Fred said:
There are some traits from the nekovalkyrja like the 4 incisors instead of 8, the eyes that can adapt visual spectrums, the furred mobile ears, the four fingers/toes, the generally oriental cast to their features and the colored streak over their backbone that represents their SPINE interface that set them out in a tasteful "I'm not human" fashion.
Now that Yukari is feeling more Neko, she'll actually USE the dang eye thing.
The lack of fingernails on the latest neko is stretching it. I really don't buy the rationale, which was to not damage the HS inserts when inside a power armor (which would probably insta-regenerate anyways). Fingernails are just too useful otherwise. But I've worked my way into thinking that the tips of their fingers was bony enough to achieve most of anything a fingernail could do for a human.
Fingernails also can be used during torture. Peel them off and such.
The lack of skin oil and sweat is also counter-productive. Skin oil is important - it gives us water permeability while still allowing our skin to breathe (what happens to your fingers after you stay in a bath for too long shows the job skin oil does for you). Skin oil also contributes in your skin staying soft. Skin oil buildup does bring up complications, but where the nekovalkyrja body could shine is simply in regards to regulating the degree of skinoil present over a select portion of the skin.
This I agree with.
Sweat helps your body cool. Basically, the process of moisture getting on your skin and then evaporating releases a lot of body heat. Our bodies don't sweat for fun, they sweat because we need them to. The bad part of sweating is the odor, and I figure that if we wanted the nekos 'improved' someplace, it'd be in the lack-of-stink department.
This I'm not as sure about.
NH-7 didn't need to sweat because they had cooling vents. By the time NH-17 did enough hard work that most (fit) people would be sweating, they would be out of energy and collapse.
Now, with NH-29, it could be said they don't need to sweat because they don't generate the same kind of heat inside their bodies. After all, they're nanomachine constructs; the machines could produce microscopic vents of steam across the entire surface of the Neko's skin, instead of drops of water and chemicals via glands. If produced across the entire surface, it would not require the big drops of water and other solubles.
Neko, as well, might pant. It's unknown, but they could. Big steamy clouds puffing in front of a Neko's face as she lets her tongue loll out and her incisors are showing ... bweh heh heh.
Right now, the lack of heart - besides the semi-amusing possibility of accusing a nasty neko that she's heartless, which will be literal - implies, from what I've heard in the past, that each and every vein in a neko's body can sort of behave like a worm/intestine by undulating and forcing blow to keep flowing through the body.
Can you imagine what sort of quivering mess that would make a neko look like? The only real use I can find for this is the lack of heart pump to damage... but that in itself isn't an immunity to death from torso wounds: the lungs are just as vulnerable. In a way it'd make more sense to have a redundant cardiovascular system than making it entirely absent in favor of something that doubtfully would be spread over the whole body.
While this might be a little unpleasant to think about ... Neko blood is hemosynthetic fluid, which is an organic nanomachine material.
What if the blood moves itself?
The veins and arteries could help it along, guide it to necessary places, reroute or close off damaged areas and such, sure. But theoretically the blood could flow all by itself. It's not just a dumb fluid; it's nanomachines. Thus, the Neko's body could be built to compensate for any such vibrating or pulsing of veins, arteries or the blood itself. And it's the blood that keeps the Neko alive, not the muscles around it.
That's why you would avoid the redundancy — if the blood isn't properly working anymore, there's no point in pumping it to needed areas.
The lungs are vulnerable to damage, but many times the heart is a one-shot kill. The lungs are not.
This also brings up the question of what happens with the space vacated by a missing heart? Hearts take considerable internal real-estate in a human's body - even if nekos are diminutive, the absence of it would be hard to replace with something else.
Only if it required replacement. What if the Neko has larger lungs? Maybe it has a redundant "brain?" Because the blood is so important, maybe it has a second liver or another pair of kidneys?
All we're doing, in the end, is speculating on the anatomy of a Neko, which no one knows anything about.
It's one of the thing I'm wondering if a retcon would be possible, rather than the creation of a wholly new nekovalkyrja type.
Sometimes, making something too nice or advanced under the excuse of making it better is not always a good idea.
I would prefer explaining the current NH-29 — give it an actual anatomy! There's no need for a retcon if we can explain things in a sensible fashion.