The Let's Play Archive

Fantasy Maiden Wars E

by BlitzBlast

Part 74: Alice, Luna

Carrying on with the catchup session, today is all about a few of the new characters in Marisa's second mission.

Alice

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weak points and an intimate knowledge of magic itself.
She was apparently formerly a human, but became a magician after much training. She has not been a magician for very long, so she still has not discarded her human habits, and continues to sleep and eat like a normal human even though she no longer needs to.
Although she doesn't heavily buy into things that aren't advantageous to her, she is still generally kind. A famous entry in PMiSS details her providing shelter for humans lost in the Forest of Magic by letting them stay at her house.
The same entry also stated that she "never spoke, which was creepy", but after saving a person's life, calling the same person creepy just because they don't initiate conversation is rather extreme.
Her kindness isn't limited to the weak either. In IaMP after Sakuya came to the forest of Magic, Alice personally guided her out despite losing a battle to her. Although given that it was Alice who provoked the fight, it maybe a little difficult to classify that as a show of kindness...
With regards to Alice's dolls, according to the book BAiJR, Alice says that her goal is to create an autonomous doll, which tallies with the image of most puppeteers. Thus her dolls must all be controlled by Alice herself with
strings...Or at least, that is likely what everyone thinks.
However, the same article has Alice saying that "it's easy enough to make a doll that will do something if I command it to", so it seems possible that she uses magic to make her dolls move in a special, fixed pattern.
Furthermore, the strings that Alice use to control the dolls are magical strings, which implies that those strings are controlled using magic.
Exactly how that magic might work is not detailed anywhere, but Youmu has said that "Even if I cut the space between you and your dolls, the strings refuse to be cut", so it seems the strings are not physical. Though in the end, the image of Alice fitting all those strings around her fingers and controlling her dolls from there is too stylish to discard so easily.
She also appears in the final of the PC-98 games MS and battles against Reimu and co. It is from this situation that the fanon-created setting of her being Shinki's child was born.
In FMW, she appears near the beginning of the game, and takes her place in the group as one of its most intelligent members.
The setting of her living in Makai in the past and being Shinki's daughter has also been utilised and established
The start of the game takes place shortly after she moved from Makai to Gensokyo, and frequently sends letters to Shinki to let her know how she's doing.
How does mail go between Gensokyo and Makai? I dunno.
There is no special name given in Touhou Project for the technique of manipulating dolls, but for the purposes of presentation they are given the name "Soul String Puppetry" in this game.
"I wonder how many I can control at once"
So it seems that in this game they're going with the idea that Alice is literally Shinki's child, which is unusual. Either way like blitz said she's essentially Reimu 2, except her role is to stick with the pack. In Reimu's route there's not really any point in keeping her right next to marisa until the last third of the game, but there's not really much harm in it either. She's one of the best characters.

Luna Child

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she still goes along with the other two and enjoys playing pranks with them.
She is probably the least smart, falling over her own feet when nothing's around, and always gets the short end of the stick.
Her power allows her to make the sounds around her disappear.
Doing so allows her and her allies to converse normally even while they're supposed to be sneaking around, and she appears to be able to control the range of effect as well.
She is considered a bit peculiar among fairies, as she enjoys reading the Bunbunmaru Newspaper and likes the taste of coffee and Petasites Japonicus flower buds. Exactly how she gets the Bunbunmaru Newspaper to read is not clear. The three fairies do not hold money, so it is likely that she takes discarded copies to read.
Basking under the moonlight helps her recover from injuries faster, and she is generally more active at night. Yet, she wakes up the earliest amongst the three fairies...There are a lot of puzzles regarding their daily lives.
Perhaps her being a moonlight fairy means she needs less sleep than most living things.
In PMiSS, she is introduced with the line "Out of that red, white and blue trio of fairies, the white one is Luna Child". The line is a good indicator of what Akyu thinks of fairies.
In FMW, her clumsiness and so on is unabashedly emphasised.
"Well, excuse me"
One of the three fairies. They're all essentially huge shitlords who keep on popping up in this game. Nobody who counts likes these characters.