[OOC][PLOT] Planning for Arc 2 - Crisis on Infinite Earths

[robkelk]

Did a bit of research on the Girls und Panzer school ships today. (Okay, I watched the GnP OAVs.)

Things that we know about Ooarai, as revealed in OAV 3: "School Ship War!"

• Grade school students attend classes on land; Hana assumes that this is because they're too young to be away from their families. The implication is that middle-school students attend classes aboard the school ships. And that means my earlier estimates as to how many students are present in the fleet were off by a factor of 1 - we have to double my estimate of three-quarters of a million to include the middle-school students. (The fact that the high school Student Council runs things implies that Ooarai doesn't have a university... but IRL the city of Ooarai doesn't have its own university, either.)
  
• Ooarai offers eight course streams at the high-school level: General, Ship (presumably "ship operation"). Intelligence, Tailoring, Nutrition, Engineering, Fisheries, and Agriculture. (Miho mentions an "Armored Forces Course", but goes on to say that Ooarai isn't Kuromorimine, implying that Kuromorimine has a cadet/ROTC program if we don't assume Miho was joking.)
  
• One of the students in the Ship course and seen on the flying bridge was Mako's classmate in middle school. This implies that students either do not specialize in middle school or can change from the general course to a specialized course when entering high school.
  
• Students in the Ship and Engineering courses do not pay tuition, but do serve an eight-hour shift keeping the ship ''Ooarai'' functional in addition to taking classes... which doesn't leave the Ship or Engineering students time to play sensha-do. However, Miho and Yukari both mention that other ships do things differently.
  
• Students in the Ship course have individual quarters, about the size of a frigate captain's quarters IRL.
  
• Agriculture and Fisheries are both carried out below decks. Fish are farmed in large tanks. Crops are grown in soil, under grow lamps; no hydroponics were shown.
  
• Water purification is also below-decks, and is shown to use the same large ponds/vats that cities on land use.
  
• Ships are modular, built from 300x300m blocks of various types. There is little coordination done regarding transit between blocks below decks; it is sometimes necessary to go topside to get from one block to the block next to it.
  
• Ooarai has a museum devoted to the history of the ship and the school. One of the exhibits is a 1/1000 scale model of the ship.
  
• Miho describes Ooarai as old, but well cared for.