Touhou

Liar. We both know you were thinking about scratching an itch.

EDIT: Why hello thar incomprehensible pagetopper!

edited 3rd Mar '15 6:57:49 PM by MajorTom

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Its like running your hand through your hair. Except instead of hair its half of your soul. And instead of your hand, you're sitting on it.

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Youmu scratches her ghost half and lets out a deep sigh. "That hits the spot! Stupid bugs."

This raises many questions.

Whenever I start to think that there is no less qualified than I to be working photoshop magic on scanslations, I remember that I got an 'A' in Computer Art in high school. Mostly for playing around on the computers. I'm pretty sure I beat Fire Emblem 6 in that class.

Anyway, consider this a warning.

EFZ was the only thing Tasofro had been making up until IAMP - they still kept updating EFZ some time after IAMP. According to Unabara, they considered making IAMP using the Astra Super Stars movement system (HM's system) from the very beginning; in his heart, that should be how a Touhou game plays. You can say they were not daring enough when making IAMP, but you can't say they were making a parody of Touhou in any meaningful sense of the word.

If you want to make the parody argument, the later Touhou fighting games seem to contain many more Tasofro-directed references to other fighting games than IAMP.

edited 3rd Mar '15 9:26:45 PM by atrican

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Parody has many meaningful senses of the word. The one that comes to mind is "distorted imitation". Parodies don't have to be funny or anything. In this case, the fact that it's a fighting game with Touhou characters is enough to say it's a parody, or at least would be seen as such. IAMP's story is also notably half-assed compared to its successors.

I'm not too interested in talking about fighting game mechanics, but you sure have a funny way of saying "one of the most well-realized stories in the 20 years of Touhou Project".

Some Japanes fan(s?) have built an illustrated encyclopedia of Touhou. While all the wikis and fansites in different languages have done plenty of work, I still think their ebooks look pretty neat. Download the .zip file for the whole package (except for the changelog .txt).

Stop atrican from crawling out of the dumpster! Touhou status updates

I'll admit that it's been years since I played the game, but "unknown character appears for the sole purpose of gathering a bunch of other characters against their will and thereby making them fight" is what I would consider the archetypical fighting game throwaway plot.

Cinderella Cage

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Kasen is a hermit.

Most fans think that she's an oni,

Oni are youkai, and hermits are delicious to youkai because their flesh ascends a youkai to a higher form.

Kasen gave in to her youkai instincts once and ate her arm and is now atoning for it (or at least ashamed of it.

This might be the dumbest theory I have ever come up with for anything, but it almost, almost makes sense. I mean, it's obviously not true, because it's patently ridiculous, but sometimes the fun in WMG'ing is seeing how absurd a theory can get if you take everything at face value.

Maybe ZUN could clear these things up if he didn't insist on endless Slice of Life adventures every chapter. Seriously ZUN. PLOT. It's been 24 chapters. Can we have a conflict that lasts longer than 2 chapters?

edited 4th Mar '15 12:18:35 PM by Frostav

Varśnāmi, nūdhrēmnāyīm eyī —"With the pen, I reach satisfaction"

Its implied that her arm is missing rather than gone. Whenever a mysterious arm shows up she goes to check it out.

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Also she's not a real hermit so I doubt she tastes delicious.

...I forgot about that.

But once again, we still know like...nothing about Kasen outside of vague implications. That works for when you're building a world, like what ZUN does with P Mi SS and So PM and the character profiles, but when you're writing an actual story you can't just endlessly string the reader along with tantalizing implications. We know that she's a hermit and a beastmaster with a ton of esoteric knowledge, and...what else?

His style also doesn't work when you add so many implications towards one thing that it's pretty much confirmed for a reveal. Kasen has had so many situations that imply she's an oni that there's practically no way she can be something else. At this point The Reveal will become The Un-Twist.

Looking back on it, "youkai hermit ate their own arm and is atoning for it" is actually a pretty cool character concept, but it's a bit too grimdark for canon Touhou.

Wait, what?

I thought she was a hermit like Seiga. I've only read up to ch24.

edited 4th Mar '15 12:31:12 PM by Frostav

Varśnāmi, nūdhrēmnāyīm eyī —"With the pen, I reach satisfaction"

In chapter 18, Komachi straight up asks her why she's pretending to be a hermit. If anyone would know the truth of the matter, it's Komachi. Also, rereading that chapter, I am a bad writer.

As for the "reveal" that Kasen is an oni, obviously it's not meant to be a twist at this point. It's more of a running gag. The comic assumes you know that she's an oni and works from there. The mystery is more about what her specific motivations are vis-a-vis her arm and breaking Gensokyo's barrier.

edited 4th Mar '15 12:38:03 PM by Clarste

She's a rather hermit-like totally-not-an-oni, though.

Post--edit-edit: For some reason, people always seem to think that something that hasn't been explicitly stated will be a grand reveal when it's finally stated, rather than just confirming what was already assumed to be understood.

edited 4th Mar '15 12:43:28 PM by AnotherDuck

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Given who the other hermits are in this series, I would think she's actually not very hermit-like at all.

I think someone pointed out that Kasen is trying her hardest to act like the stereotype of what hermits act like, basically she is pretending using second hand knowledge as the basis for her charade.

It's a open secret for a reason.

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I'm not sure there are many characters who're good to stand in place of a typical whatever it is they are. Or rather, we should probably never judge how typical someone is just going by the examples we've seen.

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Right now I'd say Miko is the most hermit-like hermit, since she explicitly has 'become Celestial' as her endgoal.

Or at least, that's what she says. Politicians, you just can't trust them.

Heart of Stone

Except Nitori. She's so kappa.

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At this point, the thing about Kasen is not trying to figure out who she really is, but about the details of who she really is. Is she just a regular oni, or something else (like a kishin)? Is her horns cut off or does she have small, round horns? What motivated her to pretend to be a hermit. Stuff like that.

Continue the bloodline, Fujimaru!

Ibaraki-Douji was Shuten-Douji's second in command. Either his son or his wife or his lover or any combination.

Heart of Stone

Who's the girl next door living in a haunted mansion...?

Seriously though, The Witches' Ball in the style of Ashley's Song. It's great.

Heart of Stone

Interesting song. And funnily enough, the first picture in that video showed up on my background just now.

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Wonderful miko of paradise
Flan
Ran and Yukari
Hina-chan
Sanae
Starry sky logic
Koishi
Mary and Renko