>>49869845
I like Kokoro-chan and Koishi.

It's not a serious holy war. Basically, big players start noticing that the villagers are getting apathetic and aimless. They instead tried to fix it and at the same time gather faith through an overblown popularity contest. It's a religious popularity war framed as a faith battle spell card brawl.

Kokoro dropped her Hope mask by mistake pre-plot, which destabilized her. The 'hopelessness' pandemic was Kokoro absorbing hope from the village itself to replace her own lost emotion.

Koishi picked up the old Hope mask and kept it. Her possession of the mask inadvertently makes her a beacon of hope, drawing the attention of the villagers. This is actually a turning point for Koishi's lore because she felt real emotion because of the mask.

Ultimately, the various storylines converged on Kokoro. It's a journey of self-discovery of some sort. Kokoro eventually came to a realization: she could develop her own emotions, independent of her masks. This understanding allows her to stabilize her emotional state, even without the original Mask of Hope.

She was eventually sent to the Myouren Temple. To gain control over her emotions, Kokoro undertook training there. This was crucial because a new Mask of Hope, created for her by Toyosatomimi no Miko, had the potential to erase her individuality and revert her to a collection of inanimate objects if she couldn't manage her feelings. Canonically, if I remember correctly, Kokoro eventually gave Miko back the new Mask of Hope because of the reason before.

You now remember that HM was over 8 years ago.