The USS Intrepid (CV-11), the fifth of the US Navy's Essex-class aircraft carriers, as personified in the game Kantai Collection. She is designed by Shibafu and is voiced by Kubota Hikari in her first role in the game. She was second of two American shipgirls who made their first appearance in the Winter 2018 event, Gambier Bay having appeared earlier.
Appearance
Although Intrepid is Shibafu's first non-Japanese shipgirl, the artist is no stranger to illustrating non-Japanese girls, doing so both in fan art (like those for the World Witches Series) as well as official art (such as this World of Warships wallpaper on post #2270532). Following those precedents, Intrepid is given short medium brown hair tied into a ponytail while still depicted as a blue-eyed, well-endowed European like the American shipgirls ahead of her. Ample curves are also something Shibafu gives any standard carrier he does (See also Kaga, Souryuu, etc.). She wears a black overshirt with gray or white neckerchief over a white shirt, a white unpleatedminiskirt, and a very wide belt. Her machinery and rigging consist of a backpack with attached antennas and a large flight deck as well as a neck pillow supposedly for shoulder support (although fan artists have already depicted her with the neck pillow detached). Like Saratoga before her and unlike the other personified aircraft carriers, she brandishes a firearm to "launch" her aircraft, in this case an M1903 Springfieldrifle.
Personality
While generally friendly and outgoing, Intrepid is also depicted as a childish yet mature girl, often taking pride on the post-World War II aircraft and technology that she has handled, as evidenced by her hourly lines. She also makes an oblique reference to the manga Area 88, which also features the same post-World War II aircraft.
History and trivia
The historical Intrepid led a very long and eventful history, fighting during World War II and beyond. Arriving to the Pacific, she started operations with strikes on the Kwajelein Atoll, taking part in further strikes on Peleliu and the Operation Hailstone Truk raids, taking a torpedo and needing repairs. During the Battle of Leyte Gulf, her planes helped sink Musashi, Zuihou, and possibly Zuikaku. She returned to the Pacific after repairs from kamikaze attack damages in support of the Okinawa invasion, where her planes helped sink Yahagi and possibly damage Yamato, and was again hit by kamikaze attacks not long afterward. After a few more months of repairs, she would operate off the coast of Japan for the remainder of the war. Postwar, she was decommissioned, but then reactivated and modernized for her multiple newer roles, taking part in various NATO exercises, being utilized as an anti-submarine vessel during the 1960s, retreiving the Aurora and Gemini space pods as part of the US Space Program, and finally taking part in operations during the Vietnam War, all before returning to routine patrol and retiring in 1974.
There were plans to scrap the historical Intrepid after decomission, but through the efforts of real estate developers Zachary and Larry Fisher and the Intrepid Museum Foundation, she was instead brought from her mooring at the Philadelphia Navy Shipyards to New York City and made into a museum ship, the centerpiece of the larger Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. Intrepid thus joins Iowa as Kantai Collection shipgirls whose historical counterparts are still floating to this day.
During the war, she earned three nicknames: The Fighting "I" for her prominent roles in battle and the less flattering Decrepit and Dry "I" for her frequent bad luck and time spent in dry dock for repairs (she was torpedoed once and hit by four separate kamikaze aircraft). She also gets a fourth nickname, Sky Mama, derived from the literal translation of kuubo (空母), the abbreviated Japanese term for an aircraft carrier, which comedian Degawa Tetsurou coined in a segment for the show Sekai no Hatemade Itte Q! In the said segment which originally aired February 2, 2017 (over a year before Intrepid's introduction into the game), Degawa, supposedly asking for directions to the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, asked several New Yorkers, "Do you know Sky Mama?"
Intrepid's introduction into the game on the morning (Japan time) of February 22, 2018 drew mixed reactions from Western fans with the negative side taking issue with her design which is not helped by her artist's already notorious art style. Her first appearance and the negative initial reactions coincided with the temporary suspension of the game's Twitter account that day, leading some Western fans to connect the perceived rage against Intrepid's design to the suspension (which was actually for unrelated reasons). In comparison, the Japanese fanbase was much more receptive for Intrepid's design with the initial negative reactions being lukewarm.
