Azur Lane Kaga gone?

[Howard Roark]

So I was looking at the AL commander crates and noticed Kaga wasn't in the drop list, she also isn't in the commander bundle. Has she been removed for sale?

If so I guess it shouldn't surprise me given the drama around her VA. But it is sad, I hoped that it wouldn't impact WoWs.

Edit: Atago is gone from the store too.

[York]

Originally posted by Howard Roark:

So I was looking at the AL commander crates and noticed Kaga wasn't in the drop list, she also isn't in the commander bundle. Has she been removed for sale?

If so I guess it shouldn't surprise me given the drama around her VA. But it is sad, I hoped that it wouldn't impact WoWs.

you mean atago right?

[Howard Roark]

No Kaga, but you are right, Atago is gone too. Same VA so presumably same issue.

[Superczar]

It probably had to do with them removing the VA from the characters.

[Hiei]

Well that is strange. I have them as a voice over mod still because I got them earlier. But They aren't in any of the package deals.

[SimpleSnek]

It is sad that they removed her but It makes sense considering the backlash; don't want to reopen old wounds and whatnot. Still, very regrettable

[Jackson]

Cancel culture at its finest.

[Howard Roark]

I guess there goes my hope of ever getting Graf Zeppelin in the game :(

Originally posted by SimpleSnek:

It is sad that they removed her but It makes sense considering the backlash; don't want to reopen old wounds and whatnot. Still, very regrettable

That's understandable, but misguided in my opinion. To my knowledge it was only a handful of Chinese players who cared, virtually no one outside of China minded at all. I mean, a much larger pool of WoWs players are angry at any anime in the game than there are people who dislike the VA. I would have hoped enough time had passed that we could move on from the controversy. But companies do tend to err on the side of caution. As you say, very regrettable.

Oh well, it's not a big deal for me as I already have the captains, but I dislike characters being removed like this on principle. That and it sucks for anyone who was looking forward to getting them.

[SimpleSnek]

I don't really know the sensitivity of the incident all that well so I can't really be judge of it; but from what I do know it's pretty absurd; I respects wargamings choice to go along with YoStar, to not further the incident and keep the crossover but from what i've read and understand it really seems unnecessary and caused by a loud (and annoying Minority). I have both ship captains too luckily, but my girlfriend was looking forward to grabbing Atago and I'm sure others were too; Oh well though, maybe one day

[Lavian]

Originally posted by Superczar:

It probably had to do with them removing the VA from the characters.

Yep, this. Ai Kayano visited the Yasukani Shrine (IIRC), which the Chinese took offense to. Her voice acting was thus removed from the Chinese version of AL, but she's remained in other versions (at least in JP and EN). That said, since China is where the devs are located, it's not all that surprising that it's impacting things (like collabs) going forward.

That said, as I've mentioned in other threads, as far as I know, WoWs China is pretty much a separate entity from WoWs globally, so it sucks to see that Chinese controversy is impacting AL collabs globally, when it hasn't even effected AL itself globally as much.

Though, I suppose we have yet to see if Kayano's characters end up showing up in any anime or games going forward (assuming any more happen). She hasn't been getting new lines in game, even when new skins showed up for Kaga (which happens with some skins anyway, so it's not seen as that much of an oddity).

I have one thing to really say about all this: "♥♥♥♥ that noise."

I really like her characters and her portrayal of them.

[Jackson]

Would it not have been fairly easy to keep the content and just hire another voice actor? The whole thing just seems ridiculous. So many easy fixes.

[Lavian]

Originally posted by Jack:

Would it not have been fairly easy to keep the content and just hire another voice actor? The whole thing just seems ridiculous. So many easy fixes.

Yeah, you could get another voice actor, but then you risk angering those of us that like Kayano's acting and see the entire controversy as pretty much a giant load of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Furthermore, the people you're likely to anger are the people who already paid money for her skins that feature her voice.

I'm sure they could find a great replacement voice actress. There's a lot of talent out there, but no matter what they do, it's going to be different, and the characters she voiced are going to be different.

To make matters even more complicated, Kaga was a major character in the anime (Atago had a more minor role, but she's there). There's nothing they can do to take that back. If they ever try to replace her, people are going to notice.

The chances of her being replaced for characters in Crosswave also would raise cost concerns for something that probably isn't really making money at this point. They've pretty much forgotten about that game, with a UE bug causing issues with certain Intel processors still in the current PC build for a long time.

They could possibly simply replace her voice in the base skin and skins going forward, but it would certainly be jarring.

[York]

Originally posted by Jack:

Would it not have been fairly easy to keep the content and just hire another voice actor? The whole thing just seems ridiculous. So many easy fixes.

they did that with arknights for the Chinese version(before later on just announcing multiple VAs for different languages.) the problem is that..................well the VA is actually rather well liked in JP and i hazard to guess they just couldnt find a good VA to replace them.

VAs are a pain to replace because the character can become intrinsically linked to the VA in a way that is hard to replace or change without the character feeling off in someway or form.

it sounds easy just swap the VA but if they get it wrong then all you hear is "old VA was better" etc etc

[Jackson]

I can see what you guys are saying.

[Howard Roark]

I wonder whether it was wargaming that decided to remover her, or if it was the Azur Lane devs. Probably the AL team, but that is a bit odd given that they are willing to leave her in the EN/JP versions of the game.

Either way, I agree with Lavian, it is a really stupid controversy. I understand why the Chinese have a problem with the shrine, but get mad at the Japanese government not some random VA who happens to visit it.

[christof]

The problem is that visits to the shrine, particularily if they're being made in a very public way, are being considered as support for old, nationalistic views. (Not just by foreign states, but with many people in Japan itself as well.) The kind of mentality that still claims that Japan can and could do no wrong and that everything the nation and its army ever did was perfectly justified, yadda yadda, the works.
That mentality is still around with a certain amount of people in Japan. And it unfortunately still has a bit of political pull as well. And it's no big surprise that nations that have suffered from that mentality in the past will take offense. ESPECIALLY if they, due to their political system and agenda, do need that picture of the bad Japanese and their never-changing ways in the heads of their people.

It may seem stupid from our point of view. But it is still a big deal around those parts of the globe. But we're well on our way into political discussion here, so I'm leaving it at that.

What I don't quite understand is why AL didn't go the Arknights way here. Or was Arknights their testing ground for the replacement and it didn't go well with the players? I'm not involved with either community, so I wouldn't know.