Casual online games based on military themes and with a kawaii (cute) twist are currently a surprise hit in Japan. Is this related to the recent rightward tilt in national politics, or just part of Japan's creative desire to "cutify" everything.

It's no secret that Japan loves cartoon characters, attaching them to any and every brand. And more often than not, those characters take the form of young girls. In the case of "Kantai Collection," game designers at Kadokawa Games have mined warship designs from World War II, with over 100 battleships, cruisers, submarines and aircraft carriers anthropomorphized as teenage girls decked out in naval uniforms and accessories.

In this browser game, published by DMM and also known as "KanColle," you play as an admiral and form fleets of these girls, called Kanmusu (kan musume, or "ship girls"), each of whom has her own personality, anecdotes (based on historical incidents) and speech dubbed by anime voice actresses.