Posted under Tags
I would say that characters semi-frequently using terms like “sister,” “big sister,” or “little sister” when talking about their sisters goes a bit farther than just headcanon. And using aesthetics to determine sisterhood, well, let’s just say that if the gap between Takao and Atago is too wide, then Blanc and Noir’s sister tags probably need to be pruned too.
Hillside_Moose said in forum #438695:
The whole "sister" situation just strikes me as WW2 naval otaku (i.e. Kancolle's target audience) trying to ram their metaknowledge headcanon in.
It pretty much is. For every post of Kancolle "sister" characters that look like actual sisters, there are dozens like post #11254726 where the characters in question look completely different and the only way it's known they're sisters is metaknowledge. Someone who likes the sisters tag but doesn't know/care about shipgirls is likely extremely confused.
evvvk said in forum #438775:
I would say that characters semi-frequently using terms like “sister,” “big sister,” or “little sister” when talking about their sisters goes a bit farther than just headcanon. And using aesthetics to determine sisterhood, well, let’s just say that if the gap between Takao and Atago is too wide, then Blanc and Noir’s sister tags probably need to be pruned too.
Shipgirl sister-ships that actually look like sisters are by far the exception rather than the rule, yes. Which is the reason why everything I've seen and been told over the years has discouraged using familial tags for personifications.
evvvk said in forum #438775:
And using aesthetics to determine sisterhood, well, let’s just say that if the gap between Takao and Atago is too wide, then Blanc and Noir’s sister tags probably need to be pruned too.
Nikkes were human once, unlike shipgirls who are supposedly reincarnated spirits of the actual ships (i.e. more headcanon), so they do have actual consanguinity.
I think "sister_ships" is an ok compromise, they do adress eachother as sisters ingame, but we don't know if that's because they're actually related, or just because they are sister-ships. (And going by appearance, it's more likely it is the latter in most cases, and we can't really start seperating each case like if Takao-Maya is just "sister_ship" or Fusou/Yamashirou is "sisters")
BUR #59663 has been rejected.
mass update kantai_collection siblings sisters -> sister_ships
Well... since this seems like a popular compromise, why don't we vote on it to make sure?
Eboreg said in forum #440184:
BUR #59663 has been rejected.
mass update kantai_collection siblings sisters -> sister_ships
Well... since this seems like a popular compromise, why don't we vote on it to make sure?
If you remove sisters and siblings from all Kantai Collection posts, you'd also be removing them from things like post #2401587 and post #9325565. Removing those tags should be done manually, not through a BUR.
Blank_User said in forum #440185:
If you remove sisters and siblings from all Kantai Collection posts, you'd also be removing them from things like post #2401587 and post #9325565. Removing those tags should be done manually, not through a BUR.
Duly noted
I've been gardening my way through these posts manually since this vote's direction became clear (down to less than 130 pages remaining from over 400!), and while doing so have made a number of observations from which effective conclusions can be drawn.
Firstly, discounting outlier posts where the sisters tag was applicable (largely involving cosplay) or single-post examples (usually a user adding the tag while uploading about a week ago, when the sisters tag was common enough to be suggested), the effective totality of the sisters tag has been added to Kancolle posts by only three users: user #1153489, user #455356, and user #492049. Of these, the earliest edits found were performed by user #1153489 in June and July of 2025, and were only performed on select images of the Kongou class, seemingly done as additions to a larger project by that user to replace detached sleeves with shoulder cutout on images of said class. This means that, despite the Kantai Collection tag existing for over a decade, there were no posts where the sisters tag had been added earlier than last year.
Secondly, the vast majority of the tag was added by user #455356 beginning in April of this year, with user #492049 contributing to the tag beginning at the end of April. Both users continuing to add it until the creation of this thread on May 9th, meaning the vast majority of the 400 pages of posts tagged Kantai Collection and Sisters had the latter tag added in the space of about a month. There are no similarities in situations by which these posts were added: instead, they followed scenarios and ratings across the board, linked only by the characters involved: the Kongous, the Yamatos, the Nagatos, the Fusos, DesDiv 6, and the entirety of pool #10686. Given the lack of similarity many of these characters exhibit, and the lack of interaction on many of these posts, one can only conclude that the sisters tag was added by these two users en masse based solely on the character tags involved, which sends us into a larger but separate argument of what exactly is supposed to be the point of the sisters tag is at all. This also echoes the concern raised by Hillside Moose that the determination of "sister" in a Kancolle or other personification context relies more on metaknowledge of the objects being personified than it does any objective measure of siblinghood, which again raises the spectre of tag pollution.
Returning back to argument at hand, however, the concentrated and extremely recent nature of these tag edits serves to refute NNT's points earlier in this thread regarding consensus: the larger community of Kantai Collection uppers and taggers, it seems, do not consider shipgirls of the same class to be familial relations, regardless of the valid question of what familial relations of personifications are supposed to look like. Whether the edits by user #1153489 last year comprise the very first time a familial relationship was tagged on a Kancolle post, or simply the oldest example to have been unreverted, is a question that may be interesting in the sociological sense but is irrelevant to this discussion. Also irrelevant is the argument over the larger question of familial tags in general, or the arguments raised by Evvk over how similar personification games such as Azur Lane treat familial relations.
In the end, it seems that the Kancolle community has largely been holding true to the wiki instructions to not tag shipgirls as sisters, and the recent spate of tagging thereof was an aberration from the norm rather than an adjustment of it.
In conclusion, so as to preserve the sisters tag where properly applied on cosplay posts, I'll reject the opening BUR and then finish manually gardening the remaining offenders over the next few days.
The bulk update request #59159 (forum #438491) has been rejected by @Historyanon.
The bulk update request #59663 (forum #440184) has been rejected by @Eboreg.
Of course, this means that the double standard in the incest tag is still unaddressed...
I might have to figure out another way to settle things there.
Oh yeah, and having to deal with people thinking that artists only put sister ships together because they're from the same country.
Historyanon said in forum #441242:
In conclusion, so as to preserve the sisters tag where properly applied on cosplay posts, I'll reject the opening BUR and then finish manually gardening the remaining offenders over the next few days.
@Historyanon since you had the brilliant idea of mass nuking incest from posts which were obviously incest in this weird attempt at enforce your own opinion, i am also "in conclusion" reverting your edits.
As shown in this post versions search plenty of other random users are completely fine with tagging these characters with incest.
And as shown in this post versions search, there's also a wide array of users who think it's fine to tag kancolle characters as sisters.
Sites like e-hentai have no problem categorizing these characters as sisters when they look the same: https://exhentai.org/?f_search=kantai_collection+incest, https://exhentai.org/?f_search=azur_lane+incest
post #2864186 or post #9202651 are obviously two sisters, claming they're not sisters is stupid.
Look at Tatsuta (Kancolle) and Tenryuu (Kancolle). They're always depicted as sisters. You're claiming post #10609162 should not be tagged with sisters because they're personifications. That makes no sense. Why does post #10357759 not get sisters but Rem (Re:Zero) and Ram (Re:Zero) do?
Do naka_(kancolle) sendai_(kancolle) not look like sisters to you? If you saw post #1539334 as original you'd have no problem tagging them as sisters.
This is yet again another retarded argument where builders have convinced themselves they are right and will pummel through with their all or nothing approach despite all evidence of the contrary or utility of tags.
These characters treat each others like sisters. If I'm trying to find kancolle incest I don't give a shit that some nerd decided in their own fart bubble that "erm... they're ships, not real people! Don't you know ships don't have biological siblings?"
If a user wants to see the Admiral (Kancolle) in an oyakodon with sister ships (which is a tag you removed from several posts, by the way), any pedantic argument you might have about blood relation is completely irrelevant.
Updated by nonamethanks
Eboreg said in forum #441293:
Of course, this means that the double standard in the incest tag is still unaddressed...
I might have to figure out another way to settle things there.
Oh yeah, and having to deal with people thinking that artists only put sister ships together because they're from the same country.
Incest and Kantai Collection has already been gardened down to the few posts that actually have incest involving siblings doing cosplay, I'm unfamiliar with the discourse surrounding Azur Lane, but since the Kancolle community has pretty firmly rejected familial relations between shipgirls for over a decade now, the direction here is pretty well set--
nonamethanks said in forum #441299:
@Historyanon since you had the brilliant idea of mass nuking incest from posts which were obviously incest in this weird attempt at enforce your own opinion, i am also "in conclusion" reverting your edits.
...or not, because NNT will just go "fuck you all I say they're sisters now" and reject the whole premise in its entirety. Sure, that works too.
I'm sure the two users who mass-added the "sisters" tag are very happy.
Historyanon said in forum #441300:
but since the Kancolle community has pretty firmly rejected familial relations between shipgirls for over a decade now, the direction here is pretty well set--
You and others keep claiming this, and yet I've never seen such a statement anywhere other than in these forums.
Had you bothered to take a look at the source, the actual artists and players outside danbooru, you would have realized this "rejection" is entirely made up. Try to argue to someone outside of danbooru that post #11409120 or post #11112394 do not depict sisters, and they will rightfully call you retarded.
People have no problem calling these characters sisters, because it's what they are and it's how they present themselves.
This entire thread and debate is a quintessential example of builders huffing their own farts with no regard to how normal users actually browse and search.
Even when someone started populating sister ships as a compromise you went ahead and nuked it because it didn't fit this obsessive compulsive autistic categorization of fictional characters. Ridiculous.
Updated by nonamethanks
I think the ultimate frustration here stems from what the hell the sisters tag (and the broader relationship tags) are supposed to be used for.
The pro-tagging-sisters side has yet to mention whether or not Kantai Collection itself canonically states that their personifications are sisters (because if they were, then that would be entirely fine, per relationship examples from Fate and Uma), so this entire discussion is entirely based on real world knowledge influencing the tagging of characters. Uma has Umamusume horse relations for posts that are explicitly based on real world knowledge, born out of the former pool of the same intent, distinguishing that genre of posts from other relationship tags which are based on the canonical facts of the franchise (so IRL parent-child relations are not represented in Uma, but some sibling relations are) - so if we were to make sister ships/ship relations/etc. as a tag, it would follow the precedent Uma set in distinguishing between fanon and canon family relations.
Without any proof provided, we have to assume that any depictions of sisters in KanColle fanart is purely fanon based on real world knowledge, so the discussion becomes whether or not fanon can justifiably tagged with relationship tags which are otherwise normally tagged canonically. And if fanon does count, do all instances of fanon count or do only some instances of fanon count? Do we want to carve out a specific exception just for ship girls, or would this apply universally?
Do they call each other sisters? Yes -> tag them as sisters. No -> don't tag them as sisters. It's really that easy.
Look for example at Kongou's voice lines from the Setsubun 2016 event:
HEY、提督ぅー！ 今年の節分は、この金剛型四姉妹がDirectionさせていただきマース！ まず、鬼役ですが……あっ、提督ぅ！ なぜ逃げるデース！？
She straight out calls the other Kongou-class ships "sisters". It's literally spelled out for us. So what the hell are we doing here?
I'm going through the edits, there's so many examples of things like post #1699542 where they EXPLICITLY call each other sisters, and I'm supposed to believe we shouldn't tag them as sisters?
Updated by nonamethanks
