Part 76: Akyu, Rumia, Black Kedama
Character update 4RAkyu
quote:
"Children of Miare" is a general term to refer to the people reincarnated from Are Hieda. The reincarnation occurs about every 100 years. Their duty is to compile the "Gensokyo Chronicles" using their power to remember anything that they see coupled with the inherited memories of their ancestors before them.
Though the memories related to the Gensokyo Chronicles that are inherited from ancestors tends to be incomplete. In reality, they use their power to remember anything they see as they peruse through the abundance of materials held by the Hieda family in order to update themselves on the latest information.
The lifespan of the "Children of Miare" is short, although the source material does not make it clear. Akyu did write herself that she is not likely to live beyond 30 years of age.
Furthermore, it takes several years for the preperations required for the reincarnation process to be completed, which gives them little time to live a normal human life. Moreover, after death, they work under the yama as they wait for a hundred years before returning to Gensokyo via reincarnation.
It is a very cruel fate, but Akyu practically never complains about it. She pays close attention to the ways of Gensokyo, calls the current Gensokyo a "happy place", and thinks the next era will be enjoyable. Seeing that viewpoint of hers would make anyone feel warm inside.
Akyu does write about the difficulties of her circumstances, stating that "The hardest thing about reincarnation has always been having all my interpersonal relationships reset".
However, the current era for Gensokyo has humans and youkai closer than ever, and Akyu has been able to be acquainted with more youkai, so the fear of isolation after reincarnation seems to have been lessened.
She has been aiming to change the atmosphere of the 9th edition of the "Gensokyo Chronicles" as well to reflect the change in the world. As such, we are given a glimpse of her lifestyle and her opinions throughout the book.
She seems to be friends with the girl from the flower shop that goes to Keine's elementary school, her favourite music comes from Yougakudan, and she likes rabbit stew and black tea.
Her acrimony towards fairies is famous. She introduces ways to perform "fairy-fishing" and reccommends punishing them as well.
Perhaps she fell prey to a particularly bad prank from a fairy before.
In FMW, she holds the position of an intellectual who regularly converses with Keine.
As she has vast knowledge and a deep understanding of Gensokyo, she tends to play the exposition role, although with her appearance as a child and her occasional lapses in behaviour...
She was heavily stricken by the scarlet mist incident, pranked by the three fairies, and when Reimu and the rest of the group left to do battle with Flandre, she was put in a difficult situation by being left alone with Yuuka, a feared youkai. She may be more experienced than one might expect.
"Now please read the Gensokyo Chronicles well, and may you have a wonderful and safe life in Gensokyo".
for a useless character. Quite 
though.
Rumia
quote:
blackness.
She takes things exceedingly at her own pace, and normally spends the whole day drifting about in the darkness.
When she hides herself in the darkness, her own vision is also adversely affected, but she does not care about that at all.
She seems to be one of the weaker class of youkai, but PMiSS constantly warns that the reader should instantly run away from an encounter with her, and she has many eyewitness reports from humans.
She might well be the archetypal youkai that humans need to be cautious of in their daily lives.
The same book also writes that it is impossible to have a successful conversation with her, but when Reimu and Marisa encountered her in EoSD, and when Aya interviewed her in BAiJR, she was able to answer questions normally, albeit a little strangely at times.
Perhaps the book means more than she has different morals and values from a human being and faithfully follows them, so it would be impossible to come to a mutual understanding.
By the way, she is depicted as disliking bad skin or split ends of hair, making her suprisingly fashion conscious.
She is a character full of mysteries; for example, the ribbon on her head is said to be an amulet that Rumia herself cannot tough, and she does not seem to be able to generate darkness on the night of a new moon. These traits mentioned in her profiles generally are not explained any further either.
The darkness she manipulates appears to be a "magic darkness" which torches and such are ineffective on. She also seems to generate darkness in the summer to avoid the summer heat, saying that "if I keep myself covered in darkness, it'll always be a summer's night".
However, since all she is doing is not letting the sunlight through, it would be more accurate to call it "a tree shade in summer" than "a summer's night", and the temperature difference between the two is significant enough to be suspicious about.
Perhaps the darkness that Rumia manipulates is not merely that, but also the power to manipulate "night".
In FMW, Rumia is the carefree cloud-cuckoolander.
After battling Reimu and co, they decided that she was essential to further danmaku battles, and half-forced her to come along.
Actually, in Touhou Project, characters who already know the player characters on their first appearance are basically non-existant. Rumia follows this trend in FMW amongst characters that appear.
Yet despite this environment, she ends up melding right into the main group somehow... The feelings of familiarity between them seem a bit forced.
Being the first boss of EoSD, she is usually positioned first amongst the roster of Touhou characters, Rumia and Marisa excepted. even in FMW, her portrait was the third one to be drawn, again after Reimu and Marisa.
"Is that so~"
That said, she's not really that good in FMW, due to the fact that she's fairly good at taking hits and her ability to self heal, I tend to use her in a tank role.
Black Kedama
quote:
Daiyousei and move slightly differently from normal kedama. Though the main change is the colour.
As the kedama that appear in Touhou Project are white, we decided that a differently coloured kedama should be considered a "sanbondo original" for now.
Since we figured that using the normal kedama for serious scenarios would destroy the atmosphere when they start talking, we decided to create a different type of kedama that would not speak.
In terms of stats, they are slightly tougher than normal kedama, but the difference is nothing major