Yu Zhong, the director of Girls' Frontline 2 (少前2), has done it again. This time it's not a game content disaster — players uncovered that he actually hired the real person (中之人, "chuunin" — the flesh-and-blood performer behind a virtual avatar) behind A-SOUL's former member Jiale (珈乐) to shoot a promotional ad for Girls' Frontline 2. The community was absolutely speechless.
The promo reportedly dropped around December 25th, but it wasn't until December 30th that NGA forum users brought it to the gossip section (瓜版). The original poster kept it minimal — just a screenshot and two words: "unbearable" (难绷) — but the message was crystal clear. For those unfamiliar: Jiale was a former member of A-SOUL, a massively popular Chinese VTuber group under ByteDance. She retired in 2022 amid explosive controversy over the labor rights of the real performers behind virtual idols, sending shockwaves across the entire VTuber community and Chinese internet.
Girls' Frontline 2 itself is already a game drowning in controversies — since launch, the title has been plagued by one drama after another, and the playerbase has long harbored deep resentment toward the development team. So for Yu Zhong to go and recruit someone this controversial for a promo? That's pouring gasoline on a dumpster fire.
The comment section went absolutely feral. User @m_isiaosp dropped a devastating one-liner: "Second-hand goods picking up a second-hand goods sponsorship — makes sense" (二手货接二手货商单，河里). The implication: Girls' Frontline 2 is itself a controversial "second-hand" mess, and now it's partnering with an equally controversial "second-hand" VTuber performer — truly a match made in hell. The user accidentally replied to his own comment, but that didn't stop it from becoming the undisputed MVP of the thread.
Some users pointed out the promo actually dropped on December 25th, calling the post "stale news" (火星水, slang for being out of the loop), but most NGA regulars confirmed they hadn't seen it shared on the forum before. Others dug up that Sunborn's other game Neural Cloud (云图计划) previously hired Sun Xiaochuan — one of China's most infamous internet meme figures — for their launch promotion. Looks like recruiting controversial influencers is practically a company tradition at this point.
The thread also featured comments like "Daiyan (a game character) has a certain sultry charm that regular girls can't match" as mockery, accusations of the director "simping on the company's dime" (公款追星), and a player lamenting that the pork chop rice and cheese-burst pork cutlet in the promo video looked delicious — until he remembered "Third Sister" (三姐, the online nickname for Jiale's real performer) and lost his appetite entirely.
As of the time of this post, Girls' Frontline 2's official channels have not responded. But given Yu Zhong's track record of galaxy-brain decisions, this is probably just another Tuesday for players. After all, when your company once thought Sun Xiaochuan was a good brand ambassador, truly nothing should surprise anyone anymore.
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