Bothering me for a while now, but does anyone know why Alice says Marisa in hiragana and Yuuka says the same in kanji? Apologies if this is a rather stupid question, since I don't actually know much japanese at all.

soullesshuman said:
Bothering me for a while now, but does anyone know why Alice says Marisa in hiragana and Yuuka says the same in kanji? Apologies if this is a rather stupid question, since I don't actually know much japanese at all.

It has to do with familiarity. Hiragana is less formal than Kanji. That's one of the beauties (and frustrations) of written Japanese. With 3 writing systems used simultaneously, a lot can be conveyed through written text that is not necessarily literally "spoken" in speech. Manga and light novels take advantage of this on a regular basis.

Another cool thing would be the whole Reisen and "Reisen" thing and "Reimu" and Reimu.

Both Reisens and Reimu's names are written differently so it's easy to read who is talking about who. However western fanbase has needed to do different stuff. Such as Reisen 2 compared to Reisen.