Go here for HoloFunk's main YMMV page.
- Angst Aversion: A chief criticism of 5.0.0 was how fans were not happy with the Crapsaccharine World setting and how determined it is to put Aloe and her friends through the wringer, making it unclear if the story really is about moving forward as advertised. Even for those normally accustomed to darker works, there's an added layer of discomfort in the consideration that a lot of Aloe's backstory was rife with Reality Subtext to varying degrees of subtlety.
- Breather Level: Week 3 is generally considered the easiest of the mod’s weeks if you're playing as Aloe due to its slower pace and simpler charting thanks to it being a full cover of Pico’s week. The only form of Difficulty Spike would be if you're playing as Fubuki, where after "Poi", you need to play Vs. Camellia’s version of "Lioness Pride".
- Broken Aesop: The intent of the story is supposed to be about moving forward from the shock of Aloe's graduation. However, most of the narrative ends up taking place in the past (both in terms of in-universe time and in the real world, even accounting for Comic-Book Time), complete with a chapter of The Dragon's Pizzeria containing a Cold Open also set in the past where Kenji beats up a version of Pico that had been villified into (among other things) representing antis. And while it was stated Delutaya was part of the story's endgame, her coexistence with Aloe is oxymoronic at best relative to the idea of escaping the past. In stark contrast, the current in-game story refuses to bring up Aloe's past at all, sidestepping this issue entirely.
- The Chris Carter Effect: The dissolution of the 5.0 lore is partially attributed to its Kudzu Plot rapidly branching out and straying away from hololive lore with inadequate resolution time and reconciliation with the game itself.
- Don't Shoot the Message:
- Although meant to pay tribute to Aloe, it does so by replaying a lot of the real Aloe's traumas and giving an unhealthy amount of focus on her graduation, which was quickly pointed out by some and derided as exploitation rather than tribute.
- More generally, while the game in this state was appreciated as a potential Gateway Series between the two fandoms, it's largely agreed that the story direction was not the right way to involve Hololive, due to taste issues involving its subject matter.
- Fan-Disliked Explanation: 6.0.0's rewrites were initially Hand Waved as Narumi and Kiryu Kazuma successfully healing Aloe's traumas. The former was eventually marked as The Scrappy for various reasons, while Kiryu presents taste problems due to his home franchise's own propensity for Mood Whiplash and being a wholly fictional character compared to Aloe, whose portrayal in 5.0.0 draws heavily from her Real Life experiences. As a result, said explanation has been derided as utterly ridiculous if not outright selfish rather than the heartwarmer it was meant to be.
- Franchise Original Sin: While a major pain point of the old story as finalized in 5.0.0 is the case to be made that it repeatedly dredges up real old wounds, a deleted development video mentions the original plan for starting the plot was to kill Aloe outright; this can be taken to mirror the life-threatening situation the real Aloe was in during the original controversy. However, the lack of detail made this too fuzzy to call until 5.0.0 fleshed a lot of the story out, making other, similar missteps more concrete and easier to spot.
- Fridge Brilliance: Why doesn't Daddy Dearest know his own daughter Towa is working for the group he's tried to dismantle at least once despite how ridiculously high-profile it is? Because with an act like that, there's no way that's a demon in Generation 4's roster.
- Fridge Horror: If Heaven scoffs at the idea of aliens infiltrating society to the point where they deny it as a possibility when investigating an incident caused by just that with witnesses, that place must be one hell of a Closed Circle (no pun intended) no thanks to a faulty government considering both Nene and Iofi exist. Granted, they're both Human Aliens with no known "true form" unlike Cass, but still.
- Fridge Sadness: In the 5.0 lore, Aloe has short hair in a concept sketch of a family photo that appears to have been taken just before things before went to hell; her brother's hair is longer, but is tied up to give the impression that it's only as short as hers. This implies, together with another sketch showing that Aloe's brother later untied his hair post-betrayal, as his unmasked concept sketches show, that her long hair in the present is at least partially because it's unkempt from Mamoru's death causing their home lives to become completely dysfunctional and eventually non-existent.
- Genius Bonus: In the lore, Towa dyed her hair bleached blond prior to leaving the family and before getting her official purple coloration later on. In Japanese culture, dying your hair, much less bleaching it blonde, is considered frown upon in Japanese schools of old, to the point of harsh mandates preventing the act of hair dying. As the hair color typically means a sign of rarity and superiority, it's a trend amongst Japanese Delinquents to signal their act of defiance towards their superiors. In this case, Towa bleaching her hair blond is her protesting against Mr. Kurayami.
- Harsher in Hindsight: A major background plot point in 5.0.0 is Towa undergoing Adaptation Species Change into a half-angel, recontextualizing the Running Gag of her reaction to being called an angel/"TMT" as a massive insecurity that also happens to be caused by and inherited from her Archnemesis Dad, Daddy Dearest. The real Towa has since confirmed that she is similarly fed up with the nickname as well
due to overuse and the pigeonholing connotations that come with that. - Heartwarming Moments:
- Even though no one in the setting really gains much for the longest time, there's a number of indications that Kenji and Aloe's friendship occurs because they're trapped in a common situation that required them to unabashedly be themselves. Everything else about the story aside, that's the kind of friendship that creates worthy successors to dangerous legacies.
- Kiryu Coco's week serves as a tribute to the real deal — whose graduation happened close to the release of the week's update — being a Homage to her favorite game series, complete with cover songs such as "Friday Night," "24-Hour Cinderella," and "Hands"; the last in particular paralleling with its use as a send off to Kiryu Kazuma in its home game, now to Kiryu Coco in this mod. Finally, there's the message from the dev team upon completing the week in 5.0 onward:
Week 4 was one of the weeks that meant the most to us to have worked on. We hoped to have shown our love and respect for Coco, and showed just how much her legacy means to all of us! Thank you Kiryu Coco, from the bottom of our hearts, for all the memories.-The HoloFunk Dev Team - Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Though Kenji is no longer canon, "blue-haired teenage Ambiguously Human Manotomo" also describes Blantad, who cameos in Week 5 and is the Author Avatar of Fandom VIP (later Promoted Fanboy) Blantados.
- Pico's portrayal is clearly a riff on his Friday Night Funkin' Soft counterpart, and a big part of what made him leave Kenji was how much he hated Aloe's guts to the point of Fantastic Racism. The Plus update for Doki Doki Takeover!, which features Soft Pico and Aloe as character skins, allows for the complete opposite situation to happen: a played-straight Soft Pico can cooperate with a version of Aloe who does not experience the events of 5.0.0.
- Memetic Mutation: Week3dad.pngexplanation
- Narm: Although it makes sense diegetically, Aloe's reveal of her backstory to Botan in Week 3 has often been derided as a poor attempt at producing a sense of drama. While meant to get the player introduced to the Darker and Edgier background lore, its odd pacing and the sheer amount of content outside the game needed to follow up caused it to end up falling flat.
- Overshadowed by Controversy: It is very difficult to discuss the old story without addressing the elephant in the room of its numerous issues, including but not limited to Arc Fatigue, uncomfortable levels of Reality Subtext, and the question of whether or not the works involved were conducive to its themes.
- Protection from Editors: Based on the tags for The Dragon's Pizzeria, a large chunk of the old story was not properly ran through an editor. As fate would have it, the smaller amount that was turned out to have better reception than the rest.
- Realism-Induced Horror: A big part of why the 5.0.0 setting is a Crapsaccharine World — even though a lot of stuff from hololive "lore" is played straight, the real threats ultimately end up being mundane weaponry, crimes, corruption, and poverty.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: For all its faults, it's generally agreed that 5.0.0's lore held a very promising storyline of a Stealth Sequel Massive Multiplayer Crossover and Boyfriend & Girlfriend becoming jaded veterans from their experiences who have to trade their protagonist roles to new heroes in exchange for finally being able to let go and be free of the Dearests. Unfortunately, between being fundamentally at odds with the mod's vision as a Hololive-centric game and being stuck behind an A-plot few were willing to stomach, any semblance of an interesting plot was forced to drag its feet until being Cut Short.
- Trapped by Mountain Lions: While FNF and Hololive have both brought together audiences accustomed to complicated lore and Weird Crossovers, the 5.0.0 plot ended up attracting criticism for how little its use of such a story actually pays off immediately in the actual game despite the amount of time devoted to fleshing it out and planning to address it in-game later — thereby diminishing the level of care from the audience to disproportionately-low levels.
- Uncertain Audience: Of the clashing Genre Mashup variety, with the background lore and its treatment of Aloe (rooted more in non-Hololive audiences) coming at odds with the main Hololive-oriented content through Angst Aversion and certain missteps in the lore's writing direction.
- The Woobie: Mano Aloe. Even discounting the rough career of the real deal, this mod's portrayal qualifies because of her whole backstory. Being born in the middle of a feud between two Yakuza clans, the Mano Kai and the Dearest Mob, she would go through various trials and tribulations such as losing her father, brother, and adoptive father to the opposing yakuza clan in one fashion or another; ditching her own clan in an attempt to get away from a Succession Crisis and live a mostly normal life with many anxiety-inducing consequences along the way; and putting everything important to her aside (her career, interests and relationships, including with the HoloFive group) for the sake of not losing anything else to her circumstances. Simply put, Aloe has had it rough.
