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Kisume
| キスメ
kisɯme (♫) Kisume | |
|---|---|
 Kisume in Subterranean Animism The Fearsome Well SpiritMore Character Titles | |
| Species | |
| Abilities |
Dropping will-o'-the-wisps |
| Location | |
Appearances | |
| Official Games | |
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| Print Works | |
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Kisume (キスメ) is a rather shy Tsurube-otoshi who usually spends her time in buckets. She is often seen in dark places such as caves or wells. As a midboss with no dialogue and a sparse official profile, little is known about her.
General Information
Kisume was the stage 1 midboss of Subterranean Animism and has made a cameo appearance in Oriental Sacred Place chapter 10 and Forbidden Scrollery chapter 2.
Personality
Though her usual activities are a mystery, ZUN described her as cruel and violent, who would probably "go ahead and chop your head off, put it in her bucket, and go home".[1]
Abilities
- Ability to drop will-o'-the-wisps
It is to literally drop will-o'-the-wisps from the objective that is on top of her head. It probably comes from her species as tsurubebi (釣瓶火, lit. "well-bucket fire"), thought to be the same as tsurube-otoshi. Her spell cards have many that drop danmaku vertically, which would be the specialty of her species.
Official Profiles
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○１面中ボス 恐るべき井戸の怪 キスメ 種族：釣瓶落とし 暗い夜に道を歩いていると真上から落ちてきて、頭をぶつけてしまう恐怖の妖怪。 |
Stage 1 mid-boss The Fearsome Well Spirit
Species: Tsurube otoshi A fearsome youkai who drops straight down onto you from above when you're walking the streets late at night. |
Spell Cards
Character Design
Origin
Tsurube otoshi (lit. bucket dropper) are a type of youkai believed to have originated in the Chuubu region of Japan. They usually live atop trees, and when humans come close to the tree a bucket or a severed head drops down and eats them. They are also sometimes depicted as flaming spirits. There is also a traditional Japanese proverb somewhat related to her species: "The autumn sun descends like a bucket falling into a well" (秋の陽は釣瓶落とし Aki no Hi wa Tsurube Otoshi). It is a proverb used to indicate how the days in Autumn get shorter.
Name
Her full name is Kisume (キスメ). According to ZUN, her name is written in katakana to give it an old feel, and it's not written in kanji because "that would make her seem too strong".[2]
Design
Kisume has a pale skin with dark teal hair tied up in pigtails by white hair beads. The bucket she sits in is a cherry brown with black hoops near the top and bottom. She wears a white robe with an obi.
Appearances
Windows Games
- Subterranean Animism
- Main article: Subterranean Animism Story
In the events of Subterranean Animism, she attacks the heroine on her way to the underground by dropping on her. She is disposed of quickly.
Spin-offs
- Double Spoiler
In Double Spoiler, Kisume appeared as a stage 3 target, where she uses a few spell cards and had Aya Shameimaru and Hatate Himekaidou take photos of her and her danmaku.
Literature
- Symposium of Post-mysticism
Back in 1984, Aya Shameimaru reports that during Gensokyo's winter, children had found skeletal remains of a human while playing around a dried-up well, to which it ended up that the well was declared to be off-limits. Apparently, a tsurube-otoshi youkai (presumably Kisume) came out of the well saying "So is THIS the body you dropped down here?" and threw the bones at them. There was no one missing, so who the bones belonged to is a mystery.
The bones disappeared while no one was looking during preparations to bury them in Muenzuka. This rolled onto a case of whether there was any sort of incident or not, along with the identity of the previous owner of the bones. Yukari Yakumo thought it was by the youkai from the Underworld and that they wanted to scare the humans since their powers come from the negative energy of humans, but it may've been a simple misunderstanding. Due to a non-intervention pact with between the underground youkai and Gensokyo, the situation was noted as potentially problematic.
The incident was settled as silver birch branches have been mistaken for bones, to which no ominous occurrences had happened at the Human Village. At a later date, it was confirmed that the dried-up well was filled in with dirt; who did this is unknown.
Gallery
Illustrations
Others
Kisume's Sigil as seen in The Grimoire of Marisa.
Additional Information
- Both Kisume and Yamame Kurodani use the same background image while performing a Spell Card.
- Her Subterranean Animism portrait is very low-res, compared to many other portraits by ZUN.
- Kisume is one of the few characters to not make a cameo appearance in Hopeless Masquerade.
Fandom
Official Sources
- 2008/08/16 Subterranean Animism - Official profile (Character Settings.txt)
- 2009/07/28 The Grimoire of Marisa - Kisume's Spell Card
- 2010/03/14 Double Spoiler - Stage 3 spell cards comments
- 2010/08/26 Oriental Sacred Place - Chapter 10
References
- ↑ Symposium of Post-mysticism - Interview with ZUN
- ↑ Cara☆Mel (25 December 2008). "Interview on Subterranean Animism with Cara☆Mel" (in 日本語). Retrieved 22 August 2011.
 | This page is part of Project Characters, a Touhou Wiki project that aims to write proper descriptions for all official characters of Touhou Project. Please keep the character page guidelines in mind when contributing. |
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