Analyzing Hu Tao's Incredible Design (Inspirations, Themes, & More) 

I'm not gonna make a video about the recently revealed 1.4 stuff but it looks SUPER EXCITING My boy Chongyun finally getting some love lets goooo 2nd best part is definitely the instrument

Dont forget that in most asian traditions butterflies are seen as the souls of the deceased which are reincarnated to visit their loved ones

Hu Tao is one of the first female characters in this game which I have genuinely loved the design of. Both her costume design, and her personality design

Hu Tao is one of the few Liyue characters that embodies a lot more of traditional Chinese aesthetics (except the shorts but hey thighs save lives) so I appreciate her a lot for that and super kudos on analyzing her name correctly. It bothered me a bit because English only players weren't privy to the meaningful name but I didn't think it was worth correcting people on. Liyue is still pronounced incorrectly even by the VAs so I guess it's better to let it be the unofficial pronunciation in English. Anyway, thanks a million for putting out a video so at least the info is out there!

I like Hu Tao's hat, i wish they'd sell those as a merchanise

I love how at 1:36 Venti and Xingqiu managed to sneak their way onto the “all female eyes” list.

Imagine Hu Tao being released after more than one week and here you are with tons of research. Thank you for being this dedicated.

the second flower is actually a chrysanthemum and not a spider lily but i’d see how you would get them confused lmao lilies and chrysanthemums are also common funeral flowers in china, chrysanthemum’s being the go-to flower ^^

I once read that, on her closing chain finisher, the small pose she does (where she puts her hands together) is a gesture with connotations to "passing away" in Taoism. It's something I read on twitter, and Twitter is Twitter, so take it with a large lump of salt because I can't confirm it.

i love how in depth mihoyo goes when developing characters, there's so many layers its mindblowing. thanks for taking your time for breaking it down for those of us who do not have the brain capacity to do That and in such a simple way. i'm obsessed with your content!!

Another interesting thing about Hu tao that nobody talks about (probably because it's such an obvious thing) is her vision being pyro, this seems very fitting for her considering cremation is a thing.

Even if I'm not going for her and instead waiting for a rerun, I really like her personality. Plus her design, especially her eyes are cute. Not to mention all of her VAs really bring out her personality.

There's actually another Easter egg for the 十只兔子 song (10 Rabbits), I saw it on another comment here: ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GMUI8eopuJk.html ) Also, in the Chinese version of Hu Tao's PV, instead of saying "because they want to be seelies when they grow up" she actually says "Why are butterflies our guide? It's because their surname is also Hu!", a word play on the Chinese word, Hudie (蝴蝶) which has the same pronunciation as Hu in Hu Tao

when i first saw hu tao, she reminded me of hanako kun

Fun fact, Red spider lily is known as 彼岸花 bi’an hua in Chinese, which literally means “flower that grows on the other side/bank”. In Chinese mythology, the places near the edge of the world of the dead and life are filled with this type of flower.

I never realized I was straight up knocking the souls out of Hilicurls

It should also be noted that Hu Tao's basic attacks have a lot in common with Xingqiu's, which may stem from the two bonding over poetry and sharing ideas.

actually in chinese taoism, peach wood 桃木 is a superb material for making tools to fight against evil spirits, like peach wood sword 桃木劍which is a very famous weapon in the category. HuTao’s symbol is peach blossom, so it resembles her born ability to ward off evil. Peach also symbolises immortality and long life, good example would be the tradition of eating peach shaped buns called 長壽包 on birthdays or important events. Also, I think Hu Tao’s tao is a smart word play cuz it can mean peach 桃 in chinese and resembles taoism in english.

When HuTao needs to fight. Hutao: Aiya.

Ningguang, hutao, ganyu: dislike fighting Big numbers go brrrrrrr

Fun fact: Activating hu tao's skill makes her smirk for a moment which makes my heart go HHNNGG

I have never simped so hard for an anime girl I don't even have.

Since your analysis about Xiao's design and others Genshin characters, I've been following your channel. It's amazing how much symbolism you can find and history you can find on those little details.

I love Hu Tao. 1. She's cute 2. She's cute 3. Cute hat 4. OP as fuck 5. She's thick 6. Cool voice lines 7. Funny 8. Cool eyes 9. Waifu

Her family symbol is a burning flower. It represents her wildfire nature of the cycle of life from death. Another thing to consider is HuTao is super old. She became funeral director as a teenager, but states that the years have flown by since. Her youthful appearance is most likely a result of the same magic she uses in battle to absorb her enemy's spirits to heal herself. She's a really grim character.

3:49 i love how you visualized her grandpa as tyler1

7:22 this hand gesture she makes is actually a symbol representing 往生 (wang sheng, same as funeral parlor name) in Chinese Daoism, she’s basically telling us to die lmao also, the joke about Seelies and butterflies was originally a pun on her surname in Chinese (“hu die” are butterflies in Chinese), they obviously had to change it for english audiences though

6:32 Yes it is carefree but her free hand is being used as a counterbalance to when she fights, also the way she switches hands constantly mid-combo makes each attack really fluid.

I personally see Hu Tao’s iris as a flower, similar to her blood blossom

"all female eyes" me: is that venti?

sorry for my bad English。harmony hexagram hat means“乾坤泰卦帽”in chinese，“泰卦”is consists of“乾”and“坤”，both 乾 and坤 are consist of 3“爻”(阳：ー阴：--)，add to 6，meanwhile，“泰卦”means “harmony”。so you might be confused by the translation

i really need more people to look at this game and analize it in its art and desing department (also music and shit) because no one talks about it in depth, great vid

3:04 you can actually see this symbol on chongyun's design too!

As a person who major in China Studies, I have to say your work was so perfectly done, espeacially the part you analyzed the divinatory symbol from Yijing. These effort made your video better than presentations done by some of my classmates lol. Many thanks for your sharing, that is really interesting.

Hu Tao's twin tails, loose sleeves, and split tail coats also make her silhouette look like butterfly wings when she's in motion. (sprinting, jumping, gliding, etc.) The two straps behind her hat serves as the butterfly's antennae. Taking motion into account when designing a character is always a huge plus. Her design is currently the most creative imo.

Hu Tao‘s design is one of the things i love most about her. Iam so in love with the flowers and butterflies in her animations and her dash is sooo smooth i‘m glad she is my main

Thank you this just a makes me love hu tao even more even though I’m not pulling for her, honestly I love all the characters. Thank you for taking time to make this video!

I don't think we'll ever get a character as good as her tbh.

Wow,,,, I love this type of content. Dissecting a character to this depth is just bravo fr. Hu Tao immediately became my favorite after I read her lore before she even got released, always found it so fascinating how her talents/skills also were so fitting to her theme of 'the circle of life and death'.

Amazing video! I didn't notice the "soul out of body" effect on opponents hit by her elemental burst before. Nice find! On the butterfly lore, Hu Tao actually made a joke about her own name in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean videos because the similar pronunciations of "butterfly" and "Hu Tao" in these three languages. The joke cannot be replicated in English so they changed it into a seelie joke instead. There's no seelie references in C/J/K versions of the video at all.

0:59 When i heard that Hú means Recklessly, Foolishly, or Wildly, i immediately remembered that Staff of Homa's Passive is called "Reckless Cinnabar" , so i guess the staff really is meant for Hu Tao

10:05 I love seeing IDV, pleasant surprise 😆

the amount of detail and story that goes into Genshin is astounding, I love and will always love this game

The dislikes are Qiqi’s alt accounts.

People : genshin impact is just zelda breast of the waifu Mihoyo : _is twenty-five parallel universes ahead of everyone_

1. Hu is just a common surname in Chinese, I doubt it's used to implying anything 2. Tao usually means "桃花", Peach blossom. And I would argue the "plum blossom" on her hat was peach, so was the shape of her pupil. Note that neither peach nor plum is directly related to funerals in Chinese culture 3. Her ascension material silk flower looks very close to the "red spider lily" aka "higan flower" or "彼岸花" in Chinese 4. I agree that reusing animations is not necessarily a bad thing, but her polearm clipped through her sleeve on weapon page. And this is a bad thing 5. The Origin of Hilitune is not a real "nursery rhyme" in China. In fact, it was an online "dark fairytale" story and went viral in China ~10 year ago. The rabbit story was intentionally made “猎奇” (strange or absurd so people would be curious) and pretended to be a challenging detective story (thus you see many people explaining the story even now). But in reality, it was just a boring and easy (and stupid) dark story that meant to be a clickbait

Mihoyo puts so much details into the character design and story, like I'm amazed how they managed to come up with all this. Well done mihoyo

往生堂, wangsheng parlor, actually has very deep religious meaning. 往生wangsheng refers to those who dies, they will go another realm of joy and happiness, aka Buddhist heaven. But this is the highest achievement of any Buddhist.

6:25 I've been a Hu Tao main since she came out and I had never noticed the soulf of the enemieess omgggg IT LOOKS AMAZING

6:30 Thank you for explaining, I thought that too and could never pin down why but that comparison with Xiao makes so much sense

you're one of my favorites now lol im so glad that i'm not the only one who reads into every character, their lore, their design, and their gameplay. it gives me a sense of satisfaction when i know where characters come from and why they are the way they are. the thought process behind the stories and characters in genshin is amazing jdsfksd.

One thing most people don't notice is that between her basic attacks she drops the spear sometimes, for example when she slams the spear into the ground, she leaves the spear mid-air, makes a spin and catches it to slam it to the ground, I feel Hu tao's basic attacks more like a dance

wow, I've been using her ever since her banner dropped but I never noticed how enemies souls leave them briefly, that's such a cool detail!! I love how much detail went into Hu Tao in general, it makes me love her just that much more. thank you for this video!

I’m so happy you did this with hu tao!! she is my favorite character and I love your videos, they are always super interesting!

Nice vid!! I really love everything about her. Her design, personality, etc. She's the only character i simped for and will never be replaced!!

I pulled for her and i gotta say her mechanic is very challenging specially on mobile but I've never regretted it. I gotta say i never thought that I'll fall in love with the same character twice specially after her story quest.

Thank you so much! I love learning about their designs so much!!! Please make more of these in the future!❤️

wow, obviously I'm blown away by the amount of thought put in these characters but I'm even more blown away by the animations, like what you mentioned how Xiao holds his hand near his chest like in realistic martial arts, while Hu tao stretches it and stuff like that. Insanely good video! you're absolutely my favourite genshin youtuber :)

Thank you for making this. She's my favorite character.

I swear her smile. That damn smile

This character analysis is so good, great work on the video!

Thank you so much for making this! You must have put a lot of effort into this :)

i love your contents so much man. there's not many who cover these kinda things so i really appreciate your works hehe keep it up!

As for the Harmony Hexagram Hat, I would like to make a small contribution: The I Ching hexagram mentioned here is not the 13rd one, but rather the 11th one. I can see how the English translation can misdirect people really bad, since the two's meanings have quite subtle difference. The 13rd one means "harmony between people", or perhaps "great fellowship", while the 11th one means "harmony between heaven and earth", or perhaps "everything goes smoothly". The Chinese version clearly stated the hat's name as 乾坤泰卦帽, lit. "The Hat with the Hexagram of Heaven and Earth". This possibly goes with Hu Tao's claim that this hat will bring good fortune to her and her parlor, as the hexagram itself would predict. The number 13 should mean nothing here, since for Chinese the unlucky number is actually 4 (which in Chinese sounds like "death"), 13 is only unlucky for Catholics.

I really love the fact that Genshin characters' design and lore really influence their Moveset. During Xiao's Ult, he recieves damage overtime. Mihoyo did this not only to "balance" his gameplay, but also because of his Karma based on his lore

YES pls do more characters analysis because Genshin Impact character concepts are amazing

the flower on her coat is also the in-game silk flower, one of her ascension materials .

I absolutely love all the detail poured into the genshin characters, especially with Hu Tao. I absolutely love all the symbolism in her design. So much love has been poured into this game

For people confused about what the heck was happening in the video where the ten rabbits song was playing, It's actually recorded footage from a game by another Chinese developer named "Identity V", the game collabed with Persona and Danganronpa which is why you could see them

Love your approach to the content of this channel! Instant subscription, glad I took a look thanks to recommendations.

Yo this style of video is really sick. Really looking forward to for more this style of your video!

So much detailed information into the video. Love it!

Man...this made me very happy because i know how hard it is to design a character and full on background stories. Im glad you took time to research on her design and everything else!!

These are the types of videos we need more GI content creators to make! Thanks for the hard work! Cant wait to see more

thx for this amount of research u put for this quality and unique video...

The hour was worth it thanks for making these videos

Great content dude! Always nice to see unique content once in a while

I really enjoy all of your content thanks for making it!

absolutely amazing video as always

the effort to make those kind of videos in youtube is amazing. i subscribed!

Damn, so many information packed in one video. Really good at explaining. Nice

I find this super interesting, I love the process and effort on designing characters and I adore when people take time to analyze it (and even better, explain it to others hehe) It would be wonderful if you could make this about more characters, but still, I like all your content ^^

this video is amazing! really useful since im making her cosplay. it really helped me understand her better

I really love that 4th attack animation reset, spinning her spear around her back, and the 5th was so cute, I'm happy that you showed that ❤️

Another great video! And good luck on your assignments 👍🏽

Thank you so much for making this videoooooo

With all of the effort Mihoy o puts into character design, I'm so glad you're making videos here! This was great, and I can't wait to see where you go from here!

After watching this video and the other video of you explaining how much goes into making a genshin character I am super surprised on how many they released so far. Also I just wanna say I am so glad you are covering lore and character design stuff for genshin because I really love that part of the game and no one talks about it.

Amazing video, really enjoyed!

You forget about the most important thing, in 7:23 look at HuTao hand that's is the hand sign from Taoism call 往生印 wang sheng yin that's mean the hand sign of dead

thanks for the spooky warning. other videos just throw creepy stuff at you without warning and I'm easily disturbed and thus kept up at night

I'd love to see more of these types of videos! They're so interesting! I'm definitely leaving a like, I'm so impressed! I'd love to see you analyze Kaeya someday! 🤍

Great video you make people notice their detail on character

Since you’ve brought up the yijing regarding hu tao’s hat i’ve just noticed that the cloth thing hanging in front of Chongyun has some of the trigram symbols too :o, that’s so cool XD! You’re videos on the characters design are amazingg :)

you have such amazing channel tbh, insta-subbed

This in-depth analysis of one of my favorite characters Genshin has to offer has been a real treat! I LOVE IT!

Can't wait for the next lore videos, keep up the good work👍

Wonderful video. Your channel is so underrated!

Your videos are amazing, i enjoy listening to you so much! please keep going with these informative videos :o! you're so underrated >.

Thx dude I love your vids they are so informative