>- I have a soft spot for Mogamin

As do I, though I have to ask - what's the deal with the "-in" thing? I've seen it before, often but not always with other girls' names that end in I (Saori in Girls und Panzer calls Yukari "Yukarin" and Miho "Miporin"); assuming it's some kind of abbreviated variant of "-chan", but it's a hard thing to craft search terms for when you're looking for confirmation. :)

>Add in her being a clumsy girl
>(you ever notice there's a number of those in
>Kancolle?) and she's doubly endearing.

I think that's kind of a natural side effect of there having been so many ship-to-ship collisions during the war. You get big enough fleets tooling around long enough and that kind of thing is going to happen just because of statistical factors. Heck, two out of Mogami's three infamous collisions were the other ship's fault!

>She's the sorta
>girl I could see getting along with Utena, perhaps even developing a
>little bit of idol worship.

Hmm.

>- Say what you will about Mutsu, she has an explosive personality
>(that's a joke, son). I really came to like her
>as a character while watching the anime, how she seemed to be such a
>great "big sister" character for the younger girls and yet seemed to
>take pleasure in catching Nagato in embarrassing situations.

Yeah, Mutsu's awesome, that's why she's on the list even though she's kind of the salt to Nagato's pepper shaker. I'll probably save her for a different situation where I'm not limited to a single KanColle character, though, as a direct result.

>- The thing about Kongou is she's a character who works best in small
>doses. Not a bad thing by any means, but she has a tendency to just
>steal any scene she's in. Heaven help whoever she proclaims to be her
>admiral/commander when she does eventually show up in UF.

Again, I like Kongō a lot, but upon reflection, I'd feel bad about breaking up the set. (I like 'em all a lot, but of the four, I think I like Haruna the most. She just seems to need a hug that bit more than the other three. Maybe it's that historical parallel thing again; they do get a lot of mileage out of her saying "Haruna is OK" when she really isn't. I'd want to call her Haruharu even though that's the other one. :)

>- I had to give my vote to Yūdachi, especially in her Kai Ni form.
>She just goes from "cute airhead" to "slayer of men" with a refit,
>even picking up the little hair "ears" to represent how she's become a
>ferocious hound (the artist's words, not mine).

She and Mogami are pretty much the frontrunners for the single storyline slot I have open right now, though the plot structure they'd need to fit into is still taking shape and may wind up suiting one more than the other. Not entirely sure how I feel about her K2 personality change (the new look's a keeper, but I kinda liked that nice-but-dim thing she had going on before), though she does seem to be able to turn the increased aggression off a little when she's not actively shooting at things.

(In the course of stumbling around fearfully clicking too-small comic thumbnails in hopes that I wouldn't see things I couldn't un-see, I stumbled across a page from one I didn't want to read the rest of, but the image on that one page was pretty worth it, since it was Kirishima having a "Limit Break" moment and blasting the holy living shit out of something, accompanied by a user comment to the effect of, "MIC CHECK MOTHERFUCKER." I didn't dig the reason for it, but it's hard to argue with that visual. :)

--G.
-><-
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
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.