The word "conceit" has an alternate meaning which is very useful, but which doesn't get used all that much. One meaning, of course, is similar to "arrogance". But the other meaning is "an idea, opinion, or theme, especially one that is fanciful or unusual in some way". It's not quite the same thing as an affectation, though it's similar. A conceit, especially when it comes to story telling, is deliberately adopted even though the story teller knows it's strange.

The fundamental conceit in Mao-chan is that the war against the alien invasion is being televised live. Every encounter is viewed by the voters. And the aliens are cute looking, so the government of Japan is afraid that if cute aliens are fought by ugly men using normal military equipment, the voters will see it as bullying, and come to root for the aliens.

Besides which, years of budget cutting have made the military an empty shell.

Kawaii, deshou?

So cute aliens have to be fought by cute little girls, in order to maintain an advantage in cuteness, and thus to maintain the will of the voters to continue to resist the invasion. Hence Mao, Misora, and Sylvie are the frontline troops in the war.

And when, on live TV, they start crying because they want to protect the country against the aliens but cannot because they're not being permitted to do so, and the voters who watch also start crying, that helps make it politically possible for the government to allocate funds and grant permission to the girls to use their heavy attacks.

On the face of it, that would seem to be really stupid. But for those of us who have watched the way that the GWOT was simultaneously being fought on the battlefield and on television, and respectively being won and lost in those places, it rings true. Mao-chan has something of the same kind of funny, yet uncomfortable, truth that the classic movie Network did.

I found out about that conceit from the slightly-spoilerish Wikipedia page for the show. It included one piece of information I hadn't known that made some sense of the first episode: Mao's tank isn't armed. It has a turret and what looks like a main gun, but it doesn't work.

That may have been another case of the government trying to figure out a politically acceptable way of fighting the war. Cute girls don't fire 120mm cannons, because that just wouldn't be cute. They should do mahou-shoujo kinds of attacks.

Sylvie says that her submersible doesn't have any weapons. And I bet that Misora's Harrier is likewise unarmed.

I really like the conceit of the government trying to fight a war for survival with one foot in a bucket because of excessive publicity over tactics. I know all about that kind of thing, baby.

(UPDATE: Comments about the GWOT are not welcome. This is a post about an anime series.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 01:39 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
Post contains 492 words, total size 3 kb.

1 Whooops... don't know how that empty comment got there.

I love the details on Mao's Tiger, right down to the tow cables.  (What does it need tow cables for?  Anime tanks don't throw tracks...)  It could just be the shot, but the Harrier and the mini-sub look CG, or at least more obviously CG than the tank.

It does raise a question:  the Harrier is current day military equipment,   so why does Mao have a PzKpfw VI Tiger from World War II?  I guess it's because the Tiger is obviously historically a tank among tanks in that it looks like a tank should look, even if its 88 is outgunned by modern JSDF stuff.  There's no question that a Tiger looks like a tank should look.  The Harrier, on the other hand, does not look like the very essence of air combat, but it does have the advantage of being VTOL, which is great for animation purposes.

Posted by: Civilis at April 22, 2009 02:03 PM (dpgDM)

2

S'okay. I figured it was just a mistake, and deleted it.

All three of the machines are CG, and they look pretty darned good.

I'm pretty sure the submersible is patterned after a real one. I thought it was Alvin, but I was wrong.

Mao's tank is there to carry her to where she's going to fight, which means it's driving on city streets. Do you have any idea what kind of damage tank tracks do to normal pavement? (Especially when the tank turns?)

I saw some of that here recently. Someone was digging up the street to lay a new water main, and they had a back-hoe which they were parking at the school next door each night. The street next to that parking lot was pretty scarred up from the back-hoe's tracks.

Of course, an 8 year old girl in a drum major costume riding on top of a tank is kawaii, so the voters don't mind.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 22, 2009 02:34 PM (+rSRq)

3 That submersible is Shinkai6500.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 22, 2009 02:41 PM (+rSRq)

4 I rented disc three of Mao-chan and really liked it. I meant to chime in and say that I thought you might like it, but I didn't get around to it between you mentioning that you were going to buy it and now.

I don't believe that KA was really thinking of GWI, GWII, Vietnam and how the increase in media presence has had an effect on warfare. His interests are likely closer to home. One can easily enjoy the series without thinking about those aspects at all. They can be considered merely a good excuse to have cute magical girls with a semi-military theme with things waged in a bright cheerful fashion. Even if I have broader tastes, I like a series where I /can/ turn my brain real low, and not worry things to pieces.

Anyway, maybe I ought to make the budget to go rent it again. I could use some more upbeat in my life.

Posted by: PatBuckman at April 22, 2009 02:48 PM (h7HNv)

5 Odd that the Harrier looks more blatantly CG than the others.  I wonder if it's the color that makes it stand out worse, or the contrast (mostly light bluesky behind it).  At any rate, unless it has an internal cannon, it's unarmed, and I suspect it doesn't.

Posted by: BigD at April 22, 2009 02:58 PM (LjWr8)

6 Pat, I know it's not intended to be a message show, but it definitely does take comedic swipes at politics and bureaucracy, among its many targets. And the basic conceit appeals to me, even if it wasn't intended as some sort of timely satire.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 22, 2009 03:11 PM (+rSRq)

7 Steven, it is timely now, but maybe not when it was made. I'm not exactly adverse to reading far more into something then was ever meant to be there. Sometimes someone commenting on the human condition to themself as they tell a fun story can have great significance after the fact, when other things come into the picture. There are hints of deeper thinking in the Negima manga that might be indicators that someone on KA's team is capable of the intent, but I wouldn't bet on it. I think it is too fun of a series to go too deeply into the dissection at this point. The surface is good enough for me as it is.

Posted by: PatBuckman at April 22, 2009 03:30 PM (h7HNv)

8 Politically charged shows are only as good as the rest of the material allows. I heard Tokyo Marble Chocolate was quite bad, and quite a few people are unhappy about Shangri-La.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 22, 2009 03:57 PM (/ppBw)

9

The anime came out the second half of 2002. The manga was 2003.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 22, 2009 04:58 PM (+rSRq)

10 I'm reminded of some of the RahXephon staff interviews, where the creators expressed surprise that there was any foreign audience for the show; one of the staff actually said that he thought that the issues brought up were uniquely Japanese (not in a bigoted way, precisely, but he was honestly puzzled). Uh, no, guys, universal themes are universal.

That said, the JSDF is a ridiculous paper tiger, and lots of people know it, not least of which are practically everyone -in- it. So here we have the opposite problem - you can see the echo of world politics there, but it's just as likely to be something more parochial. (On the gripping hand, I haven't seen Mao-chan, so maybe it IS world politics that was driving it. Or some of both, for that matter.)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at April 22, 2009 05:33 PM (pWQz4)

11 I think it's the glass that definitely makes the Harrier look CG, and to a lesser extent the same for the mini-sub.

Posted by: Civilis at April 22, 2009 05:36 PM (dpgDM)

12 Japanese gave a good account of themselves in Iraq, even although to endless surprise of everyone involved they came equipped with Type-64 (almost a decade since 5.56 mm weapons were officially introduced into the inventory -- perhaps their command had concerns about the sand). But overall the combat worthiness of JSDF is an open question indeed. People still debate the reasons for the ridiculous rout of Georgians in 2008 by a couple of Russian brigades, so Japanese ability is a complete unknown. Anyone who makes pronouncements deceive themselves.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at April 22, 2009 06:03 PM (/ppBw)

13 Steven, yeah, I checked that. Add in the lead time for an anime, and various other things... That said, for someone interested enough, there were probably enough clues in, say, 1950s-2000 to predict part of the shape of things. However, I don't think it deliberate satire. I found the GDI campaign of the original command and conquer (I think '97) simlarly amusing because of the same series of events.
Japan seems to be slightly ahead on the curve as far as the effects of electronics on society is concerned. Perhaps the same is true for the effects on the Media?
I do not think it overly political. Of course, I enjoy Tom Kratman, so my tastes may be off. The least political of Tom's works might be Yellow Eyes, which takes shots at the third world and the international community. I do not think that Mao-chan has any political content for an American audiance that is deliberate and necessary for appreciating it. I do not consider elected officials being worried about upsetting their voters to be political. This might be merely an artifact of my culture and my own laziness of mind.

Posted by: PatBuckman at April 22, 2009 06:08 PM (h7HNv)

14 A "conceit" in storytelling is a delicate thing to use. It can work but depends on how flexible the viewer is in suspending disbelief, so what is a dealbreaker to one person can be accepted by another.
An example for me is the use of honorifics in Ai Yori Aoshi.  The way Aoi, Miyabi and Kaoru address each other is a dead giveaway to any Japanese person that something very odd is going on, but it is studiously ignored within the story.  It grated on me for quite a ways into the series, but I tolerated it since I enjoyed the series otherwise.

One of my relatives is in the JSDF, working on board an Aegis cruiser.  His comment when the JSDF shot up an American ship with a .50 cal machine gun during RIMPAC was "I'm not surprised."  He feels the forces have decent equipment, but training and command are sadly lacking.
He took me on board for a tour when they were docked at Alameda a while back.  Pretty cool.

Posted by: Toren at April 22, 2009 07:02 PM (dVb3R)

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