My love for Japanese culture oddly intersects with my enjoyment of the Battletech franchise over the years in the form of the political faction known as the Draconis Combine. Of course in a future ruled by giant robots Japanese culture should prevail and result in a Successor State that for the most part accounts for a fifth of the entire Inner Sphere. But oddly enough it's hard to really rally for them or even say that they're my faction of choice given how for many years they were bogged down by poor decisions by the authoritarian Kurita government. The best example of this is how they were clearly in the wrong in terms of how they treated the mercenary unit known as Wolf's Dragoons.
House Davion is often presented as the sort of "good guys" of the series when you look at things as House Steiner ended up going on its own. But both of those states along with House Marik were mostly representative of caucasians. House Liao was pretty much China but in a bit of irony they ended up with the smallest number of systems of all the Successor States and some crazy leaders as well. Why are the Asians always crazy in these books?
So as much as I love the classic Japanese traditions still embraced by House Kurita and the rest of the Draconis Combine, it's hard to really love them. Then again, it's hard to fully embrace any of the Successor States and you're sort of better off throwing in your chips with a mercenary unit or even one of the Clan Warden factions. Or maybe the real point here is that there are no good guys as all of the political groups in the Battletech universe are flawed somehow.
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