Rika

里香 (りか) ɾikä Rika
Rika in Story of Eastern Wonderland Engineer More Character Titles
Species	Human
Occupation	Engineer
Location	Just outside the Hakurei Shrine, ???
Music Themes
She's in a temper!! (Story of Eastern Wonderland) 戦車むすめのみるゆめ (Story of Eastern Wonderland)
Appearances
Official Games
Story of Eastern Wonderland (Stage 1 Boss, Extra Stage Boss)

"I am Rika. Remember it from now on. If only you'd chased me when I ran before, you would've been crushed by the might of my Flying Tank, Evil Eye Σ!!"
— Rika (Story of Eastern Wonderland Extra Stage)

Rika (里香) is a tank engineer that appears on Stage 1 and the Extra Stage of Story of Eastern Wonderland, being the boss of those stages, where she creates a large number of monsters and starts hanging around the Hakurei Shrine while Reimu Hakurei is away. The reason for and method of creating all of these monsters and bakebake isn't clear at all.

General Information

Rika is known to use machines that she herself created, including a few cannons, the Shrine Tank, the Flower-Tank and the flying tank Evil Eye Σ. Since Rika is an engineer, she ought to have excelled in mathematics and science in order to create her tanks. However, on how she's able to do all this herself using Gensokyo's technology is unknown. In her speech patterns, she's shown to use the auxiliary "It's assuredly that—" (～なのです, ~nanodesu).

Character Design

Name

Her name is Rika (里香). The kanji in her name can mean "village incense". With different kanji, "Rika" can also refer to "science" in Japanese. There's a possibility that her name may've also been based on Rika Kayama, who is a psychiatrist.

Design

In Story of Eastern Wonderland's official art, Rika has brown eyes, long brown hair in two braids, wears a white shirt with a purple bow beneath its collar and she holds a piece of chalk in her left hand. Her vague sprite shows that she has black hair, wears a grey shirt, a red cape, and what appears to be black trousers of some sort. In the Extra Stage, she has purple (brown?) eyes, long purple (brown?) hair in two braids, white horns and wears a strange red hat. She also wears a purple shirt with a red ribbon in front.

Appearances

Vague sprite of Rika on Stage 1

Story of Eastern Wonderland

During Stage 1 of Story of Eastern Wonderland, Reimu Hakurei and Genji encounters Rika as a "suspicious character", who stated that everything on the stage was created by her, which includes the bakebake, a few cannons and the Shrine Tank. She then attacks Reimu with the Flower-Tank that she's created with no apparent reason, but is defeated quickly. Sobbing, she wanted Reimu to follow her into a trap, which Reimu refuses and heads on to another direction.

Later during the Extra Stage, Reimu once again encounters Rika, who reveals her name and that this is the "trap" she wanted Reimu to come to: to fight her flying tank Evil Eye Σ. They talk about that Reimu followed Rika during Stage 1, then Reimu's battle with the Evil Eye Σ would've been Stage 2, which is breaking the fourth wall. After a long harsh battle, Rika is defeated and the Evil Eye Σ lets out a huge explosion for the player to dodge.

Additional Information

• Rika was the first boss ever in a Touhou Project shooting game with the Flower-Tank, as well as the first Extra Stage boss with the Evil Eye Σ. With this, she is also the first character ever to be a stage boss and an Extra boss in the same game, with Alice Margatroid, Junko (only partially) and Okina Matara being the only other Touhou characters to do this.
• Rika said in Story of Eastern Wonderland that she created the Bakebake on the first stage of Story of Eastern Wonderland, but it's unknown if the bakebake in other games (as well as the entire of Story of Eastern Wonderland) were also created by her.
• Rika is the only character in the series to pilot a vehicle during a boss fight - tanks that she herself constructed. This also shows that she's the only character in the whole series to not fight in flesh without any abilities or magic whatsoever. This could therefore make her the weakest character in the gaming series, since she has no ability to fight herself.
• Rika, Fujiwara no Mokou and Marisa Kirisame are the only three Extra bosses in the series that are known to be completely human.

Fandom

Main article: Fandom: Rika

Official Sources

Official sources

• 1997/08/15 Story of Eastern Wonderland - Stage 1 dialogue, Extra Stage dialogue