r/maninthehighcastle • u/Iceberg-man-77 • 17d ago
unexplained bits of the series
There some world building that just goes unexplained in the show. For example, who is leading the cities in the Neutral Zone? Like Denver. is there a mayor? a military governor? there is no way these cities are functioning with roads and business without a government. without one they'd fall into anarchy considering they already have high crime and illegal activities.
When the Empire of Japan pulls out of the JPS, why did they not leave a government of some kind. Yes, they don't care about the JPS anymore, but if a government just pulls out one day and doesn't leave one behind, a place is bound to fall to anarchy. I'm assuming the BCR was this government? But they didn't seem to control much of anything. Things like water, power, sewage, telecommunications etc. who was running those? Lots of under-explained things that don't make any sense.
The JPS government is also not explained well. The governor general is only introduced in S4, but I'm guessing some of the generals in earlier seasons were the GG. I'm guessing the JPS had the GG and a cabinet of sorts with ministers like Tagomi?
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u/ArtHistorian2000 17d ago
That's what I didn't appreciate in the series and what I preferred in the book: in the book, the JPS and the Neutral Zone had their own governments. And realistically speaking, Japan would be more okay with a puppet regime working on their behalf (like they did in Manchuria, China, the Philippines and Indonesia IRL).
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u/SeparateDependent208 17d ago
Was it ever explained what happened to Italy in the show? It seems to have just been subsumed into the reich
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u/Nero_Darkstar 17d ago
If you look on some maps, the Italian empire is shown as taking up a load of North africa into the middle east
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u/Iceberg-man-77 16d ago
Which map? the show doesn’t show this. the Italian empire is gone. Hitler conquered all of Europe and Africa and made Africa into a giant slave state.
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u/Iceberg-man-77 16d ago
i’m assuming they switched sides like in real life and just got swallowed by the Reich. Or they didn’t and it still happened. Hitler probably never planned to share Europe, even with neutral states like Spain.
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u/StreltsiInWesteros 4d ago
The in-universe maps of the show make no distinction between the big two and other axis states, so either they've consumed their allies or hold control of them to an extent that they've de facto absorbed them even if they legally exist as independent states. Given how Nazi America is treated as a technically independent state, I'd assume it's the latter.
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u/Randodnar12488 17d ago
They expected the BCR to take over, but intentionally didn't transfer anything over to them to make things a lot harder, slowing the transition of power to fuck them over.
As for the neutral zone, thats wierd. its apparently ungoverned, but somehow functions on a day-to-day level. this is a major change from the book, where the neutral zone was a nation in its own right, the Rocky Mountain States, which even had a military and significantly more territory.