**NOTES & CORRECTIONS** - Nineveh isn't the only other Ethereal to create those ether crystal walls. It seems like Dullahan can also do it to a degree. - KitKat pointed out that ether potency (and thereby concentration or control) may be represented on a color scale canonically to the people of New Eridu as well since the Ether Aptitude test strips show blue/green as the lower end of ether aptitude, and magenta/pink as the higher end. - As for the concept of ether as data, Aluslaw pointed out that WEngine Discs are written with ether; so where we would encode data onto a CDROM using a laser with binary, Elfy engraves the disks with ether (called Ether Burning. For you younglings, the process of copying a CD was called "burning" back in ye olden times).
I got a question, how the does rina float?, is it the blue aura?, if so, is it the same with qingyi’s aura when syncing with eous? And what is the source of this aura?
@user-sd3sm5bq4r The key aspect to remember is that it can manipulate ether to some extent. Think about it, a primordial substance in the palm of your hands, bending to your will. It's only natural it is that powerful.
I don't recall if you mentioned it in the video but there is another very interesting aspect of "Sacrifice" that instantly caught my eye. You know how Ethereals and etheric beings can't survive outside of Hollows. Well, Khors goes to seal the Sacrifice within the Monument which at that point in time should be outside of a Hollow as far as we know. Which seems to heavily suggest it's a form of ethereal life that can exist outside of Hollows. It's also weird how it can assimilate tech and its profile expands that according to HIA speculation is able to devour and assimilate all types of machinery including military tech. The profile also suggests it's design objective being to maximize destructive power and efficiency as a type of weapon. So with these two things in mind, it's very possible that "Sacrifice" was created for Military use or at least to combat something possibly outside of Hollows.
Ether could just be pure corrupted data as well, which would have a lot of parallels with how the abyss works in genshin!! This is how king deshret can still-
@@MyBoobsAreHuge What makes you think that? The entire point of the Hoyoverse is to make games that are attached to the same cosmology, even if they are not always as closely related as the Honkai games. We know this because while Genshin Impact is not a Honkai game and not directly related it is still confirmed to share the same cosmology.
Ashikai is the GOAT. Blew my mind when you made the connection that ether corrupts the mind first then the body. Edit: 10:54 Oh god, it’s Remuria all over again
Idk if thats true though since (I forgot where this is from) there was a guy documenting his transformation and he noticed his hand forming crystals. I think she meant to say that it fully corrupts the mind first, but corruption starts on the whole body.
@@renno2679 just spitballing here but maybe it takes root in the mind while causing physical changes elsewhere on the body. Like, if the mind is corrupted it can’t keep up with other bodily functions, allowing the ether to do whatever it wants?
Don't let the Golden Week event fool you. It might seem like an insignificant event, until the thing casually drops one lore bomb that you can GROW Hollows by feeding it, which in the event context, was AI equipment that got activated inside it. Now imagine if, oh I don't know, some crazy organization that would send sentient beings as "Sacrifice" to feed the Hollow? Oh wait-
That is not new information. Ever since chapter 1 (with the Cunning Hares) we knew that the size of a hollow is directly related to the amount of ether activity (such as active etherials) in it. We were trying to shrink the Dead End Hollow to get the trapped people out by either slaying a lot of small etherials or one very big one (the option we chose in the end).
@@LittleTilde We only knew hollows can shrink by subtracting ethereal beings, and that it's size is relative to ether activity. What we didn't know is it CAN grow by intentionally adding corruptible stuff inside. Before this event, Hollows were thought to just appear and grow naturally EDIT: Now that you think about it, you can relate hollows to fire. "Sacrifice" might be beings that are like kindling that starts the fire...... Now that kinda fits with the "Sacrifice" Thors found. The Hollow appeared right after the incident.
@@KawashiK If we know the means by which to shrink a hollow then we can naturally infer that it can grow by doing the inverse, wether that process happened naturally or artificially. It is a reasonable argument to say that the event definitely confired that to be the case but it is such a logical conclusion that I do not see it as having needed confirmation.
@@LittleTilde Not really logical, given this is not a phenomenon that follows any irl physics. Besides, given that SHIYU exists to stop Hollows from growing/appearing, that logic would have punctured and fell flat before 1.1.
@@KawashiK dont shiyu towers store the harvested ether from the hollow, thus starving it and controlling its growth? if so, his inference would actually be kinda correct
On the note of the voice of Grace's teacher and the voice in the lore trailer, they only sound the same in the english version, they don't sound alike in jp or cn
Was going to comment on this lol The female voice in the lore trailer on the other hand is very clearly "Sarah" in more than one dub (I play in CN, asked a friend to confirm for EN, not sure about JP or KR)
This video was fantastic, I love seeing people theorize about Zenless -- this game's lore is cooking, I'm fiending for all of the lore content I can get. I want to yes and your theory a bit, though. You draw parallels between Ether and Code, and also the sort of primordial soup that life emerged from. What if, instead of code, ether was just a manifestation of information as a concept? That explains why it would corrupt the brain first, the brain is designed to store information in large quantities, which would consolidate the corruption of ether to the mind. It also explains the physical corruption, DNA is a type of encoding for information. Code and hard computer memory devices like solid state drives ALSO consolidate information and would explain why sufficiently intelligent androids and automata get corrupted as well, they're the constructs with the most "room" for the ether to corrupt. Ether, I think, is commensurate to Entropy, specifically an informational entropy. This also explains why the Ethereals have so many features that represent black holes, since black holes are, effectively, consolidated entropy. They're a nexus of a TREMENDOUSLY high volume of pure, unrefined "information" -- information in a logical sense, like knowledge, but also information in a conceptual sense, such as "what does this atom do" or "what is the function of this
There is so much lore in this game; it'll be fun to see another video from you because there are so many unanswered questions, like the Scott outpost's "Lost item from the old capital" collectable. It showed some really intriguing lore, like 1. Measurement device: It talks about how the Zenless limit is the limit of how much ether Hollow Zero can hold before it spawns another companion hollow. Not only do we learn that Hollow Zero does have an ether limit capacity, but also we learn what Zenless in ZZZ means. 2. Here it once swayed: The story of this one seems to be about a girl who died in the hollow after escaping her abusive family when their house got shallowed up by a hollow. What is intriguing about this is that it heavily implies that the flower we brought with her is the same flower that is growing in Hollow Zero. This could heavily imply that she is another "scarifice" or something similar to that of the twin dancer, which means this collectable could be heavily implying that this mysterious dead girl is in fact actually Nineveh. There is not enough information to say anything conclusively, and unfortunately only "Measurement Device" spawned a small mini quest but didn't go in more in depth about what Zenless meant, and "Here it once sway" didn't get any thing at all, so we will just have to wait.
I originally was here for the Genshin content, now I am here for pretty much everything becasuse god damn Hoyo is good at writing stuff and god damn you are good at explaining it in the most interesting and easy to understand way
Came to the game because the combate seemed fun and the characters cool. Now I'm hooked because ZZZ is a surprisingly well crafted and engaging universe. ... Aslo because Jane Doe is hotness incanate, let's be honest.
"...the hollow disaster is actually a disaster where everything is trying to reverb back to the state it was at the beginning of the universe, a primordial chaotic nothingness" *Flashbacks of a german named song, red sea and two teenagers in a beach*
Something that I think is worth pointing out is the fact that in every single one of these "specialized" corruption cases, there were two organisms or "brains" present. The twin dancers were corrupted while helping the audience evacuate the Hollow. They, somehow, seem to have maintained aspects of their humanity given their attraction to music. Nineveh was apparently a woman who was locked away (test subject?) for a long time and managed to escape during the Hollow Disaster. Now, it's unclear on where her flower came from, but we know that she had it when she was corrupted and that it cannot exist outside of the Hollow. Finally, we have the Sacrifice, which we can be fairly certain was a man-made Ethereal. However, Khors presumably went to go stop it and never came back, thus making him the second organism in this theory. So, taking all of this together, assuming that Ether corruption is in fact some form of data corruption/overwrite that targets the brain first and then the body, wouldn't it make sense that the best method of controlling the corruption and maintaining the sanity of the corrupted individual would be to share the load? The twins, through their bond or something else, split the data corruption between the two of them, allowing them to maintain some of their human aspects. Nineveh, who only had a plant, couldn't maintain any of her humanity but did manage to gain some form of control over the ether. The Sacrifice likely wasn't planned to have another person there, but through Khors' presence, he may have caused it to become more powerful and gave it an affinity for his machines, thus why it absorbed both of the machines when it had a chance. This is a crackpot theory at best, but it seemed an interesting connection. However, considering that the A.I. have been built for some grand plan using the Hollows, it makes me consider what vessels might exist to house them. And if those vessels could be people. Consider a Pacific Rim adjacent idea. An A.I and a human sharing the same body and sharing the neural load (the data load), allowing the two to gain power and go further than anybody ever could before.
空 in 空洞 also has a buddhist concept behind it. In mahayana Buddhism, 空 refers to this concept of emptiness in everything (emptiness in objects, ideas, and even dharma). It's the idea that everything in its current state is the result of a set of conditions fulfilled (a plant is the result of a seed being grown in the right conditions, someones dharma is the result of the karma they are dealt with) so ultimately there is nothing inherent about anything, and that emptiness is called 空. From that emptiness, you can create something, the way that from an empty plot of land, you can create a house and from an empty bag, you can fill it with fruit. So 空 also has the concept of being the emptiness that can take on the form of anything, similar to the primordial nature that youre impling about aether.
Would be interesting as it may also relate the ethereal resistance. Given operators have to usually have more resistance, perhaps the test subject that would become sacrifice had been one such case. They had enough resistance that they would be able to withstand turning into an ethereal as the resistance may be some form of handling the data. The average person may just be overwhelmed compared to those with higher resistances. Thirens also have a unique physiology as well in this regard and may be related to the matter. After all, I don't believe it's ever been specified how long thirens have existed in the ZZZ reality. But consider if that before hollows, especially hollow zero the data had already been flowing out and causing animals to undergo changes. This may explain why alloys had already existed that could withstand ether corruption: humans in ZZZ have unknowingly been altered by the data being shot out from hollows not yet present on the planet as space and time aren't reflected by hollows. There may also be the possibility that those corrupted by the hollows are possibly separated from the bodies of typical ethereals as well. The logic cores are awakened in them may be triggered by the data present as said data may be the result of consciousness existing in them. Which in turn could explain why people are corrupted: their being pumped full of so much data that it overloads the physical brain and well, destroys it's physical state as the data there is added to hollows. A controlled enviroment may of been a theory as to try and slow down the exposed amount and why they call it a sacrifice. They willingly sacrificed a person under the presumption that their mind and body may be destroyed to try and create an ethereal with a controlled consciousness. Be great to get more specifics, but there are certainly many ways it could go on the assumption that hollows are a collection of chaotic data. It would explain why analog is so crucial as it doesn't rely on any data needed.
i wonder if that huge hollow on the moon has affected anything down on earth, given its size. no idea if that's possible though since we don't know the theoretical reach of hollow influence outside of the actual hollow and we don't know how long it's been there (unless i missed that part somewhere in the lore).
Another little point I'd like to highlight is the various Ether corruptions you can get in a Hollow; they seem to affect the agent's personality as much as their physical state with stuff like Insatiable Greed, Suspicion, and Rampage. I feel like this lends credence to your "Ether is data" hypothesis.
I have always thought it the opposite way: The less compatible you are the better you can resist it. The very first guy from that gang became a pretty powerful ethereal and had explicitly a very low resistance. So the more your "code" is an "island" the better you can survive in the hollow.
This is a well educated guess at what may be happening, agree completely with your theory and can't wait to hear what else is there in your brain about the game. Also, another observation about the logic cores. Belobog version might also be a great deal because the logic core themselves could be a black box for ZZZ society. We know they have lost a lot of tech (Billy is explicitly lost tech) and even the Marcel corporation (the ones who mass produce Bangboos) doesn't seem to be able to properly tinker with their logic cores considering their failure to create a line of Bangboos that can consistently pass the forbidden fruit test and how all Bangboos have just cosmetic differences, the core is the same even when more specialization could be more convenient/efficient. That makes Grace achievements even more impressive and the use of Ether more reasonable, no one actually know what they are doing and so any advancement comes from trial and error.
9:18 this part reminded me so much of the game Astral Chain, where when people got basically digitized, and taken to the astral plane. Where they would, as one of the villains (Jena) said, "they are here to be categorized" taken back to storage
To and to the "Hollows are similar to cosmic eggs" idea, I read in a recent article about astrophysic that recent discoveries seem to reveal that black holes (which Hollows are similar to in apperances and overall Sci-Fi tropes) may be much older than they previously assumed and maybe older than stars and galaxies. Which lead to new theories about galaxies and celestial bodies being born from black holes. Hoyo being the company that it is, wouldn't surprise me if they were very up to date with theories about the universe and other space related stuff
for me it's more of vaccuum collapse bubble, a region where some laws of physics fall to a lower point of energy, releasing a lot of weird energy and physic property inside this region. The more energy release, the more the bubble will expand just like the hollow. Due to cosmic censorship hypothesis, these bubble might appear black, masking the rest of the universe from what happen inside it. Vaccuum collapse can appear throught nucleation sites just like the hollow with companion hollow and the main bubble as the hollow zero 🫠
We did saw that massive hollow on the moon, so it is likely that it came from the universe itself. Even though it likely foreshadows what will happen in the future for ZZZ
@@renno2679 I would if I could, but it was in a French physical magazine I read back in August... But I've found two articles on the website ScienceDaily that seem to talk about the subjects! (I only skimmed through them) "Massive merger: Study reveals evidence for origin of supermassive black hole at galaxy's center" from September 6 and "Dark matter could have helped make supermassive black holes in the early universe" from August 28 Apologies for not giving the links directly, UA-cam seems to not like it when I do that >-< but I hope that helps !
Neo Green is the color of Radiation, but that pink on white is the color of the Honkai Beast. I bet the green guy are pure instinct beast, but the pink gang server a greater will, a hollow herrscher perhaps? 12:30
Coming back after the outer rings arc, it's interesting to note now that Belle and Wise aren't described as having low afinity, but that they have a specific condition that causes them problems when exposed to a hollow for too long and the fact this is actually using specific language tells me that considering that aether is information based, whatever they did to interface with the HDD through that ancient tech, that seems to be what's actually vulnerable, which would line up with other scenarios where aether causes problems for them. Actually, considering Billy is aware of it in such a specific tone to comment on it as well as Quingyi seeming to know a lot about and have that same tech, tells me its likely the twins could have some form of cybernetics thats a lot more impactful than what we may assume.
Ether reminds me a lot of how bubble universes work in honkai impact 3rd, but completely opposite. I'm not completely knowledgeable on how bubble universes work, but from what I recall, it's bubbles of somewhat ordered data in the sea of quanta, which is the exact opposite from hollows, which are bubbles of somewhat unordered data in the actual world. This made me jump to a lot of different theories, but I just want to wait and see what happens :)
@@GhostEmblem Yeah it seems this way after the big lore teaser trailer, if Koleda was a little kid when Old Eridu was around pre-Hollow Zero but Miyabi's ancestor was also around during hollow conflicts
Hollow Zero did destroy old Eridu, but it existed long before the destruction of the city. The Void Hunters lore teaser explicitly says that Professor Arche entered Hollow Zero to investigate it and also that the document themselves are from before Eridu fall. Hollow Zero may not be the very first Hollow, I don't think we have explicit confirmation of that, but it has definitely been around since the start. Old Eridu fell because Hollow Zero became superactive for some reason and started expanding more than what people could control.
@@Adser261 I believe the materials over on the official website call it both "the first Hollow" and "the first Hollow within Eridu/New Eridu", with the game itself also usually going with the latter.
I got more answers from your video and the comment section than all of the 1.0-1.1 stories. Thank you. :) - I've said it before, I'll say it again, I hated all the cliffhangers and how nothing was explained in 1.0 and 1.1, while making it sound like it should be obvious why the sacrifice or monster in the monument is so important/central to the plot. - It was up there with Destiny 2's Light Fall Story - nothing is explained to the player while every single NPC or agent already knows what's up.
@@oysan.nAll roads lead to Deshret. But in this case, Ether sounds so much like Honkai. But then again it's the same concept with Genshin and Khaenriah anyway. Any advancement in technology gets fucked by something.
If it helps, I THINK theres another ethereal that also produces ether crystals, i think its called Dullahan? Its the large one with a shield and a sword, its one of the harder elite enemies
Madness theory: ZZZ is a prequel to the other games. The ether became the imaginary tree or the sea of quanta and from there the Mihoyo universe spawns. All other games are post, post apocalypse while ZZZ is almost like the first stages of an apocalypse. Source: I made it the fk up + intuition?
I can't wait for the game to finally tackle these aspects in future, because I have a gut feeling that we're going to fight off against the ether corrupted past void hunters, just imagining their designs makes me so hyped!
Don’t know why, but Ashikai as a Bangboo just makes sense, lol. Interesting that you bring up Bringer being the mole in PubSec. He acted very suspicious about Zhu Yuan and QingYi investigating the Sacrifice to the point where it made me wonder why he wanted them transferred off of the case almost immediately after they reported the issue to him.
@Ashikai This was an amazing video. So I don't have a question. However I did notice something after listening to your theories. You mentioned that through your research, that it's very likely ether is a sort of data corruption and it likely effects the mind first. With the deduction I think there is some solid evidence for your theory. If you played Rena's agent story there is an npc who shows up that suffers from a form of ether alzheimer that disrupts the memory of people who have had long term ether contact. This feels like a good bit of evidence towards your theory.
I have the theory that Sarah's faction is aligned with the "Ether cooperation". They are trying to increase interest in Ether and Ether-based technology, so that they may have a dominant hold over most industrial markets. This is the idea that I had sometime after playing the most recent chapter of Phaethons story. I originally thought that their goal was just to increase their interests in the fuel industry, as they tried to eliminate a highly valuable fuel source -- oil. Lucius wanted this so that he could be among those with an iron-grip over the industry. Though it had me wondering what the Sacrifice had to do with this, as it wasn't fully clear to me what it was. Then I found this video. Now I believe it's more than just the fuel industry they were after, but also technology and bioengineering. Their plans are to encompass almost all general sources that would be of importance to mankind. And you have to wonder how much control they will have if they were to succeed.
Ether as data overwriting things is an angle I didn't think about, but it fits almost too well. I also play Impact 3rd, so I first thought of Hollows being a bubble universe over writing the ZZZ one, but what if it is only the data! If we take out all the fliar, the brain is a computer, and logic cores seem to follow that same idea, so it only makes sense that data corruption affects both in the same way with organic and non-organic things. Also, if that logic tracks, the reason why Belobog needs to make new cores is because the machines' bodies are not humanoid. All other examples of logic core fit a human like "case." Maybe the normal cores are put in the machines have almost no ether resistance. Loving the ZZZ theories!
This idea that the hollows warp and corrupt data reminds me a LOT of Annihilation. The parallels are huge >The Shimmer is a strange, barely understood dome that you can actually enter and leave freely, but doing so is difficult cuz of the nature of how it affects spatial reality >Things seem mostly normal, but it warps and distorts basically everything (in Annihilations case, genetic material) creating strange hybrid species >The minds of people entering usually start to break over time, and so do your bodies Maybe the hollows are similar in that 'merging' thing. maybe thats where thirens come from. The world of ZZZ having all these hollows and corrupting zones, it could of merged the physiology of multiple species, the main thing being thirens. this explains why we dont just get humanoid ethereals, but also dog ones
Oh wow. Seeing the comic panels where Miguel gets fully corrupted really does show how agonizing of a process it is. The whole thing it's definitely brutal. And apparently a lot of humans went though this to become the Ethereals. This is dark dark.
Another interesting characteristics of the Sacrifice as opposed to regular ethereals, is that the game clearly stated Ethereals disintegrate if they manage to leave the hollow, meanwhile the Sacrifice seems to have been taken out of the hollow for the analysis
I just completed Chapter 4 from the 1.2 update. I’m really interested to see how this goes especially the foreshadowing they left off at the final cutscene
Something I've noticed is that most Etherals have an energy orb for a head, the only exceptions are the sacrifice and the twin dancers.{That I recall} Miyabi also said they found a mask with the sacrifice's remains, so maybe someone was trying the use that mask to contain the sacrifice's energy and control it. But when it absorbed all the machines the energy was to much and it shattered. I have no idea my the twin dancers don't have orbs for heads but maybe they are more important then we think.
you can also i think pretty confidently draw a common throughline between ZZZ and another universal human narrative: stasis vs change. particularly the Norse flavor of it, which sees Odin fighting a doomed-from-the-start war against "ragnarok", which he himself personally brings about in his singleminded attempt to avert it at all costs. which i think also has interesting implications about what you said previously, about the Phaethon sibs being locked in a battle they will ultimately lose.
When you started talking about ether as data made me think of Originum from Arknights and now I wonder how often "solidified data that is both fuel and an existential threat" has been used in gacha game plots.
There is a piece of lore for the game Destiny that seems very relevant. One of the races in the game are "Exos," which are human minds uploaded in to robot bodies. The lore around them is incredibly dark, and a lot of Exos failed. One problem they ran into is the minds kept getting caught in loops, and effectively entered a solid or looping state. The eventual solution to this was realizing the human brain is not perfect. It loses information all the time. The human mind expects this to happen, and will constantly check itself, and rebuild itself. The synthetic brains needed to do the same thing. They basically had to artifically introduce entropy into the system. In the Destiny universe, they did that using Darkness (a form of space magic). That sounds like very close to what the Hollow Awakening is.
I've had that theory as well. If you look at the sacrifice, it's different compared to other ether creatures we've seen in ZZZ. A couple of days ago, i theorized that the sacrifice was created illegally in a lab to maybe control a hollow companion. But obviously, something went wrong, and maybe whoever created the sacrifice lost control. I have a hunch that vision may have some knowledge of the sacrifice which they wanted the cunning hares and perlman gone. It also seems even Victoria housekeeping is also aware of the creature as well. Thats just my theory though but it does seem possible that the sacrifice was created in a lab
WAIT now that you mentioned inspector bringer, he was excited and personally came to the memorial square, and when the case is to be handed over to HANDS he didn't like that. AND ALSO, the operation of the bandits stealing the evidence (which is the sacrifice) is the very day of his public seminar which is very sus! he might be a silly looking character but we better watch out for him!
It might be useful to look at genshin's abyss and abyssal energy to see if there are any similar theme's and concepts applicable to ZZZ. Because when you talk about ether it sounds quite similar to the abyss in genshin.
Given that the story is largely built on Greek myth, and that the Hollows are likened to mazes (of which "Cretan" is one)-- it makes me think the Sacrifices (in ZZZ) are thematically linked to the sacrifices made to the Minotaur in myth. If that's the case, it gives me the impression that the sacrifices are.. exactly that-- sacrifices. The question would be what are they sacrificed **to**? Given how the story emphasized the need to keep Sacrifices **sealed**, I'm imagining that sealing them is **part** of the ritual. It makes me think of "Hitobashira", the Japanese practice of burying **sacrifices** alive in the foundation of buildings (and other structures) in order to to protect the buildings, ward off evil and misfortune, or otherwise keep the structures in tact. "Hitobashira" translates like "Human Pillars". I'm wondering if the Pillars that keep the Hollows out of New Eridu require Sacrifices to act as their core.
huh, thinking about the idea of ether as data, I sorta remember that there's like, a threshold of where if you tried to put too much data (a frankly extreme amount, totally impossible realisitcally) into a person's brain, it'd become a black hole. and seeing as ethereals often feature a sort of "black hole" on their design...? maybe ether corruption is almost like, "overloading" a person with data/information/some other memetic attack?
What if HollowZero was man-made? Maybe they discovered that Ether is a powerful energy source, and the old Eridu needed it for their power supply. So, they decided to create a small, controlled Hollow to get the energy, but something went wrong, causing the disaster. That could explain why New Eridu has advanced technology to extract energy from hollow. It’s kind of like in Spider-Man 2, where Doc Ock tried to create a mini sun in his lab, and it failed. (Note: I’ve only finished Chapter 2, so I don’t know what happens next. I could be completely wrong.)
@Ashikai I think yout theory about Ether being a primordial code construct might be correct, and that its corrupt the brain first. If you pay close attention, all Etherials in the game have their core at their head, with the only exception being the Sacrifice and the Twins, since the Twins share their burden with each other, therefor, the Twins core is at their center.
Hollows happen around world spreading and there’s huge one on the moon ethereal’s wandering and crawling and this sacrifice is something really gonna happen 🧐🧐🧐👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Maybe that's what Belobog used for his prototype but it got out of control, also your theory reminds me of Gundam 00 movie awakening of the trail blazers
![[1.4] The story so far - Zenless Zone Zero Season One](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/uOX7DhZbAEo/mqdefault.jpg)
![[1.4] The story so far - Zenless Zone Zero Season One](/img/tr.png)
![[1.0 ZZZ] The Secrets of Hollow Zero - A Zenless Zone Zero Theory](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/l1k7nZ4SFb0/mqdefault.jpg)
**NOTES & CORRECTIONS**
- Nineveh isn't the only other Ethereal to create those ether crystal walls. It seems like Dullahan can also do it to a degree.
- KitKat pointed out that ether potency (and thereby concentration or control) may be represented on a color scale canonically to the people of New Eridu as well since the Ether Aptitude test strips show blue/green as the lower end of ether aptitude, and magenta/pink as the higher end.
- As for the concept of ether as data, Aluslaw pointed out that WEngine Discs are written with ether; so where we would encode data onto a CDROM using a laser with binary, Elfy engraves the disks with ether (called Ether Burning. For you younglings, the process of copying a CD was called "burning" back in ye olden times).
I got a question, how the does rina float?, is it the blue aura?, if so, is it the same with qingyi’s aura when syncing with eous? And what is the source of this aura?
@Sh_nsoul Same as Aponia.
Mhy aren't going to explain sht. Yet.
And Sacrifice makes a lot of sense, because the creature is a sacrifice in the research for the evolution of mankind
What does that mean for the evolution of mankind and I watch how that monster absorbed three huge machines and how powerful it was
@user-sd3sm5bq4r The key aspect to remember is that it can manipulate ether to some extent. Think about it, a primordial substance in the palm of your hands, bending to your will. It's only natural it is that powerful.
I don't recall if you mentioned it in the video but there is another very interesting aspect of "Sacrifice" that instantly caught my eye. You know how Ethereals and etheric beings can't survive outside of Hollows. Well, Khors goes to seal the Sacrifice within the Monument which at that point in time should be outside of a Hollow as far as we know. Which seems to heavily suggest it's a form of ethereal life that can exist outside of Hollows.
It's also weird how it can assimilate tech and its profile expands that according to HIA speculation is able to devour and assimilate all types of machinery including military tech. The profile also suggests it's design objective being to maximize destructive power and efficiency as a type of weapon.
So with these two things in mind, it's very possible that "Sacrifice" was created for Military use or at least to combat something possibly outside of Hollows.
Ether could just be pure corrupted data as well, which would have a lot of parallels with how the abyss works in genshin!! This is how king deshret can still-
the deshret agenda must never stop
can still?
i believe that forbidden knowledge and the abyss are two different things. so, i don't think yo can draw parallels from that to ZZZ.
idk if this is supposed to be a meme. But ZZZ is not attached to the imaginary tree
@@MyBoobsAreHuge What makes you think that? The entire point of the Hoyoverse is to make games that are attached to the same cosmology, even if they are not always as closely related as the Honkai games. We know this because while Genshin Impact is not a Honkai game and not directly related it is still confirmed to share the same cosmology.
Ashikai is the GOAT. Blew my mind when you made the connection that ether corrupts the mind first then the body.
Edit: 10:54 Oh god, it’s Remuria all over again
Idk if thats true though since (I forgot where this is from) there was a guy documenting his transformation and he noticed his hand forming crystals.
I think she meant to say that it fully corrupts the mind first, but corruption starts on the whole body.
@@renno2679 just spitballing here but maybe it takes root in the mind while causing physical changes elsewhere on the body. Like, if the mind is corrupted it can’t keep up with other bodily functions, allowing the ether to do whatever it wants?
Don't let the Golden Week event fool you. It might seem like an insignificant event, until the thing casually drops one lore bomb that you can GROW Hollows by feeding it, which in the event context, was AI equipment that got activated inside it. Now imagine if, oh I don't know, some crazy organization that would send sentient beings as "Sacrifice" to feed the Hollow? Oh wait-
That is not new information. Ever since chapter 1 (with the Cunning Hares) we knew that the size of a hollow is directly related to the amount of ether activity (such as active etherials) in it. We were trying to shrink the Dead End Hollow to get the trapped people out by either slaying a lot of small etherials or one very big one (the option we chose in the end).
@@LittleTilde We only knew hollows can shrink by subtracting ethereal beings, and that it's size is relative to ether activity.
What we didn't know is it CAN grow by intentionally adding corruptible stuff inside. Before this event, Hollows were thought to just appear and grow naturally
EDIT: Now that you think about it, you can relate hollows to fire. "Sacrifice" might be beings that are like kindling that starts the fire...... Now that kinda fits with the "Sacrifice" Thors found. The Hollow appeared right after the incident.
@@KawashiK If we know the means by which to shrink a hollow then we can naturally infer that it can grow by doing the inverse, wether that process happened naturally or artificially.
It is a reasonable argument to say that the event definitely confired that to be the case but it is such a logical conclusion that I do not see it as having needed confirmation.
@@LittleTilde Not really logical, given this is not a phenomenon that follows any irl physics. Besides, given that SHIYU exists to stop Hollows from growing/appearing, that logic would have punctured and fell flat before 1.1.
@@KawashiK dont shiyu towers store the harvested ether from the hollow, thus starving it and controlling its growth? if so, his inference would actually be kinda correct
On the note of the voice of Grace's teacher and the voice in the lore trailer, they only sound the same in the english version, they don't sound alike in jp or cn
Was going to comment on this lol
The female voice in the lore trailer on the other hand is very clearly "Sarah" in more than one dub (I play in CN, asked a friend to confirm for EN, not sure about JP or KR)
This video was fantastic, I love seeing people theorize about Zenless -- this game's lore is cooking, I'm fiending for all of the lore content I can get.
I want to yes and your theory a bit, though. You draw parallels between Ether and Code, and also the sort of primordial soup that life emerged from. What if, instead of code, ether was just a manifestation of information as a concept? That explains why it would corrupt the brain first, the brain is designed to store information in large quantities, which would consolidate the corruption of ether to the mind. It also explains the physical corruption, DNA is a type of encoding for information. Code and hard computer memory devices like solid state drives ALSO consolidate information and would explain why sufficiently intelligent androids and automata get corrupted as well, they're the constructs with the most "room" for the ether to corrupt. Ether, I think, is commensurate to Entropy, specifically an informational entropy. This also explains why the Ethereals have so many features that represent black holes, since black holes are, effectively, consolidated entropy. They're a nexus of a TREMENDOUSLY high volume of pure, unrefined "information" -- information in a logical sense, like knowledge, but also information in a conceptual sense, such as "what does this atom do" or "what is the function of this
There is so much lore in this game; it'll be fun to see another video from you because there are so many unanswered questions, like the Scott outpost's "Lost item from the old capital" collectable. It showed some really intriguing lore, like
1. Measurement device: It talks about how the Zenless limit is the limit of how much ether Hollow Zero can hold before it spawns another companion hollow. Not only do we learn that Hollow Zero does have an ether limit capacity, but also we learn what Zenless in ZZZ means.
2. Here it once swayed: The story of this one seems to be about a girl who died in the hollow after escaping her abusive family when their house got shallowed up by a hollow. What is intriguing about this is that it heavily implies that the flower we brought with her is the same flower that is growing in Hollow Zero. This could heavily imply that she is another "scarifice" or something similar to that of the twin dancer, which means this collectable could be heavily implying that this mysterious dead girl is in fact actually Nineveh.
There is not enough information to say anything conclusively, and unfortunately only "Measurement Device" spawned a small mini quest but didn't go in more in depth about what Zenless meant, and "Here it once sway" didn't get any thing at all, so we will just have to wait.
I originally was here for the Genshin content, now I am here for pretty much everything becasuse god damn Hoyo is good at writing stuff and god damn you are good at explaining it in the most interesting and easy to understand way
Came to the game because the combate seemed fun and the characters cool. Now I'm hooked because ZZZ is a surprisingly well crafted and engaging universe.
... Aslo because Jane Doe is hotness incanate, let's be honest.
"...the hollow disaster is actually a disaster where everything is trying to reverb back to the state it was at the beginning of the universe, a primordial chaotic nothingness"
*Flashbacks of a german named song, red sea and two teenagers in a beach*
Something that I think is worth pointing out is the fact that in every single one of these "specialized" corruption cases, there were two organisms or "brains" present. The twin dancers were corrupted while helping the audience evacuate the Hollow. They, somehow, seem to have maintained aspects of their humanity given their attraction to music. Nineveh was apparently a woman who was locked away (test subject?) for a long time and managed to escape during the Hollow Disaster. Now, it's unclear on where her flower came from, but we know that she had it when she was corrupted and that it cannot exist outside of the Hollow. Finally, we have the Sacrifice, which we can be fairly certain was a man-made Ethereal. However, Khors presumably went to go stop it and never came back, thus making him the second organism in this theory.
So, taking all of this together, assuming that Ether corruption is in fact some form of data corruption/overwrite that targets the brain first and then the body, wouldn't it make sense that the best method of controlling the corruption and maintaining the sanity of the corrupted individual would be to share the load? The twins, through their bond or something else, split the data corruption between the two of them, allowing them to maintain some of their human aspects. Nineveh, who only had a plant, couldn't maintain any of her humanity but did manage to gain some form of control over the ether. The Sacrifice likely wasn't planned to have another person there, but through Khors' presence, he may have caused it to become more powerful and gave it an affinity for his machines, thus why it absorbed both of the machines when it had a chance.
This is a crackpot theory at best, but it seemed an interesting connection. However, considering that the A.I. have been built for some grand plan using the Hollows, it makes me consider what vessels might exist to house them. And if those vessels could be people. Consider a Pacific Rim adjacent idea. An A.I and a human sharing the same body and sharing the neural load (the data load), allowing the two to gain power and go further than anybody ever could before.
空 in 空洞 also has a buddhist concept behind it. In mahayana Buddhism, 空 refers to this concept of emptiness in everything (emptiness in objects, ideas, and even dharma). It's the idea that everything in its current state is the result of a set of conditions fulfilled (a plant is the result of a seed being grown in the right conditions, someones dharma is the result of the karma they are dealt with) so ultimately there is nothing inherent about anything, and that emptiness is called 空. From that emptiness, you can create something, the way that from an empty plot of land, you can create a house and from an empty bag, you can fill it with fruit. So 空 also has the concept of being the emptiness that can take on the form of anything, similar to the primordial nature that youre impling about aether.
Would be interesting as it may also relate the ethereal resistance. Given operators have to usually have more resistance, perhaps the test subject that would become sacrifice had been one such case. They had enough resistance that they would be able to withstand turning into an ethereal as the resistance may be some form of handling the data. The average person may just be overwhelmed compared to those with higher resistances.
Thirens also have a unique physiology as well in this regard and may be related to the matter. After all, I don't believe it's ever been specified how long thirens have existed in the ZZZ reality. But consider if that before hollows, especially hollow zero the data had already been flowing out and causing animals to undergo changes. This may explain why alloys had already existed that could withstand ether corruption: humans in ZZZ have unknowingly been altered by the data being shot out from hollows not yet present on the planet as space and time aren't reflected by hollows.
There may also be the possibility that those corrupted by the hollows are possibly separated from the bodies of typical ethereals as well. The logic cores are awakened in them may be triggered by the data present as said data may be the result of consciousness existing in them. Which in turn could explain why people are corrupted: their being pumped full of so much data that it overloads the physical brain and well, destroys it's physical state as the data there is added to hollows. A controlled enviroment may of been a theory as to try and slow down the exposed amount and why they call it a sacrifice. They willingly sacrificed a person under the presumption that their mind and body may be destroyed to try and create an ethereal with a controlled consciousness.
Be great to get more specifics, but there are certainly many ways it could go on the assumption that hollows are a collection of chaotic data. It would explain why analog is so crucial as it doesn't rely on any data needed.
i wonder if that huge hollow on the moon has affected anything down on earth, given its size. no idea if that's possible though since we don't know the theoretical reach of hollow influence outside of the actual hollow and we don't know how long it's been there (unless i missed that part somewhere in the lore).
Another little point I'd like to highlight is the various Ether corruptions you can get in a Hollow; they seem to affect the agent's personality as much as their physical state with stuff like Insatiable Greed, Suspicion, and Rampage. I feel like this lends credence to your "Ether is data" hypothesis.
I have always thought it the opposite way: The less compatible you are the better you can resist it. The very first guy from that gang became a pretty powerful ethereal and had explicitly a very low resistance. So the more your "code" is an "island" the better you can survive in the hollow.
This is a well educated guess at what may be happening, agree completely with your theory and can't wait to hear what else is there in your brain about the game.
Also, another observation about the logic cores. Belobog version might also be a great deal because the logic core themselves could be a black box for ZZZ society. We know they have lost a lot of tech (Billy is explicitly lost tech) and even the Marcel corporation (the ones who mass produce Bangboos) doesn't seem to be able to properly tinker with their logic cores considering their failure to create a line of Bangboos that can consistently pass the forbidden fruit test and how all Bangboos have just cosmetic differences, the core is the same even when more specialization could be more convenient/efficient.
That makes Grace achievements even more impressive and the use of Ether more reasonable, no one actually know what they are doing and so any advancement comes from trial and error.
9:18 this part reminded me so much of the game Astral Chain, where when people got basically digitized, and taken to the astral plane. Where they would, as one of the villains (Jena) said, "they are here to be categorized" taken back to storage
This made me think of how the Ether icon ingame is similar to the commonly used emoji for AI's: ✨
To and to the "Hollows are similar to cosmic eggs" idea, I read in a recent article about astrophysic that recent discoveries seem to reveal that black holes (which Hollows are similar to in apperances and overall Sci-Fi tropes) may be much older than they previously assumed and maybe older than stars and galaxies. Which lead to new theories about galaxies and celestial bodies being born from black holes.
Hoyo being the company that it is, wouldn't surprise me if they were very up to date with theories about the universe and other space related stuff
for me it's more of vaccuum collapse bubble, a region where some laws of physics fall to a lower point of energy, releasing a lot of weird energy and physic property inside this region. The more energy release, the more the bubble will expand just like the hollow. Due to cosmic censorship hypothesis, these bubble might appear black, masking the rest of the universe from what happen inside it. Vaccuum collapse can appear throught nucleation sites just like the hollow with companion hollow and the main bubble as the hollow zero 🫠
We did saw that massive hollow on the moon, so it is likely that it came from the universe itself. Even though it likely foreshadows what will happen in the future for ZZZ
@@renno2679 I would if I could, but it was in a French physical magazine I read back in August... But I've found two articles on the website ScienceDaily that seem to talk about the subjects! (I only skimmed through them)
"Massive merger: Study reveals evidence for origin of supermassive black hole at galaxy's center" from September 6
and "Dark matter could have helped make supermassive black holes in the early universe" from August 28
Apologies for not giving the links directly, UA-cam seems to not like it when I do that >-< but I hope that helps !
THANK U LORE AEON ASHIKAI !!
Neo Green is the color of Radiation, but that pink on white is the color of the Honkai Beast.
I bet the green guy are pure instinct beast, but the pink gang server a greater will, a hollow herrscher perhaps?
12:30
I LOVE THAT YOUR HOST AVATAR IS A BANGBOO!!!
Yippee a theory on this!
Edit after the video: another awesome video!
Coming back after the outer rings arc, it's interesting to note now that Belle and Wise aren't described as having low afinity, but that they have a specific condition that causes them problems when exposed to a hollow for too long and the fact this is actually using specific language tells me that considering that aether is information based, whatever they did to interface with the HDD through that ancient tech, that seems to be what's actually vulnerable, which would line up with other scenarios where aether causes problems for them. Actually, considering Billy is aware of it in such a specific tone to comment on it as well as Quingyi seeming to know a lot about and have that same tech, tells me its likely the twins could have some form of cybernetics thats a lot more impactful than what we may assume.
I feel like you could pull off an incredible Belle impression
Love this, lore is my drug ❤
I love your voice and commitment. Thank you!
Ether reminds me a lot of how bubble universes work in honkai impact 3rd, but completely opposite. I'm not completely knowledgeable on how bubble universes work, but from what I recall, it's bubbles of somewhat ordered data in the sea of quanta, which is the exact opposite from hollows, which are bubbles of somewhat unordered data in the actual world. This made me jump to a lot of different theories, but I just want to wait and see what happens :)
I'm pretty sure hollow Zero is the hollow that destroyed old Eridu, not the literal first hollow.
@@GhostEmblem Yeah it seems this way after the big lore teaser trailer, if Koleda was a little kid when Old Eridu was around pre-Hollow Zero but Miyabi's ancestor was also around during hollow conflicts
Hollow Zero did destroy old Eridu, but it existed long before the destruction of the city. The Void Hunters lore teaser explicitly says that Professor Arche entered Hollow Zero to investigate it and also that the document themselves are from before Eridu fall.
Hollow Zero may not be the very first Hollow, I don't think we have explicit confirmation of that, but it has definitely been around since the start. Old Eridu fell because Hollow Zero became superactive for some reason and started expanding more than what people could control.
@@Adser261 I believe the materials over on the official website call it both "the first Hollow" and "the first Hollow within Eridu/New Eridu", with the game itself also usually going with the latter.
Always enjoy these lore videos and start each one hoping for a mention of anything like a primordial chaotic nothingness
I got more answers from your video and the comment section than all of the 1.0-1.1 stories. Thank you. :)
- I've said it before, I'll say it again, I hated all the cliffhangers and how nothing was explained in 1.0 and 1.1, while making it sound like it should be obvious why the sacrifice or monster in the monument is so important/central to the plot.
- It was up there with Destiny 2's Light Fall Story - nothing is explained to the player while every single NPC or agent already knows what's up.
0:04 - 0:07
AMazing arch.
immaculate form.
Ass tooted up more then any male character in all of hoyoverses games combined!!!
I had being waiting for a new of your ZZZ videos for long time... excellent theory as always
here's a bigger mystery, how did Koleda lost one of her eye?
It might just be she thinks it looks cool
Probably an accident, things happen beyond our control…
@@calebjones7868 yeah you might be right
She probably poked her eye out by accident lol
Considering her dad and possibly everyone else in Belobog allowed her to be around heavy machinery, she probably lost it in an accident.
Would that make Ether.... Forbidden knowledge?
I mean... isn't the way they test for sentience in ai literally called "The Forbidden Test'?
it all leads back to Deshret 😔
So it is related to the Irminsul.
@@oysan.nAll roads lead to Deshret.
But in this case, Ether sounds so much like Honkai. But then again it's the same concept with Genshin and Khaenriah anyway. Any advancement in technology gets fucked by something.
@@anomm3182 Forbidden Fruit Test. That's the whole name.
If it helps, I THINK theres another ethereal that also produces ether crystals, i think its called Dullahan? Its the large one with a shield and a sword, its one of the harder elite enemies
Madness theory: ZZZ is a prequel to the other games. The ether became the imaginary tree or the sea of quanta and from there the Mihoyo universe spawns.
All other games are post, post apocalypse while ZZZ is almost like the first stages of an apocalypse.
Source: I made it the fk up + intuition?
12:24 how many times are we gonna make Project STIGMA, HYV?
I can't wait for the game to finally tackle these aspects in future, because I have a gut feeling that we're going to fight off against the ether corrupted past void hunters, just imagining their designs makes me so hyped!
finally the next part of the story!!! thank you!
This is so perfect especially when In hsr Silverwolf can “Aether edit” the data of reality… shits insane
Don’t know why, but Ashikai as a Bangboo just makes sense, lol.
Interesting that you bring up Bringer being the mole in PubSec. He acted very suspicious about Zhu Yuan and QingYi investigating the Sacrifice to the point where it made me wonder why he wanted them transferred off of the case almost immediately after they reported the issue to him.
Amazing as always!
@Ashikai
This was an amazing video. So I don't have a question. However I did notice something after listening to your theories. You mentioned that through your research, that it's very likely ether is a sort of data corruption and it likely effects the mind first. With the deduction I think there is some solid evidence for your theory. If you played Rena's agent story there is an npc who shows up that suffers from a form of ether alzheimer that disrupts the memory of people who have had long term ether contact.
This feels like a good bit of evidence towards your theory.
Whoa partial ether corruption is necessary for awakening the smart machines 😮
I have the theory that Sarah's faction is aligned with the "Ether cooperation". They are trying to increase interest in Ether and Ether-based technology, so that they may have a dominant hold over most industrial markets. This is the idea that I had sometime after playing the most recent chapter of Phaethons story. I originally thought that their goal was just to increase their interests in the fuel industry, as they tried to eliminate a highly valuable fuel source -- oil. Lucius wanted this so that he could be among those with an iron-grip over the industry. Though it had me wondering what the Sacrifice had to do with this, as it wasn't fully clear to me what it was. Then I found this video. Now I believe it's more than just the fuel industry they were after, but also technology and bioengineering. Their plans are to encompass almost all general sources that would be of importance to mankind. And you have to wonder how much control they will have if they were to succeed.
12:00 Dullahans can also summon ether crystals with one of of their attacks
Also most if not all ethereal enemies have a variation with the same colors as Nineveh
And let me guess, the one who managed to become such a being able to control Ether is none other than Professor Arche!
You're Eous now? Cute
@@manhmo she's 18, Eous is 01
Great video!!!
Ether as data overwriting things is an angle I didn't think about, but it fits almost too well. I also play Impact 3rd, so I first thought of Hollows being a bubble universe over writing the ZZZ one, but what if it is only the data! If we take out all the fliar, the brain is a computer, and logic cores seem to follow that same idea, so it only makes sense that data corruption affects both in the same way with organic and non-organic things. Also, if that logic tracks, the reason why Belobog needs to make new cores is because the machines' bodies are not humanoid. All other examples of logic core fit a human like "case." Maybe the normal cores are put in the machines have almost no ether resistance. Loving the ZZZ theories!
Thanks for the video 🤗
The bringer thing is SO real, i thought the exact same thing! I swear im hearing his voice everywhere
The lore for this game is so cool
Always look forward to another ZZZ lore drop from this channel. We really don't get enough quality lore videos on this game... a shame, really.
This idea that the hollows warp and corrupt data reminds me a LOT of Annihilation. The parallels are huge
>The Shimmer is a strange, barely understood dome that you can actually enter and leave freely, but doing so is difficult cuz of the nature of how it affects spatial reality
>Things seem mostly normal, but it warps and distorts basically everything (in Annihilations case, genetic material) creating strange hybrid species
>The minds of people entering usually start to break over time, and so do your bodies
Maybe the hollows are similar in that 'merging' thing. maybe thats where thirens come from. The world of ZZZ having all these hollows and corrupting zones, it could of merged the physiology of multiple species, the main thing being thirens. this explains why we dont just get humanoid ethereals, but also dog ones
Oh wow. Seeing the comic panels where Miguel gets fully corrupted really does show how agonizing of a process it is. The whole thing it's definitely brutal. And apparently a lot of humans went though this to become the Ethereals. This is dark dark.
Another interesting characteristics of the Sacrifice as opposed to regular ethereals, is that the game clearly stated Ethereals disintegrate if they manage to leave the hollow, meanwhile the Sacrifice seems to have been taken out of the hollow for the analysis
I love you. Genshin or zzz makes no difference. I love you!
Watched this after 1.4 and it seems pretty accurate
I just completed Chapter 4 from the 1.2 update. I’m really interested to see how this goes especially the foreshadowing they left off at the final cutscene
Something I've noticed is that most Etherals have an energy orb for a head, the only exceptions are the sacrifice and the twin dancers.{That I recall}
Miyabi also said they found a mask with the sacrifice's remains, so maybe someone was trying the use that mask to contain the sacrifice's energy and control it. But when it absorbed all the machines the energy was to much and it shattered.
I have no idea my the twin dancers don't have orbs for heads but maybe they are more important then we think.
@Ashikai, the lore bomb dropped after the SoC story is huuuuge, you should make a video about it.
you can also i think pretty confidently draw a common throughline between ZZZ and another universal human narrative: stasis vs change. particularly the Norse flavor of it, which sees Odin fighting a doomed-from-the-start war against "ragnarok", which he himself personally brings about in his singleminded attempt to avert it at all costs. which i think also has interesting implications about what you said previously, about the Phaethon sibs being locked in a battle they will ultimately lose.
Woooo! ZZZ IS WINNING!!! 😊😊😊😊
When you started talking about ether as data made me think of Originum from Arknights and now I wonder how often "solidified data that is both fuel and an existential threat" has been used in gacha game plots.
ZZZ Lore! Lets goo!
There is a piece of lore for the game Destiny that seems very relevant.
One of the races in the game are "Exos," which are human minds uploaded in to robot bodies. The lore around them is incredibly dark, and a lot of Exos failed. One problem they ran into is the minds kept getting caught in loops, and effectively entered a solid or looping state.
The eventual solution to this was realizing the human brain is not perfect. It loses information all the time. The human mind expects this to happen, and will constantly check itself, and rebuild itself. The synthetic brains needed to do the same thing. They basically had to artifically introduce entropy into the system. In the Destiny universe, they did that using Darkness (a form of space magic).
That sounds like very close to what the Hollow Awakening is.
Dang I’ve never been this early in an Ashikai video
That.. makes alot of sense
GOOD VIDEO
I like to think that the hollows are representative of the consistently changing and overly complex portions of life.
Love your zzz videos. By any chance, will you be making a story breakdown of Chapter 2 and 3?
It's a good day when Ashikai posts. No longer upset about my life science research task and IT PAT 😊
I'm getting Fullmetal Alchemist brotherhood lvl conspiracy theory crafting.
OMG ZZZ LORE THEORY❤
“What’s in the statue!” -Everyone in New Eridu
after playing the ch 4 ending, i hope we get another update on the phaethon link to helios academy
Forbidden knowledge? Forbidden knowledge! FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE!
neat note about why there is so much analog tech being used still. a lore tie in other than it being a simple style choice
I've had that theory as well. If you look at the sacrifice, it's different compared to other ether creatures we've seen in ZZZ. A couple of days ago, i theorized that the sacrifice was created illegally in a lab to maybe control a hollow companion. But obviously, something went wrong, and maybe whoever created the sacrifice lost control.
I have a hunch that vision may have some knowledge of the sacrifice which they wanted the cunning hares and perlman gone. It also seems even Victoria housekeeping is also aware of the creature as well.
Thats just my theory though but it does seem possible that the sacrifice was created in a lab
The mere fact it's such an unknown anomaly is why anyone worth their weight in research would want it 🤔
Punishing virus 🗣️🔥🔥🔥
WAIT now that you mentioned inspector bringer, he was excited and personally came to the memorial square, and when the case is to be handed over to HANDS he didn't like that. AND ALSO, the operation of the bandits stealing the evidence (which is the sacrifice) is the very day of his public seminar which is very sus! he might be a silly looking character but we better watch out for him!
It might be useful to look at genshin's abyss and abyssal energy to see if there are any similar theme's and concepts applicable to ZZZ. Because when you talk about ether it sounds quite similar to the abyss in genshin.
0:06 cake
YES ZZZ LORE!
A NEW UPLOAD LETS GOO
yay i rly like the zzz videos
Honestly I think Hoyoverse may notice this and think "can't believe they figured it out" or "why didn't we think of that?"
Given that the story is largely built on Greek myth, and that the Hollows are likened to mazes (of which "Cretan" is one)-- it makes me think the Sacrifices (in ZZZ) are thematically linked to the sacrifices made to the Minotaur in myth. If that's the case, it gives me the impression that the sacrifices are.. exactly that-- sacrifices. The question would be what are they sacrificed **to**?
Given how the story emphasized the need to keep Sacrifices **sealed**, I'm imagining that sealing them is **part** of the ritual.
It makes me think of "Hitobashira", the Japanese practice of burying **sacrifices** alive in the foundation of buildings (and other structures) in order to to protect the buildings, ward off evil and misfortune, or otherwise keep the structures in tact. "Hitobashira" translates like "Human Pillars".
I'm wondering if the Pillars that keep the Hollows out of New Eridu require Sacrifices to act as their core.
YES! Please give me lore theories
I swear this theroy makes the sacrifice basically what sele from evaongelion wanted to do
huh, thinking about the idea of ether as data, I sorta remember that there's like, a threshold of where if you tried to put too much data (a frankly extreme amount, totally impossible realisitcally) into a person's brain, it'd become a black hole. and seeing as ethereals often feature a sort of "black hole" on their design...? maybe ether corruption is almost like, "overloading" a person with data/information/some other memetic attack?
What if HollowZero was man-made? Maybe they discovered that Ether is a powerful energy source, and the old Eridu needed it for their power supply. So, they decided to create a small, controlled Hollow to get the energy, but something went wrong, causing the disaster. That could explain why New Eridu has advanced technology to extract energy from hollow. It’s kind of like in Spider-Man 2, where Doc Ock tried to create a mini sun in his lab, and it failed.
(Note: I’ve only finished Chapter 2, so I don’t know what happens next. I could be completely wrong.)
@Ashikai I think yout theory about Ether being a primordial code construct might be correct, and that its corrupt the brain first. If you pay close attention, all Etherials in the game have their core at their head, with the only exception being the Sacrifice and the Twins, since the Twins share their burden with each other, therefor, the Twins core is at their center.
No, wait, I take it back, the Sacrifice also have it's core on it's head.
Hollows happen around world spreading and there’s huge one on the moon ethereal’s wandering and crawling and this sacrifice is something really gonna happen 🧐🧐🧐👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Maybe that's what Belobog used for his prototype but it got out of control, also your theory reminds me of Gundam 00 movie awakening of the trail blazers
Now I'm curious what the purpose of Mosquitos are