Hard to say. We can see that Marisa is happy and the outcome went well but on the other hand, Reimu's living with the fact that she forced this upon her friend in addition to the scorn. Most likely Alice and Patchouli, while grateful for Marisa's life, also scorn Reimu for the same reasons when Marisa isn't looking.
I agree with a previous comment, that a person who throws away their life has no right to decide what to do with it. But at the same time, deciding another person's life for them is debatable. Marisa may have agreed that this may have been the only way but that mostly meant that she resigned herself to it, it didn't necessarily mean she chose to accept it. Or something like that.
Everyday, Reimu will be looking at Marisa's smile with the knowledge that it was a happiness forced upon her. Happiness is never really a bad thing but it came about from a decision beyond what the authority of a person should have. Who knows. Maybe Reimu thinks of herself now as a worse thief than Marisa could ever be. A good outcome from a controversial means.
Bittersweet I guess as Raigeki said before part 2.
Certainly, and spending these past couple of days monitoring this work for updates has been fun. A big thank you to palesse for uploading and translating these of course as well as anyone else who's helped out.
One wonders if this outcome might've came about if Reimu & Co. had chosen to try to support Marisa until she came out of her depression, rather than turning to Yukari for an ethically questionable cure-all for it.
Reimu took all the scorn, pain, hatred and blame onto herself. She will live with it for the rest of her life. If she dies alone because of it, she'll accept it, because she was at fault. She will never forgive herself. But she only wanted to sav her very important friend.
Maybe Alice's, Patchouli's and Yukari' anger (if Alice and Patchouli are angry at her) will lessen after some time. Maybe it'll disappear. I hope it will happen before Reimu's time to go comes.
JimmyJimJimbo said: Reimu took all the scorn, pain, hatred and blame onto herself. She will live with it for the rest of her life. If she dies alone because of it, she'll accept it, because she was at fault. She will never forgive herself. But she only wanted to sav her very important friend.
Maybe Alice's, Patchouli's and Yukari' anger (if Alice and Patchouli are angry at her) will lessen after some time. Maybe it'll disappear. I hope it will happen before Reimu's time to go comes.
Because now that Marisa's become a magician, she'll have a much longer life than Reimu.
Nice doujin. It was really hard decision for Reimu. I wouldn't want to be in her place.
JimmyJimJimbo said: Maybe Alice's, Patchouli's and Yukari' anger (if Alice and Patchouli are angry at her) will lessen after some time. Maybe it'll disappear. I hope it will happen before Reimu's time to go comes.
Let's just hope Reimu doesn't piss off anyone one day enough to tell Marisa. If anyone could go so low as to do that anyways. It's hard to predict how the truth would affect this Marisa, but it would certainly make a big impact non-the-less.
FRien said: However, Yukari scorns Reimu for doing so, so it's not the best end.
Haters gonna hate. Yukari seems to very much represent the status-quo in this Gensokyo, so when Reimu asked Yukari to do something as significant as rewriting someone's memories that disturbs the status-quo. I hate to use the cliched phrase but, REIMU'S DISTURBING THE NATURAL ORDER!
Awesome story though I wish the artist showed a bit more of Magician-Marisa doing...um...magician-y things.
Novack said: so did reimu erase marisa's memory? I'm just wondering because reimu say on a previous page that marisa over came her set back.
That's my thought as well. Reimu didn't erase Marisa's memory and rather Marisa stood up against her weaknesses by her own feet after that emotional barter.
Darluk said: Yukari seems to very much represent the status-quo in this Gensokyo, so when Reimu asked Yukari to do something as significant as rewriting someone's memories that disturbs the status-quo. I hate to use the cliched phrase but, REIMU'S DISTURBING THE NATURAL ORDER!
Interesting theory, but hélas flawed. In PCB, Yuyuko asked Yukari to change the border between Gensokyo and Hakugyourou. This seems far more important than just erasing someone's memory. And yet, Yukari did it happily.
That has nothing to do with natural order, it's just that, in Yukari's opinion, Reimu runs away from the trouble instead of solving it. She's cheating, in a way.
Seeing Marisa smile like that would make Reimu's heart ache more, knowing all of that and more (yada yada as everybody else has mentioned it)
Reimu basically threw everything away for her "selfish" desires. Talk about all the farce that is being put up just so it can end happily, one must think and wonder if it really is the right choice. At some point, we hate Reimu for doing so, but if you were in her shoes, would you have done the same to somebody you care a lot? If you are pushed into a corner, chances are you probably would. As mentioned in the afterword (next page), they're the most human (in body, skill, & personality) of all the characters and this is an example of human nature
It seems a little odd that just overwriting the suicide attempt would dispel all those delusions so easily. A simple "oh I decided not to kill myself and just train more" mod (as described earlier) was all it took? I didn't expect Reimu to go through with it, either, after Marisa suddenly seemed to be doing better. I'd prefer to think Reimu didn't do that...
FRien said: Interesting theory, but hélas flawed. In PCB, Yuyuko asked Yukari to change the border between Gensokyo and Hakugyourou. This seems far more important than just erasing someone's memory. And yet, Yukari did it happily.
That has nothing to do with natural order, it's just that, in Yukari's opinion, Reimu runs away from the trouble instead of solving it. She's cheating, in a way.
Messing with someone's memories can be considered much more detrimental to someone than messing with worlds.
Imagine you held something strongly to your heart, and that someone else could, without you knowing it, take that thing away. You'd live your life happily without the belief you held to your heart, and could possibly change to the point where if you met your previous self, the person who was un-edited, you would be an entirely different person to the original, to the point where you could despise this old you. What Reimu seems to do in this comic is change the level of how badly Marisa suffers from her inferiority complex, to the point where she realises suicide isn't the answer and goes off on the better path, which also erases everything that had happened to her prior to the death dive.
Considering that Reimu's been able to experience the consequences of saving her, getting to see both outcomes of the fork in the road Marisa took could well be considered cheating (which would be why Yukari will end up detesting Reimu). Much as I hate to make the reference, it's as if she used a save state on an emulator and had Marisa realise that suicide wasn't the best answer, having found out that the path she originally took would lead to her death, and that having Yukari save her only made things worse.
Having that sort of power over people is definitely much more terrifying than having the ability to fiddle with worlds, since if you wanted to, you could have everyone go on the "best" paths in their lives, and having a successful yet boring utopia where everything is fine and dandy and nothing bad ever happens. Bad things happen in life, and they shouldn't be avoided as they let people change, for better or for worse. That Reimu took this upon herself is going to weigh down on her soul terribly, to the point where when she gets judged by the Yama, it could be the clincher in her fate. The only way she could not feel bad about this whole thing is if she erased the memories of those who were involved in the incident, but considering there's always a higher power who cannot be swayed, there'll always be someone who knew what happened, and the events would eventually rise to the surface causing more drama.
Right, I'm pretty sure I've gone off so far from the point people are going to think I'm driving the wrong way. Being awake at around 4am will do that. I apologise if any of this seems skittish and all over the damn place.
The fact remains that Reimu used external powers to entirely cancel out this dark chapter in Marisa's life, retaining all of her memories of the event whilst letting Marisa live on in blissful ignorance of the danger she was once in. This does mean that she runs away from the problem instead of trying to actually solve it, but the reason for this was because Reimu was the actual cause of the problem, and how would you go about curing an inferiority complex when you're what's causing the whole thing? Who knows what would occur if Marisa found out about the events that happened prior to Reimu resetting her. This is to say nothing of Alice and Patchouli, and whether they retain their memories of these events or not. That Reimu did this to maintain the status quo just makes the entire thing all the more dreadful.
RaisingK said: It seems a little odd that just overwriting the suicide attempt would dispel all those delusions so easily. A simple "oh I decided not to kill myself and just train more" mod (as described earlier) was all it took?
Yeah, when you think of it, it's really strange outcome. Reimu erased the consequences, but not the cause of depression. So Marisa saw no more hinamizawa-style delusions? Why?
While the problem persisted, they made it so that Marisa will no longer be as bothered by it and keep aiming for her goal. Well, that may have dispelled Marisa's initial attempt at suicide but after that, Reimu and all must have acted accordingly to help limit the stress Marisa felt. Sure, Marisa must have still been bothered but after Reimu and Marisa's little heart to heart before the reset, Reimu must have been able to think of something to help Marisa. Perhaps Reimu tried to do a repeat of their last conversation. Being able to get things off their chests would have helped.
And then of course the obvious. By stopping the process of becoming a magician temporarily, that may have staved off the delusions. And then after the training Alice provided Marisa with, that would make it bearable when Marisa tried again years later. The stress Marisa felt after all was amplified by her undergoing the process of becoming a magician. It would have still hurt but probably not to the point of suicide.
ExecutorBill said: One wonders if this outcome might've came about if Reimu & Co. had chosen to try to support Marisa until she came out of her depression, rather than turning to Yukari for an ethically questionable cure-all for it.
There were 3 possibilities as I see it. The first is where they succeeded and Marisa got better, continued her training and became a magician. But that would have probably taken more than the estimated 5 years Reimu stated earlier as Marisa would still have to overcome the trauma that everything after the suicide attempt caused. More than trying to overcome how she treated her friends, she'd need to get back the desire to train and become a magician.
The second possibility would have been similar enough but without the desire to study magic again. She would become an ordinary human with some knowledge of magic. Whether she actually could bring herself to even attempt magic again though is another 2 separate sub-possibilities.
I can only see the above possibilities because of how emotional the two girls were before the reset. But there's still the last where all fails. She would keep living in people's care until she withered away and dies.
Still, I can't really blame Reimu for her decision. If I was in her position with that same choice open to me, I would have taken it as well. Having felt there were no other options that would result in a happy ending for her friend, she took the easiest method and damned herself for the rest of her life and beyond. Shikieiki would most likely condemn Reimu to the worst fate she could give as is her job and her authority.
escav said: Still, I can't really blame Reimu for her decision.
Well, who can? That was one of the hardest decisions I ever seen (in touhou, that is), and Reimu is doomed to take full responsibility for the result. I can only wish her the very best of luck.
Shihion-fon said: Marisa became known as the great magician.....Byakuren's title is the Sealed Great Magician.....am I detecting some twisted form of a time paradox?
I think you have the wrong end of the stick there, mate.
It was a brilliant and very morally chalenging story. I probably hate a lot of you guys now for not respecting Marisa's desire for freedom to live or die though. No offence though, I guess we just disagree.
Reimu's decision was hard, I'll agree with that but in the end it was selfish and not the right thing to do I think. I would've set Marisa free and give her the freedom to live or die as she wanted. What I got from Yukari was that what Reimu was doing was killing Marisa and remaking her as the Marisa that Reimu wants. That is a very selfish thing to do. The Marisa that Reimu and everyone knew in this is dead and the Marisa seen in panel 1 of this page is the Marisa that Reimu made. They're not the same people anymore. That's my opinion anyway.
Also what was Yukari saying about somthing being partly her fault or somthing near the start of this part?
The problem, as I see it, is that choosing to end your life, while innate, is not an option that hurts only yourself. You take a lot of people with you. It's almost an attack on others as well.
We could argue for days on end whether Marisa's pain or the pain the others felt would be worse. But it would be pointless. The simple fact of the matter is someone was going to be hurt. If it's human to want to control your own life, to have the choice to die, it's equally human to want your friends to not die.
So I don't see how you can blame Reimu for saving Marisa. (I can put "saving" in quotation marks if you'd like) When the right to die and the right to save your friends collide, I guess it all comes down to a battle of wills.
As I commented on with an earlier picture, this path was unnecessary.
As soon as Marisa broke down and began apologizing, she had left the stage of Anger behind and was experiencing the Grief stage. That was rounding the corner and progressing on her path to recovery.
The next stage would have been Acceptance. In this case, accepting that she had screwed up by learning "Without Food" before mastering at least four elements, that she was NOT hopeless, and that she needed to work harder and rely on help from her friends to achieve her dream despite the setback.
All in all, this dark period of their lives would have been a learning experience for everyone that they would all eventually laugh about.
Not that Reimu, Alice or Marisa understood this, because they're too young; they haven't seen people go through this kind of thing before. But Eirin and Yukari should have, and they should have known better.
Maybe the author didn't understand either, or maybe he wanted a depressing ending, or maybe he thought a bitter ending was "better" than a sweet one. Honestly, I was expecting another "chapter" after this "normal end" to show us the "true / good end".
Rest assured, I'm writing the good end in my mind, and in that end, Marisa's learning experience from this ordeal lets her shave off another year from that training time... even counting the time it takes her to finishing Grieving and start Accepting.
And yeah, years down the line, after she's become a Magician, Marisa and everyone else laugh about that dark time, because they've come out of the dark tunnel and into the light. And the next time someone crashes and burns this hard, they'll be better prepared to handle it.
And no one will regret how that period resolved itself, because no one tried to muck things up with sex, or drugs, or memory-alteration, or any other crutch.
Really, I don't think the memory thing really would have allowed things to turn out this well.
aListers said: It was a brilliant and very morally chalenging story. I probably hate a lot of you guys now for not respecting Marisa's desire for freedom to live or die though. No offence though, I guess we just disagree.
Reimu's decision was hard, I'll agree with that but in the end it was selfish and not the right thing to do I think. I would've set Marisa free and give her the freedom to live or die as she wanted. What I got from Yukari was that what Reimu was doing was killing Marisa and remaking her as the Marisa that Reimu wants. That is a very selfish thing to do. The Marisa that Reimu and everyone knew in this is dead and the Marisa seen in panel 1 of this page is the Marisa that Reimu made. They're not the same people anymore. That's my opinion anyway.
Also what was Yukari saying about somthing being partly her fault or somthing near the start of this part?
I agree with you on the part of the remaking of Marisa as Reimu sees fit and it being a very selfish thing to do, but I can't imagine letting Marisa choosing to kill herself just because she can't become a magician..
The thing is, as was discussed on of all things a Cracked article the other day, many, if not most who attempt suicide don't really want to die. Rather, they feel trapped to the point that dying still seems less painful than literally any other option available, and often just one little thing getting through to them in the right crucial moment can change their point of view just the tiniest little bit to hold those feelings off.
I'm no expert, and the psychology around it is even more complex than that, but it's an important thing to understand when discussing works like this.
Now on the other hand, for all that I think I would've done the same thing in Reimu's place (especially just a little younger than I am now), I don't think that erasing Marisa's memories was the right choice in that situation, but at that point none of the younger characters were anything approaching rational thought.
This was amazing, but I feel like it would have been happier if Marisa had been able to overcome the depression herself. With the way it turned out, there's this bittersweet feel, you're glad because everything worked out well, but at the same time, you hate how the solution was really just running away from it all. Or at least that's how I feel. But at the same time, that weight is also pretty deep, and a fitting end for such a doujin.
Whoa...Almost all the comments on this page are as deep as this history, what a bittersweet ending but I'm with Reimu on this one saving your best friend life was worth it but it is too bad she lost Yukari respect (everything has a price to pay) they say time heal all wounds hope Reimu can regain it with time.
I'll go ahead and say this: this actually sucked for me.
She had it easy, having these kind of friends. If I acted like her I'd be kicked out from home long ago by my family. Actually, they still hate me for trying to kill myself, don't care at all if I suffer alone in my room, don't bother asking me if I'm okay.
Also it doesn't help that she would be closer to her goal as the years passes, while I (and most people who choose to kill themselves) am more and more distant from mine.
I found the first ending more humane and realistic. Suicide due to failure happens all the time.
aselus1111 said: Whoa...Almost all the comments on this page are as deep as this history, what a bittersweet ending but I'm with Reimu on this one saving your best friend life was worth it but it is too bad she lost Yukari respect (everything has a price to pay) they say time heal all wounds hope Reimu can regain it with time.
Remember Yukari's stance on this. It's what I said or somthing similar anyway. Yukari thinks of what Reimu did as killing Marisa and replacing her with a Marisa that she wants. Murder of sombody you know doesn't usually get forgiven quickly. I'm with Yukari.
But Marisa did manage to become a true magician in the end? That's seems to be the best end, out of all the others. Yukari might scorn Reimu, Reimu might have killed a version of Marisa and her memories and recreated her... This doujin deserved a 4.99 out 5 stars
What an amazing story, really well done. Many thanks for the translations.
And it is really great to see many different PoV regarding suicide and what is right or wrong when your decision involves someone's life. I wouldn't know what to do if I were in Reimu's shoes, but I certainly would live the rest of my life asking myself if it was really okay to erase her memories.
I can't help but feel like I didn't put my point across properly. Is it just because people don't want to be fully depressed by what has truly happened? Is it simply because people are looking at it from Reimu's point of view more than Marisa's or Yukari's because she's the main character?
I don't know why people seemed to find the ending "bittersweet" rather than simply bitter. Maybe I just feel too sorry for Marisa for having sombody else live her life and dreams because she couldn't. I kind of think I'm the only person who feels sorry for Marisa as she learned nothing and was pretty much doomed to her unfortunate fate - death.
Damn. It's been a long time since I read this but it's probably the best doujin I've ever read. Nothing has made me feel this much. I may be raging to the bone every time this comes to mind but Kudos to Jiroo for being able to do that.
This doujin is completely tragic, in my eyes. Marisa absolutely needed help to save herself. I can't blame her for faltering. There really are situations where you need other people. However, Reimu ultimately didn't know how to help her. She lacked the knowledge and perspective. So Marisa is effectively dead, and Reimu will live with the guilt of that for the rest of her life. Every moment she spends with Marisa will be poisoned by the knowledge that what she created isn't really the girl she was in love with. In the end, Reimu didn't save Marisa's life. She acquiesced to Marisa's wishes and let her die, even if that's not how she viewed her actions.
But what else was she supposed to do? She didn't understand how to save Marisa, so how could she possibly have done it? I can't blame either of the girls, which is what makes this story so tragic. It's not a story of assigning blame, it's a story about not knowing.
Reimu essentially killed Marisa and remade her to be the Marisa she wanted to her to be. I dont see how anyone can see that as a good ending but there you go.Reimu saved nothing but her ego and Yukari has every right, and I am glad she hates her guts because of it.
I can't help but feel like I didn't put my point across properly. Is it just because people don't want to be fully depressed by what has truly happened? Is it simply because people are looking at it from Reimu's point of view more than Marisa's or Yukari's because she's the main character?
The latter but not really because she's the main character. Rather I personally found myself wondering what I would do in Reimu's shoes since her situation felt more like something I could find myself in than Marisa's or Yukari's. Especially Yukari's.
I suppose it's because I've never felt the way Marisa did so I couldn't even begin to relate to her predicament and couldn't fully sympathize. I find it hard to sympathize with people who give up on life. As cruel as I sound, I find them weak and annoying. I'm sorry but this is really just my inability to understand how a person can completely give up on life that's at fault here. I'm logical to a fault so sympathizing isn't my strong point and it makes more sense to me to simply either move on or give up your life and become an empty shell to live it for someone else's benefit instead (like giving up your hopes and dreams to raise your child as an example, not that this example is applicable to Marisa here).
On the other hand, I found myself more interested in the moral choice Reimu was faced with with regards to violating Marisa's right to decide her own life and wondered to myself what I would do in a similar situation. It's one hell of a thought experiment to weigh your own selfishness to change someone's life against another person's selfishness to end their life.
The selfishness in both cases is the same. Complete disregard for the feelings of others. The former is to disregard the affected person's wishes as well as the natural order of things for your own desire to keep a friend and maintain a status quo so to speak. While the latter is the selfishness to escape from life and disregard the feelings of your loved ones, those who respected you, and those who relied on you leaving them in despair. Who then should have the greater say?
"Only the person themselves gets to decide what to to do with their own life." "A person who can throw away their life has no right to decide what to do with it." "I want to respect the wishes of my best friend even if it will pain me." "I don't want to lose my best friend no matter what even if it means committing a grave sin."
The answer you decide on will depend on which of the statements above resonates with you most.
It's a bittersweet story. While Marisa is not suicidal anymore, she is not the Marisa she knew and Reimu is forced to live with the fact that Marisa's current happiness was forced into her. However, I can't blame Reimu and it seems that there wasn't any other choice to save Marisa.
Also, the ending reminded me of the story "Daddy's World" by Walter Jon Williams. You know, that story where the cute little boy protagonist who lives in a saccharine world with kiddie monsters and all was dead all along, he lives in a virtual world and his father basically uploaded his brain into a computer (same as Noah Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh). When he finds out, the results are not pretty and he falls on a spiral of self-destruction, which is mirrored by the state of the virtual world he lives. Anyway, in the end, his father resets him and he is back to his naive old self, but the results are the same as Marisa in this story.
... let's all go watch cherry blossoms, drinking sake with everyone.Well, for this...In the future, she becomes known as the great magician.When the White Cherry Blossoms Bloom -The End-