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Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ～ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Validon98:
I don't want to get too involved with this argument, I just want to point out that uh, did Yachie even use her power? I think it's moreso that the animal spirit possessing the protagonist is following orders and is guiding you along. It's why everyone says stuff like "I shouldn't know this but it sounds familiar" when Yachie is explaining things. If playing with Otter, the spirit outright takes over a stage earlier than normal to directly apologize and grovel.
So yeah, while her ability is a bit silly I don't think it even got used, it was moreso being possessed by the spirit that made them go along with her orders.
nintendonut888:
It's pretty heavily implied Yachie is using her power on the heroines. Reimu in particular remarks in her Wolf and Otter scenarios that "even though she's clearly lying, I have this strange feeling she's telling the truth," and after beating her says almost distressingly "it feels like I never had any questions for you to begin with." While it's hard to say one way or the other, I don't think they actually directly influence the heroine's actions until stage 5. I'd even go so far as to say the general outline of the beast spirits' basic goal was to direct the heroines into Yachie in particular, who'd then convince them to fight Keiki using her power to minimize the chance of them refusing.
Regardless, I personally like the odd feeling of the plot setup. It really does feel like the heroines lose control over the plot and just are kind of led by the nose to a fight they didn't really understand. I think ZUN wanted to emphasize this time letting the player discover through the endings what the motivations and character of each side were after the fact, rather than you learning the story on a first playthrough. Given it's one of the most grey conflicts of the series, it was interesting to try and puzzle out the unique politics at play. I do hope we get to see more of the animal realm in the future - and since it's looking a lot like there may be a whole arc devoted to the goings-on of hell, that's not out of the question at all.
TresserT:
The protagonist yelling out Yacchie's name and then questioning "wait how do I know her" implies that the animal spirits are already influencing their actions as early as stage 4 imo. Reimu's wolf and eagle routes are a bit vague, but her Otter route and Marisa/Youmu's routes make it clear that they know who she is, it's not just that they're chill with her. Yacchie's ability is just reducing the will to fight, it shouldn't be able to impart knowledge of what being leader of the Kiketsu family means.
nintendonut888:
Mmm, that's true, I forgot about that. In that case, it's probably a two-pronged assault; the spirits give what push they're able to due to possessing the heroines, while Yachie uses her power to more directly influence them. Given Saki refers to them having made an alliance with Yachie specifically, I still get the impression it was agreed she would be the liaison for the selected human for that exact reason.
CyberAngel:
--- Quote from: TresserT on September 14, 2019, 11:47:09 PM ---Tbh did Yachie even use her ability? In all the dialogue I read, it was always "oh we're going to Hell to fight these beasts", Yachie shows up, "this is not the hell you're looking for", "wait really", "yes", "oh okay let's go to animal realm then."
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The problem is that this isn't really the case. There's always an "wait, why should I trust you" "because my name is Yachie" "oh okay" exchange. As others pointed out, this might as well be the animal spirits influencing the heroines, but the fact still remains that the story has this unnecessary questionable hurdle. Again, why not make her ability being a master negotiator? That exchange might as well not be there or become something like "look, just do it and the spirits will stop coming" that way.
--- Quote from: Suspicious person on September 15, 2019, 02:38:21 AM ---Serving as unwitting tools for other folks and solving their problem is of no consequence here since it has always been about the incident and nothing else from the heroines perspective. The heroines not putting 100% of their trust in their animal partner in the prologue should make obvious what they think about being used, so long as the incident, which is their PRIME focus, gets dealt with.
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Look, this is the prime example of what I called "retroactive explanation". Using in-universe reasons to explain the story and then using the story to justify the in-universe stuff. What I'm suggesting is looking outside the box and thinking why ZUN wrote things that way in the first place. Which I'm saying were unnecessarily convoluted and could have been done better.