Webcomic / Flan Wants to Die

Due to the short length, all spoilers will be unmarked by default.

I thought to myself maybe I should just die already.

—Flandre Scarlet's famous introductory line of the webcomic.

Flan Wants to Die is a darkly comedic one-shot Touhou Project doujinshi manga, written and illustrated by Tsukumizu, who would later create Girls' Last Tour and Shimeji Simulation. Taking place two centuries later in The Future, the story focuses on the life of Flandre Scarlet, who is now reaching her 695th birthday, but with a catch.

Flandre, largely due to her being immortal, becomes bored of her miserable existence as one, and instead finds a way to kill herself.

To add insult to injury, Flandre later passes by within the Human Village in Gensokyo, which has completely changed for the past 200 years, causing Yokai that formerly wander the village to be practically non-existent.

From there, Flandre encounters old faces of her own past, while narrating the miseries surrounding the life of being an immortal, as well as the changed world around her.

Being one of the more well-known doujinshis by tkmiz, Flan Wants to Die loosely serves as the author's primary pivot into joining the professional manga industry.

Tropes:

• Art-Style Dissonance: While the webcomic tends to have a cutesy art-style on the outside, its Central Theme, on the other hand, not so much, as it is a Deconstruction regarding what it means to live immortally.
• Ascended Extra: As this is a doujinshi that focuses mostly on Flandre, she is the main protagonist of the story.
• Bittersweet Ending: The ending shows Flandre narrating her attempts to die, but later instead comes to terms with her immortal and undying life, after witnessing Cirno's death and "Marisa's" destruction.
  Flandre: "I was thinking of dying tonight, but after seeing such unsettling things, I came to my senses."
• Central Theme: Living life to the fullest, in spite of the shortcoming. This is pretty much Lampshaded with many of the scenes in the webcomic regarding Flandre.
• The Cynic: Flandre.
• Darkest Hour:
  • Daiyousei was seen mourning in front of Cirno, who was dead after getting accidentally hit by Flandre's scooter.
  • Alice Margatroid also went through this, when her creation, a Marisa Kirisame puppet, later broke down and malfunctioned completely during the puppet's interaction with Flandre.
• Death by Adaptation: Cirno, but it is rather zigzagged. While she was presumed to be dead after Flandre hit her via her scooter, despite being a fairy, it is still unclear if she is dead or not.
• Deconstruction: Flan Wants to Die takes a rather thorough approach about being immortal and the life that immortals has been living, viewing from the lens of a fantasy reader. Exemplified when Alice Margatroid, an immortal, was later shown to have a Marisa Kirisame puppet that she created to talk to Flandre, given the fact that Marisa was just a mere human witch who died several decades ago. It drives the point how immortality is Not a Game and the risks of becoming one are very obvious, particularly how it can chew at someone's sanity (a la Sanity Slippage) for years of enduring death. This is not even accounting for the further problems that it can ensue when it comes to their friends who are living a mortal life with a limited life span. The story makes the lesson clear that immortality has very negative side effects when done without any thought other than the choices of an impressionable, naive person who thinks it will give them eternal happiness, when it is in fact the very opposite that it gives: misery and insanity.
• Downer Beginning: The story starts off with Flandre celebrating her rather Ironic Birthday, while narrating her miserable existence in the changed Gensokyo.
• Driven to Suicide: Subverted. While Flandre's immortality did almost drive her to suicide, as means to end her misery, she would instead put it aside and later move on, by the end of the story.
• End of an Age: With Gensokyo being highly modernised in the span of two centuries, it ended many of the following things that were once staple in this world.
  • It marked the end of Human Village being a safe haven for the Village's humans and a paradise for the Youkai, once a pest to Gensokyo's humans, and any other Japanese mythical creatures freely roaming around it. Fairies like Cirno are virtually a rarity across the village proper and are only seen in the small pockets of Gensokyo's forests.
  • On the topic of Human Village, the village and the people itself embody this trope. For the village, it marked the end of the city's rural nature and it marked its transition to being an urbanised city. Old, Edo-era architectures have been replaced with 21st Century modern architectures, turning the Human Village from a simple village into a very urbanised city. The Human Village's humans, as briefly shown in the second panel of page eight, also have been subjected to this trope as they are more so reminiscent of people living in urban areas than their simple, traditional-minded and primitive predecessors. As with the previous contrasts not being enough, modern daily technology like electric poles and power pylons, as well as other outside world things deemed "too dangerous" for Gensokyo are now commonplace in the Human Village.
  • As shown with the gravestone of Marisa Kirisame, it also marks the end of magicians as even the magic-powered immortal characters including Flandre and Remilia are Retired Badasses living in a normal yet conflicted life. Alice Margatroid is a perfect example of this, as she's still alive but tries to create a Marisa doll that is remotely close to her long-dead friend, but the doll's continued interactions with Flandre backfired spectacularly to the point that she broke down into tears when it failed.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The literal title of the story is about Flandre attempting to commit suicide, as means to end her miserable existence that is caused by her immortal life.
• Existential Horror: A case of Disguised Horror Story, the webcomic checks all the boxes. It talks about how immortal people like Flandre and Alice are Blessed with Suck, particularly because their mortal friends were long dead and they are still alive without them on their side anymore. Existentialism is on point here, with Flandre's case taken to the extreme as her dialogues for 26 pages were all but depressing, even to her Ironic Birthday when she turned 695, as she talked all about existential matters like life, death and misery becoming synonymous to her tragically immortal existence.
• Extinct in the Future: The Youkais, who used to prowl around the Human Village, are virtually gone within the future Human Village.
• The Future:
  • The story is set 200 years later, where, in particular, a lot has changed, including the Human Village in Gensokyo. This resulted in Youkais practically being non-existent in the village. Given that The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil approximately takes place in 2003 (Season 118), this story takes place in the year of 2203 (Season 318). However, this is rather zigzagged, as the Human Village resembles more of a contemporary city within the present time^note Specifically within late 20th Century to early 21st Century. than a futuristic city.
  • Ditto from the same example above, the Scarlet Devil Mansion is nowhere the same as what it was two hundred years ago.
• Hard Truth Aesop: Immortality can only be enjoyed while it lasts. The moral? Be Careful What You Wish For. Because immortality is a risky endeavour that would put misery and depression into your head.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: The main conflict of the story. It is lampshaded, when Flandre constantly narrates her immortal life and the miseries surrounding it, and how she has been living for the past 695 years, after many of the people she knew including Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame were long dead and gone. Completely subverted, however, when she later seemingly moves on from it at the end of the story.
• Ironic Birthday: Flandre celebrates her 695th birthday, but this celebration only left her more empty and disillusioned. The entire birthday scene was considered to be a sad one, since it was compounded with Flandre's brief monologue of her wanting to die.
• Irony:
  • Exaggerated, when the Marisa Kirisame puppet controlled by Alice was later seen malfunctioning not far from Marisa Kirisame's grave in Alice's home.
  • Modern things like power lines, pylons and 21st-century buildings are omnipresent in Gensokyo; despite Gensokyo being known for its stance against innovation and science due to its nature of being a Hidden Elf Village.
• Life's Work Ruined: The Marisa Kirisame puppet that Alice Margatroid created, as means to relive with Marisa, who has been dead for a very long time, later malfunctioned and broke down, as it attempted to communicate with Flandre. Also Played for Drama, as this caused Alice to spiral into depression.
• Phlebotinum Breakdown: While the Marisa Kirisame puppet, a creation by Alice, attempted to fully converse with Flandre, it unfortunately broke down after just minutes of their conversation.
• Retired Badass: Flandre and Remilia, the villains and bosses of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, are already past their own prime and have been retired for a very long time.
• Title Character: Titled after Flandre.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Much of the story is driven by Flandre being tired of her immortal existence and wanting to end it all.

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