Nendoroid Ship Sisters

Another double this week, and it’s an ever-popular duo.

You might even say they’re the latter part of a quartet.

So, we’ve got ship girls, two of them, they’re sisters and they’re the third and fourth of a quartet.

Could it be?

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen today I give you:-

Nep: “Hold up!”

Wha-Neptune! What are you doing here?

Nep: “You were implying that today you’d be doing the last two Kongo sisters, weren’t you?”

Uh, yeah. They’re the Nendoroids I’ll be unboxing today.

Nep: “You’ve completely forgotten about them, haven’t you?”

Who? Who’s ‘Them’?

Nep: “I got a full house here that might remind you.”

Oh.

Oh yeah.

I forgot about them again.

#481: Kumano and #482: Suzuya

Funny story:
I originally preordered these two back in December/January (whenever it was that they were announced) and then went and forgot about them until the site I used emailed me about paying for them. At first I was confused, but then I saw the order contents and remembered about ordering them, so I paid up. I totally forget about them again when a surprise package comes in the mail!
I just felt like keeping up the ‘forget about these two’ thing as a joke for the start of today’s unboxing.
It probably didn’t help that I had no prior knowledge or interest in any of the heavy cruisers in the game, so hence my lack of memory regarding Kumano and Suzuya.

Moving right along:

“I’m Suzuya! What a lively fleet it is. I’ll be in your care!“

The Third Mogami-class Heavy Cruiser, Suzuya is one of four Mogami-class heavy cruisers (duh), after the first two, Mogami and Mikuma, were found to be top-heavy with stability issues in rough seas the four ships, including the incomplete Suzuya and Kumano, were rebuilt to considerable expense. The resulting four ships were considered to be among the best during WWII.

And it’s at this point where I lose interest in skim-reading Wikipedia. Seriously, is Suzuya’s service history this uninteresting? Check out the link above and make up your own mind. I think I might be too heavily spoiled by previous ship girl Nendoroids, as they all had interesting stories to tell.

Well, if nothing else I’ll make note of her personality in-game (which is probably why she’s popular enough to have a Nendoroid). She’s…quite chummy, really – she speaks and acts very informally, which is unusual for most Japanese let alone one who’s supposed to be addressing her commanding officer.

She has three Weiss Schwartz cards (you can see them in the above picture), but I’ll talk about them later.

“Good day to you. I am the heavy cruiser Kumano.“

The Fourth Mogami-cllass Heavy Cruiser, Kumano is…another Mogami-class heavy cruiser (also, duh). Her construction background is the same as her sisters (although they were all built in different dockyards).

Kumano was the flagship for Vice Admiral Inoue Shigeyoshi’s 4th Fleet and took part in quite a number of surface engagements.

Again, nothing in particular stands out as being of interest. At least Mogami and Mikuma collided, that was interesting.

Her personality in-game…well, it’s something of a 180 from Suzuya. Whereas Suzuya is quite informal and friendly, Kumano is a complete Ojou-sama. She’s not haughty, but she acts with prim and grace – well apart from her night battle “ToooOOOO” line which sounds like a dolphin.

Blister Pack Contents.

I’ll try to make the whole posing process a bit more interesting than my history lesson, at least.

Alt text as usual.

Standing.

Wow. The flash turned their faces a bit…weird. Maybe it’s because the camera was low on power.

They seem to have anti-air guns attached to their sleeves, not something I noticed before.

Imitating Card Poses.

Hmm. Something definitely doesn’t look right with Suzuya’s facial expression here.

Their ship parts attach in the same way as Kitakami/Ooi, although things were more fiddly this time. The larger guns that hang on a strap across their shoulder are, just like with i-401 last week, hung with a leather strap.

Their Weiss Schwartz cards are as follows:
“3rd Mogami-class Heavy Cruiser, Suzuya” is a level 1 blue character with 3500 power (that’s extremely low for a level 1). She has two effects: the first activates when she’s summoned from your hand and requires two stock, it allows you to search your deck for a «Fleet Girl» character (all KanColle characters are «Fleet Girl») and add it to your hand, shuffling your deck afterwards; her second effect allows her to upgrade to her Aviation Cruiser form (“3rd Mogami-class Aviation Heavy Cruiser, Suzuya-Kai”) when the climax card “Leave it to Suzuya-!” is placed on the climax zone and provided Suzuya-Kai is in your hand. Her first ability makes it easier to pull the second ability off.
“4th Mogami-class Heavy Cruiser, Kumano” is a level 1 blue character with 6000 power. She has two effects: the first requires you to be at level 2, pay one stock and send a card from your hand to your waiting room in order to upgrade her to her Aviation Cruiser form (“4th Mogami-class Aviation Heavy Cruiser, Kumano-Kai”); her second ability is a not-optional revival skill – she is defeated in battle, you take one damage and she revives. That second ability is very useful for making sure she survives to become her Kai-form, but is very risky in the late game so take it as a double-edged sword.

With the next picture I tried an experiment:

Flipping the poses.

I swapped the poses, without swapping parts! In other words I put Kumano in a pose similar to Suzuya’s card art, but using parts from Kumano’s set (and vice-versa). It’s not perfect, but I matched it as best I could.

The flash problem I seem to be experiencing is so bad in this picture, it’s making Suzuya look like Mikudayo!

Battle Scene.

A battle scene involving the girls being attacked by Abyssal Destroyers.

Suzuya comes with that mini i-class destroyer and the damage effect that Kumano is sporting.

Aviation Cruiser Poses.

Here we have them matching their -Kai form card artwork. Wikipedia doesn’t seem to mention anything about remodelling into Aviation Heavy Cruisers and seems to imply that they had float planes from the start, so I’m forced to assume that their remodelling in-game is more to give the player a reason to use them.

Their Weiss Schwartz cards are as follows:
“3rd Mogami-class Aviation Heavy Cruiser, Suzuya-Kai” is a level 2 blue character with 7500 power (on the low side for a level 2) who costs one stock to play to the field. Her ability gives her an additional 500 power for every other «Fleet Girl» character on the field (which maxes out at +2000).
“Leave it to Suzuya-!” gives 1000 power and a soul to all of your characters once it is activated. Its trigger icon is ‘gate and soul’, which allows you to recover a climax card from the waiting room and gives your character a soul.
“4th Mogami-class Aviation Heavy Cruiser, Kumano-Kai” is a level 2 blue character with 8500 power and 2 soul, but costs two stock to summon (2 stock level 2 cards having 2 soul instead of the usual 1 is normal). Her ability gives her 1000 power when another of your «Fleet Girl» characters attacks (maxing out at +2000).
Comparing Suzuya and Kumano’s WS cards together like this, I have to say I think I prefer Kumano. Suzuya’s search ability is good and easily leads into getting Suzuya-Kai out on the field at level 1, but she’s just so weak. Kumano, on the other hand, doesn’t die and has enough power to actually weaken the opponent’s field presence.

Final Pose: “Time for some shopping-!”

Kumano comes with this holding-hands part and the dressing table in the background.

The picture seems to go well with their recently-removed-from-the-game ‘early summer’ lines (you can read them by checking the alt text on the picture, and hear them voiced on the KanColle Wiki pages linked above).

Closing Thoughts

Well, that’s that for today.

About Suzuya and Kumano’s fates:
Suzuya was badly damaged by two near-miss bombs from US carrier-based planes in the Battle off Samar on the 25th of October 1944. The second near-miss detonated the Long-Lance oxygen torpedoes in her no.1 torpedo tubes which in turn caused other fires and damaged her engines. She was abandoned at 1150 before sinking at 1322, her crew were rescued by Destroyer Okinami and other American warships. She currently rests under 8kilometres of water.
Kumano took surprising amounts of damage during her career. In the same battle that saw Suzuya sink she suffered three bomb strikes. She didn’t sink then but exactly one calendar month later, on the 25th of November 1944, while undergoing repairs at Santa Cruz she was attacked by US carrier-based planes; after being struck by four bombs and five torpedoes, at 1515 she rolled over and sank in just 31metres of water. According to the KanColle wiki, she is still there, but I can’t find any other sources to verify this.

I think my lack of interest in the characters marred my enjoyment of these Nendoroids. Although it probably wasn’t helped by Kumano’s annoying loose bracket, or the multitude of other parts that liked falling off. The paintwork was good, however.

Time Taken
Unboxing/Photographing: 1hr 30mins
Editing: 30mins
Write-up: 5hrs (historical research, lack of motivation, etc.)
Total: 7hrs Let’s hope next week’s Battleships don’t take this long.