Anyway.
I have so many feelings.
I love Himeko in every universe, so OF COURSE they absolutely twisted that Final Lesson PTSD to the fullest extent. They really, really milked that original trauma and like....
SPOILERS AHEAD
Man, the Trailblazer is just checking off doing stuff that Honkai characters never could.
Saving Firefly by changing the timeline, when Otto spent 500 years failing to save Kallen and ultimately had to accept that the only possibility was to sacrifice himself to make a new alternate timeline where Kallen lived. He could never save HIS Kallen, just make another reality where she didn't die.
Trailblazer went FUCK THAT IMMA TRAILBLAZE and used the Finality to make rewrite Time and save Firefly.
Himeko Murata sacrificed herself to save Kiana, and that sacrifice shaped the entire story from then on out. Her sacrifice, her betting on Kiana, ultimately saved the world and allowed for someone to finally, finally, after billions of years, complete an "embrace" with the Cocoon of Finality.
Trailblazer sees Himeko sacrifice herself, and manages to wield the Stellaron's power to go back in time several seconds to prevent her death.
FUCK THAT IMMA TRAILBLAZE.
Once again, our feral smelly Raccoon has checked off something from the Honkai Impact 3rd Wishlist.
ANYWAY.
Asat Pramad is an amazing character, A+ well-written and fascinating, a terrible and wicked villain but also so much fun to watch. And with so many layers of depth to him, beneath his mockery and pseudo-Enlightened Philosophy is really the story of an incredibly naive, well-meaning man that lived through some horrific times and events, and was so thoroughly BROKEN by what he experienced.
I think Himeko is correct in her assessment that he is a dark reflection of our heroes, he is their senior and predecessor that ultimately lacked the Courage to continue onwards. For all his efforts to play Hero as Enroute and Isee, ultimately he lacked the courage to go on when not directly guided by a god. He saw Akivili "die", what he describes not as a death as we would understand it, but transformation into something new. Akivili is the star at the very edge of reality.
He is stated in official material for his Boss as the Lord Ravager dealing with "Possibilities", and that seems central to his character.
Asat Pramad sees Possibilities, he tampers with Probability and uses his die to select the Possibility that he wants.
He also describes the Trailblaze as the Path of Possibilities, endless Possibility and no Limits. His description of how the Trailblaze is the 4th Apocalypse centers on what he understands to be Akivili's goal:
A cosmos of Infinite, Endless Possibilities. No limits. No ends.
This terrifies Asat Pramad.
It terrified him so much, that he came to believe Destruction is merciful, that all things will eventually decay and break down and lose their restraints or focus. That Destruction is salvation, because all other ends are too horrible to comprehend.
Himeko calls him a coward.
In his big climatic rant to Himeko at the conclusion of 4.3, he theorizes that Himeko saw the vastness of the universe, and she was afraid. He describes how she would have given up, running away from responsibility and the horror of a vast universe. That she chose to let Motoko take over, and stayed behind to die.
We now realize that he was projecting his own feelings and his own failings on to her.
HE was the one that saw the vastness of the cosmos, that had responsibility thrust upon him suddenly and did not want it. He was the one that was terrified, that ran away from it all by stepping off the Express and embracing Destruction.
His daughter was ultimately stronger and braver than he ever imagined. She is, in every way, everything good that he once was and all the strength that he never possessed. Himeko, frail and dying from the Weathering Curse, looked up and said that she wanted to die among the stars. She faced the Herald of Death and said, I'm afraid of dying but someone has to do something. She sacrificed her dream to stop that monster, and then she chose to live as fiercely and beautifully as possible to honor Motoko.
It's ironic, in many ways, that Himeko would never have become who she is without Asat Pramad's "joke". Ryusuke did not know about the Astral Express, and he did not dream of exploring the cosmos. His only wish was to save his wife and child, and he did that by leaving them behind to search.
Himeko would not be the woman she is if Ryusuke had lived to raise her.
Would she have still made Motoko? Would she have dreamed of escaping her cruel fate? Would she have fought the Herald of Death and repaired the Express?
I don't think she would have done any of that. I think Ryusuke would have loved his daughter, but he would never have raised her to become anything like the woman we know and love.
Because the Himeko we know and love was raised by a man that still, on some level, cherished the past he abandoned. A man that passed on Enroute and Isee's dreams, telling her stories of his past and encouraging her to be brave, curious, and determined. To ultimately be all the things he tried to be, but faltered at being in the end.
As twisted and monstrous as he is, I think Asat Pramad genuinely loves Himeko. At least, as much as such a being is capable of experiencing that kind of emotion. It's not a pretty or healthy thing, and he's perfectly willing to toy with and harm her.
But she's truly his greatest masterpiece. On a whim, he became the father of this little girl doomed to fade away and die. He taught her about heroism, about curiosity, about courage, about the Nameless and the vast cosmos, and the ideals he had long since abandoned.
He watched her wither and bloom at the same time, and now he has witnessed how she tricked him and ultimately picked up his shattered past identities and used them to make herself everything he wasn't brave enough to become.
She is his daughter and his successor, and the answer to his deeply-held wish to be overcome and proven wrong.
He said: You should be afraid, you are limited and the universe is terrifying. There's too many possibilities and you can't save people all the time.
She said: Nah, Imma fucking Trailblaze this mecha into your face.
