Survey Ship (AGS): She wears a blue coat over a full brown serafuku with a brown skirt. She handles a Nambu type 14handgun on her right hand. Both her suitcase and her machinery are mostly colored grey. This is the first form she is seen upon her first meeting with the player.
Lighthouse Tender (AGL): She wears a white coat over a full brown serafuku with a brown skirt. She handles a light bulb on her right hand, presumably the heavy duty one used in lighthouses. Her hull number as a tender, LL01, is written on the left chest area of the coat. Both her suitcase and her machinery are mostly colored white with the mast being mostly yellow.
Icebreaker (AGB): She wears an orangehooded jacket over a serafuku composed of a brown shirt and a white skirt. She handles nothing on her right hand, but a helicopter is seen as if she is presenting it. Her suitcase is white, but her machinery is colored orange and white. Her name is seen both in kanji and romaji on the right chest area while her current hull number is seen on her left. This reflects the ship as it appears today.
She has several seasonal CG where each form is differentiated by the color of her outfit.
Seasonal Outfits
Rainy Season: Wears a simple sailor-collared shirt and a white pleated skirt without pantyhose and with simple boots. She is holding a blue umbrella with a paw print pattern and carries with her a blue shoulder bag and the appropriate rigging.
AGS: Blue shirt.
AGL: Gray shirt.
AGB: Orange shirt.
Summer: Wears a t-shirt with a large text print on it and a pleated skirt with sandals. She is carrying with her a duffel bag, a lifebuoy and the appropriate rigging. Her damaged CG reveals she wears a simple bikini underneath that is the same color as her t-shirt.
AGS: Blue shirt, brown skirt, brown bag, red and white buoy with name written in hiragana, right to left, text is "特務" (Short for "特務艦", "Auxiliary Ship").
AGL: White shirt, white skirt, blue bag, orange buoy with name written in hiragana, left to right, text is "灯台" ("Lighthouse").
AGB: Orange shirt, white skirt, blue bag, orange buoy with name written in kanji, text is "南極" ("South Pole").
New Years: Here, each version of Souya wears a different outfit. She is holding a hamaya with an ema attached to it with "安全海上" ("Safe seas") written on it.
AGS: Wears a t-shirt with "賀正" ("Happy new year") written on it under a blue happi.
AGL: Same outfit as normal AGL.
AGB: Wears an orange furisode with the bottom hem and sleeves fading to blue and white as well as a snowflake print. Her footwear is rudder geta.
She is the first Japanese and the third ever museum ship included into the game after Iowa and Intrepid. The historical ship itself is currently docked at the Museum of Maritime Science in Tokyo. This and the several close calls the historical ship had during WWII are translated into a maximum luck of 155 (the highest ever in the game). However, shipgirl Souya's other statistics make her practically useless in battle due to the historical ship being mostly in the sidelines in WWII, compared to the battle-hardened American museum shipgirls whose luck stats are not as high (at 99 max and 100 max respectively) but are balanced out by other statistics.
The historical ship started out as the cargo ship Volochaevets in 1936, one of three ice-straightened cargo ships commissioned by the Soviet Union as part-payment for Japan's construction of the South Manchuria Railway. She was never delivered to the Soviets, however, due to deteriorating relations between the two countries and instead was renamed Chiryō Maru. The IJN then acquired Chiryō Maru in 1939, given the name Souya, and assigned duties as an auxiliary ammunition supply and survey vessel. Other than participating in the Battle of Midway as part of Miyamoto Sadachika's 16th Minesweeper Unit, her service in the IJN was mostly unremakable. She did survive WWII as a whole but with multiple close calls, including a torpedo attack by USS Greenling in 1943, an aircraft strike during Operation Hailstone at Truk in 1944, a convoy attack by USS Parche on June 26, 1945, and a flotilla attack on Onagawa Bay by British bombers on August 9, 1945. After the war, she was given repatriation duties and by 1949 was turned over to the Maritime Safety Agency, the precursor to the Japan Coast Guard, to supply remote lighthouses, hence the moniker "Santa Claus on the Sea" (and shipgirl Souya's lighthouse tender form). The historical Souya was then comprehensively refitted during the 1950s into Japan's first dedicated Antarctic research ship which made several missions to Antarctica from 1956 to 1962. Her second mission in 1958 was significant due to her rescuing the human crew of the Showa research station in the face of approaching winter, but having to abandon its 15 mission dogs, two of which survived upon Souya's return the following spring. After her retirement from her Antarctic duties and her use as a rescue ship in Hokkaido, Souya was fully decomissioned in 1978 and was moored at her present location in Tokyo the following year as museum ship.
Souya's name can also be read as "Munetani," so searching for Souya using the kanji can also turn up results connected to characters surnamed Munetani, Mashiro of High School Fleet being a prime example.
