Tear Jerker / Honkai Impact 3rd

Nothing I can do at all... nothing...

Though it may seem like a cutesy game at first, Honkai Impact 3rd has many a moment that pulls on your heartstrings. If you happen to come from Guns GirlZ, you may know that miHoYo is no slouch at writing tragedies, up to world-scale ones, akin to their biggest inspiration, Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

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• Wendy, a former Valkyrie paralyzed by the Gem of Desire, befriends Theresa and Bronya, where the latter promises to restore her capacity to walk. Sadly, Wendy is dead when she becomes Herrscher of Wind, Cocolia captures her and has the Gem of Desire inside her removed.
• The death of Himeko. Mainly because of her Dying Moment of Awesome to save Kiana from being controlled by the Herrscher of the Void, but mostly because of the accompanying song, "Nightglow". Not only does it fit a scene of hard struggle, its lyrics also convey love and care to one's loved ones (particularly Himeko's).
• How Mei ended up losing Kiana yet again (this time, to Durandal) in Chapter 15. After Kiana has just pulled all the stops to save Arc City in Chapter 14, Mei fights her way to where Kiana fell, but Durandal, who had saved Kiana, blocks her way and declares her intention of taking Kiana away. Despite knowing that she's outmatched, Mei tries her hardest to fight the S-rank Valkyrie to bring back Kiana but ends up losing. After Durandal flies away with Kiana, Mei is left behind crying and can only grab the jacket that Kiana left behind. The narration puts it best:
  Mei: Nothing I can do at all... Nothing...
  A fit of violent and involuntary shuddering overcame her. Regret, self-blame, and anger exploded and tore her apart. Durandal's casual remarks and moves felt suffocating. Recalling their encounter only sank her heart ever deeper - she watched her loved one taken away hopelessly. But Mei simply couldn't wipe Kiana off her mind, not for a second. The joyful time at St. Freya seemed like yesterday. But in a wink, the big-hearted girl was turned into a slave of the Honkai with a wickedly chilling smile. She finally got to see her again, only to be drowned in despair watching her taken away. Everything had changed, everything but the timid, hopeless girl she had always been. She knew Kiana was leaving her, further and further.
• Kiana's own tribulations. Chief among them is how Kiana has a case of deep self-loathing, because she seemingly has the bad luck of having her loved ones hurt themselves trying to help her (or unintentionally hurting her friends by herself as she was controlled by the Herrscher of the Void), and she hates herself for having terrible things happen to her loved ones and being unable to do anything about them. This drives her to try to find ways to atone for her perceived faults, even if she has to pay with her life for it.
  • Despite looking like a carefree, happy-go-lucky and dorky teenage girl, she has some baggage (primarily about her father disappeared from her life but also about the fact that she never knew her mother or how she struggled with nightmares and "inner demons") long before the reveal was dropped on her in the end of Chapter 6, where her "adventures" with her mother was revealed to be a lie constructed by the Herrscher of the Void to break her mind and make her give in to her illusions. And it works.
  • Then there's the Herrscher of the Void’s awakening itself. Seeing such an "adorably dumb" girl transforming into a slave to the Honkai with such sadistic glee and utter hatred of humanity is both tearjerking and chilling, but then she proceeds to beat up her friends and "aunt" Theresa badly (including taking away Mei's Gem of Conquest, which leaves her in critical condition), and she's only stopped after Himeko sacrifices herself to neutralize the Honkai energy inside her student.
  • Then, in the following months, she has become a drifter who can never stay in one place because she realizes she cannot be among people... just like what she used to do before meeting Mei and Bronya and joining St. Freya. All the while she continuously has nightmares where HOV's consciousness torments her mind and threatens to take over her body again, and only Fu Hua's consciousness is there to help her.
  • After she manages to subdue her "inner demons" and gain extra power from them, she has become a more solemn and brooding person, a far cry from the Kiana we saw early in the story. She then only concerns herself in saving Arc City as much as she can, and is generally composed at it despite the constant Honkai attacks, but seeing Mei coming to her again brings back the feelings of unease and guilt from before, such that she feels she can't go back to her friends again because she'll only put them in danger. Then, when she's about to use the Herrscher's full power to try to stop the Honkai bomb in Arc City, she gives one last long look to Mei before she goes to do it; she also ends up absorbing the Honkai energy burst afterward.
  • After saving Arc City, her unconscious body is taken by Durandal to Schicksal's North African base, despite Mei's best efforts, so Otto can secretly put her in an experiment. Then, the World Serpent troops come knocking, with Kevin leading them, to find Kiana; when Kevin closes in on her, Fu Hua separates herself from her to hold him back so Kiana can escape. Frustrated at having to leave one of her trusted friends again, she vents her anger at the pursuing robots while dragging herself through the desert. In her tired mind, she can only think of Mei and where the two first met: the Nagazora City.
  • For that matter, seeing how much Kiana has changed also gives Mei feelings of alienation and powerlessness amidst all of the ever-increasingly tense conflicts that Kiana was repeatedly, uncontrollably thrown into. Chapter 16 has her put it:
    Mei: I can hardly find the right word for this change, and I can't even say that she has simply grown up. She has always been loud and restless. From the day we first met, I never knew she could be quiet or patient. She was surely a troublemaker, but I always found her weirdly reassuring. Now I can't say the same... I have to wonder what miseries she has been through... anything could've happened in the past 4 months.
• Chapter 17, especially the last third of it.
  • Mei, in anguish from her repeated failure, to save Kiana, frustrated by her powerlessness, weakened by the "imaginary construct", and about to be killed by a said robot hits her breaking point. In the darkness of her mind, she hears a familiar voice (implied to be the Gem of Conquest) warning her about the consequences of obtaining the power she so desperately seeks: she'll have to walk a path as dark as the abyss, haunted with suspicion and mistrust. She'll have to turn her back on her friends and family. She'll never get to be with Kiana again. There's no turning back after this. Her answer?
    Mei: It doesn't matter.
  • The voice's final words before Mei reawakens as the Herrscher of Thunder:
    Mysterious Voice: Farewell, "Raiden Mei".
  • Mei treasured her past times with Kiana greatly, and laments that they can "no longer go back to the past". Then, as she's pushed to her breaking point (see above), she accepts that she's going to have to cut her ties with the past and therefore with Kiana, to take the "power" she needs to save her most important person. She also has to act cold and cruel towards Kiana so that the latter doesn't have to push herself to care for her anymore (particularly after joining the World Serpent).
  • Mei vs Kiana, both in the final stage and the subsequent animated short, "Lament of the Fallen". It's heartwrenching to see the two girls who were always so close come to blows. The playable stage contains cinematic Q.T.E.s that show flashes of their happier times together, ending with the shot of Kiana saving Mei on the rooftop all those years ago. Mei slices through the image, right where Kiana's and Mei's hands join. She's letting herself "fall" into darkness to keep the one she cares about the most in the light.
    I'll fall into the darkness and return you to bliss.
  • If you listen closely to the voice acting, at least in the Japanese dub, the battle grunts for both Mei's Striker Fulminata and Kiana's White Comet and Void Drifter attacks have changed. They're pitched higher and sound more strained and desperate. Both of these girls are hurting.
  • "Lament of the Fallen" continues the scene with Kiana desperately trying (and failing) to keep Mei from leaving with the World Serpent, while Mei evades and counters the former's moves almost effortlessly. Their tactics gradually get more and more brutal: for starters, Kiana tries to break Mei's leg with a Void-enhanced elbow, only for Mei to counter with a roundhouse kick so hard she temporarily loses consciousness.
    • "You can barely even stand." That cold voice. That emotionless, almost bored side gaze. The warm, sweet Raiden Mei of the past is gone.
  • After Kiana uses her Herrscher powers to trap Mei, we hear the familiar click-clack of the Herrscher's magical platform "stairs". The last time we heard this, the Void Queen was powerful and confident, moving downward, looking down her nose at Himeko. But now? It's Kiana, battered and weary, dragging herself upward, too exhausted to even look up at her friend.
  • Their final conversation. Mei is just so tired of watching her most precious person slip away from her fingers over and over again, that she's willing to sacrifice her own self-respect and dignity to save her. Greater good be damned.
    Mei: You're always like this...Kiana, you're always like this. Even when you're battered you'd still force a smile. You saved me. You saved us all. Yet you shoulder everything alone, at the cost of your own life.
    Kiana: Mei...! This is my...mission...
    Mei: Maybe this is for the greater good...[breaks some of the lances]
    Kiana: Mei!
    Mei: [grabs the lance at her throat, cutting herself] But how can I pretend that this is the right thing?
    Kiana: Mei...don't...!
    Mei: I only know that deep down...[shatters the lance]...this world means nothing to me... without you!!
• The "Theater of Thunder" web event shows (part of) Mei's Dark and Troubled Past, and why Kiana mattered to her so much.
  • She was born to a rich family as the daughter of a CEO, and she was admired by her schoolmates. However, her father got involved in a scandal about his company that ended up putting him in jail; this not only separated her from the one person that cared about her, but also alienated her from her surroundings, as people then only saw her as "the daughter of a criminal". What the event didn't show is that the whole "scandal" was orchestrated by Cocolia so that she can take over his company.
  • From then on, she was said to be "suffocated within the darkness of her life", until a "warm light" shines over her, as if telling her that she's not alone. That "light" was Kiana.
    • One detail that this event doesn't show is that she once succumbed so much to her "darkness" that her Herrscher self started awakening which caused a mass murder incident in her school. It's only stopped when Kiana came and fought her to bring her back to her normal self. Out of immense guilt and fear that it may happen again, Mei thought of committing suicide by falling off a building; however, Kiana quickly took her hand to catch her. Mei was touched by both this act and Kiana's words towards her which showed that Kiana was willing to accept her for who she is.
  • The next scenes show how much Kiana had an impact on her daily life; from just making Mei smile, to lending Mei her umbrella while she braves the rain alone, and to defending Mei from school bullies. ^Extra  When a Honkai outbreak occurred in the city where her school is in, Honkai Beasts appeared en masse; during her, Kiana and Bronya's escape from the horde, Kiana defended from one of the beasts, causing her to take a big wound to her back. Mei, stricken with grief over having her dearest friend get hurt in front of her eyes, turned into a Herrscher again and started wreaking havoc. Kiana was able to wake up and subdue the Herrscher split personality again. The three girls were then put in St. Freya. Then it goes to a scene where Mei and Kiana are sitting together happily, and the narration says "perhaps her life has finally regained peace"... only for the living Mei's hand to pick up the Kiana puppet as the narration shifts to the 1st person.
    Kiana... suddenly disappeared from [my] world.
  • Aside from the other sad events that happened before it^note such as being put in the enemy's mercy even after she awakened her Herrscher self to fight said enemy (only to be saved by Kiana again, in the "Anti-Entropy Invasion" comic), and getting kidnapped by Anti-Entropy (in Chapter 4 of the game), she had to deal with being separated from Kiana and facing ordeals and opponents that are out of her league in her struggle to find Kiana again^note Kiana gets forcibly awakened as Herrscher of the Void, and she not only beats Mei badly but also takes her Herrscher Core out. As Kiana goes missing for a few months after that, Mei has to fight Rita, then she sees the World Serpent's attempt to bomb Arc City with Honkai energy and Kiana's struggle to stop them, then she can't prevent Kiana being taken away by Durandal, and now after Kiana escapes and Mei finds her again (after struggling to fight Benares with Raven's help), she finds out that Kiana only has a few months left to live due to her condition. She then has to deal with the very group that (indirectly) harmed Kiana to find a way to save her life. Mei also gets saddened by Kiana's disregard of her own life to save others and her attempts to keep calm about it in front of others. Mei laments that since then, she's only a "spectator" who can only see Kiana "struggle on the stage" and can do nothing to help her; Mei fears that Kiana will forever disappear from her world if this keeps going on. This leads to the climax of chapter 17, as shown above. Her transformation into Herrscher of Thunder signifies her cutting her ties with her past and attachments to other people (including Kiana herself) and growing past her powerlessness to save Kiana's life.
• The final cutscene in Chapter 20 is a flashback to the happiest time in Fu Hua's life. In it, she and her friend (who may be the Previous Era's version of Carole Peppers), lie down on a grass field and talk about their lives. When asked about what she plans to do with her life, Fu Hua admits that she has no dreams. Carole points out that Hua is an Extreme Doormat who doesn't know what she wants in life. The scene concludes with Carole assuring Hua that she'll find her dream one day, with Hua responding, she'll hold onto these previous memories. We then see a few pictures of Hua at her happiest, enjoying her life with Carole... only for those photos to be burnt to a crisp by a fire that engulfs them which both represents the Honkai outbreak which later kills her friend and Hua’s burning of her memories in the Second Honkai War.
• The last section of ch. 24 opens with Kiana dreaming of Sirin's memories of being a prisoner at the Babylon Labs and a test subject for their stigmata experiments. She's barely conscious in her cell, crying out from a combo of the excruciating pain the tests leave her in and her overwhelming sadness at the other test subjects not responding to her cries, as they're at least unconscious if not dead. She also calls out for her mother but gets no response there either, and Cecelia's attempts to comfort her end up for naught.
• Chapter 25 fully confirms that, yes, Himeko is gone for good, and only her wrecked weapon remains. Her lingering consciousness inside the Gem of Haste talks to Kiana one last time, giving her final parting words as she convinces Kiana to return to reality and fight for what she believes. This allows Kiana to finally accept Himeko's death, and as shown in the second act's epilogue, Kiana and all of her friends hold a memorial for Himeko, with Mei (who had cut contact with her friends back in Chapter 17) sneaking in at night to give her teacher one last goodbye.
  • Within the "Everlasting Flames" short video, the ghost of Himeko appears beside Kiana as the latter makes a decisive blow against the Herrscher of Dominance, smiling at her student. It's bittersweet, as it gives Kiana the final push to move on with her convictions, but it also seals Himeko's fate as her consciousness fades away for the last time.
  • miHoYo also had uploaded Himeko's final voice recording, which acts as her goodbye to the Captain, i.e., the players themselves. May you rest in peace, Himeko...
• Chapter 26's revelation about the real Kiana's whereabouts proves once again that no character is safe from miHoYo's cruel designs. Specifically, a casual conversation between Theresa and Kiana ends up triggering memories the latter saw through her Herrscher Core; memories of the time Siegfried, K-423 and someone else (initially referred to as "her") escaped from Schicksal aboard a fighter jet, only for an incident to happen that eventually led to Siegfried bestowing the name of Kiana upon K-423 (as seen in the Anti-Entropy Invasion comic), all but stating that the real Kiana died during the escape.
  From Kiana's perspective, if it wasn't for that accident when they were escaping that year... she might be still wandering, but maybe she wouldn't be alone.
  • Chapter 28 then reveals that the original Kiana never died but instead lost her memories and was reshaped into Durandal. What should be a massive turn towards the optimistic is made sad with the gift of hindsight, as she was effectively robbed of her own life by the man she spent years thinking she could trust, something even she realizes when she gets fragments of her childhood memories back. Not to mention, she has a "sister" now who was put through absolute hell by that same man. Even when there's hope, there's always got to be a catch.
• Despite the sheer amount of crap Otto was behind, his death in "Thus Spoke Apocalypse" is oddly pitiable. In the end, unlike what was originally assumed, he didn't even want to have Kallen for himself. In reality, he was so wracked with guilt over her death that he didn't even value his own life beyond how it could be sacrificed to save hers. And that's precisely how he meets his end. To hammer just how trapped in the past he's been, the short ends with a childhood memory of him resting next to Kallen, implying that his memories with her might've been the only happy memories of his entire life.
• "Elysium Everlasting" Story Arc:
  • One of the overarching plot points of chapters 29 and 30 is that someone or something is deleting the sims in the Elysian Realm. Elysia is the first to be removed, just as she was on the verge of giving Mei vital information about her past and becoming the 13th Herrscher. Later on, the tally of fallen sims increases to include Kevin, Mobius, Pardofelis, Kalpas, and Vill-V. Of these, Pardo's is the most heartbreaking. She is attacked by Vill-V's evil side after unlocking one of Vill-V's memories, and, with Mei holding her in her arms, fearfully pleads that she doesn't want to die before her sim, already fading and glitching due to what was done to her, shatters and vanishes.
  • In the "exploration" parts of Elysium Everlasting, Pardo will occasionally make enthusiastic comments when you find a treasure chest or chastise you when you fall into a pit. After she dies in Chapter 30, this funny chatter is replaced by crushing silence and a mere "…" from Mei as a form of Gameplay and Story Integration. When this new dialogue is triggered for the first time, Mei even comments on the sadness of not being able to hear Pardo's voice anymore.
  • The Flame-Chaser sims gradually try to fight back against the Herrscher of Corruption in their own ways. Though their plans "succeed" in one way or another, tragic and tear-jerking consequences were still inevitable.
    • Kalpas's primary goal is to prove Sakura's innocence from being suspected as Elysia's killer. By the end of Chapter 30, he's proven right as he managed to expose the identity of the true culprit—the Herrscher of Corruption. Moments before he disappears, Kalpas asks for some validation from Aponia, and the latter assures he finally managed to protect something. In Chapter 31, Raiden Mei even retroactively and posthumously acknowledges Kalpas's accomplishment; for someone who's mostly known for violence, he ended up being vital against the Herrscher of Corruption.
    • Sakura returns to aid Raiden Mei against the Herrscher of Corruption. As awesome as their battle might be, Sakura admits the enemy has grown strong enough to the point where it couldn't be defeated even if all 13 Flame-Chaser sims are present, but she still fights and mocks the Herrscher to the bitter end. Sakura's flashback scene drew a conclusion to her own character arc as well; she already knew her sister was killed, a secret that was kept from her by the other sims, but Sakura understood that they had no ill intentions in doing so.
    • Kosma needed himself to be drawn as one of Griseo's paintings so that a version of him could fully utilize his over-Meta-Morph form and stall the Herrscher of Corruption. During the "painting" process, he recalls the tragedy of the Project Ark: a one-person spaceship sent to find a new home for humanity (as the Earth is still dealing with the Honkai), but communications with that ship were lost and it never managed to find its way back home.
    • Immediately after the Herrscher of Corruption realized that "Kosma" became a painting, Griseo appears and reveals she sacrificed herself to be a part of the painting as well. Griseo didn't do it to stop the Herrscher per se, but because she didn't want Kosma to be alone and lonely in her final painting.
    • Pardo guides Su to Kevin inside the illusion city of Nagazora, despite apparently losing her memory and connection with the two. She's also having doubts about her given task of creating an opening for a secret attack, but accomplishes it anyway because deep inside, she still remembers she's a Flame-Chaser.
    • Su is basically overjoyed upon seeing his friend Kevin once again, and it brings a flashback of the two casually chatting about their future career plans; with Su becoming a doctor, and Kevin wishing to become a "hero". The flashback is also one of those moments where we get to see the two of them smiling, and hear Kevin's simple desire to make Dr. MEI blush. Then it shifts back to the present scene where Su sacrifices his data so that Kevin could unleash Shamash against the Herrscher of Corruption. By this point, the Herrscher is pissed at the fact that the sims are willing to sacrifice themselves just to stop her.
    • Eden is the last Flame-Chaser sim to disappear, and thus all of their portraits in the menu's interface are replaced by shattered glass. Near the end of Chapter 31 Part 1, you can inspect the now-empty seat and the table with a wine glass left behind, but the text implies that the wine is still waiting for someone to return.
  • The short animation "Because of You" serves as the final farewell for the Thirteen Flame-Chasers we know from the Elysian Realm as they fight together as a team for the first and the last time against the Herrscher of Corruption.
    For the Thirteen Flame-Chasers. Elysian Realm Wraps Up.

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