An Aloof Intel Officer's Dossier

A text regarding Jo'on Yorigami's ability to adapt to the current era and environment, and what that means in a criminal sandbox game

Something that stood out to me when looking at Jo'on Yorigami across different Touhou media is how quickly her presentation shifts.

She doesn't have a fixed identity or fixed fashion. Almost every canon appearance comes with a new outfit, and a new con. In a lot of ways, she feels less like a traditional character and more like a self-updating function: she instinctively detects where money flows in whatever environment she lands in, and immediately mutates her wardrobe and methods to match it.

Let's look at the record:

She always dresses as whatever the "filthy rich" look like in that specific decade, and she always runs whatever scheme drains the local marks fastest.

So, drop that exact same functional deity into the 1992 San Andreas Criminal Sandbox. What is the meta there?

It sure as hell isn't polite business deals or opening a dango stand.

In 1992 San Andreas, the local economic pipeline revolves around turf takeovers, armed robberies, carjackings, drive-bys, and casino heists. If crime, theft, and raw physical violence are the fastest ways to generate capital, then naturally, Jo'on is going to adapt to the local rules. After all, 「郷に入っては郷に従えって云うでしょ？」"When in Rome, do as the Romans do, right?" - she says while completely flat broke with nothing but poor man's gold on her wrists.

Or in another angle, if she is a pestilence god whose divine function is the movement of money from one's pocket to another (preferably to her own), then naturally she will take up the form and identity of one that will make money move the fastest.

She isn't going to stand on a corner looking pretty waiting for someone rich to gift her a necklace; that isn't the most effective tactics available out here anymore. The means of making big money fast out in San Andreas is a lot more active and violent, and smells a lot more like blood and gunpowder.

...wait, the meta is horse betting??

She was already a brawler anyway

People who only know Jo'on from pretty fanart might look at her holding a micro-SMG or punching out a gang member and think, "Wait, why is she so violent?"

I will stress this again.

Watch her combat animations in Antinomy of Common Flowers:

Now, watch her combat animations in Sunken Fossil World:

She was always an aggressive brawler wrapped in expensive accessories.

She looks deceptively small, cute, and dainty in her expensive dress, right up until she closes the distance and caves your chest in with heavy studded ringed fingers. Those are pretty much brass knuckles, yo. So while I was testing the combat mechanics of the perk Jo'on's Bling, it never felt out of place for me to see her zapping about beating the mafia to the ground.

Black comedy and morbid slapstick

The other side of this is the setting itself. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is largely built on 90s crime satire, extreme caricatures, and pitch-black comedy.

Because of that environment, the dynamic between Jo'on and Shion can afford to be a lot more morbid in a comedic, cartoonish way.

In my mod, Shion's role as the companion means she takes the brunt of the chaos and abuse. In version 1.2, I added a full Death Memory system: if Shion got herself killed, she remembers the exact weapon that did it and complains about it the next time you recruit her.

It sounds brutal on paper, but in practice, it plays out like Looney Tunes with an R-rating. They are immortal gods; they cannot actually die. Shion will get blown to pieces by an RPG rocket, respawn at her usual hangout spot, and demand Jo'on buy her a double bacon burger as compensation for the inconvenience.

Of course, the player doesn't have to hurt her at all. You can play through the entire game without a single point of friendly fire, keeping her safe in ghost form on your shoulder while Jo'on handles the fighting. But having the game acknowledge the accidents make the world feel reactive.

Keeping it grounded to the sources' genre

Even with all the violence, I made a conscious effort to keep her dialogue grounded in standard GTA-level silliness rather than making it tryhard edgy or deeply and psychologically nuanced like in a few Japanese and Chinese stories I've read (that is a topic I want to write about another time).

The humor comes from her petty grievances in the middle of chaos. When the cops show up, she doesn't panic, she just insults them for their poor evaluation of her bounty and how cheap the fine is if she gets caught. If her car is taking rifle fire, she cares more about the fact that blood is going to stain the genuine leather seats and tank the resale value rather than the firefight itself.

She isn't a serial killer nor an unhinged psychopath like the more traditional GTA protagonist.

It is for this reason I consciously implemented the Shakedown perk and Pestilence Fever perk to give the player alternative means to harvest money out of pedestrians without killing them. Because going on killing sprees is not Jo'on's style as a god; whether you are playing as Jo'on herself, or as CJ who was praying to the altar of the Yorigami via spending money and investing Y-Points for power.

As I test and play, I only ever have Jo'on punch people to death if it was self-defense or against hostile targets, or if it was the only option at the time. There is more money to make from shaking people down than looting corpses for pocket change. Of course, the player is also entirely free to go on a rampaging killing spree if they like. I just don't have specific dialogue for it. But because rampaging is a sandbox activity, and Shion might be there to witness it, maybe I can have Shion comment on the craziness... Hm, I'll put it in my backlog of ideas.

Maybe it's just my brain after two straight months of staring at CLEO scripts so I am biased, but Jo'on fit the pavement like she was born on it.

Just another Jo'on

The fun of Touhou since the beginning was everyone is permitted to have personal alternative interpretations of a character as long as it still fits in a gut-level sense... or not at all but still looks pretty cool. I guess, this one I will coin as GTA Caricature Jo'on, compartmentalized away from the other Jo'ons running around in my head fitting better in different genres with speech patterns closer to canon and having different outlooks and boundaries on causing financial harm and misfortune on others, and the many different ways those Jo'ons treat their respective Shions.

Even so, she didn't have to change much to fit this world. San Andreas was already built on enough greed and dirty money to match her disastrous spirit from day one.

-- EagleRaviOrange