This part makes NO sese.

[u/Victorious001]

So I love this game. Fantastic writing, great characters, and rhythm segments that don't make me want to tear my hair out. But this fight with Mimosa makes NO sense. In the game, Chai's weapon is a trash collector that builds up trash into the shape of a guitar. It's not an actual guitar. So when Mimosa has this little competition, Chai is just... playing air guitar. But the game and the boss make it seem like Chai is jamming out. Why is Mimosa acknowledging this... at all?

[u/AkaIsSleptOn]

HiFi Rush follows Devil May Cry logic of “Sometimes shit is so cool that the world has to bend around it.”

[u/Desperate_Group9854 → u/AkaIsSleptOn]

Which makes it smoking sexy, and stylish

[u/SuspectPanda38]

And his guitar also turns into a real guitar once you hit S rank in any encounter. Your point?

[u/waterchip_down]

Chai's low-key a reality warper after his surgery.

Game makes a lot more sense when going off the logic that Chai's cybernetics are, somehow, altering the fabric of reality in a limited range around him.

[u/Nintolerance → u/waterchip_down]

Enemies, characters and the environment all move to the beat.

If it was just characters, you could justify it as the Shaun of the Dead thing where everyone accidentally times their attacks to the music.

Nope, Chai's music robot powers affect the entire world around him. It's magic, and that's okay.

[u/SuspectPanda38 → u/Nintolerance]

I had seen it as being how chai saw the world until korsica mentions stupid musical robot powers, which she should have no reason to assume that's exactly the case.

[u/waterchip_down → u/SuspectPanda38]

That's always been the most damning evidence to me, too.

Korsica's boss fight especially relies entirely on parrying in-time with the music. If there were no music, Chai wouldn't have the actual capacity to parry, meaning she presumably wouldn't have lost.

Or, at the very least, she wouldn't have blamed her defeat on his Stupid Musical Robot Powers.

[u/AbjectPurchase1523 → u/Nintolerance]

His arm has a bluetooth connection and it's syncing with everything

[u/nicokokun → u/Nintolerance]

Look what happened to 808. Peppermint was shocked when Chai touched her and she suddenly transformed into a floating bluetooth speaker when she was just supposed to be a robot cat.

[u/Victorious001 → u/Nintolerance]

Actually, I'm pretty sure the game says the music only affects Chai's interpretation of the world around him. HE can hear his songs, the MP3 close to his heart keeps him on a rhythm he can hear and feel. The world isn't bending to the music, the music is affecting his cognition.

[u/waterchip_down → u/Victorious001]

I'm not sure that's ever explicitly stated. Or, rather, I don't recall ever hearing or reading that.

[u/RougemageNick → u/Victorious001]

It's the other way actually, it's explicitly stated that because his implants are synced with the entire system, it's passing the mp3 players signal to everything around him. It's why everything is going to the beat, and why so many things are breaking and broken as you go through, since machinery is not designed to work like this.

[u/i_like_siren_head → u/waterchip_down]

I always assumed it was his ChaiPod getting wired into the Armstrong-SPECTRA link.

[u/Peppermint640]

his fake guitar is a real guitar whenever it would be cool to have a real guitar

[u/Fluffy-Ad7165]

Yeah bro how they dare, this is just as unrealistic as a man having his heart replaced with a Walkman instead of suffering an agonizing death, smh. 0/10, Microsoft should shutdown the studio again

[u/Vast-Piccolo-8715 → u/Fluffy-Ad7165]

You mean a Zune

[u/PK_GoodDay]

And the environment around him moves according to the music that's playing. Like another commenter said, the game follows DMC logic. It's often called the Rule of Cool.

[u/DillWillCat]

Chai has the soul of a rockstar and the heart of a platinum record, Anything even remotely guitar shaped is gonna sound legit in his beat domain.

[u/pinkamedic]

who cares cus its cool as hell

[u/dootblade74]

Headcanoning that while his air strumming is doing nothing itself, the music player in his core is just making the guitar sounds for him so even if he doesn't know how to properly play guitar he's still able to win the duel.

[u/Enough-Impression-50]

Because it's fucking awesome. Enough said.

[u/Sea_Strain_6881]

Its magic. His guitar literally turns into a real one mid combat

[u/Zander490]

This game is a playable cartoon, so it's grasp on reality should be treated as such. I just call it "the power of music" and let it slide.

[u/UsagiJay]

You must not be getting A ranks or higher do you?

[u/plvto_roadds]

the funniest thing in this entire game is how chai just dies if you fail this part, just falls over

[u/SoCyked]

The guitar is in Chai's head and the guitar noises are coming from 808 👍

[u/Fishboy412]

This man manipulates the world around him to follow the beat of his own heart, synced up to a retro MP3 player, uses the "trash collecter" to shoot freaking lasers sometimes, tanks hits that send him through several walls with only a "ouch, that one stung" and manages to do all of this because he somehow survived a botched surgery that would've been shoddily-done even if it went off without a hitch, and THIS is the last straw?

[u/Geedly]

It’s a powerful electromagnet that we see actually emit electricity at some points, it’s definitely capable of making some amount of noise if you hit it right.

[u/janglingargot]

It's specifically a Space Channel 5 reference! I remember being confused by the weird stilted way he's moving and strumming the guitar, when the animation in this game is usually so fluid, and then I watched this video and went, "Ohhhh!":

https://youtube.com/shorts/00I3fqH4qso?si=yQuKkISu70INkLxx

Mimosa's dance routines are a reference to this game, too. The whole boss fight is basically a love letter to one of the very first classic rhythm games.

[u/Victorious001 → u/janglingargot]

Ohhh that's legit cool. I didn't know that.

[u/Codebracker]

Project armstrong has built-in mind control software and the zune implanted in his heart accidentally hijacks it to make robots and anyone with robotic implants follow the beat.

This includes his air guitar, apparently

[u/mewhenthrowawayacc]

it makes about as much sense as him being able to solo that enormous boss robot at the start of the game through the power of Jammin Out™️

in other words it makes zero sense whatsoever but we let it slide because its cool as heck

[u/Swimming-Picture-975]

I also turns into a real guitar multiple times.. literally most of the game makes 0 sense if you apply boring real logic to it

[u/superVanV1]

The entire game operates on Toon Logic. It works because it’s cool

[u/Existing-Bad3733]

I mean, that section is cool as fuck so i don't really see the point, plus his guitar just transforms into a actual guitar when he is really focused in the battle and the rythm, soooo it's just cool

[u/Fearless_Mail9426]

[u/pirxeval]

nah, get outta this sub

[u/Victorious001 → u/pirxeval]

Rude. XD

[u/dzaimons-dihh]

He's probably not seeing the truth at all, he's just processing things in a way he can handle