Adorkable: A lot, as expected from a game franchise that features many character stereotypes. Some examples include:
Baltimore: A tomboy like Cleveland, it would come no surprise that she does not know how to deal with her feeling towards the Commander when her affection is up, her reactions being both cute and dorky at the same time. The tattoos seen in her Black Ace skin are fakes used in an attempt to seem cool.
Essex: Like Akagi, she gets rather special treatment in meta and in media. She is normally an upright and honest girl, but among fandom, her envious feeling towards Enterprise has been taken to a whole new level (especially when Zuikaku or Belfast are involved), like putting her in awkward moments with Enterprise. Also, her various hilarious chibi reactions spawn numerous memes in various contexts, and the official Discord server has three of emoji based on Essex's reaction ("ehhhessex", "essexshock" and "essexcry"), and more did come and are coming. To a lesser extent, Zuikaku is this.
Renown: she gets incredibly flustered upon pledging. Also happens during on one of the idle lines, where she says she'll thank you on behalf of "Renown" for thinking she's cute, before realizing it's her.
Ark Royal is infamous as a destroyer-con, starting from her stranger line having her catch herself before she says that destroyers turn her on. However, the existence of her horrified reaction to herself being on the receiving end of a Special Touch casts doubt on how much of what she says is genuine malice and perversion.
Littorio is extremely bombastic and self centered, with her ego simply just being that rather than the usual desire to be the most powerful ship girl there is. It's also theorized this might be due to her being a Clingy Jealous Girl with attachment issues. When she points out in her dress skin that the Commander is a Chick Magnet, it at first may be her seeing the Commander as competition for attention from the other Ship girls, but she then goes onto mention that she too would be possessive over him if he gets her affection high enough, making the case Littorio is an example of I Just Want to Be Loved underneath. Similar theories have been made about more typical Yanderes like Taihou.
With what various side materials show of her, it's suggested that Taihou's behavior is a cover of her lack of confidence in herself. Her seeming Yandere-ness is a way to seem "strong" while her blatant come-ons is a reflection of feeling her body is the only thing she has confidence in. The conclusion is that Taihou would calm down once she feels secure.
Eugen's infamous drinking habits take on a much sadder tone if one knows her service history and reads between the lines of her dialogue. It feels less like she's trying to have a good time and more like she's trying to forget the long list of defeats she survived as her comrades sank one by one, Bismarck chief among them.
Some see Sirius's readiness to offer her body or to be punished a sign of lower self-esteem as she may feel the only thing she's good for outside of battle is her body. The main supporters of this theory are the sort that would assure her that is not the case.
Belfast is considered a perfect maid, not just for performing her duties flawlessly, but also considered willing to expose herself for the Commander in her Special Touch. However, her Oath line is delivered with legitimate surprise and hesitation, and post-Oath, she both yelps when Special Touched, and suggests that being the Commander's wife is something she needs to get used to, making it plausible that she has similar self-esteem problems as Sirius, and is just better at hiding it.
Americans Hate Tingle: Some characters are much more popular in one part of the world than the other.
Bache gets mixed reactions from the western fanbase for her over-the-top mix of clothes, youthful appearance and perverted design, which gained her instant popularity in Japan. She was so well-liked that she got a skin during the Yamaha collaboration (but it was not part of it) shortly after her release, surprising most of the western fandom.
It's believed Amagi is less popular in Japan due to the stigma associated with being seriously ill, with a few translated Japanese comments amounting to saying Western players have a sickness fetish. That was until her swimsuit was released for the English version (timed exclusive, with the outfit being announced for the Japanese version prior to the 3rd Anniversary Livestream), sparking a small boom in art.
The Chinese playerbase has a low opinion of the Italian faction ever since its reveal, making jokes when a ship turns out to be weak. When a ship like Vittorio Veneto is strong? They rage.
The full reveal of the iDOLM@STER collab has gotten a rather palpable cold reception from many players of the global version. Reasons can be summed up by the mostly younger playerbase not understanding the original 765 cast's significance or how Bandai-Namco operates. While the opinion isn't entirely negative, bringing it up in some places will cause arguments. A lot of hay was also made over the decision to replace the Oathing mechanic for the Idolm@ster girls with a “Unifying” mechanic (which is really just Oathing by another name, mechanically). When the reasoning behind this decision was explained to Western players, where "idol culture" simply doesn’t exist the same way it does in the East, their derision only intensified.
The actual release of the event didn't do much to alleviate this. Players starting up the game, even before going into the event, were blasted with a rather loud main screen music that drowned out their secretary, even when the BGM volume was significantly lower than the voice volume. Much of the rest of the event music consists of short and not-well-mixed loops of songs from the franchise. The event itself is relatively standard AL event fare, but with one annoying concession: the IM@S girls were apparently not even allowed to be destroyed on screen like any other ship, so they retreat at 1 HP instead of blow up. This even happens with mere holograms of the girls! This is nothing new to the game, but it got taken to an extreme with it even occurring against the humanoid enemies in regular production fleets — which could cause additional production ships to spawn during the retreat. Furthermore, the retreating ships would continue firing on you until they were entirely off the screen. This hurt against the Chihaya and Iori mobs, who had ludicrously durable planes and searingly powerful burns with their HE ammunition respectively. The saving grace most players were able to agree upon is that, mechanically, all the SSR ships hit the sweet spot of being very strong and quite usable without actually being meta shifters, more so than any other collab to date.
Anchorage isn't as liked in the west as much due to her Womanchild nature, which isn't as common in western media. This has a way of sparking some less than kind remarks about her mental state in some circles. However, on the flip side, some are protective of their big daughers.
Annoying Video Game Helper: TB, the new Mission Control added in Operation Siren, has earned this reputation amongst much of the playerbase. Nearly every action you take in Operation Siren will prompt a message from her, and these messages reset if you log out or restart the app. There are also occasions where the reward spawned from defeating a Promoted Pawn fleet will contain no items, but will instead contain a reminder from her that she can...help you find items with her scanner. The complaints about her were such that the first major patch after Operation Siren's implementation added an option to reduce how frequently she appears. She'll still pop up quite a bit even with this option on.
Arc Fatigue: A number of fans feel that the game does too little to advance the plot with the Sirens, with many events having them show up and spout something cryptic without really adding anything new.
In terms of skins, Saratoga. She is one of the few non-Starter ships to have the most skins (a couple of her skins are even event rewards too, including a wedding skin implemented in 2022), although ships like Yamashiro, Cygnet, and the Starters amount to having more. This is somewhat explained by her being a mascot of the game (her face graces the app icon of both Japanese and Chinese versions). Some people really like the fact she has a lot of skins, considering her adorable in them. However, some people would rather have the game tone down on her skins a bit (even charging for a few of them), giving some more attention to characters like Lexington, who currently has one skin as of this writing. This overlooks that Saru (her artist) is busy with other games and other ships like Yukikaze who also has gotten a number of skins.
Ships such as Sirius and Taihou have people split on their extremely curvy and sexy designs and how they overshadow other ships in terms of fanart. Chinese New Years after 2018 are bad as they're dominated by either a very buxom ship (Sirius and Dido, 2019 and 2020) and/or sexy skins, resulting in the other ships that debut at those times largely forgotten. It's suspected the reason why Sirius isn't doing as well in the 2019 English polls is the backlash from people spamming her fanart (particularly of her swimsuit) in various places while Taihou's main spam period happened early in the English version's life (thus coming off as not so overdone).
Cygnet. While her C-class common siblings (Comet and Crescent) don't have non-retrofit skins, she has 5 skins as of March 2020 (a summer, Christmas skin, a New Year's skin, a maid skin, and a cheerleader skin, all but the last two are freebies) plus the obligatory basic and retrofit skins. Also, of all existing units, only Laffey, Javelin, Ayanami, and Yamashiro have more skins than her at the moment. While there are signs on her artist's Pixiv that she's his favourite, many more people share the sentiment than oppose it. On the flip side, there are also a number who are starting to dislike her because she's gotten so many skins, despite only being a common destroyer that isn't all that important historicallynote She wasn't even serving with the Royal Navy itself, or known as HMS Cygnet, during World War II, as she had been decommissioned in 1936 and sold to Canada in 1937, being renamed to HMCS St. Laurent or all that impressive in terms of stats, but has gotten a lot of skins while more popular, more historically important, and better ships haven't even received one skin. This is somewhat ignoring the fact that Cygnet's artist has a lower workload than most of the popular ships (in comparison with Yumesaki Kaede who has created 35+ ships), but doesn't entirely excuse the clear favoritism of the artist (seen on their Pixiv page) towards her compared to his other ships (Crescent, Comet, and Agano who only started skins in late 2019/early 2020). That being said, she still has her fans, and there are many people who are hoping she can even get a wedding skin - which would essentially make her the first Normal-tier ship to do so.
Best Known for the Fanservice: A good number of prospective players are introduced to the game due to finding the artwork of the characters (main ones being Belfast, Illustrious, Akagi, Sirius, Taihou), and only after looking into it do they find out about the gameplay. Within the fandom itself, some ships like Bremerton (especially in her tennis outfit) are known for being fodder for Rule 34 before anything else, much to the dismay of the ship's fans.
Breather Boss: Some French events recently introduced mass-produced ships as bosses. That is ... not one personified. The only problem is the ships don't move at all and are generally really easy to destroy with a bunch of concentrated hits (battleships, Submarines, and Torpedos in particular).
Breather Level: Most of the event specific levels have enemy levels lower than even half of the main storyline. This applies to the normal levels, the hard mode event stages can be tricky due to the stat requirements that tends to be anti-meta. But they generally don't have the nasty traits of chapter 10 and later (trains of suicide boats, heavy enemy plane presence, special enemy ships seen in Chapter 13)
Whether the English translations are Macekre and meme for the sake of meme or Woolseyism is something that is fiercely debated.
The matter of which script to follow (Chinese, Japanese, or English) invokes some serious debate.
The English version's event pacing invites some heated debates due to how certain smaller events were omitted and how short break/slow periods are. And there's the fact that the other versions were forced into a similar pace for a time in order to assist with the Chinese, Japanese and English versions fully syncing.
St. Louis' Luxurious Wheels skin has some debate due to how some people feel it excessively pushes fanservice even compared to her previous skins. That and how she's rendered as bustier/leggier than normal makes the suspicion that it was meant for Taihou or Surcouf (characters who would go that far in fanservice). Keep in mind that most of the detractors generally like her other skins, but to them this particular one all but does the "work" of making her porn fodder before non-player fanartists even get around to it. Others eat it up and consider it a normal extension of her teasing personality.
While both of the Erebus class ships are definitely cute, Terror looks like she came straight out of an anime horror movie.
Akagi's yandere tendencies can fall under here when she's also being genuine about loving the Commander, even if she does threaten anyone who even looks at him in the same breath.
Taihou easily comes off as a lustful yandere at a glance (her skins play into that heavily), but her character story and side materials like Slow Ahead (with her chapter being animated) reveal a cuter, not-so-threatening side, one which more and more fanart show off.
Gangut has the Face of a Thug but is actually a Nice Girl, so a lot of art depicts her as this, even if she's being drawn as a torturing gulag warden.
Graf Spee's rig is rather monstrous, and then there are the oversized clawed gauntlets she's forced to wear, but she's actually a rather cute and shy girl. Her alternate skins lose the creepy factor, where she's just simply cute.
Bombing Ships move fast, can deal tons of damage, and often strike in groups, making it hard to stop them all.
Battleships and Battlecruisers in PvE beginning with Chapter 9 start using High Explosive shells and aim at your main fleet. If you don't have Fire Extinguishers by this point, then prepare to lose some ships to constant fire damage over time for tens of seconds. What makes this even worse is that they have a tendency to focus on your flagship, which can easily cause you to lose the battle.
Any Siren elite fleet counts if your fleet has no reliable way to finish them off quickly (like Jean Bart with her infamous preloaded Critical Hit); if they're low-level or lack a healer, then expect to take heavy damage before those enemies can be taken down. However, some stand out:
The Elite version of Oceana during events is the most annoying Siren unit to face: she deals massive damage to the frontline with her large-caliber HE spam. Thankfully she does little to no damage to the backline.
Siren large aviation fleet in general; while the enemy ships including the elite carriers you face are not that scary for a supposedly superior Siren fleet, these fleets generally come with crazy numbers of enemy aircraft that can easily chip away at your flagship. Thankfully, an Anti-Air such as San Diego can block out those aircraft before they can cause trouble.
And then there is Peace Breaker, whose AP hurts like hell and can heavily damage your flagship. She can be felled easily by air raids and salvos, but if you let her run unchecked, your backline will suffer.
World 13 introduces three special mook ships: command (buffs other ships while alive), repair, and anti-air (their presence will largely shut down most airstrikes to a heavy degree). All three are banes to players with many choosing to use a battleship or torpedoes to take them out immediately. Luckily, they don't appear in any other normal content.
The SP4 stage of the Kizuna AI collaboration suddenly forces you to fight level 80-plus enemies after the much more manageable 60-plus enemies of SP3. The same exact thing occurs in the Hololive collaboration event as well. These two events don't follow the rules of having a Hard Mode (only having an EX mode with an SP stage and an EXTRA stage), so that explains that part.
World 11 onwards also is this compared to World 10, where the amount of suicide boats and surface firepower massively increases in World 11, and World 12 and 13 are filled with absolute massive number of aircraft. The last two worlds mark the point where your possible level advantage starts to really thin out (with World 13 putting you at a slight level disadvantage at best), requiring a focus on a good fleet composition and equipment. World 14 throws a number of curveballs with subs and night battles (which have new mechanics and emphasis on destroyers and light cruisers, which were disfavored up to this point)
At event scale, the Ashen Simulacrum is notable to be one of the hardest event so far, even for some veteran players (who mostly got caught off-guard with its gimmicks) with introduction of new mechanics and frustrating combat conditions, at least before clearing threat meter. The Empyreal Tragicomedy event also used some of Ashen Simulacrum's mechanics, but the enemy isn't too hard to destroy, and is considered to be one of the easiest events to clear.
Fan Hater: With the release of Tower Of Transcendance and a new Iron Blood UR, a massive wave of hate erupted from fans of the Royal Navy faction towards fans of Iron Blood, nearly permanently driving a rift between the Community. The cause stems from Iron Blood having several events that year as well as its very own UR-class ship, which Royal Navy fans felt Iron Blood didn't deserve.
Multiple fans have voiced distaste of the anime adaptation due to certain decisions like removing the Commander and its treatment of Enterprise, causing them to disregard it entirely as nothing more than a time killer.
Some have preferred to ignore some of the content of the Chinese New Year Juustagram, done by an artist known for heavy parody and/or shitposts as they proceeded to cram in stuff from the (divisive) anime, like MREnterprise and an Ark Royal picture that required the official JP twitter to make a post clarifying it.
Fans love to ignore the fact that the little versions of the Ship Girls such as Bel-Chan and Akagi-Chan refer to their older counterparts such as Belfast and Akagi respectively as their big sisters. Instead, many fan works portray them as the daughters of them and the Commander, mostly since many fans find them calling the bigger ship girls "Mother" and the Commander "Father" to be cuter.
Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Western players are annoyed whenever someone credits Yostar with developing the game when it's Manjuu (everything but the actual programming) and Yongshi (the actual programming) that actually develop the game. There's various reasons involved, one of which being different opinions of Manjuu and Yostar in light of the latter's debatable actions, which involve Arknights.
Fan-Preferred Couple: While the game encourages the player to build a harem of ship girls, interactions between the ships are filled to the brim with Les Yay and have created some notable pairings in the fandom.
Cleveland gets shipped a lot with Helena. The fact that Cleveland is a Bifauxnen, or that a loading screen has Helena and Cleveland paired together, doesn't hurt. The game itself teased this by adding another loading screen featuring Cleveland handing a rose to Helena, having Helena ask Cleveland for a dance during the 2nd Anniversary event, and having Clevelad and Lena express interest in each other (the subtext is stronger in the English version than the others)
Prince of Wales and Prinz Eugen get shipped somewhat often. There is, however, a very mild subtext between them in their friendship seen in their lines.
Like in KanColle, Kaga and Zuikaku also get shipped quite often, despite their Interservice Rivalry, or perhaps because of it. Zuikaku also got shipped with Enterprise more often, even though this is just from Zuikaku's side (Enterprise especially does not see her as her main rival), due to her obsession with winning and competing with Enterprise in many aspects, be it combat prowess or their standing in Commander's eye.
Essex's rivalry/admiration with Enterprise has invited this to some extent.
Littorio has invited some shippings due to how she flirts with various ships during the event (her in-game lines instead imply no such things towards other girls). especially Illustrious, due to how Littorio described things as if the former wanted to make out with the latter. This is one-sided, as Illustrious shows little to no interest, aside from her comment regarding how durable Littorio was after taking damage from the former's attacks.
Massachusetts and Jean Bart is a ship with a small but devout following from their rivalry.
Jean Bart is also shipped with her sister some.
Thanks to the Anime, the duo of Enterprise and Belfast has become a popular relationship, and in the game, they are increasingly encountered in PvP.
In China, there's a rather strong one with Warship Girls; among other things, which led to an absolutely notorious incident involving the Colorado-class ships in Azur Lane.
In the West at least, there are a minor but vocal one from Girls' Frontline fans, but this has been present in other areas, even down to lead figures of MICA and Yostar, which has lead to the latter trying to get the other's artists to do their games (not just this game but also Arknights, made by Ex-MICA staff). This aspect generally has no complaint as most artists that do both games are generally praised, but the case of having Suisai (Black Prince) and Waterkuma (Bache) did raise a small number of complaints due to both artists' infamous reputations (different things). Though with Yostar seemingly recruiting artists from Azur Lane's pool for Arknights has helped spark a rivalry between the two Yostar properties.
There are some tensions in the West between this game's fans and Arknights due to feelings of the latter getting a bit more focus from Yostar when it was released, and the former game having feelings of toes being stepped on. Things like a number of regular artists were put on AK, sometimes abandoning their AL creations. Some blame the Amagi swimsuit delay on Liduke's Arknights work (where she made a number of notable operators). Fortunately, there still exists an overlap of Friendly Fandoms. There is also a matter of players who also played Girls' Frontline maintaining their feelings towards Azur Lane. For such reasons and others, in China, it's said to be an outright war between the two games' fandoms. With the sharp drop in retrofits in Azur Lane, the remark that equated the game as a stripper paying for her sister's (Arknights) college rings rather true.
The Chinese Arknights fanbase and their suspected role in both this game and Girls' Frontline getting hit with censorship has to some degree made the fanbases of the latter two do an Enemy Mine. It is also telling that an executive of Sunborn (publisher of Girls' Frontline, close partner to MICA) condemned the Arknights zealots' action against this game. It has since been discovered that the Arknights fanbase were not responsible for this, having been used as a scapegoat by the actual perpetrator (an entity that was not connected to the Arknights, Girls' Frontline, nor Azur Lane fanbases).
There's slight tension with Blue Archive due to September releasing bunny skins for Asuna and Karin which were notably sexier than most of Azur Lane's bunny skins. This was due to the different regions the games were developed in with Korea having less strict rules compared to China, whose government placed extra rules on Azur Lane at the time. The fact Yostar seemed to okay something that highlighted a weakness rubbed some the wrong way. Things have lessened with time due to a number of factors, including no artist overlap/poaching.
As time has gone on, there's been some friction between AL fans and fans of other anthro-ship games in general... because, as a result of AL's reasonably good management and some absolutely disastrous management from its would-be competitors, AL achieved an almost total strangle-hold on the Anglophone market by the early New Twenties. By mid-2021, the English version of Warship Girls has been given an end-of-service date of the end of August that year, its Mirage of Steelblue spin-off had failed entirely and never saw an English release period, and Abyss Horizon ended up shuttering all its servers worldwide (and their English shutdown message rather infamously made it sound like the English version had been operating for a month - it ran for a year). The Darker and Edgier take on the concept, Black Surge Nightnote also known as Kuroshio Awakening/Abyss Front/Dark Boom, released in the Japanese market to rather middling reviews after absolutely gutting the amount of free gacha rolls and reduced rates compared to its native Taiwan, leaving it uncertain if it will ever see a global release. With Kancolle still stubbornly refusing to release anything overseas officially, and Blue Oath apparently not even attempting a release after Abyss did so poorly (along with its evident COVID-related struggles and the closure of its Taiwanese regional server due to unprofitability), that left Azur Lane as the sole king of the seas practically by default, with GFL its only real relevant competition in the Moe Anthropomorphism English market period. This has led some corners to accuse AL of effectively sucking the air out of the market with, by that point, its higher production values, multimedia penetration (including all its various manga, light novels, streaming presence, and multiple animated adaptations) and crossover partnerships (particularly its World of Warships and hololive connections). AL fans tend to counter with the fact that several of the competitors in question are older than AL, and had even more time to attempt to set up media penetration of their own, and that virtually every would-be competitor was mostly brought down by mismanagement rather than any push by Manjuu or Yostar to "overshadow" any given game. The overall situation tended to breed bitterness in the fans of the other works, and while AL continued to gain broad popularity, those who disliked AL tended to sharply dislike it.
Fanwork-Only Fans: There's a number of artists and fans that while they don't play the game, they make/consume fanart. This sometimes irks actual fans as it tends to make a skewed impression of the game and characters due to overemphasizing the fanservice above all other traits and butchering character's personality for either memes or sexy fanart. Examples of the latter being Bremerton who is often shown as an "easy" girl (the opposite of her actual personality) and Essex being turned into a lemon wielding troll out to antagonize Enterprise (when in canon she's a serious, even minded girl that is a tad overfocused on her sempai)
Rather than creating them, the Kizuna AI event revels in already existing gaming memes and breaking fourth-wall. Best summed up by Laffey going "Here we go again" (a possible nod to the rather memetic in its own right Neptunia collab, also a meme in itself)
Some of the Juustagram pictures have spawned some, like a number of takes on "building chibi Gascogne", with Slow Ahead doing its own take with Avrora.
On the flip side, there are also KanColle fans that don't mind enjoying both games at once. As a result, crossover fanworks are met with approval from both fandoms.
Likewise, many Girls Frontline players happily play both, likewise for Arknights players. For AK, it is usually from this game's fans citing Yostar's management of AL as the reason. For GFL the friendliness is helped by the fact that GFL focuses on gun girls while AL focuses on ship girls.
World of Warships is another example, even extending to the developers with both being fans of each other. Besides that, fans have noticed the various nods from the other game in this one and vice versa. It also leads to permanent collaboration content (the Prototype ships).
Due to her covering the game before its Japanese release (she got to play ahead of its release), there's a crossover with Kizuna AI fans. The Japanese Twitter has actually mentioned her and she even wound up doing a video that announced Fallen Wings for the English version. She outright ended up appearing as a playable character in a collaboration event. That period is still remembered fondly by fans, with some hoping she resumes playing.
Due to the collab and a number of its members continuing the play the game, the hololive fanbase is on friendly terms with this games with both open to another collab or a rerun. During the 25 hour livestream for the Japanese server's 3rd anniversary in mid-September 2020, Houshou Marine went on-record during the livestream's Hololive segment as hoping for a second collab so she can join her "senpais" in-game. Unfortunately, the "Taiwan incident" occurred a mere two weeks afterward, and following the decision by the VTuber group's company, Cover Corp, to make their exit from the Chinese market (which included the shuttering of hololive's Chinese branch), chances of a Round 2 happening are slim to none.
Due to the convenient timing of Bismarck's reveal being very close to the release of Sabaton's song about the same ship, some degree of overlap between the two fandoms began to surface as a result in the English fandom, with the top comments on Bismarck on the English servers being all references to Sabaton. This was further aided by Azur Lane's official EN twitter account quoting lyrics from said song to foreshadow the ship's impending addition to the roster of playable ships.
There's some friendliness with Blue Archive due to interest in the more unique designs among others.
Game-Breaker: Getting lucky with a build can result in getting a ship that can steamroll big chunks of the content to varying extents. There are some ships that are considered very good:
New Jersey is particularly absurd. Her high main gun efficiency and her reduced spread make her has potentially high shelling damage, not to mention using slowing abilities as more shells will connect with the target. Her barrage is just unfair to enemies. When she fires her main guns, it releases both HE shells that set a decent burn and AP shells that set a unique armor break with a 100% chance of activating when enhanced just like San Diego Retrofit and the barrage is independent of this ship's position in the main fleet. (which means her barrage pattern won't be changed in any position) Additionally, 10 seconds into the start of the battle, fire this same barrage, making this as a free barrage as well. This makes triple BB fleets with her can use AP Main Gun without sacrificing the ability to burn thanks to this barrage. She also offers backline buffs, a rare feature for a ship that is a backliner herself. These are a broad buff for USS battleships in the same fleet and an AVI buff for cross-fleet USS carriers. The icing on the cake part is her cross-fleet barrage also has higher base damage than other similar barrages and is quite useful, though this is not necessary for her use.
Shinano. She is the only carrier to have 9 planes in her loadout, allowing her to deal the highest single target damage with absurdly high torpedo bomber efficiency and a guaranteed aimed torpedo barrage with some dive bombers and a single scout plane that debuff enemy. She is very versatile with the ability to equip any type of plane in her first slot. Whether AA with a fighter, general use with a dive bomber, or a torpedo bomber for single target burst. She also brings a variety of buffs to your fleet, namely the enemy debuff, IJN carrier AVI buff, self-damage reduction against gun and plane, and the DD FP buff (although IJN carrier AVI buff and self-damage reduction against gun and plane need to be activated by having at least 3 IJN ships in the fleet). Her butterfly barrage can do a great job at killing suicide boats and side productions, and the interfleet barrage acts as a small but nice damage bonus to the other fleet.
Perseus is quite honestly ridiculous. While she has many drawbacks like has drastic increase in airstrike cooldowns, only great for mob clearing, low aviation, and plane efficiencies, the tradeoffs make her arguably superior. Simply using her causes her to release two airstrikes instead of one, allows her to deal relatively high damage and wipe enemies at the first wave to help your vanguard. On top of that, it allows her to heal entire fleet, granting you more freedom for fleet composition. What makes her even better than most of carriers, however, is she can be used for opening enemy carriers visibility in Player versus Player, allowing other shipgirls to mow the backline quickly with the like of Warspite's Divine Marksman or New Jersey's Dragon's Breath. Whether you simply need some breathing room, some extra supplies, or you want to end an encounter quickly, using Perseus is never a bad option.
Ägir is an exceptionally durable large cruiser with very high damage output. She is best sortied in the main tank position for your vanguard. She has an excellent statline and useful support skills. The first of her support skills allow her to slow opponents and set up for backline damage, as such you should pick her torpedoes to sync with the main fleet to maximize the effectiveness of the slow. The second support skill is a passive effect where she inflicts armor breaks on all armor types which magnifies shelling damage received by a target.
Shimakaze is an absolute bastard when it comes around torpedo DPS for shipgirls. As an extremely strong torpedo-focused destroyer, she has double preloaded torps, strong barrages, and a helpful cross-fleet support barrage, allowing her to mow enemies down so fast with her immensely high amount of damage she can put. Considering Ayanami is a walking nuke by herself, Shimakaze is a walking nuke but on steroids indeed. That being said, she is still Glass Cannon, even though she is fairly durable for a destroyer, so she should still be protected in the middle position of the vanguard when engaging difficult content.
Since her introduction, Vanguard has become the best Support BB that outshines even Vittorio Veneto with many debuffs and buffs should could offer. Her first skill is 100% chance to do all damage equally with her specific armor modifier, allowing her to destroy any ship with ease and allows them to take a bit more damage from BBs and BCs for 6 seconds. Her second skill is self-reload and accuracy increase, which is simple, until it can make every enemies get more 10% damage after 2 seconds. A deadly skill for working together with Helena. Not to mention cross fleet Firepower boost for HMS vanguard ships and some fire support with AA boost. Her third skill is a bit underwhelming, but it works well against bombing, AA efficiency with reduced main gun spread is a nice bonus, and Aircraft damage reduction is a good bonus as long as there is one HMS ship with her. Oh, and did we mention that her second skill’s damage increase debuff cannot be erased forever until enemies die or the battle is ended?
While Unicorn in pre-retrofit is not too shabby, her post-retrofit is literally as broken as Perseus. Her first skill is not only doing the heal, it allows her to have pre-loaded air strike to mow the obstacle pretty quick, which makes her one of the best mob killing ship as of now, and her heal will not only healing vanguard ships, she also heals main ships with 5% to all main ships max hp and another 3% for main ship max hp with lowest hp. To make it better, she does not suffer airstrike cooldowns like Perseus, allowing her to deal with mob fleet in long run. A fantastic improvement that is worth waiting to get retrofit indeed.
The moment it was released in Japan, Azur Lane's fandom instantly boomed, with at least 5 million registered users as of January 2018, and with enough recognition to gain a collaboration with Hyperdimension Neptunianote As it happens, the Neptunia collaboration seems to be due more to a long-term collaboration with their developers, since Compile Heart and Idea Factory were revealed to be the developers of Azur Lane: Crosswave for Playstation 4 in September of 2018. Note that this is despite accusations of being an imitation of Kantai Collection. The other major Chinese competitor, Warship Girls, is much less popular.
Once the English version entered OBT, there was a large jump in the player base, fueled by word of mouth from vets of JP/CN, more eye-catching designs, gameplay, far more western ships, and the collaboration with World of Warships which came earlier than the English release certainly helps.
While there is some crossover, the ships often considered the most popular on EN tends to vary wildly from Japan. Case in point: In the 2019 Popularity Poll EN's Top 20 was dominated by Ironblood ships, with Bismarck, in particular, taking a close 3rd to Laffey, and 1st Place being taken by Amagi. In contrast, the only IB ship in Japan to break the Top 10 was Roon (granted at 3rd), Nagato took 2nd as opposed to her 9th place in EN, and 1st was Sirius, who didn't even make the finals of EN. Meanwhile, Amagi couldn't crack the Top 10 (12th), and Bismarck was barely able to make the Top 20 alongside Eugen and Graf Zeppelin. Reasons for this is being fond of the rigging designs, having Z23 as a starter, and to some degree, the fact the faction as a whole isn't popular elsewhere (thus a sense of "being EN's"). The 2021 polls were similar with the top 10 having a clear german leaning for the english version.
In gameplay trends, Chinese players are said to favor the mindset of the frontline being there to tank and buy time for the backline, thus they favor Stone Wall ships more than the other areas. Despite this, they are fond of doing speedruns of stages. And in characters they have a rather extreme fondness of the Cleveland class ships (not that they're unpopular outside of China). It's telling that Biloxi, a Cleveland class ship has gotten the most skins out of the 2020 Chinese New Year/Fight On, Royal Maids! banner, two more than everyone else, including Dido, the big star ship of the banner and found her way into the event pool of Inverted Orthant (which had a new years skin debut for her).
In Feb 2022, it was revealed that the CN playerbase has a reverence for world war 2 American ships as they voiced some outrage over the implication an artist may have half-assed art for Arizona's Lunar New Year skin.
Niizuki had a bug that her reload cycle begins after her first salvo as opposed to after her last like every other ship. With a gun with a high enough reload rate, she will produce a never-ending stream of fire. The only downside is her firepower stat isn't the greatest and this will disable her torpedoes from loading. Using a slower firing gun will partially offset the first downside and negate the second. This has been fixed, though unmentioned in any patch notes.
When the game allowed you to have rotating secretaries, a glitch was discovered that would allow you to change the size of them on the menu, specifically the L2D ones. This glitch was harmless and just allowed you to either have your secretary look really big or really small. This made people demand that the glitch not be fixed, and the company responded that not only would it stay, but they would also find a way to implement it in a future update. And they did it a week later!
While not a true bug, there's an oversight in certain heavy cruiser skills "Focused damage" and "Chain Assault" (and a few others) that have an internal cooldown; while not much of an issue normally, but with the Prototype Triple 203mm AA Gun (Mle 1934 prototype/Sanrui gun), it's possible to fire faster than the CD. This forces such ships to seek slightly slower guns.
Enterprise's "Lucky E" skill has a high proc rate, making her temporarily invincible and doubling her airstrike damage. There are anecdotes of PVP where one player got knocked down to just Enterprise, Lucky E procced and proceeded to singlehandedly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The E-nfinity Gauntlet is not that much of an exaggeration. It's only semi-recently with the advent of Hiryuu Refit, Amagi, and Nagato that she was pushed out of this.
Noshiro gets some flak due to a set of buffs that are very welcome to Sakura frontlines as well as packing a super rare buff to Evade RATE (unlike buffs to Evade the stat, it avoids the soft cap and works in content where Evasion is disabled).
The original art for Shoukaku and Zuikaku, before their current designs were implemented, look more like they would be at home in Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth. Cue a collaboration where the Utawarerumono girls show up as ship girls for a crossover event (with Uruuru and Saraana just straight-up looking like the old Kaku sisters!)
When Z35 was first released, she drew comparisons to Uzuki Shimamura because of their similar looks and her idol persona. Later, the developers actually got Uzuki's voice actress, Ayaka Ohashi, to be Z35's too.
Takao and Atago getting a High School / Serafuku skin is rather funny given that Maya, their sister, has this as her standard outfit.
Soon after Little Bel/Belchan was released, Oouso (who would later be the artist for USS Corcord) decided to try their hand at making de-aged versions of Enterprise, Hood, Kaga, Akagi, Shoukaku. Cue Akagi-chan's release and her chibi spire being leaked, people found it resembled the Oouso's Akagi-chan rather closely (shorter twintails compared to the fanart version).
The official announcement on the English Azur Lane account for the EN server for HMS Sussex came on the same day as Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, gave birth.
Soon after Sabaton's Bismarck was released, the first of a number of hints of the said ship becoming playable in the game was posted. It's become a minor meme among English players to quote song lyrics whenever she comes up. This culminates in the English twitter doing so to announce her here.
Monarch doesn't get along with her half-sisters in the King George V-class. Later on, King George V herself was added, who is voiced by Ayako Kawasumi, the seiyuu of Saber/King Arthur in the Nasuverse. Monarch's? Miyuki Sawashiro - Saber of Red/Mordred. Suddenly the enmity makes sense.
Ayane Sakura's casting as Prinz Eugen ends up as this, especially with the real-life ship being involved in "Operation Crossroads", which included another ship she previously voiced: Nagato.
Mamiko Noto served as the voice of Taihou in KanColle, both in the video game and anime adaptation; cue her casting as her direct successor Shinano in the September 2020 Dreamwaker's Butterfly event.
In Sabaton's "Bismarck", the titular ship is described in the refrain as a "Beast made of Steel." Cue the introduction of Bismarck Zwei in 2023, sporting a massive, three-headed rigging she calls "Geryon" which, going by the theme of later-released Ironblood kansen, comes the closest to such description.
Kansen are the embodiment of humanity's hope, and "The Fool's Scales" implies that the Leviathans are the embodiment of humanity's despair; the plot seems to have always been Danganronpaas naval battles!
Incest Yay Shipping: Ships with a similar theme or are depicted as sisterly anyway of course get subject to this, with Akagi and Kaga being the biggest examples, as are Atago and Takao. The lack of the Commander in the anime adaptation, which caused their affections to be redirected towards each other despite acknowledging in the same breath that they're sisters, helped a lot.
Animated adaptations in general seem to get in on it. The anime of Slow Ahead ups the subtext between Bismarck's and Tirpitz's party dress interactions to the point where it might be text, as Bismarck is nervous about asking Tirpitz to dance, with part of the plan in boosting her confidence involving sexing her up even though their sisterhood is still acknowledged in the same episode. The animated trailer for Daedalian Hymn also has Littorio give Vittorio a flower as if they were lovers, even though their relationship is stated to be that of sisters as well.
Sandy more or less defined the trope in Azur Lane for a long time. Her retrofit makes getting her hurt a little less, but she still shows up annoyingly often in things like limited banners.
The building pool was even changed slightly just so she wouldn't appear in any other option except for Light ships, meaning that a significant amount of cubes wouldn't be spent for her to appear.
While some event rares may get flak for appearing often instead of the desired Super Rare/SSR or Elite/SR ships, none get it more than the Royal Navy Country class heavy cruisers who seem to appear more so even compared to other Rare ships. This is mostly a consequence of most event banners being based on the heavy pool or Aviation, which contains relatively few Rares, and the Royal Navy County Class makes up about a large portion of the pool.
Javelin is considered bad among starters mainly because her original skill (big buff to her evade stat) is rather useless due to how evasion is calculated, and the effective cap on the stat being as such that most of it goes to waste. While her refit improves her, it mainly offsets her issues than adds to her strengths like the other three. This applies purely to her performance; she's averagely popular and not disliked anywhere.
San Diego used to be this; she was considered one of the worst SRs to get in the game due to suffering from extreme Crippling Overspecialization by having a great Anti-Air stat in exchange for having abysmal stats in all other offensive areas. She became a meme due to how undesired she was and how much she spooked players during the building (she used to be able to appear in any construction pool). Later revisions to her actually traded on this reputation, starting with her retrofit; the retro deliberately turned her into an outright Lethal Joke Character with an even higher Anti-Air stat and two barrage skills she can fire in rapid succession with the right equipment, making her an extremely effective ship to deal with all the planes in chapters 12 and 13. "WATASHI WA NAMBA WAN" indeed. The anime also tended to make her the butt of jokes on purpose as a result of her previous reputation. Post retrofit she runs into the high end as no other Anti Air Light Cruiser compares to her.
Ammunition/Cargo ships. The buffs they bring simply do not make up for the loss of a much more powerful ship in one of your limited front-line slots.
Memetic Badass: Leipzig is called the anti-Roon due to a doujin where Roon tried to steal the Commander from her and received a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown when discovered.
Z23, or Nimi, is generally regarded as this among the Starters. She has her fans, but compared to Javelin, Ayanami, and Laffey, she generally gets the short stick of things, with a lot of artists (mostly Japanese where she has to be unlocked) forgetting about her. It also doesn't help that in the anime, she's the only one left out from the side plot of the Starter ships being friends (with Unicorn kinda taking her spot). She also took the longest of the starters to get her oath skin. This would somewhat be averted when Yostar announced that they will make an anime adaptation of 4koma Slow Ahead, in which Javelin and Z23 are the main characters in their various adventures and mishaps. Expect Nimi to be a Butt-Monkey this time, but at least she'd get screen time.
English version players are prone to seeing Ironblood as this due to what happened with Z23, the small role they had in the first anime, and how new stuff seems rather infrequent. Tying into their own opinion of being similar, they tend to consider the faction their faction.
Similar droughts cause the English playerbase to see whatever faction getting it as such, like the Royal Navy in late 2021.
Ships without a voice for a significantly long period of time are generally regarded as this by English version players. Some ships take a bit to get a voice upon release, while some get a voice right away. However, there are some cases where they don't speak at all. This is overlooking the fact that Yostar and Manjuu aim to get fitting VAs for the characters rather than getting one quickly. This goes some time back though; by the time the English version started, the vast majority of ships had gotten their voices, giving a false impression to those who aren't aware of things before this point.
In the eyes of western fans, the Italian ships as their debut event was upstaged by Formidable and they feel the depiction was stereotypical. Littorio was perhaps an exception: her silly interaction with Illustrious (as well as with any other girls with large... assets) and her somewhat large ego slowly earned her a decent amount of fans, and memes regarding her "milking" other ships start to appear more than often, slowly moving her away from loser domain. Zara as well though for more gameplay-related reasons. The continued lack of carriers or PR ships is not doing them any favours. The second Italian event had dispelled this with the addition of a number of powerful and eye-catching ships with Vittorio Veneto being one of the stronger faction buffers.
Older Than They Think: Azur Lane is not the first ship girl game to feature ship girls based on paper ships from World of Warships. For example, Warship Girls featured a ship girl version of Moskva◊, the Tier 10 tech tree Soviet heavy cruiser, long before the announcement of a collaboration between Wargaming and the entities behind Azur Lane and the introduction of PR ships based on paper/incomplete vessels featured in World of Warships. Furthermore, Azur Lane was beaten to the punch once again by Warship Girls' depiction of the fictional Kitakaze-class destroyer, named Hayaharu◊ in-game, months before Azur Lane would receive its own ship girl depiction with Kitakaze, who was announced as one of the ships in the second batch of PR vessels. Of course, it probably helps that both ships have historical precedence: Project 66 Heavy Cruiser for Moskva, and Super Akizuki-class Destroyer for Hayaharu. Warship Girls has since added more Wargaming paper ships into its game, forging onwards with Stalingrad◊, and then later with Alsace in the now-defunct Mirage of Steel Blue spin-off, followed up by Lyon◊.
One True Threesome: Ships that are depicted as sisterly or having similar themes have fans frequently pair both of them with the Commander, as long as incest isn't to their fancy.
Atago and Takao are very popular for this trope, given both treat the Commander in different ways, with Atago making overt moves on him while Takao is a Reluctant Fanservice Girl.
Speaking of the Sakura Empire, Akagi and Kaga with the Commander is popular as well, never mind Akagi threatening every ship girl who even looks at him funny in all her adaptations, sans the anime where the Commander is Adapted Out. Kaga is usually thus shown as the only exception to Akagi's wrath (due to a line showing Akagi is willing to share with Kaga). Some fans go further and just give the Commander a fox girl harem with Amagi, Tosa and Shinano added in too when they're not just being shipped with each other.
And speaking harems, the Royal Maids are pretty popular for poly shipping with both each other and as the type who give the Commander more than just maid's service, either to his surprise or out of their expected duties to him. That said, it's almost always just Belfast, Sirius and Dido who are paired with the Commander, the other maids being ignored. This got somewhat of a bump in the Anthology series in Volume 7, Chapter 7, where Sirius suspects that Belfast has a less-than-innocent arrangement with the Commander as his lancer, while also deciding to sex herself up in front of him after finding some of his lewd magazines, thinking it was what the Commander desired from his maids.
Going further in regards to Belfast, the anime adaptation has opened the option to having USS Enterprise as part of the OT3 with the Commander, thanks to the relationship of the two kansen as shown therein. Interpretations of this pairing have Enterprise being a sort of a Fish out of Water in terms of expressing her affection to the Commander, and Belfast (being the more experienced kansen) assisting the former in the process.
Continuing on from the Royal Navy, pairing the Commander with the Illustrious trio, Formidable, Victorious and Illustrious herself, has some popularity though not to the extent of the allure that is the Royal Maid harem. This foursome does have somewhat of a shoutout in one of the game's most infamously NSFW loading screens however, which is the first person perspective of what seems to be the Commander walking in on the three sisters nude bathing, much to the surprise of Formidable and Illustrious while Victorious greets him with a wink.
Honolulu and Zara with the Commander became a thing once the fans noted their similar redhead twin tailed design, the addition of Bremerton who shared their style making it a foursome whenever the three identical-looking girls make a move on him.
Honolulu and St. Louis with the Commander is another one for yet another reason being that they're foils of each other due to Honolulu being a Reluctant Fanservice Girl while St. Louis is a Shameless Fanservice Girl. This OT3 got fuel in Volume 3, Chapter 2 of the comic anthology where St. Louis teaches Honolulu Big-Breast Pride, getting too feely with her, and forcing her to change into a bikini for the Commander's happiness, only for him to walk in on the two with Honolulu getting embarrassed at her state of undress. Slow Ahead episode 8 also has St. Louis do something similar by giving Honolulu a revealing Yukata so the Commander would like it, with Honolulu winning a date with him at the end. Since the Commander is still the Chick Magnet in the series, St. Louis also likely still has a crush on him unless stated otherwise.
Even before Pola was introduced in the game for real, pairing her with Zara and the Commander for the latter's Twin Threesome Fantasy had a following. It's even slightly teased at in game where Pola's swimsuit skin is viewed from the first person perspective of the Commander hiding in the water to stare at her behind while she plays ball with Zara, not that he was successful at stealth. Though Pola's lines imply she isn't too mad.
Not so much an in-game event, but rather part of Inazuma's Pledge line: "I will never abandon you. Even if you get fed up and leave, I will always be here waiting for you." This hits anyone that used to play Kancolle and left due to a number of issues pretty hard as it reminds them of what they left behind, such as Inazuma's counterpart in that game.
Two in Scherzo of Iron and Blood:
The dying thoughts of Hood, where she thinks of Repulse and Renown, her fellow battlecruisers, of Dunkerque and how she hopes she'll finally understand that the Royal Navy fights for lasting peace, of Prince of Wales and how honoured she was to have fought alongside her, and in the end seems to simply be worn-out by the war. Became even worse when Iris of Light and Dark released, revealing the context behind her line regarding Dunkerque: Hood and Dunkerque represented their sides in the negotiation at Mers-el-Kébir, and having to turn her guns on former allies during that attack was extremely hard on Hood, especially as she had failed to get Dunkerque to side with them.
The death of Bismarck, who goes down thinking about how she's failed the Iron Blood and failed to live up to her namesake, who she idolized. And then there's the piano rendition of Deutschalndlied while this is happening for maximum effect.
It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: As noted in Fandom Rivalry, as the early New Twenties rolled in, this phenomenon settled in among some corners of the wider anthro-tech fandom as, by coincidence or design, Azur Lane came to be practically the only game in town when it came to anthro ships available in English in an official capacity. The push Yostar made with its animated adaptations (which aired on Crunchyroll to no small fanfare) only sharpened these reactions in those already inclined to dislike AL (and only increased the annoyance of fans of AL with this sort of behavior).
The Random Encounter mechanic. Airstrikes in PvE are not really dangerous, but extremely frustrating to deal with nonetheless as they happen frequently with no way to prevent them (AA stats do nothing), stop your movement for a few seconds, and cause you small amounts of damage. Ambush fleets are even worse as they not only impede your movement but can force you into battle, wasting both your ammunition and oil reserves. The twisted cherry on top is not only that ambush fleets don't leave wrecks, meaning the Anti-Frustration Features of avoiding a fight if you move on top of a square with a wreck doesn't activate, but they don't count towards the number of battles you need to make the boss appear. As a result, due to the auto-pathing system, you can trigger ambushes multiple times off the same square if you're particularly unlucky. The devs seem aware of this, and after the first few events which used the feature the same way it appears in the main story maps, the encounters were removed in favor of visible Siren fleets that chase you around the map instead and do count towards making the boss appear.
However... the "Wandering Sirens" have ended up something of a Scrappy of their own. On paper, they're a cool mechanic - they're pretty much player fleets on the opposing side and can move, chase you down, or close chokepoints. That should make the event maps a lot cooler, but there are two problems:
Firstly, to ensure they can catch you, Siren maps now have movement limits. Instead of just increasing Random Encounter chance as you move across the map in one go, you now move a set number of spaces in one turn, determined by the slowest ship in your fleet. That's fine... except the popular Erebus monitors move two spaces a turn, meaning that popular farming fleets spend intolerable amounts of time on the map.
Second, and more importantly... the mobile Siren units are wildly more powerful than anything else on the maps save for bosses. In battle, they're basically bosses unto themselves, with complex bullet hell-like patterns, several times the HP of other random non-boss shipgirls, and killing them more or less ends the fight. While that makes them a credible threat, it also has the effect of making events substantially harder for new players, as the random Sirens represent a substantial Difficulty Spike compared to the main story content. A new player who's been killing similarly-leveled main story content with their new team is likely to engage a Siren for the first time and get their butt handed to them well-grilled for their trouble. Moreover, later stages in particular often put enough roamers on the map that fighting at least one is unavoidable. It doesn't make events impossible, but it does make it harder on new players and can be a bit jarring.
These problems do get ameliorated to some degree in later events, starting with "Ink-stained Steel Sakura", as the newbie-focused maps lower their levels a bit, have a tendency to spawn just the Destroyer to Heavy Cruiser equivalents, and only start spawning multiples on the last map of the event... but, of course, this comes at the cost of neutering their presence a bit overall outside of the Hard Mode maps, making them a bit less cool and impactful.
And with the coming of "Clear Mode" since the Kizuna AI event, that prevents the Siren elite fleets from moving and removes every restriction of your fleet movement, it is finally averted, but not before you lower the map's threat level to safe and get 3 stars. You are free to choose whoever you wish to fight on the map.
Submarine combat, in which the tutorials are poorly explained, you cannot directly control the submarines, and when the enemy fields submarine... without depth charges, you are basically forced to retreat no matter how overleveled you are. It has since been tweaked that they show up after a certain amount of time (at the risk of junking your rank and Depth charge gear just enhances an ASW able ship (Destroyer/Light Cruiser/Light Carrier) ability to do so. Some enemy submarines appear as bosses in Ashen Simulacrum (thankfully optional and easily avoidable), Looking Glass of Fact and Fiction (one which is a mandatory fight that is fought twice but doesn't have to be fought repeatedly), and Microlayer Medley (the game doesn't outright tell you until you fight the boss itself, and it's a newer type of Siren, so unless if you're familiar with the Ashen Simulacrum ones, you won't know).
There's a whole lot of the Research process that could be tallied here, but one point in Season II of those ships stands out: the fact that Friedrich der Grosse, the incredibly powerful Ultra Rare-equivalent Ironblood battleship, absolutely cannot be completed without possessing Ironblood back-line ships... all of which are event-locked. The same goes for Gascogne, which requires Ironblood, Iris, or Vichya backline ships, all event-locked. Players who missed Divergent Chessboard, or Iris of the Light and the Dark, as matters currently stand, more or less get to eat shit when it comes to obtaining Friedrich. While NA will definitely see at least one rerun of the event (and it may be some time before Friedrich even comes to NA), new CN and JP players are currently in limbo, wondering if those ships will ever return, and if so, how. This has been alleviated somewhat with the announcement of Zeppelin-chan/Zeppy, an Elite rarity chibi version of Graf Zeppelin in the same vein as Bel-chan, with Hiei-chan and Akagi-chan also being announced to get added a few days later alongside her. This is further alleviated in the Scherzo of Blood and Iron event, where the Scharnhorst sisters can be obtained as drops, then later (in Japan and China) Scharnhorst is made purchasable in Core Shop and Gneisenau can be dropped from archived events. Gascogne got some added relief in the form of...herself as the Crescendo of Polaris event allowed players to build Gascogne Muse.
Finally alleviated for FdG in NA with the addition of Zeppy to the Special Build Pool.
It zigzags in general for PR 2 and 3 as while Divergent Chessboard has been archived, onemight have a hard time getting the ships out of the build pools.
PR5 adds ships that require ships from outside of the main four factions, which zigzags this trope. Brest and Chkalov require Iris Libre and Sardegna Empire respectively to start, but earlier PR's and War Archives can provide the necesary ships with some grinding, meaning that one does not have to rely on the build pools. Harbin, however, requires 160 Dragon Empery tech points. While the number may seem small, on top of being one of the smallest factions in the game (and the smallest if you count the Iris Libre and Vichiya Dominion as one faction), the vast majority of the faction consists of Lunar New Year event-exclusive characters, with only a small handful even available on a permanent basis. Chang Chun and Tai Yuan being added to the Guild Shop on May 2023 allieviated this issue.
Kizuna AI's collaboration event
Kizuna's Red Alert mechanics can be listed as one. It won't be a big problem for those who are focusing on the game, but for ones who tend to go AFK while letting the gameplay automatically will be in a lot of surprises! Regardless of whether auto-battle is on or you're manually taking control, when this mechanic is active, the next battle will see AI's face intruding your screen from the lower right hand corner sometime during said battle, which causes 3 things to happenOpen Me! When she appears, her face blocks the activation buttons for support skills, namely Torpedo attack, BB's/BC's artillery support, and CV's/CVL's airstrike. She'll also invisibly reset the reload timers on all skills, AND removes whatever charges for those skills were already loaded prior., which explains why her appearing on screen also prevents automatic skill usage. Finally, she freezes the reload timers in their unloaded state for said skills., the effects of which will persist until you tap on AI's face multiple times to get rid of her. People who went AFK (mostly those who play the game on PC with an emulator) would be frustrated to know that their frontline ships took heavy damage or outright got sunk because backline ships couldn't activate their essential skills like healing, shielding, or firing high caliber guns. At low-level maps it won't be a problem, but when you reach higher levels, like SP3 at with lvl.65 enemy or SP4 with lvl.88 mooks, it would be a different story.
Electricity zone in SP3 will gradually expand over time, and your fleet that stands on the zone will take damage every move turn. "Air Raid" zone in SP4 will stop your fleet movement and at worst, you will take damage from enemy Air Raid, the same thing that happens in Story maps whenever your fleet triggered airstrike after a certain number of moves.
It was bad enough that the Bel-chan/Little Bel grinding event was set to run concurrently with the Kizuna Ai event. It was an absolute dumpster fire that the two had mutually exclusive event currencies (The Little Bel event ran by itself in JP and CN), such that you could not grind for Little Bel using clears of Kizuna Ai stages and vice versa. Fortunately, the mistake has not been repeated subsequently, with later grinding events allowing clears of simultaneously-run event stages to qualify for their event currency too.
The fact that collaborations involve Gacha when a number of other mobile games have them gotten purely through tasks or drops. It's very possible to burn through one's resources and not get all the collab ships with the only consolations being that such ships aren't counted on the collection rate and that for the most part, they're not terribly effective. Thankfully the game does have a tendency of giving at least two for free (whether if they're handed over or if they're Event Milestones) and a few of them can be pretty powerful if used effectively.
Temporary NPC characters. They're handed over to you at the start of their event, and you have to collect a lot of points to recruit them permanently to your dock. Problem with this? They're all the way at Level 1, and cannot be sent to the Dorm, Training Hall, or Commissions to get their levels up. Usually, the points needed to recruit are 1,000, but the missions generally yield about 10-12 on average. It motivates you to use the ship against the boss fleet to double those points, but first, said points can only be accumulated in event stages (where the earliest ships are at least in their 20s or 30s) or on or after Chapter 3 (where the boss, Kaga, is Level 24). This fork forces players to either grind their NPC ship to try to be on par with said ships or to just consider grinding tremendously to obtain them. And you cannot use Hard Mode (which lets you go straight to the boss on Safe maps) either, meaning you have to fight all the way through ships, making this a time-consuming process as well. Not as bad if the unit is a Carrier or Battleship (as your frontline could be powerful enough to take on the fleet), but far worse if the unit is a frontline unit (such as Lil' Sandy), meaning they have to get damaged head-on. Thankfully with the combination of EXP data packs (so you can rapidly level up your units, even "guest" ships) and the readjusting of Little Prinz Eugen/Cheshire's events, it's much easier to accumulate points without risking them getting sunk on the battlefield.
For people not too interested in the event dialogue and just want to jump straight into the battle or get rewards, you can normally skip cutscenes with just the game letting you know that you can access it later in the "Memories" section if you want to. However, you can't skip straight through if there's a line assigned by the Commander (you) to say, even if there's only one option (and generally, the options don't affect the story in any way, shape or form). Good luck when numerous cutscenes are littered with these.
Self-Fanservice: Despite many designs being plenty of shapely and eye-catching, some artists feel the need to take it further. A common target is Akagi whose already-above-average bustline is often upped to be comparable with Illustrious, Ranger, and Taihou, particularly evident in pictures with Taihou. Same with Belfast in regards to topics with Sirius.
Bremerton's Tennis skin which has a clear black bra underneath is often omitted in arts of it, with some art deciding to make the outfit skimpier and show Underboobs.
"Stop Having Fun" Guys: Much of the English Reddit community is not sympathetic, to say the least, to those who dare to openly say that they are unhappy with the fast pace of event release with little or even no breaks in between. Consider, for example, the number of downvotes directed at this thread bemoaning how the Scherzo of Iron and Blood rerun came immediately after the end of Aurora Noctis without even a week's downtime to rebuild gold and Wisdom Cube stocks. Or how longform posts laying out why players don't want to play any longer get summarily dismissed as "screeching reee".
Enterprise's Lucky E skill is infamously powerful in PvP, and most reactions to it include a fight reset. When your backline strikes and you hear her signature phrase "OWARI DA", you know you've been screwed with. note Her skill doubles the damage she inflicted, and what is the most important: she becomes invulnerable to all non-collision damage for 8 seconds! Somewhat downplayed later on, things have evolved that her skill doesn't make an instant win.
Eldridge's skill in PvP, which completely nullifies all non-collision and non-burning damage you cause to your opponent's frontline. Luckily, she needs to take damage to activate her skill and there is a considerate cooldown before she can activate it, so a strong burst damage frontline can take her out before she can cause any trouble.
The Omitter from the Northern Overture event introduces an Interface Screw mechanic that is very similar to the infamous one in the Kizuna Ai collab event (Find "Red Alert" on this page and open the associated note for details). She darkens the entire screen minus your frontline fleet by firing out ink missiles, messing with your vision, and disables the buttons for BB/CV and torpedo support skill. Since you have limited vision, you'll have very limited room to dodge - which she'll usually follow up with a widespread laser attack. Even worse if you're caught off-guard if you were too busy auto-battling the easier one earlier and just notice it when manually fighting in the harder difficulty. The only way to prevent it is holding air groups in reserve, and then launching them in the very short duration of time between Omitter launching the ink missile, and said missile detonating and blacking out your screen. And Intruder II uses this one too, especially in the SP battle.
In Operation Siren, any Siren boss which has the "heals 15% of its HP when below 30%" random ability, particularly if you have not reached the point of having multiple max-level fleets. With any other random ability, the boss may be punishingly powerful, but you can eventually whittle its HP down to zero since its remaining HP carries over between battles. A boss with the aforementioned ability? If every fleet you use in Operation Siren isn't capable of dealing more than 15% of the boss's maximum HP, that boss becomes outright unkillable. Also, some of them have the above-mentioned ability to prevent you from using your torpedoes, shelling, or airstrikes.
Helena META's showdown is significantly more difficult than those of her predecessors, Hiryuu and Ark Royal META. She takes surprisingly little damage compared to previous METAs, even if you are exclusively using High Explosive ammunition which she is weak to. Her very high Anti-Air stat and the early airstrike she calls in to detect carriers makes the all-CV torpedo bomber backline much less effective. Thus, battleships perform far better against her...but she also has an extremely powerful laser attack that will continue to damage you in real time during theslow-motion portrait cut-in when you fire battleship salvoes!
Akashi Questline. It's not hard to do her quest, but it is very time-consuming — as the wiki says, it takes a minimum of 21 days due to some daily-completion-dependent requirements. The only hard part is you have to clear 8-4 to proceed to the next quest. Each server also reduces hard mode attempts to three times a day (down from 6) once Core Data is implemented as a currency, so her hard mode tasks take even longer for new players. After you complete her quest, you'll find she is a great PvE ship you should have.
Any of the Secretary Ship questlines with a quest that requires you to get her Affection and/or level to 100 can be a massive time sink, especially if it's a character you otherwise have little reason to use often.
Trying to retrofit any Elite or abovenote San Diego, Warspite, and Yuudachi ship can be a huge chore due to the number of Gold Retrofit blueprints (an average of 10 for Elites, 20 for above) each ship needs. It's not hard farming for cash (although Retrofits are rather expensive) or weapon plates, but unless if you collect enough ahead of time, you'll be stuck for weeks not being able to fully retrofit someone because you're still in Hard Mode trying to farm for said gold blueprints. Cruisers have it worse due to both kinds using the same blueprint type while battleships have it easier as very few refits require gold blueprints. To make things worse, the retrofit blueprints are also required to finish a shipyard research projectnote 5 Gold Retrofit blueprints for each PR ship, 11 for each DR ship. The game does give you two gold blueprints if you complete a respective chapter in Hard Mode and will give you a random gold blueprint weekly for playing Hard Mode for at least 5 days, and events will sometimes give you gold blueprints as well, but even then, the latter two might not give you blueprints you need.
Ark Royal is a major disappointment to many players who see her cool-looking design and know her from her historical accomplishments turn out to just be almost entirely a cheap Comedic Lolicon gag. Her META self is generally seen as an improvement, since she has much more self-confidence, and her Comedic Lolicon tendencies in regards to destroyers are instead turned to a general desire to protect them.
Some also feel this way about Portland with a rather decorated heavy Cruiser being portrayed almost entirely as a siscon, albeit an admittedly powerful statistics-wise one. Her character story has helped some as it shows her being an effective strategist with a ragtag group.
King George V sort of has this due to how her Big Eater tendencies pop up a bit too much for her historical performance.
Tosa. As Kaga's actual sister ship, you'd think she would get more prominence in Crimson Echoes, the event that explores the past of Kaga and Akagi along with Akagi's sister Amagi before the Washington Naval Treaty and the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake that changed their fates forever. Unfortunately, she was only released in the rerun, and reruns don't change story content, meaning her relationship with the others never gets explored.
This also applies to any other ships introduced during rerun events or normal gacha additions that don't get character stories, in part due to the decrease in smaller events where they can get screen time. This might be one reason why in 2022, they were scrapped altogether, though a rerun of the Dead or Alive Extreme: Venus Vacation collab (which originally ran in late 2020, making this the first collab event to be rerun), announced in the Spring of 2023, brings back the introduction of new ships during re-runs.
"Inverted Orthant" gets accusations of this from some corners on a couple levels. The first and most noticeable concerns Leipzig — she was very prominent in the reveal trailer for the event, sharing screentime with the very first reveal of her sister (who, previously, was thought by many to be a ship that would never appear as an Ironblood). It showed them interacting together in a curious room with a timepiece, and was the first time since the game's launch, three and a half years prior, that Leipzig had appeared in any supplementary media for the game at all. Her few-but-devoted fans were looking forward to her finally emerging from obscurity and to cute interactions between the sisters. In the event as published, Leipzig is mentioned by Nürnberg precisely once, she does not appear on-camera in the event at all, and nothing even resembling the scene in the trailer happens in any capacity. To say fans of Leipzig, and the pre-fascist IBs more generally, were bitterly disappointed would be like saying Leipzig faints occasionally. Leipzig wasn't even updated with a reciprocal battle voice line for being fielded alongside her sister.
More generally, the trailer is strangely disconnected from the reality of the event itself. Nothing too similar to the "action scenes" with Heinrich happen (she has plenty of action scenes, but they're all water-based), and the trailer seems to posit that Heinrich and Nürnberg are good friends; in the event as published, they're never even in the same scene together and don't acknowledge each others' existence. The only aspect that is retained is Strasser and Friedrich having a history of chess together, but even that is a background element rather than a scene we see play out directly. It actually generates some speculation that the event's plot was rewritten sometime after the preview animation was ordered.
Of a sort. While fans generally like seeing new navies introduced to the game, there's sometimes been some cynicism about it — the dual French groups got it worst because combined, most of them are locked behind the construction gacha, with only three ships being available for free from the event. (The CN/JP rerun made it even worse, with both new girls being construction-only, leading to the Iris gacha being hilariously over-loaded.) When Sardegna was introduced, however, most players were very happy to see that the majority of the new-faction ships were in fact available for free in some fashion - only Zara and Cesare were locked behind the limited gacha. The fact that enough ships were introduced for Sardegna to build a complete and (mostly) sensible full player fleet was also met with a positive response. (Well, assuming they weren't all gawking at Formidable.)
Late 2019/early 2020 has marked a seeming trend in lesser-known shipgirls actually getting skins. Agano got a few skins and Nagara get free skin in February (for Japan and China) a few months before the cranes finally got skins to call their own. And Massachusetts in June 2020 got a stunning formal skin.
The Woobie: Some of the shipgirls in the game still bear the mental scars of their lives as ships, with Arizona and Helena being some examples as their lines reference their sorrow and/or attempts to avoid repeating history and some other shipgirls' lines showing worry about them.
Woolseyism: Now that the English translation has improved from launch, there are a few new jokes added in that's exclusive to the server:
Hornet's oft-mentioned "Big Wasp" in-joke from the poor initial translation is carried over to her introduction, where she warns players to notcall her Big Wasp.
Atlanta's fairly generic introduction line in other servers (which can be translated as "I’ve made you wait, Commander") is rendered in Memetic Mutation form: "Kept you waiting, huh, Commander?" Predictably, this has increased her fanbase with an influx of Snake-related comments.
Fu Shun's Strengthening, MVP, and Low HP lines in other languages are fairly generic, simply saying stuff like "I can still get more powerful" and "I'm not even taking this seriously". In English, these lines are changed shout outs to Dragon Ball Z, and several memes related to it.
San Juan's lines have some Spanish injected into them in the English version where in Japan and China nothing exists; the opposite happened with Jamaica who has some foreign language in her lines.
Georgia in an event had a remark of calling Enterprise on Ark Royal, basically ascending a western-used meme about the former being the police to the latter.
Renown's stranger line is an example of this in all three languages. In all of them, the joke is that she doesn't know what a love letter is. However, since her misunderstandings rely on puns and wordplay that doesn't really translate, the exact joke is changed in each one:
In English, she thinks that "love letter" literally refers to someone being in love with a letter.
In Chinese, she is confused over how someone can write a book with a piano, as the word for love in Chinese is also the word for piano, while the word for a letter can also mean a book.
In Japanese, she mishears it as "Luv rhaita" (and the text has the words purposefully misspelled to reflect this), and wonders if it's a type of instrument, as a rhaita is a woodwind instrument from North Africa.
In the original script for the Winter's Crown event, Scharnhorst demands to know who shot her in generic fashion when Duke of York makes her appearance. The English version changed this to a line borrowed from Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket.
"Who's the slimy little crumpet-munching island ape bastard out there who just signed her own death warrant?!"
The English translation also makes use of the Separated by a Common Language trope. Royal Navy ships' dialogue uses the British spellings of words like "honour" and "manoeuvre," in contrast to ships of other factions who use American spellings.
In the original Chinese, Bataan's second skill is "航空辅助", which directly translates as "aviation support", and the Japanese version follows suit. The English version uses the much more poetic "One for All" instead.
It has been revealed that to some level, the three major areas have their spin on things, with the Japanese version, doing things different (to mixed results) and the english version while they get the japanese script as a base, but make changes themselves (such as rewriting New Jersey in the event to be more accurate to her character). This does no favors to those trying to figure out the plot.
Adorkable: Edinburgh and Akashi. The former is a Cute Clumsy Girl who happens to be Belfast's sister. The latter is just an adorable catgirl who is introduced carrying a meowficer.
Base-Breaking Character: While Enterprise was liked in the games, her anime counterpart was criticized for her Adaptational Angst Upgrade who goes in Wangst territory in comparison to her game counterpart. note In the games, it took the deaths of both her sisters to become depressed while the anime was Lighter and Softer with both Yorktown and Hornet Spared by the Adaptation with the worst thing happening to Yorktown was being temporarily crippled. This not helped at the Season Finale where she assumes the position of commander where many fans were thinking that this would be the best moment for The Commander to make their appearance.
We get to see how the shipgirls transform courtesy of Cleveland and it looks amazing. Immediately upon finding out, there's an attack, she runs towards the ship bay, equips her ship gear, and shoots down a Siren plane confidently. Then we see that the other shipgirls have their battle attire ready to go.
Enter Kaga, who proceeds to turn her rigging into a giant fox. Just the fact it came out of nowhere (even for those who have played the game) shows that these guys aren't messing around, and they mean business.
And then we have Enterprise, who intercepts said fox with an eagle, and proceeds to kick ass. She ends up even riding on the planes she's summoned too. In Episode 7, Kaga abandons the giant fox and even uses the same plane combat Enterprise used as well to fight her head-on.
In episode 7 alone, upon realizing that Enterprise hasn't done yet after Akagi assumed that she has taken her down, summons a freaking fire dragon just to counter the newly powered-up Enterprise. It doesn't last long, though.
Fanon Discontinuity: The anime adaptation is rather divisive to the point where some groups have even disregarded it as non-canon.
Harsher in Hindsight: Or Hilarious in Hindsight, depending on your view. Belfast's interest in Enterprise gains a different context with the game's debuts of Royal Navy's Enterprise and Iron Blood's Emden (who happens to be two ships under a shared identity). Was Belfast under the belief that Enterprise might have a similar case as Emden's?
Les Yay: Enterprise and Belfast. The interactions between these two can easily lead one to mistake that they are a married couple. In one episode, one of their disagreements has been seen as a lovers' quarrel In-Universe.
Memetic Badass: San Diego is already considered a meme herself, but there are many memes hilariously stating that she wasn't shown on-screen in the battle (while almost all of the other shipgirls shown did) against Akagi and Kaga because she would've utterly annihilated them. [However, Episode 5 does show her taking out a bunch of airplanes, showing she can be very formidable when given the opportunity. However, she has her share of Memetic Loser moments as well.
Memetic Loser: Episode 2 shows the aftermath of the battle, and one the first casualties showed... is none other than San Diego. Yes, a light cruiser strongly specializing in Anti Air got badly damaged by planes, and she's shown whining about how her rigging got damaged (hilariously enough, Purifier destroys her rigging in Episode 10 again with the same reaction from her). She does get a little better in Episode 5, but she goes back into this territory once she jumps into a tub that Eldridge (who electrifies any water she happens to be in) is currently occupying. Hilarity ensues.
From time to time, there are noticeable animation issues that are compared to awkwardly animated segments of both Dragon Ball Super and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Notable scenes include San Diego's first appearance, and the battle between Takao and Sheffield in the fourth episode. The eighth episode, a far more serious episode than the others, suffers a lot of awkward animation issues and angles, with a lot of fans being very particular on even close-up scenes involving the characters.
Mikaela Krantz's take on Prinz Eugen's German accent in the English dub sounds more like a young androgynous German boy or Momiji Sohma trying to be seductive towards a woman than Ayane Sakura's flirty vocal performance in the original Japanese version. To some, it reeks of Vocal Dissonance; The initial voice is really too low in register to really mesh with Prinz, and it might have worked better with one of the Battleships or Graf. It does get slightly higher in pitch in later episodes which helps a little, but the accent stays the same.
Enterprise's attitude towards battling (Episode 2 and 3 especially) can come off as very self-destructive, considering she feels like she has to battle, no matter the cost. She's eager to sortie, even with only minimal repair and only eats ration bars as opposed to actual food. Considering what happened to her the second and third episodes (her equipment breaking at the worst possible time against Zuikaku and her weaponry not even working at all when rescuing Ning Hai and Ping Hai), it's only a matter of time until something really bad happens that snaps some sense into her. Thankfully Belfast seems to be trying to do something to alleviate this a bit, but then Ash comes in ....
A Siren almost killing Akashi just due to her accidentally stumbling into something she shouldn't have witnessed. If Sheffield and Edinburgh weren't there, she would've been good as dead. And as far as Sakura Empire is concerned, they just simply believe that the two maids kidnapped her and nothing more.
The Stinger to episode 7 has Akagi in a field of flowers, seemingly dead, seeing Amagi facing away from her in the distance. She slowly and tearfully approaches her sister to hug her, only for Amagi to turn around... Revealing Amagi's face completely devoid of facial features with Akagi looking on in pure horror before the screen abruptly cuts to black.
Even worse? The Observer channels her voice into Amagi's own voice while mockingly stating that she's not finished with Akagi yet.
Enterprise entering Ash mode and rising back up from the ocean after having been shot down by Akagi, and immediately one-shotting Kaga is also scary to see as she completely lacks and compassion and restraint doing so, to the point where Akagi is terrified of her as she is defeated effortlessly, and Enterprise herself is shocked and horrified at what she just did once she snaps out of it.
The eighth episode shows Ash again once Shoukaku and Zuikaku deal with her. Ash mercilessly aims bomber planes at Shoukaku as a blow meant for Zuikaku, and when Ash prepares to kill them both, Ayanami intercepts and she almost falls into a void - which thankfully Laffey and Javelin save her from. Enterprise is even more horrified than before.
Special Effects Failure: The choice of censorship in Episode 6 seemed very ... basic. It's just a whitish blur drawn on top of the characters when they're naked (and there is a lot of nudity - it's a bath scene). It blends in with the steam from the bathing, but with characters moving and such, it still looks rather low-effort It's even more jarring when it's done with the Cleveland sisters because they are wearing panties in that scene, but it gets censored shortly after for no explained reason. In the Japanese Bluray release, the blur is removed entirely, essentially uncensoring the entire scene.
Some fans have noticed that whenever a battle happens, it mostly focuses on Belfast, Enterprise, Laffey, and Javelin. Even though we have characters such as Cleveland and Hornet who are strongly relevant to the plot, they don't really contribute much to the battles, and even when they actually battle, their scenes are cut short. For Hornet's case, her only real battle scenes were of her dodging a bunch of bombers, being part of a plan to trick Zuikaku and Shoukaku into thinking she was Enterprise, and briefly fighting Purifier - while Cleveland (this applies to her sisters minus Clevelad and Birmingham), although being the first ship to transform on-screen and take out a Siren ship, doesn't really contribute much to any on-screen action - and whenever she does battle, the scene is quickly cut to another plot-relevant event, and nothing plot-significant occurs (for instance, one of her battles was against Atago and Takao - which the resolution of that was just an implication that they surrendered somehow).
Out of battle, the seemingly forced duo of Belfast and Enterprise results in seemingly cutting them off from ships that know them in the game, including both their sisters (Sheffield and Edinburgh did get some notable screentime in Episodes 4 and 5 though).
Saratoga here (despite having a pretty big role in events involving the Eagle Union) is just simply Demoted to Extra, despite making an appearance in the credits since the first episode. Doesn't help that her major scene of dealing with a shark was blocked out and off-screen. She doesn't get any introduction card at all, and every other scene after that reduces her to simply a background character with very minimal focus. Her sister, Lexington, gets even less focus, though she admittedly also suffers that in the game too.
Speaking of being Demoted to Extra and reverse of Saratoga, Bismarck (a fan-favourite character) is only shown in the opening and that's it. The only Ironblood ships that are prominently shown in the anime are Prinz Eugen, Z23, Z1, Admiral Hipper, and Koln, with Prinz being the most prominent by far. Some people believe this could be a sign of a second season. She appears at the very end of Episode 12 though.
Some fans were a little annoyed that the "transformation" exchange of Saratoga dealing with a shark that was chasing San Diego was completely off-screen cut with Hammann and Hornet seeing it.
Some feel this way about the general plot with how time was spent on the Belfast and Enterprise subplot.
The suggestion in the command room that the fleet needs a commander in the final episode would have to many people been the perfect moment to hint that the Commander from the game might show up to lead the base, only for that notion to be immediately discarded by the fleet deciding to make Enterprise their commander instead, especially considering how many people have come to dislike Enterprise's divisive portrayal in the anime.
, and post-Oath, she both yelps when Special Touched, and suggests that being the Commander's wife is something she needs to get used to, making it plausible that she has similar self-esteem problems as Sirius, and is just better at hiding it.
