Fascinated, she watched them go until they went out of sight, tiny dark specks making a hard starboard turn and passing behind the pedestal of the colossal bronze statue that stood near the mouth of New Yokosuka Harbor. (She wondered idly who or what it was meant to depict; from behind, it looked like a woman wearing an ornately modified miko outfit, striking a triumphal you-shall-not-pass sort of pose.)

We've been trying for some time to get an illustration of that item, but for various reasons it hasn't happened...

... until last weekend, when Doc ran it by Adam Withers at Anime Central and he blasted it out in record time.

That statue, erected in the aftermath of the Ragnarök, is listed in the Valhalla Register of Historic Monuments with the complete, official title of The Colossus of New Yokosuka, or Kongō Holding the Line at the Strait of Miura. It commemorates one of the most widely witnessed of the original "kanmusu incidents", in which the spirit of the battleship Kongō manifested on the vessel's foredeck at the height of the struggle for that particular approach to Rainbow Bay and appeared to repulse a svartelven strike fleet as much with sheer force of personality as with firepower. It's 275 feet tall, weighs 8,500 tons, and is made from solid adamantine.

Special thanks to Phil for cleaning up a bit of a blunder on my part: when specifying this piece for the artist, I included a reference image of Kongō in her kai ni form, but forgot to note that she's not wearing her rigging in the statue, and so, rockstar that he is, Adam included it in the original. I was just going to try and rewrite the scene to reflect it, but Phil jumped in with his Photoshop skills and saved the day. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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