Honkai Star Rail offers a huge cast of larger than life characters with lovable personalities, one character in particular takes the cake as being the most popular, Kafka, even before her release. But what makes this specific character so compelling for so many people?
Kafka is a member of the Stellaron Hunters, a shadow organisation who collect Stellarons, a mysterious object spreading across the universe like a cancerous growth. Star Rail player’s first introduction to Kafka is as early as the opening cut-scene of the game, with her dramatically playing an imaginary violin to the tune of Canon in D while the Herta Space Station gets invaded by space aliens. Talk about a first impression.
Throughout the story of the game, we come across the Stellaron Hunter time and time again as being portrayed as one of the antagonists in the game. Whenever she appears on screen, it always feels like such a treat seeing her showing up in the most dramatic way possible.
It also helps a lot that both her Japanese and English voices has their own charm to them. Ito Shizuka, and Cheryl Texiera respectively did a fantastic job at making Kafka as this beautiful yet mysterious Femme fatale archetype. I think I can speak for everyone where the one scene that really stood out was the interrogation scene at the Xianzhou Luofu where the players gets to talk with her in person for the first time.
With her equally visually pleasing design and personality, Kafka has gained countless of amazing fan art across multiple platforms, even getting over three thousand works on Pixiv alone; (the highest amount compared to other Honkai Star Rail characters) and spawning various communities dedicated to the Stellaron Hunter, such as the Daily Kafka Twitter account and Kafka Mains subreddit with well over thousands of users.
One of the most persistent consensus within the community is how they revere Kafka as a maternal figure, mainly because how Kafka “gave life” to the Trailblazer by inserting a Stellaron in them. It became such a big meme that even the official English voice actors brought it up in the latest version update livestream.
Needless to say, fans are eagerly waiting to when Kafka comes to Honkai Star Rail as a playable character in version 1.2.