Cirno is interesting

In our coverage of Touhou we've looked at a Yokai that's like a human and a human that's like a Yokai, how about we look at something different? Today we will talk about Cirno, the strongest (fairy) of all!

 

 

Cirno is a fairy, an ice one specifically. She 'lives' near the lake outside of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, an important location in the Touhou world. She is fought in the 6th Touhou game as the boss of the second stage, during which she is quite easy to best. She was a big hit with the fans though who latched onto her apparent stupidity and cute appearance right away. She was so popular and featured so heavily in doujins that ZUN made her the protagonist of her own side game and included her in the fighting game spin offs. In these games, as she is playable, she is seen to be able to best characters of 'higher' species, something we'll get onto later.

Common trends with Cirno in fan fiction are her idiocy, her group of friends and her arrogance but she's also seen to be a determined and soulful person. She is either portrayed as innocently stupid or frustrated with how she is viewed by people as a fairy. If she isn't the frustrated one then that quality tends to be passed onto one of her friends, mainly Wriggle Nightbug or Rumia. On the subject of her friends, they are also something of a common sight with Cirno and have basically become canon simply because of how many fans portray them as a group despite them never having met in the games.

Wriggle, Rumia, Cirno, Mystia and Daiyousei are referred to by the name Team Nine, for an obscure Japanese pun based reason and are all youthful characters, or if you'd prefer, loli's. (I probably shouldn't put that apostrophe there but it looks weirder without it.)


The reason Cirno interests me is exactly the opposite from the reason I like Alice and Mokou. I don't want to know more about her and other than her icy wings, I don't find her design that interesting. I am driven not by mystery or possibility but by the absolute fact that Cirno is a silly little girl who has fun, freezes frogs and gives zero fucks. It's her fan forced character, that endearing dumbass, the stupid force of nature that I, like so many others latch on to because in a media filled with outwardly chirpy but apparently dark characters, having a center of unerring fun is pretty useful. Keeps the hopes up

May Lee is interesting

 

So, That went well, didn't it?

 

 

Apparently trying Wedge was a mistake, there seems to be a lot more to him than I first thought and he burned me out a bit but I've decided to try and stick with it but Wedge is on the back burner.

 

Today is Friday and I like alliteration so from now on, Fridays will be Female Fighter Friday! Celebrating the most interesting female fighting game characters.

 

Today's subject is one of my favourite and one I doubt many will recognise, the somewhat ephemeral May Lee from King of Fighters.

 

 

 

 

 

"May" Lee Jinju is a Korean fighter who joined the King of Fighters tournament in her mentor, Kim Kaphwan's team in 2001 and 2002, in theory, uses Taekwondo but we'll get into that for a minute. She was added to add to the younger female cast of characters but because of her kick based fighting style and the absence of fan favourite character, King, she was seen as a replacement and fans reacted negatively to her.

Now something you've got to keep in mind with fighting games is that character comes after design and May's design is one of my favourite character designs ever. There are two forms of May, the one at the top, dubbed 'hero' May and the 'normal stance' May seen above, lacking the gloves and scarf. May's design emphasises her legs with long slightly flared trousers with a blue stipe running down the side, this gives her kicks a strong silhouette. She has something of a frog motif with her shirt and her glasses and she has a rather interesting belt. In contrast to many over designed fighters of the past she has a very simple look that she carries well.

The hero look adds gloves and a red muffler and changes her fighting style, something you can switch too and from on the fly during battles. This mode's moves are more sweeping and slower but more powerful. Her scarf billows behind her when she leaps around and the black gloves put a good highlight on her new reliance on punches and a certain couple of moves she has.

So her design is interesting but that's not all that pushes May into my mind as a strong character, what I love is her personality, or personalities, rather.

In normal mode May's face is determined, her stance is side on and, most notably, she doesn't talk much other than her standard fighting character yelling. In Hero mode her determination becomes a hearty grin, her stance shifts backwards and she talks a lot more, naming her moves and denouncing evil. It may not sound like much but it really seems like she has multiple personality syndrome or something similar to me and for some reason  this quirk appeals to me more than it should. Maybe it's because the hero personality seems to think she's a Kamen Rider of all things, leaping into Rider Kicks, swinging into Rider Chops and going so far as to throw energy blasts and strike victory poses at the end of her super moves.

May Lee is interesting because, despite how briefly she appeared in the King of fighters, and perhaps because of it, she has an amazingly endearing character. A quirky, exciting gravitas that draws you in and makes using her a real treat. She escapes from the fighting game tropes of well meaning girl, reluctant champion or the cruel rival with the flair and style you can expect from someone who tries to fight the way a Kamen Rider does.

Next time? who knows, but eye'm sure It'll be on Tuesday. *wink*

Kino is interesting

Kino comes from the series of books and anime, Kino no Tabi or Kino's journey in English. The basic premise is that Kino, a girl under an alias, travels the world with her talking motorcycle, Hermes. During their travels they experience all the fun, dangerous or strange customs of other countries, she has a self imposed rule of only spending three days and two nights in each country and must keep moving from place to place, never settling down or spending too much time interfering.

Both Kino herself and the nature of the series are deceptive. When reading about it you imagine a quirky little romp through a magical land with a rather light hearted protagonist but both Kino and the themes of the series are a lot darker than that. Kino, despite being in her mid teens Kino is responsible for more deaths than the average drought and the stories of the individual lands tend to revolve around death, oppression or the morals of killing. What makes Kino interesting is her use in the story and how she both propels it by moving from country to country yet somehow manages to seem like a passenger, merely along for the ride that she set in motion herself.

Kino's motives for travelling are clearly explained, she's escaping the customs of her own strange country. Kino left when Kino dies protecting her from being brainwashed when she reached her adolescence. Oh, I forgot to mention, Kino (girl) named herself Kino after Kino (man), the man who saved her life and originated the three day rule and owned Hermes before she did. She traveled around the world in his honor and sees the customs of the other countries from the viewpoint of someone who fled her own and can see how cruel or evil certain things can be.

It's this that makes her a rather likable protagonist despite her nonchalance about shooting people or her quiet, almost door-mattish politeness, Kino is running from not only the land she left behind but the ones she ends up in, lest they are as horrid as her own home and they quite often are despite how they first seem and without getting into details about how she learned to fight or where she got her guns her journeys are interesting and if you think about it, do raise a lot of morally pertinent questions.

Kino is interesting because her journey affects us more than it affects her, her emotions are secondary to our own, it's our disgust at the cannibalism or brainwashing the children, not Kino's and this use of her as a story element is honestly a refreshing experience.

Next time we look at one of the greatest heroes of the Rebelion, Wedge Antillies.

Fujiwara no Mokou is interesting

 

Deep within the bamboo forest of the lost is a ramshackle little hut, within that hut is a girl and within that girl is the burning rage of a woman scorned. Fujiwara is a character from the Touhou franchise who, like Alice and Yuuka, straddles the line between the species but instead of being a yokai who might be a human or a fairy, she's a human who might be a yokai but unlike Alice and Yuuka, we know a lot about Mokou's past and how he came to be who she is now.

Mokou's story starts 1400 years ago in Japan. A princess, Kaguya Houraisan was exiled from her kingdom, the moon, for inventing a potion that would make her live for eternity. She decided to live in japan and was quickly set upon by suitors who were captured by either her beauty or greed for her immortality. One of these men was called Fujiwara no Fuhito, an actual historical figure. He approached Kaguya who promised to marry him if he completed a number of tasks, when he failed he was humiliated and shortly there after he passed away.

Mokou was young at the time and sought revenge but Kaguya had disappeared from our world and fled to Gensokyo, the only thing that was left was a single draft of the potion Kaguya and her staff had created. It was in the possession of some soldiers who saw it as demonic and attempted to destroy it but Mokou saw it as a way to get revenge. She drank the potion and began wandering the land. After about 300 years of trying to cope with what she had become and learning to deal with her immortality she found her way to Gensokyo and thus, Kaguya. (Both of them probably made there way there with the 'help' of Yukari, who we will be covering later)

For the next 300 years she and Kaguya would fight each other, killing each other over and over fruitlessly as both knew the other would rise again before the day was out. After this the killing wained and became less frequent though she and Kaguya do still clash from time to time. The next 800 years of Mokou's life were somewhat less eventful, she set up her home in the bamboo forest, a place that only she has learned to navigate, leanred magic that granted her the ability to control fire and supposedly started to run a grilled chicken stand or a charcoal burning business though both are possibly jokes.

What makes Mokou interesting is her immortality and how fans and fan-works deal with it. Kaguya and Eirin, the only other people to have drank the potion, seem to be contended with their immortality but Mokou is often seen to hate it or at least, dislike it. Everything around her decays and dies, human lives go by, trees grow from seeds and rot into nothingness before her and even the seemingly immortal Yokai are killed or disappear but Mokou lives on, whether she wants to or not.

It's an age old question, would you live forever if you could? could you stand to see all that you love and hold dear die? Mokou would rather not and so she tries not to connect with people, she's shown to be happy with her self imposed loneliness and content to help people navigate the bamboo forest without getting attached to them but there is  something that gets in her way. Keine Kamishirasawa, a half human, half yokai who protects the human village from yokai who would do it harm. Keine and Mokou's relationship is what adds depth to Mokou's character.

Through Keine, who tries to befriend Mokou, we can see Mokou's reluctance to make friends, her sadness about her friend's mortality and perhaps most importantly, her anger. It's a theme that runs throught a lot of Touhou as nearly all of the human characters have an immortal character they are often paired with, Alice and Marisa, Yukari and Reimu, Remilia and Sakuya, but it comes to it's fore with Mokou and Keine. Alice, Yukari and Remilia are fine with living forever but Mokou sees her immortality as a curse and this disdain, this anger, works with her backstory very well. She can take her anger and her sadness and use it to keep her mind off the thoughts of death by getting into some pointless fights with Kaguya, the only constant in her life.

I also wanted to talk for a second about character design, somthing I have avoided until now but can't avoid here. Mokou's design is a very unique one in Touhou for a few very important reasons, First of all it's one of the simplest with only really three components, her shirt, her trousers and her talismans, the things plastered all over her trousers and tied into her hair, second of all it has a very utilitarian look to it, Mokou is often shown to be one of the few characters who gets any reasonable amount of work done, and third of all, it includes trousers. This might not seem like an important fact but it rasies some interesting points and contrasts with the previous point. The trousers she wears were, in the time she comes from, something of a status symbol and it's strange that someone of her status would be doing hands on work like burning charcoal, cooking or guiding people.

This goes hand in hand with another fact we know, at least before she met Keine, she was content with her life, she wasn't upset about her long life because she didn't get attached to anything and it was refreshing for her to be in a land where a long life was not instantly a bad thing. It was almost like the place she belonged. She's quite often shown as rather a happy character making the contrast between her normal self and when she is depressed even bigger and even more interesting.

Fujiwara no Mokou is interesting because she is always a black sheep, she stands out from the yokai because she is human, she stands out from the humans because she will live forever and she stands out from those others who will live forever because she doesn't want to. She stands out, like a candle in the dark, or like a fire in a forest.

Our three days are up now and it's time for us to move on, so pack up your things and lets see what weird customs we'll need to deal in the next leg of our journey.

Rin Tezuka is interesting

A flock, a herd, a heap, whatever you call a group of butterflies, people sure seem to like it when they vomit on a wall, at least that's what Rin Tezuka thinks. Rin is a character who's origins are as strange as her idle conversation and habits. She comes from a visual novel called Katawa Shoujo that literally translates to broken girls, it's not entirely an encouraging name. Visual novels play out something like choose your own adventure novels, where it is a story and you make choices to change how it progresses while being shown images of the people you are talking to and the outcomes of your actions.

The game was created by a team that organised themselves via 4chan, a place with a rather bad reputation that colours people's view of the game. While much of 4chan can be vile, disgusting, pornographic or rude, Katawa Shoujo is a well written, touching and earnest story about life coping with a new disability, making friends and hopefully finding romance at a new school. The story follows Hisao as he makes friends with 1 of 5 girls, one of whom is Rin

It is at this point that I should point out something that, while used in a beneficial way, has plagued the game since the offset. The sex scenes. They are a product of the genre but in something of a subversion of the norm they are not mean to titillate and move the story along in one way or another, in fact some of them are downright bad for the story. All of them are skip-able and there is only one possible with Rin at any rate. We're going to ignore it because I personally skipped past that scene.

Rin is an amputee, as you've probably noticed, yet she is also an accomplished and habitual painter. She paints using her toes to hold the brush, in fact she does practically everything with her toes, the first time you see her in the game she is sitting on a table, eating some curry with a fork clenched between two of her toes. This physical oddity is also carried over into her personality somewhat as she talks in either short, sentences that belie her anti-social, awkward nature or long, rambling explanations of her complex, seemingly mad trains of thought.

She has little to no social skill and, aside from Hisao and Emi, another girl, no real friends. This is where Rin's reality starts to come in. Her disability and strange speech make her somewhat unreal and unrelatable but her thoughts and problems are all too real. Rin, despite all her eccentricities and strangely philosophical questions about what things are and what people think and do, is confused, angry and upset at both herself and the people around her. She has a very hard time explaining her thought processes to other people, she doesn't understand what people want her to do or expect from her and she isn't sure what to expect from other people.

This feeling of being lost and confused is the thing that gives Rin's path in the game a very personal feeling, while it is one of the funniest in the game it is also, without a doubt the saddest because it's so easy to relate to those feelings that Rin feels. It all comes somewhat out of left field, there is a build up to this revelation that Rin might not be 100% satisfied with being Rin but it is easy to miss the first time around as you tend to be focusing on the funnier parts of your odd conversations with Rin. This, as well as the alternate endings and paths, made me play Rin's route through several times before considering the others and the effect is astounding.

Every frown, every little statement or criticism of her work that Rin made was different now, it wasn't a temporary lull in her normal, sleepy randomness, it was a kick in the nuts from the sad reality of Rin's existence. That doesn't make everything depressing, quite the opposite, it makes the happy, funny moments better, each non-sequitur is a thing to be savoured and every idle conversation becomes more meaningful.

Rin Tezuka is interesting because much like Arthur Dent and Tsukasa Kayoda, she's human despite her circumstances but in a much more relatable way than Dent or Tsukasa could ever be.

While I could only recommend Kamen Rider, Touhou or the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, I downright implore you to go and download Katawa Shoujo, read it and experience it for yourself, not just Rin, the other characters all offer a different view and a different feel but I will always guide people towards Rin first. It was released by it's developers for free at http://www.katawa-shoujo.com/ and is well worth at least playing the first act of.

Just maybe turn on the mature content filter first.

Next time, a slight change in scheduled programming, see, it's not the end of the 3rd day yet so we've got a bit of time to spend searching in the bamboo forest, with any luck we'll find a phoenix.

Arthur Dent is interesting

Arthur Dent, much like Earth, is mostly harmless. He is the protagonist of every version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. I didn't specify medium because there are quite a lot of mediums that the Hitchhiker's Guide covers, almost all of which penned at least in part by Douglas Adams except the sixth book that was written by Eoin Colfer after Adams' death, though Adams had intended to write it himself, and the last 3 radio plays. There are 6 books, 5 radio plays, a TV series, a movie and a very good text-based adventure game. They all differ in story elements, sometimes greatly, and are all very funny.

We will be focusing on the two most accessible today, the books and the 2005 movie where he was portrayed by Martin Freeman. The books focus on his accidental romp through time and space, mostly the former, while the movie has a larger focus on his romance with Tricia MacMillan, understandable since the books run to something near 900 pages when compiled and the movie was less than 2 hours long.

In both Arthur is very much someone that things happen to. He doesn't choose to leave Earth as it is destroyed, nor does he choose to learn how to fly, they just happen to be things that have happened to him. He is the quintessential everyman, a 30-something who works in local radio and likes tea. He's not particularly bright, fit, good with words, attractive or quick on the uptake and one of the few things that he seems to actually want to do, have a nice brew, is practically impossible for him.

He has been portrayed as both sarcastic and put-upon and both work surprisingly and give this wholly unremarkable man a likable feeling. He might not be good at things, he might be the worst human who could be representing us out in space but after even a few chapters or 10 minutes of the film we grow to like him because what he does is what a lot of us like to think we would do in the same situation; panic a little, remember that we shouldn't and try and find something pleasant to put in our mouths.

He is actually rather extraordinary in his boring normality. This man has been through a lot, he's lived in a cave, he's been shot at, he's killed one guy over and over again and he had his house demolished but he takes it all with very few real changes in character. He has waded through thick and thin, time and space, alien and prehistoric plant life and come out asking for a cuppa.

There are of course moments where he veers off into some other want, sometimes he wants 'not to die' or 'the love of others' but in the end, the things that make Arthur Dent Arthur Dent is his admirable ability to accept what happens around him as just space stuff, his staunch Englishness and the fact that he endures the whims of a whacky improbable adventure while wearing his pyjamas.

Arthur Dent is interesting, he's a hoopy frood I'd like to sass, because he has all of these extraordinary things happen to him and he still seems normal, by the end of the film or the 6th book he still seems like the sort of guy we could chat to in the pub about football or the weather without having to revile in his stature as someone who has been on the trip he's been on.

Next time we look at someone a little less ordinary but maybe a bit more relatable as we answer the age old question, what do you even call a group of butterflies?

Kamen Rider Decade is interesting

Though I should probably say Tsukasa Kayoda is interesting since that's his actual name but we'll get onto that after we talk about what Kamen Rider is. As you'll note from the picture above he seems to be some form of armoured super hero in the vein of power rangers or maybe a very confused Iron-man Rip off. Kamen Rider was a franchise I often liken to Doctor Who as both share a lot of qualities. They are well thought of pop culture science fiction adventure shows, aimed at a similar age bracket. They are both more than 40 years old, both stopped in the 1990s but returned in the 2000s and both had questionable special effects, something Doctor who has grown out of but Kamen Rider is unfortunately still burdened with.

Kamen Rider was what started Power Rangers and shares the creator, Shotaro Ishinomori, Kamen Rider started 5 years before 'Super Sentai,' the show who's fight scenes and costumes were bought and used for the western show Power Rangers. Kamen Rider has not had as much luck coming over the sea and only two attempts at westernising it have been made, Masked Rider, an attempt in the 90s that fell through quickly and Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, a reworked version of Kamen Rider Ryuuki with a vastly different story line.

Decade is the 10th Rider of the 2000s reboot, also known as the Heisei Era, (the pre 2000s are commonly called the Showa Era,) and has a fantastic premise. His gimmick was that he travelled to alternate universes to gain the power of the Riders in those universes as he tried to regain his memories. Yeah, amnesia, cliché but it proves a very good driving force. He spends two episodes in the universe of each of the other Heisei Riders and even visits the worlds of some of the Showa Riders before he ends up in the Rider War world, a world where all riders are colliding in a war that threatens to destroy the worlds. It's an amazing driving force that gives the series weight from the start.

It makes the whole show a massive, colourful, varied crossover as the tones of the previous shows carry over. The Kamen Rider Agito episode is serious and dark and the Kamen Rider Den-O episode is silly and frantic. It gives the character Tsukasa a lot to work with and it brings out some important characteristics. He is very non-committal about this quest of his, he doesn't know why he's traveling the universes and while he does his best to do good if things start going south he'll make as little effort to fix things as possible. He's one of those too cool to care types that normally I don't care for, it's good that that's all a façade.

Tsukasa is actually a very understanding person who cares deeply for many people and while he may not get on with them from the start, recognises and respects the other Rider's reasons for fighting. He Will protect Kuuga's smile while he protects the worlds, he fights for the flawed love of humanity, he fights for camaraderie and for peace. There is a very emotional point in every other episode where Tsukasa learns the other rider's motive and uses it to inspire both himself and the rider mid-battle that never gets old, no matter how many times he repeats the same process

"Wataru believes in the law, that human and fangire can live together. But you gave up. You lost to your own weakness and forsook the law. But he fights for those who believe. That's not a dream, that is the qualification of the King!"

This adds to Tsukasa's image as a leader of the Riders, he unites the Riders against their common foes with his dimension hopping powers, he has a charisma about him that inspires those around him to join in battle and more than one time he has led the riders into battle as a whole and it's an impressive affair every time.

Another great choice in the show was the character of Kamen Rider Diend or Kaito Daiki who serves as something of an anti-hero, not evil, just greedy. He shows up now and then to either fight Decade or help him. He knows about Tsukasa's past and serves as an additional encouragement for Tsukasa to continue his quest. Everything in the series is either a very cool crossover throwback or something that pushes Tsukasa along his journey through the decade whether he wants to go or not and it gives him a lot more depth than you'd expect from someone who is essentially a glorified power ranger.

Above his charisma he also has something else going for him, his strength. Since he can use the same powers as the previous Riders he is effectively their equals and betters in some cases by using powers that the others are weak against. This gives him an over powered feeling that he never truly exploits until the final handful of episodes that, again, adds to his image as the Rider who would lead the others into battle.

Kamen Rider Decade is a show that not only continues the long running Kamen Rider name admirably but it improves on some of the other series by making it very clear that Tsukasa is flawed and needs the friends he makes just as much as they need him. He tries, he screws up, he gets depressed, he smiles and he kicks ass, all while flaunting that magenta colour scheme.

Kamen Rider Decade is an interesting character because despite how often we are reminded that he leads these legendary, inhuman figures, the Kamen Riders, we can still see him as a human.

Kamen Rider as a franchise is worth delving into if you can get past the costumes and effects, it has a good mix of silly, childish, serious and dark series and can be very entertaining in the right frame of mind. Once again, Leave a comment for questions, suggestions and requests.

I leave you with some advice, always remember where you put your towel.