title: James Carville

text: In the wake of an economic crisis from falling oil prices and stagnant economic growth, Mahuad decreed a state of emergency, and embarked on austerity measures to stifle rampant inflation, including sales tax and gasoline tax increases, freezing bank account withdrawals, and the dollarization of the economy which included the sudden voiding and invalidation of the Sucre, Ecuador's currency since 1884. In January 2000, Mahuad was forced from office in a military coup following demonstrations by Ecuadorians. Mahuad fled to exile in the United States. In 2014, an Ecuadorian court convicted Mahuad, in absentia, of embezzlement during his time in office, and sentenced him to twelve years in prison. Interpol also issued a warrant for his arrest.


title: James Carville

text: In 1998, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) party in Panama retained Carville as their main adviser to help re-elect then term-limited President Ernesto Pérez Balladares during an election where opposition figures suggested that Perez Balladares was hoping to convey the impression that the Clinton Administration in the United States secretly favored a second term for him. Pérez Balladares, who attended college in the United States at the University of Notre Dame before attaining his Master's at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, reformed Panama's Labor Code, privatized Panama's telephone and electrical utilities, and ushered Panama into the World Trade Organization during his tenure. Despite massive spending by the PRD, including the hiring of Carville to craft an effective political strategy, the proposal to lift his term limitation was defeated by a margin of almost 2 to 1.


title: James Carville

text: At the suggestion of President Clinton, who had grown frustrated with Benjamin Netanyahu's intransigence in the peace process, Carville, along with colleagues Bob Shrum, a speechwriter for President Clinton, and Stanley Greenberg, consulted in late 1998 and early 1999 for Labor Party candidate Ehud Barak to help him prepare for the 1999 prime ministerial election.


title: James Carville

text: Carville and colleagues endeavored to help Barak seize control of the daily debate, and boost his struggling challenge to incumbent head-of-state Binyamin Netanyahu. Short declarative sentences, sound bites, rapid response, repetition, wedge issues, ethnic exploitation, nightly polling, negative research, searing attack advertisements on television, all familiar tools of American politics, arrived on the Israeli political scene during the election, as a part of what Netanyahu's director of communications, David Bar-Illan characterized as an Americanization of the election, and Netanyahu advisers implying White House meddling in an Israeli election. Barak won election by a double digit margin and served for over two years, before calling a special prime ministerial election in 2001.


title: James Carville

text: Carville consulted for Buenos Aires Province Governor Eduardo Duhalde in his 1999 run for president of Argentina as the Justicialist Party nominee. Carville remarked in May, 1999 that U.S. Ambassador to Argentina James Cheek introduced him to Duhalde in January, 1998. Carville's consulting fee ran $30,000 per month, in 1999 US dollars, added to a percentage of campaign advertisements, plus first class airfare and hotel expenses.


title: James Carville

text: Duhalde spent much of the campaign embroiled in a power struggle with his own party and incumbent President Carlos Menem who was barely dissuaded from running for a third term despite constitutional term limits, and a series of court rulings against him. The contest of campaigns was rather flat; there were no presidential debates, nor large campaign rallies, nor were any major changes in course promised by the frontrunner candidates. Duhalde emphasized his law and order credentials as a campaign theme. One television advertisement for Duhalde's campaign depicted him walking in the woods alone, talking to himself, and bemoaning all the political enemies plotting against him. Carville clashed with Duhalde's public relations team leading up to the election, which lead to his departure.


title: James Carville

text: Against an economic backdrop of the Argentine Great Depression, Duhalde lost the October 1999 general election to Radical Civic Union party candidate Fernando de la Rúa who enjoyed the strategy and advice of U.S. American political consult Dick Morris (like Carville, also a former consultant to President Bill Clinton). De la Rúa would later resign during the December 2001 riots, and the Argentine Congress appointed the governor of San Luis Province Adolfo Rodríguez Saá as president. When Rodríguez Saá also resigned, Congress appointed Duhalde, who would serve as president of Argentina from January, 2002 through May, 2003.


title: James Carville

text: In 2002, through his firm Greenberg Carville Shrum (GCS), Carville strategized in Bolivia on behalf of Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) party presidential candidate Gonzalo "Goni" Sánchez de Lozada. The son of a political exile, Sánchez de Lozada spent his early years in Iowa, studied at the University of Chicago, and spoke Spanish with a midwestern American accent. Sanchez de Lozada served as Bolivian president in the mid 1990s, and had a record of using shock therapy, economic liberalization, and privatization. In his 2002 election campaign, he faced the first serious challenge to the hegemony of the established Bolivian political parties in the form of Evo Morales and his left-wing populist and indigenist Movement for Socialism (MAS) party.


title: James Carville

text: slogan ""Bolivia sí puede"" ("Yes, Bolivia can") that featured negative attack ads on his opponents, particularly against Cochabamba mayor Manfred Reyes Villa. In one campaign advertisement, Reyes Villa was blamed for rampant diarrhea in the city's poor children.


title: James Carville

text: Sanchez de Lozada garnered a plurality of votes, 22.46%, against Evo Morales second place finish at 20.94%, before coming to power in August 2002 in a coalition government formed with two other political parties. Lozada resigned in October, 2003 and fled to exile in the United States following the 2003 Bolivian Gas Conflict. Carville's work for Lozada in Bolivia was portrayed in the 2005 documentary film "Our Brand Is Crisis", which inspired the 2015 narrative form film "Our Brand is Crisis".


title: James Carville

text: In early 2003, Carville worked in Venezuela as an advisor to Venezuelan business interests that previously led an economically devastating strike in the spring of 2002 by managers of the national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), in an effort to destabilize the government of leftist president Hugo Chávez. In the aftermath of an unsuccessful coup attempt in April 2002, the group sought Carville's assistance in displacing Chávez from office. In a September, 2006 interview that touched on the topic, Carville remarked: "I've worked in Venezuela and I would be very reluctant to call Chávez a democrat."


title: James Carville

text: Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani hired Carville as a campaign advisor in July 2009. Ghani, who renounced his US Citizenship in order to run for Presidency in Afghanistan, attended high school in the United States in Lake Oswego, Oregon during the late 1960s, earned his master's degree from Columbia University in 1977, was a Fulbright Fellow in the United States who taught at UC Berkeley, and Johns Hopkins University in the 1980s, and worked as an economist at the Washington, DC-based World Bank in the 1990s.


title: James Carville

text: Ghani and Carville met in Washington in the spring of 2009 through mutual friends. Carville would not say whether he was paid to advise Ghani, whereas Ghani claimed Carville volunteered his time. Carville remarked at the time that the 2009 Afghan presidential election is "probably the most important election held in the world in a long time," and he called his new job "probably the most interesting project I have ever worked in my life." When asked about similarities between politics in Afghanistan and politics in Louisiana, Carville responded: "Yeah, I felt a little bit at home, to be honest with you." Carville's objective was to help prevent one of Ghani's opponents, Hamid Karzai from garnering a majority of votes, to force the election into a second round. Ghani garnered just 2.94% of the vote, with Kazai finishing just shy of a 50% majority. After a cancelled run-off election Karzai became president.


title: James Carville

text: In 2010, Carville worked as senior advisor to elect presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia. The Colombian-born Santos attended the University of Kansas for undergraduate studies from 1969 to 1973, graduating with a degree in economics and business. He returned to the U.S. as Fulbright visiting fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1981, and also earned a master's degree from Harvard Kennedy School in 1981, and lectured as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1988.


title: James Carville

text: Santos later joined the Washington, DC-based think tank, the Inter-American Dialogue, and served as Colombia's Minister of Trade, and Minister of Finance and Public Credit of Colombia during the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2006, then President Alvaro Uribe appointed Santos as Colombia's Minister of Defence. Santos supervised the military during a period of political tension and military action targeted at the FARC guerrilla group, including a controversial military raid on Ecuador's border, and extrajudicial assassinations during the "False positives" scandal.


title: James Carville

text: Carville played a crucial role for Santos, helping him to analyze voter polls, and crafted a winning strategy, that included the night-time distribution of pamphlets under the doors of voters' homes predicting the end of popular social welfare initiatives if Santos wasn't elected.


title: James Carville

text: On June 20, 2010, after two rounds of voting, Santos was elected as President of Colombia and was inaugurated on 7 August 2010 in the midst of a diplomatic crisis with Venezuela. The U.S. State Department remarked in official communications that it was "pleased" with the election of Santos, and praised the "spirited debate" before the runoff and Colombia's "longstanding commitment to democratic principles". In 2017, Santos acknowledged that his 2010 campaign received illegal payments from Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht.


title: James Carville

text: Carville acted as advisor for Daniel Scioli's 2007 and 2011's campaigns for the governor of Buenos Aires. He also consulted for his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2015. The election featured allegations of vote-buying, when Scioli's Front for Victory party was alleged to have distributed sacks with bottles of cooking oil, pasta and flour to Buenos Aires voters in exchange for their votes. Scioli was defeated in a November, 2015 runoff election.


title: James Carville

text: In September, 2004, after conversations with Bill Clinton, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry engaged the assistance of Carville as an informal adviser to his 2004 presidential campaign. Rival political consultant Dick Morris speculated at the time that Carville and Greenberg, instrumental participants in the Clinton's political machine, infiltrated Kerry's campaign as a way to engineer his defeat and clear a path for Hillary Clinton to run in 2008. In the aftermath of Kerry's loss, Carville and colleagues Stanley Greenberg, as well as journalist Bob Shrum, sought to place blame on external events, including news media coverage of the Iraq War, the October, 2004 Osama bin Laden video, as well as Bush's focus on cultural issues.


title: James Carville

text: Carville co-hosted CNN's "Crossfire" along with associate Paul Begala from 2002 until the show's cancellation in 2005. Carville was a CNN contributor until parting ways with the network in 2013. The following year, Carville joined Fox News Channel as a contributor.


title: James Carville

text: In 2005, Carville taught a semester of the course "Topics in American Politics" at Northern Virginia Community College. Among the guests he had come speak to the class were Al Hunt, Mark Halperin, Senator George Allen, George Stephanopoulos, Karl Strubel, Stan Greenberg, Tony Blankley, representatives from the Motion Picture Association of America, and James Fallows.


title: James Carville

text: In 2006, Carville became a host on a sports radio show, "60/20 Sports", on XM Satellite Radio, with Luke Russert, son of NBC journalist Tim Russert. The show was an in-depth look at the culture of sports based on the difference in ages of the two hosts.


title: James Carville

text: During 2006 mid-terms, then Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean mobilized a Fifty-state strategy. Democrats won control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the 1994 election. For the first time since the creation of the Republican party in 1854, no Republican captured any House, Senate, or Gubernatorial seat previously held by a Democrat. Notwithstanding, after the election, on November 15, 2006, Carville blasted Dean's leadership as "Rumsfeldian in its incompetence," called for Dean's ouster as DNC Chair and his replacement with Harold Ford Jr., and claimed that, with a conventional strategy of piling money solely into close races, Democrats could have picked up as many as 50 House seats, roughly 20 more than they won that year. In late November 2006, Carville proposed a truce of sorts.


title: James Carville

text: Carville was the executive producer of the 2006 film "All the King's Men", starring Sean Penn and Anthony Hopkins, which is loosely based on the life of Louisiana Governor Huey Long.


title: James Carville

text: On March 4, 2009, "Politico" reported that Carville, Paul Begala, and Rahm Emanuel were the architects of the Democratic Party's strategy to cast conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh as the face of the Republican Party. Carville was particularly critical of Limbaugh for saying he wanted Barack Obama to "fail".


title: James Carville

text: Carville was a regular contributor with Stan Greenberg to the weekly Carville-Greenberg Memo at The National Memo.


title: James Carville

text: Carville advised Hillary Clinton during her 2008 presidential campaign. In remarks on then rival candidate, Senator Barack Obama, Carville declared in 2007 that Barack Obama was the Democratic candidate "most likely to explode or implode."


title: James Carville

text: On March 22, 2008, Carville compared New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who had just endorsed Barack Obama for the nomination, to Judas Iscariot, calling this "an act of betrayal." Carville remarked, "Mr. Richardson's endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic," referring to Holy week. Richardson had served President Bill Clinton as his Energy Secretary, and Ambassador to the United Nations, and Carville believed Richardson owed an endorsement to Senator Clinton. Carville also claimed Richardson assured many in the Clinton campaign that he would at least remain neutral and abstain from taking sides. Richardson denied Carville's account, arguing that he had not made any promises to remain neutral. Richardson claims that his decision to endorse Obama was "clinched" by his speech on race relations following the swirl of controversy surrounding Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright. Carville went on to note, "I doubt if Governor Richardson and I will be terribly close in the future," Carville said, but "I've had my say...I got one in the wheelhouse and I tagged it."


title: James Carville

text: Even as Clinton's campaign began to lose steam, Carville remained both loyal and positive in his public positions, rarely veering off message and stoutly defending the candidate. However, on May 13, 2008, a few hours before the primary in West Virginia, Carville remarked to an audience at Furman University in South Carolina, "I'm for Senator Clinton, but I think the great likelihood is that Obama will be the nominee." The moment marked a shift from his previous and often determinedly optimistic comments about the state of Clinton's campaign.


title: James Carville

text: After Barack Obama's clear lead for victory in the Democratic presidential campaign on June 3, James Carville said he was ready to open up his wallet to help Obama build a political war chest to take on John McCain in November.


title: James Carville

text: Carville was retained by Palantir Technologies as a paid adviser in 2011, and was instrumental in bringing about Palantir's collaboration with the New Orleans Police Department to quietly deploy predictive policing software in New Orleans.


title: James Carville

text: Carville has criticized Obama's political style and demeanor over the years. On November 18th, 2010, Carville spoke to an audience at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast and remarked: "If Hillary gave up one of her balls and gave it to Obama, he'd have two." Carville made a similar remark to political journalist Eleanor Clift during the midst of the primaries in May, 2008, insinuating that Hillary Clinton was a tougher candidate, remarking: "If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two."


title: James Carville

text: In November 2013, in light of President Barack Obama's declining approval poll numbers, Carville commented "I think the best thing he can do is take a toke on the mayor of Toronto's crack pipe, because his numbers are about 48."


title: James Carville

text: On October 21, 2018 Carville participated with Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson at the 2018 PoltiCon in Los Angeles in "A conversation with Eddie Izzard", an event chaired by the British comedian.


title: James Carville

text: Carville joined the faculty of Louisiana State University's Manship School of Mass Communication in January 2018. His work at the Manship School was supported by philanthropic gifts. He has also lectured in political science at Tulane University.


title: James Carville

text: In 2019, political pundit Mark Halperin consulted with Carville for his upcoming book, "How to Beat Trump: America's Top Political Strategists on What It Will Take". Carville was asked what he would tell Halperin's sexual assault victims, who have expressed disappointment and outrage that so many top Democrats were willing to talk with someone accused of such serious allegations, and remarked: "I know he's been accused by a lot of people and lost his job. The guy called me and asked me to speak to him on a topic that I obviously care about. And I spoke to him."


title: James Carville

text: In January 2020, Carville endorsed Colorado Senator Michael Bennet's ultimately unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Carville appeared on stage with Bennet leading up to the 2020 New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary at his political events in the state. Carville remarked of Bennet during the campaign season: "This is John Kennedy recloned, you can't get any better than this guy!" Bennet, who leaned hard on Carville's endorsement, garnered 963 votes in New Hampshire, or 0.3% of 300,022 total Democratic ballots cast in a year of record-shattering turnout.


title: James Carville

text: Carville has also entered the podcast business, and, along with Al Hunt hosts "2020 Politics War Room", which purports to offer "a backstage pass to impeachment and the 2020 Election." He continues to make frequent appearances with Brian Williams in MSNBC cable news programming to comment on the 2020 Democratic debates, caucuses and primaries, and the trajectory of the 2020 Democratic nomination and general election.


title: James Carville

text: In February 2020, Carville suggested jettisoning the Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses, letting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi select the Democratic Party's presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and suggested Mitt Romney should "resign from the Senate to save the Democratic Party's ass, and run our convention." Carville further added he might cast a write in vote for Nancy Pelosi when he votes in Louisiana.


title: James Carville

text: In February 2020 media appearances and interviews, against a backdrop of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' rise in the polls, Carville expressed his displeasure at the prospect of Sanders being nominated, branded Sanders as a "communist" and pejoratively labeled Sanders' base of support as a "cult", warning of the "end of days" if Sanders were to win the Democratic nomination. Carville used his media appearances surrounding the dustup to rail against the ascendance of progressive populist Democratic policy positions such as student loan debt forgiveness and "people voting from jail cells." Carville also decried banning hydraulic fracking for shale gas.


title: James Carville

text: In November 2020, Carville predicted that the result of the presidential election would be known by 10p.m. on election day. After the Associated Press took an additional four days to declare the winner, "Politico" named Carville's prediction among "the most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year".


title: James Carville

text: In 2022, Carville led the "Penn Progress" Super Pac, which spent the entirety of its funds in support of Rep. Connor Lamb's bid for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by retiring senator Pat Toomey. Lamb worked closely with Carville's SuperPac, and participated in donor calls Carville arranged.


title: James Carville

text: Carville's Super PAC bankrolled TV ads which sought to portray one of Lamb's primary opponents, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman as a "self-described democratic socialist." Within a day of airing, PolitiFact and Factcheck.org called the attack ad false, "The Philadelphia Inquirer" commented that Fetterman had never actually described himself that way., the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, stopped broadcasting the ad, and Senator Elizabeth Warren called on Lamb to disavow it. Echoing a fanciful attack by Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman Val DiGiorgio, Carville himself re-tweeted news coverage on Fetterman being labeled a "silver spoon socialist."


title: James Carville

text: In 2004, "The New York Times" noted that Carville was making more than 100 speeches per year to various audiences, including business groups, colleges and universities and Democratic Party fundraising events. Charles Lewis, executive director at the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington research group, remarked that "No political consultant has carved a space as unique as his." Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, said at the time: "He's become a commodity of himself by design. He's a walking conglomerate." Joe Lockhart, a former press secretary to Bill Clinton, characterized Carville as "a multimedia corporation, and he's been smart about it. He is a model of the future. This could not have happened pre-1992 when campaign consultants were viewed by a small audience. Now they are public celebrities." Carville was noted to have been represented exclusively by the Washington Speakers Bureau, with a speaker's fee of $20,500 in 2004 to get him to the podium for an hour, plus first-class expenses and top accommodations.


title: James Carville

text: Carville had an array of commercial endorsements, and starred in print media and television advertisements for leading consumer brands including Coca-Cola, Little Debbie snacks, Maker's Mark bourbon, Heineken beer, Alka-Seltzer antacid, American Express credit cards, Nike shoes, the Cotton Council, and Ariba software.


title: James Carville

text: In 2000, through Bob Chlopak's and Peter Schechter's Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates (CLS), a Washington, DC-based public relations firm, Carville enjoyed a sponsorship with Playboy media and Captain Morgan rum, which included a trip to Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion.


title: James Carville

text: Carville is married to political consultant Mary Matalin, who worked for Republican George H. W. Bush on his 1992 presidential re-election campaign. Carville and Matalin were married in New Orleans in October 1993. They have two daughters. In 2008, Carville and Matalin relocated their family from Virginia to New Orleans.


title: James Cosmo

text: James Ronald Gordon Copeland , known professionally as James Cosmo, is a Scottish film and television actor known for his appearances in films including "Highlander", "Braveheart", "Trainspotting", "Jagame Thandhiram", "Troy", "", "Ben-Hur" and "Wonder Woman", as well as television series such as "Game of Thrones", "Sons of Anarchy", and "His Dark Materials". He appeared in the nineteenth series of "Celebrity Big Brother", finishing in fourth place.


title: James Cosmo

text: Cosmo is the son of actor James Copeland and Helen Goodlet Findlay. He attended Hartfield Primary School in Dumbarton. Through his father, young James played cricket on Hampstead Heath with Sean Connery while his father was in the pub with Peter O'Toole. He also has a sister named Laura. When he was 11, he moved back to Glasgow and later he worked for a time at Arnott Young shipbreakers in Dalmuir.


title: James Cosmo

text: At the start of his career he adopted Cosmo, the middle name of his mother Helen, as his stage surname. Cosmo is best known for his film roles as Angus MacLeod in "Highlander", Campbell in "Braveheart" and as Father Christmas in the adaptation of "". Over the years he has also had roles in other films such as "Trainspotting", "The Last Legion" and "2081". He appeared in "Troy" with future "Game of Thrones" cast members Sean Bean and Julian Glover. He also appeared in UFO as SHADO operative Lieutenant Anderson, in "Take the High Road" as Alex Geddes from 1982 until 1983 and in 1984 played Jock McLeish in the "Minder" episode "Senior Citizen Caine". He appeared as Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Drysdale in the seventh series of "Soldier Soldier". He portrayed Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, in the HBO series "Game of Thrones". He was involved in the filming of the thriller "Breakdown" in which he appeared alongside Craig Fairbrass, Bruce Payne, Emmett Scanlan, Olivia Grant and Tamer Hassan. He played the antagonist in the Indian film, "Jagame Thandhiram", which released in 2021.


title: Azur Lane

text: Azur Lane () is a side-scrolling shoot 'em up video game created by Chinese developers Shanghai Manjuu and Xiamen Yongshi, released in 2017 for the iOS and Android operating systems. Set in an alternate timeline of World War II, players engage in side-scrolling shooter gameplay, using female moe anthropomorphic characters based on warships from the war's major participants. Other gameplay elements, like customizing a dorm and in-game characters, are also present.


title: Azur Lane

text: First launched in China in May and in Japan in September 2017, "Azur Lane" quickly became popular, especially in Japan where the player count reached five million within four months after its release. Players have voted the game among the top five on Google Play's Best Game of 2017 list for the region. Critics have attributed the game's popularity to its original and well-designed gameplay system. An English version started open beta in August 2018 and was formally released in May 2019. Later, in December 2019, the English version was expanded to Latin American region. PWB Play simultaneously released it to Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan in October 2019.


title: Azur Lane

text: The game has been adapted into several manga and novelizations. "Azur Lane Crosswave", a 3D adaptation for PlayStation 4, was published by Compile Heart in August 2019 with mixed reception. "Crosswave" English localization was released in February 2020 for PlayStation 4 and PC. A Nintendo Switch port of the game was released in Japan in September 2020, and in February 2021 in North America and in February 2021 in Europe.


title: Azur Lane

text: An anime television series adaptation by Bibury Animation Studios was announced in 2018, and was aired from October 2019 to March 2020. Funimation licensed this series for a SimulDub. An anime television series adaptation of the "Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!" manga by studios CANDYBOX and Yostar Pictures aired from January to March 2021. An OVA adaptation of the "Azur Lane: Queen's Orders" manga has been announced.


title: Azur Lane

text: "Azur Lane" is a side-scrolling shoot 'em up, simulation and role-playing video game. Players collect characters that are moe anthropomorphic interpretations of World War II warships ("shipgirls"), mainly from the United States Navy, Royal Navy, Imperial Japanese Navy and Kriegsmarine, with other ships from the French Navy (both Vichy and Free France flavors), Republic of China Navy, People's Liberation Army Navy, Regia Marina, Soviet Navy, Imperial Russian Navy, and Imperial German Navy being added later. Players organize them into fleets of six and confront AI-controlled enemies or other players' fleets. These ships can gain experience points (EXP) from various methods (such as from battles, completing commissions, or placing these ships into Dormitories), and they require a certain amount of EXP to gain a stronger level. They have a certain maximum level limit on how far players can level up their ships, which can be increased via Limit Break. Most characters have their own set of upgradable abilities that can be activated in battle.


title: Azur Lane

text: Personifications of American destroyer USS "Laffey" (DD-459), British destroyer HMS "Javelin" and German destroyer "Z23" (Chinese, English release) or Japanese destroyer "Ayanami" (Japanese, Korean release) are available for players to select as a starter ship. They are referred to as protagonists in-game. , more than 450 characters have been introduced to the game, representing ships from nine countries that participated in the war. The game is also notable for including preserved museum ships as its characters such as Japanese "Mikasa" and Russian "Aurora".


title: Azur Lane

text: A new game mode "Operation Siren" was announced on Twitter on December 13, 2020, for a late December release.


title: Azur Lane

text: When preparing for the game's main mode, players can organize two fleets (as the game progresses, they will unlock up to a maximum of 6 fleets) consisting of a front row and a back row, with three slots available in each row. Destroyers, light cruisers, and heavy cruisers can be allotted to the front row, while the back row is reserved for battleships, aircraft cruiser, monitors, repair ships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers. Different combinations of ships are required to achieve victory in different battle situations. Players may then select and enter a map.


title: Azur Lane

text: On entering a map, the player's fleet is placed on a grid-like map similar to that in the game Battleship. The map contains nodes, which are either combat nodes which are enemy fleets, some immobile and others that pursue the player, or non-combat nodes which provides ammunition or mystery nodes which can provide supplies such as repair kits, upgrade materials or can spawn a special combat node called a Treasure Fleet. Players must navigate optimally and assemble their fleets tactically, to clear obstructing enemies and, using minimal movements, reach the map's boss. When the player moves their fleet across the map, they can be ambushed in random encounters from which they may take damage, or they can be forced to engage the enemy, using fuel and ammo. Fuel is one of the two in-game resources. Ammo points are assigned to player fleets at each map, with one ammo point deducted at each battle. Fleets that run out of ammo can still fight but may only deal half damage.


title: Azur Lane

text: When battling an enemy, players can use a virtual joystick to control the front row, which can automatically fire shells at targets and manually launch torpedoes. While stationary, the back row can send shell barrages and the player can manually call in airstrikes. These will activate a bullet-clearing effect, removing all projectiles and torpedoes on screen. Players have an auto mode option to give up this control to the game's AI. Characters' health is fully replenished when completing or exiting a map. Morale points are deducted for each fleet character in a battle. Should a character fall in battle, they cannot join in further action on the map and a larger number of morale points are deducted for the fallen character at the end of the battle. Sustained low morale for a character decreases their stats and affection points. Low affection points lead the character to greet the player with vocals reflecting their disappointment.


title: Azur Lane

text: The game features a player versus player mode. The player may prepare a defence fleet and organize an offence fleet to challenge opposing players' defence fleets. In this mode, battles are controlled entirely by AI, and the bullet-clearing effect of airstrikes is disabled. Tokens can be gained and the player's ranking can rise through victory in this mode. Players receive no penalty if they lose a challenge or their defence fleet is defeated by other players. Exclusive characters and other items can be obtained using tokens (which is called Merits). The ranking is refreshed every 15 days.


title: Azur Lane

text: Additional mechanics were introduced after the game's release. Submarine and anti-submarine warfare systems were introduced in May 2018. This included anti-submarine campaign maps, and characters based on German U-boats, and American and Japanese submarines. A ship's cat system was introduced in September 2018. Various cat breeds can be obtained at a cattery. They can be trained to provide buffs when brought along with fleets to battle.


title: Azur Lane

text: The game sports a "Dormitory" feature. Characters in their chibi forms may be put in the furnished Dormitory where they can walk around and sit, sleep, or bathe. Characters may passively gain experience points and recover morale when they are given food by players. Players can purchase food using fuel or in-game currency. Players can also purchase variously themed, and occasionally time-limited, furniture sets and decorations using "furniture coins" obtained by sending characters through special quests. Furniture and decorations raise the rate experience is gained. They can be arranged freely. Players may increase Dormitory character capacity, unlock a second floor which recovers morale, and buy special interactive furniture using the in-game currency. As well, monuments can be awarded by clearing event stages. Players may inspect other players' Dormitories.


title: Azur Lane

text: When a character's affection (which act as another form of levelling in game) points are raised to 100 through battle, secretary, or Dormitory, players may choose to give a "promise ring" to this character. A "promise ring" can be obtained through quests once. Additional rings can be purchased using in-game currency in the items shop. The developers also give out these rings for free during special occasions. Players may also give customized names to these characters but may only do so every 30 days for each character. Furthermore, a few of the most popular characters will also gain unique wedding dress costumes for the wedding. They will also gain additional stat bonuses after being given the promise ring.


title: Azur Lane

text: The start of the game features an anthropomorphic recreation of the Battle of the Denmark Strait, where the personification of famed British battlecruiser HMS "Hood" is sunk by characters representing the German forces. The game features an eponymous military alliance, the "Azur Lane", formed by the nations of Eagle Union (United States), Royal Navy (United Kingdom), Sakura Empire (Empire of Japan) and Iron Blood (Nazi Germany). The alliance split in two because of an alien intervention, with the Iron Blood and Sakura Empire forming the opposing "Crimson Axis" faction. Using technology provided by the aliens called as "Sirens", the Crimson Axis invades the Azur Lane's territories. The rest of the game's main plot partially follows the United States naval engagements in the Pacific War. Chapters represent several decisive battles of the war including the Battle of Midway, the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, and the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign.


title: Azur Lane

text: "Azur Lane"s producer, Yuwan, a well-known uploader to the Chinese video sharing website Bilibili, began developing the game with five of his college friends, with the initial notion of "creating a doujin game, if a commercial one is not possible". Seeing many similar games created in Greater China after "Kantai Collection"s success, the developers aimed to create "something different from previous works of ship moe anthropomorphism". As such, they intentionally avoided using a turn-based strategy game mechanic like that used by "Kantai Collection" and most of its followers. They also shifted the focus on Japanese ships to those from other countries involved in World War II.


title: Azur Lane

text: One particular difficulty was incorporating shoot 'em up elements, as there were no existing works to reference. An early version of the game featured a combat system of a five-character fleet in a single or double column line of battle. "World of Warships", a World War II naval warfare simulation game popular in China, influenced some of the gameplay design.


title: Azur Lane

text: The developers sought to further differentiate the game by featuring characters based on preserved museum ships from earlier times, such as the pre-dreadnought battleship "Mikasa" of World War I, which was served as a flagship during the Russo-Japanese war, and the Russian protected cruiser "Aurora", the ship famed for its October Revolution involvement. Keeping game balance and rarity with these characters was difficult, however, the developers were intent on featuring museum ships, and intend to introduce more characters like this in the future. A series of characters based on proposed or unfinished World War II warships, including "Neptune", "Saint-Louis" and "Ibuki", were introduced as part of a collaboration with Wargaming, publisher of "World of Warships".


title: Azur Lane

text: Many young voice actors, some critically acclaimed, lent their talents to the game. The decision to employ an all-Japanese voice cast with a focus on younger actors was the result of a lack of professional voice actors in China, as well as the team's intention to give younger Japanese actors opportunities to perform. The game's notable voice actors include Yui Ishikawa, Rie Takahashi and Risa Taneda.


title: Azur Lane

text: Shanghai's Manjuu Ltd. provided the audiovisual design and the writing for "Azur Lane". Xiamen's Yongshi Ltd. () was responsible for programming, game data design and content. The companies share joint authorship of the game and share its copyright, with a 65%/35% share of its revenue.


title: Azur Lane

text: The game first launched in China in May 2017, published by Bilibili. Shanghai Yostar published the Japanese version in September that year. XD Global published the South Korean version in March 2018. The English-language version was announced as being in development in June 2018. Open beta began on August 16, 2018. On May 20, 2019, the English version was formally released along with the rollout of the 2019 UI overhaul.


title: Azur Lane

text: Li Hengda, president of Yostar Inc., revealed that although he saw "Azur Lane"s potential, he did not expect the level of popularity the game experienced in Japan. Believing that around 10 people would suffice, Li later admitted his mistake in only having four full-time employees and two interns before the game's release, as they had to work from morning until midnight as the game's popularity grew until the end of 2017. Through "Azur Lane", Yostar established contact with distinguished Japanese enterprises and creators and was met with welcoming responses. Tony Taka, known for his work on the "Shining" series, was delighted to be invited to provide character design for HMS "Centaur" (R06), marking his first work in a mobile game. Jin Haganeya, writer for "Demonbane", agreed to write the script for the game's anime adaptation.


title: Azur Lane

text: Artwork for the Korean release was provided by Korean artist Nardack. In March 2018, XD Global asked her to condemn the Korean radical feminist website Megalia after some players filed complaints accusing her of maintaining relations with the online community. Nardack refused to comply, and her artwork was then removed.


title: Azur Lane

text: A special program featuring voice actress Yui Ishikawa visiting the office of one of developers, Manjuu Ltd., in Shanghai was aired on the Japanese streaming television platform AbemaTV in May 2018. However, misuse during the program of the trademarked term to refer to the game's personified warship characters led to Yostar being publicly warned by DMM.com, publisher of "Kantai Collection". Yostar issued an apology, and called on players of "Azur Lane" to provide alternative terms for the game's personified warship characters. More than a thousand submissions were received. In September 2018, Yostar announced the new term would be "Kinetics Artifactual Navy-Self-regulative En-lore Node", abbreviated as "KAN-SEN" and is the backronym of the Japanese word .


title: Azur Lane

text: A January 2018 collaboration event with Compile Heart introduced protagonists of "Hyperdimension Neptunia" to "Azur Lane". Players may obtain "Neptunia" protagonists with naval elements, as well as their "goddess forms" as separate characters.


title: Azur Lane

text: In April 2018, Yostar and Wargaming Japan announced a collaboration between the game and "World of Warships". "Azur Lane" players may obtain characters based on ships from "World of Warships" through a new interface called "Development Dock", while "World of Warships" players may purchase "Azur Lane" characters as voiced captains, and skins for ships based on design elements of "Azur Lane" namesake characters. In April 2019, the "WoWS" collaboration was further extended by season 2, introducing new characters into both games. In August 2020, the collaboration was once again extended by a 3rd season, introducing a wave of new ships, skins and captains in both games.


title: Azur Lane

text: A collaboration with Sunrise Inc. in May 2018 featured a crossover plotline with the anime "Armored Trooper VOTOMS". The Marshydog mecha from the show was added to "Azur Lane" as a furniture item. A collaboration event with Aquaplus in November 2018 made characters from the visual novel "Utawarerumono" obtainable in "Azur Lane".


title: Azur Lane

text: An April 2019 collaboration with Kizuna AI introduced the virtual YouTuber as 4 different in-game characters.


title: Azur Lane

text: Between 27 November and 10 December 2019, seven Hololive members (Murasaki Shion, Nakiri Ayame, Ookami Mio, Natsuiro Matsuri, Minato Aqua, Shirakami Fubuki and Tokino Sora) became playable characters as part of another collaboration.


title: Azur Lane

text: A November 2021 collaboration with anime television series "SSSS.Gridman" and "SSSS.Dynazenon" saw the introductions of 7 limited-time obtainable characters; Rikka Takarada, Akane Shinjō, Yume Minami, Hass, Namiko, Mujina and Chise Asukagawa.


title: Azur Lane

text: Between 24 November and December 7, 2022, six new limited-time characters were introduced (Kala Ideas, Klaudia Valentz, Patricia Abelheim, Reisalin Stout, Lila Decyrus, and Serri Glaus) as part of the collaboration with two video games from the Atelier franchise developed by Gust Corporation; "" and "Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key" (of which the latter is scheduled for release in Steam by 24 February 2023).


title: Azur Lane

text: Yostar has held illustration contests with Japanese art community Pixiv to promote the game. Winners in a contest held in December 2017 were rewarded with cash and their designs featured on the game's loading screens. Winning designs from a wedding dress illustration contest in July 2018 were also planned to be implemented in the game.


title: Azur Lane

text: Yostar licensed the Japanese company GRSPER to create virtual reality wedding ceremonies with the game's characters in August 2018. The crowdfunding project was cancelled in October 2018 because GRSPER did not meet its funding goal and was having communication difficulties with voice actors and their agencies.


title: Azur Lane

text: In 2022, the game collaborated with Yamaha and its employee-run team, Iwata Racing Family (IRF), to race a YZF-R1 sports motorcycle that appears in-game as Essex's motorcycle at the Suzuka 8 Hours.


title: Azur Lane

text: "Azur Lane" was adapted into several manga and novels. An official yonkoma comic, titled "Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!", is being published in Ichijinsha's magazine "Manga 4-koma Palette". It features the character based on HMS "Javelin" and three of the game's other protagonists. Chapters of "Very Slow Advance!" are regularly posted on the game's Japanese Twitter account as a means of promotion. "Azur Lane Comic Anthology", a comic anthology series currently up to four volumes, is being published by Ichijinsha and sold on Amazon Japan. "Azur Lane Queen's Orders", a manga centering around the characters based on HMS "Queen Elizabeth" and HMS "Warspite", is being published by Ichijinsha in "Comic Rex". "Azur Lane Comic à la Carte", another comic anthology, was published in October 2018.


title: Azur Lane

text: Kodansha published a spin-off light novel featuring the character "Laffey" as protagonist, titled "Starting My Life as a Commander with Laffey", in June 2018. Shueisha published another novelization, "Episode of Belfast", featuring the character based on HMS "Belfast", in June 2018. Overlap, Inc. published the third spin-off light novel featuring the character "Ayanami" as protagonist, titled "Ayanami, Happily Married", in December 2018.


title: Azur Lane

text: "Azur Lane Crosswave", a 3D shooter game for PlayStation 4 was announced in September 2018. "Crosswave" features "Azur Lane" characters battling against realistic warships and warplanes. The game follows a different story with new characters also making their debut. This console adaptation was developed by Felistella using Unreal Engine 4 and was published by Compile Heart on August 29, 2019. An English-language release was published by Idea Factory International in North America and Europe in 2020. The localization features Japanese voice-overs and sold in both digital and retail formats. A Nintendo Switch port of the game was released in Japan on September 17, 2020, and on February 16, 2021, in North America and in Europe on February 19, 2021.


title: Azur Lane

text: An anime television series adaptation was announced in September 2018. The anime was directed by Tensho, director of "Grisaia" and "Rewrite"'s anime adaptations, with writer Jin Haganeya, and Yasunori Nishiki composing the series' music. Tensho's Bibury Animation Studios is animating the series. Yostar head, Li Hengda, revealed that the animation project began in late 2017, when the game experienced its breakout in popularity. The choice of Haganeya to be the writer was due to the "Demonbane" franchise being one of Hengda's personal favorites. The series premiered on October 3, 2019, on Tokyo MX, SUN, KBS, BS11, and AT-X. May'n performed the series' opening theme song "graphite/diamond", while Kano performed the series' ending theme song "Hikari no Michishirube". Episodes 11 and 12 were originally scheduled to air on December 19 and 26, 2019, but were delayed to March 13 and 20, 2020, respectively, due to production issues. Funimation had licensed the series for a SimulDub. Following Sony's acquisition of Crunchyroll, the series was moved to Crunchyroll.


title: Azur Lane

text: An anime adaptation of the "Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!" manga was announced on December 24, 2019. The television series was directed by Masato Jinbo and written by Yū Satō at Yostar Pictures and CANDY BOX, with Hiromitsu Hagiwara designing the characters, and Shade composing the series' music. Yokohama Animation Laboratory is credited for production cooperation. It aired from January 12 to March 30, 2021, on Tokyo MX, BS11, and AT-X. The opening theme song is "Longing for!" performed by Emi Nitta, while the ending theme song is performed by Yui Sakakibara. Crunchyroll licensed the series. An OVA episode is bundle with the second Blu-ray volume, which was released on July 7, 2021.


title: Azur Lane

text: An anime adaptation of the "Azur Lane: Queen's Orders" manga was announced on September 12, 2021, as part of the game's 4th anniversary (and 3rd anniversary in English). It was later revealed to be an OVA on September 10, 2022.


title: Azur Lane

text: A CD featuring character songs sung by their respective voice actors was released in September 2018. A drama CD written by the author of "Starting My Life as a Commander with Laffey" was released on November 28, 2018.


title: Azur Lane

text: "Azur Lane" produces an educational video series hosted on YouTube called "Learning Ships of the World with Mikasa Dai-Senpai" (). Hosted by Mikasa, it highlights the real-life characteristics and histories of ships featured in the franchise. In the event that a featured ship still exists as a museum ship, live-action or documentary-style footage may be included. For example, for one of Belfast's episodes, footage was included of "Azur Lane" management visiting Belfast in the Pool of London in cooperation with Imperial War Museums, which currently operates Belfast as a branch.


title: Azur Lane

text: "Azur Lane" was very popular in its home country, contributing to most of Bilibili's 2018 Q1 revenue along with the Chinese release of "Fate/Grand Order". In Japan, the game enjoyed an overwhelming surge in popularity after its release, despite initial accusations by fans of "Kantai Collection" that it was a clone. After only four months, there were more than five million Japanese players. The first doujin convention dedicated exclusively to the game was held in November 2017. From May 2017 to August 2018, the game has earned US$170 million globally on the iOS AppStore. Chinese players spent $28 million, while Japanese players spent $139 million, accounting for approximately 82% of the game's sales.


title: Azur Lane

text: The game scored within Japan's top five best games of 2017 in a Google Play user vote, as well as a first place in the app section of the Dengeki Online Awards 2017. In September 2018, the game was awarded third place in Game of the Year in the 15th China Animation & Comic Competition.


title: Azur Lane

text: "Azur Lane"s popularity was attributed to its gameplay and game system design which were widely praised. "RPG Site" wrote the game "acts as an important lesson on how a Chinese-made title can gain popularity in Japan by offering originality in its gameplay". "Famitsu" liked how the game depended very little on luck, let players develop their own playstyle, and was easy to pick up and play due to few microtransaction elements. Japanese writer, actor and radio personality Mafia Kajita was impressed by the tight shooter controls. He felt the game systems were streamlined and avoided any nuisances, and believes the all-Japanese voice cast is likely a reason for its popularity.


title: Azur Lane

text: Critics have also compared the game to "Kantai Collection". Hong Kong media outlet HK01 found "Kantai Collection"s complete lack of post-release improvements and overdependence on luck responsible for upsetting its own players, who switched contributing to "Azur Lane"s popularity. Mafia Kajita noted the two games had different focuses: "Kantai Collection" is centred on resource management while "Azur Lane" is a simulation game about dodging danmaku bullets while shooting the enemy. However, Shigetaka Kurita, director of Kadokawa Dwango corporation, criticized "Azur Lane" for lacking the sense of "tragedy and heroism" in "Kantai Collection". Kurita described the game as "merely an idol action game with a fleet motif". He found the greatest appeal of "Kantai Collection" to be the "sorrow of the Imperial Japanese Navy" saying that one might cry while playing "Kantai Collection" but not "Azur Lane".


title: Azur Lane

text: In February 2021, one of the game's voice actresses, Ai Kayano, who made voice lines for "Kaga", "Atago", "Renown", and "Graf Zeppelin", was embroiled in controversy on Chinese social media as a result of her post regarding her February 11 trip to Yasukuni Shrine – a Shinto shrine known for the enshrinement of Japanese men, women, children, and soldiers died in numerous wars involving Japan spanning between the Meiji and Showa eras, including 1,068 souls of convicted war criminals that were sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal; of which 14 of them, including former Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, are labelled as A-Class criminals. In response; amid backlash from some Chinese fans, her voice was removed from these characters, including other variants, from the Chinese servers of Azur Lane and are subsequently replaced in September 2022 by a number of voice actresses for their respective characters (Yuka Iguchi, Saeko Ouki, Ayako Kawatsumi, and Yumi Uchiyama). Similar action was also taken in other games such as removing Kayano's "Platinum" voice dialogues from Arknights, and while Kayano's voice dialogues remained available outside of Arknights' Chinese servers after the incident, her voice lines have since been replaced by Mizuki Kitajima for all servers by a flash update on October 24, 2021.


title: Azur Lane

text: On February 24, 2022, due to unknown reasons, the comment sections of all Northern Parliament ships were removed from their respective sections. The game's event called "Abyssal Refrain", which involves Soviet ships like the one called , premiered on the same day that Russia began its invasion to Ukraine. On September 22, 2022, the comments section for all Northern Parliament ships has re-opened, as with the rollout of the new comment reporting feature that same day.


title: Solar flare

text: A solar flare is an intense localized eruption of electromagnetic radiation in the Sun's atmosphere. Flares occur in active regions and are often, but not always, accompanied by coronal mass ejections, solar particle events, and other solar phenomena. The occurrence of solar flares varies with the 11-year solar cycle.


title: Solar flare

text: Solar flares are thought to occur when stored magnetic energy in the Sun's atmosphere accelerates charged particles in the surrounding plasma. This results in the emission of electromagnetic radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum.


title: Solar flare

text: High-energy electromagnetic radiation from solar flares is absorbed by the daylight side of Earth's upper atmosphere, in particular the ionosphere, and does not reach the surface. This absorption can temporarily increase the ionization of the ionosphere which may interfere with short-wave radio communication. The prediction of solar flares is an active area of research.


title: Solar flare

text: Solar flares affect all layers of the solar atmosphere (photosphere, chromosphere, and corona). The plasma medium is heated to tens of millions of kelvins, while electrons, protons, and heavier ions are accelerated to near the speed of light. Flares produce electromagnetic radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum at all wavelengths, from radio waves to gamma rays. Most of the energy is spread over frequencies outside the visual range; the majority of the flares are not visible to the naked eye and must be observed with special instruments. Flares occur in active regions often around sunspots, where intense magnetic fields penetrate the photosphere to link the corona to the solar interior. Flares are powered by the sudden (timescales of minutes to tens of minutes) release of magnetic energy stored in the corona. The same energy releases may produce coronal mass ejections (CMEs), although the relationship between CMEs and flares is still not well understood.


title: Solar flare

text: Solar flares occur in a power-law spectrum of magnitudes; an energy release of typically 10 joules of energy suffices to produce a clearly observable event, while a major event can emit up to 10 joules.


title: Solar flare

text: Associated with solar flares are flare sprays. They involve faster ejections of material than eruptive prominences, and reach velocities of 20 to 2000 kilometers per second.


title: Solar flare

text: The frequency of occurrence of solar flares varies with the 11-year solar cycle. It can range from several per day during solar maximum to less than one every week during solar minimum. Additionally, more powerful flares are less frequent than weaker ones. For example, X10-class (severe) flares occur on average about eight times per cycle, whereas M1-class (minor) flares occur on average about 2000 times per cycle.


title: Solar flare

text: Erich Rieger discovered with coworkers in 1984 an approximately 154 day period in the occurrence of gamma-ray emitting solar flares at least since the solar cycle 19. The period has since been confirmed in most heliophysics data and the interplanetary magnetic field and is commonly known as the "Rieger period". The period's resonance harmonics also have been reported from most data types in the heliosphere.


title: Solar flare

text: The duration of a solar flare depends heavily on the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation used in its calculation. This is due to different wavelengths being emitted through different processes and at different heights in the Sun's atmosphere.


title: Solar flare

text: A common measure of flare duration is the full width at half maximum (FWHM) time of soft X-ray flux within the wavelength bands measured by the GOES spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit. The FWHM time spans from when a flare's flux first reaches halfway between its maximum flux and the background flux and when it again reaches this value as the flare decays. Using this measure, the duration of a flare ranges from approximately tens of seconds to several hours with a median duration of approximately 6 and 11 minutes in the 0.05 to 0.4 and 0.1 to 0.8 nanometre bands, respectively.


title: Solar flare

text: Solar flares lasting longer than approximately 30 minutes are regarded as long duration events (LDE).


title: Solar flare

text: After the eruption of a solar flare, post-eruption loops made up of hot plasma begin to form across the neutral line separating regions of opposite magnetic polarity near the flare's source. These loops extend from the photosphere up into the corona and form along the neutral line at increasingly greater distances from the source as time progresses. The existence of these hot loops is thought to be continued by prolonged heating present after the eruption and during the flare's decay stage.


title: Solar flare

text: In sufficiently powerful flares, typically of C-class or higher, the loops may combine to form an elongated arch-like structure known as a post-eruption arcade. These structures may last anywhere from multiple hours to multiple days after the initial flare. In some cases, dark sunward-traveling plasma voids known as supra-arcade downflows may form above these arcades.


title: Solar flare

text: Flares occur when accelerated charged particles, mainly electrons, interact with the plasma medium. Evidence suggests that the phenomenon of magnetic reconnection leads to this extreme acceleration of charged particles.


title: Solar flare

text: On the Sun, magnetic reconnection may happen on solar arcades – a series of closely occurring loops following magnetic lines of force. These lines of force quickly reconnect into a lower arcade of loops leaving a helix of magnetic field unconnected to the rest of the arcade. The sudden release of energy in this reconnection is the origin of the particle acceleration. The unconnected magnetic helical field and the material that it contains may violently expand outwards forming a coronal mass ejection. This also explains why solar flares typically erupt from active regions on the Sun where magnetic fields are much stronger.


title: Solar flare

text: Although there is a general agreement on the source of a flare's energy, the mechanisms involved are still not well understood. It's not clear how the magnetic energy is transformed into the kinetic energy of the particles, nor is it known how some particles can be accelerated to the GeV range (10 electron volt) and beyond. There are also some inconsistencies regarding the total number of accelerated particles, which sometimes seems to be greater than the total number in the coronal loop. Scientists are unable to forecast flares.


title: Solar flare

text: The modern classification system for solar flares uses the letters A, B, C, M, or X, according to the peak flux in watts per square metre (W/m) of soft X-rays with wavelengths , as measured by the GOES spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit.


title: Solar flare

text: The strength of an event within a class is noted by a numerical suffix ranging from 1 up to, but excluding, 10, which is also the factor for that event within the class. Hence, an X2 flare is twice the strength of an X1 flare, an X3 flare is three times as powerful as an X1, and only 50% more powerful than an X2. An X2 is four times more powerful than an M5 flare. X-class flares with a peak flux that exceeds 10 W/m may be noted with a numerical suffix equal to or greater than 10.


title: Solar flare

text: This system was originally devised in 1970 and included only the letters C, M, and X. These letters were chosen to avoid confusion with other optical classification systems. The A and B classes would later be added in the 1990s as instruments became more sensitive to weaker flares. Around the same time, the backronym "moderate" for M-class flares and "extreme" for X-class flares began to be used.


title: Solar flare

text: An earlier flare classification was based on H-alpha spectral observations. The scheme uses both the intensity and emitting surface. The classification in intensity is qualitative, referring to the flares as: faint (f), normal (n) or brilliant (b). The emitting surface is measured in terms of "millionths" of the hemisphere and is described below. (The total hemisphere area "A" = 15.5 × 10 km.)


title: Solar flare

text: A flare then is classified taking S or a number that represents its size and a letter that represents its peak intensity, v.g.: Sn is a "normal sunflare".


title: Solar flare

text: X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation emitted by solar flares are absorbed by the daylight side of Earth's atmosphere and do not reach the Earth's surface. Therefore, solar flares pose no direct danger to humans on Earth. However, this absorption of high-energy electromagnetic radiation can temporarily increase the ionization of the upper atmosphere, which can interfere with short-wave radio communication, and can temporarily heat and expand the Earth's outer atmosphere. This expansion can increase drag on satellites in low Earth orbit, which can lead to orbital decay over time.


title: Solar flare

text: The temporary increase in ionization of the daylight side of Earth's atmosphere, in particular the D layer of the ionosphere, can interfere with short-wave radio communications that rely on its level of ionization for skywave propagation. Skywave, or skip, refers to the propagation of radio waves reflected or refracted off of the ionized ionosphere. When ionization is higher than normal, radio waves get degraded or completely absorbed by losing energy from the more frequent collisions with free electrons.


title: Solar flare

text: The level of ionization of the atmosphere correlates with the strength of the associated solar flare in soft X-ray radiation. The NOAA classifies radio blackouts by the peak soft X-ray intensity of the associated flare.


title: Solar flare

text: The increased ionization of the D and E layers of the ionosphere caused by large solar flares increases the electrical conductivity of these layers allowing for the flow of electric currents. These ionospheric currents induce a magnetic field which can be measured by ground-based magnetometers. This phenomenon is known as a magnetic crochet or solar flare effect (SFE). The former name derives from its appearance on magnetometers resembling a crochet hook. These disturbances are relatively minor compared to those induced by geomagnetic storms.


title: Solar flare

text: For astronauts in space, an expected radiation dose from the electromagnetic radiation emitted during a solar flare is about 0.05 gray, which is not immediately lethal on its own. Of much more concern for astronauts is the particle radiation associated with solar particle events.


title: Solar flare

text: Flares produce radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, although with different intensity. They are not very intense in visible light, but they can be very bright at particular spectral lines. They normally produce bremsstrahlung in X-rays and synchrotron radiation in radio.


title: Solar flare

text: Solar flares were first observed by Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson independently on 1 September 1859 by projecting the image of the solar disk produced by an optical telescope through a broad-band filter. It was an extraordinarily intense "white light flare", a flare emitting a high amount of light in the visual spectrum.


title: Solar flare

text: Since flares produce copious amounts of radiation at H-alpha, adding a narrow (≈1 Å) passband filter centered at this wavelength to the optical telescope allows the observation of not very bright flares with small telescopes. For years Hα was the main, if not the only, source of information about solar flares. Other passband filters are also used.


title: Solar flare

text: During World War II, on February 25 and 26, 1942, British radar operators observed radiation that Stanley Hey interpreted as solar emission. Their discovery did not go public until the end of the conflict. The same year Southworth also observed the Sun in radio, but as with Hey, his observations were only known after 1945. In 1943 Grote Reber was the first to report radioastronomical observations of the Sun at 160 MHz. The fast development of radioastronomy revealed new peculiarities of the solar activity like "storms" and "bursts" related to the flares. Today ground-based radiotelescopes observe the Sun from c. 15 MHz up to 400 GHz.


title: Solar flare

text: Because the Earth's atmosphere absorbs much of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the Sun with wavelengths shorter than 300 nm, space-based telescopes allowed for the observation of solar flares in previously unobserved high-energy spectral lines. Since the 1970s, the GOES series of satellites have been continuously observing the Sun in soft X-rays, and their observations have become the standard measure of flares, diminishing the importance of the H-alpha classification. Additionally, space-based telescopes allow for the observation of extremely long wavelengths—as long as a few kilometres—which cannot propagate through the ionosphere.


title: Solar flare

text: The most powerful flare ever observed is thought to be the flare associated with the 1859 Carrington Event. While no soft X-ray measurements were made at the time, the magnetic crochet associated with the flare was recorded by ground-based magnetometers allowing the flare's strength to be estimated after the event. Using these magnetometer readings, its soft X-ray class has been estimated to be greater than X10. The soft X-ray class of the flare has also been estimated to be around X50.


title: Solar flare

text: In modern times, the largest solar flare measured with instruments occurred on 4 November 2003. This event saturated the GOES detectors, and because of this its classification is only approximate. Initially, extrapolating the GOES curve, it was estimated to be X28. Later analysis of the ionospheric effects suggested increasing this estimate to X45. This event produced the first clear evidence of a new spectral component above 100 GHz.


title: Solar flare

text: Other large solar flares also occurred on 2 April 2001 (X20+), 28 October 2003 (X17.2+ and 10), 7 September 2005 (X17), 9 August 2011 (X6.9), 7 March 2012 (X5.4), and 6 September 2017 (X9.3).


title: Solar flare

text: Current methods of flare prediction are problematic, and there is no certain indication that an active region on the Sun will produce a flare. However, many properties of sunspots and active regions correlate with flaring. For example, magnetically complex regions (based on line-of-sight magnetic field) called delta spots produce the largest flares. A simple scheme of sunspot classification due to McIntosh, or related to fractal complexity is commonly used as a starting point for flare prediction. Predictions are usually stated in terms of probabilities for occurrence of flares above M- or X-class within 24 or 48 hours. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issues forecasts of this kind.


title: Solar flare

text: Analysis Group at Johnson Space Flight Center (NASA/SRAG) for forecasting M- and X-class flares, CMEs, fast


title: Solar flare

text: A physics-based method that can predict imminent large solar flares was proposed by Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research (ISEE), Nagoya University.


title: Solar flare

text: They are also a popular doomsday scenario in disaster films, where their effects on Earth are often greatly exaggerated.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: The Mitsubishi Mirage is a range of cars produced by the Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi from 1978 until 2003 and again since 2012. The hatchback models produced between 1978 and 2003 were classified as subcompact cars, while the sedan and station wagon models, marketed prominently as the Mitsubishi Lancer, were the compact offerings. The liftback introduced in 1988 complemented the sedan as an additional compact offering, and the coupé of 1991 fitted in with the subcompact range. The current Mirage model is a city car hatchback and sedan and it replaces the Mitsubishi Colt sold between 2002 and 2012.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: The Mirage has a complicated marketing history, with a varied and much convoluted naming convention that differed substantially depending on the market. Mitsubishi used the Mirage name for all five generations in Japan, with all but the first series badged as such in the United States. However, other markets often utilized the name Mitsubishi Colt and sedan variants of the Mirage have been widely sold as the Mitsubishi Lancer—including in Japan where the two retailed alongside one another. In Japan, the Mirage was sold at a specific retail chain called "Car Plaza".


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: In the United States and Canada, the first four generations were sold through a venture with Chrysler as the Dodge Colt and the similar Plymouth-badged Champ and Colt. Later, the venture brought the Eagle Vista and Summit branded models which sold alongside the aforementioned. Confusingly, Chrysler has also offered an unrelated Dodge Lancer at various stages between the 1950s and 1980s. However, when DaimlerChrysler briefly controlled Mitsubishi through the DaimlerChrysler-Mitsubishi alliance from 2000 through to 2004, the license to the "Lancer" name was relinquished to Mitsubishi for usage in North America. Thus, after the fifth and final generation Mirage, replacement models in North America have adopted the new name.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Mitsubishi introduced replacements for the fifth series of Mirage, starting in 2000 with a new generation of Lancer—now larger, having moved up to the compact segment. Then in 2002, a subcompact five-door hatchback badged Colt globally became available. By 2003, the Mirage and its derivatives had been completely phased out of mainstream Japanese production. For the 2002-era Colt's replacement in 2012, Mitsubishi decided to resurrect the Mirage name internationally for a new sixth generation model.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: With the rising popularity of boxy subcompact SUVs in Japan, the Mirage nameplate was used on a domestic market-only model called the Mirage Dingo, from 1999. The Dingo was facelifted in 2001 and canceled in 2003. However, New Zealand sold a very different Mirage from 2002—a rebadged Dutch-manufactured Mitsubishi Space Star labeled Mirage Space Star. This vehicle was not very popular and was discontinued in 2003.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Mitsubishi launched the Mirage as a front-wheel drive three-door hatchback in March 1978, as a response to the 1973 oil crisis. A five-door hatchback on a longer wheelbase arrived in September. Since most overseas markets did not have the Minica kei car, the Mirage was usually sold as Mitsubishi's entry-level model. Chassis codes were from A151 to 153 for the three-doors, with A155 and up used for the longer five-door version.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Mirage featured four-wheel independent suspension, rack and pinion steering, plus front disc brakes. Power initially came from 1,244 and 1410 cc iterations of the familiar "Orion" engine, putting out , respectively. Of particular note, the 1410 cc variant featured "modulated displacement"—a system that could shut down cylinders under cruising or idle conditions to reduce fuel consumption. Mitsubishi added the moderately more powerful 1.6-liter "Saturn" engine to the range in March 1979, for the 1600 GT model.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: The Mirage also debuted Mitsubishi's "Super Shift" transmission, a four-speed manual with a second lever for "low" and "high" range; effectively making the transmission an eight-speed unit. The "Super Shift" was not originally planned. However, Mitsubishi engineers had to make use of the existing "Orion" engine designed for rear-wheel drive applications making use of the longitudinal engine orientation. In the Mirage, sizing constraints as a result of the front-wheel drive layout required the engine to be mounted transversely, thus causing the carburetor to face forwards and run into icing issues. However, the primary implication of the Mirage's powertrain orientation — and the issue that demanded the unconventional transmission — was the mounting of the transmission beneath the engine. This required the gearbox to take power down from the clutch, an action not possible directly as this would have dictated that the gearbox rotate in the opposite direction to that required. To overcome this, the use of an extra "idle" transfer shaft was necessitated. It was subsequently realized that for a cost no more than developing a new five-speed transmission, this shaft could be modified as a separate two-speed gearbox controlled by a secondary shift lever mounted alongside the main lever inside the cabin. The ratios on this transfer transmission were, in effect, "underdrives"—consequently marked on the second shift lever as a "power" mode due to increased performance granted by the lower gearing. In contrast, the higher overdrive setting was noted as "economy". Mitsubishi called this a unique selling proposition.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: In February 1982, Mitsubishi facelifted the Mirage range. Distinguished by the installation of flusher fitting headlamps that extended into the fender panels, stylists also designed a new grille insert. The tail lights were larger, new firmer engine and transmission mounts were fitted, and a new, lighter and more rigid transmission case was developed. The dashboard was also updated, with rotating "satellite" buttons mounted within fingertip reach for light and wiper functions. Another new version for the Japanese market was the 1600SX, a well-equipped five-door automatic fitted with the 1600GT's 88-PS engine.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: At the same time as this facelift, Mitsubishi introduced a four-door sedan variant to Japan under the names Mirage Saloon and Lancer Fiore, which is not to be confused with the unrelated regular Lancer. The Fiore was often abbreviated to Lancer or Lancer F in international markets, eschewing the "Fiore" suffix. The sedan's backseat folded in a 60/40 split, just as for the hatchback. With Mirage hatchback and sedan sales in Japan restricted to the "Car Plaza" dealerships, the Fiore was intended to duplicate the Mirage's success at the "Galant Shop" — Mitsubishi's second retail sales channel. Lancer Fiore received the same 1.2- and 1.4-liter engines, and as a Mirage-derived model line, was substantially smaller than the strict Lancer. Apart from the wider axle track dictated by the switch to front-wheel drive, the original 1973-era Lancer offered a similar dimensional footprint. Unique to the four-door saloons was Mitsubishi's new "Modulated Displacement" (MD) engine, a short-lived technology which allowed the engine to run on only two cylinders while under light loads so as to save on petrol.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: A more sporting turbocharged version of the 1.4-liter engine was made available in Japan from the time of the facelift as the 1400 GT Turbo, originally only in the three-door hatchback. To handle the additional power, the suspension was made firmer, the brake servo was upgraded, and the driveshaft was changed to an equal-length design featuring a central bearing. The small turbocharger, of Mitsubishi's own manufacture, unusually sat between the intake and the twin-barrel carburetor. The engine was equipped with a knock sensor, enabling it to run on petrols of various octane ratings. The compression ratio was also unusual, fairly high for its time at 8.7 to 1. The Turbo also used the twin-range Super Shift transmission. In Japan, the Turbo was also available with the five-door hatchback bodywork, a version that was rarely exported (if at all). Japanese buyers could also opt for the new turbocharged Lancer Fiore/Mirage Saloon 1400GT; all three of these turbo versions arrived in August 1982. Mitsubishi distinguished the 1400GT with a hood mounted air intake, unique interior, uprated suspension and brakes, and the equalization of the drive shaft lengths to reduce torque steering.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: In October 1982, the 1200EX Special (hatchbacks) and 1200EL Special (saloons) were launched in Japan; these were well equipped low-cost versions with heated rear windshields and other extras. The 1400MD Super and Marie limited editions were launched in December 1982. Japanese manufacture of all body variants ended in October 1983.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Chrysler imported this generation of Mirage to the North America as the Dodge Colt and Plymouth Champ from late-1978 for the 1979 model year, in three-door form only until the 1982 model year when the five-door was added. Then from the 1983 model year, Plymouth retired the Champ and adopted the name Colt as well. 0-60 time was over 12 seconds, and the top speed was 90 MPH. The Mirage Turbo was sold as the Plymouth Colt GTS Turbo, only as a two-door hatchback and fitted with a fuel-injected 1.6-litre 4G32T engine which reappeared in the next-generation Colt.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: The facelifted model was also manufactured as the Colt by Mitsubishi Motors Australia at their Clovelly Park, South Australia plant from 1982 to late 1989, with sufficient inventory stockpiled not exhausting until 1990. Initially offered with the 1.4- and 1.6-liter engines in five-door hatchback form, the sedan was produced from 1984.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Australian Colts were given model codes RA (from November 1980), RB (October 1982), RC (April 1984), RD (October 1986), and RE (September 1988). The RE update was distinguished by revised wheel covers, body side projection mouldings, and grille, plus the addition of body colour bumpers. The SE model was dropped, with the range opening up with the fleet-focused XL hatchback with the 1.4-litre engine and a four-speed manual gearbox, stepping up to the 1.6-litre, GLX hatchback and sedan with five-speed manual or optional three-speed automatic.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: This model was also briefly exported to New Zealand in the late 1980s, where it shared showroom space with the locally assembled third generation models. Previously, local complete knock down (CKD) assembly of the Colt took place in Petone, Wellington under contract through Todd Motor Corporation (the NZ, Mitsubishi assembly franchise holders), including a variant called the Mirage Panther. The four-door saloon version (known elsewhere as Lancer Fiore) was sold as the "Mirage Geneva" in New Zealand.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Many export markets, such as Europe and Australia received the Mirage under the Colt name. In the United Kingdom, where Colt was the marque itself, it was called the Colt 1200 and Colt 1400, after the engine displacements. In most of Europe, it was sold as the Mitsubishi Colt. The Lancer Fiore (sometimes called Lancer F) arrived in early 1983, which is also when the facelift appeared in Europe. European market models usually have the 1200 or the 1400 engine, with on tap. Max power was reached at 5000 rather than 5500 rpm for the Japanese market models, and they were fitted with somewhat gentler cams for a less peaky power delivery. Some European markets also received the Turbo model, which arrived in late 1982. After the introduction of the second generation Mirage/Colt, the original model remained available in Belgium (at least) as the "Mitsubishi Magnum", only offered as a three-door with the smallest engine and bare-bones equipment.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Mitsubishi launched the second generation Mirage to Japan in 1983, again splitting the range into Mirage (three- and five-door hatchback, plus four-door sedan) and Lancer Fiore (four-door sedan) models. A station wagon version of the Mirage was added in 1985, with a four-wheel drive wagon available from the fall of 1986 with the 1.8-liter gasoline engine. Many export markets sold the hatchbacks as Mirage or Colt, with the sedan and wagon commonly badged Lancer. This wagon model went on to become very popular in both the commercial and private sectors overseas as well as in Japan. C10-series chassis numbers denote front-wheel-drive models, while C30-series numbers are for four-wheel-drive versions (only station wagons).


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Uprated engines were deployed into the series; 1.3- and 1.5-liter "Orion" gasoline engines replaced the previous 1.2- and 1.4-liter "Orion" units. Mitsubishi also released variants fitted with the 1.6 and 1.8-liter "Sirius" gasoline powerplants, and for the first time a 1.8-liter "Sirius" diesel was added. The 1.6-liter "Sirius" engine also included a turbocharged variant with between and , featuring the latest in computer control engine technology including electronic fuel injection. Power differed for cars with catalyzers, or for markets with lower octane fuel. Some European markets received a smaller 1.2-liter "tax special" as well, with .


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: The car received a very mild facelift in early 1986, along with some new engine options for the Japanese domestic market. This included a fuel-injected version of a new 1.5-liter engine from the Saturn family, the G31B. The transmissions were updated at the same time. The second generation Mirage hatchback was replaced in October 1987; the sedans were replaced in January 1988.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: The Wagon and Van versions were kept in production with some minor updates until 1991, as there was no station wagon of the third generation Mirage and Lancer. The diesel engine remained the 1.8-liter 4D65 (also available with four-wheel drive) while the petrol 4G13 and 4G15 were updated with the same new twelve-valve heads as were used on the third generation Mirage beginning in 1989. Power outputs climbed by 12 horsepower for both petrol versions, to in Japanese trim.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: The Mirage was available in Europe as the Colt in 1200 L, EL, and GL trims (mostly three-door models only, but a five-door GL was sold in some markets), as the 1300 GL three- and five-door, 1500 GLX three- and five-door, and as the 1800 L/EL/GL (diesel) three- or five-door. The Lancer sedan was available in the same trim levels as the hatchback model (including the 1200 engine), while the wagon versions were available as 1500 GLX and 1800 GL diesel only. The three-door Colt Turbo was also sold in Europe, with the 1.6-liter ECI engine. The Colt Turbo fared badly in competition with its European GTi-class competitors, with period testers criticizing Mitsubishi for not doing much more than adding a turbocharger, spoilers, and fat tires. It was not a thorough engineering job and the car was not able to fully handle the ample power made available.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: The Mirage was not sold in the United States by Mitsubishi until the 1985 model year. Mitsubishi licensed the "Mirage" name from Grand Touring Cars, Inc. of Scottsdale, Arizona for use in the United States, as they already owned the rights to the name with the Mirage race car series. While Dodge/Plymouth Colt-branded models were available with four-door sedan bodywork as well as a short-lived five-door hatchback - from model year 1988 also a station wagon - Mitsubishi originally marketed the Mirage only as a three-door hatch through its own American dealers despite the five-door model having repeatedly been rejected by Chrysler's marketing organization in favor of the Dodge Omni. The 1985 Mirage's equipment levels were Base, L, LS, and Turbo, with prices set a few hundred dollars beneath those of its Dodge/Plymouth equivalents. The well-equipped LS model was dropped after the first model year, and in 1987 a four-door sedan was added to the lineup. For 1988, only the Turbo Sport hatchback and naturally aspirated standard 4-door sedan remained in price listings, as the new Mitsubishi Precis supplanted the basic hatchback Mirage. As with the Colts sold by Chrysler, the turbo gained a few horsepower for a total of .


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: A commercial version of the wagon was sold in New Zealand as the Mitsubishi Express, replacing an earlier model based on the Galant Sigma. The second generation Mirage range was also assembled in New Zealand, but was never sold in Australia, where the original version was kept in production until the third generation replaced it in 1988.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Mitsubishi in Thailand released the three-door hatchback and four-door sedan models with 1.3- and 1.5-liter engine as the Mitsubishi Champ in 1983. Later the series was renamed Mitsubishi Champ II and Champ III, with the hatchback and 1.5-liter versions discontinued. The Champ was retired in 1994.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Mitsubishi introduced the more rounded, third-generation Mirage to Japan in October 1987. Masaru Furukawa headed the vehicle design, with Yasukichi Akamatsu given the role of chief engineer. The basic model, a three-door hatchback with upright tailgate and large glasshouse arrived first. The sedan, released to Japan in January 1988 was stylistically distinct with almost vertical rear glass, influenced by the larger Galant. The range was complemented by a five-door liftback in June 1988, but without a station wagon variant, Mitsubishi persevered with the previous model until the release of a new wagon on the fourth generation chassis. As before, Mirage, Colt, and Lancer naming varied between markets with different body shapes often having different titles in the same market. In Japan, sedans were available with the Mirage and Lancer nameplates, while the three-door was sold only as Mirage, and the liftback only as Lancer. Japanese Mirage sedans usually featured the "Vie Saloon" suffix.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Engines available were 1.3- and 1.5-liter "Orion" gasoline inline-fours and 1.8-liter "Saturn" gasoline inline-four. For Greece only, a 1.2-liter version of "Orion" engine available in the entry-level models outputted . The 1.8-liter "Sirius" diesel carried over from the previous shape. In Japan, four-wheel-drive versions were also available, fitted with the carbureted 1.5 and fuel-injected 1.6-liter gasoline engines, or 1.8-liter diesel. The top Mirages in Japan were called the "Cyborg", featuring the turbocharged 1.6-liter motor developing — the same unit as fitted to the GSR sedan.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: The third generation received a minor facelift in September 1989, with late models receiving the same modernized engines as were seen in the subsequent generation. In its most potent turbocharged variant, the new 4G61 engine produced at 6000 rpm.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: European versions were available as the 1300 GL, 1500 GLX, 1600 GTi-16V, and 1800 diesels, with the three-door labelled Colt and the sedan and liftback called Lancer. Mitsubishi retailed a Colt "van" in select European markets, being the three-door body without rear side windows and therefore attracting reduced taxation in these jurisdictions. In March 1990, the , catalyzed 1600 GTi-16V was replaced by a 1.8-liter version with . A few months later, this version also became available with a non-catalyzed engine for those European markets that still eschewed emissions controls. The next generation Lancer did not include a five-door hatchback; since this was a popular bodystyle in Europe Mitsubishi kept offering this model until mid-1994. Beginning in June 1992, the higher line models were fitted with the new 1.6 and 1.8-litre engines from the 4G9 engine family; a version of the 12-valve 1.3 was also on offer.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Since first generation Mirages were still under Australian production as the Colt, all three third generation body types were sold under the Lancer name in that market. Initially, the Australian-specification models were designated as the "CA" series when introduced in 1988, adopting the "CB" designation for the 1990 facelift. The liftback continued to be sold in Australia alongside the fourth generation ("CC") Mirage-derived Lancer from 1992 through to 1996. Confusingly, the carry-over liftback was also given this "CC" model designation.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: North American three-door and sedan sales occurred under the Mitsubishi Mirage name for the 1989 to 1992 model years. Badge engineered variants were also sold in the US as the Dodge/Plymouth Colt (three-door only), and Eagle Summit. In Canada, a Dodge/Plymouth sedan was also offered as the Mitsubishi brand did not operate in the market until the 2003 model year. For the Mitsubishi-badged versions, the top hatchback carried a 1.6-liter "4G61T" turbocharged inline-four engine rated as . For the 1991 model year, the 1.5-liter "4G15" engine's new twelve valve heads (three valves per cylinder) boosted power from , and a new GS sedan offered the 1.6-liter "4G61" with and a standard four-speed automatic transmission.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: In October 1991, the fourth generation Mirage made its debut for the Japanese market alongside the related Lancer. Departing from the previous series, the new Mirage adopted a much rounder body shape — a change duplicated by much of the automotive industry in the early-1990s. As before, the Japanese Mirage lineup comprised the three-door hatchback (now called Mirage Cyborg) and sedan (now with a six-window glasshouse), plus a new coupé body type suffixed Asti. Lancer variants sold in Japan offered unique body variants — a four-windowed sedan and, from May 1992, a station wagon simply named Mitsubishi Libero. This model was sold as the Lancer Wagon in most export markets, where its introduction coincided with a small update for 1993, featuring new bumpers and adjustments to the engine lineup. The Lancer wagon was sold until 2003 in the Australian and New Zealand markets, primarily for fleet buyers. The wagon was still listed on a dealer website until 2012 in Belize.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Unlike prior generations, the Japanese market Lancer range co-existed with greater differentiation when compared to the Mirage. The Mirage with its sportier appearance and tapered hood, featured elliptical headlamps with a very narrow single-port grille. Lancer variants diverged with more angular styling characterized by the more upright design. The Lancer also featured re-shaped fenders, less rounded headlamps, and a larger dual-port grille. Although both were built on the same platform, the Japanese-specification Lancer sedan received different sheet metal than the Mirage equivalent. More traditional in silhouette, the Lancer sedan (suffixed Vie Saloon) featured a simple four-window glasshouse, whereas the Mirage sedan adopted a more modern six-window glasshouse with abbreviated trunk.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Naming of the various models for export was many and varied. As a Mitsubishi, the three-door was restricted to the Mirage and Colt names, but the Mirage Asti coupé was often badged Lancer as well. With the sedan, export markets only retailed the four-window variation as a Mitsubishi, although this occurred under both the Lancer and Mirage names.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Mitsubishi's powertrain choices were vast with this new platform. Front-wheel drive was most common, with all-wheel drive available for some models. Engines ranged from 1.3- to 1.8-liter naturally-aspirated gasoline inline-fours, 1.8 and 2.0-liter turbocharged versions of the same, plus 1.8 and 2.0-liter diesels. Notably, a gasoline V6 engine variant displacing just 1.6-liters was also offered, making it the smallest ever mass-produced V6.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Many performance models were offered in this generation. The entry level model is powered with 1.6-liter DOHC inline-four engine producing was sold as "Mirage R, RS, Super R, Cyborg or Cyborg R" and "Lancer MR" in Japan. For export model, the car was badged as " Colt or Lancer GTi", powered with 1.8-liter DOHC naturally aspirated engine rated at . The 1.8-liter turbocharged inline-four, producing , was sold as a "Lancer GSR or RS" and from September 1993, formed the basis of the Lancer Evolution I that used the 2.0-liter "4G63" engine from the successful Galant VR-4 rally car. An electric version of the wagon was released to Japan named the "Lancer Libero EV" and utilizing a nickel–cadmium battery.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Australian market versions of this generation were released in late 1992 and were officially referred to as the "CC" series Lancer. Buyers had the choice of the Lancer coupé (available in GL and GLXi equipment levels), sedan (GL, Executive, and GSR), and wagon (Executive). Five-speed manual transmission came fitted as standard, with all variants except the GSR available with automatic—three gears for the base coupé and sedan—and a four-speed unit for the remainder of the lineup. The GL coupé and sedan featured the 1.5-liter carbureted motor, with the 1.8-liter fuel-injected engine reserved for the rest of the series. All engines except in the GSR are single overhead camshaft design; the GSR featured double overhead camshafts, plus a turbocharger and intercooler.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: This model launched in the United States for the 1993 model year as the Mirage, with all variants now sourced from Japan (instead of Japan or Illinois as previously). The same body shapes were also sold as the Dodge and Plymouth Colt in both the United States and Canada. The six-window greenhouse sedan was sold in these countries as the Eagle Summit alongside a coupé of the same name. For the Mitsubishi branded versions sold only in the United States, the coupé and four-window sedan were offered in base, S, ES and LS trim levels. Five-speed manual transmission was standard, although an automatic was optional on all Mirages except the S coupé. Mitsubishi kept the preceding generation's base 1.5-liter "4G15" engine with , but fitted the ES and LS sedans with the new 1.8-liter "4G93" engine rated at . For the 1994 model year, Mitsubishi introduced a driver's airbag, the LS sedan lost its optional anti-lock brakes, and the LS coupé gained the 1.8-liter engine previously exclusive to sedans. The 1994 model year was the last year of retail sales for Mirage sedans (which became limited to fleets) and for the Dodge and Plymouth Colts altogether, although the Eagle Summit sedan and coupé remained on sale alongside the Mirage coupé through to 1996. As a consequence, only S and LS Mirage coupés returned for model year 1995, and both benefitted from a new passenger's side airbag and covered center console (and therefore the deletion of the motorized front seatbelts). The 1995 Mirage LS coupé gained uprated 14-inch wheels, but deleted access to power windows, power door locks, and cruise control.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: Mitsubishi granted Proton in Malaysia a license to the fourth generation design from 1993 — it remained in produced in a distant form until 2010. The first variant produced, the sedan was badged Proton Wira (1993–2007) and was complemented by a Proton-designed five-door Wira hatchback (1993–2004). Malaysian manufacture of other variants commenced later, with the three-door Satria (1994–2005) and Putra coupé (1996–2000; and 2004–2005). Proton then developed a coupé utility variant which came to fruition in 2002 as the Arena, lasting until 2010.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: The release of the fifth generation Mirage to Japan in October 1995 introduced a rationalized lineup as a result of the fragile post-bubble economy in Japan. Three body types were issued: first, the three-door hatchback and sedan, then in December 1995, the two-door coupé (Asti). While the sedan grew slightly in size, the coupé shrunk modestly. It was bumped from the subcompact class to compact in the United States. Whereas the previous Mirage sedan sold in Japan featured a six-window profile, the 1995 redesign shared its styling with the Lancer except for minor differences in trim.


title: Mitsubishi Mirage

text: For the Lancer, these included a different trunk lid, amber front turn signal lamps, and a restyled grille garnish. No station wagon of this generation was offered, although the previous generation wagon continued over the entire fifth generation production run. While only the sedan formed part of the Lancer range in Japan, both the coupé and sedan were labeled as Mirage and Lancer in export markets. Between 1995 and 2004, the Mitsubishi Carisma supplanted the sedan in some European markets.