Yeah, but still, why? I mean I know the old folks got gold out of the bargain, but I'm curious how the Lunar authorities went from "exile Kaguya for her crimes" to "shrink her down and stuff her in a bamboo shoot, send her to a bamboo forest, and periodically send material rewards to those who take good care of her."
Well, she developed "feelings of love and gratitude," which may or may not be actual love and gratitude. Might be some stilted old-fashioned speech, might be a translation thing, might be characterization of Kaguya not quite treating those people as beings on her level, it's up for interpretation. Or maybe she was grateful but also suspicious that her gratitude was displaced since they only cared for her because of their stipend, so she walked back her affection a pace.
Also like her sentiment that she "didn't do anything particularly unusual" on Earth to get all that attention, which leads me to sarcastically ask what she was doing at all.
Skimming through her chapter, trying to learn more... she mentions that her old caretakers "had their peaceful life taken away by the moon's opulent goods," stated with what might be regret... never actually refers to them by name, though. I mean, they're bit characters from a public domain story, and not really important, but still. You'd think she'd learn who her caretakers were.
It's a bit odd. Kaguya approves of Eirin treating humans (and rabbits) as more than tools, and she doesn't like being treated differently or as superior to anyone just because she's a Lunarian, but there still feels like there's a barrier there, she doesn't seem to consider herself human or anything. And she says she likes Gensokyo because "It is a world where humans and youkai live side by side, and where the old and the new intermingled. Nobody would bat an eye at the presence of Lunarians or advanced lunar technology. People would just laugh if we said we were some sort of high-class nobles." And then there's "Gensokyo was the place that put me at ease, because even if I didn't spend my time in hiding I wouldn't stand out at all."
So what she wants most of all is anonymity? Not necessarily a land of equals, but a land so diverse that she doesn't stand out?
Welp, any last thoughts on the Lunatic Princess before we return to an earlier era featuring a Maniacal Princess? After we talk about a tourist, I should say.
Mine is to repeat what I think Clarste brought up last time around about old Japan's standards of beauty. Like, during the Heian period the vogue was for absurdly long hair, shaved eyebrows with drawn-on eyebrows put almost on the hairline, white facepaint, and blackened teeth(!). So if Kaguya didn't have some sort of superpower of Timeless Beauty, a subset of her manipulation of eternity perhaps, she might have bowed to fashion and looked rather absurd to our modern sensibilities.
Or maybe that's still the fashion on the moon and she blended right in, Iunno. Or maybe that's where the Heian fashion sense came from in the first place! Kaguya brought i with her from outer space!
Huh. Turns out whenever I hear "glamour" now I hear Mettaton's "ohhhh YES!" and his theme song. Aaaaand now Kaguya's legs are going everywhere as she dances with her tongue sticking out goddammit brain why.
Distracting thought: maybe the Lunarians' timeless beauty is just an illusion and anyone with true sight can actually see how old they really are. Not sure if Eirin would be immune to this or look like something else entirely since y'know, god.
edited 6th Sep '17 8:19:33 AM by Tacitus
Showing their age or maybe showing their inhumanity
They do seem to have some overlap with the fair folk, up to rip van winkling some poor schmuck
Forever liveblogging the Avengers![]()
So they collect dust and gradually fall apart from neglect?
Joking aside, I just like the thought that there's something subtly off about these people who tried to claim something that normally only the gods possess, like they look the same as they always have, but you can tell they've been that way for a long time. Maybe too long, like a bit of butter spread over too much bread.
Anyway, we should try to tear our eyes away from the moon princess and carry on with our lives. Coming up will be Kotohime, Doremy, and Touhou's greatest success story. But first, a girl who just wanted to go someplace new,
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Stage: Magical Space ~ Border Space
BGM:""Dimension of Reverie"
note
Theme: "Spiritual Heaven"
note
Write-up:
Just an ordinary native of Makai, encountered while trying to navigate the border between the world of demons and Gensokyo, unfortunately at the same moment a protagonist was trying to come the other way. Louise proceeded to get in and lose a fight, only to reappear in Makai's frozen wastes, skirmishing with the invader. Unless that was someone with a different hair color who shared her fashion sense.
Louise's personality changes depending on who encounters her. She's pleasant enough to Reimu apart from initially denying she's another demon tourist, which doesn't stop the shrine maiden from attacking her, while after learning Marisa is a human magician, she demands that the witch give her the honor of a duel. She hesitantly gets in a fight with Mima for no real reason, but without knowing why loses her temper and attacks Yuuka almost immediately. Last time around Antimatter625 ascribed these different personalities as perhaps indicating that Louise is but a placeholder for generic Makai denizens, which can be alternatively friendly, competitive, shy or aggressive. Or maybe it just goes to show how meeting different people brings out different parts of yourself.
Relations
- Shinki (creator)
See also the previous
compendiums.
So last time around I focused on what Louise's status as a tourist told us about Makai's material situation, i.e. standards of living allowed people to take time off to explore adjacent dimensions, their fashion sense was analogous to the Outside World's, and so forth. This time I'd like to see what her reaction to interlopers tells us about Makai society.
With Reimu she correctly concludes that the shrine maiden is a human, but Louise isn't totally sure when she asks, has to use the qualifier "possibly." Which makes sense, given how much Makai folk resemble Gensokyo folk - presumably the only way Louise could tell was because she met Reimu coming the other way through the passage between their worlds. She's friendly toward Reimu, invites her to come sightseeing, but when/if she encounters Marisa and learns that she's a magician, Louise's response is to challenge, or rather demand, that the witch duel her.
So it looks like Makai folk are used to magicians coming to visit, presumably so they can train in a magic-rich environment, and there's either a custom of helping them improve themselves through scrimmages, or it's understood that they aren't "non-combatants" like non-magician visitors. Though this does raise the question of why a non-magician would visit Makai. And I guess exceptions can be made if the visitor in question is a simple "human" like Mima who asks Louise if she "wanna go?"
Also, Louise is unable to identify Reimu as a shrine maiden, unlike Shinki, who expresses clear disdain for the position. We could speculate whether Shinki's prejudices have filtered down through her society, but there's really no need to have miko devoted to other deities when Makai's current civilization is ruled by its creator-goddess. Louise probably had no idea what a shrine maiden was, and might express shock that anyone would dedicate themselves to a deity other than Shinki.
Finally, Louise's immediate response to Yuuka is "who might you be?" followed by hostility, she doesn't recognize her as a youkai on sight. Maybe she was annoyed that the Yuuka was treating her like an alien by talking about making "first contact," maybe Makai folk and youkai don't get along on a fundamental level - rivals for the same supernatural niche, perhaps. Or maybe she could sense that a genocidal force of darkness was about to descend on her world.
Louise:
A denizen of Makai just looking forward to some time outside of the realm. Running into unexpected guests put a damper on that.
Fashionable Eye:
Louise is someone who enjoys doing different things. To her, doing different things enriches the soul. But one thing she enjoys doing repeatedly is sewing.
Magicians come to Makai for training or enhancing their magical might. Louise, whenever she passes by them, makes mental notes about their sense of fashion. The threads and fabric that went into making their outfits must have been expensive.
One day in town, she overheard some talk about how Shinki was kickstarting a tourism program. Louise thought a little about it, wondering why starting something like that was necessarynote , but most of her thoughts were focused to having a opportune chance to gather non-Makaian fabric and dyes to extend her favorite hobby.
So with that in mind, Louise put on her best outfit that screamed "I'm a tourist!" and blasted off, with the full intention of catching some rays from a different world.
...Completely unaware of the apocalypse that was to come...
Her initial attempt seems to have gone about as well as a holiday in Syria, but I think MS's ending indicates that more demon tourists visited Gensokyo despite that disturbance, so it's always possible Louise had a more successful second trip.
Good question. They probably don't need to go to Gensokyo to train or anything... unless they wanted to get stronger by practicing their arcane abilities in such a low-magic setting, hmm. It's also perfectly reasonable for some Makai folk to feel like exploring an adjacent dimension, and they seem civilized enough not to cause too much trouble - or at least as civilized as some of the people we've seen in Gensokyo.
My guess would be that having a bunch of demons roaming around Gensokyo might be as disruptive to its youkai as having a bunch of tengu and oni and whatnot walking around the Human Village in broad daylight. It's a land defined by a mystical border, after all, and the youkai stronghold has a clear hierarchy as well. Don't need any foreigners popping in, taking our jobs and mooching off the government.
But she didn't quite read the local fashions right, somehow overlooked the fact that her destination was trying to live a century or two in the past compared to the rest of the world. Sort of like taking a trip to Europe and getting a bunch of kilts in anticipation so you'll fit in properly.
As expected, not much material for a Louise picdump.
Little did she know what awaited her
Looks like colored pencils
Luggage in hand
Don't even ask about Google Maps
Parody SoPM article I wish was translated
This artist gives her a more mature look than her siblings
A distinct art style
Dare I call her a grand dame?
Some similarities, yes
Louise and Louise
Powering up
When your EX-mode just makes you a midboss in a later stage
It's not just a great group shot of the Makai cast herd, I love how Louise is just kind of there in the center not even trying to be badass
Road trip!
Off to wherever the PC-98 characters are being stored
It just occurred to me that Louise was compared to Twoflower several times over past compendiums, and is frequently depicted with a suitcase or other travel gear, and she comes from a dimension in which even inanimate objects like scrolls can be animate. So why doesn't she have something like The Luggage?
Kind of hypocritical for it to be okay for a bunch of magicians to use makai to level grind but when makai peeps want to to take a nice little vacation suddenly its an incident.
You're a bad neighbor, Reimu
Forever liveblogging the AvengersCan't be going on trips without some tunes to listen to.
Rockin' Paradise
Tight World
The Devil
Mystic Dimension
Spring Comes Along
And you know, Gensokyo was made to be a refuge for youkai and their food humans who preferred the excitement of the Good Old Days. Nothing in that charter about demons.
Demon tourism is probably fairly new, too. When we first saw Makai it was home to Sariel and other weirdos, with no signs of Shinki's more sophisticated civilization of magic. And then just four games later bam, Louise wanting to come out for a vacation. Small wonder Reimu mistook it for an invasion. Not to say she would've gone any easier on them if she knew from the start it was a civilian travel agency's fault.
Makes me wonder what those magicians coming to Makai to train thought about the change. Were they expecting to test their mettle against the likes of YuugenMagan only to wind up wandering through demonic suburbia? Do they get to enroll at one of Makai's magical colleges instead of fighting through monster-infested wildlands?
There are two types of magicians; those who're looking for a fight, and those who're looking for self-enrichment. Makai has something for both types!
The Louise that appears under a different color scheme is actually her innermost thoughts and fury given shape and form. This potentially occurs every time she doesn't have a good day. Aside from having a echo every time she speaks, Bluise is Louise. Just...blue. And a little stronger.
I've latched onto the theory that exposure to Makai's atmosphere can change hair coloration, so maybe it works both ways, and Louise got close enough to Gensokyo to develop a lovely shade of blue. Which would raise questions about Sara's original hair color.
But if any place could see a person's emotions step out and take on a separate existence from them, it'd be a magical realm where even inanimate objects have their own will.
...So what happens after you get beat up bad enough to spawn a palette-swapped doppelganger of vengeance? Do they naturally dissipate later once they burn off that negative energy? Did Louise reabsorb Bluise at some point? Or is it a variant of Makaijin reproduction, except instead of a child you're creating a twin sibling? Did she move in with Louise or start her own life?
The theory holds best when using Reimu as an example - Marisa's hair changed color before Mystic Square, so either dye was involved or she got booted to Makai early for some magical sit-ups. And it might explain why Byakuren has that funky two-toned hair, or why Gensokyo's human population has some hair colors outside the norm, if such changes can be hereditary.
Youkai aren't affected in this way by Makai's miasma, obviously... but demons are, maybe? Well, it's just a theory.
Looks like that's a "no." Welp, let's wish Louise a good vacation, or if not that than a speedy recovery from her terrible vacation. Coming up will be Doremy, Marisa Kirisame, and... well, do we really want to speculate over Youki Konpaku, or skip to one of the seven other entries remaining on the list? Before adding the newest batch of characters, I mean.
At any rate, it's time to look as law-abiding as possible.
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Theme: "Maniacal Princess"
note
Write-up:
A princess? A policewoman "undercover" as a princess? Or just a woman with delusions to supplement her supply of high explosives? Who can say.
Kotohime showed up to join a tournament of sorts to compete over the right to enter some mysterious ruins, and generally weirded out everyone she encountered. Assuming she was the one to win this competition, she took Chiyuri and Yumemi's kidnapping attempt in good spirit, and afterward got them to stuff a certain shrine maiden in a jail cell for lack of any better criminals to imprison. After that, she seems to have moved on to another adventure, as she hasn't been seen since. Or maybe her family kept her inside and out of trouble.
See also the previous
compendiums.
edited 19th Sep '17 8:32:32 AM by Tacitus

As mentioned in the above post, the woodcutter in the original story is an old man who's already married (to an old woman). They have no children so they adopt Kaguya. They're meant to be kindly old grandparent characters.