/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I was thinking about something someone said on Danbooru the other day, about how Reimu's life is actually pretty awful (in fanon, anyway). I realized that, having read quite a few sad Touhou stories, pretty much no one focuses on Reimu. Some are about Marisa, some are about Patchouli, some are about Alice, some are about characters no one pays attention to but still have sad backstories like Medicine, but none are about Reimu.

Just think about it. Obviously the first thing that comes to your mind about Reimu (in fanon, anyway) is that she is poor. Really poor, too. She can hardly afford to eat. But there is more to it than just that. She's poor because her occupation is Hakurei shrine maiden, and she doesn't get any donations to her shrine. So she has no money. That is pretty much entirely exploited for jokes and laughs.

But just look at the actual canon. What is Reimu doing every single game? She is flying out of her shrine, dealing with all the various incidents that threaten Gensokyo. Pretty much every time she has to go against some incredibly powerful foes and bust her (yin-yang) balls getting them to settle down. Then she comes back to her shrine, exhausted and hungry, but unable to help either of those things because she doesn't have any food and her bed is probably a tattered, thirty year old mattress.

She goes out whenever some incident comes up, trying to protect the people that don't even care about her. I'm sure she probably wonders sometimes if it is even worth it.

She can't just stop, though. She can't just drop her gohei and say, "That's it! I'm done!" The people would stop ignoring her for long enough to yell and shout and beat her into protecting them again. Not only that, Yukari would have something to say to her too. It is probably an extremely depressing line of work.

I was thinking about something someone said on Danbooru the other day, about how Reimu's life is actually pretty awful (in fanon, anyway). I realized that, having read quite a few sad Touhou stories, pretty much no one focuses on Reimu. Some are about Marisa, some are about Patchouli, some are about Alice, some are about characters no one pays attention to but still have sad backstories like Medicine, but none are about Reimu.

Just think about it. Obviously the first thing that comes to your mind about Reimu (in fanon, anyway) is that she is poor. Really poor, too. She can hardly afford to eat. But there is more to it than just that. She's poor because her occupation is Hakurei shrine maiden, and she doesn't get any donations to her shrine. So she has no money. That is pretty much entirely exploited for jokes and laughs.

But just look at the actual canon. What is Reimu doing every single game? She is flying out of her shrine, dealing with all the various incidents that threaten Gensokyo. Pretty much every time she has to go against some incredibly powerful foes and bust her (yin-yang) balls getting them to settle down. Then she comes back to her shrine, exhausted and hungry, but unable to help either of those things because she doesn't have any food and her bed is probably a tattered, thirty year old mattress.

She goes out whenever some incident comes up, trying to protect the people that don't even care about her. I'm sure she probably wonders sometimes if it is even worth it.

She can't just stop, though. She can't just drop her gohei and say, "That's it! I'm done!" The people would stop ignoring her for long enough to yell and shout and beat her into protecting them again. Not only that, Yukari would have something to say to her too. It is probably an extremely depressing line of work.