The Chinese title of this song is '蝉喓歌', which means 'the song of the chirping of cicadas'. In Chinese culture, cicada is the symbol of immortal and eternity, which means undying. The vocal sound in this song is called 'the Dong's Chorus', a kind of a cappella from the southwest part of China. It's a traditional music of the Dong , one of the 56 ethnics of China. This form of performance has a history of thousands of years, and is usually performed by thousands of people together. And here's my personal translation: Phase 1: It's vibrant when the sun rises, but gets withered when the sun sets. Just like the mayflies and the dew, sighing the rest time of life is so short. Your whole busy life is short as only one day, what a tragedy! Phase 2: Bewail for the elapse of time！ The struggle of life, the sadness of senescence, the pain of sickness. All of them is because of the terror of death! Even as the noble body of celestial being, there is also a day of ending. You can do nothing but sighing. The divine tree is exuberant, flowers and grasses grow around it. And now the divine fruits are on the branch! Phase 3: I take the order of the god, with such a long and prosperous life! With the bless of heaven, I will spray the shine among the stars!
There are two characters theme music that was intertwined in the 3rd Phase. If you are interested, you should definitely check out the Honkai Star Rail Short Animation: A Flash (Jingyuan's theme) and the EP: Samudrartha (Dan Heng's theme). I interpret the third phase as less a boss theme but more of a protagonists theme where these two characters triumph over the boss. Oh and the short animation is drawn in 2D completely, incredibly well-made and I have a feeling you'll love what you see. Would be cool to see a reaction video on that too!
In 3rd phase, erhu is representing Danheng, pipa is representing Jingyuan where phantylia's theme only account for less than 30% in that duration diminishing in volume. So yeah, they triumph in the end of that fight (spoiled wink wink😊
Don't worry too much about the comments talking about which "version" of this you should have listened to. There are two "official" mixes of this boss theme--the one that is played in game, and the one which Hoyo-Mix posted on their RU-vid channel and other places as the official "album" version. I suspect the in game version was designed to sound good alongside everything else going on in the fight (in particular, to not trample on the voice lines, and to sound good on mobile). While the "album" version I think has a wider dynamic range because they know you're probably listening to it with a better audio setup and/or less other sounds to distract from what's going on. (I'm actually not convinced that the album version was the "final" version, it might actually be that it was the original version and they made adjustments to make it sound better in-game.) At any rate, neither one is the "wrong" version. Please ignore any wailing and gnashing of teeth from the comments section. 🙃 (All of that said, as an audiophile & gamer you might enjoy listening to the other version in your own time, because I actually think it's really interesting seeing what they adjusted in the mix for the in-game version & trying to understand the reasoning behind it.)
I like this song a lot aswell and if you would like to listen to another song from the same region (aka in Chinese) I defenitly recommend Samudrartha! Its quite different from this one since its not a boss song but still very epic. Its also posted on the official Honkai Star Rail channel.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it! I love this track- makes the boss fight super fun. If you're looking for more Star Rail stuff, I'd LOVE to see your reaction to Kafka's trailer- "A Dramatic Irony". I totally understand if it takes awhile, since you said you're overloaded on animations, but it'd be great to hear your reaction. The music is a fantastic mix of classical (specifically Vivaldi) and modern, and the animation has some fantastic choreography. Either way, keep doing what you're doing! Love the energy you bring in all your videos.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on some of the battle themes of Star Rail, particularly Crises, Flashpoint, Dawn of Disaster (which is actually a boss theme), and Kindling. These are probably my favorite fight tracks atm and I'm curious as to your take on them. I'd also recommend checking out Kafka's "A Dramatic Irony" and "The Jepella Rebellion" trailers at some point, since... well, mainly because Kafka's kind of amazing in both of them, but also the music in the first trailer is phenomenal and the animation in the second is very interestingly stylized.
I don't know why, but this kind of music makes me want to cry? It's so weird. I feel like that when I hear parts like 5:47 and 6:24. In gameplay that doesn't happen, but when I look up the pieces on RU-vid and hear them is when it happens. It sounds like an exaggeration, but sometimes music makes me emotional lmao
You'd probably love my reaction to Spring's Pulse from Arknights or one of the first songs from Arknights' 2021 concert if you haven't seen them. I didn't CRY, but i did get caught off guard by both of those songs in a similar way. I'm working on a bigger video about Springs Pulse explaining why that may have been
'Triumphant' is how I would describe the feeling of that segment. The string at 6:24 also threw in a small part of the music in 'Animation Short: A Flash' which is in itself very emotional and even more heart-wrenching knowing the story of that short.
I'm not going to lie, listening to this was kinda like listening to the ed of madoka magica but definitely more ritualistic I guess you could say? It felt like listening to a bollywood track as an evil character comes on stage just a bit slower. It's also very cool listening to this, I may have died to her 5 times but it didn't feel that bad listening to this epic track during it
Probably because I listened to the theme s lot during the boss fight, I prefer game version over finalized one. It's nothing major, but vocals are a bit different and instrumentals. Mostly in phase 2, my favorite, so it's a bit jarring to hear a bit different sound.
To me, the First Phase is like: the ancient devilish god is trying to seduce the hero with the blessings of immortality. Second Phase: The god is laughing/mocking at the hero for daring to face her almighty power and want to crush the hero. Third Phase: The god is mad with the hero and take him more seriously. They try to overpower each other and had a fierce fight. When the epic music plays, the hero took a sacrificial move and outplayed the god.
Basically sums up the entire fight and Phantylia's character. First phase is her using the power of Abandance and the second phase is her using the Destruction's power. The last phase is her getting serious and pissed off so she started using both.
The sweet part of third phase is represent our comrade badass moment in this boss fight. You have to play and experience it yourself, the way game deliver is really epic 🤓
I am sure you have gotten similar comments, but Samudrartha for Honkai Star Rail is ethereal. It's a truly beautiful song. If you feel up to it I think you'd very much enjoy this track. Also, possibly when you are feeling up to it and have taken care of yourself you could take a look at the animation for this track. The water in the animation looks so good it's unreal(imo of course lol). Thank you for all of the great content. I just found your channel 😊
Even though this one didn't hit me as hard as Wildfire during the boss fight, this ost is still a banger, especially phase 2 for me And yes - Hoyo knew what they were doing when making the design of this boss👀
I wonder if you'll turn out correct when the story updates in the next patch soon On weather we recieved phantilias blessing in some (twisted) way I put stock in that stuff tbh
Shame you didn't react to the final version, the leaked one is also pretty good, although it lacks some finishing touches, which made the ost pop that much stronger
This is technically the official album version, but the version used ingame is definitely much better. This version isn't bad, but it just feels so weird and hollow in comparison.
it's the final/album tho for me, ingame version is better (specifically 1st and 3rd phase ingame) idk why they removed some parts of ingame in album ver.
