/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>21948757
That's the only way of seeing the Touhou franchise and it's characters that makes any sense to me.

You guys are kind of missing the implication here. Well, two of the implications:

Strange is the madness of those into whom demon foxes enter. Sometimes they run naked shouting through the streets. Sometimes they lie down and froth at the mouth, and yelp as a fox yelps. And on some part of the body of the possessed a moving lump appears under the skin, which seems to have a life of its own. Prick it with a needle, and it glides instantly to another place. By no grasp can it be so tightly compressed by a strong hand that it will not slip from under the fingers. Possessed folk are also said to speak and write languages of which they were totally ignorant prior to possession. They eat only what foxes are believed to like — tofu, aburagé, azukimeshi, etc. — and they eat a great deal, alleging that not they, but the possessing foxes, are hungry.

— Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, vol. 1, Lafcadio Hearn

The first one is that the"original" fox doesn't matter. ZUN simply reversed the original myth with an unintelligent fox-thingy being possessed by a intelligent shikigami.

The second one is a reach. If Ran WAS a historical figure of note, it would be Tamamo-No-Mae, who is extremely dead due to arrow poisoning. In this case the original fox not surfacing means that there is no original fox. There is only Ran possessing a discarded shell.