Chapter 3
—HiMERU would like to get this situation sorted out.
The source of everything is this order system.
At first, the Qualifying Rounds in the Kansai region were honest and respectable.
Yes. By engaging in idol activities, we are compensated with SSL$—
That being said, the name and purpose may have changed, but we are essentially doing the same thing with these SSL$ as we have been with L$ at ES.
For those of us affiliated with ES, it’s something we’re intimately familiar with.
Yeah, but in this case, the ES idols have too much of an advantage compared to the non-ES idols because they don’t have any experience with it.
And so in order to ensure some kind of equality, the ES idols were given orders to follow.
And we’re bound by these rules to minimize the disparity between us and those idols off in the wild (?).
They’ve created a situation where everyone can compete on equal terms—But only on the surface.
But the real problem’s that the local idols’re at this huge disadvantage ‘cause they’re competing on a playing field they’re not used to.
These orders barely make any difference whatsoever.
They call it a handicap, but it’s barely even a little scrape.
Huh~? But it’s really doing a number on me?
Hey, c’mon now Niki. Ya gotta put yourself in their shoes for a sec.
For all these local idol guys, this is basically the same as bein’ a soccer player and havin’ someone hand you a bat and glove, then say ya gotta start playin’ by the rules of baseball.
And then all the ES idols are like these pro baseball players who’ve been battin’ it up their whole lives.
And then all those Babe Ruth-lookin’-guys go complainin’ about being handicapped ‘cause they had to dye their hair brown during the game.
Sayin’ shit like “Oh, woe is me, I can’t stand this! But fine, if this makes it fair.” Got it?
Ain’t that dumb? Makes it seem like a con artist’s pullin’s one over on ya! Makin’ that long face like we’re sharing the burden, like it’s a mutual loss, but that soccer player’s the only one getting shafted!
Is the fact ya can’t eat takoyaki gonna throw your whole career down the drain? Huh?
Most of these orders are laughable at best, so the game’s still rigged in the ES idols’ favor!
If you’re looking for equality and fairness, go play soccer with the other soccer players!
Urgh~ I’m not gonna understand it if you turn it into a sports metaphor! Make it about cooking instead!
I get the feeling you never wanted to get it into your head in the first place, anyway.
Fufu. And still you go to great lengths to explain things to him. That’s somewhat admirable, Amagi.
Shut it.
Anyway, that’s the whole point of this—SS is rigged so the ES idols can pound the strays into dust with our overwhelming advantage.
Yep. An aggressive war that aims to expand ES’s territory and force the strays to surrender to ES and obey them—That’s all SS is.
…?
Whatevs, I guess it’s lost on you guys anyway.
I’m just talkin’ ‘bout how a whole buncha ethnic groups were mushed under one umbrella as the “Wajin”—which means any wars and massacres that weren’t written down just never existed.2
Well, that’s got nothing to do with us in this day and age…
When you really dig your fingers in and try to figure out who the real sinner is, the answer is each and every one of us—Homo sapiens, who rose up by cutting down all the other species in the world. Right?
Who knows? Maybe the ghosts of the Neanderthals are gonna crawl outta their graves and curse us all!
Anyway. This means that all of us ES idols were supposed to prove our superiority by winning these fixed games.
And they’d get to spread their propaganda ‘bout how cool and awesome ES is.
—Yes. However, the situation has changed.
The other day, all of a sudden, posters appeared all around the Kansai region.
Printed on them were the orders that were originally meant to be kept secret.
And a detailed description of which orders were given to which members of each unit.
Yes. We also learned of Shiina-senpai’s order by means of those posters.
—So? What happens now?
At first, everyone was just confused. We turned it over and over in our minds, thinking that it was strange for something like that to happen.
But then, someone was clever enough to realize that if what was printed on those posters was true—
It would be easy to destroy the ES idols, as well as their overwhelming advantage.
Okay. So. First Yamato: Yamato Takeru was a legendary Japanese hero. He’s said to have been the son of Emperor Keikou, and he was supposedly responsible for expanding the Yamato Dynasty’s territory (the Yamato Dynasty being the one and only dynastic house in japan, extending as far back into the past as 660 BCE and continuing unbroken to the present). Rinne, therefore, is making a reference to the way ES is rapidly expanding its territory through SS. for a fun fact about Yamato Takeru, he is said to have used the Kusanagi no Tsurugi to cut down an Ainu tribe which attacked him. I find this trivia somewhat significant because it’s been speculated that the Amagis are either Ainu themselves, or at least that HapiEle has borrowed elements of Ainu culture in the creation of their village.
Second Yamato: Yamatai or Yamato-Koku (I went with the second version due to its similarity to Yamato Takeru, and the clear tie back to the Yamato people) was an ancient country in Wa (Japan) during the late Yayoi period (1,000 BCE - 300 CE). It seems to have been an influential foundation for the idea of Japanese unity and Wajin, though historians and linguists still debate whether there’s an actual tie between the two.
Wajin (倭人) is an East Asian ethnic group which was first proposed in 19th-century Japan as a propaganda technique to aid imperial expansion once the West introduced the concept of race to the Japanese people. Japan pushed this idea of national unity and ethnic unity by enforcing assimilation and conformity on the people, expecting minority groups such as the Ainu, Okinawans, and Ryukyuans to leave behind their own cultural traditions and assimilate into the Japanese mainstream culture. By emphasizing the “oneness” and “purity” of the Japanese people, Japan was able to justify its imperialism across Asia, as well as the atrocities, the “wars and massacres,” committed at the hands of the Japanese. So this is what Rinne is talking about here: ES is enforcing this same “oneness” on the people, absorbing everything and enforcing conformity on indie idols through this very same style of imperialist propaganda.
Again I find significance in Rinne saying this because the Ainu were subject to these assimilation efforts, and this might be alluding to the Amagis having been inspired by the Ainu people and might explain why he specifically seems to say this with so much disdain. The second part of this line is probably alluding to the fact that Japan still engages in historical revisionism aimed at erasing its involvement in atrocities that were committed in the name of that 19th - 20th century imperialism.
It’s also worth noting that currently the term Wajin tends to be written as 和人 (pronounced the same way), which uses the kanji 和 (wa, peace, harmony) and is a character which has retroactively come to be synonymous with Japan itself. However, the variant Rinne uses, and the original way of writing the term, is 倭人, where the character 倭 means “submissive” or “short.” The kanji was changed from 倭 to 和 in the 8th century CE. Rinne’s choice of kanji here might be furthering his point of how ES is subjugating the rest of the entertainment industry (by making indie idols “submissive” to ES).