Pre-release data. All data is from the closed beta and leaks. It is incomplete and will change before and after launch.

Anima Codex
Wiki

Connections with other Honkai games

Nexus Anima is billed as the fifth game in HoYoverse's Honkai franchise, and it borrows faces from the others. Here's what's genuinely linked — and what's just fan theory. The game isn't out yet, so treat everything as provisional, and note where things are confirmed vs rumoured.

The franchise so far

  • Honkai Gakuen / Guns GirlZ — the original. A 2D shooter where a cataclysm called the "Honkai" erupts and Valkyries fight back. It established the franchise's core idea: the Honkai force.
  • Honkai Impact 3rd — an action RPG on an alternate Earth menaced by the Honkai, a cyclical apocalypse that anoints god-like champions ("Herrschers"). Centres on Kiana Kaslana, against the schemes of Otto Apocalypse.
  • Honkai: Star Rail — a turn-based space RPG. The amnesiac Trailblazer rides the Astral Express, resolving disasters tied to "Stellarons", in a multiverse run by godlike "Aeons". HoYoverse says it's not a direct sequel to Honkai Impact 3rd — a sibling in a shared multiverse.

Characters borrowed from other games

  • Kiana — from Honkai Impact 3rd, where she's the central heroine. Confirmed playable here, reimagined as a world-hopping "Planestrider."
  • Blade — from Honkai: Star Rail, a cursed berserker. Confirmed playable, reframed in this game's lore as the 22nd Novarch, "ruler of The Peak."
  • Otto — shares a name with Otto Apocalypse (Honkai Impact 3rd's long-running villain), but here he's given a brand-new backstory (a young researcher). Whether he is that Otto is unconfirmed — treat it as a reimagining, not a fact.
  • Kafka — from Honkai: Star Rail. Lore-only so far: named as the missing "11th Sovereign" that Blade is searching for. A claim that she becomes playable later is a leak, not confirmed.
  • Argenti — from Honkai: Star Rail. Reported as a beta NPC cameo (a challenge battle); playable status unconfirmed.

What's actually shared

The one clean, same-meaning thread is the Honkai catastrophe itself — this game's Sundering is a Honkai-type cataclysm, exactly the franchise's signature idea.

Almost everything else runs on this game's own cosmology — the Nexus, Aspects, Anima, Sovereigns, Novarchs, and 81 Planes. A few words are "false friends":

  • Sovereign here means a ruler of paired Aspects — not the organizational title it has in Honkai Impact 3rd. Same word, different meaning.
  • Franchise terms like Herrscher, the Sea of Quanta, and Star Rail's Aeons / Imaginary Tree do not appear. The "81 Planes" are parallel universes in spirit, but under their own name.

Is it the same universe?

Officially: unstated. HoYoverse has confirmed only that Nexus Anima is a new Honkai title that reuses characters, with its own self-contained story. It has not said the game shares a timeline with Honkai Impact 3rd or Star Rail.

The safest reading from current material: a standalone Honkai world that recasts familiar characters as new-world variants — the same "variant character" technique HoYoverse uses across its games. The popular idea that Nexus Anima ties all the games into one multiverse is fan theory, not a confirmed fact.

We'll revisit this after the July beta and at launch, since betas reshuffle rosters and lore.