Welcome to this little corner of the internet celebrating Alice Margatroid from Touhou Project! I hope you enjoy Alice as much as I do!
For the best experience, I suggest playing the music at the bottom, or allowing autoplay on your browser as different tracks are loaded as the page is refreshed. All the songs are from the official games, they relate to Alice, and offer pleasant insights into her character.
This page is under construction and subject to change! Thank you for your patience!
Alice Margatroid is a character in the Touhou Project series of Japanese shoot 'em up games and other media created by ZUN. She first appeared in a game titled Mystic Square that was released for the NEC PC-9800 in 1998. In her first appearance, she looked like a young girl that was heavily reminiscint of Lewis Caroll's Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The protagonists of the game fight her twice and the stage music for her second encounter makes this relationship unambiguous, being titled Alice in Wonderland; enemies with card-motifs also are found in this stage, another reference to the source for her inspiration.
While Alice has always been shown to be well-versed in magic, her second appearance in the Windows-era game Perfect Cherry Blossom—no longer a little girl but a young woman— further develops her appearance and personaliy. She is stated to have become a youkai magician, someone who has become non-human in the pursuit of magic and has the title of Seven-Colored Puppeteer. It is here that her more recognizable traits come to the fore, with her fixation with dolls being one of the more prominent ones; she uses a combination of magic, strings, and dexterity to control a large number of dolls in most circumstances, including combat. She not only has a very large collection of dolls that fill her home but also she makes them herself and utilizes them to do all sorts of mundane and more specialized tasks alike. In the Windows-era games, which revolve around fights that involve myriad colorful projectiles and character special abilities adapted to the framework of a "spell card" system, her own abilities and spell cards revolve around doll usage. These include the "Shanghai", "Hourai", and "Goliath" type dolls, at least one type of which is always seen with her. The fascination to dolls extends towards the goal of eventually making an autonomous doll, imbuing it with life.
Besides her interests and obsessions as a magician, Alice lifes a quiet life in the Forest of Magic. She lives in a cozy home that's rather secluded. While private, and given to prefering solitude, she is by no means unfriendly. Anyone who happens to be lost in the forest will be welcomed into her home and offered hospitality. The strangeness of her interests might be off-putting to normal humans but she has also been known to appear at festivals and put on puppet shows with her dolls for crowds. It's easy to mistake her for a human at a glance as she retains all the habits of humanity, such as eating and sleeping, even though she doesn't need to do any of that since becoming a youkai. Given all the other eccentrics that inhabit Gensokyo, her relative normalcy and inexperience make her unlikely to be in the middle of any sort of incident. She's more likely to be found at home, lovingly crafting more dolls by hand.
Over the years, Alice has appeared as both a playable character and enemy in various games. The latter role is mainly in her aforementioned initial appearances as well as a spin-off game. In the former capacity, she's either been partnered up with another magician, Marisa Kirisasme, to solve the relevant incidents or she's had her own story arc in several fighting spin-off games. Her interactions in those games mark her as personable and also someone who is not above engaging in the bantering competitiveness typical of Gensokyo's inhabitants. With Marisa—the deuteragonist of the games—she has a cooperative but sometimes argumantative relationship with no particular closeness neither antagonism exhibited outside of those games.
Outside of the games, her interactions with others have mostly been amiable. The Three Fairies of Light, protagonists of a few of the manga entries in the series, were invited to wait out the snow and offered tea. While there was a misunderstanding that seemed to imply that the fairies wanted to steal her grimoire that, matters ended without any permanent bad blood and they visited again on another occasion. Another interaction, an interview with a tengu reporter, was a little evasive when it came to the subject of her unusual experiments but she otherwise patiently explained her interests and motivations when it comes to magical research. Her curiosity seems to extend to things beyond making a living doll and was one of the customers that bought a pill that was sold in the Lunarian clinic in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost that grants its user pleasant dreams.
It may be the most conventional way to begin a section such as this, but I have to admit that I don't really care for her original appearance and how it hews close to the 1951 animated film's depiction of the Lewis Caroll character. As with a lot of ZUN's early designs, it's not very inspired. The later design is better but I'm more-or-less indifferent to the phenotype when assessed on its own.
That isn't to say that there aren't things about her appearance that I don't like—there very much are! The lace and other embellishments on her clothes are delicate but do not seem to be neurotically-fastidious, giving the impression that she cares about her appearance and how she presents herself without going to the extremes of being too ornate or exotic. To an extent, the clothes of her dolls are similar, and feature little bows, ribbons, and other details; as she makes the dolls herself, it is easy to imagine that her skill set extends into the realm of seamstress and that her appearance is an extension of her own tastes; not conservative, nor specifically traditional, the look is subtly dainty and stands out among the cast.
Her skill in sewing and in making dolls tie into why I happen to like her. Alice as an artisan is something appealing to me—she's someone who creates for the pleasure of it. The appreciation of craft, of the physical, of the sensual delight of making something special and pleasing with hand tools and skill is not something that common in either our reality or in Gensokyo. There's no hint of hedonism or of a need of stimulation for stimulation's sake; Alice is driven by her interests but isn't completely bound by them, as in the case of the dream pill. I don't want to overstate things here and claim that she's intrinsically open-minded, but she certainly is amenable to new experiences and to meeting new people and going to new places. It's hard to say definitively if her habit of eating and sleeping, despite not needing to, is driven by routine of her former humanity or if it is out of an ability of finding satisfaction in the quotidian. In either case, she's not bored of life and what it has to offer; as she does normal things in the day-to-day, she combines her actions and interests with her creations, giving them shape, fashioning clothes, and granting them purpose—albeit a purpose controlled by numerous strings and magic. Alice could do so many of those things directly with her own hands, but she instead directs her dolls to do them by proxy, for no one's sake but her own.
... And yes, the dolls are adorable. Their appearance in various manga doing household chores or otherwise working as an extension of Alice's always bring a smile to my face—even if a few artists go a little too far in detailing them and their reactions, making them appear as if they were autonomous and alive and not coordinated by Alice's incredible efforts.
Her magical studies and research could easily take another form—as it does with the other magicians in the setting—but her niche remains unique; her magic is not about preserving nor improving herself, nor is it about dry analysis and methodology. She experiments, yes, and obsessively so as shown in the Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red article on her. Yet it is on her own terms with her own self-imposed limitations. The other magicians in Gensokyo have been unscrupulous in one sense or another, thieving, manipulating others, using their powers selfishly, and the like in different works but Alice hasn't wanted nor tried to advance her own self-interests or her magical research and abilities in that manner.
She displays obvious skill and discipline in controlling her dolls, even taking into account the help possible with magic. It's unknown why she puts on puppet shows but given everything else it isn't difficult to imagine that it's simple an extension of her impulse to craft, to create a sort of art that's brought to life with masterly motions of digits and delicate twitches of muscle. It's a feat of incredible dexterity and willpower to control a large number of dolls at once, having them perform household chores while she herself apparently does something else. To me it's an endearing level of commitment. It's also risky since it leaves her for little room for error or maneuver in a pinch. It's noted in her profile in Perfect Memento in Strict Sense that it makes her own physical movements sluggish in combat but, nonetheless, a price she seems willing to pay. Characters that are dedicated to their own interests like that show a lot of fortitude, as far as I'm concerned.
It bears mention that her musical themes are catchy and that her spell cards and bullet patterns are colorful and fun to engage with. Even if you're not particularly good at shoot 'em ups I would say that it's worth watching her boss fight. The waves of bullets that spin out, the way her dolls come in and out and weaeve patterns while the music intensifies makes the fight and enjoyable experience. I've found myself more than once in a flow state, not consciously thinking about playing but just progressing through the fight without hesitating or second-guessing myself. That goes for both her earlier appearance in Mystic Square as well as Perfect Cherry Blossom.
The quiet, secluded, life in the Forest of Magic, certainly does allow her the opportunity to experiment and avoid unwanted attention but she's by no means a shy or unsociable character. There's a lot to be said for her hospitality, the welcoming of lost strangers, and the affinity for sitting and reading with a nice cup of tea. Her collection of dolls may fill her house and be off-putting to those who don't share her interest but they're not meant to be a status symbol or a means to isolate herself from people. Indeed, I've mentioned her puppet shows twice already and I think that it speaks to a pleasant personality who wants to share the things she takes pleasure in with others. Perhaps not on a technical, magical-research, sort of level (although she speaks freely about her work in an interview) but there's nothing inherently secretive (much less, foreboding) about her and her interests. Like many others of the cast, she's seen in the background of parties drinking or talking to the others in a normal fashion.
Being a former human and still indulging in the habits of one, makes Alice an interesting bridge between the mundane world of hobbies like doll-making, sewing, and learning and that fantastical world of magic beyond the reckoning of a normal person. I feel like she could easily inhabit either of these worlds and travel between them at will—she can get along with villager and youkai alike, blend in at the village or help a fellow magician breach the depths of an old, former, hell deep underground. It's a versatility that isn't common to most youkai or, for that matter, to humans. While she's not exactly hot-headed, she can be competitive and even brusque, and I find that that gives her a greater range when it comes to imagining how she will likely behave when faced with an obstacle or pressed to confront others.
Should her character receive more development in future print works or games, I would be interested in seeing how it is that she's evolved as a magician. It's unlikely, given that only a few characters in the series get any measure of sustained development but even hints to where her research has lead her, what sorts of new specialized dolls she's come up with, or whether the various incidents have affected her thinking or relationships in any sort of way.
I recognize that all of the above is somewhat disjointed and a little repetitive, but they are nonetheless aspects of her I enjoy. All these attributes, when taken together, create an interesting character as far as I'm concerned. There's just something about that mix of human and magician, specialization and practice, obsession and curiosity, gentleness and competitiveness, grace and power, that make her a character that's worth taking an interest in, if not to outright celebrate!
If you've made it this far, you're probably wondering why someone would go to the trouble for making a website dedicated to character from a series with a truly large cast who, in the grand scheme of things, is somewhat unimportant to its setting. Part of the answer is, well, why not make a page dedicated to a character I enjoy? The internet is a place that, despite the concentration of so-called content into relatively few places, is still large enough to allow for whimsy and individuality to exist in unusal little corners like these.
Once upon a time web rings and collections of fan pages proliferated on the internet, offering differing takes and linking individuals who cared about niche hobbies and interests. I can't make the claim that this single page, with its simple layout and limited content is anything like that but ... wouldn't it be nice if other people did something similar just because they could? Maybe for other characters in the Touhou universe. Maybe for characters from other series. For whatever it is that has brought them joy, really. Anything has the potential to create a connection with a stranger over the vastness of the internet. Maybe this site has brought a smile to your lips; maybe it's bemused you, made you shake your head. I can't be sure what your reaction might be but I do hope that it's at least genuine. Too much kayfabe, a lack of humanity (in its most playful sense) and authenticity, infest and degrade too many places in our digital lives.
I can't really call this an attempt to foster nostalgia, at least not in great part—there's plenty that was rather annoying and disenheartening about the earlier internet as well. And, besides, I'm using a lot of new-fangled technique and code to power this simple site. I might not be able to do blinking text and marquees in earnest, but I can use HTML5 to play audio, CSS3 to apply animation effects, and modern web server software to do a whole bunch of subtleties that would have been uninmaginable 25 years ago. Especially since this site uses no user-side scripting whatsoever! I hope you'll forgive me for not including simulations of Java applets, ActiveX, and early Javascript.
But, well, I hope that these few paragraphs have satisfied whatever curiosity you might have about my intent. Perhaps the simplest answer is that I had fun making this and that that is always worth sharing with the world.
Alice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111!!1!!!!111111!!!!!!!!!!