Possibly-crazy stuff you didn't notice for ages: thread 3

[Sagus]

As I interpret it, the friendly/danger levels represent how much the character tries to socialize with humans (Seiga is stated to love humans and go around following people all the time, and Miko is great to talk to, apparently, while Sanae, although amicable, considers herself/actually is a goddess, so she probably doesn't associate with mortals as often) and how likely they are to harm/attack/bother humans (Mamizou is a prankster, so she'd frequently annoy humans; Miko and Sanae might be very powerful, but the chances of them antagonizing humans is very low), respectively.

[Desu_Cake]

However why would Aya, however bad a journalist she is, use a photo of someone else under the large headline "The 9th Girl of Are Appears"? She should by all means take a picture of the infant in the arms of her family, right? So I had to come up with convoluted explanation such as "the Hieda family didn't allow it" and so on.

Because she couldn't/was too lazy to get one? I fail to see how that's convoluted.
Besides, the picture isn't necessarily relevant to the birth of the child of Miare, just to the child of Miare.

"Akyu grew up to the age of 8 almost immediately after being born" sounds much more contrived than "Aya couldn't be arsed to get a relevant picture"

[cuc]

"Akyu grew up to the age of 8 almost immediately after being born" sounds much more contrived than "Aya couldn't be arsed to get a relevant picture"

I've already abandoned the "fast growth" idea several posts ago, I'm supporting the "Child of Are's soul enters an already grown child" theory now. The implied creepiness actually fits ZUN, come to think of it. Though to Akyu herself, it might simply feel like a sudden awakening, an understanding of her purpose in life.

Aya is only lazy when it comes to writing good articles, never in her photo shooting, especially when the maidens of Gensokyo are involved, otherwise the entirety of the two photography games wouldn't happen. Come on, I've thought this through. Reporting on the girls is Aya's calling. You wouldn't say "infants don't count", right? Humans grow up fast in youkai's eyes.

(When I didn't believe it could be Akyu, my theory eventually escalated to funny but contrived scenes like "Aya took a picture of an older child, in hope that younger youkai didn't know what human infants look like").

[AnonymousPondScum]

Miko: Might have been a decent fighter in the real world but in Gensokyo she has to rely more on brains than brawn. That sword doesn't get much use in a realm where the default method of combat is MAGIK BOOLETS. :V That much said I imagine she's got a dozen schemes in the works at any given time, so facing her in single combat is probably the last thing you'd need to worry about.

Seiga's friendliness is...Well, it's arguably a false friendliness in that just because she's being polite doesn't mean she necessarily is going to treat people well. Also, given her ability to phase through walls you'd think she'd be at least a notch more dangerous.

I don't get how Sanae is merely Friendly to humans, either. Perhaps because she's built up a major rapport with the Youkai Mountain residents? As for her threat level, SoP-M says that her miracle ability is a bit of a lotto, so it's probably too difficult to use as a weapon. Also, she's kind of a ditz, after all. :V

Kanako: I got nothin'. :V

Rin: I'm just gonna guess that Rin was providing requisite smack talk here. :V

Ichirin/Unzan: UNZAN SMASH PUNY THREAT RATINGS. Also, IIRC Yoshika is at least capable of some autonomy whereas Unzan requires the go code from Ichirin to do anything, hence separate entry for Yoshika.

Suwako: Once again, I got nothin'. :V

Shou: As previous. :getdown:

Nitori: I suspect she's just tired of humans demanding tech support. :V Also, Hell yeah Nitori is dangerous!

Hina: Dunno enough about her to make a call. :V

Byakuren: She's already gotten burned once by humans, she doesn't drink (which means she already separates herself from a HUGE portion of Gensokyo festivities), and she doesn't do much about itinerant youkai that use the Myouren Temple as a place to beat up people and generally make mischief. Or so Akyu claims. :getdown: As for her threat level, I figure she doesn't pick fights often enough for anyone to really tell conclusively.

Nazrin: I figure Shou takes advice from Nazrin for a reason. But more deadly than the Moriya crew...?

Tojiko: "A Very High threat level, which isn't much of a shocker..." I'm sorry, but was that a lightning pun? :derp:

Murasa: But there's plenty of smaller bodies of water. DEATH BY TOILET!

Yamame: Probably somewhat of a lower threat due to...Eirin being really good at making vaccines, perhaps? :V Also I could have sworn she was relatively friendly but this may be one of those polite-is-not-necessarily-nice cases.

Satori: Nobody likes Satori.

Yoshika: Either she doesn't or is incapable of realizing what she is doing and is very chatty with people even as she's nomming them, or she's mindless. In the latter case she's like Koishi and is incapable of genuine aggression or genuine compassion.

[Desu_Cake]

The implied creepiness actually fits ZUN, come to think of it.

It does?

Aya is only lazy when it comes to writing good articles, never in her photo shooting, especially when the maidens of Gensokyo are involved, otherwise the entirety of the two photography games wouldn't happen. Come on, I've thought this through. Reporting on the girls is Aya's calling. You wouldn't say "infants don't count", right?

I wouldn't exactly equate the challenge of dodging danmaku trying to get the perfect shot,  and the "challenge" of getting someone to allow her to take a photo of a baby.
On top of that, her usual method is "take an interesting photo, then make up an article about it." Since it's pretty obvious that in this case the article came first, going out and taking a picture may have seemed a chore.
Not to mention the fact that she mightn't have liked the idea of having a "boring" photo in her newspaper, and just substituted something that looked better. There's numerous reasons that she might have used a different photo, and none of them are particularly "out there."

[PhantasmStardust]

On Hina, misfortune that can be brought on someone can be pretty bad, as stated in her SoPM article :
"There is no cure against unluckiness. Injury, disease, bankruptcy, divorce... Every possible influence imaginable."
and well the possibilities are endless, someone might get misfortune in the form of death or (similar to what Yamame can do) someone might end up getting an infectious disease and start  a plague throughout the humans.

For Byakuren, she can't participate in human festivities (like drinking) and well it was the humans that sealed her.
 
For Murasa, her high threat is pretty much because she can kill humans, sinking ships (I would guess that humans use fishing boats and probably use ship to get from place to place) can cause people to drown and well it can be anything related to water that kills.

[Error]

It seems that Murasa is pretty much forced to kill humans, and can't really help it.


No cure against unluckiness? Does that mean her ability would override Tewi's?

[Frog]

Murasa's able to drown people, not just ships and her article talks about people having water related accidents when ritual cleansing at a shrine, or fishing and whatnot.
And for the most part just because somebody's incredibly powerful, ie kanako doesn't mean they're dangerous, if they're peaceful and pose no threat to humans they could be considered low on the threat scale.

[cuc]

Not to mention the fact that she mightn't have liked the idea of having a "boring" photo in her newspaper, and just substituted something that looked better. There's numerous reasons that she might have used a different photo, and none of them are particularly "out there."

I've already considered that possibility, too.

Well, following this line of thought, Akyu asking Aya (who she of course have always known; the first Miare may even predate Aya) "why did you never take a picture of me when I was a toddler" certainly would be a funny scene.


I was reminded of this when reading KimikoMuffin's excellent comic Cottagesnagged...

There are actually two types of bombs in Touhou games: Spell Cards and Spirit Strikes.

The bombs in most shooting games are Spell Cards, while the bombs in IaMP, MoF and SA are Spirit Strikes, that's why they function differently from traditional bombs. Spirit Strike is of course available in SWR/Soku as a System Card. Meanwhile, the Spirit Strikes in SA are Remote Spirit Strikes, implying that they come from the partner characters.

The English translation patches have always translated Spirit Strikes as simply "Bombs", that's why this difference is not obvious to oversea fans.

I'm not saying the English patch translators are in the wrong; they may have other factors such as text space on the screen to consider.

Speaking of things omitted due to screen space, do you know that even the weather effects displayed during a SWR/Soku game contain the phrase "to the extent of"? (My preferred translation of that phrase is "enough to".)

[Starxsword]

I see it as a picture of one of the Hieda family members, not necessarily a picture even, as it could be a drawing. Look at Letty's picture. Clearly Aya cannot possibly take a photo of Letty AND Letty getting beat up by Reimu at the same time. Also, Look at Remilia's article, there is no picture of her.
I don't really how it has to be a picture of Akyuu and not a picture of what Aya thinks Akyuu should look like.

[cuc]

Never thought I'd get into a prolonged debate about Aya's paparazziism. Cheers to the gods of humor and journalism .

I see it as a picture of one of the Hieda family members, not necessarily a picture even, as it could be a drawing. Look at Letty's picture. Clearly Aya cannot possibly take a photo of Letty AND Letty getting beat up by Reimu at the same time. Also, Look at Remilia's article, there is no picture of her.
I don't really how it has to be a picture of Akyuu and not a picture of what Aya thinks Akyuu should look like.

Touhou vampires can't be seen in mirrors, so they can't be photoed? I like the idea.

It's also untrue: not only is Aya taking pictures of Remilia and Flandre in StB, her comments also said nothing about vampires not showing up in pictures. They can't be seen in some StB spell cards, but definitely can be seen in others. Regarding BAiJR's Remilia photo, the two black spots in the centre of the energy blast are her wings, and Flandre is there in her photo.

The PMiSS picture we are talking about is intended to be a photo in-universe. I'll explain why.

If you have the full scans of BAiJR, you'll see that under every news article photo, there is a note saying 撮影協力 satsuei kyouryoku "photography assistant/help/support", followed by a name, which is the name of the picture's artist in real life. These both give credits to the artists, and also indicate the pictures are photos. The same note is in the PMiSS article.

ZUN decided to not do such 4th wall breaking in the SoPM news clips, but that's his call, maybe he has indeed come to take the Touhou universe slightly more seriously himself. (The clips in SoPM are also minor articles, not front pages like those in BAiJR and PMiSS.)

Now I want to talk about BAiJR a bit...

The interviews don't have the newspaper background texture and page headers. The indication is that BAiJR is an in-universe book collection of Aya's writing. The news articles were straight reprints of the paper's front pages - along with ads and such, while the follow-up interviews were specially conducted for the book.

The pictures for the interviews with Aya in them don't have such notes. They might be drawn illustrations in-universe, but not definitely so: Aya is doing them specially for her big book, thus it's conceivable for Aya to bring an assistant who takes pictures (or indeed, draw pictures) of interviewer and interviewee together. And this being a book not a newspaper or magazine, the assistant(s) can be credited in the copyright section elsewhere, rather than here alongside the interview.

[cuc]

On the topic of ZUN liking "implied creepiness" (or to use TVTropes language, Fridge Horror)... Sorry, I have to ramble a little.

All those debates about things like "Byakuren left the humans on her ship to die" didn't happen for no reason. I've debated about "organized human hunts" on this board a few days ago. And have you read "Death of the Honest Men" (Dolls in Pseudo Paradise CD-R story), the most cryptic story, and the only straight horror story in Touhou canon?

Of course I'm of the opinion that the smaller, more local and personal "horrors" in Touhou universe are all exaggerated: Byakuren is not a murderer, "Death of the Honest Men" is a story told by Alice that may be a metaphor for something about her, Kisume was just throwing some fake human bones around to scare people, and Murasa hasn't killed anyone for real since entering Gensokyo. The larger horrors about the world system which Gensokyo stands against, however, are not: "Lunarians transformed humans into demons/monsters to regulate the filth on earth" (IN, scarlet team scenario); "The celestial realm is a great keystone. When it was removed from earth, everything on earth died." (SWR, Reisen's ending)

[Zil]

Isn't it reasonable to assume that the whole shindig happened when Akyu was older? How would you even know she inherited the powers if she was too young to talk yet? That, or ZUN just screwed up and used a picture that makes no sense. I doubt he'd be concocting some convoluted thing about Aya being too lazy to use a good picture, or whatever other explanation you can come up with, without hinting at it in any way, or having Akyu herself apparantly take any notice of the picture being wrong.

[cuc]

Isn't it reasonable to assume that the whole shindig happened when Akyu was older? How would you even know she inherited the powers if she was too young to talk yet?

Your reasoning is sound. The reincarnations of Tibetan tulku are generally discovered when they were young children, and the Avatar series used that idea. However, other possibilities are still open: each Child could have left notes predicting the exact time of the next reincarnation, or give omens when the time is near. It's entirely possible for the family to know about the correct time of Miare's return.

I doubt he'd be concocting some convoluted thing about Aya being too lazy to use a good picture, or whatever other explanation you can come up with, without hinting at it in any way, or having Akyu herself apparantly take any notice of the picture being wrong.

So do I think. That's the right place to use Occam's razor.

I'm now back to composing another post, to examine the page, more thoroughly again.

[cuc]

The facts:

1. The newspaper is from 1994 summer.
2. The photo depicts a small girl.
3. The large headline above the photo is "The Ninth Maiden of Miare Appears".
4. The article says "...the Hieda family announced the birth of a new Maiden of Are".
5. The part at the end of article invites everyone to the birthday celebration for Child of Miare at Hakurei Shrine.
(The wording here is 生誕祝賀 "birthday celebration", which technically can mean anything: celebrating a new birth, a living person's birthday, or anniversary of a birth 1000 years ago.)
6. Akyu's note, "news article from the time of my birth".
7. In Memorizable Gensokyo, the manga that accompanies PMiSS, Akyu said "I've only lived as the ninth [Child] for a little less than 10 years". (Mistranslation in English scans.) Memorizable Gensokyo takes place in 2006 autumn, soon before the publishing of Gensokyo Chronicles.

My current opinion:
None of the convoluted theories are needed, and Zil is right. Even my previous theory about "soul entering the child's body" is unnecessary.

Akyu may simply know nothing about herself being the Child of Miare, until a certain day, when her power and memories awaken. Maybe like the Tibetan tulku, it took a series of rituals and tests for the Hieda to recognize her as the Child.

No matter what exactly happened then, Akyu considers a certain moment in 1994 her true birth.

Regarding Akyu's line in Memorizable Gensokyo, "A little less than 10 years" sounds like an error (over 11 years passed between 1994 summer and 2006 autumn), but it could mean Akyu only formally began living as Child of Miare since 1995 or 1996.

And for all we know, Hieda family could be announcing that "now we know we have a Maiden of Miare", not "this newborn child is a Maiden of Miare".

The birthday celebration can really mean anything. The Hieda family may consider the moment Akyu become Maiden of Miare her birth, too. Akyu's awakening might happen when her birthday was near. The Hieda family might formally recognize her as the Child, or publically announce her identity near her birthday, by choice or by tradition.

The Japanese THWiki thinks Akyu's age to be 11-13 in 2006. I think she's older, at very least 14 in 2006.

EDIT:
Defenders of the "soul vessel" theory told me this is no better than "soul vessel". Well, first, I've put all relevant info together here in one post, so that anyone can make up her own mind; second, replace "Akyu awakened" with "the soul of Child of Miare came to Akyu", and it's really not much different from the soul vessel theory. It could happen naturally, or it could be the result of a terrifically grueling ritual, it's all up to you.

EDIT 2:
The main evidence of the "soul vessel" theory is this line in "Monologue", PMiSS, regarding the Child's physical body:

...it takes nearly a hundred years to prepare my body for the next reincarnation...

Which can be read in several different ways.

[Starxsword]

Touhou vampires can't be seen in mirrors, so they can't be photoed? I like the idea.

It's also untrue: not only is Aya taking pictures of Remilia and Flandre in StB

I don't quite understand what you are getting at. Whether it is true or untrue is not too relevant. The relevant point is there is no picture of Remilia in that article. What I am trying to say is that the articles do not necessitate the picture of the person in quest. It is relevant to the subject in question though. Since we see a picture of the scarlet mist or whatever that is.

The case of drawing the picture in is sound mainly because for several of the articles, you see pictures that are impossible to take. Like the Letty example I have given or the Kaguya/Mokou in the forest fire one. You cannot take pictures of their thoughts and you cannot take pictures of Letty talking and Letty getting beat up by Reimu at the same time. The time line simply will not match up.

So, my point is really that it could easily have been a drawing of what Aya thinks Akyuu looks like or a drawing of the subject matter at hand. Which is the Hieda family introduces the 9th Maiden of Miare.

[cuc]

My previous post was too long-winded, trying to put the entire BAiJR book in context (which is answering part of your claim, but unrelated to the more important question about Akyu), and then I got distracted into a rant about horror in the Touhou universe. I apologize for that.

So to be more concise: there is a "photography support" note under that PMiSS picture, which is irrefutable evidence that the picture is supposed to be a photo in-universe.

[Starxsword]

That I did not see. I assume it is in the original scans then. I can only rely on what I have access to and make judgements based on that.

The point I have been trying to make is that there are other more reasonable explanations, which is why I do not buy the accelerated growth or the born as an 8th year old with no explanation. Which is why I wrote 2 things, it could be a drawing or it could be a picture of the subject matter. Which is the celebration, not necessarily a picture of Akyuu.

[cuc]

Yeah, but my claim has since shifted to basically this:

A girl was born a few years before 1994, and something happened in 1994 summer, turning her into Akyu, the ninth Child of Miare. Akyu thinks of the event in 1994 summer as her birth.

Regarding the nature of this "something", I say "her power awakened", and the soul vessel theory says "the Miare soul entered her body".

[Starxsword]

Yes, and it is a much better possibility than the soul thing and the accelerated growth. Those are just too bizarre.
While I still disagree with you, your theory is sound.

[Vael]

I think we have ever seen a Youkai that could manipulate Dreams yet... O.o

[Frog]

I don't remember where, but I recall something about Yukari being able to enter dreams via her powers. (Though there's not much she CAN'T do)

[Vael]

Yeah, but that's Yukari, and well Yukari is Yukari...completely overpowered even in Gensokyo.

I'm talking about an actual Youkai that has something to do with Dreams, like a Baku.

[Tiamat]

Maybe a Touhou game will take place within a character's (or multiple characters') dreams/minds.  That would be a nice change of pace (although a lot of it will probably be "What the hell are all these fairies doing in my head!?"

[ImmaCute]

Omg You are right I didnt actually noticed this stuff haha

[nintendonut888]

Glancing at Reimu's wiki article, I noticed a passage saying she was left-handed, or at least ambidextrous. I took a look at all her in-game art, and realized it was right; Reimu is shown to hold her gohei in either hand, varying on the game. How did I never notice this?

[cuc]

When I was watching videos of SoEW, I could never figure out what's written on the loading screen. "HUMA"? What is that?

Today I finally played the PC-98 games, and saw it clearly. It says:

東方封魔録
The Story of "HUMA" in Eastern Wonderland

And I realized that "HUMA" is a romanization of 封魔 "fuuma" - "sealing of demon", as in Touhou Fuumaroku, the Japanese title of the game. ZUN didn't know how to translate it, so he left it in this form, capitalized and quoted.

With this mystery solved, it's now obvious that "The Story of "HUMA" in Eastern Wonderland" is intended to be an English translation of Touhou Fuumaroku. Also notice that all games in the series except for TH02 put both their main titles and subtitles on the menu screens...

This means that TH02 is the only Touhou game ever without a subtitle. and "Story of Eastern Wonderland" is most likely an invention of Western fans, who intentionally or not, misinterpreted the loading screen. Thus the Western fandom was forever spared the pain of having to call TH02 using awkward and unstandardized names like "HUMA", "Fuuma", EW or SoHiEW, like what would happen with Hisoutensoku.

Fate surely works in strange ways. :getdown:

[Arcorann]

The subtitle "(the) Story of Eastern Wonderland" can be seen on ZUN's website, specifically his old music page. Checking archives shows it's always been there (at least to 2001, anyway).

[cuc]

Ah yes, the old music page. Thank you ZUN for not forgetting to give TH02 a subtitle, even if it's not seen in the game itself! Imagine having to type "The Story of "HUMA" in Eastern Wonderland" every time... :getdown:

[Esoterica]

Tried Reimu in LLS for the first time yesterday and noticed Marisa's holding a rather large flower instead of her broom or wand in her stage 4 boss fight.