As more backstory is revealed the more it seems the Commander really didn’t do anything wrong.
Many of shipgirls in AzurLane are already pretty unstable and just waiting for something to push them over the edge so her kindness was probably the only thing keeping them together.
It’s just clear that something (presumably Indy and/or Takao’s death) started a domino effect that caused everting to spiral out of anyone’s control
As more backstory is revealed the more it seems the Commander really didn’t do anything wrong.
Many of shipgirls in AzurLane are already pretty unstable and just waiting for something to push them over the edge so her kindness was probably the only thing keeping them together.
It’s just clear that something (presumably Indy and/or Takao’s death) started a domino effect that caused everting to spiral out of anyone’s control
well, Atago's subtle brainwashing since Takao's sinking probably didn't help anything.
As more backstory is revealed the more it seems the Commander really didn’t do anything wrong.
Many of shipgirls in AzurLane are already pretty unstable and just waiting for something to push them over the edge so her kindness was probably the only thing keeping them together.
It’s just clear that something (presumably Indy and/or Takao’s death) started a domino effect that caused everting to spiral out of anyone’s control
She was just some highschool girl who happened to find two injured heavy cruisers.
While it's not completely her fault, it's because she couldn't handle a batshit insane base things ended this way. As the commander, she should know they are fighting in a war.
As more backstory is revealed the more it seems the Commander really didn’t do anything wrong.
Many of shipgirls in AzurLane are already pretty unstable and just waiting for something to push them over the edge so her kindness was probably the only thing keeping them together.
It’s just clear that something (presumably Indy and/or Takao’s death) started a domino effect that caused everting to spiral out of anyone’s control
Desperate need to protect has warped and created threats everywhere
Well in reality war is super serious business so some nice girl from some island ain't gonna cut it, regardless of whether her troops are bat crazy to begin with. There's such a thing as not taking on responsibility if you're not up to it. Doesn't matter how well intentioned you are, if you're not a surgeon then don't go anywhere near the business of cutting people. If you f up and things end up worse then naturally people are going to call you out for it.
Well in reality war is super serious business so some nice girl from some island ain't gonna cut it, regardless of whether her troops are bat crazy to begin with. There's such a thing as not taking on responsibility if you're not up to it. Doesn't matter how well intentioned you are, if you're not a surgeon then don't go anywhere near the business of cutting people. If you f up and things end up worse then naturally people are going to call you out for it.
I wish more people woke up to this fact. It's a sad reality but it's reality none the less.
As more backstory is revealed the more it seems the Commander really didn’t do anything wrong.
not intentionally, at least. but she is still guilty of failing to realize that kindness alone wasn't going to solve everything. that things have ended up the way they are is still her fault, even without intent.
atago and takao were probably already psychologically wounded by their previous base's fall and the loss of those who were with them. had atago died instead, takao likely would have snapped similarly, though with her personality the exact expression of it would have differed.
the wildcard here though is zuikaku. on one hand that "no more fucks to give" face she has could mean many things for her mental state... on the other hand, since the gokousen were sent by the gov't, she could still potentially be acting on behalf of the higher ups. >they have the one who wasn't part of the conspiracy in control of the vessel so whether she's going somewhere that atago told her to go, or if she's aiming to go to a normal base and pass the other three off into psychiatric care... remains to be seen. judging from akagi's talk about getting schooled hard by her, anything atago tries that she doesn't approve of isn't likely to be able to go terribly far. either way, with the local broken US ships no longer giving chase, just what kaga, roon, and big E will end up having to do is a question unto itself.
not intentionally, at least. but she is still guilty of failing to realize that kindness alone wasn't going to solve everything. that things have ended up the way they are is still her fault, even without intent.
atago and takao were probably already psychologically wounded by their previous base's fall and the loss of those who were with them. had atago died instead, takao likely would have snapped similarly, though with her personality the exact expression of it would have differed.
the wildcard here though is zuikaku. on one hand that "no more fucks to give" face she has could mean many things for her mental state... on the other hand, since the gokousen were sent by the gov't, she could still potentially be acting on behalf of the higher ups. >they have the one who wasn't part of the conspiracy in control of the vessel so whether she's going somewhere that atago told her to go, or if she's aiming to go to a normal base and pass the other three off into psychiatric care... remains to be seen. judging from akagi's talk about getting schooled hard by her, anything atago tries that she doesn't approve of isn't likely to be able to go terribly far. either way, with the local broken US ships no longer giving chase, just what kaga, roon, and big E will end up having to do is a question unto itself.
This is a case of assigning a greenhorn into a unit with a lot of history and a lot of issues, in the middle of a war. I would say that regardless of their disposition, this is sort of a losing case unless you have an experienced officer with a lot of field rapport.
This whole thing reminds me of When Trumpets Fade, in that you have the nihilistic outlook that you got a meat-grinder (Hurtgen Forest) that is chewing up your troops and leaving them broken, the competent on the ground leadership is either falling apart or dying, and what you have are a lot of people who are in way over their head having to suddenly take command of a theater that is both atypical, with little support and no way through but to keep going through the grinder until one side or the other's back is broken and the front collapses.
Not to dodge the matter of responsibility, but to me it is an inherently unfair situation for the commanader: Regardless of her naivety or intentions, this was not the sort of operation that is fit for someone's first command. When Trumpets Fade is a good example of this happening, with the ultimate admission being that those people were not in the position to refuse their authority nor did they have any ability, beyond hindsight, to realize what they were getting into and what it took to get out.
And in the end, When Trumpets Fade noted that it took a suicide attack to give their side a chance of breaking the stalemate, but by that time, it was already too late to make use of it and thus the entire affair ended up being of little strategic value.
Slightly off topic, but usually it doesn't happen since there usually are multiple field leaders that are capable of doing the job in the chain of command. In the unlikely event that they are all killed and survivors remain there often are standing orders that amount to having a headless element retreat for survival since they are no longer useful for their task, but freedom by individual initiative usually allows these survivors to continue with their mission headless if they choose to to continue (in which case you don't have the issue of people feeling overwhelmed like in the comic). Usually survivors are incorporated and overflowed into another friendly element they encounter and bolster it in return for their ride home.
On top of that there should be someone in charge of an operation who oversees everything. If people are being ordered like lemmings to walk one after the other into their doom without any proper risk assessment, that can often be the fault of this overseer since a proper contingency plan should have been made that is automatically be applied in the case that the momentum is lost.
Of course, sometimes an objective is valuable enough to warrant deliberately sending people in the meat grinder. D day is a famous example. Sometimes it results in effective results and sometime it does not. The problem is that no one is omniscient and so it can never be guaranteed that lives will not be "wasted". However because of this, lives really aren't wasted in the bigger picture since even lives lost in an ineffective action at the minimum serves to guide a competent commander towards the correct strategy. In a tactical example, we send out a small group to scout out an area. This group deliberately is too small to be an effective fighting force in order to be stealthy and to reduce the amount of lives being put at risk. The gamble is that they will make contact with the enemy without the enemy spotting/killing them and consequentially can bring that info to the main fighting force who can then proceed at less risk by negating the "fog of war". It initially might seem wasteful to risk men on a task that does not directly affect the enemy, but in the long run it saves lives through guidance just like strategic level concepts.
Hürtgen Forest wasn't inherently valuable on its own, what happened there was that the casualty rates were so high that it chewed up experienced units and left a lot of positions being filled by field-promotion, and on top of that, the majority of the 106th got surrounded and surrendered in the opening weeks of the campaign. The bigger problem was that higher command, who weren't there personally and relied on reports, under-estimated the German resolve and their willingness to defend an otherwise useless position. On top of that, Hürtgen was an artificial forest built into the Siegfried Line and was thus designed to hold up a larger force. Ultimately the Allies did take it, but it took months, and one of the goals of the offensive, the capture of the Rur dams to prevent the Germans from destroying it, was lost when the Germans released the water from the dam in the final stages of the battle in January of 1945, delaying further action by a further two weeks.
The general consensus today was the the battle was poorly conceived and mismanaged, leading to a situation where the commanders were unaware of how ineffective artillery was due to the terrain and the impracticality of armor in the area.
Ultimately the Battle of the Bulge occurred, which led to the allies dropping all focus on the region and dealing with that, and the area was only really taken once the larger push came in the start of the new year, essentially meaning that the loss of between 33,000 to 55,000 out of 120,000 troops deployed (as casualties, not necessarily dead). The initial losses and issues were viewed as issues of competence by the field officers rather than signs of a larger issue, and it wasn't until everything stalled despite massive support being thrown into the forest that the severity of the situation was recognized, and by that point the battle of the bulge occurred. Ultimately, the attempt to push through the forest fell right into the design the Siegfried Line was built for, and so the Germans were able to stall the overall offensive for months and months despite the material and strategic advantages the allies had.
I may have gotten some things mixed up since this is from memory and its been awhile, but my point is that pushing troops through a grinder and ultimately not realizing that the sector is not going to support a major offensive without massive changes is not an effective way to make use of the loss of life that results. It also creates a situation where veteran units area diminished and valuable experience and troops are lost, and their replacements are shunted into a position where they are much more likely to get killed at rates too fast to effectively rebuild their units.
Maybe because it's faster to just use a boat rather than waterski their way to their destination? Also they bringing a normal human with them. Unless their commander is Jesus Christ this is more convenient.
I just think it's funny how the commenters are criticizing the commanders' supposed lack of strength in past pages when the fact is that 100% of players of AL (or KC or whatever) are not and will not command a fleet, ever, at all. Being a commander is hard work and it's not just sitting in a pretty office signing papers while your waifu brings you coffee and I'd say that the prevalence of "admiral/commander doing paperwork" scenes so many fanworks is due to the fact few among the fanbase even know what the fuck Real Life commanders do nowadays (not to mention that having a family is mandatory to reach the higher ranks in certain navies of the world so no harem fantasies irl either!). Have some self-awareness!
So the author is in fact pointing out at the playerbase which would really do no better than any highschooler thrown in the middle of war, no matter how many WW2 shows you've watched. First of all, you can't apply real life logic or real life experiences onto these world because these characters break all rules of logic: these weapons who are human should be treated as soldiers; but possessing a force that surpasses a thousand soldiers breaks down tradional notions of hierarchy and a different, horizontal approach becomes necessary. It's the ships' humanity what becomes their greatest strength and their greatest weakness, and the story has shown us how they can be capable of showing extreme kindness or extreme cruelty, but no middle point.
Without hindsight, there was really nothing the commander could have done to avoid this outcome because armor can protect your boats but no plating can protect their hearts and brains from the horrors of war. But rather than their minds, it's their condition as weapons what makes them suffer such heightened trauma and I'd argue that having feelings for the commander was what kept them from reaching the breaking point, instead of the opposite. Of course the story is not over and there's more revelations to come.
Honestly, in situations like this, the Admiral doesn't need real military experience, the Admiral needs to be a trained psychologist.
I mean, if we're talking "real World War 2 leaders", Patton infamously had absolutely no concept of what would eventually become known as PTSD, and went into field hospitals with soldiers who were psychologically broken down to near-catatonic states and started slapping and insulting them for their "cowardice".
Events like these lie outside what generals and admirals are trained to handle. If a soldier gets shell shocked, they don't get a visit and pep talk from the general, the general isn't trained to handle them. (Although as of WW2, they only really relied upon the chaplain, who gets some training in counseling.)
I'm sorry that I'm a worthless commander!!It's alright...Onee-san will always...protect you.AHHHHH!!!!Com...Commander...I'm sorry that I didn't notice anything!!It's alright. See...There's nothing to be afraid of.I'm going to protect you.There's no need to be scared.I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY!I'm sorry that I'm incompetent!!