Some Kantai Collection players allegedly sent death threats, attempted arson against rightsholders of Japanese warship

The Kantai Collection (KanColle) franchise and fandom have become involved in controversy after a letter of protest addressed to the game’s developers started circulating on social media around November 9. The issue revolves around the Japanese warship Kikuzuki, which exists as a personified character in KanColle, and seems to have escalated into death threats and arson attempts by players of the game. 

Kantai Collection is a free-to-play web browser game developed by C2Praparat. The game features anthropomorphized historical ships as characters, called “Kanmusu” or Fleet Girls. The player is an admiral who organizes and manages the Fleet Girls. 

One of the characters that appears in the game is Kikuzuki, based on the factual Japanese destroyer Kikuzuki used by the Imperial Japanese Navy from the 1920s onwards. Kikuzuki sank in 1942 after being torpedoed by US Navy aircraft, and her hulk still exists today, washed ashore the Island of Ngella Sule. 

The party that addressed a letter of protest to C2Praparat is “The Destroyer Kikuzuki Association,” organized by the former crew members of the Japanese destroyer Kikuzuki, their families, and volunteers. The association claims to have legal ownership over Kikuzuki since November 2017. 

The letter of protest, sent back in March this year and recently deleted after receiving attention on social media, alleges that ever since March 2021, the Kikuzuki Association has been continuously harassed by Kantai Collection players, including acts such as arson threats, attempted arson, leaving suspicious objects at association members’ home addresses, as well as online defamation and death threats. The organization mentions that even with the involvement of the police, the criminal acts are showing no sign of stopping, and they are unable to resume their activities. 

But what happened in March of 2021 that could trigger such behavior? As per the Kikuzuki Association’s explanation, it all started when the organization addressed the official KanColle X (Twitter at the time) account in response to a certain in-game limited time quest. The tweet has since been deleted, but it was in response to the 2021 Hinamatsuri Operation, which included spending 4 Mutsuki-class destroyers (the class Kikuzuki belongs to) as material to modernize a Destroyer. As Kantai Collection claims to be a game in the spirit of commemorating and giving repose to the souls lost in war, the association questioned the act of treating the character based on the ship as a consumable material. 

Apparently, a portion of the KanColle fandom found offense in this act, raising doubts that the association may be pretending to have rights over the ship to harm the game and similar. The offending tweet was deleted a day later to protect the safety of the association’s members, as they had started receiving slanderous interactions and threats from multiple accounts across multiple platforms. The letter of protest describes the acts as malicious, with offenders even using Tor to maintain anonymity. 

Meanwhile, the Kantai Collection administration seems to have remained quiet on the matter the whole time, which is another point the Association brings up in their letter, criticizing their continuous inability to respond via phone, e-mail, fax etc., issue a warning or define any kind of guideline to protect rightsholders from their players. 

With the letter of protest gaining traction on social media, some users maintain the stance that The Destroyer Kikuzuki Association’s claim of ownership of the ship is vague and suspicious, but the alleged harassment and crimes committed by the Kantai Collection users have earned the contempt of the public regardless of the circumstances. Though the Kikuzuki Association deleted their letter on November 10, it remains to be seen if the KanColle administration will take any action on the matter. 

UPDATE (11/10 9:46 PM JST):

The Destroyer Kikuzuki Association has made a statement on their official X/Twitter account in which they claim the above mentioned letter of protest was written and addressed to C2Praparat by an individual of the association, without the knowledge or approval of other members. They state that the details of the letter lacked credibility and that it was an inappropriate response to the situation which was why they decided to delete it. They issued an apology to the public and C2Praparat for the inconvenience caused.