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I always knew Ei regretted what happened with Inazuma and the puppet. Her story quest mentioned how she was working on the puppet as so such events won't repeat themselves. Her voice lines also she that she deeply regrets what she has done but is willing to move forward and to pursue a different form of Eternity, on Makoto saw. Plus I think I learned more about Inazuman culture from her than anyone(mainly because I- uh need to raise friendship with them) your reading of Ei's story solidified my thoughts that Ei is quite different than what others might think.
There are only a few days left until the event of the irodori festival! If you haven't done it, you need to! Major additions to the lore! When are you doing your next twitch stream!?
@@TeyvatHistoria oh and you have completed all the story quests right? both of raidens quest, kokomi, itto, yae and ayato? you wont be able to enjoy the irodori event fully if you didn't.
@@TeyvatHistoria Ei had one of the worst character developments, he should be aware and apologize to the whole town for the damage he did with the decrees, rather the town of Inazuma would have "You are not welcome" and have banned Ei from attending the festival and while closing the door in his face. that MY rewrite the entire Inazuma arc from the beginning and that Ei observes the consequences of his actions. You’re are fanboy
What ppl don't understand abt Kazuha's friend is that his one true ambition was to face to Musou No Hitotachi. Like stated, he knew what he was getting into, and I suspect he wanted to lose the duel against Sara so that he'd have to opportunity to see the sword art. Also, Kazuha himself states that's he's not bitter abt the death of his friend, he believes it to be an honorable death, but can't stand the Shogun's Vision Hunt Decree
Let's see.. 1) Kazuha is still grieving over the death of his friend. 2) As the comment above says, he did it to give courage to the resistance and people with visions. (Said in Kazuha's story number 4 and diary of the traveller). 3)The reason why Ei is detested for that, is for the simple logic that she gave the approval of the decree of Visions, and without the decree, he would be alive. Because he exclusively asked for the duel only because of the decree. That's is
@@clover.8147 except he would’ve asked for a duel no matter what the decree was the easiest way for this duel to have happened. 2: these same people flat out ignore that Kazuha holds no hated towards Ei about the situation AT ALL and outright says her conduct was right.
She doesn't think eternity is wrong though. She's just realized that eternal stasis was not the way to go after centuries of pursuit. She still wants Inazuma to last forever though.
The whole point Teyvat Historia was getting at, at the end there when referring to Venti and Zhongli was that they had already developed, and grown past their ambitions as gods, but there's still some extra threads for them, eg; Zhongli and the Memory of Dust/Ghuizhong, Venti also seems to have some dangling threads but those are attached to the Tsaritsa and the Traveller now.
The thing about zhongli and venti is that, they are already developed character and archons. They've already passed the character development stage(mostly zhongli). For example, zhongli was said to be a ruthless god of war back on the day but after he met guizhong he changed. And now, he's the depressed encyclopedia airhead archon that we love. Not to mention that they've already finished their duties and ideals as an archon, venti have already given true freedom to mondstadt, and Zhongli already has end all contracts as the geo archon. While Ei have just recently realized the true eternity that she should be seeking for. But yeah i agree, Her Story Quest are the best in the game so far.
@@Rexhunterj Zhongli followed Venti where he give his people freedom to run the nation, so i guess Venti is the most developed one despite being younger XD
I feel like the reason many people say the archon quest was rushed because the entire resistance plotline with the delusions was unceremoniously dropped in the final act and we got no resolution - the army just showed up at Tenshukaku with no explanation (I know Ayato's demo retconned that but that came out like a week ago). We have no idea what role Kokomi played in the events of the final conflict either, and it feels disappointing to just drop such an important character at the climax of the story. I think if they had had one more act right before the climax to resolve all the plot threads, many would have been not only satisfied but impressed by the quest. It feels to me like hoyoverse bit off more than they could chew with the amount of different plot threads and simply didn't have enough time to give all of them a satisfying conclusion. I still thoroughly enjoyed the quest, though.
I feel like.. neither Gorou nor Kokomi were actually meant to be important characters to the Archon Quest (sadly). I think the resistance as a whole is meant to be important, but not those 2 characters particularly. I would liken it to Ganyu, Xiao appearance in the Liyue Quest. The adepti are important to the story, but there's nothing particularly additional from those 2 playable characters over the NPCs.
@@zackang4731 I think they actually built up them preatty well. Literally almost all the second act in the AQ of Inazuma was a build up for The resistance, ending the act with even a cinematic of a fight betwent the Tenryou com and The resistance. And then leave them a side in the 3rd act
Having the additional act you described would also make Ei's change of philosophy more sensible to onlookers, if it would overtly resolve how the resistance got to Inazuma City (I don't know if there is already an answer to that Question). Maybe they could've even found a way to get the Raiden Shogun involved in an active battle, in which they could have already suggested the instability of her beliefs in face of the resistance soilders who carry on fighting even without visions (while she would additionally make the observation that some of the soilders even used illusions given to them by the Fatui, going to harmful lengths to fight against a cause Ei deemed vital to her peoples security).
I mean, I can sort of understand why people say the Inazuma archon quests seemed rushed, at least as far as the Resistance went. They didn't really do much of anything on screen and ultimately only served as a way for the Traveler to MAYBE get invested in an npc only for them to die, then act as bridge for the Traveler to go raid the Delusion Factory and get saved by Yae. Aside from the Resistance accomplishing nothing of substance though, the rest was amazing!
I feel like mihoyo thought that when we arrived at watatsumi we would take our time exploring and do world quests and than continuing on with the archon quest
If it wasn't rushed, at least it seemed and felt rushed. For example, at the end of 2.0 the vision hunt decree was simply stated via voice over to have been abolished and we were like, that was it??? Only for hoyo to backtrack several patches later after two Ei story quests when she had her epiphany, did we find, ah okay, now the vision hunt decree is truly abolished. I don't mind that kind of storytelling, though. I could happily go all the way to patch 2.9 if they are gonna backtrack and elaborate on the events of 2.0. lol Still, execution could be improved. Basic rule of thumb of any visual storytelling. Show, don't tell. Hoyoverse has a bad habit of just telling their story through looooong dialogues and exposition.
@@icantbelieveyoudonethis4059 Yeah, now that i think about it. You're right. The two decrees were abolished in different times, patch-wise. But from what i understand, the sakoku decree was enforced as part of the vhd. So it's very easy to think that the sakoku decree would together be abolished when the vhd was repealed back in 2.0. In any case, I still feel like her 2nd story quest which we got in 2.5, chronologically speaking, happened right after we defeated Ei in 2.0, and her 1st story quest, which lead to her repealing the vhd at the end of 2.0. Just insert it, and it makes good sense. It's not unusual, coz Shenhe's story canonically happened before we arrived at Inazuma, and we got her patch 2.4. This might be a storytelling trend that hoyo is gonna use a lot in the future. I just hope they be careful about retconning or changing already established narratives because they rushed them at the start.
Ei is in this weird situation where everyone she knew got dead, or samsar-ed or both. She's got memories that don't match the memories of everyone around her and they all think she's a bit crazy. Even Yae Miko who claims to be Ei's best friend and familiar - though Ei probably didn't even know her - didn't believe Ei about the Sakura tree. And that's the nearest thing to a friend Ei has. If Ayaka wanted a friend then Ei is absolutely dying for want of human contact. So it may not have been a date in the romantic sense but it was an important event socially for Ei.
YES FINALLY- SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS HOW IMPORTANT ACT ONE OF HER STORY QUEST IS!!!! the sheer amount of smooth brained opinions regarding that quest made me so frustrated. I immediately understood that in order for Ei to change for the better, she needed to understand change was not always bad- which for the longest time she believed to be the greatest enemy to her idea of eternity. People who don't like putting effort into looking deeply into the story tend to make hasty and incorrect judgements about the story and dismisses the efforts of the creative team and its just sad man. honestly... I'm even more excited about the tsarista. She's like a more hard core version of Ei's arc because she is fully aware with what she's doing with the Fatui, taking a direct command of them but giving the Harbingers a lot of free reign as well.
I wonder what caused the God of Love to have no love left? Even for her nation(I think? She must know what the dilutions are doing to the harbingers) when so far the three archons we met all love their nations
@@cheerfulcat056 they say she changed after what happened in kaenriah, so probably her motives to do what she does is to free Teyvat from Celestia and then she will just quit or retire like Zhongli
The moment we had that quest i knew it was to set her up for her opinions to change and in the second to face her past Its right there infront of people But they just ignored it and oh its just a date headcanon started which annoyed the F out of me
The time gap between act one and two of the story arc is what makes it worse imo. It left Player that heated up with the archon quest climax and eager to understand her better ends up only knowing the underdeveloped Ei character for a while before actually mentioning the core of her story. It is a nice story but it Imo there still should be some sort of abridged part in Ei's part one that show her actively solving things in regards to the elephant in the room, civil war etc. Maybe make her realize the aftermath of the war, go to other island that gone inhabitable by all kind of danger, hear sara's report, show her real live concerns for her citizen outside of merry go happy side of inazuma city. It does paint her in a very bad light when this is addressed waaaay after that and only when we confront her about her people's concern. After all the scene of war, her people's injured imprisoned and in constant danger. The dating simulator vibe felt like an insult to her as a character
The whole "you're now captain of swordfish II" felt so unnecessary 😒 I admit that they heavily improved the Inazuma content once Serai Island and Tsurumi Island got introduced but the first couple of Inazuma updates really felt weird. As someone who usually cares a lot about the lore and the characters in general I don't know why but Inazuma never really catched me. :(
@@lemonbunny71 The swordfish 2 thing was so weird to me. It felt like: Here take this platoon of soldiers that is more like a burden then anything else. They might have been special forces. But not comparable at all in strength to the MC. And it felt like we were abandoning them to just do whatever as we as captain were off doing other stuff.
@@thecasu6940 exactly! I got really excited when we got the title of captain. But in the end we barely interact with them. This part of the quest is as meaningless as the title itself is. Also it only gets mentioned one more time during the Enkanomiya part but felt more like a reminder to the player than anything impactful. "Oh btw. You're captain of Swordfish II, remember?"
@@lemonbunny71 I didn't feel it unnecessary simply because of the state of the Resistance. They were losing in the defensive, during a time where imports were more than likely halted for the economically fragile Watatsumi due to the Sakoku Decree, and so the soldiers were starting to lose morale. Appointing the Traveler, the very person who fought Raiden Shogun and lived, and not give them a higher rank? They were obviously in a very desperate position to have to make such a choice.
The Inazuma Archon Quest, while much-hated on its arrival for reasons you discussed in your video, also has a huge glaring flaw in the Resistance. The parts about Ei were overdramatic criticism, but the set-up during the Resistance arc was rushed as all hell, and apart from Kazuha blocking the Musou no Hitotachi, they did absolutely nothing and ended up being pawns in Yae's scheme, which is disappointing for how they were set up (especially with kokomi as a smart tactician), and only served as a bridge to the Delusion Factory via Teppei, who wasn't set up that well either (and not to mention Signora with zero build-up). But yeah, Ei's arc is basically complete now, and the AQ in retrospect looks much better because of it.
Mentioning Signora is not the same as building her up. We got hints that she was around (the arrogant lady at Ritou), and a fan theory among the lore community at the time matched her to the Crimson Witch of Flames, but with no prior main story mention of any kind that even implied she had the CWoF backstory, her transformation came straight out of left field. If it was supposed to be an important boss fight on par with Childe or Dvalin (considering that she finally embraces her flames after 500 years of suppressing them), there needed to be more than just artifact lore cementing this story into the game.
@@hakimgamerzs5827 absolutely. but the creators need to hear criticism if we ever hope them to improve their next work. they say honkai's story is damn good tho (and I love most of the hangouts and character quests), so I have no doubt the writers are good.
This has been a good reminder, as well as a good cleaning of what I think of Raiden Ei. And just further reinforces my opinion of Ei being my favorite character.
The way I understand her is that she was in grief of her sister then she tries to protect her people but to do so she thought she needed control over something so that if she can control it nobody will die no one needs to be sad thus she was blind by eternity definition but what she didn’t get is it wasn’t eternity or people living longer they were just stuck unable to move it wasn’t the true eternity . As yoimiya says that fireworks are just quick things but the people we are with while watching them stays in our minds forever -something in those lines.. (which is true definition of eternity in my opinion) anyways.. also her being stuck meditating and not coming in touch with reality made it easier since the puppet didn’t have any feelings only what she was programmed for when miko came to ei we somehow see her come alive . She is more of a “broken villain with broken ideals” and now her vision and idea of eternity change she’s being better..
Clearly alot of people don't understand her at all. I'm not saying I understood her the most but at least I can tell she is not as simple as people made her out to be. This is especially true during with the way people reacted to her after the Inazuma archon quest
Ei is flawed. However the most infuriating thing about her is that basically she did "Oh I didn't know." and everyone just accepted it. Everyone basically forgot the pain and suffering she has allowed to happen. I absolutely hate her to the core :D She should have been overthrown and she should have worked her way up in the eye of the public. I don't understand why everyone just except her so easily...?
@@user-er6oz7sl7c Not everyone can fight with her equally, so who can overthrown her, maybe only traveler, she is god, and one that really strong, i think not everyone just accepted it, it just they can't do more than that, she remove Vision Hunt Decree already win for most of them
🌸🌹I am of those who feel that the Raiden Shogun is quite down to earth and was realistically represented with respect to her roll within the story! People are not black and white in their acts, we are gray and no decision made is ever one-hundred percent pure, thus it is but virtue signal on the part of those that claim outright she is a “villain”!🌹🌸
The only part that many players were disappointed with was the v2.1 Archon Quest (Resistance Arc). The pacing was plagued with sloppy time skips; and big things apparently were happening like naval battles, Teppei's achievements, etc. but we didn't really feel the atmosphere of a war. It's only that part of the Inazuman questline that felt "rushed", or simply put: mediocre and poorly executed. Just imagine the v2.0 archon quest setting up the hype, the high stakes, and the opposing sides in such complicated topics like politics and war, only to fall short in v2.1, and then be solved after a disproportionately long training arc with Yae. Also at the end Raiden's 2nd story quest, Ei said that she's going mull over with the puppet for a while about abolishing the Sakoku Decree. But apparently the decree was abolished IMMEDIATELY after the end of that quest. There was no transition whatsoever. Just another sloppy time skip.
I actually knew the Shogun Puppet twist before I played Genshin Impact (that I downloaded because Raiden looked cool) and yeah I 100% agree, the writing is extremely consistent and you can tell the writers knew what they set out to do from the get-go. Personally I love Raiden. She's not my favorite character but she's definitely in the top 5. The biggest flaw I think is Genshin's constant story updates I think made a lot of people set their expectations in wildly different directions. The time period between the end of Liyue when Zhongli talks about the Vision Hunt Decree and the conclusion of Inazuma was many months long. And I think people who spent those months expecting a villain might've felt the rug pulled out under them with the Puppet twist
As someone who “hated” Ei when i first saw her my love for her only grew as we saw more of her storyline and backstory. She quickly became my fave character in the game
I agree with you 100% here and greatly appreciate that you made this video. However, I've raised many of these points in conversation with others before, and there are some responses to your points that you didn't address that may lead the people who most need to digest this video to reject it outright. Here's a brief summary of what criticisms I've seen that you didn't address, as well as additional details you didn't mention that strengthen your argument further: 1. When considering the Puppet's actions regarding the VHD war: it is important to note that the Shogun wasn't even fully informed; the Tenryou Commission was concealing and sanitizing the details they relayed to the Shogun. This may not have changed how the Shogun behaved or responded, but I feel that's an important point to consider. 2. When considering the time spent with Ei in her first story quest: a. I don’t think everyone who claims that it was “a date” necessarily means it in a romantic sense but are using it as a hyperbolic synonym for a “hangout” (and I have also seen the word “hangout” used to describe it as well). b. While this is technically already addressed by your arguments against the first misconception, many detractors took exception to the Traveler spending time with Ei in this fashion because they saw her as a criminal who was dodging consequences. Even if you wanted to argue that there should be consequences, that opens an entire can of philosophical worms regarding Punitive vs. Rehabilitative Justice. Considering the game has taken a rehabilitative approach and considering many of the examples I’ve been given of how her recompense should have been handled, I believe these folks seek a punitive approach. 3. This is probably mostly my own speculation, but I’d like to raise the thought for consideration that Ei’s pursuit of eternity in alignment with the Heavenly Principles is a trauma response. Ei may hold Celestia partially responsible for the loss of Makoto and was further incentivized to take this approach to Eternity that she already aligned with in hopes of curtailing further pain/loss at the hands of Celestia. 4. When considering the death of Kazuha’s friend: I think the most important detail is that he specifically sought to face the Musou no Hitotachi. “There will always be those who dare to brave the lightning’s glow.” Facing the Musou no Hitotachi meant certain death if he failed to withstand it and he knew the consequences of his choice. He was purely responsible for his death there and he did so willingly in pursuit of his ambition, which is factually confirmed to be his ambition by Kazuha’s temporary reawakening of his friend’s Vision. 5. When considering the argument of pacing: One of the most common criticisms I’ve seen is of the time spent with the Resistance. I can actually agree with the assertion that we spent very little time with them. I believe most folks issue with that, however, stems from their expectations of what that time would entail. These folks wanted more time spent seeing the war play out in-front of them and participating in it. While I can understand the desire to have that experience, I believe people’s disappointment stems from their own mostly unsubstantiated expectations. 6. One criticism you did not address, but is technically tangential to all of this and is not technically related to misconceptions of Ei herself, is that some believe that the major story beats of Inazuma’s narrative arc should not have been contained within Ei’s story quest, but within the Archon quest. I believe I see what HoYovese was going for with this structure; the Vision Hunt Decree was the most pressing matter as it involved great suffering for the affected and was the only instigating factor for the war. (as an aside, I’ve also seen some folks argue that the Sakoku Decree was the more important issue of the two) However, the full path forward for Inazuma required change within Ei herself, and that takes additional time. (perhaps this could’ve been avoided if Ei was deposed, which I think some people believe should’ve been the case, but that’s an entire discussion of its own) This also ties in with the misconception that the story of a region is meant to be/should be concluded within the Archon quest, but it seems that HoYoverse intends for the entire major patch to encompass the narrative of the region rather than just the Archon quest. That may still not be to people’s taste, but I reject the notion that this is somehow an inherently flawed approach. Anyway, sorry for the wall of text but I hope this was helpful in some way. If you actually read the whole thing, thank you, and much thanks for making this video in the first place.
your 3rd point is further proved by Ei's dialogue to Miko on the archon quest: "Ei: ...You and I have both witnessed the great loss that progress can bring. Eternity... eternity is the only way..." also : "Ei: But I've seen a nation stride forward Ei: And lose everything to the Heavenly Principles Ei: Perhaps only if time stands still Ei: Will the lightning's glow never fade Ei: The present moment is a fragile illusion Ei: Only Eternity can bring us closer to the Heavenly Principles" and: "Ei: Humans have a lifespan of barely a hundred years. They cannot afford to bear any extra losses. Ei: But I have experienced it all. That is why I have chosen to guide them along the correct path toward eternity." All in all I think her stance is very well explained and the people choosing to ignore it are doing so on purpose and out of malice :/ On your 6th point, we spent much more time one on one with Venti and Zhongli during the archon quest (understandable given Ei was literally isolating from the rest of the world, so the time we spent with her in her quests were the solution so we would be on the same level, relationship wise, with her as we were with the previous archons. By the story that was being told it was a necessary concession and I, for one, have no qualms with it.
Your 2b and 5 are my biggest problems. I mean, quite literally, she said she approves all of the puppet's deeds even when we told her there's a meaningless war created by her inaction going out, a war where a lot of people die on both sides - her people which she swore to protect by eternity but achieved the opposite, and ex-vision holders and the opposition in general (which also directly contradicts to her point of "it's better to lose a vision than to lose your life" which is also a questionable point out in itself because not everyone's ambition is to become a master swordsman and die in the process, some are peaceful). So what do we see when she comes out to the town? Not hatred from both her people and the opposition, but admiration. Admiration for years of hunger, for many broken families because their relatives either died on the war or hanged themselves after losing their ambition. Not only that, she herself doesn't seem to see any problem with those lives people lost for what's at least half her fault! Not an ounce of remorse! She doesn't even seem to realise there's a problem with that! Of course i can't sympathise with such a character, she isn't even a villain - signora is a villain, she has a goal and she decided to trumple over some heads to achieve it, Ei, on the other hand, is just criminally dumb, for lack of a better word. She actively sabotages her goal without paying attention to the consequences at all. A positive character *must* compensate for their faults, here we see terrible faults which were done nothing with. Now as for the resistance, I have a problem not so much with the amount of time spent in the resistance as with how that time was used. We were told Kokomi is a genius strategist - well, that remains to be just a rumour, Ayato acomplished a much better exhibition of strategy than her, all in the span of his quest (and trailer, i guess). Also, the entire reason and plot behind the resistance was sort of like a filler, it came basically out of nowhere (under the excuse that the traveller needs a place to hide) and it left to nowhere (we just stumbled upon Yae when we could probably stumble upon her right after saving Thoma just as well). What I believe should've been done with the resistance is Ayaka admitting she can't do a thing about the decrees, she just doesn't have enough power, so she asks the traveller to establish contact with the resistance so in the end they could join forces and storm the castle together (with maybe Ayaka coming in the first row so even Kamisato clan's future was at stakes now that she's acting against Shogun in the open). Would also be good to show the power of the resistance along the way to establish how much they can achieve and that it's clearly not enough to fight shogun. That would be both a good way to make the resistance relevant as well as make the internal resistance's (which is kamisato network) role to be actually important in the whole story instead of them just doing some small things here and there until the traveller and Yae solved almost everything on their own. But we got what we got...
@@Soundwave1900 so you're just going to ignore the video then, because it's explained in it. You can have a problem with it all you want of course, but it's very much your choice to ignore the writing of the game
@@Jehphg it doesn't explain it. Tacitly agreeing is still agreeing and not a single word was said about people reaction, much less about her own carelessness about the lives she ruined.
@@Soundwave1900 Except the way she saw things, she felt that their ruined lives were better than the alternative. She's essentially an overprotective parent and yeah, they can do a lot of damage, but the solution isn't to make Inazuma an "orphan," it's for Ei to be a better "parent." Anyway, her character is flawed but those flaws are understandable to many, including the creator of this video. Your failure to understand is a you problem.
Good points and well-argued. I think this along with your Character Origins videos have a lot of potential. I know you’re very busy, but I hope you can continue your book series as well I’m definitely one of the people who has really enjoyed the Inazuma Arc, specifically the initially somber and eventually uplifting atmosphere. Ei’s arc was a big factor in that. HYV has done well in presenting Ei as a flawed, multifaceted character and (for me) Anne Yatco does a brilliant job of portraying that nuance across all the Inazuma gods. I expect they’ll can improve even further in future arcs
so because i avoid social media im hearing about most of these complaint's for the first time (and wondering if im playing the same game as them) and am a little confused how people came to these conclusions as i saw almost nothing that could lead you to think like this. its one of my pet peeves in gaming when the devs will have an NPC tell you exactly what has just happened in the plot but if people can be this confused about stuff i can see why devs do it.
I think people nowadays just react in the moment and don't actually think of what's to come or what could happen next with these sort of things and ofc with the power of social media,one opinion can be shared and spread to everywhere and that can influence on other people and they start to think the same as well because their either not knowledgeable or too lazy to form their own opinion
A lot of it comes with the minds and cultures. For example, some players think that Ei should be accountable for every bad decision of the Shogun since she build it and thus responsible, or because she turn the blind eye about it when she could "get out of the room" and interfere. For many people Ei doesn't deserve redemption and sympathy, so any story that makes her more human are bad (for those people).
I agree with most of what you said, and you made many good points. As someone who doesn’t like Ei, I can still recognize the validity in pointing out her character development over the course of the story. Honestly, I quite like the character development, even if I don’t like Ei herself. The only point I can bring up is the pervasive argument I’ve always heard and disagree with, which your arguments only bring up sometimes, which is that Raiden Shogun is responsible while Ei is innocent. My problem is that many fans shrug off the argument of her being a bad person or a terrible ruler with the argument of “It was the Raiden Shogun, not Ei.” To me, it feels a little shallow, as my belief is that their diverging personalities were made to shield Ei from such accusations against her character, feeling a little cheap to have a literal cold unfeeling robot take the blame for what was supposedly your actions. The point I would like to bring up is that Even though it was Raiden who allowed the Fatui to come in, and it was Raiden who became a tyrant, it is just as much Ei’s fault for choosing to leave her Kingdom in a Robots hands. You could argue it was to pursue eternity, and there lies the rub. Ei didn’t care what would’ve happened to her country if she left it in the hands of a robot, by her own admission she has little information about what was happening outside. This is why I find the argument to be flawed. Raiden may be the weapon, but it was Ei who let the weapon run free without supervision. At best, she’s a negligent ruler, which I know she recognized herself, but not enough of her fans do. They always forgive her easily and make excuses for what she’s done, and I do appreciate your video having actual evidence rather than spitting vague opinions and pretending it’s the end all be all of her character.
Yups you are right that Ei is not completely innocent. It's a bit more gray here, but I think the idea is that they are at fault for different things, as you have laid out. I believe Ei did realize her mistakes in her first story quest, especially with Kujou Kamaji being a parallel to herself.
As an Ei fan (ignore the fact that this is 8 months late ) I agree with what you said ! For me she isn't a saint, she isn't completely innocent since she did really make some bad descisions after the death of her sister. Her coping methods were definitely bad too. And Ei was a neglegent ruler thats true, remember before being the real archon she was only the kagemusha meaning all that she did was kill and go to war. She probably didn't have any experience governing so maybe that's why she was a negligent ruler at first, and also considering that she didn't know her sister would die in the calamity (kaneriah) . She realised that everytime there's progress there's also loss. So she wanted eternity but she executed those ideals in a bad way (vision hunt decree) unlike her sister makoto, who also pursued eternity but in a different way, After doing her story quest I was happy to see her development and now that she has grown to care for her people and feel guilty for her past misdeeds. Smh the takes on her are always the worst, like it's either the Ei stans as you said completely defending her and saying shes a saint (blaming her wrongdoings on shogun just because she was the antagonist) like she's an interesting and realistic character who made many mistakes but willing to change but then on the other hand there's just the people who think Ei's just evil and a tyrant who 'murdered' Kazuha's friend. (she did kill him but only because of the duel) Conclusion shes not a heartless warrior but shes not a saint, shes herself with her own flaws that make her even more complex and i love her for that and for changing to a better person
@psychnoodles Precisely, people often point fingers at the Shogun for all the damage that's been done and while that isnt far from the truth, there is also the involvement of Ei since she is the one responsible of the puppet, the puppet master to say so. Because of this "split personaility", it was very easy for the fans of Ei to point fingers at the puppet but not Ei, as a way to keep her freed from the blame. And here's the thing.as you previously, leaving a whole nation under the care of ChatGPT isnt really the brightest idea considering the whole shitstorm it caused with the vision decree and how miserable Inazuma was turning to be, not to mention that she was never an apt leader to govern a nation. Her naivety/neglicent caused a lot of trouble for the nation, not to mention, 500 years passed and yet, she didnt even learnt how to guide the nation during that time but chose to just seclude herself, ignoring what was happening outside (like really, she couldnt even check for like 10 minutes or so that the puppet didnt make something stupid). In all regards, i think the reasons as to why people hate or dislike Ei are clear, she really wasnt the best ruler nor a person fit to be in such charge, her actions just brought a lot of consequences, which makes it hard to like or empathize and the AQ doesnt really help much. I just cannot see how people forgive easily everything that Ei has done to Inazuma
People projecting their head canon and expectations and when a story doesn’t met such thing it’s suddenly bad and when someone thinks something is bad they’re very much willing to ignore things and nitpick to fit their narrative
And those people then share on social media and it get spread and it influence other people to have those same opinions and thoughts because those people's opinions seem reasonable but looks like people nowadays can't form their opinion and just follow others
I would love to see you do a video like this for someone like Kokomi or Ayaka, both people who I felt like were brought down by the community story wise (people saying kokomi being poorly written and Ayaka gaslighting us during the archon quest) Hoping nothing but the best for you and for this video series!!
The problem with Kokomi is her own story quest tries too hard to make her look like some tactical genius when the more they try to show this the worse she comes off. 1: Her instruction manuals. While good on paper, their incredibly impractical since they contents is only useful when you can read it. Which in the travelers case we were given a book hours before the meet up and told “ in case something happens this can help” but when we end up using the book not only do we have no time to use it but the situation in question required a solution all the way in the last section of the book. 2: Her ending is just terrible. She had a bunch of soldiers try to start ANOTHER war with the shogunate even though they just barely survived the first one and all they get is a pat on the back and a promotion to a new military corps ( which brings up another flaw in and of itself since it implies that watsumi never had a stealth corps of any variety to begin with while Ei could just have the shuumatsuban spy on them or any other stealth corps spy on them as she pleases) As for Ayaka she pretty much did manipulate us into joining since the traveler was VERY adamant on not joining and when told no she basically had us listen to a bunch of sob stories about people losing their visions till we basically said yes and when we do she doesn’t really do anything to actually help us talk to the shogun since Yae pretty much does the heavy lifting
@@amari7782 Well said. Have nothing to add about kokomi, though i guess i liked how she deescalated the situation and that's at least something. As for ayaka, it's both the problem of her writing as well as the traveller's writing. We always end up agreeing too easily with anything that gets forced on us, like that time we helped Ning to rebuild the jade chamber only for Paimon to completely hijack our question because both her and ning assumed we came to ask about useless info we already knew. I'd personally ask every little detail she knows about the destruction of Khaenriah... but i digress. In ayaka's case it would've made much more sense if after listening to the sob stories we would still refuse to help, went to tenshukaku a couple days later and witnessed Thoma's "execution". We've built a good link with him so far so of course we would intervene. And only after we listened to the puppet's "you'll be inlate upon this statue (just because you're a walkign vision and i don't like you)" and escaped while barely saving our asses it would make sense for the traveller to willingly ask to join, because this tyrant must be taken down. As for Ayaka ending up being of not much help in the end, i'll just copypaste my different comment... What I believe should've been done with the resistance is Ayaka admitting she can't do a thing about the decrees, she just doesn't have enough power, so she asks the traveller to establish contact with the resistance so in the end they could join forces and storm the castle together (with maybe Ayaka coming in the first row so even Kamisato clan's future was at stakes now that she's acting against Shogun in the open). Would also be good to show the power of the resistance along the way to establish how much they can achieve and that it's clearly not enough to fight shogun. That would be both a good way to make the resistance relevant as well as make the internal resistance's (which is kamisato network) role to be actually important in the whole story instead of them just doing some small things here and there until the traveller and Yae solved almost everything on their own. But we got what we got...
@@Soundwave1900 the problem with the traveler is THEY WERE GOING TO ASK ABOUT THEIR SIBLING. Mihoyo acts like we will be reunited never happened and keeps shoving that question out everytime is read if asking how to get to the abyss or just doing what their sibling said and continue this journey
@@Soundwave1900 also as for khaenriah I doubt ninnguan would know that much more than anyone else since overall it’s not that valuable of information to anyone and at most she’d only care about relics that could be pawned off
Beautifully done. I've never understood how people saw Ei's story quest as a mere date. Tho rushed archon quest I understand her segment was the least effected by it writing wise. I always believed that mihoyo had much more in store for her and even after 2.5 I believe we're gonna get more. She really feels like the main character of her her own story. Or so to say Inazuma's whole arc.
Honestly those people are either hypocrites who don’t read and just act like any interaction with a female character means a date but are willing to ignore that Ayaka and 2/3 of the liyue story quest were also gigantic dating sims and say their some of the best writing in all of genshin. Or their magically expecting a singular story quest to just be Ei being told she’s wrong dumb and shouldn’t be the leader of Inazuma. Forget trying to actually do better no she needs to be constantly told how bad of a person is because that’s how character development works for these people
@@amari7782 Actually none of the Liyue story quests were remotely like dating sims. You must be talking about Hangouts? Lots of people complained about Ayaka's story quest being like a date too. Also, Ei is an archon with major significance to the overall plot hence why people had a different expectation for her story quest. Compare hers to Venti's and Zhongli's story quest and hers just falls flat. But I don't blame that on the writing - I blame the timing of her story quest. They do address the fact that she was wrong and that change wasn't always bad - but they needed an archon quest for that. Venti and Zhongli's stories after their first archon quest felt complete by the end of their first archon quest, so their story quests just fleshed them out more. It didn't have to deal with the baggage of completing or necessarily furthering their character development. You just learn more about who they are as a character. Ei's archon quest on the other hand clearly wasn't resolved yet after her first archon quest. It ends with her contemplating on her decisions and actions. So yes, she still needed to see that change wasn't necessarily bad - but that was a major plot point for her character development and that was better addressed by the first part of her second archon quest because the writers can then fully further her story. They could not do that with just a story quest so it felt... half-baked. Like it was 30% continuation of the archon quest, 30% hangout and 40% story quest. It didn't really resolve anything completely by the end of it and the second archon quest does a better job of making her see change wasn't bad. I feel like MHY/HYV did her dirty by trying to push her story quest too early before her full character arc even concluded. Then they could have just focused on us getting to know her more as a character. Maybe we could have had a story that had something to do about her time with her friends Chiyo, Kitsune Saiguu, the Tengu and her sister Makoto. People shouldn't expect her to realize her mistakes in an SQ but HYV made it so her SQ was a direct continuation of her AQ which just doesn't have the capacity to actually further her character arc. Then once her second AQ was out, her SQ just felt redundant. As a result, we got a half-baked story-archon quest instead.
@@Trisha_Yuu I think perhaps the problem is placing expectations on what content "should be." No one at HoYo has ever said an Archon Quest "should be" anything, so any expectations are assumptions. You might be surprised how much more enjoyable things are when you aren't attached to assumed expectations.
go the desperate fanboy wants to attract attention with false arguments. I would answer you right now but I'm tired of continuing to defeat you, I'll just give a summary instead of feeding you ego I'll give a summary to see if your head can process it: Ei has one of the worst developments of all, his story is very poorly done and more with the dating simulator and the puppet, Conteibuir and create the vision hunting decree. in fact several people DID die after losing their visions and how do I know? easy is explained in the description of the objects and artifacts that you get in the missions of the familiars and spirits but not all Itto lives by his hot blood and Ayaka and others also by sheer force of will, the goddess of salt that is pacifist It doesn't change anything she was able to defend perfectly but it was a treacherous attack so your poor argument has no place, Ei can be killed in the same way with the goddess of salt, by means of a treacherous attack, and the fact that you do not recognize your own lies that you say About Ei you will not make me change my mind what you say are more false than your imaginary girlfriend. Ei if he killed a lot of people is explained by the dialogues with the npc and in the lore of the artifacts but of course you don't know anything because you only watch videos of Streamers, the hunting decree was Ei's idea it is also explained in the lore of the artifacts another thing that you neither read nor realize. The puppet, although she sees herself, is still the ruler, even if you see that with the naked eye and the puppet only accepted the vision of eternity very reluctantly because she was defeated, seriously you continue with your fanboy lies. Let's see the people. If they hate Ei for causing the wars, the decrees and the deaths he caused, it is also seen in the artifacts, they don't hate Venti because he hides his identity the same with Zhongli but Ei is shown to the naked eye so your argument has no logic and the two of them did not let their people die or behave like tyrants. seriously, your argument seems to be taken from the forums of the Genshin-lovers and Ei if it was an accomplice that Scaramouche was corrupted because she abandoned him after creating him (it's the same, so if you say that she loves him after leaving him, it's like saying that your parents abandoned you when you were little and you say they love you? you really have serious problems) the blacksmith and others who pretended to be his friends betrayed him and that affected him, the Fatui only pushed him They were not the ones who started his behavior, really do you know how to think? because those are two different things.
Cool video. I would like to see one of these for Eula because a lot of people I see do her quest seem to misunderstand whats going on and what kind of person she is. Also another misconception with Ei I see is how they say she abandoned scaramouche and comparing to child abandonment which is a little insane to me and they she hated him for having emotions when thats not the case, she lets him go and seals his powers because she fellt bad and didnt want to force the gnosis on him, and she wanted him to have his own life. If she really didnt care she could have just destroyed him but she didnt.
I'm so happy this video was made. I finally found one more person who tried to look past her "villain" stance and try to understand what led to it, and how the puppet and Ei were totally different, but with subtle similarities. Her first story quest was one of the best starts to character development. And this is why Ei became from someone I despised at first glance, to someone I truly love and admire after that story quest. Made me decide to pull her weapon for her, for it belonged to her made her look so much more beautiful.
I've only been playing Genshin for about a month, and I just finished Ei's archon and story quests over the weekend. I'm surprised to read her story wasn't well-received when it came out, I though it was pretty solid. I became much more invested in Genshin's lore in general afterwards.
The overarching game plot and character sub plot has always been done beautifully but the region plot is flawed which is bad when they're the main exposure to the player. I agree with most your point about Ei's own storyline but imo Inazuma feel rushed. There is no reason to have Yae info dump at the end while most of that info are crucial, have been sprinkled around the region plot, but not touched upon. I can see the point and the thread of the inazuma story laid out but how they connect it is quite sloppy made it feel rushed.
My main problem is not the fact her actions are justifiable or not, or that she deservs redemption or not, my problem is the lack of consequences for her, no matter how much you guys cope to justify her actions "ah bruh it was her puppet not her" still this creat an imense amount of problems for an entire region, the fact that we get to this point and she does not even utter a single "sorry" its just tell me that she is not even aware of the damage she caused wich makes her even more dangerous and villanous than someone like scaramouche.
This 100%. The people of Inazuma have no idea that the Raiden Shogun and Ei are "separate people" so in their eyes all of the sins are on one singular person: their "archon". It bothers me that this is the case, yet the people are fawning over her and are all "glory to the allmighty Shogun!" when she literally abused so many of them; yet they are so enamored with her?! I was so mad when Ayato came out and was all "My duty is to serve the allmighty Shogun", like bro she was the cause of all of this. All of the sins she committed against her people are met with love and praise as if she didn't spend the last several years holding people hostage in Inazuma and turning vision holders into mindless husks when she steals what isn't hers to take. She never had to face any consequences whatsoever and it pisses me off. She tried to execute the Traveler when his back was turned and would have succeeded if Kazuha wasn't there with Tomo's vision; yet the very next scene after the battle is us willingly seeking her out to walk around town with her, eat candy, read light novels, and take a commemorative photo. Kujo Sara got her ass beat by Signora in front of the Shogun and was just left there, showing that the Shogun doesn't care for her most loyal servant; and then Sara is still "glory to the Shogun" and during the five kasen event wants to buy a figurine of her. WTF?!
@@sakurawolfgoddess89 Well most Inazumans are not affected by the vision hunt decree , just the vision users, which is less than 5% of the population. Even then, the decrees are only a couple of years old. Ayato and kamisato clan running the yashiro commission only happened because the shogun is merciful. Kujou Sara thinks that Raiden shogun gave her the vision that caused her to survive an otherwise lethal fall, which meant that even after all the events in tenshukaku, she thinks that the fact she is alive is all because of her and is willing to serve all her life to the shogun, hence her unwavering loyalty and fanaticism to the shogun.
@@mikeoxmaul3776 The Shogun is not merciful. The new event explains that the Kamisato clan almost fell from grace and that the only reason they were saved is not because the Shogun is such a nice person, but because Yae convinced Ei to have them be in charge of festivals. She was perfectly ok with their clan falling into ruin (ironically enough, it would be because of her own creation: Scaramouche), it was only because her best friend suggested it.
@@mikeoxmaul3776 I just don't really consider that merciful. Ei only has Yae as a friend, I think the last thing she would really want to do is upset Yae. She didn't care about the Kamisato clan, she only cared about Yae's opinion of her. Is that really being merciful, or just doing your friend a favor?
Late comment but I don't remember people calling it a date quest literally meant it. It just seemed like a quest from the character hangout rather than one fitting for an archon quest.
Ei has always been my favorite character, but I also somewhat agreed with some of the people who hated her, not fully understanding her myself. This video makes me much more confident, and now I have a video to point people too!
The fact that ei herself is strolling around inazuma city in irodori festival is showing her growth and wanting to know more about the current inazuma.
I think se people refer to the 2.1 Ei quest as a "date quest" because they wanted that quest to be lore and drama heavy, with big revelations. And Some other people wants to held Ei accountable for everything that Shogun and Tricommission did, so they wanted that quest to be about Ei watching what has become of Inazuma in much more depressing tone.
Finally thank u people just believe her to be an evil waifu and most people don't even know who Ei is they call her baal.she is one of the best written characters in this game and I wish we get more of her interaction with other characters
Idk how to explain it… Ai gave up on her principles too easily and faced no consequence for her and her puppets actions. If your gonna be a villain be a villain with an empathetic backstory/goal; who changes through negative consequences or slow development. She had neither. In my opinion Ai was a horrendous ruler and her puppet was a dictator by Ai’s own design. Now we are learning that Ai created Scaramouche then threw him away for her ‘perfect puppet’. So sorry not sorry I don’t like her character, mostly because she literally caused so many horrible things and all she got as a consequence was puff piece where she changed her views and suddenly we’re supposed to be ok with her even after everything she did. Ultimately you’re right. I don’t understand her. Her way of thinking, her justification for her actions, and her goal are all hard for me to empathize with or even understand. Funny enough I empathize and like the Fatui more because I can at least understand that they all believe in their actions and are working towards their goal even if we don’t know what that goal is yet.
Her name is Ei, not Ai. And you can understand Fatui evil behavior because they have a goal but you cannot understand Ei? Ei froze Inazuma in time to keep people safe and from fear that it could happen something like Khaenri'ah. Ei's goal was to keep Inazuma and her people safe even though it came from a big price. She didn't want them to have visions because humans can easily be corrupted by the power (rip Teppei). And Eu is changing. She put Shogun in the shadows and wants to start handling it. She is learning the meaning of eternity that Makoto had and also trying to be the best for her people. We don't see it but we got those glimpses in her story quest. Wrong would be if she turned good and perfect out of nowhere. She didn't. Even after the first quest, she was still scared of consequences and erosion that she prefers to let Shogun handle most of it. She's taking slowly and that's what is called growth. You cannot erase thousand of years of thinking and believes in seconds. Besides, they are Gods. They aren't meant to beg for forgiveness or be flawless. I also don't agree with Venti and Zhongli is my least favorite archon but I like them for being God types with flaws.
Thank u, thank u for addressing this. I've been telling this to the people who misunderstood her in the internet but ppl don't listen they just wanna mock her. Thank u. A character I relate a lot
Thank you for this video! Raiden is my absolute favorite character and I couldn’t agree more with everything you say!! Her character development and quests have been the best in Genshin so far. Nothing else is even close…
I think what players dont understand is that all archons so far are benevolent in nature, albeit Ei not knowing how to handle humans correctly since it's Makoto who actually handles the welfare. Also, they dont understand the culture of Inazuma. Inazuma is a nation which prides itself in combat. There's a lot of references that weaponry is Inazuma's pride and glory. Thus, we can conclude that Inazuma's culture is that, if you want to get a resolution, combat is the way. We can see that with Signora and Kazuha's friend. And that's what we did when we defeated Ei to abolish the vision hunt decree. Maybe it's disappointing that Ei doesnt know what the people really want but that's why Makoto was the appointed archon. And the two story quests are great feat of how someone, even an archon, can show growth. The quests are not boring since if you understand it, it will relate to anyone on a personal level.
Taking 'command' in the resistance was a waste of time and added to the rushed feeling of the second act of Ei's story. The final confrontation was impactful but its is reduced by the chore of what came before it. I feel it would have been better used with Yae, learning more about Ei's possibly motivations and learning how to utilize the ethereal realm against her.
I don't believe when people complain about archon quest being rushed or done half way, they are referring to EI specifically. Rather they are talking about how most of us expected the "war" to get more attention. More battles and cut scenes involving the traveler as a part of that war. On a whole the war because it had all of like 2-3 cutscenes showing the actual war side of the war even if they claim it took place over months to us it appeared to last less than a week. This discrepancy is due to the lack of fleshing out of content for said war. It felt insanely rushed with the conclusion happening the very next patch after we learned of it. It should have been around NOW in 2.5-2.6 range that peace was finally found. This would make the war feel like an actual war instead of a single battle for a single cutscene. So yes they did rush the archon quest and they did not give that war proper attention. Ei however has been a slow change with her story quests coming a few patches apart.
technically i disagree with you, the misconception of being rushed kinda should be thrown out the window. One, even before we got to inazuma this war was already there, the vision HUNT decree was there already and so was the sakoku decree knowing that, it means the war only ever ended once we defeated ei and her ideals. A story can have a constant war before we even arrive there. Edit: if they ever had added more "war" scenes the whole plot wouldn't make sense, u don't need constant scenes of war to know there was one
We as the traveler came in the midle of the war And its becouse of us that the war stoped The war was there for 1 year We just came in and stoped it Do people expect to waste time on every batle Our goal was to find raiden, talk to her but in order to do that we must stop the war Now for the peace part Watatsumi and inazuma still are in peace negotiations as mentioned by kokomi and yae in inazuma event
Considering all this, the archon quest was overall handled very well. It now makes sense that the resistance was less focused on, because the point of the quests was to get every perspective needed on the electro archon and eternity, while learning about Ei’s past, followed by Ei’s story quests, which gave her perspective, and showed us how that perspective changed.
I don't understand while Ei's first quest a date when a whole Ayaka quest exist.. Besides, Ei doesn't really show interest on Traveller and almost all story quest are us accompanying the characters.. Also, especially that Ei is holed up on the PoE for a long time so of course the first thing to do is to show her the current Inazuma..
Finally got around to watching this one. While I generally agree with everything you've explained, I think there's a misunderstanding in regards to point 2. While calling it a "date" is pretty disingenuous and reductive, I think it stems from the quest feeling incredibly off tone. I understand what it does for Ei, and the lessons she takes from it are very important for her growth, but at the same time, this is a quest that follows the act 3 archon quest, yet it doesn't feel like any of the stakes are even remotely addressed. I think its natural to assume that, at that point in the story, Ei should take responsibility for the actions she allowed the puppet to take. Inazuma is still burning from a war that ended literally yesterday(kokomi's story quest about peace talks wasn't available yet when this first came out), and instead of acknowledging this, she goes on a walk to see how inazuma has changed. It feels like something is missing, that we missed her ever saying "yeah whoops, my bad" and I think that's what many people were expecting going into her personal quest. The quest, while important, yes, did not meet those expectations, and as a result, it gets reduced to being called "poorly written" and a "date". It isn't either of those things, but it is definitely a little out of place.
Bless you for this video! Ei has for real one of the best developments in-game but this game being one where parts of the story come out over time and not all at once makes people jump to conclusions and voice their dissatisfaction over something, which was never meant to be completed yet, for not being complete. And I just want to add that Ei is right now the only Archon who didn't dodge a single question traveler asked her because unlike the other two and her sister she never really had any ties to celestia. There's nothing holding her back and that was really such a nice change for once imo and also showed that just like traveler Ei was someone who got dragged into something she didn't understand
this is well said, the many misconceptions kinda needs to put behind and see that ei really has a character development which is why i like her story the most Ei never killed tomo as ei was in the plane of euthymia so she was unaware the puppet had ever executed tomo after he lost the battle with kujou sara. in addition to this - about the rushed misconception (i agree with teyvat historia) many people say its rush and complain that the story was rushed because "we only got one war scene" So let me make this clear, The traveler did not arrive to inazuma at the beginning of the war. We came in the middle of the fight where it was in complete turmoil, Our goal was simply to talk to Ei but to do so we had to stop the war that had been going on for a year. We don't need constant "war" scenes to justify inazuma being in war. Making more war scenes only wastes our time and doesn't really add up to the plot at all nor give the traveler their goal in talking to the electro archon. It's like they have to solve the human part of ideals rather then solving it from the exact source. Nor should the complaints be based on ei. Ei was deceived and worse yet the fatui were influencing said war. in the irotori festival Kokomi and yae made known that watatsumi and inazuma are still in peace negotiations which means it clarifies enough that the war has ended because there is nothing else for them to fight each other a battle between two groups are each group fighting for what they believe in. But because the traveler got the electro archon to Abolish the vision hunt decree there was no need to keep fighting. Like i will say again **u don't need multiple war scenes to justify it was happening it'll only waste our time to get to the electro archon** Edit: tbh most people who complain act like they know how to make a story .-. make a script and see how that'll work out for ya
Raiden Ei is one of the top 3 characters in game with her lore, people really don't get it and had a lot of complains because they just focus on the superficial aspects. She has many layers when you start analysing every part of her quest and over imposing it based on her past.
this video helped a lot i really liked ei's second story quest but i was still on the fence about her and this made me understnad her character more the comparisone with zhongli and venti is what really helped
The murdered argument for kazuha friend is stupid, You dont challenge a powerful warrior to a duel without threat of death much less a god. People need to understand that Ei is. God her time is more valuable than a pesant's life whose one ambition is to fight shogun. If there was not the threat of death every one who ever picked up a sword 2 days ago would challenge her continuesly and many times.
He challenged Kujou Sara not Ei. And Tomo was literally trying to take a stand against the vision hunt decree. And saw the shogun’s attack, as an ultimate form of punishment, to be able to block an attack like that… is the ultimate form of resistance, especially to stand up to a decree that wasn’t morally right. Why do you think his death was one of the reasons that sparked the resistance?
Probably because I started playing later, in patch 2.4, I noticed the writting of Inazuma as a whole was very well done. I understood most things, empathyzed with most characters, and also noticed the writting got way better than the first stories. Inazuma´s story might have flaws like everything in life, but I think it is also because they were trying to make the story a bit more complex, and introduce new things too. Compared to the Prologue quests which was just saving a sad dragon, and Chapter 1 which was just helping Zhongli doing a funeral for himself (which btw... felt way more like a date than Ei´s first quest), the Chapter 2 story is way more complex. Now that we are in Chapter 3 we can see that the stories are getting even more complex and better written, which is amazing. And btw, I love Ei, started playing the game for her and Amber.
This is the best Genshin video I've seen! I couldn't agree more, and I've been consistently confused by the community's reaction to Ei and the Inazuma storyline in general. Ei is my favorite character in the game, and she easily has had the most well developed character arc thus far. Thanks for this video! I hope it changes some minds! 😁
This is fine and all, but most of the in game characters do not know that Ei and the puppet are two separate entities. So the complete 180 (or complete disregard for her actions) everyone in the in game world has done on their stance towards her is what really bothers me about all of this.
She herself has said many times that Raiden and she are the same, that she does not consider her as a different being. So that part of the video is wrong.
I feel like the entire Narukami Island never hated her, just feared. They struggled to understand what's her reasoning, but generally had faith there is some greater plan. In fact I believe this is the biggest reason why the Tenryou Commissioner got away with false reports for as long as he did.
@@clover.8147 Yeah... the puppet is not separate character. Puppet is Raiden Ei, just reduced to the role of ruler and enforcer of her ideal. The whole point of her second quest was her inner struggle, but made literal. She wasn't fighting "AI gone rogue", she was fighting her older self.
Why are people of any religion okay with their god doing things they would otherwise consider wrong? Because that is their god and they hold them on a different level than they do other mortals. It's kind of just how religions work. It's obvious to us the players that the archons are not infallible, but the people in that world see gods differently.
@@ItzaMystri exactly this. It also deals with the question of what happens when an absolute entity were to coexist with mortals. The answer is that you can't do much about the entity. You can't punish it because you can't harm it in any way. The people of inazuma understood that. The resistance can only hope to change her mind and nothing else. Once she has changed her mind, no one else can ever expect her to face punishment for what she caused because no one can force her to. When people asked why God doesn't come down to earth to rule the world, the answer is that, you'd lose your agency. Once God decide on something and you disagree with thst decision, can you do anything to change that? Nope.
I agree with most of what you said, but the Archon Quest IMO later half was rushed. Not that the concept was wrong or bad, just the execution. The quest did not build up and pace the various twists, certainly not as good as the initial build up. The execution is not unforgivable or anything, it's just not as good as Hoyoverse usual skill. It'd be ok or better than many other RPGs. Though it's also very understandable, AFAIK they had a change in writing staff during that period and it took some transitioning.
I think the reason she is detested is for the simple logic that, if the decree had never existed, he would still be alive. Since he asked *exclusively* for the duel because of the decree.
@@clover.8147 those same people don’t understand that he would’ve found a way to die to the musou no hitotachi one way or another with or without the decree. People seem to ignore that in his eyes the decree was the perfect exudes to see it first hand
@@clover.8147 His Ambition(Kazuha’s Friend) was to witness and survive the Musuo No Hitotachi. Kazuha knew what he was getting himself into and mentioned how he holds no anger twords the shogun for his friends death. But for the Vision Hunt Decree which was established because before the Traveler arrived Ei wanted things to stay the same no matter what, for Inazuma to be in eternal stasis. Visions in her eyes were something that defied eternity(also the Fatui that tricked the Puppet as well). Since the Vision Hunt and the Sakuko Decree have both been abolished Kazuha doesn’t have a dislike twords his archon. In fact Sangonomia Kokomi also holds respect for the Shogun even though it was Ei who killed her god.
I bring up Kokomi because you’d think she would hate the shogun(Ei) but the fact she doesn’t means that they understand what the Fatui did and know that she had the best intentions just not the best exicution. Makoto promised Eternity to Inazuma and Ei wanted to keep her late sister’s promise but in a way that was different. Now Ei is taking a more hands on approach to ruling Inazuma and is finding the Eternity in the idea of Inazuma
this her Kokomi's About Raiden Shogun: Now that the Vision Hunt Decree is over, Watatsumi Island has once again returned to normal life. It has never been my intent to scrutinize the rights and wrongs of the Shogun's actions, even to this day. What I do care about is the future of our island. It is my hope that the Shogun will fulfill her promise and that we can live with the Shogunate in peace. However, if there comes a day when she once again casts aside the aspirations of the people, I can assure you that we won't sit by and watch.
The first quest actually make sense. It shows her true self in which will let us know the real her which os different from the puppet. Hence, the archon is not as ruthless as the puppet. After anlong time secluding herself in the Plane, the first quest is refreshing for her: to learn the changes of Inazuma and it's people, and also a move for us to learn about her personality, characteristics and thoughts. If the first quest illustrates her making a move to about the current problems, it will not make sense, because the reports given to her were only little and not in full detail, besides appearing as ei will overwork her, just like the last quest where she barely can walk as we investigate the leylines. The first quest let us know her and let her know us, which makes both parties learn to trust and make friends.
Just another point I like to add here, Makoto was the electro archon and hence the possessor of the electro gnosis. There is no where in lore stating that Ei became the electro archon (in the eyes of Celestia, as there is no mention of Ei using the gnosis) Ei was considered the electro archon by the people because in the eyes of the people both makoto and Ei were one and the same. I assume scaramouche was the initial attempt at creating the body that could house the gnosis, but it failed and we know from the lore neither Ei (who transferred her conscious to the sword and hence had no physical form) or the puppet had the gnosis with them. So it would be incorrect to assume that Ei given something of that belonged to her while in reality they just passed what was Makoto's. Just a passing thought while writing this comment an interesting thing to note is that we haven't actually seen the gnosis, it would be interesting to know whether it is like visions in that they become gray when the owner passes or they retain their power.
I would have to disagree with some of the points laid regarding Ei. From my perspective, I see Ei as a tragic character driven by trauma. Her pursuit for eternity fits well in the survival and preservation of what she has left, her nation. Even the realm she resides in when we first encounter her fits the inner anguish of the like. If we are going with your approach that Ei realizing she can be wrong, its good foundation that simply even Gods can make human mistakes. I had hope she would have stood her ground on her eternity even if she was beaten, I feel her "changing her mind" in her goals was way too fast for it ti be resolved. It may be a broken record but I stand not for the majority but consider it as a fact that the story felt not incomplete but the pacing was horrendous.
Raiden Ei's character should be analysed together with concepts of Zen Buddhism and other philosophies associated with mono no aware, or the sad acceptance and appreciation of transience. The crux of the archon quest in inazuma is actually about this. This is also one of the hallmarks of some of the most enduring Japanese fiction, poetry, and literature. Raiden ei/shougun has more motifs related to transience than eternity. I mean, their theme song is a dead giveaway. I would argue that the geo archon and liyue has more themes and motifs related to 'eternity'/longevity, based on their emphasis on tradition. Go praise mihoyo for incorporating this irony in her character. In fact, lightning is another symbol for ephemeral glory. Edit: when analysing stories by mihoyo, seeing characters as villains or 'good guys' vs 'bad guys' is inherently flawed. Mihoyo is really good at creating characters with grey morality. Instead, we should look at it from the standpoint of conflicting ideals, as simply antagonist vs protagonist. Seriously, just look at Otto apocalypse from honkai. And kamisato Ayato as well as childe's moralities are questionable too. So is zhongli's actions when he imperiled liyue by striking a deal with the fatui. The difference here is that ei's misguided actions caused a lot more suffering. I liken ei's actions to decarabian who is also bringing woe to the people thinking that he is helping them.
i don't think we can't ever say any character is a flat out 'good person' in this game, but the consequence in inazuma as a whole seem...lacking. There's WAR and both side lost their men but the game make it seem like a long term protest more than a battlefield it is, but i guess you can say that vision holder is the minority so it isn't a big deal(a living hell for some,a minor inconvenience for others). it would be nice to see her acknowlege the watasumi island soilders or some of the people that their vision get took away. or is it happens outside of the kamera? who knows?(you can say i hold grudge because i live in a country with dictator government) She once fear the eternally nature of change, and now she had learned to understand it. it's admirable, but until i see how her will dealing with things that will catch up to her, i can't say i like her.
tbh, I'd personally call it a long term protest considering the War only lasted for a year. in addition, all messed up things were more or less caused by the Fatui.
2nd point: I found the quest to be ill timed rather than just bad, we had a very clear goal in going to Inazuma and it was largely ignored until we got Ei's second story quest. We were not there to help Inazuma, we wanted to find answers about the war that changed our sister. I love Genshin's story, but I can't ignore how jumbled and poorly paced its been lately. If quest 1 and 2 were mixed more and the timey-wimey stuff done away with, it would have been amazing, 10/10. I think that's why so many people thought the quest itself bad, but I do agree with what you said about it setting up Ei's character, I just don't think it was appropriate for it to play out like it did without addressing the elephant in the room: The cataclysm. 4th point and somewhat the whole video: Ei did still make the puppet and give it, its orders. Sure the Fatui had a hand, but if you make a robot and someone else tricks it into killing someone under your commands, you still go to jail. Still a good point about the duels though. I don't think this is a bad thing for her character either, pushing deeply flawed traits like this are what give characters spice. Its just too bad Genshin refuses to play up the more harsh side of their characters. Like we've continued to ignore that Zhong Li 100% got some civilians and soldiers killed. If the second hydra killed some of the guards (As noted by Keqing), then you bet Osial caused some death. Yet we ignore that fact because Genshin refuses to explore it. I loved the idea that the archons were a set of people making the harsh, hard to make decisions for their version of a greater good. Imagine a scene with Zhong Li or Ei having remorse for the lives they took in their pursuit where the game could even give us two options, one where we console them for the greater good angle and one where we show disappointment in them. (Ultimately not changing the story still, but cool flavor.) 5th point: I get that the video is Ei focused, but I don't think the larger problem is her. The story felt lesser for sure, especially when Liyue's story quests gave us so many more answers and had multiple threads of plot moving together. inazuma's story only had the one thread, which isn't bad, but to a lot of people that might come off as cheap. Pacing wise it was definitely a much faster story told, though this is subjective. I found it too fast, but I wouldn't say someone was wrong for thinking otherwise. The main thing I wanted to touch on here though, is that the main quest of our MC was sidelined, despite obvious attempts to make it the main reason we even came to Inazuma in the first place. The moment we got to sit down with Ei, we should have sprung the question. The longer we waited on that note, the less impact it was going to have and thus why it was a passing comment when it did happen. I seriously wish the MC's story took a larger overall role in Genshin's story telling (I've yet to do the current quest, fingers are crossed its good). Also, as a last aside, the cherry blossom tree timey-wimey moment didn't need to happen. To clarify, I mean the seed being planted in the past from the present, the Makoto bit was great. These kinds of story elements often come across as cop outs, where a writer can try to make a story seem smarter by having the setup be one where characters have different recollections of time. I personally can't stand that stuff, but that's not to say it can't be done right and even well, I just lean more towards this being cheap on Hoyoverse's part. I want to say that I love your videos and mean no disrespect with this comment. I just wanted to share how I felt about the points. Again, I love Genshin's story, I found Inazuma to be on the weaker end for me, but ignoring contrast, it was still pretty good.
Something to consider is that Ei has no reason to talk to us about anything that matters until she becomes indebted to us by our actions in her Act 1 quest. Additionally, considering Yae said she'd put resources into it, you'd think she'd ask Ei, too, no? As far as pacing goes, there are a decent handful of stories out there that fit into a certain "traveling" genre that all share a commonality in uneven pacing. Spice and Wolf is a well known one and one of Genshin's NPCs actually directly references another, Kino no Tabi. It's reflective of the reality of traveling. Some days you deal with the mundane, other days you deal with Gods.
i mean, with the addition of the chasm, some of the world quests now kinda question the decision of Zhongli wanting a retirement as a scheme between liyue and fatui. like how his retirement resulting the Qixing to antagonize the whole fatui against liyue even though their relationship were really good prior to the event of liyue's archon quest.
If that's considered ill timed then so is literally everything else. And you know what? I agree with that idea. Genshin operates on scheduled releases meaning everything we get that pertains to story is episodic. Nothing entirely wrong with that but the story is always going to be feel disjointed and "ill timed". Not that it means we can't criticize the quests on their own but trying to say certain quests are badly timed is a moot point given that 1, those quests are entirely optional and aren't specified on when exactly they even occur and 2, the fact of the matter is that those same quests are episodic and therefore incomplete. So if we got both chapters of Ei's quest right then and there then I doubt you'd call it ill timed. That's the unfortunate truth of how Genshin is structured and is more so a problem with the game's rate of content rather than it's sequence of events. As for this point, perhaps this is more head canon than I would like it to sound but I'm fairly certain Genshin has no interest in showing us these characters in the way you suggest because they are in fact, gods. They do not die unless they are outright murdered as far as we can tell and only fade by way of erosion which is essentially treated as a form of self corruption due to long life. I find that the game makes it a point to show that the gods do not view humanity in the same regard as how we would view each other. They are not only above humans but do understand them to a certain degree while also using their perspective on how to interact with them even if it is wrong. They're not evil(so far anyways) but the deaths of a few or even a hundred while their respective regions still stand wouldn't really effect them when they've all lived long enough to see death come to many be it through natural or unnatural means. Ei, for instance, is a warrior who's trained in perfect combat and understands what it means to fight and die with honor. She lives by the samurai code so I for one don't see why it would be necessary for us to see her mourning the dead soldiers of the war we help fight in when she would be the one who understands the most that if they fought and died for their beliefs then they died with honor and don't need her pity or remorse. It wouldn't make sense for us to get a scene of her honoring the recently dead but what does is seeing how she reacted to seeing the dead once more during her second chapter. As for Zhongli, the entire first chapter of his quest was us being given more insight as to how he not only views the events of the past but has fully reconciled with the many clearly difficult decisions he's had to make in order to win the archon war. We may not agree or want him to show remorse or some type of feeling beyond what we see but he is a long lived god and constantly sees what the aftermath of the war brought. I thought his first quest was intriguing but also more than enough to establish that he's fully aware of what he did in the past but understands that it doesn't need to be dwelled on or rectified since it's pretty obvious he's done playing archon. I just don't think Genshin wants us to fully side with the archons when we know what they were before. Dain is the one who helps give us this idea of not fully trusting the gods. While we may eventually get along with them, the game doesn't actively push us to trust everything they say and do. In fact, they give us plenty of reasons of why not to and that we should use them as they've essentially used us: a means to an end. They have great character to them but ultimately I think it's clear that the story doesn't really want us to be fully sympathetic to them and that they are still gods so any real consequences they would have can't exactly be enacted as there is literally no one but *us* to do so and quite frankly, that's not our problem. And I wanna say that I do agree with this last point but I wanna add something that I think is the much bigger problem that Mihoyo has which is priorities. I think they've gotten somewhat better and hopefully Sumeru is treated better as well but Inazuma was definitely an on the receiving end of some poor judgement on the story towards the end of the quest even though, ironically, I consider Inazuma as a whole the best they've offered
Thank you for this video. I always found it annoying how people interpreted Ei's archon quest as a "date". To me it felt like the traveler was acting as a guide as well as a bridge for Ei to close the gap between herself and the present day Inazuma. Furthermore I don't get why people said The Raiden Shogun murdered Kazuha's friend when he knew he was in a duel to the death.
Your final reason about Ei was the BIG reason why Ei became my favorite archon. Compared to Zhongi and Venti, Ei already dealt with her Gnosis problem so many years ago and to top it off, she cut her ties with Celestia, so really the Gnosis is useless to her anyway. Plus, her development was WAY more handled then Venti and Zhongi's as while they already had their development in the past and are the same, Ei meanwhile has so much more room to grow and change, making her story quests as well as the Inazuma arc the most concentrated of the game so far as well as being my personal favorite arc. Don't get me wrong I love the 2 gods that we got and their voice actors from both languages are very very solid, but Ei just pushes the growth that I wanted from the archons and in the end it was nice to finally see that. Nice job on the video!
Even kazuha is aware that his friend wasn't "murdered", he doesn't have any hatred toward the shogun for murdering his friend but he hated her for being a dictator. Same thing with Sara, he didn't hate her for winning the duel that ended up with his friends death but because she helped said dictator. Kazuha's friend died and honorable death and saying he was murdered undermines it.
The comparison with "moving away from your hometown and come back" was spot on. I moved from my hometown after living there for almost 30 years, and every time I visit it, I realize how (1) it was always gradually changing, it's simply that I was unaware of it because I was immersed that and (2) those small changes look like one big chunk of change when you go visit after a prolonged absence.
It would be nice if we have La Signora of this as well, as she's the literal meaning of being misunderstood, as most just ignorantly hates the character just for kicking Venti and etc without knowing why was the case, also honestly she should've been first before her since Ei's is mostly being saved and just about Eternity in general but that just me so yeah...
Ei already adjusted long time ago how to wield her own power without Gnosis. The only thing to work on for her is how she would adjust with her people, or let's say at the present time. That's why her story quest misinterpret by other players as a date quest, coz it might too simple to look but that quest is just the beginning for her to coup up the new Inazuma, now that she's out from plane of euthymia. Surely Inazuma's story is not yet done. I am actually excited to know how Fatui response to Inazuma during Signora's death , since it is one of the most memorable cutscene in Genshin Impact.
Ei is definitely a good character and arguably the most developed in the genshin cast, there's no denying that. However, there's also no denying that the second half of the main Inazuma storyline was rushed with WAY too many things happening off screen. That and the resistance just basically became useless until they stormed Tenshukaku (though I still don't know how they planned to defeat a literal God), despite such a great introduction. My one problem with Ei is though she's learned the eternity she was chasing didn't exist and was impossible, we have yet to see any real remorse towards the (by her own words now) wrongful death and destruction she's caused. It's like Hoyoverse just completely skipped over that.
Ei had one of the worst character developments, he should be aware and apologize to the whole town for the damage he did with the decrees, rather the town of Inazuma would have "You are not welcome" and have banned Ei from attending the festival and while closing the door in his face. that MY rewrite the entire Inazuma arc from the beginning and that Ei observes the consequences of his actions.
@@sebastiancastro3524 Very bold statement. Very exaggerated too. I'm not sure if you watched the video or not, but considering her backstory the fact that she was even able to develop as a character is a real great feat in its own. The fact that she lost everyone, and everything that kept her sane, saw first hand what Celestia was capable of if they didn't like something and was forced to live with that anxiety for the rest of her life. As someone who lived with a brief kind of anxiety in a period of my life, I can safely describe it as the worst period of my fucking life 😭. She was able to go outside and realize that her eternity, her *heavenly ideal* was nothing short of impossible after she convinced herself it was the only way for 500 YEARS. She should be held accountable for her actions yes, she did some bad, but as she kept her nation safe for 500 years on her own casting her out entirely is a bit much for just less than a year of the VHD.
@@ceoofhamburgermeat6712 wow, here is another Ei SIMP that only says "He protected his nation, he is my waifu, my love, my wife" So you literally sound the same as Ei's Bootlicking Obsessives. He did NOT protect his nation. I literally provoked wars, deaths, let all her people die, she is a murderous dictator. For you to say that ridiculousness typical of a SIMP is as if you were telling me that Stalin is a role model for destroying Germany from 1940-1945. when Stalin himself committed horrible crimes. Same with Ei, he didn't protect anything and his past is just damage control to justify the horrible crimes he committed. and YOU equal to Ei's obsessive idiots defend her because waifu.
I feel like the whole shenanigan about people's opinions about Ei is badly summarized in tiny twitter thinkpieces and it hurts the interpretation of her story (whether it be rushed or not), Ei is literally the most round character in Genshin so far, an Archon to boot, for someone so untouchable and revered to just change her mind so drastically is pretty significant in terms of her arch, and the repercussions of it would probably carry over to other storylines, too, I can only imagine. Anyway I agree with the video, it definitely deserved a video, all I'm saying is twitter really isn't the best place for well fleshed out opinions on things 🥴
The fact is, Ei is a God and the Head of State and she has responsibilities to her people. The problems directly came from the Fatui, the commissions, and the puppet's limitations but not knowing/addressing those problems was wrong. Ei was a neglectful leader with absolutely no remorse. Yes, she grew as a character and she finally accepted that her previous beliefs were not right. But she still did not acknowledge that her own people were experiencing hunger and suffering. I'm not even talking about the Resistance, I'm talking about her own people (civilian NPCs) and soldiers (as shown in the initial part of this chapter and through Ayaka's requests). I really don't get why the locals just forgot about that and act like she is some sort of idol. Yes, vision holders were a minority. But everyone suffered because of her negligence. Can someone even truly change without remorse and regrets for their wrong doings?
I do get your point, but the answer is a giant gray area between confirmed lore and theory: for example we don't know how much Ei truly knew about the state of affairs or how she observes the outside world (could be anything from only the reports of the tri-commission, which we know were false, to actively observing, only the latter would picture her as an ignorant dictator). For why (most of) her people still respect and love her: she rules for 500 years, as far as most people r concerned even 2000 and things only went down one year ago, they have faith in the god that made their land prosper for centuries
Like you said the so called plot holes people are complaining about will be filled in Look how much the Honkai impact story line has evolved and we were thinking for years about loose ends and then when the story was in the right place boom big reveal that pulls some 10 story chapters back they are building the world as they go
I love the new format! And you put eloquently into words what I was thinking the whole time about the quest lines being "not really thought through/undeveloped/rushed". Thank you! :)
The more vocal part of the community are "internet kids", the ones who can't possibly understand or doesn't try to understand the motives and reasoning of characters and the story, and judge things at face value, and that's why we see so many complains about so many things, specially when it comes to the story aspect of the game. A lot of Genshin Characters are misunderstood a lot because some of the kids can't differentiate between memes and facts and again, judges things too quickly. Well that was to be expected from a community as big as Genshin. Let's just hope their screamings won't affect the story and the workers behind those. There are those who understands the story though, and there also those who throws some good critiques regarding it. It's just that they does not scream on the internet so much, so we don't come across them every five minutes or so xD
The sad thing is that it isn't just kids. I see whole ass adults who also only look at things at a surface level. But then immediately put themselves on some pretentious high horse as if they're Stephen King levels of novelist and know what's good/bad writing.
Ahh, yes, the puppet. The puppet programmed by Raiden Ei. The one that was physically incapable of changing its mind from the directives Ei programmed it with. That puppet. I don't think delegating atrocities to a robot with no free will really absolves her of them. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Ei say that she was aware of everything the Fatui were doing and it didn't pose a threat to Eternity? So it's not like she was ignorant of the war, corruption, delusions, Tatarigami, island-exploding, etc. it just didn't matter to her so she left it in the hands of her robot. While I agree that the "date quest" thing is filtered through the lens of "this game is an anime gf gacha," the underlying criticism of "it's pretty weird to suddenly be having a friendly hangout with the oppressive dictator who was trying to kill us 10 minutes ago." Both from an angle of "why are we cool with her?" and "why is she cool with us?"
Why were we cool with Childe? The Traveler sort of acknowledged Ei's motives when it was pointed out that those that seek their ambitions often lose their lives when compared to those who do not. The Traveler thought of Teppei. The VHD was still wrong, as it left them with a life not worth living, a concept reflected in Yae's dicussion with Ei about the whole of Inazuma: Stripped of the ability to change, Inazuma (and its people) would exist merely for the sake of existing (which is the existence the hollowed out prior-Vision holders were left with). What is the point of that? Ei's methods were wrong, but what was acknowledged was that she was doing it because she genuinely thought it was what was best. She was wrong, but she wasn't doing so out of malevolence. At the time, defending her definition of Eternity was her defending what she believed to be best for her people. She bore us no ill-will because her opposition to us was not personal, and we had managed to successfully convey the will of her people to her. In that final boss fight in Act 3, we actually HELPED her, and she recognized that. The thing is, someone who is doing the wrong thing for the right reasons can be helped to change, because it is much easier to help a person see better courses of action than it is to change the priorities that guide them. We wanted to help Inazuma and the person who can make it better was willing to take our help...if we really wanted to help Inazuma why wouldn't we gladly take that opportunity?
She was aware of everything, sure. But she was just uncapable of seeing the wrong in all of that because of her state of mind. Ei says more times that I wish that she's knows that she needs to do better. She says this too many times, that I think this is for fans to make it very clear that she's aware a redemption arc is needed haha So, She was so isolated that she lost empathy to everything. That's why Yae needed the Traveler to be able to fight Ei and WIN, in order to open Ei's eyes and see what is Inazuma now. This was the only way for Ei to consider modifying the rules of the puppet. Also remember, Traveler is pretty much neutral, he/she was affiliated with both resistance and shogunate. Traveler is often in a better position to mediate and solve a conflict because of this neutral/outsider position. Ayaka knows this, and that's why she basically begs for Traveler's help. Also this is why Traveler is able to see the good in Ei while people like Kazuha or Kokomi would be understandably uncapable of doing that. This is why Traveler is able to sympathize with Childe, and we don't even question ultimate decisions of other characters like Zhongli. We respect his way of doing things with contracts which is part of Liyue's culture.
@@effortlessfury We aren't really cool with Childe, though? Contrary to what fan art will have you believe, every time we've met Childe since his misdeeds, we've been hiding his identity for someone else's sake(To preserve Teucer's childhood in his story quest, to keep Xinyan from attacking him and getting her ass kicked in Labyrinth Warriors) Signora also wanted to make the world a better place through very sketchy means, and we challenged her to a duel to the death and got her fucking atomized. And we've seen way more of the suffering caused by Ei's misdeeds than Signora's. We wanted to help Inazuma... Yeah, sure, then why keep the person who fucked it up in power? We're already part of a violent rebellion, why not overthrow the government?
Overthrow the government ? I'm sorry but we clearly not defeat Ei or anything , we won the battle in her world because it's an imaginary world with the help of some friendship plot armor and miko was there. Even when her hp reduce to 0, she still standing there invincible. Ei could fight us for 500 years like she did with the puppet. In fact she could just let the puppet kill all of the resistance in real world instead of inviting the traveler into her realm.
She knows about the Fatui but doesn't know about the war that is happening.. You can see when Sara talk to Yae about how the report doesn't mention the war..
i think all the problems people have with her stem specifically from how rushed the archon quest felt. its just there's too little interaction with any of the big players, and when things get resolved, it all happens instantly. me and most people i know didn't feel at all hyped or anything during the big cut scenes and scenes toward the end, we just felt confused like it was rushed or wasn't earned. and most of THAT stems from how genshin focuses on a single characters perspective, which is sorta suppose to be OUR perspective, yet at the same time its a very character and world focused story. yet it still feels rushed just from a single perspective. there's just not enough time spent on others, fleshing out different factions and events, or giving a good idea of how things are in the world. a good example is the resistance, and even teppi. the resistance has like one cut scene where they fight and that's all we really see from them. we get told a lot of stuff but don't get shown much of anything. genshin really doesn't do show don't tell very often. which brings me to another big complaint especially with more recent stuff since inazuma, is the fact that every story event since the release of inazuma part 2, has had a moment where a character does a MASSIVE info dump of heavy plot related info, and that's how we progress story and world knowledge. its super lazy writing and makes an already rushed story feel even more so. scaramoushe: oh you wanna hear me just admit to everything randomly for no reason? sure here's our evil plan to overthrow inazuma, also let me confirm stuff about our plan you didn't know which will also help you resolve everything. miko: oh did you know? realm of consciousness + puppet + inazuma power struggles + here's all the issues and here's a step by step plan on how to solve them and all the answers. enjou: oh did you know, abyss, dragon lords, celestia sus, paimon sus, before sun and moon, anyway gotta go bye. dain: oh truth about freaking 12 different main plot points in like literally one scene, everything from abyss, the gods, hillichurls, info about the world the traveler... couldn't even be more spread out over the quest had to just be like one info dump scene... like hell... genshin is rushed period. that's where the issues are.
Agreed with your points on Ei, but I do differ on the takes on the misconceptions... Firstly, although it is true that Ei was perceived as a villain at first...the more accepted/prominent take on her character is portraying her as a naive kid. This, although an exaggeration, is pretty accurate until the ending of the 2nd storyline. Secondly, most people I have encountered term Ei's first story as a "date quest" in jest. And the sentiment is pretty well understood considering the fact that there were so many possible ways of setting up her 2nd quest - and each one I can think of does the job a lot better than what we were given. Third...yes that is true... Kazufrend wanted to see the booba blade... Fourthly, it was definitely rushed and poorly written... Mondstadt's archon quest, which was literally termed as 'prologue' is still the best written one among the nations. It gave us enough knowledge on the land, its history and its main players, its stance on the present Celestia and its overall vibe. Inazuma's quest was lacking. It was not Ei's quest, it was Inazuma's. The civil war happened...and then it didn't. Same with Liyue's main archon quest thread though. Both were downgrades... About your concept on plotholes...I agree. Although I'll prefer it if the developers refrain from demo infodumps in the future (Ayato demo)...but atleast we got something. That being said...the quest quality has improved a lot with Ayato's quest...flawed, but much better than Ei's 2nd and the joke of a quest that was Miko's.
I don't know man. I like Ei as a character a lot, but not checking up her puppet more frequently is her fault. It was her creation and her responsibility to make sure it was doing things properly. Ignorance isn't an excuse. I think she's just as responsible as the puppet and that should be addressed in the story. She faltered. It was her creation and her mistake.
It's almost like her quest shows her acknowledging and regretting this very fact. Are characters not allowed moments of growth just because they're not written to your liking?
@@bugmancer That doesn't bring back the hundreds killed and lives ruined from their vision being taken away. That's her penance? She feels sorry for herself? That's ridiculous.
@@bjorn34 Tbf that's a self-made issue in Inazuma. Most of the bad things happend as a result of the rebellion, fatui influence and power plays by the commissions. Was the vision hunt decree bad for the vision wielders and made their lives miserable? Yes, but most of the citizens of Inazuma weren't affected by it. Ei was naive and is/was really freaking bad in ruling a nation, but not responsible for most of the shitshow that happend in Inazuma.
@@bjorn34 you know that most if not all those deaths were caused more by the resistance than Ei herself right? Was it Ei that gave the resistance delusions that started killing off the people of watasumi? Was it Ei that chose to go to war with them? People who lost their visions can very well get them back and there are cases like ittou who were uneffected by the loss. By this same logic why not hold venti to the same bar. Had it not been for his negligence and stubborn believe on freedom the Lawrence clan wouldn’t have been what they are now and Vanessa’s people wouldn’t have been enslaved.
I feel like many people who criticized how rushed the resolution was in the Archon quest, in particular to how quickly the VHD was abolished, don't understand Ei's personality at all. She fights through honour. That's how she's always done things. That's why she "gave up" so easily, because she was honouring her word. Likewise when she agreed to go out into the city with the traveler. She was honouring her word in losing to the traveler, to find a new way for Inazuma to move forward. She has a code of Bushido, and one of the eight virtues of Bushido is honour. Bushido was a thing that existed ever since the first shogunate in real-life japan, so this is definitely intentional. And with Ei's quest being a date quest? Yeah, then so was Venti's because their formats were LITERALLY the same. First half: Walking around their nation chatting with the traveler Second half: More epic stuff (Kujou Kamaji with Ei's, and Stanley with Venti's). It infuriates me to no end that the people complaining about Ei's quest being a date, and use this as the only basis to say that it's worse than the other Archons' quest, completely forget that Venti's was, by their logic, also 'just a date".
the problem is that ei's issues were not resolved. Zhongli was as said in this video "complete". Same with venti, thus a date quest was a nice continuation. But ei gave a ruthless puppet control over Inazuma for 500 years who ruled Inazuma quite poorly in my opinion ultimately breaking into a civil war. How can you get involved in a date with a character like this when her very actions and reason for those actions are threading on right and wrong. So that's the problem, instead of addressing the main issues of Inazuma that had not been dealt with, we got a date(which is excellent in my opinion but god a there's a fricking nation with hopeless people who are scared of their own god hoyoverse do something about that first )
@@zackang4731 It's because Inazuma's issues were not dealt with and the puppet was not exactly what I would call a kind ruler. Would you like a date with a character whose own story arc has not even received proper content ? I sure as hell would not want to be seen on a date with someone whose irresponsible rule caused countless children of inazuma to grow up with eyes filled with hopelessness. (This is coming from me who intends to main Ei forever as she's my favourite character)meanwhile zhongli had nurtured liyue to stand on it's own feet with a thriving economy and mondatat did not even need it's archon long ago.Both these characters are complete and no further story is required. Though there is room for some nice " slice of life" wholesome date story quests and that's exactly what we got which is why venti and zhongli story quests were well received.
@@kevinkarthik3329 that's weird that we see different things. because the entire point of bringing Ei around the city in the first story quest is to resolve her problem, which is part of resolving Inazuma's problems. I never saw it as a date. I can't understand people who do. Maybe I've watched too many chinese movies about the emperor visiting the city personally and realizing/learning new things? Maybe some part of the community expects things to be solved quickly and immediately, but realistically any kind of proper change takes time to set in stone
@@zackang4731 the last part of what you said is true. It takes time for proper change to set in stone. And that must happen before we get quests where we simply spend time and have a fun outing. Inazuma's problems were not even completely addressed and thus the story quest was not fitting.
I love your theory and analysis videos! Please make more content in that style. My take on this video is: Misconceptions about characters exist in every fandom, but the way people talked about Ei is proof of how bad it is in the Genshin fandom OTL
I'm always so thankful for your videos about Ei, Teyvat Historia. Your understanding of her pokes so many holes into the unnecessary criticisms make about her character. I appreciate your content.
To do the same video about Yae Miko will be the hardest challenge of all of them. (IMHO ahoy) Sadly, the character with the vast potential was shaved to the greedy and sometimes abusive prankster. At least, Raiden was redeemed at her Story Quest part 2. Good job with the video on Ei, keep it up!
I couldn't agree more. Removing her from the isolation of Inazuma and comparing her to the other long-lived charachters of the game she seems to not know her place. She is around 600-700 years old, therefore being probably fourth youngest of the bunch (Yanfei feels like she is younger, and Scharamouche is younger as well as with some certainty Dainslief). Even so, she still is given this high-and-mighty attitude of superiority, as if she was the oldest and the wisest of them all. I really hope she gets pegged down a notch, because I can't find anything sympathetic in her arrogance.
@@sfjuhispst8144 I agree, I find Yae such a cool character in concept, kitsune are really awesome, but like, as someone who was scammed by publishing houses before (I'm an illustrator and worked as a book cover artist many years ago), the ending of her story quest really hit me personally and made me so angry lol there's nothing funny or endearing about that. Especially when the Traveler had helped Inazuma so much. I also really didn't like how mean and condescending Yae was to Paimon (a literal child, mentally speaking).
@@sfjuhispst8144 You're forgetting that she's based of a kitsune, who in Japanese folklore, is supposed to be a wise and cunning being. Kitsunes are known to be prideful. So it is only right that Yae Miko acts as such.
@@Mashmallow_31 prideful? Nope, no pride at all, she does whatever she wants with no considerations to her actual responsibilities to the Inazuman people. Wise? Nope, she does whatever suit her greed, sometimes to the point of pure gaslighting, which is not how wise people make the relationships with others. Cunning - sure. mean - sure. Petty - sure. Not wise nor prideful. Change pride to vanity and you'll be golden.
@@ichiharahinoe2329 That's pretty much the same. Vanity is still Pride. There's a reason why Vainglory/Vanity isn't part of the 7 deadly sins, it's basically Pride but excessive. Yae Miko is a prideful individual. And yeah, she's greedy. Foxes are also known as greedy and dishonest creatures which Yae perfectly represents.
She has lost alot but in the end of this first part of the inazuma quests was her seeing and going to heal her past wounds which she hasnt even let go and acting like a crying child lol...after that she has now an understanding of what is eternity and to be able to questioned it is also a part of her growth and it is something i liked about her even before the quest i liked the way she was introduced into the game and just the quests and everything that involves her are just a bonus for me and those that like ei
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I always knew Ei regretted what happened with Inazuma and the puppet. Her story quest mentioned how she was working on the puppet as so such events won't repeat themselves. Her voice lines also she that she deeply regrets what she has done but is willing to move forward and to pursue a different form of Eternity, on Makoto saw. Plus I think I learned more about Inazuman culture from her than anyone(mainly because I- uh need to raise friendship with them) your reading of Ei's story solidified my thoughts that Ei is quite different than what others might think.
There are only a few days left until the event of the irodori festival! If you haven't done it, you need to! Major additions to the lore! When are you doing your next twitch stream!?
@@Khira-kj7qc probably within the next day or two
@@TeyvatHistoria oh and you have completed all the story quests right? both of raidens quest, kokomi, itto, yae and ayato? you wont be able to enjoy the irodori event fully if you didn't.
@@TeyvatHistoria Ei had one of the worst character developments, he should be aware and apologize to the whole town for the damage he did with the decrees, rather the town of Inazuma would have "You are not welcome" and have banned Ei from attending the festival and while closing the door in his face. that MY rewrite the entire Inazuma arc from the beginning and that Ei observes the consequences of his actions.
You’re are fanboy
What ppl don't understand abt Kazuha's friend is that his one true ambition was to face to Musou No Hitotachi. Like stated, he knew what he was getting into, and I suspect he wanted to lose the duel against Sara so that he'd have to opportunity to see the sword art. Also, Kazuha himself states that's he's not bitter abt the death of his friend, he believes it to be an honorable death, but can't stand the Shogun's Vision Hunt Decree
Not just because of the Musou no Hitotachi but his friend also went against the vision hunt decree because nobody else was willing to take a stand
Let's see..
1) Kazuha is still grieving over the death of his friend.
2) As the comment above says, he did it to give courage to the resistance and people with visions. (Said in Kazuha's story number 4 and diary of the traveller).
3)The reason why Ei is detested for that, is for the simple logic that she gave the approval of the decree of Visions, and without the decree, he would be alive. Because he exclusively asked for the duel only because of the decree. That's is
@@clover.8147 except he would’ve asked for a duel no matter what the decree was the easiest way for this duel to have happened.
2: these same people flat out ignore that Kazuha holds no hated towards Ei about the situation AT ALL and outright says her conduct was right.
@@amari7782as far as im concerned, kazuha didnt know ei. but he does dislike the shogun for the vision hunt decree.
@@JA.4 as you stated he hated shogun for the vision hunt decree not the death of his friend specifically
She doesn't think eternity is wrong though. She's just realized that eternal stasis was not the way to go after centuries of pursuit. She still wants Inazuma to last forever though.
I find it poetic that the Archon whose whole ideal is to resist change was the one who showed growth the most.
Raiden Ei has the most noticeable development of all the archons we met so far. It is why I admire her story the most.
It's one of the reasons she's my personal favorite character. Zhongli felt more like an archon of encyclopedia than a geo archon
The whole point Teyvat Historia was getting at, at the end there when referring to Venti and Zhongli was that they had already developed, and grown past their ambitions as gods, but there's still some extra threads for them, eg; Zhongli and the Memory of Dust/Ghuizhong, Venti also seems to have some dangling threads but those are attached to the Tsaritsa and the Traveller now.
Preach it my friend.
The thing about zhongli and venti is that, they are already developed character and archons.
They've already passed the character development stage(mostly zhongli).
For example, zhongli was said to be a ruthless god of war back on the day but after he met guizhong he changed.
And now, he's the depressed encyclopedia airhead archon that we love.
Not to mention that they've already finished their duties and ideals as an archon, venti have already given true freedom to mondstadt, and Zhongli already has end all contracts as the geo archon.
While Ei have just recently realized the true eternity that she should be seeking for.
But yeah i agree, Her Story Quest are the best in the game so far.
@@Rexhunterj Zhongli followed Venti where he give his people freedom to run the nation, so i guess Venti is the most developed one despite being younger XD
I feel like the reason many people say the archon quest was rushed because the entire resistance plotline with the delusions was unceremoniously dropped in the final act and we got no resolution - the army just showed up at Tenshukaku with no explanation (I know Ayato's demo retconned that but that came out like a week ago). We have no idea what role Kokomi played in the events of the final conflict either, and it feels disappointing to just drop such an important character at the climax of the story. I think if they had had one more act right before the climax to resolve all the plot threads, many would have been not only satisfied but impressed by the quest. It feels to me like hoyoverse bit off more than they could chew with the amount of different plot threads and simply didn't have enough time to give all of them a satisfying conclusion. I still thoroughly enjoyed the quest, though.
I feel like.. neither Gorou nor Kokomi were actually meant to be important characters to the Archon Quest (sadly). I think the resistance as a whole is meant to be important, but not those 2 characters particularly. I would liken it to Ganyu, Xiao appearance in the Liyue Quest. The adepti are important to the story, but there's nothing particularly additional from those 2 playable characters over the NPCs.
@@zackang4731 I think they actually built up them preatty well. Literally almost all the second act in the AQ of Inazuma was a build up for The resistance, ending the act with even a cinematic of a fight betwent the Tenryou com and The resistance. And then leave them a side in the 3rd act
Having the additional act you described would also make Ei's change of philosophy more sensible to onlookers, if it would overtly resolve how the resistance got to Inazuma City (I don't know if there is already an answer to that Question).
Maybe they could've even found a way to get the Raiden Shogun involved in an active battle, in which they could have already suggested the instability of her beliefs in face of the resistance soilders who carry on fighting even without visions (while she would additionally make the observation that some of the soilders even used illusions given to them by the Fatui, going to harmful lengths to fight against a cause Ei deemed vital to her peoples security).
1 year after inazuma arc and many people still misunderstood her character
Two years now, still trying to figure out
I mean, I can sort of understand why people say the Inazuma archon quests seemed rushed, at least as far as the Resistance went. They didn't really do much of anything on screen and ultimately only served as a way for the Traveler to MAYBE get invested in an npc only for them to die, then act as bridge for the Traveler to go raid the Delusion Factory and get saved by Yae. Aside from the Resistance accomplishing nothing of substance though, the rest was amazing!
I think they will explain it in kokomi story quest act 2.
I feel like mihoyo thought that when we arrived at watatsumi we would take our time exploring and do world quests and than continuing on with the archon quest
If it wasn't rushed, at least it seemed and felt rushed. For example, at the end of 2.0 the vision hunt decree was simply stated via voice over to have been abolished and we were like, that was it??? Only for hoyo to backtrack several patches later after two Ei story quests when she had her epiphany, did we find, ah okay, now the vision hunt decree is truly abolished.
I don't mind that kind of storytelling, though. I could happily go all the way to patch 2.9 if they are gonna backtrack and elaborate on the events of 2.0. lol
Still, execution could be improved. Basic rule of thumb of any visual storytelling. Show, don't tell. Hoyoverse has a bad habit of just telling their story through looooong dialogues and exposition.
@@durein8992 didn’t she abolish the VHD at the end of the Act 3 then abolish the Sakoku Decree at the end of her story quest?
@@icantbelieveyoudonethis4059 Yeah, now that i think about it. You're right. The two decrees were abolished in different times, patch-wise.
But from what i understand, the sakoku decree was enforced as part of the vhd. So it's very easy to think that the sakoku decree would together be abolished when the vhd was repealed back in 2.0.
In any case, I still feel like her 2nd story quest which we got in 2.5, chronologically speaking, happened right after we defeated Ei in 2.0, and her 1st story quest, which lead to her repealing the vhd at the end of 2.0. Just insert it, and it makes good sense.
It's not unusual, coz Shenhe's story canonically happened before we arrived at Inazuma, and we got her patch 2.4. This might be a storytelling trend that hoyo is gonna use a lot in the future. I just hope they be careful about retconning or changing already established narratives because they rushed them at the start.
Ei is in this weird situation where everyone she knew got dead, or samsar-ed or both. She's got memories that don't match the memories of everyone around her and they all think she's a bit crazy. Even Yae Miko who claims to be Ei's best friend and familiar - though Ei probably didn't even know her - didn't believe Ei about the Sakura tree. And that's the nearest thing to a friend Ei has. If Ayaka wanted a friend then Ei is absolutely dying for want of human contact. So it may not have been a date in the romantic sense but it was an important event socially for Ei.
YES FINALLY- SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS HOW IMPORTANT ACT ONE OF HER STORY QUEST IS!!!!
the sheer amount of smooth brained opinions regarding that quest made me so frustrated. I immediately understood that in order for Ei to change for the better, she needed to understand change was not always bad- which for the longest time she believed to be the greatest enemy to her idea of eternity.
People who don't like putting effort into looking deeply into the story tend to make hasty and incorrect judgements about the story and dismisses the efforts of the creative team and its just sad man.
honestly... I'm even more excited about the tsarista. She's like a more hard core version of Ei's arc because she is fully aware with what she's doing with the Fatui, taking a direct command of them but giving the Harbingers a lot of free reign as well.
I wonder what caused the God of Love to have no love left? Even for her nation(I think? She must know what the dilutions are doing to the harbingers) when so far the three archons we met all love their nations
@@cheerfulcat056 they say she changed after what happened in kaenriah, so probably her motives to do what she does is to free Teyvat from Celestia and then she will just quit or retire like Zhongli
The moment we had that quest i knew it was to set her up for her opinions to change and in the second to face her past
Its right there infront of people
But they just ignored it and oh its just a date headcanon started which annoyed the F out of me
The time gap between act one and two of the story arc is what makes it worse imo. It left Player that heated up with the archon quest climax and eager to understand her better ends up only knowing the underdeveloped Ei character for a while before actually mentioning the core of her story. It is a nice story but it Imo there still should be some sort of abridged part in Ei's part one that show her actively solving things in regards to the elephant in the room, civil war etc. Maybe make her realize the aftermath of the war, go to other island that gone inhabitable by all kind of danger, hear sara's report, show her real live concerns for her citizen outside of merry go happy side of inazuma city. It does paint her in a very bad light when this is addressed waaaay after that and only when we confront her about her people's concern.
After all the scene of war, her people's injured imprisoned and in constant danger. The dating simulator vibe felt like an insult to her as a character
@@zenzenitha 100% agree. I understand what they were trying to go for, but the timing in which tehy does in is horible
My biggest problem with the Inazuma storyline was the resistence. I never really felt like I had a strong reason to fight and care about them.
The whole "you're now captain of swordfish II" felt so unnecessary 😒 I admit that they heavily improved the Inazuma content once Serai Island and Tsurumi Island got introduced but the first couple of Inazuma updates really felt weird. As someone who usually cares a lot about the lore and the characters in general I don't know why but Inazuma never really catched me. :(
@@lemonbunny71 The swordfish 2 thing was so weird to me. It felt like: Here take this platoon of soldiers that is more like a burden then anything else. They might have been special forces. But not comparable at all in strength to the MC. And it felt like we were abandoning them to just do whatever as we as captain were off doing other stuff.
@@thecasu6940 exactly! I got really excited when we got the title of captain. But in the end we barely interact with them. This part of the quest is as meaningless as the title itself is. Also it only gets mentioned one more time during the Enkanomiya part but felt more like a reminder to the player than anything impactful. "Oh btw. You're captain of Swordfish II, remember?"
Exactly.. this is what I felt
@@lemonbunny71 I didn't feel it unnecessary simply because of the state of the Resistance. They were losing in the defensive, during a time where imports were more than likely halted for the economically fragile Watatsumi due to the Sakoku Decree, and so the soldiers were starting to lose morale. Appointing the Traveler, the very person who fought Raiden Shogun and lived, and not give them a higher rank? They were obviously in a very desperate position to have to make such a choice.
The Inazuma Archon Quest, while much-hated on its arrival for reasons you discussed in your video, also has a huge glaring flaw in the Resistance. The parts about Ei were overdramatic criticism, but the set-up during the Resistance arc was rushed as all hell, and apart from Kazuha blocking the Musou no Hitotachi, they did absolutely nothing and ended up being pawns in Yae's scheme, which is disappointing for how they were set up (especially with kokomi as a smart tactician), and only served as a bridge to the Delusion Factory via Teppei, who wasn't set up that well either (and not to mention Signora with zero build-up). But yeah, Ei's arc is basically complete now, and the AQ in retrospect looks much better because of it.
Thanks for pointing that out. This video only seems concerned about Ei's character development, while ignoring how the plot itself develops.
Signora wasn’t zero build up, she was literally mentioned first thing when we came into inazuma.
Mentioning Signora is not the same as building her up. We got hints that she was around (the arrogant lady at Ritou), and a fan theory among the lore community at the time matched her to the Crimson Witch of Flames, but with no prior main story mention of any kind that even implied she had the CWoF backstory, her transformation came straight out of left field. If it was supposed to be an important boss fight on par with Childe or Dvalin (considering that she finally embraces her flames after 500 years of suppressing them), there needed to be more than just artifact lore cementing this story into the game.
Well, it's already in the game, just enjoy it and hope that the upcoming archon quests will be much better
@@hakimgamerzs5827 absolutely. but the creators need to hear criticism if we ever hope them to improve their next work. they say honkai's story is damn good tho (and I love most of the hangouts and character quests), so I have no doubt the writers are good.
This has been a good reminder, as well as a good cleaning of what I think of Raiden Ei. And just further reinforces my opinion of Ei being my favorite character.
The way I understand her is that she was in grief of her sister then she tries to protect her people but to do so she thought she needed control over something so that if she can control it nobody will die no one needs to be sad thus she was blind by eternity definition but what she didn’t get is it wasn’t eternity or people living longer they were just stuck unable to move it wasn’t the true eternity . As yoimiya says that fireworks are just quick things but the people we are with while watching them stays in our minds forever -something in those lines.. (which is true definition of eternity in my opinion) anyways.. also her being stuck meditating and not coming in touch with reality made it easier since the puppet didn’t have any feelings only what she was programmed for when miko came to ei we somehow see her come alive . She is more of a “broken villain with broken ideals” and now her vision and idea of eternity change she’s being better..
Clearly alot of people don't understand her at all. I'm not saying I understood her the most but at least I can tell she is not as simple as people made her out to be. This is especially true during with the way people reacted to her after the Inazuma archon quest
The moment i saw her i knew there is something that people dont see behind her actions
Ei is flawed. However the most infuriating thing about her is that basically she did "Oh I didn't know." and everyone just accepted it. Everyone basically forgot the pain and suffering she has allowed to happen.
I absolutely hate her to the core :D She should have been overthrown and she should have worked her way up in the eye of the public.
I don't understand why everyone just except her so easily...?
@@user-er6oz7sl7c Lmao... Just research properly and you will find out. I don't want to argue with you
@@hakimgamerzs5827 It's a story... Of a fictional character... WDYM research-
@@user-er6oz7sl7c
Not everyone can fight with her equally, so who can overthrown her, maybe only traveler, she is god, and one that really strong,
i think not everyone just accepted it, it just they can't do more than that,
she remove Vision Hunt Decree already win for most of them
🌸🌹I am of those who feel that the Raiden Shogun is quite down to earth and was realistically represented with respect to her roll within the story!
People are not black and white in their acts, we are gray and no decision made is ever one-hundred percent pure, thus it is but virtue signal on the part of those that claim outright she is a “villain”!🌹🌸
Absolutely!
As wise person once said it is the legend elknola
I never thought peoole really believed ei was evil.... wow they don't pay attention lol
The only part that many players were disappointed with was the v2.1 Archon Quest (Resistance Arc). The pacing was plagued with sloppy time skips; and big things apparently were happening like naval battles, Teppei's achievements, etc. but we didn't really feel the atmosphere of a war.
It's only that part of the Inazuman questline that felt "rushed", or simply put: mediocre and poorly executed. Just imagine the v2.0 archon quest setting up the hype, the high stakes, and the opposing sides in such complicated topics like politics and war, only to fall short in v2.1, and then be solved after a disproportionately long training arc with Yae.
Also at the end Raiden's 2nd story quest, Ei said that she's going mull over with the puppet for a while about abolishing the Sakoku Decree. But apparently the decree was abolished IMMEDIATELY after the end of that quest. There was no transition whatsoever. Just another sloppy time skip.
I actually knew the Shogun Puppet twist before I played Genshin Impact (that I downloaded because Raiden looked cool) and yeah I 100% agree, the writing is extremely consistent and you can tell the writers knew what they set out to do from the get-go. Personally I love Raiden. She's not my favorite character but she's definitely in the top 5.
The biggest flaw I think is Genshin's constant story updates I think made a lot of people set their expectations in wildly different directions. The time period between the end of Liyue when Zhongli talks about the Vision Hunt Decree and the conclusion of Inazuma was many months long. And I think people who spent those months expecting a villain might've felt the rug pulled out under them with the Puppet twist
As someone who “hated” Ei when i first saw her my love for her only grew as we saw more of her storyline and backstory. She quickly became my fave character in the game
I agree with you 100% here and greatly appreciate that you made this video. However, I've raised many of these points in conversation with others before, and there are some responses to your points that you didn't address that may lead the people who most need to digest this video to reject it outright. Here's a brief summary of what criticisms I've seen that you didn't address, as well as additional details you didn't mention that strengthen your argument further:
1. When considering the Puppet's actions regarding the VHD war: it is important to note that the Shogun wasn't even fully informed; the Tenryou Commission was concealing and sanitizing the details they relayed to the Shogun. This may not have changed how the Shogun behaved or responded, but I feel that's an important point to consider.
2. When considering the time spent with Ei in her first story quest:
a. I don’t think everyone who claims that it was “a date” necessarily means it in a romantic sense but are using it as a hyperbolic synonym for a “hangout” (and I have also seen the word “hangout” used to describe it as well).
b. While this is technically already addressed by your arguments against the first misconception, many detractors took exception to the Traveler spending time with Ei in this fashion because they saw her as a criminal who was dodging consequences. Even if you wanted to argue that there should be consequences, that opens an entire can of philosophical worms regarding Punitive vs. Rehabilitative Justice. Considering the game has taken a rehabilitative approach and considering many of the examples I’ve been given of how her recompense should have been handled, I believe these folks seek a punitive approach.
3. This is probably mostly my own speculation, but I’d like to raise the thought for consideration that Ei’s pursuit of eternity in alignment with the Heavenly Principles is a trauma response. Ei may hold Celestia partially responsible for the loss of Makoto and was further incentivized to take this approach to Eternity that she already aligned with in hopes of curtailing further pain/loss at the hands of Celestia.
4. When considering the death of Kazuha’s friend: I think the most important detail is that he specifically sought to face the Musou no Hitotachi. “There will always be those who dare to brave the lightning’s glow.” Facing the Musou no Hitotachi meant certain death if he failed to withstand it and he knew the consequences of his choice. He was purely responsible for his death there and he did so willingly in pursuit of his ambition, which is factually confirmed to be his ambition by Kazuha’s temporary reawakening of his friend’s Vision.
5. When considering the argument of pacing: One of the most common criticisms I’ve seen is of the time spent with the Resistance. I can actually agree with the assertion that we spent very little time with them. I believe most folks issue with that, however, stems from their expectations of what that time would entail. These folks wanted more time spent seeing the war play out in-front of them and participating in it. While I can understand the desire to have that experience, I believe people’s disappointment stems from their own mostly unsubstantiated expectations.
6. One criticism you did not address, but is technically tangential to all of this and is not technically related to misconceptions of Ei herself, is that some believe that the major story beats of Inazuma’s narrative arc should not have been contained within Ei’s story quest, but within the Archon quest. I believe I see what HoYovese was going for with this structure; the Vision Hunt Decree was the most pressing matter as it involved great suffering for the affected and was the only instigating factor for the war. (as an aside, I’ve also seen some folks argue that the Sakoku Decree was the more important issue of the two) However, the full path forward for Inazuma required change within Ei herself, and that takes additional time. (perhaps this could’ve been avoided if Ei was deposed, which I think some people believe should’ve been the case, but that’s an entire discussion of its own) This also ties in with the misconception that the story of a region is meant to be/should be concluded within the Archon quest, but it seems that HoYoverse intends for the entire major patch to encompass the narrative of the region rather than just the Archon quest. That may still not be to people’s taste, but I reject the notion that this is somehow an inherently flawed approach.
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text but I hope this was helpful in some way. If you actually read the whole thing, thank you, and much thanks for making this video in the first place.
your 3rd point is further proved by Ei's dialogue to Miko on the archon quest:
"Ei: ...You and I have both witnessed the great loss that progress can bring. Eternity... eternity is the only way..."
also :
"Ei: But I've seen a nation stride forward
Ei: And lose everything to the Heavenly Principles
Ei: Perhaps only if time stands still
Ei: Will the lightning's glow never fade
Ei: The present moment is a fragile illusion
Ei: Only Eternity can bring us closer to the Heavenly Principles"
and:
"Ei: Humans have a lifespan of barely a hundred years. They cannot afford to bear any extra losses.
Ei: But I have experienced it all. That is why I have chosen to guide them along the correct path toward eternity."
All in all I think her stance is very well explained and the people choosing to ignore it are doing so on purpose and out of malice :/
On your 6th point, we spent much more time one on one with Venti and Zhongli during the archon quest (understandable given Ei was literally isolating from the rest of the world, so the time we spent with her in her quests were the solution so we would be on the same level, relationship wise, with her as we were with the previous archons. By the story that was being told it was a necessary concession and I, for one, have no qualms with it.
Your 2b and 5 are my biggest problems. I mean, quite literally, she said she approves all of the puppet's deeds even when we told her there's a meaningless war created by her inaction going out, a war where a lot of people die on both sides - her people which she swore to protect by eternity but achieved the opposite, and ex-vision holders and the opposition in general (which also directly contradicts to her point of "it's better to lose a vision than to lose your life" which is also a questionable point out in itself because not everyone's ambition is to become a master swordsman and die in the process, some are peaceful).
So what do we see when she comes out to the town? Not hatred from both her people and the opposition, but admiration. Admiration for years of hunger, for many broken families because their relatives either died on the war or hanged themselves after losing their ambition. Not only that, she herself doesn't seem to see any problem with those lives people lost for what's at least half her fault! Not an ounce of remorse! She doesn't even seem to realise there's a problem with that! Of course i can't sympathise with such a character, she isn't even a villain - signora is a villain, she has a goal and she decided to trumple over some heads to achieve it, Ei, on the other hand, is just criminally dumb, for lack of a better word. She actively sabotages her goal without paying attention to the consequences at all. A positive character *must* compensate for their faults, here we see terrible faults which were done nothing with.
Now as for the resistance, I have a problem not so much with the amount of time spent in the resistance as with how that time was used. We were told Kokomi is a genius strategist - well, that remains to be just a rumour, Ayato acomplished a much better exhibition of strategy than her, all in the span of his quest (and trailer, i guess). Also, the entire reason and plot behind the resistance was sort of like a filler, it came basically out of nowhere (under the excuse that the traveller needs a place to hide) and it left to nowhere (we just stumbled upon Yae when we could probably stumble upon her right after saving Thoma just as well).
What I believe should've been done with the resistance is Ayaka admitting she can't do a thing about the decrees, she just doesn't have enough power, so she asks the traveller to establish contact with the resistance so in the end they could join forces and storm the castle together (with maybe Ayaka coming in the first row so even Kamisato clan's future was at stakes now that she's acting against Shogun in the open). Would also be good to show the power of the resistance along the way to establish how much they can achieve and that it's clearly not enough to fight shogun. That would be both a good way to make the resistance relevant as well as make the internal resistance's (which is kamisato network) role to be actually important in the whole story instead of them just doing some small things here and there until the traveller and Yae solved almost everything on their own. But we got what we got...
@@Soundwave1900 so you're just going to ignore the video then, because it's explained in it. You can have a problem with it all you want of course, but it's very much your choice to ignore the writing of the game
@@Jehphg it doesn't explain it. Tacitly agreeing is still agreeing and not a single word was said about people reaction, much less about her own carelessness about the lives she ruined.
@@Soundwave1900 Except the way she saw things, she felt that their ruined lives were better than the alternative. She's essentially an overprotective parent and yeah, they can do a lot of damage, but the solution isn't to make Inazuma an "orphan," it's for Ei to be a better "parent." Anyway, her character is flawed but those flaws are understandable to many, including the creator of this video. Your failure to understand is a you problem.
Good points and well-argued. I think this along with your Character Origins videos have a lot of potential. I know you’re very busy, but I hope you can continue your book series as well
I’m definitely one of the people who has really enjoyed the Inazuma Arc, specifically the initially somber and eventually uplifting atmosphere. Ei’s arc was a big factor in that. HYV has done well in presenting Ei as a flawed, multifaceted character and (for me) Anne Yatco does a brilliant job of portraying that nuance across all the Inazuma gods.
I expect they’ll can improve even further in future arcs
so because i avoid social media im hearing about most of these complaint's for the first time (and wondering if im playing the same game as them) and am a little confused how people came to these conclusions as i saw almost nothing that could lead you to think like this.
its one of my pet peeves in gaming when the devs will have an NPC tell you exactly what has just happened in the plot but if people can be this confused about stuff i can see why devs do it.
I think people nowadays just react in the moment and don't actually think of what's to come or what could happen next with these sort of things and ofc with the power of social media,one opinion can be shared and spread to everywhere and that can influence on other people and they start to think the same as well because their either not knowledgeable or too lazy to form their own opinion
A lot of it comes with the minds and cultures. For example, some players think that Ei should be accountable for every bad decision of the Shogun since she build it and thus responsible, or because she turn the blind eye about it when she could "get out of the room" and interfere. For many people Ei doesn't deserve redemption and sympathy, so any story that makes her more human are bad (for those people).
I agree with most of what you said, and you made many good points. As someone who doesn’t like Ei, I can still recognize the validity in pointing out her character development over the course of the story. Honestly, I quite like the character development, even if I don’t like Ei herself.
The only point I can bring up is the pervasive argument I’ve always heard and disagree with, which your arguments only bring up sometimes, which is that Raiden Shogun is responsible while Ei is innocent.
My problem is that many fans shrug off the argument of her being a bad person or a terrible ruler with the argument of “It was the Raiden Shogun, not Ei.” To me, it feels a little shallow, as my belief is that their diverging personalities were made to shield Ei from such accusations against her character, feeling a little cheap to have a literal cold unfeeling robot take the blame for what was supposedly your actions.
The point I would like to bring up is that Even though it was Raiden who allowed the Fatui to come in, and it was Raiden who became a tyrant, it is just as much Ei’s fault for choosing to leave her Kingdom in a Robots hands.
You could argue it was to pursue eternity, and there lies the rub. Ei didn’t care what would’ve happened to her country if she left it in the hands of a robot, by her own admission she has little information about what was happening outside.
This is why I find the argument to be flawed. Raiden may be the weapon, but it was Ei who let the weapon run free without supervision. At best, she’s a negligent ruler, which I know she recognized herself, but not enough of her fans do. They always forgive her easily and make excuses for what she’s done, and I do appreciate your video having actual evidence rather than spitting vague opinions and pretending it’s the end all be all of her character.
Yups you are right that Ei is not completely innocent. It's a bit more gray here, but I think the idea is that they are at fault for different things, as you have laid out. I believe Ei did realize her mistakes in her first story quest, especially with Kujou Kamaji being a parallel to herself.
As an Ei fan (ignore the fact that this is 8 months late ) I agree with what you said !
For me she isn't a saint, she isn't completely innocent since she did really make some bad descisions after the death of her sister. Her coping methods were definitely bad too.
And Ei was a neglegent ruler thats true, remember before being the real archon she was only the kagemusha meaning all that she did was kill and go to war. She probably didn't have any experience governing so maybe that's why she was a negligent ruler at first, and also considering that she didn't know her sister would die in the calamity (kaneriah) . She realised that everytime there's progress there's also loss. So she wanted eternity but she executed those ideals in a bad way (vision hunt decree) unlike her sister makoto, who also pursued eternity but in a different way, After doing her story quest I was happy to see her development and now that she has grown to care for her people and feel guilty for her past misdeeds.
Smh the takes on her are always the worst, like it's either the Ei stans as you said completely defending her and saying shes a saint (blaming her wrongdoings on shogun just because she was the antagonist) like she's an interesting and realistic character who made many mistakes but willing to change but then on the other hand there's just the people who think Ei's just evil and a tyrant who 'murdered' Kazuha's friend. (she did kill him but only because of the duel)
Conclusion shes not a heartless warrior but shes not a saint, shes herself with her own flaws that make her even more complex and i love her for that and for changing to a better person
And it's okay if you don't like Ei, i respect your opinion
@psychnoodles Precisely, people often point fingers at the Shogun for all the damage that's been done and while that isnt far from the truth, there is also the involvement of Ei since she is the one responsible of the puppet, the puppet master to say so. Because of this "split personaility", it was very easy for the fans of Ei to point fingers at the puppet but not Ei, as a way to keep her freed from the blame.
And here's the thing.as you previously, leaving a whole nation under the care of ChatGPT isnt really the brightest idea considering the whole shitstorm it caused with the vision decree and how miserable Inazuma was turning to be, not to mention that she was never an apt leader to govern a nation. Her naivety/neglicent caused a lot of trouble for the nation, not to mention, 500 years passed and yet, she didnt even learnt how to guide the nation during that time but chose to just seclude herself, ignoring what was happening outside (like really, she couldnt even check for like 10 minutes or so that the puppet didnt make something stupid).
In all regards, i think the reasons as to why people hate or dislike Ei are clear, she really wasnt the best ruler nor a person fit to be in such charge, her actions just brought a lot of consequences, which makes it hard to like or empathize and the AQ doesnt really help much. I just cannot see how people forgive easily everything that Ei has done to Inazuma
People projecting their head canon and expectations and when a story doesn’t met such thing it’s suddenly bad and when someone thinks something is bad they’re very much willing to ignore things and nitpick to fit their narrative
A little bit louder for the mouth breathers in the back please.
And those people then share on social media and it get spread and it influence other people to have those same opinions and thoughts because those people's opinions seem reasonable but looks like people nowadays can't form their opinion and just follow others
@@firdaus3603 I repeat. A little bit louder for the mouth breathers in the back.
@@starscreammtfan preferably with a loudspeaker please since they don’t seem to get it
head canon is good but i hate it when people assume it is actually canon EVEN WHEN IT IS RIGHT INFRONT OF THEM
I would love to see you do a video like this for someone like Kokomi or Ayaka, both people who I felt like were brought down by the community story wise (people saying kokomi being poorly written and Ayaka gaslighting us during the archon quest)
Hoping nothing but the best for you and for this video series!!
The problem with Kokomi is her own story quest tries too hard to make her look like some tactical genius when the more they try to show this the worse she comes off.
1: Her instruction manuals. While good on paper, their incredibly impractical since they contents is only useful when you can read it. Which in the travelers case we were given a book hours before the meet up and told “ in case something happens this can help” but when we end up using the book not only do we have no time to use it but the situation in question required a solution all the way in the last section of the book.
2: Her ending is just terrible. She had a bunch of soldiers try to start ANOTHER war with the shogunate even though they just barely survived the first one and all they get is a pat on the back and a promotion to a new military corps ( which brings up another flaw in and of itself since it implies that watsumi never had a stealth corps of any variety to begin with while Ei could just have the shuumatsuban spy on them or any other stealth corps spy on them as she pleases)
As for Ayaka she pretty much did manipulate us into joining since the traveler was VERY adamant on not joining and when told no she basically had us listen to a bunch of sob stories about people losing their visions till we basically said yes and when we do she doesn’t really do anything to actually help us talk to the shogun since Yae pretty much does the heavy lifting
@@amari7782 Well said. Have nothing to add about kokomi, though i guess i liked how she deescalated the situation and that's at least something. As for ayaka, it's both the problem of her writing as well as the traveller's writing. We always end up agreeing too easily with anything that gets forced on us, like that time we helped Ning to rebuild the jade chamber only for Paimon to completely hijack our question because both her and ning assumed we came to ask about useless info we already knew. I'd personally ask every little detail she knows about the destruction of Khaenriah... but i digress. In ayaka's case it would've made much more sense if after listening to the sob stories we would still refuse to help, went to tenshukaku a couple days later and witnessed Thoma's "execution". We've built a good link with him so far so of course we would intervene. And only after we listened to the puppet's "you'll be inlate upon this statue (just because you're a walkign vision and i don't like you)" and escaped while barely saving our asses it would make sense for the traveller to willingly ask to join, because this tyrant must be taken down.
As for Ayaka ending up being of not much help in the end, i'll just copypaste my different comment... What I believe should've been done with the resistance is Ayaka admitting she can't do a thing about the decrees, she just doesn't have enough power, so she asks the traveller to establish contact with the resistance so in the end they could join forces and storm the castle together (with maybe Ayaka coming in the first row so even Kamisato clan's future was at stakes now that she's acting against Shogun in the open). Would also be good to show the power of the resistance along the way to establish how much they can achieve and that it's clearly not enough to fight shogun. That would be both a good way to make the resistance relevant as well as make the internal resistance's (which is kamisato network) role to be actually important in the whole story instead of them just doing some small things here and there until the traveller and Yae solved almost everything on their own. But we got what we got...
@@Soundwave1900 the problem with the traveler is THEY WERE GOING TO ASK ABOUT THEIR SIBLING. Mihoyo acts like we will be reunited never happened and keeps shoving that question out everytime is read if asking how to get to the abyss or just doing what their sibling said and continue this journey
@@Soundwave1900 also as for khaenriah I doubt ninnguan would know that much more than anyone else since overall it’s not that valuable of information to anyone and at most she’d only care about relics that could be pawned off
@@amari7782 dammit, I wanted to believe they at least recognize we will be reunited happened... T___T God the story in this game is paced so bad.
Ei is my favourite character in the game story-wise... She’s precious 🥺
Beautifully done. I've never understood how people saw Ei's story quest as a mere date. Tho rushed archon quest I understand her segment was the least effected by it writing wise. I always believed that mihoyo had much more in store for her and even after 2.5 I believe we're gonna get more. She really feels like the main character of her her own story. Or so to say Inazuma's whole arc.
Honestly those people are either hypocrites who don’t read and just act like any interaction with a female character means a date but are willing to ignore that Ayaka and 2/3 of the liyue story quest were also gigantic dating sims and say their some of the best writing in all of genshin.
Or their magically expecting a singular story quest to just be Ei being told she’s wrong dumb and shouldn’t be the leader of Inazuma. Forget trying to actually do better no she needs to be constantly told how bad of a person is because that’s how character development works for these people
@@amari7782 Actually none of the Liyue story quests were remotely like dating sims. You must be talking about Hangouts? Lots of people complained about Ayaka's story quest being like a date too. Also, Ei is an archon with major significance to the overall plot hence why people had a different expectation for her story quest. Compare hers to Venti's and Zhongli's story quest and hers just falls flat. But I don't blame that on the writing - I blame the timing of her story quest. They do address the fact that she was wrong and that change wasn't always bad - but they needed an archon quest for that. Venti and Zhongli's stories after their first archon quest felt complete by the end of their first archon quest, so their story quests just fleshed them out more. It didn't have to deal with the baggage of completing or necessarily furthering their character development. You just learn more about who they are as a character. Ei's archon quest on the other hand clearly wasn't resolved yet after her first archon quest. It ends with her contemplating on her decisions and actions. So yes, she still needed to see that change wasn't necessarily bad - but that was a major plot point for her character development and that was better addressed by the first part of her second archon quest because the writers can then fully further her story. They could not do that with just a story quest so it felt... half-baked. Like it was 30% continuation of the archon quest, 30% hangout and 40% story quest. It didn't really resolve anything completely by the end of it and the second archon quest does a better job of making her see change wasn't bad. I feel like MHY/HYV did her dirty by trying to push her story quest too early before her full character arc even concluded. Then they could have just focused on us getting to know her more as a character. Maybe we could have had a story that had something to do about her time with her friends Chiyo, Kitsune Saiguu, the Tengu and her sister Makoto. People shouldn't expect her to realize her mistakes in an SQ but HYV made it so her SQ was a direct continuation of her AQ which just doesn't have the capacity to actually further her character arc. Then once her second AQ was out, her SQ just felt redundant. As a result, we got a half-baked story-archon quest instead.
@@Trisha_Yuu Finally someone who gets the critisism...
@@Trisha_Yuu I think perhaps the problem is placing expectations on what content "should be." No one at HoYo has ever said an Archon Quest "should be" anything, so any expectations are assumptions. You might be surprised how much more enjoyable things are when you aren't attached to assumed expectations.
go the desperate fanboy wants to attract attention with false arguments. I would answer you right now but I'm tired of continuing to defeat you, I'll just give a summary instead of feeding you ego I'll give a summary to see if your head can process it: Ei has one of the worst developments of all, his story is very poorly done and more with the dating simulator and the puppet, Conteibuir and create the vision hunting decree. in fact several people DID die after losing their visions and how do I know?
easy is explained in the description of the objects and artifacts that you get in the missions of the familiars and spirits but not all Itto lives by his hot blood and Ayaka and others also by sheer force of will, the goddess of salt that is pacifist It doesn't change anything she was able to defend perfectly but it was a treacherous attack so your poor argument has no place, Ei can be killed in the same way with the goddess of salt, by means of a treacherous attack, and the fact that you do not recognize your own lies that you say About Ei you will not make me change my mind what you say are more false than your imaginary girlfriend.
Ei if he killed a lot of people is explained by the dialogues with the npc and in the lore of the artifacts but of course you don't know anything because you only watch videos of Streamers, the hunting decree was Ei's idea it is also explained in the lore of the artifacts another thing that you neither read nor realize. The puppet, although she sees herself, is still the ruler, even if you see that with the naked eye and the puppet only accepted the vision of eternity very reluctantly because she was defeated, seriously you continue with your fanboy lies. Let's see the people. If they hate Ei for causing the wars, the decrees and the deaths he caused, it is also seen in the artifacts, they don't hate Venti because he hides his identity the same with Zhongli but Ei is shown to the naked eye so your argument has no logic and the two of them did not let their people die or behave like tyrants.
seriously, your argument seems to be taken from the forums of the Genshin-lovers and Ei if it was an accomplice that Scaramouche was corrupted because she abandoned him after creating him (it's the same, so if you say that she loves him after leaving him, it's like saying that your parents abandoned you when you were little and you say they love you? you really have serious problems) the blacksmith and others who pretended to be his friends betrayed him and that affected him, the Fatui only pushed him They were not the ones who started his behavior, really do you know how to think? because those are two different things.
Cool video. I would like to see one of these for Eula because a lot of people I see do her quest seem to misunderstand whats going on and what kind of person she is. Also another misconception with Ei I see is how they say she abandoned scaramouche and comparing to child abandonment which is a little insane to me and they she hated him for having emotions when thats not the case, she lets him go and seals his powers because she fellt bad and didnt want to force the gnosis on him, and she wanted him to have his own life. If she really didnt care she could have just destroyed him but she didnt.
Perfectly said, thank you for compiling my frustration toward others who said Inazuma and Raiden Ei are poorly written.
I absolutely love Raiden Ei and think a lot of people have misconceptions about her so I think this series is a great idea! I enjoyed the video!
I'm so happy this video was made. I finally found one more person who tried to look past her "villain" stance and try to understand what led to it, and how the puppet and Ei were totally different, but with subtle similarities. Her first story quest was one of the best starts to character development. And this is why Ei became from someone I despised at first glance, to someone I truly love and admire after that story quest. Made me decide to pull her weapon for her, for it belonged to her made her look so much more beautiful.
I've only been playing Genshin for about a month, and I just finished Ei's archon and story quests over the weekend. I'm surprised to read her story wasn't well-received when it came out, I though it was pretty solid. I became much more invested in Genshin's lore in general afterwards.
The fact that Ei fought her puppet for hundreds of years to give her people what they want is the ultimate growth proof.
bold of you to assume genshin hardcore want to understand her backstory.
The overarching game plot and character sub plot has always been done beautifully but the region plot is flawed which is bad when they're the main exposure to the player. I agree with most your point about Ei's own storyline but imo Inazuma feel rushed. There is no reason to have Yae info dump at the end while most of that info are crucial, have been sprinkled around the region plot, but not touched upon. I can see the point and the thread of the inazuma story laid out but how they connect it is quite sloppy made it feel rushed.
My main problem is not the fact her actions are justifiable or not, or that she deservs redemption or not, my problem is the lack of consequences for her, no matter how much you guys cope to justify her actions "ah bruh it was her puppet not her" still this creat an imense amount of problems for an entire region, the fact that we get to this point and she does not even utter a single "sorry" its just tell me that she is not even aware of the damage she caused wich makes her even more dangerous and villanous than someone like scaramouche.
This 100%. The people of Inazuma have no idea that the Raiden Shogun and Ei are "separate people" so in their eyes all of the sins are on one singular person: their "archon". It bothers me that this is the case, yet the people are fawning over her and are all "glory to the allmighty Shogun!" when she literally abused so many of them; yet they are so enamored with her?! I was so mad when Ayato came out and was all "My duty is to serve the allmighty Shogun", like bro she was the cause of all of this. All of the sins she committed against her people are met with love and praise as if she didn't spend the last several years holding people hostage in Inazuma and turning vision holders into mindless husks when she steals what isn't hers to take. She never had to face any consequences whatsoever and it pisses me off. She tried to execute the Traveler when his back was turned and would have succeeded if Kazuha wasn't there with Tomo's vision; yet the very next scene after the battle is us willingly seeking her out to walk around town with her, eat candy, read light novels, and take a commemorative photo. Kujo Sara got her ass beat by Signora in front of the Shogun and was just left there, showing that the Shogun doesn't care for her most loyal servant; and then Sara is still "glory to the Shogun" and during the five kasen event wants to buy a figurine of her. WTF?!
@@sakurawolfgoddess89 Well most Inazumans are not affected by the vision hunt decree , just the vision users, which is less than 5% of the population. Even then, the decrees are only a couple of years old. Ayato and kamisato clan running the yashiro commission only happened because the shogun is merciful. Kujou Sara thinks that Raiden shogun gave her the vision that caused her to survive an otherwise lethal fall, which meant that even after all the events in tenshukaku, she thinks that the fact she is alive is all because of her and is willing to serve all her life to the shogun, hence her unwavering loyalty and fanaticism to the shogun.
@@mikeoxmaul3776 The Shogun is not merciful. The new event explains that the Kamisato clan almost fell from grace and that the only reason they were saved is not because the Shogun is such a nice person, but because Yae convinced Ei to have them be in charge of festivals. She was perfectly ok with their clan falling into ruin (ironically enough, it would be because of her own creation: Scaramouche), it was only because her best friend suggested it.
@@sakurawolfgoddess89 Yae suggested, she agreed. See? mercy. She ultimately has the choice.
@@mikeoxmaul3776 I just don't really consider that merciful. Ei only has Yae as a friend, I think the last thing she would really want to do is upset Yae. She didn't care about the Kamisato clan, she only cared about Yae's opinion of her. Is that really being merciful, or just doing your friend a favor?
Late comment but I don't remember people calling it a date quest literally meant it. It just seemed like a quest from the character hangout rather than one fitting for an archon quest.
Ei has always been my favorite character, but I also somewhat agreed with some of the people who hated her, not fully understanding her myself. This video makes me much more confident, and now I have a video to point people too!
The fact that ei herself is strolling around inazuma city in irodori festival is showing her growth and wanting to know more about the current inazuma.
I think se people refer to the 2.1 Ei quest as a "date quest" because they wanted that quest to be lore and drama heavy, with big revelations. And Some other people wants to held Ei accountable for everything that Shogun and Tricommission did, so they wanted that quest to be about Ei watching what has become of Inazuma in much more depressing tone.
Finally thank u people just believe her to be an evil waifu and most people don't even know who Ei is they call her baal.she is one of the best written characters in this game and I wish we get more of her interaction with other characters
Her second quest really showed how much she’s grown
Idk how to explain it… Ai gave up on her principles too easily and faced no consequence for her and her puppets actions.
If your gonna be a villain be a villain with an empathetic backstory/goal; who changes through negative consequences or slow development. She had neither.
In my opinion Ai was a horrendous ruler and her puppet was a dictator by Ai’s own design. Now we are learning that Ai created Scaramouche then threw him away for her ‘perfect puppet’. So sorry not sorry I don’t like her character, mostly because she literally caused so many horrible things and all she got as a consequence was puff piece where she changed her views and suddenly we’re supposed to be ok with her even after everything she did.
Ultimately you’re right. I don’t understand her. Her way of thinking, her justification for her actions, and her goal are all hard for me to empathize with or even understand.
Funny enough I empathize and like the Fatui more because I can at least understand that they all believe in their actions and are working towards their goal even if we don’t know what that goal is yet.
Her name is Ei, not Ai. And you can understand Fatui evil behavior because they have a goal but you cannot understand Ei? Ei froze Inazuma in time to keep people safe and from fear that it could happen something like Khaenri'ah. Ei's goal was to keep Inazuma and her people safe even though it came from a big price. She didn't want them to have visions because humans can easily be corrupted by the power (rip Teppei).
And Eu is changing. She put Shogun in the shadows and wants to start handling it. She is learning the meaning of eternity that Makoto had and also trying to be the best for her people. We don't see it but we got those glimpses in her story quest. Wrong would be if she turned good and perfect out of nowhere. She didn't. Even after the first quest, she was still scared of consequences and erosion that she prefers to let Shogun handle most of it. She's taking slowly and that's what is called growth. You cannot erase thousand of years of thinking and believes in seconds.
Besides, they are Gods. They aren't meant to beg for forgiveness or be flawless. I also don't agree with Venti and Zhongli is my least favorite archon but I like them for being God types with flaws.
Thank u, thank u for addressing this. I've been telling this to the people who misunderstood her in the internet but ppl don't listen they just wanna mock her. Thank u. A character I relate a lot
Thank you for this video! Raiden is my absolute favorite character and I couldn’t agree more with everything you say!! Her character development and quests have been the best in Genshin so far. Nothing else is even close…
I think what players dont understand is that all archons so far are benevolent in nature, albeit Ei not knowing how to handle humans correctly since it's Makoto who actually handles the welfare. Also, they dont understand the culture of Inazuma. Inazuma is a nation which prides itself in combat. There's a lot of references that weaponry is Inazuma's pride and glory. Thus, we can conclude that Inazuma's culture is that, if you want to get a resolution, combat is the way. We can see that with Signora and Kazuha's friend. And that's what we did when we defeated Ei to abolish the vision hunt decree.
Maybe it's disappointing that Ei doesnt know what the people really want but that's why Makoto was the appointed archon. And the two story quests are great feat of how someone, even an archon, can show growth. The quests are not boring since if you understand it, it will relate to anyone on a personal level.
Taking 'command' in the resistance was a waste of time and added to the rushed feeling of the second act of Ei's story. The final confrontation was impactful but its is reduced by the chore of what came before it. I feel it would have been better used with Yae, learning more about Ei's possibly motivations and learning how to utilize the ethereal realm against her.
I don't believe when people complain about archon quest being rushed or done half way, they are referring to EI specifically. Rather they are talking about how most of us expected the "war" to get more attention. More battles and cut scenes involving the traveler as a part of that war. On a whole the war because it had all of like 2-3 cutscenes showing the actual war side of the war even if they claim it took place over months to us it appeared to last less than a week. This discrepancy is due to the lack of fleshing out of content for said war. It felt insanely rushed with the conclusion happening the very next patch after we learned of it. It should have been around NOW in 2.5-2.6 range that peace was finally found. This would make the war feel like an actual war instead of a single battle for a single cutscene. So yes they did rush the archon quest and they did not give that war proper attention. Ei however has been a slow change with her story quests coming a few patches apart.
technically i disagree with you, the misconception of being rushed kinda should be thrown out the window. One, even before we got to inazuma this war was already there, the vision HUNT decree was there already and so was the sakoku decree knowing that, it means the war only ever ended once we defeated ei and her ideals. A story can have a constant war before we even arrive there. Edit: if they ever had added more "war" scenes the whole plot wouldn't make sense, u don't need constant scenes of war to know there was one
We as the traveler came in the midle of the war
And its becouse of us that the war stoped
The war was there for 1 year
We just came in and stoped it
Do people expect to waste time on every batle
Our goal was to find raiden, talk to her but in order to do that we must stop the war
Now for the peace part
Watatsumi and inazuma still are in peace negotiations as mentioned by kokomi and yae in inazuma event
Considering all this, the archon quest was overall handled very well. It now makes sense that the resistance was less focused on, because the point of the quests was to get every perspective needed on the electro archon and eternity, while learning about Ei’s past, followed by Ei’s story quests, which gave her perspective, and showed us how that perspective changed.
I don't understand while Ei's first quest a date when a whole Ayaka quest exist.. Besides, Ei doesn't really show interest on Traveller and almost all story quest are us accompanying the characters.. Also, especially that Ei is holed up on the PoE for a long time so of course the first thing to do is to show her the current Inazuma..
Finally got around to watching this one. While I generally agree with everything you've explained, I think there's a misunderstanding in regards to point 2.
While calling it a "date" is pretty disingenuous and reductive, I think it stems from the quest feeling incredibly off tone. I understand what it does for Ei, and the lessons she takes from it are very important for her growth, but at the same time, this is a quest that follows the act 3 archon quest, yet it doesn't feel like any of the stakes are even remotely addressed.
I think its natural to assume that, at that point in the story, Ei should take responsibility for the actions she allowed the puppet to take. Inazuma is still burning from a war that ended literally yesterday(kokomi's story quest about peace talks wasn't available yet when this first came out), and instead of acknowledging this, she goes on a walk to see how inazuma has changed. It feels like something is missing, that we missed her ever saying "yeah whoops, my bad" and I think that's what many people were expecting going into her personal quest. The quest, while important, yes, did not meet those expectations, and as a result, it gets reduced to being called "poorly written" and a "date". It isn't either of those things, but it is definitely a little out of place.
YES finally I found someone who can truly understand Ei. Like I do I'm crying.
Ei is most likely to fight alongside of us the archons we’ve met so far imo
Ei is not a villain, she's just a bonehead, like what Makoto said.
Bless you for this video! Ei has for real one of the best developments in-game but this game being one where parts of the story come out over time and not all at once makes people jump to conclusions and voice their dissatisfaction over something, which was never meant to be completed yet, for not being complete. And I just want to add that Ei is right now the only Archon who didn't dodge a single question traveler asked her because unlike the other two and her sister she never really had any ties to celestia. There's nothing holding her back and that was really such a nice change for once imo and also showed that just like traveler Ei was someone who got dragged into something she didn't understand
this is well said, the many misconceptions kinda needs to put behind and see that ei really has a character development which is why i like her story the most Ei never killed tomo as ei was in the plane of euthymia so she was unaware the puppet had ever executed tomo after he lost the battle with kujou sara.
in addition to this - about the rushed misconception (i agree with teyvat historia) many people say its rush and complain that the story was rushed because "we only got one war scene" So let me make this clear, The traveler did not arrive to inazuma at the beginning of the war. We came in the middle of the fight where it was in complete turmoil, Our goal was simply to talk to Ei but to do so we had to stop the war that had been going on for a year. We don't need constant "war" scenes to justify inazuma being in war. Making more war scenes only wastes our time and doesn't really add up to the plot at all nor give the traveler their goal in talking to the electro archon. It's like they have to solve the human part of ideals rather then solving it from the exact source. Nor should the complaints be based on ei. Ei was deceived and worse yet the fatui were influencing said war.
in the irotori festival Kokomi and yae made known that watatsumi and inazuma are still in peace negotiations which means it clarifies enough that the war has ended because there is nothing else for them to fight each other a battle between two groups are each group fighting for what they believe in. But because the traveler got the electro archon to Abolish the vision hunt decree there was no need to keep fighting.
Like i will say again **u don't need multiple war scenes to justify it was happening it'll only waste our time to get to the electro archon**
Edit: tbh most people who complain act like they know how to make a story .-. make a script and see how that'll work out for ya
Raiden Ei is one of the top 3 characters in game with her lore, people really don't get it and had a lot of complains because they just focus on the superficial aspects. She has many layers when you start analysing every part of her quest and over imposing it based on her past.
this video helped a lot i really liked ei's second story quest but i was still on the fence about her and this made me understnad her character more the comparisone with zhongli and venti is what really helped
The murdered argument for kazuha friend is stupid, You dont challenge a powerful warrior to a duel without threat of death much less a god. People need to understand that Ei is. God her time is more valuable than a pesant's life whose one ambition is to fight shogun. If there was not the threat of death every one who ever picked up a sword 2 days ago would challenge her continuesly and many times.
He challenged Kujou Sara not Ei. And Tomo was literally trying to take a stand against the vision hunt decree. And saw the shogun’s attack, as an ultimate form of punishment, to be able to block an attack like that… is the ultimate form of resistance, especially to stand up to a decree that wasn’t morally right.
Why do you think his death was one of the reasons that sparked the resistance?
🌸🌹It would be alternatively called “the five reasons we would be made wiser for having subscribed to this channel”!🌹🌸
Probably because I started playing later, in patch 2.4, I noticed the writting of Inazuma as a whole was very well done. I understood most things, empathyzed with most characters, and also noticed the writting got way better than the first stories.
Inazuma´s story might have flaws like everything in life, but I think it is also because they were trying to make the story a bit more complex, and introduce new things too. Compared to the Prologue quests which was just saving a sad dragon, and Chapter 1 which was just helping Zhongli doing a funeral for himself (which btw... felt way more like a date than Ei´s first quest), the Chapter 2 story is way more complex.
Now that we are in Chapter 3 we can see that the stories are getting even more complex and better written, which is amazing.
And btw, I love Ei, started playing the game for her and Amber.
This is the best Genshin video I've seen! I couldn't agree more, and I've been consistently confused by the community's reaction to Ei and the Inazuma storyline in general. Ei is my favorite character in the game, and she easily has had the most well developed character arc thus far. Thanks for this video! I hope it changes some minds! 😁
this video deserves way more likes and views
This is fine and all, but most of the in game characters do not know that Ei and the puppet are two separate entities. So the complete 180 (or complete disregard for her actions) everyone in the in game world has done on their stance towards her is what really bothers me about all of this.
She herself has said many times that Raiden and she are the same, that she does not consider her as a different being. So that part of the video is wrong.
I feel like the entire Narukami Island never hated her, just feared. They struggled to understand what's her reasoning, but generally had faith there is some greater plan. In fact I believe this is the biggest reason why the Tenryou Commissioner got away with false reports for as long as he did.
@@clover.8147 Yeah... the puppet is not separate character. Puppet is Raiden Ei, just reduced to the role of ruler and enforcer of her ideal.
The whole point of her second quest was her inner struggle, but made literal. She wasn't fighting "AI gone rogue", she was fighting her older self.
Why are people of any religion okay with their god doing things they would otherwise consider wrong? Because that is their god and they hold them on a different level than they do other mortals. It's kind of just how religions work. It's obvious to us the players that the archons are not infallible, but the people in that world see gods differently.
@@ItzaMystri exactly this. It also deals with the question of what happens when an absolute entity were to coexist with mortals. The answer is that you can't do much about the entity. You can't punish it because you can't harm it in any way.
The people of inazuma understood that. The resistance can only hope to change her mind and nothing else. Once she has changed her mind, no one else can ever expect her to face punishment for what she caused because no one can force her to.
When people asked why God doesn't come down to earth to rule the world, the answer is that, you'd lose your agency. Once God decide on something and you disagree with thst decision, can you do anything to change that? Nope.
I agree with most of what you said, but the Archon Quest IMO later half was rushed.
Not that the concept was wrong or bad, just the execution. The quest did not build up and pace the various twists, certainly not as good as the initial build up.
The execution is not unforgivable or anything, it's just not as good as Hoyoverse usual skill. It'd be ok or better than many other RPGs.
Though it's also very understandable, AFAIK they had a change in writing staff during that period and it took some transitioning.
Finally, someone who really explains why it wasn't Ei fault for Tomo's death, we need this for those Kazuha's fans who doesn't understand
I think the reason she is detested is for the simple logic that, if the decree had never existed, he would still be alive. Since he asked *exclusively* for the duel because of the decree.
@@clover.8147 those same people don’t understand that he would’ve found a way to die to the musou no hitotachi one way or another with or without the decree. People seem to ignore that in his eyes the decree was the perfect exudes to see it first hand
@@clover.8147 His Ambition(Kazuha’s Friend) was to witness and survive the Musuo No Hitotachi. Kazuha knew what he was getting himself into and mentioned how he holds no anger twords the shogun for his friends death. But for the Vision Hunt Decree which was established because before the Traveler arrived Ei wanted things to stay the same no matter what, for Inazuma to be in eternal stasis. Visions in her eyes were something that defied eternity(also the Fatui that tricked the Puppet as well). Since the Vision Hunt and the Sakuko Decree have both been abolished Kazuha doesn’t have a dislike twords his archon. In fact Sangonomia Kokomi also holds respect for the Shogun even though it was Ei who killed her god.
I bring up Kokomi because you’d think she would hate the shogun(Ei) but the fact she doesn’t means that they understand what the Fatui did and know that she had the best intentions just not the best exicution. Makoto promised Eternity to Inazuma and Ei wanted to keep her late sister’s promise but in a way that was different. Now Ei is taking a more hands on approach to ruling Inazuma and is finding the Eternity in the idea of Inazuma
this her Kokomi's About Raiden Shogun:
Now that the Vision Hunt Decree is over, Watatsumi Island has once again returned to normal life. It has never been my intent to scrutinize the rights and wrongs of the Shogun's actions, even to this day. What I do care about is the future of our island. It is my hope that the Shogun will fulfill her promise and that we can live with the Shogunate in peace. However, if there comes a day when she once again casts aside the aspirations of the people, I can assure you that we won't sit by and watch.
The first quest actually make sense. It shows her true self in which will let us know the real her which os different from the puppet. Hence, the archon is not as ruthless as the puppet. After anlong time secluding herself in the Plane, the first quest is refreshing for her: to learn the changes of Inazuma and it's people, and also a move for us to learn about her personality, characteristics and thoughts. If the first quest illustrates her making a move to about the current problems, it will not make sense, because the reports given to her were only little and not in full detail, besides appearing as ei will overwork her, just like the last quest where she barely can walk as we investigate the leylines. The first quest let us know her and let her know us, which makes both parties learn to trust and make friends.
Just another point I like to add here, Makoto was the electro archon and hence the possessor of the electro gnosis. There is no where in lore stating that Ei became the electro archon (in the eyes of Celestia, as there is no mention of Ei using the gnosis) Ei was considered the electro archon by the people because in the eyes of the people both makoto and Ei were one and the same. I assume scaramouche was the initial attempt at creating the body that could house the gnosis, but it failed and we know from the lore neither Ei (who transferred her conscious to the sword and hence had no physical form) or the puppet had the gnosis with them. So it would be incorrect to assume that Ei given something of that belonged to her while in reality they just passed what was Makoto's.
Just a passing thought while writing this comment an interesting thing to note is that we haven't actually seen the gnosis, it would be interesting to know whether it is like visions in that they become gray when the owner passes or they retain their power.
I would have to disagree with some of the points laid regarding Ei.
From my perspective, I see Ei as a tragic character driven by trauma. Her pursuit for eternity fits well in the survival and preservation of what she has left, her nation. Even the realm she resides in when we first encounter her fits the inner anguish of the like.
If we are going with your approach that Ei realizing she can be wrong, its good foundation that simply even Gods can make human mistakes.
I had hope she would have stood her ground on her eternity even if she was beaten, I feel her "changing her mind" in her goals was way too fast for it ti be resolved.
It may be a broken record but I stand not for the majority but consider it as a fact that the story felt not incomplete but the pacing was horrendous.
Raiden Ei's character should be analysed together with concepts of Zen Buddhism and other philosophies associated with mono no aware, or the sad acceptance and appreciation of transience. The crux of the archon quest in inazuma is actually about this. This is also one of the hallmarks of some of the most enduring Japanese fiction, poetry, and literature.
Raiden ei/shougun has more motifs related to transience than eternity. I mean, their theme song is a dead giveaway.
I would argue that the geo archon and liyue has more themes and motifs related to 'eternity'/longevity, based on their emphasis on tradition. Go praise mihoyo for incorporating this irony in her character. In fact, lightning is another symbol for ephemeral glory.
Edit: when analysing stories by mihoyo, seeing characters as villains or 'good guys' vs 'bad guys' is inherently flawed. Mihoyo is really good at creating characters with grey morality. Instead, we should look at it from the standpoint of conflicting ideals, as simply antagonist vs protagonist. Seriously, just look at Otto apocalypse from honkai. And kamisato Ayato as well as childe's moralities are questionable too. So is zhongli's actions when he imperiled liyue by striking a deal with the fatui. The difference here is that ei's misguided actions caused a lot more suffering.
I liken ei's actions to decarabian who is also bringing woe to the people thinking that he is helping them.
i don't think we can't ever say any character is a flat out 'good person' in this game, but the consequence in inazuma as a whole seem...lacking. There's WAR and both side lost their men but the game make it seem like a long term protest more than a battlefield it is, but i guess you can say that vision holder is the minority so it isn't a big deal(a living hell for some,a minor inconvenience for others). it would be nice to see her acknowlege the watasumi island soilders or some of the people that their vision get took away. or is it happens outside of the kamera? who knows?(you can say i hold grudge because i live in a country with dictator government)
She once fear the eternally nature of change, and now she had learned to understand it. it's admirable, but until i see how her will dealing with things that will catch up to her, i can't say i like her.
tbh, I'd personally call it a long term protest considering the War only lasted for a year.
in addition, all messed up things were more or less caused by the Fatui.
2nd point: I found the quest to be ill timed rather than just bad, we had a very clear goal in going to Inazuma and it was largely ignored until we got Ei's second story quest. We were not there to help Inazuma, we wanted to find answers about the war that changed our sister. I love Genshin's story, but I can't ignore how jumbled and poorly paced its been lately. If quest 1 and 2 were mixed more and the timey-wimey stuff done away with, it would have been amazing, 10/10. I think that's why so many people thought the quest itself bad, but I do agree with what you said about it setting up Ei's character, I just don't think it was appropriate for it to play out like it did without addressing the elephant in the room: The cataclysm.
4th point and somewhat the whole video: Ei did still make the puppet and give it, its orders. Sure the Fatui had a hand, but if you make a robot and someone else tricks it into killing someone under your commands, you still go to jail. Still a good point about the duels though. I don't think this is a bad thing for her character either, pushing deeply flawed traits like this are what give characters spice. Its just too bad Genshin refuses to play up the more harsh side of their characters. Like we've continued to ignore that Zhong Li 100% got some civilians and soldiers killed. If the second hydra killed some of the guards (As noted by Keqing), then you bet Osial caused some death. Yet we ignore that fact because Genshin refuses to explore it. I loved the idea that the archons were a set of people making the harsh, hard to make decisions for their version of a greater good. Imagine a scene with Zhong Li or Ei having remorse for the lives they took in their pursuit where the game could even give us two options, one where we console them for the greater good angle and one where we show disappointment in them. (Ultimately not changing the story still, but cool flavor.)
5th point: I get that the video is Ei focused, but I don't think the larger problem is her. The story felt lesser for sure, especially when Liyue's story quests gave us so many more answers and had multiple threads of plot moving together. inazuma's story only had the one thread, which isn't bad, but to a lot of people that might come off as cheap. Pacing wise it was definitely a much faster story told, though this is subjective. I found it too fast, but I wouldn't say someone was wrong for thinking otherwise. The main thing I wanted to touch on here though, is that the main quest of our MC was sidelined, despite obvious attempts to make it the main reason we even came to Inazuma in the first place. The moment we got to sit down with Ei, we should have sprung the question. The longer we waited on that note, the less impact it was going to have and thus why it was a passing comment when it did happen. I seriously wish the MC's story took a larger overall role in Genshin's story telling (I've yet to do the current quest, fingers are crossed its good). Also, as a last aside, the cherry blossom tree timey-wimey moment didn't need to happen. To clarify, I mean the seed being planted in the past from the present, the Makoto bit was great. These kinds of story elements often come across as cop outs, where a writer can try to make a story seem smarter by having the setup be one where characters have different recollections of time. I personally can't stand that stuff, but that's not to say it can't be done right and even well, I just lean more towards this being cheap on Hoyoverse's part.
I want to say that I love your videos and mean no disrespect with this comment. I just wanted to share how I felt about the points. Again, I love Genshin's story, I found Inazuma to be on the weaker end for me, but ignoring contrast, it was still pretty good.
Something to consider is that Ei has no reason to talk to us about anything that matters until she becomes indebted to us by our actions in her Act 1 quest. Additionally, considering Yae said she'd put resources into it, you'd think she'd ask Ei, too, no?
As far as pacing goes, there are a decent handful of stories out there that fit into a certain "traveling" genre that all share a commonality in uneven pacing. Spice and Wolf is a well known one and one of Genshin's NPCs actually directly references another, Kino no Tabi. It's reflective of the reality of traveling. Some days you deal with the mundane, other days you deal with Gods.
i mean, with the addition of the chasm, some of the world quests now kinda question the decision of Zhongli wanting a retirement as a scheme between liyue and fatui. like how his retirement resulting the Qixing to antagonize the whole fatui against liyue even though their relationship were really good prior to the event of liyue's archon quest.
If that's considered ill timed then so is literally everything else. And you know what? I agree with that idea. Genshin operates on scheduled releases meaning everything we get that pertains to story is episodic. Nothing entirely wrong with that but the story is always going to be feel disjointed and "ill timed". Not that it means we can't criticize the quests on their own but trying to say certain quests are badly timed is a moot point given that 1, those quests are entirely optional and aren't specified on when exactly they even occur and 2, the fact of the matter is that those same quests are episodic and therefore incomplete. So if we got both chapters of Ei's quest right then and there then I doubt you'd call it ill timed. That's the unfortunate truth of how Genshin is structured and is more so a problem with the game's rate of content rather than it's sequence of events.
As for this point, perhaps this is more head canon than I would like it to sound but I'm fairly certain Genshin has no interest in showing us these characters in the way you suggest because they are in fact, gods. They do not die unless they are outright murdered as far as we can tell and only fade by way of erosion which is essentially treated as a form of self corruption due to long life. I find that the game makes it a point to show that the gods do not view humanity in the same regard as how we would view each other. They are not only above humans but do understand them to a certain degree while also using their perspective on how to interact with them even if it is wrong. They're not evil(so far anyways) but the deaths of a few or even a hundred while their respective regions still stand wouldn't really effect them when they've all lived long enough to see death come to many be it through natural or unnatural means. Ei, for instance, is a warrior who's trained in perfect combat and understands what it means to fight and die with honor. She lives by the samurai code so I for one don't see why it would be necessary for us to see her mourning the dead soldiers of the war we help fight in when she would be the one who understands the most that if they fought and died for their beliefs then they died with honor and don't need her pity or remorse. It wouldn't make sense for us to get a scene of her honoring the recently dead but what does is seeing how she reacted to seeing the dead once more during her second chapter. As for Zhongli, the entire first chapter of his quest was us being given more insight as to how he not only views the events of the past but has fully reconciled with the many clearly difficult decisions he's had to make in order to win the archon war. We may not agree or want him to show remorse or some type of feeling beyond what we see but he is a long lived god and constantly sees what the aftermath of the war brought. I thought his first quest was intriguing but also more than enough to establish that he's fully aware of what he did in the past but understands that it doesn't need to be dwelled on or rectified since it's pretty obvious he's done playing archon. I just don't think Genshin wants us to fully side with the archons when we know what they were before. Dain is the one who helps give us this idea of not fully trusting the gods. While we may eventually get along with them, the game doesn't actively push us to trust everything they say and do. In fact, they give us plenty of reasons of why not to and that we should use them as they've essentially used us: a means to an end. They have great character to them but ultimately I think it's clear that the story doesn't really want us to be fully sympathetic to them and that they are still gods so any real consequences they would have can't exactly be enacted as there is literally no one but *us* to do so and quite frankly, that's not our problem.
And I wanna say that I do agree with this last point but I wanna add something that I think is the much bigger problem that Mihoyo has which is priorities. I think they've gotten somewhat better and hopefully Sumeru is treated better as well but Inazuma was definitely an on the receiving end of some poor judgement on the story towards the end of the quest even though, ironically, I consider Inazuma as a whole the best they've offered
Thank you for this video. I always found it annoying how people interpreted Ei's archon quest as a "date". To me it felt like the traveler was acting as a guide as well as a bridge for Ei to close the gap between herself and the present day Inazuma. Furthermore I don't get why people said The Raiden Shogun murdered Kazuha's friend when he knew he was in a duel to the death.
This was definitely needed to be addressed. 👏👏👏👏
Especially for those big genshin content creators who keep calling Ei's story quest andatr
I personally loved all of Inazuma's quests and it's lore, definitely my favourite region 💜
Your final reason about Ei was the BIG reason why Ei became my favorite archon. Compared to Zhongi and Venti, Ei already dealt with her Gnosis problem so many years ago and to top it off, she cut her ties with Celestia, so really the Gnosis is useless to her anyway. Plus, her development was WAY more handled then Venti and Zhongi's as while they already had their development in the past and are the same, Ei meanwhile has so much more room to grow and change, making her story quests as well as the Inazuma arc the most concentrated of the game so far as well as being my personal favorite arc. Don't get me wrong I love the 2 gods that we got and their voice actors from both languages are very very solid, but Ei just pushes the growth that I wanted from the archons and in the end it was nice to finally see that. Nice job on the video!
Even kazuha is aware that his friend wasn't "murdered", he doesn't have any hatred toward the shogun for murdering his friend but he hated her for being a dictator. Same thing with Sara, he didn't hate her for winning the duel that ended up with his friends death but because she helped said dictator. Kazuha's friend died and honorable death and saying he was murdered undermines it.
The comparison with "moving away from your hometown and come back" was spot on. I moved from my hometown after living there for almost 30 years, and every time I visit it, I realize how (1) it was always gradually changing, it's simply that I was unaware of it because I was immersed that and (2) those small changes look like one big chunk of change when you go visit after a prolonged absence.
People judges things in such a black and white way, it makes me sad.
Amazing video btw, great work
It would be nice if we have La Signora of this as well, as she's the literal meaning of being misunderstood, as most just ignorantly hates the character just for kicking Venti and etc without knowing why was the case, also honestly she should've been first before her since Ei's is mostly being saved and just about Eternity in general but that just me so yeah...
Ei already adjusted long time ago how to wield her own power without Gnosis. The only thing to work on for her is how she would adjust with her people, or let's say at the present time. That's why her story quest misinterpret by other players as a date quest, coz it might too simple to look but that quest is just the beginning for her to coup up the new Inazuma, now that she's out from plane of euthymia. Surely Inazuma's story is not yet done. I am actually excited to know how Fatui response to Inazuma during Signora's death , since it is one of the most memorable cutscene in Genshin Impact.
Ei is definitely a good character and arguably the most developed in the genshin cast, there's no denying that. However, there's also no denying that the second half of the main Inazuma storyline was rushed with WAY too many things happening off screen. That and the resistance just basically became useless until they stormed Tenshukaku (though I still don't know how they planned to defeat a literal God), despite such a great introduction. My one problem with Ei is though she's learned the eternity she was chasing didn't exist and was impossible, we have yet to see any real remorse towards the (by her own words now) wrongful death and destruction she's caused. It's like Hoyoverse just completely skipped over that.
Ei had one of the worst character developments, he should be aware and apologize to the whole town for the damage he did with the decrees, rather the town of Inazuma would have "You are not welcome" and have banned Ei from attending the festival and while closing the door in his face. that MY rewrite the entire Inazuma arc from the beginning and that Ei observes the consequences of his actions.
@@sebastiancastro3524 Very bold statement. Very exaggerated too. I'm not sure if you watched the video or not, but considering her backstory the fact that she was even able to develop as a character is a real great feat in its own. The fact that she lost everyone, and everything that kept her sane, saw first hand what Celestia was capable of if they didn't like something and was forced to live with that anxiety for the rest of her life. As someone who lived with a brief kind of anxiety in a period of my life, I can safely describe it as the worst period of my fucking life 😭. She was able to go outside and realize that her eternity, her *heavenly ideal* was nothing short of impossible after she convinced herself it was the only way for 500 YEARS. She should be held accountable for her actions yes, she did some bad, but as she kept her nation safe for 500 years on her own casting her out entirely is a bit much for just less than a year of the VHD.
@@ceoofhamburgermeat6712 wow, here is another Ei SIMP that only says "He protected his nation, he is my waifu, my love, my wife"
So you literally sound the same as Ei's Bootlicking Obsessives.
He did NOT protect his nation. I literally provoked wars, deaths, let all her people die, she is a murderous dictator.
For you to say that ridiculousness typical of a SIMP is as if you were telling me that Stalin is a role model for destroying Germany from 1940-1945. when Stalin himself committed horrible crimes.
Same with Ei, he didn't protect anything and his past is just damage control to justify the horrible crimes he committed. and YOU equal to Ei's obsessive idiots defend her because waifu.
I feel like the whole shenanigan about people's opinions about Ei is badly summarized in tiny twitter thinkpieces and it hurts the interpretation of her story (whether it be rushed or not), Ei is literally the most round character in Genshin so far, an Archon to boot, for someone so untouchable and revered to just change her mind so drastically is pretty significant in terms of her arch, and the repercussions of it would probably carry over to other storylines, too, I can only imagine. Anyway I agree with the video, it definitely deserved a video, all I'm saying is twitter really isn't the best place for well fleshed out opinions on things 🥴
You know what would of been a nice touch: After you complete her 2nd story quest in the character menu it will say Raiden Ei instead of Raiden Shogun.
The fact is, Ei is a God and the Head of State and she has responsibilities to her people. The problems directly came from the Fatui, the commissions, and the puppet's limitations but not knowing/addressing those problems was wrong. Ei was a neglectful leader with absolutely no remorse.
Yes, she grew as a character and she finally accepted that her previous beliefs were not right.
But she still did not acknowledge that her own people were experiencing hunger and suffering. I'm not even talking about the Resistance, I'm talking about her own people (civilian NPCs) and soldiers (as shown in the initial part of this chapter and through Ayaka's requests). I really don't get why the locals just forgot about that and act like she is some sort of idol. Yes, vision holders were a minority. But everyone suffered because of her negligence.
Can someone even truly change without remorse and regrets for their wrong doings?
I do get your point, but the answer is a giant gray area between confirmed lore and theory:
for example we don't know how much Ei truly knew about the state of affairs or how she observes the outside world (could be anything from only the reports of the tri-commission, which we know were false, to actively observing, only the latter would picture her as an ignorant dictator).
For why (most of) her people still respect and love her: she rules for 500 years, as far as most people r concerned even 2000 and things only went down one year ago, they have faith in the god that made their land prosper for centuries
Great video can’t wait to see more of these!
Like you said the so called plot holes people are complaining about will be filled in Look how much the Honkai impact story line has evolved and we were thinking for years about loose ends and then when the story was in the right place boom big reveal that pulls some 10 story chapters back they are building the world as they go
I love the new format! And you put eloquently into words what I was thinking the whole time about the quest lines being "not really thought through/undeveloped/rushed". Thank you! :)
The more vocal part of the community are "internet kids", the ones who can't possibly understand or doesn't try to understand the motives and reasoning of characters and the story, and judge things at face value, and that's why we see so many complains about so many things, specially when it comes to the story aspect of the game. A lot of Genshin Characters are misunderstood a lot because some of the kids can't differentiate between memes and facts and again, judges things too quickly. Well that was to be expected from a community as big as Genshin. Let's just hope their screamings won't affect the story and the workers behind those.
There are those who understands the story though, and there also those who throws some good critiques regarding it. It's just that they does not scream on the internet so much, so we don't come across them every five minutes or so xD
The sad thing is that it isn't just kids. I see whole ass adults who also only look at things at a surface level. But then immediately put themselves on some pretentious high horse as if they're Stephen King levels of novelist and know what's good/bad writing.
Ahh, yes, the puppet. The puppet programmed by Raiden Ei. The one that was physically incapable of changing its mind from the directives Ei programmed it with. That puppet. I don't think delegating atrocities to a robot with no free will really absolves her of them.
And, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Ei say that she was aware of everything the Fatui were doing and it didn't pose a threat to Eternity? So it's not like she was ignorant of the war, corruption, delusions, Tatarigami, island-exploding, etc. it just didn't matter to her so she left it in the hands of her robot.
While I agree that the "date quest" thing is filtered through the lens of "this game is an anime gf gacha," the underlying criticism of "it's pretty weird to suddenly be having a friendly hangout with the oppressive dictator who was trying to kill us 10 minutes ago." Both from an angle of "why are we cool with her?" and "why is she cool with us?"
Why were we cool with Childe? The Traveler sort of acknowledged Ei's motives when it was pointed out that those that seek their ambitions often lose their lives when compared to those who do not. The Traveler thought of Teppei. The VHD was still wrong, as it left them with a life not worth living, a concept reflected in Yae's dicussion with Ei about the whole of Inazuma: Stripped of the ability to change, Inazuma (and its people) would exist merely for the sake of existing (which is the existence the hollowed out prior-Vision holders were left with). What is the point of that?
Ei's methods were wrong, but what was acknowledged was that she was doing it because she genuinely thought it was what was best. She was wrong, but she wasn't doing so out of malevolence. At the time, defending her definition of Eternity was her defending what she believed to be best for her people. She bore us no ill-will because her opposition to us was not personal, and we had managed to successfully convey the will of her people to her. In that final boss fight in Act 3, we actually HELPED her, and she recognized that.
The thing is, someone who is doing the wrong thing for the right reasons can be helped to change, because it is much easier to help a person see better courses of action than it is to change the priorities that guide them. We wanted to help Inazuma and the person who can make it better was willing to take our help...if we really wanted to help Inazuma why wouldn't we gladly take that opportunity?
She was aware of everything, sure. But she was just uncapable of seeing the wrong in all of that because of her state of mind. Ei says more times that I wish that she's knows that she needs to do better. She says this too many times, that I think this is for fans to make it very clear that she's aware a redemption arc is needed haha
So, She was so isolated that she lost empathy to everything. That's why Yae needed the Traveler to be able to fight Ei and WIN, in order to open Ei's eyes and see what is Inazuma now. This was the only way for Ei to consider modifying the rules of the puppet.
Also remember, Traveler is pretty much neutral, he/she was affiliated with both resistance and shogunate. Traveler is often in a better position to mediate and solve a conflict because of this neutral/outsider position. Ayaka knows this, and that's why she basically begs for Traveler's help. Also this is why Traveler is able to see the good in Ei while people like Kazuha or Kokomi would be understandably uncapable of doing that.
This is why Traveler is able to sympathize with Childe, and we don't even question ultimate decisions of other characters like Zhongli. We respect his way of doing things with contracts which is part of Liyue's culture.
@@effortlessfury We aren't really cool with Childe, though? Contrary to what fan art will have you believe, every time we've met Childe since his misdeeds, we've been hiding his identity for someone else's sake(To preserve Teucer's childhood in his story quest, to keep Xinyan from attacking him and getting her ass kicked in Labyrinth Warriors)
Signora also wanted to make the world a better place through very sketchy means, and we challenged her to a duel to the death and got her fucking atomized. And we've seen way more of the suffering caused by Ei's misdeeds than Signora's.
We wanted to help Inazuma... Yeah, sure, then why keep the person who fucked it up in power? We're already part of a violent rebellion, why not overthrow the government?
Overthrow the government ? I'm sorry but we clearly not defeat Ei or anything , we won the battle in her world because it's an imaginary world with the help of some friendship plot armor and miko was there. Even when her hp reduce to 0, she still standing there invincible. Ei could fight us for 500 years like she did with the puppet. In fact she could just let the puppet kill all of the resistance in real world instead of inviting the traveler into her realm.
She knows about the Fatui but doesn't know about the war that is happening.. You can see when Sara talk to Yae about how the report doesn't mention the war..
i think all the problems people have with her stem specifically from how rushed the archon quest felt.
its just there's too little interaction with any of the big players, and when things get resolved, it all happens instantly.
me and most people i know didn't feel at all hyped or anything during the big cut scenes and scenes toward the end, we just felt confused like it was rushed or wasn't earned.
and most of THAT stems from how genshin focuses on a single characters perspective, which is sorta suppose to be OUR perspective, yet at the same time its a very character and world focused story. yet it still feels rushed just from a single perspective.
there's just not enough time spent on others, fleshing out different factions and events, or giving a good idea of how things are in the world.
a good example is the resistance, and even teppi. the resistance has like one cut scene where they fight and that's all we really see from them. we get told a lot of stuff but don't get shown much of anything. genshin really doesn't do show don't tell very often.
which brings me to another big complaint especially with more recent stuff since inazuma, is the fact that every story event since the release of inazuma part 2, has had a moment where a character does a MASSIVE info dump of heavy plot related info, and that's how we progress story and world knowledge. its super lazy writing and makes an already rushed story feel even more so.
scaramoushe: oh you wanna hear me just admit to everything randomly for no reason? sure here's our evil plan to overthrow inazuma, also let me confirm stuff about our plan you didn't know which will also help you resolve everything.
miko: oh did you know? realm of consciousness + puppet + inazuma power struggles + here's all the issues and here's a step by step plan on how to solve them and all the answers.
enjou: oh did you know, abyss, dragon lords, celestia sus, paimon sus, before sun and moon, anyway gotta go bye.
dain: oh truth about freaking 12 different main plot points in like literally one scene, everything from abyss, the gods, hillichurls, info about the world the traveler... couldn't even be more spread out over the quest had to just be like one info dump scene...
like hell... genshin is rushed period. that's where the issues are.
Agreed with your points on Ei, but I do differ on the takes on the misconceptions...
Firstly, although it is true that Ei was perceived as a villain at first...the more accepted/prominent take on her character is portraying her as a naive kid. This, although an exaggeration, is pretty accurate until the ending of the 2nd storyline.
Secondly, most people I have encountered term Ei's first story as a "date quest" in jest. And the sentiment is pretty well understood considering the fact that there were so many possible ways of setting up her 2nd quest - and each one I can think of does the job a lot better than what we were given.
Third...yes that is true...
Kazufrend wanted to see the booba blade...
Fourthly, it was definitely rushed and poorly written...
Mondstadt's archon quest, which was literally termed as 'prologue' is still the best written one among the nations. It gave us enough knowledge on the land, its history and its main players, its stance on the present Celestia and its overall vibe.
Inazuma's quest was lacking. It was not Ei's quest, it was Inazuma's. The civil war happened...and then it didn't. Same with Liyue's main archon quest thread though. Both were downgrades...
About your concept on plotholes...I agree.
Although I'll prefer it if the developers refrain from demo infodumps in the future (Ayato demo)...but atleast we got something.
That being said...the quest quality has improved a lot with Ayato's quest...flawed, but much better than Ei's 2nd and the joke of a quest that was Miko's.
I don't know man. I like Ei as a character a lot, but not checking up her puppet more frequently is her fault. It was her creation and her responsibility to make sure it was doing things properly. Ignorance isn't an excuse. I think she's just as responsible as the puppet and that should be addressed in the story. She faltered. It was her creation and her mistake.
EXACTLY
It's almost like her quest shows her acknowledging and regretting this very fact. Are characters not allowed moments of growth just because they're not written to your liking?
@@bugmancer That doesn't bring back the hundreds killed and lives ruined from their vision being taken away. That's her penance? She feels sorry for herself? That's ridiculous.
@@bjorn34 Tbf that's a self-made issue in Inazuma. Most of the bad things happend as a result of the rebellion, fatui influence and power plays by the commissions. Was the vision hunt decree bad for the vision wielders and made their lives miserable? Yes, but most of the citizens of Inazuma weren't affected by it. Ei was naive and is/was really freaking bad in ruling a nation, but not responsible for most of the shitshow that happend in Inazuma.
@@bjorn34 you know that most if not all those deaths were caused more by the resistance than Ei herself right?
Was it Ei that gave the resistance delusions that started killing off the people of watasumi? Was it Ei that chose to go to war with them? People who lost their visions can very well get them back and there are cases like ittou who were uneffected by the loss.
By this same logic why not hold venti to the same bar. Had it not been for his negligence and stubborn believe on freedom the Lawrence clan wouldn’t have been what they are now and Vanessa’s people wouldn’t have been enslaved.
I feel like many people who criticized how rushed the resolution was in the Archon quest, in particular to how quickly the VHD was abolished, don't understand Ei's personality at all. She fights through honour. That's how she's always done things. That's why she "gave up" so easily, because she was honouring her word. Likewise when she agreed to go out into the city with the traveler. She was honouring her word in losing to the traveler, to find a new way for Inazuma to move forward. She has a code of Bushido, and one of the eight virtues of Bushido is honour. Bushido was a thing that existed ever since the first shogunate in real-life japan, so this is definitely intentional.
And with Ei's quest being a date quest? Yeah, then so was Venti's because their formats were LITERALLY the same.
First half: Walking around their nation chatting with the traveler
Second half: More epic stuff (Kujou Kamaji with Ei's, and Stanley with Venti's).
It infuriates me to no end that the people complaining about Ei's quest being a date, and use this as the only basis to say that it's worse than the other Archons' quest, completely forget that Venti's was, by their logic, also 'just a date".
So was walking around with Zhongli in the Archon Quest. I think Raiden got it bad just because she's a female character.
the problem is that ei's issues were not resolved. Zhongli was as said in this video "complete". Same with venti, thus a date quest was a nice continuation. But ei gave a ruthless puppet control over Inazuma for 500 years who ruled Inazuma quite poorly in my opinion ultimately breaking into a civil war. How can you get involved in a date with a character like this when her very actions and reason for those actions are threading on right and wrong. So that's the problem, instead of addressing the main issues of Inazuma that had not been dealt with, we got a date(which is excellent in my opinion but god a there's a fricking nation with hopeless people who are scared of their own god hoyoverse do something about that first )
@@zackang4731 It's because Inazuma's issues were not dealt with and the puppet was not exactly what I would call a kind ruler. Would you like a date with a character whose own story arc has not even received proper content ? I sure as hell would not want to be seen on a date with someone whose irresponsible rule caused countless children of inazuma to grow up with eyes filled with hopelessness. (This is coming from me who intends to main Ei forever as she's my favourite character)meanwhile zhongli had nurtured liyue to stand on it's own feet with a thriving economy and mondatat did not even need it's archon long ago.Both these characters are complete and no further story is required. Though there is room for some nice " slice of life" wholesome date story quests and that's exactly what we got which is why venti and zhongli story quests were well received.
@@kevinkarthik3329 that's weird that we see different things. because the entire point of bringing Ei around the city in the first story quest is to resolve her problem, which is part of resolving Inazuma's problems. I never saw it as a date. I can't understand people who do. Maybe I've watched too many chinese movies about the emperor visiting the city personally and realizing/learning new things?
Maybe some part of the community expects things to be solved quickly and immediately, but realistically any kind of proper change takes time to set in stone
@@zackang4731 the last part of what you said is true. It takes time for proper change to set in stone. And that must happen before we get quests where we simply spend time and have a fun outing. Inazuma's problems were not even completely addressed and thus the story quest was not fitting.
I love your theory and analysis videos! Please make more content in that style.
My take on this video is: Misconceptions about characters exist in every fandom, but the way people talked about Ei is proof of how bad it is in the Genshin fandom OTL
I'm always so thankful for your videos about Ei, Teyvat Historia. Your understanding of her pokes so many holes into the unnecessary criticisms make about her character. I appreciate your content.
remember. just because it's not explained yet doesn't mean it's a plot hole.
To do the same video about Yae Miko will be the hardest challenge of all of them. (IMHO ahoy) Sadly, the character with the vast potential was shaved to the greedy and sometimes abusive prankster. At least, Raiden was redeemed at her Story Quest part 2. Good job with the video on Ei, keep it up!
I couldn't agree more. Removing her from the isolation of Inazuma and comparing her to the other long-lived charachters of the game she seems to not know her place. She is around 600-700 years old, therefore being probably fourth youngest of the bunch (Yanfei feels like she is younger, and Scharamouche is younger as well as with some certainty Dainslief).
Even so, she still is given this high-and-mighty attitude of superiority, as if she was the oldest and the wisest of them all. I really hope she gets pegged down a notch, because I can't find anything sympathetic in her arrogance.
@@sfjuhispst8144 I agree, I find Yae such a cool character in concept, kitsune are really awesome, but like, as someone who was scammed by publishing houses before (I'm an illustrator and worked as a book cover artist many years ago), the ending of her story quest really hit me personally and made me so angry lol there's nothing funny or endearing about that. Especially when the Traveler had helped Inazuma so much. I also really didn't like how mean and condescending Yae was to Paimon (a literal child, mentally speaking).
@@sfjuhispst8144 You're forgetting that she's based of a kitsune, who in Japanese folklore, is supposed to be a wise and cunning being. Kitsunes are known to be prideful. So it is only right that Yae Miko acts as such.
@@Mashmallow_31 prideful? Nope, no pride at all, she does whatever she wants with no considerations to her actual responsibilities to the Inazuman people. Wise? Nope, she does whatever suit her greed, sometimes to the point of pure gaslighting, which is not how wise people make the relationships with others. Cunning - sure. mean - sure. Petty - sure. Not wise nor prideful. Change pride to vanity and you'll be golden.
@@ichiharahinoe2329 That's pretty much the same. Vanity is still Pride. There's a reason why Vainglory/Vanity isn't part of the 7 deadly sins, it's basically Pride but excessive. Yae Miko is a prideful individual.
And yeah, she's greedy. Foxes are also known as greedy and dishonest creatures which Yae perfectly represents.
She has lost alot but in the end of this first part of the inazuma quests was her seeing and going to heal her past wounds which she hasnt even let go and acting like a crying child lol...after that she has now an understanding of what is eternity and to be able to questioned it is also a part of her growth and it is something i liked about her even before the quest i liked the way she was introduced into the game and just the quests and everything that involves her are just a bonus for me and those that like ei