@Erik: My toughts about those oddly placed 6-inch gun mountings are that if those ships where ever got built somoeone would have noticed the flaw of an exposed ammunition magazine and modified the project in order to move the guns inside the armour belt.
By the way, here are two new drawings:
Noshiro proposed CLAA conversion:
in July 1944 a plan emerged to refit Noshiro as an anti arcraft cruiser, this called for the removal of the two type 98 80mm wing mounts to be replaced by four twin 100mm type 98 in shelded mounts, like the ones fitted on Oyodo, seventeen triple and eight single 25mm machine guns where also to be fitted for a total of 59 barrels; the plan do not materialized, and Noshiro eventualy got sunk in october 1944 during the Philippine Campaign.
The Kai-agano (also nown as C-44) Class Light Cruisers:
This class of light cruisers was designed in may 1941 for the Dai-Go-Ji Kaigun Gunbi Hojū Keikaku or Fifth Naval Armaments Supplement Program (also known as Maru 5 Keikaku or Circle Five Program) was an improved version of the agano-class, the hull was lenghtened by over 12 meters to a total lenght of 186,5 in order to fit a fourth 150mm (6-inch) twin turret aft of the mainmast, heavy anti-aicraft armament was to be composed of eight 80mm type 98 guns in four twin mounts fitted abaft the funnel; part of the hull lenghtening was also used to fit more powerful engines in order to mantain a top speed of 35 knots despite the increase of displacement, thus the funnel was also larger than the one of the standard Agano class.
Five ships (with hulls numbered from 810 to 814) where ordered in 1941, with other two (numbered 5037 and 5038) added in september 1942 under the Wartime Warship Construction Replenishment Program (Kai-Maru 5 Keikaku or Modified Circle Five Program) but eventually none of them was ever laid down neither recieved a name.