Theorysonic Marisa

"Remember when a it took a wizard in Microsoft Windows to make your job and life easier? Now see a witch from one of your favorite video game franchises do it."

- Official tagline

Theorysonic Marisa is a virtual assistant created by Theorysonic. It was first introduced in TSUG X7 and is available on TheoryPhone, TheoryTablet, Portosic Touch, and other Theorysonic hardware. It can set reminders, recognize voice without the user's input from their keyboard, and answer questions using the user's preferred search engine. It is available in more than 20 different languages.

Name and origin
Theorysonic Marisa is named after the character of the same name from Bandai Namco Entertainment and Drillimation Studios' Touhou Project series. Jen Taylor, who has provided Marisa's voice since the 1990 short film Touhou 5.5: Mima's Great Defeat, returns to voice her in the English version for the American, Canadian, British, and Australian dialects.

Development
"During my interview with Susumu Takajima, Drillimation Systems' CEO, while trying to license the character for use on the assistant, I told him I joked on trying to marry the character since I liked her so much, and he didn't seem too keen. Takajima eventually licensed her, and that's when the gears started turning."

- Interview in PC Mag

One of the engineers was a big fan of the Touhou Project series, having played the games since Touhou Reiiden: The Highly Responsive to Prayers came out on the Nintendo Entertainment System. His main has almost always been Marisa and felt she should become a virtual assistant for years.

The engineer flew to Japan to speak with Drillimation Systems CEO Susumu Takajima about a possible proposal for a virtual assistant featuring Marisa. His request was eventually greenlit by Drillimation.

Theorysonic Marisa only has a female voice, there was an attempt to have a male version named Theorysonic Mario, but was scrapped most likely to avoid trademark conflicts with Nintendo.