YMMV / Holo-Chronicles

• Awesome Art: Kugeki has a rather distinct, minimalistic style of animation that mostly uses uncolored sketchwork, so any time that there is color being shown, it very easily pops out. And boy oh boy is Kugeki a master at this limited use of colors. It's only assisted further by the fluidity of the animations themselves, really displaying the time and effort put into making it look as good as Kugeki possibly can.
• Awesome Music: Kugeki sure knows how to pick out great music tracks. For some examples:
  • The fight between Enma and J-chad is backed by M24, also known as Paradigm, from The Garden of Sinners.
  • During Gawr Gura VS Anya Melfissa, we are treated to the Thousand-Year Blood War version of Number One, a song absolutely perfect for building hype.
  • At the end of the aforementioned episode, we get our first proper use of an actual hololive song: "REFLECT", Gura's original song that introduces us to Gawr both in hololive proper and in this original story.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Despite her never having been in an onscreen fight and her exact powerset still being mostly unknown, Azki has proven pretty popular due to her being second only to Sora (shown by her having the highest recorded amount of the 13 Knights used against her). The reverence shown to her by the other talents and the ease by which she disposed of Kiara in "Calliope Mori Vs Moona Hoshinova" exacerbates what a big deal she is.
• Fridge Brilliance: While the Running Gag of Calli getting peeved at Necromancy is quite endearing, it also makes perfect sense. Being a Grim Reaper in training, of course she'd get pissed off at things that disturb the cycle of life and death!
• Funny Moments:
  • Look at some of the facial expressions and easter eggs and just try not to atleast crack a smile. Highlights include Ina's face when Amelia time-stops right through her tentacle assault, and (in that same episode) a cameo from Smol Ame for a faraway shot of Amelia.
  • The fact that Gura somehow got lost when EN was using a freaking portal.
  • In that same episode, Gura's "holy shit" response to Botan's display of her Predator Trait.
  • Right as Baelz is asking who in the hell would go along with IRyS' plan to stop Omegaα... Mumei immediately states that she's going along with said plan. One can simply feel her salt at being Instantly Proven Wrong.
  • Miko starts acting elite as always, bragging about the size of her shrine/training facility... before Roboco points out that Mio and Pekora did most of the work. Miko then references Holo no Graffiti by saying she'll get Noel to mess with Roboco's circuits before continuing her speech like nothing happened.
  • As Miko is telling Gura and Anya to not try to kill each other, we're treated to a shot of Moona, Calli, and Kiara (who is literally stated to not have been supposed to be there) in Choco's infirmary. She is quite annoyed at how loud it is, that's for sure...
  • Being that Pekora is hololive's personal war criminal, it's no surprise that she's seen tinkering with a bomb of all things during the meeting between the Divas. It's still quite amusing though.
  • When Sora and A-chan bring up the "disasters of the west" (read: VShojo), Rushia proclaims that she wouldn't mind turning one of them into an undead minion of hers, thus continuing Kugeki's apparent plans of turning her into a Solo Leveling reference ^note For context, she had previously dropped an "arise" when summoning her army against Noel and Flare.
  • In the description log about angels, A-chan visibly stutters upon realizing that Kanata can spam attacks on the destructive level of nukes, as if she just had an Oh, Crap! moment about it.
  • A short story in the official Discord depicts Sora and Moemi Yomeno training, and in it, Moemi talks about her life prior to being a Pioneer. Most notably, her battle against the demon king. After talking about how she kept fighting for 3 days straight, cut through god knows how many mountains, and destroyed a moon, Moemi finally explains her reason for fighting the demon king in the first place. And it's nothing chivalrous or heroic... she just wanted his really cool weapon. Even Sora immediately notes how shallow that is.
  • Another short story talks about how Noel was being given driving lessons by Pekora (with Flare also tagging along because Noel). Not-so-long story short, she ends up breaking the entire car and landing all three in prison courtesy of the Oozora Police, all because Noel apparently Does Not Know Her Own Strength.
  • We are given the fact that Aqua is a big goddamn deal quite early. Part of the Apex Division, only second to Hal Shibuya (the leader of the Apex Division) himself, known as "the Mad Dog"... and yet apparently, when a lot of people first meet her, their first response to how meek and shy she is results in them internally screaming "KAWAII" as they are overcome with the uncontrollable urge to give her headpats.
  • The fact that Ayame's father, the oni king and ruler of Makai... is an complete fuzzy pushover when it comes to his daughter and cannot handle how cute she is. And also how, despite that fact, their greeting is still slamming each other all across their home.
  • Right after absolutely destroying five thugs keeping a demihuman family hostage, including offing most of them with her Killing Intent alone, Fubuki's next order of business... is putting glasses on the boy that was watching it unfold, noting how cute he looked with them. Never change, Fubuki.
  • The way that Pekora was pretty much just losing it when first interacting with Earth's modern non-magical technology is precious. It's also totally hilarious.
• Iron Woobie: Tokino Sora, in this world, has gone through a lot in her life. Even from birth, she was effectively cursed with her Purity Trait, causing her to be left without friends due to other kids being scared of her continuous and passive negation of any negative feelings directed at her. Then she goes on a practically-solo crusade with A-chan to stop the discrimination of demihumans, but could not stop their hatred for humanity from creating the pure monsters, which would lead into the rest of the monster threat in their world. When she finally met others like her, other Pioneers and, just generally, others who would want to help humans and demihumans coexist, she was overjoyed... but then all of the Pioneers aside from Sora herself and one unknown other vanished, barely clinging to life. This moment in particular put a lot of pressure on her, and while in public, she's still the strongest talent who always has a smile on her face, when the public's eyes are off of her, it becomes clear she's nothing more than a Stepford Smiler. It all culminates in her lashing out and attacking Mumei and IRyS... despite the fact that none of her knights were around, showing she isn't in any danger.
• Nightmare Fuel: Some aspects of the lore are honestly somewhat haunting.
  • The Ancient Ones are here, and as eldritch as ever. They stand at the very top of the divine hierarchy, beyond even Elder Gods such as Omegaα. They are so powerful, they can't even use the standard method of descent into the mortal realm, requiring a human medium (such as Ina) to exert their influence through. And finally, they casually devour other gods... solely because they see said others as that far beneath them. It is stated by Enma that, if one of them managed to manifest anywhere near their full power, it would be game over.
  • Roboco's Bad Future. Omegaα brought the world to its knees, defeating absolutely anyone who stood in their path before simply deleting what remained of the universe. This includes Sora, who is typically portrayed as being functionally invincible. Not to mention the way they systematically dismantle all of the talents with little effort, always aiming for what it considers the greatest threat at the time. It really shows just how utterly screwed the cast would be if not for the help of Mumei and IRyS.
  • The prospect of the pure monsters. These progenitors of all monsterkind were born when humans began enslaving, hunting, and otherwise segregating demihumans, causing them to build more and more resentment until it manifested in physical form as pure monsters. While all monsters from Earth are based in pure emotional energy, the sheer hatred that created the pure monsters caused them to each be as powerful as a Diva. Mind you, this was back when the Seven Divas as a group did not exist.
  • Even the power system isn't free from being its own kind of scary:
    • Firstly, there are certain classifications for traits. The one to note here is the "enigma" class, which is defined by essentially being one massive Outside-Context Problem. They appear seemingly out of nowhere, make things happen that simply shouldn't (such as Ina's original Holy Trait being completely overwritten by the Eldritch Trait rather than simply adding onto it), and are generally barely comprehensible in what they can and can't do.
    • Secondly, there is the concept of pre-evolution. The one factor of the power system that may be more of a question mark than the enigma-class traits, a pre-evolved state is when a talent subconsciously makes use of an evolved trait before they're really intended to. You could be at as low as an untrained primary-class, and suddenly shoot up to a point where a Diva level combatant would be required to deal with you. Sounds pretty cool, right? Well... no, no it's not. Using an evolved trait like this, without any of the required training, is extremely dangerous, as the talent is not built to handle an evolved trait's immense power. Their mind and body gradually break down as they remain in this state, causing them to fly into a rampage in which they're hurting themselves about as much as they hurt others. And mind you, they are still holding the power of an evolved trait, which again, someone on the level of a Diva is needed to deal with such power. When Gura went into such a state for the first time, she racked up a body count in the hundreds. It's to the point where Hololive's higher-ups issued a damage control policy, in which a Diva is to be sent out immediately to deal with any such rampaging talents.
  • Omega's entrance in her self-titled episode is nothing short of chilling. Outside of her merely manifesting in the city generating an explosion that wiped all but Aloe from existence (her only surviving due to a lucky offshoot-class trait awakening), there is her appearance at the end. As the narration lists down the people involved, we see their sudden shocked faces, as Omega is revealed to just be... floating there, right next to them, as if she had always been there and just wasn't noticed. Then, she jumps into action, blowing everyone back while the brief conflict kicks up a dust cloud. As it clears, we see Omega completely unphased... and holding IRyS up with her Combat Tentacles. It immediately shows just how outmatched the heroes are, without even a single flashy display of the Elder God's divine power.
• Tear Jerker: The special preview for Truth and Conflict brought with it a more expansive description of the Bad Future, which... holy shit. AZKi is one of the first to fall to Omegaα, shutting down all portals to Holo-City aside from a single chokepoint before she dropped dead. After that, whether while gathering resources or trying to fight back, every single talent gradually dies out, is consumed, or simply vanishes, with Pekora being Driven to Suicide after losing all of her genmates. Eventually, the only ones left are Roboco and Sora, the latter simply wanting to keep going so she can go out swinging. Sadly though, not even she is enough for the Elder God, leaving her with one thing to say...
  Sora: I should've listened... We were too late...