>Oh... dear, that's a deep hole.
>
>OK, see you guys in a few weeks. :)

Luckily, while it's up to Ch 89, they're usually only 6 pages apiece.

>"Well, yeah," the counterargument runs, "but that's what
>happened," so I suppose it depends on whether you take the view
>that KanColle is some kind of weirdly metaphorized
>description of the war that's actually set in the 1940s, or the
>view that it's a Strange Phenomenon occurring in a near-future
>semi-sci-fi setting. (Or that it's neither, it's just a cute web
>browser game featuring personified ships from history. That's a valid
>view, although it isn't one that leads anywhere interesting.) In the
>latter case, they don't have to be slaves to what befell their
>namesakes, which seems to be the approach the TV show takes (after
>certain of the ships themselves flirt gloomily with the thought that
>they might be for most of the series). A number of fan writers and
>artists, though - some of them quite talented - take the former tack,
>and it's just crushing. Sometimes it's hard to tell where they're
>going until it's too late not to see, too, which... well. It's hard
>work, taking an interest in this franchise, that's all I'm saying.

I like one fan comic I saw, which is set in what is the standard "surprisingly-modern future," where the argument goes that the Abyssal ships are basically all the negative emotions of the souls of the famous ships sunk during the war, while the ship girls who begin to appear are the more positive emotions. The first one dealt with the appearance of the girls who are the starter ships in-game (Fubuki, Inazuma, Sazanami, Murakumo, & Samidare), while the second issue deals with the appearance of Naka.

>Heh. (I had to look up the flag part.)

Yeah, I should probably take a second to explain that to those who don't know. One of the items that's usually in restaurant and even home-cooked meals for kids is a little flag. So the joke is that, even though the admiral has invited Akatsuki to a meal-for-two, he's still treating her to a kid's meal.

>Somewhere down that
>terrifying well there's an adorable one-frame cartoon in which the
>other three are trying to get her to tell them if the Admiral is any
>good in the sack, and a deeply flustered Akatsuki insists that she
>just sleeps with him.

Well, when you get down to it, the (provisional) marriage system is just a game mechanic that allows you to go past the original level ceiling (lvl 99) to a new one (lvl 125) as well as a few other bonuses/trade-offs.

The fandom, of course, takes it as everything from a "promise" by an admiral to marry a girl once the war's over to a way to lay claim to a harem. One of my favorite little 4komas has the admiral that Kongou's been chasing after for awhile end up marrying Tenryū instead, leading to his giving Kongou an apology for not picking her. Her response? She forgives his decision, because she's not interested in a sham marriage, she wants the real thing.

>In fairness to Ikazuchi, I have to speculate that she would also be
>more fun, albeit less practically helpful. :)

Ikazuchi is the wife you love because, even if she can't cook a gourmet meal, she's so much fun to be around, the kind of mother who becomes a friend with her kids rather than an authority figure.

Inazuma is the wife you could depend on to run the house and rule the family finances with an iron fist, but would still be happy and cheerful when you came home...provided you hadn't been spending too much money.

>As fleet girl verbal tics go, that's... not the most annoying one
>kuma.

Of the Kuma girls, I'm most partial to Kiso, especially her Kai Ni refit when she suddenly becomes a swashbuckler who looks like she raided Captain Harlock's closet.