Ambience A Fleet Symphony / Tropes Q to Z

• Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice: What happened to Baltimore.
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • In chapter 188, after a long bout of Takao's bitter sniping at Akagi culminates in making a crack about not everyone the latter kills coming back to life to forgive her, Kaga snaps and does a Neck Lift on the former, followed by a What the Hell, Hero? "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
  • Chapter 313 has three in succession, first from the wife of a civilian Asashio mistook as hostile and shot, which prompted Kasumi to give a Shut Up, Kirk! speech, and that in turn leads to Arashio punching her through multiple walls.
  • Damon has one of his own during Operation Goldmine, when he's dealing with the multiple effects of Samidare's rampant protocol - at one point he even yells at Samidare,
  Damon: GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP!
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: subverted, due to the fact that the ship girls in the story generally have subdued personality quirks across the board. Still, they keep enough of their more unique personality traits to be considered as such, especially considering that the fleet is literally an entire company of ship girls with no rigidly enforced substructures and squadrons.
• Ranger: Chapter 289 reveals that Whitewater is currently led by a former captain from them, which has given the rest of the 75th a personal stake in bringing the mercs to heel.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Several of the ship girls experienced this at the hands of their captors.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • The ship girls who show up in the beginning chapters of the story after Murakumo until the end of the first Atlanta arc - Amatsukaze, Mutsu, Iku, Shimakaze, and Kaga - were chosen because of the author's attendance of a Kantai Collection panel at Anime Expo 2014 titled "Can I Kantai? You Too Can Teitoku", at which he asked the panel speakers who their favorite Kantai characters were in order to select which ship girls would show up in the early part of the story.
  • The author went to go study abroad in Japan (Hirakata City, Osaka) during the spring semester of 2015 as part of his university requirement to obtain a Japanese minor degree, and he continued writing during his studies there. One day, he found a local Tsutaya video bookstore while biking back to his host family's house, and he found a small dispenser that sold little Kantai Collection keychains◊ and bought a few, receiving Inazuma, Yayoi, and Naka - hence why Inazuma (and the rest of the Akatsuki-Class) show up in chapter 38, Mutsuki, Satsuki, and Kikuzuki in chapter 66 (the author wasn't the biggest fan of Yayoi and thus decided to put in her sisters instead), and Naka and Jintsuu, also in chapter 66.
  • The implementation of new ship girls in the game oftentimes means unexpected twists in the story's plot, as seen below in Ripped from the Headlines. Several of the below-mentioned entries have had dramatic impacts on the story's direction.
  • The digression about discrimination against and relocation of Japanese Americans in World War II that started in chapter 321 was due to the author spending a semester working on the topic for his history major.
• Reality Is Out to Lunch: The state of Houston as of chapter 212, most visibly in the massive pillar of black flame orbited by skyscrapers.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In chapter 150, Kisaragi tells Murasame that the latter is a disappointment for wallowing in her problems and pretending that she's moved on when all she's been doing is running away from them.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • The eyes of certain ship girls turn red when they activate their Super Modes.
  • This is one of the external signs of Kaga and Shoukaku's partial Abyssalization.
• Red Herring: Part of chapter 247 sets up Damon's concern that the American shipgirls, if allowed to go on a mission unsupervised, will do something under Sandman/Franklin's orders that will have negative consequences for him and his. Without going into even more spoilers, that's not the angle that the trouble ends up coming from.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: all of the usual pairings for this in the game carry over into the story, but special mention goes to the Shiratsuyu-Class, who can basically be divided into such: Shiratsuyu, Murasame, Yuudachi, Kawakaze, and Suzukaze are the Red Onis, and Shigure, Harusame, Samidare, Umikaze, and Yamakaze are the blue onis.
• Reference Overdosed: Just look at the shout out page, for crying out loud!
• The Reliable One: Taihou, refusing to let her lack of luck in her previous life get her down, turned herself into the unofficial caretaker of the girls held in Charlotte.
• Reluctant Warrior: Shigure doesn't like having to fight and kill. But don't push her or give her reason to think you're an Asshole Victim, lest she change her mind with gruesome results. Murasame feels the same way.
• The Remnant: "The Inner Circle" was formed by remnants from the group "Advanced Administration of the Holy War", which dissolved following the Great War.
• Removable Turret Gun: invoked in chapter 315, when Iris and New Jersey find that there is no more ammunition in the mounted side-door machine guns, the battleships simply tear the turrets out and leave them behind to assume their positions for themselves.
• Replacement Goldfish: In chapter 135, Hatsuyuki recalls that her head developer modelled her appearance after The Lost Lenore.
• Required Secondary Powers:
  • Iku and Imuya's Invisibility Cloak extends to their weapons as well.
  • In chapter 63, Damon notes that even though the radiation's gone, no one's going to be staying in the Virginia boondocks they're passing through as it would be prohibitively difficult to get food and supplies.
  • Sendai has a noise suppression system along with her cloaking. Presumably, the latter doesn't muffle any sounds she might make. Though chapter 98 reveals that the cloak does hide any wake she creates.
  • Unlike Sendai's, in chapter 97 the Banshee's cloaking system is explicitly said to muffle sound too.
  • The Inner Circle exosuits mentioned in chapter 107 have two major flaws. Firstly, they need an already super strong user lest the user be crushed using them, similar to Halo's MJOLNIR. Secondly, they are extremely expensive to make.
  • In chapter 284, Eagle mentions that while it is theoretically possible to mount cannons on destroyers' legs, recoil, target acquisition and body kinesthetic issues make doing so unwise.
• Resignations Not Accepted: In chapter 231, when a certain character walks away from the Jerkasses the people she's been working with reveal themselves to have been all along, one of said people tries shooting her In the Back.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: In chapter 53 we learn that the people rebelling against the Feds in New Jersey did a bad, bad thing. Though few of the other dissident groups fighting the Feds have much cleaner hands.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: The question of where the ship girl the machine ends and the ship girl the human begins is a recurring issue no one's entirely able to answer.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: We eventually learn that there were secret divisions within the F.L.E.E.T. Project, such that developers within each cell did not know about the others.
• The Right of a Superior Species: In chapter 102 a Wo-class tells Shoukaku that it considers its kind a superior race and therefore more worthy of Earth.
• Ripped from the Headlines:
  • Graf Zeppelin, who first appeared in the Fall 2015 Event, shows up in chapter 144.
  • Warspite (canon), who was introduced in chapter 249, is put into the story a week after her implementation.
  • Implied in chapter 289, with the President giving us this line: "...France, huh..."
    • This comes to pass in Chapter 310, with the President of France revealed as the French shipgirl Commandant Teste. As a major shock to readers, it was simultaneously revealed that she lives together with the Abysallised-version of herself.^note  Seaplane Tender Princess
  • Yamakaze, introduced in chapter 290, the next day after her implementation.
  • Saratoga, introduced in chapter 294, also a week after her implementation.
• The Rival: subverted to the point of aversion: rivalries among the ship girls, if they even exist, never evolve beyond past friendly ones. Part of the reason for this is because of the one rule in the fleet that Damon strictly enforces, and that is making sure that everyone gets along to prevent any opportunity for in-fleet conflict.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • In chapter 121, Suzukaze goes on one of these after Tatsuya is wounded by Federal troops while trying to hide from them and later expires from his injuries, and when the Feds track Suzukaze back to the siblings' shack and torch it with Miyuki still inside. This activates her Darkwater Protocol.
  • In chapter 296, Suzuya goes after the Whitewater soldiers with a vengeance, having had certain bad things happen to her in that particular city.
• Robot War: seeing that both ship girls and Abyssals are in fact androids - extremely humanized androids - technically the conflict between the ship girls and the Abyssals is this, in the eyes of the story.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: subverted heavily in the story, and part of this is explained with the made-up mechanics in chapter 169, where health pools are expanded greatly and stats much more adequately describe a ship girl's full combat abilities. For the most part, even destroyers are hardy and tough to kill; there are technically ways to one-shot ship girls, but that would have to involve weapons that are beyond even what ship girls are usually capable of wielding or gimmick attacks. However, this is only for when ship girls get attacked - it would seem that the Abyssals have a much easier time getting ripped to shreds at the hands of the ship girls, and the Abyssal destroyers get the worst shaft of the situation, as they are almost always taken out by destroyer cannons in one shot; even the splash damage from destroyer shells is enough to kill them.
• Running Gag: Destroyer dogpiles. Considering how the past few times it happened, Damon always ends up with a brand new injury (dislocated shoulder, broken wrist, broken ribs etc.), his reaction is understandable.
  Shiratsuyu: "Dogpile him!"
  Damon: "No, no, oh God, no- "
• Sailor Earth: the author has taken many liberties to include ship girls who do not exist in the browser game for the sake of having an international presence of ship girls. Given the ongoing mysteries surrounding the F.L.E.E.T. Project and all its sub-divisions, it's very easy for the author to suddenly put into place another fleet of ship girls wherever he sees fit in the story.
• Sanity Slippage: Shigure suffers this, starting from her class's revelation of their true identities. She finds out more details about her class in the old underground Seal Team Six base in San Pedro, and it gets worse and worse until she finally succumbs to her own demon angel form.
• Sarcasm Failure: In chapter 192, an approaching figure is so terrifying even Sazanami can't crack a joke in the situation.
• Second Hour Superpower: Damon's Yellow Reality Cancel; the first time he explicitly uses it under his own control is two hundred and fifty chapters into the story.
• Scenery Gorn: The world is in ruins and the narration doesn't hesitate to remind you of it.
• Scenery Porn: Each time Damon's dreamscape is shown. Except when it doesn't
• School Swimsuit: somewhat justified in the story, as the swimsuits are the main reason why the submarines are able to Cloak. It still doesn't prevent Damon from lampshading why it had to be school swimsuits that did this.
• Scope Snipe: In chapter 147 Graf Zeppelin does this to a NDP sniper.
  • in chapter 381, this happens to Taihou, whose scope for her sniper rifle gets ruined by getting sniped by another sniper.
• Scratch Damage: perhaps the occasion of a ship girl getting shot by a gun can count as this. A ship girl shot by a gun will still feel pain from a gunshot (albeit only a little), but usually, so long as it doesn't strike them in somewhere sensitive like the eyes, getting hit by a bullet is little more than getting a pebble thrown at them. Though, the story takes the time to make the detail that some ship girls who've had historically very little armor, like Yuubari, feel markedly more pain from gunshots.
• Scream Discretion Shot: In chapter 77, the last thing said onscreen about the fate of the premier of Charlotte at the vengeful hands of the Shiratsuyu-class girls is that she screamed. Subverted in the next chapter, where we learn what happened.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: The Typewriters of Inner Chicago are a gang of Spoiled Brats who have evaded justice because their rich parents pay off the police.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • In chapter 105, Suzukaze, driven to tears by Murasame's rebuff, decides that if the latter really is so ashamed of her, then she'll just leave.
  • In chapter 155, a certain enemy, seeing that a third Protocol-equipped destroyer has joined the two already fighting it, decides discretion is the better part of valour.
• Secret Circle of Secrets: subverted; the Green Grass society is this, but apparently they are not villainous.
• See the Whites of Their Eyes: In chapter 39, Sanford says that someone he spoke to said that the Atlantans manning the USS John Paul Jones were idiots because they failed to capitalize on the range advantage that the ship's armaments had over whatever Mobile could throw at it. The Tomahawk cruise missiles, in particular, could've been launched from well outside the engagement range of any of the defenses. They instead launched way too close.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • In chapter 129, Kinugasa's comments on Damon in her fleet log reflect the issues and complaints that readers had about Damon in general.
  • In chapter 167, the author acknowledges that this is the wrong place if you're looking for high literature.
• She Is All Grown Up: at one point, Damon meets a teenage version of his cousin Jeannie while inside his dreamworld.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Damon himself is one, having fought in the Battle of Baltimore during the Border Wars.
  • a few ship girls who have bad times dealing with their memories as warships (or what has happened to them as ship girls) may count as this, albeit subverted because they can handle their memories just fine during times when they need to and only lapse into their shell shock whenever they can afford to.
• Shoot the Hostage: In chapter 148, a mook tries to shoot Wakaba through the guy she's using as a meatshield.
• Shout-Out: Now has its own page.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: In chapter 12 Chad tells a trio of mooks trying to use I Have a Family that they have no right to ask for mercy after raping his girlfriend.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Chitose has saintly patience. Chiyoda... not so much.
• The Siege: In chapter 54, Damon and co. have to defend the labs where certain ship girls are undergoing surgery.
  • The Battle of Baltimore, with 5,300 Feds, Mercs and Damon against 10,400 bandits and southerners. The number of survivors can be counted in the single-digits.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: In chapter 82, Arrechea tells Damon that he's gravely mistaken to think that there's any place for heroism in the world.
• Skyward Scream: Damon has such a moment at the end of chapter 18 when Baxter Harrison makes off with Kaga.
• Slasher Smile: Chapter 297. As Suzuya meets Jared Imwalle, one of her rapists during her stay at Little Rock. With her scythe deployed. And Imwalle having expended his EMP only to find that it didn't work on any of the shipgirls.
  Suzuya: "Start squealin' like a bitch for me, you little shit."
• Slave Mooks: The Inner Circle's Agents have had their brains modified to unquestioningly obey orders.
• Smug Super: Akebono takes a lot of pride in her ship girl superiority over baseline humans. Hyuuga does too, but to a lesser extent.
• Soft Water: Averted in chapter 121, where the water being controlled by Suzukaze hits hard enough to kill.
• Sore Loser: Discussed in chapter 270. When an American asks Kikuzuki why she can't let go of her hatred of Americans, she retorts that it's easy for Americans to be magnanimous in victory, but they probably wouldn't feel the same way if they had somehow lost the war. Considering works like Red Dawn (1984) that glorify La Résistance fighting on in the face of Invaded States of America, it's hardly an unfounded complaint.
• Spell My Name with a "The": the Abyssal.
• Split-Personality Takeover: Hibiki's "Phoenix" persona, which takes over at critical moments.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: many ship girls gain this ability as a result of their YRC contracts they form with Damon.
  • Jeannie is able to create "Keys", her red and black swords that she creates inside Silva Gelida, which she uses as her signature weapons when she is in her Vatista Install.
• The Squad: the new Seal Team Six that deploys during Operation Sandblast.
  • Sanford is The Leader.
  • Chuck is a Friendly Sniper and The Big Guy.
  • Lauren is The Squadette and The Point Man.
  • Irene is The Quiet One and also the Cold Sniper, though she's actually pretty friendly and is only considered cold because of her dominating trait of being extremely quiet due to her perceived muteness.
  • Jeannie is the New Meat - but with the way she fights, she'll have you fooled that she's actually The Veteran.
• Squishy Wizard: Yuubari has capital-tier sensors, reflexes and processing power, but is even more fragile than most other light cruisers.
• Stab the Scorpion: Chapter 115 ends on a cliffhanger with Tatsuya reaching for his knife over the unconscious, seemingly dead Suzukaze shortly after it's revealed that he's been carving up corpses for food. The next chapter reveals that he didn't do anything to her.
• Starter Equipment: subverted. For ship girls, Damon does indeed "start" with a starter ship in Murakumo, but he finds the rest of the starter ship girls steadily over time (except for poor Fubuki, who hasn't even been mentioned save for whenever the narration describes Murakumo, Shirayuki, and Hatsuyuki as a class). For equipment, the vast majority of ship girls are described only to have their destroyer cannons as their default equipment, with only a few ship girls having anything more than that (like torpedo launchers, for example).
• Steel Ear Drums: like Concealment Equals Cover above, the story strives to avert this at all times. One good example is found in chapter 293, when Damon fires a Desert Eagle, a particularly loud handgun thanks to its large cartridge, in front of Sanford's face off to his right, deafening him significantly.
• Stepford Smiler:
  • Inazuma has a lot of bitterness brewing under her cute personality.
  • Goya's cheerful personality hides her disappointment over the use of kaiten and how the sinking of USS Indianapolis came only after she had delivered the atom bomb parts.
• Sticks to the Back: Invoked in chapter 140. The ship girls' gearboxes have been coated with special gels that allow their guns to stick.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: in chapter 238, President Blackwood declares to the Shiratsuyu-Class, "you may believe that you are about to fight a madman, but instead, you may find a god..." A dozen chapters later, during Damon's and Blackwood's fight to the death, Damon, when drawing out his YRC for the first time, utters:
  Damon: "I am the God-slaying blade..."
• Stuff Blowing Up: in a story about ship girls armed with cannons, it would be a little worrying if the story didn't have this.
• Suicide Attack: in chapter 383, Abyssals attack the ship girls by charging straight into them with armed Nova Gas canisters, which ends up hitting Yuudachi, but this is because Yuudachi herself charged straight into the Ri-Class who was holding it with enough force to puncture the canister and cause the gas to leak so that Shimakaze, who was injured shortly before, won't suffer the effects right after losing her eyesight.
• Super Mode: many of the ship girls' protocols, like the Nightmare Protocol.
• Super-Senses:
  • Damon has innate night vision.
  • Iku can see much farther than a normal human.
  • Damon once worked with a guy who could see radiation.
• Super-Soldier:
  • The F.L.E.E.T. Project that created the ship girls. While they're not designed to fight as regular infantry (Damon only has them perform anti-infantry roles because the first couple such girls he finds don't have their rigging with them, and because most of the fighting is on land, where their mobility drops like a rock if they deployed their ship armaments), they can wield small arms with a good degree of proficiency. The ship armaments are more suited to the usual anti-ship combat, as well as anti-vehicle/demolition duty. Chapter 56 reveals that a second phase was started, one that would have made the ship girls look weak. Or it would have if the sole subject thus far didn't escape and destroy the plans. Chapter 219 further reveals that F.L.E.E.T. was actually the second generation of ship girls, with !Samidare apparently being the Sole Survivor of a preceding one. Chapter 225 reveals that the first-gen Shiratsuyu-class girls were all impregnated and would eventually give birth to their second-gen offspring, in such a way that the birthing process would kill off the first-gen girls. !Samidare is, of course, the only first-gen to survive the birth of her daughter/clone.
  • The Genesis Thesis Project, intended to create a radiation-resistant Human Subspecies better able to survive in the irradiated postapocalyptic hellhole, which Damon is the only surviving success of.
  • In chapter 249, Blackwood reveals that he intends to combine both the above; take the children of ship girls and put them through the Genesis Thesis Project, creating a personal army superior to either.
• Super-Strength: naturally, the ship girls, but also Damon with his mutated state.
• Super-Toughness: Ship girls can take a lot more punishment than humans. Best demonstrated in chapter 26, where even a headshot with a rifle round against a destroyer is described as only as effective as hitting a human with a tennis ball. It takes RPGs or better anti-armour weapons to get anywhere fast. Even a soft target like the eye needs at the minimum Sniper Rifle rounds like .338 Lapua to damage.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • The whole thing about using ship girls as infantry. Really, when you have Immune to Bullets Super Soldiers with Super-Strength, Intended Use or not, who isn't going to be using them in land warfare?
  • In chapter 31, Sanford explains at length to the ship girls about how trying to uplift the Chicago poor by just having the rich give money away won't work.
  • In chapter 34, it's mentioned that staying underground without sunlight means Vitamin D supplements are needed.
  • In chapter 42, once Shiranui loses the element of surprise, Kongou clearly has the upper hand. In a fair fight, a destroyer can't beat a battleship, righteous anger or no.
  • In chapter 47, though she makes a valiant attempt, Yuudachi gets killed after being double-teamed by HMS Swordfish and Javelin.
  • In chapter 61, Damon tells Kongou that putting all of her heart into doing something won't help make it good if she doesn't actually know how to do it right.
  • In chapter 119, Kitakami recalls that she had been warned against returning to the Boise CCPL post because the ship girls' slowed aging might have led to inconvenient questions.
  • Just because you Took a Level in Kindness doesn't mean people forget how you used to be. Not even Furutaka herself can forget.
  • Grudges, resentment and trauma doesn't just go away. Without proper psychological help, some of the girls still struggle with their Past-Life Memories. For a few, like Musashi, the hatred of Americans has actually grown since their reincarnation.
  • In chapter 222, Damon tells Suzukaze that for all his laxness regarding discipline, he's not going to go so far as to try and appease or mollycoddle her given how she's been consistently an arse to him for little to no reason.
  • In chapter 264, Shiratsuyu explains this aspect of her electricity powers.
  • Parrying Bullets is cool and all, but when there are innocent bystanders around, ricochets can be a problem.
  • "Subcapital ship can't beat capital" is reiterated again in chapter 298. Suzuya may be a heavy cruiser and even have Yellow Reality Cancel powers but she can't overpower Enterprise, a carrier.
    • This is most likely because Suzuya's YRC power is her scythe. She left her scythe behind in Simmons Tower chasing after Imwalle after he tried escaping her by jumping out with a parachute, so without it, Suzuya was probably no stronger than she normally is without YRC, meaning that Enterprise could overpower her easily just because of her superiority as a capital ship.
  • Collateral damage concerns means the girls sometimes can't use their most powerful attacks, like in Italy where the potential political issues of missing and hitting foreign soil means the girls with Yamato Cannons can't use them as an opening salvo against the Abyssals.
• Surrounded by Idiots: All but one of the captured Whitewater mercenaries tries to hit on the shipgirls, prompting this reaction from the only one who doesn't.
  Whitewater mercenary: Are you trying to get her number too? You're all fucking hopeless. Whitewater's fuckin' doomed to hell.
• Swipe Your Blade Off: ship girls who are armed with their own swords do this sometimes after a kill or after a battle is concluded.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Mutsuki's YRC weapon can be considered as one. It has three forms: a bladed scythe that can cut through enemies, a blunt four-clover club that can electrocute enemies, and a sniper rifle that fires anti-materiel rounds.
• Sword Drag: the mutants that show up in both Baltimore and Moscow that are described to have stakes for arms do this, being a Shoutout to the Gorefasts and Gorefiends from the Killing Floor games.
• Take a Moment to Catch Your Death: At the end of chapter 54, as the helicopters start flying away, Murakumo deactivates her Waterfall Shield... and a bullet goes right through the chest of the boy sitting on her lap.
• Take Me Instead: In chapter 307, Samidare tries to offer this to her mother.
• Take That!: At the end of chapter 146, where a Homage to the "I like war" speech is made, the Sheriff trails off and declares that "only true Nazis who can't aim for shit", which was true of the original, "can talk like that anyway".
• Take That Us:
  • In chapter 216, the superpowered fight sequences of the previous few chapters are scoffed at as "anime logic".
  • In chapter 228, a character also finds the above events ridiculous.
• Takes One to Kill One: Without heavy or naval weapons, only Smartsteel melee weapons can harm shipgirls or Abyssals, who are themselves made of Smartsteel.
• Taking the Bullet:
  • Damon does this twice: once to save Shoukaku from getting Killed Off for Real by Alastor Scott, and twice to save Kawakaze from suffering the loss of her arm at the hands of Demon Suzukaze by sacrificing his own.
  • In chapter 305, Imuya stops two incoming torpedoes with one homing torpedo. She launches her one torp at an incoming torpedo and uses her body to take the hit from the second one.
  • Chapter 315: Iowa(Kancolle version) tanks a continuous burst of fire for Mogami from a Howitzer-mounted M2-Browning machine gun.
  • in chapter 378, Damon takes one to the nose for Naganami when an Agent tries to get a last-second shot with his Desert Eagle at the destroyer.
• Taking You with Me:
  • In Chapter 103, an Abyssal tries this on Murasame, and fails due to outside intervention.
  • Later, Shoukaku tries it when a Wo-class and her cohorts demands her surrender. It doesn't work, and leads to her capture anyway.
  • Aircraft Carrier Water Demon tries to do this to Zuikaku.
• Tap on the Head: In chapter 7, Damon knocks out a bandit ringleader with the butt of his pistol to the head.
• Tears of Blood: in chapter 378, when Kongou's squadron gets ambushed and overwhelmed by Agents, they're subjected to a gas attack that damages them quite severely, and part of the damage is portrayed through tears of blood.
• Technicolor Fire: the fire users in the fleet have fire colors across the spectrum. Damon himself has yellow flames, coinciding with his Yellow Reality Cancel. Amatsukaze, Kagerou, and Kongou have realistic flame colors, Shigure has dark, bloody-red flames, Yuudachi has a slightly differently shaded yellow flame that more matches her own hair color, Samidare has blue flames, Umikaze has violet flames, Kawakaze has red flames, and Suzukaze, Ushio, Losira, and New Jersey all have black flames.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Damon and Sanford, though it's mainly one-sided from Damon, in that Damon hates Sanford's guts for multiple reasons, justified or not.
  • but as the story goes on and Sanford's roles within the F.L.E.E.T. Project are more and more explored, with unsavory details coming to light, Damon finds more and more reason to truly despise his godfather's guts. The breaking point comes when Damon first learns about the Moebius Program involving the Shiratsuyu-Class, and since then, it's quickly gotten to the point where Damon will willingly and unabashedly give Sanford a sucker punch here and there if the latter says or does something that Damon really doesn't like.
• Tempting Fate: In chapter 7. "There's a possibility that we could get through here without any trouble, but-" Cue explosion, which gets a Lampshade Hanging right after.
• That Man Is Dead: Chapter 162. Aircraft Carrier Water Demon denies being Shoukaku.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Invoked by Damon in chapter 92, where he says that, if Akebono wants him to stop trying to be a hero... well, he'll give her just that.
• There Are Two Kinds of People in the World: In chapter 38, Damon says that the two are those "who do their jobs bein' themselves" and those "who do their jobs bein' people they ain't".
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In chapter 147, a grenade fired by Shiranui does a contact explosion on a NDP mook already dying a Multiple Gunshot Death.
• There Was a Door: When a ship girl charges a wall, the wall loses.
• Third-Person Person: some ship girls who normally speak like this in the game now speak in regular first person in the story. The one persistent exception to this rule is Haruna, who faithfully retains her third-person manner of speech.
• This Is Reality:
  • In chapter 37, Damon and Benjamin bemoan the fact that they don't live in the Call of Duty world with the accompanying Regenerating Health perks.
  • In chapter 108, Amatsukaze chides herself for having several thoughts seemingly out of a shoujo manga.
  • In chapter 148, Benjamin is chided for thinking that, like a video game, there would be an incentive for completing secondary objectives.
  • In chapter 241, Ooi tells Damon he's not a harem protagonist.
  • In chapter 278, Jeannie tells Damon that his life is not a Dating Sim.
  • In chapter 322, Damon tells Umikaze that feelings alone probably won't allow him to wake Samidare back up, and that their world isn't a Shonen Jump publication.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: averted from the story; as mentioned above, due to the nature of ship girls in the story, there is at no point when a ship girl is deemed useless; the only way a ship girl cannot be a force to be reckoned with is if she herself does not want to be, and even if they don't want to, duty is usually a good enough reason to convince them to fight.
• Those Wacky Nazis: The reason why the fleet is going to Germany is to help with the resurgent Neo-Nazi problem. No longer content with the political process, they seek to reestablish the Reich by force. And the Inner Circle is supporting them. To what end no one knows yet, but probably nothing good.
• 'Tis Only a Bullet in the Brain: In chapter 130, a mook Suzukaze had shot in the forehead is still somehow alive. She quickly rectifies that error.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In chapter 232, Damon notes that although the Savannah survivors weren't the friendliest the first time around, they got even more full of it the second time.
• Tragic Keepsake: In chapter 295, a National Guard is shot in the head by an enemy Super Cobra attack helicopter. Another soldier quickly rips off his dogtags before rushing to find cover from the helicopter.
• Trauma Button: the story concentrates on the ones that are produced within the events of the story itself as opposed to the ones caused by historical reasons. For a perfect example, see below:
• Trauma Conga Line: Suzukaze goes through this starting from after Operation Dualsight. She goes to rescue Murasame when Kisaragi turns violent only to be rebuffed, the last straw on an already tense relationship that causes her to flee the fleet. Neither Sanford nor Shigure are sympathetic and Sanford almost eagerly Unpersons her for not falling in line. When she reaches Atlantic City, she discovers a pair of young survivors, only for the two of them to die at Fed hands. When she links up with the Shakers from Ablett Village, it almost looks as though she's finally found a new home... Nope! The Colossus Reactor augmentation she picks up is revealed to be a bane rather than a boon when the healing it seemingly grants turns out to be nothing of the sort. This results in her being driven away from Ablett Village. This second rejection just compounds on the lingering effects from the first, which causes her to fall into a lifeless, violent funk. Her subsequent discovery that the purported ship girl in Quaker hands is not actually one, the slaughter of the Shakers by the Quakers, and having to bury the corpses of Barry, Baxster and Celsie all tear at her fraying psyche. Chapter 143 ends with the ominous message "END TRANSMISSION: SUZUKAZE'S VOYAGE", and in her next appearance in chapter 164, she's outright immolated by her own Darkwater Protocol.
• Troll:
  • Tatsuta doesn't troll her sister Tenryuu as mercilessly as she does in other fanworks, but she likes to poke fun at her from time to time.
  • Damon himself likes to tease his girls, having a little bit of fun at their expense and chagrin.
  • Of all people, Nagato is this - to Damon, of all people too. There's a bit of a Running Gag between the two that Nagato thinks Damon is gay (jokingly) because of their first encounter at Charlotte, and she's casually been spreading a small false rumor about it. That, and she's also been telling the destroyers that he prefers them...which, given Damon's relationships with the destroyers, would actually be quite true.
• Tsundere: the Kantai characters who are infamous for their tsundere personalities are somewhat more complicated in the story, with Murakumo being the straightest example, at first hating Damon and then warming up to him as the story unfolds. Kasumi seems to simply hate Damon with none of her dere side, and Akebono's case is...complicated.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: the story starts in the year 2029.
• Unconventional Vehicle Chase: in chapter 294, the American ship girls chase a cargo train on horseback.
• Underestimating Badassery: Damon and co. thought Little Rock, being the least obviously militarised of the Coalition's cities, would be a pushover, with horrible consequences.
• Underground City: "New Chicago", built underneath the remains of Chicago.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • While Suzukaze might have gotten a bit carried away during her rescue of Murasame from Kisaragi, the rescuee not only did not thank her for it, but in fact very harshly reprimanded her.
  • In chapter 231, the new Savannah camp survivors not only fail to thank Damon for saving them, they get mouthy and chase him away without any supplies for daring to defend himself when one of them tried to get physical.
• Unobtainium: Navitasium, a special mix of bauxite and Smartsteel involving an unknown catalyst that lets ship girls use special abilities.
• Unorthodox Reload: In chapter 164, Amagi reloads by catching a thrown magazine out of the air right into the slot.
• Unperson:
  • The Battle of Baltimore was left out of official records by the Feds, leaving almost all the dead undocumented.
  • In chapter 108, following Suzukaze's dishonourable discharge from the fleet, Sanford deletes all records of her and officially forbids any discussion of her existence.
• Unusual Euphemism:
  • the term "night battle" gets used a few times at first during the first half of the story, and then when things start escalating between Damon and some of the ship girls, it naturally gets used more and more often.
  • the author varies between terms like "fuel tanks", "chest armor", and "upper hull armor" to describe ship girls' breast sizes in narration.
• Unwanted Harem: One of the things from the game that gets deconstructed. Having to juggle the affections of so many girls turns out to be relationally and even physically hazardous for Damon, and all that's even before counting the superhuman factor. It demonstrates quite clearly why conventional militaries take anti-fraternisation regulations so seriously.
• Unwitting Pawn: In the aftermath of Operation Orlando, Damon and co. suspect that the ship girl-possessing Coalition factions are this to the Inner Circle, first having been told where to get them in the first place, and then sent Navitasium cubes loaded with Abyssal energy to use on their girls. They suspect that this will result in the hijacked ship girls tearing out each faction from within.
• Verbal Tic: the story's dialogue heavily implies that ship girls actually enunciate their Japanese verbal tics in Japanese even when they're speaking English. So for Yuudachi, she says "poi" in English, Inazuma says "nanodesu" in English, and Iku says "nano" in English.
• Veteran Unit: the American ship girls, in particular. Pretty much any group of ship girls who have been active and in service prior to the beginning of the story's events.
• Vice City: Under Arrechea, Orlando has become little more than a drug manufacturing plant filled with junkies.
• Video Wills: a twist on this trope: Shigure, who is lost in action during Operation South Town, doesn't actually leave behind a pre-recorded video for her sisters to see, but Jeannie creates an audio file by using both Shigure's personality codex and Haida's memories of Shigure's final moments to make it as if Shigure is addressing her sisters in regards to her own final moments.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: The Re-class has a habit of bugging out whenever a fight starts to turn against it.
• Villainous Rescue: In chapters 213 and 312 (huh), !Samidare intervenes against an out-of-control Suzukaze.
• Villainous Valour:
  • In chapter 164, we see NDP soldiers trying to drag their wounded out of the line of fire.
  • Happens twice in chapter 325. One mook tries to pick up a grenade and throw it away from his comrades. Another tries to save a comrade who's been wounded by Taihou, even as the rest of their unit flees.
• Violence is the Only Option: This turns out to be the case in Little Rock. Damon and co. thought that, since it was the least obviously militarised of the Coalition's cities, they could go in with minimal weapons, buy the ship girls held there, and get out peacefully. They even wanted to spare the leader, Alastor Scott, due to concerns that his death and damage to the city would ruin the agricultural supply Little Rock was giving the surrounding region. Of course, it turns out to be a trap, and once Scott fired the first shot there was no way he was going to walk out alive.
• Walk on Water: the story depicts the ability of ship girls to traverse on water in three different ways: the standard cruising, used for long-distance travel, the "ice-skating" method discussed in the 4koma, used when ship girls must quickly reach a destination on water, and simply sprinting on water, used in combat for when ship girls must make evasive or attacking maneuvers at close to melee range against the enemy.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Discussed in chapter 145. Kikuzuki thinks that the lengths Damon went to for the fleet, far from being anything unusual, are merely what's expected of a normal Admiral. Her sisters disagree and think that he did go beyond the call of duty.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Damon's brusque ways and unorthodox methods frequently get him into disagreements with his allies. It reaches a peak in chapter 68, where he and Sanford get into a fistfight over his decision to allow Shiratsuyu to return to the Coalition for Murasame's sake and have the rest of her class follow, instead of forcing her to stay with his fleet. Divisions also develop between the ship girls.
  • and to a lesser extent, the Transatlantic Alliance. Even though it's a multinational organization with countries like the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and now most recently Russia, the leaders of these countries quickly seek out other partner countries within the bigger alliance either due to already established political connections (US and Britain) or fears that a certain country is already too powerful and will too easily dominate the alliance if the others don't band together (Italy, France, and Russia). As the alliance is only recently established, the countries aren't at the point where they're bickering, but that is only for now.
• Weapon Specialization: Damon is never seen without his rifle and pistol of choice. The Juggernaut Tactical M14 Rogue Chassis^note One of many bullpup conversions available for the M14 battle rifle rifle, and the Glock 37 pistol.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: In the document about the FLEET Project in Chapter 34, it notes that ship girls are proficient with a large variety of infantry small arms. Each type of ship girl has, among the types they are proficient with, types of guns that they prefer. For example, the destroyer girls prefer pistols all the way up to assault rifles, light cruisers girls prefer all those including battle rifles, and carriers are specialized in and prefer long rifles (DMRs, sniper rifles, and anti-materiel rifles).
  • Several ship girls have this, either through their default equipment or what they get through Damon's YRC. The entire Kagerou-Class, minus Amatsukaze, all use MK-16 SCAR-L variants as their signature assault rifles.
• Weapon Twirling: Damon and some of the American ship girls are prone to doing this to relieve their boredom, either when they're just standing around talking or while on long flights to get to their areas of operation.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Bulldog, a British destroyer, wears a sweater with the British Union Jack on it.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 7. Damon and Murakumo find Amatsukaze.
  • Chapter 18. Damon discovers he's not the only person who is looking for and/or in possession of active ship girls. He spots Baxter Harrison of Mobile meeting with members of the Atlanta faction, who have their hands on Shimakaze and Kaga.
  • Chapter 20. The first Cain and Abel incident listed above.
  • Chapter 26. The secrecy of the Project itself is brought up, after Damon encounters Mexican nationals at NAS Corpus Christi in the previous chapter. How the hell do they even know about the Project in the first place? Or have not one but seven partly-used navitasium cubes?
  • Chapter 28. Baxter Harrison isn't just coincidentally happening to pick up ship girls but is actively looking for them. Furthermore, the existence of Amagi (the battlecruiser, not the carrier) means that F.L.E.E.T created ship girls other than those the IJN actually used in the Pacific War, girls that even Sanford didn't know were to be created. There could be a lot more out there than originally anticipated.
  • Chapter 30. After successfully defending Mobile from the Atlantans and flying to Chicago, Damon gets arrested by Chicago police.
  • Chapter 36. The Feds have operational ship girls of their own and Sanford warns Damon to prepare to fight if he wants to hold on to his own.
  • Chapter 38. After a very tense confrontation with the US President, Damon and co. are going to Britain to help fight the Inner Circle.
  • Chapter 40 Shortly after landing at Menwith Hill, and before deploying to the English Channel, Damon and Sanford receive intelligence that the Inner Circle have deployed their ship girls. The fact that they have ship girls is bad enough, the fact that Kongou is among them is worse, but the fact that Sanford doesn't recognize any other ship girl in the photos he's been given sets off alarm bells for him and Damon.
  • Chapter 41 Kongou opens up this chapter with a bang by countering Amagi's Yamato Cannon with her own, and then quickly wrecks Kagerou with a salvo of 35.6cm rounds. The abyssals make their debut, and Damon's fleet manages to capture one of the unknown ship girls.
  • Chapter 42 The unknown ship girl identifies herself as the HMS Conqueror, third ship of the Orion-class Dreadnoughts. She also reveals the existence of the Abyssals, and the fact that someone by the name of "Mr. Abyssal" is making them for the Inner Circle. They also happen to have in their possession (save Conqueror) ALL of the Royal Navy ship girls produced by Shadow Helix, and Sanford briefs Damon on Shadow Helix.
  • Chapter 53. Damon finds Kisaragi. To say any more would give away a major spoiler.
  • Chapter 64. Damon's fleet joins battle with the Coalition's and the Abyssals make their return.
  • Chapter 87. Zuikaku is killed, Shoukaku nearly goes Abyssal in response before Kaga knocks her out, and the ship girls' weakness to EMP is shown in action.
  • Chapter 95. Damon is fatally wounded, his hacking nanoknife destroyed, and Shoukaku's Abyssalization reaches a new height trying to revive him only to be killed by Alastor Scott.
  • Chapter 96. Damon's funeral is held, more dire effects of Abyssalization are revealed when Murasame attempts suicide, and Sanford has a mysterious conversation about a body and the Genesis Thesis Project.
  • Chapter 105. The unity of the fleet is once again called into question when Kisaragi and Murasame get into an argument over the latter being gifted Damon's old rifle. Suzukaze comes to Murasame's rescue when Kisaragi escalates to violence only to be blown off by Murasame, which leads to her running away. Shoukaku is confirmed back in Abyssal hands, and the Sheriff makes his first onscreen appearance.
  • Chapter 107. After Shigure fails to talk her out of running away, Suzukaze has the dubious honour of being the first ship girl to be dishonourably discharged from the Combined Fleet. Sanford and co. learn from Eagle that the Inner Circle is recycling activated ship girls into exoskeletons and that Simpson was not officially on the Genesis Thesis Project, meaning that anything the Inner Circle knows about it comes from them having directly worked on it.
  • Chapter 122. Suzukaze manages to hitch a ride with some bikers heading back to their home base in Philadelphia, and they tell her what happened to the Trenton CCPL post after Damon and his fleet completed their mission there and left. To start off, the Philadelphians, or whoever they received this news from, mistakenly thought that Damon's fleet was a Fed regiment that rolled in on Trenton that day and killed off scores of rebels. But more to the point, what happened after the fleet left was that the Feds rolled in to suppress the rebellion by exterminating the entire population of the post, trucking their bodies to Atlantic City, and dumping them at the same location where Tatsuya was scavenging. This introduces a Fridge Horror moment. If Tatsuya and Miyuki's parents didn't manage to flee the post prior to the extermination, they may well be among the bodies piled up in Atlantic City. Not only that, there is implication that either they would have eventually been discovered by Tatsuya had he not met an untimely death, or even worse, that he and Miyuki had consumed their corpses without either knowing it. Philadelphia itself also contains a little surprise for us. Smack dab in the middle of one of its cemeteries is an unexploded Iranian nuke.
  • Chapter 125. A traveling merchant by the name of Pulupet is implied to be in possession of some of the un-accounted for ship girls. The leader of the Shakers and his grand-son know that Suzukaze is a ship girl and are planning on selling her off to the merchant in exchange for much-needed medicine. Chapter
  • Chapter 133. When Suzukaze boards the USS New Jersey museum ship, it's revealed that both this ship and Alabama have ship girl cognitive programs loaded aboard them. And said programs were created by Sanford's team in FLEET Project.
  • Chapter 137. We now know why Baxter and Barry recognize that Suzukaze as a ship-girl. Prior to the incident that led to Philadelphia becoming A House Divided, another ship girl (they never found out her name) had been living with the family, but decided to go with Barry's brother and the Quakers when the split happened.
  • Chapter 142. A German ship girl, U-511, makes her debut, pulling a Big Damn Heroes moment to save Hatsuyuki and Sanford from a Eurocopter Tiger attack chopper.
  • Chapter 143. The Colossus Reactor turns out to have side effects when used on humans, which lead to Suzukaze being chased out of Ablett Village. The ship girl with the Quakers turns out to have been nothing of the sort, "merely" a superpowered mutant, meaning that traveling merchant Pulupet's girls may not be ship girls either. The Quakers wiped out the Shakers while Suzukaze was away, and she returns the favour. After burying the bodies of Barry, Baxster and Celsie, she "disappears into the starry night", the chapter ending with an ominous "END TRANSMISSION: SUZUKAZE'S VOYAGE".
  • Chapter 146. The German ship girls were initially in the possession of the NDP before the truck transporting them was stopped by the SDP, had its cargo confiscated and sent over to the Chancellor.
  • Chapter 147. We know more, a lot more, about Deimos' team's mission to rescue Chancellor Gernot Wedekind and his family during the Great War. Deimos was personally involved in the development of the German ship girls, which fell under the umbrella of an off-shoot of Shadow Helix, Wunderwaffle Helix. In fact, the reason why he and his team were even in the country in the first place was to deliver the six completed ship girls to the Chancellor, though outbreak of war plus the impending impact of a nuke meant that those girls never made it to the Chancellor, until 19 years later when his party managed to liberate them from NDP possession.
  • Chapter 154. The Re-class makes its second appearance, while Murasame's Protocol activates.
  • Chapter 162. Shoukaku re-appears, this time as Aircraft Carrier Water Demon, and fatally wounds Zuikaku before forcing the rest of the fleet to retreat. Zuikaku bleeds out before they make it back to base. And the British ship girls who chose to stay with Holmwood are assaulting German territory for currently unknown reasons.
  • Chapter 163. We learn exactly what Holmwood was dealing with the Inner Circle for, shortly before he gets assassinated.
  • Chapter 164. Suzukaze reappears briefly before being consumed by the Darkwater Protocol, but this reveals that there's a second Samidare running around in the US. The British ship girls - now under Sir Stormrider's command - intervene against the Abyssals.
  • Chapter 206. Damon spills the beans on Baltimore and finally gets out of there, shortly before Blackwood apparently has him killed.
  • Chapter 219. The current ship girls are confirmed to be the second generation, with !Samidare being the apparent Sole Survivor of the previous one. American ship girls are also shown to be secretly operational, with their admiral collaborating with Franklin and Eagle on something involving Damon.
  • Chapter 225. We learn what happened to the first generation Shiratsuyu-class.
  • Chapter 230. Damon's dreamworld is acting weird after his latest revival. The Feds, working through mercenaries, try to purge Khal's old survivor camp at Savannah, who have picked up Aoba.
  • Chapter 233: Damon and co. reach Spring Hope too late to thwart a massacre.
  • Chapter 247: The missions to retrieve access codes to the White House are both traps. U-511, and presumably Retia and the German government, is working with Blackwood, and so is canon!Iowa.
  • Chapter 293: Sanford finally reveals the details of the secret Moebius Four sub-project and, accordingly, the true nature of the Shiratsuyu-Classes, both the first and the second.
  • Chapter 316: Umikaze and Kawakaze manage to enter Damon's dreamworld on accident, demonstrating that ship girls, too, can somehow join Damon in his dreamworld.
  • Chapter 438: The specimens make their appearance in Losira's family home, spawning when Damon picks up a strange cube in one of the upper floor rooms.
• Wham Line:
  • Chapter 14.
  Second Nagato-Class Battleship, Mutsu.
  • Chapter 25.
  "Mexicans? What the hell're the Mexicans doing on American territory?"
  • Chapter 31.
  "Gospodin Sanford, I must inform you that you are to expect an important visitor."
  • Chapter 46.
  "Shiranui! Kagerou!" Damon calls loudly, confused at why they are suddenly missing from the second floor, where he last remembers seeing them.
  • Chapter 56.
  "My daughter. Blacklist: Vatista. Unfinished prototype of the Second Fleet Expansion and Enhancement Test. Status: fugitive from the United States Federal Government."
  • Chapter 65.
  "Kaga and Shoukaku... have been captured by these Abyssals."
  • Chapter 70.
  As soon as she opens them, a sizzle of red haze radiates from Shoukaku's brand new eye.
  • Chapter 77.
  Her right eye, which is a full shade of sickly orange, begins to pulse with a familiar haze of the same color.
  • Chapter 79.
  "C-4! GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OU-!"
  • Chapter 88.
  "Tell me why...this happens."
  • Chapter 90.
  It's a land mine.
  • Chapter 97.
  Inside, it is not Damon's body that lies inside that coffin, but the preserved body of the Ru-Class that was captured during the fleet's invasion of Newfoundland.
  • Chapter 99.
  "You don't think..." Lauren whispers, "they've been ordered over to Cayo Romano... for those cargo tankers?"
  • Chapter 125.
  "She's a good candidate for Mr. Pulupet."
  • Chapter 141.
  "Once you land in Germany, watch everyone, and trust no one. That chancellor over there? I don't think that's actually him. It might be someone else."
  • Chapter 148 has two.
  There's nothing inside.
  Among the row of tanks that is parked all around the hexagonal hub, one of them is slowing to a stop.
  • Chapter 152 has two too.
  "Yup. We found him," Sanford chuckles. "This's where good ol' Deimos died, by the looks 'a it."
  "The Abyssals? What the hell're they doin' in Cologne?"
  • Chapter 158.
  "The 'offer' is a deal Holmwood and his secretaries are negotiating with a continental organization who only refers to themselves as the 'Inner Circle'."
  • Chapter 168.
  "My name ain't TJ Combo," Damon Polchow laughs, "but I am so fucking back!"
  • Chapter 179.
  Indeed, when he does reach for it and pull on it a little, the padlock immediately falls apart into two pieces and drops to the ground before Damon can catch them.
  • Chapter 198.
  "He said his ETA to Cape Canaveral was thirty mikes. That was an hour ago. I can't get into contact with him."
  • Chapter 209.
  "...Kitakami-san..." she mutters quietly.
  • Chapter 259 ends with an email requesting for weapons to be shipped out, and the sender is Marco (Santini).
  • Chapter 298.
  Samidare opens her lips to speak in a tiny, raspy, and strained voice:"「さみ...？誰...？」"
  • Chapter 315 ends with the arrival of the Agents as reinforcements for Whitewater.
  • Chapter 376.
  "...why did the Agents sound like...Hank was the one who...launched these missiles...?"
• Wham Shot: In-Universe in chapter 247. Iowa is shocked when she sees BB-61 on the clothing of a certain subordinate of Blackwood's.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Occasionally, Damon and co. encounter the family of mooks they killed.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: The hacking of shipgirls by stabbing them in the head is one of the things that always gets brought up by objectors to this story. But no one complains about Skulljacking in XCOM 2, which is essentially the same thing, presumably because Advent troops, unlike shipgirls, aren't young, attractive women.
• What Measure Is A Nonhuman: Discussed in chapter 127, where Haguro feels disturbed by how the inhuman appearance of the Abyssals makes it easier for her to fight them than if they were humans.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Murakumo rips into Damon for the Mercy Kill involving the baby. It won't be the last time.
  • In chapter 156, Kagerou reprimands Shiranui for the latter's overreaction to the Nui-chan nickname.
  • In chapter 214, Samidare scolds Suzukaze over her actions.
  • In chapter 280, Mogami calls out Suzuya on how she's gone right past Broken Bird into bitch.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Damon can't place Kuroshio's accent. It's not Southern, nor is it stereotypically North American.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: A lot of the ship girls that Damon finds in the early chapters are found without their rigging (referred to by the author as a "gearbox"), meaning they have to fight with only their innate abilities, and whatever firearms Damon manages to scrounge up. This doesn't stop them from being any less useful in anti-infantry work.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity:
  • Some of the girls with Super Modes, like Ayanami's Nightmare Protocol, discover that the things have unwanted effects on their psyches.
  • In chapter 213, Suzukaze has gone as far off the deep end as she has become powerful.
• Women Are Wiser: Averted. Women, both human and ship girl, are very much able to be as irrational and immoral as the men.
• Worf Barrage: In chapter 162, nothing gets through the shields of Aircraft Carrier Water Demon.
• The Worf Effect:
  • Want to show how much of a tech wizard someone is? Have them outdo Benjamin.
  • In chapter 101, after Shigure and Yuudachi onesidedly slaughter Armored Carrier and Southern War Demon, the Re-Class shows it's on a completely different level by killing both of them in a horrible manner.
  • The Shiratsuyu-Class are the strongest destroyers in the Combined Fleet and possibly the strongest shipgirls overall. So in chapter 190 !Samidare dominates all eight of the extant Shiratsuyu-class even with them using their Protocols. Blackwood shows he's a force to be reckoned with by handing them their arses, and offscreen at that.
  • Franklin shows Damon and Jeannie that as powerful as they currently are, they still have a long way to go by toying with them throughout most of the fight and very quickly ending things once he gets serious.
• The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Damon's mother told him that his father was part of a team meant to stop nukings... who was killed in a nuking.
• World of Action Girls: naturally, with all the ship girls featured in the story and ship girls being many times stronger than human men (under normal circumstances). And although Kantai Collection is undoubtedly this too, the grittiness and action-oriented nature of the story perhaps puts forth this notion better than the game itself.
• Would Be Rude to Say "Genocide": In chapter 243, Damon finds an executive order that includes a veiled call for the extermination of mutants and other dissidents and undesirables.
• Would Not Hit a Girl: Discussed in chapter 148. Shioi finds it wrong to shoot another girl. Ashigara retorts that the stereotype of women being less able fighters than men is silly.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Discussed in chapter 317. Murakumo tells Asashio that it's hypocritical to get hung up over nearly fatally shooting a civilian and fearing for the man's wife and child when she hasn't given any such consideration to the mooks they've been slaughtering or to the crews of their previous bodies.
• Wrong Side of the Tracks: Chicago is divided into the rich downtown and the squalid, dilapidated rest of the city.
• Yes-Man: Discussed in chapter 92, where Damon says that having people who disagree with him keeps him on his toes, because he'd start to feel like he wasn't keeping it real if he only surrounded himself with girls that love him.
• You Are Already Dead: Kaga says this to the Aircraft Carrier Demon in chapter 305 after executing her Shitenketsu attack that promptly causes the Carrier Demon's arms to explode off, followed by her head and then the rest of her body.
• You Are in Command Now: With the assassination of Gernot Wedekind, his daughter Retia has taken over as interim Chancellor/President.
• You Bastard!: In addition to the Self-Deprecation, in chapter 167 the author notes that if you're reading this specifically for the gore and violence... what the Hell is wrong with you?
• You Can Barely Stand: Exploited in chapter 92, where Damon fakes his wounds being more severe than they actually are in order to lure a foe into overconfidence.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • In chapter 144, we learn that after the war, the British government was initially headed by a triumvirate until Holmwood had the other two assassinated for not going along with his plans and took the reins.
  • In chapter 206, Blackwood tries to kill off Damon after he comes back from Baltimore.
  • In chapter 223, this appears to happen to Damon again after he refuses to go along with Stukov's plan.
• You Killed My Father: Technically "You Left My Father To Die", but that's the beef Damon has with "Godfather" Sanford.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: averted wholesale, with the exception of story arcs that do not involve the fleet being situated out of a base, the fleet never has to worry about running out of supplies, due to a combination of a reworked resource concept and the fact that Lukenstor, the story's resident MegaCorp, provides the fleet all of the supplies that they would need, including their usual consumables, weapons, and equipment.
• Your Head Asplode: in chapter 378, after taking a Desert Eagle bullet to the side of his nose for Naganami, Damon retaliates by shooting the Agent who's shot him with his own .80cal revolver, and the bullet strikes the enemy in the head. Given what that kind of bullet will do to a normal human being, it's safe to say that that enemy no longer has a head.
• You Watch Too Much X:
  • After getting a summary of the situation in chapter 66, Yuubari tells Damon that it "sounds like a corny plotline straight out of an anime."
  • In chapter 157, when Benjamin wonders if a certain ship girl gained a new weapon from Victoria's Secret Compartment, Sanford says he's watched too much harem anime.
• You're Insane!: In chapter 100 a Chi-Class uses this line on a battle-crazed Tatsuta.