Touhou 11 Incident

Quick Notes:

・ Readers unfamiliar with touhou may want to look around the touhou-wiki after reading.

・ Spells cast by players clear the screen of enemies, spells cast by bosses are difficult patterns of bullets.

・ The player’s gender is unknown but all the characters in touhou games are girls (except for one but no one sees him anymore)

<span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Once an unnamed player torrented a copy of Touhou Subterranean Animism, a PC game. The player had played other touhou danmaku shooter games and especially loved Perfect Cherry Blossom but still hadn't played anything past Phantasmagoria of Flower View. Touhou games were only sold in Japan so for the player, who lived in the U.K., it was impossible to get a copy of any touhou games. Therefore they torrented any they could find. Oddly only one other person had downloaded the torrent the player was getting.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The game started and nothing looked out of the ordinary with the start menu, there were the normal "Start", "Options", "Exit" and other choices and the "Practice Start" and "Extra Start" were still grayed, showing this was a fresh program with nothing unlocked yet. The player decided to play as Reimu A on Kappa (Normal) difficulty because she was the player’s favorite character, her A power was based on Yukari from Perfect Cherry Blossom and the player was wearing a red shirt at the time (Reimu’s main color).

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">As the game loaded the first stage, there was a short sentence of Japanese text but the player’s knowledge of what it meant was very limited. The program wasn't patched to be in English yet so the player didn’t pay much attention to the text. The first stage began, the background was a narrow tunnel with a light coming from the bottom. The player did well and had no problems up to the first stage boss. The boss was a rather husky woman with webs over her brown clothes, definitely spider based. Oddly the boss was more difficult than the player expected. A spider web would appear at times and when the player passed over it, they got stuck for a few seconds, leaving them vulnerable to attacks. Regardless, the player finished the first stage with only one life lost, cheering for themselves after a job well done and skipping the dialog of Reimu supposedly talking to herself (it happens in almost all the games).

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The second stage began loading with an odd text "Do you understand now?" showing. The text was in English unlike most of the in game text up to that point. Usually only the starting screen options were in English. The player went through the second stage shown as a wide open and slightly dimmed area. There was little challenge after the shock from the first boss. However, when the second boss appeared, the player lost all emotion just by the sight of her. A black aura was emitted from her that twisted the background. Her eyes glowed green and when she cast spells a spinning pentagram would appeared behind her. She had curly blond hair and had an odd Persian style dress. She acted very odd and her spells were like nothing the player had seen before. Only one specific spell terrified the player but they didn’t know the name as most of the dialog and names of spells were still in Japanese. It involved a cloud of green orbs chasing the player’s character and leaving a trail of orbs, crowding the screen and making it harder to escape. After struggling to beat this boss, the player was glad that this touhou game was based on challenge more than some games of the series were.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The third stage began with more text in English, "Are you here to play with me?”. The text made little sense and confused the player when they read it. The third stage background was a darkened town lit only by small lanterns. It was snowing slightly like it did in Perfect Cherry Blossom and was very calming to the player after the depressing background of stage 2. This stage was much harder and the boss seemed to be part of the stage. After the first encounter, the boss seemed to take no damage from the player’s attacks. The boss was an oni woman with long, blond hair and red eyes. She had a single horn on her head, wore a dark blue translucent skirt with red highlights and had chains on her arms and ankles. She had no weapon and was only holding a sake dish. Again, the dialog was only in Japanese and the player only ignored it. Even when it was officially the boss portion of the stage, she was difficult to dodge. The player lost all their lives but rather than use a continue, the player decided to get an English patch to hopefully better know how to win.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">When the player came back, the title screen was almost the same except Reimu was frowning sadly on the character select. In almost every game she smiled and the player was certain she was the first time they played. When the player talked to the first boss, she was in fear asking "Have you come to harm me again?" and was scratched up a lot but not bleeding. The boss battle seemed to have glitched because the boss made no attempt to attack and didn’t shoot a single bullet. All the boss did was move around the top of the screen avoiding the player’s attacks. The player thought little of it and just kept playing.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This time the text before stage 2 said "I think she deserved it, too". Perhaps the patch was poorly translated or an error was made while torrenting. On the second stage boss, the player realized Reimu wasn't talking to herself, all she said was "... ... ...". The only words that were visible were from an unknown person who later introduced herself and was labeled in dialog as "Rittle Lock". The dialog was odd and was seemingly asking for a response from Reimu, but all Reimu said was "... ... ...". The stage 2 boss's infamous spell name was revealed as " <span lang="JA" style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "MS Mincho"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: JA;">こいし <span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">'Green-Eyed Invisible Monster'". The first part seemed like another mistake in the patch seeing it was still in hiragana, while the second part was somewhat fitting but the boss wasn't invisible during the spell unless it meant someone else with green eyes.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The text before stage 3 this time said "Why won’t you speak?". At this moment, the player thought that the text was from "Rittle Lock" and wanted to speak with the player. The stage’s background village was now burning, and instead of snow it was ash falling from the sky. After getting to the boss with fewer problems than the first attempt, again Reimu said nothing and the dialog of Rittle Lock said "Hello?". The player put on a headset and spoke back, and a conversation began. Rittle Lock asked why the player hadn't responded before, the player claimed they didn't want to talk. This in some way made Rittle Lock sad and for the rest of the dialog she was very hostile towards the player’s requests to calm down. The Stage 3 boss interrupted believing the player to be crazy talking to no one. Reimu began speaking on her own and responding to the boss as she normally would in other touhou games. When the battle started, the player knew how to beat the boss this time and did much better, this time beating the oni boss with only 2 lives lost and one gained from past levels.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Stage 4 began loading and said "Don't go just yet". Now it wasn't perfectly clear if the messages were from Rittle Lock, last time the player spoke to her, she seemed upset and wanted nothing to do with the player. Stage 4 began with a bird’s eye view of a floor patterned with red and blue eyes, all appearing to stare directly at the player. A devilish sounding cat meow was heard, sending a shiver up the player’s spine. A black cat with a flaming silhouette and a spinning pentagram behind it flew onto the screen and began attacking. Unlike the Persian girl’s pentagram, the cat’s pentagram didn’t disappear when the cat wasn’t casting spells. The player just barely avoided the attacks and was reaching for their own spells very frequently just to stay alive. The cat kept meowing every 20 seconds, causing the player to shiver despite how warm the air was in their house. The player wanted to pause for a moment to calm their nerves but the Esc key wasn’t responding. Eventually the cat ran off and the stage boss came to talk with the player.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The boss was a young looking girl who wore a pink flowery skirt and blue shirt, her hair was short and purple like her eyes. She had an indifferent stare towards the player. The boss looked mostly human except for a red third eye hanging on tubes connected to many parts of her body. The boss spoke in a monotone voice to the player, "You must leave now". The name wasn't shown just yet but the player assumed this was Rittle Lock. Again Reimu said her blank, allowing the player to speak with the boss. The dialog went on for a minute, over which the girl seemed to answer questions the player was just about to ask but didn’t explain much of what was really going on. The boss then said, "Leave now and do not play again, she is tormented enough." The player questioned more but continued to get very little information. The girl demanded the player to stop immediately or she would be forced to fight. The player pleaded for the boss to let them through and even referred to them as Rittle Lock. The boss then said they didn't know anyone named Rittle Lock. "I am Satori Komeiji, Mistress of the Palace of the Earth Spirits".

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The fight began, Satori started with simple attacks with transparent red and blue orbs that would overlap and become purple, nothing special. When she casted her first spell, it was very familiar and was a little like her transparent orb attack but seemed inspired from something else. The next attack was made up of lasers that would aim where the player was. The next spell began as a stream of bullets from the right, causing the player to move to the empty left. The player felt like they had dodged this spell before and quickly went to the left believing to know what the next part of the spell was. Suddenly, a large cone of lasers swept over from the left making the waves of bullets to the right much safer and forcing the player to move faster through them than what would have been safer. The player recognized this spell as someone else’s; it was a spell from Perfect Cherry Blossom the player had remembered during the laser attack. Even the name was the same, it was Yuyuko's "Lost Soul's Village". As the battle went on, Satori cast harder and harder spells from previous games, each one reminding the player of more terrifying spells that came up later in the battle. The player knew how to beat most of the spells but was slowing down because of the shock. Even after Satori’s health was gone, she cast Mokou’s “Resurrection”, bringing it back. Satori even cast Green-Eyed Invisible Monster but with the kanji <span lang="JA" style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "MS Mincho"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">古明地 <span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> before the spell. Eventually, the player understood that Satori was reading their mind and recreating spells from their memory. The player then focused their thoughts to think only of easy bosses and their easiest spells. The bullet patterns were then very spread out and no challenge to dodge. When Satori mimicked the first boss's passive “glitched” movement, the player stopped, refusing to continue fighting. The player eventually won simply by waiting for the timer to end. The player had gained a life from the many spells despite dying a few times during the more difficult ones. The player felt that to be the final boss, but of course there were still two more stages before the game was over as in any touhou game. The pause button still didn't work and the player was still very curious as to what was going on with the game. Though the player felt they should stop now, they knew something evil was working in the game and felt they were the only one who could stop it.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Text appeared, "Suffer as I did". At this point the player had no clue who wants them to suffer. Rittle Lock had stopped talking during the in game dialog, and the only one who the player remembers suffering greatly was the first boss or maybe Satori. The player heard a breeze of wind in the headset and felt and equally chilling breeze against their skin. The background of stage 5 was a dark red, lifeless field with patches of fire dimly lighting small areas. There was no grass and no animals, moving or dead, could be seen. Black iron fences, gates and walls decorated the scenery. The player heard murmurs from white ghosts that flew by, many of which disturbed the player or caused anger. The ghosts were the only thing on the screen other than the background so the player decided to fire a stream of bullets at the ghosts. The bullets killed many of the ghosts, causing the player to hear screams of pain and panic. The stage had more ghosts further on, insulting and mocking the player more. But the voices weren't coming from the headset; they were coming straight from the players mind. The screams could be heard from both the headset and the players mind and were especially unnerving. Eventually the cat from the previous stage appeared again, meowing the same bone freezing sound. This time the cat had much more powerful attacks and was joined by morbid looking fairies who would cry blood from their black, empty eyes. The player was dreading the cat’s spells but could hear what were believed to be the cat's thoughts. The player dodged the later attacks perfectly based on the information they heard from the cat. By the end, dialog from Rittle Lock was seen, "Hurry to me". Reimu had no dialog, not even the blank for the player to speak. When the player shouted, it seemed unheard. The player didn’t even try to escape the game, they were so invested with how odd the game was acting, they wanted to reach the end and hopefully know what was going on.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The dreaded text appeared, saying “You shall receive eternal torture”. The background of the final stage was a violent scene of a fiery landscape with magma flowing over it. Burning bodies and corpses could be seen in the fires as more were delivered by horrible looking creatures that were half human and half animal, not like the normal animal people of touhou but were much more animalistic and frightening to look at. The name of the music for the stage didn’t disappear as it did on the other stages. The music was given the fitting name of “Hellfire Mantel”. Ravens swarmed the player in the game, luckily only taking one life. The cat’s meow was heard but when it jumped in, it instantly fell into a dark portal that was only there for a short instance. Reimu said her “… … …” but the player had nothing to say. A new mystery person with no name said “No need to thank me, honorable opponent”. The player was very confused but had no time to be distracted as the background became a starry void. A large raven flew in. It had a bright red reptile-like eye and a small luminous orb was orbiting around. The raven spoke in deep but still female voice saying “I finally found you“.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The dialog between the player and the raven didn’t give much explanation to the game. The raven only told the player that Satori Komeiji was a creature known as a satori, a Japanese mythological creature, and was the owner of the cat and the raven. The raven didn’t know anyone named Rittle Lock and had no knowledge of the other stages what the player had seen on their way except what she already knew of the satori and cat. The raven then finished the dialog with “Enough talk, my new master wants you to suffer”. The raven attacked with a blast of bright light and explosions, when spells were cast there was a warning in advance from what seemed to be an outside source. The player could feel the heat and hear the magnitude of the explosions and almost fell over in their chair. As the battle went on, the player began to sweat and was playing better than they had in any other game. On the final spell, the raven began to suck in the player’s character into what seemed to be a black hole, inside of which was the blackest darkness the player had ever seen, as if not even the computers screen in that area was giving off light. After finishing the final boss, the player got their lives back and the game seemed to end. The player was beginning to calm down, ignoring the ending scenes. When the player tried to get up from their chair, they couldn’t. “Leaving so soon?” text said. The player quickly pressed the Esc key with no results. Even as the player pressed Ctrl Alt Delete, they were helpless to stop the game and could only stare at the screen as the game loaded the extra stage.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Up to this point, the player had felt like a hero when playing, as if they could take on anything the game could throw at them and walk away at any time. Now, they were without a doubt scared sh*tless. Not only were they physically stuck in place, they still couldn’t pause or quit, but the game was meant to end after stage 6. The player was also only on normal, extra stages were often on par with Lunatic difficulty, the hardest in any game they were in. As the player’s character slowly scrolled up the stage, there were only ghosts crying and zombie fairies the player knew better than to shoot at, this time the sound was heard normally but was still just as nerve wrenching. After what seemed to be an eternity of soft and paralyzing background music, the boss appeared, “Welcome, now we can truly play”. The boss was a young girl like Satori but a few inches shorter and wearing a green skirt with a slightly flower design and yellowish-orange shirt with a black inside. She had a black sun hat and her hair was a grayed green. She was turned away from the player with her eyes were closed and she also had a third eye similar to Satori but colored blue and closed. Reimu said nothing, meaning the game was letting the player speak, “Why are you doing this?”. The extra stage boss answered, “You deserve to suffer, they all deserve to”. The player responded, “What have ‘they’ done?”. “They insulted my friendship, you insulted my companionship, and you all have insulted me in your thoughts. I know you have.” The player wondered what she meant, he didn’t remember saying anything hurtful to the boss, nor to the mysterious Rittle Lock. “I never said any insults to you. I didn’t even think anything harmful.” The girl hastily and angrily replied “I know what humans think. I’ve read their thoughts and saw only hatred and cruelty. I may have given that power up but I will never forget the hate I heard from their selfish minds”. “Who are you?” the player asked. The girl turned around opened her green eyes, her third eye didn’t open at all, and as her name appeared on screen, replied “My name is Koishi Komeiji, but I also like the name Rittle Lock.” Koishi’s sinister theme began, titled “Hartmann's Youkai Girl”.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">No matter how hard the player dodged, the player was losing badly. When the player was on their last life, Koishi shot an oddly colored life token that the player had no chance to avoid. From then on, whenever the player would have died again, the character would flash for half a second and the player felt scratches and stabbing pains on their skin. Koishi’s spells weren’t just meant to hit the player while playing the game, but more to torture them mentally as they tried to avoid them. Knives would ease in on the character causing the player to anticipate the pain but still try to resist while also dodging Koishi’s other bullets. At times, Koishi wasn’t even visible, but the player knew where she was from where the bullets were much larger and left no room to dodge. The player felt they would faint from the mental and physical stress but suddenly, the character disappeared and reappeared in another location. The player was then given the message “Supernatural Border”. The player was no longer feeling pain and didn’t seem to get damaged from Koishi’s bullets. The player won and Reimu’s “… … …” text appeared. The player asked “Who are you?” Text appeared and in a sweat voice the player read and heard “The one behind the spiriting-away. The border is mine.”