Day 59: Friendly fish from San Diego

[Juuni]

Fish girl!

Day 59: Wakasagihime 

Waka is the weak point of the grassroots trio. Essentially, she came about because of the DDC power level changes, and became a part of the grassroots trio at some point. Her and Kagerou is a popular pairing, and I don’t mind it too much. But her own place in gensokyo as a whole is very unclear, as she really just kinda chills and doesn’t do much. I feel like fans have to carry this character to higher heights, as her lack of things to realistically do holds her back somewhat. Her design is fine, but I don’t care for mermaids, but her boss theme is pretty poor tbh. Overall, a fine character that finds difficulty with doing much more than she has.

[Yumetou]

One weird thing about her, a couple mods for other games I play include Wakasagihime. There's a mod for Hearts of Iron 4 and one for Mount and Blade. In both, Wakasagihime is made a minor leader...in the Scarlet Devil faction. Despite having no overt tie to the SDM or the Scarlets. Why? Well there isn't any lore reason. The reason as near as I can tell is 'Well, she lives in the lake doesn't she? So naturally she would work for them'. Which...is incredibly sad. She has so little strength as a character on her own she gets assimilated into the Scarlets. Not once but twice.

 

For all I know there's some deep fanon lore behind this, or maybe its a meme on the Japanese side of the fandom. I don't know. I just think its sad. Even a character like Daiyousei who is basically an extension of Cirno has a pretty clearly defined personality and ties in the fandom. But Wakasagihime is just...there, and I doubt it speaks highly of her presence in the game she does appear in...

[Gri]

The thing with Wakasagihime (and the rest of the grassroot youkai), is that she only appear in DDC, and she's under the effect of the Miracle Mallet, so we don't really see her with her real personality (all we know is that she's usually shy/not-aggressive). Much like other Stage 1 boss, she's just there to serve as a boss, rarely used to move the story forward. Another thing is that there's practically no other water-youkai (aside from Kappas), so it's hard to have a setting in which Wakasagihime fit for fan-content. It could be interesting to explore Gensokyo's underwater at some point.

In general, interest in characters after Touhou 12 in generally pretty low, which is a shame, but understandable since character from Touhou 13+ practically never comes back outside of mangas (or photo spin-offs). 

Design wise, it cool to see a different design from the typical mermaid, though I am pretty sure Zun's pick that design from somewhere.

Edited September 10, 2023 by Gri

[Juuni]

7 hours ago, Gri said:

In general, interest in characters after Touhou 12 in generally pretty low, which is a shame, but understandable since character from Touhou 13+ practically never comes back outside of mangas (or photo spin-offs). 

I feel this specific things has been somewhat remedied in touhou 19, as that games cast brought back multiple characters from more recent works back. I feel like ZUN is very much trying to push the animal matriarchs as characters to good heights, and it’s been great so far on that front. Fans also love to take underdeveloped characters and give them fangames every now and then, like mystia’s izakaya or heart of the tiger. In general, fans I feel carry the characters ZUN doesn’t, which hurts and helps waka because she hasn’t gotten her “work” yet, but has dedicated fans that put her in the fangame jams.