Alice Margatroid is interesting

A lot of people I talk to like Touhou but that's only on the internet, a lot of people I talk to in real life have no idea what Touhou is so consider this a little intro to the world of Touhou as well as a look at one of the most interesting characters in the series. Alice

The Touhou franchise is a series of top down shoot 'em up games, renowned for it's difficulty, wide cast of characters, vocal and creative fan base and it's sole creator, ZUN. It started back in 1995 and has been growing steadily since then with just more than 20 officially released games. In the games you chose one of several female protagonists, normally Reimu and Marisa but in some games many more characters are playable and in one game, Imperishable night, (my personal favourite,) you control a pair of characters.

The stories are told very sparsely through conversations between the character(s) you control and the ones you are fighting, (all of whom are also female, the all female cast is another thing that Touhou is recognised for,) so there are a lot of characters we simply don't know much about. This is where the fans come in and this is where the interesting qualities of Alice Margatroid really come into their own.

Alice is a Magician, a witch of sorts, who lives in a magical forest in a house full of dolls and puppets that she uses to fight. If we only played the games, that would be about as much as we know about Alice, sometimes you fight her, sometimes you fight along side her and sometimes you are her but she's a bit of a recluse and likes dolls, that's all concrete. We also learn that she is can live indefinitely and has something of a friendship with Marisa.

Before we go any further we need to have a word about species. There are a lot of them in Touhou, from vampires to...moon...rabbits.. but they can be sorted into several broad groups. Humans like Marisa and Reimu, some of whom can do magic but many of whom are just normal humans, gods like Suwako and Kanako who create and maintain the world, which is called Gensokyo. Fairies like Cirno who represent parts of the natural world like Ice or Light and Yokai, everything else.

To clarify, Yokai is something of a catch all term for a non-human who isn't a fairy or a god, vampires are Yokai, as are ghosts and catgirls. This brings us to the question, What is Alice? At first glance she seems to be like Marisa, a human magician but her race is listed as Magician while Marisa's is listed as Human (Magician). Her ability to live much longer than a human also indicates that she is in fact a Yokai. The official book of the series, Perfect Memento in Strict sense claims that she was human to begin with and only recently became a "Magician."

If this is the case, how did she manage it? If she can make herself immortal why can't Marisa who is shown to be arguably more powerful? This is why Alice is interesting, she promotes these questions that have led to innumerable fan works that try really hard to answer the question in very interesting ways. Theories range from her just getting so good at puppetry that she became a Yokai representing puppetry to her killing and eating the heart of a Yokai so she could become one.

My favourite theory revolves around the 4th of the first 5 Touhou games which was Alice's first appearance. These games are treated as only Semi-canonical at this point and keeping up with it is rather hard work but suffice to say that in this game was Alice's first appearance. She appears as shorter, without her puppets and relying on magic much more than she did in subsequent games. Because the place she appeared in that game, Makai, was a city of demons, some people have the theory that Alice was never human to begin with and was a Demon Yokai that followed one of the protagonists out into Gensokyo. She created a large puppet who's appearance was closer to the age of the protagonists so that she could make friends with them and that is the Alice we see in the modern games.

Of course these are all theories and until ZUN really explains what is going on we will never know what and who Alice Margatroid really is but that is why she is interesting. Alice Margatroid is interesting, not because of what she does, what she looks like or who is she is, she is interesting because of who she might once have been.

Also, her dolls are cool. I wish I could get so good at playing with dolls that I'd live forever.

Check out Touhou, read some of the Fan Doujins, play some of the games, listen to some of the music, it's worth delving into as the wide cast means you'll probably find someone you like. If you have any questions about where to find Touhou related media please ask in a comment and if you have any suggestions for characters I should cover, either from Touhou, books, films, games or whatever, please feel free to tell me about them.

Next time on A Judge of Character, we look at the Destroyer of Worlds, Kamen Rider Decade!