All aboard, and Welcome to the Wondrous Weird Knife Wednesday Weaboo Wagon.

I am fully aware it's Thursday in most time zones. Never mind that. Get a load of this thing.

For anyone in your life with a custom body pillowcase, a hatchback covered with ahegao stickers, and an imposing DVD collection, here's the perfect accessory.

This is the "New Animation Game Genshin Impact Butterfly Knife Toy Unsharped Metal Weapon Wolf's Last Road Stick Cyno Weapon Model Gift," which I received for a whole 99 US cents from Aliexpress as an "introductory offer" item. Yeah, it's one of those kinds of things. I am positive that even though I knew exactly what I was getting into when I ordered it I still got ripped off. But the grist mill of Content hungers evermore; I've got to feed something into the damn thing or else I won't have anything to write about. And hey, it was still only a buck.

This is... Look, we have to down a whole damn rabbit hole for me to explain it to you. Obviously the moniker tipped you off that this is ostensibly a piece of cynical tie-in merchandise for the exasperatingly popular video game, Genshin Impact. There were a whole range of these things apparently replicating a variety of "signature weapons" from the game, but for some inexplicable reason they're all balisong shaped which is of course right in my tree. But also hard to make much heads or tails of, since they're all described with inscrutable titles in transliterated Chinese.

I picked the absolute silliest looking one of the bunch, which is named "Tian Kon."

The fact that its frilly and overwrought decorative trappings also have a distinctly Zelda-eque vibe probably also contributed.

I have to admit I don't know a whole heck of a lot about Genshin nor do I really care to, although that's not to say I have no experience. I did try it out very briefly back in its early days, when the consensus about it on the internet was still in its initial phase of howling about how it was superficially a Breath of the Wild ripoff, just to see what all the hubbub was about. I concluded that while it had a veneer of this, it was overlaid on a bedrock core of Gacha Waifu Slot Machine Harem Simulator For Whales, a genre in which I have no interest.

I slept on this writeup for a few weeks longer than I should have, as well, since this specific product and all of the others in its range have vanished from the face of the Internet entirely in the meantime. It's useless for me to link you to the item anymore even if you did want one of these yourself for whatever reason. It's just gone, although the Chinese knockoff sphere is still absolutely packed to the gills with junk in a broadly similar vein. The top search result if I try to look for what I've got verbatim is now this, which I'm pretty sure is made in the same factory that used to be making the thing I've got. (In case interested future historians click on this eight, maybe nine minutes into the future when this page has likewise inevitably disappeared, I also saved a screenshot.) This contains such hits as "Fo Nu Huo Lang," and "Mo Dao Zhu Shi," and "Qi Sha." You see what I mean.

I think my "Tian Kon" is supposed to be a hack representation of Genshin's Skyward Pride. (Not the Skyward Blade, which was my initial thought based on the translation.) "Tian Kon" is likely actually a bastardization of "Tiānkōng", which is broadly speaking "sky." No points for guessing (or looking it up on the wiki) that the Skyward Pride's Chinese name is Tiānkōng zhī Ào. (And the Blade, Tiānkōng zhī Rèn.)

Case closed. That was entirely more research into this 99 cent piece of junk than should be undertaken by anyone, and now if you'll excuse me I think I'm going to go wash my hands.

One thing I sure didn't expect was for this to show up on a full color hang card. I was predicting the usual nondescript plastic baggie in a bubble mailer with a smudged and barely legible sticker on it printed in Chinese. If you found this hanging on a peg in FYE or Hot Topic it'd probably run you twenty bucks.

Let it not be said that I've completely slandered Genshin Impact by calling it a mere Waifu simulator. To its credit, it contains a couple of token himbos as well. The bloke depicted here is Diluc, a fire elemental guy who you can obtain fairly early on. He has absolutely nothing to do with the Skyward Pride, so it beats me why he's on the packaging. Maybe he's on the packaging for all of these. Maybe he's not, and it's random. I'll probably never know.

In case anyone cares, the back of the card is thus. I am particularly fond of "wyth," and "under 12 vrars old." Not that I'm any better at Chinese, mind you. I butcher their language, they butcher mine. We're even Steven.

The Chinese on the rear at least reveals that this is (allegedly) manufactured by Jinjiang Animation Hardware Factory, of Fujian Province. So now we know who to blame.

Because this is crap.

No, I did not put 99 cents down on this with high expectations. But as usual for Chinese knockoff goods, much effort has been spent meticulously touching up the photos of the product in its online listing to make it look more attractive than it actually is, and very little on the actual manufacture of the thing itself.

Obviously this isn't a "real" knife in that it's not sharp. But calling it a balisong trainer is really a bit of a stretch. It's entirely made of cast zinc, sans the screws, at least if the packaging is to be believed. That seems plausible to me since zinc (or its myriad alloys) is cheap and braindead simple to cast in a die. A magnet doesn't stick to any of it, it's clearly not aluminum, nor dense enough to be lead.

The finish is airbrushed on.

And, it must be said, not very well. The base color is some kind of metal flake enamel in a color that is precisely that of the Oldsmobile Allero your great aunt bought in 2002. The blue details are sprayed overtop presumably with the aid of some kind of mask, but as you can see on the blade especially the factory, er... missed.

It's also all a façade anyway because it's only finished and fully detailed on one side. The reverse side of the handles are flat with none of the bass relief and no spraypaint job. Here you can see the commodity Phillips (or possibly knockoff JIS) screws holding it together. Don't cry that you've been misled -- You got exactly what was offered, since the product photos religiously depict the knife from only one side. Remember: 能骗就骗.

Mine also showed up slightly bent. It was worse right out of the package, to the extent that the inner face of one of the handles would rub on the blade. I suspect it got crushed in transit somehow, and since it's only made of potmetal in any case it's not especially rigid. No big deal, though. I just took it apart and bent it back before I took my pictures.

The blade has a hole in it and also a split, running all the way down to its tip, which puts one in mind of a fountain pen nib. This makes it look cool, though once again it's probably a good thing that this can't hold an edge. You could try dipping it in ink and writing with it, but I'll bet you that wouldn't work too well, either.

It's not tough to take apart, which is especially beneficial if you find yourself having to smash any of its parts back into being flat. Just to throw a pure hypothetical out there.

The "blade" itself is quite a detailed casting, and it is so on both sides unlike the handles. I have no doubt that the majority of the pennies that were spent on producing this were spent here. What I don't have any idea of is what the runes down the fuller are supposed to mean. Initially I thought they may have been an outright fabrication, or possibly lifted (or mutated) from some other script, but apparently they do indeed appear on the original digital blade if you peer closely enough. So there's dedication to detail. If you're the type of turbo-nerd who can read Genshin runes, do let us know.

As part of its no doubt ruthlessly cost-cut industrial design, the Tian Kon's pivots are cast into the back sides of the handles. There are no female screws at all, just these escutcheons which have a hole drilled and tapped into them. On the bright side that means there are no screw heads on the decorative side of the knife.

Conversely, though, this means that the pivot clearances are hilariously awful. There's probably a full millimeter of rattle in the pivots, and they are by necessity tapered. Otherwise the part wouldn't come out of its mould, but that probably doesn't help matters from a precision standpoint.

So don't expect any. The Wiggle Test with the handles in the closed position reveals the Tian Kon's continued proud tradition of cheating, looking better than it is at first blush only because the raised portions of the blade hit the inner surfaces of the handles down around the pivot area where it's tough to see and prevent the handles from wiggling further.

With the handles in the open position you can see just how dire matters really are. The Tian Kon wins the coveted Ching Chow award, being one of two (2) balisongs I now own that are so awful that you can cause the latch to miss the opposite handle entirely. It's fabulously awful.

In spite of all expectations, the Tian Kon is actually functional. For suitably small values of "functional," anyway. The pivots work, and you can swing the handles and blade around.

But because all of the contact surfaces are zinc-on-zinc, it squeaks incessantly while in operation. Because of this it is in at least one sense also now the loudest balisong I own. I'm not sure that's a compliment, exactly, but it is damned hilarious. It's also guaranteed to annoy the hell out of anyone else in the room with you.

The Inevitable Conclusion

This is still probably cheaper in a real world sense than a round of gacha pulls and at the end of the day, probably leaves you holding exactly as much value.

That's got to count for something, but I'll be damned if I know what.