分类： 前线来信·Mail call

Sometimes if there’s no mail call, it’s because we’ve done other stuff – for instance, tweeting yesterday or commenting on stuff yesterday on our forums. I need to figure out a better way of getting that info to everyone.

I admit, I’m still messing around with how to keep everything organized. That, probably, is the biggest challenge that we’re facing right now. We’ve got a pretty clear idea about where and how we want to take Pacific, but it’s considerably more challenging to figure out how to show it to all of our readers.

That, and the thing is that with a 12-hour difference, sometimes it takes quite a while to get things settled.

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Today’s update is a new piece on what’s going on in the USSR.

I’ll talk more about this later. 🙂

Quick grab-bag of various questions, then I’ll start to work on the backlog. A promise is a promise, after all. 🙂

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“Is the English release of volume 2 out yet?”

No.

Before you ask when it’s going to be out, it’ll be out when it’s out. 😉

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“What kind of books is the team going to bring to AnimeBoston?”

We’re still finalizing our decisions for now. Probably you’ll see some posters and whatnots of our other works, but honestly whether or not we bring more of our books over to America is going to depend on how well Pacific does.

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“What happened to Baicai?”

He’s doing fine. He’s a tea merchant now. Small business and all, you know. It’s a lot of hard work so I don’t think he’s going to be drawing again anytime soon.

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“So just how “badass” (for lack of a better word) is Maury? Is she the type who knows martial arts and can take down squads of armed soldiers with her bare hands? Or is she just the athletic type with a fondness for CQC?”

Badass can’t really be quantified. You’re forgetting that shipgirls are capable of superhuman actions. In that sense, then, even someone like Shaw can probably take down squads of armed soldiers without difficulty.

“Martial arts” for shipgirls look very different than what you would think. For starters, think about the strategies employed by typical military specialists. They often leverage key advantages such as size or bulk and turn that directly into combat applications.

You might as well ask “is your arm or leg stronger than an Abyssal’s armor?”

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“Is the wiki going to come back?”

Sort of. I just got frustrated trying to learn the wiki format, so I might try something else with it. We did learn how to set one up, but between that and the site it’s a handful.

Basically, I think the wiki was set-up for a purpose of cataloging and displaying our content. In that sense it wasn’t the perfect system, but it had the right functions at the time.

So we’ll see.

Someone actually asked me this a while ago, which was largely along the lines of “what/how would a country like Japan use its shipgirls?”

Well, something like this might give you an idea of what the NKT were planning.

Basically, to answer the question, Japan will tend to focus on defending its own home waters. Their military planners are largely pessimistic about the chance of receiving foreign aid once the Abyssal War breaks out, since they really doubt America or the UK would be in a position to come to their rescue.

That, coupled with an inherent belief about Japanese shipgirl superiority, makes it so that Japan’s tendencies to focus on self-sufficiency (okay, technically, all nations do this but Japan emphasizes this) means that they think about fighting the Abyssals in completely different terms.

The two things Kusaka talk about can be summed up basically as follows:

Ambush: Exactly as this sounds. A focus on the (relatively) fast Japanese DD and other light girls to quickly ambush an Abyssal force, or relying on the precision of the Japanese torpedo fairies on DD and subgirls (especially subgirls) to snipe away and destroy the Abyssals in a war of attrition.

Decapitation: This is a call-back to the Kantai Kessen doctrine that the IJN used, but the modern-day NKT believe they have more than the capability to do this. In a suspiciously similar throwback to history, this is basically the idea of luring larger Abyssal forces to (preferably non-Japanese) waters, where an overwhelming strikeforce of the Japanese shipgirls (including the likes of Yamato) can crush the opponent in a single decisive engagement.

The reason, again, is because Japan lack the capabilities of the US. Unlike Avalon, which is a nexus of fairy activity and churns out supply and materiel, the NKT is slow to adapt centralized systems for stockpiling of shipgirl weapons. The Hyuuga Incident was also a critical setback that will likely result in significant delays in at least the foreseeable future.

“Why is Pacific’s Iowa not a bimbo?”

Er, that is a very odd question, one. Two, I really wouldn’t call KanColle’s Iowa a bimbo. It’s not nice and it really isn’t accurate. Theirs is honestly a very Japanese take on “American shipgirl.” From the star-shaped pupils to her buxom chest to stars and stripes to her very outgoing personality, the design fits.

Pacific’s Iowa, however, have different focuses. A pretty good rule of thumb: at a bare minimum, Pacific girls should be someone you want to take home and introduce to your mom and dad. Even the wild and abrasive ones have a certain sort of “womanly” quality that supplements their personalities. In other words, a common core of values are shared between all of our girls.

Iowa just happens to be more of a “quiet country girl” or “serious and quiet” type. Here’s a  sketch from November from a long time ago. This character isn’t Iowa, mind you. But this should give you an idea of what kind of girls he likes to draw.

See the resemblance? Characters like Iowa came pretty naturally to November, since he’s really pretty fond of drawing girls of this type. Specifically, he likes to draw girls with slimmer and “daintier” builds. He also likes sundresses and straw hats.

So, when it’s time to make a shipgirl that’s well, quite easily fitted with the above, it’s no wonder she got drawn.

(Meanwhile, I have a grand old time trying to convince the guys to draw the men of Pacific. Go figure, right? I’m not gonna make our people do things they don’t particularly like to do. Cute girls? Yes. Sexy girls? Yes. Ordinary girls? Yes.

Guys? Eeeehh…. )