The New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium!

EDIT: Wait shit, that is what I already voted for.

edited 1st Jun '13 10:47:29 AM by Otherarrow

Sekibanki, PC-98 midbosses, Rika

The tally thus far!

SoEW leads with two votes (one for Rika, one for Mima)! Meanwhile, Sekibanki, Kokoro, LLS (Yuuka), and the PC-98 midbosses trail with one point apiece! Because only two people have voted!

Well, asterism suggested doing the four remaining games in order, but that would be four votes and we only get three.

edited 1st Jun '13 10:57:10 PM by Tacitus

People should start caring again once we leave PC-98. On that note, it may be best to impose a time limit on non-Mima or Yuuka discussions

I wish I had more to say about these characters but I haven't even played these games. I have to wait for people to start talking before I can learn enough to think for myself.

You can always read the translated dialog from the touhouwiki.

In the spirit of adding a vote when there's only a small number of votes, I will... vote.

Rika, Yuuka, and PC-98 Midbosses.

I haven't played the games (well OK, I've sampled the fighters) and I am doing just fine!

...right? ...right? Am I doing good?

Really, the main required reading is PMiSS, SoPM, various character profiles, and CiLR for IN/Moon related characters.

Well, there's also CoLA for some background references and also baseless speculation.

Indeed.

Aya is with us in spirit sometimes, so go ahead and read that too.

I blame all these new characters showing up, distracting people. This could've been Orange's big break, but then some girl who can detach her head stole the show.

Hmm, an incentive for discussion? "Speak now and quickly, you only have x days remaining!" Is the current system of "if the conversation dies for a day we move on" working too slowly?

Well, look at it this way - this is an alternate character interpretation thread, so there's no "right" characterization you're expected to adhere to. You don't necessarily have to be well-informed here, you can talk about what you'd expect the character to be like based on her design, or how her theme makes you feel. The worst you could do is contradict canon, which is something this fandom cheerfully does all the time (see the Aya-Momiji ship).

This, along with your avatar, fills me with the urge to give you a reassuring pat on the head, but I don't want to be patronizing.

You're doin' just fine.

Looks like we may end up doing things chronologically after all. Polls close at "early evening" o'clock, people!

Rika

Themes: "She's in a Temper!!"*

"The Tank Girl's Dream"

Stages:
Purple Field ~ Purple Dawn
BGM: "Hakurei ~ Eastern Wind"*

A Different Sky ~ for Lunatic Gamers
BGM: "Extra Love"*

Signature Attack:
Taaaaaank!!

Write-up:
A human engineer able to build monsters and tanks and monster-like tanks she uses to attack religious sites. Rika introduces herself as the creator of all the enemies swarming the Hakurei Shrine at the start of SoEW, and politely asks Reimu to take a dive before the mighty Flower Tank. The shrine maiden fails to cooperate, and ignores Rika's attempts to lure Reimu into a trap. Some time later the two battle again and discuss the proper boss difficulty curve of shoot-em-up games.

The most obvious question surrounding Rika is how the hell one engineers a ghost like the Bakebake. For that matter, all of Rika's creations are pretty bizarre - the most normal is the Stage One Midboss, some sort of roof on treads, while the Flower Tank incorporates leaves and vines as part of its design, and Evil Eye Sigma is some sort of demonic angelic eyeball. The follow-up question is what if anything Rika has against Reimu, and just how involved she was in Mima's revenge scheme. Was she following someone's orders, as Reimu suspected, or was her raid on the Hakurei Shrine done for a lark?

Relationships:

• Stage One enemies, Flower Tank, Evil Eye Sigma, Nameless Stage One Midboss (creations)
• Rikako (look and sound sorta similar)
• Nitori Kawashiro (spiritual successor?)

edited 3rd Jun '13 10:27:34 PM by Tacitus

I never really gave Rika much thought before. So bear with me if I don't have much to say.

Rika strikes me as less of a scientist and more of a...weird magician who happens to build tanks. She "creates" all these monsters and all these different tanks and sics them on Reimu basically because...why not? It's fun to watch your creations rampage I guess.

She may or may not be working for Mima.

When she returns in the Evil Eye Sigma, a big ass demon eyeball, her hair is purple and she has a hat. This is very important.

edited 2nd Jun '13 8:12:43 PM by Otherarrow

Of Note

Rika is a non-magical, human, tank engineer. It's a living.

Rika claims she created the ghosts in SOEW. Does this mean that the Ghosts are robots or that Rika is a proponent of mass genocide. She is the Extra boss after all.

Her name can mean Science.

Music & Overview

She's in a Temper: This is the theme for Rika's first appearance. It seems more powerful than some other Stage One themes, but it's still just as short. This is only Rika's first appearance. She seems fully aware that she's the first opponent and tries to use herself as bait to lead Reimu into a trap. However, unlike Genji, Reimu sees through this and relies on her Shrine Maiden's instinct. This may be why Reimu seems to believe she has an infallible Shrine Maiden's Instinct in the present.

The Tank Girl's Dream: "If I'd followed you when you ran, this would have been level 2." Rika's tactical genius laid out for all to see. The Stage One boss has to be a small fry, but there's no rule against a difficult Stage 2, so long as Stage 4 is harder. Who would design a giant, flying, eye tank other than some one who had full aspirations of being a boss in a shoot em' up? I wonder where she gets all her ammo? Isn't that why the series uses Magical Girls in the first place? I'm trying to find things to say about Rika, but the dialogue in these fights keeps drawing me back to Reimu. She's clearly grown a bit from HRTP, and she's starting to doubt the power from the Yin-Yang orbs is anything more than her own power. Reimu's instinct is probably wrong on that front, but she really will get much stronger on her own. As for Rika... in the end she was nothing more than another foe on Reimu's way to the top.

edited 2nd Jun '13 8:32:35 PM by Horselesshorseman

Theory: She's a secret kappa.

And Reimu subliminally realizes it which is why Reimu is such a kappa racist.

She doesn't dress like Nitori, so she can't be a kappa!

That's why its a secret.

Theory: She's a kappa that got exiled for being too supervillainous. It's one thing to blow up their hideout in a mad attempt to turn kelp into rocket fuel, but it's another to regularly commit murder in the name of making an army of ghosts

You know, she actually reminds me a bit of the Forsaken from Wheel Of Time - using magical genetic engineering and mechanics to create menaces while using scientific terms for the whole thing because, well, magic is her science.

Panzer vor!

Do you think there a load of Evil Eyes aside from Sigma? Aside from the fact the sigma looks like an E making it EEE I wonder if it's just one in a long line of productions.

Well, there were those Evil Eye enemies in SoEW stage 2 and LLS stages 3 through 6. They're just normal stage enemies though, and are probably just common nuisances.

Also, Sigma might not necessarily refer to the unit number (i.e. Evil Eyes Alpha through Rho have already been built (and destroyed?)), but maybe just the design iteration (The design's been through 18 iterations before it was built properly).

A few other things to mention:

- Like Orange, Rika doesn't even tell Reimu her name on her first battle. You have to reach Rika in the Extra stage before she introduces herself.

- Rika apparently owns a giant factory/warehouse, which is the location the Extra Stage takes place in. "Different Sky" might refer to the place having a mechanical ceiling. This in and of itself is ripe for speculation - did she build the factory herself, or buy it? did it belong to her father? etc.

- Rika's battles took place on the PC-98 system. If she were a Windows-era boss, would she use bullet-shaped bullets like Reisen?

edited 3rd Jun '13 12:46:32 PM by Leylite

It was my half-joking notion that Rika based the name of the Evil Eye Sigma on sigma's use is statistics; it is the summation of all of the work she'd done to that point. If she builds something bigger and better later, she'll just call it Omega. It's all marketing anyway.

Eeeh, I hope not. I mean off the top of your head, can you think of anything with the designation Omega that didn't turn out badly? Not that Sigma is much better...

Maybe a Rikako free of the delusion she's a hard-boiled scientist? She knows how to physically put things together, and magically make them move, and that's all she needs.

Or something like that, yeah.

Dark, but, also kinda cool. Engineering using souls, treating spirits as just another raw material. You could probably come up with some pretty groovy mechanical monsters that way.

The attempted ambush displays a level of forethought - assuming it's not on-the-fly tactical improv - that suggests Rika's attack just happened to coincide with Mima's wider plot to get revenge on humanity. I mean, if Mima was out to get humans, why would a human help her?

...I'm lookin' at you, Marisa.

If she were uninvolved with but aware of Mima's scheme, wonder why Rika would go after Reimu instead of playing the hero/testing her creations on a true challenge?

It'd be hard to fit something like that in modern Gensokyo, wouldn't it? On the other hand, it's easy to explain the place's absence - Reimu wrecked it. An alternative would be that it isn't in Gensokyo at all, but some manufactorum dimension. Maybe that's where all the sciency stuff in the PC-98 games comes from?

High-explosive tank shell bullets! Armor-piercing shells that ignore bombs! Tracers that blur up the screen!

edited 3rd Jun '13 10:33:48 PM by Tacitus