I'd like to see this quest as a more refined version of SoaBS 1. The background is similar, but not identical, and in particular I'm trying to escape its pacing issues.
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The other players, because they're a little nuts, selected three banes for the very first story arc... through sheer happenstance, those three banes are arriving one from each of the three main crossover elements. What you're looking at right now is the Shugo Chara one. It's an affair that I've previously considered turning into a standalone story, but it might honestly be more interesting like this.
I do notice you said "main" crossover elements. While it has been a long time since I've read the old quest thread, I do remember it ALSO being a crossover with Devil Survivor, Schild's Ladder and (if I recall right) Black Rock Shooter.
Does that mean the other, unselected banes were from unspecified "minor" crossover elements and there are actually 3 (or more) other unmentioned minor crossovers like in the original, assuming SMT/Persona counts as the same thing for crossovers, making the "main" ones Shugo Chara, Exalted and SMT?
If so, I would hazard a guess that, if the Delinquent bane is the Shugo Chara one, Reality Glitches are probably going to be SMT, leaving the Publicity one for Exalted. Though, I supposed it isn't confirmed whether Exalted counts as a main crossover either. That question mark in the thread title makes me highly suspicious.
So I switched to playing Atelier games and, well, there are a lot of those.
Ah yes, while Ryza is not strictly-speaking a magical girl like Amu, heck if the anime of it didn't make her almost look like one doing a transformation during those synthesize sequences. Shame the anime only covered half the first game.
This doesn't make conspiracies not real. We've seen plenty of demonstrations that they happen. It does tend to make them not all-powerful, and in a functioning state, there's likely to be other interests. People who'd be horrified by learning about it, even. That's what makes it a conspiracy, instead of being the known way that things work.
I think I'm getting what you're putting down - it's not the whole government (perhaps not even the most or highest-ranked people) in on it and there are ways to dismantle it legally, if you had an in with inside workers you could trust. Or if you knew which members of the conspiracy were either not true believers or kept in the dark about the reality and could subvert them.
So believe it or not, but the first thing I did upon reading there was a government conspiracy was to check whether Mashiro Rima's parents were politicians or government workers, as I vaguely remembered them being rich people with status in the anime (it's been a long time since I watched Shugo Chara too). But I didn't find anything to indicate they were. Yeah, I actually went to check whether Amu had any ins with the government. But I don't think she does, or at least if she does, I don't remember them.
That leaves it difficult to determine who actually can be trusted. The conspiracy in P5 had leadership in the police under their thumb, even though we know that individual officers like Chie and Akihiko would have been clean. And without personal connections, hard evidence of the conspiracy would be needed to blow the lid publicly.
Well, unless Amu engages in some brainwashing or mind control of her own and I doubt that's a route anybody plans on going down any time soon.
......Huh, makes me wonder if Officer Satonaka or Detective Shirogane are suddenly going show up out of the blue now.
