2008-03-03, 21:27 | Link #701 |
Once and Current Subber
Join Date: Dec 2005
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Like we've said, the TSAB is designed by people whose experience with the military is the JSDF. That is to say, the TSAB is a self-defense force in almost the same mold; law enforcement, disaster relief, a jobs program for people with a certain type of inclination.
That works for the Japanese government and society, but primarily because the US is there; Japan, as part of the US security umbrella, doesn't really need powerful forces of its own (and in fact, developing them would be counterproductive, as the US would probably reduce its own deployments in the area.) Nobody else is really competing with the US, so it's not essential that Japanese military strength be developed - and staying non-nuclear was Japan's only real hope of coming out of a multinational nuclear exchange intact. The TSAB has a different environment, though. If there's a big protector keeping everyone else off their back, the series definitely doesn't mention it; thus, probably not. The implication is that they're the only game in town. Possibly true - it would take a lot of infrastructure to match their Navy, and they're not totally blind. That kind of security arrangement would call for something more like the British Imperial Navy than the JSDF... One other point - there's absolutely no combat continuity in the TSAB. No mention of unit continuity, no glorious martial heritage, no traditions, no patriotism. No "why we fight" moment - the characters are there because of their personal ambitions, desires, and quirks, and there's no common purpose beyond that. That's -freakin' odd- for a military, but the JSDF is closer to it than anything else. Nanoha and the others make a lot of other mistakes that help give you the feeling that the writers just weren't familiar with any "real" militaries, and thus winged the whole thing, without really having the background to appreciate the problems their structure would encounter. Well, it's not a terrible thing, that we've created a world in which such people can exist and not know any better... ;p But it does tend to kneecap your magical girl military realism, if that term isn't a contradiction in and of itself. It'd be interesting to design a rival organization "the right way", though. What special challenges would a militarized magical society face? Yes, yes, peace through superior firepower, but there really are unique challenges presented by the situation; you couldn't just throw Nanoha and Fate and Hayate into the 101st without giving everybody involved fits. (More to the point, it'd be more interesting to talk about that than harping continually on the shortcomings of Nanoha from a pragmatic standpoint...) |
2008-03-03, 21:29 | Link #702 | ||
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Join Date: Jul 2007
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They won't be able to invade us without lots of indiscriminate bombing to make up for their tactical nonexistence, but we aren't going to invade them anytime soon unless entire inftact warships are given to us. Even then, we'll only be able to use them until the first major magitech system requires maintenance. (Pure speculation here, but when a world gets advanced enough it might just be able to, like the Erusians, eventually squeeze something out of accidentally contacted magitech, they go from "Non-management" to "Observation Candidate"). That's when they start to sweat... Now here's another thought. We all agree that the TSAB pretty much had to suppress tactics to get that dumb. Perhaps that was their war-suppression plan... After all, tactics are the best chance for the weaker side to pull a fast one over a stronger side. If no one even has tactics as a concept, then battle becomes a crapshoot. The stronger side will win by dint of N-square (not counting the inevitable factor of luck). Since the TSAB is presumably the strongest power, anybody acting up won't even dream they can beat them. Further, the suppression of tactics also suppresses the arms race. A lot of weapons are created to satisfy certain tactical requirements mandated by certain tactical visions. Remove thinking on military matters and you reduce this. Of course, all this kind of falls apart when one guy like Scarlietti doesn't play by the rules, but while the illusion holds, a kind of peace can be retained. They are exchanging unpreparedness against the unknown factors we think of for increasing the probability of peace in the known factors. At least, that was the original vision about 75-150 years ago. Now, no one in the TSAB controlled zone even really understands what's as stake. |
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2008-03-03, 21:30 | Link #703 | ||
~ I Do ~
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Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: In the XV-8A Spartan "00"
Age: 38
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Too bad I'm being hampered by my writing ability... Quote:
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2008-03-04, 01:28 | Link #706 | |
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Join Date: Jun 2007
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In that case, I'll post this here then.
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I've got one, though I never got around to writting it down. I was thinking about what I could give an OC in the TSAB, then I thought, "Why should I give these to the Bureau?" The resulting world has the following features, which I think are what's needed to give the Bureau a run for its money: 1. About 250 years before MC0000, the civilization on this world was in the early electric age and discovered a way to generate magical energy from electricity. As a result, they don't need high-powered mages to deliver high-power attacks. They use nuclear reactors, that can be small enough to mount on vehicles. Infantry have to make do with high capacity batteries. 2. This planet has three superpowers dominating a continent each. Sounds like Gundam 00, but I thought of it weeks before that detail was announced. Anyway, they're not friendly to each other, so they weren't dumb enough to stand down their conventional forces to replace them with magical ones like Mid-childa did. 3. As a result of 2, their magic weapons evolved to match modern weapons in speed, range and destructiveness. They've replaced non-magical weapons only where they've proven superior. Unlike the Bureau's which seem to use non-gunpowder weapons as a meterstick. To keep them and the Bureau from commiting their full resources to destroying each other, I put this world over three years travel time in Dimensional Space from Bureau HQ. |
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2008-03-04, 04:18 | Link #707 | |
does whatever he wants.
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Atop a hill of words.
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Looks like everybody loves (killing) the TSAB in their dreams and fantasies. For me I did something a little nastier and sneakier rather than "outright planetary resistance", which I refuse to state as yet. |
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2008-03-04, 09:52 | Link #708 | ||||
Adeptus Animus
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Age: 36
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Continuation of a discussion on Lost Logia powers that started in the OC-thread:
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Also, this 'exageration formed over a lifetime of indoctrination' is completely baseless. Lost Logia incidents happen even to this day, meaning that there is plenty of it in the news. Quote:
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Do clarify. If it was what Lutecia stole for Jail, we don't even know what that was. |
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2008-03-04, 10:21 | Link #709 | ||||
does whatever he wants.
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Atop a hill of words.
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Yeah, watching Nanoha tells us that much about Lost Logia incidents. There seem to be way too many of them for anyone's good. Quote:
You can go see the main point of my reply to his rant on the OC. Quote:
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Spoiler for Philosophical/Technological/Magical Underpinnings of the Formation of RF6:
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2008-03-04, 11:32 | Link #710 | ||||||
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Join Date: Jul 2007
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The actual word used in the Japanese was 崩壊, which means "collapse", "breakdown" or "decay". It is actually a pretty broad term that can mean far more than annihilate. Quote:
The point is that where we can observe the seeds, they clearly aren't nearly as l33t as promised. Quote:
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2008-03-04, 13:20 | Link #711 |
Once and Current Subber
Join Date: Dec 2005
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One points out that it was stated pretty bluntly that the Book of Darkness would absorb the entire world if not unchecked. Destroying Tokyo to kill it (temporarily) was a lesser-of-two-evils option, not a hysterical over-reaction to an imagined threat. No, Yuuno didn't actually see a world go foom, but given that by this point he's the expert on the Book outside of Reinforce herself (who doesn't contradict him), we can take it as settled fact.
One also points out that you don't know that the "old calendar" is a BC-type counting backwards. That's actually an unusual way to do it - the counting backwards would also be an artifact of the "new calendar", and the "old" calendar would reflect the previously-used dating system. Since the implication of that statement was that it was in some way influential in forming TSAB policy towards Lost Logia, it's sensible that it happened much closer to the TSAB's foundation than you've stated. Keroko's right in that the manifestations of the Jewel Seeds that we see in the first season are entirely uncontrolled - the Jewel Seeds are not being manipulated by anyone with the least magic power (save Fate and Nanoha, who are busy sealing them, not unleashing them.) The one time we see some Jewel Seeds being intentionally used by a mage, Precia is attempting to open a pathway that involves destroying a dimension, and even the warming-up process is enough to cause an earthquake... in Uminari, in another dimension completely. It's not too much to surmise that (a) Precia-success would have spelled bad news for the Midoriya's cake sales, and (b) that the Jewel Seeds are packed full of punch for them who know how to use 'em. |
2008-03-04, 19:17 | Link #712 | ||||
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Join Date: Jul 2007
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2008-03-04, 20:01 | Link #714 |
Once and Current Subber
Join Date: Dec 2005
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Fate didn't execute the Jewel Seeds in ep 9 - she just threw a hell of a lot of energy out there, and hoped that they'd reveal themselves with some sort of sympathetic reaction, which is what more or less happened, right? Fate wasn't trying to "summon waterspout" (duh). And once she'd set them off that way, she couldn't just turn them off - in fact, she wouldn't have managed to seal them at all without Nanoha for backup - so it's safe to say that they were doing their own thing and not in the least under Fate's control.
I have no idea exactly how much oomph it takes to make an earthquake in another dimension. Hell, making one HERE requires the same magnitude of energy release as several nuclear weapons, even if it's one that's too small to do much damage (and I suppose "distance to the epicenter" isn't a problem when the quake is occurring at right angles to reality, huh?) And it's not even what Precia was trying to do - just an incidental feature of her doing something even more difficult. And she didn't even manage it! So, yeah, okay, we're talking about nine seeds and the assist of all the power reactors in the Garden of Time (which was not, we can assume, greater than the effect of the additional five Jewel Seeds that Precia wanted.) But that's still one HELL of a punch! By contrast, the show never gave the Relics that kind of power in Strikers. We don't ever see them unshielded, we don't really know what they're good for other than sticking into Vivio and (maybe) bringing back Lutecia's mom? (What'd Jail want with so many, anyway?) They're not so dangerous that Caro suffered ill effects from hiding one under her hat, even. So we can at least conclude that they're more stable than a Jewel Seed... |
2008-03-04, 20:33 | Link #716 | |||
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Join Date: Jul 2007
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2008-03-04, 20:52 | Link #717 | |
The Dang-meister
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Oh and can anyone please answer the question I had posted a few statements back?
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2008-03-04, 21:01 | Link #718 | ||||
~Night of Gales~
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Join Date: Dec 2005
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I'd say in the least, 1 Jewel Seed for 100,000 Drones. Not that Jail made that much of course. Quote:
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I think those Relics are supposed to matter after Jail wins, where he can spend his nice coffee hours to create more Saint bloodlines, or to modify living humans to be able to accommodate Relics, since canonically proper cloning is not so easy of a task.
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2008-03-04, 21:24 | Link #719 | |||
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2008-03-04, 21:47 | Link #720 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2007
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Ark, as Avatar and the others keep trying to tell you, that's because the process was stopped before it really begun! I don't get, they mentioned it several times, had Precia actually completed her task with the Seeds, it would have destroyed the planet. All the damage we did see was merely from the initial stage, the process hadn't really gotten underway before it was stopped. Yet you always ignore that, why? You don't think things couldn't have gotten worse had she not been stopped?
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