Note: "Sou" (Thanh in Sino-Vietnamese) in Souryuu (translate as Blue Dragon or Thanh Long in Sino-Vietnamese) can be both Blue and Green that why Souryuu has both blue and green color on her theme.
I don't know much Sino-Japanese, but in modern Sino-Vietnamese, Thanh (Sou) or Xanh Dương is Blue, while Lục - Xanh Lá is Green, if I don't wrong, in Sino-Japanese still use Sou for both blue and green.
I can see/understand why would would go for her current design though. Alot of ship girls are forgetable simply because they look too much like their other sister ships and from those sister ships, only 1 gets popular while the others kinda sit in the background. They probably didn't want her looking too much like Sou and Hiryuu.
For example, I keep forgetting that Tama and Kuma are sister ships to Kiso. Her popularity dwarfs Kuma and Tama so much it's not even close. The popularity game with Ashigara and Haguro from Myoukou and Nachi are also pretty vast.
The Kongou sisters and Sendai sisters though seemed to have lucked out in that those sisters are at least close to each other in terms of popularity.
Doesn't help that Hiryuu and Souryuu are the standing in the background character without much special feature. The other carriers are unique enough. Shoukaku and Zuikaku is clearly differentiated enough. Kaga has her flat expression while Akagi her reputation as a glutton even if their design is not so special.
Panzercracker said:
Note: "Sou" (Thanh in Sino-Vietnamese) in Souryuu (translate as Blue Dragon or Thanh Long in Sino-Vietnamese) can be both Blue and Green that why Souryuu has both blue and green color on her theme.
I don't know much Sino-Japanese, but in modern Sino-Vietnamese, Thanh (Sou) or Xanh Dương is Blue, while Lục - Xanh Lá is Green, if I don't wrong, in Sino-Japanese still use Sou for both blue and green.
It would help to know what the word originally refers to.
Doesn't help that Hiryuu and Souryuu are the standing in the background character without much special feature. The other carriers are unique enough. Shoukaku and Zuikaku is clearly differentiated enough. Kaga has her flat expression while Akagi her reputation as a glutton even if their design is not so special.
It would help to know what the word originally refers to.
It's said long long ago, the humans are not so interested in colors. So in the early period of the languages, there are usually very few words to distinguish colors.
For example, in Japanese language, the oldest color-words are black(kuro), white(shiro), red(aka) and "others"(ao), that is to say, to the ancient Japanese, they just did not quite care about the colors other than black, white and red, they just treat all the colors including green and blue and gray all as one.
This is also the case in ancient China, the "sou" in Japanese, is in fact an imported word from Chinese language. This word also has very very long history, and through the archives you will notice that the ancient Chinese also used "sou" to indicate blue,gray and green...
that is to say, to the ancient Japanese, they just did not quite care about the colors other than black, white and red, they just treat all the colors including green and blue and gray all as one.
*looking at Reimu and Marisa* That explains...
I never studied language, so the earliest I know about that blue is probably for the blue dragon (as in the four holy beast) and after seeing example of blue/green confusion (traffic light) thought that the dragon refers to the ocean so it probably means colour of the sea rather than blue. ^^;