| abstract | - The "squid hat" is the real Ika Musume. When she decided to invade the surface she realized that she would need a body that could function on land, and to that end she attacked some poor, anonymous swimmer and latched onto them headcrab style. This would explain a number of oddities within the series, all of which have been pointed out as unusual by the characters themselves:
* It's not that Ika would die if her "hat" is removed, it's that Ika cannot survive out of the water without a host.
* She is likely extracting oxygen directly from the host's bloodstream, which allows her to breathe air; without a host, she'll suffocate if not returned to the water immediately. She can't breathe underwater because this supersedes her own respiratory mechanisms; she relies on her host for nourishment so long as she's attached to it.
* Also explains her eating habits. Shrimp, lots of it, crammed into her (or rather, her host's) mouth.
* Ika mistook Takeru for a comrade of hers when he was wearing a squid-hat not because she failed to recognize him with the hat on, but because she assumed that he'd been recently infested by one of her people. When she addressed him as a comrade, she was talking to the squid. And when she encountered Takeru's empty hat, she directed her grief at the hat, not at Takeru's hatless body.
* Ika does not know how to swim...with a human body. Without one she'd jet about as a squid usually would, but having a hundred-odd pounds of human weighing her down makes this rather more difficult.
* Ika's Easy Amnesia from falling down the stairs is a result of the impact jarring the interface between Ika and her host's brain. Attempting to remove her "hat" stressed the connection and allowed it to realign.
* And, finally and most damningly, she looks like a squid sitting on a girl's head.
* This troper doesn't think so. While the Puppeteer Parasite idea explains the hat and super powered tentacles, it doesn't explain her ability to hold her breath a long time, make her body glow (not just the tentacles), and spit squid ink.
* Just make some biological modifications. If that organism can link neural systems, surely a bit of in-vivo gene-tweaking is not beyond its capabilities. Also supporting this theory is that right after she came to shore, she introduced herself in Japanese, despite never having had the opportunity to learn the language. I think this show is about to take a turn for the darker...
* Ika has literally bonded with her host body, which allows her to modify it as she chooses, but at the cost of removal = death. If she were to jettison her host body, she could probablt do so, but it would be a long and complex process, ending in the host's death. Or it could truly be permanent, and Ika is one of the few of her species to ever go through with this process (and also explains why we don't see more of Ika's kind.)
* She speaks Japanese because of Translation Convention, I guess.
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