A game's pre-registration score tanking from 9.9 to 8.9 in a single day — what did it do to trigger a mass revolt from its own fanbase? That's exactly what happened to Blue Star Origin (蓝色星原), the upcoming title from Manjuu Network, the studio behind Azur Lane. Furious Azur Lane veterans stormed Bilibili's comment sections for both games, with Blue Star Origin's page getting hit especially hard. The devs went on a deletion spree to contain the damage, but that only poured gasoline on the fire.
The core grievance is straightforward: Azur Lane players feel betrayed. They argue that Manjuu bankrolled Blue Star Origin — which looks suspiciously like an open-world gacha chasing Genshin Impact's coattails — with revenue earned from Azur Lane's gacha and skin sales. In their eyes, this is a classic case of milking loyal players to fund a project that serves a completely different audience. Some players even drew parallels to Sunborn Games, which used Girls' Frontline 1 money to develop Girls' Frontline 2: Neural Cloud, only for the new game to crash and burn.
But the drama goes deeper than just 'our money funded another game.' The real ticking time bomb is the question of male playable characters. So far, Manjuu hasn't confirmed or denied whether Blue Star Origin's gacha pool will include male units. But anxious players remember how Neural Cloud lured in waifu collectors with all-female marketing only to sneak in strong male characters post-launch. Hardcore fans are now demanding Manjuu publicly pledge 'no male characters in the gacha or we burn everything down — sunk costs be damned.'
Not everyone on NGA's drama board is on the anti-Manjuu bandwagon, though. Some users pushed back, arguing: 'Making money is their business — just because I spent 100 yuan on a skin doesn't mean I get to dictate how they spend it.' Others blamed the rating tank not on genuine Azur Lane players but on NGA's infamous 'Shouzong' crowd (手游综合版 — the mobile game general discussion board known for brigading). The Shouzong theory was immediately ridiculed: 'So 40,000 comments were made by 1,000 Shouzong regulars each running 40 alt accounts? Sure, buddy.'
Meanwhile, cooler heads pointed out that the male character leak is still just 'uncle party' (舅舅党) intel — unverified insider rumors — and that attacking a game over unconfirmed info is peak 'persecution complex.' But the counter-argument writes itself: Manjuu's aggressive comment deletion and refusal to address the issue directly is what's fueling the paranoia. In Chinese internet culture, companies that censor rather than communicate are seen as confirming the worst — because why would you silence the conversation if you had nothing to hide?
As of now, Blue Star Origin's Bilibili PV has accumulated nearly 40,000 comments and counting, with the flame war showing no signs of cooling down. Manjuu Network has yet to issue any official statement. Between the overnight rating collapse and the sheer volume of rage in the comment sections, it's clear that the rift between Azur Lane's community and Manjuu's new baby runs deep. The next beta test — and specifically what ends up in the gacha pool — will determine whether this drama fizzles out or explodes for good.
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