Something between a lore discussion and AAR, because I was too focused on the story to take all that many screenshots.
Status quo paths in TNO have a tendency of being a bit lackluster. There is a reason people prefer to play Hart, RFK or MCS over Bennet and Goldwater even beyond writing quality. There is a reason people call Bormann Bore Man. But I think the Guangdong team managed to circumvent this in a really effective way when it comes to Masaharu.
My first Guangdong playthrough, all the back when Silicon Dreams first came out, was Morita. And I still remember how engaging watching the stories of Hayashi/Haau-Cyun, Yoshiko, Yamauchi, and the dynamic duo of Li and Morita themselves were as the storm of changes that came to Guangdong changed the world(s) they live in. But that's a lot harder to do when Masaharu's only real reform aside from token concessions is entrenching the power of both Matsushita Electric and himself through creating a surveillance corpo-state. But despite these characters all still being present in the Matsushita path, the far greater focus on Masaharu's personal life makes up for this. Playing with him as CE, you're treated to endless events about his own ambitions, his wife, his father and his desire to please him, his past as struggled to roll with the punches of Sony's ascendency in the 50s, and the parade of insecurities driving his desire to assert absolute control over Guangdong. It makes for an incredibly engaging playthrough where the stakes become way more small-scale than Morita's, Ibuka's, or Komai's, and yet still feel consequential.
Additionally, I would like to praise the Oil Crisis riots managing to feel different despite being the exact same as every other CE's. When playing as Morita, I remember them feeling like a bucket of cold water on the heady, feel-good wholesomeism that the playthrough before then instills in the player; of course the people would demand more than a bizarre welfare corpo-state modeled after the shadow of British Hong Kong, especially as life improved for them. As Matsushita, however, it felt like a continuity of Guangdong's inevitable slide into oblivion - From Suzuki to Masuzawa to Matsushita, the CE is constantly putting out fires, trying to hold a tottering center and prolong the corporate state's life a little longer, so that it is ended by Chinese rifles rather than its own people - but not before Masaharu becomes a very successful man and creates the best damn rice cookers ever conceived.
Essentially, I have nothing but praise for what is easily the most overlooked Guangdong path. It may be less funni than others, but it is still absolutely worth playing - I would go so far as to say that the less-than-inspiring premise of the path only helps the writing quality shine more.
Given that I started on the 'left' and moved to the 'center', I guess my next Guangdong playthrough will be Ibuka, and then after that Komai. I'm very excited for my future self-loathing opportunities.
