"There is a road filled with pain, struggling and endurance..."*
"I've made up my mind! I'm going to become a hero and protect this land!"
— Makoto (in all his heroic eagerness)
In the Touhou Project Walfas community, there exists a Walfaser named Kigurou-Enkou, who one day, in a conversation with a friend, came up with an idea for a huge feature-length comic story much like one of her favorite works, Diamond in the Rough (Touhou). So she gathered the rest of her friends from the well-known Walfas Clubs 1 and 2 and...
The Crossroad is a Touhou Project Webcomic made in create.swf, aka, Walfas. As you can expect, it is a Spiritual Successor to Diamond in the Rough and is a more focused Deconstruction on the Heroic Wannabe trope as opposed to all Self-Insert Fic tropes, making great use of several Walfas OCs and shows that not all OCs/Author Avatars are a bad thing.
Makoto Yoshio is a naïve young Middle-Schooler with strong dreams to become THE perfect hero. And he gets it. Being spirited away to Gensokyo, he decides to jump into the action he sees around him as he realizes just how HEAVY the population of heroes there is. Naturally, if he tries to fit in, everything will go well, right?
Wrong. His naïvety and ignorance of words of wisdom ends up setting a "chain of horrible, HORRIBLE problems". While the residents of Gensokyo are naturally annoyed but generally forgiving, that may all change...
Read the series at its gallery
. It was updated every Sunday until 9th August, where updates were only released "when appropriate". First comic here.
The Crossroad provides examples of...
- The Ace: Subverted by Alyss and Paul. Despite how impressive they appear to Makoto in their heroicism, both constantly admit they aren't perfect people and have made some mistakes before, particularly the latter, who in his previous naivety, attacked Gensokyo in the Shanghai War. Makoto doesn't listen to any of this, though...
- All There in the Manual: Averted. The entire series makes sure to introduce every important stated detail of each of the characters and the various incidents, most particularly the Shanghai War. Subverted with Etoile's backstory, as you have to check out an prior side-story, Windmill of Hatred, for the details.
- Anti-Hero: The story portrays Anti-Heroism as a more 'realistic' form of heroism, on the basis that Anti-Heroes KNOW they have to deal with many hardships, but press on anyway, adapting to their surroundings; a far cry from Makoto's actions. See Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes for a breakdown.
- Sliding Scale Of Anti Heroes:
- Type 1 (Classical Anti-Hero): Seth, Paul's team
- Type 2 (Disney Anti-Hero): Alyss, The Valkyrie Zauber
- Type 3 (Pragmatic Anti-Hero): Kurisu, Emma, Mordred, and just a good chunk of the Touhou canon cast
- Type 4 (Unscrupulous Hero:): Miki
- Type 5 (Nominal Hero): Makoto's Team
- Sliding Scale Of Anti Heroes:
- Armor-Piercing Question: Several, the most notable one being in Part 73, where Alyss questions Makoto whether he wants to be a hero geniuenly because he wants to help people, or because he's desperate for satisfaction. He brushes it off almost immediately.
- Joe raises a good one in Part 45 to Avaron and Hitomi, as they didn't help Makoto in stopping Cirno throwing snowballs at Joe earlier, nor did they back him up in any other way. Subverted when they don't listen to him.
- Joe raises a good one in Part 45
- Art Shift: Sometimes, it changes from the usual create.swf visual to hand-drawn pictures.
- Big "NO!": Reimu, when learning she's out of tea.
- Berserk Button:
- Alyss is a Christian and the easier way to provoke her is to talk something wrong about her Faith or misinterpret it.
- Ren/Zero, when being reminded of a certain version of Transformers (2007) from Baal Michey, loses his disguise and proceeds to attack Baal.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: "You're going to count how many people have the same reaction as me, right?"
- Comes Great Responsibility: Makoto somewhat realizes the use of his Gunsword occasionally.
- Contrived Coincidence: Makoto easily assembles a team by simply asking some people to join him.
- Crisis Crossover: And HOW! Containing not just the canon characters of the ''Touhou'' cast, but of several (and do we mean SEVERAL) Original Characters of the Walfas Clubs, elements from Puella Magi Madoka Magica AND Sound Horizon, The Crossroad is definitely this.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Misaka, Celeste, Chika and Laurencin all have one. The latter most tries everything possible to avoid speaking about it.
- Deconstruction Fic: It analyzes heroism in a realistic way and it shows that it's not easy to be a hero or continue being a hero.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Makoto fits in this trope, because he is living the usual Changeling Fantasy and always wanted to be a hero, without being aware of what it costs to him.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Susumu seems to be one.
- Gilligan Cut: "You were saying, defender of justice?"
- Good Is Not Dumb: ALYSS. Despite being a Mr. Vice Guy for her over-assertiveness, she genuinely wants Makoto to change his ways and help the rest of Gensokyo while still kicking lots of ass. Kurisu lampshades this early in the story and, being the Knight in Sour Armor he is, claims she needs to learn the hard way.
- Good Is Not Nice: Assassin Miki may be for good of getting rid of criminals, but she's a total grump and jerk towards others, even Makoto.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Makoto chooses a sword as his main weapon, though he has to learn how adapt it to use in danmaku fights.
- Heroic Wannabe: Makoto being this is the moving force of the ENTIRE story.
- Hijacked by Jesus: Thanks to Author Appeal, Alyss and several other characters are Christians, the former being one of the most prominent to speak about her faith openly. Thankfully, this is not shoehorned forcefully.
- Knight in Sour Armor: Kurisu Youseikyo. Being just a decade younger than Yukari, he's Seen It All and is a severe cynic, completely unamused with Makoto's effervescent optimism. Being a survivor of the Youkai-Lunari War has further soured his opinion of blind heroism. It takes a LOT for an Outside World human to impress him, and so far only Alyss has managed that. Makoto actually comes very close early on, but when the boy goes Glory Seeker, it costs him Kurisu's initial respect.
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Due to the presence of several Original Characters of the Walfas Clubs (all containing VERY detailed backgrounds), the story becomes this, with a touch of other universes.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When Souta keeps smashing the ground with his sword, causing various spirits and youkai to escape, Makoto, Sylvia, and Marlene do come to help but both Makoto and Souta FORGET to seal the hole made, causing an incident to occur, attracting the attention of Alice, Chika, Marisa, and Youmu, who are also aided by Yuugi and Yamame. But guess how Makoto takes it when he realizes he inadvertently caused the incident?.
- Original Character: It has extensive use of them. Actually it's the point to, in contrast with Makoto, to show that original characters can be good characters as well.
- Parody Sue: ALL of Makoto's team, save for Rein.
- Makoto. In case it wasn't obvious already, he's a Heroic Wannabe who's Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life and finds every situation possible to help someone.
- Laurencin. He has no purpose other than to be Makoto's cool and suave Foil, and he apparently spends him time
brooding over a past he refuses to disclose. - Susumu. His ONLY good point is being a Gadgeteer Genius, and Nitori lampshades that his devices may not have any purpose. He is an Ineffectual Loner otherwise.
- outa. POWER OVERWHELMING! EVERYTHING IS ABOUT POWER! He accidentally causes a minor incident with his 'training'.
- Avaron and Hitomi. They only serve to support Makoto and back him up. Without him, they don't flinch a single finger. Joe lampshades this once. (See Armor-Piercing Question)
- Partly Cloudy with a Chance of Death: It's raining when The Valkyrie Zauber are killed by Rein.
- Path of Inspiration: Makoto feels inspired by Celeste's actions unaware that Celeste killed others when she was young.
- Punch-Clock Hero: Miki. Or at least, that's what she claims. But considering how she acts sometimes...
- Shinigami: Rein is a shinigami for magical girls.
- Self-Insert Fic: Subverted, because while there are self-insert of some Walfas authors, The Protagonist does not fit as a self-insert.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Miki swears at that much and it's a toned down version of her original series.
- Spit Take: Alyss, once without a drink and once with a drink, after Makoto assembled his team.
- Take That!: Baal Michey, huh?
- Third-Person Person: Rumia, mainly based on the way Sethb 1 portrays her.
- World of Badass: One thing that helps Makoto to decide stay in Gensokyo is that there are a lot of heroes in there and a many of them were outsiders as he is.
