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Overview

Seiga Kaku (霍 青娥 Kaku Seiga), nicknamed Seiga Nyan Nyan (青娥 娘々), is a "wicked" hermit. Surprisingly, she is a married woman character and has a husband. By the way, "Kaku" is the surname of her husband's. Moreover, about the married woman character, the inferior comes out later.

She was a human who had been trained as much as possible to be a hermit, but she fell to become a wicked hermit. However, she acquired much strength as a hermit and can handle some Taoist magic arts. She can remain young for hundreds and thousands of years.

She is the manipulator of Yoshika Miyako who is a jiangshi. And she loves Yoshika very much.

In Ten Desires, she appears as a stage 4 boss at the underground deep cave of Myouren Temple's graveyard, and in front of the gate which attach to Hall of Dreams' Great Mausoleum.

She appears to avenge Seiga's subordinate Yoshika Miyako on the one who has beat back her attack at stage 3. During the Stage 4 boss battle, Yoshika takes part in the battle as an option of Seiga's. Seiga treats Yoshika, who shoots danmaku at the front and falls down under attack sometime, as a shield. As soon as Yoshika is defeated, Seiga will stop the attack and rushed to Yoshika's side to heal (revive) Yoshika with no attention to the damage. In the circumstance that Yoshika can't be revived after she is defeated, Seiga's attack will be more intensive than usual.

Seiga's music theme "Old Yuanxian" was made out of her image of a magician who carries out various magic arts with unknown stuffs jumping out. Staring from stage 4, ZUN said that he wanted to express the sense of speed and cheer, so he made a trance style music and he seemed like it.

Background

She used to be a normal human. When she was young, Seiga's father became engrossed with Taoism and left their family to become a hermit. Later she read her father's books to follow him, and she was looking forward to Taoist priests and hermits (especially one of the the Eight Immortals, He Xiangu). And she dreamed to be a hermit one day to see her father again.

When she grown up, she became a wife of the renowned Kaku family. However, she didn't give up her dreams and insisted to learn Taoist arts by herself. She was depressed during the days and was estranged from her family as she was not willing to speak to them. After eight years, Seiga bid her new family farewell and faked her own death by using self-learned, and traveled to her dreamed hermit's world.

After that, she refined her Taoist magic arts to be a hermit, and the power of hermit leads to an un-aging body and a long-lasting life.

However, her willingness to trick her family without any remorse and her personality of behaving unedifying made the higher beings showed no acknowledgment to her as a "hermit" but gave her a title of "wicked hermit". Still, she flattered herself of being a "hermit" with a clear mind, an indestructible body and a long-lasting life.

Her hobby was to show her power to others in the premise of spreading Taoist. However, hermits like her were not rare in her home country (the name of the country is not written, but it seems to be China from the name, culture and the name of spell card). She wished to spread Taoism, so she decided to move to Japan, which didn't have quite as many hermits 1400 years ago. And she recommended Taoism to Miko Toyosatomimi, the authority at that time who had talents. But she was rejected by Miko as Taoist had no use in politics for the peace of the country. So Seiga suggested that "for politics, spreading Buddhism to people to make them mature, and for authorities, using Taoist to build a superman power", and Miko accepted the idea. In fact, Seiga paid no attention to the politics of the country as she just wanted to fulfill her wishes.

As a result, a religious wars started between Miko who became a shikaisen and resurrected as a saint, and the Buddhists who saw through the plot and attempt to stop it...the root cause of the war is the woman.

But it seems she carried no wicked thought. She was just attracted by the strength of powerful people and to impart Taoism to Miko. When she went to Reimu's place, it was said that she was planning nothing, but be fascinated by the power of Reimu, and the Miko incident was the same. But she never flattered powerful people.

The protagonists didn't realize that she was the reason of the changes this time.

As an aside, her episodes have many blanks.

From the words of "the great king of evil who has just resurrected recently" in Byakuren Hijiri to the process of Byakuren's reviving, the reason why the sanctuary was sealed was seemed to be known. Also Reimu's story was known in advance (Mononobe no Futo, who has just been resurrected by the art of the shikaisen, did not know the inside story of Gensokyo. Miko Toyosatomimi seemed to knew it in advance by her abilities).

From this incident and the remarks of "recently", there is doubt that whether Seiga used to be in Gensokyo as she said that"the people in Gensokyo were worthy of to be powerful". From her tone, it seemed that the seal was not exist, and she had just come into Gensokyo recently.

What has she been doing for 1400 years? And what was the process of she becoming an evil hermit after traveled as a hermit. How did she encounter Yoshika Miyako? There are so many untold stories. The text has stopped 1400 years ago, and the hermit is a species that can't live without training, so it's hard to know her current power.

She is a mysterious woman.

In addition, Despite being a stage 4 boss, she can be seen in various parts of the work. Toyosatomimi no Miko appears many times in the normal ending, whereas she appears in the parallel ending. Also, there is an interesting design that though the Shinreibyou CD package is Miko's silhouette, when you open package, you can see the message of Seiga's tone saying "Oops, did you pick it up?" in the right hand corner of the CD. Moreover, her stage song "Desire Drive" was arranged, and she can be seen in the ending theme song "Desire Drive".

Appearance

The design is unified with the color blue as from her hair, eyes and clothes as the name suggests. She has a wavy blue hair, and a part of her hair is plaited into the shape of ∞ at the top of her head (known as a chigomage), instead of hairpin, the knot is inserted with a nomi (a chisel but also a mysterious tool that appeared in the original story that can crack an extremely hard wall. It is a plowshare in the original version). The chisel was originally used to cut medicinal stones, it could easily crack stones, bricks, or crags like rotten pieces.

She has blue eyes.

She wears a water colored one piece dress with puff and short sleeves. The full front of the gown, the sleeves and the chest are made of frill. A belt-like pattern made of red and yellow dots is drawn on the whole clothing. The pattern is said to be the immature fruit of the raspberry (tokkuriichigo) with cyanide to dissolve gold when making the Immortality elixir's gold liquid by alchemy (external alchemy). The fruit of the raspberry changes from red to black-purple when it fully ripe, so if you pull the black and purple parts out, it will become red and yellow and the pattern is very similar to the fruit (reference link, it is an edible fruit and is also used in sake and herbal medicine).

Underneath the one piece, she wears a one piece-like white sheer clothes. It's hard to notice if you don't look carefully, but you can see it from the rim of the chest, sleeves, and the full front of the gown. In the defeating graphics after she has defeated, the sleeves are exposed.

There is a black belt on her waist. white and red blossom in the middle and green leaves are decorated on the front (peach blossom?).

From the top of the one piece, she wears a white vest (with a blue pattern) with a collar. And she wears white socks and black shoes.

There are brown strings tied on her shin of both feet, and a charm with red letters written on white paper is attached to her left leg's string.

She wears a translucent robe of feathers. Both ends of it are floating against gravity, but the middle part is not floating as much. Maybe the reason why it looks like that is because Seiga sits in her full-body graphics.

In the game, Seiga flies in the sky with the robe of feathers hanging on her waist. So, a unique s-shape carefree flying look can be seen in the moving motion of the pixel graphics when Seiga appears and runs away.

Her robe of feathers seems to be cheap.However, since she used to live freely in the famous Kaku family, it is unclear whether she has an ordinary sense of money.

Her appearance is very similar to the current logo of ZUNTATA, the sound production team of Taito, where ZUN used to work at (but the original logo didn't wear a hairpin).

ZUN said that her design followed an orthodox fairy style.

By the way, there is another hermits called Kasen Ibaraki appears in the Touhou Project series. Her image color is red, which is the opposite of Seiga's blue image of blue. Was there anything intended?

Ability

Capable of passing through walls

It is not the ability to pass through walls like a ghost, but the ability to physically break through walls with holes.

Specifically,

1. break the wall with the hairpin in her hair and make a round hole.
2. Pass through the hole and enter the other side of the wall. Pull out the debris of the broken wall.
3. The hole in the wall will restore to the original shape after a while.

It seems like the retro game Lode Runner.

It seems to be an unbeatable ability at first glance, but it actually has weaknesses that she can't pass though the walls made of soft things.

From Seiga's perspective, there is no use of this ability except scaring others. Using this ability seems to be able to give a fatal damage to the mortar-covered wall (but it is unknown that whether it can remove the existence meaning of blocking the way, or just to bring some damage to it).

It can be inferred that her ability comes from her original story "the incredible nomi (chisel)" (but the one who used the chisel was not Seiga but her husband). In the original story, the cracked hole in the wall will not restore to the original shape.

Fighting Ability

She uses magic arts as the attack skill and the support skill for herself.

She has a stubborn body that has been refined by alchemy and is difficult to give damage her in the battle (the hermits who eat the elixir at their own expenses can make their bodies harder than steels). What's more, she can use various magic arts like passing through walls, making illusion, the resurrecting and manipulating of corpses (the magic art of jiang shi). She made the corpse of an ancient Japanese Yoshika Miyako as a jiang shi to be her subordinate. She can resurrect Yoshika as soon as she is knocked down.

It can be inferred that she is not good battles at short range because she always manipulates Yoshika as a shield and hide behind her. However, she seems confident in the battle as she says that "it is amazing that a human can fight against me."

It seems that Seiga have acquired regular art knowledge and skills as she spread Taoist to Miko Toyosatomimi, and find out that the skills of Reimu's Yin-Yang Orb, charms, trance, etc., are the power of Taoist.

Species

Wicked Hermit

It is a kind of hermit, but it has been running off the rails of Sendo. A hermit who strengthens herself by carrying out wrong-doings.

Seiga used to be an ordinary human of a country (probably China) where the Taoist and hermits were prevalent. As a result of giving up her moral life and to be trained as a Taoist priest, she succeeded in acquiring the power of a hermit. However, her personality of behaving unedifying made the higher beings showed no acknowledgment to her as and gave her a title of "wicked hermit".

In the story, she called herself a "hermit" in front of Youmu, but was perceived as a wicked hermit by Youmu at a glance. From her stage with Reimu in the ending, ZUN indicated that wicked hermits are conspirators.

"Hermit" refers to the one who finished all Taoist training, living in fairyland, using hermit arts and immortal.

Hermit is a human who owns superman power and knows various hermit arts. The power of a hermit can fight against the youkai.

Hermits have little desire, but the desire is not completely abandoned. Though hermits have a long life like thousands of years, they are not immortal. If they don't keep the Taoist training, they will soon be unable to maintain the body. For the youkai, celestials is hypertoxic, but hermits are their favorite food. The youkai will rank up if they eat hermits.

Moreover, even ordinary beast can become a beast youkai. So hermits are targeted by many youkai and beast youkai which know the benefits (another way to become a beast youkai is to eat human who gain much virtuous, such as a monk).

Except that, there are many devastated hermits. The most devastated one must be the shinigami who must experience the hell once every hundred years.

According to Komachi Onozuka, though she seems to be out of jurisdiction, the shinigami will appear once every hundred years to the celestials and hermits, to perform a mental attack that strikes the gap in the heart. If they lose, their life span will not be extended anymore, so they can't escape from it.

She says that a common human can't be won, and the one who win continually become the hermits and celestials nowadays. Also, if they don't keep training and the abilities become dull, they will fall into hell with no chance of return. In addition, when Tenshi Hinanawi, who beat back the shinigami for many times, won the battle between her and Komachi, a shinigami and a ferryman, she said that "you're a ferryman after all. Go summon a different mysterious spirit to fight me."

That is to say, if hermits cannot become celestials, they must continue to improve themselves both physically and mentally through training and will live a harsh life full of disasters. That's why many hermits are weirdos. Seiga has lived that life for a long time.

Also, there is also an amiable aspect of hermits. They will deepen the connection with other hermits, and when new hermit candidates appear, they will look after the candidates as disciples, as well as handy men, until they can stand alone. And hermits will help as soon as humans are in danger too.

Hermits can live just by eating a few nuts a day, and if they are over 500 years old, they can live on air without eat other things.

As an aside, Seiga is considered to be a shikaisen the same as Miko no Toyosatomimi and Mononobe no Futo, considering the way she used when leaving home.

Seiga made a illusion to disguise the bamboo pole as her corpse and her family buried it. She pretended to be dead.

To become a shikaisen, people need to die once or to fake their own death.

The method of faking the death requires an object as a substitute of the body.At that time, when a sword is used as the substitute, the shikaisen will be the most powerful ones. In contrast, when a bamboo pole is used as the substitute, the shikaisen will be the least powerful ones. There are different classes between shikaisen.

There are three ranks of hermits, celestials, sennin, and the shikaisen. The shikaisen are the lowest level of hermits.

Nonetheless, her species is considered to be a wicked hermit and her current rank is unknown as the text has stopped before 1,400 years.

Personality

She is carefree with an elusive attitude, cheerful and calm.

Basically, she uses a frank tone like "～wane", "～desyou?" and "～damon". Sometimes she will use a little polite language. She always "ara" as a pet phrase. She has sociable manners while talking, and it's hard to find she is a wicked hermit. When she visits Reimu's place, she is unexpectedly cheerful to say "YEAH" while appearing from the wall.

As noted in the settings, her essential personality is far from human morality. She cares about nobody as long as her purpose can be achieved. She is a very self-centered figure. As a result, she deceived the authorities, the people of the country, and she even deceived her families in the end.

From another perspective, she is pure and willing towards her own business. And she acts for the outcomes. It can be said that she is free and honest to her own desires. Therefore, she do not cares about whether the methods are on good and evil standards, but to choose the best ones without hesitation. In order to become a hermit, she did many distasteful things as well. It can be said that she is a woman who owns both childish behavioral principles and adult's strength. She also shows her quick mind because she comes up with another proposal as soon as Miko refuses the first proposal. From the cases like Miko's, it seems that she can grasp the needs of the other party. It can be seen that Seiga is enterprising because she has a solid understanding of the pagan Buddhism, and she also applies for the discipleship of Reimu's to learn her Tao despite being in a position of teaching Taoism.

Despite her personality, she is a good talker, and she is good at deceive others with words by telling the advantages others wanted. She will deceive others for her own purposes, but it seems to be without any ill intent.

In a different future, Marisa was captured by Taoism before being told that Taoism's final goal was immortality and she knew nothing about the secrets (Marisa did a ongoing practice of her own style). Though she refused the persuasion of Sanae Kochiya that "If you convert, you can become a better hermit", the overwhelming charisma of Miko showed great impact when she try to find out her own faith, so she eventually went to dojo of Miko, and converted temporarily for her practice.

Although Youmu and Miko had a grand misunderstanding on Futo's expansion, she used to be considered as "a hermit-like person who transcends life and death". She was completely convinced to be a hermit, but the story became a dark history after Yuyuko told her it was not true.

Regardless of her awareness, she has the power to attract the opponents.

She has a strong self-revelation desire to show off her power as a hobby.

Because of that hobby, she made up to the authority (Miko) came from Japan at that time and learn Taoism from her. The Japanese view of religion was changed on that occasion as the idea of spreading Buddhism to the people was raised.

She has interest in dead bodies as she praises the corpse very much.

That's why she spoiled her own jiangshi Yoshika Miyako very much, and she liked cats as well. She recommended callisthenics exercise to Yoshika to prevent her from being hurt. She always said to Yoshika that "It's so cute to be rotten" and "You know that corpses can't die and isn't it wonderful", and her ethical perspective can be shown when she is showing of the functions of the corpse with a child-like innocent smile. While laughing innocently with a bright smile like a child. Reimu and Marisa can't endure it and said that jiangshi is "a bad hobby, and an abandonment of corpses".

It seems that she is easily to be attracted by those who are powerful, because they might give her some advice.

In fact, in the future, she is attracted by Reimu's power and visits the jinja directly to apply for the discipleship to learn Tao (onmyoudou). She will recommend Taoism to the one (including pagans) who are not engaged in Taoism if she think they have talents. It seems that she cares nothing about the distinction between good and evil, religion, and enemies and allies. Moreover, she will send generous praise to the opponents after she wins with a self-praise because she thinks it's amazing that the opponents have the audacity to fight against her.

ZUN said that she is real and glib, and she will follow whoever she likes. And she is described as a character with a "good personality" as she no particular ambition by following others.

Original Story

Her origin comes from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio 14th chapter of the 7th volume, Qing'e.

In this story, the name of Huo Qing'e, her personal history, the ability and the design of the hairpin are considered to be the original.

The story Qing'e is:

There was man with a surname of Wu who served as an official (judge). He went in and secluded himself in the mountain to learn Taoism.

He had a daughter called Qing'e.

Qing'e was 14 years old and her beauty is very famous in the village. However, she decided not to married throughout her life. She read her father book secretly when she was young, and she was looking forward to hermit He Xiangu. So, she decided to be a hermit as well. As her father secluded himself in the mountain, she was very determined and even her mother could not change her mind.

There was a young man called Huo Huan who lived in the same village of Qing'e, he fell in love with her at first sight an wanted to marry her.

He used a "one foot long magical chisel which can crack hard stones like rotten pieces" which he obtained from a Taoist to open up a hole on the wall of Qing'e's house and slipped into it. Then they became a couple though the process was with twists and turns. They had one son between them.

Eight years after their marriage, however,

Seiga told a farewell to her family and died on her bed in a sudden.

Her family buried her body in sorrow.

A year later.

Huo Huan saw Qing'e again by chance when he was distressed in the mountain.

It turned out that Qing'e became a hermit and came to her father ‘s place. A year ago, Seiga use a magic art to disguise the bamboo pole as her corpse and left her home as her family thought she was dead. And she went to the place of her father's, who is a hermit as well, and lived with him in the cave of the dwelling place of hermits.

At this place, when Huo Huan did a barefaced to Qing'e, she said that "Your behavior defiled the cave" and drove him out of the cave, and the entrance to the cave is closed by the rock wall.

Huo Huan used the magical chisel with him in a frenzyto break the rock wall, and pulled Qing'e out.

In the end, Huo Huan and Qing'e went back to their village.

They then had one more daughter (later married) and a son.

Later, Huo Huan also became a hermit, and the couple left their grown-up children at home and disappeared.

……As you can see, there are lots of similar outlines.

By the way, there is other story of the goddess "Qing'e" who can control the frost and snow "Qing'e", she is also called Qing'nv. Moreover, In the various meaning of the character "Qing", there is a meaning of young and the character "e" has the meaning of extremely beautiful. So, in Chinese, "Qing'e" also means beautiful young girl.

In background soaring door of Shinreibyou's 4th boss stage, the photo materials with portraits and characters are used. The photos is the middle door of the Taipei Xia-Hai City God Temple's Sanchuan Palace in Taipei, Taiwan (reference link).

Spell Cards

It is a term in Taoist arts and a source of danmaku shooting with a pattern of bullets. Most of them are in the kind of evil arts following the title of the wicked hermit.

Ten Desires

• Evil Sign "Yang Xiaogui"
• Evil Sign "Guhun Yegui"
• Demonify "Zouhuo Rumo"
• Necromancy "Corpse Tongji"
• Spirit Link "Tongling Yoshika"
• Path Sign "Dao Fetal Movement"

OVERDRIVE

• Path Sign "TAO Fetal Movement ~Dao~"

Impossible Spell Card

• Demonify "Excessive Zouhuo Rumo"
• Hermit Arts "Wall Runner"
• Hermit Arts "Wall-Phasing Wormhole"

Names in Other Languages

Related Illustrations

Related Articles

Touhou　Touhou Project　Ten Desires

External Links

English

Seiga Kaku - Touhou Wiki - Characters, games, locations, and more

Seiga Kaku | Touhou Wiki | Fandom

Japanese

霍 青娥／青娥 娘々 - アニヲタWiki(仮) - atwiki（アットウィキ） (Aniwota wiki - atwiki)

霍青娥とは (カクセイガとは) [単語記事] - ニコニコ大百科 (NicoNico Encyclopedia)

Chinese

霍青娥 - THBWiki · 专业性的东方Project维基百科 - TBSGroup (THB Wiki)

Korean

곽청아 - 나무위키 (Namuwiki)

Article in Other Languages

霍青娥