The Intrepid hate was nowhere near as bad as the Anson hate is. Intrepid's design had plenty of defenders with many pointing out that it was just her head that seemed kind of off and others even went so far as to point out that being somewhat generic was very much in brand for a member of a 24-ship carrier class.
Anson hate, on the other hand, is rather overwhelming with defenders finding their takes incredibly unpopular unless they concede that she's not supposed to be a KGV-class. Hell, you even had a certain handsome devil point out that this belied a massive structural problem with Yostar and get away with it despite how controversial "his" Azur Lane hate was at best.
The Intrepid hate was nowhere near as bad as the Anson hate is. Intrepid's design had plenty of defenders with many pointing out that it was just her head that seemed kind of off and others even went so far as to point out that being somewhat generic was very much in brand for a member of a 24-ship carrier class.
Anson hate, on the other hand, is rather overwhelming with defenders finding their takes incredibly unpopular unless they concede that she's not supposed to be a KGV-class. Hell, you even had a certain handsome devil point out that this belied a massive structural problem with Yostar and get away with it despite how controversial "his" Azur Lane hate was at best.
The Intrepid hate was nowhere near as bad as the Anson hate is....
Intrepid backlash was big enough to kill the KanColle EN community and some say is responsable for the migration towards AL as people used Intrepid as an argument for how much Tanaka hates the USN and how that also is connected somehow to the IP region blocking and the 5 years of venting and so on which to this day people still believing is true despite not sustancial evidence, not only this controversy did that but also the backlash and harrasment forced Shibafu to disconnect from the Internet nuking all of his socials.
Opinions about Intrepid all around were subjective since everyone agreed she was a good historical design(objective) ruined by Shibafu's artstyle(subjective) hence the whole "Shibafu is great at drawing riggings and uniforms but sucks at drawing faces" that even shibafu fans were forced to accept.
People hated that Shibafu got to draw the final reward of a such a big event instead of Yoshinori. So imagine all of the reactions of all the vets and frontliners when they realized they would do an 7 maps event on hard to get a Potato.
It didnt matter she has a good voice and even good enough english, didnt matter she was singlehanded one of the stronger CVs in the game, the potato face was enough reason to hate her. I do wonder if she wasnt the final reward people would have taken her without too much anger.
The historical argument in defense of Anson werent good for the simple fact Manjuu has show many times they do not care or at least dont put the history as the main priority when it comes to character designs and they posted a public apology which prooves it wasnt an April Fools Joke and actually thought she was fitting for being a KGV class. And now we have a KMS papership "saving the day"
Anson's controversy is bigger because of the size and reach of AL as well as how centralized their fanbase is, and because any CN controversy is a global scale controversy specially if EN and JP jump into the wagon.
"Good artwork but she doesnt look like a KGV" is probably the most objective take from this. Also doesnt help she looks like the recycled artwork of a submarine.
The historical argument in defense of Anson werent good for the simple fact Manjuu has show many times they do not care or at least dont put the history as the main priority when it comes to character designs and they posted a public apology which prooves it wasnt an April Fools Joke and actually thought she was fitting for being a KGV class. And now we have a KMS papership "saving the day"
The fact they went ahead with using her doesn't necessarily mean they thought she was fitting for a KGV class ship. Depending on how their workflow goes, there may not have been enough time to have the artist provide an entirely new design by the time they received this one, if they wanted to release the event as scheduled. They might have just hoped fans wouldn't make too much of a fuss over it.
The Intrepid hate was no-where near as bad as the Anson hate is. Intrepid's design had plenty of defenders with many pointing out that it was just her head that seemed kind of off and others even went so far as to point out that being somewhat generic was very much in brand for a member of a 24-ship carrier class.
Anson hate, on the other hand, is rather overwhelming with defenders finding their takes incredibly unpopular unless they concede that she's not supposed to be a KGV-class. Hell, you even had a certain handsome devil point out that this belied a massive structural problem with Yostar and get away with it despite how controversial "his" Azur Lane hate was at best.
Intrepid's hate also came from the fact everyone expected Yoshinori to do her design, and it ended being Shibafu who was at that period of time in the place of "Look, all he can is the same copy-paste potato face, it's ugly and uninspired."
Doesn't help when some people fueled the hate with beliefs that Shibafu would be the "face" of US navy (Turn out the US navy is so big in size you can't give it to only one artist unlike most of the others foreign fleets in KC).
By now, KC fans have accepted Intrepid's design and I don't recall seeing nearly as much hate for a new shipgirl or new CG since then (Even with Shibafu)
I don't play AL at all, but I do know that sisterships in a same class can be wildly different in designs (Looking at Shiratsuyu-class and Akatsukis, mainly) and some... Liberties are taken sometimes (Looking at you Nagato and Queen Elizabeth). This is certainly not the first time such a clash in design between sisters happened in AL, right ?
I don't play AL at all, but I do know that sisterships in a same class can be wildly different in designs (Looking at Shiratsuyu-class and Akatsukis, mainly) and some... Liberties are taken sometimes (Looking at you Nagato and Queen Elizabeth). This is certainly not the first time such a clash in design between sisters happened in AL, right ?
People also didnt like that the loli looked like a reused artwork of a submarine. And probably because people really dont care about Destroyers but they do care about Capital ships meeting their expectations, thats why she has the oversized rigging, but somehow they missed the mark with the rest of her design.
In both Nagato and QE's cases is because the first one was supossed to be a reference to being raisefunded by schools and the second because the irl QE were pretty short, this doesnt explain why the Colorados in AL are tall despite being very short as well tho.
I don't play AL at all, but I do know that sisterships in a same class can be wildly different in designs (Looking at Shiratsuyu-class and Akatsukis, mainly) and some... Liberties are taken sometimes (Looking at you Nagato and Queen Elizabeth). This is certainly not the first time such a clash in design between sisters happened in AL, right ?
It basically is. No one's ever been this hyped up before, and even in other examples of sisters that didn't share a cohesive design, it was still generally agreed that the designs they got were good on their own and fit the ship they represented. Minneapolis (azur lane) looks nothing like her sisters, but no one cares cause her design is still good and the only New Orleans class ships in the game at the time were extremely unpopular.
Anson clearly being designed for the wrong ship was probably an even bigger upset than not looking like her sisters. She doesn't just look like she doesn't belong with her sisters, she looks like she was modeled after an entirely different ship. She's obviously a submarine, not a battleship.
I don't play AL at all, but I do know that sisterships in a same class can be wildly different in designs (Looking at Shiratsuyu-class and Akatsukis, mainly) and some... Liberties are taken sometimes (Looking at you Nagato and Queen Elizabeth). This is certainly not the first time such a clash in design between sisters happened in AL, right ?
While there are a lot of classes that have very different designs, there are also plenty of classes that have more cohesive design styles. Look at the Essex and Allen M. Sumner classes (minus the Type II ships), the Hippers, the Zaras, Mutsukis, etc. The KGVs are one of the classes with the strongest sense of design cohesion in the game (even extending to their pseudo-sister Monarch). And Anson has been one of the most highly-anticipated ships for the Royal Navy for years now. So when this design came out that is basically the antitheses of all the design features the KGVs are known for - and was pretty clearly recycled from a submarine - players were not happy.
Admiral_Shippai said: the second because the irl QE were pretty short
QEs were actually on the longer side when it came to length for battleships laid down in 1912, being in the 190+ zone when most of the other battleships that started being constructed around that time were still in the 170m zone.
Honestly manjuu is desperate but going that low to a point of imitating would bite them.
Manjuu doesn't tell the commissioned artists what to draw, and no one would have cared that much anyway. Honestly, if "AL is ripping off BA's designs!" was the worst anyone could say about the girl then I'd say they're in a good enough place, considering people say stupid shit like that any time similar designs popup in different copyrights.
Intrepid backlash was big enough to kill the KanColle EN community and some say is responsable for the migration towards AL as people used Intrepid as an argument for how much Tanaka hates the USN and how that also is connected somehow to the IP region blocking and the 5 years of venting and so on which to this day people still believing is true despite not sustancial evidence, not only this controversy did that but also the backlash and harrasment forced Shibafu to disconnect from the Internet nuking all of his socials.
It's especially disappointing since pretty much every American ship after Intrepid got a pretty good reception. Even Helena didn't get as big of a backlash.
Honestly manjuu is desperate but going that low to a point of imitating would bite them.
To be honest, simply repeating or similarity to a single element does not prove that someone is intentionally imitating or plagiarizing someone. Otherwise, can we equally assume that BA's shiroko has plagiarized AL's kawakaze or hololive's fubuki based solely on similar animal ear designs, thus initiating a new round of counterattack campaigns? This matter is incomplete until now. We don't even know the fundamental reason why the author designed her to be the way she is, so there is no way to determine what kind of event it is. If anyone is paranoid that this must be plagiarism, then I ask me to imitative writing the words of General Saint-Cyr satirizing Marshal Masséna: "Your Excellency, God has given you the power of omniscience, who am I, a rational ordinary man, how can I refute you?" ”
I don't play AL at all, but I do know that sisterships in a same class can be wildly different in designs (Looking at Shiratsuyu-class and Akatsukis, mainly) and some... Liberties are taken sometimes (Looking at you Nagato and Queen Elizabeth). This is certainly not the first time such a clash in design between sisters happened in AL, right ?
It's not new, and to be honest it's reductive to say art consistency was the root cause of this backlash. For the last three years or so, Manjuu has been getting heat for putting AL on the backburner. Uninspired events, glacial changes to game systems, and more pertinently slipping quality control. If I'm going to be honest, AL has never been a sterling example of quality but they at least weren't so bad the veil went down and you could see how they likely handled things behind-the-scenes. Then the hubbub with HMS "Manchester" happened and people realized that Manjuu likely has a pile of shipgirl designs they assign names and riggings to. So you got chatter about Houston II potentially being a backburnered KMS ship that got rebranded as USS, Otto von Alvensleben being a submarine that got changed to a destroyer, and even people looking back and noticing that Reno has the designation for USS New York right there on her glove. And that's not even mentioning grumblings about some of the skins, most recently Wakatsuki and Peter Strasser's Lunar New Year skins looking nothing like their base selves despite being from the same artists.
So you take all of that, and slap on Azur Promilia being announced. Uh oh, Manjuu's got a new 3D game coming out. Is this going to affect Azur Lane? Has it already affected Azur Lane?
And then they announce HMS Anson in bar none the most blatant example of "they took a ship design and put whatever name they felt like on her". Like at least with Manchester or Otto you could argue they looked appropriate. But Anson had all the design choices of a submarine and you expect me to believe she's a battleship? I'm not that dumb, and judging by the outcry a lot of people were similarly unhappy that Manjuu gave so little of a shit.
It's not new, and to be honest it's reductive to say art consistency was the root cause of this backlash. For the last three years or so, Manjuu has been getting heat for putting AL on the backburner. Uninspired events, glacial changes to game systems, and more pertinently slipping quality control. If I'm going to be honest, AL has never been a sterling example of quality but they at least weren't so bad the veil went down and you could see how they likely handled things behind-the-scenes. Then the hubbub with HMS "Manchester" happened and people realized that Manjuu likely has a pile of shipgirl designs they assign names and riggings to. So you got chatter about Houston II potentially being a backburnered KMS ship that got rebranded as USS, Otto von Alvensleben being a submarine that got changed to a destroyer, and even people looking back and noticing that Reno has the designation for USS New York right there on her glove. And that's not even mentioning grumblings about some of the skins, most recently Wakatsuki and Peter Strasser's Lunar New Year skins looking nothing like their base selves despite being from the same artists.
So you take all of that, and slap on Azur Promilia being announced. Uh oh, Manjuu's got a new 3D game coming out. Is this going to affect Azur Lane? Has it already affected Azur Lane?
And then they announce HMS Anson in bar none the most blatant example of "they took a ship design and put whatever name they felt like on her". Like at least with Manchester or Otto you could argue they looked appropriate. But Anson had all the design choices of a submarine and you expect me to believe she's a battleship? I'm not that dumb, and judging by the outcry a lot of people were similarly unhappy that Manjuu gave so little of a shit.
I think the only way to ensure this never happens again is to outright clean house in Manjuu, for whatever that implies.
It's not new, and to be honest it's reductive to say art consistency was the root cause of this backlash. For the last three years or so, Manjuu has been getting heat for putting AL on the backburner. Uninspired events, glacial changes to game systems, and more pertinently slipping quality control. If I'm going to be honest, AL has never been a sterling example of quality but they at least weren't so bad the veil went down and you could see how they likely handled things behind-the-scenes. Then the hubbub with HMS "Manchester" happened and people realized that Manjuu likely has a pile of shipgirl designs they assign names and riggings to. So you got chatter about Houston II potentially being a backburnered KMS ship that got rebranded as USS, Otto von Alvensleben being a submarine that got changed to a destroyer, and even people looking back and noticing that Reno has the designation for USS New York right there on her glove. And that's not even mentioning grumblings about some of the skins, most recently Wakatsuki and Peter Strasser's Lunar New Year skins looking nothing like their base selves despite being from the same artists.
So you take all of that, and slap on Azur Promilia being announced. Uh oh, Manjuu's got a new 3D game coming out. Is this going to affect Azur Lane? Has it already affected Azur Lane?
And then they announce HMS Anson in bar none the most blatant example of "they took a ship design and put whatever name they felt like on her". Like at least with Manchester or Otto you could argue they looked appropriate. But Anson had all the design choices of a submarine and you expect me to believe she's a battleship? I'm not that dumb, and judging by the outcry a lot of people were similarly unhappy that Manjuu gave so little of a shit.
It's like they wanna move on, but part of them is like "We can't left AL behind" either. So it's a complicate situation...
It's especially disappointing since pretty much every American ship after Intrepid got a pretty good reception. Even Helena didn't get as big of a backlash.
I mean... there were only 4 USN ships in Kancolle when Intrepid came out, now there are 27 making the USN the second-most prominent navy in-game.
This sums it up perfectly. It's not that Anson's design was that bad; she was just the straw the broke the camel's back, the most prominent in a list of questionable decisions that had become more frequent and obvious the last two years or so.
It's especially disappointing since pretty much every American ship after Intrepid got a pretty good reception. Even Helena didn't get as big of a backlash.
It was not just the Intrepid situation that caused a exodus. It's the event mechanics creep. You had to use a minimum of 2 combined fleets, a combination of carrier, surface and (CANCER AF) transport fleet. You run through a gauntlet of submarine, air raid and buffed up abyssal ships. Sometimes, you do it to unlock a far easier route. Easier is a big word here, it often mean just 1 less dice roll at praying not getting REKT by a bad roll. You deplete the boss HP until you have the last bit of life where you have to redo unfun runs to nodes supposed to debuff the boss. And if you reach the boss node on last dance, you pray you have at little escort as possible because the sometimes useless Allied Fleet will fail to kill the rest.
It inflated the time you spent staring at the screen to almost 20 minutes per run. Back in Midway 2014, it took about 2 weeks to do it with my beginner fleet, I didnt reach the extra op, but cleared the rest, for the record it started from august 8th 2014 to august 29th 2014. Kitanda Event started on august 10th 2015 till september 7th 2015, then was done. Colorado event? More than 1 month. I quit after this, I started Azur Lane around that time. Last I heard, the summer 2023 started in august 8th 2023 and ended in october 11th 2023 No, thanks, I'd rather bash my head against the Abyss floor 12 in Genshin, the MoC in Star Rail or try to kill the Train in Nikke.
Intrepid backlash was big enough to kill the KanColle EN community
You know some of these days it would be nice if we were formally informed that we are dead. The EN kc kancolle community has supposedly died or fallen out of god's light like what, 6-7 times already?
You know some of these days it would be nice if we were formally informed that we are dead. The EN kc kancolle community has supposedly died or fallen out of god's light like what, 6-7 times already?
According to a friend who's been part of the community since the game's early days, most of the outrage over Intrepid actually came from Japanese players, and while her release did coincide with EN player fall off, it wasn't really the main cause.
As he claims it, the actual reasons were: 1. AL's growing popularity at the time, and EN players' growing general dissatisfaction with how Kancolle was being run. Intrepid was at most a final straw for players who were already considering dropping the game, she wasn't really a turning point on her own. 2. The KC wikia shutting down sometime after this, though this was entirely on Fandom being shit.
He also says that the community has actually seen some decent growth in recent years thanks to the English fan patch. Sounds to me like it's just the usual case of people who left the community, or were never in it, claiming it's dead because they don't have anything to do with it.
......I quit after this, I started Azur Lane around that time. Last I heard, the summer 2023 started in august 8th 2023 and ended in october 11th 2023 No, thanks, I'd rather bash my head against the Abyss floor 12 in Genshin, the MoC in Star Rail or try to kill the Train in Nikke.
I always tell newbies they shouldnt force their way with hard difficulty since the main appeal of KC is collecting the shipgirls, specially if the equipment you get in the event appear again through quests like the two shinden kais we got last year.
Most newcomers i heard actually like the fact events last minimum one month because they can plan their schedule according to the game, they have shown their dislike for how live service and gacha games are handle today, always spamming event after event without not rest or even leave enough time to digest the new content which sometimes is very poorly made, not wonder Genshin, HSR and Blue Archive are on the top since they focus more in quality over quantity.
Also following what blindVigil said, the new blood pumped out thanks to the EN patch is giving the community kinda of a new take on KC as these people dont have any of the past memories from when KC was more "hardcore", "brutal" and "sanity" consuming.
At this point the amount of new admirals is way bigger than the vets and the past is being rewriten by their current experiences. Is it fair to say that KC post covid have become not only more or less a different game but also the fanbase on EN have changed. Now is time for some people to move on for real and never look back if they really wish so.
As a side note and as a funfact, people said during March the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park have gotten quite the number of visits than usual. Also maybe certain "Jojokaze" fan living in the state of Luisiana also maybe helped spread the interest to visit the Memorial Park.
You know some of these days it would be nice if we were formally informed that we are dead. The EN kc kancolle community has supposedly died or fallen out of god's light like what, 6-7 times already?
Parks had pretty much resuscitated Kancolle EN Fandom back to existence, there is also rumors that he is keeping in touch with zeco in a way to really bring Kancolle to the West. There are also those people that really stayed because of their passion of WW2 Naval History.
KC's design philosophy is always focused on telling a story as shown with Drum's and Inagi's design while AL really wants to maximize to a larger and more profitable audience, explained why Anson looks like someone came from BA. I already lost interest from AL ever since they started making girls with gundams, it was clear I'm not the target audience anymore.
KC did many fuckups during its height of its popularity not to mentions being only exclusive to Japan would really fan the anti-foreign, imperialist, warcrime-denyilist allegations, but having fall from grace they really pick themselves up and tried to make something that will really appeal to their real audiences. AL should have learned from KC's mistakes, but as I see now, it's a bit too late.
I always tell newbies they shouldnt force their way with hard difficulty since the main appeal of KC is collecting the shipgirls, specially if the equipment you get in the event appear again through quests like the two shinden kais we got last year.
Most newcomers i heard actually like the fact events last minimum one month because they can plan their schedule according to the game, they have shown their dislike for how live service and gacha games are handle today, always spamming event after event without not rest or even leave enough time to digest the new content which sometimes is very poorly made, not wonder Genshin, HSR and Blue Archive are on the top since they focus more in quality over quantity.
Also following what blindVigil said, the new blood pumped out thanks to the EN patch is giving the community kinda of a new take on KC as these people dont have any of the past memories from when KC was more "hardcore", "brutal" and "sanity" consuming.
At this point the amount of new admirals is way bigger than the vets and the past is being rewriten by their current experiences. Is it fair to say that KC post covid have become not only more or less a different game but also the fanbase on EN have changed. Now is time for some people to move on for real and never look back if they really wish so.
As a side note and as a funfact, people said during March the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park have gotten quite the number of visits than usual. Also maybe certain "Jojokaze" fan living in the state of Luisiana also maybe helped spread the interest to visit the Memorial Park.
With all due respect, I disagree with some of your views. First, how many people really like longer events (even last minimum a month)? At least from my perspective, the people around me and some of the online public opinion that I have observed prefer shorter events. It is true that the activity of AL is shorter, but there is no need to expand it to that long time in one go. Second, Genshin, HSR are fine, but I totally disagree with Blue Archive's so-called "top" - I've played it before and learned about it. To me, it is musically inferior to AL (even less than 《Kaiserhymnen》's elegant and《Le Chant du Départ》's rouse), only moderately artistically (although AL has indeed declined in quality recently, but it is still basically better), not even as good as a purely literary work in terms of plot and allegory, and even less to reach the peak of the glorious stories of historical illustrious figures. My attitude is more intense, but that's how I see it. Blue Archive is nothing more than a small bird that has been decorated with silver-gray paint as an "eagle".
You know some of these days it would be nice if we were formally informed that we are dead. The EN kc kancolle community has supposedly died or fallen out of god's light like what, 6-7 times already?
It's especially disappointing since pretty much every American ship after Intrepid got a pretty good reception. Even Helena didn't get as big of a backlash.
There...was actually a localized hate toward the artist (acea4) over Helena's art quality (and likely, her artist's nationality as well) to the point that the haters either did a redraw of her CG or commissioned(?) one that suited their standards and then used client-side asset modification to swap them.
It took quite some time for the community to warm up to ZECO's style as well, which some considered "too Azur Lane-ish" which is a strange argument to make since the guy has been in ship personification business longer than either franchises and likely had influenced both of them in some ways.
There...was actually a localized hate toward the artist (acea4) over Helena's art quality (and likely, her artist's nationality as well) to the point that the haters either did a redraw of her CG or commissioned(?) one that suited their standards and then used client-side asset modification to swap them.
It took quite some time for the community to warm up to ZECO's style as well, which some considered "too Azur Lane-ish" which is a strange argument to make since the guy has been in ship personification business longer than either franchises and likely had influenced both of them in some ways.
With respect Acea, the controversy wasnt due to Helena, there were people who didnt like the artstyle and render used on her design but they admit it it was a proper design at the end(fanarts show it), most of the hate came from Acea being a very active political person on twitter, his stand on Taiwan's autonomy got him into trouble with the CN community and basically tried to harrass him, it got bad enough that even they started to replace Acea's artwork in the KC viewer they use "Ooi"
Zeco's controversy is bizarre because AL in its early days have a lot of overlap with KC design philosophy, you can see the influence in artists like Saru when it comes to the characters and also could see Shibafu's influence in most rigging designs as well. So i can see how some people who havent been in touch with AL lately would see Zeco's designs and say it reminds them to AL(2017), just like there are people who still see KC like the game it was on 2013 and arent even aware that Nevada is in the game, i think the same happened when people saw Zeco's while being unaware of AL current design trends which indeed have nothing in common with KC today.
There are also people saying that Scamp looks like an AL shipgirl because of her face expression and the accents of sky blue in her uniform being too saturated which is weird because KC isnt an stranger when using saturation, is just that unlike the several gacha games' artists who abuse it(because of the 5sec attention rule in marketing that influenced and turned gacha character design into what is today) KC artists understand an important concept called "point of interest"