So, in my (apparently) unending quest to become a Megadork or Geekus Maximus, I got an anime series from 2004 called ‘Area 88′ (remade from one in the ’80′s) which is essentially ‘Top Gun’ with more hair. (Oh man. There is tons of hair.)
I’ll spare you the tedious plot details, but the gist is that there’s a war in a parallel or slightly-modded world of the not-too-distant future (I know this because they reference the Vietnam war at one point) in the Kingdom of Asuran, and Area 88 is a secret desert base from which the good guys launch attacks against the unnamed enemy. I think it’s a civil war because they keep referring to the enemy as ‘rebels,’ and seriously, who does that?
Anyway, what I found most interesting was the management scheme at Area 88. It’s more or less strictly rewards-based – the soldiers are sort of government mercenaries. Rewards come with risks – for instance, in the one episode where a sniper is holding the base captive by shooting down planes on the runway, the top brass offers $30,000 for his death. If you shoot down a deserter you can get $200,000. You pay for everything on top of regular fuel, ammo, and maintenance – like, if you’re a terrible shot you can buy extra rounds for your 20-mm so you don’t run out in the middle of a raid because you went through your standard-issue rounds too fast.
I thought it was quite a cool system, though they don’t explain it well in the 12 episodes (since it’s not really part of the plot except to explain that a pilot can pay $1.5 million to break his contract – which is what the main character is trying to do). My brother and I were discussing it the other night, how you could implement this system in ‘real life’ (“Anime’s not real life?” “No, dear.”) and how it would cut down on civilian losses, property damage, etc, because it’s a right-minus-wrong system. If you shoot down an enemy plane and get $1000, but the downed plane falls on a non-military hospital that will cost $50,000 to repair, guess what? You owe $49,000. It means they end up with really careful and talented pilots with every incentive to only kill the, uh, rebels.
Then Al was like, “How are they paying for it? In the series, I mean.”
I said, “No idea. All I know is they work for the actual government, so I’d guess it’s tax dollars.”
Al: “So the only way it’s different from regular soldiers is that they get paid to kill the enemy instead of a salary.”
I had to think about that one. Because aren’t all soldiers basically just paid murderers? Yes, we could split hairs all day. But in the end if you’re in the army you’re accepting money to kill people. The only difference is the method of payment, and the motivation to limit collateral damage.
I find myself curiously intrigued and confused by this whole system and I wonder if I should write to the Chief of Defence or something. You know, hammering out the details: if more than one fighter shoots down an enemy plane, who gets the reward? Do they split it? Would it be weighted based on their current battle scores? Does anyone get paid in the event an enemy plane downs one of its own? Would there be other opportunities to make some money – for instance, capturing a refinery? Would POWs count for anything, or only if they had information? How to prevent fighters claiming fake victories? (For some reason, in the series this was really easy. The radar controllers all seemed to know exactly who had downed whom. Or whom had downed who, I forget.) And finally, who pays? Could there maybe be corporate sponsorship or something? “This enemy kill was brought to you by Saturn. Saturn: a different kind of company. A different kind of car.”
(We also ended up talking about Canada’s position in Afghanistan. Al thinks we should stay a little while longer to see if ‘we can fix their crap government.’ I think we should stay until we’ve found every Taliban member, placed them in a large pit, and filled it with molten lead. This is for no more noble reason than that they blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas, with which I’ve had a strange obsession for my entire conscious life. One of the first images I can clearly remember – seriously – is a photo of them from an old travel magazine. I will argue endlessly for womens’ rights and self-government but in the end I find myself mainly incensed by the destruction of important world heritage sites.)
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