Could you even really hang a shipgirl? I'd like to think that the rope would snap and they would end up looking around with this look of "Sorry I didn't die just then".

... so the order was literally "Kirishima SMASH!!"

Perfect, Kongo, just perfect!

So, Kirishima is that much taller than Kongou

As someone who loves Kirishima as his favorite shipgirl, this series makes me so conflicted.

On the one hand, she's shown as a total badass capable of single-handedly stopping whole navies.

On the other hand, she's portrayed as some sort of Rain Man "idiot savant", or a monster with a restraining bolt where she isn't capable of independent initiative until her sister tells her she's allowed to act upon her own ideas.

NWSiaCB said:
On the other hand, she's portrayed as some sort of Rain Man "idiot savant", or a monster with a restraining bolt where she isn't capable of independent initiative until her sister tells her she's allowed to act upon her own ideas.

Sounds more like she respects Kongou's input and the chain of (familial) command. She offers her perspective and waits for an order to act.

cd_young said:

Sounds more like she respects Kongou's input and the chain of (familial) command. She offers her perspective and waits for an order to act.

She does so to a robotic degree of inability to infer Kongou's actual intentions, however. Spoilers for stuff that happens later: Kongou tells her to "cool her head" in the lookout tower, so she stays up there all night until explicitly ordered to return. Kongou tells her to refrain from excessive violence or killing humans because of possible time warp problems, but when Kongou then sends her out to fight pirates, she refuses to actually FIGHT until Kongou explicitly countermands the "no hurting people" order... if your arbitrarily superior officer-by-birth-order tells you to fight, then don't you think any non-brain-damaged human would infer that meant actually hitting them is OK?

dandan said:

... so the order was literally "Kirishima SMASH!!"

Perfect, Kongo, just perfect!

Well that's my secret admiral. I'm always violent.

@NWSiaCB said:

She does so to a robotic degree of inability to infer Kongou's actual intentions, however. Spoilers for stuff that happens later: Kongou tells her to "cool her head" in the lookout tower, so she stays up there all night until explicitly ordered to return. Kongou tells her to refrain from excessive violence or killing humans because of possible time warp problems, but when Kongou then sends her out to fight pirates, she refuses to actually FIGHT until Kongou explicitly countermands the "no hurting people" order... if your arbitrarily superior officer-by-birth-order tells you to fight, then don't you think any non-brain-damaged human would infer that meant actually hitting them is OK?

... Am I the only one who interpreted that as simply being the result of crushing guilt after Kongou - the big sister that she idolized and whom she probably assumed would've approved of her actions up until then - severely dressed her down for coming too close for comfort to using excessive force against the human soldiers (because of the time paradox risks)? She seemed like she believed she was walking on eggshells from that point on, and thus decided to follow Kongou's commands to the letter to avoid disastrous consequences of her making the wrong decision if she took the initiative.

Am I the only one that notice that the put Kongou is on a box to get hanged?