warning text wall filled with nonsensical ramblings about fictional rocks.

• unassuming concept !
  • vaguely established as a buddhist concept based on narrative + visuals and indirect references within the dialogue and storyline itself. it's a weighted yet deeply overarching theme consistent throughout the piece and even somehow grows and manifests into something even more nuanced and WAAAAHH
• character development !!
  • usually seen as a positive, but in hnk, could be argued as net negative or even just morally grey development. forced character development through repeated trauma? hello !! connects to the overarching buddhism theme and concept of, "life is suffering," just chef's kisses all across the board.
  • also ! they aren't human! they don't understand human social concepts, which is a VERY important aspect to factor in when analyzing and critiquing the story and characters. this all happened because they were not human, but so many plots could have been explored and dealt with differently if they were human. that's kind of the whole point!
• character design !
  • all characters being unapologetically agender and sexless lights a fire in my heart. each character is tailored to their respective gem and is honestly such a niche but cool idea to play with
  • also the art style is just envy everywhere. it's so cool and unique and beautiful that i want to ingest my limbs
• complex characters !!
  • going back to that "they aren't human" concept; they're so complex bc they aren't able to sympathize or empathize bc... they aren't human!!! and so if they aren't human, they don't have their own set of morals!! and characters like lapis are seen as manipulative... but that's not entirely correct.
    • if they were able to learn how to humanly sympathize, we would've have a happy ending with shinsha and phos. we would've had everyone apologize to phos for treating them like that. we would've had this weird utopia world and not the series we know. it's a matter of "what could've been" and that just hurts deeply in all the right spots and makes for great fanart material.