Shanghai Yostar have announced a bunny girl costume for Ultra Rare Iowa-class Battleship USS New Jersey in mobile gacha ship girl game Azur Lane.
The information on how the character skin will be available is scant at this time, but more news is promised to come soon. USS New Jersey had only been announced yesterday, being an Ultra Rare Iowa-class Battleship with exceptional Shelling, HP, and high AA (but poor Evasion and everything else).
She is the star of the Mirror Involution event; an event for all Eagle Union ships (those based on battleships of the US). The event begins May 27, and you can find the animated trailer below.
The new bunny girl costume may have been inspired by censorship that befell another mobile game with bunny girl costumes. On April 22nd, MiHoYo had removed the bunny girl costumes and event from Honkai Impact 3rd, along with a dancing music video.
They later stated the designs and dance moves were “out of character and inappropriate.” It should be noted the characters have dressed in swimsuits, bikinis, and similarly revealing clothing before. Later that month, a Chinese man was arrested for allegedly planning to miHoYo’s founders due to being “upset by the recent changes” in Honkai Impact 3rd
In fact, our coverage of it was seen by at least one person from Shanghai Yostar; the game’s English and Japanese publisher. Twitter user @TheeUnderBrake shared our coverage, and told Shanghai Yostar Operations Director “Intern-Kun” “I just want to say that we all in the community would absolutely love a bunny girl event in Azur Lane.” Intern-Kun replied with a simple “ok.”
While we would love to have contributed to this costume coming to the game, it is likely the decision for such a costume was decided months in advance, or (as aforementioned) primarily motivated by what occurred with Honkai Impact 3rd. Whether Shanghai Yostar or others involved with Azur Lane learned of the news through us is unknown.
Azur Lane is no stranger to befalling the Chinese censors however. The bunny girl costume does have longer coat tails to cover the buttocks in the Chinese version of the game. The Chinese servers had also previously removed 18 ship girls, with the community’s suspicion it was prompted by the government’s policies on lewd content.
You can find the full rundown (via Google Play) below.
An ideal Naval Warfare game like you always imagined！
・A unique mix of RPG, 2D shooter and tactical genres combined in a beautifully designed anime game
・Easy and intuitive gameplay, built on the concept of 2D side-scroller, is the main feature of Azur Lane
・Organize up to six ships into flotilla, break through enemy gunfire and defeat them!
・Both AI and manually controlled battles are available, choose whatever you like!
・Build your own fleet. Azur Lane has a wide range of warships from all over the world.
・More than 300 ships, each with its unique stats and represented by a beautiful character!
・Live2D interaction technology is available for selected characters
Azur Lane is free-to-play and available on Android, and iOS.
