The New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium!

I vote Koishi as well, if only because I find it odd that there's a Windows era EX Boss character that isn't that popular.

To expand on the "Shikieiki=Jizou Statue" thing, apparently it was Komachi who said it. Now, that still does not answer the question of why an always-male figure (Jizou) transformed into a female.

That was the first thing that came to mind when I heard it. Strange. I wonder if Komachi is telling this story first hand.

If Komachi was saying it, it sounds like a joke. Just making fun of her seriousness.

all I know of Koishi comes from Koishi the Loving Gourmet and At Chirei

Those are actually fairly good sources.

Koishi Komeiji

Themes:
Hartmann's Youkai Girl*

Stage: "Moriya Shrine"
"The Lovely Visitor from Hell"
bgm: Last Remote*

Spellcard Motif: Love | (Freudian) Psychology | Roses | Evolution
Notable spellcards: SA, DS
Rekindled "The Embers of Love", "Philosophy of a Hated Person", "Subterranean Rose", Memory "DNA's Flaw", "Embryo's Dream" *

Write-up:
The hidden depths of one's mind is something one would never want to come to light. We hide many things in those depths... even unconsciously. No one knows this better than the satori, who have the ability to read minds – and are shunned and rejected for it. Koishi is one of these beings. But she did not want to be one. One fateful day, she sought to escape her lonely fate by closing her third eye once and for all... not knowing that this means closing her very heart.

The underground denizens no longer feared her for her mindreading. However, she was missing an essential part of her being. The ability to read minds was traded for the ability to act subconsciously, without being consciously noticed. While she was no longer feared, she remained alone. While she could deal with this new kind of loneliness, it was not for the strength of her heart, but her inability to care. Free from emotional bonds, she began traveling the world as she saw fit, embracing her life of indifferent loneliness, returning home sporadically like a stray cat. One day, however, she heard about the incident of Subterranean Animism and went above ground to investigate the people it originated from. She was promptly defeated by the heroine after requesting a display of her power, but it's not a loss she mourns. Oh, no. After all, that human was so interesting. Why, to be able again to read a mind filled with so many stories to tell... I want to hear them, I want to hear them all!

Koishi is (appropriately enough?) a schizophrenic persona in the fandom. Her personality is hard to pinpoint, as despite her somber backstory, she appears to be rather happy-go-lucky. In spite of her "heartlessness", her motifs include love and plenty of hearts, along with the Freudian bits that fans love to poke fun at. In the end, she's most commonly used as a fun and quirky character with a penchant for psychology and a love for lovin'. She's also popular for potentially more serious stories involving her beloved sister, whether it is on a dramatic search for the wandering Koishi and for a solution to bring her back, or a less dramatic adventure in bed. Ah, shippers.

To be portrayed in so many different ways, how does this make you feel, Miss Komeiji?

Relations:

• Satori (loving, caring sister)
• Marisa/Reimu (interesting human)
• Rin & Utsuho (pets)

Alternate Character Interpretations:
Philosophy of a Hated Person
-by Clarste

Nobody.
-by Fawriel

One without Feelings or Thoughts
-by Hylarn

Koishi ~ Blinded Maiden
-by Raz Fox

Koishi: Je rejette tous vous
-by yarrunmace

edited 8th Oct '11 3:58:22 PM by Fawriel

One without Feelings or Thoughts

I think I should start with explaining the logic behind how her powers work. To shut off her mind-reading (actually heart-reading; Touhou combines the two), she closed her heart. This happened both literally and metaphorically; the eye on her heart shut, but she closed her heart to others. Because her heart is closed to everyone, other's heart are closed to her, which manifests as people just not noticing her. Not certain where the ability to manipulate the subconscious comes from, though.

There's a parenthetical statement in the above paragraph about how Touhou uses the word 'heart' to mean both the traditional, source of feelings meaning of the word 'heart', as well as including the concept of the mind. This is kind of important for Koishi. Sealing away her heart not only lost her emotions, but also her thoughts. While she's obvious not entirely mindless, she's closer to an animal than a person like this. She wanders across Gensoukyou, doing whatever looks interesting, with no purpose or reason behind her actions.

That's fairly horrifying, if I'm understanding her abilities correctly. She traded being feared for being ignored and not caring about it enough for it to matter, which seems like an And I Must Scream situation in some ways.

So wait, if people can't truly notice her, does this make her akin to a living mirage? How exactly did the heroines react to her then? Or am I still not understanding Koishi's ability...?

She chose it for herself, so I see no problems with it. In general, I dislike ascribing human motives or feelings to youkai. If she wants to be ignored, she can be ignored.

The getting ignored bit is on/off, but her loss of feelings will only go away if she opens her heart again, at least the way I read it.

Art:

• Roses
• From Ideolo
• Rose garden — Close to how I see her
• Cute
• Creepy
• Pets
• Frills
• Ruffles — Like this one in particular
• Full body

Judging by her spellcard theme and profile, I have to say that she initially did not want to be ignored. She couldn't stand being feared by people around her and took a drastic action that had unexpected consequences. But as a result of sort of basically lobotomizing herself, she no longer cares about those unexpected consequences and probably forgot her initial reason for doing it. She is very much a sad broken thing that's been put back together somewhat by a loving sister.

Well yeah. I wasn't trying to imply that she should feel scared or anything like that; it was just how I'd view the situation.

Besides, based on canon, ZUN seems to actively push the " most youkai only look human and shouldn't be expected to act human" train of thought, so I try to keep that in mind.

Yeah, something like that.

edited 26th Dec '10 4:40:50 PM by Customer

Her sister tried but failed. What apparently succeeded in getting her closed eyelid to stir was meeting interesting people that she wanted to know more about (ie: the protagonists of SA).

I wonder if I'm the only one to notice a strange parallel between Koishi and Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.

You know, the sociopath who can smell anything and everything, but has no scent of his own, thus leading people to regard him with suspicion as there's just something off about him that they can't pinpoint, or to just miss his existence entirely... The story even equates scent with feelings.

Kinda the reverse situation for Koishi, since she became estranged from people after losing the ability to have insights into people's hearts. And, well, she's probably not a sociopathic murderer. But, I think the part about how people treat her is probably similar. They can see her no problem, but they just feel like something's off, and subconsciously, they feel no desire to bond with this person they see, but don't feel in front of them, much like the person has no desire to bond with them, thus ensuring that no such thing will happen.

In addition to that, she has the ability to erect a Somebody Elses Problem Field to make people completely ignore her existence.

The ability is often misconstrued as the ability to read subconscious thoughts, but that would only be worse than Satori's ability, now wouldn't it? Though, I think Satori's ability includes subconscious thoughts as well...

She chose it for herself, so I see no problems with it. In general, I dislike ascribing human motives or feelings to youkai. If she wants to be ignored, she can be ignored

The profile does mention that the pet therapy was showing results.

edited 26th Dec '10 4:42:48 PM by Fawriel

Satori took pity on Koishi, ordering her pets to play with her and giving her some pets to keep as her own. She thought that taking care of the pets might give her a purpose, and it might enable her to begin opening her heart to others again. Indeed, it seemed that Koishi began to change, ever so slightly, after she began to raise her pets.

Satori took the first step in fixing Koishi's heart. The protagonists took another. As of yet, her Third Eye hasn't opened yet but she is beginning to feel the motivation to do so after a long time of indifference to the hearts of others.

Edit: Ninja'd.

edited 26th Dec '10 4:44:21 PM by Bocaj

Hmm, but the fact that she chose to close it in the first place does suggest motivation of that sort, doesn't it?

She did indeed close her eye out of a desire to not be hated, but that doesn't mean she dislikes being ignored. I mean, when it explicitly tells you that they felt X then you can say they felt X, and it's not like they can't feel emotions (heck, they're often created by emotions), I just dislike it when people go "I would feel X is this situation, thus she probably feels X".

The profile does mention that the pet therapy was showing results.

Results are different from success. Satori wanted her to regularly interact with a small number of pets in order to build trust and eventually open her heart, but what really got her eye itching to open was meeting new, exciting people unlike anything she's ever encountered before. In that sense, Satori got it completely backwards: limiting her interactions was only delaying the opening of the eye.

edited 26th Dec '10 4:49:09 PM by Clarste

Thought: With a heart not working entirely correctly, Koishi is effectively some sort of sufferer of Magical Asperger's Syndrome.

... I, uh, I'll just let that sink for a moment.

The point is, she lost the ability to just feel her way through human interaction, all those instinctual tidbits that just come naturally to most people. She doesn't interact much with people, but she walks the earth observing them, and can even make herself invisible while doing so. It's not hard to imagine that her apparent interest in psychology stems from gaining a new perspective on people's behavioral patterns... and/or from just observing a bunch of people and trying to systemize her observations as a hobby.

... Sorry, my thoughts are probably pretty incoherent right now. I need to catch some sleep.

Aah, I see.

edited 26th Dec '10 4:53:31 PM by Fawriel

An alternate interpretation is that the minor improvements from the pet therapy are what drove her to even care that her sister and her sister's pets had fought someone from the surface.

edited 26th Dec '10 5:09:29 PM by Bocaj

As far as I can tell, she didn't care. She went to the surface because Okuu got more powerful all of a sudden and she was curious as to what was up with that. And while she was investigating the Moriya shrine for that reason, she happened to meet Reimu or Marisa and became extremely interested in them. She didn't care about them before they met, nor did she particularly care about Okuu except in the sense of "huh, there are things like that on the surface?". She had been described as wandering around at her whims beforehand, so her journey to the surface was actually contradicting the behavioral changes prompted by Satori.

Although I suppose she may not have noticed any change in Okuu if she hadn't become acclimated to Okuu's normal state.

Either way, both the change caused by the pet therapy and the change from meeting the PC are described in the exact same way. "Ever so slightly."

But the second one is followed by "For the first time, she regretted having closed her third eye." and "When she thought this, Koishi felt the lid of her third eye begin to shift a little." It's clearly a bigger effect. Or at least a more relevant effect.

edited 26th Dec '10 5:23:59 PM by Clarste

Perhaps this was one of the few times she met someone who wasn't afraid of her?

No one's been afraid of her since she closed her eye.

The fact that she regretted closing her eye is kind of worrisome, since that makes it sound like it's not necessarily easily reversible. Especially since she has fewer veins/arteries than her sister...

Is Marisa the only interesting human Koishi found? Cause Faw's bio up there only mentions her.  ^*

edited 26th Dec '10 6:01:34 PM by Customer

It could also be Reimu. Fanon seems to prefer Marisa, though.