No, it's fairly open about what it is.

>What, so any who manage to survive the war will promptly be murdered
>by the U.S. Navy, then?

The Abyssals seem to be filling in that role in the narrative. But the big climactic battle sequence involves the assault on Abyssal Base AF, and KSS Akagi had been having nightmares about her namesake's destruction at Midway, while TBS Nagato, temporarily in command, noted that she'd been utterly convinced that AF was their target long before their recon elements confirmed it.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

... of course it does. Are they having problems with their water purifiers?

--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.

The most human thing any Abyssal does or says in the course of the show is tell the girls it's fighting, "Sink... to the bottom..."

OTOH... Would you like a spoiler?

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

Should you consider going further, I would warn that there are two problems with the show; first, the writers couldn't decide whether to do a cute slice-of-life or an Actual Serious Plot, so they tried to do both in a 12-episode run, with the result that neither were done well.

The second problem is the production quality itself, which is very uneven, to the point where the start of the pivotal Operation sees more frames of animation put into showing a girl blowing bubbles in her milk than into one of the combatants dodging torpedoes (leading to a cliffhanger as to whether the torpedo-dodger had been killed or not, because we couldn't tell).

On the upside, Episodes 6 and 8 are pure sugar, and I think worth watching even if you're going to toss the rest of the series in the bin.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

You missed the even bigger problem with the show. Which is that it's an adaptation of an on-line collectable card game which has about as much plot as, and inferior gameplay to, the classic "Modern Naval Battles".

And yet it's a massive success, thus proving that your game doesn't have to be uber-sophisticated if it involves ships represented by cute anime girls. It's become so popular that there's a Chinese knock-off.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

Yes, yes. It does not necessarily follow, though. Lots of cool things are adaptations of things that are not so cool. The Hunt for Red October is an adaptation of a book that is so pompous and needlessly convoluted, things that are turgid feel insulted when it's included in a list of them, but it's a great movie.

>It's become so popular that there's a Chinese knock-off.

In fairness, I often get the impression that the Chinese just like making knockoffs of things. They make a knockoff of the BMW X5, for pete's sake, and that's not exactly an original that set the world on fire. :)

--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.

The novel has a plot for the film to more or less follow which it does. Kantai Collection (the game) doesn't have even that much, just card battles and cute girls being subservient to their "admirals" in some of the auxiliary material. The latter is damning, IMO, because that's the big draw for KanColle.

I don't think that's a fair assessment of the side stories- outside of the outright porn doujins, most of the official comics and plot-oriented doujins do a good job of exploring the questions of "what are we and where did we come from?" and "how can we be both weapons and people at the same time?"

This is also part of why the anime got a poor reception- Kadokawa put their stamp of approval on stories with actual thinking in them, then released the doesn't-know-where-it-wants-to-go show.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Most. There are some licensed spinoffs that are just as I described, and never mind the "partial damage" figurines.

>This is also part of why the anime got a poor reception- Kadokawa put
>their stamp of approval on stories with actual thinking in them, then
>released the doesn't-know-where-it-wants-to-go show.

It's not that the show didn't know where it wanted to go. It went exactly where it wanted to go: merchandising.

I honestly don't think that's the case- between the various manga, sound stages, and as you mentioned, the figures, KanColle is pretty well merchandised already. An anime has to go one of two places at that point to be a money-maker- either it panders heavily to the fans of the previous media and plays up game mechanics and community memes (which didn't really happen, aside from ep 1), or it lays out a "welcome to the property" mat to try and draw in new fans (which also didn't happen, as it leaned heavily on prior knowledge of the game or at least the fan-favorite characters).

At this point, the best-case scenario I can think of is for the show to follow the path of the Super Robot Wars anime, which was poorly handled in its first run, tanked hard, and then was given a second chance and put out a decent product in the second series.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

AmiAmi is one of the largest anime goods stores in Japan and likely the world.

>The only thing I've managed to find with that name is a figures shop,
>and everything KC related was already out or in the works before the
>anime turned up.

AmiAmi started taking pre-orders for sleeves for the card game yesterday. Last week they started taking pre-orders for the Vita game and the Ikazuchi anime version figurine. That's just a couple of KC things on the front page right now. It's all a gigantic merchandising engine.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

And the anime version Ikazuchi figurine on the front page at the time.

You mean Weiss Schwarz, I presume?

If anyone wants a handful of cards for it, I'm prepared to dump what I have (about two booster boxes and a starter deck's worth).

I'd trade for Macross or Evangelion cards, or cash.

That's very true, but seeing as that didn't dissuade the planning committee, it would have been nice if the actual production team had stuck with the "if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing right" ethic.

If you want to be really horrified, at the end of the last episode it was announced that there would be a 2nd season . . .

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

True, but Strike Witches had the same problem, and it was perfectly enjoyable in spite of it.

>The second problem is the production quality itself, which is very
>uneven, to the point where the start of the pivotal Operation sees
>more frames of animation put into showing a girl blowing bubbles in
>her milk than into one of the combatants dodging torpedoes (leading to
>a cliffhanger as to whether the torpedo-dodger had been killed or not,
>because we couldn't tell).

We can hope that the production budget for the return engagement will be more extensive; the CG-based combat scenes were kind of uncanny valley, but their framing and such could be pretty cool looking if there was the budget to outright animate them.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

Iirc, Strike Witches had things in some sort of order; they portrayed it as a War Show, but with cute things in between. Kantai Collection felt like there were literally 2 different camps within the production team, and they were each trying to get their Vision onto the screen in spite of the others. Hopefully Round 2 will go smoother.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Well, yes. Those are the carriers.
How else did you expect them to launch fighters?

Carnival da yo.

--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.

My condolences. One OAS Yuudachi is cute and amusing; being trapped in an entire memeswarm of imitations would rapidly get irritating.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

And so my brain switches seamlessly from the Maya riff to the image of a vast sea of cheesy vintage anime references, marching in machinelike regular order - like the Red Army in the May Day Parades of old - and chanting in one colossal terrifying voice,

HARO.
GENKI.
HARO.
GENKI.

--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.

"She's another one like you? Why don't you look like that?"

"It's just an interface skin option.

<sweatdrop>

Honest."

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

--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.

The ladies of the Kongou class honestly aren't even comparable.

I mean, compare Kongou to... Kongou. The Machine of Perfect Legs vs BURNING LOVE.

They're way too different to be used in each others' plot roles, is what I'm sayin'. Even if inflicting the wackiness of the Kancolle versions of Kongou, Kirishima, and Hiei on poor Haruharu would be amusing, in a sadistic kind of way.

That said, as a reader of the manga, comparing the Ashigaras is even funnier.

>The other, in opposition to this, is that the premise is... well, not
>too silly to import, I dislike dealing in such absolutes, but much too
>silly for me to want to. :) Arpeggio wins handily on
>that side of the card, even with its strange propensity to
>forget occasionally whether it is actually srs bsns or not.

Oh, absolutely. Arpeggio is a source of plot and technology, as well as characters - but Kancolle is a great source for the latter.

>So I'm not going to move this thread to Source Material, and girls
>with ship-parts backpacks are unlikely to start surfing the seas of
>the UF universe? But if and when there is actually more than one
>Fleet of Fog ship in the UF universe, I wouldn't be at all
>surprised to find a Mental Model or two among them who look like the
>Kantai Collection characters instead.

Yamato and Nagato are certainly more distinctive in their Kancolle versions. The Arpeggio ones mostly pop up to do Mysterious Unexplained Plot Events and then vanish again, which gets old.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

"So, uh, what's Kongou's problem?" "Oh, she had a psychotic break at the end of the original incident on Earth."

"I got better!" "That's debatable."

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Fog Kongō just hasn't met the right admiral yet. :)

>Oh, absolutely. Arpeggio is a source of plot and technology, as well
>as characters - but Kancolle is a great source for the latter.

Case in point, just off the top of my head: Maru-yu. A, she's adorable; B, she's a cargo submarine, which is the coolest idea that never caught on in peacetime; C, she's with the Army, because that's how much the IJA trusted the Navy to bring them supplies; and D, she's adorable.

Also, Mogami. Just... just Mogami.

>Yamato and Nagato are certainly more distinctive in their Kancolle
>versions. The Arpeggio ones mostly pop up to do Mysterious Unexplained
>Plot Events and then vanish again, which gets old.

Well, in fairness, the Fog don't really need secretaries, so their version of Nagato doesn't have a proper job. :)

--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.

There's a fan comic that was written around the time the Ars Nova season ended and Shioi was introduced to Kancolle that deals with the idea of the personalities of the shipgirls and Mental Models exchanging sides. So you get tall and leggy Kongou hanging all over Gunzou while in the Kancolle-verse you have our favorite black tea addict acting imperious and stomping all over her admiral. It's semi-NSFW, but a laugh riot if you're a fan of both franchises.

>Oh, absolutely. Arpeggio is a source of plot and technology, as well
>as characters - but Kancolle is a great source for the latter.

That's really Kancolle's biggest selling point, the wealth of characters and the fan community that has grown up around them. It's one of those few franchises where you can actually see fan input being accepted and incorporated in real time by creators.

>Yamato and Nagato are certainly more distinctive in their Kancolle
>versions. The Arpeggio ones mostly pop up to do Mysterious Unexplained
>Plot Events and then vanish again, which gets old.

Kongou really did a lot of the same, at least in the manga, prior to the recent chapters. She was the chessmaster, setting events into motion, but taking no direct part in them. I've found myself thinking that, if she were to show up in UF, she'd work well in Akio's employ, if only because the both of them like to let others do the heavy lifting while they sit back and plot.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

... right up until the point where he put a hand someplace it didn't go, and she destroyed the entire Ohtori Institute campus.

On the other hand, that would solve a lot of the home team's problems for them. :)

--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.

Killed for feeling up Kongou...what a way to go. But you're right, the only way it would work is if she made it clear up front that theirs is a professional relationship only, and if he tries to go further than that then she won't hesitate to knock him into another dimension.

I might have said Stark would work for him as a toady, but the recent manga chapter has made me begin to wonder if he's really the heartless bastard he was initially made out to be.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

Back when you started OWaW, I thought about proposing the Kancolle girls as a sort of sea-based counterpart to strike witches, with their rigging and gear explained as being striker units. But then I realized three small problems:

1. The girls are personifications of famous ships rather than genderswapped versions of famous people, which might be workable except...

2. 95% or so of the girls are Japanese ships, with only a few German (Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, and the destroyer girls) and the Littorio-class sisters from Italy.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

... what was the third one?

Well, anyway. Let's look at the two you had.

>Back when you started OWaW, I thought about proposing the Kancolle
>girls as a sort of sea-based counterpart to strike witches, with their
>rigging and gear explained as being striker units.

That would make a certain amount of sense, and - oddly enough - is in keeping with the way some of the other non-aviation equipment is presented in peripheral Strike Witches materials. The tank witches, for instance, carry around cannon-type armaments in a similar sort of "strapped-on scale model" fashion, which appear to be rated in terms of what sort of conventional weapon they hit like (i.e., a witch with a Tiger II tank Striker doesn't actually have to carry an 88mm gun, but supposedly can do as much damage with the one she has as if she were).

So the Kantai Collection approach would make as much sense as any other implementation of sea-based Striker technology, though - to be more visually in keeping with the aviation and armored combat versions - they would presumably have to enclose the wearers' legs a bit more thoroughly. At least up to the knee. (My notion of what a submarine Striker would be like is essentially the same as the aviation one, except it's a submarine hull. I haven't actually seen a KanColle sub in action on screen yet, so I'm not sure how they handle. As it were.)

>1. The girls are personifications of famous ships rather than
>genderswapped versions of famous people

Strangely, there is also precedent for this in Strike Witches. A few of the Fusō witches who appear in the manga aren't based on Japanese pilots, but rather aircraft. Suwa Goshiki and Nakajima Hayate, for instance, are based on the Kawasaki Type 5 (go-shiki) and, well, Nakajima Hayate, respectively, and one of Suwa's sisters appears briefly in the anime (Amaki, the girl who crashes delivering Yoshika's mail in the last episode of season 1).

Mind you, they aren't supposed to be literal personifications of those airplanes, as the fleet girls in KanColle are literally supposed to be their ships; but still, not all witches are based on people.

>which might be workable
>except...
>
>2. 95% or so of the girls are Japanese ships, with only a few German
>(Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, and the destroyer girls) and the
>Littorio-class sisters from Italy.

(Interesting note: The German ships, including U-511/Ro-500, were designed by Humikane Shimada, creator of Strike Witches.)

Anyway, that isn't necessarily a problem in itself - I mean, we're not above extrapolating characters who did not exist in the canon around here, right? - but heck, it even makes a certain level of sense, given that the Great Fusō Empire is one of the most significant naval powers in the world of Strike Witches, and, unlike (say) Britannia's, its headquarters and production centers are far from the Neuroi sphere of influence. One would expect most of the operational sea witches of the latter stages of the war to be Fusōnese or Liberion - Britannia's and Karlsland's would have done most of the heavy lifting early in the war, but by 1946 they would have suffered very serious attrition, particularly as replacing their equipment and training new recruits would've been seriously curtailed by the evacuation of Europe and the Siege of Britannia.

Plus, we've already seen that Britannian witch policy in the mid-'40s prioritizes aviation over other witch applications. Wilma and Lynne's youngest sister wanted to be a tank witch, but was at the very least Strongly Encouraged to go into aviation instead. That nation's once-vaunted dominion of the seas has presumably succumbed to the pressures of history and limited-resource optimization by now, that battlefield left to the Liberions and the Fusōnese. (In the first series of Strike Witches, which is set in coastal England, I don't believe we ever see a Britannian warship, but the Fusō carrier Akagi appears multiple times.)

As for Karlsland and Orussia, their hearts have never really been in seapower. They make gestures at it, but apart from U-hexen (as I'm sure the Karlslanders call sub witches), one wouldn't expect either power to have really significant sea-witch assets - and most of Orussia's would necessarily end up in the Pacific, where they're really not needed, because they've lost all their western ports.

Mind you, the part about them being personifications of sunken warships from a previous era obviously doesn't fit since they're in that era, and those ships actually exist. Some big names in Fusō's fleet have appeared as actual warships in action - Akagi and Amagi, Yamato, Takao. That's not an obstacle in itself, though; this is, after all, a world in which the Mitsubishi A6M Type Zero Carrier Fighter is both an airplane and a model of Striker Unit. More likely than "these girls are reincarnated warships" is the notion that it would be some kind of weird magical sychronization with extant vessels. Ships as familiars, more or less. The affected witches would adopt the names of those ships as sort of a gesture of sponsorship, although, unlike their KanColle counterparts, they would most likely keep their given names. (So, for instance, the witch synchronizing with battleship Kirishima would be called, say, Kirishima Tomoko. She had another name, and will probably take it back when she retires.)

Now, having sat here and designed all that in my head, I can tell you that I'm probably not going to do much with it, because the current campaign in OWaW is taking place in the middle of the European landmass and we simply don't need sea witches right now; but I might throw in a reference to it here or there. Keep it on the shelf in case we do need it for something sometime.

... And you're still likely to see Fog ships whose mental models are based on the KanColle characters instead, back in the regular UF universe. :)

--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.

Brain fart.

No, seriously, the third was going to be that at the time this thought had crossed my mind, the Kancolle anime either hadn't premiered or only a few episodes had aired, and the game itself actually sounds rather silly if you try to explain it to others.

>That would make a certain amount of sense, and - oddly enough - is in
>keeping with the way some of the other non-aviation equipment is
>presented in peripheral Strike Witches materials. The tank
>witches, for instance, carry around cannon-type armaments in a similar
>sort of "strapped-on scale model" fashion, which appear to be rated in
>terms of what sort of conventional weapon they hit like (i.e., a witch
>with a Tiger II tank Striker doesn't actually have to carry an 88mm
>gun, but supposedly can do as much damage with the one she has as if
>she were).
>
>So the Kantai Collection approach would make as much sense as
>any other implementation of sea-based Striker technology,
>though - to be more visually in keeping with the aviation and armored
>combat versions - they would presumably have to enclose the wearers'
>legs a bit more thoroughly. At least up to the knee. (My notion of
>what a submarine Striker would be like is essentially the same as the
>aviation one, except it's a submarine hull. I haven't actually seen a
>KanColle sub in action on screen yet, so I'm not sure how they
>handle. As it were.)

Well, I'll say now there were no subs in the anime itself, maybe they'll show in the second season. Then again, the anime only featured something like 1/4 of all the girls in the game itself.

>Strangely, there is also precedent for this in Strike
>Witches. A few of the Fusō witches who appear in the manga
>aren't based on Japanese pilots, but rather aircraft. Suwa
>Goshiki and Nakajima Hayate, for instance, are based on the Kawasaki
>Type 5 (go-shiki) and, well, Nakajima Hayate, respectively, and
>one of Suwa's sisters appears briefly in the anime (Amaki, the girl
>who crashes delivering Yoshika's mail in the last episode of season
>1).
>
>Mind you, they aren't supposed to be literal personifications
>of those airplanes, as the fleet girls in KanColle are
>literally supposed to be their ships; but still, not all witches are
>based on people.

True, some are composites, some are based upon people who never actually became pilots (i.e. Ursula Hartmann), and some are based upon pilots who died either before or early in the war.

>(Interesting note: The German ships, including U-511/Ro-500, were
>designed by Humikane Shimada, creator of Strike Witches.)

Yeah, the art for the girls comes from all over, both established artists as well as ones brought on for the game.

>Plus, we've already seen that Britannian witch policy in the mid-'40s
>prioritizes aviation over other witch applications. Wilma and Lynne's
>youngest sister wanted to be a tank witch, but was at the very least
>Strongly Encouraged to go into aviation instead. That nation's
>once-vaunted dominion of the seas has presumably succumbed to the
>pressures of history and limited-resource optimization by now, that
>battlefield left to the Liberions and the Fusōnese. (In the
>first series of Strike Witches, which is set in coastal
>England, I don't believe we ever see a Britannian warship, but the
>Fusō carrier Akagi appears multiple times.)

Or been committed to colonial duties, the worry being that with all the focus on the fighting in Europe, there's the danger of less scrupulous elements helping themselves to the riches of the crown behind its back.

>As for Karlsland and Orussia, their hearts have never really been in
>seapower. They make gestures at it, but apart from U-hexen (as
>I'm sure the Karlslanders call sub witches), one wouldn't expect
>either power to have really significant sea-witch assets - and most of
>Orussia's would necessarily end up in the Pacific, where they're
>really not needed, because they've lost all their western ports.

The Kaiserliche Marine is probably lucky if it has much of a surface fleet in the wake of the evacuation. And the rebuilding is slowed by most of the funding going to the air and land arms of the military.

Likewise the Imperial Orussian Navy also gets the short end of the stick, but is also saddled with being a bit backwards technologically compared to other European powers.

>Mind you, the part about them being personifications of sunken
>warships from a previous era obviously doesn't fit since they're
>in that era, and those ships actually exist. Some big names in
>Fusō's fleet have appeared as actual warships in action -
>Akagi and Amagi, Yamato, Takao. That's
>not an obstacle in itself, though; this is, after all, a world in
>which the Mitsubishi A6M Type Zero Carrier Fighter is both an airplane
>and a model of Striker Unit. More likely than "these girls are
>reincarnated warships" is the notion that it would be some kind of
>weird magical sychronization with extant vessels. Ships as familiars,
>more or less. The affected witches would adopt the names of those
>ships as sort of a gesture of sponsorship, although, unlike their
>KanColle counterparts, they would most likely keep their given
>names. (So, for instance, the witch synchronizing with battleship
>Kirishima would be called, say, Kirishima Tomoko. She had
>another name, and will probably take it back when she retires.)

Amusingly enough, one of the nicer fan theories for what happens when a ship girl is "scrapped" is she gives up her equipment and is allowed to return to civilian life.

>Now, having sat here and designed all that in my head, I can tell you
>that I'm probably not going to do much with it, because the current
>campaign in OWaW is taking place in the middle of the European
>landmass and we simply don't need sea witches right now; but I
>might throw in a reference to it here or there. Keep it on the shelf
>in case we do need it for something sometime.

"In case of writer's block, break open glass."

>... And you're still likely to see Fog ships whose mental
>models are based on the KanColle characters instead, back in
>the regular UF universe. :)

Speaking of which, did you happen to hear that the Arpeggio girls made an appearance during a special appearance in the Kancolle game?

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

Aw, and here I've been hoping to see Not Iona in action. She's cute! And probably easier to hold a conversation with than any of the Fog 400-classes. :)

>Then again, the anime only
>featured something like 1/4 of all the girls in the game itself.

That's fair enough, really, I mean there are a hundred and eleventy twenty-four million of them. :)

>>Mind you, they aren't supposed to be literal personifications
>>of those airplanes, as the fleet girls in KanColle are
>>literally supposed to be their ships; but still, not all witches are
>>based on people.
>
>True, some are composites, some are based upon people who never
>actually became pilots (i.e. Ursula Hartmann), and some are based upon
>pilots who died either before or early in the war.

I'd argue that Ursula isn't actually based on the real Ursula Hartmann; she's based on Erich, like Erica, they just borrowed Frau Hartmann's name for her. (Which is slightly odd in that Erich Hartmann had a younger brother, albeit not a twin; his name was Alfred. We might see Alfie in OWaW one of these days.

But yes, point reinforced, there are several different paths to the historical references in canonical witch designs. The Bishop sisters, for instance, don't have direct "ace archetypes"; their mother's the one based on a real-life fighter pilot, in this case from the first war. Billy Bishop did have children who served in WWII, but Wilma and Lynne don't appear to be based on them in any recognizable way. And it's a good thing the Strike Witches setting doesn't have KanColle's sinister "you will mirror the fate of your namesake" thing going on, or Lucchini, Minna, and Sanya would be dead by now, and that isn't even worth thinking about.

>>(So, for instance, the witch synchronizing with battleship
>>Kirishima would be called, say, Kirishima Tomoko. She had
>>another name, and will probably take it back when she retires.)
>
>Amusingly enough, one of the nicer fan theories for what happens when
>a ship girl is "scrapped" is she gives up her equipment and is allowed
>to return to civilian life.

... but it's a Japanese fandom, so I'm betting most of its theories are... less than that nice. Hngh.

I've never been entirely clear on whether they came from civilian life - given that the game has a "construction" mechanism, I was under the impression that they just sort of appeared in the form they ultimately take, and don't actually have parents or old report cards from grade school and whatnot. They do talk about doing other stuff after the war, though, which is nice, albeit also somewhat sad given that, historically, the tiny handful of them who survive the war will be immediately assassinated by the United States Navy.

>Speaking of which, did you happen to hear that the Arpeggio girls made
>an appearance during a special appearance in the Kancolle game?

I did hear about that. I also heard that they were actually as powerful as Fog ships, which strikes me as such a grotesque thing to do to the players that it makes me wonder how Jack Emmert ended up on the design team. :)

--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.

I don't know, in the manga, I-402 seems like she's slowly acclimating to that whole "Humans are really neat!" mindset that Zuikaku is teaching her.

But yeah, I hope they include the subs in the second season, because they're all rather endearing in their own ways. And it may only be me, but Shioi almost looks like she could be Korra's little sister.

>That's fair enough, really, I mean there are a hundred and
>eleventy twenty-four million of them. :)

And more being added every other update. I mean they just recently added Katsuragi, and her namesake never even saw combat before war's end. Figure it's only a matter of time before they add Shinano, Yamato and Musashi's "little" sister.

>I'd argue that Ursula isn't actually based on the real Ursula
>Hartmann; she's based on Erich, like Erica, they just borrowed Frau
>Hartmann's name for her. (Which is slightly odd in that Erich
>Hartmann had a younger brother, albeit not a twin; his name was
>Alfred. We might see Alfie in OWaW one of these days.
>
>But yes, point reinforced, there are several different paths to the
>historical references in canonical witch designs. The Bishop sisters,
>for instance, don't have direct "ace archetypes"; their mother's the
>one based on a real-life fighter pilot, in this case from the first
>war. Billy Bishop did have children who served in WWII, but Wilma and
>Lynne don't appear to be based on them in any recognizable way. And
>it's a good thing the Strike Witches setting doesn't have
>KanColle's sinister "you will mirror the fate of your namesake"
>thing going on, or Lucchini, Minna, and Sanya would be dead by
>now, and that isn't even worth thinking about.

Thankfully for a lot of fans, the writers seem to have decided they didn't want to follow history too closely.

>... but it's a Japanese fandom, so I'm betting most of its theories
>are... less than that nice. Hngh.

Well, the fandom is really spread across the globe, which is amusing considering the game itself is only available in Japan. But yeah, theories run the range from mostly harmless to depressingly dark. To give an example that can be either/or depending on who's telling it, the in-game mechanic to raise a ship girl's stats is called "modernization," and requires you to sacrifice another ship. No points for guessing how that's usually depicted.

>I've never been entirely clear on whether they came from
>civilian life - given that the game has a "construction" mechanism, I
>was under the impression that they just sort of appeared in the form
>they ultimately take, and don't actually have parents or old report
>cards from grade school and whatnot. They do talk about doing other
>stuff after the war, though, which is nice, albeit also somewhat sad
>given that, historically, the tiny handful of them who survive
>the war will be immediately assassinated by the United States Navy.

Of the theories as their origins, I like the idea of them being girls who've volunteered and can call on the power of sunken ships to fight with. Gives the game a magical girl quality which is a bit easier on the soul.

>I did hear about that. I also heard that they were actually as
>powerful as Fog ships, which strikes me as such a grotesque thing
>to do to the players that it makes me wonder how Jack Emmert ended up
>on the design team. :)

Well, there were measures taken to balance them for the event. Three of the Fog ships (Iona, Takao, & Haruna) were ship drops after beating them as enemies on the map and could be used and leveled-up like other ship girls. And they could be used on maps aside from the ones for the event. But they were really intended for the event maps, as the event bosses included the Fog versions of Kirishima, Maya, and Kongou. Plus their game-breaking qualities were balanced out by being resource hogs, which wouldn't have been so bad except they were limited-time use and so admirals bankrupted themselves trying to exploit them as much as possible.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

Well, I think technically it's just that she's got a tan, she's not actually brown, but that aside, yeah. She could at least be somebody from the same village. :)

(It's an amusing touch that most of the submarines have suntans. All that cruising around at shallow depths in tropical waters...)

>And more being added every other update. I mean they just recently
>added Katsuragi, and her namesake never even saw combat before war's
>end.

Gosh. They may have to start including ships from Allied navies at some point. That'll presumably involve some tension in the showers. :)

"Hi, Oklahoma here. You'll keep them God-damn carriers away from me if'n you know what's good for you, Admiral."

>the in-game mechanic to raise a ship girl's stats is called
>"modernization," and requires you to sacrifice another ship. No
>points for guessing how that's usually depicted.

Mm. Yes, evidently Maru-yu is a common target of that practice, since a) she's not very useful in combat and b) she increases the other ship's Luck stat. Which was a cruel, cruel joke on the designers' part.

>the
>event bosses included the Fog versions of Kirishima

As an aside, the KanColle version of Kirishima is on my short list for UF hybridization, on account of a) I'm fond of the Violent Brainiac archetype and b) she's not a sociopathic stuffed animal, which would frankly give her a significant edge even if she wasn't a hot librarian with 104 out of 100 in firepower. :)

>Maya

One assumes it was, therefore, a carnival.

>and Kongou.

A meeting between those two would be like a theoretical face-to-face between the personification of the original-series USS Enterprise and her counterpart from the Mirror Universe. I mean, you know that ISS Enterprise would be a stone bitch. She probably stabbed Chris Pike herself, never mind Kirk doing it.

>Plus their game-breaking qualities were balanced out by being
>resource hogs

Someone should warn Corwin... He does seem to be starting a submarine shelter.

--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.

It's not as if that'd be entirely impossible within navies. Nebraska getting snippy with Iowa would be rather understandable, for example. And poor little 'Wilma' Porter.

The canon contains a number of jokes regarding IJN ships that crashed into other IJN ships; everyone's a bit wary of Mogami in the hallways around the Naval Base, for instance, particularly her sister ships. (They're not actually hostile about it, it's more of a "look out, here comes danger" running gag. :)

(I dunno, I wuv Mogami. She wears shorts with her sailor blouse. It's like if Utena had decided, "All right, the top's not so bad, but I ain't wearin' that underwear display device." :)

--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.

Inazuma is the worst offender in this category, rising to the level of "superstitious curse"- there have been 4 ships named Inazuma so far, and 3 of them have had major collisions (first one sank as a result, 2nd one sank another destroyer, 3rd one destroyed her bridge and the bridge of the ship she hit).

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Yeah, it's what makes U-511 stand out more before she's refitted into Ro-500, how pale she is from operating in North Atlantic waters.

>Gosh. They may have to start including ships from Allied navies at
>some point. That'll presumably involve some tension in the showers. :)
>
>"Hi, Oklahoma here. You'll keep them God-damn carriers away from me
>if'n you know what's good for you, Admiral."

Nah, if you want a real source of tension, wait for Allied subs to start showing up.

>Mm. Yes, evidently Maru-yu is a common target of that practice, since
>a) she's not very useful in combat and b) she increases the other
>ship's Luck stat. Which was a cruel, cruel joke on the designers'
>part.

No, the cruelest joke was played on Isuzu. She could be refitted early (lvl 12), came with a unique radar that could be equipped by other ships, and added +5 anti-air to any ship that "consumed" her during modernization. This led to many admirals "Isuzu farming" just for the radars.

Luckily, they eventually gave her a further upgrade that makes her a dedicated anti-air/anti-sub light cruiser, and "farming" cooled down a bit.

>As an aside, the KanColle version of Kirishima is on my short
>list for UF hybridization, on account of a) I'm fond of the Violent
>Brainiac archetype and b) she's not a sociopathic stuffed animal,
>which would frankly give her a significant edge even if she
>wasn't a hot librarian with 104 out of 100 in firepower. :)

I'm right there with you, Kancolle Kirishima is also one of my favorites.

>One assumes it was, therefore, a carnival.

Indeed, that was one of her lines. And can I emphasize how thankful I am that the manga did not go the way of the anime? Because she is just too adorable to be a puppet.

>A meeting between those two would be like a theoretical face-to-face
>between the personification of the original-series USS
>Enterprise and her counterpart from the Mirror Universe. I
>mean, you know that ISS Enterprise would be a stone
>bitch. She probably stabbed Chris Pike herself, never mind
>Kirk doing it.

It would be interesting...right up until Kancolle Kongou dragged her counterpart off to join her for tea time.

>Someone should warn Corwin... He does seem to be starting a submarine
>shelter.

Corwin's beginning to develop his dad's habit of bringing strays home every time he goes out on an adventure.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

Though if anyone is, perchance, interested in playing the Kancolle it's a remarkably simple process to spoof the region locking using a single altered cookie, and the English speaking fandom maintains a decently up to date wiki about it. I can elaborate on this if people want.
*edit: And I now the feeling about not understanding a lick of what's going on as well, as mentioned in another thread, but thankfully there is a tool that will do at least some of the work for you, just as long as you plug in the API token and what not. I play a lot of Super Robot Wars so the interface tends not to bother me.

Regarding as well the Chinese Knockoff, which is called just "Warship Girls" as far as I can tell, it's actually kind of interesting in it's own right, and has a far larger selection of ships from various navies across the world as opposed to just Kancolle's Axis ships thus far, but the designs can be...well. Out there.
Like CB-1 USS Alaska here.
Or Chinese Kongo, who is not full of Burning Love.

Heh, I've read a bunch of that wiki (if it's the one at wikia), and the comment streams on the individual characters' pages amuse me, if only because they're a constant stream of "I can't get this character to drop, I have 400 million of $other_character" and "you lucky sod, I've been trying to get $other_character for ages and keep getting $yet_a_third_character instead" and "hax, $yet_a_third_character is super rare, I can't get her" and so on. It's all so cheerfully futile, like no one there has any actual idea what the R in RNG stands for. :)

Also, since a lot of those wildly inconsistent RNG results seem to be from a construction mechanism as opposed to mission drops, it gives me the very amusing mental image of a shipyard so colossally incompetent that they don't know what kind of ship they're building until it's not just launched, but fully operational - and yet so fantastically competent that the ships they build always work perfectly right out of the dock. "Oh hey, another Kongō-class battleship, rock on. We were trying to build a Sentoku-class submarine! Go figure, right?" Not even the Soviet military-industrial complex worked that crazily. It's a glorious picture.

Also also, this is the second post in the last three where I've used the phrase "military-industrial complex", although last time it was metaphorical. :)

--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.

Making it even funnier, the "quick complete" consumable for shipbuilding is a *flamethrower* (the exact one 6thDesDev uses to try hurrying their stew). So what exactly is the shipyard doing, wrapping up the ingredients in a tamale wrapper and roasting it till it starts moving?

And then there's (I believe) random drops from expeditions, which means you might end up with a situation like this.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Maybe the assembly instructions are all in Tongan. Or done up like IKEA instructions. (Which inspires the image of stack of flat-pack boxes, all with the word "ubåt" emblazoned on them in cheery IKEA font, being dropped off at the shipyard, along with several packs of Swedish meatballs and some lingonberry soda.)

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."