Against Kadokawa Games's expectation things kind of exploded, and they accidentally created a hit. KanColle started with a modest ambition of getting a total of around 100,000 players in Japan and expected to quietly fade away in a matter of months, apparently PC browser games aren't a big thing there.

With it's massive cast of over 100 ships and continuous new additions and updates, there's a favourite for everyone. The cuteness of destroyer Shimakaze probably has as much to do with its popularity. I do not know Japanese and I've been happily playing with help from the English wiki.

However very little understanding of the language is needed to play the game, more important is the ability to memorise which funny looking symbols do what. There is a region lock on the game, so one will need to use a Japanese proxy, or another method of bypassing this restriction. Knowledge of Japanese is not required to play it, although knowing some does undoubtedly help navigate around the DMM website without liberal use of google translate, and understanding what all the voice actors for the ship girls are saying will add to the experience. And you as admiral of the fleet have got to collect them all, train them up, and do battle with the various maps and tough seasonal special events which the developers love to throw out against the mysterious 'Abyssal fleet' enemies. Essentially it's a PvE pokemon game.with WW2 warships.which have been anthropomorphized into young women. Having played it, it's a nice browser game to pass the time, it's pretty relaxing and unlike WoT won't make you want to murder all humanity in a fit of rage. The original game is available on DMM.com, and whilst it might otherwise have been dismissed as yet another browser game in different circumstances, it has been a runaway success, due to the popularity of its characters and decent gameplay. The game was launched on the 23rd April 2013 and is hosted on DMM.com.

Kantai Collection (艦隊これくしょん Kantai Korekushon, literally 'Combined Fleet Collection' and abbreviated as KanColle (艦これ), is a Japanese free-to-play online social card browser game developed by Kadokawa featuring anthropomorphizations of WW2 era IJN warships.

Kancolle world of warships fan art