Author Topic: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!  (Read 210258 times)

Sage Ω (Ultima)

  • CEO at Team Eternal Desire
  • ??? X
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #30 on: July 29, 2013, 02:58:18 PM »
Has ZUN ever mentioned who the characters on the music cd covers are?

ToyoRai

  • Head But No Tail
  • I am still here. Sometimes.
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #31 on: July 29, 2013, 03:12:37 PM »
The girl in Dolls in Pseudo Paraside is unnamed. The rest of the music CDs (not counting in game game soundtrack CDs and the extra CDs) feature Renko Usami and Maribel Hearn.

HyperGumba

  • Substitutional Immortality
  • Touhou MUCK's PR Person or something
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #32 on: July 29, 2013, 03:17:42 PM »
Hi!

Just a question that has bugged me quite a bit for now: Is there any such thing like a Touhou-themed horror game?

<Tengukami> Yo! Miscellaneous questions = Miscellaneous questions thread!

I am admittedly not too bad with horror myself, and am having trouble to get into the genre, so I thought trying something that is tied to my interest for Touhou might work. I know there has been an Amnesia mod based on EoSD in the making, but the project seems dead... anything there to recommend?
« Last Edit: July 29, 2013, 04:01:53 PM by Tengukami »

Clicking the signature leads you to our flash-based web client! ~ Here is some extensive info on TM! ~ I also have a Tumblr now!

Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #33 on: July 29, 2013, 06:16:30 PM »
Does anyone have any idea what the actual age of the 9th generation of Child of Miare - Akyu have at present? 20 - 23?

Fonzi

  • Comfort from battles
  • Cheers from beers!
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #34 on: July 29, 2013, 06:27:00 PM »
Does anyone have any idea what the actual age of the 9th generation of Child of Miare - Akyu have at present? 20 - 23?

19.

Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #35 on: July 31, 2013, 12:37:03 AM »
I think how youkai reproduce differ for each species. Youkai are largely defined by human imagination, so if the humans think some youkai can reproduce sexually, then they can. If they think some youkai just fade into existence, then so do they. If they think some humans are actually youkai, then they might turn into youkai. The line between human and youkai is kinda blurry anyway. Ichirin was human, but she became youkai due to people fearing her hanging around Unzan too much.
How can yokai, or anyone at all, in the Touhou World, reproduce sexually? Men doesn't exist! (or am I wrong, if so, please correct me)
Maybe there is something that no one knows about...

Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #36 on: July 31, 2013, 12:45:33 AM »
How can yokai, or anyone at all, in the Touhou World, reproduce sexually? Men doesn't exist! (or am I wrong, if so, please correct me)
Maybe there is something that no one knows about...

Men exist in Touhou. We just don't meet very many of them through contrived coincidence. The most recent and obvious example would be the background characters in Hopeless Masquerade's village stage (and maybe some other stages too), but they've always existed as background characters in all the side materials. Furthermore, sometimes characters have specific relationships with males in their lives (Marisa's father, for example) which exist despite never actually meeting the other half.

Oh yeah, and Rinnosuke I guess.

Hanzo K.

  • White Tiger Shikigami
  • Whoa, this YF-29's awesome!
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #37 on: July 31, 2013, 12:47:11 AM »
And Unzan too, we can't be forgetting him y'know.
Essence RO
Eiji Komatsu L1xx/6x CritsinX | Ryoshima Nanbu L7x/4x Crafting Blacksmith

Arbitrary Gaming~!
Youkai Quest: Unknown Adventure

Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #38 on: July 31, 2013, 01:04:44 AM »
While technically true, in the context of the question it's unclear if cloud people can reproduce sexually at all.

Fonzi

  • Comfort from battles
  • Cheers from beers!
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #39 on: July 31, 2013, 09:35:26 AM »
The existence of half-youkai and half-ghosts is another hint. Although I'm not sure how a ghost would be able to bear a child.

cuc

  • *
  • Probably won't respond 'til this mess is sorted o?
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #40 on: July 31, 2013, 10:05:08 AM »
Hoho, the piled up questions.

>Kanako and mythology

I've been recently investigating this topic again. I promised somebody to write about it, so I'll post it here when I get it done.

>Akyuu's age is 19

It's a bit more complicated than that.

According to Akyuu, this newspaper article from 1994 is a story "about my birth". But look at the newspaper photo, and you can clearly see Akyuu in it is not a newborn baby; she should be at very least 4 or 5 years old. Why is that so?

Also consider that, Akyuu said in "Memorizing Gensokyo", the short manga accompanying PMiSS that she had "lived as the Ninth Child of Miare for less than 9 years" at the time of "Memorizing Gensokyo".

The implication is, Akyuu was physically born a few years before 1994, and in 1994, something happened, turning her into the full Child of Miare, with its memory and ability.

As for precisely what this something is, my friend thinks the spirit of Miare has come to her, and I think she has awakened her latent power as Child of Miare.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2013, 10:59:36 AM by cuc »
Touhou Fantasy News: twitter

Fonzi

  • Comfort from battles
  • Cheers from beers!
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #41 on: July 31, 2013, 10:32:32 AM »
Quote
According to Akyuu, this newspaper article from 1994 is a story "about my birth". But look at the newspaper photo, and you can clearly see Akyuu in it is not a newborn baby; she should be at very least 4 or 5 years old. Why is that so?
It could be just as you say, that her Child of Miare spirit has awoken in 1994. That, or the girl in the photo is Hieda no Aya. As a sort of "preview" of how the next child of Miare will look like when she grows up. I'd even say the girl in the photo looks older than the Akyuu we saw in Memorizable Gensokyo and WaHH.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2013, 10:40:59 AM by Fonzi »

Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #42 on: July 31, 2013, 10:44:39 AM »
Hieda no Aya lived over a hundred years ago. While they did have photography back then, it was of the sort that required people to sit still for a long time and would likely have been a formal portrait rather than the "quick shot while she's in the middle of something" style shown here. Unless we assume magic tengu camera, I guess. Even then it feels kind of weird though because it implies that Shameimaru Aya saved a picture from a hundred years ago just for this article.

Fonzi

  • Comfort from battles
  • Cheers from beers!
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #43 on: July 31, 2013, 10:53:52 AM »
If not the previous Are Maiden, then perhaps Akyuu's mother is who we see. They photographed the happenings of the celebration and not the baby directly. In the article, Akyuu literally states "The newspaper article released at my birth. " So by "birth" she either means the rite of passage of becoming a full-fledged Child of Miare, or she really was born in 109.

cuc

  • *
  • Probably won't respond 'til this mess is sorted o?
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #44 on: August 03, 2013, 02:57:47 PM »
If not the previous Are Maiden, then perhaps Akyuu's mother is who we see. They photographed the happenings of the celebration and not the baby directly. In the article, Akyuu literally states "The newspaper article released at my birth. " So by "birth" she either means the rite of passage of becoming a full-fledged Child of Miare, or she really was born in 109.
The original work (the newspaper frontpage) is actually fairly unambiguous in its intention, both in and out of universe: it's a portrait of the smart and confident newly born Child of Miare. For alternate interpretations to be true, one would have to assume the original work to be actively misleading (rather than merely "ambiguous") in conveying its message. By common sense, both in and out of universe, if the woman in the photo is the mother, she should be depicted in a way that implies her identity, such as carrying her baby.

BTW, in Shinto and Japanese culture, pregnant women or women who have recently given birth are considered unclean (kegare, same concept translated as "impurity" in the SSiB translation), and are not allowed in Shinto shrines. Gensokyo doesn't have to work this way, but that would make Gensokyo such an exception that the author would have to specifically direct the reader's attention to it.


Someone has asked me this question about Kokoro's last line in some campaigns:
Quote
I don't quite get why in Japanese says the Noh of Darkness, but just above that it reads something entirely different. Is it an alternate reading? The actual pronunciation or something like that?

I think this question is of general interest, so I'll answer it here.

An important feature of the Japanese language is that its writing system combines the phonetic kana (hiragana and katakana), and the borrowed Chinese characters (kanji). The same kanji (or combination of kanjis) can have several different phonetic pronunciations, and for various reasons, such as education, or particularly obscure words, it may be necessary to adage kanji with smaller print of kana as reading aid (furigana).

Some writers have turned this into a rhetoric technique, by arbitrarily assigning the sound of one word to another word ("ateji"), creating a combination that's written as A, but read as B, to produce various effects, and lyrics often replace words with synonyms for the purpose of rhyme. ZUN actually uses it a fair amount in his writing; the difference is that previous translations tended to smooth those cases over, while the translatiors of HM has chosen to retain them this time.

ZUN generally uses ateji to turn a line into two versions: one spoken version that may flow more naturally, and one written version that is a more complete expression of meaning.

An earlier example: Orin's line as SA Stage 6 midboss:
Quote
地獄の底(ここら)で死ぬとみんな焼けて灰すら残らない
Literal translation: "Anyone who dies at the bottom of hell (here) will burn and leave no ashes."
Wiki translation: "If you die around here, you'll burn so hard there won't even be ashes left."
The idea is that Orin actually said "here". But a player will see "the bottom of hell" first, getting a good impression of the meaning of the line, then see "here", and understand that's what Orin said.

For the line about "Dark Noh": Kokoro actually said "My arcane art, Monkey Possession!" But the player will see "My arcane art, Noh of Darkness!" first, then notice the "Monkey Possession" part, and understand this is a Dark Noh technique called "Monkey Possession".

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ateji
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlternateCharacterReading
« Last Edit: August 03, 2013, 03:37:02 PM by cuc »
Touhou Fantasy News: twitter

Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #45 on: August 03, 2013, 07:15:14 PM »
I am looking for a certain specific chapter in one of the touhou manga by Zun those name I forget but I think there was Marisa who stole a seal book from Patchouli library and Reimu manage to break up the seal somehow by using her power and then I forgot...

Anyone have any idea what Touhou manga that may be?

ToyoRai

  • Head But No Tail
  • I am still here. Sometimes.
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #46 on: August 03, 2013, 07:32:42 PM »
Oriental Sacred Place, Chapter 15

Fonzi

  • Comfort from battles
  • Cheers from beers!
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #47 on: August 03, 2013, 08:46:50 PM »
Quote
The original work (the newspaper frontpage) is actually fairly unambiguous in its intention, both in and out of universe: it's a portrait of the smart and confident newly born Child of Miare. For alternate interpretations to be true, one would have to assume the original work to be actively misleading (rather than merely "ambiguous") in conveying its message. By common sense, both in and out of universe, if the woman in the photo is the mother, she should be depicted in a way that implies her identity, such as carrying her baby.

The girl looks far from a newborn. If the girl in the photo is Akyuu, then why does she look older in 1994 than in 2006? Notice the longer hair. In memorizable Gensokyo, Akyuu looks like a pre-teen child. Well, she technically is 12 if we consider the article's release date as the date of Akyuu's biological birth. If the birth of Are maiden was a mere ceremony, then there should be some mention of that in the canonical materials. And if the girl in the picture is not Akyuu, it should be mentioned too.

CyberAngel

  • Retired
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #48 on: August 03, 2013, 09:11:30 PM »
The girl looks far from a newborn. If the girl in the photo is Akyuu, then why does she look older in 1994 than in 2006? Notice the longer hair. In memorizable Gensokyo, Akyuu looks like a pre-teen child. Well, she technically is 12 if we consider the article's release date as the date of Akyuu's biological birth. If the birth of Are maiden was a mere ceremony, then there should be some mention of that in the canonical materials. And if the girl in the picture is not Akyuu, it should be mentioned too.

I don't think it's a good idea to compare drawings from different authors to draw conclusions about character's age, instead of looking at them more carefully separately. If you look at newspaper article picture, Akyuu holds an adult's hand, which is clearly bigger. She does look like she's 4 years old there. In Memorizable Gensokyo, she is only a bit shorter that Reimu and Marisa, so she's in her early-mid teens. As for hair length, nothing prevents her from getting a haircut, duh.

Fonzi

  • Comfort from battles
  • Cheers from beers!
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #49 on: August 03, 2013, 09:31:54 PM »
I don't think it's a good idea to compare drawings from different authors to draw conclusions about character's age, instead of looking at them more carefully separately. If you look at newspaper article picture, Akyuu holds an adult's hand, which is clearly bigger. She does look like she's 4 years old there. In Memorizable Gensokyo, she is only a bit shorter that Reimu and Marisa, so she's in her early-mid teens. As for hair length, nothing prevents her from getting a haircut, duh.

If the artist of the picture in the newspaper was aiming for a 4-year old girl look, then he/she missed... critically so. The bigger hand she's holding looks like a male hand, and males usually do have bigger hands than females. Not to mention the matter of perspective the shot is taken from, the owner of the said hand standing closer to the camera lens. Sure, a hair cut is possible, but that still doesn't explain why the Hieda family would delay a birth announcement for approximately 4-5 years. And if that was Akyuu's age at the time, then she'd be 16 - 17 in Memorizable Gensokyo, which I can in no way associate with her appearance in the said short manga.

Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #50 on: August 03, 2013, 10:45:01 PM »
Quote
By common sense, both in and out of universe, if the woman in the photo is the mother, she should be depicted in a way that implies her identity, such as carrying her baby.

Not necessarily, but more importantly, someone is holding her hand. That has implications that she needs help navigating.

Quote
BTW, in Shinto and Japanese culture, pregnant women or women who have recently given birth are considered unclean (kegare, same concept translated as "impurity" in the SSiB translation), and are not allowed in Shinto shrines. Gensokyo doesn't have to work this way, but that would make Gensokyo such an exception that the author would have to specifically direct the reader's attention to it.

I don't think that picture was taken at the Hakurei Shrine. It should be reasonable to assume that it is taken at the Hieda family. From my understanding, at the posting of this paper, the Hakurei shrine has not held a celebration yet, but will hold one.

Quote
Sure, a hair cut is possible, but that still doesn't explain why the Hieda family would delay a birth announcement for approximately 4-5 years.

There is no delay in the announcement. The idea is that she became the Child of Miare at the age of 4. So, that would be when the Child of Miare's birth gets celebrated. Akyuu herself was born 4 years prior to that.

I guess another way to think of it is like this, she gained her reasoning and cognitive skills at the age of 4. Therefore, she is officially a Child of Miare at 4.

Fonzi

  • Comfort from battles
  • Cheers from beers!
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #51 on: August 03, 2013, 11:20:04 PM »
Quote
Not necessarily, but more importantly, someone is holding her hand. That has implications that she needs help navigating.

Not necessarily. It can just as well have implications that the woman is holding her husband's hand.

Quote
I don't think that picture was taken at the Hakurei Shrine.

I can at least agree with this one. There are at least two buildings standing opposite each other and while Reimu's shrine may consist of more than one building, it looks more like a street.

Quote
There is no delay in the announcement. The idea is that she became the Child of Miare at the age of 4. So, that would be when the Child of Miare's birth gets celebrated. Akyuu herself was born 4 years prior to that.

I guess another way to think of it is like this, she gained her reasoning and cognitive skills at the age of 4. Therefore, she is officially a Child of Miare at 4.

Emphasis on "the idea is", meaning it's an assumption based on a picture of a girl who we assume to be Akyuu, with no claim to back it up, othar than logically deducing it from the subject of the article. If that's the case, why isn't it mentioned anywhere that the birth of the Child of Miare doesn't mean birth in its literal sense of word, but merely a "coming of age"? Because it's obvious from the implication? I don't think so.

Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #52 on: August 03, 2013, 11:52:54 PM »
I really don't care to argue about this, but I think it's relevant that when I look at the picture it looks like a very young girl holding her parent's hand. The fact that you see it differently doesn't mean that I'm wrong, or that I'm right, but it does mean that we shouldn't really be using it as evidence of anything because it's subject to interpretation.

Fonzi

  • Comfort from battles
  • Cheers from beers!
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #53 on: August 04, 2013, 12:32:54 AM »
Anime Weekend Atlanta is coming soon. Someone should ask ZUN about that picture.

Sungho

  • Custom Title
  • Personal Text
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #54 on: August 04, 2013, 06:50:35 AM »
What significance does the word 'Lotus' have in '東方幻想郷 ~ Lotus Land Story' and '東方香霖堂 ~ Curiosities of Lotus Asia'?
It seems to be related to what Gensoukyou is (paradise), but I really can't find any kind of information.
Signature

Fonzi

  • Comfort from battles
  • Cheers from beers!
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #55 on: August 04, 2013, 08:57:11 AM »
While you should probably wait for someone more competent to answer this question, I'll throw in my 2 cents. The Japanese names of games/manga are not literally translated into English. For example; Lotus Land Story is romanized as "Touhou Gensoukyou", which literally means "Fantastic Land of the East". And Curiosities of Lotus Asia is romanized as "Touhou Kourindou" just like Rinnosuke's shop and the wiki translates that as "Eastern Hall of the Perfumed Rain". So I don't think the word "lotus" is even present in the original names.

Sungho

  • Custom Title
  • Personal Text
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #56 on: August 04, 2013, 09:46:46 AM »
The question must have been more poorly worded than I thought.
I wanted to ask if the word 'Lotus' could somehow mean 'paradise' in Japan, or in Buddhism, or in whatever.
Or if it isn't the case, if the word 'Lotus' signifies anything else related to the game or the book.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2013, 09:48:59 AM by Sungho »
Signature

Fonzi

  • Comfort from battles
  • Cheers from beers!

cuc

  • *
  • Probably won't respond 'til this mess is sorted o?
Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #58 on: August 05, 2013, 08:46:42 AM »
Quote
I don't think that picture was taken at the Hakurei Shrine. It should be reasonable to assume that it is taken at the Hieda family. From my understanding, at the posting of this paper, the Hakurei shrine has not held a celebration yet, but will hold one.
Sorry, I misremembered. At the time of the newspaper report, the Hakurei Shrine ceremony for Akyuu had yet to be held. It was advertised as something to happen on the page.

Quote
Is there any such thing like a Touhou-themed horror game?
There must be such a thing. Unfortunately, the only one I know is a Chinese fangame that seems to be more about the writers/artists coming up with ways to kill the characters than anything substantial.

>Magician age topic

I don't have much to add about this topic itself, however, it's interesting to notice that what is now translated as "abandon temper" is originally written as shachuu 捨虫 "casting away the worms", while "abandon food" is shashoku 捨食 "casting away food".

"Shachuu" is a reference to the Taoist concept of sanshi 三尸 "three worms", mentioned in Miko's SoPM article. They are three parasites that reside in the human body. Some theories credit them as the sources of human illness and wickedness; other theories, as referenced in SoPM, say they are three supervisors who report the human host's crimes to the Celestial Emperor every 60 days. Eliminating or removing them is an important step in the process of achieving immortality. This Taoist tradition also happened to be pretty influential in medieval Japan.

Since "shachuu" and "shashoku" sound like authentic Taoist nomenclature, I tried looking them up, but haven't found anything. They are also definitely not from Buddhism or Shinto. They seem to be invented by ZUN.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2013, 10:56:32 AM by cuc »
Touhou Fantasy News: twitter

KuroArashi100

Re: Miscellaneous Questions Thread 4 - Bring us your Questions!
« Reply #59 on: August 06, 2013, 02:17:13 PM »
According to the Touhou wiki, one of Remilia's and one of Orin's spellcards reference a buddhist hell of needles.

However, when I am looking around on internet, I can only find things about hot and cold kind of hells.
So which one is true?