The New New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium

...Huh. So basically, when Yuyuko was removed from her body (permanently, due to it being sealed with the tree), she got wiped clean,and the current Yuyuko is a new personality that Yuyuko's soul developed as she went about her new duties as Netherworld administrator.

...I can get it! It would also explain the disconnect that Yuyuko has towards her tragic life?

It's also possible that simple time could have done it. After decades of living in an entirely different form, with new powers and duties and needs, she could have adapted pretty thoroughly without even being wiped clean at the start. I think Clarste once likened this to hearing stories about things you did when you were a toddler that you don't remember or especially care about now?

Well, I suppose I had a thought about Sanae (Ok, I have a lot of thoughts about Sanae, but this one's new).

It seems Sanae wants to jump headfirst into the latest fad while Kanako realizes their efforts are better spent elsewhere. Sanae really has a hankering for some youkai extermination but puts orders first.

Something like that. The idea kinda left my head as I wrote the first sentence.

I guess the butterfly metaphor's a good one. Yuyuko's ghostly form is still made from the same substance as her mortal soul, but the habits, the attributes, pretty much everything else is entirely different. With her ghostly amnesia there's nothing to connect her to her previous existence but her name and shape... which breaks the butterfly metaphor, shoot.

Hmm, maybe this is why Yukari is on such good terms with her. Not that I'm sure Yukari has the same memory problems - if Yukari can remember who she used to be, maybe that's a factor behind those moments where she doesn't "get" Yuyuko's thought process.

Edit to respond to ninja:

Sanae seems to still be adjusting. On the one hand she's embraced her role as a kicker of booty, and revels in the chance to really cut loose and use her gods-given powers. Because what modern schoolgirl wouldn't want to be a superheroine? But she's still used to the fluidity, the changeability, the fast pace of the modern world. She's happy with her role, but wants the world around her to keep changing.

...which is interesting to me 'cause I always pegged Kanako as the most dynamic of the Moriya Mafia. Might be a generational thing - Sanae wants the world to spin on under her feet, but Kanako is experienced to know you've got to put a bit of thought and effort into it to get the ball rolling. And she still manages to make mistakes like Derpy Wings.

Meanwhile Suwako's off to the side getting drunk right after breakfast.

edited 3rd Jun '14 10:08:54 PM by Tacitus

Huh, was expecting more catch-up talk than what's been going on. If things don't pick up I'll be drawing the next three characters out of the digital hat and moving on in 24 hours or so.

In the meantime, a lil' Reimu picdump, searching for stuff not in the last two - mostly alternate costumes and badass stuff.

Taking a page from Yukari
Silk, frills, throne
Shady
Feelin' blue
Seems to fit
Where does one find these flaming swords?
Sword, staff
I question the skirt more than the bike
Had her heart stolen by a dashing officer
On more equal footing\\ Oh goodie, a controversial reboot
Actually a terrible detective, yet always solves her cases
This fits pretty well, actually
Festival days
Great, she got another power-up
Boss butterfly
Flaming butterfly
Blowing the hell out of a vat of pudding
Yellow eyes in profile
Rematch
Servant of the heavens
Girl with a heavy impact
Scorched but still standing
Through the fire and the flames she carries on
Red eyes are intimidating
Surprised the onimiko hasn't met Kokoro yet
Mid-flip
A proper battle
Fighting with caution
Lunatic battle
Reminds me of that Finnish comic
Did she just write someone's name in her Death Note?
Branching out
The hardened veteran of countless campaigns
This guy does P2 Yukkureimus I like
And sometimes they're awesome
Chubby baby Reimu
Have some tea

I, ah, expected there'd be more talk than this. ._.

I wish I something to add but my brain is not up to par and it has been awhile since I wrote an essay. My essays suck.

edited 6th Jun '14 4:34:26 AM by GAP

I don't feel like I have anything to add as of now. Not for the characters that have already been discussed at least.

Here's something that I was thinking about regarding dead person's crossing of the Sanzu River in Touhou. It is said that the time to cross depends the shinigami's fee, which is on the money spent by the deceased's loved ones on their behalf, and those who have nothing to pay will be thrown overboard.

But I wonder, what would become of someone if they Never Found the Body and therefore could not get a proper funeral for loved ones to donate at? Would they get thrown overboard too, or would Komachi or whichever shinigami carries them let it slide in that circumstance. Or am I simply misunderstanding what Komachi's ''Perfect Memento'' article means by "the money spent by close friends on behalf of the deceased"?

edited 6th Jun '14 5:05:26 PM by Lightblade

I don't think it has anything to do with the funeral in particular, just how much money people were willing to spend on you over your lifetime. Friendship power, monetized. But only rich friends.

edited 6th Jun '14 6:51:57 PM by Clarste

Sucks to be self-sufficient, then.

Can't help but think about tricks you could try to pull with belief in Gensokyo. Say someone dies but they don't find a body, and as far as everyone knows they're off in Makai doing some training. There's a soul to be shuttled, probably, but what happens if someone else visits Shinki's place? Might they encounter a doppelganger, because so many people expect it? What happens if that fellow dies?

Or there's what might happen if enough people pray for the soul of an imaginary character like King Arthur. Does Komachi get to ferry a spirit that has nothing to talk about? Eiki judge a soul who hasn't done anything, good or bad?

Alright, let's move on.

Lined up in the pipe we've got a mermaid, a most definitely not an oni, and whatever's the deal with YuugenMagan. But first, please welcome one of the A-listers from the old games, the ruler of the demon world, Lady Shinki!

Shinki

Stage and Music:
War of Gods ~ Dream Battle
bgm: "End of the World ~ World's End"
Theme: "Legendary Illusion ~ Infinite Being"
Theme from Touhou Unreal Majong: "An Ordeal from God"

Signature Attack:
Great Magic "Devil's Recitation"''

Write-up:
Makai's self-professed creator goddess. Whether or not this is true, Shinki has the loyalty of at least five stages' worth of demons who put themselves between her and the heroines out to put an end to Makai's fledgling tourism industry. She seems to be a hands-off demon goddess person, since she initially declared the tourism matter of her control, and even after agreeing to stop it was unable to keep further incursions from bothering the protagonist in certain endings.

Like most other PC-98 characters Shinki hasn't been seen for a while now, but whether because she came from the most Windows-like of the old games, or thanks to Alice Margatroid's reappearance raising questions about who is or isn't from Makai, Shinki may be even more popular than Mima when it comes to the old cast. Nods like Byakuren's attack in UFO only fan the flames, and many fans were disappointed that game's jaunt to Makai didn't earn her a cameo. At any rate, while Mima's disappearance is one of Touhou's great mysteries, Shinki for all we know could be exactly where we left her at the end of Mystic Square. Hopefully she's fixed her house, though.

Relations

• the rest of Mystic Square's cast (creations)
• Alice Margatroid (fanwank something)
• Byakuren Hijiri (implied contact)
• Mima (past history?)
• Koakuma, Sariel, Elis, YuugenMagan, and any other quasi-demonic entities (???)

Interpretations
"A Sacred Hope"
by Diamite

See also the first two compendiums.

edited 12th Jun '14 9:23:39 PM by Tacitus

I always wondered about the Makai, why would any want to turn hell into a tourist attraction? I know the Hell in the East isn't the same we westerners interpret hell but still...

It's the other way around. It's the Makai people who are going as tourists to Gensokyo.

And Makai and Hell are two separate places. Hell is the afterlife place where sinful souls go after death. Makai is just another world where the Makai people live.

Yea, Shinki created Makai, so it doesn't have any affiliation with the Ministry. (that I know of)

Shinki is the goddess of Makai! She made it, isn't that something? How does one get the power to create a whole world and all of its inhabitants anyway? Come to think of it, where did you come from Shinki? Are you a fallen angel? Born from the magic ether? ...Folks believe in a devil, so poof, there is Shinki?

Well, origins aside, Shinki is the absolute ruler of Makai, reigning from her throne in Pandemonium and...OK only half of that is true. In reality, Shinki seems to have a rather hands off approach to ruling over her subjects, leaving them to their own devices and accepting their authority (for example, she comments that the "visits to Gensoukyou" thing was all the privately owned travel agency and she has no power over it) until absolutely necessary. Like any good god I suppose.

Shinki is a nice goddess, she cares about her subjects and her land and has great pride in them. Despite her hands off approach, she will intervene if a bunch of out of control heroines start wrecking the place and show them what for. Most fandom depictions thus tend to have her as a loving, motherly figure.

She also fell for Mima's lie about being a goddess. There is that. That's a thing that happened.

(Yumeko is her favorite, not Alice btw)

Regarding your first line, Miko created Senkai, didn't she?

Buf yeah, Shinki is an impressive figure. I view her as slightly naive and trusting though, due to likely having been in charge of a world where everyone likes her for ever so long.

Shinki! Fuck yeah! My favorite PC-98 era character! She is so absurdly powerful she created her own pocket dimension and all of its inhabitants. Probably the creator of all demons and devils, and her dimension is somewhat implied to be the source of magc(?).

Her depictions in fandom vary - the Japanese see her as a wise-yet-silly motherly figure. Laying back behind the scenes and letting her "children" handle themselves. In a way she is more in a representative role than an actual ruling queen.

From what I've seen (or read) from the Western fandom however, it seems some had taken the Devil theme quit literally. I'm pretty sure I don't need to mention names, but I've read several fanfictions depicting her as Absolute Evil, ruling over a land swarmed with monsters and wicked witches with an iron fist. Like, Makai makes Old Hell look like a kindergarten. It's not an accusation or anything, it's just that it's so far from my perception of Shinki is a little alienating.

Edit: lol, Shinki's post number.

edited 8th Jun '14 8:36:39 AM by ninryu

Worth noting: Makai is normally translated as "Demon World", but equally valid is "Magic/Mystic/whatever World". I'm pretty sure that the concept of a semi-Death World filled with "mazoku" who are basically magic elementals (and more chaotic than truly evil) was established in Japanese fiction long before ZUN, though Yu Yu Hakusho has the only other Makai I can think of off the top of my head.

Also, in Japan Christianity is weird foreign occultism that's obsessed with death imagery (which is why Remilia of all people has cross-themed attacks).

ZUN was supposedly ripping off Shin Megami Tensei a lot back then (including PC-98 Alice), but I'm not familiar with the franchise myself.

edited 8th Jun '14 3:53:14 PM by Prime32

I think the only overt SMT references are Alice and one of the locations in Highly Responsive to Prayers being named after the penultimate dungeon from the very first Megami Tensei.

Shinki:

The goddess of Makai. Very kind unless provoked.

Yay, Shinki! What an angelic figure you are. But you preside over demons, known to be malicious.

Shinki's a gentle soul. She loves her creations, and they love her back. Even better is that after she creates them, she doesn't really watch their every move. She wants them to be their own demon. Any thoughts of mutiny? Why mutiny? She's da best!

Of course, she is also a bit on the carefree side. I bet when they proposed the tourism plan, she was all "That sounds like fun! Do it!" She will stand by her creation's beliefs, if that makes sense. She's also carefree enough to go all out and turn her world into a blazing wasteland, because no worries, she can patch it right up in a jiffy. After all, she had to go all out to teach that miko and her not pals a lesson for ruining the fun of her creations!

Shinki would be a great Sensei-chan.

edited 8th Jun '14 3:52:45 PM by Diamite

Well, I can only speak for myself, but the Shinki of A Satori's Tale was fun to write. And after saying that... I'm not sure I have much more to say about her...

Well, The reason I chose her and the rest of Makai as the 'villains' was fairly arbitrary. It came about after I realized I wanted an antagonist in the story, but didn't really want to use an OC or the original characters for that role... so I decided on the PC-98 Makai crew, since it was -like- using OCs... except for Shinki, and the rather violent interpretation of Shinki I was going to use I figured would make the alignment of the Makai folks pretty clear.

Once I decided she would be the primary antagonist, I examined her design more, thought about some stuff, and came up with the other details that pop up in that story. I worked out a lot of the final conflict and such before I even started the story proper, so saying that Shinki did a lot to inspire the entire story isn't far off.

Just realized her stage is called "Dream Battle." Now, who else do we know with... wait, no, no, "Maiden's Capriccio ~ Dream Battle" came several games later.

Well, Shinki being Makai's equivalent to Reimu is an interesting concept, anyway.

This made me think - what did Shinki view those visiting human hermits as? Did she mistake the magicians training in Makai's hazardous conditions for a bunch of humans having a good time? Does she know that little of mortals, and wholly underestimates the dangers of her world? Or was she under the impression that letting her people visit Gensokyo as "tourists" would be the equivalent of humans coming to Makai? If so, why was she trying to make her girls stronger?

Assuming you can trust the not-devil, anyway.

Well, eventually. Once the rampage reaches her actual house.

Ah, let's not start a demiplane-measuring contest.

Let's find a compromise - the supportive but not-overbearing mother figure of a land of wicked demons, smiling with maternal approval at the chaos they wreak. Or we could always play them in sequence, with a once-carefree mother figure prompted to tighten her grip and harden her tactics after the rude awakening of Mystic Square.

Heh. Always thought her wing markings looked a bit like circuitry. Guess that's why she's such a distant ruler, always on the interwebs.

Here's a question. How dependent on the faith of Makai's residents is Shinki? Is she a "God" in the sense that she requires it to sustain herself like, say, Kanako, or is it like this Ask the Five Magic Stones entry supposes and she simply "created Makai and serves as its unquestioned ruler"?

edited 9th Jun '14 6:18:14 PM by Lightblade

I think Shinki is a different beast from Kanako. More creator god less turn up after the fact to claim the credit and then introduce electricity to keep the people invested.