Naturally, today’s strip starts out rather conventionally: following conventions, the Queen sends her conventional forces to fight the freshly-appeared mecha menace. And following a different, but no less well-established convention, they fail miserably. In response to that failure, the Queen delivers the conventional answer to the conventional question: “Why did we spend so much on that stuff if it’s useless?”
An alternative, and in this case even somewhat justified, excuse would have been “We weren’t prepared because we couldn’t predict this newly-emergent threat.” But that’s also been used so frequently, off recently, that it has become a hollow phrase in it’s own right.
The most honest answer would probably have been: “Any threat in a magical-girls-show can only be defeated via magic forces, everything else is contractually obligated to fail.” With a more specific alternative: “Gigantor has always dealt with tanks in this way.”
The strip becomes less conventional once the twins appear – and that’s something that applies to them nearly anytime they appear in any context. In this context, I toyed with the idea to have them appear in the same kind of sailor outfit as her boss, which I had no problem imagining them wearing. But ultimately, I decided to go with something more outrageous, and blame it on themselves to boot. I think the outfits match the spirit of the genre (I drew heavily on the Vepper from Cute High Earth Defense Club Love!, after all), and the idea that the twins would moonlight as fashion designers appears plausible to me. And they would be unconventional designers, given how going against conventions is core to their identities…
Good thing Latho wasn’t deterred by his very strong first impression of the twins. It clearly saw the potential, and after studying the applicable rules in great detail, went ahead with the recruitment. And the rule were sufficiently clear on the necessity for love, and sufficiently unclear on the specific nature of the required love, to have the twins pass with flying colors! Mostly pastel pinks and violets, but still flying colors.
“…but purchasing it created a lot of jobs, right?”
Broken Window Fallacy in action!
Well, she’s a politician on some level, so she’s bound to communicate (toward the general public) mostly in fallacies. XD