Reflections After the Disaster

On the televised debate shows, the pundits were spitting as they spoke, holding up enormous memo boards and turning the government's response time and private companies' rescue speed into clear comparison charts.

That red "government decision-making line" was as flat as a heart monitor after the heart had stopped, while the blue curve representing civilian rescue efforts shot straight up two hours after the earthquake struck.

This contrast was practically a public execution of Kasumigaseki's bureaucratic system.

While the Defense Agency was still tangled up over which legal clause deploying the Self-Defense Forces might comply with, employees from supermarkets and convenience stores had already carried box after box of food and drinking water into the shelters.

While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was still studying the medical license qualifications of foreign doctors, civilian rescue convoys had already set up generators at the entrances of hospitals whose water had been cut off.

As the media praised the various companies involved in disaster relief, Sega's performance was inevitably dug up by the media again.

Unlike the official relief points, where people still had to fill out forms and follow procedures before they could receive supplies, Sega's trucks simply flipped open their cargo beds, and boxes of cold-weather assault jackets were thrown down.

These peripherals, originally custom-made to coordinate with Sonic's publicity campaign, had fleece-lined inner layers and were windproof and waterproof. Now, in Kobe's January cold wind, they had become the most practical life-saving charms.

An even more interesting scene took place in the children's resettlement area.

The adults were worrying over tomorrow's mouthful of food, but the children quieted down while holding dark-green machines one after another.

Five thousand GamePockets—electronic junk that, under normal circumstances, parents might have regarded as monstrous floods and savage beasts—had now become "electronic sedatives" that stopped