From Wikipedia - Reading time: 10 min
| Hu Tao | |
|---|---|
| Genshin Impact character | |
| First appearance |
|
| Voiced by |
|
| In-universe information | |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Female |
| Weapon | Polearm |
| Origin | Liyue |
| Birthday | July 15[2] |
Hu Tao (Chinese: 钟离; pinyin: Hútáo; Japanese: 胡桃; Hepburn: Kurumi) is a playable character in the action role-playing game Genshin Impact. She is voiced by Brianna Knickerbocker in the English dub, Tao Dian in the Chinese dub, Rie Takahashi in the Japanese dub and Kim Ha-ru in the Korean dub. Within the game's context, she serves as the 77th Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor within the Chinese-inspired nation of Liyue. She would make her debut within the second phase of Version 1.3 of the game on March 2, 2021.[3]
In the weeks following the initial release of Genshin Impact on September 2020, some players would discover unreleased characters within the game files with Hu Tao being among them.[4][5] This resulted in leaks that the character would be officially launched in Version 1.3 of the game,[5] but Hu Tao would go without mention in the Version 1.3 preview video released by miHoYo, which disappointed many fans that were looking forward to the character's launch.[6] By the end of February 2021, one month after the release of Version 1.3, miHoYo announced that Hu Tao would be released in the second phase of version 1.3 with her dedicated chapter, “Papilio Charontis",[7] with her event unlocked after players completed the second act of the main story, "Farewell, Archaic Lord".[3] On February 27, miHoYo released a character preview video, in which it was revealed that Hu Tao was the director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor of Liyue within the game, possessing the ability to see ghosts as well as already being well acquainted with Zhongli.[8] In the character demo video released on March 1, Hu Tao's skills and gameplay were showcased,[9] with both the announcement and demo also displaying Hu Tao's playful personality.[10] In terms of her premise in gameplay, Hu Tao adorns the Pyro elemental skill with a forearm as her primary weapon, and her skills requiring health to increase damage output which was requiring the player to manage her health and utilize the abilities from other characters.[11]
The character's Chinese voice was portrayed by Tao Dian. She described Hu Tao as a "quirky" and "creepy and cute" girl. After getting to know the character in depth, she found that Hu Tao, while being mature and strong internally, maintains the innocent and cheerful nature of a child. On the surface, she often makes light of subjects regarding life and death but secretly has a more genuine and thorough understanding of them, treating the matters with respect.[12] Hu Tao's English and Japanese voice actors were portrayed by Brianna Knickerbocker and Rie Takahashi respectively.[13] Takahashi expressed surprsie by the complexity of the character when she received background information regarding the character. At the recording site, she was further surprised when directed to "make Hu Tao weird" as she had interpreted the character as being more of a tricky personality.[14]
Hu Tao serves as the 77th Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor which is responsible for funerals and similar affairs although she often goes on breaks during the weekends. Most of the time, she is shown to have a more livelier and active side to her, often times tending to pull pranks on other characters but becomes serious regarding matters to her profession.[15][16] In the early days of Hu Tao's management of the Parlor, she was questioned by the other undertakers because of her young age. Her leadership would be up to the highest Calibur and increasing the prestige, satisfying the other undertakers within. This also led to the subject of funerals being less taboo within Liyue.[17] Hu Tao is also a "famous" local poet as she often travels around to accumulate materials and inspiration for her poetry.[18] She describes herself as an "alley school dark poet" and is proficient in writing doggerel with her works being so recognizable that children tend to recite them.[17]
After the update of version 1.3 of "Genshin Impact", players can obtain Hu Tao through Wishes within the game.[3] Unlike other five-star characters, Hu Tao can only be obtained via specific banners that are running throughout the update.[19] She was intended as being primarily within offensive usage with good damage output. What differentiated Hu Tao from other offense-based characters was her trait to consume health points to convert attack damage into Pyro elemental attacks and increase the overall damage. Her Elemental Burst consists of a ranged attack with the additional perk of partially restoring her own health if it hits a target. When her health is less than or equal to around half, the damage and healing amount caused by her Elemental Burst can be increased.[20]
Hu Tao grew to become a popular character among players due to her character's backstory and gameplay with fans of the character creating many fan-works because of this.[16] Her character trailer video exceeded one million views in less than seven hours after being released on YouTube.[21] In a Reddit survey conducted in January 2022, Hu Tao ranked as the popular character among male players.[22] On the day of the character's launch on March 2021, Genshin Impact topped the iOS best-selling list in seven regions and ranked in the top ten on the best-selling list in 41 regions.[23] In November of the same year, Hu Tao appeared for the second time in her own banner, attracting a large number of players to the game again, causing MiHoYo's largest server "Sky Island" to have a server implosion. Due to this being the second time where many had logged on simultaneously since the public beta, a queue system was set up to handle the surge of players.[24] On that day, "Genshin Impact" topped the iOS game best-selling list in 31 regions, and it was the first time that Genshin Impact topped the charts simultaneously in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United States, Japan, and South Korea.[25] On May 23, 2022, Hu Tao would appear in a card collection as part of a collaboration with Bandai.[26] Later on August 9, 2022, Chinese electronics manufacturer OnePlus announced a limited edition variant of the OnePlus Ace Pro featuring the character.[27] In addition, a popular fan-made preset outfit based on the character would be implemented in the action role-playing game Tower of Fantasy.[28][29]
Sisi Jiang of Kotaku believes that Hu Tao is the strongest character in "Genshin Impact". He argues this based on how she utilizes a high-risk, high-reward gameplay to achieve extremely high damage output, which could lead to producing the highest damage output before Version 2.2 of the game.[30] GameDaily believes that the production team paid attention-to-detail when introducing the characters such as her constellations were in relation to her poetry and to her profession within the Funeral Parlor.[31] In response to players' high expectations for the character, the production team postponed Hu Tao's trailer until after the traditional Lantern Festival to avoid potential negative impact of the character's announcement during the festival with the character being released a few days later. March 2 also corresponded to the Tung Shing, which contained terminology such as sacrifice, enshrinement, and funerals which some perceived as a deliberate decision.[32] In an anaylsis regarding the character's high popularity, Game Grape editor Jiulian Baodeng stated that the character's popularity came primarily from her setting and role within the story. He noted on how the character appeals to the values and actions that younger demographics yearn for.[16] In addition, the launch of Hu Tao has brought considerable economic benefits to miHoYo. According to Sensor Tower statistics App Store and Google Play player payment records, on the day that Hu Tao’s banner was launched, it brought in a revenue of 12.9 million USD to MiHoYo.[33] A similar study was conducted where it was reported that within the first day, her release would bring in around 100 billion yen.[34]