Honkai: Star Rail meets Helldivers 2 in spectacular Firefly anime short

HoYoverse went extra hard for this one

HoYoverse

It’s difficult not to assume that HoYoverse is going to announce a self-produced anime series at some point in the future when the company keeps churning out jaw-dropping anime shorts left, right, and center. After we thought it would take a while to top the Arlecchino animated short for Genshin Impact, the studio dropped “The Embers of Glamoth” on us, which tells us more about the absolute hell that Firefly went through when she was serving in the Iron Cavalry.

Honkai: Star Rail meets Evangelion and Helldivers 2 in this grueling, spectacular anime short that shows the full horror of fighting against Tayzzyronth’s Swarm – check it out below:

Beautifully animated, this short takes to what looks like the final battle of the Iron Cavalry – a fight to take down a Swarm Mother, which looks even more massive and terrifying than the Emanator of The Propagation we had to confront in the game. Most of the bio-engineered SAM pilots fall as they approach the enemy with only Firefly and an anonymous pilot surviving (who sounds like he was voiced by none other than Zach Aguilar, who plays Aether in Genshin Impact).

Making a predictable kamikaze attack, the anonymous pilot obliterates the Swarm Mother, which takes down all the little bugs as well. Firefly looks like the sole survivor of the explosion, being left to survey a scene of carnage: Corpses that look very similar to herself are scattered around the ashen battlefield in-between debris and insect cadavers.

It looks like the Iron Cavalry made a typical, tragic last stand and prevailed against the odds – only for Firefly herself to shatter the illusion by saying that Glamoth was no more. The SAM pilots were still fighting and dying only because that’s what they were born to do, all in the name of an Empress and a nation that only existed in their minds – the Republic of Glamoth had lied to them starting from their birth to make it easier to throw them away once the threat of the Swarm was dealt with.

Glamoth's Iron Cavalry was nothing more than a tool, always planned to be disposed of. / HoYoverse

We learned from the story in Simulated Universe: The Swarm Disaster that it took several Aeons forming an alliance to stop Tayzzyronth’s rampage, making the entire struggle of the Iron Cavalry even more meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Glamoth eventually fell anyway.

Firefly as the single survivor (that we know of) walks away from it all, blasting the entire planet to pieces in a sequence that seems to be half dream, half reality. That probably explains why her Enhanced Skill is called Deathstar Overload.

The animated short ends with another familiar face finding Firefly resting in-between the debris she created: Kafka, who might have been led there by Elio to recruit Firefly for the Stellaron Hunters – though it’s safe to assume that Firefly was in some sort of cryogenic slumber for a few thousand years before this scene takes place.

Kafka ended up finding Firefly amidst the debris as she was awakening from her sleep. We can assume Elio lent a helping hand. / HoYoverse

Firefly enters the game as a playable character on the Honkai: Star Rail 2.3 banners on June 19, 2024.