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Touhou Nekokayou #90: God Night

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Touhou Nekokayou: Scarlet Weather Archive in Japanese Red #90

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Characters: Minoriko Aki, Shizuha Aki, Rin Kaenbyou, Kanako Yasaka

I'd already been planning on using the Aki Sisters. Then I realized that tonight was Halloween, so! (I've had "Heartful Neko-romancer" stuck in my head all day, anyway.)

It, um, took me a bit to contrive come up with a coherent segue between "faith" and "Halloween"; hence the content of panels 4 and 5.

Orin's lyrics in panels 7 and 8 are taken directly from Thriller; Heartful Necromancer's lyrics do not, in fact, bear any resemblance to it whatsoever, but I figure the former is much more recognizable than "Souls are light and fluffy, white and transparent, tasteless and odorless."

The title is a play on the fact that "Halloween" = "All Hallow's Eve" = "'Hallowed' is 'sacred, y'know, like gods', and 'eve' = 'night'." So it's obviously about the Aki sisters, without obviously being about Halloween at first ...

Wanna know what's absolutely great? The fact that create.swf has scrollbars now!! :3

Transcript

  1. (The Aki Sisters walk through the woods at night.)
    Shizuha: Ah, today was a good day!
    Minoriko: You said it! The harvest looks better and better every time I look!
  2. Shizuha: (slight smirk) Of course, you'd know, wouldn't you? Since you're the goddess of the harvest and all ...
    Minoriko: (waving her arms cheerfully) Well, yeah! It's partly cuz of all the extra Faith I've been getting the past coupla years.
  3. Shizuha: Yeah, I guess people are still worried after the harvest went badly last year because of that Celestial ...
    Minoriko: Yeah, you get mediocre faith when times are good, but the minute you get a scarlet weather incident, people are waxing rhapsodic and deluging you with prayers ...
    Shizuha SFX: and everyone just takes falling leaves for granted so I don't get much to begin with, whee
  4. Shizuha: I was talking with Sanae about it, by the way ...
    Minoriko: Oh?
    Shizuha: Yeah ... our chat went all over the place. she mentioned that around this time of year, people in the Outside World dress up in scary costumes and have costume parties and stuff.
  5. Minoriko: (sweatdrop, bemused frown) Um, interesting.
    Shizuha: Oh yeah, it was because we were talking about old gods and faiths with no real followers anymore, but people still do things that were originally in their honor ...
  6. (One of Orin's ghost-skulls floats into the panel.)
    Minoriko: Ah! Well, in any case, that new tradition sounds like it would be fun to have ... (aside) if a bit morbid to *us.*
    Shizuha: It does, doesn't it?
    Orin: (off-panel) Good thing, too ...
  7. (A giant shadowy Orin steps into the panel, startling them.)
    Giant Orin: ... Cuz this is THRILLER! THRILLER NIGHT! GIRL, I CAN THRILL YOU MORE THAN ANY GHOST WOULD EVER DARE TRY!
    Shizuha: Wha!
    Minoriko: Eep!
  8. (Minoriko and Shizuha flee in terror.)
    Giant Orin: THRILLER! THRILLER NIGHT! SO LET ME HOLD YOU TIGHT AND SHARE A KILLER, THRILLER, OW!
    Minoriko and Shizuha: AAAAAAAAA!!
  9. (The real Orin sits inside the shadowy one, with an angry Kanako coming up behind her.)
    Orin: (thought cloud) Man, this is never gonna get old ...
    Shizuha: (off-panel) Wait -- Minoriko, why are we running!? We're gods!
    Minoriko: (off-panel!) Because we're still only stage 1 bosses! Don't stop!

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.

16 Comments (auto-closed) (rss feed)

The Ace Of Scarabs (Tv-Troper)

Well played, I am amused.

Aki sisters need more faith/love.

RozenMariku

How'd you do that effect with Orin?

sRc

the scrollbars in create.swf are nice, wish the point where it autoscrolls wasn't like 2 entries down from the top of the list, though

and Orin just needs to moonwalk out of there, and then Kanako can't do anything to her

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

@RozenMariku:
Step 1: open in Photoshop (or GIMP) and create a layer with blend-mode: "Multiply" and set it to 80% opacity. Name it something like "Shadowy."
Step 2: Select each individual color on big-Orin. Select -> Modify -> Expand (or in GIMP, Select -> Grow) by one pixel.
Step 3: Fill what you have selected, on the Shadowy layer, with color #280050 (red = 40, green = 0, blue = 80).

To include real-Orin:
Step 1: Do the above twice: one with real-Orin in front of the giant-Orin, and one with real-Orin behind giant-Orin. In both cases, do not select real-Orin's colors.
Step 2: Arrange the layers alternating: Shadowy-for-real-Orin-behind, real-Orin-behind, shadowy-for-real-Orin-in-front, real-Orin-in-front.
Step 3: Put the upper two layers in a Group. Set the Group to 50% opacity.
Step 4 (optional): Create a Layer Mask on the Group. Make a black-to-white Gradient, at 75% opacity, and put it in the circular pattern, with the center around Orin's center and the edge near the top of Orin's ears.

@sRc: Yeah, I've put in a formal request for a "disable Autoscroll option."

ganbaru

Sorry to sound stupidd but, why Kanako would be angry at Orin?

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

Solidarity with other gods, I guess.

universalperson

You know, I'm wondering whether the Aki sisters and Hina are the same kind of god as Kanako and Suwako. The Japanese word for kami not only refers to diety, but also a kind of spirit, and I'm starting to wonder if we aren't in some "dub-induced plot hole" as tvtropes would put it.

Duran

I think they are since they're all based in japan; Japan has a lot of gods, it's just so happens that Kanako and Suwako are more powerful gods.

sRc

I believe the linear notes of Silent Sinner in Blue did a fairly good job at explaining, but I don't remember where in it I read at the moment. basically theyre more of a spiritual being which are powered by spiritual energy (collectively 'faith') given to them by mortals that believe in them. the Aki sister's power comes from the faith of the farmers for a good harvest, and Hina's power comes from tops effectively granting happiness to the unhappy

sRc

whereas Suwako and Kanako essentially share the faith together between the two of them, which is combined from Suwako's leadership abilities over other gods, and Kanako's selling nuclear secrets power over storms

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

Well, that still doesn't necessarily make them different kinds of being. It could be ZUN just screwing around with gods/religion as a concept, and he certainly wouldn't be the first person to depict gods as having power because people believe in them (though that's only one kind of faith), rather than the other way around; or it could just be the way Shinto/animism works (I'm really not doing any research here). Or it could be a term for beings with a particular similar set of attributes in the Touhouverse; Byakuren notes to Reimu (I think it was) that the distinction of "gods" from "youkai" is arbitrary to begin with.

Facteur Rien

Mmm, yeah. But still, youkai lives by eating food, while gods lives by using faith. I wonder if we can believe Byakuren, for me at least, she look like an hippie.
Thinking about that, in all the doujin, Kanako and Suwako are shown eating food like other living beings, and I think it's mentionned in a end that Kanako is used to drink...
So, maybe Byakuren was right after all.

Ah, f-ck that crap! Let's go drink some beer!

Tarquin

A bit of a necro-post here, but what the heck.

As I understand it (though I'm not a Shinto scholar), the difference between kami-who-are-gods and kami-who-are-spirits is literally only one of degree (and indeed, doesn't really exist in Japanese); they're exactly the same class of being, just some are more powerful than others, so you speak to or about them with more respect. I'm not sure if all youkai would be considered kami; some certainly would (tsukumogami like Kogasa and Medicine, for instance, and perhaps the various animal youkai as well), but creatures like oni usually seem to be regarded differently. (Then again, are oni even considered youkai? Maybe they're not.)

The difference as I see it would be that kami gain power from faith or belief (more people believing means their powers get stronger), but the likes of oni don't (they're just about personal physical strength). I wouldn't say kami need faith to live - they generally eat and drink like any other being - but they do need it in order to be able to influence things with their power. Having no faith wouldn't kill them directly, but it might mean they would be unable to gather food or find shelter.

(Byakuren never struck me as looking like a hippie, though her attitude certainly has some peacenik aspects to it. Her costume always reminded me more of an idol singer...)

Beta-Maxis

Be better if create.swf could have the arrow keys move stuff up and down lists as well because it eitrher goes INFURIATINGLY slow or shoots WILDLY up and down, and takes forever to get to what I want/need, especially if it's notin alphabetical order.

TechSY730

@Beta-Maxis
Woa, easy on the archive binge there. How many posts in old pages have you made this last day?

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

A fuckton, and it's starting to annoy me, too. :P