@A Mão Esquerda the Tsushima Strait is about 70 miles wide, in Infinity context located between territories that have all been part of Yu Jing for a significant length of time. The idea that that passage remains neutral at the point Uprising takes place is patently ludicrous, its an internal passage. @Dude 1) You disagree with @Hecaton and @SKOZZOKONZ , but I dont think its a simple black and white of 'their stuff is fanfiction' 'my stuff is totes canonical'. They are taking existing setting material and using it to critique the situation. You are taking existing setting material and using it to support the situation. The narrative as described EXISTS. That cannot be denied. But does it make sense? Is it good? These are valid questions, and grounds to challenge. 2) That is for sure how the event is presented. Criticisms about that presentation do, however, remain valid. 3) I disagree definitively and absolutely that war crimes are the ISS modus operandi. We can have that debate, with sources from the canon background material, if you like. @psychoticstorm A strange trend, but as has been the case a few other times I disagree without disagreeing (?). Alone, the Japanese secession might cost Yu Jing little (though, without the book to confirm, @Yasashii Fuyu 's descriptions seem to paint a picture of Japanese industry incompatible with that assertion). But the point is that while giving up Japan to avoid the Pan-O/O-12/whatever alliance going to war, Yu Jing is stating that they will give something up to avoid that war. This time it is (arguably) of little value. But WHY WOULD PANOCEANIA STOP THERE? There is an alliance in O-12 against the StateEmpire. The StateEmpire is willing to surrender sovereignty when faced with that alliance. Why does that alliance cease pushing at Japan being liberated into the Non-Aligned nations? Why do they not push further against a Yu Jing which has proven wiling to cede ground? If Yu Jing is unwilling to cede further ground, and will go to war over the matter, what difference is there if they go to war over suppressing Japanese independence? The result is war all the same, the self-interested backers of JSA will give in all the same or open conflict all the same.
I do not disagree with this statement, but it is worth pointing out that most intelligence services either focus inward on internal security, or outward on external security, and rarely do they cover both. In this case it would be the ISS looking inward and I agree that its hard to believe they'd let so much stuff slip. External intelligence (i forget the name sorry) can be criticized for not seeing the danger in Kuge dealings with other powers (O12, PanO, Nomads and StarCo etc), but its also possible to put a lot of it down to the speed of beaurocracy (hint, its slow).
Gotta hand it to you @Shiwen , you are living up to your forum title. You state your case clearly, firmly, and politely. Any faction would be lucky to have you as a commissar. I admire the confidence it takes to declare yourself a greater authority on a narrative than the author. Unfortunately I must decline your invitation to debate. This isn't a winnable discussion. I hope you read the book and I hope you can appreciate the story within. It's clearly a dark chapter for YJ, where their misdeeds are put on display for all of humanity to see. But nowhere in the book -or any book - is it explained exactly how the ISS came to loathe the Japanese, to see their lives as worthless. For that we must infer meaning and intent from the text, and we will no doubt make different inferences.
Yeah, I'll be honest, the more I hear, the more it sounds like a massive ass-pull that requires Yu Jing to hold a colossal idiot ball for it to work at all. I'm not a fan of their slow degradation in to PRC/DPRK Yellow Peril villains they've been sliding toward ever since they got zombie bombs, but at the same time if they're basically just the PRC but with sci-fi gubbinz added on, then making them terrible at counter-insurgency and media manipulation just sort of seems like the worst of both worlds. Playing a nefarious villain can be fun in some circumstances, but only if they aren't just heels jobbing for the "good guys". Making them the PRC turned to 11 only works if they're portrayed in that same shrewd, reserved, but ruthless and competent light. The depiction we're getting of them is that they couldn't notice, let alone stop, a massive insurgency happening right in their midst and were completely oblivious to the sphere-wide machinations of what appear to be just about every faction in the game. So they take a gut punch like someone's paying them to go down in the second. It is frankly, just sort of ham-handed and unconvincing given what we know about the setting. Between the StateEmpire apparently losing control of the ISS who went balls deep in to crazy town (which makes no sense given their usual characterization, and is supposed to be something that shouldn't happen given the leash the Party has the ISS on) and the plot requiring Yu Jing to remain completely oblivious to the insurrectionist plot brewing in basically every territory they hold this just seems like a big clusterfuck of ideas that might have worked, but needed a lot more workshopping to be more coherent and logical within the frame of reference of the setting itself. I'll be honest, this is some Word of Blake level of out-of-nowhere background shift and it certainly feels like it went off half-cocked with way to many logical holes for it to maintain verisimilitude. After all of the "but wait for people to discuss the background" calls, I had a shred of hope, but this feels lackluster and all over the place in terms of quality. I'm frankly glad I didn't buy it.
Seventy miles? Ummm... yeah, that’d be international waters... and PanO would stop there because that’s as far as the Nomads and Ariadna and Haqqislam and O-12 are willing to go... but, as @Dude said, this isn’t a debate to be won or lost. The author has declared what the narrative is and the justification behind it in the text. You can like it or not, but it is what it is.
Not in the infinity universe. Straits between territory owned by the same sovereign nation tend to entirely belong to that nation, there are no international waters in between. Australia has straits between their islands about 130 nautical miles wide, the entire strait belongs to Australia, the yellow in image being Australian maritime zones. The same would apply to the strait between Korea and Japan which in setting all belong to Yu Jing. Pan-O forces just chilling in the Tsushima strait would be a very open declaration of invasion.
Cool. Internal waters? I’m wrong there. However, PanO blockading them with the explicit permission of O-12 to prevent a humanitarian crisis? Different kettle of fish.
Once folks have book in hand, rather than running wild with their own half baked theories and snippets shared on various social media, rock on. Until that point... it could be construed as mildly counterproductive.
Your timing doesn't work. Pan-O were shooting down YJ forces trying to cross the strait prior to receiving the O-12 go ahead on Japan. What Pan-O were doing was basically what the US is doing to Syria, a third world country who can't possibly bite back. It doesn't work in any sense really when Yu Jing are supposed to be an actual threat. What really should be happening is closer to how Russia and the US are jockeying over Syrian airspace but neither wants to actually fire on the other because of the threat of an escalating war breaking out with a major power. It's just bad writing from Gutier, but I'm not particularly bothered as I never really held the fluff or Gutier's ability to write in that high regard in the first place. It's just like a crappy anime, you just turn your brain off and say "sure, whatever" and roll with it and see where it goes. I agree with the other folks though because it is actually just a bad piece of fluff and can understand they're annoyed.
What you're referring to as the go-ahead from O-12 is the actual recognition of Japan's independence - that's the endgame of the rebellion. The Steel Wall strategy was a humanitarian interventionist policy that all other nations essentially endorsed. The entire Human Sphere turned on Yu Jing because of the scandals leading into and rising out of the uprising. I acknowledge that it's very aggressive posturing on PanO's part, and is tantamount to an act of war. However, Yu Jing was in no condition to escalate a limited engagement by a powerful rival when they were already fighting a 2+ front war without any allies.
Even if you buy the idea that Yu Jing wouldn't immediately counter attack to enforce a MAD policy to get the other nations to back down, it doesn't fix the bad fluff of the best intelligence services in the entire human sphere not noticing not just an interplanetary insurrectionist movement, but also several other sovereign nations and PMCs rallying and preparing to deploy enough military forces to prevent the deployment of nearly 100,000 YJ troops in one theater of war alone. We're not talking missing a black ops here, there's alot of assets being mobilised by Pan-O and the other powers. Yu Jing's intelligence services literally missed multiple sovereign nations winding up enough firepower to declare open war on them. As other people have pointed out, Gutier has very firmly planted the idiot ball in Yu Jing's hands. It's clunky story writing at best, and just a poor effort at worst.
*shrug* The story addresses your concerns about how the international deals and relationships were brokered in great detail. And the revolt itself was coordinated Tatenokai spark onto an overflowing powderkeg. It all feels very organic to me. I'm not sure what specifically you're talking about with the 100k troops, though. Is that not the PanO steel wall?
Yu Jing managed to land about 25k troops, then Pan-O started shooting down their reinforcements and troop carriers and prevented anymore from landing. YJ were attempting to deploy about 100k troops total in Japan alone. Pan-O miraculously managed to muster enough of their firepower to disrupt and prevent the deployment of 100k troops without anybody noticing this before hand or moving forces to intercept or prepare to intercept them despite as a nation supposed to be very good at noticing these things. They literally didn't notice Pan-O mobilising enough military assets to declare open war on them. And this is one single theater of war. We're not even mentioning the parts where they missed the other forces and PMCs on other planets preparing to wage war on them. As mentioned several times in this thread, idiot ball. If you need to give a character an idiot ball to move a plot point along it's usually a sign of bad writing. Sure, Gutier has justified the uprising, but he's done it badly and in a fairly implausible way. As I said though, I didn't think he was a very good writer in the first place so I'm not particularly surprised.
Someone mentioned JSA being a significant part of Yu Jing forces: they were not. They were the largest and most significant ethnical army, but that's still tiny compared to the old Yu Jing army structure that deafeated Pan-O (not to mention the new Invincible Army structure).
Yeah. But they can suddenly equip half of their HI with monofilament swords. Were monofilament factories in Japan? It was the cutting edge technology (literally). I don't think, YJ would place most of their factories in hands of second class citizens. There is an argument that there are only a few Tankos and it was said that the Japanese just equipped them with swords for oniwabans but considering tankos ava, they are not super elites and they are much more numerous than oniwabans.
Look; it's also a matter of scale. I'm willing to let that slide, no problem, and I don't think anyone else should have a problem letting that slide. Yu Jing is humongous, JSA is tiny. Yu Jing likely have more Kanren than there are Tanko, Oniwaban, and Domaru combined. JSA's AVA isn't representing the same thing as Yu Jing AVA. It's also the reason why there's even exotic weapons in Ariadna (a faction as populous as modern day Sweden) or Nomads - because while they are tinier and their production is much lower, they can still maintain a fairly similar percent of their fighting forces with exotic weapons. The fact that a single Cold War Chinese battleship, in a single volley, has the potential to destroy JSA's entire domestic production capacity for a specific suit of armour or weapon is not represented in game while Yu Jing has order of magnitude industrial redundancy for their much larger army divisions is also not represented in game.
Because the Japanese have once again bit the hand the feeds them despite all the past leniency for their rebelliousness. Therefore the are probably a lot of people in Yu Jing who would view them, no longer as children to be guided but as mad dogs (which sounds like they are given the indoctrination to their emperor) and you only do one thing with mad dogs. ANd the fact that ISS is on the hook for not catching it earlier insert karen meme.
I'm criticizing the existing narrative because it's shit. Just because Gutier writes it doesn't mean it really makes sense or is good writing. It comes off as someone having a kindergarten level understanding of how geopolitics work. In terms of what Yu Jing gains by backing down from outright war with PanO... probably nothing, because PanO would just ask for more. It's the danegeld problem. Giving in just tells PanO that they can take more and Yu Jing will roll over like a bitch. All the shit that PanO did would start WWIII if Australia did it to China irl.
