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Maribel Han

Name:

マエリベリー・ハーン

Maribel Han

Alternate spellings:

Maribel Hearn
Mæriberie Harn

Species:

Human

Abilities:

Able to "see" boundaries (including Gensokyo's and the Moon's).

Age:

Unknown

Occupation:

University Student (Relative Psychology major)

Location:

Kyoto, Japan in the near future.

Description:

  • (Ghostly Field Club) Blond hair. Wears a purple dress and a white mob cap.
  • (Changeability of Strange Dream)
  • (Retrospective 53 Minutes)
  • (Magical Astronomy)

Relationships:

Appearances:

(Music CDs)

Titles:

See Character Titles

Maribel is a student on the outside world, presumably in a college or university. She majors in relative psychology and sometimes has difficulty telling the difference between dream and reality. She believes subjectivity to be more true than objectivity. Together with her friend, Renko Usami, she has an interest in what would be considered the paranormal. Their club, consisting of only the two of them, describes itself as a club for necromancers. However, they don't do many of the things necromancers would normally be associated with. Instead, they investigate spirits and such. Specifically they're interested in Gensokyo and seem to be among the few, or even the only, humans on the outside world who know of Gensokyo's existence. Maribel has visited Gensokyo in her dreams.


Fun Facts

  • Maribel's nickname is "Merry" or "Mary." She also complains that Renko never calls her by her full name because it's hard for Renko to pronounce.
  • As Maribel's name is written in katakana, she is not of Japanese ethnicity.
  • It is implied that Maribel and Renko's lifetimes occur in the future, as Mt. Fuji has finally become a world heritage site, "capitalism has reached its final step", most food is artifical (such as artificial bamboo shoots and strawberries), there are (expensive) tours to the moon, and Tokaido's 53 train stations have been phased out into one. All forces (such as gravitational force) have also been unified.
  • Due to her power to see Gensokyo's boundary, she is sometimes depicted with Yukari.
  • There is a fan theory that Maribel and Yukari Yakumo are actually the same person. The basic idea of this theory is that when Maribel sleeps she dreams that she is Yukari and when Yukari sleeps she dreams she is Maribel. Because Yukari is nocturnal and is known to sleep during the day neither of them would normally be awake at the same time. Maribel is strangely able to cross the border into Gensokyo while dreaming. Maribel's clothes are also very similar to Yukari's clothing from Perfect Cherry Blossom. Both characters have blonde hair and (in some depictions) purple eyes, and have abilities related to boundaries. Some fans go further with this theory to suggest that Gensokyo itself was created in Maribel's dreams. However, none of this is officially supported. In "Perfect Memento in Strict Sense," there is an entry about a mysterious memo by a person who believes she is wandering in the bamboo forest while she is dreaming. The key phrase "I'm gonna tell Renko about it when I wake up" is a clear tip-off to whose memo this is. This would seem to disprove the preceding theory, since the memo's author would be Yukari, were it to be true, and would also be a case of Maribel being Maribel and not being Yukari despite dreaming at the time.
  • Another theory linking Maribel to Yukari stems from the fact that there has never been an official romanization for her name マエリベリー・ハーン (Maeriberii Haan). It is possible that the ハーン in her name does not translate to "Han" but "Hearn", as in Lafcadio Hearn the Western author of Japanese horror stories. Lafcadio Hearn was known as "Koizumi Yakumo" after he gained Japanese citizenship. At least some of his written works involved youkai such as yuki onnas and ghosts.
  • Another written work of Lufcadio Hearn discussed the Zen symbolism of dreaming as a butterfly, which is a theme of Maribel's in several of her official stories. Yukari, too, has a spellcard which references the butterfly dream ("Butterfly in the Zen Temple")
  • In addition to travelling to Gensokyo in her dreams, Maribel also appears to be able to travel back in time as well, as shown by the memo in the Bamboo Forest referenced above. Toyohime mentions in the third chapter of Cage in Lunatic Runagate that one can get lost in the past via "spiritting away".
  • The fact that Maribel was able to travel to Gensokyo in her dreams leads Renko to wonder if Maribel's power to see boundaries is changing into the power to manipulate them.
  • At the end of Changeability of Strange Dream, Renko worries that if Maribel continues to accept her dream of Gensokyo as a reality, then she'll eventually never be able to return from it. Rinnosuke in Curiosities of Lotus Asia as well as Eirin in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red mention this phenomenon as well. Despite this, after considering which outcome would be better for Maribel, Renko decides to encourage Maribel's Gensokyo travels.
  • By the end of Magical Astronomy, Maribel gets an idea to travel to the moon, apparently using the moon's reflection in the water. This is the same method Yukari uses in Silent Sinner in Blue as well as Perfect Memento in the Strict Sense. Presumably, pulling off such a feat would require that Maribel had obtained the power to actually manipulate boundaries.
  • Before going to Japan and becoming Koizumi Yakumo, Lafcadio Hearn's earlier works centered around current events (he was a sensational journalist) as well as his surroundings, such as accounts of disadvantaged people and various aspects of current New Orleans culture. After he went to Japan and became Koizumi Yakumo, he started writing Japanese fairy tale books about youkai, several of which were popular enough to become plays and even movies. To correspond with the theories, one could interpret this as (Maribel) Hearn representing a human side (as Lafcadio's earlier works were primarily about humans and their culture) and (Yukari) Yakumo representing a youkai side (as his later works after becoming Koizumi Yakumo were often about youkai). It could also correspond to another theory where Maribel Hearn (a human) eventually becomes Yukari Yakumo (a youkai). This one avoids the bamboo forest memo contradiction stated after taking into account the fact that Maribel can be spirited away through time,
  • Changeability of Strange Dream ends with Renko encouraging Maribel to change her dream (of Gensokyo) into a reality. In Perfect Memento Memorizable Gensokyo, Yukari tells Akyu that she represents Gensokyo's reality.
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