Memory-Insufficient-spec-alt

and to widespread industrialization. They are politicalin a way that the depiction of mechas is not,even though the two are historically intertwined.The history, however, is largely avoided when thegenres are split; that Liberation Maiden is a mechagame is in some sense an attempt to avoid the politicsof history.A future for which we can all becomfortably nostalgic sits uneasilywith the imperative to killthe past.Liberation Maiden manages to create a future whichinverts the past. As the player shoots lasers at enemiesand buildings, causing them to burst intoflora, bits and pieces of narrative are unlocked.These unlocks happen when the player does unintuitivethings like “flying to the edge of the combatzone;” not challenges so much as suggestionsto play the game poorly. Six of these unlockablesare marked “History,” and provide worldbuildingcontext. “100 years in the future,” Japan is awaning ecological paradise under semi-subjugationby “The Dominion,” and is leading a worldwideeffort to resist the Dominion’s strangleholdon the world.The “sole ruler of the Dominion[,] known onlyas ‘the Chairman,’” never shows up in the gameproper. His “ambitions border on madness,” asthe leader of a nation whose “radical political philosophyis little more than a front for spreadingtheir own ideals and national interests, leadingthem to wage war against the entire world.” TheChairman, who is a clear analogue of Mao, alsohas weaponry described as “[l]acking any artisticaesthetics.”Over the course of the played through narrative,the Dominion is only ever given a single momentof visual identification; after the player has defeatedthe final boss, a large airship appears bear-