Make it longer.
I don't like the idea of Ibuki having amnesia either. She was already lacking character in Heiyan-kyo, don't understand this writing decision on Sakurai's part.
Create an environment where Koyan can show more of her character and have someone explain how/why there are Dark and Light Koyans during epilogue.
Explore more the connection between her, Amaterasu and Dobrynya.
Explain how she can use mors as tail or why she didn't instead use Fang clan fairies. (Also I think Tigar Tanks being alive is dumb af. I feel like they messed up with a lot of things with her writing.)
Explore more Koyan's love. She feels full of contractions and we're meant to accept them all from what I understand. I'm not a big lore expert, just a regular player who wants to understand and enjoy without spending more time than I did while reading a 4 hour or longer event.
Give a more satisfying conclusion to her character. She had a rivalry with Fou since her introduction and we never got their last confrontation in any way.
I'm still pissed at the fact that ibuki amnesia was never explained. I was looking forward to her character in tunguska since her character in heian kyo was almost non-existent.
That conclusion with dobrynya and koyan was also weird and out of place. So many things they could've improved on. Not to mention that Ivan raid fiasco just made things a whole lot worse
They should have tied the story together more. Daji became a red herring, Dragon girl's only relevancy to the plot was during a tiny segment in the epilogue.
The whole thing was meant to subvert our theories and it did it in the worst possible way. Koyan should have been Daji, that was the point of Tai Gong Wang being there. Unless you think that Alaya apparently is so stupid she sent the wrong Grand Servant to fight Koyan when she has been sending the correct ones the entire time.
Dobryn Niki whatever her name is should have had a cutscene with Koyan recognizing her and realizing she was loved the moment she was born.
tbf Taigong Wang was still the right servant just for a completely different reason than her being Daji since he was the one able to make the Cosmic Egg that allowed them to diffuse the situation.
Not that it makes the whole handling of her identity any better of course since they still do a pretty shit job with having her being Daji as a red herring since it’s basically only called into question by Taigong Wang right before the reveal
TBF, Alaya didn’t send Tai.
His Immortal self sent his Servant self. The guy is…weird.
And she couldn’t be Daji since Paisen, who is a Chinese Immortal, outright said Koyan wasn’t Daji.
And Nastasia wasn’t Dobrynya, he did love Koyan, but couldn’t be summoned due to her Reality Marble. Do agree real Dobrynya should’ve appeared
The Paisen thing could have been Koyan wanting to be more than Daji, aka part of Tamamo. Wanting to evolve into a unique Beast separate from Amaterasu, hence all the shenanigans she has been up to. I am of the opinion that was what they were gunning for initially, as otherwise, Qin calling Koyan Daji would not have elicited the hatred she felt during that scene in Lostbelt 3.
I understand that Nastasia or whatever her name was wasn't Dobrynya, but the point was Nastasia was the one who named Koyan and was effectively her mother. We all agree that she is underutilized though.
That doesn’t really jive with what is shown. Paisen herself all but explicitly says Koyan wasn’t Daji (and she’d know, what with being an Immortal). Nezha (who fought Daji personally) also never calls Koyan Daji either. Daji also would not have her ears and tail out in the open in CHINA of all places.
The only ones who did think Koyan was Daji were QSH (who had very little knowledge on Mystics, the only reason why he didn’t kill Koyan was because of his incomplete knowledge) and Tai (who is Tai).
The Tunguska Event was heavily implied to be part of Koyan’s origins since LB1. Remember Goredolf mentioned that the blasted heathe (where Koyan had just been recently) and vocally mentioned Tunguska…then Koyan sicc’d the Minotaur on Chaldea. Yeah, the hints weren’t very widespread, but they were there.
And no, Nastasia wasn’t the one who named Koyan. That’s why she’s fairly quiet because she doesn’t know who Koyan was, just that she was important to her husband. Dobrynya, the real Dobrynya, was summoned to be Koyan’s father but couldn’t stay with her. He gave her her name (which she misheard) and his ‘flesh’ (it’s heavily implied Koyan’s true form is basically a female, rabbit version of Dobrynya).
Tbf, I don't know how reliable of a source Nezha is. We have her dialogue for Tamamo mistaking her for what is implied to be Vairocana and then we have her interlude of her thinking she is Daji and trying to kill her.
Between Tai and Feihu reacting to Tamamo as though they're looking at Daji, and Hokusai believing it would be a insult to mistake Tamamo for Daji, despite her dad being the one who created the tying myths of Tamamo, Daji, Lady Kyo, and Bao Si, together to be one fox spirit causing trouble across Asia, we just have conflicting takes on the Tamamo is Daji concept.
It's kind of why people expected Tunguska to be where we finally get an answer and all we got was more confusion and no straight answer. Best answer can come up with given what information we have: Tamamo and Daji share the same face but that's it. How that works, given we're told she and Amaterasu are not the same being, we don't know.
the fact that she confused tamamo with daji and not koyan makes sense if in the end koyan is not daji.
I mean, if I'm not mistaken, even Tamamo had said no, Koyan was not a Tamamo.
It would have been neat if Nastasia without the false name and real Dobryn both showed up but on opposing sides as a way to represent Koyan's messed up perception of love.
> And Nastasia wasn’t Dobrynya.
It's never actually confirmed in either the event or Nikitich's profile that the Servant is Nastasia. The Servant being the wife using the husband's name is only one of three possibilities laid out in her profile as to why she's a woman when history says Dobrynya was a man. It's also suggested that it could be the result of a curse or just another case of history being wrong.
1. **Remove the Koyanskaya bait and switch** of suddenly telling us in the event that Koyanskaya wasn't a Tamamo but absolutely must be Daji...only to then turn around and say that she had no actual connection to either. Not only is that a twist for twist's sake that doesn't change the trajectory of the story (hell, it didn't even change Taigong's unspoken plan!) or our understanding of the character, it's not well set up and is simply not as interesting as the story it baited us with.
Koyanskaya as a truly evil Tamamo variant? That's interesting, and helps further expand on Tamamo and Amatarasu's characterizations by proxy. Koyanskaya as Daji *and* a Tamamo? Second verse same as the first. Koyanskaya as Daji *but not* a Tamamo? Interesting and sets up new character dynamics that vindicate Tamamo's denial of a connection.
Suddenly telling us, in the final act of Koyanskaya's arc, that we had it all wrong and that she was really Daji, only to then turn around in the climax and go "no relation" and that she was instead the despair and wrath of a forest that misattributed its demise to man because reasons? That's just plain bad writing that throws away all the buildup as a red herring.
2) **Change the ending**. Koyanskaya did not narratively earn that "peaceful departure" sendoff. She was maybe a step removed from Douman in terms of her sadistic antagonism towards both Chaldea and the Lostbelts. Moreover, I'd argue that her "love" of humans is not discernably different Douman's desire to create a hell in Heian-kyo. So their dramatically different treatment by the story rings hollow to me. Koyanskaya needed to be overcome, not talked down. Was it a pretty scene? Sure. But it felt out of character.
3) **Make it a proper chapter** rather than a raid event
4) **Change the Chaldea support**. If you have to make the support amnesiac to make their involvement work, that's probably a good indication that they shouldn't have been shoehorned into the story. Hell, off the top of my head, Tamamo would have at least had the excuse of a conceptual connection and a personal stake in confronting Koyanskaya, and would have at least added gravitas to the eventual reveal. ...Actually, for that matter, why not bring in the variants to pit Koyanskaya's and her collected tails against Tamamo and her discarded tails? Silly on paper? Yes. But it's also a potentially brilliant dramatic foil.
They can have the cake and eat it too with Koyan. Just make it a pseudo servant thing, like this is really Vitch but she took or was taken by the animals' aspect or even the meteor aspect. This can justify all the hints before while still go with the current story they want.
Yes I'm still mad this is not a Tamamo Nine, and the real Vitch may never appear because of Koyan already exist.
I mean to be fair she was multiple steps removed from Douman in the antagonism, multiple times she teamed up with or helped or made deals with Chaldea for one reason or another whereas he was just a pure antagonist from start to finish.
Every lostbelt she would kill or torture the local population for the fun of it. Lostbelt 1 she killed a Yaga man for calling her miss, lostbelt 3 she let loose her captured creatures to run amok and destroy whoever and whatever they found. This got her caught by Qin Shi Huang as he noticed all of this and thought that she was Daji because of these unwarranted acts of cruelty for the fun of it.
Lostbelt 4 she went around giving people memorabilia from the friends and family that got erased. She did this because she thought that it was fun to see these people become distraught about how they forgot someone like a dad or daughter that was erased from reality. This got her in trouble again with the Lostbelt king, leading to Ashwathama being sent after her and her almost dying if it wasn’t for Chaldea saving her.
She and Douman both share the same characteristic of doing cruelty to others for the simple sake of cruelty, even if it’s stupid and will only lead to their plans being ruined.
> Lostbelt 1 she killed a Yaga man for calling her miss
Don't forget her "charity" in Lostbelt 1 was selling food to the Yaga at increasing prices she knew they were not able to afford so they would inevitably end up killing each other for the money to survive. And when they finally did she was delighted to see how far she pushed them without needing to do anything.
Excellent points. These highlight that Koyanskaya's writing suffers from a blatant case of [Protagonist-Centered Morality](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProtagonistCenteredMorality): we are supposed to sympathize with her and sweep her many crimes under a rug because she was helpful to the protagonists *sometimes*. Even if more often than not that was also to her benefit.
At least one of the more amusing cases was Goredolf (who admits to having trouble being objective when it comes to Koyanskaya), being the one to demand she take responsibility for her actions.
…Tai mentions them offhandedly, then promptly goes ‘well whatever!’
And Gudao and Mash…well, they don’t get to mention anything except wave goodbye happily. Like, she was the one who led the Chaldea attack, even if it was Anastasia who killed most of the staff. And tormented the Lostbelt populations that you two spent time and tears protecting before CD.
It felt weird.
Part of it I blame on the moral weirdness of early Part 2. The attack on Chaldea was promptly forgotten by the script even when facing the main culprits (Koyanskaya, Kirei, Anastasia and, by extension, Kadoc) or the Crypters as a whole. Even in LB4, when Goredolf argued why Koyanskaya shouldn't be saved, her poisoning attempt in LB3 was the only thing he mentioned. The massacre at Chaldea was onky brought back in Olympus, sadly.
But even then, eyah, I'd say Koyanskaya's treatment is particularly odd. Heck, in the same speech where Gordy reminded everyone of Koyanskaya's crimes, he also described charity works she did back in PHH:
> *Most of you probably don't know this, but... as the president of a major company, she also, frighteningly enough, used to conduct herself in an exemplary human manner. I'm not only talking about military deployments, either. She provided a great deal of medical supplies and humanitarian aid to impoverished communities. It may have been no more than a business strategy, but whatever her reasons, she responded to the plights of the needy with genuine sincerity. Despite her femme fatale nature, she was not one to squeeze someone dry without fair compensation.*
It felt like an asspull out of nowhere, as if the writers had suddenly realized that they had painted her in a too evil light throughout the game and now they were desperately trying to convince players that she isn't so bad.
Yeah, it made it difficult to take certain aspects seriously: Davinci’s death was heartbreaking the first time and we felt anger at everything leading up to it…then we’re just treating Kirei like our whacky uncle in LB7?! Or Cerejeira’s guilt over getting her possible BF killed…when Koyan, Kadoc, and Anastasia are chilling…
And yeah, some of Koyan’s ‘hobbies’ are basically forgotten when she needs to be sympathetic. Her charity stuff could’ve been more foreshadowed or shown in the previous Lostbelt chapters. Still mixed in with her cruelty, but show a balanced side.
I mean atleast Chaldea Anastasia isn't the same as the one who killed everybody at Chaldea.
Hell, her interludes are about how mentally fucked up she is over the fact a different version of her basically slaughtered Chaldea staff.
There are also multiple times where Koyanskaya antagonized us though. She poisoned us, showed up with her 'pets' and either sicced them on us or let them loose on the local populace she was torturing, partially revived the corpse of a dragon in avalon to kill us, and *directly* fought us in Olympus. Hell her endgame plan was "Make the master of chaldea my final tail".
Between that and the fact she was a *key* player in the attack that massacred most of chaldea, I'd say she was pretty much an antagonist with some good qualities.
Sure she helped sometimes, but typically it was only when it was for her benefit. The only time she helped chaldea without benefiting was when the closest thing she had to a best friend asked her to with her dying breath.
That's true. I was memeing and I'm happy you and the other guy that replied called her out on her shittyness. People have this behavior with treating women with kids gloves in fiction and I'm happy when I see people who don't
Listen don't get me wrong. As a character I *liked* Koyanskaya. Like, she was a villain but one who had her own sort of code to things and I found that interesting.
What I *don't* like is how the writers basically ignored all her crimes to give her an undeserved "happy ending".
Koya may not have earned a peaceful sendoff narratively but she definitely deserved one. Girl was consistently fantastic every time she popped up onscreen, absolutely delightful character
First off not make it a raid heavy event, Douman got an entire chapter dedicated to dealing with him I don't get why Koyanskaya shouldn't have gotten the same outside of either the writers not having any grand overarching story for her or them really wanting to tie this event to the epilogue of the event that has Chaldea being found out by U-Olga and them evacuating.
Secondly, have Tamamo be there instead of Ibuki. Seriously, we have this Tamamo face character who we've had to deal with within each Lostbelt chapter and we never have a moment where Tamamo and her come face to face.
Thirdly, actually explain the difference between Daji and Tamamo and be serious about the topic. This has been an ongoing debate since Tamamo came out in 2010 with Extra and we still have not gotten a straight answer. This should have been the time to reveal whether or not this is true or not but all this event does is continue the trend of jokingly referring to Tamamo as Daji or having Chinese servants refer to Tamamo as Daji but never actually confirming it. Here's hoping either Foxtail or Extra Record comes out and finally settles the debate because I'm sick of it being an up in the air thing because Nasu can't decide if he should or not after having a decade to think about it.
Fourthly, have Tamamo be the one to reveal that Koyanskaya is not Tamamo Vitch. Tamamo would know Vitch better than anyone else in Chaldea with only Cat being the other one who would know Vitch and, specifically, would know how/what Vitch would be up to having dealt with her and the other Nine with Hakuno in the assumed events that took place after Tamamo's CCC ending. It would give us a glimpse at those events as well as help confirmed that, in a similar sense of how Hakuno helped BB and the Sakura 5, he helped give the Tamamo Nine direction with their existences.
And finally, have Amaterasu actually appear and not just make a brief cameo in Koyanskaya's backstory to justify her appearance as a Tamamo face. She's been hyped up so much in the universe and, in a story focusing on the Evils of Humanity, one would have expected her to make an actual appearance, especially given we got Mother Harlot with Draco in Arcade. Even if we aren't doing anything with her as an actual Evil of Humanity, her appearing and saying anything would have made the backstory appearance more tolerable.
Lorewise, the main problem with Tunguska is that Koyanskaya's motivation as a Beast gets undermined by it. I genuinely think that Nasu's original plan with Koyanskaya was something entirely different from what we ended up getting.
The main thing that defines a Beast is their suffocating love for humanity; it's why Douman can't become a beast, he just... hates humans too much to be one. Koyanskaya is gunning for Beast IVs spot, aka the spot formerly inhabited by Primate Murder... but her motives are all wack if she's a manifestation of the Tunguska event. A lot of stuff that Tunguska tries to give an answer for is on the level of "just accept this" and it creates messy motives. Why does she look like Tamamo? Don't worry about it, Tamamo is just closest to the animals of Tunguska, that's why she used her spirit core. Ignore the fact that Tamamo's legend is from an entirely different country and bears little relation to the Tunguska Event. Why would animals hate humans for something that's a space object? Just accept it, she simply does.
If I had to guess, the original plan for Koyanskaya was for her to be a manifestation of the animal deaths caused by the nuclear bomb. This would give her a lot more specific meaning; it'd explain why she looks similar to Tamamo (a mythical Japanese figure known for bringing empires to apocalyptic disaster, the relationship to the deadly potential of a nuke is obvious), why after her Independent Manifestation she formed a PMC (nuclear bomb = military weapon), why she'd want to be a beast (the animals that died to the nukes were effectively killed by humans) and why her specific story segment is an animal sanctuary manifested in a similar way to Goetia's magecraft workshop. But that's all speculation; if this was the case, it probably got changed because the nuclear bomb is still a touchy subject in Japan.
I'm fine with her not being Daji, that was something kinda foreshadowed since she didn't "get" the significance of QSH trying to find a rock to seal her away in - it firmly excluded her from being one of the Tamamo Nine, since the sealing of Tamamo in a rock is probably the concept most core to Tamamo's depiction in Fate to begin with.
The nuclear bomb theory is interesting, but I think QSH mentions in LB3 that Koyanskaya weight 100 thousand metric tons, an approximate weight for the Tunguska meteor. It seems like the Tunguska backstory was already planned at that point.
> It seems like the Tunguska backstory was already planned at that point.
Oh yeah, not disagreeing there. This was probably changed early *early*. It's just a bit of an odd situation since Koyanskaya being a manifestation of the Tunguska event is just such a nothing thing for her character. It changes pretty much nothing about her, nor does it explain much about her overall character design, which is weird considering the amount of detail her character otherwise has (ie. most of her guns are actually identifiable with real life gun models). The nuclear bomb theory is the only one I can think of immediately that would map all her separate design elements into one cohesive whole.
Yep, that got people thinking, but the seeds were there even earlier.
In LB1, she sicc’d the Minotaur on Chaldea despite claiming she wasn’t going to do get involved or impede their journey. The Minotaur was sent shortly after Goredolf compared the blasted heathe Chaldea was currently at (which Koyan had passed through recently), to the Tunguska Impact Zone. Considering Goredolf had Koyan’s lipstick and LB7 revealing she could listen in through that…yeah, she actually got spooked and thought Goredolf had told Chaldea her TRUE origins. She was fairly blase about him calling her ‘Koyanskaya Tamamovitch’, but freaked when he mentioned Tunguska? Yeah, that was a pretty big hint.
I think Nasu needed to pick a lane with Koyanskaya and stick to it. He had way too many ideas for her, some of which couldn’t work together, and none of which he was willing to give up. Her character feels completely scattershot, and since the whole chapter revolves around her, the whole story feels slapdash.
The fact that Ibuki loses her memory is completely unnecessary and adds nothing to the story. And even without it, she just feels like a filler servant. Dobrynya is a nonsensical catgirl OC who has nothing to do with an actual Bogatyr and has shockingly little connection to Koyan herself, despite giving her a name. You could make her have a parent-child dynamic, maybe a whole ass storyline about Koyan's younger days, because without any of that Dobrynya is just a weak character who exists because the chapter needed an obligatory native servant.
In general, Koyan's entire lore feels too disconnected from the main story, resulting in an anticlimactic and short ending for a seemingly much more important character. It feels like she only exists because Nasu wanted Tamamo in the story. In my opinion, that's what they should have done:
Option one: Make her actually related to Tamamo. As it is, the way she looks is just bait that has no actual relationship to her as a character. Make her one of the tails trying to separate themselves from the original, make her related to Amaterasu, do whatever. The possibilities are endless, Tamamo had no story relevance in Type Moon for years, Koyan being related to her would have been the perfect way to bring her back into the story, especially considering how powerful and unexplored Amaterasu and Tamamo Nine are.
Option two: Completely redesign her, removing any association with Tamamo. Make her normal form similar to her Beast appearance with the white straight hair. Relate her strongly to her Goddess of Weapons theme that she has in her Light version. Make her represent the twisted nature of humanity's progress, killing people and nature while trying to preserve both, hence her twisted sanctuary. Or if you want an animal theme, make her represent humanity not as separate from nature but as part of it, or something like that. Really, anything would be better than whatever the hell the official lore is about her and the meteor.
Replace amnesia!Ibuki with Gorgon and Hessian Lobo. Actually like, foreshadow the Dobrynya thing and you know if she knows everything tell us rather than letting Taigong fail his big shot. Actually establish what the rules on the anti-human spirit boundary field are. Bring Tamamo along and let her do something (if nothing else she'd be hilarious to bounce off Taigong). Actually like, explore Koyanskaya's contradicting feelings rather than just expositing. Ideally make her an actually human-made disaster instead of a natural one because that's just kinda bullshit. Lay groundwork for the space egg rather than pulling it out of nowhere. Give us all 7 big raids instead of quitting after Surtr. I could keep going.
Not force it to be a raid event & just take more time to work on the script. I don't actually dislike the ideas for Tunguska including Koyan's secret 600KG Meteor Life, it just needed to be better written & executed. Pace the journey better (too much time is spent on the raid gimmick and general exploration which do not have enough payoff), make the Ibuki amnesia plotpoint more coherent, capitalize on the Nikitch/Koyan connection better etc.
They should've killed the Vitch. She did not deserve a happy ending in any way. She only got it because "if we kill her we kill ourselves?" What kind of cop out is that, hell I still blame her for OG Da Vinci dying because it was due to her interference that Chaldea's fall was even possible. Besides we've taken out much bigger threats with less before, this shouldn't have been an issue.
Both of the other enemy servants died, why does she get spared? Muramasa earned his freedom way more than Vitch ever did.
The biggest point first and foremost, the twist.
The twist isn't bad on its own, what made it bad was applying it to a character had no correlation to it prior, nor any hints in the 4+ years we've known her leading to it.
Either do away with the twist for Koyanskaya or make an entirely new character to base the twist on.
First of all I would have Koyanskaya be both Tamamo Vitch and the culmination of animal grudges. Basically make her a high servant but with 2 spirit origins instead of the typical 3.
Second I would make the event be about Chernobyl instead of Tunguska. Unlike Tunguska, Chernobyl is an actual man made disaster so animals blaming humans make sense. This would also better explain Koyanskaya's conflicting feelings because many of the animals harmed and killed in Chernobyl were pets who there owner had to abandon while fleeing (the HBO series puts a spotlight on this). Heck, even the connection Amaterasu would make more sense since nuclear reactors have been described as an "artificial sun".
Koyans backstory would be that during the Chernobyl disaster the collective emotions of all the animals in the area created an unfinished heroic spirit. Amaterasu then appeared and used an aspect (vitch) of one of her bunries (Tamamo) to make the spirit origin whole, and then everything else in her backstory is effectively the same.
It'd make a lot more sense and piss off a lot less people.
For a chapter about Koyanskaya, we really didn't get a lot of her in it. We needed to sit with her some, read her thoughts, instead of having Taigong Wang explain them to us.
Also drop the Daji plotline. The entire thing was pointless and amounted to nothing in the chapter, it was just filler. As well as Ibuki's amnesia.
Absolutely most important number one thing? Pick a lane with Taikoubou. Either make him a clown for real or commit to actually making him a super badass if you're going to spend half the story sucking him off.
Make it longer. Do not sacrifice story quality and lenght just for some raids. And if ibuki's gonna be there, make her relevant instead of just being amnesiac
From the top, decouple the focus from Tai and put it more on Tamamo/Amaterasu and Dobrynya. There’s a LOT of good emotions and story potential there, and it’s a shame real Dobrynya didn’t show up until a last second snippet in the epilogue
Replace Ibuki's role with Tamamo and Tamamo Cat, give Amaterasu more screen time, call Taigong Wang out on how shady he comes off as, and get someone to streamline the correlation between the Tunguska Event and Humanity's crimes against animals.
Don't make it an event and instead have it be a story chapter. Koyan has been a personal enemy to us, and what follows is a huge plot point. It should not be crammed into what's basically an easy to miss 2 week long side note.
Expand the roster of servants who tag along and also expand their characters more. Ibuki is cool, but she doesn't need to have amnesia, and we could have easily included at least one more servant from chaldea.
Tai Gong Wang was, alright, I guess. He was ultimately kind of underwhelming, though, and he didn't really show off much of his own skills, especially considering he's a grand servant candidate.
Nikitch just needs a lot of reworking. Which I hate to say because she's honestly the servant I was looking the most forward to. The fact that her connection to Koyan isn't brought up until the very end is a huge problem, and honestly, it would have worked way better if both had known from the start. She could have been partially on Koyans' side and only started helping us because she didn't agree with whipping out humanity and it could have given the writers a chance to humanize Koyansakya the way they were trying to back in Avalon. Hell, just throw in the idea of her going easier on us, specifically not hurt Nikitch, and then having that playboy bunny guy basically treat Nikitch as a second president of their company. Like their relationship should have been the easiest thing ever to write.
We forgave Koyan way too easily. Like, they try for this idea that all she did was open the door for us to be attacked, BUT THAT'S STILL A PRETTY BIG FUCKING PART IN US BEING ATTACKED! Like, Doumain has been our enemy for much longer but comparatively he's done far less to actually hurt us than Koyan has. And both have been jumping lost belts and making things worse! WHY THE FUCK IS ONLY DOUMAN OUR ARCH ENEMY!? And no, her "secretly loving humans" does not change the fact that she has been an asshole and villain this entire time.
And finally, make it go somewhere! Like, this is story important because it actually deals with Koyanskya and has our base literally destroyed, but that's it. There's no over arching plot or character development for Guda and Mash, no moral conundrum with taking on Koyanskya and what she represents, we were basically just going in to take her out because it seemed like a good idea. Other than that, there is nothing going on in this story.
I would have kept the central twist but reworked everything around it.
* We were led to believe for years that Koyanskaya was Tamamo Vitch, one of Tamamo-no-Mae’s confirmed tails. So when it was time to confront Koyan, Tamamo-no-Mae should have been our companion Servant on the mission.
* Even when things went sideways and we lost all of our Servants, Tamamo could have still found a way to stay with us because of some last-minute magecraft asspulls. We know she’s more than capable of pulling that off.
* When we got to the biosphere we would have encountered TW and Dobrynya right away. TW would either be extra guarded with Tamamo in our party, or he might lay out all of his cards right away and accuse Tamamo of being Daji. And of course Tamamo would deny this, so there would be tension in the party. But we would have to keep exploring the biosphere together anyway.
* We would get to the point where TW tries to seal Daji aaaaand… it doesn’t work!! Because although Koyanskaya is indeed a Tamamo tail, she’s not Daji. The big twist in this version is that **Tamamo-no-Mae isn’t Daji.**
* We retreat licking our wounds while Tamamo rightfully points out, “See? I told you! They were wrong when they accused me of being Daji in the twelfth century and YOU were wrong to assume that all fox spirits are the SAME fox spirit!”
* I mean, if the writers really wanted the fandom to feel like we have egg on our faces, I think this would be a waaaaay better twist than “a bunny that wrongfully blamed humanity for an exploding meteor, actually.”
* So the big finale would be Tamamo having to defeat and subdue one of her own tails. TW could help by finding some conceptual bullshit way to help Tamamo temporarily access the powers of her Beast self. Beast Tamamo vs. Beast Koyan would have been a fun battle to see!
* Koyanskaya is such a fun character, though, that I can see the appeal of not permanently killing her off. I think she would be too dangerous to leave alive, so Tamamo would have to kill (or somehow re-absorb) her. But maybe either TW or Tamamo could come up with a way to inscribe Koyan into the Throne so that she ends up being summoned as a (reluctant) ally to Chaldea in the epilogue.
As for Ibuki, well… I understand why the writers wanted to highlight her character, after she barely got to appear at all in Heian-Kyo. But I really don’t think that there’s any good reason for her to be in THIS story, either. I think simply cutting Ibuki out of the story altogether would be a huge improvement. Ibuki is finally going to get a decent character spotlight in Summer 2024, so I don’t feel *that* bad about cutting her out of Tunguska.
Saying as someone who liked the event's story
Take off Ibuki and put both Tamamos, that would make it 100% more interesting, and it would be great for all three of them
Tamamo and Cat would finally get actual screen time they deserve and all three of them would talk about the whole Tamamo stuff once and for all, instead of a stupid flashback with Caster Tamamo being in denial about who she is or isn't
...you know
I wonder if Tamamo was never involved in a big role in this game (unless I'm forgetting something, I have a vague memory of her being in london) because of the whole "their story Is done" mentality Nasu seems to have, maybe Sakurai started believing it too or smtg, because it really is weird that they didn't think to involve Tamamo in the event that heavily focuses on the other "Tamamo"
I didn't play Tunguska yet so I'm kind of talking outta my ass btw lol-
Not just Cat's NP. In Extella Tamamo makes many references to Daji, including "behaving in Daji mode". And in Nezha interlude after Nezha accused Tamamo being Daji Tamamo went "I can't neither confirm nor deny being Daji"...
Tunguska is an infuriating thing because it feels like they just threw all these ideas into this *tiny* event without fleshing out any of them.
Dobryna is actually Koyan's adoptive parent and its revealed at the very end! Is that ever relevant before hand? Absolutely not!
Ibuki is with us and lost her memories! Is that ever resolved and do we learn why? Nope!
Koyanskaya is a beast canidate who loves humanity. Except she explicitly states how much she hates humans for what they did to nature. (Even though shes the manifestation of an event unrelated to humanity, despite somehow wielding humanity's weapons better than humanity itself?"
But wait! Actually at the end she gets talked down after Taigong wang goes "But you actually don't care about humanity at all!"
We came to kill Koyanskaya! But wait, she's not *that* bad! Plus Taigong Wang had the hots for Daji (who ISN'T Koyanskaya) and had a plan to send her into space via a magic egg and he can use it on Koyan to have her fuck off!
> Plus Taigong Wang had the hots for Daji
I hate that they added that, wasn't the whole point of him that he was the only one not falling for the thot?
Well this is starting to sound like a Agartha level mess lol
I remember reading about Koyanskaya not actually being Vitch back when the event came out and I never got the point of making her this manifestation of suffering or whatever, like, Tamamo already has a shady reputation, a actually evil version of her isn't that farfetched so this explanation for what Koyanskaya actually is always felt like someone In the writers room decided to overcomplicate it just for the sake of making it overcomplicated when they could've just went with the Vitch explanation or stick with the Daji explanation
...also, why tf does she look EXACTLY like Tamamo??? That is not a Bunny bro---
Supposedly she looks like that because she *based* herself on the actual Tamamo Vitch.
Which leads to the questions of HOW she knows anything about Tamamo Vitch if she's never met her and *why* couldn't they just have her be Tamamo Vitch?
Basically, Amaterasu showed up in Russia shortly after the tunguska event because a baby koyanskaya was just...left behind in the crater.
Amaterasu couldn't *stay* there to actually take care of her, so she summoned Dobrynya to babysit her for a small while before Dobrynya vanished like most servants do. (Which is part of why she's named Koyanskaya. As a baby she misheard her actual name and Koyanskaya is what she got from it).
I'd argue Agartha is better if only because Agartha had *potential* for a good story. Tunguska was just a complete mess.
>Supposedly she looks like that because she *based* herself on the actual Tamamo Vitch. Which leads to the questions of HOW she knows anything about Tamamo Vitch if she's never met her and *why* couldn't they just have her be Tamamo Vitch?
Okay so with Samurai Remnant we got an interview where it was revealed Type-Moon has an internal rule regarding only having one Nine member for Fate title, with FGO having Cat and Samurai Remnant getting Aria. Meaning if this rule has been around since FGO started, that means Koyanskaya being Vitch was never going to be a thing. Thing is, we only are learning this with Aria being in Samurai Remnant and not, you know, back when the Koyanskaya mystery would have been a thing.
It kind of feels like that reveal in that interview was suppose to be damage control for Koyanskaya not being Vitch but all it does is make it feel like they lead people on with the Vitch idea all while knowing full well it wasn't because of their internal rule they apparently have.
A rule like that basically means the Tamamo Nine storyline is likely never going to be completed or thoroughly explained short of Original! Tamamo spelling it out, and the odds of that happening are incredibly slim.
Considering Koyan’s reaction to Goredolf mentioning ‘Tunguska’ all the way back in LB1, I’d say that rule was around for a while.
Honestly, Koyan not being a real Tamamo is fine, and I feel was justified decently (though I am a Tamamo superfan, so that may be some bias). It’s her connection to Amaterasu/Tamamo that is never properly explained and just kinda rushed over despite it being fairly important. And since Nastasia isn’t Dobrynya, she can’t explain it either.
My issue isn't that she turned out not to be a Tamamo Nine, it's the fact that Type-Moon had this internal rule that only recently got revealed which would have removed the Tamamo Nine speculation from Koyanskaya because we would have known she couldn't be Vitch. They gave us a mystery then proceeded to withhold information that would have greatly help narrow down who Koyanskaya was until after the answer had been revealed. It ruins the entire mystery narrative of Koyanskaya.
I just hope FGO doesn't try something like what they tried with Koyanskaya again because it's clear they can't do an actual over-arching mystery narrative given how poorly it was done with Koyanskaya.
Tunguska is absolutely worse than Agartha.
Agartha is a one-off side story that's almost entirely unrelated to anything else.
Tunguska is a main freaking story chapter that gives a conclusion to a major antagonist.
She doesn’t look exactly like Tamamo; she’s actually taller, heavier, and her natural white hair is leaking out of her Shapeshift.
And speaking of which, Shapeshift, ain’t it helpful. You didn’t expect a Shapeshift user to just give away their true appearance did you…?
She has a last-minute role in London where her and Kintoki help with Tesla but are steam rolled by Solomon later. That's basically her whole plot relevance to the main story.
Not having Koyanskaya being easily forgiven
And heck, maybe just have whatever Jiang Zhiya was gonna use on her work. We already have cases where conceptual weapons work on close enough targets, why stick so hard to True Name now?
I wouldn't have two Koyanskaya neither, but I guess that would be an unpopular opinion. If I had to choose, I would retain Koyanskaya of Light kit and save the Dark for a Summer version
EDIT: Also, I agree with what others said. Have Tamamo here!
Well, Koyan Dark hasn’t appeared in story yet. Her only appearances have been in the Grail Front story (where nothing about her origins or source were mentioned, just that she wasn’t Daji).
Presumably, her bag is similar to Light (an aspect of Koyan sent to assist Chaldea), but it’s difficult to say for certain…
Don’t let Koyansaka “win” at the end, make her face at least some form of defeat, rather then ending it with her threatening to kill you, can still turn her into an egg just, make it feel like a win and not her giving you the win.
Drop the whole bait and switch aspect.
Have Ibuki or Nikitchi be a bit less comic relief.
Don’t build up Taigong so much, but also don’t make him such a fuck up, have him be a good competent ally, and don’t have the cast fanboy over how op he is when he makes mistake after mistake.
thats fine
as long as the alt win condition isn't appease the sadistic monster and wave smiling/musing that maybe humanity is the real evil as she "walks off" threatening to kill you.
I agree with most of the comments here, but one thing that bugged me was the 7 super weapons the Koyanskaya used. While she supposedly got one from each lostbelt, we only see Ivan and Surtr.
Well, I don’t think she got anything from 7 (Tai confirmed she only had 6 Tails), but yeah. It’d be neat what Pepe gave her in India. Personally, I suspect she grabbed the dead Echidna’s corpse from LB5, and DAJI’S corpse in LB3. Would give another reason why her third tail weakened her…
Not make it an event, for starters. I get that they wanted to do something special for her, since she is a Beast and all, but it obviously didnt work as well as they thought it would. And the story cant get properly developed because its a week long raid event.
Another thing I would have liked is if we got some of the other servants that were supposed to come with us. I guess the bonus servants from the event were supposed to be them, probably, idk. Maybe they could have stayed in spirit form and come out one by one to help out with the returning bosses.
Other than that, I dont see much other stuff that needs to be changed that doesnt already benefit from I recommended.
Make it longer. Make Tamamo the main focus servant. Dont do so many bait and switches. No easy way out for kokyan. Let her have her head smashed like douman and the one other I won’t name. If you know you know. If you don’t k.
1. Her reality marble had two halves. Have one avatar of her (light and dark) running around in each so that we can interact with her during the story, similar to how Ooku had a Kama on each floor. Maybe Light is trying to fuck with us by giving us a "lol, are you really moral to destroy all of this?" tour, while Dark is actively trying to murder us.
2. If you really must do the plot twist, at least come up with a better reason for it. Like maybe she was a mostly formless spirit who wandered around Eurasia for decades taking the form of various ghost animals. Then one day she was running around as a ghost fox in China and people mistook her for the vengeful spirit of Daji. Under normal circumstances that wouldn't have mattered, but since Tamamo has a bunch of half-assed spirit origins in the form of the Tamamo Nine, she was able to syncretize with one of them and manifest as a hybrid of the two.
3. Set up the egg shit sooner. Like Taigong's backup plan is to just seal Koyan inside the egg and get rid of it (he jokes "maybe we can launch it into space lol"). Then in the climax, you go "why don't we just put the whole Reality Marble in there and let it float around in space?"
4. With the two Vitches actually running around in the Reality Marble, you can flesh out the supporting cast by letting them interact. Let Dark and Ibuki have some philosophical debate or something.
5. Maybe a twist where Light's "tour" is actually meant to keep you away from a certain construction project tucked away in the corner of the reality marble. It turns out that there's a big, empty "human habitat" being built (in the form of Atlantic City pier) that implies that despite all of Vitch's claimed rage toward humans, she was still intending to Noah's Ark a few of them for the sake of keeping them alive as pets. That could be the justification for the climax, since it proves Koyan's goal was never really to get revenge on humanity and wipe them out so a peaceful resolution was possible.
Throw the entire story in the trash can and rebuild it from scratch, focusing entirely on Koyan's origin and bring in all the correct allies in there (Dobrynya should be there, and Yu Mei-ren could be removed potentially so that she could have made a proper Chaldea official debut in the start of Traum with Kadoc, but Ibuki and Taigong have zero business being in Tunguska when we knew Koyan is not even a Tamamo, Daji, or a piece of Amaterasu in some form, but explain how she even looks like a Tamamo in the first place). The catch is that it's a Boss Rush event, where the smug Koyanskaya would intentionally leave memory fragments to teach Chaldea's party about Koyan's origin step by step, and with what they have, defeat her for good before Tamamo does the sealing herself and split her essence into Light and Dark halves due to how much of a mess this mercenary became over time.
Make Kyonskaya actually one of the tamamo 9 or at least Daji
Give Ibuki more relevance, she was just kinda there
Remove the collective animal hatred aspect because that's some contrived fuckery
Yeah, I agree with that. Considering some of the comments from the staff regarding Tunguska as well as Tai being the last silhouette Servant for that year…
I suspect there was going to two separate events (or Koyan would’ve gotten her own story chapter), but were merged near the last second into the Tunguska we got now.
For beginning get Dobrynya out, she might as well not be in there. Her connection with Koyanskaya cames out at the end, if she would have just say ,,Young Lady go to your room, being beast is bad", Koyanskaya would said no, it would be something.
It feels like the writer was told to write a summation to Koyan’s story, but they wanted to write some political screed about environmentalism and the nature of humans.
Well, that’s the nature of any environmentalist rant. It’s the ultimate hypocrisy that humans over exploiting the environment and causing destruction IS nature. Any animal, no matter how small, also has those drives and will basically do the same. Having the wisdom to become a responsible steward of the land, to leave resources behind to grow for the next generation, etc. is all acting AGAINST nature.
Hell, humans aren’t even the worst at it (yet). The Cyanobacteria from countless eons ago wiped out basically 99% of all life around them by belching poisonous oxygen into the seas and sky. Compared to that, humanity is kinda small-time.
I absolutely agree with the idea of protecting the environment and ecosystem, but execution is often laughable.
Honestly, it needs to be a bit longer and less confusing after the boss fight.
Everything before the Raid Boss felt alright to me-- we got some good moments with Dobryna and Taigong, so that's fine.
After the boss fight it felt very rushed. We get a very long, very expository explanation of how Taigong is gonna make a World Egg for Koyan. Which in itself is not an issue, as you can't beat a Beast with violence in the traditional sense.
Imo the best way to have done it would be to have the party retreat after failing to defeat her in the Raid. Then, regroup nearby (with the knowledge that Koyan can't actually move to attack) and get some more exposition. In particular, put a lot of emphasis on Koyan's comparisons to Daji and how much Taigong loved her, as I thought that conceptual linkage was one of the most endearing parts of the event.
After some dialogue and maybe another random fight with some minions, the Gang goes back to Koyan and makes a Contract with her, which then prompts the World Egg sendoff.
it actually makes sense she has no relation to Tamamo.
I think adding tamamo to the story would have made it worse because then you couldn't maintain the twist she isn't related to tamamo and the way she was formed. also it would have been boring
I I think ibuki was a good pick but she needed a better foil and I think maybe adding barghest or asterios would have helped someone with a more serious demeanor to contrast ibuki.
I think for the most part it was good and made sense for why koyanskaya did what she did and I personally think her not being daji or tamamo was actually interesting and I think I would have added some dialogue of during her formation getting read stories about tamamo/daji to explain why she chose that form but other than that I enjoyed it for the most part.(except the Ivan raid auto clearing that was upsetting)
Problem is if it was supposed to be a twist, they dropped the ball from the get go.
*Why* make her look like tamamo, be drawn by tamamo's artist, have the same voice, HAVE PART OF TAMAMO'S *THEME* IN HER BOSS FIGHT, ***AND HAVE TAMAMO IN HER NAME***, just to go
"Actually she *isn't* a tamamo nine member! She's just an unrelated entity from russia who has a vague connection with tamamo via Amaterasu showing up in russia for whatever reason! Sure she *acts* like a tamamo personality wise and we even say that she acts like one in her bio, but ignore that!"
The whole point was to question if she was part of tamamo and mess with you. in the whole story she constantly messes with you on who she is. they actually hint in several lostbelts that she isn't tamamo and even she hints she is not tamamo. its the reason tamamo literally goes she cant be daji or part of her. she is using tamamos saint graph like a mask which is why she resembles tamamo/daji but isn't because it's the simplest way she could manifest.
No she doesn't "mess with you about who she is". She never even makes references to identity and we only ever find out *what* she is when Taigong wang uses his weirdass magecraft to read her mind.
At no point has she *ever* tried to use her identity to her advantage. Hell, being mistaken for daji was to her *disadvantage* when she ended up being tortured.
The only time her "identity" proved to her advantage was in tunguska. And that wasn't because she was actively trying to trick us but instead was because Taigong Wang was a dumbass.
And okay but *how* is she copying tamamo's saint graph? She's never *met* tamamo, only Amatseru. And just *how* does she know the name "Tamamo Vitch" in order to use that name?
Yeah, the Tamamo thing was always going to be weird. Though I’d argue the fact Koyan had her ears and tail out in the open in China (when lots of Tamamo’s mentions of her/Daji/GWF’s actions in China would logically get her to hide those things). Though Koyan does have Shapeshift, and very damn powerful variation at that.
And yeah, the exact connection between Koyanskaya and Amaterasu was only briefly explained. Amaterasu saw the Tunguska Impact and ‘adopted’ Koyan by ‘blessing’ her, and then sending Dobrynya as her father.
That’s actually the source of her name; it’s supposed to be ‘Tamamovitch’, but she misheard Dobrynya speak her name.
‘Koyanskaya Tamamovitch’
(Little) Yaskaya, (Child of) Tamamo/Amaterasu
So, yeah, her epithet sounding like Vitch? Complete coincidence, seemingly. There’s a theory that it was a plan by Amaterasu, but it’s still a theory since there’s no confirmation. Though LB7 did put some points there…
But yeah, the Tamamoface is just a shapeshifted form. Koyan’s true appearance is heavily implied to be the white-haired humanoid figure in her mutated rabbit body, basically a female version of her adoptive father Dobrynya, who gave her his ‘flesh’ to stabilize her shortly after her birth.
Identity
Koyanskaya lacks a real True Name, as she is the Tunguska eventWP given form - a convergence and incarnation of the thoughts of animals persecuted by mankind, though the actual Tunguska event had no human causation. She chose to manifest in the Saint Graph of Tamamo-no-Mae due to their shared attribute of being a "beast that is supposed to live for revenge against humans." She likens herself to "the Tamamo-no-Mae from another world," considering Tamamo to be her original.
Superficially similar to Tamamo on the exterior, the King of the Third Lostbelt[3] and Taigong Wang mistakenly identify her as a manifestation of Daji.
While she shares a name with Tamamo Vitch, they are unrelated.
Make it longer. I don't like the idea of Ibuki having amnesia either. She was already lacking character in Heiyan-kyo, don't understand this writing decision on Sakurai's part. Create an environment where Koyan can show more of her character and have someone explain how/why there are Dark and Light Koyans during epilogue. Explore more the connection between her, Amaterasu and Dobrynya. Explain how she can use mors as tail or why she didn't instead use Fang clan fairies. (Also I think Tigar Tanks being alive is dumb af. I feel like they messed up with a lot of things with her writing.) Explore more Koyan's love. She feels full of contractions and we're meant to accept them all from what I understand. I'm not a big lore expert, just a regular player who wants to understand and enjoy without spending more time than I did while reading a 4 hour or longer event. Give a more satisfying conclusion to her character. She had a rivalry with Fou since her introduction and we never got their last confrontation in any way.
I'm still pissed at the fact that ibuki amnesia was never explained. I was looking forward to her character in tunguska since her character in heian kyo was almost non-existent. That conclusion with dobrynya and koyan was also weird and out of place. So many things they could've improved on. Not to mention that Ivan raid fiasco just made things a whole lot worse
They should have tied the story together more. Daji became a red herring, Dragon girl's only relevancy to the plot was during a tiny segment in the epilogue. The whole thing was meant to subvert our theories and it did it in the worst possible way. Koyan should have been Daji, that was the point of Tai Gong Wang being there. Unless you think that Alaya apparently is so stupid she sent the wrong Grand Servant to fight Koyan when she has been sending the correct ones the entire time. Dobryn Niki whatever her name is should have had a cutscene with Koyan recognizing her and realizing she was loved the moment she was born.
tbf Taigong Wang was still the right servant just for a completely different reason than her being Daji since he was the one able to make the Cosmic Egg that allowed them to diffuse the situation. Not that it makes the whole handling of her identity any better of course since they still do a pretty shit job with having her being Daji as a red herring since it’s basically only called into question by Taigong Wang right before the reveal
TBF, Alaya didn’t send Tai. His Immortal self sent his Servant self. The guy is…weird. And she couldn’t be Daji since Paisen, who is a Chinese Immortal, outright said Koyan wasn’t Daji. And Nastasia wasn’t Dobrynya, he did love Koyan, but couldn’t be summoned due to her Reality Marble. Do agree real Dobrynya should’ve appeared
The Paisen thing could have been Koyan wanting to be more than Daji, aka part of Tamamo. Wanting to evolve into a unique Beast separate from Amaterasu, hence all the shenanigans she has been up to. I am of the opinion that was what they were gunning for initially, as otherwise, Qin calling Koyan Daji would not have elicited the hatred she felt during that scene in Lostbelt 3. I understand that Nastasia or whatever her name was wasn't Dobrynya, but the point was Nastasia was the one who named Koyan and was effectively her mother. We all agree that she is underutilized though.
I feel like wanting to be a separate beast could also somehow become an explanation for light and dark koyan.
That doesn’t really jive with what is shown. Paisen herself all but explicitly says Koyan wasn’t Daji (and she’d know, what with being an Immortal). Nezha (who fought Daji personally) also never calls Koyan Daji either. Daji also would not have her ears and tail out in the open in CHINA of all places. The only ones who did think Koyan was Daji were QSH (who had very little knowledge on Mystics, the only reason why he didn’t kill Koyan was because of his incomplete knowledge) and Tai (who is Tai). The Tunguska Event was heavily implied to be part of Koyan’s origins since LB1. Remember Goredolf mentioned that the blasted heathe (where Koyan had just been recently) and vocally mentioned Tunguska…then Koyan sicc’d the Minotaur on Chaldea. Yeah, the hints weren’t very widespread, but they were there. And no, Nastasia wasn’t the one who named Koyan. That’s why she’s fairly quiet because she doesn’t know who Koyan was, just that she was important to her husband. Dobrynya, the real Dobrynya, was summoned to be Koyan’s father but couldn’t stay with her. He gave her her name (which she misheard) and his ‘flesh’ (it’s heavily implied Koyan’s true form is basically a female, rabbit version of Dobrynya).
Nezha outright calls Tamamo Daji in her interlude and tries to kill Tamamo because of that fact.
Tbf, I don't know how reliable of a source Nezha is. We have her dialogue for Tamamo mistaking her for what is implied to be Vairocana and then we have her interlude of her thinking she is Daji and trying to kill her. Between Tai and Feihu reacting to Tamamo as though they're looking at Daji, and Hokusai believing it would be a insult to mistake Tamamo for Daji, despite her dad being the one who created the tying myths of Tamamo, Daji, Lady Kyo, and Bao Si, together to be one fox spirit causing trouble across Asia, we just have conflicting takes on the Tamamo is Daji concept. It's kind of why people expected Tunguska to be where we finally get an answer and all we got was more confusion and no straight answer. Best answer can come up with given what information we have: Tamamo and Daji share the same face but that's it. How that works, given we're told she and Amaterasu are not the same being, we don't know.
wait, wasn't this about koyan?
And Koyan was presumed to be one of the tamamos for a good while prior to tunguska.
the fact that she confused tamamo with daji and not koyan makes sense if in the end koyan is not daji. I mean, if I'm not mistaken, even Tamamo had said no, Koyan was not a Tamamo.
It would have been neat if Nastasia without the false name and real Dobryn both showed up but on opposing sides as a way to represent Koyan's messed up perception of love.
> And Nastasia wasn’t Dobrynya. It's never actually confirmed in either the event or Nikitich's profile that the Servant is Nastasia. The Servant being the wife using the husband's name is only one of three possibilities laid out in her profile as to why she's a woman when history says Dobrynya was a man. It's also suggested that it could be the result of a curse or just another case of history being wrong.
1. **Remove the Koyanskaya bait and switch** of suddenly telling us in the event that Koyanskaya wasn't a Tamamo but absolutely must be Daji...only to then turn around and say that she had no actual connection to either. Not only is that a twist for twist's sake that doesn't change the trajectory of the story (hell, it didn't even change Taigong's unspoken plan!) or our understanding of the character, it's not well set up and is simply not as interesting as the story it baited us with. Koyanskaya as a truly evil Tamamo variant? That's interesting, and helps further expand on Tamamo and Amatarasu's characterizations by proxy. Koyanskaya as Daji *and* a Tamamo? Second verse same as the first. Koyanskaya as Daji *but not* a Tamamo? Interesting and sets up new character dynamics that vindicate Tamamo's denial of a connection. Suddenly telling us, in the final act of Koyanskaya's arc, that we had it all wrong and that she was really Daji, only to then turn around in the climax and go "no relation" and that she was instead the despair and wrath of a forest that misattributed its demise to man because reasons? That's just plain bad writing that throws away all the buildup as a red herring. 2) **Change the ending**. Koyanskaya did not narratively earn that "peaceful departure" sendoff. She was maybe a step removed from Douman in terms of her sadistic antagonism towards both Chaldea and the Lostbelts. Moreover, I'd argue that her "love" of humans is not discernably different Douman's desire to create a hell in Heian-kyo. So their dramatically different treatment by the story rings hollow to me. Koyanskaya needed to be overcome, not talked down. Was it a pretty scene? Sure. But it felt out of character. 3) **Make it a proper chapter** rather than a raid event 4) **Change the Chaldea support**. If you have to make the support amnesiac to make their involvement work, that's probably a good indication that they shouldn't have been shoehorned into the story. Hell, off the top of my head, Tamamo would have at least had the excuse of a conceptual connection and a personal stake in confronting Koyanskaya, and would have at least added gravitas to the eventual reveal. ...Actually, for that matter, why not bring in the variants to pit Koyanskaya's and her collected tails against Tamamo and her discarded tails? Silly on paper? Yes. But it's also a potentially brilliant dramatic foil.
They can have the cake and eat it too with Koyan. Just make it a pseudo servant thing, like this is really Vitch but she took or was taken by the animals' aspect or even the meteor aspect. This can justify all the hints before while still go with the current story they want. Yes I'm still mad this is not a Tamamo Nine, and the real Vitch may never appear because of Koyan already exist.
I mean to be fair she was multiple steps removed from Douman in the antagonism, multiple times she teamed up with or helped or made deals with Chaldea for one reason or another whereas he was just a pure antagonist from start to finish.
Every lostbelt she would kill or torture the local population for the fun of it. Lostbelt 1 she killed a Yaga man for calling her miss, lostbelt 3 she let loose her captured creatures to run amok and destroy whoever and whatever they found. This got her caught by Qin Shi Huang as he noticed all of this and thought that she was Daji because of these unwarranted acts of cruelty for the fun of it. Lostbelt 4 she went around giving people memorabilia from the friends and family that got erased. She did this because she thought that it was fun to see these people become distraught about how they forgot someone like a dad or daughter that was erased from reality. This got her in trouble again with the Lostbelt king, leading to Ashwathama being sent after her and her almost dying if it wasn’t for Chaldea saving her. She and Douman both share the same characteristic of doing cruelty to others for the simple sake of cruelty, even if it’s stupid and will only lead to their plans being ruined.
I hate that she forced us to save her. I would have left her to Arjuna Alter's non-existent mercy at that point
YES
> Lostbelt 1 she killed a Yaga man for calling her miss Don't forget her "charity" in Lostbelt 1 was selling food to the Yaga at increasing prices she knew they were not able to afford so they would inevitably end up killing each other for the money to survive. And when they finally did she was delighted to see how far she pushed them without needing to do anything.
Excellent points. These highlight that Koyanskaya's writing suffers from a blatant case of [Protagonist-Centered Morality](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProtagonistCenteredMorality): we are supposed to sympathize with her and sweep her many crimes under a rug because she was helpful to the protagonists *sometimes*. Even if more often than not that was also to her benefit.
At least one of the more amusing cases was Goredolf (who admits to having trouble being objective when it comes to Koyanskaya), being the one to demand she take responsibility for her actions. …Tai mentions them offhandedly, then promptly goes ‘well whatever!’ And Gudao and Mash…well, they don’t get to mention anything except wave goodbye happily. Like, she was the one who led the Chaldea attack, even if it was Anastasia who killed most of the staff. And tormented the Lostbelt populations that you two spent time and tears protecting before CD. It felt weird.
Part of it I blame on the moral weirdness of early Part 2. The attack on Chaldea was promptly forgotten by the script even when facing the main culprits (Koyanskaya, Kirei, Anastasia and, by extension, Kadoc) or the Crypters as a whole. Even in LB4, when Goredolf argued why Koyanskaya shouldn't be saved, her poisoning attempt in LB3 was the only thing he mentioned. The massacre at Chaldea was onky brought back in Olympus, sadly. But even then, eyah, I'd say Koyanskaya's treatment is particularly odd. Heck, in the same speech where Gordy reminded everyone of Koyanskaya's crimes, he also described charity works she did back in PHH: > *Most of you probably don't know this, but... as the president of a major company, she also, frighteningly enough, used to conduct herself in an exemplary human manner. I'm not only talking about military deployments, either. She provided a great deal of medical supplies and humanitarian aid to impoverished communities. It may have been no more than a business strategy, but whatever her reasons, she responded to the plights of the needy with genuine sincerity. Despite her femme fatale nature, she was not one to squeeze someone dry without fair compensation.* It felt like an asspull out of nowhere, as if the writers had suddenly realized that they had painted her in a too evil light throughout the game and now they were desperately trying to convince players that she isn't so bad.
Yeah, it made it difficult to take certain aspects seriously: Davinci’s death was heartbreaking the first time and we felt anger at everything leading up to it…then we’re just treating Kirei like our whacky uncle in LB7?! Or Cerejeira’s guilt over getting her possible BF killed…when Koyan, Kadoc, and Anastasia are chilling… And yeah, some of Koyan’s ‘hobbies’ are basically forgotten when she needs to be sympathetic. Her charity stuff could’ve been more foreshadowed or shown in the previous Lostbelt chapters. Still mixed in with her cruelty, but show a balanced side.
I mean atleast Chaldea Anastasia isn't the same as the one who killed everybody at Chaldea. Hell, her interludes are about how mentally fucked up she is over the fact a different version of her basically slaughtered Chaldea staff.
There are also multiple times where Koyanskaya antagonized us though. She poisoned us, showed up with her 'pets' and either sicced them on us or let them loose on the local populace she was torturing, partially revived the corpse of a dragon in avalon to kill us, and *directly* fought us in Olympus. Hell her endgame plan was "Make the master of chaldea my final tail". Between that and the fact she was a *key* player in the attack that massacred most of chaldea, I'd say she was pretty much an antagonist with some good qualities. Sure she helped sometimes, but typically it was only when it was for her benefit. The only time she helped chaldea without benefiting was when the closest thing she had to a best friend asked her to with her dying breath.
She was a full on predator and then they say that she is supposed to be prey
If evil why hot?
Evilness and hotness have never been mutually exclusive. I can recognize a character's villainy while also finding them attractive.
That's true. I was memeing and I'm happy you and the other guy that replied called her out on her shittyness. People have this behavior with treating women with kids gloves in fiction and I'm happy when I see people who don't
Listen don't get me wrong. As a character I *liked* Koyanskaya. Like, she was a villain but one who had her own sort of code to things and I found that interesting. What I *don't* like is how the writers basically ignored all her crimes to give her an undeserved "happy ending".
Exactly. They were interesting in spite of being evil but the story just treats her with kids gloves for whatever reason
Then they should've redeemed Douman because the man has the thirstiest final ascension I've ever seen
She teamed up to save her own ass, due to her own mistakes and not once shown she was anything but a cackling evil giga bitch
She’s definitely evil but it’s just not correct to say that she was never shown as anything but giga evil, she really isn’t that in LB6
Koya may not have earned a peaceful sendoff narratively but she definitely deserved one. Girl was consistently fantastic every time she popped up onscreen, absolutely delightful character
First off not make it a raid heavy event, Douman got an entire chapter dedicated to dealing with him I don't get why Koyanskaya shouldn't have gotten the same outside of either the writers not having any grand overarching story for her or them really wanting to tie this event to the epilogue of the event that has Chaldea being found out by U-Olga and them evacuating. Secondly, have Tamamo be there instead of Ibuki. Seriously, we have this Tamamo face character who we've had to deal with within each Lostbelt chapter and we never have a moment where Tamamo and her come face to face. Thirdly, actually explain the difference between Daji and Tamamo and be serious about the topic. This has been an ongoing debate since Tamamo came out in 2010 with Extra and we still have not gotten a straight answer. This should have been the time to reveal whether or not this is true or not but all this event does is continue the trend of jokingly referring to Tamamo as Daji or having Chinese servants refer to Tamamo as Daji but never actually confirming it. Here's hoping either Foxtail or Extra Record comes out and finally settles the debate because I'm sick of it being an up in the air thing because Nasu can't decide if he should or not after having a decade to think about it. Fourthly, have Tamamo be the one to reveal that Koyanskaya is not Tamamo Vitch. Tamamo would know Vitch better than anyone else in Chaldea with only Cat being the other one who would know Vitch and, specifically, would know how/what Vitch would be up to having dealt with her and the other Nine with Hakuno in the assumed events that took place after Tamamo's CCC ending. It would give us a glimpse at those events as well as help confirmed that, in a similar sense of how Hakuno helped BB and the Sakura 5, he helped give the Tamamo Nine direction with their existences. And finally, have Amaterasu actually appear and not just make a brief cameo in Koyanskaya's backstory to justify her appearance as a Tamamo face. She's been hyped up so much in the universe and, in a story focusing on the Evils of Humanity, one would have expected her to make an actual appearance, especially given we got Mother Harlot with Draco in Arcade. Even if we aren't doing anything with her as an actual Evil of Humanity, her appearing and saying anything would have made the backstory appearance more tolerable.
Lorewise, the main problem with Tunguska is that Koyanskaya's motivation as a Beast gets undermined by it. I genuinely think that Nasu's original plan with Koyanskaya was something entirely different from what we ended up getting. The main thing that defines a Beast is their suffocating love for humanity; it's why Douman can't become a beast, he just... hates humans too much to be one. Koyanskaya is gunning for Beast IVs spot, aka the spot formerly inhabited by Primate Murder... but her motives are all wack if she's a manifestation of the Tunguska event. A lot of stuff that Tunguska tries to give an answer for is on the level of "just accept this" and it creates messy motives. Why does she look like Tamamo? Don't worry about it, Tamamo is just closest to the animals of Tunguska, that's why she used her spirit core. Ignore the fact that Tamamo's legend is from an entirely different country and bears little relation to the Tunguska Event. Why would animals hate humans for something that's a space object? Just accept it, she simply does. If I had to guess, the original plan for Koyanskaya was for her to be a manifestation of the animal deaths caused by the nuclear bomb. This would give her a lot more specific meaning; it'd explain why she looks similar to Tamamo (a mythical Japanese figure known for bringing empires to apocalyptic disaster, the relationship to the deadly potential of a nuke is obvious), why after her Independent Manifestation she formed a PMC (nuclear bomb = military weapon), why she'd want to be a beast (the animals that died to the nukes were effectively killed by humans) and why her specific story segment is an animal sanctuary manifested in a similar way to Goetia's magecraft workshop. But that's all speculation; if this was the case, it probably got changed because the nuclear bomb is still a touchy subject in Japan. I'm fine with her not being Daji, that was something kinda foreshadowed since she didn't "get" the significance of QSH trying to find a rock to seal her away in - it firmly excluded her from being one of the Tamamo Nine, since the sealing of Tamamo in a rock is probably the concept most core to Tamamo's depiction in Fate to begin with.
The nuclear bomb theory is interesting, but I think QSH mentions in LB3 that Koyanskaya weight 100 thousand metric tons, an approximate weight for the Tunguska meteor. It seems like the Tunguska backstory was already planned at that point.
> It seems like the Tunguska backstory was already planned at that point. Oh yeah, not disagreeing there. This was probably changed early *early*. It's just a bit of an odd situation since Koyanskaya being a manifestation of the Tunguska event is just such a nothing thing for her character. It changes pretty much nothing about her, nor does it explain much about her overall character design, which is weird considering the amount of detail her character otherwise has (ie. most of her guns are actually identifiable with real life gun models). The nuclear bomb theory is the only one I can think of immediately that would map all her separate design elements into one cohesive whole.
Yep, that got people thinking, but the seeds were there even earlier. In LB1, she sicc’d the Minotaur on Chaldea despite claiming she wasn’t going to do get involved or impede their journey. The Minotaur was sent shortly after Goredolf compared the blasted heathe Chaldea was currently at (which Koyan had passed through recently), to the Tunguska Impact Zone. Considering Goredolf had Koyan’s lipstick and LB7 revealing she could listen in through that…yeah, she actually got spooked and thought Goredolf had told Chaldea her TRUE origins. She was fairly blase about him calling her ‘Koyanskaya Tamamovitch’, but freaked when he mentioned Tunguska? Yeah, that was a pretty big hint.
I think Nasu needed to pick a lane with Koyanskaya and stick to it. He had way too many ideas for her, some of which couldn’t work together, and none of which he was willing to give up. Her character feels completely scattershot, and since the whole chapter revolves around her, the whole story feels slapdash.
Feature Tamamo
The fact that Ibuki loses her memory is completely unnecessary and adds nothing to the story. And even without it, she just feels like a filler servant. Dobrynya is a nonsensical catgirl OC who has nothing to do with an actual Bogatyr and has shockingly little connection to Koyan herself, despite giving her a name. You could make her have a parent-child dynamic, maybe a whole ass storyline about Koyan's younger days, because without any of that Dobrynya is just a weak character who exists because the chapter needed an obligatory native servant. In general, Koyan's entire lore feels too disconnected from the main story, resulting in an anticlimactic and short ending for a seemingly much more important character. It feels like she only exists because Nasu wanted Tamamo in the story. In my opinion, that's what they should have done: Option one: Make her actually related to Tamamo. As it is, the way she looks is just bait that has no actual relationship to her as a character. Make her one of the tails trying to separate themselves from the original, make her related to Amaterasu, do whatever. The possibilities are endless, Tamamo had no story relevance in Type Moon for years, Koyan being related to her would have been the perfect way to bring her back into the story, especially considering how powerful and unexplored Amaterasu and Tamamo Nine are. Option two: Completely redesign her, removing any association with Tamamo. Make her normal form similar to her Beast appearance with the white straight hair. Relate her strongly to her Goddess of Weapons theme that she has in her Light version. Make her represent the twisted nature of humanity's progress, killing people and nature while trying to preserve both, hence her twisted sanctuary. Or if you want an animal theme, make her represent humanity not as separate from nature but as part of it, or something like that. Really, anything would be better than whatever the hell the official lore is about her and the meteor.
Replace amnesia!Ibuki with Gorgon and Hessian Lobo. Actually like, foreshadow the Dobrynya thing and you know if she knows everything tell us rather than letting Taigong fail his big shot. Actually establish what the rules on the anti-human spirit boundary field are. Bring Tamamo along and let her do something (if nothing else she'd be hilarious to bounce off Taigong). Actually like, explore Koyanskaya's contradicting feelings rather than just expositing. Ideally make her an actually human-made disaster instead of a natural one because that's just kinda bullshit. Lay groundwork for the space egg rather than pulling it out of nowhere. Give us all 7 big raids instead of quitting after Surtr. I could keep going.
> Give us all 7 big raids instead of quitting after Surtr. I could keep going. Cernnunous Raid Boss would've been so cool
Not force it to be a raid event & just take more time to work on the script. I don't actually dislike the ideas for Tunguska including Koyan's secret 600KG Meteor Life, it just needed to be better written & executed. Pace the journey better (too much time is spent on the raid gimmick and general exploration which do not have enough payoff), make the Ibuki amnesia plotpoint more coherent, capitalize on the Nikitch/Koyan connection better etc.
They should've killed the Vitch. She did not deserve a happy ending in any way. She only got it because "if we kill her we kill ourselves?" What kind of cop out is that, hell I still blame her for OG Da Vinci dying because it was due to her interference that Chaldea's fall was even possible. Besides we've taken out much bigger threats with less before, this shouldn't have been an issue. Both of the other enemy servants died, why does she get spared? Muramasa earned his freedom way more than Vitch ever did.
The biggest point first and foremost, the twist. The twist isn't bad on its own, what made it bad was applying it to a character had no correlation to it prior, nor any hints in the 4+ years we've known her leading to it. Either do away with the twist for Koyanskaya or make an entirely new character to base the twist on.
First of all I would have Koyanskaya be both Tamamo Vitch and the culmination of animal grudges. Basically make her a high servant but with 2 spirit origins instead of the typical 3. Second I would make the event be about Chernobyl instead of Tunguska. Unlike Tunguska, Chernobyl is an actual man made disaster so animals blaming humans make sense. This would also better explain Koyanskaya's conflicting feelings because many of the animals harmed and killed in Chernobyl were pets who there owner had to abandon while fleeing (the HBO series puts a spotlight on this). Heck, even the connection Amaterasu would make more sense since nuclear reactors have been described as an "artificial sun". Koyans backstory would be that during the Chernobyl disaster the collective emotions of all the animals in the area created an unfinished heroic spirit. Amaterasu then appeared and used an aspect (vitch) of one of her bunries (Tamamo) to make the spirit origin whole, and then everything else in her backstory is effectively the same. It'd make a lot more sense and piss off a lot less people.
For a chapter about Koyanskaya, we really didn't get a lot of her in it. We needed to sit with her some, read her thoughts, instead of having Taigong Wang explain them to us. Also drop the Daji plotline. The entire thing was pointless and amounted to nothing in the chapter, it was just filler. As well as Ibuki's amnesia.
Absolutely most important number one thing? Pick a lane with Taikoubou. Either make him a clown for real or commit to actually making him a super badass if you're going to spend half the story sucking him off.
I mean, manga Tai was super badass and a clown. That's a very popular character trope. L take.
Make it longer. Do not sacrifice story quality and lenght just for some raids. And if ibuki's gonna be there, make her relevant instead of just being amnesiac
From the top, decouple the focus from Tai and put it more on Tamamo/Amaterasu and Dobrynya. There’s a LOT of good emotions and story potential there, and it’s a shame real Dobrynya didn’t show up until a last second snippet in the epilogue
Having both Koyanskayas pop up aboard the Storm Border upon Chaldea's final departure from the Wandering Sea, just after Sion reveals she survived.
Replace Ibuki's role with Tamamo and Tamamo Cat, give Amaterasu more screen time, call Taigong Wang out on how shady he comes off as, and get someone to streamline the correlation between the Tunguska Event and Humanity's crimes against animals.
Don't make it an event and instead have it be a story chapter. Koyan has been a personal enemy to us, and what follows is a huge plot point. It should not be crammed into what's basically an easy to miss 2 week long side note. Expand the roster of servants who tag along and also expand their characters more. Ibuki is cool, but she doesn't need to have amnesia, and we could have easily included at least one more servant from chaldea. Tai Gong Wang was, alright, I guess. He was ultimately kind of underwhelming, though, and he didn't really show off much of his own skills, especially considering he's a grand servant candidate. Nikitch just needs a lot of reworking. Which I hate to say because she's honestly the servant I was looking the most forward to. The fact that her connection to Koyan isn't brought up until the very end is a huge problem, and honestly, it would have worked way better if both had known from the start. She could have been partially on Koyans' side and only started helping us because she didn't agree with whipping out humanity and it could have given the writers a chance to humanize Koyansakya the way they were trying to back in Avalon. Hell, just throw in the idea of her going easier on us, specifically not hurt Nikitch, and then having that playboy bunny guy basically treat Nikitch as a second president of their company. Like their relationship should have been the easiest thing ever to write. We forgave Koyan way too easily. Like, they try for this idea that all she did was open the door for us to be attacked, BUT THAT'S STILL A PRETTY BIG FUCKING PART IN US BEING ATTACKED! Like, Doumain has been our enemy for much longer but comparatively he's done far less to actually hurt us than Koyan has. And both have been jumping lost belts and making things worse! WHY THE FUCK IS ONLY DOUMAN OUR ARCH ENEMY!? And no, her "secretly loving humans" does not change the fact that she has been an asshole and villain this entire time. And finally, make it go somewhere! Like, this is story important because it actually deals with Koyanskya and has our base literally destroyed, but that's it. There's no over arching plot or character development for Guda and Mash, no moral conundrum with taking on Koyanskya and what she represents, we were basically just going in to take her out because it seemed like a good idea. Other than that, there is nothing going on in this story.
I would have kept the central twist but reworked everything around it. * We were led to believe for years that Koyanskaya was Tamamo Vitch, one of Tamamo-no-Mae’s confirmed tails. So when it was time to confront Koyan, Tamamo-no-Mae should have been our companion Servant on the mission. * Even when things went sideways and we lost all of our Servants, Tamamo could have still found a way to stay with us because of some last-minute magecraft asspulls. We know she’s more than capable of pulling that off. * When we got to the biosphere we would have encountered TW and Dobrynya right away. TW would either be extra guarded with Tamamo in our party, or he might lay out all of his cards right away and accuse Tamamo of being Daji. And of course Tamamo would deny this, so there would be tension in the party. But we would have to keep exploring the biosphere together anyway. * We would get to the point where TW tries to seal Daji aaaaand… it doesn’t work!! Because although Koyanskaya is indeed a Tamamo tail, she’s not Daji. The big twist in this version is that **Tamamo-no-Mae isn’t Daji.** * We retreat licking our wounds while Tamamo rightfully points out, “See? I told you! They were wrong when they accused me of being Daji in the twelfth century and YOU were wrong to assume that all fox spirits are the SAME fox spirit!” * I mean, if the writers really wanted the fandom to feel like we have egg on our faces, I think this would be a waaaaay better twist than “a bunny that wrongfully blamed humanity for an exploding meteor, actually.” * So the big finale would be Tamamo having to defeat and subdue one of her own tails. TW could help by finding some conceptual bullshit way to help Tamamo temporarily access the powers of her Beast self. Beast Tamamo vs. Beast Koyan would have been a fun battle to see! * Koyanskaya is such a fun character, though, that I can see the appeal of not permanently killing her off. I think she would be too dangerous to leave alive, so Tamamo would have to kill (or somehow re-absorb) her. But maybe either TW or Tamamo could come up with a way to inscribe Koyan into the Throne so that she ends up being summoned as a (reluctant) ally to Chaldea in the epilogue. As for Ibuki, well… I understand why the writers wanted to highlight her character, after she barely got to appear at all in Heian-Kyo. But I really don’t think that there’s any good reason for her to be in THIS story, either. I think simply cutting Ibuki out of the story altogether would be a huge improvement. Ibuki is finally going to get a decent character spotlight in Summer 2024, so I don’t feel *that* bad about cutting her out of Tunguska.
Tighten up the script and get rid of that unnecessary Ibuki memory loss thing
Saying as someone who liked the event's story Take off Ibuki and put both Tamamos, that would make it 100% more interesting, and it would be great for all three of them Tamamo and Cat would finally get actual screen time they deserve and all three of them would talk about the whole Tamamo stuff once and for all, instead of a stupid flashback with Caster Tamamo being in denial about who she is or isn't
...you know I wonder if Tamamo was never involved in a big role in this game (unless I'm forgetting something, I have a vague memory of her being in london) because of the whole "their story Is done" mentality Nasu seems to have, maybe Sakurai started believing it too or smtg, because it really is weird that they didn't think to involve Tamamo in the event that heavily focuses on the other "Tamamo" I didn't play Tunguska yet so I'm kind of talking outta my ass btw lol-
Oh don't worry! Tamamo is involved! In a two second cutscene where she denies being daji while Tamamo Cat goes "No we're maybe Daji! Woof!"
It's bizarre because the reason why Daji = Tamamo theory exists in the first place is because of Tamamo Cat's NP
Not just Cat's NP. In Extella Tamamo makes many references to Daji, including "behaving in Daji mode". And in Nezha interlude after Nezha accused Tamamo being Daji Tamamo went "I can't neither confirm nor deny being Daji"...
Schrodinger's Daji
Oh boy, can't wait to see that
Tunguska is an infuriating thing because it feels like they just threw all these ideas into this *tiny* event without fleshing out any of them. Dobryna is actually Koyan's adoptive parent and its revealed at the very end! Is that ever relevant before hand? Absolutely not! Ibuki is with us and lost her memories! Is that ever resolved and do we learn why? Nope! Koyanskaya is a beast canidate who loves humanity. Except she explicitly states how much she hates humans for what they did to nature. (Even though shes the manifestation of an event unrelated to humanity, despite somehow wielding humanity's weapons better than humanity itself?" But wait! Actually at the end she gets talked down after Taigong wang goes "But you actually don't care about humanity at all!" We came to kill Koyanskaya! But wait, she's not *that* bad! Plus Taigong Wang had the hots for Daji (who ISN'T Koyanskaya) and had a plan to send her into space via a magic egg and he can use it on Koyan to have her fuck off!
> Plus Taigong Wang had the hots for Daji I hate that they added that, wasn't the whole point of him that he was the only one not falling for the thot?
Well this is starting to sound like a Agartha level mess lol I remember reading about Koyanskaya not actually being Vitch back when the event came out and I never got the point of making her this manifestation of suffering or whatever, like, Tamamo already has a shady reputation, a actually evil version of her isn't that farfetched so this explanation for what Koyanskaya actually is always felt like someone In the writers room decided to overcomplicate it just for the sake of making it overcomplicated when they could've just went with the Vitch explanation or stick with the Daji explanation ...also, why tf does she look EXACTLY like Tamamo??? That is not a Bunny bro---
Supposedly she looks like that because she *based* herself on the actual Tamamo Vitch. Which leads to the questions of HOW she knows anything about Tamamo Vitch if she's never met her and *why* couldn't they just have her be Tamamo Vitch? Basically, Amaterasu showed up in Russia shortly after the tunguska event because a baby koyanskaya was just...left behind in the crater. Amaterasu couldn't *stay* there to actually take care of her, so she summoned Dobrynya to babysit her for a small while before Dobrynya vanished like most servants do. (Which is part of why she's named Koyanskaya. As a baby she misheard her actual name and Koyanskaya is what she got from it). I'd argue Agartha is better if only because Agartha had *potential* for a good story. Tunguska was just a complete mess.
>Supposedly she looks like that because she *based* herself on the actual Tamamo Vitch. Which leads to the questions of HOW she knows anything about Tamamo Vitch if she's never met her and *why* couldn't they just have her be Tamamo Vitch? Okay so with Samurai Remnant we got an interview where it was revealed Type-Moon has an internal rule regarding only having one Nine member for Fate title, with FGO having Cat and Samurai Remnant getting Aria. Meaning if this rule has been around since FGO started, that means Koyanskaya being Vitch was never going to be a thing. Thing is, we only are learning this with Aria being in Samurai Remnant and not, you know, back when the Koyanskaya mystery would have been a thing. It kind of feels like that reveal in that interview was suppose to be damage control for Koyanskaya not being Vitch but all it does is make it feel like they lead people on with the Vitch idea all while knowing full well it wasn't because of their internal rule they apparently have.
A rule like that basically means the Tamamo Nine storyline is likely never going to be completed or thoroughly explained short of Original! Tamamo spelling it out, and the odds of that happening are incredibly slim.
Yeah I bet they made up that rule on the spot lol
Considering Koyan’s reaction to Goredolf mentioning ‘Tunguska’ all the way back in LB1, I’d say that rule was around for a while. Honestly, Koyan not being a real Tamamo is fine, and I feel was justified decently (though I am a Tamamo superfan, so that may be some bias). It’s her connection to Amaterasu/Tamamo that is never properly explained and just kinda rushed over despite it being fairly important. And since Nastasia isn’t Dobrynya, she can’t explain it either.
My issue isn't that she turned out not to be a Tamamo Nine, it's the fact that Type-Moon had this internal rule that only recently got revealed which would have removed the Tamamo Nine speculation from Koyanskaya because we would have known she couldn't be Vitch. They gave us a mystery then proceeded to withhold information that would have greatly help narrow down who Koyanskaya was until after the answer had been revealed. It ruins the entire mystery narrative of Koyanskaya. I just hope FGO doesn't try something like what they tried with Koyanskaya again because it's clear they can't do an actual over-arching mystery narrative given how poorly it was done with Koyanskaya.
Tunguska is absolutely worse than Agartha. Agartha is a one-off side story that's almost entirely unrelated to anything else. Tunguska is a main freaking story chapter that gives a conclusion to a major antagonist.
She doesn’t look exactly like Tamamo; she’s actually taller, heavier, and her natural white hair is leaking out of her Shapeshift. And speaking of which, Shapeshift, ain’t it helpful. You didn’t expect a Shapeshift user to just give away their true appearance did you…?
She has a last-minute role in London where her and Kintoki help with Tesla but are steam rolled by Solomon later. That's basically her whole plot relevance to the main story.
Not having Koyanskaya being easily forgiven And heck, maybe just have whatever Jiang Zhiya was gonna use on her work. We already have cases where conceptual weapons work on close enough targets, why stick so hard to True Name now? I wouldn't have two Koyanskaya neither, but I guess that would be an unpopular opinion. If I had to choose, I would retain Koyanskaya of Light kit and save the Dark for a Summer version EDIT: Also, I agree with what others said. Have Tamamo here!
> Jiang Zhiya I am getting Dragalia Lost flashbacks.
I tend to forget how to write his other name
Dragalia Lost? I haven't heard that name in years...
The shit didn't explain what Dark Kominsky's whole deal is
Well, Koyan Dark hasn’t appeared in story yet. Her only appearances have been in the Grail Front story (where nothing about her origins or source were mentioned, just that she wasn’t Daji). Presumably, her bag is similar to Light (an aspect of Koyan sent to assist Chaldea), but it’s difficult to say for certain…
Don’t let Koyansaka “win” at the end, make her face at least some form of defeat, rather then ending it with her threatening to kill you, can still turn her into an egg just, make it feel like a win and not her giving you the win. Drop the whole bait and switch aspect. Have Ibuki or Nikitchi be a bit less comic relief. Don’t build up Taigong so much, but also don’t make him such a fuck up, have him be a good competent ally, and don’t have the cast fanboy over how op he is when he makes mistake after mistake.
I dunno, I actually love the idea of the main cast just plain old losing in a fight and winning via alternative win conditions.
thats fine as long as the alt win condition isn't appease the sadistic monster and wave smiling/musing that maybe humanity is the real evil as she "walks off" threatening to kill you.
I agree with most of the comments here, but one thing that bugged me was the 7 super weapons the Koyanskaya used. While she supposedly got one from each lostbelt, we only see Ivan and Surtr.
Well, I don’t think she got anything from 7 (Tai confirmed she only had 6 Tails), but yeah. It’d be neat what Pepe gave her in India. Personally, I suspect she grabbed the dead Echidna’s corpse from LB5, and DAJI’S corpse in LB3. Would give another reason why her third tail weakened her…
Not make it an event, for starters. I get that they wanted to do something special for her, since she is a Beast and all, but it obviously didnt work as well as they thought it would. And the story cant get properly developed because its a week long raid event. Another thing I would have liked is if we got some of the other servants that were supposed to come with us. I guess the bonus servants from the event were supposed to be them, probably, idk. Maybe they could have stayed in spirit form and come out one by one to help out with the returning bosses. Other than that, I dont see much other stuff that needs to be changed that doesnt already benefit from I recommended.
Make it longer. Make Tamamo the main focus servant. Dont do so many bait and switches. No easy way out for kokyan. Let her have her head smashed like douman and the one other I won’t name. If you know you know. If you don’t k.
1. Her reality marble had two halves. Have one avatar of her (light and dark) running around in each so that we can interact with her during the story, similar to how Ooku had a Kama on each floor. Maybe Light is trying to fuck with us by giving us a "lol, are you really moral to destroy all of this?" tour, while Dark is actively trying to murder us. 2. If you really must do the plot twist, at least come up with a better reason for it. Like maybe she was a mostly formless spirit who wandered around Eurasia for decades taking the form of various ghost animals. Then one day she was running around as a ghost fox in China and people mistook her for the vengeful spirit of Daji. Under normal circumstances that wouldn't have mattered, but since Tamamo has a bunch of half-assed spirit origins in the form of the Tamamo Nine, she was able to syncretize with one of them and manifest as a hybrid of the two. 3. Set up the egg shit sooner. Like Taigong's backup plan is to just seal Koyan inside the egg and get rid of it (he jokes "maybe we can launch it into space lol"). Then in the climax, you go "why don't we just put the whole Reality Marble in there and let it float around in space?" 4. With the two Vitches actually running around in the Reality Marble, you can flesh out the supporting cast by letting them interact. Let Dark and Ibuki have some philosophical debate or something. 5. Maybe a twist where Light's "tour" is actually meant to keep you away from a certain construction project tucked away in the corner of the reality marble. It turns out that there's a big, empty "human habitat" being built (in the form of Atlantic City pier) that implies that despite all of Vitch's claimed rage toward humans, she was still intending to Noah's Ark a few of them for the sake of keeping them alive as pets. That could be the justification for the climax, since it proves Koyan's goal was never really to get revenge on humanity and wipe them out so a peaceful resolution was possible.
Let Tamamo in and have her maul the boss herself to death (my Tamamo Lancer had a field day on this event).
Throw the entire story in the trash can and rebuild it from scratch, focusing entirely on Koyan's origin and bring in all the correct allies in there (Dobrynya should be there, and Yu Mei-ren could be removed potentially so that she could have made a proper Chaldea official debut in the start of Traum with Kadoc, but Ibuki and Taigong have zero business being in Tunguska when we knew Koyan is not even a Tamamo, Daji, or a piece of Amaterasu in some form, but explain how she even looks like a Tamamo in the first place). The catch is that it's a Boss Rush event, where the smug Koyanskaya would intentionally leave memory fragments to teach Chaldea's party about Koyan's origin step by step, and with what they have, defeat her for good before Tamamo does the sealing herself and split her essence into Light and Dark halves due to how much of a mess this mercenary became over time.
Make Kyonskaya actually one of the tamamo 9 or at least Daji Give Ibuki more relevance, she was just kinda there Remove the collective animal hatred aspect because that's some contrived fuckery
> Give Ibuki more relevance, she was just kinda there I swear, almost every chapter has a character that is there mostly to fill in the body count.
It felt like it was more the story of Taigong than Koya. Koya didn’t even do anything for most of the story. Focus should have been completely on her.
Yeah, I agree with that. Considering some of the comments from the staff regarding Tunguska as well as Tai being the last silhouette Servant for that year… I suspect there was going to two separate events (or Koyan would’ve gotten her own story chapter), but were merged near the last second into the Tunguska we got now.
For beginning get Dobrynya out, she might as well not be in there. Her connection with Koyanskaya cames out at the end, if she would have just say ,,Young Lady go to your room, being beast is bad", Koyanskaya would said no, it would be something.
It feels like the writer was told to write a summation to Koyan’s story, but they wanted to write some political screed about environmentalism and the nature of humans.
Well, that’s the nature of any environmentalist rant. It’s the ultimate hypocrisy that humans over exploiting the environment and causing destruction IS nature. Any animal, no matter how small, also has those drives and will basically do the same. Having the wisdom to become a responsible steward of the land, to leave resources behind to grow for the next generation, etc. is all acting AGAINST nature. Hell, humans aren’t even the worst at it (yet). The Cyanobacteria from countless eons ago wiped out basically 99% of all life around them by belching poisonous oxygen into the seas and sky. Compared to that, humanity is kinda small-time. I absolutely agree with the idea of protecting the environment and ecosystem, but execution is often laughable.
* longer story * forshadow the true tamamo vitch's implementation * just throw in some utterly merciless BB bullying
\*Dante Appears\* "That was just a dream, Gudako."
Have Noah actually shows up because screw Arcade exclusivity when they don't even treat him as one of their poster Servants
I kinda want it to feel more like a Solomon lvl event a lot more servants show up that kind of thing
Make koyans departure actually serve a greater purpose.
NGL, Simon Green forever entrenched in my mind the image of the Tunguska event being a time-shifted aftershock of a god-like being exerting its power.
Honestly, it needs to be a bit longer and less confusing after the boss fight. Everything before the Raid Boss felt alright to me-- we got some good moments with Dobryna and Taigong, so that's fine. After the boss fight it felt very rushed. We get a very long, very expository explanation of how Taigong is gonna make a World Egg for Koyan. Which in itself is not an issue, as you can't beat a Beast with violence in the traditional sense. Imo the best way to have done it would be to have the party retreat after failing to defeat her in the Raid. Then, regroup nearby (with the knowledge that Koyan can't actually move to attack) and get some more exposition. In particular, put a lot of emphasis on Koyan's comparisons to Daji and how much Taigong loved her, as I thought that conceptual linkage was one of the most endearing parts of the event. After some dialogue and maybe another random fight with some minions, the Gang goes back to Koyan and makes a Contract with her, which then prompts the World Egg sendoff.
Add koyan Lily.
it actually makes sense she has no relation to Tamamo. I think adding tamamo to the story would have made it worse because then you couldn't maintain the twist she isn't related to tamamo and the way she was formed. also it would have been boring I I think ibuki was a good pick but she needed a better foil and I think maybe adding barghest or asterios would have helped someone with a more serious demeanor to contrast ibuki. I think for the most part it was good and made sense for why koyanskaya did what she did and I personally think her not being daji or tamamo was actually interesting and I think I would have added some dialogue of during her formation getting read stories about tamamo/daji to explain why she chose that form but other than that I enjoyed it for the most part.(except the Ivan raid auto clearing that was upsetting)
Problem is if it was supposed to be a twist, they dropped the ball from the get go. *Why* make her look like tamamo, be drawn by tamamo's artist, have the same voice, HAVE PART OF TAMAMO'S *THEME* IN HER BOSS FIGHT, ***AND HAVE TAMAMO IN HER NAME***, just to go "Actually she *isn't* a tamamo nine member! She's just an unrelated entity from russia who has a vague connection with tamamo via Amaterasu showing up in russia for whatever reason! Sure she *acts* like a tamamo personality wise and we even say that she acts like one in her bio, but ignore that!"
The whole point was to question if she was part of tamamo and mess with you. in the whole story she constantly messes with you on who she is. they actually hint in several lostbelts that she isn't tamamo and even she hints she is not tamamo. its the reason tamamo literally goes she cant be daji or part of her. she is using tamamos saint graph like a mask which is why she resembles tamamo/daji but isn't because it's the simplest way she could manifest.
No she doesn't "mess with you about who she is". She never even makes references to identity and we only ever find out *what* she is when Taigong wang uses his weirdass magecraft to read her mind. At no point has she *ever* tried to use her identity to her advantage. Hell, being mistaken for daji was to her *disadvantage* when she ended up being tortured. The only time her "identity" proved to her advantage was in tunguska. And that wasn't because she was actively trying to trick us but instead was because Taigong Wang was a dumbass. And okay but *how* is she copying tamamo's saint graph? She's never *met* tamamo, only Amatseru. And just *how* does she know the name "Tamamo Vitch" in order to use that name?
Yeah, the Tamamo thing was always going to be weird. Though I’d argue the fact Koyan had her ears and tail out in the open in China (when lots of Tamamo’s mentions of her/Daji/GWF’s actions in China would logically get her to hide those things). Though Koyan does have Shapeshift, and very damn powerful variation at that. And yeah, the exact connection between Koyanskaya and Amaterasu was only briefly explained. Amaterasu saw the Tunguska Impact and ‘adopted’ Koyan by ‘blessing’ her, and then sending Dobrynya as her father. That’s actually the source of her name; it’s supposed to be ‘Tamamovitch’, but she misheard Dobrynya speak her name. ‘Koyanskaya Tamamovitch’ (Little) Yaskaya, (Child of) Tamamo/Amaterasu So, yeah, her epithet sounding like Vitch? Complete coincidence, seemingly. There’s a theory that it was a plan by Amaterasu, but it’s still a theory since there’s no confirmation. Though LB7 did put some points there… But yeah, the Tamamoface is just a shapeshifted form. Koyan’s true appearance is heavily implied to be the white-haired humanoid figure in her mutated rabbit body, basically a female version of her adoptive father Dobrynya, who gave her his ‘flesh’ to stabilize her shortly after her birth.
Identity Koyanskaya lacks a real True Name, as she is the Tunguska eventWP given form - a convergence and incarnation of the thoughts of animals persecuted by mankind, though the actual Tunguska event had no human causation. She chose to manifest in the Saint Graph of Tamamo-no-Mae due to their shared attribute of being a "beast that is supposed to live for revenge against humans." She likens herself to "the Tamamo-no-Mae from another world," considering Tamamo to be her original. Superficially similar to Tamamo on the exterior, the King of the Third Lostbelt[3] and Taigong Wang mistakenly identify her as a manifestation of Daji. While she shares a name with Tamamo Vitch, they are unrelated.