The goldfish is the youkai and the bowl is Gensokyo.
When the youkai presents the bowl to Yukari, the premise that the goldfish "cannot live in water outside anymore" is similar to the youkai's situation. Which is: live in Gensokyo or die outside. Since the youkai was going to die soon, I suppose he presented the goldfish to Yukari as a final insult to her ideals.
Yukari and Ran understood his intentions right away. They were able to catch the metaphor easily perhaps because the Yakumos had some history with him as evident from the story.
Yukari did not want Chen to eat the goldfish in the same way that she does not want those living in Gensokyo to die despite being limited. However, she does realize that the goldfish will be limited by the tank and is troubled since she does not have an answer. She says to Chen, "if it ends up in someone's stomach, that too will be karma." since at that point she believed that perhaps fate has a better answer than she did. It is for this reason that she did not scold Ran, because Ran presented her an answer to that youkai's problem while she had none. Ran killed the youkai, and Yukari kept wondering if that was the right thing to do.
When the goldfish grew bigger, Yukari says, "well don't come crying to me when you change your mind [about eating it]." Or in other words she was telling herself, "if a youkai grew to resent Gensokyo for limiting them despite it being the only thing keeping them alive, not even I have an answer."
But Chen's answer "when I changed my mind [about eating it] it'll be because I know it's time to eat it." Was what solved her troubles. It means to her that there was nothing to regret about the youkai's death. The youkai died under Yukari's watch because she in her heart has always wanted him to die. In the end it seems that there was no real dissatisfaction among youkai regarding their lives in Gensoukyo. The youkai in this story alone had brought it up to bother Yukari. The truth was that only this youkai had grown incompatible with Gensoukyo, but was unable to do anything about his fate other than protest to Yukari.
At that moment Yukari realized the youkai died because he had given up on Gensoukyo, and Gensoukyo had given up on him. He has literally become too large for the "bowl (Gensokyo)," and it was time to "eat" him. Thus, she overcame her own troubles and had Ran make a feast to celebrate. It became clear to her that Gensokyo, or "the bowl" is not the problem. The youkai was the problem. and it released her from her doubt about the Gensokyo situation. It told her that her creation of Gensokyo wasn't as the youkai said, restrictive. It was a necessity. Goldfish cannot grow without a bowl.
Furthermore, the fish metaphor also extends to Reimu. Yukari watched her because Reimu was what came to her mind when she watched the goldfish. In a sense Reimu is a "big fish in a small bowl." She is much stronger than all of Gensokyo (at least for now). That is why in the last page Yukari kept using the fish metaphor for Reimu, saying, "she's more of a fighting fish than a goldfish." When talking about her behavior.
Fighting fish do not outgrow their bowl like goldfish, but instead like to monopolize it. Yukari is saying that she will never become like that youkai, thinking herself too great for Gensokyo. Although she will fight to keep Gensokyo her's, like how she keeps exterminating youkai.
I really enjoyed the story. The allegories kept the characters multi-dimensional. Despite their moral ambiguity, I can say that they still tried their best to do good. While I don't usually like stories that depict Reimu as a youkai exterminating tyrant, I was OK with this since the author did show her to love Gensokyo in her own way.
last edited at Mar 14, 2016 5:19PM
