Quote:The tank battles are actually all in virtual reality.  This is why no one gets broken bones or worse when their tanks are flipped upside down and set on fire.  The girls Miho rescued from drowning in her character-defining moment were in no real danger at all.  This makes her mother — and Erika — not quite as dickish as they'd seemed.

On the other hand, as Maho pointed out, Miho's determination not to yield her subordinates even to simulated death breeds an esprit de corps and devotion to their leader that lets a pack of newbies defeat veteran players and overwhelming odds ... so this hypothesis does NOT mean Miho's the idiot Shiho and Erika call her.  Rather, she's deliberately playing at a higher level of difficulty than they are.  And beating the odds anyway.

Virtual reality also mitigates the apparent wastefulness of the whole program.  That shopkeeper wasn't talking about remodeling with insurance money after his shop was wrecked, but remodeling with profits from people visiting the shop because it featured so prominently in the broadcast.  Free advertising, yay!  And those impossibly large ships?  Hey, the computer simulates those, too.  Everything's really all taking place on land at Oarai.

The simulation is so good that people, especially young people, often lose track of the fact that this isn't the real world.  That's why Mako, flaking out, thought she had to swim to get to her ailing grandmother, rather than simply logging out of the simulation and catching a taxi. 

Quote:DHBirr wrote:

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Ah, yes; the dreaded "all there in the manual"!  But I still find it difficult to accept the proposition that, without so much as a seat belt or padded clothing, no one ever gets really injured inside a tank abruptly knocked onto its side or upside down.

Quote:ECSNorway wrote:

Quote:High School Fleet (aka Girls und Panzerschiffs, in my headcanon) 

Quote:A tank filled with holes.
For that is what we shall be.
Boom we go, goodbye.