The New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium!

Votes for Komachi, Eiki or Marisa.

The Big Bad of Touhou, the Unnamed Giant Catfish.

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HONG MEI LING

Marisa or Komachi would be cool as well.

Time keeps dragging on.

Ferryman of the River Styx Komachi Onozuka

Appearance:
Voice: Judging

Theme:
Higan Retour ~ Riverside View*

, Higan Retour ~ Riverside View (SWR)

Spellcard Motif: Coins (the ferry's fare), Ghost Lights (SWR only)
Notable spellcards: PoFV, StB, SWR, Hisoutensoku
"Tip of Death", Death "Higan Retour", Death Song "Ferriage in the Deep Fog", Death Sign "Scythe that Chooses the Dead"

Write-up:
Death is the ultimate relaxation. In the cycle of life, the middleman is someone who inhabits neither in the world of the living, nor the world of the dead, and lives in her own concept of time as well.

Komachi is a ferryman who ferries the souls of the dead across the Sanzu river, to the land of the dead, where they shall be judged. While she is one of the most productive of the ferryman shinigami, she is also the laziest. She will often slack off from her work, and even when so many dead souls were amassed that the workload became too much to handle, she refused to go at anything but her own pace. Thus happened Phantasmagoria of Flower View, the only incident caused by negligence.

Laid-back, talkative, humorous. With her carefree and good-natured personality, Komachi is a fun character who is basically a pre-built comedy duo with her superior Shikieiki, the straight-laced judge of the dead. The two are inseparable in fanworks, which delight in pairing up the two in comedy or romance alike. It's probably the "imposing" Komachi's fault that Shikieiki is generally considered a shorty – despite canon disagreeing – just to further underline the contrast between the two.

In a world where straight-laced servants are bossed around by capricious masters, there is one odd couple that turns the tables. But the world of an otherworldly gondolier is not all fun and games, and the scythe is not just for show. After having taught a lesson in respecting the dead to Tenshi, Komachi has recently come to the surface again, and her purpose this time around seems to be a similar one...

The scythe of death strikes true and without mercy. The rest is peace.

Relations:

• Shikieiki (master and servant, stuck-up and laid back)
• Tenshi (had to face netherworldly wrath for her sins)
• Kasen (might eventually suffer the same fate...)
• Reimu (fellow perpetrator of sloth)

Alternate Character Interpretations:
"Price of Life"
-by Clarste

The gondolier of the troubled water sings an ode to life
-by Fawriel

Working hard or hardly working?
-by Bocaj

But Fear Itself
-by Horselesshorseman

Her Own Pace
-by Hylarn

Komachi ~ Life Is Suffering, Death Is...
-by Raz Fox

Komachi: Death's Craftsman
-by WORLD Tree

edited 8th Oct '11 4:04:56 PM by Fawriel

Komachi's a perfect example of what happens when the afterlife's support staff stop working. You don't have to be a major power to screw things up on a metaphysical scale, and it's doubtful she even learned her lesson after PoFV. Probably doesn't even get paid for all this.

Her position as ferryman is an interesting one: although she transports souls to the afterlife, she does not personally reap her clients (then again, some of her SWR dialogue would imply that she wishes she had that power). She's just the one that takes them from this world to the next, and may even sympathize with the souls she has to transport. She can presumably manipulate the distance of the Sanzu river, but this distance depends at least partially on the soul being transported. Who knows, perhaps boredom is not the only reason why she likes having conversations with the souls.

One of the most inconsistent aspects in fan portrayals that I've seen is her relation with Shikieiki, which ranges from Komachi being her heavily-abused minion to Komachi practically being her personal henchman/friend. Depends on whether the yama's having a bad day, I guess.

edited 19th Dec '10 12:13:18 PM by Fluid

Komachi ~ Life Is Suffering, Death Is...

Don't pay the ferryman unless you want to see the other side. After all, she can make it as long and boring a trip as she wants to, and she can probably sleep standing up.

Komachi Onozuka doesn't have to worry about getting fired, or having to work to eat, or about anything except the Yama getting angry at her (and what's the chance that she'll get riled up over a little nap or two, right?), so she is relatively free to be herself when it comes to getting the job done. After all, there are two ways to get any job done: the fast way and the fun way, and if you choose the fast one you'll miss out on a lot.

That's not to say that she's a lazy, useless bum, however. Quite the opposite. Rile her up - go on, I dare you. I dare you. She is, after all, a shinigami (not to be confused with a shikigami, as interesting as that would make her connection to the Yama), and that scythe isn't for show. She is possibly even more dangerous than her mistress, if sufficiently riled up. Now that would be a sight to behold.

Much like post-Inaba^2 Kaguya, Komachi is fully aware that she's functionally immortal. Though even death may one day die, that day is very far off, and so she endures. After all, one can't just keep going full-throttle for a hundred thousand years, can you? She laughs and gently pokes fun and sleeps when she can just because she can - it is her way of surviving immortal life. Or, rather, immortal death. That's why she gets to know every single one of her passengers, so that they don't blur together into an endless montage of sailing back and forth across the river with a never-ending stream of lost souls.

I don't think she even cares what you did in life, unlike her boss. (I think Usually Dead wrote about this, and it stuck.) Hey, you're dead. Life's over, and it's time to see what you got. Don't rock the boat, and don't even think about nicking the fares, and you'll get to the other side just fine. It isn't her job to judge you, after all.

Life is suffering, so why should death be suffering as well? Komachi Onozuka will do her best to ease you on your way, as long as she's not tired. Then you'd best wait along the banks of the river until she's ready to ferry you across - but it shouldn't be too long.

Time keeps dragging on.

Still too tired (and distracted) to contribute much of worth, but two things:

1) Komachi shot to the top few characters in my book, mostly thanks to "Sabotage" and "Escape".

2) If she was real, she'd be a lot like Abby, or Ducky... or BOTH.

One telling detail is that she throws around coins for her attacks. Presumably the same kind that she collects for her fare. Could it be that money has little worth to her, that she can just toss it about and let it scatter all over the place?

But if that's the case, why would she insist on collecting fare money in the first place? "It's the principle of the thing," would be the kind of answer I'd expect.

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

Aren't they just money-themed bullets, not actually money?

I heard that the money wasn't even a material thing, that it represented how much the deceased's friends and family cared about them.

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So it's all metaphorical, huh? That works too.

(Sorry about having more questions than answers. I hope that's not a problem.)

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

Then again, you're probably not concerned with either pay or work if it's the entirety of your life to begin with, like some kind of supernatural slave labor. I once encountered a doujin (the 300 parody one) where Shikieiki relieved her of her duties and she immediately feared the worst.

I don't really have enough on Komachi for a full write-up, as I've never really played through PoFV and haven't touched SWR. That, and her character seems very simple to me, even simpler than Reimu's.

I would like to comment on Faw's inclusion of Reimu as a relation. The similarity goes beyond their mutual languid natures. Komanchi, as Raz pointed out, is functionally immortal, while Reimu's functionally unbeatable. So, they also share similar motives for laziness.

you'll then have a grave in the clouds where you won't lie too cramped

Well, finally finished my "Touhou is an escapist fantasy write-up" and changed the title of my last essay, but I feel kind of weird posting it now that we're into the Komachi conversation...

Bocaj vi Britannia politely requests you post it anyway.

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Eastern Wonderland

Gensokyo is the escapist fantasy of a teenage Hakurei Reimu, a neurotic, socially-awkward, orphan who writes the fantastical world of Gensokyo to ease the troubles of her every day life. Why is it so? Translated "Gensokyo" roughly means "Land of Fantasy" or something similar, it serves as Reimu's wonderland, her "safe place" where she is the ultimate invincible shrine maiden. "Fantasy Haven" is a spellcard that makes Reimu invincible embodying the meaning of Gensokyo itself, a fantasy that serves as a have for the teenager.

This also explains many aspects about Gensokyo itself such as the rather gratuitous use of Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie put onto each character and the continuity between each game, it’s because Reimu is a bad writer and the same goes for the art, the improvement and slow introduction of continuity later on is simply the small improvements of repetition. It also explains things like Reimu’s age, while she should be in her mid-twenties she still appears to be a teenager, because real life writes the story, Reimu remains a teenager in Gensokyo because she is one in real life, the events happen when Reimu writes them not in a chronological pattern.

Now one of the biggest complaints about theories like this is Maribel and Renko, they live in the outside world so there’s no way Reimu can know them, and she doesn’t they’re probably actors or models she’s seen in the real world hence why she puts them in the “real world” as she doesn’t know them in real life, bringing us to a previous point, continuity, she wrote about them because she needed to escape from some form of stressful event, every event or character in Touhou reflects an aspect of either Reimu or her life.

For example, a frequent examination made by people is that if you actually look at the behavior of the characters in the games a lot of them are quite bitchy and crude to each other; this is because that’s how Reimu sees them in real life, the characters are people she knows in real life and more often then not they’re portrayed negatively in her fantasies because that is her personal opinion of them, probably being classmates who have angered her in real life which serves as the basis for the games themselves and explains why some characters have more characterization then others like Koakuma compared to Patchuoli as Patchuoli probably at least interacted with Reimu in tandem with Remilia while Koakuma was probably just a girl she saw with Patchuoli at one point.

Other observations can be drawn as well, there are no men in Gensokyo because Reimu probably doesn’t talk to boys, there is an abundance of Les Yay because Reimu herself is probably a very sexually frustrated lesbian and there are no relationships because Reimu herself does not have one, things like bomb mechanics change between each game because Reimu cares more about making the world more detailed so she can distract herself easier rather then playability, no one in Gensokyo has parents because Reimu’s are dead and because she probably has never met them. And perhaps the biggest explanation comes can be drawn from the PC-98 and Windows division, the former takes place in grade school while the later is middle and high school.

During the PC-98 games Touhou is more “fantastical” and less detailed, the first game is an “Alleyway” type game, something that children would probably play, and the later games are based off simpler shumps and don’t feature the highly colorful habits of the Windows installments, here there is a higher ratio of blonde characters and various odd colors like Mima’s green hair because currently Reimu cares little for reason and the “series” itself is more like the daydreams of a child and was quite possibly recommended to be kept in a set of journals as a coping technique for her parents death. Here the conflicts are simple and boil down to “Good guy (Reimu) beats up Bad Guy” with characters like Mima and Shiki being schoolyard bullies harassing Reimu.

The reason they don’t appear later however and the dynamic change of the series is because she moves up to middle school, most of the characters like Mima move to different schools and the environment becomes more stressful, in addition her pet turtle probably died as children aren’t the most reliable caretakers explaining why Genji is no longer there. As the “series” transitions into the Windows phase Reimu begins to become more cynical and reliant on Gensokyo as shown by the slow transition from lighter moods to darker ones (Eo SD to SA) and here is where she begins to introduce more complicated concepts and analogies to the real world, all quite possibly the result of a newly developed “Eight grader’s syndrome” (ie. You believe yourself to be special and no one understands you).

For example hair color, here hair color can be given somewhat of a more consistent characterization, blue or silver hair is blonde hair, green is light brown hair, blonde hair is dark brown, red hair is red (“real” red where it looks like it’s orange not candy apple red like Komachi’s), black is just regular black, and purple is probably a medium shade of brown.

The setting probably involves higher end schools as evidenced by the higher ratio of odd hair colors which implies more liberal ideas and stronger ties to other international schools, and shows that Reimu is at least musically talented (The game’s strong music) and that Marisa probably excels in math or another subject (In canon she is stated to at least work hard to get her “abilities”). And in the Windows games it becomes more obvious the role of the “good people” and the “bad people” by looking at who’s a player character, at what time do they become a player character, what traits do they have, and how does their characterization change with each appearance.

Take Suika for example, in real life she is most probably a classmate who has a very serious alcohol problem but is friendly to Reimu, so in Gensokyo she is turned into a “funny drunk” who likes parties and is a player character in her appearances, having negative traits turned into positive ones because she’s a “good person”, a similar situation can be seen with Marisa, who initially is depicted as an enemy loyal to Mima (her friend) but is very soon turned into a player character and becomes independent of Mima in the Windows games (became Reimu’s friend soon after Mima started harassing Reimu and continued with her into later grades).

Others similar to Marisa are Aya and Sanae, both of whom are player characters that were previously enemies. Sanae embodies the principle of “changing characterization” mentioned earlier, previously she was a girl from a well off family (the Moriya Shrine) that was a “good girl” who followed the rules, however later interactions with her show that she is a heavy otaku with supremacist tendencies (If youkai are generally portrayed as bad people and the bad people are generally foreigners or people who don’t follow the traditional mindset) that she hid from people, showing them to Reimu because she takes an interest in her which shows that she trusts Reimu despite having little reason to “redeeming” her and putting her in the position of player character.

Aya is similar but more complicated; she is probably the one who runs the school newspaper and finds the fact that Reimu is an orphan interesting and is most likely constantly hounding her for stories, while this may be annoying it also means she’s taking an active interest in Reimu’s life and giving her the attention she so greatly desires, hence why she seems to flip-flop between positive and negative and given her own games where she is the only player character because Reimu has a hard time categorizing her, Cirno is similar probably being a child in her neighborhood she finds annoying but not annoying enough to make malevolent as she is probably also friends with Marisa and innocent enough to not be totally “unredeemable”.

An example of the opposite would be Remilia, who is probably in real life, a foreigner studying abroad who is probably very ambitious and well-liked, making friends very easily and earning some jealousy from Reimu, hence Eo SD, where her ambition is made into one for selfish reasons and she is put into the role of an immature child having her good traits turned into bad ones and being attached onto other “negative” traits because she doesn’t fit into Reimu’s group of friends, which, evidently is quite small if one examines the number of recurring player characters. This is a recurring theme throughout the whole Touhou universe; traits like loyalty, intelligence, dedication, and ambition are turned into negative traits while traits like alcoholism, laziness, racism, obsession, and abusive tendencies are made positive or toned down and played for comedy.

Another important thing to note is how fickle Reimu is and how that plays into the “Touhou” world, as stated above Sanae had a drastic character change because of a change in circumstance and similar things happen for other characters, mainly being Po FV and the fighting games or other “collaboration” games where you get to play as all the characters, most likely being school or local festivals where the other characters have to be at least somewhat cordial with Reimu, meaning that while they may not be fully “redeemed” like Sanae they were nice enough to her to warrant a small gameplay spot though they still act rather callous.

The most prominent example of all of this is probably Yukari, who is most likely Reimu’s guardian after her parents died and emotionally manipulating her into a relationship or something similar. Going back to Maribel and Renko, if the “real world” is representative of the world around Reimu in real life then Yukari’s heavily implied connection to the “real world” (knowledge of Nintendo products, owning a cell phone, etc.) means that the real Yukari is at least conscious of the existence of “Touhou” and Reimu’s escapist tendencies, also her power is the power to “control boundaries” and goes to near omnipotent levels implying she has at least some degree of significant control over Reimu’s life like her curfew, what she can buy, and where she can go.

In addition Yukari is frequently depicted to be teasing Reimu and is also a player character; in real life she probably is very emotionally abusive and uses it to have Reimu desire her approval more and most likely promotes her creation of “Touhou” as it isolates her and makes her easier to control. She also is at least well off, having an assistant who has an assistant (Ran and Chen) in addition to having a separate piece of real estate which Reimu has not seen (The Yakumo household is reported in canon to be hard to find). The events of the story might also correlate to events Yukari probably caused in Reimu’s life, her appearance at the end of PCB may signify the start of the actual relationship, as is each “game” represents a stressful event in Reimu’s life, and PCB is the eighth game then presumably the pressure after eight “events” was enough to push Reimu to find another way to relieve stress beyond her regular escapism.

Other appearances like the one in IN and Ia MP show the greater deal of control she exhibits over Reimu as time passes, becoming more involved in her life and reaching closer to a possible overall goal of almost complete control over her. And it could also explain why currently “Touhou” has gone for three side games and a manga in-between release dates, Reimu has become more and more distracted from “Touhou” and is finding a harder time writing about her fantasy world because she needs it less as Yukari begins to assert more control over her.

edited 19th Dec '10 5:59:17 PM by WORLDTree

OW, MY BROWSER

WHO IS THIS LOSER

Well, that was surprisingly coherent. And dark.

you'll then have a grave in the clouds where you won't lie too cramped

Hold on. It just means the cardinal direction "east". "The Orient" more flavorfully. It has nothing to do with a "Wonderland". Did you mean to refer to Gensokyo in that statement as well?

"Price of Life"

Komachi's laziness is well documented, but in many ways I think she's been unfairly Flanderized. I've said in the previous compendium that she seems to be Brilliant, but Lazy, but I'm not going to go into that again.

Komachi has three spellcard themes, but really they're all the same. First of all, death. She is a shinigami after all. Second of all, the voyage. The journey from one side to the other. Third of all, money. The price of life, the price of death. This is the toll for the ferryman. The amount of money you have in death is equal to the number of people who honestly mourn you. The more you can pay, the more "ideal" the length of the trip. I really have no idea if that means longer or shorter.

Ultimately, Komachi is a person who cares about people. A lot. While she deals with death every day, instead of becoming numb or jaded to it she is instead filled with respect for it. She treats all her guests as individuals instead of quotas, and in general tries to make the trip a pleasant one. Death is not cold or merciless, it just is.

And it doesn't appreciate being forgotten either. Despite her boss' disapproval, Komachi likes to take time off to remind certain people what's important in life, which is life. While she does appear threatening, it's clear that she's trying to help people appreciate what they have rather than squandering it. As she says, she's not in charge of the killing of souls, she's merely their guide. However, as a shinigami she is perfectly capable of doing so, if she chose to. Do not be fooled by her attitude, she is literally a God of Death and the only thing stopping her from killing anyone is her decision not to and her job position.

However, she is not human or even a youkai. She is a god who lives primarily on the border between life and death. Death is not sorrowful for her, it is merely the next stage in existence. Life can be sorrowful at times, and she's empathetic to that, but death is not something to be regretted, but rather something to be accepted. Regrets are something she's prefer people not to have, and thus her emphasis on improving lives. I'm sure she'd prefer all her guests to have pleasant and interesting stories to tell, after all.

edited 19th Dec '10 5:40:11 PM by Clarste

^^ "Higashi" means the cardinal direction "East". "Touhou" means "eastern" or "eastward". Pointing east. Oriental, except probably without those connotations.

edited 19th Dec '10 5:42:07 PM by Clarste

I think that was one translation I heard, it probably is wrong and "Eastern Paradise" I think might be closer.

"Eastern Wonderland" is nowhere near the meaning of Touhou. It's a pretty generic and banal phrase, like you'd find on a map. "Head touhou for three miles and then turn left."

Ah I see what happened, what I initially was thinking of was "Seihou" and "Touhou" which mean west and east respectively, Gensokyo means "Land of Fantasy", I got the two mixed up, I'll change that.

I thought it was a noun; "that which lies in an eastern direction".

That's not important, though. We're in agreement that it has nothing to do with a wonderland, and that is.

edited 19th Dec '10 6:00:33 PM by SuperDimensionman