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Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#2401: Jun 20th 2010 at 2:52:52 PM

I'll toss in a vote for Mokou.

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
Zudak Since: Dec, 1969
Hylarn (Don’t ask) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
Fawriel Since: Jan, 2001
#2404: Jun 20th 2010 at 3:28:21 PM

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Fujiwara no Mokou ("Mokou of Fujiwara")

Appearance/voice:

Theme:
Extend Ash ~ Hourai Victim, Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke

Traits:

  • Loner ~ Jaded, but coping with it
    • Loner with a Heart of Gold
  • Strong sense of justice
  • Spartan humor

Relationships/Shipping:

  • Keine (one of the most popular ships)
  • Kaguya (ranging anywhere from victim or oppressor to bloodsportsmate to plain old love interest)

Write-up:
Mokou is the heroine of a dark tragicomedy. Her eternal task is to be the one who laughs last.

Apparently an unwanted daughter to an aristrocrat, her father was shamed as he was denied Kaguya's hand in marriage, as he couldn't complete her impossible task. In spite of his lack of love for her, she wanted to avenge him, perhaps to gain his respect. She wanted to kill Kaguya before she could return to the moon, but failed, and instead decided to steal the medicine that was left behind by Kaguya before leaving. The medicine was the Hourai Elixir, which granted her immortality... Yet an immortal being has no place in the human world, and so eternal loneliness was her prize. Eventually, she once again met Kaguya, the person to blame for all that has happened to her... And as it turns out, she, too, is immortal, and can never return home... Irony is another thing that doesn't rust.

There is a wealth of possibilities that can be woven out of the rich threads of her backstory. She spends her life living mostly alone in a bamboo forest, occasionally helping out people who get lost, while barely sharing a word with them. How has her unnatural life shaped her worldview? Why is she so silent? How is her relationship to the people around her, in general, or quite specifically? In particular, what's her relationship with Kaguya?

On one extreme, you will have those who consider her and Kaguya psychopaths who lust for the blood of the other, on the other extreme, you will find those who ignore all antagonism and make them lust for their quite intact bodies. The answer is never quite as simple. Perhaps they fight out of habit. Perhaps they are enemies because they need enemies. Perhaps it's just an extreme sport because normal games don't cut it anymore for an immortal. Perhaps it's something else.

Will Mokou have the last laugh? Will she laugh at all, or will she laugh with everyone else? What does the author of this tragicomedy have to say about it?

"Mokou still detests Kaguya, and Kaguya still tries to kill her, but neither of them can die forever.

These are wonderful days... This broken place is truly a paradise!

And she is alive to enjoy it, how magnificent!"

How magnificent!

(Dis-)Similar characters:

  • Kaguya (ironically enough)
  • Yuyuko ("Dead and loving it" versus "still alive and grudgingly smirking about it")


I recently gained a major interest in Mokou and I'm not sure, why. I guess Sparky just made me realize at some point that ol' Mokou is a pretty fascinating character if you think about it. I only scratched the surface in the profile, and I don't know where to start with the deeper stuff! I didn't even know she was this popular. 9th in a popularity poll, above Yuyuko and Yukari? Why did I think Mokou would count as UU?!

Miscellaneous thoughts about Mokou. I can't tell in how far Sparky has influenced me on all of these, sooooo lots of credit to him?

One thing he came up with was the interesting contrast between Kaguya and Mokou concerning how they act towards their peers. Mokou is a loner who won't do a lot with people but won't ask for much, either. Kaguya, on the other hand, is surrounded by a whole bunch of people and acts like a spoiled child.

I actually think the two of them would get along well because, in my eyes, Mokou is someone who expects conflict. She'd soon be bored by a person who's all nice and friendly towards her. She might even be someone who distrusts friendliness, the kind of person who'd complain about the forums being "too nice" and thus promoting complacency and arrogance. Someone who's a little difficult to deal with like Kaguya would constantly keep her on her toes and give her something to do. (Which also makes me hopeful for some friendly interaction between her and Cirno in upcoming fighting games. I think Mokou would find her spunk amusing.)

I do think that at this point, their mutual killing is more of a sport than anything. They are immortal, there's only so many things you can do in a thousand years. If I kept respawning, I'd also take extreme sports to a new level, I'll tell you that much.

I need more Mokou pictures.

PS: Oh yeah, if you're wondering about "Spartan humor", there's this bit I found on her wiki article...

"If asked, she will escort anyone safely through the forest or to Eientei. The only thing she says is "I'm a health nut that runs a yakitori stand."

A "health nut".

That is the most cruelly clever thing in the world.

PPS:

I want to do Youmu

Who doesn't? wink

edited 20th Jun '10 3:30:41 PM by Fawriel

Zudak Since: Dec, 1969
#2405: Jun 20th 2010 at 3:41:23 PM

I think that Kaguya and Mokou would have hated each other initially, but I find it likely that over the years they've developed a grudging respect for the other. I see them as friendly rivals of a sort, who feel kinship with the other just as strong as their loathing. By now, their constant slaughtering of each other is probably more of a sport to them then anything, and I think that it helps them cope with the stress and boredom that comes of being immortal. Better that Mokou fry Kaguya than take her frustrations out on lost people in the bamboo forest, eh?

CBanana Tall, Dark and Bishoujo Since: Jan, 2001
#2406: Jun 20th 2010 at 3:43:33 PM

I've noticed that in fanon, Mokou is portrayed as very masculine to the point where she's the most masculine character in Touhou Project (excepting of course joke fan characters such as Cho-Marisa and MANnosuke).

Oddly enough, there are a lot of pictures of her hanging out with Cirno but that's probably just because of the fire/ice dynamic.

One question is how she developed fire powers. My guess is that it's a side effect of a human taking the Hourai elixir (although she likely had to spend some time training those powers).

and that's how Equestria was made!
Hylarn (Don’t ask) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#2407: Jun 20th 2010 at 3:51:50 PM

Recently Mokou has been getting drawn as fairly feminine. I'm not entirely certain what caused this change.

I think her magical abilities may just be the result of being really old. Normally living for a long time turns things into youkai, having drank the Hourai Elixir she's stuck as a human, but still capable of developing the magic powers she'd have a youkai.

StarkMaximum I missed this avatar. from someplace funny i dunno Since: Jan, 2001
I missed this avatar.
#2408: Jun 20th 2010 at 4:17:10 PM

A lot of my "notes" on Mokou revolve around her contrast with Kaguya (but since duality and the like is such a common theme in my writing, I'm not surprised). For instance, Mokou seems a lot more "simple" than Kaguya. She's got royal blood like Kaguya (if I'm not totally misinterpreting shit again), but she doesn't seem like the kind of person to use that for her own gain, making her more of a "normal" person, whereas Kaguya plays up the whole "princess" thing like it was her job. Hell, Kaguya could probably find a way to make someone sneeze for her.

And like Faw said, I really do find it interesting how Kaguya is always surrounded by people who care about her (Eirin, Reisen, Tewi at the least), whereas Mokou is almost always a loner, with Keine being her only "real" friend, and yet Mokou is generally the nicer person, the easier one to be around. But of course, I don't really see Kaguya as a bad person, just spoiled and selfish. I've always characterized her as like a somewhat friendly Libby to Mokou - always lording her "better" status over her, criticizing her more simple style, and yet still can show that she legitimately cares about her. A lot of people think the more you can insult a person, the closer a friend they are to you, and I think that sums Mokou and Kaguya up to a tee - they'll shoot the most horrible insults at each other rapid-fire, but the second one has a serious problem, the other one is ready to help.

I also really like her outfit, style, and powers. All around Mokou is probably one of my favorites these days.

Also their eternal rivalry is Cirno's favorite show. Oh, I'm getting a bit too in-jokey now, I should stop.

edited 20th Jun '10 4:17:51 PM by StarkMaximum

WHO IS THIS LOSER
Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#2409: Jun 20th 2010 at 4:19:41 PM

Considering Cage in Lunatic Runagate, the god or spirit or whatever of Mt. Fuji is involved in her taking the elixer, her fire powers may have been a small gift from the mountain.

There's a couple of ways that Kaguya and Mokou's cycle o' revenge can go. It can be a weird kind of foreplay. It can be a way to pass the time. Mokou could still be vengeful after all these years. Kaguya could be trolling Mokou to keep the feud going. Mokou or Kaguya may be more irritated with it than anything, although never both at the same time.

In Imperishable Night's extra stage, Mokou implies that Kaguya's part of the cycle o' revenge include sending assassins after her, which she finds irritating and pointless. In the Inaba comic, Kaguya "forgets" who Mokou is but seems to keep stealing her food. In Cage in Lunatic Runagate, Mokou panicked when she thought Kaguya had returned to the moon. In a deep, deep sense that she might never admit, she and Kaguya may be vitriolic best friends taken to the hilariously homicidal extreme.

What other friends does she have? She doesn't have well-aged vendetta against the other inhabitants of Eientei so if they don't get in her way, she's on good enough terms with them. Keine might be the only friend she has and one gets the feeling that Keine is the active party in forging that friendship.

Mokou seems like a very "go with the flow" kind of person. Aside from her Kaguya obsession she doesn't seem like the kind of person to put much effort into life. It's not uncommon in fanworks for her to neglect her health or forget to eat. With all the time she has, you might expect her to have perfected various skills by sheer rote but unless its training to fight Kaguya I can see her picking up and dropping hobbies the way someone might change their clothes. More than almost anyone else in Touhou, I can see Mokou being confused or annoyed by all the shenanigans that go on.

Two side-notes: One, Mokou's pants make her memetically masculine kind of like poor Wriggle. But I heard somewhere that pants were the apparel of the rich in feudal Japan. So, despite her hobo-ish lifestyle, Mokou may be wearing the pants as a status symbol. She must know a good tailor.

Side note two: Mokou has an awesome theme song.

Doujins that I am suggesting in your direction

Chihagura's Taikyuu Spell Wa Ikaga. Mokou attempts to learn a new spell. Eirin trolls. Can love be coerced on a battlefield?

Can't Fix the Helmet's Super Beasts and Lunatic People. Contains brief, unanimated Kaguya nudity. Tewi psychoanalyzes Mokou and Kaguya's fights. And then skips work.

Snow and Wind Mokou. They're magical, Marisa, but not in that way.

Shino's The Young Mistress' Epic Homestay Battle. If you didn't read it for the Flandre, read it for the Mokou.

Mitsumoto's Night Sparrow Love. Umm... this is shipping, pure and simple. I don't know if it started the Mystia/Mokou ship but it helped popularize it. It's pretty good.

Usually Dead's Recount and Full Moon Predecessor. Fanfic. Contains a not-so-nice Mokou.

Video. Mokou lends Keine a hand.

Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke EWI video. If you don't mind the obligatory swimsuits, this video is nice and tearjerky.

edited 20th Jun '10 4:27:27 PM by Bocaj

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
Fawriel Since: Jan, 2001
#2410: Jun 20th 2010 at 4:22:51 PM

Also their eternal rivalry is Cirno's favorite show. Oh, I'm getting a bit too in-jokey now, I should stop.

Oh, no, I love this part! Kaguya is all like HRRRRRR and Cirno is like "WAAAAAAAAAH" and

Go ahead and write about this stuff already gee wiz!

StarkMaximum I missed this avatar. from someplace funny i dunno Since: Jan, 2001
I missed this avatar.
#2411: Jun 20th 2010 at 4:34:39 PM

Faw you should post that one Mokou/Keine doujin you linked me to.

WHO IS THIS LOSER
Fawriel Since: Jan, 2001
#2412: Jun 20th 2010 at 4:40:15 PM

Oh, that one.

Burning For Mokou. Fun portrayal of tsundere Mokou!

edited 20th Jun '10 4:46:08 PM by Fawriel

Servbot Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
#2413: Jun 20th 2010 at 5:00:56 PM

A few more Mokou videos.

Blazing Heart. Badass Mokou is Badass.

Touhou M-1 Gran Prix 2 finals - With special guest... (Mokou getting such a high-pitched voice here was a bit surprising. I kinda expected her to have something deeper, like those found on Bifauxnens or Tall, Dark and Bishoujo types <<)

Touhou M-1 Gran Prix 4, Mokou/Keine - A sort of sequel to the above.

...and the final verdict on the previous skit.

Hylarn (Don’t ask) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#2414: Jun 20th 2010 at 5:11:12 PM

CiLR has Mokou say that Keine is the only person that truly understands her. Which kind of suggests that her relationship with Kaguya doesn't extend much beyond beating the shit out of each other.

Oh, and if some one else wants to do a picspam for her, go ahead.

edited 20th Jun '10 5:11:28 PM by Hylarn

Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#2415: Jun 20th 2010 at 5:13:13 PM

^ So they have a physical relationship is what you're saying

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
Fawriel Since: Jan, 2001
#2416: Jun 20th 2010 at 5:21:31 PM

Oooh, that Ex-Keine video was AMAZING.

"Blazing Heart" was well-made, too, but it rubbed me the wrong way how it portrayed Kaguya as the clear villain. I don't like her too much, and she's probably the less sympathetic of the two, but the only thing that was missing from that was for her to watch the fight while eating popcorn in a really sinister fashion.

Zudak Since: Dec, 1969
#2417: Jun 20th 2010 at 5:31:42 PM

she and Kaguya may be vitriolic best friends taken to the hilariously homicidal extreme.

Ah yeah, Vitriolic Best Buds was exactly the trope I was looking for.

Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#2418: Jun 20th 2010 at 5:42:04 PM

^^ Well, to be fair the Extra Stage of IN is basically Kaguya sending the PCs out to harass Mokou.

Y'know, it occurs to me that Mokou may be the EX-boss least likely to cause an Incident.

Flandre has a five lane streak of mischief at the very least as does Koishi and Nue. Suwako already caused an Incident in UNL so, yeah. As for Ran, well, it depends on what Yukari tasks her with.

Mokou is pretty much content to be left alone and not cause a fuss as long as she has access to a Kaguya to murder every now and then.

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
anelaidlives Since: Jun, 2009 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
#2419: Jun 20th 2010 at 7:28:32 PM

I'm always confused though on the nature of Mokou's/Kaguya's relationship. It goes between a friendship between two immortals to an everlasting hatred between the two and and endless cycle of revenge.

Zudak Since: Dec, 1969
#2420: Jun 20th 2010 at 7:31:37 PM

I think the most interesting interpretation, as well as the one with the most potential for interesting stories, lies in the middle.

Going to one extreme or the other isn't really all that interesting.

edited 20th Jun '10 7:32:17 PM by Zudak

anelaidlives Since: Jun, 2009 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
#2421: Jun 20th 2010 at 7:35:18 PM

I agree with that two but it seems the canon veers wildly between the two.

Hylarn (Don’t ask) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#2422: Jun 20th 2010 at 7:46:32 PM

Current canon seems to be that Teruyo thinks it's kind of fun but doesn't care that much, and it's a major driving force for Mokou because she doesn't have anything else to do.

Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#2423: Jun 20th 2010 at 7:56:07 PM

Well, one way to look at it is that Mokou still hates Kaguya for snubbing her father. And the cycle of killing keeps the enmity hot. But at the same time, she's secretly grateful that Kaguya provides some consistency and objective to her immortal life. Kaguya is the one person who can keep Mokou company through the eternities.

Kaguya is the person Mokou loves to hate.

^ I agree. Kaguya probably sees her rivalry with Mokou as a game to while away the hours.

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
Brickman Gentleman Adventurer! from wherever adventure takes me Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: My own grandpa
Gentleman Adventurer!
#2424: Jun 20th 2010 at 8:44:54 PM

I think works can be interesting if they fall anywhere from "friendly rival taken to eleven" to "want nothing more than to make the other suffer," (actual shipping between them is silly though), but the version I like best is probably where they legitimately do hate each other but the rivalry is one of the few things that keeps eternity interesting.

One thing I find sort of interesting about Mokou: If it's her immortality that makes her a loner, why isn't she friends with more Youkai? After all, many of the youkai in the series have lived for more than 500 years, and a few have probably lived longer than Mokou herself; it seems to be almost a given that even the weakest and lowest level youkai age slower than humans. Yet the one person consistently depicted as a friend is a human (I doubt being a werecreature helps in the aging department), and with the exception of Flandre and Mystia (who each have a laundry list of reasons why the pairing just clicks) I've never seen any indications that she likes or tolerates Youkai, rather less is friends with any of them. Perhaps it's a cultural thing; it's ok for some of the Touhou humans today to be friends with a lot of Youkai, but that's just because of relatively recent social changes spurred on by the Hakureis, the border and the spellcard system. In her time the idea of being friends with a Youkai was probably about as absurd as being friends with a Xenomorph. It's hard to shake values like that.

One other interesting thing, and a point in her favor to offset the whole "aren't they both really just jerks who can't drop a grudge?" thing, is that she helps humans despite not wanting or receiving any reward, thanks or even company. She doesn't even talk to them when she's doing it. Perhaps even though immortality makes personal relationships and human interaction difficult and painful she still instinctively wants to do good, or perhaps she does it to try to justify her existence, or perhaps it's more that she forces herself to mechanically perform any good deed that stumbles headfirst into her path just because she feels like she has to (the feeling that you "have to" keep doing something even when the people who'd make you are long since gone is certainly not rare as a motivator among humans, especially where morality is concerned). Thing is, while she's certainly a lifesaver to anyone who happens to run into her in the forest, she isn't seeking out opportunities to do good/help people/make an impact/accomplish anything with a given decade of her life, which suggests to me that perhaps it's more of the last of those options.

PS: Of course that video makes out Kaguya to be the villain. It's shown (loosely) from Mokou's perspective. Anyways, all of those videos are awesome (well, I didn't watch the comedy sketches yet, but the rest are awesome).

Your funny quote here! (Maybe)
Clarste One Winged Egret Since: Jun, 2009 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
One Winged Egret
#2425: Jun 20th 2010 at 8:54:55 PM

Mokou, unlike Kaguya, actually matured over her absurd lifetime. First she had a grudge, then she gave up on it, then she went crazy, then decided that was boring, and then went crazy again just to be sure, but no, sanity is more interesting after all so she stuck with that. And then she found Kaguya. She's gotten used to be a weird loner who knows exactly how much hunger pains she can deal with before she needs to eat something, but she's a friendly person at heart. On the other hand she's afraid of either getting too attached to people who will die or being rejected by society for being immortal. The latter has been solved by discovering Gensokyo though.

Either way, she's not too used to dealing with people in a long term sense, which is why she's lucky that Keine befriended her. I don't actually know their history, but it seems very unlikely that Mokou would have been the one to approach her.

Of course, the big "thing" about Mokou is obviously her relationship with Kaguya. First of all, I don't think Mokou's obsessed with Kaguya. She's had far too long of a time to get over it before she rediscovered her. Heck, she thought Kaguya was on the moon. That doesn't mean she's forgiven her though. I don't think she's above playful jabs at her enemy, although the scale of playful differs for these two because of their immortality. It doesn't dominate her life though. It's just something they do to each other, like a running gag between old friends if they happen to meet after a while.

Honestly, I think she was very glad to have found Kaguya though. It grounds her to know that her old life still mattered. Instead of floating through history without an anchor, she now has something to connect both ends of her life, which were drifting dangerously far apart. She has something to care about, long term. She seems to be afraid of Kaguya going away. I guess that looks kind of Tsundere, but whatever. I really don't think they're very close at all, in terms of personal interaction. Neither mortal enemies nor friends, they're just old "acquaintances" with a morbid sense of humor towards each other because of their immortality.

edited 20th Jun '10 8:58:51 PM by Clarste


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