The New New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium

At this point the Oni are a mere shells of their former selves, changing with the times is hard but it is inevitable.

Well, they can still enjoy traditional oni pastimes like drinking and brawling and drinking, but the context will never be the same no matter how much Suika tries to reverse that. Huh, and isn't it weird that the second least oni-like oni tried the hardest to bring back the old status quo? Maybe Suika realized she was lapsing and hoped, consciously or not, that convincing the rest of her kind to return to the surface would encourage her to be more oni-like.

Something that struck me while binging through Shitenno! in preparation of a Suika picdump - Suika is rarely a serious character in what fan works I've encountered feature her. She's often comic relief or thoughtless but loveable, but she lacks the harsher side that sometimes comes through in official games or works. And I guess if you're not doing a story about Suika's issues there's no real reason to explore that part of her character, but still.

Suika is a somewhat serious person isn't she? She doesn't mince her words and she is very long lived and experienced. Suika isn't just comedy relief, she could be portrayed as being a smart character in a different way than Yukari.

Suika used her gathering power to bring humans and youkai to her parties in order to attract the Oni. Would it have been rude to just gather the Oni directly? Ever heard of a Maxwells Demon? With her gathering power, Suika could be a Maxwells Demon in a pretty literal sense. Suika has plenty of good official music. But I like Tsurupettan. I like it partly because of the cheerful tune. And partly because it was my introduction to Touhou. The lyrics seem a bit disrespectful to Suika. Would Suika put up with that? I think she might if it brought her enough attention. Suikas scattered form has been described as a black mist. But that's really just how a red mist looks in black-and-white.

I never heard of or I think I forgot that I may need to look that up.

Is Suika a serious person? Yes, but she goes to considerable effort to disguise that fact. Patchouli perceives enough of the real Suika to be very worried. Eirin perceives her too, but is formidable enough to be less worried. Suika and Yukari have reached an understanding over the centuries. Aya isn't fooled, but she knows when to play along.

That is a really... novel idea. Like, I don't think I've ever seen a fan work where Suika gets to dispense the wisdom gained over a thousand years of being a Deva, ruling over the other youkai of the Mountain, and experiencing more parties and drunken brawls than mortals can comprehend. I've seen Big Sis Yuugi, but never Ibuki in that role. And that seems a real shame. Suika might not be a grand schemer, or a master manipulator, or a great sage, but she isn't lacking in wisdom, her scenario in IaMP has all sorts of cutting insights about her opponents.

Perhaps, that would be awfully like using some dishonorable human trick on her fellow oni. Which didn't keep Suika from using her power in that way on humans, hmm...

I'm starting to wonder what Suika was like back when the Big Four were together and active and the oni ruled Youkai Mountain. Between her ability to turn into mist and the recurring "I know all about you. I've been watching you for a long time" line from her scenario, it's easy to cast Suika as someone who can follow up on intelligence from the tengu's swift information corps. Call her the Big Four's "tricky general" or the party's Rogue, she plays a vital but shady role that might be skirting the limits of what's considered acceptable oni behavior.

The weird thing is that, if memory serves, Suika's concept art (and her Alphes profile pic, as we can see) actually has her with a noticeable bust, it just never translated to her game sprites and that's what everyone seems to have gone by.

Suika as an intelligence gatherer? That makes sense considering her powers and skillset but Suika is an brutally honest Oni and she cannot be too sneaky.

edited 21st Dec '16 2:47:40 AM by GAP

"Do you see anything?"
"Uh..."
"If you rat on me I'll punch you in the face."
"Nope! Just the wind!"

Oni are honest, won't tell lies, and don't like it when humans use "underhanded tactics" to defeat them, but oni also don't see anything wrong with tempting foes into challenging them, even though they know them to be weaker, and abducting them when they inevitably lose. So I don't think the oni have the same notion of a "fair fight" as we do - it might mean using every ability at your disposal, even if your opponent can't match it.

Which could make Yuugi toying with the protagonist by holding back in SA a sort of insult, huh.

Anyway, pretty pictures time. Don't think it's drastically different from past picdumps, I'm sorry to say, but so it goes.

Drunken moon
A less anime take on her
Must be spring
Gensokyo's majestic skyline
Reimu's big problem
Contributing in her own way
A pacifier of sorts
A more tomboyish interpretation
Maybe give her another thousand years
Donde esta la cerveza?
Sitting pretty
Big drink, big grin
:P
Multicolored horns
Second comment wins
Oni in the breeze
Oni on the bridge
Oni in the moonlight
A party by yourself is no party at all
One for her homies?
From above
From below
Terajin did this?
Koto Inari definitely did this
Scenic but threatening
ROAR
Smash!
Ominous clouds
Take warning
Tattoos
Za beasto
Demon girl
Ogre in chains
Bottle fairy
Baring her scars
Giant versus giant
Giant versus robot
Giant versus miko
Keep your eye on the birdy
Friendly spar
Moment of impact
Suika the white mage?
She cleans up nicely
A drink among the petals
Wild girl in the woods
Hostess with the mostest
The hills are alive with drunken singing
Miko training?
Nap in the woods
Suika the sage
Sake from the shadows
Dichromatic butterfly
Alone again
#OniProblems (animated)
And you thought your commute sucked
Sweaters
Ending on a classy note

edited 21st Dec '16 6:25:07 PM by Tacitus

Suika's throwing another party. All are invited!

Festive Moon
The Strongest Species
Dance on the Moon
That Funky Lunar Beat
Chaotic Festivities
Immeasurable Might
Shattered Moon
White Rock Party
Forgotten FURY
Majestic Deva
Trembling Moon
True Power, True Despair
Stomp the Moon!
A Great Feast

Suika loves parties as she tried to give one in Gensokyo in order to lure out the Oni out of hiding but how did our heroines react to this?

I believe it was "Why the heck is everyone just partying all the time?"

Man, Oriens keeps awing me and annoying me with such amazing but short pieces.

I'm not sure any characters react to the notion of the oni returning to the surface - maybe it comes up in the endings? But that would be troublesome, wouldn't it? The tengu and kappa have adapted nicely to the oni's absence, so there's the potential for youkai-youkai conflict there, and of course the oni like to carry off humans, which in Gensokyo's case are a protected species, so there's more conflict. Gensokyo just might not be big enough these days for a society of drunken brutes, when there's so much more at stake and a good number of more sophisticated and subtle powers already jockeying for position.

Hope everybody had a good holiday weekend and didn't make to much of an oni of themselves. So here's your chance for any last Suika-related thoughts before we move on to Kyouko.

Mine's that she's just not very honest with herself, or maybe blind to some of her less oni-like qualities. Like she acts like a cheerful drunk - and to some degree is one - but she has a harshness, a bitterness, maybe even a darkness to her beneath the surface. And Suika wants (or wanted) a return to the good old days when the oni partied and raided aboveground, but doesn't seem to have noticed the un-oni-like tactics she resorted to in her attempts to bring that about.

It makes me wonder whether her perpetual drunkenness is deliberate, if she's trying to avoid a moment of sober self-reflection. Which would be an un-oni-like thing to do too. So Suika might have more in common with Kasen than she'd care to admit.

I guess that might be the case as Suika might some issues that need to be dealt with,

Orrrr she could drown those issues in alcohol and paaartaaay!

Let's put Suika in a back room somewhere while she sleeps it off. Coming up will be... pffft, great. Yeah, I messed up, I must not have saved the document with all the character names on it after crossing one off, which is to say that we've already covered Kyouko this Compendium. It just feels like October was ages ago, because holy fucking shit this year.

Anyway. Let's move on to Tokiko, followed by Tewi, the first set of three, and someone whose butt might have splinters.

Tokiko

Write-up:
Another sad statistic in the lingering problem of racial profiling, this youkai was innocently enjoying a book one day when Reimu Hakurei assumed she had stolen it and attacked, confiscating the literature afterwards. Then, when this youkai tracked her enemy down to Kourindou and tried to demand her property back, she learned that Reimu had sold the books to try to pay her tab, and then got Marisa Kirisame sicced on her. In what may or may not be a coincidence, in the next chapter of Curiosities of Lotus Asia the cast enjoys a meal of cooked crested ibis.

And that's the extent of what we know about this character - she only made that one appearance in a side story, and even the name "Tokiko" is a fan invention based on her resemblance to a crested ibis. Nevertheless, some fans have taken a liking to this little monster girl, either for having the gumption to give Reimu a surprisingly hard fight, or because they need another character to place in proximity to Kourindou. Or maybe it's simple pity for getting savaged by two main characters in the same day for no legitimate reason.

Relationships:

• Reimu Hakurei (aggressor)
• Marisa Kirisame (aggressor)
• Rinnosuke Morichika (bought stolen property)

See also the previous compendiums.

edited 28th Dec '16 11:35:22 AM by Tacitus

Ah, the best character

I prefer the name "Unnamed Bookreading Youkai."

But can we call her that if she has no books to read?

Her very identity was stolen along with her material possessions

Truly Reimu is the literal worst

What's a youkai doing with a book on "The Future of the Non-Neumann-Type Computer," though? Even if Tokiko was a kappa that would be eyebrow-raising, and since she's not, it's about as suspicious as little Tiffany walking through the ghetto late at night with a quantum physics textbook.

Maybe she likes the pictures? Wants to look smart in front of all her friends? Wanted to tear it up for bedding?

Maybe she learned displacement from some crows and became fascinated with science

So what's the deal with Tokiko's head? I interpreted her having a tuft of red hair in a braid or something, but on closer inspection it's actually a wing? And not something as sensible as Koakuma's headwings, no, but a single wing, either sticking out of the back of her skull or, as some art has it, only on her left side? If it's the former I guess it could be some sort of rudder or dorsal fin, while if it's the latter it raises further questions. And horns too? On what is most likely some sort of bird youkai?

Nothing about this girl adds up, from her choice of literature to her physical form. She's just too suspicious to be a nameless bit character who only showed up for one scene and a later cameo.

Could it be a feathery crest?

It could, but it looks to have the same sort of limb structure as her more conventional wings. At least in that art from CoLA, fanart portrayals range from a topknot thingy to a single off-center wing to tweaking the character design for the sake of symmetry. Gah, and if it's like that, does that mean Tokiko has some unusual musculature under her hair to articulate her head-wing?

Anyway, more art. Not that there's a lot to go through.

Little bird with a book
Serious glasses on
Heart
Hamming it up
No birdbath for her
Three-winged avian
Monochrome happiness
Of the two, she's the only one with a real crest
Merry Belated Christmas
And Koto Inari kills the good mood
She just can't win
Persona!
The confrontation
A peaceful encounter, for the moment
Perhaps making her escape
That's one way to get rid of her
Birds of a feather
Stop molting!
This artist loves their bird youkai
Heart alight
Face aflame
Implying that a half-youkai and a were-cow could somehow produce a three-winged bird thing
Dramatic sky
Still like this artist
Don't bother, he was either trolling or mistaken

Huh, so maybe the horns anchor the muscles she uses to control the head-wing?