What a lot of people forget about Yoshika is that she's both surprisingly intelligent and independent from Seiga.

colBoh said:

What a lot of people forget about Yoshika is that she's both surprisingly intelligent and independent from Seiga.

Um... in the first game she was in she forgot she was a Jiangshi, forgot she who she was serving, and forgot why she was protecting the graveyard. Intelligent is not exactly the first word I'd use to describe her.

HanabiWarrior said:

Um... in the first game she was in she forgot she was a Jiangshi, forgot she who she was serving, and forgot why she was protecting the graveyard. Intelligent is not exactly the first word I'd use to describe her.

Well her brain IS rotting, so that should be expected.

Marisa's route in Ten Desires is the only one where she is so far out of sorts she doesn't have the faintest clue what is going on, except in the very middle of the conversation. I actually blame some of her initial confusion in Marisa's route on Marisa always trying to befuddle people with words; the usual playful banter Touhou is known for doesn't work on someone who can't switch word meanings quickly. Any confusion afterwards is probably because Marisa just beat her like a sack of potatoes. Marisa's route is the most curious one because it's completely unlike the other three. Yoshika has absolutely no worthwhile information at all and spends most of it in confusion, whereas she's lucid and informative in the others and most of the confusion happens after she's beaten like a sack of potatoes. In SoPM, she's still guarding the temple graveyard, but only because she has a feeling that she needs to be guarding the temple graveyard and not that there's any reason to do it.

One thing that is obvious is that her mind is currently like that of a very simple person and she can't grasp complicated questions. Despite that, she does know enough information to answer questions and she can memorize recite poetry, though it isn't clear whether she recite it on request. According to ZUN's admission, he intentionally designed her to be a dumb Hsien-ko zombie, but she doesn't seem to be as dumb as a brick.

You can build some nice alternate character interpretation from her, though. It's easy to make it sound like she's trying to make bad jokes. Just read through her dialogue in Ten Desires with the presumption that she actually does know what the protagonist is talking about and you get that impression.

FJH said:

Marisa's route in Ten Desires is the only one where she is so far out of sorts she doesn't have the faintest clue what is going on, except in the very middle of the conversation. I actually blame some of her initial confusion in Marisa's route on Marisa always trying to befuddle people with words; the usual playful banter Touhou is known for doesn't work on someone who can't switch word meanings quickly. Any confusion afterwards is probably because Marisa just beat her like a sack of potatoes. Marisa's route is the most curious one because it's completely unlike the other three. Yoshika has absolutely no worthwhile information at all and spends most of it in confusion, whereas she's lucid and informative in the others and most of the confusion happens after she's beaten like a sack of potatoes. In SoPM, she's still guarding the temple graveyard, but only because she has a feeling that she needs to be guarding the temple graveyard and not that there's any reason to do it.

One thing that is obvious is that her mind is currently like that of a very simple person and she can't grasp complicated questions. Despite that, she does know enough information to answer questions and she can memorize recite poetry, though it isn't clear whether she recite it on request. According to ZUN's admission, he intentionally designed her to be a dumb Hsien-ko zombie, but she doesn't seem to be as dumb as a brick.

You can build some nice alternate character interpretation from her, though. It's easy to make it sound like she's trying to make bad jokes. Just read through her dialogue in Ten Desires with the presumption that she actually does know what the protagonist is talking about and you get that impression.

Huh. I actually didn't know that because I always play as Marisa. I try to keep up as much as possible with the other story's dialogues but I kind of brushed over 13 since in my opinion one of the weaker titles. Yoshika is actually my favorite character from the game, especially when drawing. You can do so much with that ofuda.