Alex's House of Whatever (original) (raw)

For better or for worse, the number one thing associated with the Touhou Project other than the actual Project itself.

"Yukkuri shiteitte ne"/"ゆっくりしていってね" is a Japanese phrase that's been roughly translated as "take it easy", although it more literally translates as "you should do it slowly". So, how did this phrase become associated with Touhou? Well, in 2003 or 2004, some guy uploaded to 2Chan (the Japanese precursor to 4Chan) Shift-JIS text art of the heads of Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame saying the phrase. The drawing attained infamy for how off-model Reimu and Marisa looked.

However, sometime in 2008, another guy made an actual picture of the Shift-JIS art, and then from there, an Internet meme seemingly exploded overnight with no warning. As it evolved, other Touhou characters began to be decapitated, Selena Gomez'd up, and made to join the Cult of Taking it Easy; such characters began to be referred to as "Yukkuries".

Eventually, the meme evolved to the point where it could be a whole-ass franchise within itself, if only ZUN would canonize them. I shit you not: the people who have made Yukkuri art over the years have written whole-ass diatribes about their anatomy, their typical life cycles, the fact that they often hibernate in winter, and even how they reproduce. And other people follow it near consistently!

Unfortunately, when anyone CAN participate, anyone DOES, and that's led the Yukkuri fandom to have some...uh, seedier aspects. In particular, the number one thing anyone seems to associate with Yukkuries is how much art there is of them getting abused, sometimes in extremely detailed, violent gorefests that might not be legal to view in some countries. Not helping matters much is the fact that, since Yukkuries are supposedly based on a Japanese snack called "manju", their insides are nothing but bean paste, so they're incredibly easy to kill.

Some other bad aspects of Yukkuri-dom include their low intellect, childish demeanor, and the fact that despite being based on humans (or humanized animals), they, for the most part, act like animals. Also, the Yukkuri version of Alice Margatroid was often portrayed as a rapist; her victims were fairly easy to spot by the fact that they have, like, 15 billion stalks growing out of their heads and have dried to death, drained rapidly of all the energy they'd need to keep those stalks going! O_o

That, by the way, is one of the two methods that Yukkuries reproduce: growing a stalk on their forehead and cultivating the babies as if they were walnuts. The other is by holding a baby in its "belly" like a mammal and squeezing it out of its chin.

Another notable aspect of Yukkuries is that they only bear a small resemblance to the Touhou characters they're based on. In addition to what I said above about Alice, Remilia Scarlet, in particular, is constantly in "charisma break" mode and constantly goes "uuuuuuuuuu!" Remilia Yukkuries also tend to have bodies more than the others. Another famous Yukkuri is the one of CNN reject Aya Shameimaru; she's often called "Kimeemaru" and has a horse body. Finally, Marisa Kirisame has, like, 99 billion variants of herself, the two most notable being "Shell Marisa" and "Kotatsu Marisa".

At least they make for good games. And on that note, I'm gonna go back to my cellphone now and play "Yukkuri Diary"... ^^