#HifuuDay A look at Touhou's most intricate characters

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Warning!

This text contains heavy spoilers for all of the Hifuu Club’s stories, Sumireko’s and Yukari’s stories.
The following text began as an attempt to explain the themes that ZUN approaches in the Hifuu Club’s stories, but it ended up becoming an analysis of a bunch of different lore pieces glued together, with some theories sprinkled on top.
The text participates in the #HifuuDay , a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the first Hifuu story, Ghostly Field Club.

    “Dreams and reality are different. That's why it's possible to make dreams reality with great effort.”
    Changeability of Strange Dream.

 

Gensokyo's reason to exist:

It’s important that we refresh this now.
In Touhou’s world, people slowly, but surely stopped believing in the supernatural (myths, legends, gods, etc.). This made the Youkai enter an existential threat, as they require faith (that one believes something unexplainable exists) to continue living.

Yukari Yakumo and the Hakurei Clan decided to create a separate world to harbor all of the Earth’s Youkai, preventing their extinction. First by making this place, Gensokyo, be able to draw the supernatural to itself.
Gensokyo was later isolated from the world in 1885 A.D, due to humans loosing their faith in Youkai.

A very small amount of supernatural beings remained in the outside world, mainly Mamizou, Yukari, Kanako and Suwako. With the latter two moving into Gensokyo quite recently.

The world truly stopped believing, not even gods could survive with so little faith.

But a few people in the outside world noticed that those myths and legends were real. Either via a divine bloodline, like in Sanae Kochiya's case or in Sumireko Usami's, as she unexplicably manifested psychic powers.
She plays a crucial role here. Sumireko is the founder of the Hifuu Club, an organization dedicated to study the supernatural.
Once she figured out that all of the Youkai gathered in the magical land of Gensokyo (probably thanks to Yukari), she knew what to do. Revealing that Youkai are not a mere legend.

Unfortunately, things went south for her, as she got trapped in Gensokyo as revenge for messing around.
Seeing no other chance, she decided to attempt a suicide attack at the barrier. With the goal to unleash all the Youkai to the outside world.

Of course, Reimu stopped her. But this lead to unforeseen consequences for Sumireko.
Due to her abusing the ability to enter Gensokyo in her dreams, she switched places with her Dream World self, among other side effects in the disease known as Fantasy Syndrome.
The first time, she got the help of Yukari and Doremy to get out of truble, but the second time she switched places with her Doppelgänger for about three weeks.

During that event, before Sumireko could stop Dream Sumireko, as a way of surviving the onslaught of bullets found in her dreams, she managed to collected pictures of the danmaku of all the residents of the Dream World. Essentially creating evidence of Gensokyo.

She posted all of that to social media, gathering a pretty decent following. As you probably guessed, nobody believed in Sumireko and just saw her posts as something entertaining.
It probably didn’t help that the memories of the events of Violet Detector vanished from Sumireko’s mind.

In the end, the world didn’t believe in a quite powerful psychic with photographic evidence of Gensokyo.
What a helpful evidence...

    ”The true nature of Chuunibyou is the heat of life.
    It's an explosion of one's imaginative power.
    It's a form of resistance against a chilled society, wielding both purity and creativity.”
    Dateless Bar “Old Adam”.

 

A Broken Future:

Zun presents us with a world set in an undetermined future. In a subtle way, he tells us this future has philosophical problems that go straight to its core.

As we saw with Sumireko’s experience, people stopped believing in the supernatural, they stopped dreaming of achieving the impossible, children stopped having fun.
The neglected nature was emulated with fancy paintings in buildings and fake, over-enhanced landscapes locked away inside a screen. Moon travel was possible, but inaccessible to everyone.

Everything just had to have an explanation, and unexplainable but provable information was discarded as nonsense made by a bunch of lunatics.

This futuristic world is the one that Maribel Hearn and Renko Usami inhabit.
It’s very likely that Sumireko is an ancestor of Renko, due to all the similarities between them.

It’s also likely that Renko had the material at hand, just believing that her ancestor was pretty good at fabricating stuff (keep in mind, she studies physics, there’s only rational explanations in her mind). Only to get her assumptions broken into pieces by Maribel’s abilities, that shared some resemblance to her ancestor from long ago, Sumireko.

We can actually prove that Renko had access to Sumireko’s archive, what other explanation is there for the following?:
During Ghostly Field Club, Renko urged Maribel to help her search the boundary to enter The Netherworld. In this story, she had a notebook with some undisclosed photos. Including one of The Hakurei Shrine.

"How come you have a photo of the Netherworld?"
"I have a back and forth route you don't know about, Merry."

My partner took out a picture and started talking as usual.
"But never mind that, Merry, why don't we go see the entrance at the Hakurei Shrine?"

It’s almost always Renko the one that proposes new plans and activities for the club.

 

During all of the Hifuu Club’s stories, we clearly see that our mystic duo is troubled with the state of the world.
Only recently in “Dateless Bar Old Adam” did they feel more included in the world, as they found more people that think alike, after the publication of their book under the pen name of Dr. Latency became somewhat popular in Japan.
They had no other choice but to form the Hifuu Club, in order to be themselves, investigate the supernatural, and maybe with some luck bring the faith of the supernatural back to the world.

    “The real reason she was put in the sanatorium was probably because it was determined she had some kind of   
    psychological anomaly. Of course that wasn't the case, but society just isn't receptive to strange people.
    That's why Merry had to keep her ability secret, as some element of the occult.”
    Neo-traditionalism of Japan.

 

Maribel and Yukari's connections:

 

Again, we come back to Sumireko to find the keys for the next step in the story.

During the events of “Anitomy of Common Flowers”, Yukari helps out Sumireko in her first experience dealing with Dream Sumireko escaping to the real world, by forcefully dragging Sumireko into Gensokyo, forcing her escape from The Dream World and then to teleport her to the real world for a duel with Dream Sumireko.

This was quite an outreach on Yukari’s part, this intervention broke the rules of The Dream World as stated by Doremy. No actual consequence was explicitly shared, but Doremy is not the kind of character that gets easily pissed off and she did this time.

 

In “Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia”, Aya develops a theory that the only one who could have assisted Sumireko in traveling and descovering Gensokyo, had to be Yukari, with her theorized goal being doing a reset of Gensokyo with a select group of Youkai.
Even with the explanation of Sumireko using the urban legend of the Seven Wonders and the Occult Balls with the power of the Wonders, as a way of getting inside Gensokyo, how did she manage to enter Gensokyo without knowing anything about it or the Urban Legend incident in the first place?

We know that she didn’t use the conventional entry, as that is what Mamizou used to trick and trap Sumireko inside Gensokyo.

Aya is right, it’s pretty unlikely for a human to enter in such a particular way, and even stranger to see one that developed impressive powers without magic gadgets or a connection to the gods.

Why would Yukari bother in helping out a dangerous human with psychic powers from the outside world? We know that Ms. Yakumo is pretty lazy, as she delegates most tasks to Ran and Chen.
It’s pretty out of character for her to risk Gensokyo’s existence. Even more knowing that all of this ended up allowing the Lunarian invasion in “Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom” and her backstory with Lunarians.

All the times she or her shikigami have been playable, it was to prevent a bigger disaster from striking Gensokyo.

But thinking that Maribel is somehow related to Yukari, if not Lady Yakumo herself, explains why Yukari bothered with helping Sumireko in different occasions.

Zun gives us some small gems to work with.

1) Time of creation
We know that Yukari and Maribel were created around the same time. Perfect Cherry Blossom came out the 17th of August 2003, Ghostly Field Club came out the 30th of December 2003.

2) The relationship to Lafcadio Hearn:
He was a foreigner who traveled to Japan, who quickly renamed himself as Koizumi Yakumo. Lafcadio was extremely important, as he gathered and translated many of Japan’s folk stories into books for the world to enjoy (most Youkai come from his compilations).

3) Powers:
Both characters share a similar kind of power. Yukari’s power is like a more absolute version of Maribel’s.

4) Designs:
Their designs are nearly identical, their clothing is close in style. The biggest difference is that Maribel’s eyes are yellow, but Yukari’s are usually purple (opposite colors)

Now, the connecting point is not there, we just don’t know. The fact is that there is no grand, explicit evidence that connects these two characters.
There are a few theories that come to mind to explain possible paths to make the relationship between these two a real thing. Before focusing in the one that i have been building up to, let me explore the other scenarios.

1) No relation.
Knowing Zun, it's just likely that there is no direct relationship and it's just one more wasted plot point to add into Touhou's already large list.

2) Yukari is Maribel's ancestor
Another likely scenario and the one that makes most sense, is that Yukari is family of Maribel.
It was already stated that Maribel's family had supernatural powers, it's very likely that Yukari was a prodigy that ended up transforming into a Youkai and that Maribel is unknowingly following her footsteps at becoming a great magician and possibly a Youkai.

3) Maribel and Yukari are the same person

Get your tinfoil hats, it's theory time.

 

Is Maribel going to become Yukari?

 

As we go along reading the stories of the Hifuu Club, we start to notice something particular. Maribel’s powers start to get out of control.

At first, it’s just the ability to observe where the boundaries of reality are, but it would evolve to dreams were Maribel would appear inside Gensokyo. She started to question the nature of reality at this point, because some of the objects that appeared in her dreams started showing up in her real life.

Renko clearly noticed that something strange and potentially dangerous was happening, as Maribel just making objects appear out of nowhere breaks the laws of physics. She theorized that maybe her power evolved to manipulate boundaries. Could she get spirited away or eaten by a Youkai in her dreams?

In “Trojan Green Asteroid” we saw that Renko’s fears were right.
Maribel managed to bring Renko along to see the Torifune spacial station in outer space, probably thanks to a small Shinto shrine gate located in the station.

During their exploration, a strange winged cat managed to scratch Maribel. It was bad enough that she had to go to the hospital. They truly were inside Torifune.

After that, in Neo-traditionalism of Japan, we found out that Maribel was quarantined for months in a remote location in the mountains. The sickness was labeled as a form of delirium caused by an unknown virus.
She would come out alright, but Renko kept seeing that things were going strangely.

The latest development in Maribel’s powers is the ability to show images at will of strange places via a hand mirror.

“Come to think of it, recently it felt as if Merry's abilities were getting stronger. At first they had fun enough with just being able to catch a glimpse of strange new worlds, but now they were bringing things back from those worlds as if it were nothing.”
Neo-traditionalism of Japan

 

Unfortunately, it’s been 7 years since the last development in the Hifuu Club’s stories (outside the reference of Misumaru’s magatmas being made from Izangi Objects).
This leaves us at a really awkward spot, because we are expectant to see how the pen name of Dr. Latency evolved and if Maribel’s powers kept going in crazy directions.
Just at the turning point, because the next story should introduce new elements to keep the narrative fresh. I have no option but theorize.

My theory is that Maribel’s powers will keep getting out of control, eventually leading to her turning into a Youkai, Yukari Yakumo.

The main reason I think this will be the case is that it explains Yukari’s strange behavior regarding Sumireko.
I bet that Yukari is a time traveler.

Getting time into the matter is crucial, maybe Yukari is stuck in a “Back to the Future” situation, where story events need to progress in exactly a certain manner to allow for her creation.
Like how in the movie, Marty has to make sure that his parents will end up together after he uknowingly screws up the meeting that would make them fall in love.

If she didn’t help Sumireko in that way, it would risk breaking the timeline or deleting her existence (and therefore, Gensokyo).
If Sumireko truly is Renko’s ancestry, if something bad happened to her, Renko wouldn’t exist and that changes everything. Due to this, Yukari is forced to intervene.

Another scenario is that Maribel and Yukari are in a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation.
That Maribel turns into “Mr. Hyde” at probably random times and that’s when she does all the Yukari business.
This explains why Yukari is labeled as “lazy”, it’s not that she is lazy, but rather she has a limited time of action.

It could even work in the same way as Sumireko traveling to gensokyo in her dreams.
Once Maribel “wakes up”, Yukari has to banish from whatever thing she is doing and return to her real body. This would also make Yukari’s time traveling less powerful and more of a side effect.
Another possibility would be that Yukari “glitches out” and sometimes Maribel’s mind ends up in Yukari’s body (just like Sumireko with her Dream Doppelgänger) and those are the situations we see depicted in the Hifuu Club’s stories.

    “If you try tossing your faith in information aside, you just might be able to get more enjoyment out of the fanzine(?)
    that Renko and Merry wrote.”
    Dr. Latency’s Freak Report

 

Is Zun just drunk?

 

Maybe it’s all part of Zun’s plan in criticizing today’s day and age’s obsession with seeking an explanation in cryptic subjects. Playing with rhymes and poetry that alludes a meaning that doesn’t exist, or one that the individual must create on interpretation.

I think that Zun has something planned, but who knows at this point. Maybe it is done to inspire his followers in creating an explanation? Just like I just did, or was he just drunk?

The important thing, more than theorizing and scheming, are the messages found hidden away and reflecting upon them.
Is our world becoming more and more alike Maribel and Renko’s future world? Is that a good or a bad thing? Do people exist out there with mystical powers? How real are urban legends? What role does faith place in our lives? Is our scientific progress damaging us? Why do we hate and fear what’s different and unknown?

 

    “I'm not so worried about where the "Sealing Club" is headed, but...
    Yes, Merry and Renko, who was featured in the text and is part of the mysterious "Sealing Club" that participates in all sorts of occult activities. While I didn't go into great detail, has scientific
    progress prevented them from eating wild bamboo shoots? What a pity.”
   Changeability of Strange Dream.