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Main Profile[]
Zanmu Nippaku (日白 残無 Nippaku Zanmu) is a character who debuts in Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost.
General Information[]
Zanmu Nippaku was formerly a human monk during the Sengoku Jidai period. Zanmu discarded her humanity by absorbing beast-youkai spirits. Sensing her imminent fall to Hell, Zanmu ventured there prematurely. There she transformed into an oni and ruled Hell using her intelligence and charisma. She proposed the relocation of Hell from Former Hell, creating a great amount of resentment from those that stayed behind. Currently she resides in Hell. She is said to command great admiration and respect from the dwellers of Hell.
During the events of Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, she uses her ability and influence to manipulate the other protagonists to achieve her end goal.
Personality[]
Zanmu is described as the perfect oni according to Suika. She has both the strength and intelligence that an oni should be portraying. That said she is also seen to have a sense of grace, seeking a (relatively) peaceful resolution to the beast wars and to protect Gensokyo from destruction. In this sense, she shares much in common with Reimu, feeling a sense of communality.
Zanmu is not easily upset. She frequently forgives her bumbling assistant, Hisami. Although, it might be to not encourage Hisami's masochism.
According to Saki, Zanmu is a popular figure in Hell. So much so that Zanmu was able to sway the oni to calm down and let her handle the beast spirits situation.
Abilities[]
- Capable of manipulating nothingness
Zanmu has the ability to manipulate nothingness. This causes the victim to lose their desires and motivations. It can be subtle, such as distracting the victim, or outright causing them to lose their will to fight or will to continue investigating. In Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, she uses her ability to distract Marisa and Sanae from the true cause of the incident. Then, she uses her ability to cause the beast spirits leaders to lose their will to fight. Finally, she uses her ability to convince Reimu to stop her investigation.
While Zanmu is able to manipulate nothingness of her victims, some appear to be less affected than others. Reimu's instincts continued to point to Zanmu as the true culprit and Reimu was not able to be manipulated to accept her plans for "resolving the incident". Similarly, she was unable to stop Mamizou from continuing her investigating into the incident. Also, due to Hisami's unpredictable masochism tendencies, Zanmu was not able to control Hisami the way she wanted.
Character Design[]
Origin[]
Zanmu is inspired by the similarly-named monk Zanmu Nichihaku (日白 残夢 Nichihaku Zanmu), who lived in the Sengoku era, and was recorded in some accounts of Buddhist immortals as a very eccentric individual. Some of these accounts can be found in modern-day compilations, such as the Honchou Shinsen Kiden (本朝神仙記伝)12 by Izuo Miyaji et.al.
Name[]
Her full name is Zanmu Nippaku (日白 残無). The characters for Zanmu's surname, Nippaku (日白), literally means "white sun", a term generally used with the meanings of "broad daylight" or "bright sunshine". Nippaku and Nichihaku are different but both possible readings for "日白". Her first name contains Zan (残), meaning "remainings, leftover", and Mu (無), meaning "nothing, none", differing from the character used for Mu (夢) in Zanmu Nichihaku, which means "dream", and is also used in Reimu's name.
Design[]
Zanmu is a crimson-eyed girl with long purple-black hair that reaches to her knees. Her hair is straight at the scalp but becomes wavy at the end. She has two short, pointed horns that are wrapped in red strings that are adorned with a single bead and numerous, smaller strings that look like hair. She wears a green T-shirt, with two coloured borders: the outer-most one is yellow while the innermost one is black lines that aren't attached. The t-shirt's neckline, shoulders, sides and sleeves all have the same rip except for the sides, which are partly sewn together with the same red strings that adorn her horns. She also wears long blue shorts that contain many of her shirt's decorations, the borders, the rips and the red strings partly sewn together on each side. The shorts also seem to be double-layered, one being white underneath the shorts. She sports dark red flip-flops.
Appearances[]
- Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Zanmu is main antagonist of Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost. Her goal was to manipulate the other protagonists such that she would be in a position to subsume both the animal spirit realm and Gensokyo into Hell. That way, she could easily manage everyone and avoid bloodshed. She recruited three minions and tasked them with infiltrating each of the three animal beast spirit families. Then, by manipulating them to fight each other, it allowed her to defeat them piece-wise. However, several nosy actors begun disrupting her plans. Being one step ahead, she implanted teleportation traps in her minions, sending these pests to Hell to stop their meddling. Ultimately, Suika hatched a plan to foil her plans, resulting in a final battle with Reimu.
Relationships[]
- Hisami Yomotsu
Hisami is Zanmu's assistant, carrying out orders and bringing people to her. Hisami has a one-way infatuation with Zanmu, she tries her best to gain Zanmu's attention. When Zanmu gives her the cold shoulder, she purposely does her job badly in order to get Zanmu's attention and punishment.
- Enoko Mitsugashira
Once upon a time, Enoko ate Zanmu's flesh while Zanmu was a human. Even as Zanmu's flesh was being eaten, she kept laughing. Thus, Enoko was eternally cursed by Zanmu with immortality. Zanmu then ordered Enoko to eat a gemstone which transformed her into an immortal Youkai. She then told Enoko to devour all the spirits around and introduced her to Saki. During the events of Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, Enoko begrudgingly does Zanmu's bidding. However, she seeks to rid the curse Zanmu placed on her.
- Son Biten
Zanmu manipulated events such that Biten was able to transform into an oni and meet up with Yachie. Biten then became a loyal minion of hers. Biten is the only one out of the three minions to hold an unwavering loyalty to Zanmu, addressing her with honorifics (様) and being truly disappointed when Suika told her she was abandoned.
- Chiyari Tenkajin
Chiyari and Zanmu knew each other back when Former Hell was known as Hell. Chiyari holds great admiration for Zanmu due to the resentment she caused for all the creatures left behind by moving Hell. During the events of Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, Zanmu reached out to Chiyari for help in resolving the incident. Zanmu introduced her to Yuuma in order to get her to spy on the Gouyoku Alliance. Chiyari agrees as she thinks by allying with Zanmu, more resentment would be created by the underworld dwellers, much to her delight.