The New New Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium

I think she refers to herself as a youkai even after the mallet energy gets wacked out of her.

But that's a discussion for another time.

Here, we catch the mermaid in one of her musical routines. Observe quietly.

Jovial Mermaid
Mermaid Magic
A Misty Adventure
Mermaid Rock
Mermaid Blast
Empowered Mermaid
Exotic Mist
Sombrero Mermaid
Spirited Mermaid
Harmonic Mermaid
Mermaid Party
Dancing Mist
Mermaid Electrosphere
Serene Mermaid

Oooh, let's see... well, I think mix #2 is my favorite. The accordion just works really well - it'd be nice to have a relaxed, non-rocking remix using nautical instruments like that.

Question: does Wakasagihime have any dialogue for Impossible Spell Card? The translation in the wiki is a bit spotty, and lists her as a boss but doesn't have anything more for her. I was curious about her attitude during that game, how different she is or isn't acting without the Mallet influencing her. And whether it was another Misty Lake encounter or if Wakasagihime went forth to hunt a little not-oni.

Oh, wait, should do my usual picdump at some point too:

Annoying thing is that a lot of Wakasagihime pics are basically the same, as there's only so many ways you can draw a mermaid in or out of the water. I've tried to catch the ones that stood out.




There's lots like this
Or this
Simple watercolor
Colorful
Blue
Almost a snow globe
Like the riverbanks
Maybe she lives in some submerged ruins?
Somewhat alarming
Bright-eyed
Shushing
Uncertain
Shy
Commanding
Surprised
Chains?
Flowers and pebbles
The comparative density of liquids
Onikobe Rin!
Persona!
Friend to all the lake's denizens
The conventional pairing
Adjacent-stage pairing
Royal pairing
A surprising pairing
A surprising art style for a surprising pairing
This one's familiar for some reason
Either pets or snacks
A shame lakes don't have surf
Some nights she lets her voice rest
Into the deep
Something to do with children's card games
Collector
Confusion
More confusion
She keeps ruining things
Hippocampus
Switching to all-range mode
Cooling off(?)

Assuming nobody has anything to add, guess we'll move on sometime tomorrow. Ish.

edited 29th Jun '14 9:12:25 PM by Tacitus

The double post is merely awkward. The triple post is worrisome, where you start to wonder if anything's happened to everyone else in the thread, or if they know something you don't. Anyway, YuugenMagan is next, followed by Shou aaaaand the Crown Prince! But first,

Kasen Ibaraki

Appearance:

Write-up:
The eponymous Wild and Horned Hermit, though she's not that wild, has no horns, and isn't a real hermit. But she chooses to identify as one, so we should respect that.

Kasen Ibaraki spends a lot of time doing hermity things in her hidden mountain home, but we've also seen her venture out to investigate and resolve low-grade incidents like youkai attacks, or to lecture the protagonists. We're not sure what Kasen's specific power is yet, but she does have a menagerie of mundane and mythical monsters at her beck and call, an assortment of hermit abilities, and a bandaged arm that can squish spirits. Oh, and she also has a past with Suika Ibuki, a beer-enhancing magical artifact like Suika and Yuugi, and doesn't like beans. At this point there's so many hints that Kasen is an oni that actually revealing it would be underwhelming.

Most fan works featuring Kasen therefore co-star more wild and horned not-hermits, and the downside of Kasen having her own series is that this tends to establish her character so that alternate interpretations are more difficult. On the other hand, enough unanswered questions surround her to fuel some entertaining speculation over her motives and history, and as always we are free to ignore canon when it suits us.

Relationships:

• Reimu Hakurei (go back further than Reimu remembers, which is to say she had forgotten they'd met)
• Marisa Kirisame (only it in for the immortality, and loot if she can help it)
• Moriya Trio (neighbors)
• Komachi Onozuka (conflict as part of the hermit deal)
• Suika Ibuki and Yuugi Hoshiguma (gee, what could it be?)
• Konngara (fandom association due to the above)

Interpretations:
"Walking the Right Way"
by Antimatter 625

"Reborn Oni"
by Diamite

See also the previous compendium

edited 7th Jul '14 9:49:00 PM by Tacitus

Her "ability" is basically to talk to animals. She says so herself in the musket badger chapter. "Guiding animals onto the correct path is both my power and my duty". Since we already know that powers are self-declared anyway, that's about as official as it gets in my opinion.

Ability to the extent of guiding animals.

Kasen Ibaraki! She is a onicompletely human deva of the mountaintotally legit hermit who lives and trains at her fancy mansiontraining dojo on Youkai Mountain. As you can see, she is kinda obviously suspicious.

Kasen herself is kind and polite, but preachy and prone to scolding folks with lectures when the need arises. She tries to act hermitlike, but it seems like she is merely trying to emulate how hermits act and live like, and doesn't really know the full details of hermitage.

...wait, did I say that? I meant to say she is a real hermit who does hermit stuff. Yeah.

Anywho, Kasen's primary abilities seems to be to speak to and control animals, as shown with the many many animal friends she has and uses for stuff. She also has an arm made of bandages that is capable of crushing vengeful spirits (but this is probably bad since it removes them from the cycle of reincarnation outright. Bad Kasen). How did she lose her original arm? Ain't that a good question.

She also has the Ibaraki Box of a Hundred Medicines, which can cure any illness and heal the drinker, but also makes them into an oni temporarily. Which is not suspicious at all, and is clearly just your average healing item.

Kasen is pretty and I like her design.

I need to read Wild and Horned Hermit.

edited 1st Jul '14 8:20:53 AM by Otherarrow

I saw a grid of Myers Briggs patterns that someone put together for Touhou characters and Kasen was INFJ. I remember this only because I got INFJ when I did that test.

edited 1st Jul '14 9:14:48 AM by Prime32

That means Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging, for the record. I don't know what those mean in any contextual detail though.

Personally I don't like boiling Kasen down to anything like that though, since I see her dual nature of oni and hermit to be the fundamental underpinning of her character. She's playing a role, not following her own nature. Her behavior is how she thinks a hermit should act, tempered by her natural oni instincts.

Now, obviously oni aren't all going to act exactly the same, and you can easily say that her own personality is what led her to attempt the hermit life, but the fact that she's actively attempting to change her personality is her personality. She's unsatisfied with what she is, or at least how others would treat her, so she became someone else. That someone else is also her, and surely she can't suppress herself entirely (not to mention her infamously bad lying), but this contrast forms the basis of her personality.

Put more succinctly, she wants to be a rational, detached bystander who gives advice to the heroes where necessary, but she's actually an impulsive meddler who goes by her gut feelings more often than not. The first is what she thinks a hermit is, and the second is what an oni is.

More generally and thematically, her purpose is essentially to change "human" nature in a way that may be impossible. She wants to bridge the gap between human and youkai, not unlike Byakuren, but if unclear if this is possible or even a good thing. She laments what she was born as, yet at the same time proud of what it's given her (strength, drinking ability, etc). Ultimately it's unclear if this is mere denial or the actual creation of a bridge. This lack of certainty is something she's very aware of as well, but her stubborn nature as an oni and her idealistic nature as a hermit combine to force her onto this path she has chosen.

edited 1st Jul '14 11:29:59 AM by Clarste

Kasen is trying to change herself but she is struggling with her Oni nature?

"Trying to change" has a connotation I'm uncomfortable with. She did change. She just started acting a certain way. There is nothing more than that. Her new persona is equally her. She's just now two people at once. Well, that's my interpretation.

I realize that I said that her purpose was to change "human" nature, but I meant that more on a broad societal level. She's trying to become an ideal: a youkai that is not a youkai. A place where these labels are meaningless and people live as they want. However, it is unclear if this is possible or desireable.

Kasen Ibaraki:

A mysterious hermit with connections to the Hakurei Shrine. Very helpful.

For currently classified reasons, Kasen's living the life of a hermit. While she imparts some of her wisdom to others, she also receives some lessons herself. And being a hermit means she'll eventually have to come face to face with the shinigami division whose job is to manage life insurance. A pointless job, if you ask me. Look at all the long-living people here!

Even though she's a hermit, she still has some of her oni pride. Her medicine box being a prime example. Oni are known to love honesty, but Kasen's willing to break that rule to be a better person. I wonder if Suika loathed her when she started on the path of enlightenment, thinking she was only pretending, doing this hermit thing with a half-hearted approach, only to let out a big sigh and leave her to do what she wants.

Kasen lost her arm. Somehow. It's still intact. Somewhere. But hey, her new shadow arm's pretty nifty, granting spirits, especially vengeful ones, true death. She need not fear those beings when she has this bad boy around! But...it's bad for reincarnation purposes and stuff.

Her ability to guide/speak to animals has given her a nice plethora of beasts, including eagles, a raijuu, a tiger, and a dragon. Bet they had lots of interesting stories that were said.

If she has any dark intentions for the Hakurei Shrine, I ain't seeing it, especially since she saved it from burning down. However, it may be in the way of her getting her arm back...

...I wonder if that shadow arm's actually a curse, and her being a hermit is keeping the curse in check...

Aww, but that's... well, not lame, but unexciting compared to "manipulation of density" or "power over unexplainable phenomena." And singling it out as her chosen power when she can do other stuff like the arm thing is an odd choice, like if Satori said her superpower was getting along with animals too. Though I guess talking to dragons is a bit more meaningful than being a more efficient Crazy Cat Lady.

But you're right, if she says that's her power that's her power. Though I wouldn't be surprised if she had another ability she's letting atrophy during her new life.

Sounds interesting, just wish I could find the one you're talking about. Also, annoyed that the ones I've seen ignore the PC-98 characters. Surely all those one-game wonders with a few lines of dialogue can form the basis of a complete psychological evaluation?

A hermit's head with an oni's heart, hmm? Guess she counts as three people then, the oni she's trying to leave behind but which forms the foundation of her character, the hermit she aspires to, and the compromise between the two that she operates as.

The big question is still "why?" Though I guess the easy answer is "because she wanted to change," so the follow-up would be the context for that. When did Kasen start her new life, and what prompted it? Was it something gradual, a growing dissatisfaction with the oni lifestyle, a sense that she could or should be something more than a boozing ogre? Did some significant event cause her to forsake her old life and turn her back on her kin? Was she unwilling to follow the oni exodus into the underground, and stayed on the surface by not being an oni? Or is her hermitdom a means to an end, like Diamite's idea about a cursed arm?

edited 2nd Jul '14 11:07:29 PM by Tacitus

Suika seems to think it's the latter, a means to an end (breaking the barrier to get outside and find her missing arm). And Kasen is unable to deny this, so I think it's probably true at some level. Yet at the same time she's not actively making any plans to accomplish this and seems a bit unwilling to do what it would actually take.

Procrastination, hesitation, stagnation. She thinks she knows what she wants, but... isn't this enough? This little life she's carved for herself? Like the series itself, she finds herself too distracted by daily life, and dare I say comfortable with it, to move things on to the next stage. That doesn't mean it's never coming, but maybe tomorrow. Next year. Next generation. No rush.

K Asen is an oni pretending to be an hermit in order to sscape the lifestyle or is it something more? I guess we will just have to wait for more developments. S Till, I wonder when Kasen met up with Reimu, she seems to know her but Reimu cannot remember her.

I'm surprised there's no memory trope fitted to Reimu yet on the character sheet. Between Kasen and Alice, it feels like ZUN is having fun with Remember the New Guy? and helping smooth over any old character's reintroductions.

There's something fishy about this - I'm not arguing whether it's true or not, I'm pointing out that if youkai supposedly go on hunting expeditions beyond the Barrier, and Yukari can nip across it with ease, it's strange that Kasen would have to take some levels of Hermit to cross the border between fantasy and mundanity. And what about being a Hermit would make that easier, anyway?

Does Kasen have a history with Yukari? It's been a while and I still need to get caught up with the latest comics, but I can't remember the two ever interacting.

It'd also be useful to know just how long ago the oni migrated belowground, so if we assumed that Kasen stayed behind, we'd know how long she's been procrastinating regarding her arm.

Kasen talked with Yukari in one of the chapters, and she didn't seem to recognize her (although maybe that's ambiguous). Yukari implicitly acts like Kasen is "on the side of the youkai" and tells her stuff that hermits and humans shouldn't know, specifically some of her plans for the outside world and how she's keeping tabs on the human village to eliminate dangerous elements before they rock the boat. Incidentally, that's the exact same chapter that shows youkai being able to freely move back and forth between the barrier (while humans can't). The Zashiki Warashi one.

As for how becoming a hermit would help Kasen accomplish anything, obviously Suika's theory was that she was trying to earn Reimu's trust so she could destroy the shrine and thereby remove the barrier. There's obviously a difference between merely slipping past the barrier and bringing it down entirely, but it's unclear why she would prefer to latter.

Why would Suika believe that? It isn't though the barrier was deteriorating at a fast pace anyway.

Projection? Maybe Suika wants it broken down for whatever reason? To demonstrate Oni superiority?

It could be Kasen's arm doesn't let her cross over (or wouldn't let her cross -back-) for whatever reason. Maybe she's come to sympathize with the humans and wants them to have a way out.

Walking the Right Way

Oh, here's a thought. Maybe Kasen's an oni and losing her oni-ness. She severed and cursed her arm so that as she keeps drinking from the box, it keeps her oni-ness from slipping entirely away. Because it keeps healing her (turning her into an oni), but can't ever fully heal her. So she's got a way to stay an oni indefinitely, but it's still susceptible to failure (The box being stolen, for instance).

And in that case, her motives for wanting the barrier broken arise pretty simply. If the barrier's gone, then she doesn't need to worry about becoming a human and therefore trapped in (or outside of) Gensokyo. She'd still be able to escape even if that did happen.

I don't think she'd like the idea of either being pinned down in such a small place, or of being locked outside of the home all of her onibuddies and other friends live within.

She's walking that middle line but it really seems to me that the series is setting her up to make a choice: hermit->celestial, or stay an oni.

Not merely controlling them, or talking to them. Giving them guidance and direction where otherwise they may have none. Animals are rather like little forces of nature. They're fairly straightforward, and Kasen demonstrates an ability to change which 'forward' they're heading. Its not just that she can talk to them, it's that they listen to her. They take her advice. And they always turn out better for it. The gunshot raccoon critters don't become bloodthirsty youkai, the wolf becomes a protector rather than a hunter, and the seal gets its happy bathtime.

Contrast with Reimu, who doesn't listen. Remember how I've said sometimes that WAHH should be subtitled 'Reimu fails at everything forever'? I think this is part of why she does. Reimu's various human flaws (greed, mostly, but also sloth and pride to an extent) prevent her from following Kasen's good advice (and let her be manipulated by Kasen's oddly specific anti-bean setsuban suggestions). Hm. It might be part of a wider message about following good advice, considering the advice Suwako gives Sanae which basically solves the issue perfectly... and which Sanae carries out.

Basically, because Reimu is human and not animal, she can think. And her thinking keeps getting in the way. Contrast with animals, which aren't lost through their own delusions of grandeur or greed or pride. They don't second-guess the intentions of others and don't understand things like betrayal. When Kasen tells them to do something, they do because clearly its what they should do.

What's interesting is that Kasen considers it her duty to guide them along the right path. She could just as easily be leading them astray, and I think it's fairly telling that she opted for the 'good-aligned' option. No one but herself would have known if she gave the wolf good advice on how to survive as a maneating youkai rather than how to not become one in the first place.

So maybe she likes humans and wants them to live. Maybe she needs them for her arm. Maybe she even wants to break the barrier to free them all. Maybe she just doesn't want the delicate balance between youkai and humans to be disturbed by animal-intellect youkai potentially throwing everything out of whack. Maybe she just knows more about how to live with humans than how to hunt them.

I suppose we're at a 'wait and see why', now.

edited 5th Jul '14 9:37:46 PM by Antimatter625

Or why Suika would be okay with that, good grief! I thought she liked Reimu?

Quite a revealing look at lil' Ibuki's thought process, if nothing else.

I was gonna shoot that down for being too extreme even for Suika, then remembered the time she blew up the moon.

This may be the only thing that would make this situation make sense, that somehow the normal rules don't apply and Kasen and her missing limb cannot be on the same side of the Border so long as it stands. Though this leads to the questions of 1) what is up with her arm? and 2) why is she willing to destroy Gensokyo to get it back? I understand that it is her arm, but surely the smoke-wraps situation she's got going on is passable, or she could consult the Template and find a better replacement.

Maybe... well, I said earlier that talking to animals doesn't sound much like a superpower. Maybe Kasen's real ability was focused on her arm, and it was something sufficiently awesome to justify taking the hermit path and destroying Gensokyo to get it back.

Or maybe talking to animals is a legitimate superpower after all, either or.

"This hand of mine glows with an awesome power, it- ... where the hell did it go?"

Kasen is wing to desy Gensokyo to get her arm back? That is a little extreme.

To reiterate, powers are self-declared. Most characters can do whatever the heck they want: it's magic. Presumably limited by some kind of vague power levels, but still: magic. The "abilities" listed in their profiles are not and never have been a specially granted "superpower" like a comic book superhero or anything. It's just one of the many things they can do (with magic), that happens to be the one they're most proud of, or defines them as a person, or something they strive for. Think of them less as what the character can do and more as another facet of their personality.

edited 7th Jul '14 1:28:24 AM by Clarste

Hmm...I just noticed something about Kasen's arm.

It's shown that Kasen's bandaged arm is actually black smoke. What's another thing that can turn into black smoke? Suika. Does this imply anything?