While I was reading the "Where are you from?" Thread in this subforum, I noticed that some people also stated their personal reason for playing the game. Some were funny, some hilarious. I would like to expand on that and open a thread filled with personal stories. I will go ahead and tell you my story.
I had a job offer from Japan but at the time I didnt know the language, so I turned it down. Also, I didnt had the financial backup to cover me if anything went wrong. However I have been to Japan twice and I enjoyed it very much. The food is delicious and the people are very nice.
So after I got the job offer, I decided to take a look at the language first and took some lessons at the local community college. I learned the basic Kana sets, some words and expressions but the learning experience was very tedious and sometimes even boring.
Thats where Kancolle came in. I did read about the game a few times before in 2014, on a western game blog named Kotaku, they covered the game in a few articles and I found it pretty exotic and uninteresting at the time. It was only because of the need to learn Kanji in a more fun way, that I had the urge to create an account and play the game too. What can I say, it worked. I learned a lot of new words and Kanji, also a bunch of military terms that will probably not help me at all in everyday life. :) After I learned most of the basic Kanji the game had to offer, I even connected to some doujin artist who publishes short comic strips via twitter on a regular basis. (https://twitter.com/idonum) I use the comics to learn even more Kanji.
When I was younger I used to watch Anime like Macross SDF-1 or Dragonball, so it was easier for me to adapt to the idea of girls being ships and all. I did have some problems in the beginning though, for example I found the pinup loli subs to be disgusting, but I got used to the art style now. Goya was an exception though, I liked her voice and likeness from the beginning. I found out later that her VA, Megumi Nakajima, is also featured in the latest version of the Macross franchise, she plays the role of Ranka Lee. To my surprise even the VA of Sheryl Nome, Aya Endou makes an appearance in Kancolle, she voices one of my favourite ships, the Bismarck. I also discovered that Yui Horie did some voicework in the game, I didnt expect the game to feature so many, more or less popular, VA.
TL;DR: wants to learn kanji and language in general. GREAT SUCCESS!
I played the game really casual for the first months, until summer event 2015. I had a really hard time beating the event with my flimsy fleet and around this time some switches in my head flipped and I started to study the wiki, especially the ship maxstats page, so I could make an informed decision on who to level up. I have all the german ships now and I want to beat winter event on hard. I am not sure if I will keep playing afterwards, because the game became more of a daily habit instead of a source of learning but I will see how it evolves in the future.
How about you guys out there? Whats your personal story? Maybe you are a military nut? Are you hot for ships? Maybe you are a weeaboo? Do you play because of a specific artist whose work is featured in the game? I guess there are many different reasons and I would love to read them. Dont be afraid to post it here, no matter how silly it might appear to you. I am sure nobody will judge you.
PS: here is a short 2 panel comic strip to raise your morale to provide a story!
akagi is hungry
