Military model makers are celebrating unprecedented increases in sales thanks to the massive success of DMM’s Kantai Collection franchise, with fans obediently buying up even the very un-moe warships the KanMusu are themselves modeled on.
Such is the knock-on effect of Kantai Collection’s popularity that Akihabara based model shops have seen sales surge ten-fold since the game’s release.
Some lines of models (likely those involving certain destroyers) have seen overall sales increase five-fold as well – admittedly from an extremely low base of perhaps 500 models for a popular light cruiser like Tenryu – and makers complain ecstatically that “production cannot keep up and some models are constantly out of stock.”
Unsurprisingly, it is the top makers of model battleships who are seeing most of the action – Tamiya, Aoshima Bunka Kyozai and Hasegawa – with the traditional market of military model otaku in their fifties suddenly giving way to KanKore fans in their twenties and thirties.
Hasegawa has already jumped on board with KanKore collaboration editions of some of its “Water Line” series, boasting special packaging and decals, happily mentioning that “the producer of KanKore was already a Water Line series fans so the collaboration went very smoothly.”
Similar tie-ups between Girls und Panzer and tank model makers have also been going on for some time, and there is hope that an influx of enthusiastic battleship moe fans will boost the model industry’s customer base – should the boom prove anything more than a fleeting one.
One of the reasons to like about Japan, they come up with something weird but is actually good in the long run.
Why all this battleship / moe-girl action? It’s all about WWII. Or more accurately, about pretending Japanese aggression before and during the war didn’t happen.
They don’t want to admit that they did all those horrible things, and they also want to wipe out the fact that they lost big time. It’s not doing them any good, because all their neighbors haven’t forgotten and they’re still very angry.
All the recent stuff about China, Korea, and the Philippines claiming those tiny islands controlled by the Japanese is not just about resources, it’s about getting back at Japan because of what the Imperial Empire did.
Imagine that there was a cartoon in the US about the cute little atomic bombs, Fat Man and Little Boy, and the fun they had with the B-29s Enola Gay and Bock’s Car (the planes that dropped the bombs). You would be able to hear the howls from Tokyo to Washington without a telephon. The Japanese would be up in front of the UN screaming about their poor innocent war dead and demanding additional reparations.
So how does it look to the Koreans, who want some recognition of the “comfort women”? The survivors are all almost gone from old age, and the Japanese are ignoring the whole issue.
A Japanese container ship was just seized in China over a civil suit copncerning property that was taken by the Japanese when they occupied China in the 1930’s. It’s all a very sore topic and is not going away any time soon.
I know that no one who visits this site cares a rat’s ass about this and it will be taken down quickly. Even so, for the few people who end up reading this, I hope you realize that cute girls are not going to change the attitude of people who suffered terribly at the hands of the Japanese during WWII.
Even more ironic is that most KanColle cosplayers outside Japan are from China & Korea. Regardless of what reasons, today’s generation no longer gives a f♥♥k worth regarding what happened in WWII.
Those who suffered, the older generations are dying out of old age, whether they whine for compensation, want some apology or whatever it is, it’s forgotten sad to say.
Eventually, no one will care about it anymore.. kinda similar to how the Vikings or Mongolians ravaged several countries in the ancient times.
China & the 2 Koreas are still stuck in WWII.
Korea & most especially, China whines about anything that could be correlated to imperialism in Japan *whilst* China acting like a big ASSHOLES in the sea slamming their boats on other ships beacuse they think the whole world belongs to them..
This world doesn’t make sense..
Japanese turned their bad war memories into some kind of sadomasochistic pun, see all those gigantic blows in majority of their animation, they are all created because atomic strike became a part of their popculture, like shirts with Che Guevara in other countries.
>>Japanese turned their bad war memories into some kind of sadomasochistic pun
More like a pretend victimhood…
They are victims. Victims of the only Nukes to have struck actual non-test targets.
That’s not to say they weren’t the aggressors too, of course.
hay – that don’t look liek Nagato!
meiyaoes
We need more germans KanMusus, Tirpitz, Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst!!!
Seeing as Germany was an ally of Japan, I think this may happen eventually. I mean, Bismarck’s already out there.
They were allies in name only. Japan were more interested in attacking America, China and anyone else they felt like. They never agreed with what the Nazis were doing to the jews.
I don’t know if this is just an urban legend, I once heard that hitler himself was appalled of and protested against the r♥♥e of nanjing. Murdering everyone was ok for him but mass raping a no-go.
Irony on* Of course they didn´t like the idea of the Germans killing off the Jews, that´s why they turned to killing the Chinese people. *Irony off
Yea sure… It’s the Nazi that got PTSD after visiting the Unit 731 not the other way around…
It just shows how easy it’s to market anything to otaku by putting pictures of cute anime girls on the label.