I don't think it's just that Yamato 'outspeeds' Repulse, though. The historical Vampire was a WWI survivor, while the historical Yukikaze was built in 1942, and about a thousand tons heavier.

Also, Yamato refers to Yukikaze as a 'destroyer leader', so I suspect that she was already riding the top end of non-MM-grade capability and needed a lot less to put her over the limit.

Which leads to much less bizzare results.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

There is one U-boat that's shown up with a Mental Model, U-2501, one of the Type XXI "Elektrobootes" that serves with the European fleet. She's shown as being very innocent and childlike, using any time the ship is surfaced to sit on the deck and enjoy the breeze. It's just that her captain is an asshole who, with typical German "efficiency," thinks that a Mental Model is a waste of resources on a human-crewed ship and so orders her to put those processes towards combat instead.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

-Merc
Keep Rat

Yeah, sorry, still not completely back on my game after the trauma of last weekend.

Besides, wasn't Weird Metal Danish actually Eisenbahnküchen's difficult third album?

--G.
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Well, that must be why she's called Iona, mustn't it? The actual ship never had a name besides I-401 (pronounced "ee-yon maru-ichi"); the Japanese, like the Germans, didn't name their submarines.

I feel bad for the Fog subs based on American submarines. I mean, we see several times during the series that a number of the "normal" Fog ships had some trouble with the psychological adjustment from "I am a ship" to "I am a woman, kind of" (Takao, Kongō). Imagine how much harder that would be to get your head around if you were grappling with a growing awareness of yourself as a feminine humanoid lifeform and your name was Trout. Or Gudgeon. Or Bonefish. Or Chub. Or, Poseidon help you, Scabbardfish. These are all real WWII U.S. submarine names. :)

--G.
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At least some of those can be considered gender neutral, though; then there's the ones with inescapably male names, a topic I believe has already been covered in more depth than I am currently capable elsewhere.

True, although the US Navy didn't really start naming ships after people in earnest until after the period the Fog seems to be getting its roster from. In WWII, battleships were named after states (Iowa, Massachusetts), cruisers after cities (Indianapolis), carriers after famous battles (Lexington) or ouchy flying things (Hornet), and submarines after fish (examples previously given); the only class of USN ships routinely named for people back then were destroyers, which are usually lumped into the "too small to be intelligent" category in Arpeggio.

Also, WWII US destroyers generally only bore their namesakes' surnames (e.g. USS Mahan (DD-364) was named for Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan), so even if they had Mental Models, it wouldn't be as jarring as it would be with, say, the modern-day nuclear carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), which is not only named after a man but a living man, what the hell, Navy.

--G.
"Your name is The Sullivans?" "You got a problem with that?"
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"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

By an interesting coincidence, "I got your milkman joke right here" is also what New Jersey would say at that point. :)

True fact: USS Massachusetts (BB-59), now the centerpiece of the collection at Battleship Cove in Fall River, was known to her crews as "Big Mamie". One can only assume that her Mental Model would resemble Mae West.

Speaking of battleships:

IONA
Say it.

HARUNA
Please don't make us do this, 401.

IONA
Say it.

KIRISHIMA
Haven't you humiliated us enough? Look at me!

IONA
(very slightly sharper)
Say it.

HARUNA and KIRISHIMA
(in grudging stereo)
... You sank my battleship.

IONA
Good. You may go.

HYŪGA
I'm so jealous, you two. She never did that to me.

KIRISHIMA
That's because you're not really a battleship, flattop.

HYŪGA
What! You'll pay for that.

I still think Battleship Cove needs to get off the stick and round up a carrier and a cruiser. You're more than halfway there, guys, come on. Complete the set.

--G.
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Well, they did it first with Reagan, so why not?(I thought they did it with John Stennis, but I was mistaken.) At least Bush was a naval aviator.

Polychrome

Hey, speaking of terrible puns, I just realized that, of all the Fog ships, Adorably Deranged Cruiser Maya would have the easiest time settling into life in Civvie Street in our previously-postulated "Undercover Fog" scenario.

She'd just open a churrascaria on the waterfront.

Carnivore Da Yo.

--G.
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Given all the other preposterous things Fog ships do (including those same Fog ships in that same episode), the old biblical phrase about straining out gnats while swallowing camels comes to mind. :)

--G.
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"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

The old-timey shells make more noise. It's the equivalent of banging on the door and yelling POLICE WE HAVE A WARRANT before you go to the big lad with the metal thing that knocks the door down.

--G.
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Also, when your actual driving mechanism is some kind of timey-wimey gravity gradient nonsense, nigh-lightspeed particle soup and much lower velocity artillery shells (with, presumably, Fogtech Warheads aboard) both notate down to 'such-and-such a number of newtons' as far as power consumption and so on are concerned.

Which, after you try one and see it not working out, makes it easy to switch to the other.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

"In the name of the FOG, I will punish you!"

-- Bob
(What? Wrong sailor costume? Oops, my bad.)
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

This makes me giggle mainly because - in spite of the fact that Fog Mental Models occasionally do magical girl costume changes - I'm hard-pressed to think of another sailor-suited anime heroine of a similar body type (and, weirdly, now that I think about it there are an awful lot of them) who Iona is less like. If she ever said anything like that, she would be uncomprehendingly humoring someone who asked her to do it (probably Hyūga). :)

>(What? Wrong sailor costume? Oops, my bad.)

I've never been 100% clear on why Japanese middle school girls' uniforms look like Donald Duck's costume, and the Internet being what it is today, I don't dare ask it. :) It seems to be going out of style for the older students these days, though. The junior high students one occasionally sees in K-On!, for instance, wear sailor outfits, but the main cast are dressed more like modern British prep school girls. Everybody in Girls und Panzer is still all sailored up, but then again, I suppose they really are sailors, given that their school is a ship. :)

(There's a scene in one episode where some of the Tankery Club girls venture belowdecks; they encounter a couple of girls who are apparently part of the ship's crew, so, amusingly, everyone in that scene is dressed like a British sailor from the 1920s - just in different colors, and I think the crew girls are wearing trousers, because they are actually working sailors.)

That said, I like Iona's usual outfit, mainly because it's an actual Cute Girl Sailor costume and not a sailor-themed school uniform. It's even got shorts, which is a thing one would imagine a good many Japanese schoolgirls wish they could wear with those microskirts.

Come to think about it, Iona is curiously unsexy for the female lead of a show that, let's be honest, doesn't skimp on the check-out-our-sexy-characters. She's adorable, don't get me wrong, but it'd take a more predatory horndog than I am to look at her and think anything other than, "Aww, I wanna give that a big ol' hug." :)

--G.
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Wiki's a pretty safe bet to research the subject, though it didn't tell me much more than I'd already heard from (oddly enough) another anime. Apparently the uniforms really are modeled after sailor suits, namely those worn by the Brits circa 1920, while the boys outfits are modeled after the uniforms of the French Army of roughly the same time frame. Both are a result of that classic Japanese cultural osmosis, namely something that a school principal saw overseas and decided to adopt back home. And you're right, it's mostly a middle-school thing these days, as high schools have changed over to blazers to allow their students to look more mature...and also because the old-style uniforms have become fetish fuel.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

Oh, because the modern Japanese school system was explicitly modeled on the Prussian system when they were first setting it up in the late 19th century, and that's what students wore in 19th-century Prussian schools. Which were all sorta-kinda military academies, Prussia being Prussia. They were also easy to sew, and the construction had similarities to the way the Japanese already made dresses.

>It seems to be going out of
>style for the older students these days, though.

Part of that is reaction to the joshikousei fetish, and part of it is because modified sailor uniforms became standardized girl-gang wear in the 1980s, so many high schools switched to blazer/blouse/skirt combos. You can still find sailor uniforms at about 1 in 5 high schools and most junior highs, though.

>Come to think about it, Iona is curiously unsexy for the female lead
>of a show that, let's be honest, doesn't skimp on the
>check-out-our-sexy-characters. She's adorable, don't get me wrong,
>but it'd take a more predatory horndog than I am to look at her and
>think anything other than, "Aww, I wanna give that a big ol' hug." :)

Heh. I should probably put Arpeggio on my "get around to watching" list along with K-On!, just so I can see Iona in action.

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

I just read up on that, and had one of those "too weird to be a coincidence" moments. I knew the battleship Scharnhorst had a sister ship, the Gneisenau. I didn't realise the earlier liner of the same name (that was later converted to the carrier) did as well. You'd think someone would get confused, especially as it seems they were both active at the same time for a few years.

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

Given that so much of the German military build-up of the 1930s was deliberately obscured by the Nazi government, one finds oneself entertaining the possibility that that might've been the whole idea. Not that it would've been possible to conceal the construction of something like a Scharnhorst-class battleship, but the timing is very interesting. According to Wikipedia (which, well, you know, but these particular articles appear to be pretty well-sourced), the liner Scharnhorst entered service on May 3, 1935. Construction began on the battleship Scharnhorst on the fifteenth of June (or possibly July - sources differ).

Intriguingly, the battleship Gneisenau's keel was laid a mere three days after the liner Scharnhorst was launched, but the second one to be laid down was launched sooner and became the class ship as a result. It would be interesting to know whether they were named before construction began, or when it became apparent which one would be launched first.

Anyway, like I say, it would've been impossible to conceal the construction of a pair of battleships, but given the timing, I find myself wondering whether there might've been at least a hope of causing some confusion for foreign intelligence services that were trying to keep tabs on the naval buildup.

--G.
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In one of the manga's more recent chapters, he and Hyuuga are engaged in salvaging the leftover nanomaterial from her old hull - because Iona has started running out - and take the time to chat about what he's hoping to accomplish. Wanting to change the world from the fucked-up state it's entered since the Fog arrived is perfectly sensical...

...But his logic for doing it by delivering a weapon that will let humanity fight back is interesting. He figures that, with the Fog holding all the military cards, humanity would never be able to trust and rely on any settlement. But, with a weapon in hand that would give them a fighting chance, humans won't be forced into a stance of utter paranoia that would inevitably destroy a settlement.

Or something like that. It may make less sense when I try and boil it down into just one paragraph.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

Yeah, something similar comes up in "House of Dolls". His basic idea seems to be that so long as one party is capable of instantly and effortlessly annihilating the other, neither one can engage in meaningful dialogue - which history suggests is pretty much true. The thing that gets me is that he doesn't just aspire to turn the tables completely and wipe out the Fog, which is what your generic Robot Resistance Fighter protagonist would want.

--G.
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Yup. For a self-consciously low-brow franchise about cute girls and sci-fi battleships, Arpeggio gets interestingly sophisticated at times.

I'd forgotten how the anime version of that scene went. I should rewatch!

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

Well, we're three for four Takao-class mental models - Maya, Takao, and Atago - and all of them favor the same build.

Which is shapely, certainly, but sadly not aligned with the joke. Missed opportunities!

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

Heh, it's just as well. Takao works better as she is.

Although I notice that there are a couple of points in the TV show where they play up the fact that Hyūga's mental model possesses what I believe the 20th-century Earth poet Sir Mix-a-Lot described as "the Oakland booty". I can't help but wonder if that's a reference to her having that weird semi-carrier fantail flight deck (which, according to Wikipedia, was stuffed with concrete to recenter her CG now that #5 and #6 gun turrets weren't there any more). :)

--G.
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Interior of a bar, possibly on Omega, certainly stuffed with ne'er-do-wells of the worst stripe.

IONA
"All I wanted was to ask a few questions. But it looks like we're going to have to do this the hard way, so here's the deal: In five minutes. I'll be the only one at this table still standing. Five minutes after that, I'll be the only one in this bar still standing.

*Ten Minutes Later*

IONA
"Crap, now I have to wait for somebody to wake up . . ."

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

--G.
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