Azur Lane just dropped a new controversy bomb — and this time it's not about power creep or impossible event stages. It's about the brand-new ship Anson's character design being so wildly off from her sister ships that the entire community collectively lost it. We're talking a blue-haired loli sandwiched between a fleet of blonde bombshells. People genuinely thought she wandered into the wrong game.
Here's the deal: HMS Anson is historically a King George V-class (KGV) battleship, and Azur Lane already has several KGV-class ships in the game — King George V, Prince of Wales, Duke of York — all designed as tall, elegant, blonde mature women (what the community calls "御姐" or "onee-san" types). They share a strong visual identity. Then Anson drops, and she's... a blue-haired, short-stacked loli. The design DNA between her and her sisters is basically zero. Players wasted no time putting them side by side, and the visual dissonance is jarring, to say the least.
But the rabbit hole goes deeper. The community soon unearthed a wild theory that turned out to be disturbingly plausible: the artist may have mixed up two completely different ships. You see, the name "Anson" was used twice by the Royal Navy — once for a KGV-class battleship (1942) and once for an Astute-class nuclear submarine (launched 2021). Anson's default skin features a school swimsuit ("死库水" or sukumizu), which in Azur Lane is typically the go-to outfit for submarine characters. The implication? The artist likely Googled "Anson ship," landed on the submarine, and designed accordingly — while the art director apparently never caught the mistake during review.
This theory spread like wildfire across NGA, Tieba, and Twitter. One highly upvoted comment nailed it: 'All the KGV sisters are blonde onee-sans, but Anson turned out to be a blue-haired loli. The artist probably drew the submarine Anson instead of the battleship Anson.' Another player elaborated: 'Azur Lane's default swimsuit skins are usually for submarines. There are two Ansons — a KGV battleship and an Astute-class submarine. People suspect the artist referenced the wrong ship entirely.'
Some players also pointed out that the blue-haired loli aesthetic feels like a deliberate (or accidental) imitation of Blue Archive's art style, which clashes hard with Azur Lane's established visual language. The crocs she's wearing didn't help either — players contrasted them with the recent maid-succubus skin that looked fantastic, making the quality gap even more glaring.
What made this even more explosive was the timing. Not long before the Anson reveal, Azur Lane's developer Manjuu (黄鸡/蛮啾网络) had released an official statement about their new game "Star Azure: Journey Ballad" (蓝色星原: 旅谣), explicitly promising it would "absolutely not" impact Azur Lane's development quality. Well, that promise aged like milk in record time. Players immediately pulled up the statement and started memeing it. One commenter quipped: 'The boomerang came back this fast? I'm now super confident in Manjuu's ability to keep delivering — can't wait for Star Azure!' The phrase '未曾松懈' (never slacking off) from the statement was turned into memes and circulated everywhere.
To be fair, not everyone is outraged. A few voices in the comments called this 'typical Tieba manufactured outrage,' arguing Anson looks cute on her own merits and the design is just different, not bad. But the anti-sentiment clearly dominated — the backlash was multi-platform, coordinated, and loud. Players even dug into questions about why the art director didn't catch the discrepancy during review.
As of now, Manjuu hasn't issued any official response. But the core of this controversy goes beyond whether the art looks good or not. It's a trust issue: players feel like the artist made a basic research error that a single Google search could have prevented, and the review process failed to catch it. The community message is clear — you promised you wouldn't cut corners, so don't. And at the very least, don't mix up a battleship with a submarine.
评论 (0)
暂无评论，来说两句吧！ 🍉