I’m here to announce the project we hinted at in the previous blog entry. I’m making my webcomic project, Touhou Mecha, into a DSD production!
See the new info page here.
Category: Story
Reimu
Miko Player 1. The pillar of Gensoukyo. Reimu’s fairly laid back for someone who has to deal with youkai on a regular basis, though the arrival of a new shrine and the constant threat of poverty have forced her to spend more time working.
Reimu and Marisa were friendly rivals back when Reimu needed a turtle to fly and Marisa had brown(red?) eyes. Only Rinnousuke has known Marisa longer then Reimu. They have a strong and enduring friendship…. Which is not exactly conductive for a relationship.
Still with a bit of trickery and effort, you should be able to convince Reimu to take another look at you. And with so many years of being friends, Marisa and Reimu know each other very well. Unfortunately, by becoming a youkai you may put Reimu in a sticky situation. And you don’t want to force Reimu to choose between her love life and her shrine duties.
Of course even if you don’t choose to pursue Reimu, becoming a youkai is going to change your friendship. Just as events have caused Marisa to start worrying about death, your actions may cause Reimu to start thinking about her long term duties to both the shrine and Gensoukyo. Especially with Sanae dropping by as an example of a miko whose shrine is doing well. Your actions will decide how this long time friendship evolves… or ends.
Flandre!
Since 2002, Flandre Scarlet, everyone’s favorite psychotic vampire, has been terrorizing Gensokyo with her ability to destroy anything, and filling the internet with her theme song, “U.N. Owen was Her?” For a lot of people, Flandre is the first encounter they have with Touhou, and she’s a rather memorable one at that.
Of course, Flandre doesn’t MEAN to terrorize everyone, she’s just a little kid at heart who got handed a very, very dangerous toy, and has her view on the world kind of warped as a result. Of course, at the same time, Flandre is several hundred years old, and she has a very odd mixture of both childishness and maturity. She certainly is more knowledgable than the average kid. She’s as energetic as the role requires, of course, and one of our more expressive characters–especially compared to such characters as Patchouli.
That isn’t to say that Flandre’s path isn’t dangerous. To be blunt…you asked for it. This is easily one of the harder paths, and the most fraught with danger. And Flandre might even have a few surprises up her sleeve, like an alternate form of immortality. Of course, for those of you less interested, or perhaps more intimidated, we’ve included the option of bailing out of the path entirely.
Of course, for those brave of heart, the road ahead is hard, but with some very cautious teaching, and maybe some psychological help from the other residents of Gensokyo, one day, Flandre may be a productive member of society. Well, as much as that means in Gensokyo. And of course, perhaps with some help from Marisa’s friends, there might be room for something beyond pure friendship with Flandre.
Patchouli
And with Graph having granted us another wonderful set of screen shots, I figure it would be a good time to talk about our Patchouli. The head of the Scarlet Devil Mansion’s library is quite possibly one of the learned magicians in the Touhou series, making her the best person to speak to in order to accomplish magical research. She’s also the true owner of several of the books in Marisa’s home, so she has a tiny grudge against our heroine.
For Patchouli we tried to aim for her personality in EoSD. Not the most social of people, but still able to enjoy a joke. Assuming you understood her humor of course. She’ll be a little less asthmatic then she was in her first appearance, but don’t expect her to run marathons either.
Patchouli’s unique among the main characters in that she’s definitively older then Marisa, in both physical and mental age. In addition, those considering Patchouli’s path will quickly find that they have a rival for her affections. Still with charm, perseverance, and possibly the return of stolen items, you could win her heart. Or at least become known as something other then “that black white rat.”
Alice
Hi, I’m one of the writers, Wererat42. Sorry for the late introduction.
We’ve already talked a bit about our plans concerning Marisa and how we intend to characterize her, but the name of the game is Eastern Starlight Romance, so why don’t we talk a little bit about the heroines of the game? One of the most recognizable pairings in Touhou would have to be MariAli, so I’ll start with Marisa’s neighbor in the Forest, Alice Margatroid.
The interpretations of Alice’s personality and background are varied, so we’ve been taking a relatively balanced approach. Don’t expect to see the stuttering, lovesick Alice that pervades most of the fandom or the cold, calculating Alice at the opposite end of the spectrum . We’re aiming towards making her a stronger, less two-dimensional character, rather than just slapping on a label like ‘tsundere’ and being done with it.
Like Reimu, Marisa has known Alice for a while now and they have worked well together in the past, the most recent example being the episode of Subterranean Animism. While they do have their differences, they get along relatively well. So while you can expect plenty of bickering and the occasional duel (usually Marisa’s fault), you won’t have to worry much about Alice turning into a yandere psychopath and try to murder Marisa without warning. Unless you do something incredibly stupid.
Always look on the brighter side of life…
This posts going to be a little short to keep attention where it should be, specifically on Graph’s screenshots. For those wondering, yes Marisa is reading the original Dracula to Flandre, and no she had no idea what she was getting into when she started it. Hilarity is sure to ensue, and by hilarity I mean a big mess. In fact the aftermath of this is the first time you can get yourself painted over the walls, though hardly the last.
That’s right, it’s entirely possible that your guidance of Marisa will lead to a time paradox and rather bloody game over. Our Gensoukyo is a generally nice place, but you’re still dealing with very powerful people. If you manage to screw them over badly they might just get angry enough to explode you, seal you, shove your soul into a doll, turn you inside out, or turn off your lungs. And, well, romantic entanglements can be messy.
Still, we aren’t going to kill you for taking the wrong entrance to the Shrine, or for not wiping the blood off your shirt (well aside from that path). And there’s a powerful ally who can give you hints as to what to do and not to do. Should you choose to spend time with her of course.
Of Fanservice, Bikinis, and Birthday Suits
So.
Visual Novels. Lots of them have sexual content. Not all, but lots. So when we began this project, we had to decide…
“How explicit should our work be?”
Well, frankly, the general conclusion was that none of us felt confident or comfortable writing in an explicit environment. Some of us didn’t think we had the skill to do it properly, and others just didn’t like the idea in general.
Of course “not explicitly H” covers a whole lot of ground. We also had to decide how much fanservice we were going to put into the art, and how much we were going to insinuate was going on off screen.
Art wise we’re going to stay within the boundaries of safe. However that doesn’t mean there won’t be fanservice. The girls will be visiting the hot springs that popped up, and there are a few other interesting events that we have planned that will allow the girls to change outfits.
Writing wise… we haven’t fully decided yet. However, sex is part of relationships, and even if Marisa’s relationship might be too young to get into those matters there are other couples in Gensoukyo as well. So while nothing may happen on screen, there may be a good deal implied, or occasionally outright stated.
So…what does all this mean for you, the audience? If you enjoy swimsuit pics and a dose of innuendo there’ll be something here for you. But if you don’t care about those things don’t worry, we aren’t going to twist the story in odd shapes just to put those scenes in. So, all in all, expect a lot of good fun, of all shapes and kinds.
Marisa
Marisa, as the heroine, gets a lot of time. Admittedly she doesn’t get that much art time since we’re using Marisa’s point of view (most of the time) but in terms of screen time she’s almost always there. Thus we’ve taken a fair amount of time to try to develop Marisa herself.
The first thing we tried to make sure of was that Marisa wouldn’t just be a generic protagonist. She’d have her own personality quirks, character flaws and strengths, just as she does in the original games. Of course this is a visual novel as well, so we have to give the player a fair amount of choices too. Fortunately Marisa’s complex enough to have many different ways of approaching a situation, all depending on her mood (and the players whims). Still there are going to be some times where Marisa does something brilliant or stupid (or both) that will be out of the players hands. You didn’t expect the black white witch to not steal control at some point did you?
Of course uncontrolled theft isn’t the only thing Marisa will be bringing as a character. Marisa’s quest for immortality is a large chunk of the game, and we spent a good deal of time working out the reasons for that and filling out the rest of her character. In the process we created a whole lot of story for Marisa herself. In fact Marisa will be the character the player learns the most about as they guide her through her quest to become a true magician.
Characters
One of the great things about Touhou is the massive diversity in it’s cast. This is a constant source of inspiration both to us and to hundreds of other fans who create Touhou fiction, art and games. If I could I’d give every single character ever a cameo somewhere (note: include magic stone reference) and have a lot more speaking roles.
Unfortunately brutal reality forces us to concentrate on a smaller subset of that character base. Not only do we need consistent characters for the story itself, but our artist quite frankly doesn’t have the three years it would take to make decent pose sets for every character that we’d like to put in. So in a very painful process we cut down our character roster.
Still our current character set is around 30 characters, not counting cameos. We tried to spread things out as much as we could among the windows cast (though the SDM makes that difficult…) and we made sure to keep a few cameos for those who love PC-98. So there will be plenty of the odd interactions that are so much fun for us as writers and hopefully for our fellow fans.
We’ll be keeping some (okay a lot) of our cards in our hand, but in addition to our heroine and the lovely leads (Alice, Patchouli, Reimu and Flandre) we’ll be including:
Sanae
Nitori
Koakuma
Youmu
Mystia
Sakuya
Rinnosuke
Koishi
Suika
This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but there should be some mystery. I can say that I’ve now given out the name of our hidden romantic interest though. What can I say. I’m always bad about dropping hints…
The Plot
Of course our VN has a large amount of space devoted to having Marisa and whichever love interest you pick get to know each other and start a long term relationship. But there’s a lot more to this story then just Marisa falling in love.
Most importantly is Marisa’s attempts to become immortal (thus the subtitle Eternal Dilemma) and the complications around it. That will have a big impact on her relationships with the other residents of Gensoukyo, and on Marisa as well. Transforming yourself into a youkai is a big deal, as is deciding to live your days out as a human, and either of those choices will affect you status as a friend or partner with the other girls. (And then there’s the hidden desperation option….)
In addition because Gensoukyo is such a small place, there’s a lot of other things going on as well. No matter which girl Marisa falls for there’s going to be friendships to maintain, overeager suitors to dissuade, and of course things to steal incidents to resolve. We’ve done our best to try to keep things lively at all times.