Interest

New KanColle Dōjinshi Doubles as English Textbook

Now that Kantai Collection (Kan Colle) has an American battleship, Iowa, who uses lots of English phrases, the opportunity seems ripe for a Kan Colle dōjinshi that teaches Japanese spekers English. And that's what the dōjin circle Yudokuya is doing with its latest publication, Dawn Horizon. It casts Iowa in the role of an English teacher with the other fleet girls as her students.

Although it's sure to delight Kan Colle fans with its references (the battleship USS Iowa was built in New York, for instance), it's actually an English textbook complete with Japanese translations, assignments and vocabulary lists.

If the name "Dawn Horizon" and Iowa's pose seem familiar, it's because the dōjinshi is a parody of the new edition of New Horizon, a middle school English textbook with a sensationally popular English teacher character, Ellen Baker. While fan art of Ms. Baker is widespread online, there have been concerns that it is unauthorized, given the textbook publisher's request for discretion in her portrayals. When asked over Twitter whether he had received permission to publish the Kan Colle textbook, @tomokity, its writer, confirmed that he had — from both the Japanese Association for the Copyrights of Textbook Publishers and Tokyo Shoseki, New Horizon's publisher. Presumably they approved of the book's use of "lively characters" to "make every middle school student want to learn English more."

The original images from New Horizon

Sources: Togetter via Hachima Kikō and Netlab; Images from Tomokity Twitter and Hachima Kikō