#ask bookworm

Oh! Uh-thank you?

It’s really just for helping me read.. are you all right?

I am, yes! I’m studying Japanese at a language school in Tokyo.

How I ended up here is a long story but basically, two years ago I was seriously ill, and thought I was gonna die for real and stuff, and that prompted lots of deep life questions. One thing I’ve always wanted to do is learn Japanese in a classroom setting and get seriously fluent at it, so once I was better I looked into the options. It turned out learning Japanese in Japan would cost exactly the same as learning it at home, in London. So I thought “Fuck it, I don’t like anything about my life right now and I’m not gonna use my savings for anything else. I’m going to Tokyo.”

Ah well thank you for the offer!

You could come over to my residence to talk about the details?

I don’t know because I haven’t played any of them! The only console I own is a 3DS (and a computer, I suppose).

I dunno because I haven’t watched them. I don’t really watch anime... lol

While I am a fan of 四面楚歌/Surrounded by Enemies, that anime bundle cost 5000 yen and I was only interested in the novel, so I didn’t buy it. I might have bought it anyway in the past because I was loaded back then, but I’m a poor student now... ah well.

Hmm… I think there is a difference, based on what I’ve seen. (Huge generalisations time!) Basically, western fandom Marisa is the Marisa we see in IN’s magic team route: silly, somewhat irresponsible, doesn’t take things seriously, about to blow herself up in a wild experiment and Alice is the only one who can talk her out of it etc. It makes sense, considering MariAli is the big popular ship in the west, and the western fandom generally prefers the cute and silly side of Touhou, but I’ve seen her characterised like that in serious stories too. This Marisa is pretty fun to write, so I can see the appeal.

The Japanese fandom has a huge range of fanworks spanning well over a decade so I’m going to stick to what I’ve seen recently. The Marisa I usually see in doujinshi is a more serious version of the Marisa we see in the print works: she’s had a troubled childhood, struggles to keep up with Reimu and does everything she can to get stronger, sometimes dropping dead in the process. In recent stuff, she tries to become a youkai magician and has the inevitable tragic showdown with Reimu.

…But I suspect this reflects my taste in touhou doujinshi more than anything! I like my fanworks full of pain and suffering so that’s what I mostly read. It’s not all doom and gloom, I swear! But I think the Japanese love to think about her ‘omote’ (front) and ‘ura’ (back) sides a lot more than the Western side. ‘Omote’ is the side you show to people in public, and ‘ura’ is how you actually are; in private or with close family and friends. Marisa’s ‘omote’ is her carefree, jokey side, and her ‘ura’ is her studious, serious side who left her family to live in a forest full of dangerous youkai and experiments with hallucinogenic mushrooms.

I’ve seen a few Japanese creators depict Marisa as someone with a limited range of emotions, or empathy issues. Bizarrely enough, Akyuu seems to be one of those people: her real person fanfic about Marisa in AFiEU (everyone please read it!) depicts her as very… relaxed about all her friends getting murdered, and that ending…! Yes. Good.

Hello!

1) The theme didn’t come with a search box, so there’s no search box! lol I’ve been meaning to change the theme for about 4 years now but I’m too lazy. I figured most people would just use the tags, but I suppose some of the tags have a lot of posts... a search box might dig up some embarrassing old posts from several years ago too. Hmm... I’ll think about it.

2) Yes, this is how I beat Shion in the end, actually! I grazed a ton, then spellcard, grazed some more, another spellcard etc. But thanks for the advice anyway! I’m not that great at the fighting games so I usually play on easy mode to read the story, then occasionally do VS mode and... that’s about it. The fighters can be great fun and I really enjoy seeing all the characters interacting, but I prefer playing the main games overall.