Another Kancolle event has come and gone and once again heroes have been crowned but unlike previous events this list can be considered largely CANON in terms of historical accuracy which is really something if you think about it. The Fall 2017 event plays out the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in WWII and arguably in history in terms of scale and amount of boats involved. Many boat waifus sunk historically in this event, such as Musashi, Kongo, Zuikaku, Atago, Maya, Suzuya, Kumano Chokai, Chikuma just to name a few which is kind of a big deal. I don’t normally look too much into the historical basis for these boats but the way they designed this event it’s kind of hard not too. To continue or make any kind of decent progress you literally have to use the “historically accurate” fleet compositions which goes to say that if you don’t have enough, you are pretty much screwed. I luckily had enough and of course I went with easy mode all the way but even still it was quite a struggle near the end at E4. After breezing past E1-E3 without much trouble I hit a roadblock at the mid-boss of E4. FUCCKKKKK. At this point it was pretty much set your shit and hope for the best RNG runs which luckily I got through. They made your third fleet special and allowed it to have 7 boats and created a new battle formation called “Vanguard” or something. Of course you have to use that fleet for the boss section of E4 with the right boats or you’ll have a bad time. This list mostly reflects the fleet that I had at the time of clearing E4 as the bulk of the bullshit and RNG lies in that map, to be specific the route towards the boat.
7. Abukuma
Oh hay it’s annoying voice blonde boat again with good early torpedo shots again, pretty much mandatory at some point in every event. For once she just barely makes the list. I got Yura to K2 recently which acts the same way as Abukuma except better so hopefully I won’t have to rely on this noise machine anymore.
6. Suzuya
Oh look, it’s Suzuya, everyone’s favorite green haired virgin bitch making her appearance again. I think she was in most fleets whenever it called for a CAV or even CA. Suzuya is good, RIP historically in this event.
5. Yukikaze
Hmm..I don’t remember if I ever had the beaver ever on one of these lists. Either way, congrats Yukikaze for doing something. I originally brought her along because I was thinking there would be a need for a lot torpedo cut-ins for E4 and such…but in the end she just got used to be the PT Imp killer and didn’t even equip torpedoes at all…ah-well, doesn’t hurt to have high luck.
5. Tone
Oh look it’s Tone again, our wonderful twintailed no pantie wearing green clothed CAV. I like Tone, fan artists usually draw her art pretty good. The original artist, Bob; really got better as time went on. Tone was my go to CAV for this event, even though to be more historically accurate I should have used Mogami, too bad because my Mogami is like totally shit, maybe level 50? Tone will do, Tone will do…
4. Akizuki
Of course we needed an anti-air goddess somewhere and I decided to give this spot to Akizuki even though I think for one of the earlier combined fleet maps I did use Maya as well. At one point I had like 3 AA capable boats in my combined fleet and it was like 99% chance that one of them would trigger in opening node battle. Shittt. I had her in my final E4 boss clear as well and to be honest I am not entirely sure I needed her to be there since while AA is important in this event, it’s nowhere near as important than previous events which were more carrier air focused. Either way whatever, she’s good.
3. I-14
A unsung and non-canon hero of the event, the sub I-14 or “Iyo” as they call it. After ramming my boats into the shit show that was E4 boss path for about 2 days I think I decided to give this whole sub tanking business a try. I generally don’t like using subs for anything other than as eye candy because the fact they are all in swimsuits and can’t do much damage in day battle but I decided to try since I was stuck. Holy shit did it work. Iyo provided excellent tanking abilities for my fleet to reach deep into the boss path and kept my fleet largely undamaged for the boss battle. Hell yeah. Of course 80% of the time she would get hit in the red like midway though the path but that was ok since I crafted the special fleet command equip which allows you to retreat a red boat by itself but only for this special 7-boat map event. Abuse that shit, chip away boss hp, win.
2. Shigure
Shigure was listed as one of the required historical boats for pretty much every map I think and of course I did not hesitate to add her to each one. I normally run her with double torpedo for cut-in chance just like Yukikaze, but in the end she ended up being just a PT Imp killer with the added bonus of more damage to the E4 boss since well, she is supposed to be fighting here historically. Shigure has been known as a “lucky” boat having survived many battles undamaged where others met their end, this event; the Battle of Leyte Gulf was one of them most famously as the only survivor of the “Nishimura Fleet” which is what you are supposed to use for E4 boss path. She did a great job at fighting the boss and throughout the event as a whole on all maps; I even noticed that they changed her CG artwork for the occasion with her face looking serious which is going out of their way I suppose to try and make her stand out as a hero as the sole survivor. Good job, nice bathing suit art too.
1. Fusou/Yamashiro
And here we are at the end to recognize the aviation battleships Fusou and Yamashiro, the primary power and damage dealing factors of E4 boss and backbone of the Nishimura Fleet. Well then, I suppose it has been a long time coming but it finally makes sense to me, this event is pretty much the equivalent of a dream what if scenario to make the boats of the Nishimura Fleet survive this battle. Great planning and care was done to craft this event and all of it’s maps, especially E4 to basically make it so that ALL admirals end up coming to the conclusion that you have to use boats from the Nishimura Fleet and do a re-enactment of sorts, except that they win. Holy shit, you literally could not do this event if you did not have at least 2-3 boats from the Nishimura Fleet in your third fleet, designed just for this event to allow 7 boats just to be canon. Of those 2-3 mandatory, I am sure that 99% of admirals had both the Fusou sisters and Shigure for sure, since that’s what happened after all. Shigure protected the two battleships and was the only survivor while everyone else sunk, all her friends are dead; which I suppose explains why there is so much fanart with those three together, historical legacy yo. But anyways, the fleet composition for the boss part of E4 was super strict, for hard you literally needed to have everyone of the required boats or else you’ll get shit on, and yes, the damage bonuses were noticeable. After some struggle with the mid-boss combined with the sub tanking strategy I finally managed to get the boss down to last dance. At this point is was pretty much pure RNG and it all depended on the Fusou sisters to do damage and of course they delivered. I can’t remember who got the final kill but I think it was Yamashiro. After clearing the event you hear the voice actors of the Nishimura Fleet boats and Shigure giving some kind of fleet thanking everyone and some shit. Wow, so much lore, very nice. I don’t normally care about lore/history for boats but for some reason this time it was very interesting to me. Maybe considering that so many boat waifus supposedly died at this battle but yea. I am actually kind of surprised that they made this a small event with only 4 maps, you would think that such a huge battle would entail some of the shit like 6-7 maps of summer. Maybe because Japan got totally wrecked in this battle they don’t really want to prolong it, heh, nonetheless cool. The event itself was largely easy with the exception of E4 and all the bullshit RNG and special gimmicks but whatever, I got through it so it’s fine.
Good job Fusou/Yamashiro, you both are the top heroes of our time for this event.
Bonus:
As one can see, there is much artwork depicting the super-fleet of tragedy. Pretty gangster looking boats and Shigure the lone survivor hero protagonist.
I don’t actually think Iowa was in this battle but you get the idea, America totally destroyed japan’s navy in this battle. From what I read on wiki, this was also the first battle where Japan got desperate and started doing kamikaze attacks which goes to show how strong America’s navy was. Like seriously, Japan lost soooooo many boats in this battle and were so outrageously outnumbered and under-powered compared to America it’s not even funny. Like after this battle, their navy was basically spent and the pacific war was at it’s end before nukes came.
Another example of the “bond” I suppose that Shigure and Fusou/Yamashiro have and are always depicted in fanart. I suppose you could say that Shigure does look a little like a mini Fusou but yea, dunno. The most you could say is that they have similar hair ornaments. Very nice, makes sense to me. When I think about it, since boats is re-creating battles near the end of the war does that mean they are close to finishing development of the shit flash game? I mean, flash is going to be dead officially in 2020 I think so It makes me wonder what the future holds for the franchise. I’m sure they’ll make a mobile version or new adaption maybe even take some cues for the new China boat bootleg game Azurlane who knows.
Artists works featured here, in no particular order because I am lazy: