• Welcome to Touhou Wiki!
  • Registering is temporarily disabled. Check in our Discord server to request an account and for assistance of any kind.

Eika Ebisu: Difference between revisions

From Touhou Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
(Literally every WBaWC boss has a unique skin tone, so this isn't accurate.)
Line 52: Line 52:
{{#lsth:List of Spell Cards/Touhou Project 3|[[Eika Ebisu]]}}
{{#lsth:List of Spell Cards/Touhou Project 3|[[Eika Ebisu]]}}
{{hidden end}}
{{hidden end}}
refresh test


==Additional Information==
==Additional Information==

Revision as of 18:23, 18 August 2019

Hakurei Shrine collapsed and needs rebuilding Attention: This article is a stub and it needs expanding with more information related to the article's topic. If you can add to it in any way, please do so.
(えびす) (えい) ()
Eika Ebisu
Youka Ebisu

More Alternative Spellings
Eika Ebisu
Stillborn Idol of the Riverbed
More Character Titles
Species

Soul of a stillborn child and god

Abilities

Stacking stones well

Location

Sai no Kawara

Music Themes
Appearances
Official Games

Eika Ebisu (戎 瓔花 Ebisu Eika) is the soul of a stillborn child and a god of fortune who resides at the riverbank of the Sanzu River, Sai no Kawara. She appears as the Stage 1 midboss and boss in Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.

General Information

Eika is the spirit of a mizuko (水子)- meaning a child that was either stillborn, or only lived for a short time. Like all such spirits, she exists in limbo at the Sai no Kawara and spends her time stacking stones into towers. Though Japanese folklore portrays the spirits' situation as tragic, Eika enjoys her work immensely and sees the Sai no Kawara as a "kingdom" where she and the other spirits can play freely. She's adored by her fellow spirits, and routinely arranges stone-stacking contests for their enjoyment.

She is described as being both cheerful and intelligent, though she also displays fierce bursts of emotion that one might expect from a young child. When the protagonists of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature knock over the stone towers while passing by, Eika is outraged on behalf of her fellow spirits and makes a threat on the protagonist's life. At the same time, she's also very flexible and quick to make the best of a bad outcome; once the protagonists leave, she casually accepts the situation and wastes no time in arranging a different type of contest instead.

Abilities

Stacking stones well

Background Information

Name

Her full name is Eika Ebisu (戎 瓔花). The character "戎" (Ebisu) is one of several used for Ebisu, one of the Seven Gods of Fortune, who presides over fishermen and luck. Ebisu was the first child of the creation gods Izanami and Izanagi, but was born without bones due to Izanami committing a transgression during the ritual of their union. Initially known as Hiruko (蛭子), meaning "leech child", the child was set adrift in a boat of reeds, and eventually grew to become Ebisu after washing ashore. "戎" is also used to refer to the Ebisu (or 'Emishi'), a former ethnic group of northern Japan with potential relation to the Ainu.

Eika (瓔花) is spelled with the characters ei (瓔)- an uncommon character meaning "necklace made of precious stones"- and ka (花), meaning "flower". "瓔" also visually resembles the characters "王" (meaning "king" or "ruler") and "嬰" (from 嬰児 / eiji, meaning "infant"), tying in to Eika's status as a "ruler" of infant ghosts. The character can also be read as you, notably seen in a spelling discrepancy in Wily Beast and Weakest Creature's demo release. Her name is read as "Eika" in the music room and her on-screen title graphic, and as "Youka" in the omake.txt and name graphic in the upper-left corner.

Design

Eika has a fluffy mass of light yellow hair with several thin braids trailing off of it, red eyes, and a noticeably darker skin tone than the majority of Touhou Project characters. She wears a white dress with red polka dots near the hems, red frills, and thin red tassels trailing off of the sleeves and waist. Both her hair and dress visually resemble a jellyfish, and the red tassels bear a resemblance to both a jellyfish's tendrils and to umbilical cords. She also has large earlobes, likely as a visual allusion to Jizo Bosatsu and Ebisu.

Her color palette seems to be based off –to an extent– of Turritopsis dohrnii (commonly known as the immortal jellyfish), a species of small, biologically immortal jellyfish found in the Mediterranean Sea and in the waters of Japan. It is one of the few known cases of animals capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary individual. The liner notes for her boss theme Jelly Stone make a reference to jellyfish – possibly this specific species in particular.

Story

Games

Wily Beast and Weakest Creature

Eika was hosting a stone stacking contest on the riverbed of Sai no Kawara with the children of the afterlife. However, the contest was ruined due to the heroines thrashing around, causing the stacked stones to fall over. Enraged, Eika attacks the heroines, but is ultimately defeated.

Spell Cards

Spell Cards
Name Translated Comments Games Stage
Total: 5
石符「ストーンウッズ」 Stone Sign "Stone Woods" WBaWC St. 1: E/N
石符「ストーンコニファー」 Stone Sign "Stone Conifer" WBaWC St. 1: H/L
石符「チルドレンズリンボ」 Stone Sign "Children's Limbo" WBaWC St. 1: E/N
石符「アダルトチルドレンズリンボ」 Stone Sign "Adult Children's Limbo" WBaWC St. 1: H/L
石符「エイジャの積石」 Stone Sign "Red Stone Stack of Aja" 100BM 3rd Market

refresh test

Additional Information

  • Eika is one of the few Touhou characters whose sprites in her debut game appearance aren't largely based on her in-game portrait. Though her pre-battle dialogue uses a set of 'sitting' sprites that match her portrait, she switches to a unique 'standing' set during the fight itself.

Fandom

Official Profiles

Youka Ebisu  ○1面ボス 

  河原のアイドル水子

  戎 瓔花(えびす ようか)
  Ebisu Youka

  種族:水子の霊
  能力:上手に石を積む程度の能力

  とても器用に石を積む達人。
  石を積む技術に優れていて、賽の河原の水子の霊達のリーダー的存在である。

  無駄な単純作業を、楽しくやりがいのあるものに変える、転んでもただでは
  起きない福の神でもある。
  いつも明るくそして才知に長け、石積みコンテストを開催したりと、次々と
  新しいイベントを開催して、水子達に好かれる賽の河原のアイドルである。

  主人公達が石積みコンテストを台無しにしたと、激怒しているが、実際には
  ほぼ地獄から来た動物霊達の所為である。

Stage 1 Boss: Stillborn Idol of the Riverbed

Youka Ebisu (sic)

Species: Soul of a stillborn child
Ability: Capable of stacking stones well

A master at skillfully stacking stones.
Her stone-stacking technique is superb, and she serves as a sort of leader of the spirits of stillborn children at the Sai no Kawara.

She's also a god of fortune who's able to change simple, pointless work into something that's enjoyable and worth doing, and who can make the best out of any bad situation.
Her ever-cheery demeanor, bright intellect, and penchant for constantly holding exciting new events like stone-stacking contests makes her the Sai no Kawara's resident idol, beloved by all the children's spirits there.

She's utterly furious with the protagonists for ruining the latest stone-stacking contest, but actually, it was mostly the fault of the beast spirits who arrived from Hell.

Official Sources

Official sources

References