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a-la-campanella · 8 months

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So... White Night goes hard. Here's a music video dissection!

Way too much to say, I'm doing bullet points again. Comparing CN lines and EN translation of those lines (NOT THE ENGLISH LYRICS) here, but if they say basically the same thing, I won't bother mentioning any differences. I'll look at the English lyrics in another post. For the record, like fuck did I bother to learn what the different zones of Penacony are named.

The transition out of the Hoyoverse logo with Aventurine's hand? That was smooth. Holy shit. I've tried doing a transition like that for a school assignment, and that sort of thing goes hard.

The word branded on Aventurine's neck spells out "slave". That's... concerning. I guess he'd have history with crime (assuming he was a slave and that slavery is illegal under the IPC - but who knows about that last point?) and given Penacony's history, he might hold some more personal sentiments about being there.

Showing off his rings, his watch, his fit... dude is bling-bling-bling. Coin flip sound effect! Love the whistling too.

Those dance moves, synced to the beat of the music. The camera angles. Wooooow. The first time I watched this was breathtaking. I give a fuck about Aventurine now. That's so wild. I had go check if this was official, for a few seconds genuinely thought I was watched a fan-made MMD.

Male Trailblazer! Checks out, last video had the Female Trailblazer. We get a fancy hat to dance with!

Background Robin poster, by the way.

Robin and Sunday in a shiny vehicle, with Robin holding a drink in her hand. They're driving somewhere. They look so pretty!

Something crashes into Misha? In the Reverie Hotel??? Is that a hat?

Out of all the luggage that gets knocked over, the blue, circular case stands out the most.

From "Don't forget, shut your eyes, embrace the light", the "embrace the light" part is "才算醒来" in CN (it's time to wake up). Do Misha and Gallagher have something to do with the dreams, besides the whole, Reviere Hotel thing?

Gallagher's lighter, and then the background change plus light turning off (plus sound effect!) when the lighter is closed? He's not the type of guy I'd really care about, but. That smile. Shit.

Sparkle followed by a bunch of koi fish out of water, skipping forward. She winks and sends us off with a koi fish transition.

It's fitting that the line here is "you act in this huge play, a change of attitude" (from CN line; 你参演这场戏变换姿态)... the EN line uses "postures interweave" to convey acting I suppose? Makes sense, she's a Masked Fool, acting would align.

Black Swan picking from one of ten cards... she eventually picks a card, revealing a white swan in the front. I wonder who that represents? I wanted to say one of the factions, but there are only nine we know of; the Family and the invited eight. Maybe an uninvited guest?

The CN line says "谜底结局我该怎么猜" (The truth/mystery of the ending, how should I conjecture?), where 结局 can refer to the last act of a play. It's says the same as the EN line, this is just a more linguistic fun-fact.

For the last bit of that line, we see a hand with yellow claws, and at the center of the palm seems to be a red eye. New enemy?

Flrefly holding sparklers! She's smiling! It's a "prelude of dreams supplied by memories". This line definitely does not spark fear, because dreams are built on memories, and Firefly is definitely real. (I speculate that she isn't/only exists in dreams, but I sure hope not.)

Trailblazer tries to take a photo of her! It's synced so it sounds like you can hear the shutter go off, almost.

Transition to the Trailblazer running (in the form of a bunch of still Trailblazers gradually turning back/away from the camera) alongside a light in a very... uh. Absurd environment. Up a bunch of spiral stairs, and near the end of the sequence, seems to be chasing the light. Is the light meant to symbolize Firefly? Fuck me.

"Covered scars still linger yesterday" wherein the past remains, even when swept away... genuinely, what happened to Firefly.

Trailblazer in a room with a bunch of Clockies, standing on Clockie's shoe. We challenging the dream here? Is Clockie a representation of the Watchmaker? They might be holding a sparkler in their hand, hard to tell. They certainly don't look happy.

"Your wakefulness, time foresees" = time is waiting for you to wake up.

Blink, transition by zoom to a falling light, which turns out to be (probably!) Firefly. Throughout the descend, her eyes are closed. Sigh. I hope not. Based on the transition, it's definitely her, and I'm pretty sure she'll die, if she hasn't already died.

IS THAT AVENTURINE? Similar enough hair and outfit, but his chest opening is larger and glowing green. Wearing a mask too. Do we fight him? Is that who we fight with? Questions, questions.

Close-up of Aventurine with his earring and eye catching the light. Insert "take me away" line. Yessir, whatever you say ma'am, anything for you babygirl.

Someone else noticed this first, but his earring looks like a dream catcher! They're protective charms, so Aventurine might be safe from the horrors of an eternal Penacony dream.

I want to point out: the instrumental here goes silent, before a sound that reminds me of a rewinding watch hand plays where Aventurine says "take me away". Interpret that how you will.

We get a view of Clockie and some background or whatever, into the spotlight on the Trailblazer presumably tossing their hat. On the left side, the Clockies are smiling! On the right side... not so much? Either way, they're coming down the steps, and one of them is about to jump the Trailblazer.

Also, ad of a pizza pie with slices of money(?). Or it might just be pepperoni and mushrooms or something. The pepperoni is numbered, so I'm assuming it has something to do with a game of sorts.

Zoom out to get a better look at Penacony. We can see the whales in the sky looming over sll the buildings, ads everywhere (cartoony-looking Times Square), and massive bubble gum machines roaming the streets. At the heart of the city is... I'm guessing that's the Stellaron? Whatever the blue light is.

Flashes of whales, some kind of circular thing, a fan(?), and a very hard to make out sequence of numbers. The last three digits are 183. I've edited the screenshot I took to try and make the numbers more clear. (You might have to open the image to see what I mean.)

The whales are very reminiscent of the abyssal whale from Genshin Impact. We know that Genshin and the Honkai games are all connected in the same multiverse, though seeing these whales after fighting the All-Devouring Narwhal is raising flags...

A slot machine, falling gems, monsters on the street, oh my.

The line here is "Cease the shattering, let withering subside" or more literally, "Don't break again, don't wither again" (别再破碎别再枯萎). I guess this has to do with the dreams? Don't let dreams shatter and wither; they must be good dreams, and Penacony must stay a land of dreams.

Transitions into an angry Clockie, though the face flickers back to a smile. Camera flips back up to a whale!

The clock ticks, passage of time, all that... sheesh, that synced well.

A bunch of tiny whales and monsters headed in the same direction. Clockie in the streets too, next to a monster holding SoulGlad.

Wacky flash transition to whales. Then zoom out of a TV screen (Clockie's face?) to see the monsters broke into the hotel, I think? That's not good. I guess that's where they were heading!

"Indulge anew, in the self's meandering stride"... I'm going to guess this is a reference to the dreams, the winding detours they lead you on, trippy experiences, stuff like that.

The rest of the Astral Express gang now! These are their dreams, I guess. Dan Heng is in the Reverie, I think, with a bunch of whales and wacky lamps. Maybe he's investigating, or he escaped his dream?

Himeko floats, eyes closed, one arm reaching outward. She's surrounded by semi-circular tables and chairs floating. Seems like it could've been a banquet, had there been more people.

The line for both of them here was "Savor at last, the taste that's ever true", and might be referring to SoulGlad. It's the only big thing I expect we'd literally be tasting in Penacony.

A huge March 7th is taking a selfie. Typical March.

Welt is surrounded by some toppled buildings, holding the Star of Eden in his hand as he looks out at the city. Maybe he knows what's up here?

Black Swan seems to be picking from one of ten circulating cards again, this time floating above the city. There's something inside the cards though—seems like a catalyst weapon. She holds it instead of a card.

"In the dreams of that night, we'll meet anew"... the first part is said with March and Welt, and the last bit is with Black Swan. Have we met Black Swan before? Or maybe this is us meeting her again/a second time on Penacony. Or it could be about someone else...

A white void with black cubes surrounds Sam, who gains these green wings (propellers?) to fly out of the void space into a fight with Acheron. I doubt the Stellaron Hunters would go out of their way into a fight with her, and they've had a record of staying in line with Elio's scripts (case in point: Kafka on the Xianzhou Luofu, Sam's "You should really stop playing with your food" line). This fight didn't seem to happen by choice.

Acheron swings her sword at Sam. We don't know a lot about her, but we do know that she doesn't pull out her sword that easily. Her eye glows, and red petals appear, followed by a swing of red lightning. All the other strikes had purple lightning instead.

"The more deceptive, the more pristine", where Sam is deceptive and Acheron is pristine... these adjectives might apply to both characters, to be honest. The word used in place of pristine also means perfect/ideal (完美).

Not sure about Sam, but the fact Acheron doesn't pull out her sword often is easily grounds for underestimating her.

Sam doesn't dodge the red lightning; instead, he's trying to block it with his arms.

A huge explosion follows, either from the backlash of contact with the lightning, or it could be entirely unrelated. Annihilation Gang, is that you...?

The translation says "Dreams in slumber, despair's endless spin", though the exact term used where endless spin is was 轮回. It's more so used to mean reincarnation, or the cycle of life and death... so dreams and despair go hand in hand, in a cycle like sleeping and waking.

Sam is down on one knee with electricity flickering around his body. Did he lose? He's not completely down yet.

The Trailblazer jumps with a running start, with Belabog in the background.

"With each blink, a retreat in time's cruel cue" is... hard to decipher for me. Where are you going back from? I doubt we're going back in time, it's a little to early to be traveling alongside Terminus... If Firefly is dead and was a real person, then it could traveling back in time to save her.

The Trailblazer throws pure light??? In the black and white for a few frames, you can see Stelle/the Female Trailblazer.

I don't think there are any major implications from this. The way I see it, Stelle is Caelus and Caelus is Stelle, in that both of them are the Trailblazer, and there was only ever one Trailblazer like them in this story (the choice we made/Kafka picked at the beginning doesn't matter when the end result is the same).

A big Sampo and big trashcan duke it out with Belabog in the background. This should all be be the trailblazer's dream, since dreams are made from your memories, and using the trailblazer's memories would make sense to generate the scene within Belabog.

"In the dream of that night, we'll meet anew" should be pointing to the Trailblazer meeting Firefly again.

The Trailblazer is on a rooftop with Firefly. When the Trailblazer looks back, Firefly has disappeared...

Acheron in front of a black hole(?). She's crying?

We get a few frames of Sam that fade into a faint red light.

The video ends with Clockie and the Trailblazer dancing together! Clockie either gave us the hat or returns it to us.

Characters who we don't see in the video: Duke Inferno (or anymore from the Annihilation Gang, for that matter), any of the other Stellaron Hunters (did they ditch Sam, or did only Sam arrive at Penacony...), and Dr. Ratio (where did he go...). Genuinely, where is the doctor.

I think the song is overall from the Trailblazer's perspective, and about their relationship with Firefly, trying to save her. I'm 100% convinced something sinister happened, or will be happening, to her.

#honkai: star rail #hsr #recall and retrieve #penacony #trailblazer #firefly #it's mostly abt them tbh #if you compare the lyrics from all the languages #the lines are different!#so the songs might all be from diff povs

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