Recap / Fujitsu Guangdong

Guangdong Recap:
Index | Suzuki's Guangdong | Yasuda Crisis | Sony's Guangdong | Matsushita's Guangdong | Fujitsu's Guangdong | Lam Haau-cyun's Flashbacks | Opium Trade War | Hitachi Coup | Hitachi's Guangdong | Flavor Events | General Oil Crisis and Guangdong Riots | Imperial Japanese Army's Guangdong

The Possibilities Are Infinite.

"Are you sure you want to risk everything you have, everything you love, everything you care about for the sake of your dream?"

— Morita Akio

The Legislative Council has made its decision: Ibuka Masaru will become the new Chief Executive. Confidently striding to the podium for a speech, Ibuka simultaneously basks in his own glory and thinks about how terribly designed the complex is. Ibuka cannot stand any of these imperfections and it merely emboldens his mission to shape Guangdong to his own design.

Ibuka wasn't always a perfectionist or social Darwinist; in fact, he used to be friends with Morita Akio and cofounder to his business, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications). Unfortunately, Tokyo Telecommunications' slow growth made Ibuka believe that Morita was committed to a dying cause and sold the company to Fuji Tsushinki Manufacturing (Fujitsu), betraying his partner and firing him so that he wouldn't protest the acquisition. Going into exile in Guangdong, Morita stole Tokyo Telecommunications' transistor radio prototype as a last spiteful act, which Ibuka discovered and let him get away with as a token of his regret.

Quickly rising up Fujitsu's ranks, Ibuka sought control of the entire company and convinced his fellow executives to expand their operations in Guangdong. The idea of relocation was not entirely for the sake of profit; Morita had bounced back with Li's help and debuted Sonus-Li Electronics (Sony) with the TR-56 transistor radio, made from the prototype he stole years ago. Furious, Ibuka moved to Kōshu so he could sue his former partner for "stealing" his idea and kill his company, reluctantly abandoning his own family in the process. Despite Fujitsu's best efforts, Sony survived the lawsuit and a venomous rivalry still burns strong today. With Ibuka now sitting as Chief Executive, it's clear who's won the competition and Fujitsu is free to transform Guangdong into a technocratic utopia. The human cost will be great and Ibuka, deep down, has some regret for what he will do, but ultimately buries these feelings for the sake of his dream.

If there is one thing Ibuka cannot stand, it is incompetency. He is frustrated that Guangdong has not reached its full potential because of laziness and inefficiencies facilitated by the government, which must immediately be repaired by targeting the economy:

• The first social Darwinist policies are rolled out by liquidating government programs deemed "wasteful" and cutting off inefficient firms to suffer bankruptcy. Meanwhile, government workers unable to meet Fujitsu's high expectations are fired, which may only be mitigated for those with a proven loyalty to the government, though Ibuka may just double-down with higher education quotas too. Ultimately, the bureaucracy will be cleaned out of incompetence and have its streamlining mandated through the Guangdong Civil Service Ordinance.
• The potential of computers fascinates Ibuka, who can develop an infrastructure to favor their increased presence or have them outright replace workers who will be fired in the "unstoppable" march of technology. The Guangdong Efficiency Ordinance will enforce computer installation quotas in all businesses and be treated as a requirement for legal status.
• Ibuka sees great potential to use Guangdong's vast urban centers. Demolishing the slums and evicting their residents, Ibuka will transform them into massive industrial centers to create Guangdong's own steel belt, either to export raw materials for the rest of the Sphere or producing electronic components useful for Guangdong's own industry. Meanwhile, new energy sources will be exploited to fuel Ibuka's latest project, either investing in traditional oil extraction or relying upon renewable energy through solar panels and wind turbines.
• The growth of an intellectual class is encouraged by building research parks and forming a Committee of Technology, all of which will allow promising entrepreneurs to start their own businesses.
• Fujitsu's products can be licensed out to other companies or kept a trade secret to preserve their value. In both cases, Fujitsu's dominance will be guaranteed with the Guangdong Trademark Ordinance, giving Fujitsu the power to copyright its inventions and sue anyone they think is stealing their patented designs, no matter how trivial the case is.

With the economy and civil service dealt with, Ibuka's next point of concern are the workers. Hard work and innovation are virtues in Ibuka's Guangdong; anyone who fails to meet Fujitsu's high expectations are severely punished. However, those who do meet them will reap the benefits of their effort:

• Ibuka cultivates a competitive work spirit in the firms, using a 10-point scale to publicly compare workers together and empowering the managers to punish downtime. Those content to remain mediocre are fired, while those who excel will be rewarded with bonuses and promotions. Those with a proven talent will be sought after by Fujitsu and paraded as proof that their vision for Guangdong is working, ignoring the countless stories of failure and oppression they've created. The issue of labor is finally addressed with the Guangdong Organized Labor Ordinance, allowing businesses to control their labor laws and thus take away even more worker rights.
• Ibuka blames the current generation of decadence on the lack of proper education. Fujitsu funds an intensive program where children are put through rigorous and difficult courses, like calculus and thermodynamics. In a relatively charitable move, Ibuka also expands education opportunities for the normally neglected Chinese class and gives them a theoretical means of social mobility, though this is less ideal in practice since Chinese families lack the money necessary to educationally compete with Japanese students. Regardless, Ibuka pushes onward with the Guangdong Education Ordinance, standardizing school curricula and mandating a diploma for certain jobs.
• Disgusted by the poorer urban districts, Ibuka orders their destruction to be replaced with an ultramodern architecture, with their populations inflated with either Japanese or Zhujin arrivals. In his most radical move yet, Ibuka will propose the Guangdong Zoning Ordinance and try to "perfect" his city's design so that businesses and residential areas are rezoned based on occupation, even if this will split families apart.

Regardless of how much work Ibuka pours in, his dream will never come to pass so long as the streets are unsafe. The Triads are not only a great threat to Fujitsu; their boss, Stanley Ho, is also an ally of Morita who helped him evade Fujitsu oppression during the TR-56 lawsuit. They must be taken out, where Police Commissioner Tsuchida Kuniyasu is assigned to the task:

• Operation 489 is the proposed plan to take out the Triads and arrest Ho. However, the Police cannot do this alone; reluctantly, they also employ the help of the brutal Kenpeitai, as well as Yokoi Hideki and the Triads' rivals, the Yakuza. None of these factions are happy to work together, but so long as the Triads pose a common enemy, they will remain united. After careful preparation, the Police prepare to arrest every Triad member they can find and shut down their business. There are a number of different strategies to approach Operation 489, from setting optimistic or realistic expectations, going it alone or relying upon the Police's allies, and going guns blazing or doing a quiet takedown. The outcome will depend on the combination of strategies used. If Operation 489 is successful, the Triads will collapse with Ho's arrest and deal a major blow to Sony and Cheung Kong, while the Yakuza are left to dominate the criminal underworld. However, if it fails, Ho and the Triads will narrowly escape with Morita and Li's help, displeasing Ibuka and causing him to blame Yokoi for the setback.
• In the bureaucracy, Ibuka cracks down on corruption, replacing them with his own loyalists and potentially passing the Guangdong Anti-Corruption Ordinance to surveil the Legislative Council of any future crimes against the state. Meanwhile, Ibuka increases the frequency of police patrols and surveillance, as well as funneling more money into the manpower, training, and equipment. Civilians are also recruited to help in the Guangdong Special Security Action Detachment, capable of responding quickly to emergencies. The Police's reformation will be complete with the Guangdong Modern Police Ordinance, granting them computerized technology and state-of-the-art weapons so they become an actually feared force.

By the end, Ibuka will have crafted a utopia for himself. Those who are lucky or craft enough to meet his draconian expectations will thrive, enjoying the pristine education and career opportunities provided by Fujitsu. Unfortunately, these benefits are denied to the vast majority of the populace, who Ibuka has discarded as "incompetent" and left to squalor in even worse working conditions. While the Police are stronger than ever, the people are just as angry and a full-blown race riot breaks out near the Government Complex when a Japanese police officer violently beats a petty thief and provokes a Chinese mob. The situation only escalates when the Kenpeitai get involved and ends with great tension when Lam Haau-cyun intervenes and orders everyone to return home.

However, not everyone is so angry with the Chief Executive's direction. Yamauchi Hiroshi sees one of his mechanics, Gunpei Yokoi, design a plastic toy that inspires him to turn Nintendo into a premier novelty toy company. Embracing the future like Fujitsu, Nintendo becomes a renowned company throughout the Sphere for their quality products. Likewise, Yoshiko Yasukawa is blinded by Fujitsu's educational success stories and Ibuka's charisma, writing favorable articles about their regime without a hint to the widespread abuses it carries out. Her writing wins her the adoration of the magazine's audience, which renames itself from "Kanton Fujin Koron" to "Kanton Koron". Meanwhile, Lee Hei, the middle child of the Lee family, becomes a prodigy and rewarded with an internship in Fujitsu, who are eager to advertise him as the "Model Learner". However, this strains his relationship with his older brother, Chun, who works in the factories and resents Fujitsu for its oppressive actions. Many share Chun's sentiment. The Zhujin have lost most of their privileges under the new regime and form the Guangdong Federation of Tradesmen in the hopes they can be regained. Further, the Chinese workers are sick of being denied welfare by Ibuka and coalesce under the Committee of Chinese Labor. Though rapidly growing in strength, these dissidents are not an immediate concern, due to the outbreak of the Oil Crisis.

With skyrocketing prices on food and other consumer goods, everyone panics and starts saving as much money as possible, in turn leading to business closures and a blow to the economy. Ibuka races to mitigate its worst effects, even as his national calls for peace are repeatedly ignored. Beyond some contingency measures, Ibuka is left at a crossroads. On one hand, he can remain committed to his social Darwinistic views, which would preserve welfare only to the most competent citizens, request no assistance from the other corporations, streamline the assembly lines, increase the number of workers, lay off those deemed incompetent, ignore all complaints in the Legislative Council, and fire bureaucrats with even minor instances of corruption. On the other hand, Ibuka can reluctantly compromise on his vision, where he subsidizes all businesses, accepts the help of other corporations, maintains production levels, works with Japanese suppliers, limits layoffs, makes a bare minimum effort to appease dissidents, and ignore the minor instances of corruption to weather the Oil Crisis.

The next important matter is emigration, as Chinese citizens attempt to flee to the Republic of China in the hopes of better life opportunities. To address the issue, Ibuka can determine how strict the border policy is and either rely only on the police to stop fleeing refugees or use more unorthodox allies in the Yakuza and Kenpeitai.

As Ibuka fights the flames of the Oil Crisis, tensions brew in Guangdong's denizens. Lam sees the desperation in people to survive the depression, yet continues upholding the Fujitsu regime for the sake of following orders. Matters are dire for Yoshiko, who squandered her goodwill by continuing to support Ibuka, in spite of his increasing unpopularity for the Oil Crisis. Lastly, the Lee family is breaking apart; Chun officially joins the CCL and is outraged to hear Hei apply for Zhujin status, doubling down as a collaborator because he is afraid of losing his job otherwise when Fujitsu starts making cutbacks. Chun feels even more betrayed when the rest of the family is okay with this and he storms out of the household.

The uneasy situation across Guangdong finally explodes when a mob of workers take over a Hitachi factory and spark the Guangdong Riots. Tired of Fujitsu's oppression, the GFT and CCL rise up against their oppressors, with Chun becoming a chief organizer of the latter. All initial attempts to suppress them fail, to a point that Fujitsu starts sending out their own untrained employees to slow them down and inevitably get mobbed. Hei is among those victims, getting beaten hard enough to reconsider his loyalty to Fujitsu. Meanwhile, Chun raids the Kanton Koron for its allegiance to the regime, temporarily holding Yoshiko hostage until the Police arrive and force him to flee.

Outraged by the Police and Kenpeitai's failure to contain the situation, Ibuka blames everyone in his cabinet for failing him and, like a pouty child, deflects any responsibility for bringing this crisis unto himself. His standing further sinks to new lows when some of Matsushita Masaharu's men leak Ibuka's invitation for Komai Kenichirō to enter the Legislative Council, thus making him indirectly responsible for their brutality, the attempted Hitachi coup, and the Guangdong Riots. Now the most unpopular man in the country, Ibuka wallows in his self-pity and his buried feelings of guilt resurface, stronger than ever. In his self-reflection, Ibuka comes to a startling realization; his grand vision for Guangdong is unrealistic and foolish. From here, Ibuka has a choice to make.

In a complete show of self-delusion, Ibuka can ignore his epiphany and remain committed to his dream, despite knowing its hubris. Taking a hard stance against the rioters, Ibuka unleashes the full force of the Police to violently put them down. Across the country, demonstrators are gunned down and tortured without mercy, until the GFT and CCL either surrender or are destroyed.

But Ibuka doesn't need to seal his fate in history as a monster; he can alternatively confront his remorse and finally acknowledge that his actions are bringing ruin to Guangdong. To the surprise of the rioters, the police presence on the streets is pulled back and Ibuka publicly admits accountability for his actions in a remorseful tone. Negotiations are opened, with the Riots ending with the GFT and/or CCL agreeing to the government's concessions or being forcibly broken up. In either case, the dust will settle and peace returns to Guangdong. Nintendo gets caught up in the riots too, where its largest factory gets destroyed in a fierce battle if the CCL are crushed or its workers negotiate with the Police for fairer terms if the CCL are negotiated with. Nintendo's fate will depend on the CCL's fate. If they were dismantled, Yamauchi cannot recover anything from his destroyed factory and still has to pay off his massive debts without Fujitsu's support. However, if the CCL were negotiated with, Yamauchi can resume business and gets inspired by the Magnavox Odyssey to design Nintendo's own video game console.

If Ibuka persists in his vision, dark days await the country. The workers return to the factories, subjected to even worse exploitation and surveillance from the government. In the Legislative Council, Ibuka proposes the Guangdong Future Act, subordinating the entire government body to Fujitsu and suspending the system of ordinances so discretionary power is entirely concentrated to himself. The law passes and Morita leaves the chamber in silence, knowing that his former friend is truly beyond redemption. Not even Ibuka's former allies in the Yakuza or Hitachi are safe from his tightening grip, who fear that they'll become his next targets. Despite Ibuka ruling through fear and violence, his Guangdong utopia is viewed positively by the rest of the world, treating it as a prosperous financial and technological center that even the American and German delegates have to begrudgingly respect. In the end, Guangdong is Ibuka's personal kingdom, to be changed and governed by his own will.

Meanwhile, those who survived the Riots are forever changed, since Ibuka first ascended to office. Yoshiko is greatly rewarded for her loyalty to Fujitsu and becomes the new editor-in-chief for Kanton Koron, free to indulge in her political favoritisms. The Lee family remains fractured in Ibuka's 'utopia'. Hei remains loyal to Fujitsu and submits his application to become a Zhujin, while Wai graduates at the top of her class and prepares to go to college. Chun isn't so lucky and is imprisoned for his leading role in the Riots; Hei only visits him if the CCL were negotiated with and it's clear that their relationship is permanently strained. Matters are even worse for Lam, who sees his home village bulldozed and renamed to "Shenzhen Research and Digital Accessories Park", yet can do nothing but remain loyal to the regime that destroyed his old life.

However, if Ibuka repented for his actions, a more uncertain future will befall Guangdong. Ibuka lets go of his ambitions to rule Guangdong alone and plans to ease on his oppressive policies, returning the country to a corporate-dominated status quo. If Ho was arrested in Operation 489, the Yakuza continue to dominate the streets with Yokoi on top; otherwise, the gang war with the Triads will persist. In the business world, Ibuka loosens the requirements for corporate entry and allows domestic and foreign companies to begin operations in Guangdong, showing that he truly has changed from his old stubborn ways. Despite this, not everyone is ready to accept his redemption, most of all Morita, who calls out the number of years and people he's killed before coming to this realization. Ibuka understands the rejection, but still wishes to try to be a better man.

In this new era, matters are mixed for the Lee family. Feeling just as remorseful as Ibuka, Hei rejects his Zhujin application and quits Fujitsu to start his own firm before trying to reconcile with his brother. If the CCL were suppressed, Hei visits Chun in prison and the latter still needs time before he forgives his sibling. A true reconciliation is only possible if the CCL were negotiated and the two brothers happily return home together. The major shortcoming in either scenario is that Wai can't yet go to college without Hei's stable income. In another equally bittersweet case, Lam returns to his home village and his family, reaffirming his cultural identity and relief that the plans to bulldoze the place have been rejected.

Among the denizens dissatisfied with Ibuka's change-of-heart is Yoshiko, who is ordered by her superior to tone down her pro-Fujitsu writing and feels betrayed that the Chief Executive would side with the same rioters who kidnapped her. She feels censored and controlled by the more powerful men who surround her, having no choice but to reluctantly moderate her outspoken beliefs because she has nowhere else to go. On a more dangerous note, Komai is dissatisfied that Ibuka is going soft and plots a conspiracy with Miyazaki Kiyotaka and Nagano Shigeto to overthrow him.

No matter the ending, Ibuka's journey is far from over. Rumors circulate that China is preparing for war against Japan and will tear the Sphere apart, potentially destroying Guangdong in the process. For the new decade, Ibuka commits to preparing for the conflict, either to protect his home or preserve the perfect, technocratic paradise he's built in Guangdong.

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This route provides examples of:

• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • Subverted. After creating a firestorm of controversy for his proposed Guangdong Trademark Ordinance, Ibuka finds a pamphlet defaming his name and calling him a thief. Ibuka is so amused by its amateurish look that he smirks before he's about to toss it aside. Then, he sees Tokyo Telecommunications' logo on the bottom-right corner, revealing that Morita is behind the campaign. Only then does Ibuka take it seriously, especially after the pamphlet's anecdote is about Fujitsu's lawsuit against the TR-56 transistor radio.
  • As representatives from Fujitsu and the various riot organizations meet to negotiate a settlement in the Reconciliation ending, a Fujitsu member attempts to speak with his poor knowledge of Cantonese while, careful to avoid using a condescending tone. Neither trusts the other, but the rioters find the efforts of this Fujitsu representative to be hilarious and has to prevent himself from laughing.
• Adults Are Useless: Discussed by Ibuka, who thinks that adult brains are stagnant and inflexible, unlike youthful minds that can still learn new things rapidly. This motivates his aggressive education reforms and mandatory education requirements for employers, rejuvenating people's mathematic and scientific discipline.
• Advantage Ball: In case Manchuria is taken over by Sakomizu or Sejima, Ibuka fears that either one will have the competence to keep outpacing Guangdong in the economic race. His only hope is the advantage of a head start, since they still need to deal with their domestic rivals before fully devoting himself to Manchuria's economic issues.
• All for Nothing: After everything he's done to turn Nintendo into a famous toy company, Yamauchi's efforts are nullified if the CCL were forcibly dismantled, as they battle the police in his factory and destroy it. Yamauchi can't recover anything from the remains, his debts are still unresolved, and Fujitsu pulls their support from Nintendo because the "incident" was evidence of its nonviability.
• All of the Other Reindeer: When he first visits the Fujitsu laboratories, Hei suspects that he's seen with discomfort, condescension, jealousy, or all three by his Japanese colleagues. However, due to his relative inexperience with speaking Japanese, he can't be too sure.
• Allohistorical Allusion: Yamauchi's chance meeting with Yokoi and creation of the Ultra Hand highly resembles their OTL encounter in a Nintendo factory in 1966. In TNO, Yamauchi tours Nintendo factories for inspiration on how to meet Fujitsu's modernization plans before he spots Yokoi tinkering with a toy while on break. Despite Yokoi's apologies, Yamauchi is not offended at all and has more interest in the prototype he was building, making Yokoi his partner in developing the Ultra Hand.
• The Alternet: If embargoes between the CPS and Einheitspakt are lifted, Fujitsu can help Germany construct a network of computers across banks, universities, and companies linking to the Ministry of Economics, which can make better market and economic predictions. This WirtSchaftNet and the publicity produced from its implementation leads to a rise in sales for Fujitsu computers amongst Germany's companies and government ministries.
• Ambiguous Situation: An in-universe case with the race riot that Lam puts a stop to, in which Yoshiko struggles to get an accurate account of the event and Lam's own feelings about the situation, incapable of discerning truth from speculation.
• Answer Cut: If the CCL are destroyed, Yamauchi wanders his destroyed main factory and takes a seat to wonder if there is a chance of recovering from this. As if the universe is answering his question, a piece of scrap collapses on its own weight, frightening Yamauchi and showing that there are no second chances from here.
• Apartment Complex of Horrors: Massive worker tenements are constructed to hold cheap laborers as part of Ibuka's industrialization plans to compete with Manchuria. Every resident is closely monitored, as the lights can never be turned off, and cameras and guards surveil the place.
• Apologizes a Lot: When Ibuka berates him for consistently failing to meet expectations, a Fujitsu manager profusely apologizes to desperately earn back his favor. Ibuka completely ignores his pleas, more so focused on how understaffed his place is.
• Appeal to Flattery: If Ibuka expands education opportunities for Japanese expats, he hosts a convention in an old luxurious British estate, where he praises them for their entrepreneurship and promises to support them in the future. The speech is received warmly and even Yoshiko is happy to be acknowledged, believing that the success she found moving to Guangdong can largely be attributed to him.
• Arc Words: In the wake of Ibuka's ascension, a single thought occurs to multiple denizens in Guangdong: "What would be their place in this brave new world?" For Yoshiko, she doesn't know. For Lam, it's just another descent into a living hell of more work and police brutality. For most of the Lees, it means spending the rest of their lives in the slums. For Lee Hei, it's an opportunity to show off his visionary ideas.
• Armor-Piercing Response:
  • With the nation in critical condition from the Oil Crisis, Ibuka tries defending himself as the only man capable of fixing the catastrophe, which Matsushita scoffs at and denounces all of the "executive overreach" he's been doing for the past decade. This response momentarily catches Ibuka off guard before he loses all composure and curses everyone around him.
  • Chun berates a Maoist member of the CCL for spreading ideas of class struggle and raiding jewerly stores, but the latter retorts that Chun hasn't been doing the best service for the movement either, citing how he failed to mobilize the rest of his family behind their cause. The response stuns Chun right then and there.
• As the Good Book Says...: Ibuka may completely reshape Honkon and Makao to rid them of corruption and decadence, comparing them to Sodom and Gomorrah.
• Ascetic Aesthetic: Under Ibuka’s policy of integrating urban housing and industry, Chun is relocated to a minimalist apartment entirely white, sleek, undecorated, and clean compared to its polluted grey exterior. However, this comes with an element of Sinister Surveillance with the lights never being turned off, combined with cameras and guards watching over them.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Downplayed. No one, least of all Lam, is crying about the Triads being persecuted by Ibuka, but there is an underlying discomfort about Ibuka's alliance with the Yakuza to achieve this goal, undermining the moral high ground and justness of the mission. This sentiment is amplified if the Kenpeitai were unleashed, with Lam wondering if this will just herald even more oppression against the Chinese people by closing off a major source of financial income and target those with even the loosest connection to the Triads.
  • The corrupt Japanese elite are among the many who are targeted by Ibuka's anti-corruption policies and they're far from his most sympathetic victims.
• Awful Wedded Life: As the Oil Crisis worsens and taxes are raised for everyone, a Zhujin couple get into a shouting match over each other, the wife accusing her husband of sabotaging her rival business against his. For added measure, the argument eventually descends into a physical brawl.
• Bad Boss:
  • Enforced. Ibuka encourages managers to reduce downtime and separate friends in the workplace to busier production areas.
  • With the Organized Labor Ordinance's passage, the Japanese managers are given free rein to abuse and belittle the Chinese workers they employ, which Yoshiko and Lam are disturbed by, thinking that this signals dark days ahead for Guangdong's future. As Ibuka puts it, the companies should only value the workers who express "excellence"; all others are expendable.
• Ballroom Blitz: In an aggressive Operation 489, a lavish dinner amongst the upper echelons of the Triads is violently interrupted by the police raid, leaving multiple dead and injured and the room filled with bullet holes and tear gas.
• Battle in the Rain: If Ibuka conducts Operation 489 with guns blazing, then Lam, his colleagues and Kenpeitai “observers” approach a secluded hotel while heavily armed during a cold, rainy night.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Ibuka can focus on rewarding excellence among the workers and publicly show their greater standing to their colleagues. However, earning this position can be a trap in its own right, with those at the top now being expected to hold their position, unless they want a demotion or termination. One worker even wonders the point of participating in this "rat race".
  • As Hei finds out too late in the Oil Crisis, he never secured a permanent contract with Fujitsu and could easily be cast aside, if he's no longer useful to them. By this point, Hei finally figures out the downsides to throwing his lot with them, which could stick in the Reconciliation ending.
• Berserker Tears: Seeing Ibuka persist in his doomed vision, Morita hopelessly bangs at hiss door to demand a stop to the madness, but to no avail. The vain attempt makes Morita realize that his former friend is too far gone and he's driven to tears at the thought, with Matsushita politely telling him that no one can prepare for what he'll do next.
• Big Entrance: Subverted. Contrary to Chun's expectations, the CCL doesn't start the riots with a fancy chant or grand march against the Chief Executive. It's just a chaotic mess of violence and vandalism, albeit large enough to get the government's attention.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word:
  • When giving the news that computers will be used en masse in Fujitsu, his employees ask what will happen to them, now that their jobs are being taken away. Ibuka responds that their offices will make way for "Guangdong's chief ascension to efficiency and prosperity", all but stating their inevitable job termination.
  • A Brazilian bureaucrat is too lazy to graph accurate economic data in Minas Gerais, so he resorts to mixes fake "estimates" with real numbers to fill in the blanks. Notably, he realizes that he doesn't need to pull out any "estimates" when he gets a Fujitsu computer and can print out a graph in seconds, which would've taken hours by hand.
• Blatant Lies: If the Modern Police Ordinance fails to restrain the Kenpeitai, the Kanton Fujin Koron will report on the unity of the Guangdong police and the Kenpeitai, glorifying their shared strength. Lam can't help but stifle a laughter in reaction, knowing that both organizations actually hate each other and that neither are heroic groups.
• Bloody Smile: Though captured, Ho tries his best to cheerfully smile, makes jokes, and claim innocence, despite have a bloodied face. It soon goes away when his attempt to bribe out of punishment is thoroughly rejected by Ibuka.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Ibuka can focus on updating Guangdong's infrastructure and passing the Guangdong Efficiency Ordinance to standardize Fujitsu components than trying to introduce computers to the workplace. This mundane path of laying servers and cables could create the groundwork of a "silicon revolution" where existing digital technology can become even more advanced and ingrained in everyday life. The path pays off for Fujitsu with the creation of the FACOM 230-50, one of the most efficient computers seen in the market.
  • In a Fujitsu contest to produce a unique device, Hei presents a simple device that barely has enough memory space for six short behavior states, but it has a triple-redundant transistor setup so that it can switch out a broken transistor for a new one. This ingenious idea catches the eye of the judges, making a note to keep on eye on Hei.
  • Though it's not a weapon by nature, Fujitsu's computers prove an invaluable tool for numerous dictatorships:
    • The Iberian AAS uses them against CNT-FAI and other enemies against the Caudillos. Where they once had to manually go through hundreds of reports, they can now pinpoint the location of CNT-FAI bases and organize strikes against them. It's so effective that the Caudillos send a letter of thanks to Fujitsu.
      Fujitsu condemns all terrorists, at home or abroad.
    • The Turkish authorities use Fujitsu computers in a similar manner, calculating the increased frequency of attacks in Sulaymaniyah and the concentration of rebels in the northern and eastern parts. With this information, Turkey can deploy stronger policing in areas before the rebels can hit them.
    • In Mexico, the computers can present the faces, details, and last known locations of the country's most prolific and wanted terrorist leaders. The security ministers are stunned by the potential and excitedly discuss how they apply this technology.
    • The Argentinian military and Ministry of Defence, who have traditionally relied on phone transcripts and hand-drawn maps, utilize Fujitsu's computers to modernize their military infrastructure. Now, swarms of clerks can feed data into the machines and efficiently produce reports on military units, down to a company level.
• Bread and Circuses: If computers are implemented into Guangdong's administration, Ibuka will conduct a massive advertising campaign to distract the public backlash of disgruntled office workers who are about to lose their jobs to them.
• Break the Haughty: Various bureaucrats and Yokusankai politicians resist Fujitsu's proposal to implement more computers in Japan and smugly turn down Ibuka's pitches. However, when the companies who accept Fujitsu's offer start thriving, the contrarians suddenly become much more respectful towards Ibuka, who makes it clear that he's the one calling the shots now and giving a second chance to them. Those present have become so timid and respectful that a few flinch when Ibuka claps his hands aggressively.
• Bring It:
  • Nintendo is ordered by Fujitsu to make more inventions, if they are going to expand into the market. Yamauchi notes that this would be daunting a few years ago, back when Nintendo was struggling. Now, he eagerly takes on the challenge to innovate, alongside Gunpei Yokoi.
  • In his address for the Persistence ending, Ibuka comments on the outside threats facing Guangdong in the coming decade, but he expresses no fear for what's to come, confident that the country will survive and continue on its visionary path with Fujitsu's guidance.
• Brown Note: One of the first proposed inventions to reach the Committee of Technology is the Mosquito, which emits a high-frequency sound that apparently can only be heard by juvenile delinquents and rodents, irritating them enough to leave.
• The Bully: Some of the Japanese students in Hei's university are racist thugs who attack their Chinese counterparts out of naked discrimination.
• Butt-Monkey: After Fujitsu expands their operations in Bormann's Germany, Dr. Horst Zuse is hired to install the FACOM 230-50 across eastern Europe, which ends disastrously for him every time. In Riga, there hasn't been a census since the civil war and there's just barely enough surviving records to fill in the blanks. Then, in Kiew, he finds that much of the census data before the Ukrainian Civil War had been destroyed, in large part, due to larger native resistance, eating a significant amount of time for him to retrieve the data and making him curse Koch. It gets even worse in Moskowien, where almost all useful data there has been misplaced or fabricated by incompetent administrators. The event chain ends with a frustrated Zuse cursing Kache, Kaminski and all of Moskowien's leaders.
• Bystander Syndrome:
  • Even if prized Japanese students feel brief moments of concern for the Chinese laborers being exploited to make their dreams possible, they do not take a stand for them and ignore them to focus on their careers.
  • Having their powers expanded by Ibuka, managers are free to fire their workers at complete random, deeming them too incompetent to be worth keeping. Some workers feel sorry for their misfortune, but ultimately stand aside because they think nothing can be done.
  • As Hei quickly finds out, it's best to focus on one's own work in Fujitsu and ignore the co-workers who are struggling with their jobs. Chances are, they'll get fired and those who succeed, like himself, will be rewarded as a cut above the others.
• Call-Back:
  • In an early event, Suzuki reads about Michel Foucault's panopticon and is inspired by it to develop a surveillance system to monitor everyone's activities. He was hit by the Yasuda Crisis before he could realize this vision, but Ibuka revives it to monitor any form of work misconduct and punish factory managers who fail to adhere to their standards.
  • In the event chain of Lam's past, he interrogates the Vice-Chairman of the Guangdong Republic of China Restoration Committee, accusing him of blowing up a tram that killed multiple civilians, including children. The chairman denies it, but when they encounter each other again in the Guangdong riots, he admits his culpability and lack of remorse for it. He even implies that the recently promoted Lam no longer has the moral high ground when he personally killed 27 people to put down a protest.
• Call-Forward:
  • Ibuka expressed interest in moving to Guangdong all the way back in 1950, with the fledgling Tokyo Telecommunications company and Morita by his side.
  • In the last flashback, when Tokyo Telecommunications was still active, Morita asks Ibuka if he's willing to risk everything by going to Guangdong and seeing his dream through. The same question crosses Ibuka's mind during the riots, in which his affirmation or rejection is the one of the most dramatic choices for whether he goes down the Persistence or the Reconciliation path.
• Cannon Fodder: With the Guangdong police and Kenpeitai overwhelmed by the Guangdong rioters, they start conscripting Fujitsu employees to their front lines and using them as human shields to slow the dissidents down, despite the fact that they have no formal training. Much to Hei's dismay, he's among the many sent to face the mob and gets assaulted by them.
• Cathartic Exhalation: If Morita's efforts succeed and the Guangdong Trademark Ordinance fails to pass, he lets out a sigh of relief at the news, much to Ibuka's chagrin.
• Challenging the Bully: Seeing a group of Chinese students, with limited knowledge of Japanese, get bullied by their fellow Japanese classmates angers Hei to the point of confrontation with them, forcing them to stand down.
• Chance Meeting Between Antagonists: In a Reconciliation ending with the CCL negotiated with, the two Lee brothers encounter each other by chance while on walks from the new accommodations the've obtained. There, the two brothers reconcile and catch up on all the lost time between them, starting with Hei's profuse apology for turning his back on the family.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: If embargoes are lifted with the OFN, the American government reacts with suspicion to Fujitsu's FACOM computers, unable to believe that the Japanese could produce such cheap yet advanced computers without a drawback. They subsequently force Fujitsu to let their products be checked for surveillance equipment by NSA agents and engineers from IBM, a rival company who could get some insight from their searches. However, despite IBM's attempts to catch up and ruin their reputation, Fujitsu thrives in the United States and whole city administrations start using their products.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The Guangdong Efficiency Ordinance comes in handy during the Oil Crisis, with the low production levels at least being kept stable and the only major problem being the lack of manpower. If the ordinance fails to pass, most production shuts down in Guangdong, with some citizens committing suicide in their hopeless predicament.
  • Many of Ibuka's ordinances and minor campaigns actually play a later role in determining what measures he can pursue in the Oil Crisis. Specifically, the Guangdong Zoning Ordinance lets him crack down on civil unrest, the Guangdong Education Ordinance lets him tighten education restrictions in the factories, and the Guangdong Anti-Corruption Ordinance lets him remove "disruptive" members of the Legislative Council. Even the immigration problem will be dependent on his earlier, seemingly inconsequential actions, like using the Kenpeitai (if the Guangdong Modern Police Ordinance empowered them), the Yakuza (if Operation 489 was a success), or nobody (if the Guangdong Modern Police Ordinance passed).
  • The Triads' smuggling routes into the Republic of China, barely discussed in Fujitsu's path, can play a larger role in the Oil Crisis, where they are used to guide refugees fleeing Guangdong.
• Child Prodigy: Inspired by the success story of Hei, Fujitsu authorizes a company education service to train a whole generation of child prodigies. Before they are even in kindergarten, they're already learning complex subjects, like statistics, and they're capable of solving sophisticated math equations that not even adults like Yoshiko can do.
• Childhood Home Rediscovery: After Ibuka abandoned Tokyo Telecommunications, he visited the village he grew up in, Nikkō, recalling his childhood experiences there and witnessing the local celebrations, but ultimately deciding to focus on the future from that point onward.
• Cliffhanger: Near the end of his epilogue tree, Ibuka receives news that the Republic of China is gearing for war against Japan, which disturbs and motivates him to prepare Guangdong for the impending conflict. More immediately concerning in the Reconciliation ending, Komai forms an alliance with Nagano and Miyazaki to overthrow the Chief Executive, believing that he's become too indecisive to properly lead the country for the upcoming war.
• Common Tongue: If updating the electronic infrastructure of Guangdong, Ibuka will mandate the use of F-ShoGen as a programming language, standardizing computers to Fujitsu's benefit. Any devices that can't convert to this language are outmoded.
• Commonality Connection: On their few breaks, Chun and his colleagues converse over their similar work experiences, including their work days, what machines they found broken, who got injured, what insults were hurled at them, and what injuries they have.
• Competition Freak: Ibuka’s promotion of social Darwinism pushes Guangdong into an exceedingly competitive society where everyone is constantly expected to surpass the call of duty. This can even come down to expecting employees to show up one hour early for work or placing a ten-point scale in the workplace which compares all the employees on it, the latter of which incites envy and conflict.
• Condescending Compassion:
  • The Sony store has their televisions set to the Cantonese channel so that the poorer Chinese citizens can understand, but most don't even appreciate being advertised to and reminded of their poverty.
  • After catching thousands of refugees attempting to flee the Oil Crisis by heading to the Republic of China, a police officer tries to convince them to stay and assures them that they can endure the struggle together. After years of enduring Fujitsu's tyranny, including by the Guangdong police's hand, many are displeased with the officer's comment, even if they don't devolve into a full-on riot.
• Confetti Drop: By the end of Ibuka’s main tree, he opens the Kōshu Research & Development Nexus to a cheering crowd and confetti while contemplating how far he has come, everywhere it could have gone wrong, and the possibility of failure in the future. However, he sets these thoughts aside and takes pride in what he has done to Guangdong.
• Convenient Misfire: With Ibuka persisting in his vision and the Guangdong Police Force enacting Operation 892 to to kill the CCL, Chun instantly opens fire on the police, only for his rifle to jam. Desperate, he tries to make a leap for a pistol lying on the ground, only to be shot in the thigh.
• Cool Toy: Yamauchi's partnership with Gunpei Yokoi leads to the creation of the Ultra Hand, a highly successful toy sold to the Japanese expat community and even finding itself exported to China and Japan. This kickstarts the hot streak of Nintendo developing more novelty toys, even appealing to the adult demographic with the Love Tester. Yamauchi may still love his playing cards, but he considers these novelty toys the key to Nintendo's future.
• Courtroom Episode: In the midst of a Fujitsu playthrough, which mostly acts as a political drama, an event chain switches to a flashback of Ibuka's lawsuit against the TR-56 and the arguments he presents in court.
• Cram School: The Guangdong youth are put into intense education programs at an early age, subject to incredibly dense curriculums with reading material, practical engineering sessions, and formulas, along with mandatory extracurricular activities in the arts and sports.
• Crapsaccharine World: To the prized Japanese students who graduated from the best universities on the Home Islands, Ibuka's Guangdong is a paradise, presenting a world of endless possibilities and scientific progress through their extravagant research parks. To everyone else, it is a corporate, country-sized sweatshop where indentured servitude is the law of the land and they're treated as mere tools to carry out Ibuka's grand vision, only to be enjoyed by the most skilled of them.
• Crapsack Only by Comparison: In the Oil Crisis, many people immigrate to the Republic of China. While they hear stories of government repression there, they reason that there are, at least, more job opportunities in the Republic than in Guangdong and that it's better to be oppressed by a Chinese boot than a Japanese one.
• Creepy Child: Hei is creeped out by the children of his Japanese co-workers, who are brought to Fujitsu to be trained as prodigies and ask uncomfortable questions about his heritage.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: A Chilean contemplates his disappointment that Fujitsu is wasting its talents on developing weapons of war when they could make just as much of a buck if they invested more in the sciences, such as weather instruments or geographical tools.
• The Cynic: Unlike most who protest the Zoning Ordinance, Leong just accepts his family's fate to be separated and even acknowledges that they already are divided, with Chun often being arrested, Hei constantly on the move with Fujitsu, and himself and Mei working in the factories.
• Day in the Life: An early event details Ibuka's daily routine and his internal commentary throughout.
• Deadly Euphemism: As his public transmissions for peace and law abiding in the Oil Crisis fail, Ibuka loses patience and ends the charade of openness, warning everyone to stick to their directives or "be dealt with accordingly".
• Death or Glory Attack: Operation 489 is an incredibly risky endeavor by the Guangdong police to destroy the Triads, where more aggressive strategies will uproot them more significantly, but getting too upfront will backfire. If it fails, Ibuka will have no choice but to cut his losses, having sacrificed too much capital to stage another attack.
• Defiant to the End: If the "Realistic Expectations" and/or "We Will Handle It" foci are chosen, Lam will encounter and arrest a Triad member who is in the middle of packing his things and leaving. However, the Triad officer does not give up easily, snarking at Lam throughout the entire exchange and pulling a pocket knife on him. Even when he's finally apprehended, the Triad laughs at Lam and mocks his collaboration with the Japanese.
• Déjà Vu: Chun gets this sensation when he's sent to a Fujitsu manufacturing plant that he once saw in a commercial that Hei adored.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • After the Zoning Ordinance's passage, some citizens don't resist the Kenpeitai's arrest and relocation to the proper district away from their families, having already lost all hope without their loved ones. It’s passage also causes many in the Legislative Council to break down in shock with some collapsing, doing a Thousand-Yard Stare or desperately calling their families. Even Morita and Li get washed over with defeat and despair over what terrible future Ibuka has just unleashed.
  • Suffering in the Oil Crisis, one citizen writes a list of basic qualities of life they will not attempt to acquire, believing there is no longer any hope under the cruel and merciless state built by Ibuka.
  • Ibuka’s Persistence ending acts as this for all of Guangdong, with a squabbling Chinese laborer and Japanese manager mutually realizing that Guangdong does not care about either of them and that Ibuka has absolute control over their fates, leaving them as nothing more than parts of a metaphorical circuit board.
• Deus ex Machina: Being mugged by a Yakuza member, Chun senses his impeding doom before his attacker drops dead with a hatchet buried in his back. The hatchet was wielded by an individual in a tank top who subsequently tries to advertise a radio to Chun after verifying he is Chinese.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If Operation 489 was successful, Ibuka's Reconciliation ending plays a special event where a captured Ho is released, but feels disillusioned and questions the possibility that he can revive the Triads' business.
  • When Fujitsu expands its market to Chile, it normally plays an event of a lone Chilean working at a minor weather station and lamenting the increasing militarization of Chile with Fujitsu's products. However, a unique event will play if Allende is the Chilean President, where he personally meets Ibuka and discusses the prospect of employing more computers to run the economy.
• The Dictatorship: In Ibuka's Persistence path, the passes the Guangdong Future Act, which forcibly subordinates all LegCo representatives to Fujitsu and puts them under Ibuka's thumb, turning an already undemocratic system into one where Ibuka has full control and is answerable to no one else in Guangdong..
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Ibuka’s push to expand education for everyone is successful and leads to a new generation of educated Chinese citizens working in the government and industry. However, this also encourages many who are not blindly loyal to the regime to reconnect with Chinese history and particularly find inspiration in the Xinhai Revolution, which could potentially undermine Ibuka in the future.
  • Ibuka’s stricter criteria for Zhujin status through arbitrary measurements in education and achievements ends up denying social mobility for much of Guangdong’s Chinese population and threatens to push many existing Zhujin back into a lower social class. Outrage is swift and explosive once the “Rationalization” goes into effect, pushing the Zhujin to unify and create the Guangdong Federation of Tradesmen, one of the two main opponents to Ibuka during the riots.
  • If Ibuka starts investing in renewable energy sources, his engineers construct a wind turbine with structural steel. What they didn't consider is that they were building near the sea, so the turbine is susceptible to corrosion without marine steel, an amateurish mistake that baffles and frustrates Ibuka.
  • The government can reduce education prices for the Zhujin, but this plan fails to consider the busy schedules this demographic needs to juggle in order to survive in Guangdong, leaving them little time to attend a regular study routine. When Lam receives this offer, he has to toss it out because even the easiest course would eat up too much of his time.
  • The Guangdong Zoning Ordinance is penned by Ibuka to redraw the administrative districts and divide people by occupation. What he realizes too late is that the law would absolutely be savaged in the Legislative Council, with most unwilling to move out of their homes or be split from their families.
• Disaster Dominoes: Catching a Chinese pickpocket at the end of his shift, a Japanese officer starts beating him with his nightstick, with the violence attracting an angry crowd of Chinese residents. The officer then has the gall to call them all parasites, inciting the crowd to attack him and the cop to pull his gun. Then, matters get even more out-of-hand when the Kenpeitai arrive on the scene and start attacking any random Chinese citizen they happen upon, cascading into more street violence between the Japanese, Zhujin, and Chinese onlookers. Fortunately, Lam intervenes before the race riot can escalate further, calming everyone down enough to just go home and leave an uneasy peace in their wake.
• Dissonant Serenity:
  • Regardless of the Organized Labor Ordinance's passage or failure, Komai and his Hitachi allies are completely silent amongst the arguing in the Legislative Council, either out of satisfaction or bitter disappointment. Either way, it's a little creepy.
  • As the rest of his colleagues blame each other for the Anti-Corruption Ordinance's passage and fight each other, one executive casually leans back and smiles at the violence, knowing that their corruption gives him an opportunity to rat them out and advance his own station.
• Distinction Without a Difference: As the Guangdong police arm themselves for war against the Triads, a security contractor from Japan sees Lam and remarks that Zhujin like him are no different than the collaborators Japan used during the Second World War.
• Divide and Conquer:
  • At least one worker suspects that they are graded on loyalty, competence, and teamwork to publicly show their standings and sow envy among their ranks so they won't unite against Fujitsu.
  • Facing controversy for abolishing work leaves in the Oil Crisis, Ibuka can break up the resulting strikes by transferring workers to different factories, making it harder for them to communicate with each other and thus easier to suppress.
• Do Not Go Gentle: If the CCL are not negotiated with, their members will refuse to surrender control of the Nintendo factory, so the police are sent to violently raid the facility. The CCL put up a good fight against the tear gas and gunfire for an hour, before they are finally put down with 37 dead and 71 wounded.
• The Dog Bites Back: If allowed to choose who to fire so the Oil Crisis can be weathered, a Zhujin terminates the manager he had when he was originally Chinese. Given his arrogance and racist contempt for Chinese people, everyone cheers when they see the ex-manager walk out of the door.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • In 1954, Ibuka thought that computers were "reductionist fancy new toys stripping away what makes life". Come the present day, he's arguing for their greater implementation.
  • After betraying Morita in the 1952 flashback, Ibuka discovers that his former partner took a transistor radio prototype before being exiled, which he finds amusing and overlooks because he doesn't think Morita can do anything with it. That stolen device would later be used to make the TR-56, the focal point of Ibuka's lawsuit against Sony and the renewal of their rivalry.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: After undermining smaller businesses at the start of his economic tree, Ibuka goes for a stroll on the streets to see how many stores have shuttered their doors ever since he's implemented a rabid, social Darwinistic approach to the market. Instead of realizing how much ruin he's sowing, Ibuka just sees this as an achievement for breathing "new life" into the city.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Viewing life under Fujitsu as meaningless and beholden to an oppressive schedule, a man leaps off of an observation deck and kills himself. Due to everyone else's crippling schedules, nobody tries to save him and ignore the arriving clean-up crew, a sight that's all too common in Guangdong.
  • During the Oil Crisis, another office worker breaks under the vast piles of work, long hours, abusive managers, poor pay and not being able to support his family properly, so he commits suicide. Just as horribly, his demise means that the rest of his colleagues will have to pick up his work so as to keep the business productive, which makes everyone miserable.
• Dying Town:
  • Many of Guangdong’s rural and agricultural towns suffer thanks to Ibuka’s aggressive urbanization. The Ministry of Agriculture finds that food production is in decline as people move to the cities, not helped by the industrial pollution either. It's openly stated that they're even lucky to produce a quarter of their own food.
  • The matter is worsened during the Oil Crisis, as Ibuka redirects state resources towards the Three Pearls out of urban elitism against the countryside.
• Empathic Environment:
  • The day Ibuka left his family to move to Guangdong was on a cold morning, matching the somber attitude.
  • After Ibuka completes main tree, most of the Lee family tries to adapt to the sweeping changes on an exceptionally windy day. Wai waits outside of school to the backdrop of a university being constructed, the parents traverse a dying market suffering due to most of the residential population being relocated, and Hei works on urban planning which could affect his family and the rest of the city.
  • On a fittingly rainy day, Ibuka acknowledges the worsening riots by confessing his guilt over what he has done to Guangdong.
  • When the Guangdong riots are concluded, sunny weather returns to Kōshu and signifies the return to normalcy.
  • Lam’s reconnection with his distant family in the Reconciliation path is accompanied with a bright sunny day.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Subverted when Ibuka rejects Morita’s proposal to crack down on Yakuza contacts, refusing to ever cooperate with the Triads against a potential enemy.
  • In a rare moment of solidarity, the Japanese, Zhujin, and Chinese express universal disdain for Ibuka's redefinition of the Zhujin to exclude people who don't fit the new criteria. The Japanese hate it because it's contradictory to their White Man's Burden agenda or to start Going Native, the Zhujin hate it because it means a demotion in social status, and the Chinese hate it because it denies them a means of social mobility. The negativity around this law is so strong that it leads to the GFT's birth.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Once the riots break out, a group of Matsushita aligned members of the Legislative Council leak Ibuka’s invite of Hitachi to Guangdong, making him the most hated person in the entire country. When Ibuka demands an explanation, Matsushita explicitly states that his associates are angry over Fujitsu’s treatment of them and blames Ibuka for having the biggest role in what has happened. Ibuka expresses shock and betrayal at this and orders the Legislative Council be dismantled by force for the first time in its history.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: The center of so many human rights abuses, Fujitsu’s Kōshu headquarters is a glass leviathan that bears over the city and is colossal even compared to the other skyscrapers.
• Evil Versus Evil: Reforming the security forces and cleaning the streets of crime creates conflict between Ibuka, a social darwinist who's sacrificed thousands of lives to see his vision through, and the criminal gangs ruling the streets, namely the Yakuza and the Triads.
• Evil Wears Black: If Ibuka chose a more subtle approach for Operation 489, Lam is assigned to watch a suspect undercover. This suspect leaves a location of interest and makes a break for his car while wearing a jet black suit.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: His Reconciliation path isn't called that for nothing; it ends in him reaching out to Morita for the first time since the Tokyo Telecom split.
• Face Death with Dignity: Though shot in Ibuka's Persistence path, a Guangdong rioter does not perish with any regrets over what she's done, happy that she at least died for a purpose and not in a sweatshop.
• Failed a Spot Check: The Guangdong police completely miss a warehouse that the CCL have been using to supply their riots and, by the time Lam barges in, they've already evacuated. Worse still, Lam's going to be scapegoated for the failure and he's too depressed to even care.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Inverted. The Guangdong Future Act is guaranteed to pass in Ibuka's Persistence ending, emphasizing how much power he has at this point.
• Fair-Weather Friend: Played With. Yoshiko is admonished by her manager for supporting Ibuka's unpopular tax law, with audiences no longer buying her pro-Fujitsu material ever since the Oil Crisis discredited the Chief Executive. However, this light scolding is taken personally by Yoshiko, who feels betrayed by her manager and interprets it as an ungrateful attack after years of working for the Kanton Koron, to the point that the event is titled "Fairweather Friendship".
• False Reassurance: Running out of money for their project during the Oil Crisis, one Fujitsu engineer asks his colleagues if they think the economic depression will end soon. One of them smiles reassuringly and nods yes, but everyone knows that it's just front to keep morale up.
• Firing Day: With newly empowered managers and the promotion of social Darwinist rhetoric, the president of Haru Chemicals fires seven employees in front of their co-workers as an example for the others to keep up with a higher standard or "exceed the call of duty".
• Fist of Rage: Morita meets with Ho and Li to discuss Ibuka's attacks on the Triads, clenching his fist and hitting his desk in rage. Even if Ho successfully evades Operation 489, Morita still keeps his gist clenched.
• Forced from Their Home:
  • Ibuka hates the slums as a waste of land his renovation of the cities into an "ultramodern architecture" will involve demolishing these districts. This requires the relocation of thousands of Chinese citizens, who are rendered homeless and left to fend for themselves. One event shows hundreds of bulldozers descending on a port neighborhood, with expelled families watching in horror and the police unsure if everyone has been evacuated. It's an appalling plan that Morita feels sick to his stomach to think about.
  • Ibuka's Rationalized Land Development law seeks to shape Guangdong’s land to Fujitsu's needs, even if villages above deposits or housing in a suitable place for factories will be destroyed.
  • Matters are taken to another extreme with the Guangdong Zoning Ordinance, which will evict and relocate thousands to districts based upon their occupation, which not only takes away their homes, but also splits them from their family.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Sneaking a peak at the surveillance system in the factory he works at, Chun internally ponders the possibility of cheating the system and perhaps overthrowing it one day, foreshadowing his leading role in the Guangdong riots. The foreshadowing is enhanced in the immediate next event, with some of his coworkers taking a smoke break, snarkily complaining about their subjugation by the Japanese, and briefly raising the possibility that the Chinese can grow powerful enough to fight back.
  • The end of Ibuka’s security tree details a group of workers attempting to perform a strike, but they are swiftly arrested once the managers call for backup. The managers themselves are arrested on charges of negligence. Though shortlived, the attempt does reflect growing discontent amongst the working class, which will be amplified by the Oil Crisis and pave the way for the Guangdong Riots.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • The successful emigration of one Chinese citizen to the Republic of China is dependent on whether the Guangdong Modern Police Ordinance passed and weakened the Kenpeitai. If it did, then he and thousands of other refugees will be stopped at the border.
  • In Ibuka's Persistence path, once the Guangdong Future Act passes, subjugating every LegCo representative to Fujitsu's control, the Legislative Council mechanic will be closed off to the player.
  • The final focus of Ibuka's epilogue tree will change its icon to reflect if the player has gone down the Reconciliation or the Persistence path.
• Graceful Loser: Even if some CCL members are arrested while the Oil Crisis is ongoing, they take their imprisonment fairly well, knowing that they'll be released eventually and that they no longer have to hear the nonstop intercom blabbering about "productivity" and "excellence".
• Gratuitous Latin: In the Reconciliation ending, Wai makes her decision about getting a labour-intensive internship in an event whose title and reaction text write “Times change us and we change in them” in Latin.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • Many of Hei's Japanese colleagues are jealous about being outcompeted by a Chinese person, staring at him with thinly veiled contempt during his school assembly speech.
  • The Guangdong police don't appreciate being outperformed by the Special Security Action Detachment, trying to assure themselves that they'll screw up one day and that they'll be disbanded.
• Have We Met?: To put a forceful end to the riots, the CCL stronghold is raided by the police, with Chun being apprehended by Lam. While being dragged to a van, a semi-conscious Chun recognizes that he's met Lam before, but is too tired to say anything to him.
• Heel–Face Turn: Following Ibuka's Reconciliation path, some Fujitsu executives apologize for the abuses they've afflicted on the populace and resign to show that they are genuinely remorseful. They even open negotiations with the rioters and, besides some awkward attempts to speak Cantonese, the talks go smoothly.
• "Hell, Yes!" Moment: Subverted. If Katakura takes over Manchuria, Ibuka almost bursts into excitement over having such an easy opponent to economically dominate, but he stops himself at the last second. He settles with getting out a bottle of 1880 Chardonnay.
• History Repeats: Defied. Ibuka remembers how most of the corporations turned on Suzuki and he avoids meeting a similar fate in the Oil Crisis by calling Japanese suppliers to help Fujitsu's production logistics and give them a lifeline.
• Hope Bringer: Subverted, if the Triads are completely destroyed in Operation 489. A dissident group opposed to Fujitsu sets up a poster calling for revolution against the government, attempting to stoke the people's anger during the Oil Crisis against the Chief Executive. However, no one answers the call because they know they're being watched and fear the punishments that could be inflicted, so the posters go largely ignored and are eventually taken down with no fanfare.
• Hope Spot: Kyoshi Ito, a worker for Haru Chemicals, appears in a sequence of events during Ibuka’s social tree, as things go From Bad to Worse in the company with random firing and incendiary point charts on the employees. Once Fujitsu buys the company and the old president is replaced, he thinks he's survived the ordeal and can fly under the radar, but complaining to his co-worker results in him being fired the day after.
• Hostage Situation: Targeting Kanton Koron for its pro-Fujitsu stance, Chun leads a raid on their building and holds all of its employees, including Yoshiko, hostage. The situation doesn't last long, as the police follow after the mob and force them to disperse in a panic, with Chun throwing Yoshiko at them.
• A House Divided: Invoked by Ibuka as the supposed “justification” of the Guangdong Future Act while presenting the act to an unusually silent Legislative Council. He blames them for infighting during Guangdong’s darkest hour and accuses them of presenting him with a farce. In reality, the act is really a blatant power grab by a delusional tyrant.
• I Am the Noun: If he incorporates the police into Fujitsu, Ibuka proclaims that Fujitsu will be Guangdong, one and the same.
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • Forced to evict people under the Guangdong Zoning Ordinance, Lam ponders his morally questionable orders if he should even be following them. However, he can set these thoughts aside and carry on with the relocation effort.
  • If the assembly lines are overworked in Ibuka's Oil Crisis response, one Fujitsu worker will overdose on sedatives while trying to maintain the company's high standards. Rather than taking this as a sign to loosen work conditions, Fujitsu merely strengthens their drug regulations and forces the others to get back to work.
• In Spite of a Nail: No matter the outcome of Operation 489, Ibuka always thinks "Why do I even pay you people?" in reaction to the report, specifically either because of inefficiencies in Fujitsu's semiconductor production facilities or because of the abysmal performance by the Ministry of Agriculture, on top of failing to destroy the Triads.
• In-Universe Catharsis: After dealing with the insufferable Japanese bureaucrats while trying to expand into the Home Isles, Ibuka feels satisfaction and catharsis when he receives a quarterly report and learns that most of the companies who accepted his deals are doing uniformly well, while those who didn't are stagnating. It's especially pleasing to Ibuka that one of the dying companies belonged to the brother of a smug YSK politician that the Chief Executive had to deal with.
• Individuality Is Illegal: Ibuka's regime has themes of enforced conformity, as his government fosters an overly competitive workplace that frowns upon individuality and pressures everyone to be efficient.
• Industrialized Evil: One of Ibuka’s main goals is a vast expansion of industrial areas with factories to support growing demand for cheap products from Guangdong. This is achieved through aggressive land acquisitions and integrating urban housing into these new industrial areas, paving the way for the creation of the "Steel Belt" and uprooting thousands of lives to fulfill Ibuka's pet project, excavating the resources to sell to the rest of the Sphere or create electronic components.
• Indy Ploy: Caught in the middle of a race riot, Lam shouts at everyone to shut up and, to his surprise, it actually works and everyone turns their attention to him. Not having planned what to do at this point, Lam improvises a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for everyone involved and orders them to go back home, which miraculously works, albeit with some lingering tensions.
• The Informant: Ibuka can employ informants to break apart the unity of the Guangdong rioters, in exchange for scraps. The Chief Executive delightfully calls them insects eager to rip each other apart out of selfishness.
• Inner Monologue: Ibuka's reconciliatory foci in the Riots describe his internal doubts over his ambitions. He first criticizes himself for not realizing that people aren't toys that can be disposed of at a whim, and that the Japanese elite are not fond of him and would toss him over to the mob. Thus, he rationalizes a lighter hand on the Chinese population, using an electric engineering analogy in his self-reflection.
• Innocently Insensitive:
  • A Fujitsu representative meets Yamauchi and announces Ibuka's intent to modernize the "outdated companies", declaring that Nintendo's specialization in playing cards is dealing in an archaic industry. This unwittingly offends Yamauchi, but he knows better than to respond to the insult.
  • After the Chinese tenements are relocated to work on Ibuka's Steel Belt project, the foreman offhandedly mentions that the factory workers must be proud to work on something so grand. This comment infuriates Chun so much he wants to strangle him for his insensitivity.
  • While hammering a deal with Li to pass the Organized Labor Ordinance, Ibuka talks about how the Zhujin are a nebulous group who will need to be redefined "for efficiency's sake". The comment can unintentionally offend Li so much that the deal falls through.
• Insane Troll Logic: During the lawsuit over the TR-56, Ibuka tries to delegitimize Morita's ownership of the product by how he never asserted his claim in a Japanese court, so this case in Guangdong now constitutes an act of theft. However, as Li points out, Morita was exiled from the Home Islands and thus could never claim legal ownership of the product, rendering Ibuka's argument null and fallacious.
• Instant Emergency Response: Implied. Part of Ibuka's policing reforms involves the creation of a new, elite Fujitsu-controlled militia dubbed in the relevant focus the "Microsecondmen", just as the American minutemen were able to move and engage within a minute (though it's fairly obvious that the microsecondmen can't literally be at the ready in the microsecond).
• Intellectually Supported Tyranny: Enforced by Ibuka, as he strives to carve out a Social Darwinist state, ruled by a class of only the most talented engineers, while everyone else is mercilessly oppressed.
• Interface Screw: In Ibuka's Persistence path, once the Guangdong Future Act passes, subjugating every LegCo representative to Fujitsu's control, the Legislative Council GUI will become inaccessible to the player, obscured with a neon blue overlay and text reading "The Possibilities are Infinite"◊.
• Ironic Echo: Should the Triads escape Ibuka's clutches, Yokoi will furiously confront the Chief Executive over his failure, insulting the Triads as "monkeys" who could've been handed down on a silver platter. Ibuka unsympathetically dismisses his complaints and threat to never work with him again, saying he wouldn't want to invest in a gang that is "outmaneuvered by monkeys, as you call them".
• Irony: Teamwork is one category for which workers are rated on, yet jealousy and insecurity over the rankings actually turns each worker on each other and creates a disharmonious team spirit.
• Is That a Threat?: When Tsuchida angrily confronts Ibuka about the Special Security Action Detachment undermining his authority, Ibuka bluntly states that Tsuchida could be packing his boxes or be behind bars. Tsuchida tries to ask if it's an indirect threat, but Ibuka cuts him off.
• It's Probably Nothing: During the riots, Yoshiko and her manager get into an argument over her staunch support of Fujitsu and how its alienating the readers of the Kanton Koron. During this confrontation, both dismiss the sounds of protests in the distance as the usual sound of chaos and it is not until her manager asks her to metaphorically look out the window that she notices the angry crowds fast approaching their offices.
• It's What I Do: Compared to the other Chief Executives, Ibuka's reaction to outpacing Manchuria in the economic race is rather reserved. He's happy and accomplished, but he treats this as an expected inevitability with Manchuria's obsolete model rather than a sudden shift in the balance of power, like how the media portrays it. In his mind, it was only natural that a Fujitsu-led Guangdong would overshadow them. After spending half a day talking to reporters, he goes back to his regular routine of working on new products and making up lost time, as if nothing spectacular happened.
• Jaw Drop: The normally absent Morita sudden appears in a meeting concerning a crackdown on crime, which most of the corporate leaders gaping in shock, most notably Matsushita.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • One wealthy Japanese woman bemoans Ibuka's Zoning Ordinance and its absurd plan to evict and redistribute people based on their occupation, even calling out Yoshiko for blindly acting as Fujitsu's mouthpiece when she tries to defend the initiative.
  • The IBM conducts a PR smear campaign against Fujitsu's presence in the United States, accusing their low prices to be the result of using slave labor. They're merely trying to cut down on their rivals, but they are right that Fujitsu is using and exploiting Chinese laborers to create their products.
• Just a Machine: Ibuka can fully entrust computers to monitor the marketplace and force businesses to implement them, under the belief that they are not susceptible to typical human vices. To him, computers are incapable of bribery, do not demand wages, and do not waste time on endeavors outside of completing their function. At best, he will compare them to soldiers who undergo meticulous training, a metaphor of the computers' large-scale field testing to document any and all improvements that can be made.
• Kent Brockman News: The Kanton Fujin Koron has a blatant bias for Fujitsu, writing articles in favor of their policies and ignoring their downsides. It gets to a point where they expand their scope to cover exclusive interviews with figures from groups like Fujitsu and the Guangdong Police Force.
• Kick Them While They Are Down:
  • A workplace digital screen is used to inform a business’ employees of any updates to their occupation status. One worker finds out he has been demoted and one of his colleagues tell him it’s for the best, since he wouldn’t have retained the position anyways. To rub it in further, this colleague earns a promotion and exclaims this matter was an inevitability.
  • While the public are placed under financial strain by the Oil Crisis, Ibuka cuts pay checks and subsidies to spare them for the government.
  • Potentially relaying Ibuka's request for Manchurian money during the Oil Crisis, Komai joins his superior's laughter at the Chief Executive's indignity and hypocrisy about "self-sufficiency", with the former adding that the whole situation is hilarious after years of enduring his arrogance.
• Know When to Fold 'Em:
  • Already in his first day of college, Hei and the other Chinese students are being harassed by racist Japanese students, knocking the books out of their hands. Though irritated, Hei doesn't directly confront them because he wants to focus on his education rather than look for trouble. The rare times he loses his cool is when he's seeing other Chinese students get assaulted.
  • If, at most, the "Big Ambitions" or "Synergistic Determination" foci are picked, the Guangdong police will struggle to combat the Triads, with Lam's unit forced to retreat because they're stretched too thin in the shootout.
  • As the remaining CCL members are hunted down in the Persistence path, some start talking about turning themselves in, no longer able to stay in their cramped hideouts and eat nothing but dehydrated onions. Though, for one group, it doesn't matter anyway, since they all get caught and arrested.
• Last Stand: As the CCL are forcibly dismantled, the last few members fortify themselves in the Nintendo factory. They reject the Police's demands for them to surrender, so the rioters are forcibly removed with tear gas and bullets that leave 37 dead and 71 injured, while the others are arrested.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste:
  • In the wake of a race riot that Lam puts a stop to, Yoshiko and her superiors are quick to write and publish an article on the events, given that Yoshiko was an eyewitness and is acquainted with Lam. This proves to be a massive success, with widespread readership and connections with powerful Fujitsu figures being established, paving the way for the expansion and renaming of the Kanton Fujin Koron.
  • If the Triads are still at large in the Oil Crisis, they briefly drop their smuggling activities to help immigrants fleeing to the Republic of China, for an obvious price. One smuggler helps guide a family across the Nan mountains in exchange for jewerly and other goods, all while thinking about how strange it is to be helping ordinary people as opposed to the criminal activities he is used to.
  • Fujitsu is quick to exploit the Oil Crisis to bring down their rival companies, especially if they passed the Guangdong Trademark Ordinance. Ibuka even hopes that the general economic turmoil can be addressed and turned around into an opportunity to achieve greater, future success.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: The Guangdong police have blood on their hands and set up checkpoints to profile Chinese citizens, but they don't hold a candle to the brutish violence of the Kenpeitai. Tellingly, if the Modern Police Ordinance restrains the Kenpeitai's reach, Leong and Mei will comment on the increased police presence, but note their relief that it isn't the Kenpeitai.
• Like Father, Like Son: Dr. Horst Zuse is a computer scientist, who plays a significant role in developing Germany's research into computer technologies, much like his father, Konrad Zuse, who pioneered research in the field.
• Lockdown: To stave the waves of emigrations out of the country after the Oil Crisis, Ibuka can lockdown the nation and forbid any travel outside the state without permission. However, this just leads to congestions at airports and border checkpoints with angry crowds desperate to leave anyway. One checkpoint worker, who once used to think she was lucky in her position, wonders about the point of continuing her work if no one is allowed passed and not enough police can stop the crowd if they decided to riot and storm through the border.
• Locked Out of the Loop: If Ibuka chooses the ‘We Will Handle It’ focus, only certain information will be given to the Yakuza to keep them placated. This is done through Fujitsu affiliated officers passing delegated information while plotting to work underneath them.
• Long Game:
  • If the Anti-Corruption Ordinance is rejected, Ibuka won't take the defeat lying down, now opting to develop and construct surveillance technology to slowly consolidate his power over the private sector, even if at a slower pace than plan A.
    The trash will be taken out, one way or another.
  • Expanding the computer network into China's cities will be difficult inland from Shanghai, Nanjing, and Beijing. Chengdu and Chongqing's regional warlords are not cooperative and disagree with how to maintain their records, while Yunnan lacks a central authority to manage the network and prevent its parts from being stolen. Despite his frustration, Ibuka sees the venture as a long-term investment and that it will further entrench Fujitsu into China's administration.
  • The Steel Belt can commit its resources to developing Guangdong's electronics industry, which will be slower to develop than just selling the material, but it will reduce Guangdong's dependence on Japan for the long-term.
  • The CCL patiently waits out the Oil Crisis before making their first open move, waiting for more people to start disrupting the factories or face enough abuse to join their ranks.
• Long Last Look: After Tokyo Telecommunications’ buyout by Fujitsu in 1952, Ibuka takes one last tour of the office where he and Morita dreamed together.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Ibuka sets upon a mission of culling any incompetence or inefficiency in the Big Five. Not coincidentally, he targets his hated rivals in Sony and Cheung Kong first.
  • The Guangdong Education Ordinance is an earnestly meritocratic effort to give more opportunities for the Chinese and Zhujin to elevate their socioeconomic status through education. However, most members from these demographics lack the financial security to pursue such higher education, so these benefits are largely enjoyed by the Japanese, thus maintaining the unequal racial hierarchy.
  • Since Oil Crisis refugees have legal citizenship in the Republic of China and can't be extradited back to Guangdong, the government stations Kenpeitai officers and militiamen to patrol the border and arrest those caught immigrating. There, the Nanjing government can't complain about Guangdong overstepping their boundaries, while the Kenepitai are trusted enough to bring back those caught fleeing without succumbing to the "Zhujin sympathies" of the police.
• Lured into a Trap: During a failed Operation 489, a smaller group of high-ranking Triads will wait for the police with their enforcers, waiting out of sight with their machine guns. Once the police barge in, the leadership just continue to eat their dinner to lure the police into the room where they cross the sights of their enforcers. And once the police are distracted by said enforcers, the leadership pull their guns and start shooting, forcing them into a hasty retreat.
• Make an Example of Them:
  • The optional use of "shock and awe" tactics in Operation 489 are intended to use extreme force to strike fear in every Triad member.
  • The arrest of several CCL members can be publicly shown to make an example of those who oppose the Chief Executive.
• Malicious Misnaming: Kanton Fujin Koron's glowing favoritism towards Fujitsu earns it the nickname "Kanton Fujitsu Koron" by its detractors.
• Mathematician's Answer: A Japanese girl, unfamiliar with a Chinese person or the ethnic conflicts in Guangdong, asks Hei where he is from. To avoid the awkward intricacies of reality, Hei responds "Somewhere east of Kōshu."
• Meaningful Rename: Ibuka’s path leads to great success for the Kanton Fujin Koron, so much that it renames itself to "Kanton Koron" as it expands its scope beyond just women’s issues in Guangdong and into broader social and political analysis.
• The Migration: Having lost their livelihoods in the Oil Crisis, many try to flee Guangdong for the Republic of China, since they have Chinese citizenship and can't be extradited as illegal immigrants. The Fujitsu regime tries to circumvent this by stationing Kenpeitai and militia patrols on the border and either putting the entire nation on lockdown or starting a campaign to convince people to stay.
• Mirthless Laughter: Ibuka laughs bitterly if the Guangdong Trademark Ordinance fails to pass.
• Missing Floor: During a subtle approach in Operation 489, the building that Lam and his colleagues raid does not have fourteenth floor, instead being called ‘13' to avoid bad luck, which Lam considers ironic considering what is about to go down.
• The Mole:
  • In the early days of the CCL's formation, a sympathetic guard in Kōshu helps Chun deliver a package to his comrades, setting the groundwork for a future Chinese uprising.
  • Towards the end of the Oil Crisis, a Zhujin manager working for Fujitsu secretly helps the GFT by asking a Sony manager for a safehouse, knowing that confrontation is coming with Ibuka in the near future. This also acts as Foreshadowing to the upcoming riots.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The Guangdong Civil Service starts out as a fairly lax work environment, brought together by shared adversity and even hiring some Zhujin workers to improve services for Chinese citizens. One worker even buys some Cantonese learning material so that he can properly communicate with the Chinese. Then, Fujitsu arrives on the scene and starts introducing stricter regulations, firing the Zhujin workers, and forcing the remainder to pour even more hours into their jobs. The worker's job is so consuming he doesn't even have time to read his Cantonese material, quashing the few bright spots left in Guangdong.
  • If Ibuka increases cooperation between the police and the Yakuza for Operation 489, Lam arrives unusually cheerful to work, greeting everyone and pondering how easy preparation have been so far. This positivity is wiped out the moment he enters the meeting room and finds three Yakuza members discussing Operation 489 with his colleagues.
  • A worker loses his job for protesting Fujitsu's seizure of his factory, but he remains hopeful in his impoverished situation, at least happy to see that his children have food on the table. Unfortunately, the moment is cut short when the police break into his place and arrest him for his outspoken opposition.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: During the Oil Crisis, one citizen snaps and believes that murdering others under the guise of a Mercy Kill to save them from their corporate hell is the best thing to do. He subsequently murders multiple people with a knife before being gunned down.
• My God, What Have I Done?: If Ibuka introduces computers to the workplace, one Fujitsu businessman will balk at the idea of firing their human workers to make way for the new initiative, While everyone else is celebrating Ibuka's progress, the executive is internally regretting Fujitsu's decision and his part in it. His doubt resurfaces again when he sees an over-the-top commercial of Fujitsu's automated workers, knowing that his cousin will be fired and replaced by them. This is further reinforced when he stares outside the window, only to see streams of people leaving offices with no hope of recovery.
  Not all innovation is for the better.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: Barely escaping his raid on the Kanton Koron, a vulnerable Chun gets mugged and nearly killed by a Yakuza member in a hidden alleyway. Under capture, Chun's life flashes before his eyes, particularly thinking about the past few moments of his hostage situation and throwing Yoshiko at the police to escape. Fortunately, Chun gets rescued by a man with a hatchet before he gets gutted.
• Neon City: Deconstructed during Chun's stroll through Kōshu, which was built to be artificially lit. The city looks nice when the lights are on, but when they're off, the architecture exposes how ugly it really is, with the bulbs casting the sunlight as an orange miasma punctuating any rust and grime. Chun compares the city to a mausoleum during the early morning, with most people still sleeping and the otherwise nice morning being ruined by decrepit buildings that tower over everyone.
• Never My Fault:
  • Chun's manager is furious that one of his lines is producing more subpar products than usual and blames it on his workers' incompetence, never considering the fact that he's overworking his employees to the point of exhaustion, ignoring the injuries they sustain, and paying them smaller wages.
  • After ruthlessly beating a Chinese pickpocket to near-death, a Japanese police officer expresses no shame of his actions to the Chinese onlookers, blaming them for their own criminals and poverty.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Initially Gao is cynical about his power and legacy, pondering if he will leave a pathetic legacy of ruling a fractured China and being forced to do ad-hoc business with a Japanese company like Fujitsu. However, Fujitsu can set up a computer network in Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing, allowing them to expand towns, digitize the police forces, and process imports and exports. For Ibuka, it's just good business. For Gao, it's a huge opportunity to unite China in communication, if not politically, further fueling the idea of China rebelling against Japan.
• Nightmare Sequence:
  • Already stressed out by the Oil Crisis, one of Ibuka's nights is interrupted with a nightmare, hearing a mixed voice of Akio, Hirohito, and a Fujimicho pastor denouncing him and his stockbrokers as vile sinners. Then, everyone who has ever been wronged by Fujitsu enact bloody vengeance on them, only sparing Ibuka to see the dead faces of his victims and a crucified Jesus atop a hill. The immense guilt is so powerful that Ibuka wakes up in a cold sweat.
  • In the initial outbreak of the Guangdong riots, Ibuka is hit with another nightmare, now seeing his destroyed office and a bloodied personification of Guangdong accuse him of killing her in the first place and pinning it all on his childish attempt to play god.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • Even though Lam stops a race riot from escalating into a full-blown war, no one appreciates his mediation, if the Modern Police Ordinance passes and restricts the Kenpeitai's powers. The Chinese still sneer at him as a Japanese collaborator, while his colleagues resort to quick beatings to avoid attracting a crowd like last time, smugly looking at Lam as a challenge for him to intervene. Matters aren't any better if the ordinance favored the Kenpeitai, with their officers singling him out and condescendingly complimenting his role in delaying the riot, reminding him of his failure to actually prevent it.
  • When a factory gets unfairly seized by a Fujitsu executive, one of the workers dares to stand up for himself and everyone else in the face of this injustice. He not only loses his job for it, but also gets arrested by the police.
  • In a rare moment of compassion, Ibuka saves a boy from a pair of bullies who are assaulting him, but he gets no gratitude from his victim, since one act of kindness does not wash away his history of horrendous abuses.
  • Subverted in Ibuka's Reconciliation path. After being ordered to stand down, most of the police expect that the rioters will take advantage of their retreat to assert themselves even more violently, but they actually become more peaceful in response.
• No-Respect Guy: There is a small Patagonian weather station that is stationed by one man, who is tasked with watching out for Argentinian incursions, yet gets no support from the government, since they're more busy dealing with the military and economy. At best, they send him a package of Fujitsu weapons to fight against Argentinian invaders.
• No Sympathy:
  • Ibuka orders the destruction of hundreds of impoverished neighborhoods and homes so that they can be rebuilt. As far as he's concerned, the now homeless residents can only return so long as they don't "stink up" the place.
  • Zig-Zagged by Ibuka in the Oil Crisis. Though the event affects everyone in Guangdong, Ibuka reserves sympathy for those who have proven their worth, admitting that they shouldn't be punished for elements outside of their control. Unfortunately, anyone who doesn't meet his standard of excellence are discarded and get no warmth by the Chief Executive.
  • Despite the number of people suffering in the Middle Eastern conflicts of the Oil Crisis, Ibuka insults them as "imbecilic squabbles that disrupted his plans from coming to fruition.
  • As many migrate for better economic opportunities during the Oil Crisis, Ibuka thinks that they're cowardly or even treasonous, instead of people just desperate to survive.
  • Having bought into Fujitsu's rhetoric, Yoshiko is confused by the controversy of Ibuka's tax hikes during the Oil Crisis, thinking that its detractors are all freeloaders who expect the same rewards as those who have actually worked for them.
• No True Scotsman: With the General Law on the Standardization of Zhujin Identity, Ibuka will update and streamline the criteria for who is considered a Zhujin, including education, societal contribution, and a vague measure of "exceptional merit". Many realize that this updated definition could let Ibuka revoke the Zhujin status for thousands, signaling a wave of controversy.
• Nostalgia Filter: Discussed when Ibuka argues tha tthe Chinese and Zhujin are clinging onto "obsolete concepts of life" during the Riots, and that the government should use more propaganda and pressure from the Legislative Council to cow everyone into following his vision.
• Not Bad: Tasked with designing architecture with an ultramodern style, one of the Japanese foremen points at Hei's scrunched up face while trying to understand the construction jargon, in which the latter retorts that he's putting more effort than anyone else on the project. The other Japanese workers are impressed enough by his fluent Japanese to nod approvingly and dismiss his backtalk.
• Not Himself: Morita and Li’s initial reaction to Ibuka's repentance is shock as to what Ibuka is up to and whether or not he has finally seen reason after twenty years, with Morita expressing a cautious hope that he is changing for the better.
• Not Me This Time:
  • Seeing several people smoking opium, Ibuka instantly accuses Yokoi for selling them these drugs. However, Yokoi earnestly doesn't know if they got them through Yakuza dealers, mentioning that the Triads and other small-time smugglers could be equal suspects. A police raid reveals that Japanese criminal organizations from the mainland could also be responsible for the opium trade.
  • When his invitation to Komai is leaked to the Legislative Council, Ibuka immediately confronts Matsushita about it, knowing that his men were responsible and thinking that it's a power move to try discrediting him once more as Chief Executive. However, Matsushita denies all responsibility for giving the order and doesn't care anyway, defending their anger at Ibuka as legitimate.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Ibuka draws parallels between himself and Ludwig Erhard, an unassuming man who also wants to make sweeping free market changes, in opposition to a conservative establishment. Ibuka considers Erhard and his reforms to be a future competitor to Fujitsu, but he partners with him for the time being.
  • In his Reconciliation route, Ibuka realizes that the Zhujin are just like him, as they began with nothing and were given a big break. This realization turns into self-reflection that he's crushing people just like himself.
• Nothing Is Scarier: As Fujitsu clamps down on unprofessional work conduct, they send a memo to factory managers about the new standards and gives them some photographs to remind them of what happens to those who fail to meet them. The images aren't described, but it's directly described to be unpleasant.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat:
  • When Fujitsu tries expanding to Japan, a group of bureaucrats and Yokusankai politicians try undercutting Ibuka's sales pitch, unwilling to see changes to the status quo they've enjoyed for decades. They spend more time filling the room with cigarette smoke and asking inane questions, like if his computers come with bombs or if they will break down from being made by Chinese laborers. Ibuka predicted that they would try to be difficult, so he made deals with private accounting firms and stock exchange analysts, who are more willing to back up his pitches.
  • One early response to the Oil Crisis dissidents is to set up road closures and traffic blocks to hinder their activities, with even innocent civilians suffering a maze of obstructions and unsympathetic bureaucrats who waste hours of their time to reach a desired service.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • As per Ibuka's policy, businesses are expected to cut down on "nonessential" workers who aren't efficient enough. Being jobless is unthinkable in a place like Guangdong, so everyone in Chun's factory, especially those without a double income family, starts working even harder. The usual chatter is completely gone and everyone devotes their total attention to the machines before them, highlighting just how desperate the situation is and signaling dark times ahead for those working in the sweatshops.
  • After Ibuka turns to Japanese suppliers to mitigate the Oil Crisis, an otherwise calm and collected manager finally loses her cool and rants about her factory underperforming.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic:
  • Ibuka implements computers into Guangdong's economic management, an unprecedented strategy that gives the country a leg-up over its competitors. Even the more moderate approach of improving digital infrastructure will digitize all of Fujitsu's data and give it a unique advantage.
  • Rather than invest in traditional oil extraction, Ibuka can instead tap into solar and wind energy, an unorthodox endeavor which will require a heavy cost, but something that Ibuka considers worthy of pursuing.
• The Paranoiac: As Ibuka purges the bureaucracy, one Zhujin bureaucrat is constantly anxious that he might be next. No matter if Ibuka increases education standards or the bureaucrat is rewarded for his loyalty, he is left permanently worried about his future.
• Passive Aggressive Combat: During Ibuka’s celebrations of becoming President of Fujitsu in 1959, he encounters Morita and Li and engages in small talk under a veil of tension. Morita and Li start talking about their recent successes in the Legislative Council and expansions respectively, which Ibuka perceives as insults taunting him for failing to take them down with the TR-56 lawsuit.
• Pet the Dog: If the CCL are negotiated with, their cell in the Nintendo factory will agree to repair the damage to its equipment and leave Yamauchi's paperwork untouched, something which Yamauchi considers thanking them for.
• Police Brutality:
  • Narrowly subverted. As the Makao Police Force receives better funding, many of the officers are mesmerized by their new armory, eager to deliver "justice" on the Chinese citizens and enact hate crimes against them. Fortunately, the police chief, whose kid is half-Zhujin, stops the matter and sternly warns everyone to not abuse their newfound power.
  • If the Modern Police Ordinance passes, the strengthened Guangdong police or Kenpeitai are given no regulation on who to kidnap and interrogate, with the Lees commenting on how many people have gone missing since the amendment's implementation.
• Police State: In the Persistence approach, Ibuka proclaims that the autonomous chain of command is pointless, so he merges the police into Fujitsu and makes it an extension of his special militias.
• Powder Keg Crowd: After the GFT refuse to accept "Fujitsu associate" status, the government declares the organization illegal and sends the militia and police to shut down one of their buildings. The Zhujin employees refuse to back down and begin a tense stand-off with the Fujitsu detachment. After several moments of shouting at each other, an unknown person throws the first punch and the whole situation descends into an open fight from there. As the Guangdong riots spread, similar situations of angry crowds and tense stand-offs are being documented across Zhujin communities.
• The Power of Apathy: Many of the Japanese immigrants who arrive in Guangdong are more focused on their work than the abuse faced by the Chinese citizens and, even if they did, they would feel a twinge of pity and nothing else. To the Chinese, this apathy is not much better than support for the state apparatus and makes the Japanese all the more contemptible in their eyes.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • Since purging the bureaucracy of incompetence can render it toothless, Ibuka can adopt a more moderate approach and reward loyal workers instead.
  • Ibuka may forgo his plan to introduce computers to the Fujitsu workplace and replace his workers with them because the current electronic infrastructure is ill-suited to such an ambitious plan.
  • Upon hearing the news of Ibuka replacing his human workers with computers, some Matsushita executives oppose their boss' decision to follow suit, though only because it means more work to restructure their management sectors and surrender influence to Fujitsu.
  • Ibuka detests the decadence seen in Makao and Honkon, deriding the old, wealthy families as parasites. However, he may not directly confront their financial muscle because it may be too much to handle. Instead, he will renovate the cities to be more appealing by bringing in investments from across the Sphere.
  • In a surprising move, Komai sides with Morita against Ibuka's Guangdong Efficiency Ordinance and the possible replacement of workers with administrative machines. However, while Morita partially does so for moral reasons, Komai is against the ordinance because human workers are more "malleable" than machines.
  • Matsushita supports Morita's opposition to Ibuka's Anti-Corruption Ordinance, but largely because it would empower Fujitsu and threaten his own company.
  • Knowing that Morita will oppose the Guangdong Organized Labor Ordinance and its restrictions on workers' rights, Ibuka tries to appease him with an offer that Sony will retain "operational autonomy" in exchange for support in the Legislative Council. A similar offer is made to Li, though now promising more Zhujin involvement in factory management if Cheung Kong supports Ibuka's initiative.
  • Komai suggests that the Organized Labor Ordinance should be enforced with the Kwantung Army, a proposal that Ibuka balks at because it would reflect badly on his PR and thus may reject the idea.
  • Matsushita's decision to support Ibuka's Modern Police Ordinance is entirely up to his pragmatism. On the one hand, he'll side with Ibuka or Morita and let it pass to restrain the Kenpeitai's overreach, since it threatens his power. On the other hand, he can side with Komai and veto it because he thinks the Guangdong police is too ineffective and would rather rely on the Kenpeitai.
  • Upon the Guangdong Trademark Ordinance's introduction to the Legislative Council, Morita openly protests the law and points out how it legitimizes Fujitsu's ability to sue any company for minor copyright violations. Matsushita and Komai silently agree with the sentiment, knowing how the law can be used to harm their own companies.
  • Ibuka is content to have the Zoning Ordinance fail to pass because relocating everyone and splitting entire families apart would've been too costly and drastic to properly enforce.
  • Ibuka can set rather humble goals for Operation 489 and the takedown of the Triads, focusing on the most vulnerable members first. Despite having evidence to convict more people, Ibuka recognizes that attacking all at once will raise the alarms too soon and let important evidence get away, so he approaches with a more careful methodology.
  • With a race riot inflamed by the Kenpeitai's intervention, Ibuka berates Miyazaki for failing to control his men, which damages the credibility of his regime. It's enough to inspire his creation of the Guangdong Modern Police Ordinance to potentially restrain future cases of Kenepitai brutality that would harm his reputation.
  • Viewing the Kenpeitai as excessively brutal and having overlapping duties with the Guangdong Police Force, he may limit their powers with the Guangdong Modern Police Ordinance, making the security apparatus more efficient and limiting bad publicity from the Kenpeitai. Alternatively, he may choose to empower the Kenpeitai on the argument that the Guangdong Police Force is ineffective and rife with unprofessional conduct, along with appeasing Komai and Hitachi.
  • One of Ibuka's responses to the Oil Crisis is to subsidize struggling businesses, but he makes it clear that this is not out of genuine generosity, but only to handle a specific and extraordinary issue.
  • Ibuka may decide against increasing education restrictions in the factories because the workers are suffering through the Oil Crisis and he doesn't want to anger them too much, despite his own personal frustrations that the less educated are making his cutting-edge technology.
  • Since it would create chaos, Ibuka can optionally continue his backroom deals rather than forcibly remove Legislative Council members during the Oil Crisis.
  • Tokyo gives Nagano pre-approval to launch a coup if Ibuka is unable to resolve the Oil Crisis, only holding off for the time being because direct military rule would harm Guangdong's economic potential.
  • Komai fears Guangdong's descent into a one-company dictatorship in Ibuka's Persistence ending, mostly because it's hurting Hitachi's economic interests and Fujitsu's surveillance is too advanced for him to do anything about it.
• Prayer Is a Last Resort: During the Riots, the largest Nintendo factory is occupied by armed CCL members, locked in a standoff with the police. Yamauchi can only helplessly watch as his machinery is used to barricade the entries and his workers, once praised by him, are threatening to get the property destroyed, so he desperately prays that there is a peaceful solution to this conflict. If the CCL are negotiated with, his prayers are answered when the CCL agrees to disband and pay for damages and expenses for three years in exchange for having no charges pressed.
• Propaganda Piece:
  • Ibuka commissions a group of statisticians to collect data and have it publicly presented to prove the shortcomings of manual white-collar labor and encourage the use of Fujitsu computers.
  • To endorse the initiative of raising child prodigies, Fujitsu prints testimonials of mothers approving the program and its effects on their children.
  • Ibuka appears in television broadcasts and speaks in Cantonese about the common ideals and dreams of Guangdong’s citizens and its commitment to pan-Asian co-operation.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Many of the Kenpeitai officers sent to arrest Oil Crisis refugees are hardly passionate about their jobs, tired of how much ground they have to cover and the people they have to arrest. Most of them just want to be paid for their job and it's the only reason they stand the sweltering heat.
• The Purge:
  • Ibuka, believing the civil service to be full of vested interests and the incompetent, "streamlines" the bureaucracy by cutting loose many of its employees. Government programs, particularly those concerning welfare, are deemed wasteful and dismantled without mercy. The purges are especially harsh if Ibuka implements education quotas for government positions, cutting loose anyone who doesn't meet them.
  • Thinking the Legislative Council's corruption is worsening the Oil Crisis' effects, Ibuka can forcibly remove some of their members, to the opposition of many, including Morita, who denounces it as another power grab by the Chief Executive.
• Quantity vs. Quality: During the Oil Crisis, Ibuka will reorient Fujitsu's strategy to either improve their assembly lines to maintain a high quality or sacrifice some quality to increase production and rely on high demand to carry the company.
• Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits: Ibuka’s Operation 489 against the Triads combines the forces of the Guangdong Police Force, the Yakuza, the Kenpeitai and Japanese Security Contractors, all with varying levels of professionalism.
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • After an awkward silence of dining together, Morita's pent-up frustration of Ibuka's rule finally boils over and he rants to Li about Ibuka driving hundreds of smaller businesses into bankruptcy, particularly through aggressive use of trademarks which Morita sees as a repeat in relation to the TR-56 lawsuit.
  • With Guangdong crippled by the Oil Crisis, and the Chief Executive turning to Japanese suppliers to mitigate its effects, a Fujitsu inspector finally loses her patience about her factory's inefficiency and goes on an outburst about her unfair situation, denouncing Ibuka for not knowing the struggles they go through and threatening to quit Fujitsu and start her own firm.
  • Hearing about Tsuchida and Miyazaki's lack of progress in suppressing the riots, Ibuka finally loses his cool and angrily orders them to work harder, throwing in multiple swears during his tangent.
• Reaction Shot: Ibuka’s first national address in his Reconciliation path demonstrates the reactions of various people. Lee Chun scoffs at the understatement of Ibuka claiming that his policies were questionable. Morita finds little comfort in agreeing with Ibuka that inviting Hitachi was a mistake. Finally, a group of rioters react with uncertainty when Ibuka claims responsibility for everything that has transpired in Guangdong and that he is supposedly sorry for it.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: A list written by a Chinese citizen goes on an absolutely scathing rant against Ibuka and his reign, denouncing his vision as a farce and a corrosive disease that has done nothing but inflict death and destruction on the masses, representing the very worst of Japanese imperialism and capitalism.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Ibuka's focus on punishing mediocrity will demote and reassign the less efficient workers to different floors, which they consider no better than a prison sentence and a dead end job. Of note, one Zhujin bureaucrat gets demoted despite having an undergraduate degree, leaving him in a state of shock and fear as to any future pay cuts, not helped by the ominous ticking from the office clock.
• Rejected Apology: ZigZagged. With Ibuka conceding in his Reconciliation path, some Fujitsu managers and other employees make apologies for their actions, with a few going as far as resigning. After all the years of exploitation by these people, many doubt their sincerity and take the opportunity to mock those apologizing. That being said, others take the belief that some of Fujitsu’s managers are being genuine.
• Reluctant Retiree: With the Guangdong Anti-Corruption Ordinance, Ibuka can force his less powerful enemies into retirement on the grounds of "corruption" and replace them with Fujitsu loyalists.
• Repeating Ad: The television in the Lee's household loves to play the same Fujitsu ad of "Shaping Tomorrow With You", which wears on Chun's nerves and contributes to his growing animosity towards Hei.
• Rousing Speech:
  • Subverted if Ibuka attempts to make a grand speech encouraging Fujitsu employees to innovate and develop more computer technologies, but the audience remains unenthused, tired and impatient, more concerned about their jobs being stolen by said computers.
  • Chun kickstarts the CCL movement in a speech to various other Chinese workers, denouncing the Japanese abuses they've suffered and calling for a rebellion against the unequal status quo. This speech comes to fruition years later in the Guangdong riots.
  • Ordered to arrest every Triad member possible in Operation 489, the police chief gives a theatrical speech to his men, dramatically flaunting the department's past successes and raising his men's morale to destroy the enemy with every bit of strength they have. The speech works, perhaps too well in Lam's eyes, who thinks it's making everyone arrogant before the battle has even started. This is largely subverted if Ibuka chooses a more precise approach to dealing with the Triads, which frustrates many impatient officers, despite their tired chief's best efforts to excite them.
  • Subverted. To calm everyone down in the Oil Crisis, Ibuka sends a nationwide radio transmission, boasting about Guangdong's special place in the world and declaring that the nation will overcome the latest troubles, if they work together. However, his words fail to placate the populace and Ibuka's increasingly desperate calls for calmness are similarly fruitless.
• Run for the Border: Some try to escape Guangdong during the Oil Crisis by making a literal run for the border, even if they are being pursued by security forces firing warning shots at them.
• Run or Die: After the botched hostage situation at the Kanton Koron, Chun escapes through a window, running as far as he can while gun shots ring out behind him. Any potential pursuing police officers lose Chun in the chaos of the riots and he makes it multiple blocks before his injuries from jumping out a window catch up to him.
• Sadist: In the Persistence path, the Guangdong police are unleashed on the rioters and some take a disturbing amount of glee with beating them to death and destroying entire communities with the knowledge that they won't be caught for it. One event even implies that they're willing to hurt children.
• Safety in Indifference: In the Persistence ending, everyone realizes that Ibuka has effectively cemented his control over Guangdong and has surveillance everywhere to monitor and decide the fates of anyone he thinks about. Having no hope of beating him, the denizens of Guangdong have resigned to indifference, preferring safety over rioting or raging against the unequal ethnic hierarchy.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • If either/neither the "Realistic Expectations" and/or "We Will Handle It" foci are completed, some Triad members evade the police and leave Kōshu, with the Yakuza doing little to stop the escapees. The apartment that Lam and his colleagues find is picked so clean that only wrappers and socks can be found, leaving Lam somewhat defeated that, even with Yakuza support, the police have failed.
  • A bureaucrat in the Ministry of Transport toys with the idea of transferring to Manchuria as Fujitsu begins clearing out his building of anyone deemed incompetent.
• Selective Enforcement: Ibuka's Industrial Rationalization law blatantly favors companies that "deserve it" under the justification that they are simply taking the free market and will "speed it along".
• Shoddy Knock Off Product: If the CCL were negotiated with and Nintendo can get back to business, Yamauchi rejects the proposals of a reflective spinning top and a toy racecar because he fears that imitators will create cheap knock-offs of them and sell them at half the price. To defy this trope, Yamauchi proposes creating a counterpart to the Magnavox Odyssey, setting Nintendo on the path to becoming a video game company.
• Shown Their Work: Many of the toys designed by Nintendo were also invented by them in OTL, including the Ultra Hand, the Love Tester, the Ultra Machine, and the light gun.
• Sinister Surveillance:
  • Ibuka makes sure to have cameras and audio recording equipment in every possible area he could think of as part of his security measures up to and including monitoring private offices to stamp out corruption. Such surveillance efforts extend to squashing other forms of dissent, sending his police when they detect the slightest infraction. Surveillance is also expanded with the Anti-Corruption Ordinance to watch over people suspected of corrupting the government.
  • During the Riots, Ibuka demands that the security forces, engineers and executives watch over the state's extensive surveillance network at all hours to catch dissidents.
• Sleep Deprivation: If Ibuka abolishes work leaves during the Oil Crisis, a badly injured worker is called back to work immediately and struggles to sleep through his injury, the sound of strikes being violently suppressed, and the Special Security Action militia barging into the room to get rid of his roommate’s belongings. By the end of the night, he falls asleep only an hour before he has to repeat everything again.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: The obstructive bureaucrats and politicians who stubbornly reject Fujitsu's computers for petty reasons are also aggressive smokers who fill the negotiation rooms with smoke, much to Ibuka's chagrin.
• Smug Snake:
  • The Special Security Action militia are overconfident in their lighting-quick response times and superiority over the police. They don't even consider the possibility that the police could ever turn the tides on them, paying more attention to how bad of an idea it is to wear black in the summer weather.
  • The Kenpeitai officers Lam meets for Operation 489 are smug in their attitude and treat the police as inferiors to their proper police work. Lam also recalls an incident where Kenpeitai officers were wielding katanas to his colleague to flaunt their purported superiority.
• Spiteful Spit:
  • With both the "Big Ambitions" and/or "Synergestic Delegation" foci, most of the Triad enforcers and bosses are arrested, with one of them spitefully spitting at a Kenpeitai officer. He responds by kicking the man's teeth in, with Lam expressing no sympathy for the victim.
  • Caught for selling fake diplomas to Chinese workers in the Oil Crisis, the conman spits in the face of a policeman and gets beaten heavily for it. Notably, he spits not for getting caught, but because they lectured him about integrity and the need to follow the law.
  • Subverted after Chun's unsuccessful raid on the Kanton Koron and capture by a Yakuza member. In the face of death, Chun prepares to spit at his assailant only for said Yakuza member to be killed in the nick of time.
• Spotting the Thread: Exploited. Ibuka knows that not every corrupt official can properly cover their tracks, so he authorizes an extensive review of documents within the bureaucracy to look for clues and build a case from the trail.
• State Sec: The Guangdong Special Security Action Detachment is a unique paramilitary group created by Ibuka for citizens to join and receive security and technical training so that they can respond to emergency situations. By the time they finish their training, they will be just as well-equipped and powerful as the Guangdong police. In fact, they're so successful that the police think they're getting replaced by them.
• Status Quo Is God:
  • Wai's new school seems to be an improvement over her old one, being well-supplied and even having a facility for those with developmental disabilities. However, Wai wonders if this is really a substantial upgrade in her family's living conditions, knowing that she and the other Chinese citizens are only being trained to be slightly more skilled workers who will still be sent to the factories.
  • If Operation 489 was a failure and Ibuka goes down the Reconciliation path, the criminal underworld returns to its status quo of Triads and Yakuza battling for dominance, much to Yokoi's irritation.
  • In the Reconciliation ending, Ibuka realizes that his ambitious, technological vision for Guangdong is unrealistic and gives up on them, returning Guangdong to its chaotic, albeit still oppressive, status quo.
• The Stool Pigeon: Talk of dissent against Fujitsu is ill-advised because other people can happily snitch them out for it. In one case, a worker from Haru Chemicals Limited speaks ill of Ibuka and his recent abolition of downtime, in which his longtime friend is heavily implied to have sold him out to security and get him fired.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: Morita and Li feel alienated in their favorite dinery, whose interior has not changed in the slightest, but the exterior has been massively affected by Ibuka’s rule and the two witness the logos of their companies being removed from nearby skyscrapers.
• Stunned Silence: While the rest of the Legislative Council is outraged by Ibuka's plan to relocate everyone in the cities, Morita can only react in pure shock that he would even suggest such a plan.
• Sudden Downer Ending: Fujitsu's route sees Nintendo following a largely similar path to OTL, with Yamauchi meeting Gunpei Yokoi and successfully entering Nintendo into the toy market, until the Persistence ending, where the one-two punch of Ibuka's dismantlement of the CCL and Fujitsu's withdrawal of support leaves Nintendo's fortunes looking bleak.
• Sunk Cost Fallacy: Ibuka can mitigate the Oil Crisis emigration problem by emphasizing the positives of his own regime and stoking fears that people will lose everything, if they leave for the Republic of China or Japan.
• Superior Successor: Invoked by Ibuka, who calls the Guangdong Organized Labor Ordinance to be a more "efficient" version of Suzuki's RLSO because it streamlines worker productivity.
• Suppressed History: Ibuka’s Persistence response to the riots concludes with the demolition of the Hengli Residential Facility, which has become an empty wreck, thoroughly looted and riddled with bullets. This building, along with the Hitachi factory, were ground zero for the riots and have been scheduled for destruction to bury the memory of these initial outbreaks, regardless of any unfortunate residents still remaining.
• Sympathetic Criminal: A factory owner loses his job when it's unfairly taken by Fujitsu and, because he tried standing up for his workers, leaving him unemployed and running out of food to feed his two children as a single parent. At a breaking point, he gives his children one last nice meal at a restaurant without paying, resulting in him being tracked down and arrested by the police.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Morita has a burning rivalry with Ibuka, but he can't help but pity the man during the Guangdong Riots, seeing him overburdened by the struggle, but knowing that he's brought this crisis on to himself.
• Take That!: The only references to Shintoism in Guangdong's many events is in an event noting how disused Kōshu's 'leading' Shinto shrine is, only being cleaned for whenever Japan's Consul-General pays a visit. This is likely a reference to the "Shinto Ultranationalism" post on TNO's subreddit which stated that Japan's victory in WW2 would lead it to being a "ultra-nationalist fascist theocracy" with a leader that the Japanese population viewed as a "literal god-emperor", which was criticized for being an Orientalist view regarding Japan and not taking into account that Shinto was primarily used for propaganda value than spirituality.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
  • Police officers like Lam are reluctant to cooperate with Yakuza members in Operation 489, only holding their tongues because the higher-ups are mandating the tense partnership. The Yakuza themselves are not thrilled at the prospect of working with Ibuka, with many of their leaders pushing back against Yokoi when he proposes the concept, and only swayed with the prospect of profiting from weakened Triads. Some members consider the Triads to at least be predictable unlike the government, who will likely betray them at the first opportunity.
  • Despite being on the same side of the law, the Guangdong police and Special Security Action militia have a very tense relationship, with the latter's quicker response times earning the former's jealousy. It's not helped by the militia's patronizing attitude and talk about eventually replacing the police.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Even as Ibuka is cleaning the bureaucracy of its corruption, one bureaucrat dismisses the possibility that he'll be caught, ignoring his friend's pleas to leave the country. Just as he's bragging about how untouchable he is, the police knock on his door and call for his arrest.
  • A member of the Ministry of Agriculture in Shaoguan regards fellow suits as fools for fighting for real estate, while he sits comfortably in his position. Shortly after, men from the central government arrive and forcibly remove him with the increasing agricultural shortcomings to blame.
  • When Fujitsu achieves a majority in the Legislative Council, Ibuka reacts coolly, believing that this outcome was inevitable and that the opposition's efforts to undermine him will fail as his vision is inevitably going to win. This hubris can come to haunt Ibuka by the time of the Oil Crisis and Guangdong Riots.
  • Despite the threat posed by the Oil Crisis, Ibuka downplays the challenge and thinks that his state is in a perfect position to tackle it, more concerned about the public panic than the financial repercussions. As far he is concerned, the crisis is yet another test, befitting his Social Darwinist beliefs and ignoring the lasting damage done. By the end, Ibuka proclaims that Guangdong has survived and will progress to the future, taller and stronger than ever. The arrogance bites back when it culminates into the Guangdong Riots, where Ibuka faces a legitimate threat of being deposed.
• Telegraph Gag STOP: A telegraph describes the creation of the CCL in response to machines stealing jobs from the workers, where each sentence of the message ends with 'Stop'.
• Terse Talker: The Fujitsu representatives who meet Yamauchi are under orders of getting Nintendo to adapt to the new available technology, so they are very short and blunt with their statements. After giving Yamauchi the draft documents, they leave just as quickly as they arrived.
• This Cannot Be!: Ibuka is completely shocked by the Guangdong Riots, refusing to admit that his grand plans are going awry and that people are demanding change that isn't what Fujitsu offers.
  What we did not expect, what we did not account for - what should not be happening. And yet, it is.
• This Means War!: When Morita loudly complains about the Guangdong Trademark Ordinance and convinces some Legislative Council members to turn against it, a furious Ibuka reignites his burning hatred for him, declaring a metaphorical war on the affair.
• Title Drop: In the focus "Money Where It Should Be", Ibuka justifies his austerity measures during the Oil Crisis and claims that they are necessary to not "shatter the promise of the Silicon Dream", namedropping the Guangdong update.
• Too Dumb to Live: Having already angered a Chinese mob by beating a young boy in front of them, a Japanese police officer digs himself deeper by spewing disgustingly racist rhetoric against them, blaming the Chinese for their own poverty and calling them parasites. Furious beyond measure, the crowd menacingly approaches him to beat him to death and they would've been successful, if the Kenpeitai hadn't arrived.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: After the bureaucracy's restructure, the higher ups leading the Ministry of Transport become much colder to their subordinates, firing those who can't keep up with their strict orders and bringing in pretentious private consultants to supervise their workers.
• Training from Hell: Under Ibuka, recruitment in the Guangdong Special Security Action Detachment is savage, with the "Rapid Response" event mentioning the harsh physical and technical courses that recruits must endure and how only a few are capable enough to pass.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • Ordered by Ibuka to seek investments outside the Sphere for his plans, Komai and Yokoi will be subtly frustrated when the Chief Executive sends police officers to surveil them and ensure that they don't try to undermine him. However, they maintain their outward politeness and quietly leave Ibuka's office.
  • Alternatively, if Ibuka tries renovating Honkon and Makao, he will leave it to Komai to deal with anyone who will complain about the incoming, competing investments. Komai clenches his jaw in frustration about being given Ibuka's dirty work, but maintains his outward cool.
  • Promoting the Guangdong Trademark Ordinance, Ibuka goes on a long winding rant in the Legislative Complex about how inefficient the country is before pointing directly at Morita and explicitly threatening to deal with the threat in Sony and Cheung Kong first. Morita only barely holds back from saying something in response.
• Trouble Entendre: When Tsuchida complains about the Special Security Action militia overtaking the police's duties, Ibuka rejects his plea to restrain them and even makes a subtle threat that he could be fired or arrested, if he's not onboard with his plan.
• Underestimating Badassery: Ibuka initially scoffs at the Republic of China's condemnation towards Guangdong's labor practices and dismisses the possibility that they could ever threaten his regime. However, even the aides know that he's making a dangerous mistake of underestimating Guangdong's larger neighbor, especially since the Great Asian War looms over the next decade. Eventually, Ibuka realizes his mistake and starts taking the Chinese threat more seriously.
• Understatement:
  • As Ibuka cracks down on the Triads, Ho jokes that he thinks the Chief Executive doesn't like him.
  • During his first address in the Reconciliation path, Ibuka comments that he's made policies that were "questionable at best". Chun scoffs at the understatement.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Under Ibuka's reign, it doesn't matter how long or loyally you've served your company. If you don't meet the new high expectations, you are seen as a loose end and could get fired or get a pay cut. This can be downplayed if those who have a proven loyalty are allowed to join Ibuka's state apparatus, but this can still be played straight if education quotas are established instead and loyalty is still worth nothing.
• Un-person: A Zhujin state bureaucrat finds out that all of his more troublesome and corrupt colleagues are mysteriously gone, only finding an empty office piled with cardboard boxes. This leaves him suspicious and anxious about Ibuka’s purges of the bureaucracy for those deemed corrupt and “incompetent”.
• The Unsmile: If Ibuka's Modern Police Ordinance does not restrain the Kenpeitai's authority and it passes, Komai gives a warm smile of approval to the Chief Executive, which unnerves him more than anything else.
• Unwanted Assistance:
  • Fujitsu can mandate some of their affiliated officers to participate in Operation 489 and collect data on the police's raids on the Triads, even though some officers like Lam think that such work could interfere with the job.
  • Under a pro-Kenpeitai Modern Police Ordinance, the Guangdong police are mandated to invite Kenpeitai lecturers and hear their advice, where they can insult the "incompetence" and "laziness" of their rivals, especially the Zhujin ones. Many officers absolutely disdain the so-called assistance.
• Victory Is Boring: An Italian bureaucrat and his colleagues in Zara find that their workdays have become magnitudes easier, ever since the government bought Fujitsu computers, no longer having to work on reports all workday. However, this new efficiency also means there's nothing to do or worry about, leading to widespread boredom.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Instead of encouraging excellent work effort, Ibuka can change the workplace culture so that it punishes the "mediocre", demoting and firing anyone who doesn't meet his absurd standards.
  • During the Oil Crisis, Ibuka can make numerous choices across mutually exclusive foci that puts more strain on those who are struggling to survive, using Social Darwinism as an excuse. This includes cutting subsidies to vulnerable businesses, tightening education requirements in factories, and ignoring pleas for government aid.
  • The entire Persistence path is about crushing the Guangdong Riots relentlessly. Every security force is called to destroy the rioters, the corporations fire any worker who participated, and all derelict neighborhood is bulldozed to combat crime, regardless of the collateral damage.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • After withholding Fujitsu's products as a trade secret, Komai accuses Ibuka of sabotaging the Pan-Asian movement. However, Ibuka internally and rightfully points out that Pan-Asianism is nothing but an archaic excuse used by Japan to justify their own imperialism.
  • Ibuka makes a legitimate point about how ineffectual the Guangdong police are, unable to even catch a simple gang of pickpockets.
  • If Pujie takes power in Manchuria, Ibuka reveals his cynical thoughts of Morita as an opportunist who proclaims himself to be a man of the people, yet is secretly using them for his own gain. While it is an exaggeration that ignores some of Morita's genuine intentions, it is only an exaggeration, not an outright falsehood. Morita's path itself raises the question of how truly altruistic Morita's intentions are, where he selfishly hopes to enrich himself by enshrining Sony and Cheung Kong into the state.
  • Upon the outrage of taxes being raised for the upper crust during the Oil Crisis, the Fujitsu executives rightfully point out that they're already privileged under the current social hierarchy and need to stick with its negatives if they've going to enjoy its positives. Not that this does much to calm down the uproar, nor satisfy the Chinese and Zhujin who are suffering most.
  • Yokoi is right to call out Ibuka's harsh demands for the populace to give up their opium addiction, stating that it's not as easy as he thinks and that he throws a childish tantrum every time his impossible dictates are not met.
  • When news leaks of Ibuka inviting Hitachi to Guangdong, Matsushita justifiably calls out the Chief Executive's attempt to blame the rest of the Big Five for the catastrophe, pointing out that Ibuka brought this controversy on to himself by bringing Komai in the first place.
  • A particularly combative member of the Legislative Council makes a fair point in the Reconciliation route, arguing that the Legislative Council needs to mediate the Chief Executive's actions. Ibuka agrees with the sentiment and, despite his own frustrations with the arguing in the Council, he lets the comment fly.
• Villainous Breakdown: The Oil Crisis exhausts Ibuka's nerves and he explodes into a caustic rant that he's the only one capable of guiding the nation through this troublesome time.
• Waking Up Elsewhere: Beaten up by rioters, Hei wakes up after an unspecified amount of time in a hospital room, barely conscious and spending the next few weeks there to recover.
• The War Has Just Begun: With a significant amount of Despair Speech mixed in as well. At the end of Ibuka's Persistence path, he delivers a speech to the people of Guangdong laying out the situation: Sino-Guangdong relations are in the pit, Manchuria is still wallowing in delusion, Japan is faltering in its support too often for comfort, and the Great Asian War is imminent. Ibuka implores the people to buckle up and double down on the path of "rationality and enlightenment" he's set them so far down.
  Ibuka: Forget all your hopes. Forget all your expectations for the outside world. Whatever those mongrels do they can do as they please; you have only yourself to trust, because you yourself have earned it all.
• Weapon Jr.: Embracing the future under Ibuka's direction, Nintendo enters the electronics industry by designing the light gun, an optoelectronic pistol that can shoot targets from an overhead projector. Yamauchi hopes that this can draw sales by tapping into people's war attitude and even believes this could earn a collaboration with the IJA.
• Welcome to My World: While extracting raw materials in the Steel Belt, Chun meets another worker who used to be part of an old money family in Honkon before his wife disappeared and he fell into poverty, now experiencing the same hardships of people who've never had privilege in their entire life.
• Wham Line: After getting into a fight with his fellow CCL members, Chun angrily marches home to see Hei talking with the rest of his family, hearing a bombshell that constitutes the ultimate betrayal.
  Hei: "-therefore, I have decided to apply for Zhujin. Mom, Dad, Wai, I hope you understand."
• Who's Laughing Now?: Yoshiko's interview with Hei boosts Kanton Fujin Koron's popularity, while the newspaper firms who previously rejected her during the Yasuda Crisis go out of business and shutter their doors for good.
• Workaholic: Enforced. Ibuka believes that everyone should be wholly committed to their work, cracking down on workplace breaks and spare time. He has no patience for people he thinks are lazy and excusing their sloth, something that he's trying to crush. This drive climaxes with the Guangdong Zoning Ordinance, which will divide people into zones based on occupation and purportedly get people more focused on their work; it's one of his most radical and controversial laws.
• Would Hurt a Child: A Japanese officer angrily and savagely beats a Chinese boy for pickpocketing at the end of his shift. The surrounding Chinese residents are furious at the blatantly racist police brutality and even the Zhujin and Japanese onlookers are disturbed, if not sympathetic to the boy.
• Yellow Peril: Discussed. The success of Fujitsu's computers in Germany outpaces Siemens and provokes outcry from Germany's more xenophobic citizens, who denounce the computers as an "Asiatic-Jewish plot" to undermine Germany and send information to Japan.
• You Are a Credit to Your Race: Subverted during Hei's application to join Fujitsu. His job interviewer comments on how ambitious Hei is, in which the latter half-expects him to add "for a Chinese", but the comment doesn't happen and he lands the job.
• You Didn't Ask: Morita and Li are unusually absent in Ibuka's meeting to acquire more land and build more factories. Ibuka instructs Matsushita to inform the other corporations to start making preparations for this, but Matsushita finds a convenient excuse to withold the information; if the two didn’t have the respect to show up, then they don't have a right to know and will be none the wiser to ask about it until it's too late.
• You Have Failed Me: After an unsuccessful advertising campaign in 1954, the then President of Fujitsu questions Ibuka's value to the company and threatens punishment. However, Ibuka is spared when the other Fujitsu employees stand up one-by-one and support Ibuka’s potential and the potential in expanding to Guangdong. At this moment, despite reservations about his place in Fujitsu and how Morita would have done better, Ibuka senses that he is destined to take over Fujitsu.
• You Owe Me: In the Oil Crisis response, Ibuka can take economic assistance from other countries in the Sphere, reasoning that they've long benefited from Guangdong's cheap profits and it's time for them to repay the favor.

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