The New New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium

Not a whole lot of art tagged with "saigyou_ayakashi," and not a lot focusing on the tree instead of Yuyuko. Still found some good stuff, though.

Blooming
Glowy petals, glowy butterflies
Abstract
Slightly out of focus
Good wallpaper
Also a good wallpaper
Odd place for a torii
Maybe the author's note would explain what's going on
Probably a good thing the protagonists showed up when they did
The deadest thing in the Netherworld
I see someone has no respect for the beauty of transience
A staff...
...borrowed by a different artist?
75% flowering
I guess shimenawa can keep evil in as well as out
Not to be confused for paradise
A twisted, blighted thing
My first reaction would be to take an axe to it, not revive it
Better tie that sucker down, don't want it getting loose
Suppose stakes wouldn't work on a demon tree
This is a tale with no dialogue, beautiful art, and a pretty trippy story
Getting sleepy just looking at it
There is no escaping your fate. In the end, you will take it easy.

edited 25th Jul '15 7:48:17 PM by Tacitus

That was certainly more than I expected for this discussion, and surprisingly fruitful stuff, hur hur.

Any last treeish thoughts before Sakuya steals our time?

I wonder how the the tree got there? And I wonder fi the the Yama knows about the the tree enough to make sure that things go smoothly?

Alright, pretty good conversation for a dormant character mainly featuring in another character's backstory. After this will be Rumia, followed by Yuuka and Yamame Kurodani! But first, let's have a little time-out.

Sakuya Izayoi

Stage: An Elegant Servant for the Scarlet Moon
BGM: "The Maid and the Pocket Watch of Blood" (IaMP)
Themes: "Lunar Clock ~ Lunar Dial" (IaMP), "Flowering Night" (SWR)

Spellcard Motif: Stage magic, time fcukery, and a hint of murder
Notable spellcards: EoSD, PCB, IaMP, IN, PoFV, SWR, StB, 'Soku, DDC, ISC, GoM, SSiB
Conjuring "Misdirection," Illusion Image "Luna Clock," Illusion World "The World," Illusion Sign "Killer Doll," Wound Sign "Inscribe Red Soul," Jugglery "Close-Up Murdering Demon," "Deflation World," Time Sign "Mysterious Jack," Silver Sign "Perfect Maid," Illusion "My Knife's Recursions," Watch "Lunar Dial," Bewitched Weapon "Silver Another Dimension," Time Sign "Time Stopper Sakuya"

Write-up:
Contemporary Touhou's first scarily-competent second-in-command, and one of the most enduringly popular characters in the series. Sakuya Izayoi's past remains the subject of speculation both in and out of universe, but currently she serves as head maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, performing whatever tasks her mistress assigns her. This made her the protagonists' enemy during the Scarlet Mist Incident, but in subsequent conflicts, Sakuya has found herself battling alongside Reimu and Marisa to protect Gensokyo.

Her trademark ability is the manipulation of time, which Sakuya combines with sleight-of-hand and an astonishing assortment of knives to make battling her a prickly proposition indeed. She can be cold at times (though she's gotten better at social interaction), and has some occasional ditzy moments, but for the most part Sakuya does an excellent job keeping the Scarlet Devil Mansion in order and its owner happy. Or venturing forth to carve someone up with knives, as her orders dictate.

Relations

• Remilia Scarlet (mistress)
• Flandre Scarlet (mistress' little sister)
• Patchouli Knowledge (mistress' housemate)
• Hong Meiling (fellow employee)
• Fairy Maids (useless)
• Tupai the Chupacabra (adorable)
• Eirin Yagokoro and Kaguya Houraisan (???)

Interpretations

"Playing House"
by Tacitus

See also the previous two compendiums.

edited 10th Aug '15 6:20:18 PM by Tacitus

So. On Sakuya Izayoi.

...Trust me, there are a few interpretations like this that I've never really had the chance to share, but right now I'm in just the right mood to share it, so here we go.

I honestly believe that even if she was a killer once, she isn't now.

My general reasoning is based on how she reacted to finding out that Yukari was the one gapping in humans.

To me, this quote doesn't make much sense if Sakuya regularly went over to wherever the hell humans were gapped in and killed them to give their blood to Remilia and Flandre.

Any objections? I've said this before, and I'll say it again: I really haven't played that much of the Touhou games nor read much of the supplementary materials, so there could be something I'm missing here.

edited 27th Jul '15 7:01:19 AM by GM_3826

Hmmmm she could one gapped humans except that in Imperishable Night, Eirin apparently knew of her and was shocked that she had arrived to the Eientei.

Sakuya is an impure Lunarian baby that was dropped onto the Earth and then gapped to Gensokyo by Yukari at a young age.

Bah, forgot to list Konohana-Sakuyahime under the Relations section. Doing it here to call attention to it.

It's an interesting quote in that it sounds like Sakuya is taking a stand against human hunting, yet there's no indication she's stepped down as the Mansion's chef in later installments. So does Sakuya have a moral code that she can use against Yukari here, but totally suppresses it when her mistress orders red tea and Flandre gets hungry? Or does she dislike Yukari's habit of abducting people, which suggests that the vampires' food comes from willing suppliers?

Yeah, if we screen Touhou threads for everyone who hasn't played every game, read every manga, and studied all the stories ZUN publishes with his soundtracks, the handful of folks that remain are probably going to feel lonely.

And yet the devil's dog shows no hint of recognition when she encounters Eirin. Maybe the Lunarians were monitoring Sakuya because of her time-manipulating abilities? Though if Eirin recognizes her, this would mean she took notice of Sakuya when Eirin was still living on the moon, which could make Sakuya older than Remilia.

As an aside, the best thing about the dialogue with Eirin is that Sakuya gets sidetracked while talking about cleaning floors and the proper tools to use on them.

Sakuya is an impure Lunarian baby that was dropped onto the Earth and then gapped to Gensokyo by Yukari at a young age.

Could work, though for Sakuya to immigrate to Gensokyo with the Scarlets after having served Remilia long enough for the vampire to no longer consider her human, Yukari would have had to punt Sakuya out of Gensokyo a few centuries ago. That rascal, kidnapping children and then throwing them out when she gets bored.

And maybe instead of a mundane gap-napping, Yukari snatched a baby during the youkai invasion of the moon. Y'know, like stealing any other priceless lunar treasure, just a baby.

edited 27th Jul '15 6:23:10 PM by Tacitus

I admit it, I don't really pay all that much attention to whatever Maryberry is up to nowadays.

Sakuya with a measuring cup stalking for donors headcanon still has a chance

Oh glorious day

@Tactitus I was thinking she just kind of suppresses it when it comes to feeding them.

I'm piggybacking off of Antimatter's theory here, and suggesting the vampires get it directly from the source.

edited 28th Jul '15 4:00:26 AM by GM_3826

Sakuya is the comically serious maid of the SDM. I wonder where the whole serial killer theory with Sakuya came from?

She has serial killer themed cards

and also knives

Hence why I'm saying she could have killed people before.

Well, Flandre has to eat somehow....

Sakuya Izayoi:

The head maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Remilia's most trusted servant. Very elegant.

Sakuya's an all-purpose maid, meaning she can do anything without fail, and her time powers greatly aid her endeavor. But...I wonder if stopping time on a constant basis is taxing for her. Perhaps that's why she'd rather have some much-needed help from those fairy maids. Or at least, she wishes she got meaningful help from those fairy maids.

Regardless, Sakuya's meticulous. ...What if she's too meticulous, as demonstrated in this set of Fire Emblem supports?

Time. How long can she stop it? Any time she sets her clock to, I suppose. Speaking of clocks, is her time power connected to her clock, or is it a natural ability?

Girl knows her way around knives.

edited 30th Jul '15 6:49:25 PM by Diamite

You know Sakuya does possess rather broken ability, I wonder if she had somehow mastered some form f time stopping magic before meeting Remilia?

This reminds me of an episode of Darkwing Duck where Darkwing ended up with the power of Super-Speed. When he activated it, he did everything much faster than normal ... including aging faster. I could imagine Sakuya having a similar problem with the use of her time manipulation. All those little moments where time passes only for her could start adding up...

Maybe that could explain her gray hair. But that would just raise the question of why the rest of her body stays youthful if that is the case.

And of course, this is all assuming she is even human at all.

edited 29th Jul '15 4:05:39 PM by Lightblade

Maybe she started as human, but after so many years with the ability to hit reality's pause button, the term isn't as accurate these days.

That grey hair... Mokou's hair is very pale blue/smoky gray-white. But her hair was dark before drinking the Hourai Elixir. So either the shock of that entering her system changed her hair color, or somehow her hair is the one thing about her that shows evidence of her abnormally-long lifespan. Contrast this with Kaguya, a dark-haired Hourai immortal who was "naturally" born with an indefinitely-long lifespan.

From this, I conclude that Sakuya is not a Lunarian, and had her extended lifespan bestowed upon her at a later point, based solely on these characters' hair colors.

Wait, Eirin has silver hair. Nuts.

Whatever, Sakuya is Eirin's oblivious niece or something. Like, Sakuya is or is related to Konohana-Sakuyahime, and Eirin aka Ya-gokoro-omoi-kane-no-mikoto is... well, I know next to nothing about these deities, so until I'm given information to the contrary I'm assuming they're related somehow.

Who else would be suitable for working for a vampire? Remilia's already got a court wizard and a Meiling guarding the front gate. When it comes to loyal Number Twos, a murderous knife-throwing ninja maid is the next best thing to a scythe-wielding skeleton in a cowl.

I'm also surprised Remilia hasn't snapped up Sekibanki and Kagerou yet as general Mansion staff.

Appealing. I also like the idea of Sakuya quietly trolling her boss by following her orders to the letter in ways that are inconvenient. But my hunch is that ultimately she's too utterly loyal to Remilia to do anything like that.

If she hadn't, the implication is that Remilia somehow bestowed it upon her, which begs the question of how the vampire did it and why she used such an awesome ability on her maid instead of herself. So the more likely scenario is that Sakuya has had her time-manipulating powers for some... time. Which would mean that, if Sakuya is supposed to be a defeated vampire hunter or something, Remilia took her down, when Sakuya was being serious, timehax and all.

Well, one way to interpret Remi's ability to manipulate fate is that she needs something there to work with, and can't just bestow powers on a whim. (Another way to interpret it is that she doesn't have a special power over fate at all and uses it as a way to describe her ability to make the things she wants to happen, but whatever.) It might be that even if it was Remilia that bestowed that power on her, she couldn't give it to just anyone.

Heck, it could be like awakening someone's Stand/Persona. Wouldn't that be fitting?

It could be.

Possibility: Sakuya's ability to manipulate time stems from a Lunarian experiment; Eirin for whatever reason took it into her head to set someone slightly apart from the flow of time. The result was someone to whom the flow of time was variable. She can't travel in time in any direction but forward, but she can come to a stop if she chooses, or move infinitely fast. The flow of time within her is also variable; until she learned to control it it was rather disjointed, and a couple times she went decades without aging, before suddenly aging years in a day.

Learning to control it left her ageless, but not immortal; if you cut her she will bleed, and the wound will take time to heal. Not sure if it would be more interesting for her to have to age to heal wounds or not. And also, this only applies to wounds that one could actually heal; cut her head off and she dies. As to why she looks like a young woman: She got to choose when she stopped aging.

I figure she was probably always able to control it instinctively at a very coarse level; that's probably how she caught Remilia's eye. Remilia was walking along, or hunting, or something, and some white-haired brat tries to stab her. When good ol' bodyguard Meiling goes to stop the kid before she gets herself hurt, the kid apparently teleports past her and goes for the mistress. A brief fight ensues during which Remilia (whose ability to manipulate fate I've always read as the ability to choose how a situation will turn out as long as it is possible) manages to catch the kid. Asks Sakuya if she'd like to join with people that understand her, that kinda thing.

So why a maid? Other than the implication that in Touhou the Ultimate Life Form wears frills and an apron.

Playing House

What is a vampire? An unholy thirst and the dark power to slake it, wrapped in the guise of a pale aristocrat. This is problematic if you're like Remi and would rather have people over for tea than have them over for "tea." Everything about her monstrous biology is set up to make her the natural predator and enemy of humanity, but as arrogant and bratty as she can be, she's not really Dracula material. Her nature is against her own nature, so to speak.

Who is Sakuya? We know who she is now, but the hints about her past suggest that she could have been the stuff penny dreadfuls are made of. She's wrapped in a bundle of serial killer references, and early on mentioned that most of her human interaction involved a knife in her hand. She looks mostly normal, but then they usually do, don't they? That's how they get ya. Yet for the moment she's content to play servant girl to a winged, fanged brat.

It's a symbiotic relationship, I think. They are both, in their own ways, monsters trying to play at being human.

Sakuya willingly puts herself on a leash, submitting to Remilia's whims and serving as her head maid. Her knack for knifeplay is channeled into home defense (or food preparation), and not expressed through... other acts. Her easily-abused control over time is focused on making up for the fairy maids' inability to keep the house clean. And her morality is clearly established - preying upon humans is only acceptable when her mistress is hungry.

Why is it important that Sakuya's mistress is a vampire? Why couldn't Sakuya get these results by joining a military or something? Probably because working for a vampire provides a good contrast to reinforce your own humanity. Sakuya's no stranger to human yet ended up the way she is, but it's easier to notice when you're becoming more like a blood-sucking devil and turning back from that route.

As for Remi, she gets a hell of a competent underling to command, and a similar psychological benefit. She can fit into a master-servant role rather than that of predator-prey, a role that places limitations on her just as it does on Sakuya - for what proper lady goes around terrorizing the countryside when she has underlings to do that for her? Sakuya serves as another example of humanity Remilia can imitate, not to mention another kindred spirit, in her mansion of youkai and devils pretending to be a normal household.

edited 31st Jul '15 8:04:45 PM by Tacitus

I guess Sakuya's like some other older characters in that we have a pretty good idea who she is now, and at most can speculate on her past or future. Though I suppose we could argue about who to ship her with? (the correct answer is Meiling, by the way)

Anyway, picdump. Sakuya's also one of those characters whose fanart tends to be pretty samey, so it's either an aerial action pose with a fan of knives around her or something showing off her legs. But there's a lot of good stuff, even if it fits into those categories.

Something about the face reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactics
Blue and white against the red
A maid for all seasons
Has someone stolen spring?
Someone's about to get stabbed
Gray girl
Alluring sketch
Big baby blues
Clocks, cards and a little cutter
Musical interlude
Of course she plays
The moon, a clock, and thou
Sweetness and steel
Love the mixture of poise and manic wide eyes
Pretty much an official alternate costume by this point
Dog and cat
Fabulous
I don't usually post pantyshots, but I appreciate the juxtaposition of the lacy, frilly clothing and the cold steel concealed by it
A more restrained take on the previous idea
At rest
My first thought was "Eirin"
Tools of the trade
Interesting interior
And the Flans are wild
At half power?
Must be her Temple of Time
Scroll down at your own peril
Persona!
Reminds me of that Persona! android girl, whossername
Thanks to Antfish, every time I see that mask I hear "Holy Diver"
Eyes are still blue, she's not even going all-out
Good detail on that watch
Her world
Rings of stabbity
A near-solid disc of stabbity
Laser knives
Yumeko approves
I'd say it suits her
Those eyes
Unleashed
Rabid
It's not her mansion, but she's still the centerpiece
With her conscript
Kaguya? With my Sakuya? It's more likely than you think.
Battle Butler battle
Mess with the maid, get the fangs
I miss the Frill Hell pool
Curtains. You need curtains.
Probably the closest Remi has had to a mother for a long time
Perhaps the most responsible person in the whole mansion
Snippy-snip
Brushy-brush
I like this, not just because I approve of the ship, but because it looks like Sakuya is taking off the maid mask
Sometimes you have to improvise
Warm colors but still spoiling for a fight
A more realistic take
Still love a gothic SDM
Dethroned?
Not sure what's happening but it looks epic
dantewontdie doesn't disappoint
imizu also depicts her well
But my favorite artist for this character remains banpai akira
Her response is understandable
A doofy little skit with the SDM crew
Who says she doesn't have a sense of humor?
If you gotta go...
The aftermath of every fight
Always work to do

edited 2nd Aug '15 8:37:36 PM by Tacitus

Sakuya is serial killer who might be a monster hunter as well as some sort of alien. I wonder about Sakuya's relationship with all the other characters are?