>Hee hee, does this make Iona and Shioi twin sisters?

Not quite, although they may choose to say that it does. See below.

>I do have to
>admit, I'm still not entire sure how all of this works- at first, I
>thought that the girls were simultaneously ghosts of their old selves
>given structure by the Fog technology, but I'm still not entirely sure
>where the Arpeggio ends and the Kancolle begins.

Well, it works something like this:

Shioi is the spirit of the original I-401, resurrected in the body of a Fog ship (the nanomaterial basis of which is made from the mass of her original hull, because what Corwin was actually trying to do was convert that mass into a new body for Iona).

For her part, Iona was given that designation and programmed to manifest a vessel shell that resembles the original vessel when she was first activated, but as a "true" as opposed to accidental ship of the Fog, she has no actual metaphysical connection to the WWII submarine. In absolute technical terms, she's an alien(?) robot in a cunning disguise that is not entirely convincing from some angles (her propulsion gear, for instance, is a dead giveaway).

No original Fog vessel has such a connection--that some of them show such close identification with their 20th-century models in their behavior (Kongō chiding Kaga about the dignity of the First Carrier Group, the Special Type III ships acting as if they're actual sisters) is... well, let's be generous and call it eccentricity rather than affectation. They're quite sincere, not putting on an act, but it's still basically roleplaying; there seems to be no genuine basis in their origins for this behavior.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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