The Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium

Okay, now that the side story's been put off my chest... (Warning: Half asleep. So I will be rambling a lot)

Alice, Alice... I generally see her as a Straight Man, which is probably the reason why she get paired with Marisa. Gotta have someone silly to put that personality at full.

I find the portrayal of Alice in IaMP to be rather interesting. In the game, she's actively avoiding fights against the two Final Bosses of their respective games, Remillia and Yuyuko, when she was doing her investigation on the strange mist. In Suika's path, Suika calls her out on it, saying that, while she tries to give off a cool and efficient demeanor, she's really a bit of a coward at heart. This actually made me smile a bit, since it contrasts her quite a bit to the other proud and sometimes gung-ho denizens of Gensokyo. Here is someone who realizes that she has limits, and is still willing to try and resolve incidents while keeping a brave front to hide her fear and apprehension. In a way, that trait of hers makes her the most normal in a world where Everyone Is a Super and acts like it.

On Alice and humanity, she's quite a curious case for a youkai. Youkai are mostly solitary (save for a few cases like the tengu and kappa society), and yet, while Alice lives alone in the Forest of Magic, Alice regularly tries to mingle with humans during festivals. Youkai could never wish themselves as being something other than youkai, and yet it's mentioned that Alice sleeps and eats even though magicians don't need to do those things anymore. Is she doing these consciously, or are these just unconscious instincts from her days as a human? If it's the former, it paints a portrait of someone who, while technically a youkai now, believes that they are still human at heart. I wonder if this is the same for all humans turned youkai (I look forward to more info about Byakuren in the future).

On Alice and her dolls, the official Slice of Life manga around the three fairies shows her talking to her dolls when she's alone and assigning them tasks, so I don't think it's just to troll others, as amusing as it may be. It may be something like how people talk to their pets and plants, treating things they are with as sentient because humans are social creatures in the end. Or maybe it's just a projection of her greatest wish of one day creating a living doll.

As an aside, in Inaba of the Moon, and Inaba of the Earth, Alice mentions that, when she uses her dolls as decoy, she feels a bit sorry for them, so maybe while she isn't shy of using her dolls for their intended purposes, it's with a very small bit of regret (sort of like how a baker who had crafted their greatest masterpiece of a wedding cake might feel a bit sorry to see it eaten). On the other hand, she may have just done that to troll Reisen since, when she said that, she and Tewi had unanimously agreed to use the Moon Rabbit as bait. <<;

edited 26th Jun '10 8:55:47 PM by Servbot

Suika is a good judge of character but I don't know if Alice is a coward. She has a lot more power than she uses and could probably put up a good fight against Remilia or Yuyuko at her Mystic Square level of power.

I think I heard somewhere that Alice chooses to handicap herself in fights because she's afraid of what would happen if she lost while going all out? Maybe she's a coward in that sense. She avoids fights that might force her to leave her power level/comfort zone. Anyway, if that's true, losing in the EX-stage of Mystic Square must have devastated her.

Notice that in her game art, she always carries around her locked Grimoire. Granted, I wouldn't leave a valuable book unattended with Marisa on the loose. She doesn't intend to use it but she always carries it with her. Does her carrying the book represent to her "I could have beaten you if I chose"?

It's interesting that Suika and Alice are both Willfully Weak but for different reasons.

Even if she loses, she doesn't show her full power. That's because she thinks it would be the end of the rope for her if she lost with full power. In this point, she is somewhat similar to Reimu.

End of rope, what? Also, an interesting point is that Reimu appears to share some of Alice's cowardice but Suika doesn't call her on it.

Anyway, if that's true, losing in the EX-stage of Mystic Square must have devastated her.

That might be where her entire "won't fight at full power" complex stemmed from. I assume that she had gotten stronger then (she is constantly looking for ways to improve after all, partly fueled by a a twinge of jealousy towards those she sees as stronger), and is confident that she could beat anyone in Gensokyo if she goes all out now. However, there's that niggling fear of defeat planted by Reimu with her EX-Boss loss. After all, the implications of a second loss at full-power is staggering for someone who is constantly trying to better themselves: It might mean that either the others are too strong for her to ever reach, or that the others are improving at a faster rate than she is.

edited 26th Jun '10 8:33:21 PM by Servbot

Oh yeah, on the subject of her dolls, I'm pretty sure she doesn't have a doll named Shanghai or a doll named Hourai or anything like that. If you look at her spellcards in PCB they're all things like "Foggy London Dolls" and "Chalk-White Russian Dolls" and "Eerily Luminescent Shanghai Dolls". Sounds to me like she just has a "dolls of the world" collection and decided to enchant them differently based on region. So "Shanghai" would just be her dolls from Shanghai. Considering how often she blows them up, it's pretty much a given that she has multiple copies of each.

edited 26th Jun '10 9:14:53 PM by Clarste

^ Thank you!

I maintain that its a fiendish plot by Alice to misdirect her enemies into kidnapping one of her dime-a-dozen dolls.

Random youkai (possibly with the power to manipulate fabric softener): Don't try anything funny, Alice Margatroid! I have your precious Shanghai, the particular doll you always have around. If you do what I say, maybe you'll get her back in one piece.

Alice: -_- *snaps fingers* Artful Sacrifice. *Shanghai blows up in Fabric Softener Youkai's hands*

The only thing she would need to do for this kind of plan is to always have a Shanghai floating around her, talk to it, and "misplace" it a couple of times so she can feign panic.

Fridge logic edit: Wait. Alice lived in Makai and then Gensokyo. How would she know about the places her dolls are from or even get the dolls if they're from outside Gensokyo?

edited 27th Jun '10 12:27:22 AM by Bocaj

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Alice Margatroid

I think this is what I'm supposed to do.

Also this.

Theme:\\ The Doll Maker of Bucuresti The Doll Maker of Bucuresti (IaMP) Doll Judgment ~ The Girl who Played with People's Shapes(With awesome pic) Doll Judgment (IaMP) The Doll Maker of Bucuresti (SWR) The Grimoire of Alice Plastic Mind Alice in Wonderland Romantic Children

Traits:

• Tsundere / Kuudere / Yandere. Commonly portraited as any number of these when paired off.
• Doll maker.
• Willfully Weak
• Somewhat of a loner.
• Studious.
• Unnaturally pale skin, potentially from staying indoors too much("She has blond hair and pale skin, and looks very much like a doll herself." - Perfect Memento)

Relationships/Shipping:

• Shanghai and Hourai(If you even consider them characters)
• Marisa Kirisame(Neighbors in the Forest of Magic and partners in IN and SA. Quite possibly the most popular Touhou ship is Alice/Marisa. The exact nature of all of this is hotly debated.)
• Patchouli Knowledge(Patchy and Alice are actually a pretty popular pairing. Canon-wise, it's not implausible for them to have met, but IDK if it's canon?)
• Shinki(Potential mother/creator/shipping option//Tree.)
• Yumeko(Potential maid.)
• Reimu Hakurei(Because Reimu/Alice is actually pretty popular too.)
• Yukari Yakumo(Unknown. Her Subterranean Animism profile says "She also made her carry dolls that had Yukari's remote control devices in them.", implying Alice at least knows Yukari enough to get this from her.)

Write-up:\\ The master of PC-98 trees. Stage 3 boss of PCB and Shoot the Bullet. Playable character in Ia MP, SWR and UNL, and also a partner in IN and SA. She's also (potentially) the Stage 3 Boss from Mystic Square, and it's EX-Boss.

Wow, she loves the number three.

The puppeteer who lives in the Forest of Magic. Her PCB Profile describes her as "a versatile magician, that has no specific strong or weak point in any area. If you ask me, she is similar to Marisa, or rather I'd say a youkai version of Marisa." and her IN Profile says "You might imagine magicians as being indoor-type people; in Alice's case, you'd be right. She spends most of her time alone, and the forest is a good place for that. The forest is quite humid, however, and her dolls will become damaged without her constant care. Because of this, she's currently planning to make a doll that will automatically take care of other dolls."

Her apparant goal is to make a completely sentient doll and she devotes large portions of her life to slaving away at these dolls. Her dexterity "shines even among all of Gensokyo." and allows her almost unparalleled control over her dolls. Aside from that, however, she's completely average as a youkai magician.

Frequently described as a loner who doesn't socialize well. Even in the Forest of Magic, her house scares people away("Her house is crammed with a lot of dolls. The sight is so spooky that it scares rare visitors away. The house of dolls is strangest even in the forest of the bizarre. It's no wonder that they tend to run away from there." - Ia MP Profile). Akyuu states that she will welcome you and allow you to stay at her house if you get lost, but she only works on her dolls and studies magic, so it makes for creepy and uneasy company. Most run. She rarely, if ever, attacks humans, but she gladly accepts battles.

Ia MP says that "She pretends that she has a strong attitude, but truthfully she is kind of a coward in her heart.". This seems quite internally consistant with her earlier profile, which states that "Even if she loses, she doesn't show her full power. That's because she thinks it would be the end of the rope for her if she lost with full power. "

Essentially, she never fights as full power. While this seems arrogant, it's truly cowardace: She's afraid to face and lose with her strongest and face the facts of that.

Fanon-wise, Alice is a widely popular character(6th Place in the latest Touhou Popularity Poll), which leads to a lot of variation in depiction. However, she's almost universally somewhat of a snarker, and likes tea.

One of the most popular variations of Alice is "Tsundere Alice", which is almost always used with a Marisa x Alice shipping on top of it. The general gist is almost exactly what it sounds like: A Tsundere Alice chases around one of the(numerous) interpertations of Marisa. Usually, Alice is also shown to be quite inept at relationships, and takes hot-and-cold pretty far. Marisa either knows and plays with it or is completely oblivious.

It's almost staggering popularity, which probably helps lead to Sturgeon's Law has led to it having a bit of backlash to it. The variety of works that take the Tsundere and completely replace it over Alice's normal character don't help.

Some other common depictions are an especially creepy and/or Yandere Alice, a british Alice(I swear it's true) and a reversal where Marisa acts somewhat flustered and Tsundere to a more cool and calm Alice.

KimikoMuffin's Nekokayou features Alice as a somewhat prominent character. Fans generally seem to like the perception given.

Similar characters:

• Marisa Kirisame(Both are magicians, albeit one human and one former human, and both are some of the harder working Touhou characters. Both live in the Forest of Magic, as well.)
• Patchouli Knowledge(Both are youkai magicians who spend a lot of time studying and seem to shy away from social contact.)

Misc:

• Alice's last name is based on the character Miss Murgatroyd from Agatha Christie's book "A Murder is Announced".
• One of the few people known to actually take medicine of Eirin's. She buys Kochoumugan(Butterfly Dream Pills), as mentioned in Aya's article with Eirin. The pill guarentees it's consumer to have pleasent dreams if they fall asleep after taking it. May be a reference to Alice in Wonderland.
• "Alice's alternate palette from Scarlet Weather Rhapsody resembles Hina-Ichigo, a doll from the manga series Rozen Maiden. In Touhou Hisoutensoku, she has palettes resembling the other Rozen Maiden dolls: Suiseiseki, Souseiseki, Suigintou, Shinku, Kanaria, and Kirakishou. Add the fact that, in Rozen Maiden, the aforementioned dolls are battling for the title of "Alice", the perfect doll" - Touhou Wiki
• Her dolls are filled with gunpowder. BOOMIES indeed.
• She's actually a Final Boss, in addition to a third stage boss. The final boss of Cirno's UNL route.
• Bucuresti/Bucharest is the capital city of Romania.
• "Alice is the only boss who appears 3 times in a single stage (2 times as midboss and 3rd as actual boss in her Perfect Cherry Blossom appearance). "

Ruki's Notes:

3 AM. Second time I've stayed up powers past my usual bedtime.

Started this around 4 or 5 PM. Spent waaaaay too much time on it, although a great deal was spent wasting it on other important stuff.

I feel it was somewhat insignificant, but I wanted to release it today, as I said I would.

I wanted to say some stuff...

I like to imagine that Alice designs one doll, then creates a line of generic dolls off of them. I also like to think that the first doll is somehow special, and retains it's "name". For example, the first Shanghai doll is "Shanghai", and all the ones after it are merely "Shanghai Line Dolls". The same goes for Hourai Dolls, London Dolls(And now I'm going to include London and others whenever I write Alice, dammit), and so on.

I wanted to link to some fine creepy Alice pics, since I like vaguely disconcerting images and Alice makes fun ones, but Danbooru is down. Not staying up until it's back up.

Also, throwing in a quick reply to Fawriel's reply to my way too long Mokou stuff: Yes, Mokou probably didn't have quite the same personality way back then as she did now, but there's some elements I think run somewhat previliant. Mokou's IN profile states that "Long ago, before she became immortal, she was the daughter of an aristocrat. She wasn't allowed to go out in public, so it seems that she wasn't a wanted child.", so I think Mokou growing up as somewhat of a tomboy during such an era would fit this well, and it gives a certain amount of internal consistancy(And I don't imagine Mokou ever acting particularly girly, it's just kinda hard...). Assuming you meant to go towards sexual preference over that, I generally see Kaguya and Mokou as a certain amount of Bi-Sexual, with Mokou leaning to women. Immortality means experimentation, after all.

And then I'm too tired to think of what else to reply to in my reply to your reply(Which has replies). So I'll leave it at that.

Time to see if I screwed up any coding!

edited 27th Jun '10 3:15:29 AM by RukiMotomiya

^ But there's nothing in canon that she has a doll actually named Shanghai, or that any of her Shanghai dolls are special. Even in the fighting games, where one of her cards is simply "Curse: Shanghai Doll", it's using Shanghai Doll as a title, not a name.

It just makes more sense to me that each variety of doll is simply named after the country [in which it was created] / [in the style of which it is], rather than saying that she has a single Shanghai doll that's more special than the other two dozen she uses for her final spell in PCB.

Fridge logic edit: Wait. Alice lived in Makai and then Gensokyo. How would she know about the places her dolls are from or even get the dolls if they're from outside Gensokyo?

If I remember correctly, Alice makes most of her dolls if not all of them. They're likely just designed based on dolls commonly associated to those countries instead of dolls she bought. She probably has a doll reference book or something similar. After all, Gensokyo had only been sealed for around 100 years or so, and things do pop up in Gensokyo every so often, usually after they stop being a common sight in the outside world.

edited 27th Jun '10 6:55:07 AM by Servbot

Some fansongs for Alice: Artificial Children, Alice&#8594;Dere.

The Manzai skits involving Alice.

Marisa/Alice in the First Touhou M-1 Gran Prix - Alice tries to buy a house.

Marisa/Alice making the finals of the first Touhou M-1 Gran Prix - Alice thinks of her dream guy. Warning: Not safe for work

Marisa/Alice returns for the third Touhou M-1 Gran Prix - Alice acts out a celebrity interview.

Closing credits for the third Touhou M-1 Gran Prix, featuring Alice.

"I think this is what I'm supposed to do."

No, you're supposed to do this. Yeah, there's no rule and no real rhyme or reason, but this feels much more appropriate for Alice than the shouty Unlucky Morpheus girl, not to mention being utterly awesome and also covering "appearance".

^^^^ Okay, that makes sense. But now you've put in my head the thought of Alice getting her hands on a Barbie catalog.

Anyway, the reason why people treat Shanghai and Hourai and London as characters is because fanon needs something to work off of. Its more plot convenient for doujins if Alice tries her independent doll experiments on Shanghai. Its more dramatic if someone steals her precious thing. And for that she needs a precious thing such as a dear friend/servant/tool. Pretending that Shanghai is a special, individual doll really isn't the worst thing fanon has done.

I like to imagine:

1. Books from the outside end up in Kourindou.
2. Sakuya and Marisa acquire these books (Sakuya collects them at Patchouli's request).
3. Alice somehow gets hold of some of these books from Marisa, learns some interesting dollmaking techniques and is inspired by SCIENCE.

And now, fanvids showing the famous Marisa/Alice ship

Star Colored Night Sky - This one is sweet and touching.

Stardust Reverie - This one is... not so sweet and touching <<;;

Stardust Curse - ...Okay, I'm half convinced that one of the things that fuels the Marisa/Alice ship is that people enjoy seeing Alice as The Woobie

Glossolalia Syndrome - And now, for somthing different... Yandere Alice!

edited 27th Jun '10 3:29:18 PM by Servbot

If we don't consider the PC-98 games canon (and Alice herself is the best argument against them) she has an open backstory. It's actually possible that she spent some time in the outside world before coming to Gensoukyou, so she could have seen doll designs there. Also; there's mentions of her collecting dolls, so she doesn't make all of them.

And this MariAli doujin is cute.

Someone mentioned Alice troll face. There's a pretty good Alice troll face in Hisoutensoku/UNL during Meiling's story-mode. I tried to get a print screen of it but it turns out blank.

Look at her expression at the 3:56 mark. Video is untranslated if you're worried about UNL spoilers.

Also, Alice had a cat? I hope she got someone to feed it since she's been gone.

edited 27th Jun '10 7:34:13 PM by Bocaj

Maybe Alice knew about that earthquake demon thing, knew that Hong would be worked up about it, and came to deliberatley troll her. That's why Alice says the things she does while Hong's supposedly not dreaming.

Well, in the translated version, Meiling comes right out with accusing Alice of being a evil youkai disguised as Alice. I think Alice just decides to play along.

This post's picspam comes mainly from the "Badass" pool, because I am intimidated of the prospect of sorting through over four hundred pages of Alice art. Picspam in four...thr(boomies): gauntlet, dark persona, lancers, many dolls, Shanghai took Monkey Grip, youkai eyes, young Alice gets extra arms, Shanghai’s got a gun!, boomies, kaiju.

The tsundere Alice always bothered me because I just don't see it. At least in my readings of her dialogue, Alice comes off as someone level-headed engaged in good-natured banter with her old friend Marisa, not a mood swinger. I imagine her as more of an introvert or kuudere, someone distant and uninterested in strangers (hence the silent treatment if she lets you stay overnight), but who opens up around friends. She's more intellectual than wildly passionate, someone who appreciates tactics and micromanagement over Master Sparks.

-dere type aside, in Alice I see a drive to excel born of arrogance butting against fear and insecurity.

The dolls - well, it's certainly a unique motif, but beyond that it's a way to show off. A way to easily demonstrate Alice's superhuman dexterity, a way to showcase the fruit of her labors. Even the act of fighting with dolls is somewhat arrogant: "I'm not even going to bother fighting you directly, you're gonna lose to my proxy, a doll." And hey, maybe she just likes collecting them.

Then there's the quest to make a living doll. This is interesting, because I don't think Alice is in it to reduce her work load, since manipulating the dolls is like I said a way to show off and keep in practice. So why make an independent one? That's where her ego comes in again. She recalls seeing one from long ago, and since she's a doll maker herself, she has to meet or exceed this standard, to prove her superiority over a rival she doesn't really remember.

And all this is tempered somewhat by fear. Fear that she'll lose her dexterity if she doesn't practice. Fear of defeat: "oh well done, you blew up my dolls. Half of them do that on purpose. And I wasn't going all-out anyway." Fear of not being as good as that dollmaker from her past that she's competing with.

Wonder if this comes from Makai (which I'm going to take as canon because it's more interesting that way). If we go with the fanon that Alice is Shinki's "daughter" (adopted, biological, artificial, whatever), what sort of life did she have there? Presumably one that showed her deference due to being high on Makai's totem pole (if only a 3rd stage boss) and allowed her to grow confident in her talents. Then someone comes along and tears through the place, giving Alice a smackdown, giving her goddess "mom" a smackdown, and then giving Alice a smackdown again even after the girl opened her grimoire and gave it her all.

That'd be a rude awakening for sure, and certainly an incentive both to improve her skill and power, but also to never fully utilize it in case of another humiliating defeat.

...Wonder if Marisa was the one who fought her? Alice's "Using so much magic doesn't make you any cooler, you know!!" line sounds almost like the angry denial of a crush...

^

Does anyone actually have a way to reconcile the PC-98 and Windows Alice?

My theory is that the PC-98 Reimu and Marisa are the grandparents of the Windows ones. This explains why Marisa looks the same age as the one on the PC-98 games but Alice got older. Are you talking about the difference in personality, though? I dunno about that.

edited 27th Jun '10 10:45:59 PM by Zudak

I believe ZUN said in Reimu's EoSD profile that that game doesn't take place very long after the previous one.

Besides, Alice could've easily aged herself up (perhaps to better compete, even).

But she also acts nothing like her earlier self.