katsuragi (kancolle)
The Kantai Collection version of the historic Imperial Japanese Navy Aircraft Carrier Katsuragi, introduced in the April 2015 event.
Third of the three Unryuu-class carriers. An energetic girl, in contrast with her sisters' quiet and proper lady images.
Appearance
Katsuragi has long black hair with some tied in a small ponytail with a white hair ribbon. She has blue eyes. Underneath a green furisode with orange patterns that is only loosely tied around her waist by a camouflage-patterned obi, she wears an odd piece of clothing that looks like a robe's front that seems mostly just tied to her chest with an armor protector over her chest. Below, she wears a fundoshi. In her kai form, she disposes of the kimono entirely, and wears a pleated skirt, asymmetric fingerless gloves, with one being an elbow glove, and black thighhighs to create zettai ryouiki. Her armor also includes an armored belt and both forms show off her midriff. Like Amagi her green furisode reflects the fact that she spent almost her entire service camouflaged.
Before remodel, she has a banner-rod like her sisters as well as an azusayumi, a sacred musical bow used for Shinto rituals, attached to her gear. She replaces these with a functional bow upon remodel. Her pre-kai gear notably incorporates aspects of the real ship's flight tower, and houses turrets for AA guns. Her quiver in kai form, however, has paper-charm-like arrowheads on her arrows, giving her some hybrid relation to her sisters. Also in kai form, a flight deck is suspended off of the left of the rear of her armored belt, along with a mockup of her bridge and several AA turrets as a counterbalance on her right.
Unlike her sisters and cousins, she has a slim figure, complete with a flat chest. This is both due to her being fitted with destroyer machinery instead of her sisters' heavy cruiser machinery (though her machinery is the same as those on the Kagerou-class destroyers, whose some of their in-game counterparts are actually well-endowed;) and the fact that she never received a complement of planes (her kai form is merely a what-if).
History
Katsuragi spent nearly the entirety of her career at port because of American advances and oil shortages. Katsuragi was permanently moored at Kure, disguised as a city street by her crew. She was effectively hulked during the Raid on Kure Harbor, when an American Curtiss SB2C Helldiver dropped a 2,000 pound bomb into her aircraft elevator that blew off the entirety of her flight deck. Amazingly she did not sink, and ultimately had the skeleton of her hanger plated over and was used as a repatriation ship to return Japanese nationals home. Because of this, in KanColle Katsuragi seems to have a complex about being a "floating AA platform".
Trivia
She is a huge admirer of Zuikaku and frequently calls her senpai. At the time of Katsuragi's completion, Zuikaku was the only remaining standard aircraft carrier in the IJN apart from the Unryuu-class.
She is named after Mount Yamato Katsuragi (lit. Kudzu Castle).
Voiced by Kayano Ai.