Thoughts On Medicine Melancholy?

[SateriCat17]

Medicine has become one of my absolute favorite Touhou characters recently.
I think some major reasons for that is because of her being one of the more "creepy" Touhou characters despite her cute appearance, I find her to a pretty complex character (a lot more complex than what is even directly shown in PoFV), I like her theme and general design, and I also find her personality to be pretty interesting.
The idea of her just wandering around the Nameless Hill and suzuran fields also conjures up a somewhat idyllic scene for me for some reason.
Of course, another reason I like her is because she comes from PoFV, which is one of my favorite Touhou games despite it generally being considered to be the "black sheep" of the games.
Regardless though, Medicine is probably one of the most obscure and underrated Touhou characters, so there are probably some of you who don't even know who I'm on about. Still, I would want to hear your thoughts about her. Is she a character you like, or do you not find much interest in her?

 

[Retron]

She's not a character I've seen brought up pretty often, though I wouldn't call her obscure in a sense that a majority of the touhou fanbase wouldn't know her. I would say she's more of somebody who simply exists. People know she's there, but she doesn't get much attention. For a really obscure character, I would say Konpaku Youki, Mugetsu and Gengetsu or anybody really from HRtP (except Mima ofc).

Upon giving it much more thought, there are a couple of things to say about Medicine. One is that it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize she was a tsukumogami. Also, nameless hills is called that since that's where kids were left to die or something, right? So I guess we can assume that Medicine has quite the body count as well...

What I find most interesting and the true obscure character is the little doll or faerie or something floating beside her. Does it have a name? Is it like Shanghai and Hourai? It could be a shikigami of medicine (if she's even capable of summoning such a thing) or a cosplaying fairy. I propose that we should give her a name.

 

[Buwako]

there was a point in time where i was obsessing over her and its why i got touhou 9 lol. im not as interested in her now but that doesnt mean she doesnt have anything to offer. i think she is an interesting parallel to yuka. they are both associated with plants, and are seen as scary and dangerous youkai. and yet, they are also opposites, as medicines poison harms yuka. not many people have been able to do that.

i would also like to mention that in a way she is also a parallel to kogasa. both gained trauma from being abandoned long ago, but they deal with it differently. kogasa, by seeking for attention, and medicine, pushing people away from her and holding grudges. just something i wanted to point out. it would be interesting to see what kind of relationship they have.

 

[Napechi97]

I like her design, like i like every 2hu's design besides elis, and that's all i can say since i haven't played anything past Touhou 7 yet (i did play 7.5 too but i couldn't get used to the controls of the combos)

 

[SateriCat17]

She's not a character I've seen brought up pretty often, though I wouldn't call her obscure in a sense that a majority of the touhou fanbase wouldn't know her. I would say she's more of somebody who simply exists. People know she's there, but she doesn't get much attention. For a really obscure character, I would say Konpaku Youki, Mugetsu and Gengetsu or anybody really from HRtP (except Mima ofc).

Upon giving it much more thought, there are a couple of things to say about Medicine. One is that it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize she was a tsukumogami. Also, nameless hills is called that since that's where kids were left to die or something, right? So I guess we can assume that Medicine has quite the body count as well...

What I find most interesting and the true obscure character is the little doll or faerie or something floating beside her. Does it have a name? Is it like Shanghai and Hourai? It could be a shikigami of medicine (if she's even capable of summoning such a thing) or a cosplaying fairy. I propose that we should give her a name.

I've seen some people theorizing that the little "fairy" is some type of poison fairy or even Medicine herself (similar to how some people see Kogasa's umbrella as Kogasa herself, while the girl is a different manifestation of her).
I personally prefer to think about it being the latter.
The "fairy" is also most often referred to as "Su-san" by the fandom because of Medicine saying that word a lot in her PoFV storyline, but it's ambiguous as to whether she's talking about the flowers (which are known as "suzuran" in Japanese, or better known by the name of "lily of the valley") or about the floating "fairy".
Anyway, for the Hill of the Nameless, as far as I know in canon, it's not really known what happened there.
I'd have to look deeper into the few pieces of lore the Hill has, but from what I remember, PoFV doesn't mention anything like children having died there.
Even if it is that children truly died there, it probably wasn't Medicine's own doing (but she still most likely does have a body count, considering she states herself that she's used poison on animals and even humans).
I think these mysteries surrounding her are what make her an even more interesting character to me.
I love horror and horror-like characters, so Medicine's more creepy and disturbing parts to her are what I especially like about her.

 

[SateriCat17]

I like her design, like i like every 2hu's design besides elis, and that's all i can say since i haven't played anything past Touhou 7 yet (i did play 7.5 too but i couldn't get used to the controls of the combos)

As far as I know, 7.5 is considered to be one of the hardest of the fighting games because of the wonky controls.
I was able to figure out how to fix those controls though, but I don't really remember where I did it besides it being one of the config files with the game.
Still didn't make me any better at that game though. lol

 

[SateriCat17]

there was a point in time where i was obsessing over her and its why i got touhou 9 lol. im not as interested in her now but that doesnt mean she doesnt have anything to offer. i think she is an interesting parallel to yuka. they are both associated with plants, and are seen as scary and dangerous youkai. and yet, they are also opposites, as medicines poison harms yuka. not many people have been able to do that.

i would also like to mention that in a way she is also a parallel to kogasa. both gained trauma from being abandoned long ago, but they deal with it differently. kogasa, by seeking for attention, and medicine, pushing people away from her and holding grudges. just something i wanted to point out. it would be interesting to see what kind of relationship they have.

Heh. PoFV is why I got so interested in Medicine in the first place.
I didn't pay Medicine's existence much mind before, but after I played her storyline in that game, I started liking her character and design so much that she inevitably became one of my favorite Touhou characters.
I think one of the reasons I also became interested in her character is as well because of her fight with Yuuka.
Medicine's whole storyline feels quite "nightmare-like" (which is pretty interesting, considering the rest of the game has a "dream-like" feel to it for me), and her fight with Yuuka in some ways enhances that feeling more.
I love Medicine's storyline so much that her route is the only one in PoFV I've played twice so far.

 

[RiceCookies]

I like her. And because there are almost no fangames of her, I'm thinking of making my own. Problem being that I never seriously made art, or music, or coded anything really, but I do have some motivation even if I currently lack the skillset needed to make it reality. I did start looking at pixel art tutorials and experimenting with music because of it.

Medelin -> Medicine + Elin / Elona except with a story more focused on the lead character and with the Gensokyo aesthetic. Colorful whimsical like a fairy tale and just a bit 'nightmarish' (Because of Medi's personality. Oh the twist when the 'hero' is actually scarier then any of the foes she faces... I'm definitely making that a running joke or maybe even a plot point.) I still have no what genre it will be, but there definitely will a gardening system for the nameless hill, ordinary farming is a bit too boring, yet on the other hand something like in Atomicrops feels like too much so I still have no idea how the game loop will look like.

The idea bounces around in my head on and off. A few days ago I decided I also want to make it free and easily mod able (open-source) because our community really lacks that one sandbox fan game that makes it easy to freely play around in the world (even if it'll be mostly randomly generated)… so a good base for that also needs to be implemented, the scope creep is real, huh?

Thanks for listening to my head junk, I wanted to talk about the idea for a while and to actually tie answer to the thread topic - pretty much all that's been said already. PoFV is also my favorite, the ZUN art in that game is simply special. Medicine's story's... world building? is unlike anything you will ever find any media, a concept addicting, brain poisoning, melancholic fairy tale. It gives of that same sparkle that Gensokyo itself has, that feeling as if someone has cast a magic spell on you like when you read the Harry Potter books or Tolkien's works.

 

[SateriCat17]

I like her. And because there are almost no fangames of her, I'm thinking of making my own. Problem being that I never seriously made art, or music, or coded anything really, but I do have some motivation even if I currently lack the skillset needed to make it reality. I did start looking at pixel art tutorials and experimenting with music because of it.

Medelin -> Medicine + Elin / Elona except with a story more focused on the lead character and with the Gensokyo aesthetic. Colorful whimsical like a fairy tale and just a bit 'nightmarish' (Because of Medi's personality. Oh the twist when the 'hero' is actually scarier then any of the foes she faces... I'm definitely making that a running joke or maybe even a plot point.) I still have no what genre it will be, but there definitely will a gardening system for the nameless hill, ordinary farming is a bit too boring, yet on the other hand something like in Atomicrops feels like too much so I still have no idea how the game loop will look like.

The idea bounces around in my head on and off. A few days ago I decided I also want to make it free and easily mod able (open-source) because our community really lacks that one sandbox fan game that makes it easy to freely play around in the world (even if it'll be mostly randomly generated)… so a good base for that also needs to be implemented, the scope creep is real, huh?

Thanks for listening to my head junk, I wanted to talk about the idea for a while and to actually tie answer to the thread topic - pretty much all that's been said already. PoFV is also my favorite, the ZUN art in that game is simply special. Medicine's story's... world building? is unlike anything you will ever find any media, a concept addicting, brain poisoning, melancholic fairy tale. It gives of that same sparkle that Gensokyo itself has, that feeling as if someone has cast a magic spell on you like when you read the Harry Potter books or Tolkien's works.

Ohh! That sounds like a really good game! Hope you can succeed in making it and I'll most certainly play it if you do!
Also, I definitely agree with you that Medicine is most certainly a unique Touhou character despite her being so obscure.

 

[RiceCookies]

Ohh! That sounds like a really good game! Hope you can succeed in making it and I'll most certainly play it if you do!
Also, I definitely agree with you that Medicine is most certainly a unique Touhou character despite her being so obscure.

Noted!
When (and if ever) the alpha comes out I'll definitely message you as one of the first testers. After all, what's the point of a game if no ever plays it? Knowing there will be people willing to provide feedback is valuable in it of itself! Look, already a new idea.

If I keep work on the later bits of the story in secret, I could provide access to a build much earlier while preventing spoilers so that people have something to look forward to. Moreover, if the gameplay loop turns out to be fun, more people will be willing to engage with the game. So should I focus on polishing the community aspect first and make the story instead in to something like a fun show (creative implementation of the main gameplay mechanics) of everything the engine is capable of making? Please wait warmly, brain storming in progress...

 

[Spongelash]

Anyway, for the Hill of the Nameless, as far as I know in canon, it's not really known what happened there.
I'd have to look deeper into the few pieces of lore the Hill has, but from what I remember, PoFV doesn't mention anything like children having died there.
Even if it is that children truly died there, it probably wasn't Medicine's own doing (but she still most likely does have a body count, considering she states herself that she's used poison on animals and even humans).

This is what the book Perfect Memento in Strict Sense says about the Hill of the Nameless.

It's called the Hill of the Nameless because long ago, it was a place where children were abandoned (*26).
Young children who weren't even given names were brought here to sleep to their death among the lilies' poison.
The dead bodies were cleaned up by the youkai, so they disappeared without a trace.
However, it's said that some of the children were abducted by mischievous youkai and raised as youkai.
There are sad stories of parents who did not want to see their own children die, leaving them here thinking they might have a chance to live as youkai.
Perhaps because of its dark history, hardly any humans visit this place today.
At some point youkai stopped visiting as well, so this is a place forgotten by contemporary Gensokyo, having become a "nameless" hill just as the term implies (*27).
26: This is a story from when one could pass between Gensokyo and the outside world. Of course, this doesn't take place today.
27: Ah, how clever!

So first of all it is a story so old that it is questionable whether or not it is true, and then if it is you'd have to question if Medicine had been there this long. And then, you'd have to question how many of these children actually perished to Youkai versus just dying naturally themselves.

Funnily enough at first I thought the Hill of the Nameless was the same place as the Mound of the Nameless in Curiosities of Lotus Asia in the chapter The Flowers of Muenzuka Higan which is similarly full of poisonous flowers and is the place where people without relatives in Gensokyo are laid to rest, but according to Perfect Memento in Strict Sense that is apparently in an entirely separate place. I guess people like to bury folks amongst poisonous flowers in Gensokyo. Is this a Japanese thing?

---

Anyways, about Medicine. I like the concept behind her and the reason for her abilities; it is creative how she uses poisons because she is immune to them as a doll. Unfortunately though I think she has one of the stupidest names in the franchise which may be fitting for her as a doll but "Medicine Melancholy" isn't a name for a person and from what I see the Japanese name isn't any better. Her personality is fine but it doesn't really create any interesting character dynamics unlike Aya or Eiki who were introduced in the same game and do a lot more for the setting.

I think she is a novel idea for a Youkai but as a character I think she is definitely the most forgettable of those added in 9.

 

[Spongelash]

Alright so I played through Medicine's route in PoFV for the first time and I've warmed up on her a little bit.

I liked how ZUN played around with the idea of her being created alone in that field and staying there for so long in that she needs to learn basic stuff like how to interact with people in order to make friends. Using the doll part of her not just for immunity to poison but also for the idea of an object having to learn to be human is pretty interesting to me.

I also like that the people she tries to become friendly with is Erin (and therefore Reisen). The pairing makes sense given what both characters work with.

Also the goal of doll emancipation is a funny one. I didn't really get the sense of that in the other routes when you fight her, though it seems she only gets the idea when she gets brave enough to leave her little field.

So yeah, as an opponent she seemed very one-note compared to the other PoFV first-appearance characters, but playing her route I understand how someone could have a unique appreciation for her.

 

[SateriCat17]

Alright so I played through Medicine's route in PoFV for the first time and I've warmed up on her a little bit.

I liked how ZUN played around with the idea of her being created alone in that field and staying there for so long in that she needs to learn basic stuff like how to interact with people in order to make friends. Using the doll part of her not just for immunity to poison but also for the idea of an object having to learn to be human is pretty interesting to me.

I also like that the people she tries to become friendly with is Erin (and therefore Reisen). The pairing makes sense given what both characters work with.

Also the goal of doll emancipation is a funny one. I didn't really get the sense of that in the other routes when you fight her, though it seems she only gets the idea when she gets brave enough to leave her little field.

So yeah, as an opponent she seemed very one-note compared to the other PoFV first-appearance characters, but playing her route I understand how someone could have a unique appreciation for her.

Those are among the very reasons she became one of my favorite Touhou characters after playing through her route.

 

[YourGamingChair]

I thought she looked like a character who would be at least semi-popular when I first saw her, but since then I've only seen her in PoFV and Blooming Soul. It's a shame too because I think she has a really nice design and her poison could have been cool in some of the games. I only went through PoFV with Youmu, so I'm not sure how much could be done with her character, since I still have to play her story.

 

[SateriCat17]

I thought she looked like a character who would be at least semi-popular when I first saw her, but since then I've only seen her in PoFV and Blooming Soul. It's a shame too because I think she has a really nice design and her poison could have been cool in some of the games. I only went through PoFV with Youmu, so I'm not sure how much could be done with her character, since I still have to play her story.

She truly does seem like an underrated character. In many ways, she has a lot of potential, but alas, she has been forgotten by just about everyone...
I also feel much the same about that with Letty. She's another character I feel to be very underrated.

 

[MonkeGaming67]

you'd figure that Medicine would have a positive opinion of Alice given how Alice likes playing with dolls and Medicine is a doll but apparently she fights for "doll independence" so they probably don't get along. Surprised that she barely interacts with other characters, as she's only interacted with Alice in chapter 9 of SSiB and Eirin if you don't include Eiki, Reimu, and Marisa.

 

[SateriCat17]

you'd figure that Medicine would have a positive opinion of Alice given how Alice likes playing with dolls and Medicine is a doll but apparently she fights for "doll independence" so they probably don't get along. Surprised that she barely interacts with other characters, as she's only interacted with Alice in chapter 9 of SSiB and Eirin if you don't include Eiki, Reimu, and Marisa.

I mean, for Medicine only interacting with a few characters, in-universe, it's probably because she's "selective" in whom she interacts with, but out of universe, it's probably just because ZUN has forgotten to include her in anything else. -_-
But anyway, in regards to both Medicine and Alice, it's possible they have a lot friendlier of a relationship than we'd expect. Of course, I would assume that even if this is the case, Medicine would most likely have a resentment of Alice to some extent or another.
Regardless, we also have no idea if Medicine is even still trying for "doll independence". As she seems to have decided on it on a whim in PoFV, it's possible she quit pursuing it sometime after PoFV.

 

[MonkeGaming67]

I mean, for Medicine only interacting with a few characters, in-universe, it's probably because she's "selective" in whom she interacts with, but out of universe, it's probably just because ZUN has forgotten to include her in anything else. -_-
But anyway, in regards to both Medicine and Alice, it's possible they have a lot friendlier of a relationship than we'd expect. Of course, I would assume that even if this is the case, Medicine would most likely have a resentment of Alice to some extent or another.
Regardless, we also have no idea if Medicine is even still trying for "doll independence". As she seems to have decided on it on a whim in PoFV, it's possible she quit pursuing it sometime after PoFV.

That requires ZUN to do more worldbuilding than having Toyohime show up randomly and the antagonists mellowing out after getting beat up