Thoughts on the Genshin Impact 'Xianyun's Story Quest'

I cleared the latest update for Genshin Impact. Regarding the resolution of the foreshadowing that 'Fontaine and Liyue are connected,' I had expected them to insert a Silk Road-style area in between. Instead, they simply connected the Liyue expansion right next to Fontaine, following the Chinese desire for such a connection, which made me chuckle. Since Genshin is a game from China, it is inevitable that areas and characters based on the country will increase. However, when I was laughing loosely, thinking, 'Isn't it a bit too simplistic to anthropomorphize the Crane Immortal (Crane Hermit!) as a bespectacled beauty? Are you running out of breath because the update frequency is too high?', I was hit, as usual, by the 'family story'—a staple of Genshin—straight in the gut like a fastball, leaving me sobbing while vomiting stomach acid (I never learn). The mother secretly visiting her daughters' workplace out of concern after they left home for the city is a perfect depiction of the 'empty nest syndrome' felt by someone who has just finished raising children. Furthermore, the way it positively portrays a girl living with her grandmother, who has begun to suffer from dementia after losing her parents, without using the strange Western concept of a 'young carer,' makes me sigh in admiration at their confident touch. I often think that if you live a standard, median life in this country, you start to feel—not that I believe in conspiracy theories about 'someone's intentions'—that you are being subtly steered toward disliking family. Rather than sticking your neck into situations you aren't involved in and foaming at the mouth, or putting on other people's rules as if they were universal, I strongly believe that, to borrow the words of Master Irokawa, we should focus only on 'creating a hand-stitched way of life, not a ready-made one.' Among the various forms of linguistic art, the reason why fiction—which is nothing more than a fabrication—has been told continuously since ancient times is that we can re-experience a 'hand-stitched way of life' through a subjectivity that is not our own. In that sense, this girl, who later becomes the disciple of an immortal, is definitely not a being that can be measured by the word 'young carer.'

Once you are past the midpoint of eternity, 'irreversible regrets' arise in everyone to some extent. I am the type of person who always Googles 'game title' + 'point of no return' before starting a major game—Baldur's Gate 3—which I also ended up stalling on at the end of Chapter 2 because there were too many 'points of no return'—but I am reaching a stage in life where the cold realization that 'Oh, this really is irreversible' permeates to the marrow of my bones. In the final part of this Legend Quest, the words the granddaughter says to her grandmother, who is trying to return to her original form before she forgets everything and becomes 'something that is neither human nor beast': 'Maybe it was all regrets for you, Grandma, but thanks to that, I was able to be born into this world,' is a dramatic negative reversal through the exaltation of the story, a reversal of a regret that should have been impossible. It is a profound life lesson that 'Japanese fiction a.k.a. teenage nonsense spoken by middle-aged men in falsetto' could never reach, and at the same time, it can be said to have reached the level of a hymn to humanity. If the massive hit of Genshin is born from the fact that the Showa-era stories themed around 'family dissolution through killing toxic parents'—a carbon copy of 'national dissolution through killing the system' that started with the All-Campus Joint Struggle Committee—have finally begun to be elegantly avoided by the new younger generation, then I feel that the world is definitely moving in a better direction (I even feel that now, I can give a historical evaluation to Shin Evangelion as a 'tombstone for Showa-era fiction'). Also, the way the character is depicted—giving forgiveness and compassion in secret, contrary to her outward anger, toward a 'daughter who chose to elope with someone her parents did not approve of, even by lowering herself to a lowly status'—can be said to be engraving the true meaning of 'motherhood,' unlike the depictions in this country where the contours of motherhood can only be expressed through hollow wording like 'babumi' or 'ogyaru' (After finishing this scenario, I immediately maxed out her level, skills, did some light artifact farming, and spent money on her signature weapon).

Also, there is a brief moment where it is noted that Paimon is not dreaming, and it is becoming increasingly likely that the world of Genshin is 'the dream itself' seen by Manna-Yood-Sushai (the source material for MMGF!) in the Gods of Pegana, or perhaps by a happy fairy.