Power games in Midchilda, Playing politics in Lilian

If Subaru was anything like Mami, she would really do well in the senior ranks of the TSAB; you need to be a cunning little raccoon dog ("chibi tanuki" was what Major Nakajima called her after realizing how he'd been manoeuvred by her) to survive there, like Hayate - was what I found myself thinking as I watched the negotiation, about the Card Treasure Hunt, between the Yamayurikai and Lilian Newspaper in Ep 10.

I've long wondered: Why does the Mistress of the Night Sky require a whole phalanx of guardian knights when she's rated SS?

And Chapter 10 of the StrikerS manga answered my question most satisfactorily: not all Ss are equal, there's Ground Combat S, Air Combat S and composite S. Hayate's SS rank is a composite rank based on her staggering amount of mana but she won't be rated highly for either ground melee combat or air combat. LOL at her speculation that, out of the whole Riot Six personnel, she'd only be able to beat Caro. And then again maybe not. LOLOL. In essence, she's like a hugely powerful artillery platform, excellent at dealing death and destruction long range but will be in a lot of trouble if engaged up close even by lightly armed infantry.

Which reinforces zwei my belief that Yagami Hayate's real power lies in her political streetfighting skills. Despite barely concealed opposition from TSAB Army HQ and rather more insidious opposition from the TSAB High Council floating brain troika, she carefully built the support she needed from the Saint Church and Inter-Dimensional Navy, leveraging on her Belkan heritage and family ties respectively, to establish Riot Force Six.

StrikerS was, for me, intensely political; it's not party political but it had a clear bureaucratic politics angle to it. Likewise I also find MariMite intensely political, especially in the encounters between the two above-mentioned powers of the school, in terms of the very broad definition of politics by Harold Lasswell: "Politics is who gets what, when, and how."

And the "what" of the MariMite universe are the members of the Yamayurikai themselves. The souer relations within the Rose families overdetermine the rites and rights of succession. And the Lilian Newspaper's main preoccupation, far from being some kind of putative Fourth Estate, is to be the main source of Rosa news and organizer of Rosa events. Which is sometimes at odds with the personal feelings of the Roses themselves.

In this season I've enjoyed seeing how much Mami has come into her (though I do miss her terrorizing Minako) exemplified in how confidently she talked to the whole council on her own. But also heartily approving of her cutting and pasting last year's plan for this year! Now, for great staff work, she just needs to be more judicious with doing the Find And Replace.

Related posts:

1. Twenty H-Games turned Animes (HGtAs)
2. Power of Sunflower
3. Power of Flower