Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-30736282-20170510131544/@comment-26366865-20170510163955

1- This is verifiably false:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2016-12-23/comiket-table-layout-reveals-most-popular-kancolle-characters/.110092

If you are not satisfied with that for whatever reason, feel free to go to https://www.pixiv.net/ or similar and do a few tag searches yourself. While the big ships do have a somewhat higher number individually, the sheer amount of DDs in the game can easily overtake that.

If you are still not satisfied, I suggest heading over to https://www.doujinshi.org/browse/parody/4492/Kantai-Collection--KanColle-/ (the site should have a R18 filter on by default, but it’s far from perfect). That site has a handy tab with all the characters with all the books they appear in. This list is far more extensive than on other sites (you can’t download anything there btw), and you’ll see the same thing as on pixiv: big ships have a small individual advantage, but are overtaken by sheer numbers.

IMHO, your perception is skewed because of the way most download sites get their material. if you head over to sites that show who upload what, you’ll notice that a significant number of books/images has been uploaded by a relatively small number of users, which obviously mean that what those users enjoy will be more plentiful. Unfortunaly, there aren't a lot of rich lolicons around (or they might just be more cautious about uploading that kind of book). Incidentally, Nagato and Bismarck are nowhere near as popular as you think – in fact, Inazuma has the same number of books as both of them combined (and can beat both individually on the R18 front).

2- First, there is the matter of the artists simply improving their skills over time. The game just turned 4 years old, so the artists that have been around since the beginning had plenty of time to improve. Just look at the recent Yura K2 spoiler and compare it with the old art – you can probably trick a fair few people into thinking it’s not the same artist.

Secondly, and this is just a guess, the artists probably few the need to be a lot bolder these days compared to a few years back, both to stand out from the crowd (which is nearly at 200 ships these days) and for the sake of variety. YMMV on the actual results, of course.