The Touhou Character Alternate Interpretation Compendium

I love this bit from Utsuho's SA profile. Utsuho just doesn't sweat the small stuff.

That's almost frightening, depending on her definition of "small stuff."

edited 17th May '10 6:00:13 PM by Durazno

Luckily, it seems that she has more supervision these days, now that she's working.

If there's one thing that's consistent about her in fandom besides her stupidity, it's that she does not consider the proper running of her reactor to be "the small stuff". So at least we've got that.

Utsuho strikes me as the sort of person to take great pride in her job. She probably took the transition from regulating hell to regulating the reactor fairly in stride.

How exactly do you regulate an abandoned hell, though?

By keeping its fires from raging out of control and consuming the totality of existence?

Apparently,

Rin and Utsuho both worked hard at their respective jobs, Rin at controlling the evil spirits, Utsuho at managing the the former Hell of Blazing Fires. If the flames became too hot, they'd open the skylight in the courtyard; if the flames became too weak, they'd throw in more of the corpses Rin carried off; they regulated the flames in this manner.

regulating hell is like stoking a fire.

Utsuho is a strange case. Her music? Badass. Her occupation, a deepcrow stoking the flames of hell? Metal. Her appearance, with dark wings, an eldritch eye peering out of her chest, and the arm cannon, all backlit by the flames of the underworld? Even more badass. Her power, control of nuclear fusion that enables her to hurl miniature suns at her foes? Extremely badass.

And yet underneath all that is a somewhat vacant ditz. Like if a stereotypical blonde cheerleader suddenly gained the power to annihilate cities. One could only imagine what Utsuho would be capable of if she had the force of personality and mind of someone like Remilia or Kanako.

That said, I like KimikoMuffin's take on her.

You know what'd be metal? If the yatagarasu was only dormant, and woke up when Utsuho ate it, and is now aware and can see out of the eye in her chest. And when she's asleep it whispers to her... to absolutely no effect, because Utsuho's a sixball.

Yatagarasu: Utsuho...Utsuho...
Utsuho: Hmmm?
Yatagarasu: ...burn it all...kill them...destroy the entire world...
Utsuho: ...I thought I heard my name...
Yatagarasu: ...hey, you listening?
Rin: Okuu! Gimme a hand here, will you?
Utsuho: Coming!
Yatagarasu: Hey, listen to me, damn it!

edited 18th May '10 12:24:38 AM by Lemurian

Hmm, now who's linking my site ...? *coming back from referral logs*

Ah. Okay, I'm stealing that idea. :3

edited 18th May '10 1:01:57 AM by KimikoMuffin

Alright, so, Utsuho...

I know I've mentioned this, but I'll say this again: My indisputed favorite character.

The funny thing is, TBH, I don't really know WHY she is. Almost ever since the start of me getting into Touhou, though, albeit not the first(The first, funnily enough, was Rumia. Then Cirno, which got me looking up everyone else via Cirno's sheer memetic power...). So I guess that's part of it.

I really love her design. The arm cannon means "Instant awesome", she has a completely badass cape which completely compliments her wings, very pretty hair and she even has the Yatagarasu eye, which always seems to be done interestingly, from a fused, somewhat scarred way(Kinda like here) to eyeboob. I never really considered if she could see out of it, though, but I wouldn't say she could...

For me, one pose I ALWAYS imagine Utsuho in is her pose when she charges her primary UNL projectile(The one where you charge the sun and it sends small bullets, not the giant sun firing one). It's an attack charging position full of confidence and the charging of overwhelming power. I think it's perfectly fitting, basically.

Now then, personality...

Utsuho is EXTREMELY confident in her abilities. This utmost confidence can also come off as arrogance, although I don't quite view it that way, and can lead her to making some very unwise choices battle-wise. Utsuho also isn't much of a planner and operates on a pretty big "Might is Right" prinicple. She'll always charge headfirst into a battle and her general plan for defeating someone amounts to "Blow the fucking hell out of them". Because of this, she is often outmatches by the much wiser opponents of Gensokyo despite her immense strength.

To a certain extent, Utsuho is very child-like. She's extremely naive about the world around her, which leads her to make poor descisions and also leads her to misinterperate things. At the same time, she has a very childish wonder about her and even the smallest things are appreciated by her. Ignorance is bliss, as they say?

She's also somewhat forgetful, if UNL is any indication.

At the same time, Utsuho is very protective and loyal. Harming anyone close to little Okuu is generally a good way to get yourself a one way ticket to hell to be roasted into a lovely little meal for everyone. Even though you might be able to be the boss of Utsuho, such as Kanako has become, I would however find that it may take a while to earn her respect as a pet. To this point, Satori has earned Utsuho's trust and respect to a nearly unfathomable degree, and Utsuho would do almost anything in her power to help Satori. I always figured that the fact Orin's profile says getting Satori involved could have solved the problem beforehand as meaning Satori could easily talk Utsuho out of genocidal, world-rulingness pretty easily.

Of course, some people claim that it means more Satori could beat up Utsuho, but that seems unlikely to me and I don't think there's anything canon on it.

On an only somewhat related note, does anyone think Utsuho has been tutoring Satori on fighting? I forget which spellcard it is, but one of Satori's Double Spoiler spellcards sure looks...Utsuho explosion-y.

Even though Utsuho isn't the brightest, she does get pretty badass in battle. In UNL, neither Cirno or Sanae beat her as usual. Sanae outsmarts her and Cirno basically takes the five second repreieve she had to run the fuck away. SA gives her some pretty awesome quotes from her evil days, too:

"Lord Yatagarasu, the Black Sun. Thank you for giving me your power.

The sunlight that rains down on the Earth is a nuclear furnace that will create new atoms.

My ultimate nuclear fusion will burn up every body, heart, ghost, and fairy!"

"Oh, that was certainly a point I overlooked. If I'm no longer of this world, then the Blazing Hell will return to the way it was.

But, there's also another point you are overlooking.

My ultimate nuclear energy melts up everything completely! How would you go about taking me down then?"

"Each person who could would control fusion energy differently. What would you do with it if you could steal it away?

The ultimate vehicle? The ultimate weapon? Or, maybe, the ultimate magic?

Well, I want to revive the Hell of Blazing Fires. I'll melt the Earth away!"

Yes, I did feel the need to add the three quotes I felt best exemplified this, thus making this post far larger than it needs too...

"Won't you fuse with me?"

Although sometimes she misses hitting the "Awesome" or "Ditzy" mark and hits...well...another mark entirely.

It probably doesn't help this comes after a discussion about, um, eating Reimu.

Let's see, what else...

She probably has extreme knowledge in at least one area: Nuclear Fusion. Even with magic, having to keep an entire reactor going would take at least a certain amount of knowledge. I'd imagine she obtained this knowledge from the Yatagarasu when she swallowed it.

So essentially, the ditz is probably the foremost nuclear scientist in Gensokyo. You have to wonder what she'll name all those technical terms if she's the first to discover it, although the kappa seem to have done some theoritcal research on it after learning about Utsuho from Kanako.

Utsuho also talks about eating humans quite casually in Reimu/Suika's scenario. The way she talks about it though...I'm guessing hell ravens and such frequently eat corpses? I think that might be an interesting cultural difference: Is eating stuff like that more acceptable in the underground? Is it even commonplace, seeing as Old Hell would be used as a dumping ground of sorts and thus it would be free food? Are dead youkai eaten or just human corpses? Do just hell ravens eat it, all of the underground, or is it something like vegetarianism with people?

There's probably a really simple, canon answer I overlooked there, as per the course. But eh. This also gives me the fun thought of above-grounders coming over to have dinner at Satori's and, well, what kind of meat is this?

Utsuho can detatch her third arm. I wonder what would happen if somebody else put it on. Since it controls her nuclear fusion, as a control rod, does that mean they would have a certain amount of control over Utsuho?

I wonder what the Yatagarasu looked like. Most everyone and every god we've seen has been a person, not a bird like the Yatagarasu would be, and generally a cute girl to boot. Was the Yatagarasu a cute girl who got OM CHOM CHOM CHOM CHOMMED by Utsuho, or a bird? I kind of like to think it was a girl, just because it seems...I dunno...working.

I think that's all the odd Utsuho rambling I have...I could probably think of more, but this is all that came to me, you know?

Next, the topic of shipping...

Utsuho's actually not somebody I pay heavy attention too, shipping-wise. The ship I support fully and completely is Cirno and Utsuho.

Come on, man, it's got a FLURRY of puns and fun wordplay, and Cirno + Utsuho is a lovely combination. Come on, you know those two put together could ONLY produce good things.

On a related note, Tenshi, Cirno and Utsuho work really well together as a team, in a non-shipping sense. Tenshi is mischeavous and bored, provides a lot of extras, could do some celestia beurcratic turning and might even be able to get Iku in on something, Cirno comes up with ideas or expands upon Tenshi's ideas and is, well, Cirno, while Utsuho is pretty damn powerful and just unwise and flighty enough to go with Cirno and Tenshi's asinine plans.

Koishi and Utsuho, going from the SA crew alone, seems like it would be the most interesting. Koishi is pretty psychological, but given Utsuho's relative simpleness it would be less for her to anaylze and more for her to get to know Utsuho on a personal level. In addition if you take the view of a more reserved Koishi then Utsuho's energy brings a driving force to a relationship. The most potentially interesting thing here is Koishi being Satori's sister, which could develope some good stuff when considering Utsuho's overall attitude with Satori. Plus, Koishi seems like the type to snark well with Utsuho's relative cluelessness and presumed pachant for getting them into some bad situations.

The next most logical would be Satori and Utsuho. It'd be a pretty awkward relationship, I think. Satori is already Utsuho's master and Utsuho is Satori's "pet" and I see Satori as having such a relationship of master and pet as friends. In addition, Utsuho's complete devotion and perhaps even partial reverence of Satori could be very overbearing at first, which could be quite a gunked cog in the pairings' system. At the same time, this pairing allows a way of Utsuho's personal growth and maturity, only rivaled by the Koishi/Utsuho pairing and perhaps moreso. You could also make a pretty damn creepy reversal, with Satori as the aggressor and a perhaps unwilling Utsuho in the relationship which is then combined with Satori's mental reading powers. A total control of Utsuho, you could say.

Utsuho/Utosho is great for anyone who loves rivals in love, but the twincest-y vibes might be a turnoff.

Finally, Orin and Utsuho...TBH, not much to say here. Orin has never been a character who interested me, so I haven't looked into her as much as I should have. Thusly, I lack a lot of information on this pairing. It's the most plausible though.

Anyway, that's it.

Sorry for making this longass, semi wall of text post. I really wanted to put out something special for Utsuho and I spent about two hours making this plus later time across the entire day fixing it up and finishing it. I tried to make it as close to "perfect" as a writeup as I could. Because of this, it turned out a little long. I don't know how long it is in comparison with my others, but it sure FEELS the longest!

Since it's 2 AM and I can't think of much to say, I'll just leave you with my favorite Solar Sect remix and another badass Utsuho image.

Okay, I teal-deered most of that, but, yes, hell ravens and kasha eat corpses. This is part of the reason Okuu got the job; not just anyone can get stronger by eating the dead.

edited 18th May '10 2:15:36 AM by Hylarn

I like how nobody seems to care about the surprise Muffin.

Hi there, Kimiko Muffin. What's up.

PS: ^ So that seems to suggest that the Yatagarasu was indeed dead. Alright then.

PPS: I actually prefer this remix. In my mind, this is a great example of how to make a damn good remix without sticking too close to the original. The only downside is that it kinda lacks the "heroic" feel.

edited 18th May '10 4:14:36 AM by Fawriel

But isn't Muffin already a troper? Why should we be surprised to see him/her here? (I assume it's a him, but I've been wrong before).

I don't think I've ever seen him post in the forums, though.

He has before, but it's rare.

I was surprised by the surprise Muffin. It was very surprising.

edited 18th May '10 8:44:44 AM by Zudak

I always thought of Okuu as being very smart in terms of INT, but she is also scatterbrained, naive, trusting, and gets distracted easily.

So high INT but WIS is her dump stat?

Yup.

I like that idea, actually.

On top of that, if you flip her cape up and over her face, she falls asleep!

(I can't find the image link on Gelbooru ;_;)

Well, watching the stars go by can be very soothing.

But if you flip it up and over she'll be staring at the white side.

And to be completely unrelated, here's a cute comic witu Utsuho and Rin.

And the comic before it that helps make it make sense.