The New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium!

Note to self: Play through all the story routes before talking about stuff.

That awkward moment where Kyoro is one of Satan's Generals.

Yukari destroyed it because of the keystone placed in it. Then she got Suika to handle the reconstruction *

since she didn't trust Tenshi to not do it again.

Intriguing that we segued from Suika to Tenshi. I was working on a belated writeup for the oni and was struck by some similarities:

Unexpected Parallels Between an Oni and Celestial

Both are brats. Suika likes to talk about her incredible strength and how impossible she is to defeat, and while you could chalk it up to "oni honesty," her primary objective for the IaMP feast is to get attention. Tenshi, of course, started an incident that threatened the safety of Gensokyo and wrecked Reimu's shrine in a childish bid for negative attention.

Both are also fundamentally unhappy. Tenshi was given a free ride to paradise, and Suika was part of an exodus that carved out a new oni homeland. Neither was happy with the result. Suika looks around Gensokyo and sees deceit, liars, people afraid of power, and once-mighty youkai races now only a shadow of what they used to be. Tenshi looks down on Gensokyo and sees a place of excitement and adventure more appealing than heaven, with rivalries and friendships that she's never known despite living in paradise.

Both are absurdly powerful. Suika's got her incredible oni strength, Tenshi swiped god-tier artifacts and has been fortified with heavenly food and drink. Both use that power selfishly, to cause incidents or simply get attention - "hey, lookit what I can do!"

And both try to hide their bad qualities, but don't quite succeed. Suika tries to come across as a fun-loving party animal, but even when she's drinking with friends she's being sharply critical and dismissive. Tenshi plays up her status as a celestial and tries to seem otherwordly and wise, despite having little understanding of the snatches of poetry or sayings she can recite. It'll be interesting how extended contact between the two plays out - they'll either be best of friends or mortal enemies.

That's enough rambling, arts time (NSFW ads):

• A sketch that stood out for its simplicity
• Kinda watercolory
• Eyes
• Like the linework
• Looks kind of alien
• Good ol' (F7)eiki
• No idea what's going on in the background, but it looks neat
• Something about her expression...
• Like this expression too
• Volcanoes are a type of earthquake, right?
• This is why you never hold your glowing sword at crotch level
• No idea what kind of flowers those are
• Colorful
• Scandalous
• Dominant
• Looks molten
• Aromatherapy
• The rare happy Tenshi (seriously, Tenshi + happy only gets two pages of results)
• Peachy
• If you held down Shift near edges that wouldn't happen

Tenshi Fact #1 - Having a flaming sword earns a robust presence in the Badass pool

• Like her expression here
• Snap-hiss
• Wardrobe change
• Ruffles
• Palette shift
• Not a professional swordswoman
• Looks like she fused with Iku to me
• Ka-wham
• Stimulus
• Response
• The rainbow. Taste it.
• And now it's a greatsword
• I don't get Persona stuff
• Don't get Madoka either
• Vs Suika (again)
• Vs Yuuka (why isn't she in a fighting game?)

Tenshi Fact #2 - Living in Heaven means a lot of Tenshi artwork features spectacular scenery

• I dunno man, Heaven looks effing awesome
• Peaches, floating rocks, what more could you want?
• Splash of aqua
• Twisters
• Eeep
• The sun
• Stratosphere
• Soft
• This is Tenshi, sunrises make her cry
• Blue
• Wet feet
• Stars above
• Tenshi... in... spaaaaaace!

edited 5th Jul '11 1:38:13 PM by Tacitus

Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"

My god man, look at it all!

The last category was particularly nice to look at.

I sure said that!

Volcanoes are not a type of earthquake.

Am interesting thing though. Suwako notes that those in heaven have no expectations. Tenshi did not earn her place, she was given it. And it is clear from her boredom that she has many expectations.

I also wonder how much she'd enjoy Gensokyo if she were actually living there, instead of just watching from above. Would she find her place amongst the sudden and dramatic battles? Or would she grow weary of the thieves, fairies, false accusations and endless plots?

Note people saying that Tenshi's evil. She's not. She's incredibly selfish, and tends not to think of consequences. People like that aren't necessarily villains; in fact they can be harmless. I'm willing to bet that everyone here knows someone like that, hopefully from a distance.

Heart of Stone

Again; Tenshi is deeply flawed, and in particular lacks any sort of outsider perspective, but she isn't doing things she knows are wrong, I'm thinking.

I sure said that!

No one does anything they know is wrong. I didn't want to play this card, but Hitler didn't think he was doing anything wrong. He was just incredibly selfish and didn't care about the people he was hurting. Not saying Tenshi is that bad, but being selfish and hurting others is pretty much the only definition of evil that makes any kind of sense.

It depends on a person's own beliefs and views I guess. I'm usually one to stay neutral to things.

That awkward moment where Kyoro is one of Satan's Generals.

Go to any schoolyard; you'll find a jackass bully who's doing something they know is wrong, but they don't care; that, or they don't think they'll get caught, and doing whatever it is they are doing will get them something, be it lunch money, respect from their accomplices, or just a cheap thrill.

edited 5th Jul '11 1:16:06 AM by Pulse

I sure said that!

Godwin's Law on a discussion of Touhou. Well.

I don't think 'right' and 'wrong' are really the correct words here, since we're dealing with quasi-immortal beings with world destroying powers. You can't apply human values to someone that isn't human. Any more.

Heart of Stone

... Which was my whole point.

I sure said that!

You know, I kinda disagree with Clarste in this particular case, and that's a thing that does make Tenshi kind of interesting to me: She knows that what she's doing is wrong, but she wants to play villain. She's not really like Dedede at all, thinking about it more. Dedede made himself the king of Dreamworld because he's really strong and lazy and wants to have everyone serve him, but Tenshi wants to be a villain because evil is fun and makes people come to play with you. She knows she's committing evil acts, she just doesn't consider the potential gravity of those actions... Which... in a way makes her even more evil than standard evil.

It's kinda hard to imagine seriously calling her "evil". I guess because her personality is just that of a normal spoiled brat. If she didn't also have the ability to cause earthquakes, she would only be considered annoying at worst.

You know, slap a title on that and it'd work as a write-up.

I'll check out the pictures later, but I'm not sure if I'll use any for avatars this time because I still like my Suikas so much.

Okay, she does also have a pretty cool sword.

I'm sorry for not noticing how interesting this is! Oh, woe is me and stuff! But in all seriousness, that is really cool.

Made me smile.

And...

This made me laugh because I couldn't help thinking of the Grinch.

PS: Interesting thing is that ZUN seems to be kind of sympathetic towards Tenshi. There was something ZUN wrote in her profile or somewhere about how her flawed nature makes her seem human and makes her a kind of oasis in the plainness of heaven, except now I can't find it anymore so chances are I was hallucinating or something.

PPS: ZUN likes bad girls. Who is surprised.

She's much more human then the other celestials, which is why she hates heaven. Interesting, no? To get into heaven, celestials have to leave their humanity behind, becoming something more (or, depending on your view, less). Cue the inevitable parallels between the celestials and the magicians. Heaven, it seems, was not made for humans.

I can sympathise with Tenshi. I'd get sick of peaches after about a week. Who knows how long she's been up there? She must get giddy with excitement whenever a shinigami turns up.

Heart of Stone

... Yes.

I'd like to point out that I don't think Tenshi is "evil". Villianous, of course, but not straight up, cackling supervillian evil or anything. If anything, she is a superpowered attention whore. As someone else said, if she wasn't so story-breakingly powerful, she'd just be a nuisance at best.

It seems her family is equally seen as "unworthy", but at least they kinda did something to get in.

As for feeling sympathy for Tenshi, I just can't feel it. This isn't just my dislike of the character talking, but I feel we aren't shown any real reason to feel sorry for her in the story itself. Most of the reasons of sympathy seem to be either in retrospect or hidden away in some note somewhere. However, seeing as she is the final boss of a game, this may have been done on purpose? I have no clue.

Maybe if she were to appear elsewhere in canon not as an antagonist? I could see going somewhere with that.

I think this is the first time the other comments have made me feel bad over my opinion.

edited 5th Jul '11 2:46:04 AM by Otherarrow

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I don't think anyone's feeling sorry for her. That would be pretty misguided. When I said ZUN himself is sympathetic towards her, I meant that he suggests that she might still be preferable over the real Celestials, who are allegedly boring and quite literally holier-than-thou.

edited 5th Jul '11 3:02:38 AM by Fawriel

We're not expected to feel sorry for Tenshi, I guess. As far as canon is concerned the most positive opinion anyone besides Iku has of her is that she's a nuisance. I mean, Gensokyo's First Lady herself utterly despises the brat.

Enlightenment means being able to look above and beyond our petty humans wants. Proper Celestials just aren't interested in mortal things (or mortal things that don't have deified equivalents, I guess) anymore.

edited 5th Jul '11 3:05:41 AM by Recon5

Even Iku is of the opinion that she a brat who deserves a good spanking:

Iku: ...I suppose it would be appropriate to chastise you a little.

Tenshi: A mere messenger from the Dragon Palace such as you has no right to get angry.

Iku: No, the Eldest Daughter has been spoiled a little too much. I'll have you learn from a painful experience for once.

Heart of Stone

Seeing as (most) celestials are enlightened beings, you'd probably offend them by saying that Tenshi is somehow more "desirable" then they are, or even that Tenshi is a good example of one of them. Both due to her own spoiled selfishness, and the fact that her family apparently only got in because they got in good favor with a divine being (which does seem very odd to me, since it seems to be, to me at least, the equivalent of a random guy and his family becoming saints because he went to church every Sunday, but whatever. I actually preferred the "her parents were true Celestials and she got in somehow involving their reaching enlightenment" thing).

Actually, I wonder how do other Celestials treat Tenshi? She is the unworthy child of "untrue" Celestials. Then again, would the other Celestials care about such things?

OFF TOPIC: How does Reimu's sleeves not fall off her skinny arms?

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I imagine that they treat her as they would a rebellious teenage daughter that they're not entirely sure what to do with. There's a sitcom in there somewhere.

Heart of Stone

So her parents became Celestials through mere promotion by a god rather than through virtue? That would explain a lot.

Nope. They became Celestials because they (or was it just Old Man Nai?) took care of the keystone since forever, which I believe would at least need some of them to be enlightened or they would have given up on the job centuries ago.

The new Rock-Paper-Scissors

I think I did something last night...

Enlightenment means they probably won't be offended no matter what I do, actually!

... Unless I, like, desecrate a god or something. That would be the kind of profanity that they would take offense to.

The profile says that the true Celestials look down on her family. Probably her in particular.

I seriously approve of this.

Something like that! I have to admit, by the time I read about her backstory in the profile, I was too tired to get exactly what it was trying to tell me. Some god somewhere was all keystoning it up but then it didn't work and some other god was there in Gensokyo and then Nai no Kami happened and then Celestials and bloop.

Well now I feel like a fool. Although that does seem rather bizzare. Someone who is at the bottom of the Celestial hierarchy (which I presume is Unseen Heaven Deities -> "True" Celestials -> Tenshi's Family -> Tenshi herself, although the very first and very last parts are just speculation on my part) is still one of the strongest beings to show up in the setting. Makes me wonder how strong the so called "true" Celestials would be if they weren't living in peaceful bliss? (This is, of course, assuming that Tenshi's lower status would somehow mean she is weaker, which I admit doesn't really make much sense)

Oh, and we have to take that magic rock into consideration I guess. Meh.

I still hate Tenshi.

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