Welcome, returning subscribers and new viewers alike, to a new episode of Character Development.
Today happens to be a cause for celebration.
Why exactly?
Well, today marks a special occasion for Character Development as a series, as we've finally
reached a milestone I didn't think I'd get to after all this time.
Not only did the show turn three years old back in April, but this very episode happens
to be the 50th Episode, and I had been thinking of ways to celebrate as early as February.
After some thought, as well as reading through video comments while I was busy with sophomore
finals, I decided that the 50th Episode should be something that reflects all the progress
made after 3 years and 50 videos, and I do believe we have some unfinished business from
the very first episode of Character Development, on Utsuho Reiuji from the Touhou series.
Whether it's because of my nervous-sounding commentary, that it was made while I was still
learning how to use Sony Vegas, the background image that was an utter mess and honestly
more of a distraction than an aesthetic, the amount of information I skipped over entirely,
or how short the actual analysis was compared to more recent episodes, one thing's for
certain: the video hasn't aged well at all and there's still much more I can say about
Utsuho Reiuji, now that I've had plenty of time to sharpen my craft.
And since now is a perfect opportunity to capitalize on this idea, I'm going to be
doing something new for a change and remaking the very first episode from scratch.
I'm the Kitsune Hawk, and to mark the special occasion of Episode 50, we're going all
the way back to square 1 to revisit the character that started the series, the Scorching, Troublesome
Divine Flame, Utsuho Reiuji!
So get out your pencils, trivia enthusiasts, because this is Character Development!
Considering that this is the first episode I've done where I discuss a character I've
already covered at least once, I'd like to mix things up a bit so that I don't resort
to simply repeating the entirety of Episode 1.
So let's start from the very beginning, and go over Utsuho's backstory first and
foremost.
Utsuho, or "Okuu," as she's affectionately referred to, was originally a normal humanoid-raven
living in the Hell of Blazing Fires as a pet of the mind-reader Satori Komeiji.
One day, she heard a voice from the goddess Kanako Yasaka, telling her to consume a three-legged
crow named Yatagarasu and attain its powers.
Utsuho did as she was commanded, and from devouring the three-legged crow, she gained
its abilities to control nuclear energy and bring the Hell of Blazing Fires back to its
original heat.
From her basic backstory and name alone, we can get a good sense of Okuu's character
inspiration.
Her last name, Reiuji, if read kanji by kanji, translates as "soul, crow, path" or "spirit,
raven, path," in reference to her body being a house for the spirit of Yatagarasu, while
the kanji in her first name, Utsuho, is taken from Old Japanese, and it means "emptiness,
empty hole, or cave," either in reference to Utsuho's residence in the Hell of Blazing
Fires deep underground or to her body being a metaphorical "cave" for Yatagarasu.
And speaking of Yatagarasu, it's worth noting that it happens to be based on a mythological
creature common to the three cultures of East Asia.
While the Japanese call it "Yatagarasu," the Koreans refer to it as "Samjok-o,"
and the Chinese use the name "Jinwu," meaning "golden crow".
While these three cultures have slight variations in the mythos of this bird, they have two
primary elements in common: that the crow has three legs, and that it symbolizes both
power and the sun.
The bird's three legs were a symbol of power because of the trinities they were said to
represent: the Taoist realms of Heaven, Earth, and Man, or perhaps the three virtues of wisdom,
benevolence, and valor.
The bird itself embodied the sun, and was often closely associated with the phenomenon
that we know today as sunspots and the solar flares that they cause.
But what exactly is so important about a sunspot?
Well, strap yourselves in, because we're about to talk about the second (and more significant)
portion of Okuu's inspiration, nuclear chemistry.
Sunspots themselves are caused by anomalies in a star's magnetic field and are essentially
buildups of energy; when they finally burst, they release storms called coronal mass ejections
and solar flares, which are powerful discharges of radiation whose effects are capable of
reaching the Earth.
By fusing with Yatagarasu, Utsuho has gained a few attributes related to its power over
nuclear energy, namely the large instrument on her right arm, the concrete brace on her
right foot, and the ball of energy orbiting around her left leg.
More specifically, the instrument on her right arm is known as the Control Rod, and if you'd
like to believe it, it's supposed to be Yatagarasu's third leg manifested on Utsuho's
arm.
In the context of nuclear chemistry, the term "control rod" is used to refer to a particular
section of a nuclear power plant.
Control rods are tubes, rods, or plates that are made from neutron-absorbing materials
such as boron, hafnium, or cadmium, and they're either inserted into or removed from the reactor
core to decrease or increase the amount of fissions occurring within the core, respectively.
The higher the number of fissions is, the greater the heat of the reactor, which means
more steam and more electricity generated.
They also serve as a failsafe for the reactor in case of emergency, automatically falling
into place and cutting off the reactor entirely if the power goes out.
However, that doesn't mean that a control rod is an end-all solution to a nuclear power
plant emergency; in fact, in many cases, control rod failure or mismanagement can be the cause
of the emergency entirely.
The most infamous nuclear power plant failure thus far in history, the Chernobyl disaster
of April 26, 1986, has often been blamed on the control rods used in the reactors.
And speaking of Chernobyl, the concrete brace around Utsuho's right foot is based on the
aftermath of that nuclear disaster in two ways.
One of the immediate byproducts of the Chernobyl meltdown was a radioactive black, lava-like
substance made from reactor fuel, molten concrete, sand, and core shielding that mixed into a
deadly cocktail that seeped through the pipes of Reactor Number 4, emptying into the basement
and cooling into a material dubbed as "corium," but more colloquially known as "the Elephant's
Foot".
At the time of discovery, the Elephant's Foot was radioactive enough to cause cell
hemorrhaging within two minutes of exposure, reaching fatal levels within five minutes
of continued exposure.
Because of the immediate and potential danger that the Elephant's Foot and other aftereffects
of the meltdown posed, workers at Chernobyl decided to contain the reactor within a giant
sarcophagus of thick concrete, one of the few materials capable of blocking intense
radiation.
It could be, then, that the concrete case on Utsuho's right leg is a metaphorical
representation of the Elephant's Foot or the concrete shell designed to contain it,
perhaps even both.
As for the ball of light orbiting around Utsuho's left leg, it's what nuclear chemistry would
call a beta particle, a stray electron that has been separated from a nucleus due to radioactive
decay, the process by which an unstable atom breaks down over time until it reaches stability.
And on that note, it's worth pointing out that the three extensions to Utsuho's limbs
represent the three main processes involved in nuclear chemistry: radioactive decay, nuclear
fission, and nuclear fusion.
The beta particle swirling around her left leg represents radioactive decay, since a
beta particle is one of the three common forms of radioactive decay.
The Elephant's Foot that encases her right leg represents nuclear fission, due to its
association with the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a fission-powered reactor.
And finally, the third leg manifested on Utsuho's right arm, despite being a control rod as
previously discussed, is stated to control nuclear fusion rather than nuclear fission,
thus symbolizing the last of the three processes.
Utsuho's strong association with suns further adds to the connections with nuclear fusion;
whereas nuclear fission is the process of splitting atoms apart, nuclear fusion is the
process of forcing smaller atoms together to form a new, larger atom.
Nuclear fusion creates far more energy than nuclear fission, though it also requires higher
speeds and pressures that are currently impossible to synthetically reproduce under controlled
circumstances, so it's currently limited to the sun and other stars.
Many of Utsuho's spellcards involve her using her power over nuclear fusion to create
artificial stars that quickly burn out and decrease in size, or give off photons or smaller
stars as extra projectiles.
In Hisoutensoku, her spellcards also show that she can imbue herself with fusion energy
and turn herself into an artificial sun, which only makes me wonder how anyone can stand
remotely close to her and still survive.
A few of the names of her spellcards in all of her appearances so far even lend themselves
to terminology of both nuclear chemistry and stars.
And speaking of Okuu's spellcards, let's take a moment to break down the background
image used in both Subterranean Animism and Double Spoiler for her special attacks.
The main background used is an image of the Carina Nebula, a nebula about 7,500 light-years
away from Earth and is noted for containing over 14,000 stars.
Considering the constant star symbolism with Utsuho, I think it's quite obvious why an
image of the Carina Nebula in particular was chosen.
It's also possible that the nebulous texture on her cape in Hisoutensoku is another image
of the Carina Nebula, but given the smaller size of her sprite, it's hard to tell for
sure.
Above the background image of the Carina Nebula is a spinning nuclear trefoil, an easily recognizable
warning symbol of ionizing radiation, the kind that can adversely affect human cells,
but curiously, there happens to be a picture of a cat on one of the trefoil's points,
which could be interpreted in one of two ways.
Firstly, it's possible that this is a further link to the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986; when
the disaster occurred, the nearby city of Pripyat, where many of the Chernobyl plant
workers lived, was evacuated.
When people returned many years later to inspect the area, a colony of irradiated wild cats
was discovered to have been living in the ghost town since abandonment.
Alternatively, it could be a reference to Schrödinger's Cat, a famous thought experiment
conceived by Austrian scientist Erwin Schrödinger.
Essentially, Schrödinger envisioned an experiment in which a cat was placed within a steel chamber
for an hour, alongside a vial of deadly gas, a Geiger counter, a hammer rigged to the counter,
and a small piece of radioactive material.
If the radioactive material were to set off the Geiger counter, the hammer would smash
the vial, releasing the gas and killing the cat.
The point of the mental picture was to explain the idea of superposition—that until the
observer opens the chamber to see what happened, the cat is presumed to be both alive and dead
at the same time, as quantum mechanics would have it.
A bit of a stretch compared to the Pripyat cat interpretation, but it goes to show the
sheer wealth and diversity of information that went into Utsuho's design.
While many of the characters in the Touhou Project draw inspiration from East Asian mythology,
Utsuho very strongly remains as my second favorite character in the series thus far,
because she not only takes the centuries-old myth of the three-legged crow into her design,
but also mixes it with the modern ideas of nuclear chemistry, both at their most basic
level and their most destructive level, making her very clearly stand out in a series with
such a large roster of characters.
It's easy to see that a great deal of detail went into the design other elements of Utsuho's
character, and I couldn't imagine the nuclear hell raven any other way.
And before I end the video off, I'd like to give thanks to those of you who have supported
the show with your likes, shares, comments, and episode suggestions.
I didn't think I'd get as far as Episode 50 without your help, and I'm eagerly hoping
that it'll be just as grand of a journey to Episode 100!
In the meantime, in early May, I announced that this episode would feature an art showcase
open for anyone to submit their art inspired by the show.
Please feel free to enjoy everyone's submissions on screen, and I've also included links
to places where you can follow them to see more of their art, including that of my friend
Soma, who drew the illustration of Utsuho used on the titlecard for this episode!
Feel free to commission him if you'd like; he's trying to get his art out there and
would definitely appreciate the help.
Until then, here's to another 50!
Thank you all so, so much once again, and take care, everyone!
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