Day 36: Kurumi

[Juuni]

Vampire girl who has Rumia vibes 

Day 36: Kurumi

Kurumi is another PC98 character that has nothing special. I only really like her for her design, which reminds me of Rumia. In fact, she fills the same kind of role as her, being a reminder that youkai do kill people. I also have used her in tpdp a decent amount, so I’m a bit partial to her. Overall, vampire girl with a nice design.

[Isaac]

Kurumi is my favourite PC-98 character! I just think she's pretty cute and I like her vampire design a lot. Kurumi day on the touhou calendar is also on my birthday ; )

[Eulogous]

To me, Kurumi represents a character that has a lot going for them in terms of possible stories to tell with, over being some significant player in Gensokyo politics. 

 

23 hours ago, Juunimeta said:

Kurumi is another PC98 character that has nothing special.

She's one of two gatekeepers (a first in this series), in which her "gate" is the Lake of Blood that gets drained. Kurumi and Elly inherently have a connection to Yuuka, who escaped PC-98 hell to become a minor character in Windows. I'd also say having another vampire outside of the two everyone knows about is a bonus.

I don't really care for the notion that a character needs to be intimately involved with the narrative of a Touhou game or print work to be interesting. This just leads to most fans making content centered around the same characters over and over, ignoring everything else on the table because any relatively unpopular minor character gets the reception of "Literally who?". It just takes some creativity and knowledge on what the character's traits are (you can get an idea on a PC-98 character's personality by reading how they talk and interact), and from there you start crafting a story. It doesn't have to be grand, it only has to matter to the character involved.

You can have a story where Kurumi, Elly, and Yuuka catch up on each other's lives and hang out, maybe a story where she interacts with the other vampires. Heck, you could even think so far outside the box and pair Kurumi with Rumia. They are both Youkai associated with darkness, vampires don't like sunlight, Rumia can cast a darkness bubble, and they both seem to be mischievous. It can make for a unique plot, where they are covering for each other's weakness during the day and bonding over antics.

[Juuni]

I really like that kinda thing for these more forgotten characters, and I totally get the fact of they could have something no matter what they currently have. However, I can’t find every single character to have more potential than other characters who are at least established. Now, there are characters that I feel can do a similar thing to what you describe, but I feel like it’s hard to see that with every single character. Kurumi specifically has more potential in my opinion, but I’d rather go and care about the newer characters who haven’t had the chance to shine, like megumu, Chimata, Keiki, and other similar characters, due to the fact they have something to build off of. But yeah, I’d be lying if I didn’t agree but feel this way on different characters, which would be Yumemi and Gengetsu lol.

[Eulogous]

19 minutes ago, Juunimeta said:

Kurumi specifically has more potential in my opinion, but I’d rather go and care about the newer characters who haven’t had the chance to shine, like megumu, Chimata, Keiki, and other similar characters, due to the fact they have something to build off of.

Oh, I definitely agree there, and I'm mostly speaking generally when it comes to minor characters. I even tried pitching a fangame about Mike, that got shot down because she isn't a character anyone I talked with was "attached to". I just feel like a lot of people get dismissive on anyone that isn't a main antagonist or driving force in their story, and I think PC-98 characters get it the absolute worst.

I've pretty much given up on waiting for official content doing anything interesting with TH16-18's cast. The last interesting thing done was having Sannyo's gambling business shown, and having a branch of it set up in Geidontei to prevent humans from wandering around the mountain to her den and likely causing trouble in Lotus Eaters. I have to turn to fan content and hope they even know who any of the newer characters even are.

I'll admit a lot of my grievances come from interacting with the fangame creation side of things.