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Origin of Ran is a Nudist Joke?

Spongelash

Spongelash

Touhou Traveler
I hope this is the strangest question I ever ask here, but in a lot of PVs and fan works a common gag that I see is Ran as a nudist with Chen protecting her modesty. Take a gander:




It's also in the lyrics of IOSYS' Ribbon and Catnip and Me

Now I promise I've tried to search for this on my own but it appears that looking up "Touhou Ran Nudist" doesn't get you the most innocent search results...

Does anyone have even a glimmer of an idea of what the origin of this gag is? I'm trying to think through official media but I don't know of anything that could be played off of from what I've gone through.
 
I think the bigger problem in finding the truth to this would be the fact of just how bizarre this gag is itself.
I mean, most questionable gags in Touhou always seems to have strange origins, but this one is probably one of the stranger ones.
If I were to guess, it probably originated from an artwork of some kind, as if it didn't come from IOSYS, or another similar source, chances are it came from a piece of artwork which became the inspiration for it.
Though, it could have come from anywhere. It's possible that the origin might not be on the internet anymore.
It's also likely it came from either Nico Nico (as with most old Touhou media) or Pixiv, or possibly a now-defunct website.
 
SateriCat17 said:
I think the bigger problem in finding the truth to this would be the fact of just how bizarre this gag is itself.
I mean, most questionable gags in Touhou always seems to have strange origins, but this one is probably one of the stranger ones.
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It seems to me with Touhou gags you can usually source them as stuff from official media that just get played up like crazy (Marisa has tons of these tropes) or they are mostly self-explanatory ("Awoo" being associated with Momiji is not mysterious) but I'm stumped on this one and the search space for this one is polluted with other types of content, haha.

Wondering if any real oldheads have a bead on this one.
 
Spongelash said:
It seems to me with Touhou gags you can usually source them as stuff from official media that just get played up like crazy (Marisa has tons of these tropes) or they are mostly self-explanatory ("Awoo" being associated with Momiji is not mysterious) but I'm stumped on this one and the search space for this one is polluted with other types of content, haha.

Wondering if any real oldheads have a bead on this one.
Click to expand...
I agree that older fans of Touhou would probably have a better understanding of where it came from, but who knows.
In any case, there probably isn't a source from official Touhou media which could be linked to this gag, unless there's a single scene of Ran naked in one of the print works or something.
 
monstii said:
theres a little bit about it on the touhou wiki (link)
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Thanks. There's no way it just originated from where that trivia links to though, surely. That website must have spawned from some existing notion. It's gotta be some imageboard culture thing. I really need someone to explain to me what the connection is with Ran specifically. This trope features in so many fan works there has to be any amount of logic to it, even the tiniest thread.

Like what, has the community picked this up just like past Europeans trying to emulate ancient Rome? Folks found records of people talking about this trope so we put it in half of the fan works featuring Ran, but there's nobody out there who remembers why it become a trope in the first place or what the point of the joke was?

I'm no stranger to absurdist humor but usually for something to be as well-used as this there has to be a basis to it somewhere.
 
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