#tabinoki kanae

[magicalmelancholy-blog1]

"The planetarium is over there. I'm going to get milk, so be quiet while I'm gone, 'kay?"

I tried my best to write the kanji for orphanage.

[singular-yike]

I know you've made a ton of posts about various len'en characters and concepts but what about the creator? Their drives and inspirations and such?

I know this may be a bit of a weird one since it's about a real-life person but I figured it would be fine to ask so long as the questions respected Tabinoki's privacy and were relevant to the actual creation process of the series.

This... is a very complicated question, after all this is an actual person we're talking about here, and I'm nowhere as well-versed in JynX/Kanae information as I am with Len'en lore. Even still, we do have some mentions of JynX's inspirations and creative

So, this isn't going to be anything formal and perfectly structured, but just whatever I can think of off the top of my head.

Brainstorming Ideas

Overall Story

So this is gonna be split into three bits: One about how the story and world of Len'en came about, one about the nitty gritty development of the games and stories, and finally one about JynX's inspirations.

I'll mention it right here: JynX's process of brainstorming is... difficult, to emulate. Especially cause it assumes that you've already got a robust world in your mind.

You see when it comes to creating the world of Len'en, JynX basically started out from a macro perspective and gradually zoomed into what they wanted to focus on.

What I mean is that JynX literally started with the genesis of the universe in which Len'en takes place in, picked a suitable planet for the story to take place on, picked a suitable location and zoomed further in and in. A very... grandiose way to come up with your setting, to be honest.

From there they picked out the characters he wants to be the main characters and looked for the people around them to expand a cast out of; along with a central location to the story, Mugenri.

Basically, JynX already had the entire universe of Mugenri and beyond in his head, people and everything, they just picked out Yabusame and friends to tell their story in Mugenri.

New Characters

For coming up with new characters that were not already planned, JynX takes to looking at the setting/story and seeing what needs to be there but isn't yet.

Setting-wise, one such character is Kaoru Kashiwagi, invented during BPoHC's development, in contrast to Fujiwara no Shirogane no Sanra and Ooama no Ake no Mitori, the two of which were already conceptualised before work on BPoHC even began.

JynX looked at the brand new location introduced in that half of the game: The imperial capital Devanagara. They asked themself, what organisations exist in there, and which ones are crucial to the plot this time? Crucial to letting the audience further their understanding of the place?

There they landed on the Goefu, and from there picking out the captain to be their representative character simply followed.

Story-wise, sometimes characters simply appear as a logical result of the story JynX had created. One such example would be Shion (detailed origin story here).

Plot

Here's where we get to a caveat in JynX's brainstorming process, we technically do not know how this all truly came to be in JynX's mind.

By the time JynX actually got down to developing Len'en, much of the series' setting, along with the general plots of EE to BPoHC, already existed within JynX's mind. Yes prior to even EE's development.

So we don't actually know whether JynX is really so imaginative as to be able to spontaneously come up with a living, breathing universe in their head to start fleshing out, or if these ideas have really just been in their mind for so long that their origins are, in a sense, obscured to JynX themself as well.

What we do know, is that JynX is the type to wing it along the writing and development process (actually for all things really).

Actual Development

JynX is honestly, just in general, a very secretive person. For example, only irl person in their life that knows that they work on making games is Daijin, literally no one else (at least according to JynX). So there's not a lot about their process that we know.

What I do know though, is that it's honestly kind of a mess. JynX's process seems to be:

Make a deadline

Work on the game with no particular plan, hopping around the various tasks as their fancy takes them

As the deadline closes in, rush and stumble their way to make it no matter what.

Of course, they don't always make it (one might even argue that they only make it half of the time), but that's honestly all I could've gleaned from everything that I've seen.

I won't got into the technical aspects, what programs they use, what hardware they use, etc. It's not my forte and a lot of it can be found on the wiki, either on JynX's page or in the interviews.

Inspirations

Admiration and Motivation: ZUN and Daijin

It of course goes without saying that JynX's biggest inspiration is ZUN and his Touhou Project.

They directly inspired the genre of the first four games and JynX even pays homage to the series through little references and, of course, 90% of Haiji's spell cards.

Beyond just really liking the games and their plots, JynX also seems to really admire the solo developer thing ZUN has going on (although ZUN is much more open to collaboration these days).

JynX is absolutely determined to make Len'en completely on their own, and flat out refuses all requests of collaboration in regards to the series.

However, do note that they're not opposed to collaborative game development as a whole, and in fact is rather curious about the process and would love to get the experience. BUT! Just not with Len'en, that's a solo project, and that's non-negotiable.

To get a bit more specific, JynX also really admires the way ZUN creates, designs and writes his characters. In particular, JynX actually really likes how ZUN bases his creations off of various historical and mythological characters and events, but rarely ever elaborates on them.

JynX finds the process of digging into these characters by themself and finding out how the references shaped the characters to be what they have the most fun with (outside of gameplay, I think).

And this is why Len'en is the way it is with its characters, with references so intricate that we're still discovering new bits even to this day. And why JynX so very rarely answers regarding character inspirations, they don't want to spoil the fun.

A more personal point of inspiration for JynX is Daijin, an upperclassman of theirs from university who worked on the original Len'en, Emergency Everyday.

Daijin is apparently the person who taught JynX everything they know about game production (at the time) and even after leaving game production behind is still a great source of inspiration for JynX.

Of course, we don't know much more than this. And we shouldn't pry.

Worldbuilding: History, Mythology, Culture

As for the more creative side of things, JynX bases their worldbuilding largely on history, mythology and culture, especially Japanese.

JynX is quite the big Japanese history and culture nut, it would seem. Even when studying in a science degree at university, he somehow wound up writing an essay on the Suwa Grand Shrine.

They also have several books on these topics, such as a whole book on traditional Japanese architecture (which I suspect they must've referenced heavily with Tenkai).

I won't elaborate too much on this point, since it's fairly self-explanatory. But I would like to note that JynX is very particular about this, going as far as to prefer going on-site to do his research.

Ending

And that concludes this! A bit messy and rather casual, but I still hope it has what you wanted to read!

And sorry that it took so long, it's a rather great departure from what I usually do that I ended up freezing and just leaving it for a long while. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed~! :)

[okulki]

He is so silly scrunkly

[yukarinuniversaltraveler]

Happy birthday Kanae!!

[neobiohazardus]

Kanae Face

IDK why this came to my brain lol Sorry

[haijisenri]

[yabusame-houlen-official]

The original text attached to this image is in Japanese (machine translated though... its 1am and none of the translators are on, can you blame me? X) and directed at Kanae/JynX, but I will put the version I ran through a translator below for those curious:

Congratulations on your debut!! I apologize that this is late, I've been tired recently and don't know why... (I used a machine translation, so sorry if anything is wrong)

(Also, I hope you don't mind I drew some Len'en characters cheering you on)

If anyone wants to help me figure out some potential tags for Tumblr, feel free to join in!

[toskarin]

that one mutual who doesn't play about tabinoki kanae streams

[friendshapedplant]

Kanae's streams really are amazing~ For me it's worth the effort of waking up a bit before 8am, since I have to wake up early for some of my classes anyway. I can't believe it, Len'en Project is making me wake up early.

Of course, these aren't the only types of streams Kanae does, as I'm sure you know. Kanae also does chatting streams and gaming streams on the weekends (right now they're on Saturday and Sunday respectively).

I love using Kanae's streams to attempt to improve my Japanese skills. I also like the productivity streams because I get to focus on something for an hour~ It's actually helped me complete a couple fics so far, not to mention assignment (some of which are of course Japanese, actually a lot of them now that I think about it).

Anyway whoops I was autistic in your ask box.

No worries cus now its my turn on the autism >:)

I can't wake up at 8 but I do like to put on those weekday productivity VODs whenever I get around to working on homework! Very effective for body doubling and not having to worry about getting distracted by the other person (Except for when I'm watchin the silly Len'en ball drop go and making sure my blorbo is in the lead (rip Sukune clay had a good run)). I just hope this strat lasts for me cus I seem to run through different studying strats way too fast and keep pickign them up and dropping them. This one being tied to a SpIn might help tho :D

Unfortunately I work on weekends w little to no free time, but perhaps I'll go and watch a VOD of one of the game ones sometime. I ain't know shit for Japanese other than some hiragana so I dunno how much I'd get outta his chat streams other than his fun voice and laugh and vtuber model (which are great. is that weird to say idk)

Also gotta say Love it when your SpIn shapes your life in positive ways like this, hella good shit thank u Kanae Tabinoki. <3

(If anyone else wanna rant/infodump bout things they love at any point without any prompt my inbox is open 24/7 for this shit I wanna see what people love!)

[yukarinuniversaltraveler]

So you know I sometimes make memes, right?

[yukarinuniversaltraveler]

GUYS GUYS JYNX SAID MY NAME I SAY HELLO KANAE ON HIS STREAM AND HE SAID MY YOUTUBE NAME HE SAID “Magician of Starlight” THIS IS LITERALLY THE FIRST TIME I GET TO WATCH A STREAM ON TIME AND RIGHT THERE HE COMES AND TALKS TO ME IS THIS HOW YOU FEEL WHEN THAT ONE V-TUBER WAIFU RANDOMLY SAYS THAT SHE LOVES YOU????????

Anyways here’s a doodle that I forgot to post, this is basically whenever Kanae wins at any game:

[yukarinuniversaltraveler]

Dibujé a un Kanae enojado porque Kanae está muy enojado. /j (?)

Where my Spanish-speaking Len’en fans @??

[neobiohazardus]

むきむ木かなえ... (Sorry for stealing this joke)

[yukarinuniversaltraveler]

The funny little face that had JynX screaming for his life. (?)

[yukarinuniversaltraveler]

Nobody’s using the “tabinoki_live” Twitter hashtag and I find that quite sad, so I guess I’ll be making memes about how much I want to simp over JynX and his V-tuber persona, Tabinoki Kanae. (?)

[yukarinuniversaltraveler]

Didn't wanna risk butchering the written stuff on Kanae's little black apron thing, so I just left it as it is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!