Azur Lane and World of Warships players have experienced the collaboration between the two titles with in-game events, but the crossover extended to the real world.
Starting in April and until tomorrow, May 26, content from the two games invaded the port town of Yokosuka, in the Japanese Kanagawa prefecture, a little more than an hour away from Tokyo by train.
Since most of you don’t live in Japan and likely didn’t get the chance to experience the event, yours truly took a train from Ikebukuro station this early morning, and after a brief stop in Yokohama, reached Yokosuka Chuo station on the Keikyu Line.
Incidentally, today the streets of the city were livened up by a local festival, which made things even more interesting (and rather delicious).
The first stop was the Yokosuka Tourist Information Center, where I was welcomed by the first glimpse of Azur Lane artwork and was presented with a pamphlet including an explanation of the event, a handy map, and room for eleven stamps representing some of the game’s shipgirls.
The event is, in fact, a stamp rally. Stamp rallies a massively popular activity in Japan, prompting visitors to collect stamps in various locations simply for the fun of collecting or to win prizes and goodies.
It’s not surprising that the Japanese love this kind of event so much, considering that they’re a whole lot of fun.
This specific event involved several local shops, requiring a purchase of at least 500 yen to receive a stamp and an Azur Lane bookmark representing the shipgirl associated with each location.
Yet, before diving into the shop exploration, the next stop was inevitably the Battleship Mikasa, the flagship in the Russo-Japanese War between 1904 and 1905, and the only remaining pre-Dreadnought warship in the world, now converted into a museum ship.
She is also the inspiration for Senpai Mikasa, the super-popular shipgirl from Azur Lane acting as the poster-girl for the whole event.
Incidentally, she’s called “Senpai” (older colleague) simply because she’s older than any other ship appearing in Azur Lane.
Occupying two rooms within the steel bowels of the mighty warship, I found lovely exhibition featuring artwork from both Azur Lane and World of Warships.
You can see all the images below.
Published: May 25, 2019 11:46 am