The IJN Taihou was the first Japanese aircraft carrier with an armored flight deck. It was a highly advanced ship for its time and was destined to be one of the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy. However, it had an extremely short career.
It entered service in March 1944 and was sunk by the US submarine Albacore during the Battle of the Philippine Sea just a few months later.
The curious thing is that it was not immediately destroyed by the torpedo it received. A series of errors by the crew in damage control caused fuel vapors to accumulate inside the ship until they triggered a catastrophic explosion.
The Taihou was a very powerful vessel that ended up succumbing to an unexpected internal fragility that had not been anticipated during the ship's construction.
And you'll tell me "What does that have to do with Taihou’s yandere personality?"
And I'll tell you… really between little and nothing, but an interesting parallel can be found in the creative liberties the game took when giving Taihou that characteristic characterization based on what happened to that aircraft carrier.
Taihou presents herself as a girl who is extremely devoted and obsessed with the Commander. In the interactions Taihou has with the Commander, that confident and seductive approach that so characterizes her is quite evident, but at the same time it lets slip how emotionally fragile and insecure she feels deep down when the Commander is with another girl or she feels he isn't giving her enough attention.
Taking it to a level that can be applied to a ship, it sounds very similar to what happened with her real-life counterpart, an aircraft carrier that was very advanced for its era and destined for great things, but that succumbed to internal flaws that had not been foreseen.
The result was a woman who seems perfect, confident, and dominant, but who in reality fears being rejected, developing an extreme emotional dependence on the Commander for this reason.
It's curious because even though Taihou often implies that she could do something if she finds another shipgirl approaching the Commander or tries to pull him away from her, she never actually ends up doing anything, as if deep down she knew that the Commander would end up pushing her away, be mad or dissapointed of her if she ever harmed someone.
That's why her threats usually feel more like expressions of that emotional anxiety than real intentions to hurt anyone.
In fact, it seems that Taihou's greatest fear is not that another girl approaches the Commander, but that he ends up distancing himself from her.
In several lines of dialogue when you lose a battle, the first thing Taihou thinks about is not the retreat, the state of the fleet, her own physical condition, or the fact of having been defeated, her first thought is whether, as a result of this setback, the Commander will think less of her or, even worse, won't want to see her anymore.
An interesting detail is that as more skins for the character have been released, that more aggressive attitude has gradually diluted, as if Taihou had internalized the reality she lives in, where many shipgirls want the same man she does, and that instead of letting those insecurities inside her end up destroying her relationship, she focuses more on the time she spends with him and tries to enjoy it as much as possible, since the Commander is by nature a rather busy person.
The character's evolution ends up being quite consistent with the history of the aircraft carrier. Taihou's emotional vulnerability is still there; it never disappears. The difference is that she learns to live with it instead of letting it cause a catastrophic explosion that ends up ruining what she cherishes most, the Commander's attention and her relationship with him.
If you think about it, despite all her possessive gestures, Taihou ends up generating more tenderness than fear. Her narrative ends up being that of someone who appears invulnerable when in reality she is extremely sensitive.
The jealousy, the veiled threats, and the possessive attitudes end up functioning almost like warning signals that reveal how much she needs to feel loved.
In that sense, the image of "an extraordinary ship whose true weakness was hidden inside" fits quite well with the Taihou of the game, a woman who seems dominant and imposing, but whose real struggle has always been against her own insecurities.
Someone who, over time, learns that the best way to keep what she loves is not by clinging tighter, but by trusting that that affection can be maintained even when she does not have absolute control of the situation.