Her rigging consists of a pair of 203 mm twin gun mounts carried on a strap like a purse on her right, with a flight deck on her left. On her back, she carries a mockup of the real ship's bridge like a backpack.
In the supplementary material for the 2016 anime film, Aoba is revealed to have a second remodel/kai ni, but remains unimplemented in-game due to her original artist Hatsuko no longer in touch with C2 Kikan since 2015. Her kai ni transforms her back rig to her real-life bridge superstructure with a mast, a crane on the left/portside, and a catapult on the right/starboard. Her two 20.3 cm twin mounts are also remounted to a new portable rig similar to Kinugasa Kai Ni. In addition, she also gains a third 20.3 cm twin mount attached to the left side of her shorts.
The historical Aoba famously had a war correspondent onboard, and as such, Aoba has been made out into being the reporter shipgirl. At best, this makes her optimistic and enthusiastic, but at worst, she's portrayed as a stalker or paparazzi (whether she's portrayed as one or the other is largely artist- and/or story-dependent). (In fact, due to the heavy overlap of artists between Touhou and Kantai Collection, she's oftentimes just drawn by former Touhou artists as Shameimaru Aya with the serial numbers filed off, due to the shared reporter stereotypes.)
Historically, IJN Aoba was the flagship of Cruiser Division 6, which consisted of her sister ship, Kinugasa, as well as Furutaka and Kako. She served in numerous naval battles like Coral Sea and Leyte Gulf before being sunk in an air raid in Kure in July 1945.
