Honestly, the only things that drew me to Yu Jing were the 'pan-asian' idea of a unified culture, which is now shattered, and the terracotta army as a legion of these badass stoic HI. Since neither of those have materialized, I guess I'll play JSA until something changes, and I hate 'ditching' on a faction, especially when I don't have many minis and like units like the Hac Tao, but I just am struggling to find a reason to want to play Yu Jing right now. The fluff is making the faction look very unappealing, by the sound of it, and it doesn't really do anything unique in vanilla anymore, and I don't have the minis to run ISS. I'm sort of vaguely bummed that things are in this particular condition, and maybe they need to open the IP to some extra writers just to flesh out the various factions and restore some of that 'nobody is all good or bad' feel it had.
Huh? All the factions are putting effort into weakening everyone but themselves. Yu Jing aren't fuelling it, if anything I'd describe them as victims of the Uprising.
As @ijw has pointed out, the majority of the book is written from the JSA point of view, which will color the perception. Additionally, it's a rebellion/civil war, which means brutality on both sides. A lot boils down to remembering Obi Wan talking to Luke, and remembering to look at who's point of view the story is being told from. After all, it wouldn't make much sense for YJ's enemies to write a balanced view of the conflict.
Well, I get that. I also just am not sure what the draw of YJ is right now. Aside from getting to run my pretty HI, there's not much there. I hope the Terracotta Army materializes, I bloody painted my red veil in terracotta for that reason, and I feel like it would at least bring some of what drew me to the faction back into the game.
Obviously the JSA point-of-view is not going to paint Yu Jing in a positive light, but in the previous books you'd get a variety of viewpoints in the descriptions of events and factions. You get a glowing tourist brochure, you get a subversive Arachne broadcast, you get an excerpt of academic analysis, each looking at a thing in different and conflicting ways. It was clever, it worked well. The very fact you'd have a big chunk of a book move away from that to instead be dominated by the perspective of only one side... a matter of opinion, obviously, all depends on the sort of material you like to read. But to me, that's a shame. Certainly true for PanOceania, but it doesn't sound like it was just them. When it comes to the other powers, there's a balance to be kept between the two rivals, which provides long-term advantage vs the short term of grabbing a slice of the rebel-JSA-trade-deal pie, and it seems odd that you'd have all the factions 'pile in'.
It's worth noting that this style of presenting the fluff is still present, quite a bit too, however it looks more like this: "PanO Documentation about the reasons for the uprising, 100% pro JSA" "Inspiring speech on JSA Domaru academy about needing to rise up agains the evil Yu Jing Opression, 100% pro JSA" "Video clip of a Crane Agent telling the reporter to film the corpses, threatening JSA with death"...100% Yu Jing Villain "Medical report about an unknown biker chick that arrived at the hospital with an arm missing, getting carried away by secret agents with advanced medical gear" 100% mysterious JSA So yeah....
The rest of it is excusable as JSA propaganda. This right here tells us that CB wants YJ to be the "evil for the sake of evil" faction. As @Section9 explained in some detail, YJ should be particularly good at this, considering Mao literally wrote the book on it.
Exactly my point, when they are the victims of other factions' interference, why is there a need to have these fairly massive idiotic mistakes done by the Yu Jing counter-insurgency organizations?
Well, they *are* over 200 years beyond Mao, and have been a totalitarian police state for centuries, with (from what we already have) little to no experience in suppressing a revolution in that time. Beyond that, there are real world examples littered throughout history of countries and armies failing to learn from lessons of the past and having to relearn them again in the future. YJ failing to heed lessons from the past is entirely in line with reality.
Sooooo... I understand: JSA brainwash all his citizens and make all of them a fanatical expendable force, soldiers, men, women and kids, all for the Kuge's greedy Glory. Yu Jing is obliged to use all his force against an army of brainwashed citizens, NOT criminals, mind robbed citizens, to protect Yu Jing. And PanO allows It. The O12 allow It. And Yu Jing are the villain? Looks like all the Uprising book was made by JSA writters.
Mind you, it's not evil Kuang Shi kind of brainwashing, but more heavy propaganda since birth, indoctrination that Emperor is god and serving emperor is reason/way of life, dying honourably is preferable to living in shame, that kind of stuff...basically all Japanese turned into WW2 Japanese who fight to the last child if need be to protect their country and emperor...too bad Yu Jing didn't use a Nuke I guess.....(sorry if that was inapropriate, when I was in japan in the Hiroshima museum I kind learned that the Bomb more or less saved lifes because otherwise America would have had to go into bloody ground war against all those civilians fighting against them, while the bomb ended the fight right then and there, at the prize or relatively few lives in comparison...basically exactly what Yu Jing was forced to do now...)
And noone in Yu Jing noticed? Great. Absolutely great. And Nukes are so last century. Go for Irony and kill them with chemical and biological weapons. Well... yeah. Its basically a JSA selling device. Happy I saved my money.
Its mentioned that they did notice it, but accepted it because an obedient population is helpful (don't forget, at that moment the emperor was nothing but a puppet to Yu Jing..)...but it was also mentioned that this was one of their main problems once the uprising started..
Well, at least Kuang Shi are criminals (Sort of :P). But JSA can use even child and non combatants citizens like human shields or or another kind of war purposes. Brainwash was a way to say newstorming un media. Who's worst?
Having not read the book for now (it'll arrive in April, so there), these remarks give me pause for several reasons. The incompetence of YJ and the heavy-handed and one-sided writing has already been noted. However, one core concern rising out of this which probably beats the others is this: The core identity of YJ is to be a Pan-asian faction, uniting a multitude of cultures despite a bloody past history, with the YJ going very, very far out of their way to make sure they're not seen as what they were in the past (even if Chinese culture remains the dominant one, and even if tensions remain). But with the Japanese flipping the entire faction the bird and getting off the unity train at the feudal oppression for great justice station, and the war crime material presented in the book, that seems to be entirely out the window. Here's a question to those who do have the book: Is there material in it covering the conditions for the Japanese now until YJ control? I understand not all of them split, and seem to remember the conditions of those still under YJ rule to have been described as "hellish". Where are we at? Internment camps? Worse? At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it sounds like someone at CB needs to consider what the identity of this faction is supposed to be, and get on with that, and soon.
Even looking at YJ *wanting* to be a unified, Pan-Asian faction, it wasn't from the start. It was the subjugation of other nations, with generous terms and full membership and citizenship offered, and accepted by most, while being rejected by some, the Japanese specifically. So while the goal was constantly being worked towards, at no point has it been said that YJ reached that goal.
They're there to be the villain, commit gratuitously evil acts, and get beaten by protagonist faction X, apparently.
This is a good point, and I should probably have been clearer: Cultural tensions obviously continued to be a factor in the faction, and it was (remains? Not sure) integral to the faction's background how they tried to contain it, right down to the somewhat byzantine dual systems of governance, or the strange paramilitary identity of the ISS for that matter. My point is, I suppose, that with war crimes coming to the fore and the faction meeting a massive propaganda campaign against them during the uprising, this looks like it might entirely undermine the faction's "face" identity. Just to be clear about it, I don't mind this if that's a conscious choice made; ethnic conflicts get ugly, and while I don't want overt gore for the sake of it (could be playing 40k for that), I'd also be annoyed if the pulled too many punches on a story trying to deal with that kind of subject material. I think such a cultural breakdown or crisis can make for some interesting (if harrowing, depending on how it's written) stories for both sides involved, especially if the Japanese still under YJ rule continue to be suppressed (or "cleansed" in case they decide to go that kind of dark). I just want it to be well written, and right now, the impression left from what I'm hearing about Uprising is that the YJ side of things, since it wasn't "their book", was something of an afterthought. I think that's a problem, because it's bad service to a potentially engaging story, and because it leaves the YJ, as a faction, in limbo for rather a long time. I do think others might object to such a route being taken (I can see "we don't want to play villains/these nasty people" being a thing). But personally, I just need clarity on where they're going with this, and then I'll figure out if I'll be playing the state empire or evil android google (vedic) as my main faction in the future based on what happens to appeal more and when Vedic is actually released (late this year, presumably?).
Since a small recap of the book is out I can say a few things. On surface the book seems to make JSA look good, reading it a second time or reading it critically one can see that the book has a definite "villain" and victims that be the JSA aristocracy and the Japanese population. Yu Jing are portrayed as a surprisingly egalitarian society who does not care about birth rights or nobility titles and has equated the once mighty Kuge aristocracy to mere mortals, the whole uprising is how the Kuge brainwashed the entire Japanese population and puppeteered the military elite the Domaru using the Kempeitai to eliminate any non Japanese emperor loyalists from the fighting force, in an all or nothing attempt to gain their nobility privileges and status back, even if it means sacrificing the Japanese population for them to become "kings" of a ruined castle. The average Japanese lost a lot for the Kuge to get their privileges back and the new Japanese nation is already in dept to almost everybody with the desperate secret bargains Kuge did to set the stage. I think Yu Jing are portrayed nothing but competent, except the ISS who did not manage to uncover this, with the uprising set to happen in the worse possible time for Yu Jing (and with most on sight command assassinated) they managed to not only not get caught flat footed but effectively steamroll the JSA everywhere it counted, yes, the Yu Jing in this book express rage, blind on some parts, but justified because they gave the Japanese every chance and got betrayed again, I think the writing tries to keep a difficult balance of trying to stop an armed revolt and trying to keep the state empire coherent at the same time when everybody is dog-piling on them. I love how Sun Tze is used as the voice of reason not heard by anyone in the chaos of emotions. But I think the most damning part for JSA is the Ikari fluff, it is shocking how corrupt with their ideals the Japanese high command are and how easy it is for them to sacrifice the junior command in order to absolve themselves of their mistakes.
