It's so difficult to explain the story to this one in a way that doesn't sound like some wild far-right conspiracy, but bear with me. Without getting into a lot of the folkloric specifics, Seija is a sort of demon and is naturally contrarian, opposed to whatever the nearest person thinks and whatever the current order of things is. Shinmyoumaru is a tiny little inchling who is basically peaceful, but being an inchling she's able to use the miracle mallet that grants wishes. Seija convinces her to try and reverse the oppression of the weak by the strong, and this is causing normally peaceful yokai to attack humans, tools to come to life, etc.
The thing that saves this, if anything does, is that the conflict has nothing to do with humanity. The playable girls only get involved because they're being affected as a byproduct. This makes me think of the in-universe purpose of the setting of Gensokyo, which is perservation. The protagonists are always inherently acting as defenders of that status quo. Change is accepted often, but only to find a new equilibrium. Despite that, a lot of the endings involve the player characters joining Seija's resistence, or considering it, or worrying that the others will join it. In a few, they become influenced by the tools they have that were given a will by the miracle mallet. The humans are basically depicted as entirely reactionary, in other words. They are preservers of the current order, but also live within it and are affected by it.
I don't wanna be any of the people who try to essentially project their politics onto ZUN because I don't know the man, but as always I find in the text here a deep fascination with the past and with myth and with the place humanity has as individuals within it. Maybe the whole thing is just owning me for the very act of trying to find a way to map human society as I understand it onto something that was designed without that in mind, knowing that I can twist it into any interpretation with only a little effort. After all, the very modern conservative interpretation is easy, but the game after this was a spinoff where literally everyone starts trying to arrest Seija by literally cheating, and I can write the anarchist interpretation of that in about five seconds it's so simple.
Anyway I love the characters and their theme songs but there are a bunch of annoying gimmicks like messing with your hitbox and shaking the screen so this isn't my favorite one of these. Still cool.
The thing that saves this, if anything does, is that the conflict has nothing to do with humanity. The playable girls only get involved because they're being affected as a byproduct. This makes me think of the in-universe purpose of the setting of Gensokyo, which is perservation. The protagonists are always inherently acting as defenders of that status quo. Change is accepted often, but only to find a new equilibrium. Despite that, a lot of the endings involve the player characters joining Seija's resistence, or considering it, or worrying that the others will join it. In a few, they become influenced by the tools they have that were given a will by the miracle mallet. The humans are basically depicted as entirely reactionary, in other words. They are preservers of the current order, but also live within it and are affected by it.
I don't wanna be any of the people who try to essentially project their politics onto ZUN because I don't know the man, but as always I find in the text here a deep fascination with the past and with myth and with the place humanity has as individuals within it. Maybe the whole thing is just owning me for the very act of trying to find a way to map human society as I understand it onto something that was designed without that in mind, knowing that I can twist it into any interpretation with only a little effort. After all, the very modern conservative interpretation is easy, but the game after this was a spinoff where literally everyone starts trying to arrest Seija by literally cheating, and I can write the anarchist interpretation of that in about five seconds it's so simple.
Anyway I love the characters and their theme songs but there are a bunch of annoying gimmicks like messing with your hitbox and shaking the screen so this isn't my favorite one of these. Still cool.
2 Comments
Ok it's like this: every folk tale monster is real. They all live in like one small place. I dunno how big but there's one single village there so not big. There are humans there only insofar as some of the monsters eat humans so you gotta have a food supply. Everyone involved in this situation is just kind of an asshole but like, not high key evil just a dickhead.
poyfuh
2 years ago