Causing destruction just to get herself punished, the best motive for villainy ever
My first proposal in all the moral scaling wiki, thanks RubyDoesStuff for giving me the whitelist. Now I'm planning to add some more Touhou Project character to this wiki, so here we go!
What's the Work?
Touhou Project is a Shoot 'em up video game series developed by Team Shanghai Alice, as well as its spinoff manga and book series. The series is about Gensokyo, a remote place filled with youkais, who often cause various incidents that disrupt the balance. The heroines Reimu Hakurei, a shrine maiden responsible for keeping the barrier, and Marisa Kirisame, a human magician who the best friend/arch-rival of Reimu, are tasked with resolving every incident and defeating the youkais behind them.
The game Tenshi debuts in is the 10.5th installment Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, a fighting game collaborated with Team Shanghai Alice and Twilight Frontier. It focus on unusual weather is occuring across Gensokyo, with our heroines go out to investigate it and find the cause of the incident.
Who is She? What makes Her Heinous?
Tenshi Hinanawi is the main antagonist of Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. She is a celestial in Hinanawi clan, who lived in a spoiled life filled with singing, drinking and dancing. But dispite how extravagant her life is are, Tenshi dismisses all them as useless craps and thinks her life "boring". After seeing observing the how Reimu and other Incident resolvers "playing" with all kinds of different youkai, she decides "I want to play incident resolution too." So, she took Sword of Hisou, a celestial-only weapon to cause destruction to ease her boredom.
First, she used that sword to slay lots of phantoms (a race of sentient undead) in order to collect scarlet mist from them, then used the scarlet mist's power to invoke disasters around Gensokyo. She summoned untimely rain and hail fall in the Forest of Magic, enveloped Scarlet Devil Mansion with a a cloudy haze, and invoked earthquake that destroyed the Hakurei Shrine. Then she attempts to cause a greater earthquake, which forces Iku Nagae, a messenger from the Dragon Palace to go Gensokyo to warn everyone that an greater earthquake would happen. When the heroines confronts her, she proudly admits she is the culprit of these disasters, explains that the motive of all this is because she finds the life in the heaven "boring" and wants to cause incident to have fun. She then shows off her ability to cause earthquakes, threatens the heroines to fight her or otherwise she would continuing causing more earthquakes to destroy the entire Gensokyo.
After she is defeated by the heroines, she is ordered by Reimu to help rebuild the shrine. However she builds a keystone into the shrine so that she can make it the shrine her own clan and let her live in it. This is found out by Yukari Yakumo and makes her angry, she fights Tenshi near the shrine and the battle destroys the shrine again. Tenshi has to rebuild a second time, and when the shrine is finally rebuilt, she holds a groundbreaking ceremony in Heaven, inviting the heroines to have a feast with her.
This is not actual redemption however as she is ordered by the heroines to rebuild the shrine instead of having actual remorse in it. She still holds her childish and arrogant behavior, would still do whatever she wants to ease her boredom. In Antinomy of Common Flowers, she steals and eats an elixir in the banquet of heaven which causes her to temporarily exiled from heaven.
Heinous Standards?
There are many youkais who cause different incidents in Gensokyo, let's start to compare with the IH approved ones:
- Utsuho Reiuji, who attempts to incinerate Gensokyo with nuclear power and take over it by force.
- Junko and Hecatia Lapislazuli, who plunges a war against Lunar Capital and tries to destroy it by poisoning it with fairies' impurities.
For those who are not approved as Inconsistently Heinous, we have:
- Remilia Scarlet, who tries to dominate Gensokyo into a place for vampires and releases a red mist that block the sun.
- Yuyuko Saigyouji, who turns the entire Gensokyo into winter by gathering the spring essence, and tries to use the spring essence to make Saigyou Ayakashi bloom which would unleash a great evil in Gensokyo.
- Kaguya Houraisan and Eirin Yagokoro, who replaces the moon in Gensokyo into fake moon to avoid the hunt from Lunar Capital.
- Kanako Yasaka, who tries to take over Hakurei Shrine to acquire faith for her own, and bestows power to Utsuho Reiuji which unintentionally caused Utsuho Reiuji's deeds.
- Seija Kijin and Shinmyoumaru Sukuna, who uses the Miracle Mallet to make the youkais in Gensokyo to go violent and attack people with the intention to screw over the entire society and make it a place where the weak dominates the strong.
- Okina Matara, who caused the seasons in Gensokyo to completely out of whack that causes the youkais to go violent, and drains the life energy of fairies in Gensokyo that turns them into crystals.
- Yachie Kicchou and Saki Kurokuma, who causes the beast spirits prey upon the humans in the Animal Realm and leads the beast spirits to invade Gensokyo.
- Mizuchi Miyadeguchi, who possess on many residents in Gensokyo and drain their power, causing great pain in her victims and has lots of personal villainy to the Reimu.
However, Tenshi manages to be much more destructive than majority of them for a high kill count and massive scale of destruction and public endangerment.
| “ | Youmu: Recently, the number of phantoms has been decreasing. Yuyuko: So, we'll increase the number, then? Slice, slice. Youmu: No, no, the problem does not lie with the decreasing number itself. Somehow, one by one, those who died are not even achieving nirvana. It seems that they have simply vanished. |
„ |
| ~ Youmu's Scenerio |
First, she used the Sword of Hisou to slay lots of phantoms one by one. This act cause the significant decrease of number of Phantoms in Gensokyo, which is noticed by many characters like Youmu and Komachi. Although phantoms are not humans, they are still sentient beings just like other youkais in Gensokyo, they like to party, eat, behave cryptically, continue doing the same activities the ones that are dead spirits enjoyed in life. According to Perfect Memento in Strict Sense/Phantom, "Phantoms that prefer noisy places gather in noisy places, ones that prefer gloomy places gather in gloomy places, and there are even those that prefer hot springs." And there are also named Phantom characters in Touhou such as Minamitsu Murasa, a phantom of a girl died due to ship shipwreck, which caused her to go vengeful and cause water-related accidents until she is redeemed by Byakuren Hijiri and became her devout follower. The phantoms can still talk and interact with others like humans are, with several of them can do heroic deeds. Therefore her killing phantoms are certainly a crime of mass murder.
| “ | Summon the earthquakes. Those who notice that I am the origin of the earthquakes would do well to come here. At first, I tried summoning a little quake at the shrine. I thought that would bring me the shrine maiden for sure... but anyone will do. I just needed a waste of time. Now, wherever and however should I summon the next quake? I am not certain, but it should be fine however it turns out. We're floating out in the skies anyway. | „ |
| ~ Tenshi in Alice's scenerio |
What's more, she also invoked earthquakes around Gensokyo, which destroyed the Hakurei Shrine which caused Reimu to go out and investigate it. After that, she attempts to start a bigger apocalyptic earthquake, according to Iku Nagae's warning to the heroines, "Gensokyo's going to wake up soon. Then, an apocalyptic earthquake shall tear Gensokyo asunder." When the heroines confront her, she threatens the heroines that if they don't defeat her, the entire Gensokyo would be destroyed.
What Makes Her Inconsistent?
Just like most Touhou characters, she is not truly evil. She is just a spoiled brat who wants to cause trouble because she feels boring, but she is actually very affable and doesn't have malice towards everyone. After Reimu defeats her, she agreed to help Reimu repair the destroyed shrine and calls her fellow celestials to aid it. And in the ending of the groundbreaking ceremony, she starts a feast in the Bhavaagra with a giant catfish and invites everyone to eat and drink with her.
She is also On & Off as she has done some heroic deeds. In Antinomy of Common Flowers, she helps Shion Yorigami (a poverty god whose curse brings misforturne to herself and everyone around her, thus lives a miserable life and is constantly abused by her younger sister Joon Yorigami) with her supernatural luck as a celestial helps Shion break free of her curse of misfortune, making her live a better life and develops a genuine friendship with her. In Wild and Horned Hermit, she gives instruction to Reimu that helps her defeat Kasen Ibaraki's right arm and seal it.
Last but not least, due to how childish and arrogant she is, she has a number of comedic moments, with her extremely petty motive of causing earthquake just because she feels boring played for laughs to some extent.
Final Verdict?
I'm gonna give an average yes, but I'll let you decide.