As an aside, Sima did a pretty fun series of the Northampton girls from vol. 1. It’s a bit like Kaga-posting but with our girls. I also really like using these to make a point.
“I have a question about submarine girl riggings. In Pacific it seems many of the girls carry what looks like basically the submarines on their persons. Yet in other instances like Sculpin they literally ride on the torpedoes themselves. Why is this the case?”
Oh. This is a case of show and tell. I think I’ve been asked this before.
Just because a subgirl isn’t wearing her equipment doesn’t mean she doesn’t have it. In the same way, just because a subgirl is wearing her equipment doesn’t mean she can’t do anything without it.
One of these days I’ll show you how subgirls use their torpedoes. It’s not quite as you would imagine. The general gist of things is that they have several options, ranging from literally throwing them (think darts, where the torpedo then go to full size) to using their equipment to track, guide, and align the torpedo so it would go on course properly. We’ll have a Silent Service explaining how in real-life torpedo runs were made and we’ll show how this applies to the shipgirls themselves. (Handy for playing Silent Hunter, too)
As for Sculpin? Sculpin’s just derp enough to want to ride them at base. These are girls that can take tank shells to the face without so much as a scratch, so…
“ENGLISH VOL. 2 WHEN”
… I knew this one was coming. Soon. We’re still ironing out the details in our NA distribution network. Unlike Asia we have to build all of our infrastructure from the ground up, and at any rate you’ll see Silent Service and 2016 first beforehand.
“Will Anime still be around in Pacific?”
That answer your question?
“Which one’s your favorite chibi?”
I like them all. They all make me very happy because Sima’s got a unique talent with capturing expressions and faces.
Case in point, this one.
I do lurk around and read other creative works, you know? While I’m amused and entertained by how many others view Ari (some even using our art), she’ll always be a little klutzy and adorable in Pacific.
The Arizona is one of the most well-documented ships, in no small part thanks to the Arizona memorial. It is almost universally associated with tragedy due to in no small part the significant loss of life at Pearl Harbor.
Yet it is precisely that it is well-documented that I took Ari in a slightly different direction. By the time Pearl happened, the Arizona had been in service for nearly three decades. Some men that my family’s very well acquainted with served there in the early stages of their careers. The tales I found were many, but they can be summed up in one word: animated.
Dodging the deck’s watch (to sneak some beer below decks) to hastily tossing the day’s piracy overboard. Impromptu sessions of fun and horseplay. Shore leave (why am I not surprised that this was remembered well?). Flipping between generally slacking off (as again, one particular officer who went on to become CNO would tell) and suddenly try-harding (and winning) at both inspection and sports.
She’s awkward. Sometimes she doesn’t want to be handled at all. Other times she’s slow to start. Reading some of the folks who worked down in the engine room really hits this point home, and I’ve read enough recollections from people that served to grasp that this was perhaps a little more troublesome than the others.
But once she gets going she gets going, and she does it well. She’s good at what she does. Perhaps not the best, but definitely “above average” (though basically everyone thinks that of their ship xD).
I’ve said many times that Pacific isn’t really a miliotaku work at this point. We simply don’t view the shipgirls as pieces of equipment, and we intentionally avoid or minimize the extent of which physical “attributes” of the ship would mirror that of a girl. That stuff is easy. I could have Ari walk with a slight limp in her left leg due to one port screw consistently having troubles, for instance. Or make her farsighted since she had a tendency of overshooting her targets.
But what does that add to the story? Why is that interesting? Why should I communicate that to the reader as a character trait when I can have Ari say that as a bit of trivia?
We’re in this to make cute shipgirls, after all. Emphasis on the girl 🙂