Th17/omake.txt/en

--- ○東方鬼形獣 (Touhou Kikeijuu: Oni-Shaped Beast) ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.

Afterword and Characters

Team Shanghai Alice Leader ZUN 2019/08/12 ---

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======================================================= ■1. Afterword

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Good day, I am ZUN. The rainy season this year ended late, huh. Thanks to that, I was able to develop the game while keeping cool. (It was so hot on the day of mastering that I felt like I was going to die)

It's just a general feel, but I think this game is quite easy. Easy might be the easiest it's been in the series. I'm pretty sure people who are familiar with these games can clear Normal in one go.

In the final adjustment, I added more extends, since I wanted more people to clear the game. I hope you guys go beyond Normal if you can.

The atmosphere, music, and story unfold very differently in the final stage, so I hope you can enjoy it along with the danmaku. By the way, Lunatic is the evilest difficulty. I no longer want to play it. Truly brutal.

The story this time is quite complicated, so you may not be able to see the whole picture if you just play as one character. To be fair, you may not be able to do so even if you clear them all. (lol)

You can view endings and the extra stage conversations any time you want. (You can do so in the achievement page) Even if you can't understand what they're saying in the game, you can just read them again.

Even so, maybe it would've been better if I gave the animal spirits names...... Well...... There might be people here who haven't played the game yet, so I'll leave it be. Perhaps I'll mention them in some other place some day.

ZUN(My son said he wanted to go to the zoo so I'd like to take him there)


 * Careful: Contains post-ending spoilers after this point**

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======================================================= ■2. Extra Story

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The animal spirits turned up in order to invade the Human Realm. In reality, the animal spirits' true objective was to bring humans to the Animal Realm under the pretext of preventing said invasion. Since they were able to deceive the humans into eliminating Keiki, the Animal Realm could once again return to being a world of chaos.

With that timing, the animal spirits once again entered and invaded the Human Realm from Hell. However this time they're serious. It seems that they've taking advantage of the mayhem in order to attempt to assert control over the Human Realm.

Although they were being manipulated, it was our protagonists who caused their own predicament! Now they have no choice but to put a stop to it themselves!

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======================================================= ■3．Character Settings

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◇Player Characters

Reimu Hakurei
 * Wonderful Shrine Maiden of Paradise

Species: Human Ability: Mainly capable of flying in the sky

The all-too-familiar shrine maiden of the Hakurei Shrine.

A horde of animal spirits came invading from Hell. One of the human-friendly animal spirits said it would lend her its power, and so she decided to venture into Hell. Of course she didn't swallow its whole story, but since it would be better than going alone, and she could always kill the spirit if things went south, she decided there would be no disadvantage for her by cooperating with the animal spirit.

Marisa Kirisame
 * Excruciatingly Ordinary Magician

Species: Human Ability: Capable of using magic

An ordinary magician living in Gensokyo. She has a mania for collecting things.

When animal spirits possess something, it brings out a powerful power. She thought that it would be an extremely great idea to invite one of these animal spirits to her. She wasn't terrified to go to Hell but instead is excited to see what secrets lie there.

Youmu Konpaku
 * Half-Human, Half-Phantom, Dual-Wielding Swordswoman

Species: Half-human and half-phantom Ability: Handling sword techniques

The gardener of the Netherworld. She can be a bit dense.

Hearing that animal spirits were gathering in Hell, she went to go see what happened. The greedy spirits are relying on bodies in order to devour other creatures. If this were to continue, the surface will become a Hellscape only the fittest to be able to survive. Just who is sending these animal spirits toward Hell, and for who? We'll have to go to Hell and what is happening.

◇Enemy Characters

Stillborn Idol of the Riverbed
 * Stage 1 Boss

Eika Ebisu 戎 瓔花

Species: Spirit of a Miscarried Child Ability: Good at stacking stones

An extremely skilled master of stacking stones. Thanks to her extreme skill in stacking stones, she’s something like a leader of the miscarried spirits in Children’s Limbo.

Changing the plain and pointless busywork into something fun and meaningful, she’s also a god of fortune who can’t simply get up even when she falls over. Clever and always cheerful, she holds new events like stone stacking contests one after another, making her the idol of Children’s Limbo.

She gets mad at the protagonists for spoiling the stone stacking contest, but in actuality this was mostly the fault of the animal ghosts from Hell.

Parental Guardian of Ancient Fish
 * Stage 2 Boss

Urumi Ushizaki 牛崎 潤美

Species: Ushi-oni Ability: To increase the weight of nearby objects

A terrifying oni who drags living, flesh and blood creatures into the Sanzu River. Embracing a statue of a baby, she entrusts that baby to people, causing them to sink into the river as it gets heavier. A wonderful youkai who exploits the kindness of humans.

However, as it’s forbidden to attack humans from Gensokyo, she now runs a fishing business on the Sanzu River.

Anyone trying to cross the Sanzu River without the protection of a shinigami will be attacked by giant extinct fishes or pleisiosuars or the like. She’s tamed these giant fish and sometimes sells them in Gensokyo.

Sometimes other youkai make fun of her for toothless lifestyle, but she herself is proud of it. Sometimes she leads people who cross the river by mistake back to the living world.

The Clerk God of Hell’s Checkpoint
 * Stage 3 Boss

Kutaka Niwatari 庭渡 久侘歌

Species: God Ability: To Cure Throat Diseases

A watchman for the checkpoints of Hell, the Land of Oni, and similar Otherworlds. Her job is to sort humans and oni into their appropriate living places.

This time she heard from the Yama about humans who wanted to go to Hell, so she was worried how they’d fare in Hell and decided to test their skills.

While she works in Higan, that doesn’t mean she lives there. It seems she normally lives in places with excellent views, like atop the waterfall of Youkai Mountain.

Her true identity is the god of wild chickens, before they were domesticated, Niwatari-jin. While chickens are seen as frail and cowardly, she is a courteous and upstanding god who values impartiality and altruism.

Secretly, she thinks she’d be willing to do anything to raise the status of chickens, which have become merely food for humans.

Stage 4 Boss Matriarch of the Kiketsu Family

Yachie Kicchou 吉弔 八千慧

Species: Jidiao Ability: Capable of making people lose the will to fight back

The Animal Realm, the ultimate survival-of-the-fittest world. It's a world where the strong rule as they desire... or at least it was, until a few beasts that were just a little more clever and wily than others began to form organizations. By now, a select handful of gigantic organizations dominate the world.

Almost all of the animal spirits already have no chance of victory by themselves, and the only way to survive was to team up with one of these organizations and continue fighting as their slaves forever. Even as everyone continues to fight to exhaustion, an organization can never be stopped.

The Keiga Family is an organization of beast spirits with excellent leg strength, fangs, and strong bodies The Kiketsu Family is an organization of beast spirits that excel at surprise attacks from the ground, the water, darkness, and so on. The Gouyoku Alliance is an organization of beast spirits that fight from the air or with overwhelming numbers, from a bird's-eye point of view. There's also an unidentified organization of beast spirits who excel in cowardly methods of fighting, such as traps, poisons, parasitism, camouflage, and so on.

Within the Animal Realm, each of these enormous beast organizations competed for their share.

Meanwhile, there was one group of spirits that were complete slaves to all of these organizations. Creatures that were weak in power, but had extremely dexterous hands: homo sapiens. In other words, human spirits.

The beast organizations' ruling classes created a shelter for the humans, so that they could continue to be used as ever-capable slaves without going extinct. The shelter was called the Primate Spirit Garden. Only when they looked over the Primate Spirit Garden, filled with humans who had no means of resisting, did each of the organizations forget about their conflict. The Primate Spirit Garden was a peaceful recreational facility for everyone in the Animal Realm.

But that was also their big mistake. The human spirits were powerless on their own, but collecting them all in one place soon led to the creation of a catastrophically destructive organization.

The human spirits cursed their powerless selves, and began praying to a god. That god responded by giving the humans idols to worship.

The power of faith was revolutionary. With their newfound faith, the human spirits no longer feared the beast spirits at all. Since acting out of anything but selfishness was previously impossible in the Animal Realm, perhaps their newfound ability to act in the spirit of altruism had a large effect on them.

However, it was actually the idols, not the human spirits, that had the power. The human spirits intended to devote themselves to the divinity beyond the idols, but they actually came to worship the idols themselves. As a result, it was only natural that these idols began to dominate the humans. The idols took control of the Primate Spirit Garden, and the status of the human spirits plummeted to the bottom once again.

In being dominated by idols, the Primate Spirit Garden became the most awful, out-of-control organization of all.

The idols flew forth from the Primate Spirit Garden, and began to take over the Animal World. The idols had no flesh, soul or desire, and so the beasts were quite literally unable to lay a finger on them. At this rate, the Animal Realm would surely be ruled by the idols and fall into utter ruin.

But the beasts weren't simply sitting around and waiting to be dominated, either. The Kiketsu Family, which specialized in sneak attacks, brought things back from the brink by devising a strategy to overthrow the idols. Namely: "drag in a human from the surface, and destroy the Primate Spirit Garden with a human's own hands". Since the beasts were incapable of forming religions of their own, they would invoke a religious war by pitting the idols against a human whose faith was different from the Primate Spirit Garden's idolatry. A truly bold strategy.

Getting to the surface world from the Animal Realm wasn't an easy task. However, the Animal Realm and Hell are right next door to each other, and are relatively easy to navigate between.

Because Hell was currently going through a power struggle of its own, it was easy to travel through it to get to the Human Realm. The beast spirits went to the surface via Hell, and put on a show of pretending to invade it (though if they actually succeeded in dominating it, that wouldn't have been half bad either).

Yachie is the head of the Kiketsu Family, one of the four major organizations in the Animal Realm. She sent the beast spirits to the Human Realm in search of a human who could be of use.

She acts courteously towards everyone, but looks down on the vast majority of them. Nobody can resist her.

Stage 5 Boss Haniwa Lance Corporal

Mayumi Joutouguu 杖刀偶 磨弓

Species: Haniwa Ability: Capable of directly turning her loyalty into strength

The head of the Haniwa Army Corps made by Keiki. She's skilled in swordsmanship, archery, and equestrianism, and despite her old-fashioned technology, her pure combat prowess is extremely high.

It's been predicted that the workforce of human and animal spirits will be gradually replaced by the more efficient haniwa, because they can be immediately repaired after they've been destroyed, they can't get sick, and they don't need any rest.

Also, because none of the Animal Realm's residents have physical bodies, they quite literally couldn't lay a finger on any of the haniwa, who had physical forms of their own (even if said forms were just idols). Since spiritual attacks could only affect spiritual bodies, these attacks had almost no effect on the hollow idols.

They usually protected the Primate Spirit Garden, but since they promptly eliminated every potential enemy in the Animal Realm, the soldiers became useless dead weight. That was when a flesh-and-blood human who could destroy the idols arrived.

Stage 6 Boss The Sculptor God Crafted by Utter Isolation

Keiki Haniyasushin 埴安神 袿姫

Species: God Ability: Capable of creating idols

A god summoned by the human spirits of the Primate Spirit Garden to pull them back from the brink of disaster. She is capable of crafting elaborate idols. The idols she creates are excellent items that can gather faith, act as stand-ins, play with you, and decorate your home.

She took control of the Primate Spirit Garden, and extended her protection to the human spirits being treated horribly by the animal spirits. She believed that they could coexist with the animal spirits as well, if they could come to respect the human spirits.

However, she never thought that the likes of the animal spirits would come up with a plan to bring over a human from the surface to destroy her idols.

Tricking a human into participating in their strategy to wrest control from the human spirits... what a truly beastly act.

Stage EX Boss Matriarch of the Keiga Family

Saki Kurokoma 驪駒 早鬼

Species: Kurokoma Ability: Capable of having unmatched leg strength

The matriarch of the Keiga Family. When word spread through the Animal Realm that the previously-invincible Keiki of the Primate Spirit Garden had been defeated, she made her next move in a flash. She thought that with Keiki out of the picture, it'd only be a matter of time before the Animal Realm fell under her own control, so she went to inspect the Human Realm in advance-- and take control of it too, if at all possible.

As soon as she thinks to do something, she does it without a second's hesitation. Because she values her underlings' opinions and achievements, among other reasons, she's one of the more popular organization heads. (Though all the work she does is unbelievably dirty.)

She likes strong people, even if they're an enemy. She gets along terribly with both Kicchou and Keiki, but she does respect their strength.