Rumia
Image from Touhou Project: Who’s Who of Humans and Youkai – Dusk Edition (artbook, 2020).
Youkai of the Dusk
Shadow Type
Original Media: Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (video game, 2002)
Story
Rumia is a young youkai with the ability to manipulate darkness. While this may sound like some sort of evil energy that a “dark lord” would wield, it quite literally means she can remove the illumination from an area, a power unable to cause harm in its own right.
Just as her innate darkness powers aren’t that of an evil wizard, Rumia’s affinity for darkness doesn’t reflect her attitude: She’s a cheerful little girl with a lot of friends, and while she isn’t outgoing enough to approach everyone with a hand in friendship, she’s still plenty happy with the company she’s already made. Her pep carries over into her fighting spirit as well, eager to rush in and help battle when she can, even if she isn’t the brightest of the bunch (uh, figuratively).
Abilities
Moon Sign “Moonlight Ray”
A Spell Card where Rumia fires a pair of continuous lasers in a V formation (reducing the target’s movement range) while releasing rings of small energy orbs.
Shadow/Weapons, Space/Laser Type
Night Sign “Night Bird”
A Spell Card where Rumia swings her arms in an alternating pattern, with each swing creating a half-circle of energy orbs.
Shadow/Weapons, Shadow/Wind Type
Above two images are from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.
Darkness Sign “Dark Side of the Moon”
A Spell Card where Rumia shrouds herself in darkness, leaving her untraceable, and scatters small energy orbs before reappearing and creating a ring of larger ones.
Shadow/Weapons, Shadow/Space Type
Black Banquet “Soul of Sabbat”
A Spell Card where Rumia summons a pit of darkness, from which a gigantic sword of darkness thrusts upwards.
Shadow/Weapons, Earth/Cutter Type
Anti-Prosperity “Contra Pagoda”
A Spell Card where Rumia flies into the air, creates a vortex of darkness on the ground, then crashes down on it, creating a giant shockwave.
Shadow/Weapons, Space/Impact Type
Dark Faith “Infernal Slice”
A Spell Card where Rumia teleports in front of the opponent and slices them with a flaming sword.
Shadow/Weapons, Flame/Cutter Type
Sword of Arcana
Rumia summons a golden sword, swinging it in front of her in a horizontal half-circle.
Shadow/Cutter Type
Dark Arrow
Rumia forms an arrow from shadows and aims it straight at the opponent. Even if it’s blocked or has no effect, it will phase through the opponent and turn around to strike again, phasing through them again if the attack still fails to deal damage.
Shadow/Cutter Type
Night Step
Rumia pelts the opponent with four shadowy darts.
Shadow/Missile Type
Night Step image is from Gensou Ningyou Enbu (video game, 2014) (commonly called “Touhou Puppet Dance Performance” by English speakers).
Doomsday’s Dusk
Rumia uses her Dark magic to summon a cluster of shadowy meteors that combine and crash down onto the opponent(s).
Shadow/Impact Type
Image is from Final Fantasy IX (video game, 2000).
False Dawn
Rumia creates a sun-like orb that explodes into damaging dark energy.
Shadow/Explode Type
Black Thunder
Rumia fires dark bolts of lightning at the target. The more projectiles (bullets, throwing weapons, arrows, etc.) the target has used (that haven’t already hit something), the more bolts of lighting Rumia will shoot, and the more damage they will deal. If the opponent isn’t using any projectiles, Rumia will only fire one weak bolt of lightning.
Shadow/Electric Type
Voice
General Description
Child; cheery and energetic; almost never expresses anger or sadness
Example Voice
Sources: Bleach: The Blade of Fate (video game, 2006), Bleach: Dark Souls (video game, 2007)
Original Context: The voice of the character “Yachiru Kusajishi”.
Behind the Scenes
Being the first game after the Touhou games underwent a “soft reboot” after the fifth game, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil has perhaps one of the most well-known casts of characters in the series. I had already begun exploring one of the game’s most obscure characters, Daiyousei, throughout July of 2020. The following month, I began a story involving Team Mecha (my main villain characters at the time) having effectively brainwashed several characters as a means of causing both mayhem and psychological distress, as most characters under their control were closely affiliated with other characters I had introduced by then; Daiyousei was one such character, but my choice of who she was affiliated with was a choice I made based on other Touhou fan media; while Daiyousei was most often associated with Cirno, another writer was using the character at that point (and she was already one of the most popular characters in the series), some fan media put the two together in a larger team of childish troublemakers, including the characters Rumia, Mystia, and Wriggle (the latter two being from Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night, a game released in 2004). While Wriggle was my favorite of these characters, she too was being used by another writer, so I decided on having Daiyousei’s friend in distress be Embodiment of Scarlet Devil‘s first boss, Rumia.
I think a lot of what caused my take on Rumia in Chaos Zone to differ from other interpretations of her stemmed from her brainwashed condition in her debut; of the various youkai in Touhou, Rumia has been one of the more vocal about her interest in eating humans, and fans like to play with this idea and combine it with her attempts at morbid imagery (her perpetually-outstretched arms were meant to bring to mind a crucifixion) to give her this feeling of a childish, yet creepy or feral character. I tried leaning into this pretty hard with her brainwashed self, but when she was freed from Team Mecha’s control, I kind of…forgot to keep those common parts of her characters, and she just kind of ended up being this happy childish character. While it was kind of an accident, I don’t regret it, because I feel she’s still unique enough among her friend circle (and I’ve been thinking of very subtly re-introducing her carnivorous habits, even if she has enough human/humanoid friends to make it weird for her to go back to trying to eat humans).
Another common idea among fans is that Rumia’s ribbon (actually an ofuda) is something that restrains a much stronger and often older looking form nicknamed “EX Rumia“. While I decided not to make this part of Rumia’s character, I decided to reference it by having her learn various attacks inspired by it from other fanmade Touhou games; such games are where her attacks “Soul of Sabbat”, “Contra Pagoda”, and Sword of Arcana came from.
Brash Buster 