To those who are expecting prose, please bear with the change. This is meant to be instructions for an animation, and should be read as though it were a movie script (Music Video script, specifically). Please enjoy.

Appearances for Major Characters:

1. Young Marisa": Short chin-length blonde, wavy hair. A single braid going down her temple. Simple plain black dress with black shoes. No hat or accessories of any kind except for the red bow on her braid. Yellow Eyes.

Appearance should stay the same as she grows older, but more accessories in the outfit. 7 years old has nothing. 13 years old has longer hair, a white ribbon adorning her chest, and her dress is now a 2-piece with a button shirt. 16 years old is a magic school uniform, inspiration from Diana Cavendish's outfit in "Little Witch Academia", but also with a big hat.

2. "Marisa's Father" : A stocky, tanned man wearing brown khakis and a thin, white cotton V-neck shirt. He has blonde, wavy hair and gives off a "rugged country-man" aesthetic. Green Eyes.

3. "Marisa's Mother" or "Mima Kirisame": A tall woman (same height as Father) with long red hair parted symmetrically down her temples. Blue dress, and blue shawl, with white sleeves around her arms. Yellow eyes.

4. Older Marisa: 23 years old. Taller, more developed. Everything about her is bigger (hat, bigger broom, bigger bust), Body needs to stay slender, streamlined proportions. Fingerless driver's gloves meant to imply an air of masculinity (and perhaps being poor?).

All other side characters mentioned can have whatever appearance the animator prefers.

Animation plan:

Silent Beginning:

Text appears across a black screen. Yellow-gold font.

"Gensokyo is a place of magic. Where people can do wonderous things as long as they believe. For magic is emotion and knowledge combined and manifested into raw power."

Fade into first scene:

A young Marisa (7 years old), and her parents are standing on top of a hill in the Gensokyo plains. It's the tallest hill in the country, a perfect view of the lands around them. Towers of flame are erupting in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost. Glowing green fungus line the edges of the Forest of Magic. Distant torches spot the barricades around The Human Village. Through the darkness is the faint outline of the Youkai Mountain. Black clouds blanket the sky, making it a starless, moonless night.

Song plays: "On The Run" by Wolf and Raven

Song Timestamp: 00:00

Marisa is clinging to her father's arm with both hands, shaking and whimpering into his sleeve. Her mother bends down and rubs her nose on Marisa's, smiling before rising into the air. A light shines down, and both Marisa and her father stare up into the sky.

Mima Kirisame holds out her hand and shoots balls of bluish white magic straight up above her. They come out in rapid bursts, three at a time, until it looks as though there are stars below the clouds. The entire field lights up around them. Father picks up the young girl and sits her on his shoulder. Young Marisa can't stop looking at the "stars", lips parted and grinning in amazement. They shine, stars reflected off her eyes.

Black screen. Text reads:

"And often, those with powerful magic must rise to defend the weak. For Gensokyo is also a land of death."

Timestamp: 00:30

Youki Konpaku, The Hakurei Miko, Yukari Yakumo, and Mima Kirisame stand on top of a cliff on the Youkai Mountain. Their clothes and hair flap about in the wind. They look forward across an endless ocean, the waves crashing into the rocks in spittles of white foam. Clear blue sky above, dark blue sea below. The horizon cracks and shatters like glass as a massive youkai breaks through reality. A giant deathly white bat flaps its wings and glides toward them. it's wingspan casts the entire mountain in shadow, it's head and jaws twice as large as its body.

Song timestamp: 0:50

Next, each "Sequence" is a series of images. Each image only appears less than a second. Black screen in between each image like the shutter of a camera. Synced in time with the growing beat of the song.

Sequence 1: The four heroes are fighting the massive youkai. Konapku with swords, Hakurei with close-quarters magic seals. Yukari fights using summoning magic, opening portals where lesser monsters swarm through the opening. Mima fires off beams of increasing size and of varying colors of the rainbow. Mima and Yukari are long range, both on opposite sides of the youkai.

Sequence 2: The youkai charges through all of them and goes straight for Kirisame. She tries to fly away.

Sequence 3: Mima Kirisame is unable to escape, and she looks back into the open jaws of the creature right before its teeth close in on her waist, cutting her in half.

Song Timestamp: 1:00

Marisa (13 years old) and her father are standing before Mima's grave during her funeral. Father cannot stop shaking. His left hand is curled into a fist. It's raining, and the water drips off his chin and nose. His eyes are red, bags above his cheeks. Marisa is holding Father's right hand, her face obscured under the brim of a wide black hat. The rain slides off the hat like waterfalls off a raging river. Her body shakes from both the cold and the grief. lips pressed together tight, quivering. They both flash white as lightning crashes through the sky above them.

Timestamp: 1:15

-Marisa stares as her Father throws Mima's books on magic into the fireplace of their home.

-Marisa outside. The other children in the village wave and invite her to play with them. She shakes her head and turns away, head down.

Cut to:

-Her sitting in a dark corner of the Human Village Library, reading by candlelight. Close up of her face. She is angry, furious. She is gritting her teeth and snarling down at the pages in front of her. Her hands are turning the pages without reading them. Her eyes are closed, nose red, tears falling off her face and soaking into the paper.

- Someone from behind kneels down and places a hand on her shoulder. Marisa wipes her eyes and looks behind her to see Rinnosuke Morichika.

Timestamp: 01:42

Rinnosuke holds up a magical item. Its one of the glowing mushrooms from the Forest of Magic. He squeezes it twice, making the light grow brighter each time, and he points to a picture of it in Marisa's book.

Cut to:

Marisa smiles while she sifts through Rinnosuke's belongings. There is a different magical item each time she takes her hand out of his bag.

Director's note: Animator can stick as many nonensical items/references here as he or she wants. My choice:

1. Marisa pulls out a Great Fairy sword and swings it around.

2. She makes a Sailor Moon pose while holding a star rod.

3. She shows up with a flamethrower and Rinnosuke is yelling and waving his arms for her not to activate it in the library.

Cut to

Rinnosuke working in the front desk of the Kirisame Shop. One window gives a clear view of the ruins of the burnt down library. He is reading through a book until Marisa (16 years old) reaches over and steals his glasses. Blind, he reaches out for them but has to follow her voice around the room before he gets it back. When he is busy putting them on, Marisa stands on her tiptoes and kisses him on the cheek.

Rinnosuke looks at her shocked, forehead raised, mouth ajar with one hand on the cheek she kissed. Marisa smiles at him over her shoulder, waving with an outstretched arm before running through the door.

Timestamp: 02:30

Earlier scene but from Father Kirisame's point of view. He sees the kiss, and scowls at Rinnosuke. He searches his daughter's room and finds it littered with magical items. Books on how to fly, and how to cast light beams from a person's hands. Father grits his teeth and both hands curl into fists. Next shot is of him confronting Rinnosuke.

Cut to

Marisa sitting in her desk in class. Her book of magic laying on top of the normal school textbook. Text reads: "Members of the Hakurei family would have intuition magic so powerful that legends say they could even dodge rain." Her teacher walks over and snaps her hand with a ruler. Marisa flinches and rubs her wrist in pain.

Timestamp: 03:08

Marisa out on the yard, wide black hat on her head, broom between her legs. She lifts off and the entire school cheers her on from the ground. She rises, pieces of paper falling around her like confetti, and she boosts through the village. In mid-air she turns around and fires magic into the bristles of the broom, making it trail stars of white light. Close-up of her looking all around, a wide grin on her face.

timestamp: 03:20

She flies between buildings, across windows, twisting and turning through the streets. The villagers all look up and point at her, watching the girl as she blazes through the sky. Down on the ground, Marisa's father is wincing and scowling with his head down.

Cut to older Marisa (23 years old) walking through her small cottage out in the Forest of Magic. Her house is cluttered, disorganized, littered and stacked to the ceiling with books and random magical knick knacks. Fungus is growing on some of the furniture, glowing in the dark. She steps through her wooden door and lifts off riding on her broomstick. She serpentines through the trees, bursts of magic shooting her forward while covered in blue like a magic missile.

Timestamp: 04:00

Older Marisa breaks through the treeline and slows until she is floating in place above the forest. She looks to her left. A massive thunderstorm approaches from the horizon, black-grey clouds flashing white. Repeated bolts of lightning wrap around it like flashing barbed wire. A cocky smile plays across her lips.

Close up of flames in a fireplace. Foreground focuses in on the firewood. Among the sticks of wood are books of varying sizes. Titles reading: "Connections Between Science and Magic", "How to keep your clothes on during flight", and "Special Beam Cannons 101".

Timestamp: 04:10

Foreground blurs to focus on the background, where past the flames Young Marisa is trying in vain to wrestle the next book out of her father's hands.

Close up of Marisa and her father, and close-ups of the book between them.

Marisa is crying, screaming, mouth forming words like "Don't." and "You'd never understand". She is pulling on any part of the book she can keep her hands on, pages tearing from the spine and crumpling between them. Her father yells back in fury, pulling back on the cover until Marisa almost loses her grip.

At the last moment, Marisa holds up one hand and fires a white-blue beam at her father. It misses him by an inch, and he falls backward, tearing the book as he does so. They both look at the massive hole in the roof of their house, before looking at each other, pages falling all around them. Father's face is baring down at her in anger, and fresh tears run down Marisa's cheeks as she takes the broomstick and runs out the front door.

Timestamp: 04:30

Sideview of Marisa sprinting through the Forest of Magic, hugging the broom across her chest. Her head is down, eyes wide open. Her nose is red, and she is wiping at her eyes with one wrist.

She reaches Rinnosuke Morichika's house. Marisa takes a second to dust herself off and put on a fake smile before flying on the broom up to the 2nd story window.

Behind-the-back camera view: Marisa on the bottom left corner, shot centered on the window.

In Rinnosuke's bedroom he is having sex with another woman. The woman has a mature body, and long blonde hair with red ribbons tied at the end.

Close-up of Marisa pressing her lips together, eyes glazing over in shock, before wincing and leaning her head down. The bangs of her blonde hair cover her eyes while she drifts further upward into the sky. Her entire body is trembling.

Timestamp: 04:50

Distant tracking shot of Young Marisa flying through the forest, clumsy looping movements that bump into the leaves and branches on the way up. She breaks through the treeline, her head still down. Leaves and bits of wood are tangled in her hair and stick to her clothes. Her face and clothes are stained with dirt. The sun has set, the last few rays of sunshine highlighting the massive storm cloud drifting into her.

The black clouds flash with streaks of white lightning. And Young Marisa lifts her head up and roars at it, tears streaming down her face.

Behind-the-back camera angle. Marisa on her broom on the bottom right corner of the screen.

The bristles at the back of her broom explode with blue magic, and she shoots toward the cloud so fast that everything around becomes a blur.

Cut to Older Marisa doing the same.

Timestamp: 05:05

The view in front of Marisa becomes a tunnel of grey-blue clouds and flashes of white lightning. The bolts explode around the witch like transient cobwebs, zigzagging in randomized, impossible to predict directions.

Another explosion from the back of their brooms, and Older and Younger Marisa blaze through the storm even faster than before. The dots of rain become lines. And even the lightning itself blurs.

Close up of Older Marisa's face still holding her cocky smile. The rain from the storm is sliding off the brim of her hat, until she tilts her head up to let the droplets mix in with the sweat of her brow.

Close up of Young Marisa's head down, her body shaking from the cold, rain soaking into her hair. She lifts her head up and lightning flashes behind her. Her mouth open, a heavy scowl on her face, she yells into the storm, the rain mixing in with the tears on her cheeks.

Behind-the-back camera angle.

Older Marisa zips left and right, blue magic trailing behind her. Bolts of lightning strike all around, but she dodges each one without effort. She does tricks, treating the broom like a skateboard before standing on top as if surfing through the clouds. Her broom dips straight down, and she bursts through the bottom as if riding the lightning itself, dark blue magic trailing behind her. She moves so fast she even beats the rain before turning around and raising both hands toward the storm.

Young Marisa's flight shakes with every bolt. Lightning grazes her multiple times, clothes and hair singed with the electricity. One shot almost drags across her back, and she falls off her broom, plummeting straight down towards the ground. Marisa raises both hands and fires a Master Spark into the storm in front of her. The clouds dry up and dissipate from the sudden heat.

The witch is still falling, arms and legs limp, furious winds whipping at her blonde hair and black clothes. But she is smiling, the stars in the sky reflected in her eyes. The smile she wears is now the same as that of her older self.

Song ends. Fade to black

Final Image (Option 1): There is a green streak across Mima's red hair while she is engaged in a one-on-one battle against Shiki Eiki Yamaxanadu.

Final image (Option 2): Older Reimu, Alice, Patchouli, and Rinnosuke all look up from their homes to see adult Marisa flying through the sky. A continuous use of her spell card "Comet ~ Blazing Star"

Author's commentary:

You took the time to read through this whole thing. For that, I give you my sincerest thanks! I know it can be jarring to read a script instead of prose, but I wanted this story down on paper because I do love the song. If I had any talent in drawing and animating I would make the video myself, but I'll stick with this for now. It would probably take much longer anyway.

Inspiration for this work came from watching NewRetroWave's video for "On The Run" on youtube. Seeing the car speeding through the course, drifting as it's lights leave long trails of red behind it, is a crowning moment of awesome. Yet, the song itself isn't adrenaline pumping. It's more... bitter sweet I guess. And then I realized the reason for it being rather somber is because the driver of the car is going through the course alone, by him or herself. The excitement he or she feels is a lonely high, but one that's special because of it's solitude. At 01:50 the music swells, the car shoots through a green-lit tunnel, and I couldn't help re-imagining it as Marisa flying through a stormcloud, ice cold water pelting her body at speeds over 300 kilometers per hour. And so I wanted to think up a story that captures that feeling of prideful, passionate kind of loneliness.

My headcanon is that Mima appears as a green-haired ghost after being victorious against Shiki, but the battle has wiped away all memory of her family. She ends up sticking around the Hakurei Shrine a lot because she and Reimu's mother were good friends. Mima's bloody knife comes from a young Sakuya Izayoi's failed attempt at exorcising her. Marisa dyed her hair red during pc-98 because she suspected mima's true identity, and wondered if The red hair would trigger a reaction.

The "Towers of flame" erupting from the Bamboo Forest of The Lost is Mokou using her spellcard "South Wind, Fine Weather, Clear Sky Kick"

Youki Konpaku, Mima Kirisame, Yukari Yakumo, and The Hakurei Miko should all give people a vibe that says "These are the strongest people in the land, and this is the most badass team-up you will ever see in Gensokyo". Just the thought of those four teaming up sounds sick as fuck! Though, the disconnect between the current characters and the implied backstories is what frustrates me the most about the Canon writing in Touhou. Zun should really make a prequel game, though something tells me that would just complicate everything further.