Main Character
Mukyuu: Mu sound thmut Patchy mmukes.
So Akyuu is one of the few characters who seems to visibly age between appearances, though that could be sheer coincidence. She's supposed to have a short lifespan, so in theory ZUN will have to kill her off at some point. In theory.
edited 18th Feb '14 1:11:20 PM by Prime32
Akyuu is one of my favorite characters. Her entry on the wiki calls her a Fantastic Racist, but from reading Symposium of Post-Mysticism and parts of Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, I'd say she actually fair for her day. Like this line in the introduction;
I also see statements about individual youkai that as long as you show them basic politeness, you should be fine, and that if you needlessly provoke them, you reap what you sow. Encouraging politeness toward youkai doesn't sound that hateful to me.
Also, since she maintains the Chronicles by reincarnating, and her powers shorten her lifespan, I wonder if she feels any more pressured than normal to produce an heir so she'll have someone to reincarnate into later. The combination of an important family line to maintain and a shortened lifetime in which to do it seems ripe for drama.
edited 18th Feb '14 3:23:30 PM by Lightblade
I don't think the Child of Miare is the one who is expected to produce heirs. After all, her life is short and most of it is spend working on the Chronicle or preparing the reincarnation ritual. I don't think they could fit in rearing and raising a child on top of it.
Also, I am still not ready to talk Akyuu yet! I feel awful!
Don't PM me. We don't like being PMed.One can (at least pretend to) respect something they hate. And if disrespecting them gets you murdered, there's something to be said about respecting them. See also; dictatorships.
She also includes little tidbits like "If you can catch Byakuren off-guard, she's basically just a normal human, so that's the time to strike." Which yes, is part of her job, but isn't exactly "You should befriend this person!"
Step 1 of checking would be to see if she can write as soon as the muscles are developed enough for it. IIRC part of her power/contract/whatever means she still knows how to write when reincarnated.
I write some fanfiction. Satori's Tale is done... but I'm not.
Okay, that got me wondering...why specifically Gensokyo? Why not Kyoto or Osaka or some other places? She's the reincarnation of Hieda no Are, the author of the Kojiki, which is Japanese nation-wide mythical text. Why did Hieda no Are choose to record the history of Gensokyo, by then was simply a no-where land in some mountains range, and even bothered to make a deal with the afterlife to keep reincarnating?
IIRC, even before the border, it was a no-man's land rumored to be especially dense with youkai. Which of course made that the case.
In other words, it's where the highest density of youkai seemed to be (or perhaps the widest variety), so it's where #0 went to work.
That's my thinking, anyway.
edited 18th Feb '14 7:32:19 PM by Antimatter625
I write some fanfiction. Satori's Tale is done... but I'm not.Akyuu of the Hieda Clan:
This girl is the author of the highly valuable Gensokyo Chronicles. Very witty.
Her photographic memory is Grade A stuff. Combined with the memories of her past lives, she knows every little thing that goes on within Gensokyo's borders. Well, not everything. Otherwise, she wouldn't be documenting, now would she?
Akyuu's the narrator. The storyteller. The one showing this stupid outsider the awesomeness that goes on in Gensokyo. And I thank her for it. Her sarcasm's fun.
Unfortunately, her lifespan gets cut every time she reincarnates, so she may not be long for this world. I'm...not sure if I'll take her passing well if it happens...
I should listen to her themes to prepare for her music dump. I wonder if I'll find any that fits her musical flavor...
Akyuu! Probably my favorite of the Touhou cast! I like her. I am sad that I've been so busy with non-Touhou things that I wasn't able to talk about her until now!
Ninth Memory
Hieda no Akyuu is the ninth reincarnation of the Child of Miare, born with a special ability that allows her to perfectly remember everything that she has witnessed. The reason for her perceptual reincarnation, and indeed, her purpose in life, is to update the Gensoukyou Chronicle, a record of the history of Gensoukyou and a guide to dealing with the youkai threats contained within. To this end, Akyuu has spend the majority of her short life gathering information and writing articles for her edition of the Chronicle.
As a human (and not a youkai or a youkai-like human like our heroines), Akyuu's writing provides a unique perspective to Gensoukyou: she provides a view of most of the cast as not a group of quirky characters but as a collection of strange, suspicious and/or dangerous beings to be feared and wary of (though not without a fair bit of dry commentary poking fun at them), and details just what one should do to either avoid conflict with or deal with youkai outside of shooting them in the face.
Of course, as the dynamic between youkai and humanity within Gensoukyou has changed since the creation of the Hakurei Barrier, so has the use of the Chronicle. Akyuu notes that she is going deeper into the personal lives of the youkai she is writing about to help create new relationships between humans and the youkai, and that the Chronicle has become a tool for youkai to basically spread knowledge about themselves (and to this end they ask Akyuu to fudge the facts and inflate their threat).
This is not without problems, however, and Akyuu has started to question if there is truly any need for the Gensoukyou Chronicle or her continued reincarnation any more. After all, Gensoukyou has entered a age where humans and youkai live in peaceful (in a sense) coexistence, so what need is there for a guide teaching humans how to deal with youkai? To this end, Akyuu wishes for as many people to read her edition of the Chronicle and tell her if her continued reincarnation is needed.
As mentioned, Akyuu (and all of her previous incarnations before her) have the unique ability to perfectly remember everything that she witnesses, referred to as Gumonji. This ability is pretty much crucial for her to write and maintain the Chronicle, as perfect memory of anything she has witnessed means that she can recollect the sources and information gathered for her entries without fail and can transcribe anything relevant she has witnessed into the Chronicle (such as the transcription of the Symposium between the various religious factions). This is not without its flaws however, as while her unique reincarnation does allow her memories of her past life, they are not as perfect as the memories of her current life. Akyuu comments that while she still remembers some details of her earlier lives, they are not clear and she still needs to read up about the past to properly know about it.
Her continued existence and long memory spanning centuries comes with a price however: Akyuu has not long to live, only to 30 by her estimate. She does not know if this is due to the process being imperfect or just due to her knowledge, but the fact remains. Several years before her demise, the Child of Miare must prepare for the ritual of reincarnation, which involves her petitioning the Yama for permission to retain her memories and identity. After her death, she will spend the next hundred years or so working for the Yama in Hell instead of going through the normal cycle of reincarnation.
As more or less the head of the powerful Hieda family, Akyuu is pretty much one of the few people who come close to being considered the leader of the human village. Likewise, she is close friends with Kosuzu Motoori, who she speaks more casually to than others, and she comments that even she has youkai friends who will remember her when she reincarnates.
Akyuu is one of the few Touhou characters with a known birthday (the other I can think of being Miko) and likewise is the only character who noticeably ages.
She is a fan of both red and black teas and various types of music (such as FM Synthesis and Punk Rock).
Sorry if I rambled a bit. I had a slow start, but I seem to have gotten into a groove.
edited 20th Feb '14 9:32:02 AM by Otherarrow
Don't PM me. We don't like being PMed.Come to think of it, if the Hakurei Barrier is what gives Gensokyo its delicious flaky crust, Akyuu and her previous incarnations are to some extent responsible for its creme filling. She doesn't just give the land's humans tips and tricks for how to survive another day, she shapes the supernatural creatures they coexist with. In her own way, Akyuu is as powerful a reality warper as Yukari.
Clearly Touhou's second Phantasm boss, in other words.
Burstin' with things to say but your opportunity to speak is slipping by, eh? Appropriate.
I can't imagine that the child of Miare would be born outside of Gensokyo as their purpose of continually reincarnating is to record Gensokyo's history.
See, now we need population numbers, so we can decide how feasible it is that there will be a pregnancy every 120/180 years on schedule. If Gensokyo can occasionally pass a year without births, then maybe a baby lost in the outside world gets to be found in Gensokyo. Sucks to be you, Akyuu's Extra-Border Birth Parents.
Not that it doesn't suck to be Akyuu's Intra-Border Birth Parents. "Congrats, you get to care for, raise and love a child who will spend her entire life journaling, but don't worry, it won't be for long."
Good question. Gensokyo may have the numbers when it comes to youkai, but there have to be more significant locations or youkai outside of it. It'd be quite the coincidence that he happened to work in the land that would become a youkai preserve centuries down the line, so it's more likely that it became a youkai preserve because Are picked it.
Maybe he wanted to finish his youkai compendium, but not have to get used to a new house.
Hey, she's got a good 11 years left, if she takes care of herself. Though she'll spend the last of them preparing the ritual for reincarnation, so that'll probably take her out of the story before then...
As long as there are Gensokyans whose first impulse upon finding a globe of total darkness is to stick their arm in it, she'll be needed.
She says plural, but the only one we know of is Yukari, right? Wonder who and where the others are. And also why she hasn't recognized Mokou yet.
I read on the Unreliable Narrator page that Akyuu is something of a racist who despises youkai and her articles aren't entirely accurate. She is also seems to hate Reimu for some reason and while Reimu is pretty mean, I don't know if that hate is warranted as Reimu more or less does her job well.
"Fan, a Mega Man character."Yeah, fandom has somehow gotten this idea that Akyuu is completely unreliable and/or a racist, which is something I don't understand. The first part is probably so they can just handwave away and PMiSS and SoPM's profiles as noncanon because they are idiots, but the second part really doesn't make sense to me.
She is wary of youkai and treats them like monsters...because that's what they are. People without powers tend to fear and be weary of monsters. People tend to forget that Akyuu isn't like Reimu and Marisa, who hates everyone equally and just doesn't care (respectively), and comes from a entirely human perspective. She and Keine are probably the closest we are going to get on a normal human's perspective on all of this.
Of course, it's also worth noting that she has youkai friends and comments in PMiSS that she actually is content with the current state of affairs where the two sides have mostly peaceful coexistance with their spell cards and their incidents and so on.
Akyuu is somewhat unreliable, don't get me wrong, but that is due to misinformation and/or youkai specfically asking her to fudge the facts, not out of malice or ignorance. I'd still say she is the most reliable in-universe source we got, and it's pretty obvious to tell when she just flat out doesn't know something (Mokou and Sakuya's backstories) or is purposely trying to hype up a weakling (Wriggle, who is apparently this big dangerous youkai...who no one can properly identify). After all, a frail human can only travel so much, and she doesn't have the pseudo-omniscient view we players do.
Also, she distrusts Reimu because Reimu's general reputation in the human village is that of a slacker who doesn't do anything.
edited 20th Feb '14 9:32:21 AM by Otherarrow
Don't PM me. We don't like being PMed.Some of her best friends are youkai, honest.
She even lets them use the bathroom.
edited 20th Feb '14 6:50:54 AM by Grounder
I don't know why but it just occurred to me that if Akyuu fudges the facts about youkai and people read it, that fudge might become true.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersWriggle probably appreciates the upgrade.
Of course, if the youkai know about their nature, it's possible that was the reason they asked Akyuu to hype them up. If they are recorded into history as being stronger than they are, people will believe they are strong and thus they will become strong.
Of course, this also solidifies their weaknesses as well, as Akyuu also notes how to deal with them.
Don't PM me. We don't like being PMed.Wriggle's upgrade may be tempered with the fact that Akyuu couldn't bother to get any actual eyewitness accounts of her.
Also, magnified weaknesses aren't such a bad thing. You know what Superman's weaknesses are? Chunks of his exploded planet and magic. Because the guy is really powerful. Do you know what Spider-Man's weaknesses are? Bullets and no joke, a certain kind of pesticide.
Because when you're so powerful that people have to rely on some silly arbitrary thing to fight you, you are in the big leagues. Vampires have a bunch of silly weaknesses because they're OP, man.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersI don't think it was less that she couldn't bother and more that Wriggle is so small time that no one cares about her enough to remember her. Despite the mid air slouch. Alas.
I guess I can see the sense in that.
Don't PM me. We don't like being PMed.Maybe he wanted to finish his youkai compendium, but not have to get used to a new house.
That's a very interesting idea, and ties into the fact that Akyuu seems to have the biggest house in town, and a noble lineage. She's basically a local lord, and Gensokyo is her fiefdom. How surprising would it be then to learn that she molds it in her own image?
I feel bad pointing this out, but since you're using it so consistently you should probably be aware that the word you're looking for is "wary", as in "cautious". Same root as "beware". "Weary" means "tired".
edited 20th Feb '14 9:31:11 AM by Clarste
