Day 1: Sumireko Usami

[Juuni]

My condolences to all sumireko fans for what I’m about to say

Day 1: Sumireko Usami

This is the only character I actively dislike in all of touhou. The first issue with sumireko is her personality. I get the fact that she’s supposed to be a cringy teen, but she honestly is way too overdone in that aspect. It could have been something we could have related to easily, where she’s kinda like how you were as a teen, but instead it feels very forced and not very natural as a character. She basically feels like if you took an anime phase teen and cranked it up to 11, instead of a more normal teen with a healthy amount of eclectic nerdiness, which I think could work better and accomplish what I think would make her more tolerable.

Secondly, her specific character interactions feel very fake. First things first, most of the characters she interacted with are the incident resolvers, yukari, and mokou. Each of these interactions besides yukari boil down to the gensokyo native treating sumireko as a basic friend, and nothing much deeper. Like, there’s no hesitancy to a human from the outside world essentially invading gensokyo, even though it’s treated as serious in every other case. Sumireko feels like a weird self insert, getting along with anybody she really meets and not having any clashes despite the entire nature of her character being a dangerous thing to gensokyo. I do like her bits with yukari though as yukari actually does treat her with caution, which is how mainly reimu should have responded to her presence.

Finally, some things I like about her. Sumireko has an excellent design, and honestly fits her type of character really well despite my dislike towards her type of character. She also has a good theme.

Overall, sumireko ends up feeling like a self insert fantasy character to me, not really meshing at all with other characters naturally and honestly holding herself back with how her character is. I feels as though she missed the mark of what a character of her nature could have been, which would be someone regarded with heavy caution to those higher up, but treated like a human to anyone not, which is why her interactions with mokou are probably second best because they make more sense character wise. I wish I could find a way to like her, but she just has so many flaws that I can’t find myself really saying much positive about her.

Edited June 25, 2023 by Juunimeta

[Sci]

I only specifically remember her story in ULiL where she's running around terrified and getting chased by all the characters she fights. Deserved.

[Pepi]

Sumireko's personality does leave a lot to be desired and is kinda overdone, but that's not unusual for Touhou. Exaggeration is a tool in writing, especially for goofy characters.
ZUN is not a stranger to this technique, almost all the PC98 characters utilize this writing. It's also common for most of the characters that appear between stages 1-3, like Cirno or Kogasa.

I have to disagree with your thoughts on Sumireko.
It seems you overlooked how Sumireko's actions in ULiL leave big repercussions for her in the rest of her appearances, forcing her to mature.

In ULiL she is actively punished in her story for playing with Gensokyo like it was a game. She got trapped in Gensokyo by the residents reversing the method She used to get in, and everyone decided to welcome her by attacking. She narrowly escapes to the outside and, seeing no alternative, decides to sacrifice herself to break Gensokyo's barrier using the Occult Orbs, revealing it to the Outside World.
Not only that, but she was also manipulated by Lunarians to connect the Moon with Gensokyo, unleashing the events of LoLK.

Later on Touhou 15.5, her new ability to enter Gensokyo in her dreams got out of control when Dream Sumireko got unleashed in the Outside World due to Sumireko suppressing Her Dream Self from existing.
On Touhou 16.5, we discover that Dream Sumireko succeeded in trading places with Sumireko, but the rest of the Dream Inhabitants got angry at that and decided to hunt her dreams. After this, a very pissed off Sumireko does a final battle to retake her body, eventually winning after Okina disabled Dream Sumireko's god like abilities. 

Sumireko as a character criticizes the people who live in Wonderland. She goes too far to achieve that dream and ends up paying the price.

Sumireko is one of my favorite characters in Touhou because the things ZUN criticizes with her are big real world problems that we have trouble figuring out. I like you can gain something out of reading Sumireko's character, not like Remilia that's just a video game final boss without a deeper meaning (other characters like Sanae or Aya and the Tengus can increase the reader's perspective about the topic ZUN choose to explain with them).

Is fiction starting to control reality? How superficial can it turn us? Are we too obsessed with fiction? Is social media damaging us?

Oh, and her theme is very good, and her design is amazing.

[Eulogous]

16 hours ago, Juunimeta said:

Like, there’s no hesitancy to a human from the outside world essentially invading gensokyo, even though it’s treated as serious in every other case. Sumireko feels like a weird self insert, getting along with anybody she really meets and not having any clashes despite the entire nature of her character being a dangerous thing to gensokyo.

This is pretty much the main issue I take issue with Sumireko. I don't really mind her personality, even if I find it annoying. I just don't like how fairly easy it was for her to befriend other characters.

It's like some internal world logic got borked, and something that probably should've taken longer to happen got rushed to its conclusion.

21 hours ago, Juunimeta said:

Finally, some things I like about her. Sumireko has an excellent design, and honestly fits her type of character really well despite my dislike towards her type of character.

I'm not big on the cape runes. I feel like it makes her look over-designed, and just going with a solid red would've looked better. How she appears on one of the covers of WaHH makes me think she's better off without the cape.

Cape-less Sumireko Reference:

Spoiler

[Pepi]

1 hour ago, Eulogous said:

This is pretty much the main issue I take issue with Sumireko. I don't really mind her personality, even if I find it annoying. I just don't like how fairly easy it was for her to befriend other characters.

It's like some internal world logic got borked, and something that probably should've taken longer to happen got rushed to its conclusion.

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This makes me wonder, why is the logic borked with Sumireko? I mean, Sanae also invaded Gensokyo, but it took Kanako trying to impose her faith in the mountain to make The Tengus and Reimu/Marisa stop them.
Other characters also do disastrous acts on their first appearance, but always are pardoned in the good endings, like Yuyuko, Remilia, Kanako, Satori, Clownpiece, etc.
Why is it strange that Sumireko befriended Gensokyo residents that fast?

1 hour ago, Eulogous said:

I'm not big on the cape runes. I feel like it makes her look over-designed, and just going with a solid red would've looked better. How she appears on one of the covers of WaHH makes me think she's better off without the cape.

Cape-less Sumireko Reference:

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Regarding the cape, it does feel over-designed when the runes are highlighted too much. But in the sprite, they are almost the same color as the cape, making it much more pleasing to look at.
Searching for an image of the sprite of Sumireko, I found an edited version without the runes and the pattern on her skirt, and it looks pretty good.

Rune-less:

Normal:

[Eulogous]

16 hours ago, Pepi said:

Other characters also do disastrous acts on their first appearance, but always are pardoned in the good endings, like Yuyuko, Remilia, Kanako, Satori, Clownpiece, etc.

Satori? What did she do? Pretty sure Okuu would be considered the antagonist in that story, and even then, Kanako was effectively the reason why SA happened.

 

16 hours ago, Pepi said:

Why is it strange that Sumireko befriended Gensokyo residents that fast?

That's the word, right there: "Befriended". There should've been more time to build up a friendship before you have a character refer to Reimu as "Reimers". Again, I don't have a problem with the end result, it just feels like we fast-forwarded ahead to the conclusion.

 

17 hours ago, Pepi said:

Rune-less:

The solid red looks way better on her sprite (rip dress pattern tho). My problem is mainly that you have an intricate pattern on her outfit, then and intricate pattern on the interior of her cape, and it you have both competing to draw the viewer's eye at once. I'll use Okuu as an example of why her cape works with her design: Her outfit is composed of flat colors, so her cape interior has a ton of contrast with it. Sumireko just sticking with the inverse of that visual design philosophy of plain cape and intricate outfit pattern would've worked pretty well.

Utsuho Sprites for References:

Spoiler

 

[Pepi]

7 hours ago, Eulogous said:

Satori? What did she do? Pretty sure Okuu would be considered the antagonist in that story, and even then, Kanako was effectively the reason why SA happened.

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Satori is partially guilty of the incident for not controlling well her pet Okuu becoming a living nuclear reactor, in the good ending of Marisa/Patchouli they say this:
Patchouli: "None of this would have happened if the Palace of Earth Spirits would take proper care of their pets"

7 hours ago, Eulogous said:

That's the word, right there: "Befriended". There should've been more time to build up a friendship before you have a character refer to Reimu as "Reimers". Again, I don't have a problem with the end result, it just feels like we fast-forwarded ahead to the conclusion.

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Good point, it is too friendly. You made me laugh a lot with the "Reimers"

Great example with Okuu, it nails the balance of complexity and simplicity. Sumireko's design is definitively overloaded.