Which one is better? Kantai Collection or Azur Lane?
This is what some Japanese otaku have been arguing about recently.
Kantai Collection, also known as KanColle (艦これ), has been a Otaku’s favourite personified battleship franchise since its launch in 2013. Five years later, a very similar game caught many’s attention – Azur Lane (碧藍航線).
Azur Lane started out as a Chinese game developed by a Chinese company, but then it decided to venture into the Japanese market. This is what’s happening right now…
Gaming media’s livestream with YouTube celebrity…
Advertisement in Akihabara…
Multiple doujin artworks on Twitter and Pixiv…
加賀ｻﾝ #アズールレーン pic.twitter.com/mFJxFZCVZN
— みれあ?メロブ委託販売中 (@mirea_fraise) October 24, 2017
And of course over one million downloads in just one week after launch.
With Azur Lane being this overwhelming in their country, some Japanese are not happy with it. First, it had this “Azur Lane copies KanColle!” argument. Then, it evolved to “Azur Lane is an anti Japanese game!” because some Japanese battleships from World War II become enemies in Azur Lane. Recently, the Kantai Collection vs Azur Lane issue has become quite big that someone even takes it to a rather spiritual level.
“The Azur Lane phenomenon is testing people’s faithfulness to two-dimensional characters.”
(Source: excite.)
This guy wrote an article on Cyzo magazine to doubt some ex-KanColle fans’ love for the poor girls whom are no longer popular due to Azur Lane. He said, “if you look at the characters of Azur Lane, who appear under the same name but with different looks in KanColle, and you think ‘it’s good to see them here too’, is your love for the KanColle characters true?”.
Comments believe the writer has taken it too far, and the war has become so meaningless.
• “Why can someone be this serious about games?”
• “Preferring Azur Lane is only natural because the system is better.”
• “Azur Lane is interesting, so people are playing it; the characters are glamorous, so people are playing it. They share only the source idea but they are actually different things. KanColle may start earlier but that doesn’t mean it is original. If you are sad about it, what you should do is to ask KanColle to make something that keeps people stay.”
• “It’s a game – a hobby after all. You have no right to judge others’ hobbies.”
If you are still choosing which one to play based on what’s trendy in Japan recently, now you know, sometimes some hardcore gamers’ opinions are quite…difficult to understand. As long as it is something you are interested, you should try! What’s so bad about having multiple waifu and husbando from multiple franchises anyway, right?
