Can I take this as confirmation that that is indeed Lord? After all, there has to substantial precedence for that obsession and tenacious desire to "humiliate" Uthena and her "friends", the Enormeta - which could be the humiliation she suffered at the hands of Uthena as Lord. More importantly, though, her complex regarding having her butt touched could stem from the humiliating spanking Uthena dealt her - resulting in Lord as a sobbing, apologizing mess. Even her distaste for people "pretending to be good" could also stem from the defeat as Lord as she does also chastise Uthena for being "swayed by the spirit of justice", which from her perspective could be taken as Uthena "pretending" to be just and humiliating her when she is no less evil than herself.

Also, this pose here https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/looking_up_to_magical_girls_ch41#18 is much too similar to Lord's poses here https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/looking_up_to_magical_girls_ch19#14.

Whoa, the pages you posted really do have uncanny similarities. But it wouldnt make any sense for Shion to be her? Since - unless some memory manipulations going on here - Shion is confirmed to be one of the surviving victims of 'Lord', so she couldn't be the same person.

It is kinda obvious that shion has no idea no ones pretending to be good. I think she is in fact a child and not just someone who looks young.

Harukas face on p.12 when slapping sayos butt is too halirious XDDDDD

Must've misremembered then. I could've sworn yuyuko said 'we' when talking about less suitable abilities. Oh well, lets see if there's going to be some epilogue poetic match between master and student.

(Or Reimu will play?! And show how going beyond reality is the strongest ability XD But no, let's not leave out GOD rinnosuke, who should actually dominate the table by just playing the game like a normal person!)

So is Doremy creating Youmu's ideas or eating them?

Considering youmus last move, Id rather say shes using them (Youmus dream to go on) to power up her own ability, then create a dream like enviroment for youmu so she acts like such (i.e. when youre in a dream, you act not like you do when awake) and thus effectively countering akyuus ability.

Ok, so after all this discussion, my initial guess was right. All yokai ability like Kaguya, Shou or Sanae actually change the value of the tiles (and Remilia probably too), but actually knowing them nullyfies that.

Marisas cheating did change the value of tiles she knew, but since those were only a few, and Kaguya could influence (apparently like Doremy) behaviour, the tie ability was almost unbreakable by outside influences.

Akyuu does not only have perfect memory, apparently she also has perfect eyes. Well, at least we can discard the theory that she has perfect reflexes and information analysis...

Oddly enough, between those 2 years, did no one use these tiles? Otherwise theyd sure to have changed marks. Maybe an oversight here.

I'm wondering if Reimu just misread the situation, and what actually happened is the guy was a terrible gambler and lost without even making that basic trio.

That would fit the narrative of Reimu being stupid here

Arent onis in touhou said to be honest if nothing else? How come they said the onis did not keep their words?

Didn't Yuyuko emphasize to Youmu that both their abilities are useless for Majhong? I dont think she was lying.

I would believe Youmu not to 'cheat' against others. I think - referring to the title - that her greatest strength will be to disregard people's abilities and play her own game. E.g. even if Akyuu knows all the tiles, she still wouldn't be able to predict what Youmu cuts, so her greatest strength is rendered useless if for example her winning tile(s) is kept.

And other abilities that would influence even the behaviour, like Kaguya, shouldn't work on Youmu either (not that it matters at this point), since unless Kaguya is good at majhong, which is in question, as her reliance on her ability is very much like Sanae's, she would need to force a draw whilst only having two players (not her) to cooperate.

Btw, what's your occupation, if you don't mind me asking. I have never seen someone use ... et. al in a different context than scientific papers. (one would normally just write and co.)

last edited at Sep 3, 2022 3:10AM

This is what she came to Mondstadt for? And the photo in the background is actually Collei-friendly.

So their majhong just has different rules? Normally, you dont set up your own wall, thats actually really stupid, cos anyone could just mix up the tiles to their advantage, no ingenious tricks needed (just move desired tiles closer to you) Another thing I feel like is completely off the mark is how perfect memory works. Yeah, sure she can remember each tile movement, but only if she actually can see them. For instance, how many tiles do you think can one perceive reasonably? Unless she has a bird view and hawk eyes, she would only ever have information on a fractiom of tiles, and since they are hopefully indistinguishable by human (and yokai) eye she would always lose all information the moment the tiles get mixed.

Its like, perfect memory does not help you in this "where is the prize under the cup" (forgot its name) game, The problem in this game is not your memory (since you only ever need to remember one number), its the fact that you cant perceive what happens fast enough. Even if akyuu has perfect memory here, her playback would just be as unhelpful. Same with mixing tiles, just a million times more difficult.

Well, you're one hundred percent right that being able to build your own wall is ripe for cheating... in fact, you're so right that that is what Marisa actually does at least twice (Chapter 15, page 12, and even more egregiously Chapter 17, page 21) in the one game she's played in. They even mention that she's been pulling the tiles she needs closer to her for two rounds in the second case. Which is, as you said, all someone would need to do to cheat.

With how many players have abilities that affect their draws, it's safe to say that they're affecting their wall either directly or indirectly. It might be that their abilities merely allow them to affect how the neutral stackers end up placing the tiles, but it's also possible they either build their own wall or each other's wall. That doesn't change that what we're actively seeing is multiple people can affect their wall directly, to some degree or other.

As for your issues with Akyuu's memory ability - or maybe her memory processing/perception ability - being that good, it's probably true that'd you'd need to be at least a super-genius to memorise all that information, or even keep track of a fast Shell Game. But considering that Akyuu literally scored the highest out of all players in Self League (Chapter 14, pg 04), by a fairly significant margin it's say to say that whatever form her ability (which the author points out is to 'not forget anything she sees') takes is good enough to absolutely dominate the league and may even be on par with the Senses' powers, including the Literally Mind-Reading Satori. It's quite possible that the author has decided that her memorisation comes with the memory processing power to process the whole board, whether that's a conscious buff, attributed to the more magical nature of her ability, or just because the author doesn't know how perfect memory works.

To extend that Senses comparison further, compared to Satori, who is one of the Senses, The ability I'm theorising for Akyuu is a slower bloomer but has higher "max power". Unlike Satori, who starts with the information of everyone's hands and strategies in full and never gets more or less than that, she starts with only the normal amount of information she herself has and slowly builds up to have ALL of the information.

It's not that your objections aren't logical for a real game of mahjong. I'd even go so far as to say they're common sense objections.

But you can't be held back by common sense in Gensokyo.

Well, you concluded your argument in such a good way, I can hardly deny anything! But the rest was good as well of course. True, no matter what I say about Akyuu, the fact that she did come out on top makes her ability good, even if the realization of 'perfect memory' is up to the author to elaborate in the next chapters.

Speaking of Satori, she would be the best counter for Akyuu though. All her hard earned information can be directly taken from her.
Its fascinating how Youmu (and some other characters like Yuyuko) are not part of the large group of tile manipulator or information manipulator (gatherer). If you think back on how Youmu won, it was mostly what you'd consider a fluke. Her hardest oppenent being arguably Sanae was outdone by teamwork as far as I remember. Keine wrecked her hard, Satori won't lose to her twice. The only 'legitimate' win was against the 'strongest trio' where her ability actually did something. I wonder then how Yuyuko, who is not a newcomer and everyone knows could accumulate this many points...

Youmu I know you are an airhead but please think about Akyuu's ability more!

Im an airhead and dont get it! Help!

She's remembering the exact movements of each tile as they were shuffled so she knows where all the face-down tiles are, I presume.

But that doesnt make sense... Abilities like Shou/Hina/Kaguya do not make the tiles more likely to be drawn by them, but they change the value of the face down tiles/how people play tiles, as seen by marisas failed attempts at cheating. Unless actually knowing the tiles changes that? I mean, Marisa certainly did not need perfect memory to know where her tiles where, since she arranged them as such.

One, I don't think you should conflate Kaguya's ability with the other two really. Kaguya's affect the whole table in a lot of subtler ways, causing a draw by any means possible, while the other two strictly affect the tiles they pick up.

As for how they do it, it's actually probably closer to Marisa. It seems like in this version of Mahjong, each player draws their tiles from a "wall", basically an individual deck. Hina's and Shou's abilities seem to be that they draw far more of their personal tiles into their hand and their wall when setting up the round. Marisa does the same, just by sleight of hand rather than an ability. I don't think anyone has the ability to actually change what a tile's value is - if they could, it'd be far more suitable for a character like Mamizou... but even Mamizou's abilities only deceive people on what the card actually says, rather than change what it actually is.

Akyuu is actually a great counter to this, for basically her memory skills. Like the person above said, she can remember the exact movements of tiles.

Shou's power draws in the Pin, (aka the coins). there are 36 Pin tiles, and a hand is 13 tiles big. So just by showing her hand, Shou's already given Akyuu a marker on about a third of her core gameplan. With even that much, as well as the ones in her own hands, Akyuu's probably aware of about half the Pin cards by round 2.

by extension, if she remembers the exact movements of tiles, she can infer information on even a small amount of them (as the various trios and quads that make up a Mahjong hand are fairly consistently pre-arranged by everyone, if she knows, for example, that Shou has arranged two of the same tile with another tile between them, she can be pretty confident that there's at least three of a kind there.)

Note exactly what she did in this round - she didn't go for a big win, she went for a seemingly riskier AND smaller one that none the less paid off. The reason isn't because she's dumb, it's probably because either she knew she couldn't get the better hand or that someone else would win first if she tried.

I'm reminded of a discworld story, where a game like poker is being played with an undercover witch. The one time the main scumbag on the table has what could be the best hand in the game, the witch folds early, sacrificing a grand total of... one dollar. Akyuu's doing something similar here - accepting smaller wins and losses to prevent other players from capitalising on their good hands.

She's basically the world's best card-counter, with an eye for the very long game. Like she said, not knocking her out in the first round was a big mistake, as now she has a lot of information on Shou.

So their majhong just has different rules? Normally, you dont set up your own wall, thats actually really stupid, cos anyone could just mix up the tiles to their advantage, no ingenious tricks needed (just move desired tiles closer to you) Another thing I feel like is completely off the mark is how perfect memory works. Yeah, sure she can remember each tile movement, but only if she actually can see them. For instance, how many tiles do you think can one perceive reasonably? Unless she has a bird view and hawk eyes, she would only ever have information on a fractiom of tiles, and since they are hopefully indistinguishable by human (and yokai) eye she would always lose all information the moment the tiles get mixed.

Its like, perfect memory does not help you in this "where is the prize under the cup" (forgot its name) game, The problem in this game is not your memory (since you only ever need to remember one number), its the fact that you cant perceive what happens fast enough. Even if akyuu has perfect memory here, her playback would just be as unhelpful. Same with mixing tiles, just a million times more difficult.

Attention Duelists!

Patchouli actually thinking! But yeah, unless magicians also have a printing spell and create paper spell, they need to go comission these books as well. Even they cannot escape society!

I mean, I guess he hasnt done much recently, but every now and then, this guy comes and literally shits out insults like he supressed diarrhea for a day. Its actually kinda funny just because how cliche these insults are, still, you may wanna do something about it. https://dynasty-scans.com/forum/posts?user_id=50664

Not relatable :(

Kozakura needs hugs. And better friends.

And true that, shes still traumatized and they dont give a shit

That monke looked derpy as hell XD

This chapter was the best so far and Im glad the new guys provided us with such an opportunity!

last edited at Aug 25, 2022 2:45AM

@smoothsmoothie Fuck you Balsamic vinegar

This is not taking it easy!

Its ntr, but the one doing it does not know!

Youll never see it coming

Youmu I know you are an airhead but please think about Akyuu's ability more!

Im an airhead and dont get it! Help!

She's remembering the exact movements of each tile as they were shuffled so she knows where all the face-down tiles are, I presume.

But that doesnt make sense... Abilities like Shou/Hina/Kaguya do not make the tiles more likely to be drawn by them, but they change the value of the face down tiles/how people play tiles, as seen by marisas failed attempts at cheating. Unless actually knowing the tiles changes that? I mean, Marisa certainly did not need perfect memory to know where her tiles where, since she arranged them as such.

Youmu I know you are an airhead but please think about Akyuu's ability more!

Im an airhead and dont get it! Help!

I do love how the author played Sakuya dirty XD damn, not even a quarter of a chapter. Rumias black censor bar takes the cake for me, even if it did absolutely nothing

The meal coupon thing was actually really cute. I should take notes XD