Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-73.220.89.40-20150318192417/@comment-99.5.125.253-20151229111556

I think the problem lies less with the fans or devs and more with the direction the game has been directed into, whether on purpose or not. Given the current tone of the franchise and characterization of most of the characters, implementing Allied ships, particularly the USN, would currently be extremely difficult without it being jarring. Many kanmusu tend to be characterized as fairly confrontational; they speak of their actions in-game like a second chance at success, saying things along the lines of "this time I won't fail." This shows that they feel ashamed or unsatisfied with their past shortcomings and are trying to make up for them. Fair enough as it is now, but with the introduction of Allied ships, they would suddenly be confronted with the source of all their grief, the very ships they lost to. Any number of emotions would realistically result from such a confrontation, and none of them good: anger, jealousy, lost self esteem, depression, fear, etc. As an example, Zuikaku, Taihou, and Ryuuhou all have lines about the insult "turkey"; this shows that they all still feel like that nickname applies to them (otherwise why bring it up?) and are ashamed by it and the means by which they got it, and in many of those same lines they rebuke the name and reassure TTK, as well as themselves, that it is no longer true. Even more telling is that they say that "they" won't call them turkeys anymore. Who is "they"? The Abyssals rarely talk and none of them say anything about turkeys, so "they" can only refer to the ones that gave them the insulting nickname in the first place. The fact that they still care about the insult and indirectly refer to the USN when commenting on their opinion of it shows that they are still antagonistic with the them or at least consider them as the people who humiliated them and saddled them with the name. Do you really think that if Lexington II, the carrier that coined the phrase turkey shoot that's stuck with them for 70 years and they are desperately trying to rid themselves of (to say nothing of her other exploits at their expense), were to show up in the base tommorow, Zuikaku and the others would make a total 180 and be willing to be nice to her, much less be friends with her? Given her canon frosty relationship with Kaga, who was on the same side, I'd say that's unlikely. In terms of gameplay, I'd expect sortieing them together would cause a significant drop in morale if nothing else. In fact, there are plenty of US ships that would get it worse: as shown in Fubuki's manga, almost all of the ships have sub trauma and treat their own subs with distrust because of it, so an actual US sub (heaven forbid it be Albacore) would cause pandemonium whenever she walked into a room. She'd be lucky if anyone ever talked to her or she survived the night not being lynched.

On the other hand, there are some ships that could see their former enemies in another light. Those that have supposedly gotten over their past loss, such as what Shoukaku kai-2's library line suggests, may not react with resentment towards them, but instead see them as omnipresent competition, someone they have to, absolutely HAVE to, best at everything just to prove to themselves and their adversary that they have surpassed them. That's possibly even more insulting because it equates the Allied ships they lost against as little else but hurdles for them to jump over so they can feel good about themselves. Shoukaku from my example is too mellow for that, but there are plenty of ships that seem like they'd pull something like this.

The RN ships may get along slightly better with the IJN ships than the USN ships, but would be almost certainly as bitter if not more so towards the Germans. Quite frankly, the only kanmusu I think would accept any Allied ship as of right now is Inazuma, because she already shows signs of actually caring about those on the "other side" both in the past and the current conflict. That's honestly a shame, because there are a lot of ships on the Allied side whose stories of failure and redemption make for wonderful character arcs, like West Virginia, who unfortunately won't get that story because their redemption requires the failure and loss of a bunch of fan favorites (West Virginia's in fact runs in complete opposition to the popular depiction of Shigure preventing the massacre at Surigao).