Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
On a vessel of any kind there must be somewhere the controls are housed. On a ship this developed from a galley's cockpit (where the coxswain sits with the tiller) to a sailing ship's quarterdeck (the upper aft deck with the wheel) to the modern ship's bridge we've all seen before. As ships became larger, more complex and more heavily manned, the tasks required to be done aboard increased vastly, and the bridge became the focal point of the ship's command, it's metaphorical "mind". A modern large ship can have up to a dozen people in the bridge at once. The Captain, Officer of the Watch (OOW), Pilots, Lookouts, the Navigating Officer (NO), the Comms Operator (radio and communications with the ops room and radar); it can get busy fast, so strict discipline is required to keep it all running smoothly. Whoever the officer with conduct is, which is not always the captain since the crew can keep it running alone during plain sailing and he can't be on duty all day, communication is all directed through him. The CO gives orders and ask questions to present crewmates, and whomever he asks responds directly to him. This way nobody will talk over each other. The exception is if there is emergency information to give, at which point they can shout it out unprompted (eg: a lookout sees an unknown vessel).
The way in which the bridge is organised also plays an invaluable role in coordinating efforts. On a basic level each member must have the resources to fulfil their respective roles: the pilots need access to the controls and the lookout need a spanning view of the outside. But the location of machinery and personnel around the room itself also reflects the hierarchy and relationships between them. The CO must have a central and backward position in order to be able to hear and be heard by all, but not get in the way of their work. The NO needs to be near to the pilots to share information quickly. There must be room for extra officers as required for different circumstances: Engineering Officers in a emergency scenario, or visiting officers from other vessels for example.
^A small bridge simulator at the RN's Britannia Royal Naval College
The CO (or in this case Instructing Officer) is seated to the right on a higher chair. The positions for the pilot and NO and next to each other at the front, with the compass in the centre of the room. The Comms Ofc. is sat behind across from the CO. Another example of modern warship bridges can be seen here, a tour of the decommissioned destroyer HMS Edinburgh.
^The bridge of the Nautilus from Nadia
One of my favourite anime bridges, this time within a submarine but the dynamic stays similar. Here you can see the popular anime trope of a mechanically raising chair for the captain, by locating his quarters directly below the bridge he can quickly move directly between his personal room and the bridge through the ceiling. This trope first appeared in Space Battleship Yamato and Cpt Okita's mechanical lifting chair. Although in his case his quarters are located above the bridge, which to me serves a contrasting thematic purpose regarding his relationship to his crew. His also serves the ulterior motive of disguising Okita's illness since it allows his to slide down into the bridge cleanly instead of hobbling in through the door.
^The bridge of the Yamato from Space Battleship Yamato
And here it is, this being the view down to the bridge from Okita's descending chair. The compass (present in its real-world form aboard the Nautilus, see bottom left) is now a sci-fi orb which assumedly allows three dimensional bearings to be taken without a magnetic field. Another major anime trope appears here: the giant video comms screen above the seats. This allows video link with other ships: both friendly and hostile in face-to-face Zoom calls (or probably Skype back then). This edition never found its way into real world vessels, but I think it should. A video chat with the Russian sub about to torpedo you might solve things for the better.
^The bridge of the White Base from Mobile Suit Gundam
I would be amiss not to include the iconic White Base bridge, albeit a screenshot from Origin since I couldn't find one from 0079. This includes the curious edition of a raised platform for back-to-back communications officers. I suppose this is to allow them to disseminate information clearly to the bridge from across such a very large vessel with surely a lot of ecternal control centres to report in. The captain sites before the platform giving him a unimpeded view through the front window and up to the video call system they similarly have installed here. Federation bridge design is often directly contrasted with Zeon design, and here the decentralising of the CO gives a more cooperative impression, while the Zeon bridges have a design centralised around the raised up CO, reflecting the political priorities of each faction.
