What endlessly frustrates me about the writing in the moon arc is that it is so focused on technobabble and philosophical arguments that it completely neglects what even made honkai such a good story in the first place - the masterful portrayal of the characters' emotions, struggles and growth.
We love Kiana because we saw and heard how she was a bratty kid, and then became depressed, and then slowly climbed out of that hellhole. Props to the translaters, the scriptwriters, the voice actors, the staff behind the CGs. Mei's arc was heart-rending also because we saw how crushed she was by Kiana's struggles. Seele in CG slamming her fist on the ground and crying to herself, "Move, you coward!" will always haunt me. Veliona seeming like a psychopath and being pit against Saule and then eventually reconciling was the best thing ever, because the team really did such a good job of making it really seem like Veliona might harm Seele, and then later of conveying just how much Veliona actually loved her.
What do we get of that kind of character-building in this arc? Basically nothing. The characters are so busy talking about the technicalities of Project Stigma that we don't really know how they feel about the whole thing apart from (stock action movie hero voice) "that is so despicable and we will stop you!"
Senti is thankfully an exception, because she doesn't bother engaging with conversation unless it directly affects her. And she's got the right idea!
imo, when it comes to storytelling, the worldbuilding only needs to be as coherent as is necessary for the emotional stakes to make sense. The writers have spent so much time trying to explain the tech to us that they completely forgot about establishing the emotional stakes. Anyone who's stuck around with Honkai this long knows that the worldbuilding doesn't really make sense. Things gets retconned all the time. Anything that doesn't make sense gets blamed on Fenghuang Down. The writers really don't need to spend so much time convincing us that the worldbuilding make sense. We already know, it doesn't, and we loved you anyway. Why did you stop doing what you were good at?
Another thing that takes time away from actually establishing the emotional stakes is the philosophising. Okay, so most of the world is going to die and be reborn as a new entity that isn't really them. But the characters we love are mostly spared from that fate, so why should we care? I know this might make me sound heartless, but I only care about these fictional nameless people because the characters I love care about them. These nameless masses are fictional. I don't care. I can't even tell if the protags even care about these masses outside of an abstract "killing people bad" ideology. I don't know if it's because I haven't cleared the chapter yet (the writing is just that boring; the trio just met Kevin). But after hours of gameplay, the trio have never displayed any emotion outside of mere disapproval. The kind I might have when I go "wow that person has such a shit take on things, but I'll just live and let live". What are they even fighting for?
Granted, I do think the philosophical arguments are interesting and I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any in Honkai at all. But I can only enjoy it to a certain point, and it's not even done well here. We don't get to see any of the protagonists actually engaging with the philosophical argument. From what I can tell, it's just "Project Stigma is the only way some semblance of humanity can live past Finality" "Okay but CE isn't as driven into the corner as PE, can you let us try our things first before you effectively kill all of us?"
That's not a conversation. There's literally no emotional grappling with the fear that maybe, maybe Kevin is right and they will really fail, and that if they miss this chance then all of humanity really will be doomed.
Not to mention that we already covered this philosophical argument with the Kolosten arc. "Do a small group of elite, powerful people have the right to decide the fates of the masses, even when they've arguably already made it a good deal for them?" The answer is no, not when the timeline and form in which they existed would no longer exist, and when they didn't even consent to it. We got it! We had to go through that long arc to reach the moon arc! We got it! Can we move on to the character arcs now?
i hate the moon arc. please convince me to like it again please i dont like hating on honkai but the moon arc is simply bad
i dont like it when they use big words. i bet if you googled them youd find out that they probably dont make sense together but mhy strings them together so they sound smart and sophisticated or whatever. please dumb it down because the story is so fucking long and most of it is just parts that i am Very Tempted to skip
i went to sleep at 5 this morning because of the stupid story which is probably my fault but god damn Hare is so boring
also her boss outfit is so bad like what.
anyways i feel like honkai story is deteriorating. i am not normally a cryer but one time at 3 am over the summer i was able to make myself cry over himeko. same thing happened during honkai world diva. but now when i watch things like Because Of You (hate me if you will but i personally think the song kinda sucked) i dont even feel anything. what i got from the story was "oh no all the flamechasers are deleted! how will mei bring elysia back? it's simple! just think about her" and then poof mei can leave the elysian realm while elysia somehow gets into the actual realm from mei's brain and fights hoc to the death" or something. its weird.
anyways the moon arc sucked mhy please write better 🙏
Ergh,, okay, I'm in Newark to pick something up for a friend and Spike handed me their phone while they pick up some food. IDK what the hell to do with this thing, but, uh, AMA?
Before I start, I just want to say that this isn’t a theory I’m entirely sold on myself, but I figured I would put it out there, along with the possible evidence, just in case.
Until now, we have been led to believe that the 24th ward was a hell hole where ghouls skulked around in tunnels cannibalizing each other, evolving into monstrous insane kakujas. Just a wild orderless mess of tunnels and lairs that Eto was lucky to survive at all.
Much of what we have seen of it appears to be maintenance tunnels, drainage systems, and sewer lines. Even the rather spacious place Kaneki’s group has taken up in seems to be built within an abandoned subway project of human construction. Between these underground spaces, we are told, are a series of unmappably convoluted and treacherous tunnels, full of crazed ghouls and traps, such as kagune walls, which, Kanou informs us, must feed on something to be maintained.
And yet, deep in the 24th ward, we find an entire city.
Cities require a degree of mutual cooperation and organization we have not at all come to expect from the 24th ward. One we haven’t even come to expect from most of the ghouls living on the surface. The ubiquitous mindset that might makes right, that the strong have the right to take whatever they want, whenever they want it, does not seem conducive to what Ayato sees before him.
Not to mention the fact that this city is so far down that it’s almost too deep to carry enough provisions to make it to the surface and back.
How exactly does this city exist?
How can an entire city of ghouls get enough food to live in even relative harmony so far down?
I can think of several possibilities. One is that they have an alternative food source - some way for ghouls to survive without eating humans. Such a thing would solve the root issue and allow a path for possible lasting peace - and this chapter did finally explicitly bring back that root issue. Kaneki’s people are starving because he refuses to kill. The chapter is called Meal. This is an issue they have to address.
But it’s also kind of an anti-climax. To have that solution handed to them right as Kaneki is so desperate for a solution to the food problem that doesn’t kill humans. While I think ultimately the manga does need to solve this fundamental problem, just finding it down in the 24th ward during this sort of non-confrontational retreat feels too easy.
But it’s a possibility.
Another, darker possibility is that there are humans down there - possibly living in the reverse of life on the surface - creatures that exist to be hunted and killed. It would be far easier to transport or even grow human food, making these humans basically livestock.
A twisted mirror of the world above, rather than any solution at all, would certainly be fitting of the dynamic between Furuta and Kaneki right now and the quote from 101 - reality and the other side, twisted together.
The third idea is the one I want to explore, and it is not necessarily mutually exclusive with one or the other of those above. And that’s that this city has help. Help from none other than V.
In Ch. 66, Furuta, play-acting the loyal V party line, says the following to Eto:
“Revolutions are all well and good, but the more you desperately try to effect change, the more sad and dead you leave in your wake. You even had to kill your own father. If an equilibrium were to be achieved, albeit in a twisted way, that’d be good enough, right? Am I wrong?”
As I’ve said previously, reading this in light of what we now know offers a different insight into what Furuta is really saying. Furuta gleefully killed his own father and is almost more gleefully leaving as much death in his wake as he can. And of course, Eto explicitly calls him out on not caring about V in the least.
But in this scene, Furuta is playing a loyal V agent, specifically as Eto understands V to be (and wants to show to Kaneki).
We also know that Eto is basing her legacy and revolution in part on the legacy of previous One Eyed Ghouls.
It’s something we hear more of from Nishiki, by way of Kaneki’s research, this chapter, though he might be talking about a different revolution all together - something I tried to hash out in a different post because it got long and is worth thinking about on it’s own [x].
The fact that this account ends with “or that’s how the story goes,” as well as plot threads that still have to be explored, makes me think things may not be so cut and dry.
In addition to Furuta in 66, Kaiko also uses the word equilibrium when talking to Yoshimura before the Anteiku raid.
It certainly could be referring to things as we now understand them - enough ghouls running around to continue justifying the existence of their power structure. Or perhaps it refers to a sort of ecological equilibrium, a system where the number of ghouls never exceeds the amount Tokyo’s population can support without any serious disruption. Still, It’s a strange choice of words for a system that is based on anything but equality and balance.
In addition to the truth about the 24th ward, there are several plot threads involving V, the Washuu, and the Garden that the manga needs to address as it moves ever closer to its final arcs. We know that V does some of its dealings underground, with Cochlea being buried deep in the earth and the V members joining Furuta right at the crusher on the lowest level.
The 24th ward is described as a labyrinth, and it is from the structure in the labyrinth of the inner ear that Cochlea gets its name.
There is also evidence that even more of their operation, including the Garden itself, might be hidden down there. @kingkishou has a post detailing some of the evidence for that here [x].
And then there is the image of the bird cage with two locks. One below, one above.
It would be far more compelling if where Kaneki and Goat think they will find an answer, an escape from the cage, they simply found more of what they were running from.
Which brings us back to Furuta’s line to Eto:
“Revolutions are all well and good, but the more you desperately try to effect change, the more sad and dead you leave in your wake. You even had to kill your own father. If an equilibrium were to be achieved, albeit in a twisted way, that’d be good enough, right? Am I wrong?”
What if, with their forces dwindling and V closing in, rather than escaping, this revolutionary one eye made a deal. Ghouls live below, humans above. V would allow, even assist, in the building and maintenance of a place for ghouls underground and would brutally punish any ghouls seeking to violate that arrangement and escape to the surface or disrupt the human world above by living there. Two cities in a twisted equilibrium kept by V.
Such a situation would also preserve the hellish life we have been told Eto was forced to live - hiding away and fighting for her very survival, unable to go up or down without running into V and their forces who sought to eliminate her. Perhaps Kuzen didn’t know about this deal - he was just a cleaner, after all, not born into the organization as much of its members are - or perhaps the tunnels of the 24th are still a better bet than the surface for escaping notice.
This of course would mean that the role of Arima and his squad largely composed of garden children was not so much exploring as keeping an eye on and patrolling the underground. Even if a deal was struck, it doesn't mean the ghouls who fled down there were happy with it. If V had an iron grip on their lives and food supply, it would still make sense for them to build their labyrinthine tunnels and traps in efforts to make forbidden trips to the surface.
And it’s also almost certain that V is using these tunnels to hide things of their own, things they don’t want ghouls or humans poking into. Secret projects and spaces that benefit from the perception of both ghouls and humans that the place is a labyrinth over run by dangerous, insane ghouls
Like I said, it’s just a possibility, and one I’m not completely sold on myself. Everything we’ve been told by those in the CCG and the Washuu seem to suggest that they were desperately attempting to map and get a handle on the 24th ward, not that it was already within their control.
But this would be far from the first time we have been misled in such a way, and it would go a long way in explaining what Ayato found down there as well as presenting a way forward for many of the mysteries and plots that have yet to be resolved.
Thematically, in terms of the moon arc, our deepest depths reveal a hidden truth we must confront, not an easy solution waiting for us to run across. Just as the truths Kanou revealed to Kaneki in the depths of his lab (another arc full of moon tarot symbolism) were important but painful, one assumes Goat will encounter the same as they dig into the depths of the 24th.
The depths, in the symbolism of the moon, are painful buried truths that must come to the surface. Dark secrets that hold the twisted root of our neuroses and complexes. The part of ourselves we must shine a light on and understand before we can really move forward into the rebirth of the sun. Only in exposing and confronting our shadow can we truly escape the warped cage it has built around our psyche. True, lasting growth requires this journey to the darkest parts of ourselves, and it is never an easy one.
No doubt Goat will learn something important down in the depths of the 24th ward, and it will likely be something that, in a way, exposes the path forward. But rather than a solution - a new source of food, or an eager and waiting army - it is likely to expose the true nature of the problem, the twisted roots from which the entire warped bird cage grows.
