destroyers will form the basis of the first offensive against the Abyssals.  I'd just like to point out that this scene is just seiyuu Ayane Sakura having a four-way conversation with herself.  She actually does the voices for eight of the shipgirls, and you'd better believe I'm looking forward to that scene.  Jump back to now, and it's time for the mission briefing...

...where Mutsuki discovers that her older sister Kisaragi will be in on the mission as well.  Yay for family!  Also, yay for delays in construction!  Mutsuki is/was actually the name-ship for her class of destroyers, but Kisaragi was completed before her sister.  Eh, stuff happens.

Cutest collection of warships ever!  Good lord, they'll adorable the Abyssals to death.  What we've got here is Torpedo Squadron Four, joining The Fellowship for this operation.  Briefly, the plan is for The Fellowship to sneak in and attack W Island...

...shown here and please pay no attention whatsoever to the resemblance to Wake Island.  Merely coincidental, that.  Anyway, The Fellowship is to sneak in and attack Wake W Island at night, cause as much mayhem as they can and then withdraw, bringing the Abyssal ships known to be stationed there out after them.  Then Torpedo Squadron Four will ambush the Abyssals, The Fellowship will turn around, and the massacre will be total and complete.  There's no risk of being detected ahead of time, so all is right with the world.  It'll be a piece of cake!

more...

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In the final year of the 1980s, two of the biggest bands in Britain if not the world were imploding. 

The Smiths were a band that sounded like their songwriters were constantly on the edge of jumping off the highest building in Manchester.  This resonated with listeners and critics both, and they were hailed as "the most influential British guitar group of the decade."  They eschewed the keyboard and synth excesses of the time, instead concentrating on an echo-and-minor-key guitar-based sound.  Despite independent success unlike any seen before, the band split in 1987 from internal pressures.

New Order was formed from tragedy.  When the lead singer of Manchester-based "post-punk" band Joy Division hanged himself on the verge of the band's first North American tour in 1980, the survivors reformed as New Order.  Throughout the '80s, the band mixed what we'd call "alternative music" now and electronic dance music to create a critically acclaimed and influential sound that left major fingerprints on modern techno.  However, the various members all had audio interests that wouldn't fit the band's style.  Side projects were common, with a resulting loss of time for the main group.  Stumbling to the end, New Order broke up in 1993.

But in 1989, lead singer Bernard Sumner was wanting to add more synth programming to New Order, and was rebuffed.  He took to the recording studio alone, intending to make an "anonymous" album of whatever he felt like, but came to a discovery early on: he hated working alone.  Picking up the telephone, Sumner called Johnny Marr, the ex-guitarist of The Smiths, and asked for his input.  The two created a track, entitled "Lucky Bag", all loops and electronic drumkits, and called themselves Electronic.  If it had stopped there, Electronic would have been an interesting non-entity, a footnote in music history if that.  But of course it didn't... I wouldn't be writing about it if it had, right?

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I've got some pictures to take, and I've got a videogame I want to play.  So, here's some cheesecake to keep you entertained until I'm done with that.

I've always spoken highly of cheesecake.  A nice graham-cracker crust is what makes it.

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After having been hiding from the weather for the past couple of weeks, I ventured forth into the frozen wastes of Northern Illinois this evening for a lovely dinner with The Librarian.  I mention this for no other reason than to make an interesting bit of filler for this, the top paragraph of the Second Episode writeup for Kantai Collection.  In the first episode, we met half of the entire Imperial Japanese Navy and none of you, my readers, seemed to notice that I used the opening monologue from the movie Pacific Rim to describe the background the anime presented us with.  That made me sad.  I only had to change two words, to boot.  Perhaps I'm not as clever as I thought I was.  In any case, that was then.  This is now, and I'm probably even less clever just from the ongoing march of time killing off brain cells.  Hopefully not measurably so, but how would I know?  I leave that as an exercise for the reader.  Maybe one of you will tell me, but I can understand if you don't... after all, it might be more entertaining that way!  "Hurr durr... stupid hair girl stabs dead guy with pointed stick."  And I've just gotten distracted fixing a youtube link at that episodic recap and now I've got the soundtrack of Les Miserables going through my head and I'm going to give up for now and pick this up later.  Okay, it's later now, let's get this show on the road!  Raise anchor, all ahead flank speed.  Damn the torpedoes!

It is not late, it is very early.  The sun is not up.  Nary a shipgirl is stirring.  But yet, here is Our Heroine, Fubuki, out doing physical training.  You've gotta put in the effort if you wanna be the best around.  Nothing's gonna ever keep you down.

Except for having all the agility of a giraffe wearing ice skates, that is.  That and not being able to hit the broad side of a barn from the inside might have something to say about it.  Which would make for an interesting show, I've gotta say.  Everybody else goes to war, while Our Heroine stays behind.  She has to deal with being useless, particularly when the other ships come back damaged... or don't come back at all.  She'd feel completely worthless.  Then, as the Abyssals make one final push to smash the fleet, she'd be sent out, along with whatever shipgirls were left in desperation.  Finally, she'd have her chance to make a difference... to be a hero!  And then she falls over, takes a few crippling blows, and is forced to watch helplessly as her friends, her home, and her hopes are destroyed in front of her eyes.

The end.

more...

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I'm not feeling all that swell.  While I slowly work on the Kantai Collection Ep02 writeup, here's something that should put a smile on anybody's face... CORGISPINNING!

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I've been sitting here, staring at the blank "new post" screen for nearly 10 minutes, trying to figure out what I want to write about... and failing.  Actually, it's not that I don't have anything to write about; I can always do a First Episode Writeup, or something along those lines.  The so-called problem is that I want to post something tonight, not something that's going to take a long time to do... particularly with Ep02 of KanColle airing on Wednesday: that takes priority on the writeup front.

So, since I'm just going back and forth between nothing and nada, here's an appropriate picture.

How are you?

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On Saturday, January 3rd, I had a late lunch with Ph.Duck, then went to the store to lay in some foodstocks.  I knew the weather was going to be taking a turn for the ugly, so I wanted to make sure I'd have enough supplies for it.  It began to snow that evening, and continued off and on through Sunday night.  Once it stopped, the skies cleared, the temperatures plummeted and the winds began to pick up.  Indeed, there was a winter weather advisory due to blowing and drifting snow on Monday, and the temps continued to fall on Tuesday.  Wednesday, we were forecasted to have a high of -3°F and windchills around negative forty.  It never actually got that warm.  Thursday was much the same, just with higher winds.  Friday, it made it above zero for the first time since midday Tuesday... not by much, and the winds still made it feel ridiculously cold, but yay for positive numbers!  Saturday, January 10th, it snowed some more, but the thermometer came close to 20... but high winds still made it feel stupidly cold.

Today, we might have just hit the freezing point, with light winds... and for the first time since January 3rd, I left my apartment. 

I got the snow off the Duckmobile, made sure it started after a week of ickycold (it did), then went back inside, where it was warm and comfy.  In some ways, it disturbs me that I was able to hermitize myself with so little fuss.  There were a few days where I didn't say a single word except for the traditional "Goodnight, duckie" to Lucky Duck, the little plush duckie that I was given in the hospital by Momzerduck.  He watches over me as I sleep to make sure I'm okay, and it's the least I can do to bid him goodnight.  But that's all I said.  No human contact beyond the internet, which is arguable, and sports talk radio, which has little to do with humanity.  I'll have to go out this week... I desperately need to do laundry, and I'm out of edible tastyyums... but I find myself reluctant to do so.  People, y'know?

Or perhaps you don't.  Good call.  I'm an outsider... you probably shouldn't be like me.

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Wow, here's a shock, I'll be doing episodic writeups for Kantai Collection!  Sure, I've said I'd be doing them, but I'm really, really doing it!  As has been previously stated, it's not like this show is perfect for me or anything... the spirits of Japanese naval vessels from World War II reborn into the bodies of young women.  Throw in a rubber duck and a F1 car and we'll effectively have all of my serious hobbies all in one place.  And then The Pond will collapse in upon itself, forming a black hole of blog; all writing therein will be self-referential... nothing from the outside will intrude, nothing from the inside will interest.  So, kinda like MySpace, then.  Of course, that almost certainly won't happen... why would a F1 car show up in this show?  I've said it many times before, however: if an episode of anime contains both a rubber duck and a F1 car, The Pond will shut down.  If the duck is driving the car, I'll close it right then and there.  If they're in the same episode, I'll finish the series.  Somewhere, one of my readers is on the phone to SHAFT, trying to make this happen.   And I don't blame them, really.  I'm actually a little excited about the possibility: it's not like most blogs have a defined and announced endpoint.  Brickmuppet isn't going to close his when he graduates from college.  Ben's not going to close his when the Texas Rangers win something.  Steven isn't going to close his when the ducks invade.  But if one animator out there that was on the production staff of Rio Rainbow Gate! is still holding a grudge, he has the power to end me.  That's kinda fun to think about.  Know what else is fun to think about?  Kantai Collection!  Let's have me stop bloviating and get right to the recappin'!

When I was a kid, whenever I'd feel small or lonely, I'd look up at the stars... wondered if there was life up there.  Turns out I was looking in the wrong direction.  When alien life entered our world, it was from deep beneath the Pacific ocean. 

A fissure between two tectonic plates.  A portal between dimensions.  The Breach.  I was 15 when the first Abyssals made land in San Francisco.  By the time ships, jets and tanks took it down six days and thirty-five miles later, three cities were destroyed.  

Tens of thousands of lives were lost.  We mourned our dead, memorialized the attack, and moved on.  And then, only six months later, the second attack hit Manila.  And then the third one hit Cabo.  And then the fourth, and then we learned that this was not going to stop.  This was just the beginning. 

We needed a new weapon.  The world came together, pooling its resources, throwing aside old rivalries for the sake of the greater good.  To fight monsters, we created monsters of our own.  The Fleetgirls program was born.

Oh boy.

more...

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Oh my, yes.

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Okay, just in case anybody has the bright idea of discussing the first episode of Kancolle here before I post about it?

I WILL ban you, I will ban your family, I will ban everybody you have ever loved.  I will ban your pets, your next-door neighbor, and your postal worker.  That nice person who always waves at you?  Banned, and I will laugh about it. 

Even joke comments about it will bring about a ban.  Do NOT try me on this one.

We cool?  Cool.  And thank you in advance for your understanding.

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So I just got a text message and a phone call from Duck U, telling me that they'll be closed on Wednesday.  Seems like I forgot to get myself removed from the emergency contact line.  Anyway, they're going to be closed tomorrow because of the high of -3°F with windchills of -40°F.

I just checked, and the same thing happened on the same date last year.  Huh.  It gets cold in January, go figure.

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-Yokohama Shopping Trip: Quiet Country Cafe, Ep01
I needed me some of that something awful.

-Yokohama Shopping Trip: Quiet Country Cafe, Ep02
That too. 

Alpha's got it right.

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