Marisa Stole the Precious Thing

About

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing (Japanese: 魔理沙は大変なものを盗んでいきました) is a popular remix based on a piece of music from the Touhou series by the Doujin group IOSYS. Along with its flash animation music video, the remix track became quite popular within the Japanese Doujin community and even saw a minor spread to the English-speaking websites, inspiring a variety of remixes, instrumental covers and MAD-style music videos.

Origin

"Marisa Stole The Precious Thing" was originally composed by the Japanese Doujin group IOSYS^[1], incorporating "Doll Judgement – The Girl Who Played with People's Shapes" from the seventh Touhou title Perfect Cherry Blossom^[2] released at the 64th Comiket on August 17th, 2003. The original track itself was a slight remix of Alice's theme "Romantic Children" from the fifth Touhou title Mystic Square.^[3]

IOSYS' vocal remix was originally featured in the video game music (VGM) remix album Touhou Otome Bayashi (Touhou Maidens' Orchestra), which was released at the popular comic book convention Comiket on August 13th, 2006. Sung from the viewpoint of Touhou character Alice Margatroid, the song describes her mixed romantic feelings towards Touhou protagonist Marisa Kirisame, supporting her fanmade tsundere status.

On August 10th, 2006, IOSYS launched a special page^[4] for the fan-made Touhou album with a promotional animated music video for the song, which was later made into a movie and uploaded to YouTube.^[5] This well-made animation quickly spread through the Japanese Otaku circles.

Spread

After Nico Nico Douga (NND), a video sharing service in Japan, was launched in early 2007, the flash animation and many of Touhou remixes released in Doujin market were uploaded by anonymous people, and some of them became to audio/visual resources of MAD video that had just begun budding on NND at that time. Among them was "Marisa Stole the Precious Thing," which became one of the first big hit tunes to spawn many derivative works from the community.^[7] For instance, "Onmyoji Stole the precious thing," the earliest known derivative remix in the series, was uploaded in Feburary 2007, before NND was banned from YouTube]

Creator's Approval

Kagi, who created this flash animation and other promotional movies for IOSYSOS, expressed his approval of the remix phenomenon in an interview with ASCII.jp^[10] in 2008.

ASCII: Do you get angry with those unauthorized reproductions?
Kagi: "No, not at all. I appreciate them. I'd like to say 'thank you' to them. I'm not so interested in copyright issues like this, and I don't take money from people who watch my flash animation. So, I think it's nice that people can enjoy movies in such a way on there, in addition to my web site.

Spread in the West

The song is also credited with introducing Touhou Project to the Western audiences, as the song has been referenced by English-speaking fans on 4chan, oftentimes to ridicule various Engrish translations provided by the flash animation video, including "WHY WHY WHY DON'T I MISS YOU A LOT, FOREVER?"

Media Appearances

On March 27th, 2010, A Japanese kickboxer Yuichiro "Jienotsu" Nagashima^[17], famous for his Otaku behavior and cosplaying during his entrance to the ring, appeared with Marisa's cosplay and the song at the kickboxing tournament "K-1 World MAX."

Notable Examples

As of February 2013, there are more than 2,600 videos set to the song on NND^[9] and its popularity is reflected by its frequent inclusion in the official Kumikyoku Nico Nico Douga medleys published by the community.

Search Interest

External References

Editor’s Note: Registration on NND is needed to browse the original videos listed in this section.