Aya Shameimaru

Aya first appeared in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red official book as the reporter of its articles and made her first game debut in Phantasmagoria of Flower View. She is the main protagonist of the spin-off games Shoot the Bullet and Double Spoiler where she fights against various characters while taking pictures of them. She appears again in the mainline games as the Stage 4 Boss in Mountain of Faith and as a playable partner with Reimu Hakurei in Subterranean Animism. She is also a playable character in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, made an appearance as a background character in Hopeless Masquerade and appeared as a Day 6 Boss in Impossible Spell Card. Hidden Star in Four Seasons reintroduces her as a playable character. Like in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, Aya appears as the main character in Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia, and once again fills the role of reporter for the articles of the book.

Abilities Manipulating wind With this ability, Aya can cause wind of incredible strength whenever she pleases. Somehow, this also allows Aya to "listen" to the wind to collect rumors, aiding her in the journalism business. Many of her spell cards in the fighting games show this ability a lot. Her powers are among the top class in Gensokyo, and not many can challenge her with a real chance of winning. However, she doesn't like fighting much, nor does she show off her power a lot. This seems to be a common characteristic among Tengu.

Occupation Aya runs the Bunbunmaru Newspaper, which is viewed by most humans and youkai in Gensokyo as a mildly popular gossip or tabloid paper. She has a shameless reporting style, tends to exaggerate events, and expresses her own personal opinions in her articles. As a result, many don't want to see themselves in her newspaper, and she is on less than good terms with some of the other characters. Still, she does have ethics, and is more interested in pursuing the truth (sometimes to a fault) than ruining other peoples' reputation for the sake of it.

Her depiction in Strange and Bright Nature Deity and Curiosities of Lotus Asia suggest that her newspaper isn't well received, and she is willing to jokingly trick Reimu into believing in a fictional type of ghost to boost its popularity.

Name

Aya's appearance in BAiJR Her full name is Aya Shameimaru (射命丸　文). The characters for Shameimaru (射命丸) literally means, in sequence, "to shoot (an arrow)" (or "to shine into/onto"), "command", "decree", "order" or "life" (or "hit/target" in the word meichuu meichuu (命中)), and "circle" (common name ending, usually seen in names of crafts and swords or similar weapons, and is also a very common suffix for the names of ships). Aya (文) means "text", "sentence" or "literature", and it's also the first character of "Bunkachou". The name Shameimaru (射命丸) is derived from Sha-Mail (Shamēru → Shameimaru), which is text messages with photos, very appropriate for a fast-traveling journalist who takes pictures.

Aya owns the Bunkachou (文花帖), a tengu notebook gathering innumerable photographs and handwritten notes. Bun (文, also pronounced as aya) means "sentence, text", ka (花) means "flower", "blossom" (or "pretty", "cute thing" in a figurative sense) and chou (帖) means "notebook": therefore Bunkachou literally means "notebook of flowering sentences": her record of interesting observations for Bunbunmaru Newspaper articles and pictures of beautiful danmaku or cute girls living in Gensokyo.

During the events of Phantasmagoria of Flower View, she sets out to cover what promises to be an interesting news story, apparently having had completely forgotten that the exact same event had occurred 60 years ago. Even though she was alive and around during the previous flower incident, perhaps her memory is clouded by the thousands of facts and rumors she hears every day.

During the events of Subterranean Animism, Aya assists Reimu using a device given to them by Yukari Yakumo to stay in contact between the surface and the underground to solve the incident regarding the earth spirit's sudden eruption from a newly formed geyser. Aya's secondary objective throughout the story is to gain exclusive scoops and interviews through Reimu's journey deeper in the underground.

Aya is the main protagonist and the only playable character in Shoot the Bullet. She sets out to take photographs of various Touhou bosses for reasons only she knows. Aya has three different speeds, and has a unite screen that can be used to take photos of danmaku, as well as cancelling bullets within the shot. She doesn't shoot bullets as she's no intention in defeating her opponents and that she doesn't want her own bullets in the photos.

Aya once again appears in Double Spoiler as a sequel to Shoot the Bullet, been the main protagonist and one of the two playable characters. She competes with Hatate Himekaidou for the best newspaper, who is the other playable character. She even appears as a Spoiler stage boss if the player is using Hatate.

Silent Sinner in Blue In chapter 20, Aya comes to the Hakurei Shrine to see if Reimu came back from the Moon to write an article, but it's not until months later that Reimu appears. After hearing about Reimu's experience in the Lunar Capital, she decides that it's not appropriate for an article, and decides to follow Reimu, and the residents of the Scarlet Devil Mansion to the party they were going to do to see if she can write an article or not.

Strange and Bright Nature Deity In chapter 19, Aya meets the Three Fairies of Light and they explain to her that they want to scare Reimu Hakurei. Aya explains that she could do it, and for that she lies to the shrine maiden saying that her newspapers' words are alive and that they need to be read or a tsukumogami could appear. After that, she uses her wind powers to blow the newspapers in the warehouse in front of Reimu to make her think they were really tsukumogamis. After that, Reimu becomes paranoid and even tells Marisa Kirisame to read the newspapers or otherwise they could transform, archiving what the fairies couldn't.

Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia In this book, Aya attempts to write and publish a weekly periodical in the style of western "clickbait/outrage" political journalism. In it, she includes many overt and verbatim references to real-world political slogans and talking points associated with populism and nationalism, casting suspicion on or willfully misrepresenting the residents or visitors of Gensokyo she considers "immigrants" (those who live at Eientei, Hecatia Lapislazuli, and Sumireko Usami in particular), as well as chiding those responsible for maintaining "Gensokyo's isolation" (Reimu Hakurei and Yukari Yakumo in particular) as being inadequate in their positions. There are also some advertisements for local small businesses such as the Kirisame Magic Shop.

As she interviews many of the residents and visitors of Gensokyo with increasingly leading and accusatory questions, she is eventually cautioned by Hecatia Lapislazuli that spreading an ideology of isolationism and suspicion among Gensokyo's residents will only lead to Gensokyo's eventual decay and downfall, since the nature of Gensokyo is one that relies on forgotten youkai "immigrating" to Gensokyo. Aya decides, after some thought and remembering the goddess' warning about lunarians taking advantage of her, to come clean about the way she manipulated the facts of her interviews and articles, and to not publish that edition of her newspaper.

Lotus Eaters Aya appears in Lotus Eaters as usual to find scoops for her articles. On one occasion, she published an article that ruined Reimu's alcohol business. Apart from her newspaper work, she is a regular of Sanshoku Geidontei. She uses this secret bar to socialize and gather information from the other youkai regulars.

Due to Tengu having been shown to be able drinkers, Aya was the first person seen overcoming Miyoi Okunoda's ability to induce hallucinations.

Mamizou Futatsuiwa Mamizou and Aya are shown as being quite underhanded with each other in a fiercely competitive rivalry, although they still find ways to call truces on occasion.

In Forbidden Scrollery, Mamizou and Aya compete in the sphere of social influence of the Human Village by pitting the tengu's "traditional" media against Mamizou's "social network" of tsukumogami.

In Lotus Eaters, they're seen setting aside their differences, at least temporarily, to work towards the greater good of protecting the Human Village from immediate danger.

Hatate Himekaidou Fellow crow tengu and rival newspaper journalist. Despite their dislike of each other, they are willing to work together as seen in Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia and Foul Detective Satori.

Minor Relationships Tenma Chief tengu of Youkai Mountain.

Megumu Iizunamaru Megumu is the chief of the crow tengu, which makes her Aya's superior.

Traditional Reporter of Fantasy

Aya Shameimaru

Species: Crow Tengu Ability: Manipulating wind

A tengu who has been in Gensokyo for over 1000 years, when oni were still around. Her origin is a crow. She has the ability to manipulate wind. Her character is honest but not rigid. She is polite to strong people, and deals more firmly with weak people. However, she is always polite when conducting an interview. Although her powers are among the top class in Gensokyo, she never uses them just to show off. This isn't only a characteristic of hers, but of tengu in general.

She usually lives on a mountain where the wind always moves at the same speed and the same direction. She loves gossip and is always gathering information exchanged with her fellow tengu. During any exchange, information is warped, and almost all of their stories end up exaggerated.

She is the biggest connoisseur of rumors about the girls of Gensokyo among the tengu. Through observing for herself and collecting information from colleagues, barely a moment passes when she isn't obtaining material. However, much of her material is mingled with rumor.

She writes up her non-periodical newspaper, Bunbunmaru Newspaper, and distributes it among the tengu. It's a newspaper chock-full of rumors.

As the current disaster started up, the tengu were overjoyed. There was much new material to be obtained, based on which they can write up their newspapers.

が。

Tengu Closest to the Village

Aya Shameimaru

Species: Crow Tengu Ability: Manipulating wind

A news reporter on the Youkai Mountain. A tengu who typically writes local news stories about the girls of Gensokyo.

This time around, she got word from the white wolf tengu that an intruder had entered the mountain. Normally, the white wolf tengu are charged by the great tengu with patrolling the mountain, and conducting negotiations and defensive operations.

However, in this case, the great tengu decided to call on this member of the information media to conduct negotiations. Cocking her head to one side in doubt, she headed to the scene of the event, where her confusion was immediately dispelled.

The intruder was one of the girls she was always covering in her newspaper.

In other words, the great tengu understood that Aya had the most in-depth knowledge of the intruder, and had the best chance of being told outright what the intruder's aim was.

Aya went easy on the intruder, put on a show of vigorously defending herself, and purposefully lost. After all, if she let the intruder enter the mountain without putting up a fight, she would likely be suspected of being an accomplice to the humans.

Aya pretended to lose to the humans, and guided them to the mysterious shrine that had appeared recently. She reported to her superiors that the intruders had no business with the tengu society, but were instead interested in the troublesome, enigmatic shrine that had appeared of late.

The great tengu took in her report, and then commended Aya for turning around a potential threat into an opportunity. They then ordered the underling Inubashiri to continue her observation of the humans, and go to investigate the shrine of the mysterious god.

According to Inubashiri's report, the mysterious god and the humans had waged battle, but it was truly a playful event where the two parties seemed to be enjoying themselves. Their respective personalities were bright, and their heads kept level. There was little, if any.

The Tengu who Scatters Autumn Leaves Aya Shameimaru

Species: Tengu Ability: Capable of manipulating wind

A tengu newspaper reporter.

She's been doing news reporting in various places, so she clued in to the strange weather right away. These clearly aren't your average cool summers or heat waves, but in every case, the cause is concealed. She perceived something artificial about this abnormalcy-- but will that intuition prove true in the end?