Hey guys. I'm working on a Touhou 5.5 full danmakufu fangame, and I'm wondering what you might think of my plot outline?
Is it consistent with the lore? And how is the general idea? Like it? Shall I proceed with the fangame? And could you give me ideas for the character designs since I'm working on cuttins and sprites at the moment?
The objective of this fangame is to bridge together the pc98 plot with the modern windows games. There are four playable characters: Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, Ran Yakumo, and Yumemi Okazaki.
Each tie into the plot revealing connections to the windows games. In Yumemi's case, her scenario reveals why the Scarlet Mist incident would be so sudden, while Ran (Who is legitimate in the pc98 era so long as she doesn't meet Reimu, Marisa, or Sakuya) is burdened with investigating anomalies in Gensokyo's boundaries, which builds up to a precedence for Yukarin's Vampire Pact.
While there is a bit of fannon added in where necessary, much of what is being done is based off of real character backstories, such as Mima loving a human who grave birth to Marisa with her, Yukarin's governance of Gensokyo and neighboring worlds, and the true reason why Reimu Hakurei is so powerful.
Each story has different tones, however only the "after-story" changes depending on the character you play. Whereas the after-story final boss of Reimu's is Mima, Yumemi's would be Sakuya, Marisa's would be past-Marisa, and Ran's would be a new super-boss named Caasi Newton (Who possesses the ability to solve any mathematical equation!
)
Note what I have posted here this is supposed to be for Reimu's storymode, and that the after-story of hers is exclusive to Reimu (However you COULD unlock those stages for others after beating the intended character.)
I am concerned how consistent any fannon is with the actual Touhou backstory. I'm going to need help with a lot of research to make this good, especially the Vampire Pact for Ran's story mode (It's only BRIEFLY referenced across Touhou wiki so ambiguously.)
As for Reimu's story, how is it? I'm more concerned about whether it's accurate or not to Touhou lore than if it is too dark for Touhou.
Due to the inability to spoilerbox on this forum, please ctrl+f the desired category.
Reimu story mode bosses
Reimu story mode music
Reimu after-story music
Reimu after-story bosses
New character illustrations at the moment (What do you think?)
Visual design ideas needed for
Backstory Plot
Reimu's story mode
Reimu After-story
Reimu Extra Story
Reimu Phantasm
Other Info (misc. and trivia.
Reimu story mode bosses:Stage 1:
Midboss: Yuka
Boss: Ra Soleil (Human form)
Stage 2:
Midboss: Mushroom monster (Player trips out after killing)
Boss: Viola Cesario (Actor loli of Timesplitters pretending she's a guy playing a girl pretending to be a guy)
Stage 3:
Midboss: Lily White
Boss: Noah D'art (Magician of the Timesplitters)
Stage 4:
Midboss: Djinn conjured up by Caasi Newton, similar to Unzan.
Boss: Namazu (Giant Catfish) conjured up by Caasi.
Stage 5:
Midboss: Tethys Dalal (Guardian for Pyramid of Ages)
Boss: Tethys Dalal
Stage 6:
Midboss: Evil Genji (Manifestation by Caasi)
Boss: Cefca Chairoscuro (Jester for Timesplitters)
Extra:
Midboss: Monster-Flower
Boss: Yuka
Phantasm:
Midboss: Tethys Dalal
Boss: Ra Soleil (Ra Dragon Form)
Reimu story mode music:Stage 1 music: Arcadian Dream
Stage 1 Boss: The positive and negative
Stage 2 music: Japanese Saga
Stage 2 Boss: Dunkard's Lament
Stage 3: 妖怪宇宙旅行 = (Youkai Space Travel)
Stage 3 Boss: 時の風 (Winds of Time)
Stage 4: Incomplete Plot
Stage 4 Boss: Power Mix
Stage 5: Phantasmagoria
Stage 5 Boss: Child of Are
Stage 6: 陽落ちて(Unused SoEW theme)
Stage 6 Boss: Lunatic Blue
Extra: Lotus Road
Extra Boss: Inaminate Dream (Yuka's Alt)
Phantasm: Magic Shop of Raspberry
Phantasm Boss: スターボウドリーム (Starbow Dream)
Reimu after-story music:Stage 1: 博麗神社境内 (SoEW unused HRtP track)
Boss 1: Dim. Dream (Marisa Theme)
Stage 2: 東方封魔録 ～ 幽幻乱舞 (SoEW final stage)
Boss 2: 死を賭して (Theme of Magic Stones)
Stage 3: A sacred lot
Boss 3: テーマ・オブ･イースタンストーリー (Theme of Touhou)
Boss 3 final spell: 魔境 (Theme of Reimu/Magic Mirror)
Reimu after-story bosses:Stage 1:
Midboss: Marisa
Boss: Marisa
Stage 2:
Midboss: Monster-spawning portals
Boss: 5 magic stones
Stage 3:
Midboss: Magic Mirror
Boss: Mima
New character illustrations at the moment (What do you think?):Cefca Chairoscuro
Visual design ideas needed for:Caasi Newton (The typical "Math Magician" looks too similar to Mima. Any way to make her somehow reference Sephiroth? Refer to "2. -" in "Other Info" why.)
Ra Soleil -human form- (A cute illustration of egyptian royality?)
Ra Soleil -Ra Dragon form-
Noah D'art (Though I want to make
HIM look like Ronove from Umineko)
Viola Cesario (How DO I illustrate a girl pretending to be a guy pretending to be a girl pretending to be a guy!?)
Backstory Plot:
Mima tricks Sakuya into lending her the Luna Dial in exchange for a grimore they could use in the future to shroud Gensokyo in darkness and let Remilia roam around outside.
Using the Luna Dial, Mima weakens the boundaries of time in an attempt to travel to the past and steal Reimu's power of Hakurei.
In doing so, Mima accidentally opens the border of time between Gensokyo and another world, where a time traveling jester named Cefca Chairoscuro and her group of performers called the "Timesplitters" force their ways into Gensokyo before Mima could make use of the wormhole.
Viola Cesario - An actor who thinks she's a girl pretending to be a man pretending to be a girl pretending to be a man. Obsessed with Shakespeare plays.
Noah D'art - Magician extraordinaire. This man refrains from using his true power. He likes to conjure magical creatures for others to fight before he can respect them.
Viola Cesario - An actor who thinks she's a girl pretending to be a man pretending to be a girl pretending to be a man. Obsessed with Shakespeare plays.
Cefca Chiaroscuro herself - A jester with the powers to create travel through time and create paradox, or manipulate the current era. She loves to create mischief, because she knows she can go back to the past and fix everything anyways.
Caasi Newton - A math magician with the powers to make any problem equal and solve any math equation. Burdened with the responsibility of the group's finances and mapping through time and space, unlike the others, she does not perform, and plays the role of manager in the Timesplitters. She is often left to fix whatever mess Cefca creates. Despite her beackseat role, Cassi is incredibly powerful, with the power to measure the perfect magic formulas necessary to create great astral calamities.
With Mima unable to stop them, Cefca pilfers her home and library of books, while the other performers split up and flee the scene before Mima could give chase to any particular individual.
Cefca goes her own separate way from the Timesplitters group after learning about Gensokyo's dragon in the books she stole from Mima.
The motives for the Timesplitters entering Gensokyo was curiosity after finding the border of its era to be so powerful. While the others just want to perform, Cefca is curious to uncover the secrets of this world and awaken the dragon god.
As the Dragon God has not appeared since the creation of the Hakurei Border, there must be a connection between the border and the Dragon God. So to call upon the dragon, she had to destroy the border.
Cefca's idea to destroy the border is to stretch time inside Gensokyo so far that it will eventually collapse in trying to mantain its structure within such a large time space.
However, Cefca's power alone were not enough to accomplish such a thing in this realm. She had to paralyze the sun's control over time date.
To do this, she summons the Marisa of an earlier time era and tempts her to steal the Scarab Sundial from the Pyramid of Ages located in the Sands of Time Desert, as this would remove the sun god Ra's control over the sun and date time.
From then on, Cefca had been distorting the time within Gensokyo, noticed by its residents by rapidly shifting seasons being incistent and out of order.
The Pharaoh god Ra Soleil and the pyramid's guardian Tethys Dalal were positioned with the duty to protect the Scarab Sundial, though they were sleeping in a sarcophagus together at the time of past-Marisa's plundering.
With such responsibility as they awaken, Ra Soleil sets out to retrieve the sundial, while Tethys stays guard in the pyramid's tombs.
Unfortunately for Ra's luck again, she was caught off guard by a cranky Yuka who's winter hibernation was disturbed by the sudden summer weather, and had her eye of Horus stolen she was using to trace Marisa.Reimu's story mode:
Reimu encounters Yuka and lets her off the hook. However when Reimu meets Ra not too later, Reimu is regarded as an accomplice and Ra tries to teach Reimu a lesson in her weakened state without the eye of horus, but fails.
After Ra's defeat, she reveals to Reimu of Marisa stealing the Scarab Sundial and that something someone is doing is messing up time and space to distort the seasons.
Befoore she had her eye of horus stolen, she saw Marisa going to wonderland.
In Wonderland Reimu faces off with a magical Mushroom creature which causes her to trip out and wreck the Timesplitters' drama production by Viola Cesario.
They confront and after Viola's defeat she (he??(she???(he?!?!?!?))) points out to Reimu to ask Noah D'art near the Sands of Time desert for more info on Marisa's whereabouts.
Reimu heads in that direction, but on the way there the spring weather traps her a storm of cherry blossoms everywhere. Eventually she confronts Noah who tests her strength.
Upon victory, he reveals that the culprit who stole the Scarab Sundial was most likely not Marisa, but instead a powerful member of the Timesplitters named Cefca Chairoscuro, who was most likely lurking where the bridge of time was connected with the different eras and timezones. Likely - The Sands of Time.
Reimu travels far through the once-flaming desert now frozen in snow, to be confronted by an invisible being warning her to leave. Not heeding to the warning, Namazu is conjured up and the giant catfish attacks Reimu. Upon its defeat, the invisible being accepts Reimu may be strong enough to face the challenges ahead and points Reimu to the Pyramid of Ages.
Reimu finally reaches the Pyramid of Ages where the guardian Tethys Dalal confronts Reimu as an intruder. Tethys doesn't believe Reimu's intentions to help Ra recover the Scarab Sundial, and they are forced to fight it out.
Of course, as Reimu wins, she reveals the info that the culprit is actually hiding in this very pyramid, where the entrance to the bridge of time was strongest. Upon this acknowledgment, Tethys allows Reimu to make use of Ra's tools to enter into the time bridge.
Inside Reimu confronts Cefca Chairoscuro, forcing her to return the Scarab Sundial after she confesses her motives.
In the end, Cefca makes a big tantrum after she loses the battle, but apoligizes, and fixes Gensokyo's time. Caasi and the other Timesplitters were testing Reimu before to make sure she was strong enough to defeat Cefca in order to teach her a lesson about causing mischief in other time eras, as Caasi was usually the one to discipline Cefca (Though Cefca never listened.)
With all that over with, peace was restored to Gensokyo at the time being, and Ra has her Scarab Sundial returned to her.Reimu After-story:
Marisa is sent to kill Reimu by Mima.
After Reimu defeats her, she questions what's going on and Marisa spills the beans that Mima was angry Cefca's plan to destroy the Hakurei Border was foiled because she wanted to make a fool of Reimu. Now she outright wants to kill her.
Reimu beats up Marisa more until she reveals Mima's location inside Yomi - An underworld of rotting flesh where spirits who get lost between heaven and hell find themselves trapped within.
Inside Yomi, Mima taunts Reimu to survive her trials so that they could have their long awaited showdown.
A long, long, time ago, generations before the birth of Hakugyokurou and the honors of any Yamas, a great war was fought for the balance between heaven and hell, and the physical world in between. This war was called the Highly Responsibe to Prayers because it was of an era where the gods governing heaven and hell - Sariel and Konngara, would empower their worshipers to fight their proxy wars to decide the one god true of humanity.
Reimu Hakurei's ancestor going by the same name was the leader of a small rebellion of opposition to both heaven and hell, who believed equalization between man and god, and that though Sariel and Konngara were powerful, were both liars as the grand designers of eternity, when man had their own capabilities the gods did not.
The Reimu Hakurei of that time forged a great weapon named the Hakurei Yin-Yang Orb which functioned by storing the user's energy, multiplying it over time, and unleashing that power all at once.
She traveled far and wide to maximize the power of the orb.
If she could defeat the two gods using humanity's own power, then she could prove humanity's right to independence.
However, this was still a bloody war, involving the liberation and deaths of those who supported Sariel or Konngara.
Mima herself was a worshiper of Konngara and many of her family and friends were killed as part of the liberation by Reimu. In fact, her own mother was killed by Reimu when she was still a fetus, as Reimu and her rebels slaughtered many innocent villagers who supported Sariel or Konngara.
With a burning hate for Reimu's actions, Konnagara revived Mima in an attempt to let her have revenge on Reimu. However, even fueled with Konngara's power, Mima was still humiliated by Reimu's unstoppable force, and she was sealed alone in isolation inside a hokora as "punishment" for her actions.
Into the far distant future, a man built the Kirisame Magic shop ontop of the hokora despite legends of a vengeful ghost sealed inside it. In doing so, he broke the seal on Mima whom he quickly befriended as Mima discovered her savior was a scholar researching the forgotten events for the Highly Responsive to Prayers. They eventually fell in love and had a child named Marisa. However, as word of his actions unsealing Mima spread, the man was quickly captured and flogged as punishment for relations with a youkai.
Ever since then, the man was banished without even saying goodbye to Mima, with his whereabouts becoming unknown at the time being. Mima was disgusted at what became of the Hakurei regime.
Maintaining the Kirisame Magic shop under the guise of a mere human, Mima lied to Marisa as she raised her, hiding her half-youkai blood, and convincing her she was human.
But having seen the cruelty of this world no different than it was thousands of years ago, she vowed revenge on both the Hakurei name, and this godless civilization. Under Konngara, this would have never been permitted.
As Mima rose Marisa to be strong, she eventually found her father. But Mima herself vowed never to go near him again until she fulfilled revenge upon this civilization.
Reimu fights her way through Yomi to find Mima's five magical stones which reveal this story of Mima's intentions.
Breaking through her stones, Reimu confronts Mima who has used Cefca's efforts of date distortion to recover the powers of Sariel and Konngara from the depths of time.
Without holding back, Reimu and Mima fight to the death without holding back.
and they fight, once and for all.Reimu Extra Story:
Ra Soleil was able to have more of her strength regained since having her sundial returned. However, she was not at full power yet because Yuka stole her main power source which gives her god status - The Eye of Horus.
She asks Reimu to please recover her eye, in exchange for great riches.
Reimu confronts Yuka who was still angry at having her sleep disrupted even though the season was fixed and the date restored.
Reimu beats her up and returns the eye to Ra.Reimu Phantasm:
Ra has her complete powers restored, but wishes for a rematch with Reimu at full power.
She promises Reimu a single wish if she wins.
Reimu is of course victorious, but after killing Mima and dealing with the disaster created by Cefca earlier, she concludes Gensokyo would be very dangerous if she were to die.
There for, she wishes for a non-violent means of combat to settle conflict, and eventually establishes this into the spell card system.Other Info (misc. and trivia.):
1. - Cefca is loosely based off of Kefka from Final Fantasy. Although the references are very indirect, she embodies his sense of his chaos just for the sake of stirring up trouble.
2. - Caasi on the other hand possesses the power to solve any mathematical equation because her ability is inspired by Sephiroth, specifically his Super Nova attack being directly referenced by Caasi's own final spell "Hypernova".
3. - Caasi's ability to solve any mathematical equation allows her to accomplish anything ranging from eliminating the presence of an object from existence, to creating the big bang itself by simply focusing the right amount of magic in a way which would result in the desired chain reaction. Because of this, she's on the same level of power as Yukarin, and even speaks down towards her to Ran because she could understand the physics of her gaps. Despite this, she still fears math won't help her escape Yamaxanadu's judgment.
4. - Viola is a reference to how girls use to impersonate men to perform in plays during Shakespeare's time. However, the joke comes from the fact that the Twelfth night was a play about a girl pretending to be a guy, and only men were allowed to perform during Shakespeare's time due to the chauvinism within society. So when a girl wanted to perform the Twelfth Night, we have a girl pretending to be a guy pretending to be a girl pretending to be a guy.
5. - Noah D'art is supposed to be the voice of reason in the Timesplitters, pointing the player in thue true direction of the culprit as opposed to Viola. What he can do which Viola could have not, story-wise, is grant the player neutral insight into the conflict, as Viola's use in the plot is to capture the overall chaotic image of the Timesplitters instead of Noah's serious demeanor. This would have made Viola too hard to take seriously for neutral insight, hence the purpose of Noah as a serious character. That, and I want an excuse to base a character off of Ronove from Umineko.
6. - The idea behind Ra was originally to have some typical youkai who guarded time. But then I thought that it would be more creative to have a guardian for the sun to be the guardian of time, as the sun is what controls what we know of today as date. But I wanted to avoid using Amaterasu because it would be too complicated to have the god Reimu worships as a boss. And since Cefca uses an hourglass as her tool for time manipulation, I figured it might be more appropriate to have an Egyptian theme, especially as the other characters are performers. This is very notable because in Ancient Egypt the performers played an important role to entertain the pharaoh, and faced death if they failed. But in this case, it is the performers who are attacking the pharaoh Ra who was just minding her own business, sleeping. The poor girl has her own eye stolen by Yuka after past-Marisa looted so much of her treasure! Truly, this could probably be the craziest phantasm boss because she is introduced so weak and pathetic, and the next time you see's practically using the same kind of danmaku which Utsuho uses against you!
7. - I've always loved Highly Responsive to Prayers, but its setting and overall atmosphere just seemed to weird compared to the rest of Touhou. So what if it took place in a completely different era, where the current rules of Gensokyo don't apply? And with the whole Heaven&Hell theme of HRtP, I thought it would be cool to have Sariel and Konngara represent God vs Satan as the gods of pure light and pure darkness. This is greatly opposed to what the lore of Touhou shows today, with Yukari governing Gensokyo as a world where humans and gods co-exist with each other and roam free. You really could not compare the way Kanako is "worshiped" to how the gods of real life are worshiped. I wanted to highlight the differences of a world with central authority, and a world without central authority. And as Gensokyo does not have a central authority, the way its society functions is quite interesting to explore. Mima provides interesting depth to the idea because she wishes to live under the central authority she once she did, but now she is forced to live in a world without it.
8. - Caasi's ability to spawn Djinn is inspired off of real life UFO testimonies as "lights" in the sky which look like fire. This is interesting because the Quron depicts the djinn as "smokeless fire" in the skies as well, who live in a "parallel world" next to our own. Coincidence? Maybe. I was watching Carl Sagen one day, and once he began explaining the theory of the fourth dimension, it hit me: What if the Djinn were shadows of the fourth dimension? watch Carl Sagen's explanation and see what I mean. I don't see anything alien about them at all. It's possible they aren't even intelligent entities! Anyways, the point being is that through math, Caasi possesses the abilities to spawn the shadows of fourth dimensional objects. In this case, a Djinn. Or otherwise an "Unzan" in my case.
10. - Mima is actually killed by Reimu in her "after"-story as opposed to simply being defeated. However, to avoid any future inconsistencies with cannon, she's being judged by Yamaxanadu.
11. - Yuka is very, VERY cranky because of the distortion in weather. This is to show the impact the shift in environment has on the behavior of Gensokyo's youkai, as well as the rapid jetlag tiring its residents.
12. - Tethys and Ra both sleep in a Sarcophagus, mummified with bandages. Because of this, they are weak when they emerge from their rest, as their bodies are not use to movement. In the case of Ra, this is why Yuka was able to mug her so easily.
13. - The significance of "past" Marisa was the problems she created by sneaking around Gensokyo and pilfering everywhere she looked. This was the behavior of a Marisa who had not yet learned restraint. Notably, she pilfers Yuyuko's personal library containing the book of Saigyou Ayakashi and breaks the seal on that book, then tosses it on the floor after thinking the book is useless. This leads Yuyuko to "discover" the existence her own book she locked away. However, I'll admit that the use I have for Past-Marisa is very minimal outside Marisa's own conflict in this story itself where someone is committing crimes under her identity. It would be nice if you could suggest better uses to have her influence the future Touhou games and lore better!
14. - While Past Marisa uses her SoEW design with red hair, modern Marisa will use a redrawn version of her PoDD appearance, drawn in a style to accommodate MS-styled cuttins. Both forms however, will have their wings during special animations.
15. - Likewise, Reimu will be using a new variation of her pc98 design as well, redrawn by yours truly. That said, I am considering drawing her with detached sleeves just to bridge things over with her modern design. Think of Hanyuu from Higurashi. This is still just a minor detail in cuttins however.
16. - Whether Genjii appears or not outside the ending is still up to debate. We could assume Reimu already learnt to fly in this game, so Genjii was not needed.
Sorry this is such a long manifesto (For the lack of better words???)
Any ideas to improve the ideas, and better accuracy closer to the cannon plot details? In particular, I'm interested in the lore not covered much in the Windows games, such as the Great Youkai Expansion, and the mysterious Vampire Pact which Zun seems to reference, but never explain.
I also must apologize if this seems crappy, but it's better to get feedback on something before I make a game which causes facepalming, right?
ps. It was late at night. Sorry if there are any spelling, grammar, or structural mistakes. Even word mistakes...
