Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26091970-20150415230802

I know this will sound weird, and not too many people will take notice, but I've been constantly trying to make a connection between the gameplay we experience in Kantai Collection and the story of KC (both through certain doujins and the anime, even though the anime offered nearly no explanations). After some thought and reading through this doujin:

http://danbooru.donmai.us/pools/8986 (WARNING: pool is okay but Danbooru can be NSFW)

I've come up with a few theories on some concepts. More will be discussed or added as necessary.

First Concept: Shipgirls <-> Abyssals

One question that's plagued me is what exactly is involved in the conversion of shipgirls to abyssals or vice-versa. In the anime, Kisaragi sank, but we are offered no exact explanation for her conversion to an Abyssal (plus, the destroyer Kisaragi possibly turning into a Wo-class Aircraft Carrier is even more baffling). After some consideration, I consider the Kisaragi to Wo just unexplained idiocy in an attempt to inject drama into the anime on the director's part and now offer my theories:

1. Lingering regrets turn shipgirls into abyssals once sunk, while the opportunity to protect their country and loved ones again after being defeated as Abyssals allows a reversion.

This is pretty straightforward. Defeat in battle results in changing sides. However, if this is the case, then why don't all the Abyssals we fight in game revert into shipgirls (i.e. defeat a fleet of 6 Abyssals, all 6 turn into shipgirls)? My only guess is that the ones that revert into shipgirls feel an overwhelming desire to fight again, and are given such a chance, while the other defeated Abyssals are simply laid to rest like restless ghosts. Other than that, the other theory I have covers this.

2. Conversion takes place with special rituals (Japanese mythological stuff).

Some people portray the construction of shipgirls as similar to a summoning ritual: after all, how could normal human science instill a spirit, an actual soul, into a warship? Following this line of thought, it would make sense that other magic can be brought into play here. My suggestion is that the shipgirls and abyssals use a sort of purification/corruption ritual that allows them to convert enemies to their respective sides. Following this theory, it makes sense that we get only one ship drop max per battle, since the shipgirls probably have to subdue the last abyssal that they defeated (since all the other ones already sank and can't be retrieved), drag them all the way back to base, and then finally convert them. The abyssals would probably send submarines or other deepsea vessels to retrieve sunken shipgirls and use them for corruption rituals to convert them into more abyssal ships.

Second Concept: Magic Summoning Rituals

As previously mentioned, the idea of giving a consciousness and morality to something inanimate is still beyond the boundaries of human science (and will probably always be that way). Due to that, there has to be an explanation for how we construct these shipgirls, a strange mixture of girl and machine. The simplest explanation is magic.

My theory for this concept is that after using resources to construct a vessel, a special ritual is performed to call upon a spirit (most likely the same spirit as the historical ship itself, more on this concept later) to inhabit said vessel.

This makes a lot of sense in context, since using different amounts of resources results in different vessels that can be produced. This would also justify the uncertainty of LSC: we pour in thousands and thousands of resources, but get a ship that's only worth several hundred resources? That's probably because we didn't have the right vessel, or a different spirit was called upon by accident. As a result, we can probably blame the fairies for whatever the hell they're doing with our resources.

Third Concept: Historical Ship Spirits

This concept delves a bit further into a concept that the aforementioned doujin suggested: The shipgirls are most likely analogous to tsukumogami. Considering that the historical ships were created in the early to mid-1900s, they would likely take on the role of vengeful tsukumogami by the 21st century (around our present time, maybe a few decades later). It would also make sense that they could build up a large navy undetected by using the previously mentioned summoning rituals, which would make even more sense considering that not all of the historical ships have turned 100 years old yet (think of it as speeding up the corruption process by scavenging other sunken ships for resources).

On a side note, this also eliminates the anachronism stew brought about especially by such evidence as I-168's smartphone (since she would technically be living in the 21st century).

Back on the topic of this concept's relation to summoning rituals, let's consider some other Japanese concepts of tsukumogami: Tsukumogami are sort of considered as gods of the items they possess. As a result, we have the gods of various warships for KC context. According to some sources, Japanese gods can split themselves infinitely, with each clone being exactly the same as the original. This can be used to explain two things:

First of all, ship duplicates. We can have multiple copies of the same shipgirl because of this concept. They're all the same shipgirl, but they're also all clones of the original. This is rather interesting when we consider the events where we have to battle some ships that have historically sunk in those areas and are probably the originals.


 * Cue Persona 4 "I'll Face Myself"*

Second of all, this explains why we can have such unique event bosses while still retaining the purified versions of those supposedly original ships. If we couldn't summon clones of the abyssal originals, we would probably have very few ships to work with (essentially, the ones that weren't sunk and were properly scrapped).

Which leads to...

Fourth Concept: Scrapping and Modernization are humane methods of getting rid of unwanted shipgirls

I've read a few sources that claim that in order to prevent an item from becoming a vengeful tsukumogami (which is caused by disposal and years of neglect/abuse, sort of like the ships during the war), the item has to be properly taken apart/dismantled, which does not anger the item's spirit. If this logic applies to Kantai Collection, then it means that shipgirls are better off being scrapped/used for modernization instead of sunk. You won't anger their spirits, although they may be very unhappy about having to leave you :(

Following this same line of logic, it's a good thing that we can summon clones of the original shipgirls turned abyssal (mentioned above), otherwise we'd only have access to a limited number of the original ships like Haruna, Hibiki/Verniy, and Yukikaze (who were all scrapped).

Anyways, if you read all of this, I thank you for your time and consideration. Feel free to add on any suggestions or criticisms you deem necessary. If you think I'm a crazy loony who just put up a bunch of weird shit and wasted five minutes of your time, feel free to say so. I hope we can eventually find a way to explain the mysteries surrounding Kantai Collection.

Have a good day, fellow TTKs! 