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Touhou Nekokayou #71: Catness, part 9

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Touhou Nekokayou: Scarlet Weather Archive in Japanese Red #71

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Characters: Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, Sakuya Izayoi, Midori Inaba, Mika Sayomi Inaba, Tewi Inaba, Eirin Yagokoro, Kaguya Houraisan, Fujiwara no Mokou, Reisen Udongein Inaba

Story begins here.

I dunno ... I guess I just like Tewi's old ears better than her new ones, I guess because the new ones are kind of squashed by perspective (which the art-style on the whole doesn't do very well).

Mika and Midori's Henshin to Gattai (変身と合体) came off as more interesting than I originally planned it, to the point that I had to give it a name with a Japanese translation-thingy. No, it's not a reference to Transformers, even if "Transform and unite!" does sound like something Optimus Prime would sound awesome saying. In any event, I figured the rabbits would be able to do something like that, in order to explain the fact that "Eientei is full of youkai rabbits" when, in Imperishable Night, it's full of fairy rabbits. Familiars, incidentally, are another element unique to IN;1 they're these little smaller enemies which hover around a "master" enemy and, shall we say, contribute meaningfully to their master's bullet-spam; they die when the master is killed, but can also be killed by the human member of each duo.

I'm saving a full Dio-Sakuya sequence for later.2

Panel 8 was fricking near impossible to make, due to the fact that their hair is so ... wide. But I pretty much got what I wanted eventually. "Moekko" more or less means "cute girl," though the concept of moĆ© (Warning, link leads to TVTropes. Muffin will not be held responsible for hours of time lost as a result of following it.But see also this disclaimer) is a bit more complicated (it holds connotations of shy innocence, and also a sort of "natural" cuteness — cute like an adult rabbit, not cute like the pink-obsessed magical girl heroine of a Saturday morning cartoon targeted at five-year-old girls; at least, that's my interpretation of it).

Hmm ... the entire Eientei crew (including Mokou) have gotten updates by now. In fact, it would be quicker to list the Imperishable Night characters, enemy and player, who haven't gotten updates (both Keines, Wriggle, Remilia, and original-Marisa). KirbyM's sudden burst of productivity seems to have slowed for now, though ...

Transcript

  1. (Reimu (cat-eared), Marisa (cat-eared), Sakuya, Mika, and Midori land in the Bamboo Forest.)
    Reimu: Okay, here we are at Eientei!
    Mika: Home sweet mansion!
  2. (Tewi abruptly flies into the area, alarming Mika and Midori.)
    Tewi: Intruder alert! The witch, the miko, and the maid are attacking! All rabbits and fairies, defensive mode!
    Reimu: what
    Midori: Huh?
    Mika: Wha!
  3. (Closeup of Mika and Midori, surrounded by glowing energies, against a pink background of vertical speedlines.)
    Mika: TRANSFORM AND UNITE!
    Midori: wait hang on
  4. (Mika becomes a fairy, and Midori becomes a slave/familiar from Imperishable Night orbiting around her.)
    Mika: FAIRY AND FAMILIAR!
    Midori: bmghdrfm sfrghmprvb
  5. (Against a pink background of horizontal speedlines, they attack zip towards Sakuya, who is stopping time in her Dio Brando pose.)
    Mika: Attack the enemy with everything you've got!
    Midori: You're getting us both killed agaaaaaaaaain!
  6. (Midori (back in rabbit-form) and Mika (still in fairy-form) lie on the bamboo forest floor. Mika has a knife in her forehead.)
    Mika: Ow ... I'm glad fairies can resurrect ...
    Midori: Me too ... that way I can kill you once for each of the knives she threw at us.
  7. (Reimu, Marisa, and Sakuya, weapons out, confront Eirin inside Eientei.)
    Eirin: Hello, sorry about Tewi's prank. And before any of you detonates, no, we don't have anything to do with the Incident.
    Reimu: What!? How do you know what we're doing here, and how do you know what that rabbit did!?
  8. (Elsewhere in Eientei, Kaguya sits with Mokou's head in her lap, petting her. Both of them are cat-eared.)
    Kaguya: You're even more adorable than usual, Moekko!
    Mokou: Ah ... mm ... h-help, I can't ... stop purring ...
    SFX: purr purr
  9. (Back to the heroines. Sakuya lowers her knife.)
    Reimu: Oh.
    Eirin: And as for Tewi, she walked by looking cheerfully smug the way she usually does after pranking someone.
  10. (Sakuya puts away her knife.)
    Marisa: Well yer a genius doctor. Have ya figured out *anything* about this catness thing?
    Eirin: Ah ... it seems to be a supernatural virus that appeared spontaneously in a number of people, and it's been spreading from there, and all animal-youkai are immune. Nothing coherent beyond that, though.
  11. (Marisa puts away her mini-hakkero.)
    Sakuya: Have you seen Utsuho Reiuji anywhere? She seems to have gone missing.
    Eirin: Hmm, actually, yes ... She was supposed to be here a few hours ago to help deliver medical supplies underground, but one of the rabbits saw her chasing a wolf-tengu in the direction of the Sanzu river, babbling something about cats.
  12. (Reimu and Marisa take off, startling Eirin and causing Sakuya to flinch back in annoyance.)
    Reimu: TO THE SANZU RIVER!
  13. Sakuya: I haven't seen them this excitable since the Long Winter Incident.
    Eirin: Yes, that seems to be another effect of the virus.
  14. (Sakuya turns to leave.)
    Sakuya: I'll go make sure they don't get into any more trouble ...
    Eirin: (grinning) At this point I'd say that's the best any of us can do.
  15. (Reisen arrives; Sakuya has left.)
    Reisen: Miss Eirin! I've gotten the results of the latest test! You may have been right!
    Eirin: Well, well ... I guess it looks like the Shrine Maiden *has* faced this particular kind of power before ...

Nobody's come close to guessing who the culprit is so far, whee! It's so easy to see who's found the Extra-Hidden Hint and who hasn't, though; they're even more off than the ones who have. Today's hint: The culprit has appeared in some capacity in two Touhou games or fewer, at the time of this writing; this does not count Shoot the Bullet — which isn't to say that she is in Shoot the Bullet, but if she is, I am not counting Shoot the Bullet in my "number of appearances" list (so, to pick an example already excluded, Cirno is a boss in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, mid-boss in Perfect Cherry Blossom, playable/opponent in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, and is an enemy in Shoot the Bullet, but that only counts as three for the purposes of this hint). There is another more-hidden hint, using a different form of steganography (not linked by Wikipedia), which someone in the previous comic's comments clued me in on. As before, the individual images are thcomic/71-##.png and thcomic/71title.png for your hacking pleasure.

1A category which also includes "Spell Practice", the most mind-bogglingly useful tool in any Touhou game I've seen to date, but nooooo Y'know what, that's a rant for another time.

2When it won't take up three panels in an already-oversized comic. (Note from future-Muffin: oh. Uh, never 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.

33 Comments (auto-closed) (rss feed)

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Draykon

Sorry Morgan, Sakuya falls nicely within both hidden clues.

Marisa on the other hand, has been ruled out by every clue so far.

Morgan

Bah. My crack theories aren't as crack if they aren't contradicted at every turn. At least the non-hidden clue rules her out...

I'll have to come up with a reason for Marisa to have done it now. `.`

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

@Drakyon: Nah, look at the last part of the first hiddenclue again. And ... um ... I'm not sure how to say what's wrong with the second hiddenclue without giving away what it is.

Morgan

Well, since the odds are the culprit is from a game I haven't even played, I'll have to continue to come up with silly theories on nonexistant evidence!

Marisa: She just wanted to turn *herself* into a cat for fun... it wasn't supposed to be contagious! Once she saw it spreading, she started acting like a cat in hopes of avoiding questions.

Cirno: What better way to prove she's the strongest than by setting off an incident that affects all Gensokyo? But she had to use a spell to erase her memory of it so that Koishi wouldn't find her out, so now she's unknowingly trying to figure out her own plot... (May eventually utter Osaka's historic line "... I am the criminal.")

Patchouli: She didn't want to admit it to Remilia, but sometimes magic does work that way. Marisa got into an experiment Patchouli was working on to improve the catness of the guards directly.

Yukari: Tired of people saying that templates like her fooling around again are forbidden, Yukari is currently fooling around. Later, she'll start another incident, so there can be no doubt that she is indeed fooling around again.

Reimu: Everyone else has gotten to start an incident and she's feeling left out.

Yuka: Having caught a glimpse through the fourth wall, she's using this to rebalance the moe levels in Gensokyo so she can get more favorable treatment in fanfic and doujinshi.

Actual comment: At first when I read the comic, I thought the rabbits were fusing with fairies, but then I wasn't sure because I don't see any fairies there. So, now I'm just uncertain.

It's got to suck being the familiar part of the equation, given that some block the master enemy so well that they'll keep coming out again and again... (That's actually something that annoys me in IN. You've got the neat character-switching thing, but then the need for time orbs encourages staying in one form most of the time. Though I guess if I'm using the alternate scoring system I could just ignore it. `.` )

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

That's simple: they're fusing with each other to become a fairy with a familiar. :)

Morgan

I don't really understand the mechanic where youkai + youkai = any kind of fairy. `.`

I guess that falls under "Magic is not amenable to reality checks." though.

Dizzy H. Slightly Voided

Well, they're also transforming, duh! ;) </gonzo logic>

Acero

Last panel says "madien" instead of "maiden".

Also, just at random, aside anyone who is already out of culprit it's a 92% that the culprit is no one who have already appeared and I have my money on Mima due to the randomness

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