Japan had taken to the technological changes rather smoothly overall. The impact on the fast-paced, everyday Japanese life was fairly minimal. People still worked hard, played happily, went out on dates, got married, were attacked by demons or monsters, and defended by fighting angels of love or some such.
Yes, the exile of the Sailor Senshi had affected Japan's ability to defend itself from random supernatural attacks rather less significantly than the girls might have expected. To quote one typical Japanese schoolgirl: "on this fair winter's day, when snow covers the ground like a bridal veil, you have filled pretty bridesmaids with jealousy to turn them into screeching harpies. Wedding Peach is rather pissed-off!"
Without the senshi, there were plenty of others to step in and take the breach.
Additionally, the existance of one alien being making a brilliant, sweeping, global takeover bid did not deter others from making their own, if less than global (or indeed brilliant) plans. To quote one such planner: "when I have freed this city from the alien's tyrannical grasp, I shall be considered a hero! Then no one shall stop me from taking over. Therefore the first step towards world domination must be city domin… er, city liberation! Bwahahahah!"
Of course, there were noticeable changes that foiled such plans almost as effectively as magical girls or the planner's own stupidity. Such as the integration of the Japanese police and Self Defense Forces into the new Planetary Defense Forces ~ the alien overlord apparently considered there to be no fine distinction between crime and war. This meant taking police armed only with tonfa off of the streets and replacing them with officers armed with phasors and personal body armor.
The "real" armed forces also got quite a boost. The new regime was peaceful, but it wasn't stupid. So it just kept quiet about the details.
Rather than treating assorted magical girl teams, ninja demon hunters, martial arts trouble makers, and so forth as urban legend to be ignored, or even annoyingly elusive vigilante gangs, the new Planetary Defense Force was instructed to treat them as valuable resources.
The Far East Region's Governor General had wanted to institute a policy to locate, recruit, and protect empowered beings. Kimiko also wanted to ensure that the potential recruits' identities remained as anonymous as possible, whether they decided to actively join or no. If they refused, she still wanted undercover guards to protect them from being harassed, kidnapped, or even recruited, by extremist resistance groups.
However, she'd been somewhat surprised to discover that such a black-ops policies were already in place in Japan and elsewhere. Her policy not only meant the reactivation of a disbanded top-secret, international organizations, like the Gatekeepers, but it also revealed the existence of current hush-hush groups. One of her best friends was, in fact, an agent of a self appointed military group called Mithril, with access to suddenly-not-so-advanced technology.
It wasn't a surprise for Kimiko to learn that similar operatives had been placed to observe the other senshi; the identity of at least some of those operatives, however, was.
Not that such black ops always got it entirely right. One such operative was assigned to observe a girl who seemed to be protected by a penguin. Yet, despite being a key choice of a magical girl (kind, caring, and pining for a missing boyfriend) nothing remarkable happened around her other than the penguin's almost humanlike actions, so the operative was eventually recalled to follow-up reports of a flying turtle sighted in the Hinata district.
On learning this, Kimiko decided to requisition one of the telepathic 'Jedi' students from Australia to discretely check some of the reports out.
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(Posted Fri, 19 Mar 2004 03:49)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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