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Touhou Nekokayou #157 (4koma): Sources of Information

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Touhou Nekokayou: Scarlet Weather Archive in Japanese Red #157

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Characters: Keine Kamishirasawa, Sanae Kochiya, Daisuke Kirisame, Koishi Komeiji, Hieda no Akyuu, Marisa Kirisame, Aya Shameimaru

I'm still on my Indefinite Hiatus (or possibly Hiedas), and the reasons for remaining on it are still in place (even apart from Villainmad and Cottagesnagged, I'm still feeling generally unmotivated and discouraged and depressed about my Touhou creations). However, I thought that now would be a good time to make something about the recently-released Symposium of Post-Mysticism. This entire idea struck me while I was reading a thread on "how Symposium derped with your views of Gensokyo" on Maidens of the Kaleidoscope, and I started really thinking about the fact that Akyuu supposedly wrote this down herself.

So, Koishi is apparently sort of like an imaginary friend and adults forget her the minute they stop seeing her.1 While I don't begrudge anyone depicting Koishi as Tyler Durden or Pooh or whatever, since these ideas are all awesome, well ... How do you find out about someone whose defining characteristics supposedly include "people forget about her the minute she leaves their field of vision," let alone compile an informative article about her? Unless, of course, said characteristics were pulled out of Marisa's ass. Wait, that came out wrong. Not to mention the varopis other parts of these in-character profiles which appear to contradict the contents of the official out-of-character profiles that came with the games themselves ... It's like this information, which comes from questionable in-universe sources which are nevertheless just reliable enough that you can't discount them outright, were designed specifically to be equal parts interesting and uncertain!

Actually, I think the uncertainty is a fairly brilliant move on ZUN's part. Touhou's popularity is fuelled almost entirely by the fan-creations; the not-quite-set-in-stone nature of the source-material provides a bit more fodder for Gensokyos which aren't quite the same as ZUN's, and while a lack thereof has never stopped anyone in any other fandom, this might push people in a particular direction if they'd just been on the edge. Meanwhile, the sticklers-for-canon, who like nothing more than to bicker about it, get the added bonus of bickering about which parts of canon are accurate. Finally, ZUN himself gets to flex his creative muscles, without necessarily leaving himself beholden to any part of it if he changes his mind about anything at a later date. The only people left unsatisfied are the ones who want A Clear And Definite Answer; which is unfortunate, because clear and definite answers are not how ZUN rolls, and never has been.

Oh, look, the commentary's basically longer than the 4koma-comic itself again.

Transcript

  1. Narration Box: *This may or may not take place in the Canon Timeline
    (Dasiuke Kirisame and Keine are standing around in the Human Village when a wide-eyed Sanae shows up.)
    Daisuke: So then I ... hmm? Oh, hello, Sanae.
    Keine: Ah, hi, Sanae. Did something happen?
    Sanae: Hi, Keine ... hi, Mr. Kirisame ... Yeah, it was the weirdest thing, even by the standards of Gensokyo!
  2. (A thought-cloud with Koishi appears above Sanae's head. Daisuke and Keine turn to face Sanae, looking concerned.)
    Daisuke: What? What happened?
    Keine: Uh-oh.
    Sanae: Yeah ... I saw this youkai girl who looked like a satori with her Third Eye shut! She was acting really weird, like her mind was completely blank ...
  3. Sanae: And the instant she left my field of vision, I FORGOT THE ENTIRE EXPERIENCE!
    (Daisuke and Keine react in shock.)
    Daisuke: Gasp!
    Keine: Gasp!
  4. (Cut to the Hieda Household; Marisa and Aya are crowded cheerfully around Akyuu, who is writing in a book.)
    Akyuu: (grinning incredulously at Marisa) Waaaaaait, what!?
    Aya: That's a great idea, Marisa!
    Marisa: (goofy grin) This is gonna be the best Gensokyo Chronicle ever!!

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1This did not help the aforementioned unmotivation/discouragement/depression, and neither did murderously-psychotic Kisume for some reason. Although depression tends to cause confusion about whether you're depressed because of X, or you were already depressed when X crossed your mind ...

All Touhou characters are © Team Shanghai Alice and/or ZUN; create.swf is ⑨ KirbyM with help from Thefre. "Sakura petals" brush in main/4koma logo was made by Kisara Girl. "Falling leaves" brush in 60-Years logo came with Photoshop.

41 Comments (auto-closed) (rss feed)

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Hunter 1

...Well this was unexpected. However, it is a pleasant surprise, and I'm hoping that it's a sign of things to come; namely, more comics! (Yeah, CSA is nice, but I like more jokes. As for Villianmad... I'm typing this on my iPad for a reason. That reason is my laptop is non-functional, and as such isn't running anything at the moment.)

As for the comic itself: Yeah, I can totally see Marisa doing this. And (quick mental checking)... Yeah, isn't this the first time you've shown Daisuke in a comic?

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

Ahahaha nope @ the idea of more comics. But yeah, first Daisuke comic. *goes to edit the OC page*

Bocaj

But Sanae, if you forgot the whole experience, how are you describing the whole experience?

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

thatsthejoke.jpg

Wolf

Hmmm.... *notices* the punchline*

I'd actually belive that she would make Ayaku write that down, and top it all off Kiene-sensei has a husband!? o.O
Man that's really going to put a hinderance on the MokuxKiene... oh wait I forgot you went with the Kaguyaxmoku route. :p

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

No, Keine is not Marisa's mom (or stepmom). Why would you even think that? :P

enlong

Didn't the article also say that if you know Satori, you can remember Koishi?

John Evans

"Unreliable narrator? I just met 'er!"

OH U, Marisa.

Wolf

Wait what... no I wasn't going with Marisa being related to Kiene-sensei, but more along the line of Marisa wanting to say something like that about what happened to Sanae meeting Koishi.

Also, I was kind of joking on the whole KinexMoku relationship idea as well there. *sweatdrop*

Random person of randmoness

You should have a comic where Cirno beats Yukari to within an inch of her life.

MWchase

You should have a comic where Cirno beats Yukari to within an inch of her life.

... It's freakin' epic? ...

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

Don't wanna.

Suggesting ideas actually makes me less likely to want to use them. ;P

DiMastine

Was reading the wiki article on tengu. Apparently even the source country cant agree on what one is
Dog faced comet: Momiji
Crow demon: Aya
Fallen Monk.... Byakuren we need to get you a hat

Formica Archonis

(Reads Transcript) Uhhhh... "Narration box"?

Also, please tell me I wasn't the only one picturing Koishi in a black business suit that looks distressingly skinlike in texture? Silence will fall....

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

Gah how did I upload the older version THERE FIXED.

... and I have no idea about whatever it is you're referencing with the business suit thing.

Formica Archonis

... and I have no idea about whatever it is you're referencing with the business suit thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence_(Doctor_Who)

... their existence is a secret because anyone who sees them immediately forgets about them after looking away, but retains suggestions made to them by the Silence.

The picture there doesn't quite get across the odd texture of the suit, but it's there.

Formica Archonis

Well, good on me for absolutely b0rking that URL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence_(Doctor_Who)

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

/ Modified by Dizzy H. Slightly Voided:

... nnnope, that was me derping up the HTMLifier, hang on :o

EDIT: There we go! For future reference to regular expressors: when you want to match a dash, escape it!!

Wolf

So wait you accidentally did a Doctor Who reference here by fluke, or was it on purpose? o.O

And oddly enough quite believable in fact. :p

Sometimes I do feel the need to see Touhou placed in everything now-a-days, or is it everything placed it Touhou? lol

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

I didn't. Koishi's imagination-hax is straight from Symposium of Post-Mysticism. :P

Formica Archonis

... nnnope, that was me derping up the HTMLifier, hang on :o

I'm helping! (Gets hammer.)

I didn't. Koishi's imagination-hax is straight from Symposium of Post-Mysticism. :P

So the question is, is ZUN talking to space aliens from Doctor Who? No, wait, that's not the question....

Still, it's close enough to being a Silence that I can't help but wonder if it's a direct or indirect source for the idea. Particularly since you mention psycho-decapitation-Kisume, and a few episodes after the Silence were introduced, they introduced The Order of the Headless, a group of monks for whom decapitation was rather de rigueur. (Or is that a Tsurube-otoshi thing? I know next to nothing about them. I know they attack people but I never figured it was to chop heads.)

More on topic, while I haven't read it, if this (and poor little Kisume!) is an example of the content I think a good slice of Symposium's going in that same place where I put any content that disagrees with Mystic Square!Alice = Perfect Cherry Blossom!Alice. I don't think of Gensokyo as a sugar bowl, but I personally think it's picked up at least a bit more of an enlightened sensibility since it was locked away.

Zoom

Everything still looks amazing/ funny on this end....

Hope your not still depressed~~

good luck and everything~~ XD


hmmm... So if sujecsting somthing males you less likely to use it... I sujest you use a boring logical and dull idea~~ .... Err wait.... (although that reverse sujestion ... Wait nevermind I just hurt my head.....)

Ozimul

Koishi is The Silence? NOOOOOO!

Eletale

I had no idea such interesting thing as the Symposium of Post-Mysticism had been released. Got a cool read ahead of myself, so I'll be on my way now. Thanks for everything.

Eletale

Sometimes Gensokyo is a hellish place, then is a place where humans and youkai can ride together Byakure's ship, then it's a zoo. The humans from outside are usually eaten, then they prefer to stay in Gensokyo, then they are mostly sent back. Reimu has good intuition and natual abilities but weak due to lack of training, then abilities strong enough to beat almost anyone without training, then she's not as perceptive as before... ZUN should really stick to one idea for what he want's to be canon.

Spirit Tsunami

Whoa. It's a new Nekokayou. Didn't see that coming.

Wolf

@Eletale: But that's a good reason as to why it should be like that. I mean everything changes over time so it seems to me that ZUN changes things as his games progress. So therefore things happen to change during one game to the next. Also, I guess you can also include the Wild Honred Hermit and the 3 Faries mangas as well into the mix.

In any case pretty much I think Zun did all that just to show that it is like the outside world in a sense of things changing over time.

Now for the 4-koma again, I have to say that the more I look at it the more I'm trying to figgure out who would be The Doctor in this bit. :p

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

Now for the 4-koma again, I have to say that the more I look at it the more I'm trying to figgure out who would be The Doctor in this bit. :p

Meimu.

Morgan

This discussion got me curious, so I looked into this book... and my most common thought was "Wow, that's depressing."

Given that I don't find the way the games depict the setting depressing, and I like it that way, I think Symposium is going on the ignore list.

RaenirSalazar

Yay new comic, didn't quite get the joke but I liked it because it seemed like a Doctor Who shout out.

Brings me back to when Keine did her whole cosmic retcon thing, reminded me of the cracks in reality arc of Doctor Who and had to rewrite time from scratch to fix things.

Anyone got KirbyM's email? I want to do an anime review series on Youtube using create.swf stuff like how Yahtzee uses his imps.

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

It kind of helps if you actually read Koishi's article in Symposium of Post-Mysticism. :V

And I'm pretty sure KirbyM's okay with everyone just doing whatever with Create.swf ...

RaenirSalazar

Unfortunately copyright law is somewhat higher standard than "I'm pretty sure..." at least if I want to actually be able to monetize the video's on youtube.

Any idea how KirbyM does his line art? I'm using Inkscape to create them from scratch so I can actually get them to do things like move their arms around. (For the life of me I can't figure out how to do this using Create.swf) But Inkscape doesn't seem to support pressure based penwork for that variance in line width.

For the most part the final product is virtually indistinguishable except for minor details. [url=http://risingsunbound.com/Pictures/Test-1.png]Consider Inkscape!Meiling[/url] vs Create.swf!Meiling [url=http://risingsunbound.com/Pictures/WalloText-small.jpg]Here[/url] aside from hair colour its hard to tell but the easiest to see is comparing the hair.

Silly perfectionist that I am I'm still trying to get it right :(

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

Well, I rearrange characters' arms using the "arms" objects in create.swf, and using Photoshop to change the colors/add designs.

But the fact that you're apparently trying to monetize something based on Touhou, which already belongs to someone else, I'd say KirbyM's copyright is the least of your concerns. Honestly, you're better off going to KirbyM's website, which is linked on every single page here, instead of babbling about it in the comments section of a comic I made.

And considering you're a perfectionist, I'm surprised you completely ignored the row of HTML-tags right above the comment-box in favor of trying to use BBCode-style stuff and didn't even bother to hit "preview," to say nothing of the fact that you're using the old, shitty versions of the create.swf characters instead of KirbyM's later redesigns. :P

RaenirSalazar

What's that I see in Japan? People selling stuff designed by Zun in big massive conventions because Zun doesn't care and Japanese Copyright law doesn't incentivize hammering people who infringe it *and* that Zun's has *never* established rights in North America so it doesn't really matter? Huh, fancy that. :P

I *went* to KirbyM's website but there's no active email, tried his Twitter but no response, tried one of his Doujin Circle associates but no luck there, dude's incommunikado.

:(

FlashOfSonic

How about we just stop this argument right here?

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

Yeah. Complaining to me about it is neither necessary nor helpful.

RaenirSalazar

I wouldn't be asking here if it was easily accessible on his own website, nor am I really 'complaining' I was explaining the circumstances.

Regardless, have some Touhou HipHop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6FopGxXKPQ

RaenirSalazar

went and checked, hadn't realized I had an older Meiling, spent half an hour redoing er' :(

RaenirSalazar

Hey man, do you know how in Walfas how to make a character and than save it, so if I open up a second create.swf I can open up the character I just made? Nothing seems to work.

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

Usually, Flash only saves things after it closes or reloads. I recommend copying the character DNA, then putting it into the Cloning Capsule under the Toys menu. Or just hit "reload" on your browser before openin up the second create.swf.

RaenirSalazar

I completely forgot about the cloner tool, thanks!

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