Spongelash
Touhou Traveler
TL;DR In the Touhou setting youkai are supposed to be dangerous but work is constantly done to make them seem not so serious and encounters with them more fun and whimsical such that they can be seen as lovable cute girls and not murderous predators. I find man-eating at odds with this constant effort such that even when an attempt is made to make it more comedic I don't enjoy it in the setting. Do you find any tone inconsistencies with the idea of man-eating in Touhou, and would you have handled it any differently if it was your setting?
I want to preface this by saying that this is a factor that is largely ignorable within Touhou, so don't take my following writing as some giant critique against the entire setting, but rather a small elaborate critique of an element I think could be better done.
The world of Touhou is one that interests me greatly, because as I get deeper in the original material (especially the written material) I find that there is actually a lot of depth to it and the characters within it that doesn't get touched on by the larger fanbase. Now, the fact that (some) Youkai (might sometimes) eat humans isn't exactly one of these deeper facts; Rumia, the first real enemy of the Windows games, kind of spells it out to us, and it has been reiterated many times since. This may cause some to balk at the question I proposed in the title, but I want to make the point that man-eating especially in an explicit sense is actually rarely mentioned in Touhou which makes the few times that it is described in more detail feel uncomfortable and incongruent.
I'll get onto man-eating but first I want to establish a concept: in his work ZUN constantly wants to establish an illusion of danger around youkai while constantly working to make sure that they aren't viewed as too outwardly evil. I think this is important to acknowledge as it will form a big part of why I think man-eating is a strange part of Touhou. The setting needs some conflict that makes it natural for characters to fight on a whim, but ZUN wants the danmaku battles to feel more like the girls are playing with each other and everyone takes it light-heartedly. In supplementary media like Curiosities of Lotus Asia ZUN spells it out that Youkai attacks on humans are rarer in this era and other written media like Bohemian Archive take previously dangerous characters and pull them back like Mystia and her using her abilities for the success of her famous food cart rather than killing and eating humans. I think that as you engage with more and more Touhou content you can see that the tone is written deliberately to make it feel less serious and dangerous and the world is written to make things less dangerous than they might seem at face value. All of this in service of the fact that for the most part the girls are supposed to be in some way likable and to be able to interact with each other in friendly ways and that's hard to buy as a viewer if they are so murderous towards each other by nature.
(Not to imply that there aren't supposed to be obvious serious dangers presented in the Touhou setting. Though most of the time they are presented in a fairy-tale-esque "you went where you weren't supposed to" "you ignored common advice" sort of way.)
And for the most part, I think that ZUN manages the balance between inherent danger and light-hearted fun well. Man-eating is in a weird place in Touhou because it is easy to forget about it. As the games went on we got more and more Youkai introduced who either were either friendly to humans or didn't care for humans such that thinking of them by default as predators to humanity became less and less typical. EoSD was full of man-eaters (though notably still making up maybe only half of encounters), but the games that came afterwards, speaking of PCB, IN, and PFV introduce many youkai with their own specific goals and purposes that either help people or ignore them. MoF includes a concept of danger but plenty of helpful youkai that warn against that danger, and SA is full of youkai who have been cut off from mankind. Like I said above, even Youkai who are more explicitly man-eaters are sometimes taken and put into less aggressive situations with mankind.
I don't want to portray the idea that I think the intention is for all stories and relations in Touhou to be sunshine and rainbows. Youkai are dangerous and that is an obvious part of the story, like with the incidents. But I do want to make the point that in the face of what I wrote earlier man-eating in particular (in such a bestial way) is so much more horrific than the other antics that youkai get up to that it really stands out in a negative way in my opinion. A good portion (not all, I'll get to it) of the active man-eating youkai are the young and dumb ones that seem to seek after it as basically instinct. This is actually a world-building consideration as it is described that as youkai grow older and wiser they get connected to specific places and it seems they set their interests higher than things as basic as man-eating. Now, this combination can actually serve as another example of ZUN trying to pull things back a bit lighter with certain characters; it isn't a rare joke to remark on the fact that some little girl like Rumia is this cannibal killer, and I think that ZUN also uses the incompetence and inability of these low-level youkai as a way to get you to take what they do less seriously. Like "Rumia might want to eat people, but she is so bad at it that it's more funny to watch her try than to take her seriously." Even then, though, the real images that this produces is that these kind of youkai consume the weak, and in my opinion man-eating might just be so horrifying that even with these comedic counterweights it in itself runs counter to what is being attempted with the rest of Touhou's tone.
And now I want to cover the real sticking point that will momentarily sour my feelings when I encounter it. It's the scarlet devil herself, Remilia. Now Remilia is I think correctly portrayed as a bit darker and oppositional by both the fandom and the games than other characters, which I think is the correct read, but just like others she still joins in on friendly funny parties with Reimu and is still joked around with and it still allowed a giant mansion to remain in. My issue with Remilia is that sometimes her man-eating is made really explicit and she doesn't have the same comedic counter-weights that most other man-eaters have. Now, I actually think ZUN did Remilia right at first. In her original description in EoSD it's described that she is a light-eater and the humans she feeds off are usually left alive. This way you can view her as a bit darker and maybe occasionally a murderer but she isn't some mass murder who survives exclusively off of human death. But recently while reading Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, it's made out that she is actually fed by folks gathered from the outside world whose deaths otherwise wouldn't be looked into. And when we take a character and make out that there is just a constantly-running death count it harms their normal involvement in the Touhou story for me.
With most lower-level youkai you can at least reason that they are bad at getting humans, they have been getting humans less recently, and eventually with time they will probably move on from something so trivial. But with Remilia she is powerful, has the ability to think a little bit, but is constantly being fed people to their implied deaths and probably will be forever, because I doubt this would become a plot point. You can tell me if I'm wrong, I haven't gone further in the content than PMiSS yet.
But really, I'm just using Remilia as an example here. My real conclusion is that whenever we focus explicitly on man-eating in Touhou, I get a bad feeling about it and don't enjoy how it fits in with the bigger tone of Touhou. Remilia's PMiSS description is just one instance of this, but I feel it in varying senses even when it comes to Rumia or Mystia. It describes such a difference in nature between humans and youkai, but my problem is that in the actual games and stories humans and youkai are hanging out all the time in a way I find inconsistent with the idea that one is constantly preying on the other.
I'm really curious what you folks think. Is man-eating an element that you enjoy as part of Touhou? Do you feel like it ever sits strangely with the tone presented in Touhou media and the characters that we are shown? Do you think it fits, but should be done differently? It's really the only pain-point in Touhou for me (and honestly seems pretty easy to write-out), but I'm really curious to see how others land on this idea.
I want to preface this by saying that this is a factor that is largely ignorable within Touhou, so don't take my following writing as some giant critique against the entire setting, but rather a small elaborate critique of an element I think could be better done.
The world of Touhou is one that interests me greatly, because as I get deeper in the original material (especially the written material) I find that there is actually a lot of depth to it and the characters within it that doesn't get touched on by the larger fanbase. Now, the fact that (some) Youkai (might sometimes) eat humans isn't exactly one of these deeper facts; Rumia, the first real enemy of the Windows games, kind of spells it out to us, and it has been reiterated many times since. This may cause some to balk at the question I proposed in the title, but I want to make the point that man-eating especially in an explicit sense is actually rarely mentioned in Touhou which makes the few times that it is described in more detail feel uncomfortable and incongruent.
I'll get onto man-eating but first I want to establish a concept: in his work ZUN constantly wants to establish an illusion of danger around youkai while constantly working to make sure that they aren't viewed as too outwardly evil. I think this is important to acknowledge as it will form a big part of why I think man-eating is a strange part of Touhou. The setting needs some conflict that makes it natural for characters to fight on a whim, but ZUN wants the danmaku battles to feel more like the girls are playing with each other and everyone takes it light-heartedly. In supplementary media like Curiosities of Lotus Asia ZUN spells it out that Youkai attacks on humans are rarer in this era and other written media like Bohemian Archive take previously dangerous characters and pull them back like Mystia and her using her abilities for the success of her famous food cart rather than killing and eating humans. I think that as you engage with more and more Touhou content you can see that the tone is written deliberately to make it feel less serious and dangerous and the world is written to make things less dangerous than they might seem at face value. All of this in service of the fact that for the most part the girls are supposed to be in some way likable and to be able to interact with each other in friendly ways and that's hard to buy as a viewer if they are so murderous towards each other by nature.
(Not to imply that there aren't supposed to be obvious serious dangers presented in the Touhou setting. Though most of the time they are presented in a fairy-tale-esque "you went where you weren't supposed to" "you ignored common advice" sort of way.)
And for the most part, I think that ZUN manages the balance between inherent danger and light-hearted fun well. Man-eating is in a weird place in Touhou because it is easy to forget about it. As the games went on we got more and more Youkai introduced who either were either friendly to humans or didn't care for humans such that thinking of them by default as predators to humanity became less and less typical. EoSD was full of man-eaters (though notably still making up maybe only half of encounters), but the games that came afterwards, speaking of PCB, IN, and PFV introduce many youkai with their own specific goals and purposes that either help people or ignore them. MoF includes a concept of danger but plenty of helpful youkai that warn against that danger, and SA is full of youkai who have been cut off from mankind. Like I said above, even Youkai who are more explicitly man-eaters are sometimes taken and put into less aggressive situations with mankind.
I don't want to portray the idea that I think the intention is for all stories and relations in Touhou to be sunshine and rainbows. Youkai are dangerous and that is an obvious part of the story, like with the incidents. But I do want to make the point that in the face of what I wrote earlier man-eating in particular (in such a bestial way) is so much more horrific than the other antics that youkai get up to that it really stands out in a negative way in my opinion. A good portion (not all, I'll get to it) of the active man-eating youkai are the young and dumb ones that seem to seek after it as basically instinct. This is actually a world-building consideration as it is described that as youkai grow older and wiser they get connected to specific places and it seems they set their interests higher than things as basic as man-eating. Now, this combination can actually serve as another example of ZUN trying to pull things back a bit lighter with certain characters; it isn't a rare joke to remark on the fact that some little girl like Rumia is this cannibal killer, and I think that ZUN also uses the incompetence and inability of these low-level youkai as a way to get you to take what they do less seriously. Like "Rumia might want to eat people, but she is so bad at it that it's more funny to watch her try than to take her seriously." Even then, though, the real images that this produces is that these kind of youkai consume the weak, and in my opinion man-eating might just be so horrifying that even with these comedic counterweights it in itself runs counter to what is being attempted with the rest of Touhou's tone.
And now I want to cover the real sticking point that will momentarily sour my feelings when I encounter it. It's the scarlet devil herself, Remilia. Now Remilia is I think correctly portrayed as a bit darker and oppositional by both the fandom and the games than other characters, which I think is the correct read, but just like others she still joins in on friendly funny parties with Reimu and is still joked around with and it still allowed a giant mansion to remain in. My issue with Remilia is that sometimes her man-eating is made really explicit and she doesn't have the same comedic counter-weights that most other man-eaters have. Now, I actually think ZUN did Remilia right at first. In her original description in EoSD it's described that she is a light-eater and the humans she feeds off are usually left alive. This way you can view her as a bit darker and maybe occasionally a murderer but she isn't some mass murder who survives exclusively off of human death. But recently while reading Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, it's made out that she is actually fed by folks gathered from the outside world whose deaths otherwise wouldn't be looked into. And when we take a character and make out that there is just a constantly-running death count it harms their normal involvement in the Touhou story for me.
With most lower-level youkai you can at least reason that they are bad at getting humans, they have been getting humans less recently, and eventually with time they will probably move on from something so trivial. But with Remilia she is powerful, has the ability to think a little bit, but is constantly being fed people to their implied deaths and probably will be forever, because I doubt this would become a plot point. You can tell me if I'm wrong, I haven't gone further in the content than PMiSS yet.
But really, I'm just using Remilia as an example here. My real conclusion is that whenever we focus explicitly on man-eating in Touhou, I get a bad feeling about it and don't enjoy how it fits in with the bigger tone of Touhou. Remilia's PMiSS description is just one instance of this, but I feel it in varying senses even when it comes to Rumia or Mystia. It describes such a difference in nature between humans and youkai, but my problem is that in the actual games and stories humans and youkai are hanging out all the time in a way I find inconsistent with the idea that one is constantly preying on the other.
I'm really curious what you folks think. Is man-eating an element that you enjoy as part of Touhou? Do you feel like it ever sits strangely with the tone presented in Touhou media and the characters that we are shown? Do you think it fits, but should be done differently? It's really the only pain-point in Touhou for me (and honestly seems pretty easy to write-out), but I'm really curious to see how others land on this idea.
