Rika
Human Engineer of the Old Fantasy World
Neutral/Electric Type
Original Media: Touhou Fuumaroku ~ the Story of Eastern Wonderland (video game, 1997)
Story
Rika is an exceptionally skilled engineer, especially for how young she started; not only has she been able to build giant vehicles with powerful weaponry, she can construct smaller devices in seconds, and she’s great at adapting to different types of tech. Despite this, she struggled to make a name for herself early in her career in Gensokyo, even when she tried to stir up trouble with the resident shrine maiden Reimu Hakurei back in 1997. And just as she began to hone her tech close to her current abilities, the kappa overtook humans as the resident engineers of Gensokyo, a position of societal importance Rika felt she should have reached long ago.
Rika ended up settling in her underground bunker, occasionally taking up odd jobs; it was through one of these odd jobs – repairing two robots known as “Revolt Torch Man” and “Revolt Blade Man” – that she found herself pulled into a group that would go on to call themselves the “Brash Crew”. Through this group of vigilantes, Rika found herself something of a place to belong, working as the team’s tech whiz.
The Brash Crew wasn’t a quick fix for Rika’s problems, though. At one point she almost withdrew from the group after seeing someone improve on her craft in a way she didn’t expect, and she almost felt she lost her worth before a friend of hers chimed in to remind her of just what she accomplished.
There was also the deal of the kappa. For a while, Rika didn’t see the kappa as much more than pests who took her job, and with all the time she spent outside their land, she acted rather…prejudiced against them. She was forced to confront this about herself when she started working with Takane, a yamawaro who was much more mindful about treating the kappa as people with lives just like anyone else, especially with how often Takane had to be the mediator between the yamawaro and kappa. While talking with Takane didn’t change her overnight, Rika eventually cast aside her negative view of the kappa.
These days, while the Brash Crew isn’t as much of an inseparable unit, Rika still keeps in touch with them, Takane, and pretty much anyone she’s on decent terms with, and more often than before folks come to Gensokyo seeking Rika’s unique expertise.
Abilities
Named Abilities
Machine Charge
Rika uses Electric magic to strengthen an assisting machine or ally robot. Does not work on organic beings (humans, animals, etc.).
Electric/Weapons Type
Other Powers
- Rika tends to use her Electric magic outside of battle as a way to strengthen her ability to build machines. Theoretically she could attack someone with them, but she hasn’t as of this writing.
- Rika can easily build Bakebake, ghost-like creatures that aren’t very powerful, but have strength in numbers.
- Rika has access to two machines; driving/piloting them are her preferred method of combat:
- The Flower-Tank is a tank with a single cannon able to shoot out lasers and large orbs of damaging magical energy, as well as the ability to scatter smaller pellets of the same magical energy. It also has limited flight abilites.
- The Evil Eye Σ (pronounced “Evil Eye Sigma“) is a giant “tank” (at least that’s what Rika calls it; functionally it’s more of a mech) with much more advanced flight abilities than the Flower-Tank, and a similar yet much stronger arsenal of attacks. In the most dire of emergencies, Rika can even set it to self-destruct, potentially defeating opponents in a final bid as she escapes.
Voice
General Description
Teenager/Young Adult; cocky and slightly arrogant, but can speak in a friendlier tone too
Example Voice
Source: Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth (video game, 2016)
Original Context: One of the 40 voices that can be chosen for the main character. This voice is option 22.
Behind the Scenes
Amongst the oft-forgotten cast of the first five Touhou games, Rika has long stood out to me for her potential. She predates the idea of Gensokyo’s technology being reliant on the kappa, making her unique among the series’ engineers, and her ability to build things like the ethereal-looking Bakebake fascinates me; I can only imagine how that works.
What’s more, while most Touhou games treat the first few bosses as cannon fodder with the later bosses being the ones with plans, Rika actually had a pretty thorough plan despite being the first major boss of her one Touhou outing: She infested the Hakurei Shrine (an important place in the series) with her hand-made monsters, and tried to lure Reimu (the shrine maiden) into a trap. While Reimu ignores the trap in the main story, she explores it in the “extra stage” unlocked after clearing the main game, which turns out to be swarming with dangerous obstacles that make it more challenging than anything faced in the main story. Rika’s the only character in Story of Eastern Wonderland with a plan this thorough; even when the final boss tries to take away a great power of the Hakurei Shrine, there’s no foreshadowing to it, and it almost seems like Reimu could have avoided the final boss as easily as anyone else, not to mention the shrine is still infested with monsters at the end, as if Rika was still at work. All of this makes me like to view Rika as the “true” antagonist of Story of Eastern Wonderland, and I respect her as a character for her efforts.
All of this has given me a fascination with Rika that predates Chaos Zone, not unlike Dyna Man; my choice to introduce Rika early in my writing was somewhat done on the fly, as I thought the circumstances of the damaged “Revolt Robots” would give a good opportunity to bring her in as a favorite character of mine.
For some time, I didn’t bother developing Rika’s personality too much, but after another writer had their character spontaneously give dramatic enhancements to a contraption Rika struggled to make, I took it as an opportunity to touch upon her life and why she was working with the Brash Crew; it was through this brief “dark hour” that I fleshed out what it could have been that got Rika so invested in helping the Brash Crew in the first place; even if it didn’t last long, it made her feel more like a walking toolbox who made occasional jokes about kappa.
On that note, while her frustration with the kappa started out as a minor running gag with Rika’s appearances, the introduction of Takane in Touhou Kouryuudou ~ Unconnected Marketeers and the synergy between the kappa and yamawaro the game introduced gave me the idea to view the situation in a different light; the result ended up being a loose exploration of the idea of prejudice and racism, and how one could grow past that, which felt rather interesting to try and figure out in my writing.
I also feel a connection to Rika in the ways she mirrored my own life, and how I reflected that in her character in return; my hobby of crafting dolls of my favorite characters felt like something I worked at the same way Rika worked at her machines, and the time I spent in my day program stitching and stuffing and gluing began to translate into Rika’s passionate labor. Rika’s always been a sort of favorite, but that connection in my head made me feel even closer to her, and she’s one of the characters I value the most in my writing.
Images
Further Reading
- Kappa on the Touhou Wiki
Brash Buster 