Mai's Counterattack

Mai's Counterattack is a Lords of Ether OVA focused on Lost Ground produced by Artaria Animation who picked up the IP nine years after Season 7 of the original series was cancelled. Unlike its predecessors, it is originally produced in Japanese. Due to various copyright issues, many aspects of canon and the names of many characters and places were changed, alienating many fans of the old series. Others however, have praised the much higher production quality and modernization of the art style.

Background

Lost Ground is a small gray planet orbiting largely alone around an unremarkable reddish-orange star. Until the reopening of the starways, the population of the world simply referred to their government as "the Empire". Following the return of interplanetary travel, the planet's sole polity gained the name Alter Empire after their advanced technomagical discipline (Advanced Liquid-metal Techno-Enchantment Resonance) or, apocryphally, a founding secret society, paramilitary group or political party known as ALTER that has since hidden itself within the imperial government's shadow.

It is unclear what nations existed on Lost Ground during the previous era (when it probably wasn't called Lost Ground) but it minimally was the home of at least one major demihuman race: the aquatic Merai, as well as human populations loyal to the Japanese pantheon and Greater Atlantis. This put the world directly on the front lines of the ensuing Godswar during which the planet was predictably and thoroughly devastated. Even as the violence wound down elsewhere after the collapse of hyperspace, the people of Lost Ground carried on their microcosm of the great war for eight more centuries, transcending the memory of their former affiliations, not to cease hostilities until their final, genocidal conclusion. Throughout and after this period, human presence continued to stagnate or decline and the once green and blue world turned fundamentally hostile to humans. In the present day, most people live within the confines of the great shielded city of Vector with most outlying areas abandoned to a deadly mutant biosphere.

Alter Empire

Lost Ground's sole viable polity was founded roughly two centuries ago following the genocide of the last Merai, a capstone finale to eight centuries of war which left the imperial precursor as the last survivors on a depopulated and devastated world. It is a thoroughly molten pot of cultural remnants from the planet's original, far more numerous inhabitants with Japanese being the biggest contributor. Despite its mixed heritage and total disconnection from the pre-Godswar era, Lost Grounders arguably identify more with Atlantis than anything else, especially since the immigration of actual Atlantean survivors following the war on Myrkliea. Notably, perhaps owing to eight centuries of brutal selection, Lost Ground natives have the highest rate of magical talent in known space - even higher than the Atlanteans themselves.

For its small population, the Empire's government and social system is considerable in scale and presence but not in complexity. There are no delusions of rule through divine right nor any native sense of democracy (as opposed to rebellions of desperation) except what has been introduced through interplanetary traffic. Through their command of power, mages are the gentry and the emperor is the emperor because he is the most powerful mage around. This attitude has put the Empire quite at odds with regionally dominant Sceptre but has lead to surprisingly productive and pragmatic relations with some other powers. While there's no denying that Lost Ground scores quite low on the Cure Joy Index, the Joy Peace State nevertheless sees Lost Ground as a valuable partner in relocation projects for its undesireables while the Papacy has found them to be pragmatic allies on their Crusades with high impact despite the limited numbers of their contributions.