You've got the right group. It's pretty bad taste dude. Historically Kempeitai committed some of the worst atrocities against both armed forces and civilians during the war. My grandfather went through the fall of Singapore and told me stories of what happened. He didn't spare the details and it was bad, really bad. Like, what would your response be if CB started producing some futuristic SS Nazi officer or Gestapo models and portrayed them as sympathetic freedom fighters? Because they've basically done that just with the Japanese version of it. I don't particularly care that they've done this, but I can fully understand why this grosses some people out.
It's on it's way to flood Mayanet with cute photos and memes and this control all mankind. Can it be stopped? For get EI, this is mankind's greatest threat.
I think what Mao and others are stating is they want them to move from being liberation heroes to scumbags in the fluff to be more accurate with what they are historically. Also those two are the same thing. Thus the bad reaction to the comment of Gestapo not being worse since they were the police force that rounded up for the death camps.
About those new Proxy rules... So someone is supposed to be able to proxy a Druze force with random Haqq Troopers and Remotes at a tournament? yeah... gonna call bullshit on that. No TO wants his tournament to be overrun with the resulting complications. Most people can hardly tell PanO Knights apart if you aren't sticking 100% to the studio paintjob. One or two replacement minis, conversion or similar stuff most certainly don't hurt. But opening the gates for someone to show up with CA minis to run them as Tohaa is a mess. Wouldn't expect many TOs to allow that stuff, I'd expext TOs to include a paragraph to handle that in the tournament rules for most events. Most likely a requirement that all proxies have to be authorized by the TO beforehand (like it's already done for a few events). ... ... ... so yeah... pretty please have an alternative head like the Shikami, will ya?
The new proxy rules already have "With TO's permission" pretty prominently, to let them nip that sort of behaviour in the bud.
Per the new proxy rules: "If a player does not have the official miniature, then at the tournament organizer’s discretion, they can use a different Corvus Belli miniature as a stand-in, but they must clearly inform their opponent of what that figure represents."
While they've begun by portraying the CURRENT Kempetai as being subversives/freedom fighters going up against a worse evil, again, that *doesn't* mean that after liberation, in the name of the Emperor and securing the new nation, they don't morph into something as bad as they were historically. Additionally, the idea of today's freedom fighters becoming tomorrow's (more historically accurate) death squads is an interesting one, one that could add a lot to the setting of the game.
That's the beauty of making it the TO's problem. Imagine for a second the TO sets up his event and doesn't really expect someone would pull a "Shasvastii as Corregidor" on him. Lets say 30 players, maybe like 4 people just show up with a couple different miniatures, but more than 2. Then two Yu Jing Vanilla players thing it would be "cool" to play a "fluffy list" where they play the last remaining loyalist Japanese troops... and proxy all their Zhanshi, Hsien, SuJian etc with the new JSA models they just painted. The last dude simply wanted to play Aleph for once and uses his PanO to proxy the entire thing. All of this was previously clearly not allowed but small infringements were usually tolerated (HVTs as CSUs... small stuff). With the NA2 stuff (especially Druze and now JSA) this will be actually relevant. People have trouble even figuring out which weapon the proper model of a different Faction represents. This won't be much of a problem for myself. The events I attend to already dislike the potential trouble the previous proxy rules could invite and require proxies to be authorized beforehand anyway. Since my TO saw issues with the much less problematic version of proxy rules, the change might not turn out to be not as great. I'm questioning the actual use of a rule that allows to not use the appropriate model in a tournament environment. For friendly games in between friends there obviously won't be any problems.
1) All the examples you gave, by the letter of the current proxy rules, would not be allowed without prior TO approval. 2) TOs can be as proactive or reactive as they wish about this, or any other matter relevant to their community. Whether that's by banning proxies all together, or creating a hard limit in tournament packets, etc. 3) I don't think there's anything clear about "Faction A's minis as my Faction B army" and I can't say I'd allow someone to do that in any event I run. 4) Sorry if I'm repeating myself - TOs were already allowing all sorts of breaches of CB's (old) proxy rules which, for example, disallowed the use of an Exrah Vector Operator Hacker as a Nexus Hacker now that the Nexus has a model. 5) If explaining your proxies to your opponent takes more than a couple simple statements, I do not see how you can be adhering to the "clear" part of the rule. "This Lunokhod is a Feuerbach Tsyklon. It's the only S4 REM in my list". Clear. "I can't find Druze anywhere, so all these Intruders are my Druze - the weapons are right (HMG, Sniper, Combi) and there are no other Intruders or Druze in my list". Also clear. "These Cadmus are Alguaciles, this Gwailo is an Alguacil with missile launcher, this Seed Soldier is a Alguacil sniper, this Gwailo is an Intruder HMG, this Caliban is a Clockmaker, this Caliban is a Mobile Brigada, this Sphinx is McMurrough, and this Sphinx is a Gecko, and this Sphinx is an Iguana, the Cadmus here is the Operator, I have the S7 template if we need it, and Sheskiin here is Massacre, and this Malignos is a Jaguar and so is this Noctifer, and then this Noctifer is a Moran and these Symbiomates are Crazy Koalas, and then this is a Wildcat Haris team made up of Shrouded, Caliban, and Aswan--- er, crap, I need to check my notes." Not clear.
The problem is actual Japan is historically a country full of overaagressive imperialist motherfuckers on par with the worse the world has had to offer (including but not limited to nazis), but you can't portray them like that if you want to sell models to all the idiots who think Japan is the best country ever because omgsamuraiarethebestandwouldtotallyownamedievalknight, not realizing the present cuteness of Japan was FORCED on them with military budget mutilation after they had to get bombed with two freaking atomic bombs. It's like, please otaku fanboys, read some actual Japanese history and culture so you realize how much of a dick that country is.