Headscratchers / Touhou Project

Yukkuris

• Yukkuris. Specifically, The Factory. The place is basically Yukkuri Hell... but for all the Touhou cast who hate them or see them only as food, there's some pretty major folks who like them. Sanae, for instance, absolutely adores the little moeblobs, while Reimu is often shown acting like a doting mother to yukkuris, and there's probably more I'm just not familiar with. So... basically, I'm not sure how this place could last an hour before being leveled by a pissed-off Touhou character in Mama Bear mode.
  • It's just a meme, you should really just relax.
    • Yeah, take it easy.
  • I like it how this was the 1st one that made you have the Balls to make a "Headscratchers" Page of Touhou, I thank you for making Headscratchers.Touhou Project.
  • Yukkuri fandom is really one of those things that depends on the fanartist. There are basic accepted 'rules' to how certain yukkuri types behave, but there's no one consensus on who reacts to what they do, and how they do so (with Akyuu's elevation to some sort of Memetic Murderess possibly being the sole exception — though that too, why did Akyuu become the sadistic yukkuri killer? Why not Reimu or someone more prominent?)
  • Yukkuri fandom changes Touhou characters as they please, therefor it is not surprising that factories exist; Touhou inhabitants are simply robbed of their original personalities and made into sadistic monsters. Memes have never been about following the canon.
  • But isn't it exactly the same for human and animal in our world? Some human love animal, some keep them as pet, some thinks of the prospect of animal eating is despicable, but on the other side... well...
    • Animals aren't verifiably sapient (if not terribly bright) creatures that can actually talk and communicate with humans/youkai.

Character Specific

Alice

The "French Dolls" Card

• One of Alice's spell cards in PCB is Blue Sign: "Benevolent French Dolls" Blue Sign. Yet, there's only a handful of blue bullets that start off the attack, before changing to gray, then red. (And on harder difficulties, green as well.) I'd be willing to accept that the sign being named after a color doesn't necessarily determine the color of the bullets if another one of her spell cards, Chalk White Russian Dolls didn't use white bullets, and was noted as White Sign.
  • The colors of the French flag are, from left to right, blue, white, and red. Thus the bullets progress through those colors as they spawn more.
  • Meanwhile, Scarlet Sign: "Red-haired Dutch Dolls" uses purple and green bullets, and Darkness Sign: "Foggy London Dolls" uses multicolored bullets. Seems Chalk-White Russian Dolls is the anomaly here.
  • The dolls. It's the colour of the dolls.

Alice's personality

• Alice in Canon: Misanthropic hermit whose reaction to anyone who's not Marisa tends to vary from "passive-aggressive politeness" to "open hatred" — and her reaction to even Marisa is along the lines of Vitriolic Best Buds or Tsundere. Alice in Fanon: A lonely girl who's desperate for friendship and attention, especially from Marisa. What.
  • That's not quite accurate. Alice acts reasonably nice in SA, and she has a fairly broad range of Fanon personalities, many of which are reasonably close to her canon one. If you really want to bitch about fans screwing a character over I'd suggest looking at Chen, Mystia, or Shou.
    • As for her acting relatively nice in SA, that's why I said "tends to."
  • She puts on doll shows for children at festivals and gives shelter to lost people wandering around in the forest. Jerkass Alice is as much of a Flanderization as stuttering, lonely Alice is.
    • Well, going strictly by the games, particularly the earlier Windows ones, she actually is kind of a Jerkass — she tends to be passive-aggressive in her best moods. Also, keep in mind that although she provides shelter to people lost in the forest, she doesn't actually bother to pay attention to or interact with them in any way, just continuing to go about her business until they're ready to leave. One gets the impression that she doesn't much like people — or at least doesn't especially care about them. Dolls, on the other hand...
  • Alice is a great example of how canon personalities aren't really set in stone. PCB, affable coward. Imperishable night, foul-mouthed tsundere. The fighting games, polite moe. Perfect memento, quiet dollmaker, who takes in those in need, and puts on shows for the villagers. Bohemian archive, sort of ditzy mad scientist, threatened Aya, inferred to be voodoo-stabbing someone. There is more basis for a moe blob Alice than a vindictive Mokou, or a lazy Meiling.
    • I'd call her more passive aggressive than affable in PCB, but you do make a good point.
    • This depends on which game you're looking from. In Mystic Square, it seemed as if Alice was being a brat towards the characters, akin to a small child challenging a teenager because of their wily nature. In PCB, she really was being a smartass when meeting with Reimu and Marisa again, mostly because they don't really recognize her, and just plain making fun of Sakuya. In Ia MP, she had become a regular visitor of the Hakurei Shrine due to the many feasts, though she notices the mist and the plain ridiculous amount of gatherings, and begins to investigate by herself when Reimu and Marisa push it off as no big deal. In IN, Alice had "no one else to pair with" to resolve the incident but Marisa, and was being passive-aggressive about it. During SWR, she was one of the ones who had PREDICTED the earthquake, because she knew that the scarlet clouds and strange weather were an omen of such, and basically went to warn everybody, but arrived at abysmal times, making her look suspicious. In SA, she notices the evil spirits rising from the "hot spring" and finds Marisa because Reimu wasn't there and she didn't wanna go underground and fight the supposedly horrid banished youkai herself. In UNL, she was just testing a giant doll experiment - though probably only for defense reasons - when Cirno came along and ruined the whole thing. I'm noticing a theme that Alice is either always displayed as somewhat childishly naive, looking suspicious even though she isn't the main cause of anything, or is the one who actually notices the problem, with a little bit of smartass-y cowardice sprinkled everywhere.

Aya

• Suddenly, Aya got pointy elf-ears. What's up with that?
  • She is a Tengu or Just Zun Art Work kicking in.
  • It's how ZUN draws ears. He just normally avoids them entirely, so the fandom notices that they look weird when they show up (yes, that does mean that Parsee's ears aren't canonical).
    • Parsee's ears are fakes. She wears them out of jealousy for cooler-looking youkai.

Chen

Out of place sorcery

• Chen is a nekomata... so why is the black magic she uses Chinese sorcery instead of something more appropriate to traditional Nekomata abilities, like fire magic or necromancy? For that matter, about half the cast have powers that have nothing to do with the pre-existing mythical creatures they're based on. (The rest are a mixture of those not based on pre-existing creatures, and ones that are but have relevant powers)
  • Because ZUN's modus operandi tends to be to read up on a creature... and then discard and add stuff at will to make it cooler not caring at all about faithfulness.
  • Because Chen is a Chinese Nekomata. Didn't you notice that her name is Chinese and not Japanese?
    • I had noticed, but now that you mention it, it's kind of odd. To my knowledge, China doesn't have an equivalent to the Nekomata... or even the Bakeneko in general. They do have an equivalent to the Kitsune (which is a lot nastier than the Japanese Kitsune, but not as bad as the Korean Kumiho), but...
  • For what it's worth, Orin, another nekomata, (possibly) does use fire magic and necromancy, so there ya go.
    • Orin is a kasha, not a nekomata.
  • She's also Ran's shikigami. Maybe that gives her some special powers or something.
    • Deending on how the shikigamis are created in the Touhouverse, that might very well be it. Assuming the summoner calls forth an existing spirit, it's possible that she got a Chinese girl or cat, who became a youkai due to the influx of magic pouring in from Ran. Assuming the summoner can modify traits of the spirit they summon, Ran likely has a Chinese catgirl fetish. Assuming the former, it's also possible that Chen was originally Japanese, but moved to China and took a new name before becoming a shikigami, or that one of her ancestors was a Japanese nekomata who moved to China, or something of the sort.
  • If it helps, Nekomata aren't exclusive to Japanese folklore. Matter-of-fact, the earliest known tales of Nekomata were during the Sui dynasty of China before they appeared in folklore of the Kamakura period of Japan.

Chen's Surname (or why she don't got one)

• Yukari's full name is Yukari Yakumo. Because Ran is Yukari's shikigami, she is referred to as Ran Yakumo. Why, then, is Chen always referred to as just Chen, and never as Chen Yakumo? Shouldn't she take Ran's last name, being her shikigami?
  • One possibility is that Ran takes care of a lot of Yukari's duties, and is thus upholding the Yakumo name. Chen just kind of does her own thing.
  • Because from what I have noticed Chen is not exactly YUKARI's shikigami. She is actually RAN's, as Ran is a powerful enough being to have a shikigami of her own. Yukari's family name stretches onto her servant, but it does not stretch as far as onto her servant's servant.
    • There was a doujin (whose name escapes me now) where Ran gets the Yakumo name after passing some sort of trust-fall exercise. Ran later pulls the same test on Chen who cheerfully watches her plummet to the ground and make a Loony Tunes impact crater. Needless to say, Chen didn't pass and remained the last nameless one.
  • Maybe catgirls don't have last names? Orin's always just Orin, too.
    • ? Orin's full name is Kaenbyou Rin
  • Despite the fact that a lot of it is light-hearted, cute and Played for Laughs, it may be worth noting that in bkub's comics detailing the life of Chen, Chen is very much considered a Yakumo. Nazrin even refers to her as "Yakumo" in-comic.
    • One of the comics implies that she's more like a pet, with Yukari saying, "I wonder where our cat went off to." Other than conveinence, people don't really give their pets surnames.

Cirno

Cirno's Intelligence (or lack thereof)

• Let us talk about 9-Ball, Cirno, Ice Fairy, The Baka.
  • Has any one even known or even seen Cirno's other Spell Cards? Freeze Sign (Perfect Freeze), Snow Sign (Diamond Blizzard), Hail Sign (Hailstorm)? (The Ladder are more like Ice Sign (Icicle Fall) ~Hard and Lunatic~)
    • yes, many people have seen her other harder-level spellcards. We just focus on Icicle Fall ~Easy~ because it's funny.
    • There are other spellcards with safe zones, but these are very small and often in inconvenient locations (if not outright impossible to hit the enemy from). Icicle Fall Easy is the only one where you just gotta remember "get right in her face" and you're completely safe, and you have all the time in the world.
  • Why would she want to face a Daidarabocchi in Hisoutensoku?
    • Hisoutensoku's manual indicates that if she faces the Daidarabocchi, then she'll feel that there won't be anything for her to fear ever again.
    • As the self-proclaimed "Strongest", she wanted to prove her strength to herself and the world by defeating it.
  • Is Cirno really is the Strongest? If so how Strong?
    • Obviously, Cirno is 9999x stronger than anyone.
    • For a Stage 2 Boss?
    • She only ever claimed to be the strongest fairy. All signs point to her being right about that.
    • Actually, she claimed to be the strongest against Eiki in Po FV.
    • Possibly more than the strongest fairy. She could have some powers she doesn't unveil, due to danmaku limitations or her own stupidity (sorry to whoever considers her a genius as well). Probably not the strongest in Gensokyo but possibly stronger than she's considered to be.
    • Seeing how cold is the absence of energy (specifically, the absence of thermal energy, or the kinetic energy that causes random motion in particles), and she's able to make things cold, I think you're on to something. At the least, she's able to drain kinetic energy from basically anything (meaning she should also be able to prevent any physical object from moving). At the most, she can not only increase or decrease anything's temperature at will, but manipulate any and all forms of energy.
  • Why is the icicle shotgun harder than most of her spellcards?
    • It's not. It's just very surprising if you're not expecting it.

Can Ice fairies melt?

• Why does everyone think that Cirno can melt? SHE ISN'T MADE OF ICE!!!
  • This is fan stupid. Cirno has adventured into a superheated nuclear furnace without feeling more than a slight discomfort. There she faced a nuclear infernal raven armed with nuclear hellfire, and DEFEATED HER. I think Cirno has proven that she doesn't melt even when exposed to extreme temperatures. Of course, if you plunge her into lava, she will melt (like any creature).
    • Well, you can't say she didn't feel much discomfort, because she FACEPLANTED into one of the hottest parts of the reactor - its metal floor - and exclamed "OWOWOWOWOWOW".
    • Except maybe in early versions of Dwarf Fortress, where burning didn't cause bleeding, so it couldn't kill. Or if Temperature is turned off.
  • Because she's cute comic relief who can always use more sight gags. Ironically, the popularity gained from that role is what let her enter and battle in a nuclear reactor to begin with. Initially she's thrashing and screaming, "I can't bare it!" but as soon as she resumes her Gunbuster pose, none of it matters and she can win through the power of fighting game logic. If Cirno can be infused with literal Rule of Cool as fans demand, other ice-related traits are hardly a stretch.
  • Because it's funny.

The Wrong I or Eye

• I've seen a bunch of stuff with Cirno saying "eye" instead of "I". But she speaks Japanese, so it would be "me" instead of "watashi". Anyone who doesn't speak English will have no idea what she's saying. Does she even know English?
  • Cirno's pronoun of choice is the childish "atai", which is occasionally translated as "eye" by stupid people
  • It's entirely an English fan specific localization. Since English doesn't really have other first-person pronouns like "atai", it's attempting to convey Cirno's stupidity through an English word, one that is a homophone of I. It's not supposed to make sense in the original Japanese, just be a localization.
  • For the record, Komachi and Orin use the same pronoun that Cirno uses, but no attempt is ever made to make them stand out.

Flandre

• Why is Flandre seemingly elevated to the level of Memetic Cthulhu by the fandom? Sure, she's very powerful and destructive by human standards, but she's not the most dangerous being in Gensokyo by a long shot.
  • Because while other characters may be more powerful, none of them are as willfully destructive. Yukari might make life interesting but she's not going to destroy Gensenkyo, Flandre will do it with a smile.
  • She can destroy anything she sees, no save. Only the gap hag's ability is worse, but she's lazy and not violent by nature.
    • To further expand on this, it could be possible to consider it akin to Tsukihime's Shiki Tohno and his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, except Flandre doesn't need to physically trace the lines, or even get close. She can remotely attack the dots directly, thus allowing her to absolutely destroy anything without having to be vulnerable. It would be slightly trickier to explain how she could use it to target metaphysical concepts though.
    • Actually, it's more akin to Kira Yoshikage's Killer Queen stand from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. With it he can turn anything he wishes into a bomb, including people, giving an almost perfect parallel to Flandre. Later he gains the ability to make balls of propelled air into bombs when Stray Cat upgrades it, giving Flandre's range. Then there is the fact Kira is a psycho, which well..Flandre. The one who could fight Kira head on was Josuke, whom Reimu has been seen in some fanart with (including one where she wears his jacket and he...well, let's not go there). This combined with the fact ZUN is an extreme JoJo fanboy infact gives a hint of where some of Flandre's attributes came from so Tsukihime really is irrelevant here.
  • This troper thinks it started because of a misunderstanding of Flandre's character. Everybody sees the "locked in the basement centuries ago because of her fearsome power" part and thinks she's insane and bloodthirsty (no pun intended), while she's more of a nice girl with a really bad case of Does Not Know His Own Strength (being able to blow anything up by thinking about it probably helps). Then again, I may be wrong, Touhou canon is a really hard thing to figure out.
    • I blame Flan's upbringing for her becoming a Memetic Cthulhu. I think that whoever the heck was handling the two sisters' education before they started living on their own (someone must have, right?) was paranoid and, upon discovering the girl's power, decided to lock Flandre up to avoid accidents rather than attempting to handle her education properly. By the time they started living on their own, with Sakuya's help of course, it was too late to save Flandre - she already went insane from being locked up for so long, and besides, Remilia, being the spoiled brat she is, refused to lose her precious time trying to educate her anyways, as for Sakuya, ZUN knows she already has much to do. And this is why Flan is doomed to stay forever locked up in a basement, going more and more insane as time passes. If she's not Cthulhu how, she's bound to become one...
    • I believe it is canon that Remilia loves her sister and her sister loves her. So it's not likely that she just 'won't bother with her'. I believe it was canon as well that Remilia asks Patchy to be Flandre's teacher (poor Patchy, but she's the most suitable for the job). Also, if you see it the other way around, if Flan was allowed to go outside the mansion, she could cause too much troubles for her own good. Aside from that, my impression is that she is a fairly nice girl. The little problem is that she might be a bit mentally unstable and get upset easily. The BIG problem IS that she happens to possess that destructive ability. It's this bad combination that makes her look insane, in my opinion.
    • She shows up in one game and two fanbooks. It's not that difficult. Anyway, canonically she's kind of nuts, though the worst we've actually seen is her acting creepy.
    • A fanmade Touhou-themed add-on for the tabletop game Arkham Horror actually has stats for Flandre as a Great Old One, and she's probably the scariest. The description of her awakening is basically "her own insanity isn't enough to moderate her destructive power anymore". Basically, it implies that her insanity isn't the cause of her Cthulhoid status, but rather what's preventing it. As the game proceeds, she grows more and more sane. And, if not stopped, the game ends with her regaining full sanity and full control of her power. Alternate Character Interpretation, but interesting.
    • Wait...So if Flandre is Memetic Cthulhu, does that make the following statement applicable? "Flandre Scarlet danmakus 1d4 adventurers per round, unless the adventurer is a miko or a witch."
    • Almost. Replace danmaku with breaks to pieces. "The eye of everything is in my right hand".
  • Flandre's ability is stated to destroy anything without even touching them, I am beginning to think of it on the Reality Warper level.
• Probably the most important factor: There's been a grand total of ONE game in which she's had any story. She gets to be this insane destruction machine simply because there's nothing saying otherwise, and let's face it, that's a lot of her appeal right there.

Kaguya

• Exactly what does Kaguya's power do?
  • It can be best thought of as manipulation of stasis. Its use on Eientei was to cause time to pass, but nothing to change. Presumably its range is a bit wider, as she also used it to tear apart the spell used to stop the night.

Kanako

The Gundam Reference

• Say doesn't Kanako look more like the PALACE ATHENE then the GUNCANNON?
  • Palace Athene, Stargazer, God Gundam, Guncannon - take your pick. It's just that the Guncannon is red. Me, I prefer "God Guncannon" just because it sounds funnier.

The Komeiji Sisters

Mistaken abilities?

• Both her character sheet and the Gravity Sucks page describe Koishi as having an attack that pushes you towards a wall of danmaku. What attack is this? I've beaten Koishi in Subterranean Animism and have at least seen all of her cards in Double Spoiler, and I don't recall Koishi ever moving the player around.
  • I do believe this is a misinterpretation of quotes, or just accidentally calling Utsuho as Koishi, but if they were serious, they probably mean Rose Hell or Philosophy of a Hated Person, as they could be interpreted as walls - those roses, man. THOSE ROSES.

Satori's name

• Satori's name is also her species name. That's like having a human running around named Human. Nue has the same thing, but it's more likely that her species was named after her, as she appears to be the only one of her kind around. Satori, however, has a sister. And presumably parents. So why is that even her name? This troper is confused.
  • Given how youkai work, it's entirely possible that the Komeiji sisters don't actually have parents. And Koishi's existence is a self-keeping secret, so the species being named after Satori is still quite possible.
    • If they don't have parents, it wouldn't make much sense for them to be called sisters (and it is possible that youkai may be able to reproduce sexually; the three fairies did find a youkai egg, after all), and Koishi's existence is only a self-keeping secret now; presumably she was named when she still had her third eye open and was a normal satori. Maybe Satori is such a perfect example of her race that her parents decided to call her that. Or maybe she decided to call herself that so everyone would know exactly what she is and would stay away from her. Could be anything, really.
  • I know a guy named Guy. Also, Andrew is a fairly common name, and basically means man.
    • If I remember correctly, Satori's name also means "Enlightenment", downplaying the whole "A Dog Named "Dog"" trope.

Mamizou

• Mamizou's spellcard, "Pseudo-Exorcism of the Stupid Shrine Maiden", is clearly meant as a Take That! against Reimu. So why does she use it against the other three characters? Did she not have time to make "Psuedo-Sparking the Stupid Witch"? You could argue that Reimu's probably the only playable character Nue told her about, but why bother insulting Reimu when she's fighting, say, Youmu?
  • ZUN was drunk and fell asleep in the middle of it. He woke up the next morning and forgot. Or he just got lazy. I guess because extra is not stage 4.
  • Reimu is the only one that people hear much about. Most youkai assume that Marisa is one of them, Sanae is the priestess of a faith that accepts youkai, and Youmu spends most of her time in purgatory. A newcomer like Mamizou can't be expected to have prepared copies of the others' spellcards. But mostly it's that Extra isn't stage 4
  • Mamizou only turns into Reimu because the spellcard is a reference to the Cute 'em Up game Kiki Kai Kai. The stage 7 boss in that game is a tanuki who disguises himself as the main character, Sayo, who is a shrine maiden like Reimu.

Marisa

• Marisa is Always Second Best in Gensoukyou but don't strong magic users change into Youkai? Marisa is still human if I recall... has there been any information regarding how changing to a Youkai affects Marisa or is this why she is searching for the Hourai elixir?
  • Strong magicians CAN turn into youkai, they don't do so automatically. This article from PMiSS explains it quite well. And actually, it was Alice who mentioned being interested in the Hourai Elixir when facing Mokou in Imperishable Night; Marisa explicitly stated that she wasn't interested.
  • About that, I was checking the wikia and found this line in her Perfect Cherry Blossom profile:
  On another topic, the elixir of immortality she had been developing during the winter ended up being too large for consumption. More improvement required.
  • She indeed tried to create the (or an) elixir of immortality.
  • Perfect memento in strict sense infers that yes, she may become a youkai in the future. However, how strong a magic user you need to be, and now strong Marisa actually is, are unclear (Her magic is powered by external means, and we only ever see her using it in spellcard duels, in which power is irrelevant). Alice became a youkai from extensive training and "high dexterity", and she had a grimoire which elevated her from a stage 3 boss to an ex one to help her along.

Maribel

• Why is Maribel (Hearn)'s name written as マエリベリー (maeriberii) in katakana? That doesn't convert to "Maribel" in some sane way. No wonder Renko just calls her "Mary".
  • Mary has no official romanization for her name. It seems that some of the early translators decided to go with an actual (though obscure) name regardless of it only bearing a passing resemblance to the kana, and it more or less stuck. Finding people using alternate romanizations isn't too difficult, though
  • No, that does not convert to "Maribel" in any sane way. However, "Maribel" does convert to that in a sane way if we consider the pronunciation and the usual difficulties Japanese people have with English. Given choice over how they want to pronounce the name "Maribel", many Japanese people would pronounce it like "Marybelly". Thus, an approximation of an approximation; yes, it is still bad ... just, you know, it didn't come from nowhere.
    • ...Not really? The normal transliteration of "Maribel" would be something like "meiriberu". And "maeriberii" is noted as hard to pronounce in-story, so it's not an easier version like you're suggesting.
  • It's just one of many bad translations made in the earlier days. Her name is "Maryberry" or something like that. Flandre is also blatantly wrong, it's even written as Frandle in P Mi SS. People stick with bad translations that they're used to though.
    • The "written as" part for Flandre is hardly indicative. Another official piece claimed a certain canon manga was titled Wild and Hornted Hermit, and there's numerous other cases of official romanizations in Japanese media that are just, to someone who actually speaks a relevant language, obviously wrong, such as the notorious Crawd from Star Ocean: The Second Story, or "Blenda" from Front Mission: Gun Hazard. That said, there is another, better reason to take "Flandre" as an incorrect romanization — the kana don't match the conventional pronunciation of "Flandre," the modern French word for Flanders.
  • The only semi-believable way to anglicize "maeriberii" would be something like "Ma'eryberry" or "Ma'eriberry" or something like that. Neither of those are actual names, let alone one that would belong to someone who is presumably from a western country. I'm going to go ahead and count "Maribel" as an unintentional Woolseyism.

Meiling

The Purpose of a Gateguard

• Why does Remilia even bother having Meiling as a gate-guard at all? I mean, there is just about nothing Meiling can do that Sakuya can't do (I love Meiling, by the way), and Sakuya definitely has enough time to take care of things. If Meiling is as imcompotent as the Stage 3 boss she is, surely Remilia have better tastes for someone who will act as gate guard for the feared SDM than her. Although my guess is that ZUN just needed a Stage 3 boss, so its a kind of a Gameplay and Story Segregation?
  • Sakuya is Remilia's chief maid, and her timestopping abilities are useful for more than just throwing knives at people, and is thus quite more important to Remilia. Meiling can keep most humans and youkai out of the mansion, but was just plain out of her league when it came to dealing with the main protagonists (one of whom acts as her very own Wave-Motion Gun and the other of whom is just majorly powerful — a common in-joke has one of her spellcards being "Hax Sign - You Just Plain Fucking Lose"). That's the problem with being Overshadowed by Awesome, as well as being primarily a physical fighter in a magic and danmaku-based series.
    • So maybe Remilia should hire a more competent gate-guard that could at least stand a better chance against people such as them? Unless SDM has become too attached to Meiling as a member.
    • Care to explain where Remilia would find somebody like that? Not likely that an EX Boss is going to sign up for gatekeeper duty, is it?
    • Considering the youkai population of Gensokyo, there is going to be plenty of youkai stronger than Meiling that would love to have a job at the luxurious home of SDM, and they don't need to be an EX Boss to be like that.
    • Not really. Meiling is already a fair bit more capable than the average youkai. Combined with the typical youkai's aloofness and pride, finding someone more competent than Meiling that doesn't have ridiculous demands could be difficult.
    • Meiling is strong enough to handle the average riff-raff. It's just that the one time we've seen her in action as the SDM's gatekeeper, she was up against very much above average riff-raff. It wouldn't matter if Remilia had somehow convinced somebody monstrously powerful like Mokou to take the job, or put Flandre at the front gate that day. Hax Miko still would've gotten past her.
    • Maybe Remilia doesn't want to keep Reimu & Marisa out, so she doesn't care if they're stronger than her gatekeeper as long as the gatekeeper can keep most of the normal population out? While this doesn't hold up in EoSD, when she actually did want them kept up, it's possible to justify as her not knowing they were stronger than her gatekeeper at the time.
  • My own theory on this is that Meiling provides a friendly face for the SDM. Think about it; every other non-fairy there is either creepy and/or a Hikikomori, but Meiling is a friendly near-human, and will be seen more than the rest of them combined.
    • That is a good point, it gives Remilia a more civil side too.
    • This theory is further promoted by Perfect Memento, where it is stated that Meiling's presence makes the Scarlet Devil Mansion not seem so ominous and creepy. As one eyewitness report says, "The Scarlet Devil Mansion is terrifying, but thanks to that gate guard it feels friendly."
  • Being beaten by Reimu and Marisa isn't exactly uncommon.
  • I've always liked the theory that Meiling is just there to act as a filter—anyone who can't get past her is too boring for Remilia to bother with anyway. Just because she could handle everything or have Sakuya handle everything doesn't mean she wants to.
  • Meiling's inclusion in the fighting games is evidence that she can defeat the main protagonists if Lady Luck smiles on her. Same goes for other such characters included in the fighting games and PoFV.
  • Why have a gate-keeper at all? In a world where flight is a near-universal power, what's the point in having a gate at all?
  • Perfect Memento states she's probably a gate guard because she has no weaknesses. You have to remember that being a gate guard for a youkai is like being a sitting duck if you have a weakness. Even the extremely powerful vampire is weak to sunlight. Even the powerful magician is weak if caught without any spells prepared. A youkai with a weakness that's a gate guard is basically just asking for any youkai hunter to come along toting that weakness and then slamming it into that youkai's face. Sakuya, not being a youkai, also doesn't have any particular weaknesses, but she's already busy enough already, and guarding a gate is one of the few tasks where her ability to stop time wouldn't give her a free pass. Sakuya can stop time to cook and clean, but she can't stop time to guard a gate because that job requires time to actually pass since the job is to stand around while time passes.
  • It's also possible that Remilia considered her martial arts abilities, and decided that a gatekeeper that could literally kick someone out of the mansion, that was also decent at danmaku, was better than someone that could dish out the magic but wouldn't be able to stop anyone that didn't play by the spellcard rules. This can also tie into the above.
  • There's the possibility that although she is considered useless, she's still a longtime and close friend of the mansion, which is why she's kept there. There are a couple theories floating around which state that Sakuya has been at SDM since she was young and was raised by Meiling, which would explain why she's there even if her job isn't really needed.

Chinese youkai?

• So hong meiling is a Chinese youkai? That’s like a American Cyclops or a German kappa, doesn’t china have their own list of supernatural creatures?
  • You're confused; 'youkai' is a broad category in Touhou, and not restricted to Japan
    • So are all supernatural creatures (besides gods) youkai in the touhou universe? Like demons in Shin Megami Tensei?
    • That's a surprisingly complicated question that no one is quite certain about, even in-universe... but we can at least say that most supernatural beings count as youkai
    • Yes, Hobgoblins and such are explicitly considered European youkai. The word just means "monster", basically.
    • But one of the Fairies of Light picked up Reimu's yin-yang orb with no negative repercussions. And it exploded Kasen's prosthetic arm. It doesn't seem to consider fairies to be youkai.
    • Youkai exist in Chinese culture. The kanji for "youkai" exists in Chinese (except it's just pronounced "yao-guai" instead of youkai), and they also refer to a kind of mythical humanoid monster like the Japanese youkai. So yes, there are Chinese youkai as well.
    • More importantly, yokai of japanese legend usually have nothing saying they are unique to Japan, there is no reason there couldent be oni living in america, or a tool in africa becoming a Tsukumogami(considering humanity, and thus tools, originate in africa they would in fact have had the first Tsukumogami)

Mima

• I think it best to get it out, but Mima?
  • An unhappy situation with any number of causes: a desire for a fresh start on a new platform to make the series more accessible to newcomers; an attempt to cull the growing number of playable characters to just the two oldest and most iconic; or maybe simply because Mima and Marisa were getting too similar in terms of character and temperment, making the former superfluous.
  • But Mima is older than Marisa and was just as iconic, having appeared in 4 out of the 5 PC-98 games, with the last three times as either final boss or playable character. She was the first recurring character in the series besides Reimu

Mystia

• Why is Mystia so concerned with eating birds? Humans eat mammals all the time.
  • Well, she IS a bird. I don't think she likes seeing fellow birds get eaten. Just like how, if you were a human in Gensokyo, you wouldn't like hearing youkai talk about eating humans (or, worse, seeing it happen).
    • She's a night sparrow, which I assume is related to sparrows, of the order Passeriformes. Chickens are of the order Galliformes. They are only related by both being in the class Aves (birds). Humans are in the class Mammalia (mammals). So she's no more related to chickens than humans are to other mammals. If humans don't mind eating other mammals, she shouldn't mind eating other birds. Also, giving people eels instead seems disrespectful to Wakasagihime, who is presumably related to wakasagi, and therefore a member of the class Actinopterygii (ray-finned fishes), which is the same class as eels. Why does she think people should only avoid food in her class?
    • Because Mystia is immature and childish. It's perfectly in-character for her to make hypocritical demands (and it's not that hypocritical, given that it's unlikely Gensokyo has detailed knowledge of biological classifications). I also remember reading a quote from ZUN (admittedly second-hand) that while most youkai look nearly or even entirely human, they are not human and should not be expected to think or act like humans at any given time. To a bird-youkai, eating a bird is terrible, and logic won't convince her otherwise.
    • But humans are the only ones who care about cannibalism. Sparrows don't naturally eat other birds, but they also don't eat eels. It's not a cannibalism thing. They're just not built to eat meat beyond insects. I wonder what Aya thinks about all this, given that crows eat carrion, and are perfectly willing to eat other crows.
  • From what I remember of Bohemian Archive, Aya isn't cool with birds being eaten either. In Mokou's article, she mentions getting outta dodge when Mokou describes the Bamboo Forest as a "mecca for yakitori".
    • We're forgetting that Aya and Mystia are bird yokai and not regular birds. Remembering that they're a crow tengu and a night sparrow, they won't think or function like regular birds (or like humans, for that matter) and that a lot of birds in Gensokyo could be some kind of non-sapient yokai birds, in which case, they'd probably think of it as a cannibalism in the sense of "bird yokai eating yokai birds" (kind of like how a human might see the I'm a Humanitarian trope). Of course, while we know humans tend to be fair game as far as yokai cousine customs go in Touhou yokai lore, there isn't a lot in the lore that would rule out yokai eating other yokai either.
  • Their inclinations towards avian meat makes more sense in terms of their respective mythologies, as yosuzume eats what you'd think a normal sparrow would eat (seeds and bugs), though, in Mystia's case, we could say that lamprey aren't too different from earthworms and one of the things karasatengu eats is human flesh (like many of the other youkai in Gensokyo do),though Aya probably gets her sustanence from normal or close normal to human food, as the karasutengu also eat livestock and wild animals, it's just that she prefers to not eat avian meat because the idea, well, probably feels weird as hell to her.

Patchouli

• What exactly does Patchouli do? She serves as the Scarlet Devil Mansion's librarian, but I can't imagine any of its residents being very fervent readers. Given the time she puts into developing new spells, perhaps she was hired as some sort of magic scientist?
  • Well, it's good to have a librarian. One way or another, the SDM has a bunch of highly valuable magical books and such, so having some sort of protection for them is ideal (even if it doesn't stop Marisa). And anyway, Patchouli's a powerful magician. Always nice to have one around, right?
  • She's a good friend of Remi. She doesn't really need to be particularly useful to justify being at the SDM.
  • According to Perfect Memento, "It is her role to resolve problems that occur in the Scarlet Devil Mansion.^note At the same time, it is her role to cause problems as well." Which... doesn't make much sense either, but if you were hoping for things to make sense, you're following the wrong series. Technically Patchouli isn't even a librarian, she just uses the library more than anyone else (and then some) and is probably the only person who'd bother taking care of it. It probably is just cause she's Remi's friend, really.
    • The first sentence and the note can be summed up as "She keeps things interesting and/or fun for everyone."
  • Also, in the backstory for EOSD's extra stage, Remilia remarks that, since vampires can't move in rain, the sudden rainstorm was likely caused by Patchouli's elemental magic to keep Flandre from escaping the mansion. So that's another reason for Patchouli to be there. In the case of an emergency, she can keep Flandre from escaping.
  • There are some tidbits out there that suggest the library isn't completely made up of magic books, and that there are a number of actual story books and even possibly manga that various characters take and read.

PC-98

• So...from the PC-98 game...is Shingyoku a female, male, or an it?
  • All of the above. If you want a pronoun to use, I recommend "they"

Reimu

The Hakurei Bloodline?

• So if Reimu dies without any daughters all of Gensokyo is destroyed? Suddenly makes all of those shipping fics a lot darker.
  • Maybe? It's not entirely clear how it works. Aya wasn't too upset when Reimu went missing during SSiB, but she's not an authority on the subject
  • Yukari and the Divine Dragon were the architects of the Hakurei Barrier, I imagine they have some failsafes and back-ups in mind in case something were to happen to the Hakurei bloodline. Besides, it's a little early to be worrying about Reimu's death: she is, at the absolute most, in her early twenties. Plenty of time for her to settle down at some point in the future.
    • Additionally, I could've sworn that one of Akyuu's articles concerning Ryuujin (which used to be quoted here when his entry was still in the character list) mentioned that if both the current Hakurei and Yukari were in mortal peril, he would return to Gensokyo and personally introduce the offending entity to complete obliteration, though she also implied the collateral damage from said overkill might wipe the Human Village off the map. It's possible that was pulled from a fanwork, however.
    • If we assume Reimu's position is like any real world miko, then her position and succession isn't or doesn't have to be bloodline specific, in which case, she could choose a new miko to take her place. Likewise, when she goes to moon in one game, Aya suggests they find another shrine maiden and Kasen did act a miko in One-Armed Hermit

Little Orphaned Reimu

• Talking about Reimu and daughters where is Reimu mother? You think she would solve the majority of incidents if she was around, is she dead? Did she leave Gensokyo? Is she actually Yukari?
  • Probably not Yukari. All signs point to Reimu being pure human. And, yeah, general assumption is that she's dead
    • A popular theory is Yukari is a future Maribel, or the two have some other relationship, considering Maribel seems to be 100%, it wouldent actually rule out Yukari being her mother if she is related to/was a human at some point
    • She died of what? Old age seems unlikely and yes I know people died a lot younger back then, diseases also seems very unlikely since you think the Hakurei bloodline would have immunity to diseases so that all of Gensokyo isn’t destroyed by a simple disease.
    • Hakurei lineage almost certainly doesn't convey immunity to disease; Reimu treats getting sick as perfectly normal in the manga
    • So I guess Gensokyo could be destroyed by a simple disease, i guess that probably explains what happened to Reimu mother i’m still curious about her family since you would think she would have a niece or two, but I suppose that outside of fanfics that mystery will never have a answer.
    • The increase in life expectancy is largely due to decrease in infant mortality. Given that Reimu's mother lived long enough to have a daughter, she would most likely live as long as people do now.
  • One popular theory is that she was a nearly peerless monster in combat... until she gave her life so her best friend would never need to eat humans again.
  • In one of the games, Marisa flat-out says Reimu's an orphan, which suggests that they died or left her some years ago, tho, Marisa could be implying that Reimu doesn't have any parents that she answers to (since Marisa do got parents, interestin'ly enough). On another note, it's possible that "Hakurei" is a surname that Gensokyan miko take when they work for the Hakurei Shrine (which might be the case since, for a Miko, Reimu don't even know the name of her patron deity).

Remilia

The Manipulation of Fate

• This troper wonders why it has not occurred to people yet, Remilia seems to be pretty much a Reality Warper like Yukari due to her ability to manipulate fate. She is probably one of the more powerful beings in Gensokyo.
  • She isn't. While the while ability of "manipulation of fate" is unclear, Yukari is able to change the very fabric of the world at her command. She just doesn't do it because it either requires too much effort or she doesn't know how to do it yet. Remilia's powers can't change things that exist, just the outcome of events. Think of it like playing dice. Yukari can add faces to the die as it sits there and as it's rolling, fundamentally adding or subtracting outcomes as it rolls. Remilia rolls with weighted dice, only she can move the weights around as they roll. She can't change the dice themselves. I don't think she can make the impossible possible, as that's going into miracle territory.
  • Probably because that power's more innately covert - you can't tell just what she's responsible for. And Remilia's combination of raw power, childishness and cheap Card Carrying Villainy lead people to assume she's not doing anything subtle.
    • So in a way she did win the Superpower Lottery but that power is still not comparable for the likes of Yukari or Reimu?
    • She did win the Superpower Lottery; triple 7s too. The problem, like with most Touhou characters, is that their abilities are far too vague in description. Manipulation of fate is essentially on the same echelon of power as Yukari's gap control, but the exact method in which it is done is inconsistent and rather difficult to interpret. Most people just assume she does it unconsciously, as their logic is "That thing's too powerful. She can't really know what she's doing with it." Ironically, they say nothing of Yukari's gaps, to which basically the same conditions apply, ostensibly acting under the assumption she's strong enough to know her own power. Once again we run into the classic Touhou fuss over whether stage placement determines a character's power level. Since we've been provided with proof this is not true (as the NOT EVEN DROP Meme states, Memetic Mutation aside) and that anyone can beat anyone under the Spellcard Rules stipulations, there's no reason to continue holding to this argument beyond the point of being a fanboy. Since I, myself, am (and no shame here) a fanboy of Remilia's, I've thought long about what ability can imply, and let me tell you, the possibilities are just as numerous as Yukari's abilities. In this troper's personal canon, Remilia is a Reality Warper through and through, but I will generally act under the premise of unrealized possibilities for the sake of the Rule of Drama if it ever comes up in a fanfic I write.
    • Yukari's ability is reigned in by A: her being lazy, B: her wanting what's best for Gensokyo, and C: a laid-back, for the lulz attitude. The combination means she is rarely an active force. Not so for Remilia, who is perfectly active and itching for something to do. It isn't a question of being strong enough to know your own power, it's a question of your personality. Imagine giving Cirno Suika's power; even if she knew exactly how it works, it isn't going to be pretty. In addition, Yukari is shown many times to be using her power in various ways, and the mechanic by which it works is relatively explicit, by Touhou standards. The only inkling we have of Remilia's fate manipulation is that she may have changed Sakuya's fate at one point by changing her name, which is about as vague as you can get. It's perfectly fine to do what you want in your own canon, but try not to badmouth people for their opinions when theirs are supported by ZUN's canon.
    • Assuming the giving of a new name is a requirement or focus for her power, does the other party have to agree to the name change? If so, then it limits her power to only doing 1) something agreeable to whoever she's using it on, or 2) anything that's theoretically within the capabilities of the SDM staff, assuming she can make it specific like "Sakuya is fated to go to the Hakurei shrine and run into Reimu, Yukari, Chen, and Tewi at 8:15 AM next Saturday, then spent 18 minutes and 23 seconds playing Ping Pong with Rinnosuke, after which Genji eats the ball. She then defeats Cirno in a danmaku match, blindfolded" (if she can't make it roughly this specific, then that also limits its usefulness). It's also possible that she can use it to allow people to do things that they would normally be incapable of. If the other party(ies) don't have to accept the name she gives them, then she would best be able to use it by being a justified nicknamer. There are too many unknowns to be able to determine just what her power is capable of, even if we don't question whether people can fight Remilia's fates, or whether they can be used on inanimate objects or not.
  • Every Touhou character has a power. The majority of these are not even mentioned in the games, or even in the other canon works. Remilia is one of those who's power you would only really know about by reading a bio on her, listing her power. Now compare it to other characters, who's power is a big part of what makes them different. One of the most obvious examples would be Yukari, but a better example would be Marisa. Yes, the witch. Her power is simply the ability to use magic. Imagine a work wherein Marisa couldn't use it. It would be bizarre. Whereas Remilia is an interesting and unique character without needing superfluous abilities; she already has a combination of super strength, speed, and potent magicks that few if any other characters mach. In fact, giving her the ability to manipulate fate would only pigeon hole her into roles. The great thing about Touhou is that you can pick and choose parts of canon you like for your own works, and no one would bat an eyelid, because the canon is so loose even ZUN seems to do so.
    • Oh, and also, the listed powers aren't absolute. Tewi has manipulation of luck, but that doesn't mean she can phase through walls using quantum tunneling. Komachi can manipulate distances, but that doesn't mean she could jump to the moon. Orin can manipulate evil spirits, but we probably wont hear anything about her using Mima as a chariot anytime soon.
    • Eh...Komachi might be able to jump to the moon, if she ever got the time off to try.
    • Doubtful, she acted as if Yukari's ability to just warp up the mountain in SWR was something she couldn't do.
    • As for the moon, the true moon is completely blocked from being targeted by the false moon. The only way Yukari could do it was manipulation of the boundary between truth and lies, to turn a complete reflection of the false moon into a complete reflection of the real moon, and then targeting the real moon through the reflection, allowing a gap. Not even Yukari's power allows directly breaking through to the True Moon, though as we know she came up with a workaround. Plenty of other inhabitants could reach the FALSE moon easily enough, but why?
    • This brings up the question of whether she knew she couldn't do it, or just assumed she couldn't.

Etc

The Old Hags of Gensokyo

• Why did everyone start calling the visibly mature characters "old hags"? At worst, they look to be old enough to be considered Old Maids (although this troper admits Yukari's outfit isn't helping any).
  • They're Really 700 Years Old Old Maids ...Yeah they really look young.
  • Because it's funny. Few people legitimately consider any of the characters to be hags.
  • In a world of lolis, an adult woman is a hag :)
  • According to the Touhou wiki, it's because Eirin Yagokoro, Yukari Yakumo and Kanako Yasaka all have "ya" in their names, which, in Japanese, could be misread as "old hag".
  • Because their appearance is significantly older than most of the other characters. When most characters look to be in their teens or younger, you're considered an "old hag" when your look to be in your mid twenties.
  • But then there's Aya, who is over a thousand years old (likely close in age to Byakuren, as far as youkai are concerned), looks no younger than 27... and is exempt from the "old hag" memes. Furthermore, consider Seiga, who is a few centuries older than Byakuren, yet similarly excluded from the Old Maids Alliance. With this in mind, it's probably best to chalk it up to Rule of Funny and not think about it any harder than that.

Rin Kaenbyou/ Orin

• Rin/Orin Kaenbyou is called a Kasha, a cat youkai that takes dead sinners to hell. Chen, another cat youkai character, is called a nekomata because she has two tails. Rin also has two tails, and is furthermore associated with death, as is the traditional nekomata in Japanese myth. Wouldn't that make Rin a nekomata as well?
  • Maybe? Traditionally, kasha aren't actually cats.
    • No...? The other Wiki doesn't even mention kasha except as a minor disambiguation: "a cat-like monster in Japanese Mythology", and every other website that mentions them is copy-paste off the Touhou wiki's description of them. What.

Sakuya

Sakuya vs Yorihime

• Why exactly does Sakuya just give up against Yorihime in S Si B. She claims to have been walled in by her own knives but isn't she capable of just recollecting them? Does the fact that Yorihime used her magic to redirect them cause her to not be able to? Does the Lightning in fact obstruct her and the artwork just make it unclear? Did she just throw the fight to give Remilia the chance to win? It seems like she looked at the knife wall and thought "Eh too much work" and raised the white flag.
  • Maybe Spellcard rule prohibits picking up the knives while they're being used against you?
  • Maybe Remilia wanted her to throw the match, but make it look like she had been soundly beat? Maybe Sakuya knows Yukari, and she asked her to throw it for some scheme or other? Perhaps a combination of the two, since Remilia was playing along with Yukari's manipulation? Maybe Sakuya was hungry?

Is she the strongest?

• Is sakuya the most powerful person in gensokyo? If her time stopping has no limitation she could kill anybody(not counting immortal characters) as long she attacks first.
  • She has limits, probably. And there's a decent number of non-immortal characters that really can't be particularly hurt by knives
    • I still think that if you can stop time as long as you want you could kill anything, but if she does have limits(apparently) she’s not the most powerful person in gensokyo, still a rather game breaking ability.
    • Against humans? Maybe she can kill anyone. Against youkai, gods, celestials, and other superpowered beings? Not too sure about that. Doesn't matter anyway, because Spellcard Rules.
    • Plus, there's Kaguya, whose power essentially make her a fellow time-stopper. In that sense, Sakuya's power probably wouldn't affect her.

Seiga

• Why does Seiga use electric balls in her danmaku? Was it originally reserved for Iku?
  • Being a sennin gives you a pretty broad power set, so Seiga probably picked up ball lighting because it matched the 'blue' theme she has going
    
    That particular danmaku is unique to Seiga thus far. Iku's lightning was represented as lasers in DS. Though it should be noted that danmaku is rarely ever 'reserved' to a character; ZUN likes to get use out of his assets

Suika

• So when exactly did Suika become Iku's neighbor in heaven?
  • Some time between IaMP and SWR.
  • Suika became Tenshi's neighbor in heaven after basically shaking her down for a piece of her land.
  • After Suika's ending in SWR.

Utusho/Okuu

Where do Yatagarasu come from?

• According to Subterranean Animism, Utsuho gained her power by devouring the corpse of the Yatagarasu, provided by Kanako. This begs the question: Where did Kanako obtain the body? Furthermore, if she could obtain and deliver such a body to the underground undetected, then why wasn't she able to detect Utsuho's loss of sanity, and stop her personally?
  • Utsuho lives in (a) Hell. Maybe the Yatagarasu just died and wound up there, like all the other corpses?
    • And being basically a sun god(dess), the corpse would not be affected by the flames. Rin must have found it and treated it like any other of her corpses in the first place, then Utsuho found it, you know the rest.

Oku the Cancer Risk?

• Shouldn't Reimu be dying from cancer after her fight with Utsuho in Subterranean Animism due to radiation poisoning?
  • It would be more reasonable to question why she wasn't fried while grazing stars. Also, nuclear fusion isn't strongly associated with dangerously radioactive fuel and waste like nuclear fission is. On the other hand, it's not like the sun doesn't cause cancer as well though.
    • Nuclear fusion tends to release large amounts of neutrons. I'm pretty certain it will also release a lot of the energy is gamma radiation. You don't have to worry about waste that will stay radioactive for millennia afterwards, but you do have to use proper shielding during the reaction itself. Those giant glowing balls are presumably plasma, or at least gas. They won't be dense enough for any real shielding.
  • It was a danmaku duel. They were using non-lethal versions of their powers, so any burning or illness that Reimu would've suffered from the real deal doesn't apply.
  • ...Or maybe Reimu really WAS a zombie and was just using a ton of make-up to look normal? Of course, that then brings up the problem of Convection Smonvection for a rotting corpse...
    • Convection Smonvection was averted. It was explicitly stated that it was hot enough down there that Reimu would burn to a crisp if she dies. It's not clear why she doesn't until then, but it's obviously not because it's not hot enough.
  • My favourite theory is that a number of the things you dodge in that fight were the gamma rays. Yeah, that's right, dodging radiation.
    • That is completely absurd. Also, awesome. I have a new headcanon.

Complying with the rules to destroy the world?

• Why does Utsuho bother to comply to the spellcard rules if she wants to destroy Gensokyo? She is insane anyway so Reimu's Plot Armor should have been of no concern to her. Also how did Toyosatomini no Miko, who has just been resurrected, know about the spellcard rules? Considering Miko's mindset, she wouldn't mind going all out to kill Reimu without knowing Reimu Barrier Maiden quality. That argument also holds true for Byakuren, who was sealed away for over 1000 years, without contact to Gensokyo. Though she had a reason to hold back, she wouldn't have known about the spellcard system anyway.
  • It seems to be taken for granted anyone in gensokyo is by default aware of, and perhaps restricted to, using the spellcard rules. As to why, I don't think it's ever explained, but given the setting, there's a few plausible explanations (such as Yukari altering the border of knowledge and ignorance, for example).
  • For why Utsuho follows the rules, she seemed to be more enjoying playing the villain than being truly interested in actually destroying anything. And it's quite possible that it didn't occur to her not to follow them, Okuu being Okuu.
  • For Utsuho, it at least makes some sense. Remember, she didn't want to (utterly) destroy Gensokyo; she wanted to annex it as a part of Hell. If she kills Reimu, then the barrier would collapse and Gensokyo would wink out of existence, destroying everything. Better to simply disable the shrine maiden; that way, there's at least a Gensokyo to take over. As for the other two: for Byakuren it's at least plausible that, not wanting to kill her opponent, she's using weaker versions of her spells that coincidentally happen to fall within the bounds of the spellcard rules. And Miko simply has no excuse.
  • Remember, if any youkai tried to fight Reimu with lethal intentions, she would do the same, and that means she wouldn't hold back on using the technique that makes her completely invincible for an indefinite length of time. The spellcards rules aren't there so Reimu can stand a chance against youkai. They're there so the youkai have a chance against Reimu.
    • Debatable, considering that's from a PoV article, and ZUN likes making characters in those wrong some of the time, like a normal person would be. In any case, the spellcard rules are canonically there to allow the Youkai to fight the current shrine maiden (and by extension, everyone else) without killing her, as well as to provide a safe way for superpowered beings to resolve conflicts.
  • Zun, IIRC, did call her a "birdbrain" and Okuu ain't real smart.

Okuu's Rod

• Why does Utsuho have a control rod on her arm? Or leg, as they tend to call it? The control rod exists to absorb neutrons to slow down a nuclear reaction, but fusion reactions aren't caused by neutrons, so it would be completely pointless.
  • Utsuho can control nuclear fission as well as fusion. Anyway, the Third Leg seems to be a mechanism of some sort to help her control her power better, I don't think it's meant to be an actual control rod as are now used in fission reactors.

Yukari

Why doesn't she toy with humanity?

• Why doesn’t yukari just use her reality warp powers to throw back all of humanity back to the middle age and then put a medieval stasis on them it would be a lot better for all the youkai in the world.
  • She could. But she's just really, really lazy. Furthermore, Yukari doesn't seem to care much even for other Youkai - so long as she wins out in the end, she won't give two cents (or whatever retarded currency they use in Gensokyo). And I don't think Yukari will be too happy with a world dominated by potentially powerful Youkai that might potentially threaten her position. Also, you know, if that were the case, we wouldn't be here typing on the internet.
  • She has limits. She wasn't able to bust her way through the moon's barriers, for instance. And she does seem to care about humans to some extent.
  • Just because she can, doesn't mean she will or should. The protection of the false moon is pretty much absolute, hiding the True Moon's very existence.. She could have just removed the barrier itself, since it's obviously a boundary. But with a full moon, Yukari was able to wrangle a loophole that allowed her power to target it, so she could then open a gap to it, with the barrier still in place. She is most likely capable of more Rules Lawyering using her boundary manipulation power, should she need it. It really is incredibly powerful. But it's also dangerous, and not something she will use carelessly, beyond the obvious frequent uses.
    • Actually, since she is a master of boundaries, she should be technically be able to breach the 'boundary' of what she can or can't do. Just a thought.
    • Unless, of course, said boundary was one of the things outside her scope to begin with.
  • A: not enough power, most likely. B: Yukari is all about preserving the balance between Youkai and Humans, not favouring either side. C: she has plenty of power, and doesn't have limits, however she limits herself for the same reason I say that people always fight in Gensokyo, they're bored because pretty much everybody is 500+ years old and you run out of things to do. Limiting herself makes things more of a challenge and fun. D: If she didn't limit herself then she would probably accidentally destroy the world with unforeseen consequences after modifying say... The border of dreams and reality, then she dreams flan blows up the earth and then it happens the next morning.

Odd Friendship?

• I don't know if this is explained, but why are Suika and Yukari such good friends? Apparently Oni hate liars and sneaky people, but Yukari, while not a chronic liar like Marisa, isn't exactly truthful either...
  • Suika is an unusual oni. Note that she's the only one publicly out on the surface, to the point where everyone else thought it was impossible before she showed up. Suika doesn't seem to personally have anything against lying.

Yukari the Villainess?

• Is yukari evil? She kidnaps people to gensokyo where they nearly always die, that basically makes her responsible for the deaths of what I’m going to assume are at least a thousand people.
  • Depends. Do you see a hungry lion who attacks humans as evil? Youkai eats humans, and presumably it's needed to maintain their powers. If you were a chicken, would you see humans who eats chickens as evil?
    • I’m going to assume youkai don’t NEED to eat people, unless towns disappearing overnight is a common thing in the touhou universe, yukari should be able create humans out of nothing, so kidnapping random people seems to be her decision, i know she’s a jerk but you would think reimu would have a problem with yukari causing the deaths of thousands of people, also chickens cant wipe out all of humanity if they where to ever discover and enter there secret hideout.
    • Towns disappearing overnight? I don't think Yukari would do something attracting so much attention like that, especially since they want Gensokyou hidden. She's more likely to just gap in one person at a time. And Reimu (as well as the entire Gensokyou human population) probably doesn't know about Yukari's gapping, since Wa HH chapter 12 suggests the gapping is a secret among youkai. Yukari being able to create humans out of nothing? What the hell are you talking about? Also, Youkai probably do need to eat, if the aforementioned Wa HH chapter suggests anything, although Kogasa in UFO stated not all Youkai eats human meat.
    • What I mean by towns disappearing overnight is that if youkai really do need to eat humans, yukari would have to kidnap a lot of people to make sure that youkai don’t die or something. cant yukari simply pick up some rocks and change the boundary between rocks and humans to create humans?
    • Yukari's boundary manipulation isn't as omnipotent as most fandom makes it out to be. The most we've seen her done with it is to create portals between places. Sure there are "Boundary of Life and Death" and "Border of Wave and Particle" and others but those are SPELLCARDS. Bullet patterns. Not indicative of her actual abilities. Heck, Satori who doesn't have border manipulation power can replicate her border spellcards.
    • IN's profile for her says that, if she wanted, she could easily completely destroy Gensokyo. She's clearly one of the most powerful characters of the series, if not THE most powerful. On the other hand, it's true that she's not onipotent; there is no such thing as a "boundary between rock and human", for instance, as humans don't have any relation to rocks for them to fall in the same category so as to belong inside the same "border". Anyway, youkai don't eat much; Rinnosuke, for instance, only needs to drink some sake and eat a light meal once a week , IIRC, and he's only half-youkai; full youkai presumably needs even less actual food.
    • okay then how about the border between monkey and human, or hell even the boundary between existence or nonexistence,then again creating life only for it to die is also pretty danm evil, so unless youkai really do need to eat humans yukari is pretty much a irredeemably evil youkai, thinking about it in a much more serious touhou she would make a fantastic big bad.
    • Destroying Gensokyo is incredibly simple: take down the Hakurei Barrier and reintegrate it into the outside world. The place known as "Gensokyo" no longer exists, it's just a tiny village in the mountains somewhere. The power of creation and destruction that Yukari possesses is a philosophical one, not a physical one. If something is no defined as a discrete object, it technically doesn't exist. You could say a mountain is a bunch of boulders mashed together, but you don't because that's not how you think of things. Yukari has power over those boundaries. Akyuu makes this very explicit in PMISS. Yukari can only create life insofar as she can redefine what is considered alive or dead (like how medical science has gradually shifted "dead" from not breathing, to a stopped heart, to brain death as it became possible to revive people from more and more conditions).
    • Again, you're assuming Yukari can manipulate whatever border she wants. She can't, and canon have shown at least one border she can't break easily (the barrier to the Lunar Capital, which she can only break during the full moon). There are presumably other barriers she can't break, and creating life might be out of her capabilities.
    • She pretty much CAN. There are three things in effect her. 1) The concealing effect that hides the real moon is insanely complex and multilayered, and non trivial to beat. She still found a loophole that works on the full moon. 2) Yeah she could probably mess with the border of sight and concealment (it pretty much works on anything that can reasonably be considered an opposite), but she's most likely imposing her own limitations in certain cases. After all they wouldn't feel very safe if they knew their protection was meaningless against her. 3) doing number 2 would break the protection completely, and she doesn't want to do that. She instead bypasses it without breaking it. Which is even trickier.
    • While I do agree that creating life might be out of her abilities, if she can stop yuyuko spirit from crossing over I don’t think she’s going to have any problem turning animals that are closely related to humans into humans.
    • Hungry lions aren't people. If a person needs to kill and eat another person to survive, it's still murder, as seen in R v Dudley and Stephens. Also, lions who kill people are still killed, it's just not an execution.
    • Everything after the first statement are non sequiturs. Youkai eating, and providing for other youkai, humans have no relevance to people killing and eating humans, nor does human cannibalism pertain to lions eating humans. Lions are killed after killing humans simply because they are the weaker race. In Gensokyo, humans are the weaker race, so this is irrelevant too. In fact, the spellcard system exists in order to equalize the power difference between humans and youkai in favor of the humans.
  • Not really evil, just a prat. A lazy one who does most of what she does for her amusement.
    • If it helps anything, a lot of what she does just falls under Blue-and-Orange Morality, so, it'd be antagonistic to us mundane regular humans, but usual faire for the youkai.

Y'all would think Yukari would be there but she wasn't.

• Where the heck was Yukari in Urban Legend in Limbo? You'd think she'd be upset that someone was messing around with the Hakurei barrier.
  • No canon explanation, at least not yet anyways. My (boring) Headcanon is that she was asleep while all of that was happening. But otherwise, no one knows yet. Real world explanation for why she wasn't in the game is probably that ZUN felt like he had enough characters in ULIL, or maybe he just forgot about her.
  • Actually there was a canon explanation in LoLK. She visited Marisa after the events of the game. Marisa calls her out on never appearing for such serious incidents but all Yukari does is laugh and say that those incidents where beneath her notice and not worth her time, before leaving she states that even Gensokyou can change, a remark Marisa find ominous.
  • And that canon explanation was arguably a lampshading.
    • If we take her dialogue in LoLK into account, she probably didn't intervene because, to her, the incident didn't need her intervention. She mostly gets involved if the incident needs her intervention or just for lolz.

Rin Satsuki:

• It's one thing that ZUN didn't have enough time to put her in EoSD beyond a few lines of code. But why not simply try again to introduce her in a later work, instead of giving up on her altogether and eventually forgetting about her?

Popularity

• How the bloody hell did this series become so popular? For a bullet hell game - hell, for any kind of game really - it has inspired an insane amount of fanfiction, art, parody work and so on. I just don't understand where the hell it stems from.
  • I've tried to explain this in the main Touhou entry under Self-Fanservice. I firmly believe that if ZUN had been a good artist, the Touhou games would have just languished in obscurity.
    • Are you insinuating Touhou is a special case of So Bad, It's Good?
    • No, it's actually Let's See YOU Do Better!. ZUN's art technique is genuinely bad, but his underlying design sense is sound: for example, the characters all have distinctive silhouettes, because he puts a silhouetted character on the cover of all the games, and this is what makes the "Bad Apple!" shadow art video possible. And even when he makes incredibly stupid-looking costume choices, like Okuu, the fanartists are still able to make her look cool.
    • Except the only reason they have different silhouettes is because they are wearing different clothes, hats, hairstyles, hair-and-eye colors, and non-human features like antennae, animal ears, tails, facial markings, horns, or wings.
  • The fact that it's made up entirely of fantasy moe girls might have something to do with it too.
    • But it was the fandom who made the characters moe (not to mention good looking). ZUN tends to write most of them as jerkasses to one degree or another.
  • I think another part of the reason is that Gensokyo is a compelling setting in which to tell stories that don't need to be confined to the shmup game genre: a Fantasy Kitchen Sink where All Myths Are True, based on Japanese folklore. It's the same reason that made the world of Spirited Away, which resembles Gensokyo in many respects, interesting and deserving of more exploration than can fit into a movie.
  • The music of Touhou, I think, is more important than the games themselves. I became a Touhou fan after hearing some remixes of Flowering Night.
    • Funny, That's the exact same way I got into it as well.
    • I can't verify this information, though I've often heard ZUN's intention was to compose music, but created the games so that more people would listen to it (and if it's true, it's a genius plan because it worked probably much better than expected).
  • Great character design, poor artwork, encouraging fanart. Only very basic (and easily overridden as a result) personalities, encouraging fanfiction to flesh out the characters. An interesting setting, plus the previous points, encouraging fan videos. Excellent, easily-remixed music, encouraging... remixes. A friendly creator who seems to not only tolerate fanworks, but even encorporate fanon he likes into the canon. Essentially, every aspect of the series makes for a great template for fans to make their own works out of. Plus it has plenty of wordplay and references to science, history and mythology, which draws some people like flies.
  • ZUN is also pretty relaxed about copyrights and canon. He's like George Lucas if he wasn't so uptight about his creations.
    • This. Arguably the biggest factor of all. To give a counterexample, Pop 'n Music is a bright, colorful, cute, completely baggage-free music game series (and with much broader appeal than any danmaku game) that has become, to put it mildly, enormous and insanely popular. The problem is that Konami wants to make money off of it, which puts a serious crimp on what kinds of fanworks are acceptable...no commercial music CDs, no commercial stage productions, no spinoff games, no manga adaptations. There's plenty of fanart and a smattering of cosplay and that's about it. A landmark game, to be sure, but it'll never be an all-around super-phenomenon.
  • Two words: creative freedom. Characters who have minimal hard ("canon") traits and can be molded to any number of fanfics, fancomics, songs, games, etc. Character designs that all but dare you to make them ravishingly beautiful/majestic/cute/horrifying/funny/wacky etc.; bring on the endless reams of fanart (and of course Rule 34 applies to all these styles). Catchy instrumental music perfect for a dizzying assortment of remixes, reimaginings, restylings, and adaptations. Mix it all up, toss it in the glorious chaos engine that is the Internet, and voila, an entertainment institution is born. Pretty much the same story with Vocaloid (actually more so since that one has no canon whatsoever).

Gensokyo, it's inhabitants, and how it all works

That ain't the definition of "peaceful", Gensokyo

• Okay... how exactly is Gensokyo a "peaceful paradise"? It's threatened by lethal mists, the possibility of giant man-eating cherry trees awakening, mysterious giants, and god knows what else seemingly every other week, and "youkai eating people" has only gone down from "a regular occurrence" to "almost never happening." (emphasis mine) I think the inhabitants might just have a really, really messed up idea of what a "peaceful paradise" looks like.
  • Lethal mist? What, you mean what Remilia did to obscure the sun so she could take a walk without a parasol? The Saigyou Ayakashi is hardly a threat either. Sure, it's a killer tree, but it's... still a tree. It's also kind of sealed away in the Netherworld, where everyone is already dead. Hisoutensoku was just some kind of... something, I don't really know what it's purpose was. Test run? Experiment? Either way, it's hardly something threatening. As well, all the events of the games happen with months in between, if not outright being a year. Yes, people may get eaten on occasion, but the events of games are hardly that big of a threat, unless you involve a certain nuclear raven.
    • Yes, I do mean that mist. It's All There in the Manual, but apparently when at its thickest (during the game, just in the area around the Scarlet Devil Mansion) ordinary humans and even most youkai could only survive about thirty minutes in it. On top of that, there was the risk of it spilling out into the normal world — it's explicitly stated that they might destroy Gensokyo if it started causing trouble.
  • Nobody ever gets killed because any major dispute is resolved with danmaku. The Spell Card system was created for that very reason. Also, the only people who get eaten anymore are Outsiders who fall through the Hakurei border and don't make it to the human village or the shrine and possibly executed prisoners(I imagine they'd still have the death penalty).
    • The thing is... I'm guessing from in-game evidence that eating people is either more common than assumed, or else it died out more recently than most people think. As recently as Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Hong Meiling and Rumia bluntly threaten to eat Reimu if she loses.
    • They were either making threats they didn't intend to fulfill or were planning on eating her without killing her.
    • Or maybe they were going to eat her in another way.
    • This one's actually plausible. Remember, Remilia tells Marisa (in at least one English translation) that she (Marisa) can eat her (Remilia). Perhaps she was just messing with her, perhaps it was a bad translation, or perhaps "eating" can also refer to taking someone's power (like copying their spellcards, for example). Or maybe it can be interpreted a different way.
    • Indeed, Akyu herself goes on about how despite the spellcard system being nonlethal, youkai will almost inevitably posture and bravado. Seems to this troper that most of the threats are akin to birds exhibitioning - a way to command respect and make yourself seem imposing without actually hurting anyone. And Meiling is probably contractually required to do those threats anyway.
    • If everyone made good on their death threats and insinuations that they just killed someone in these games, we wouldn't have a large cast for very long.
  • It's written in the perspective of the characters. "A few people who are careless get eaten occasionally, but on the upside we have a nice afterlife to look forward to" is a lot better than "youkai eat humans all the time", plus all the problems inherent to the era they're in, socially. Plus, you'll notice no one in Gensokyo particularly seems to resent or dislike each other, canon-wise (And yes, Mokou/Kaguya are not particularly bitter enemies in canon. In fact, Mokou is really quite friendly). Compare that to a world where resources are running out, people war constantly, and touhou music isn't constantly playing in the background. The HORROR.
    • For all the evils of our world, that still doesn't mean Gensokyo is a nice place. Think about it: For your entire life, you're trapped in a quaint little village, unable to go outside or risk being eaten by malicious entities who see you as nothing more than a light snack. For all your life, you live under their feet and must pay respect to them at each and every opportunity (See: Perfect Memento in Strict Sense). Call me pro-human, but I fail to see why we should claim fealty to beings that would no sooner have us for lunch were it not for the efforts of Reimu to keep them in check. If the amount of humans eaten by youkai really had dropped, then there would be evidence of human expansion outside the Human Village (which there clearly isn't) since youkai would obviously have then learned to not eat them as indiscriminately as they do. On top of that, technology and science doesn't seem to advance very much in Gensokyo and seems to be infected with a bad case of Medieval Stasis. Yeah, sorry, but as shitty as the Outside World is, I'd be more at ease there than in a land where absolutely everything is out to kill you and have your corpse on the roast. At least I have a life expectancy beyond 5 minutes when I leave my hometown.
    • Nobody pays anyone else respect in Gensokyo except actual servants to their employers, and even then they get away with more than what a tenth century slave would've. The worst you're likely to get is challenged to a danmaku duel, and even then, only if you'd put up an interesting match. Youkai eating people, again, is bravado, not something that actually happens nowadays. If you don't want to meet them at all, then stay in your village, just like most people of the time would have, and none of them would touch you. As for science and such, even if we ignore the fact they recently acquired nuclear fusion, you can't miss what you never had to begin with. Considering humans have been living there as long as it's been around, without many immigrants, it's safe to say the survival rate is much higher than you seem to think. The number of Youkai that actually eat humans would be around the number of serial killers in your hometown. It's like me hearing of people being shot in new york, and declaring the entire city being unlivable due to crazed gunmen owning the streets. Finally, it's a peaceful paradise from THEIR perspective, previously a wartorn country with actually-bloodthirsty youkai, a lesser level of technology as you decry, and lacking a nice set of rules of which everyone adheres to protect the humans. If Youkai were really so bad, people would act like it. As they are, half-Youkai are accepted among human society, and even the characters who exterminate (which in Gensokyo, I might add, is the equivalent of beating someone in a race) them are at the worst indifferent, and more often quite friendly to them.
    • 1: "Nobody pays anyone else respect in Gensokyo except actual servants to their employers" Really? Perfect Memento in Strict Sense clearly states that humans in the village should pay respect to the local Youkai as if they were your superiors (And what, pray tell, have they done for us?). Make of it what you will, but that seems like concrete canon to me. 2: "Youkai eating people, again, is bravado, not something that actually happens nowadays". Alright, answer me these: Why does Perfect Memento in Strict Sense make every attempt to mention that humans are eaten by Youkai? Why does it go into detail about countermeasures against the various species (most of which have none anyway, except a .50BMG round to the face)? According to your logic, they're obviously too nice to warrant such warnings. Or was ZUN so drunk that he couldn't decide whether he should've had the youkai eat humans or not? And what about the humans from the OUTSIDE world who are spirited into Gensokyo (yes, it happens)? They have zero magical power, last we checked, so I don't think they'll be treated to a fair game of danmaku. More likely that they'll be treated to dinner, if you know what I mean. 3: "If you don't want to meet them at all, then stay in your village." Right, so, everything will be alright if you hide in your little village for your entire life, kowtow to the local Youkai that run the place and don't venture outside because you'll meet the three scary fairies in the forest. What planet, pray tell, are you on? I don't know about you, but I would go mad if I was confined to my hometown for my entire life. Surely, you have a desire to look beyond the borders of your local area and do something worthwhile with your life? And what have they done for us? Why can't they just sod off and leave us Puny Earthlings alone? Now there's some food for thought. 4: "Considering humans have been living there as long as it's been around, without many immigrants, it's safe to say the survival rate is much higher than you seem to think." ...Within the human village, I'll grant that. But what about the rest of Gensokyo? Humanity is confined to the village for a reason: Unless you can put up a nice danmaku display, I don't think any normal human will last too long beyond its walls (unless if one was to carry an AK-47, but that's another story). Ask yourself this: What if YOU took a lovely field trip to, let's say, Youkai Mountain? I bet the human survival rate would be pretty high there too, what with all the territorial Tengu flying about and all. Not to mention all the other Youkai who would probably rather not share their mountain with an intruder. Particularly a 'weak' and 'pathetic' human intruder. Particularly a much-reviled Outsider who, as an Outsider, has no spell cards and is therefore not bound by the danmaku rules. Logic, therefore, clearly dictates that you'd be lunch within seconds. Is that really your idea of a high survival rate? Surely, you jest! 5: "Finally, it's a peaceful paradise from THEIR perspective" Hmm, interesting. Well, if it's from the perspective of the ultra-powerful Youkai who run Gensokyo behind the scenes, that makes perfect sense. Derp. 6: "If Youkai were really so bad, people would act like it" Yes, you know, because it's totally safe to complain about those who can quickly and easily kill you, your family, and everyone around you to grind your bones for bread. The bastards. Either the Youkai are really good, or really bad. But in light of what I've said previously, I'm gravitating more toward the latter. On top of all of that, if Gensokyo really was a really really safe 'peaceful paradise' where children can run around with chocolate smiles and absolutely everyone gets along to the point of excessive shipping, then why, pray tell, is there only one major human settlement? By your incessant assertions that Youkai apparently don't feast on humans anymore, it should therefore be clearly safe enough for people to move out and start new lives; after all, human nature demands exploration of what is beyond our limits, be them geographical, technological, or whatever. And with exploration comes inevitable expansion. That's how modern society came to be. But since there obviously isn't very much exploring or expanding happening, it can only be assumed that any and all human explorers in Gensokyo who couldn't defend themselves were most likely eaten by wild youkai. Incidentally, that's how Gensokyo came to be in the first place - only the humans 'spiritually' strong enough to hold their own survived to found the village. Ergo, Gensokyo as a whole is not a 'sanctuary' as the more optimistic of the Touhou fandom seems to believe; bar the human village, Gensokyo is about as safe as walking in a minefield with magnetic boots - you'd be stupid to want to go there, you'd be stupid to think you want to go there, and you'd have to be stark raving mad to think it's even remotely safe for the average person. Unless, of course, you are one of the mines in the minefield to begin with. Then it becomes a bloodbath. An enjoyable (or delicious, in Gensokyo's case) bloodbath.
    • 1: Japanese society has a "respect your elders" policty, and Youkai are typically far older than you are. Common courtesy. 2: Aside from the whole "youkai asking me to make them sound more fearsome" thing, there's also the fact she has centuries of memories of the days when they DID eat people. As for people being spirited in, that hasn't got anything to do with it being a paradise for the people there; someone in China getting robbed doesn't stop you enjoying video games. 3: You appear to think that they're modern humans. They aren't. They are medieval ones- the same people that wouldn't go past a ten kilometer radius of their homes in a lifetime unless they were forced to. Also, youkai don't run the human village. One of them is a school teacher and a protector, and that's about it. As for them sodding off and leaving humans alone, are you saying anyone who doesn't conform to your idea of conduct should pack up and leave the place they created, because you can't stand them? Well, good news- become a hermit, live forever. You can beat up any youkai you meet, and won't have to deal with equally obnoxious humans, either. 4: Consider that the Moriya shrine, which actually has a reasonable number of (human) visitors is situated at the top of the mountain, and would thus require humans to go past all those Tengu (after passing the friendly harvest gods, the nice misfortune eater, and the affable kappa) to get there. Plus, it's not good business sense to alienate your customers. 5: Eh, I meant that more as in the general populace, including the humans. One of the big things your points rely on is the contrast between your life and theirs, but my point was that's not the correct comparison to make. You should be comparing them to the lives of village dwellers from way back yonder, when you'd toil in the fields for your lord for a small portion of what you harvest, die at what we consider middle age from a minor cut, perhaps get pulled into a war against a people you've never heard of, and such. Compare that to a place that allows a little girl to run away from her parents, and instead of getting eaten by an animal or starving, becoming an independent at an age when most children would be starting to learn their parent's craft, getting her own house and essentially not having to work again. 6: Even if we ignore that ZUN wrote that it was a peaceful paradise, not a PoV statement, there's still a fair problem with that first part: no one argues against it, even those WITH the power to protect themselves or those outside the youkai's each. Not Reimu, not Miko, not any of the ghosts or shinigami or even human sympathetic Youkai like Yukari or Byakuren. I also disagree with the dichotomy you have there- why can't they be, like humans, a shade of grey? Like humans, they all have differing personalities, motives, natures, and goals, from hyperactive fairies to stagnant magicians. As for your next point, there's a simple alternative to "youkai eat everyone who steps outside the village, rawr": Gensokyo is small. Like, one major body of water small. I don't know how tightly packed villages in ancient Japan were, nor the exact size of the place, but it is entierly likely they don't have the room to make another village. Considering the stable population and prevailing sit-and-drink-tea attitudes, they don't even have much reason to go to the effort of expanding. You can say what you'd like about the founding of the place, but that doesn't change what it is now. A lot of areas in Australia were colonized to give Britain's criminals a place to live since it was overpopulated, and now it has a relatively low criminal population. You can argue all you like about lack of expansion or how women mostly wear skirts or whatever, but that doesn't change the fact that by all interactions we've seen, life in Gensokyo is pretty enjoyable. I mean, I wouldn't want to live there; I probably wouldn't survive the lack of electricity and culture shock, but if I was, say, a medieval japanese orphan and you gave me the choice to live in a place where I could learn to fly and earn my living through a manner of my choosing, the offer would seem darn tempting. I might be eaten by a youkai? Well, the most likely alternative is working every day remaining in poverty, until dying from sickness or infection; or perhaps war, an accident, or heck, possibly even getting eaten by wild animals. You're certainly less likely to be eaten than to die in a car accident, but that never stops you driving anywhere or walking near roads, does it?
    • Alright. You have me on many of the points outlined above, chiefly because many of them are trivial facts that I missed. However: "As for them sodding off and leaving humans alone, are you saying anyone who doesn't conform to your idea of conduct should pack up and leave the place they created, because you can't stand them?" Actually, I'm perfectly fine with the coexistence of different cultures, be them human, Youkai, martian or whatever. Only when people are being killed - as per my original assertion - do I take a side against the belligerent party, human or not. "Well, good news- become a hermit, live forever. You can beat up any youkai you meet, and won't have to deal with equally obnoxious humans, either." No thanks, Hermits are favoured Youkai snacks. "You're certainly less likely to be eaten than to die in a car accident, but that never stops you driving anywhere or walking near roads, does it?" True that, but driving is a necessity. Living in Gensokyo as an Outsider is not. That still does not detract from the fact that it is not a peaceful paradise, since conflict technically still occurs there. The only difference between conflict in Gensokyo and out here is that cards are used instead of guns: the basic motivations for conflict are likely to be the same (resources, disputes, self-interest, etc.), and the only real changes would be the reduced scale and less death. But conflicts as conflicts themselves occur nonetheless, thereby contradicting the notion of a peaceful paradise, which would obviously be too peaceful to fathom such a primal concept of 'conflict'. And what if you're not bound by the spell card rules? You won't be bound by the laws that grant you safety, and you are therefore classified as 'Fair Game' to any wild Youkai. Never mind the lack of electricity or culture shock, you'll most likely be eaten first. My question to you is this: "Is Gensokyo a peaceful paradise to YOU?" Exclude its inhabitants, do YOU think you'll be safe there if you were suddenly spirited in for whatever reason? I think you overestimate your chances. EDIT: Ignore all of that, for I think I see the actual problem between us. Apart from my crippling lack of research, it would seem that our lines of perception differ greatly and our respective walls-of-text probably came about due to one misunderstanding the other. If I'm not mistaken, you were making your argument based on the perception of the people living there (or those of a comparable era), whereas I spoke as someone who would rather not be in a position other than the top of the food chain. I'm betting that's what you were trying to say as well, but I digress. Truth be told, my real issue was actually with an earlier assertion that we currently live in a Crapsack World, and I admittedly went a little too far in retorting by exaggerating the problems of Gensokyo and everything spiralled downward from there. Maybe I'll have a go at paraphrasing my position on the issue: "The Outside World can be a nice place. Just avoid the few nasty bits here and there, and it's a safer place than Gensokyo." (One could argue that the opposite is also true) Perhaps that will clear up a few things.
    • You're correct, I was making my points based on the resident's point of view, and I can certainly agree with that paraphrased position. (As an aside, someone claiming ours is a Crapsack World when compared to Gensokyo would annoy me too). What a nice way to end a debate.
  • Oh, and also, this.
  • It's mentioned in Cage in Lunatic Runagate that humans from the human village are not for eating under the contract. The humans that get eaten are ones from the outside that end up or were taken inside. Most of the "dangerous atmosphere" style of Perfect Memento's writing is likely there because the youkai requested Akyu to make them seem dangerous. But in the words of Reimu in Wild and Horned Hermit, they're really more like eccentric people than youkai (...unless you're an outsider, in which case it's nom om om for you)

Youkai Diets

• Youkai eating people. I can't figure out, one canon says this doesn't happen, another says it happens all the bloody time. Gensokyo is pretty much a confirmed happy place with White-and-Grey Morality and then all of a sudden we hear that Yukari spirits people in for Remilia to snack on? I don't get it. It feels almost schizophrenic. I prefer a non grimdark gensokyo, but it still bugs me.
  • This is mostly the result of ZUN changing his mind. Currently, though, youkai only really eat outsiders and hermits, and both are rare. Though a lot of them would probably like to eat humans. And Yukari getting food for Remilia is still canon.
    • It's also canon that Remilia doesn't kill the humans she "eats". She just drinks their blood. Messy, probably painful, but non-lethal.
    • You'd think with her powers she could just rob some blood banks or something instead... then again she is kind of a bitch.
  • Thats exactly my point, it feels just almost hypocritical. "Gensokyo is a wonderful place where everyone gets along, except outsiders eff them" I cant help but think ZUN hates the real world given how he made the outside world such a crapsackworld and is apparently okay with outsiders getting munched on.
    • This troper saw it as "outsiders tend not to have the necessary mad skillz to protect themselves from youkai".
    • Pretty much. I think I recall something about the Human Village originally being settled by Human Exterminators in order to keep the naturally high youkai population in check, meaning that the entire town would be filled with people that can shoot magic and fly. Since this kind of thing no longer exists in the outside world (for the most part), any outsider that ends up in Gensokyo cannot fly, shoot magic or otherwise protect themselves, and would promptly be picked off thanks to it unless they had the fortune to be found by one of the humans first.
    • I think it's actually that they don't have spellcards, and thus aren't protected by spellcard rules.
    • I'd tend to view it like most other fairy tale settings the kind where things are basically okay as long as you listen and avoid the bridge with the troll under it, don't wander around in the woods at night, and stay the hell away from the local witches territory. So you know basically cower within your village, don't venture outside, and shun contact with anything with a whiff of the supernatural about it... Actually that is pretty grimdark isn't it, why do we feed this stuff to children again?
    • Meaning that if Yukari drops you in Gensokyo, best hope she dropped you near somebody like Keine or Mokou who'll guide you to a safe-for-humans area.
    • "This is a wonderful place where everyone gets along, except outsiders eff them" Is pretty much the standard attitude of any rural community. As for why we feed stuff like that to kids, because well until the modern world most people lived in rural communities and that's what life was like in them.
    • There's actually a passage in (I think) Perfect Memento that says outsiders that stumble into Gensokyo are cherished for their knowledge of the outside world. Make of that what you will.
  • Gensokyo is a happy place, where you're not at the top of the food chain. Those don't nessecarily have to contadict each other. The likely explanation is that Gensokyans have an outlook on death that most humans of the outside world would find pretty alien. Yuyuko's profile in IN states that "It is said that experiencing death in Gensokyo is strangely cheerful in many cases." Humans in Gensokyo are probably perfectly fine with their place in the food chain.
    • Yes, because potentially being eaten alive is totally a nice way to go. And it's not like the Puny Earthlings can complain either, since the ultra-powerful Youkai who run the show would be delighted to help themselves to a little snack...
    • That's like a vegan acting as if it would be impossible for anyone to exist who thinks eating meat is acceptable. There have been cultures where it was considered horrible to not die in battle, and they happily went along with it without any super powerful spirits eating them if they said otherwise.
  • this article from P Mi SS explains it pretty well. Basically, people very rarely get eaten nowadays, but youkai like to perpetuate the idea that they do to make themselves seem more fearsome.

Them are some strange "pets"

• Why are Reisen, Utsuho, and Orin called "pets"? I can understand a little with the latter two, because some of Satori's comments indicate they were originally just a bird and a cat before they gained humanoid forms...but why Reisen? Unlike Tewi she was never just an ordinary rabbit, right? It kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth...
  • It's just a quirk of the series. Despite being sapient humanoids, Reisen and the other animals are, by the series' internal logic, just that: animals. And being animals, having Reisen as a pet would be no more objectionable than owning a normal rabbit.
  • In fact, in Silent Sinner in Blue, the Lunarian sisters who owned Reisen adopt a new rabbit-youkai - and rename her "Reisen", just like you see with a Replacement Goldfish. This doesn't really bother anybody (even the original Reisen is mostly happy that some other bunny will have to cope with those two).

Technology in Gensokyo?

• Hisoutensoku... Ugh. Ever since the Moriya Shrine was set up, Gensokyo's been gaining technology at an absurd pace. A few kappa gizmos were cool. Steam power? Uhm, alright. Nuclear reactors? This has to be some kind of joke. A giant robot? Really? Okay, screw this setting. Gensokyo's losing all the great primitive charm it once had. I have hopes ZUN's slowly adding all this for the sake of major story developments (maybe game 13), but if not, this is just getting ridiculous.
  • Hisoutensoku is essentially a giant balloon, not an actual robot. And, as of the third chapter of Wild and Horned Hermit, the nuclear reactor isn't especially useful
  • I was always under the impression that the new technology was pretty much useless in the hands of Gensokyo's residents. It's only natural we'd see some technology from the Outside World (Sanae and Kanako appear fairly pushy about it), but I doubt anyone in Gensokyo really cares about any of it or could even use it properly. Hell, in Wild and Horned Hermit, it seems the only reason anyone aside from the Moriya Shrine girls had any interest in the nuclear reactor was because it powered the hot springs. While I understand your concern, even if we keep seeing new technology introduced, it probably won't make much of a difference.
  • Basically, introducing cold fusion to a society without light bulbs is an exercise in futility. Even the Kappa are turning out to be somewhat more primitive than previously assumed.
    • What is the point, exactly? So far as I can tell, the only reason they bother is because Sanae and Kanako think science is swell (or something). What do they have to power? Are they planning on opening up a car company? The regular fusion from the core has a bit of a similar problem. A bit off topic, though: did Hisoutensoku fall into Word Salad Philosophy at the end, or was something lost in translation? So far as I can tell the logic is as follows: -The robot does not think (being, in effect, a big balloon, and balloons do not think. Check)| -Enlightenment is achieved through the absence of thought (Okay, to each his own I guess, this still works... Check)| -Therefore, the robot is enlightened (What. Using that logic, inanimate objects qualify for "enlightened". Rocks are enlightened. People who, through lots of work, become enlightened, therefore reach the level of rocks.). I suppose I am thinking too hard about this, but I can't seem to get it out of my mind.
    • Basically, it's an attempt at making "Ignorance is bliss" sound philosophical.
    • Maybe they like video games, and go a little overboard when it comes to making sure they have enough power for their beloved consoles & computers to run?
    • The effort to introduce modern devices to Gensyoko — fusion reactor and all — appears to be a long-term plan by Kanako to maintain her source of faith, by changing her own aspect into being the god of technology. If the tools, and the electricity, and the gadgets, all are known to have come from the Moriya Shrine, and the people remember that, then their continuing supply and maintenance become part of worship. It's her bid to avoid the otherwise inevitable slide into irrelevance that she already went through in the Outside World.

Celestials?

• What exactly is a celestial? Keep in mind that all of the following is 100% canon: 1. They're a type of hermit 2. who've "broken the cycle of reincarnation", 3. except for that one annoying bimbo who was able to "follow her parents" into Heaven because reasons 4. and live peaceful lives free of midnight punk concerts and nosy tengu photographers and idiot fairies blabbering about Spring being here 5. but are not actually immortal since they periodically have to fight of Shinigami (and occasionally nastier threats) who've come to kill them, 6. which they are amazingly successful at, given that no one seems to remember what happens to a celestial who gets killed 7. and can go down to Gensokyo at any time, no trouble 8. usually to give a bunch of crackpot advice and fly around on cloud chariots and harass the local youkai and in general don't do a single thing that could even remotely be considered "good". Uhhhhhhh...something's wrong with this picture. For that matter, since Heaven is one of the Ministry of Right and Wrong's possible choice of afterlife, does this mean that there's a completely different group of "proper" residents of Heaven that we don't hear about for some reason, and the celestials are merely "tourists" (or, less charitably, squatters)? Does this make Suika a celestial?
  • According to the wiki page on Heaven, "Celestials, Angels, and other heavenly beings reside there." So celestials are not the only people in heaven. I don't know if they're squatters. It may be that they're not supposed to live, but given that they do, Heaven is as good a place as anywhere else. Suika has never been a human, so she's not a celestial.

Eastern Meets Western in Gensokyo

• From which countries are the characters with foreign names in Touhou? We know that Chen, Hong Meiling, Seiga Kaku and others came from China, Parsee is from Iran/Persia (according with her background) and the Scarlet sisters are not from Japan, but what about Alice, Patchouli, Cirno, Mystia, etc?
  • The animal-type youkai and fairies^note it's actually impossible for the fairies not to be native appear to be native; the early games had all youkai have foreign names unless they had a reason not to (in fact, the EoSD characters being outsiders is a retcon). Patchouli may or may not be an example; it's suggested that Remilia binds her servant's fate to her's by changing their names, and that would certainly explain why it's so bizarre. Alice has a basically English name, though how she got to Gensoukyou is a good question. The Prismrivers... they might be of European descent (probable), but Gensoukyou only appears to absorb nearby phantasms, so they'd have to have been raised/created in Japan
  • Maybe they moved to Japan because they're monsters (or hated) in their home countries and since Gensokyo is in another dimension from ours, they can live in peace there?
  • If the fairies are native, how come most of them have foreign names? Daiyousei is the only one I can think of with a Japanese name.
    • "Daiyousei" is Japanese because she lacks a canon name and people needed something to call her. To answer the question, something about people thinking of fairies being European, maybe?
• To answer some points:
  • Western names aren't uncommonly used in Japan, so that could answer the points about Alice and Marisa.
  • As far as the fairies go, well, most of them are called after whatever facet of nature they so happen be "born" from (i.e, " Sunny Milk") and, in the case of Cirno, it's possible that, with her name being pronounced "Cheer-no" and a romanization of her name being "Chiruno", it's supposed to be something like "Chill-no".
  • To explain Gensokyo having the European residents and influences (including names), the Hakurei Barrier was put up during the Meiji period (around 1885), which was after Japan dropped the Sakoku policies (said policies ending at about 1868), so it's possible that some of the residents were around during that time and found their home in Gensokyo once the border was put up.

Hiding the Lunar Capital

• How exactly is it that the Capital of the Moon stays hidden from sight from us Puny Earthlings?
  • It's said in the supplementary materials that there's a barrier and that Capitol is on the far side of the moon, so we wouldn't see it anyhow.

Vague Aged Appearance

• How old do Satori and Patchouli are supposed to look, anyway? Not sure about Satori, but Patchouli's dialogues make her seems like an adult, though her clothes are extremely childish.
  • Patchouli is a witch. The Youkai kind. Youkai witches don't age. Maybe Remmy thought she looked cute in it and she took the suggestion.

The Hakurei Barrier

• If Gensokyo is supposed to be a haven for everything that humans refuse to believe in anymore, then why is the overwhelming population of Gensokyo (exceptions being Marisa, Alice, the SDM and maybe the Prismrivers) Asian in origin? Or did I miss a detail and Gensokyo was only a haven for Japanese/Asian myth and creatures?
  • You're looking at it wrong. Rather than being picky about what it takes in, the effect seems to be limited by area. Non-Japanese myths are simply too far away to get absorbed. Also, Marisa is native Japanese.
  • Besides, it seems things don't just suddenly show up there, they have to be somehow transported; everything that isn't native to the area came through magic or divine power or Yukari or some other way.
  • Because Gensokyo is located in what used to be a haunted area of Japan. Therefore, the majority of inhabitants there will be Japanese in origin.
  • Gensokyo is a specific place that Yukari created in Japan. It's not a magical hub of everything supernatural, or even unique (the Lunar Capital is said to be another place with the same nature). Given that plenty of youkai continue to live outside the barrier anyway, like Mamizou, then foreign mythical creatures either live modest lives in foreign lands or have created their own equivalents of Gensokyo elsewhere(maybe Atlantis or Avalaon or whatever). Basically, the world's a lot larger than what we see, and there's no reason to assume it's all uninteresting. The Barrier is simply a bubble that protect those inside from the effects of disbelief.

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• So, hypothetically speaking, what would happen to Mokou and Kaguya if Reimu were killed and the barrier separating Gensokyo from the outside world collapsed? Would they wink out of existence along with everything else? Or would their Hourai immortality let them recover from even a complete Cessation of Existence?
  • Depends on how seperate you consider the metaphysics to be from the Clap Your Hands If You Believe thing that's going on. They're either perfectly immortal, immortal for as long as the concept of souls exist, or going to die as soon as they leave Gensoukyou. My money is on the middle one, but it's hard to say for certain
  • Considering it isn't even sure that everyone inside would vanish if the barrier collapsed (we've SEEN Yukari in the outside world (Strange and Bright Nature Deity chap 25), so she clearly doesn't need to stay inside to survive; Akyuu did mention youkai hunting parties going to the outside world in P Mi SS; the Netherworld was not connected to Gensokyo before PCB and therefore exists independently of it; Mamizou was living in the outside world until 2011 and only went to Gensokyo because Nue asked her to) and that there are hints about Heaven and the lunarians being older than humanity itself, and therefore should probably exist independetly of human belief (Udonge's SWR ending where Eirin talks about the keystone that formed Heaven being removed from Earth millions of years ago and killing almost everything on it, hinting at maybe the Permian-Tertiary extinction which is the biggest one we ever had, and ZUN's drunken ramblings about both Kaguya and Eirin being millions of years old; not to mention that lunarians seem to believe (going by what Kaguya says in IN during the Scarlet Team scenario) that not only was magic a thing exclusive to them in the past, but also that they created the youkai in the first place to control the "filthiness" on Earth, so they at least should predate their existence), I think they'd survive normally, as what made them immortal wouldn't be dependent on human belief in the first place. Eirin is an unsurpassed genius, maybe the only bit of magic in the elixir was Kaguya's power. 'sides, even if belief IS necessary for Kaguya to survive (and therefore to maintain the effects of the elixir that depend on her power), her story is extremely well-known and liked, so I don't think she and Mokou would vanish even then.
    • Guy from the previous wall of text here. I just read the third chapter of Cage in Lunatic Runagate. There's an implication here that Toyohime is so old that she remembers when life on Earth first left the oceans and continued the battle for survival on land ("As I watched the ocean, memories of the distant past sprang to my mind. The life that arose from the seas in the very beginning staked its continued existence in a long battle, and its conclusion, the ocean was defiled, and only the winners set out onto the land, which then knew no impurity. (...)" (emphasis mine, this of course could be interpreted as her remembering hearing about it instead of witnessing it). So it seems that the lunarians are indeed far older than mankind, and so it wouldn't make much sense for them to be dependant on human belief to exist. Taking this into consideration, my personal opinion, then, is that Mokou and Kaguya aren't affected at all by human belief, and so the destruction of the barrier wouldn't affect them in the least.
    • (Boy do I love to talk about Touhou don't you guys love to talk about Touhou) An interesting thing to note is also the Touhou universe timeline made by the Touhou wiki; it seems that there were gods existing even at the beggining of the universe, which would imply that not all of them depend on faith to exist (although I really wish the wiki would give the source for where they got the info of those initial events happening in the Touhou universe); if this is true, then there are some fantastical beings that don't require humans to exist, and the lunarians might be part of this group. In the end this is all conjecture of course, nothing of this is truly confirmed in canon, so other interpretations are just as valid.
  • Other the other hand, whether they are able to exist outside of Gensokyo is unlikely to matter if they're inside when it falls apart. I can exist outside my house just fine, but I'll still die if I'm inside when it explodes. But either way, the exact metaphysics behind Gensokyo and the Hakurei Barrier collapsing aren't 100% clear and, strictly speaking, outside the bounds of my question, which was simply a thought experiment about the upper limits of Mokou and Kaguya's immortality.

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• What's going in in the rest of the world during Imperishable Night? Surely outside world astronomers would pick up on the Earth suddenly ceasing to rotate, or a massive eclipse blocking out all direct sunlight? Would the titular night last long enough for its effects to be felt across the world? Or is it merely local to Gensokyo and Yukari's Alien Geometries situating it in Another Dimension with its own alien day and night cycle?
  • It's likely that ZUN just didn't think that much about it. The mere existence of the outside world is ignored in most games after all.
  • Gensokyo sort of exists in its own separate dimension, so I would assume whatever happens inside has no effect on the outside.

Lunarian Society

• This has always bugged me, but how the hell does Lunarian society survive? Consider this. Ancient civilisation, established by particularly advanced humans long before ours was even conceived. Fair enough. But wouldn't their near-immortal lifespans present to us an obvious overpopulation problem? Considering how they've been around for so long, have had their numbers supplemented by the Moon Rabbits (which, obviously, reproduce like rabbits), their absolutely stunning medical technology (which would eliminate the issue of death by disease, thereby increasing the population exponentially over time) and also bearing in mind that the Moon (not the Lunar Capital) is only 1/6 the size of the Earth, wouldn't the Moon therefore be a crowded dystopia? Do understand that no amount of super-magic or advanced technology will fix this problem - it's a sad fact of life. But that's not why I pose this question. No, I seek clarification because ZUN seems to like portraying (or at least referencing) the Touhou!Moon as if it were some kind of perfect, idealistic utopia. So then. What gives?
  • First, there likely wasn't very many original settlers. Second, they don't seem to be breeding much. Also; the Lunar Capital isn't 1/6th the size of Earth, it's a bit smaller than Gensoukyou
    • One: Even the smallest population of settlers can eventually grow to a massive population over time, especially considering that they've been around for a very, very long time (see: Humans, and viable settlements were only established around 15,000 years ago). Two: A fair point, however, if they really did not have alot of settlers with them at the start and 'didn't breed much', then the Lunar Capital would not have expanded to a bustling metropolis (which it obviously is now). Also, the Moon Rabbits. They're rabbits, and they breed like rabbits. In fact, this is one of their defining features (apart from their long ears) and cannot be considered rabbits otherwise. Since two rabbits produce an average of around 70 per year, do the math and, assuming that Lunarian society has been around for at least 100,000 years (based on the earliest known records of modern humans, which Lunarians seem to represent), would lead to a population of around 6.3 million today. While that certaintly isn't saying much, that's assuming that there is only one breeding pair (and it is highly likely that they brought more). Factor the fact that all the other rabbits would be breeding like rabbits too, the number would easily surpass 4 billion rabbits by today (remember that the Earth is barely holding together as it is, and is six times the size of the Moon). And, if the Lunarians really 'didn't breed much', they would have surely been ousted from power long ago against those kind of Rabbit numbers - even if the latter is a slave race. On top of that, they all seem to be sapient and possess a reasonable degree of intelligence, being capable of abstract thought and understanding speech (see: Reisen Udongein Inaba). This only reinforces the idea that the Lunarians probably bred more than one would like to believe in order to counteract the exponentially increasing numbers of intelligent 'servants'. Further supporting this is that it can be reliably inferred from S Si B that a future Rabbit uprising is very possible (key quote: "Time of unrest"), though perhaps for different reasons. Three: I think he meant the Moon was 1/6 of the Earth's size, not the Capital (when was the last time anyone saw a city that big, anyway?).
    • It is not a bustling metropolis. The capital is small and peaceful. And there's all kind of ways to keep one's pets from breeding. Contraceptives in the food, regularly spaying and neutering, males mysteriously disappearing, etc. Besides, it's not a stretch to assume that the 'purity' lowers the procreation rate, considering that it's like being dead. And CiLR suugests that the rabbits like to complain, but won't ever do anything because they're lazy and probably drugged
    • ^ Not a bustling metropolis? This image◊ seems to disagree. Skyscrapers? Large-size buildings? The apparent existence of a Lunar army? I think they're all tell-tale signs of a rather large population (what kind of idiot squanders their resources building a city, yet maintains a minimal population anyway?). Also, from PMiSS: 月の都は、遙か昔から月の裏側に存在するという、大都市である。 [Approximate translation: The city of the Moon, on the far side of the Moon, is a great, ancient metropolis.]. Peaceful? Sure. Small? I think not.
    • It's entirely possible that the Lunar Rabbits don't breed with the speed that Earth rabbits are associated with. I mean, they don't have the same body as an Earth Rabbit, they don't act the same as Earth Rabbits, and unless Tewi's been reproducing like mad behind everyone's backs, I think being a youkai kind of pulls you away from those kinds of things.
    • tl;dr, but the truth is that ZUN really hasn't told us much about the Moon (apart from hammering the apparent fact that it's some kind of heavenly utopia down our throats) so the best we can do is speculate. Until we get our hands on some new Touhou!Moon material, we'll just have to wait and see. Personally, I think the Lunarians are assholes, but that's another story.
  • I think you're grossly underestimating super-magic and advanced technology. First: contraceptives. They can make their population exactly as large as they want it to be without any real problems. That's neither super-magic or advanced technology, but whatever. Second: who says they can't just make a pocket universe to live in? For all we know they have infinite space. It's not like we haven't seen pocket dimensions in the series before. And there are a billion other possible magical solutions. If you think super-magic can't solve any problem, I think that demonstrates an extreme failure of imagination.
    • THANK YOU! There is absolutely no reason at all to think that magic has limits. It's. Literally. MAGIC! There is no logic in assuming that "magic can't do X" even though the very purpose of magic is to manipulate the world around you anyway you please. Heck, chances are that Yukari just opens up a few gaps here and there whenever the rabbits want to leave the moon.

The Bronze Disk in PCB

• Can someone tell me exactly what that thing is that you see floating around at the beginning of the third level in Perfect Cherry Blossom? Because it looks a hell of a lot like Kikuri (the bronze disk girl) from Highly Responsive to Prayers.
  • I thank Alice was inside the Bronze Disk, also You got to love it how they is a Crescent Moon on that Stage.

Pronounciation

• How exactly are you supposed to pronounce Touhou anyway?
  • Toh-hoh.
  • You can hear it spoken in the untranslated "The Net Star" episode. (It also has an an instance of "Yukkuri shiteitte ne!")

'Imperishable Night

• In Imperishable Night, I don't understand how some of the player-character teams cause the titular unnaturally long night. I can understand how Scarlet Team and Border Team do it (Sakuya's time-manipulation powers and Yukari manipulating the boundary between night and day), and I suppose you could say that the Magic Team just used a spell they had lying around, but the Ghost Team especially just baffles me. I don't think "Invoking death in humans" or "Peerless swordsmanship" would pull that particular trick off.
  • Youmu can cleave the moon in half. Perhaps she can do the same with the sun.
    • That... doesn't really explain it. For one, that's a fan-game interpretation of her abilities. For two, the sun is in no way destroyed or broken (indeed, if it reaches 5:00, the sun rises and you lose). I would suggest that it has something to do with the crazy slowing effect used in the Youmu boss fights, but that's just a sort of reverse Bullet Time, as a way to show just how focused Youmu is, so that doesn't explain it either. Hmmm...
  • Youmu managed to steal spring. Maybe she can steal morning.
  • Also, Yuyuko is Yukari's best friend. Maybe she just asked.
    • So that's why Reimu doesn't face the Ghost Team.
  • This troper thought Yuyuko's power was to "invoke death in anything that can die". The application becomes apparent in the title— Imperishable (undying) Night.
  • Well, with the Scarlet and Border teams having logical methods of stopping the night, it's not too out there to think that the Magic team could employ the help of Sakuya (Marisa and Patchy knowing each other and all, which would give her some access to the SDM) while the Ghost team could employ the assistance of Yukari, who's best buddies with Yuyuko. This reasoning also explains why the Ghost team fights Marisa while the Magic team fights Reimu.

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• When playing Imperishable Night on easy (because it was my second attempt at the game), I got to Final B as Border Team, and was facing the spellcards that you just have to outlast. I die 3 times, then it goes on to "GOOD END 1". What happened there? Does ANYONE know if this is supposed to happen?
  • Losing to Kaguya's Last Spell just costs you a load of points, not the game. That'd be too frustrating.
    • I think they are referring to how if you use a continue you can't get a good end, IIRC.
    • You can't get to FinalB if you continue, and you can't continue once on it. That can't be it.
  • The conditions for getting the good end and extra stage in IP seems to be to simply beat Final B, since to even get there, you can't use a continue beforehand or use one during the level, except for when she directly attacks them. Since the final spell cards attacks your continues as though they were just lives, and since by that point you'll have more continues than you have chances to screw up, simply reaching them is synonymous to victory.
    • Not quite true. It's entirely possible to beat Final B without ever reaching the time point quota for a stage, resulting in a grand total of one continue. Additionally, you can lose them to her Last Spell pretty fast if you fail especially badly. It's just that at no point in the game does failing a Last Spell affect anything other than your score.
  • We seem to be forgetting the root of the question here. He was asking why he got the good ending, not why he unlocked the Extra Stage or why he got the Good Ending despite dying three times. The simple answer is that in Imperishable Night, Kaguya's - and by extension, Eirin's - "timeout" spells are considered Last Spells within the game - I.E. if you get hit by a bullet on them, it doesn't cost you a life, just that chance to capture the card during that run. Because you likely had not used a continue, you still got the Good End.

Gameplay

• Can you actually play these games or are you supposed to just watch the bullet vomit and then die?
  • With some practice, its actually not to difficult until stage 5.
  • Don't bother. Being good at shmups makes you a freak and a "Stop Having Fun" Guy.
  • There is something of a sweet spot between stop having fun guys and "Watching the bullet vomit and dying." People who actually enjoy these games because they are challenging without resorting to Fake Difficulty.

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• Why does ZUN even bother putting scoring systems in the games? People who aren't good at shooters couldn't care less if they beat their best score tenfold, and people who are find Touhou scoring to be idiotic.
  • For one thing, extra lives are awarded at score intervals, so there's a non-macrogame reason to care about your score.
    • Only in EoSD and MoF. The rest of the (Windows) games have you collecting objects to increase your lives, probably because no one really like Touhou's scoring system.
  • Because there are enough people who are good at them who do in fact like trying to aim for a high score, as evidenced by the existence of scoreboards.
    • And some of us who aren't but use score as a rough approximation of how well we did at the game.
  • What annoys me is how much stuff is in the game that only matters for score. I like the grazing mechanic in a lot of danmaku games, but if you don't care about score, Touhou doesn't have them. From what I understand, blue powerups are also only useful for increasing score.

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• The later levels seem to be the most interesting. Why did they design the game so they can be played the least? I like the idea of an extra stage that you have to do really well to play, but they shouldn't make all of the later stages work that way. The practice thing would work for that, but they only let you practice stages that you've already beaten. It's also not very good as practice, since the stages you need to practice most are precisely the ones you haven't beaten yet.
  • The idea is you start out by continue-spamming to the end, so you can see what you're up against. Then you practice until you can 1cc

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• What's wrong with having Aya as the final boss and Mima as the extra boss?
  • If we're theorizing about future games, it'd be because recurring bosses are really rare in this series. Also, Mima isn't coming back. If this is a fangame, nothing's wrong

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• The difficulty increases throughout the game. Normally, the idea is that as you play, you get better, so the game has to get harder to make up for it. But it takes many playthroughs to beat Touhou. The end result is that either the first several levels are so easy they're boring, or getting to the last levels are impossible. Also, the later in the game you are when you lose, the more frustrating it is, so if anything the game should get easier as it progresses.
  • Stage 1 being boring is a problem, yes. But the difficulty curve is a major part of how Touhou games are designed— the idea is that you spend most of the game collecting lives and bombs to take on the final boss, who's generally too difficult to fight fairly.

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• I can't stand the way they made the bombs. They're basically extra lives, as long as you have a fast enough reaction time. Unfortunately, I can never seem to react to things until after they happen. There are a few games where that's good enough, but generally you need to use the bomb before you get hit.
  • Resource management. Learning to recognize situations where you should bomb is an important skill

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• Unlocking extra stages after 1ccing normal does not makes sense if the extra difficulty is a step above lunatic. Where does the extra difficulty actually fit between normal, hard and lunatic?
  • First, it depends on the game. Fairy Wars' extra is vastly worse than Ten Desires', for example. Second, it's a different kind of difficulty; extra stages have danmaku that would be very difficult, but the short length makes memorization much more viable than in the main game, and you generally get a good numbers of lives. Finally, convential wisdom is that they're generally somewhere between normal and hard, but that comes from the kind of person that's good at the memorization-heavy gameplay that they entail.

Kaguya and Mokou's feud

• You would think after thousands of years of fighting Mokou and Kaguya would've have, y'know, gotten over it by now, but they're still bitter enemies. What's up with that?
  • They don't really have anything else to do.
  • They haven't actually been fighting that long either. Mokou re-met Kaguya in Gensokyo relatively recently after a few thousand years of assuming that she'd gone back to the moon and not really thinking about her.
    • There have only been hundreds of years. Kaguya and Mokou's first encounter was roughly 700 CE, according to Mokou's chapter of Cage in Lunatic Runagate, and they've been killing each other for only the last four hundred years.
  • Mokou and Kaguya don't actually hate each other... at least not anymore. Their battles are really more of a way to relieve some of the stress of being immortal: it gives the two of them a constant in a life where everything else withers, dies, and changes. In other words, they're doing it as much for fun as anything else; the challenge and rivalry provides them with a kind of entertainment that nothing else could provide at this point.

Name

• If "Touhou" means "Eastern", then why have I only seen people use the word "Touhou" to refer to the game and not "Eastern"? When was "Touhou" coined, anyway?
  • ? There are plenty of other things out there that use the word. Usually romanized as 'Toho' instead, admittedly.

Game Distribution

• So.. You can buy the games right? Or actually, you're meant to buy them. Then why do fans act like they're free?
  • Torrents.
    • Buying the games outside of Japan is pretty costly. Ordering UFO from, say, Paletweb will run you $20USD for the game alone, and either $8 or $15 if you want it shipped without or with insurance respectively (to NA, at least), and that's before tax. Other places tend to charge upwards of $35 for the same game. You could buy a DS or PSP game for about the same price and get more playtime out of it than your typical Touhou game runtime of 30 minutes.
  • ZUN apparently doesn't want the games or fan games to be sold as downloads aimed at overseas buyers. What I take that as is that he doesn't want people to sell the games to non-Japanese, but is fine with them finding it for free. Given how lax he is about copyright in general, and how much of Touhou's fanbase is Japanese, I think that's pretty reasonable.
  • The games aren't really easy to find outside of Japanese specialty shops and conventions. Most overseas people just torrent them to save them the time and money, since the games themselves run a reasonable cost of about 20USD (what a well-made indie tends to run for on Steam, at any rate) but the shipping is a pain since it can be almost as much as the game itself, effectively doubling the price. ZUN was asked recently if he would consider digital distribution, and after seeing the reception at AWA he said he's looking into it, specifically Steam. He said that he likes it and there's a bit of talking about it, but actually putting a release on Steam is much harder than it looks and probably more effort than it's worth.
  • Well, you can finally buy the newer games. They are now on Steam. People who are feeling guilty about pirating the old ones can make up for it now by buying the current ones.

PC- 98 game remakes?

• Why no remake of the PC-98 games? I'd like to see a complete makeover with revamped gameplay, remaster bgm and graphic with some minor adjustments to the story (like old Alice and Marisa). Something like Pokemon 1st and 2nd generation. That would be wonderful. If ZUN doesn't do it, someone should!
  • ZUN prefers to keep moving forwards. Fan remakes... there's one of the second game, but doesn't seem to be anything beyond that
  • There's also the fact that ZUN apparently lost the source code for those games, so it probably wouldn't be an easy task even if he wanted to.

ZUN and Derivative Works (and the related)

• What is the Maikaze incident that leads to ZUN putting restrictions upon derivative works? Is there any theories/reasons on why ZUN do so?
  • Maikaze had nothing to do with that. It was ufotable. Basically, a group of fans got an actual anime studio to create a Touhou short. It looked like they weren't going to keep things to a standard doujin release, and they didn't talk to ZUN about it. You can see why he'd be annoyed.
  • Then, it's just that Touhou derivative works cannot be sold in downloads aimed at overseas buyers, right? Do non-Japanese are prohibited from making them?
    • If you're asking if he's prohibiting overseas fans from making fanworks, I'm pretty certain the answer is no.
    • What I take out of that is that ZUN forbids the sale of Touhou games overseas, but not the free distribution of them. He's pretty relaxed about copyright, so that's reasonable.

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• The takedowns on Trojan Green Asteroid and Unknown Flower, Mesmerizing Journey at Youtube are justified, but why ZUN doesn't take down all of his own music along with them (although that would be a very big problem)? Also, is it possible to import official Touhou music CDs?
  • You can indeed import the music CDs
  • Being as lax as ZUN is about copyrights of his work, most takedowns on Youtube is not actually by him, but rather other unrelated entities abusing Youtube policies.
  • A good chunk of doujin albums are available for purchase on iTunes and Google Play, and that includes the official ones. Just buy them from there. You'll have to fix the metadata yourself (since they're all in romanji) but it's not that big of a deal.

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• It might don't fit this page, but is TAMUSIC, a doujin music circle known of making Touhou Music Remixes a group of doujin musicians lead by TAM? Who are the members?
  • Yes. You can find the member list here
  • Judging from the list (which has members from different doujin circles), is it common for doujin circles to work together on such matters or people joining multiple doujin circles?

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• Why Touhou vocal arrange (at least the most popular ones) are mostly women and men who perform them are generally regarded as 'sucky'? This isn't an issue in other types of doujin music, like Vocaloid covers.
  • Because Touhou's fanbase is comprised primarily of straight males, while Vocaloid has many fans on all sides of the gender and sexuality spectra, so it's not uncommon for Touhou fan works focusing on male characters and voices to be obscure at best.
  • A better explanation would be that Touhou's cast is comprised primarily of girls. Female voices can be associated with the characters and world, while male voices are more blatantly just "fans singing". Doesn't mean they are bad, but they certainly aren't as "immersive".

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• How did Taito managed to secure the rights to port Touhou music arranges to the mobile version of Groove Coaster 2: Original Style from Heavenly Festival despite that the Touhou project guidelines specifically said that derivative works should not be sold in Apple App Store and Google Play?
  • I can't say but I think it's probably because ZUN's heavily involved in that game.

Shipping

• in the incredibly disturbing remillia/sakuya ship who is the pedophile is it sakuya for having a relation with somebody with the mind and body of 10 year old(also necrophilia) or remilia for having a relation with somebody 485 year younger?
  • Neither of them are (technically) children, so neither?
  • Remilia doesn't have the mind of a 10 year old (being childish/immature doesn't mean innocent), Sakuya has lived far more than any human (according to Good Ending 3 from Imperishable Night), and Gensokyo's vampires aren't undead, they are a type of Devil. So yeah, neither.
  • Pedophilia is defined as attraction towards prepubescents. If Remilia hasn't reached puberty, then Sakuya is a pedophile. Being attracted to someone who is past puberty is not pedophilia, regardless of how old you are. Whether or not there's anything wrong with this is another question entirely.
  • That's only one definition, though, and not one that a lot of people subscribe to, regardless of what dictionary says what. As others have stated though, the characters are certainly not children. And that's just a ship also, not really any bearing on canon.
  • If you don't care about definitions and just want to know concepts, then Sakuya finds the appearance of little girls attractive, Remillia is in a relationship with someone much younger than her, and both of them are consenting adults. If you're not worried about semantics, that answers all the questions involved.
  • Yes, that's the only definition, as is the definition given by medical science and psychology, it doesn't really matter if some people suscribe to another definition, it will be the wrong definition, as the definition of mental conditions and paraphilias are done by science and not by popular slang. If someone call Gravity magic or psychosis demon possesion, is still a bad definition.
    • The term is split into two subcategories (one with prepubescents and one with teenagers—the term itself being an umbrella for "attraction to minors"). For some, Remilia is a child because of her looks and how she acts (her wiki page describing her such—-personality-wise) and, being a vampire, she didn't age past childhood, so that ship (if it's a romantic/sexual one) could come off as "pedophilic", quote on quote, Remilia's "legal" age notwithstanding, however, how she is (and looks) in the fanworks does vary.

The female cast

• This may be a stupid question, buy why do all of the youkai in this universe look like girl? is it a disguise? can humans not comprehend there true form? Do they simply like looking like little girls? is it to mess with humans? getting eaten by a monster is bad enough, but getting eaten by a monster that looks like your daughter is bad and also rather embarrassing.
  • Not all youkai. From the games, there's Unzan and Genjii, and also a bunch of Tanuki in Mamizou's stage in Hopeless Masquerade. From the mangas Forbidden Scrollery features a bunch of Youkai that looks like their traditional depictions. There are also Kasen's pets in Wild and Horned Hermit.
    • Lets change the question, why do most/some youkai look like little girls?
    • Most of them don't look like little girls. But, seriously though, there's no in-universe answer
    • The art style always makes most characters look really young, since there’s no explanation I guess I have to make one up, it’s a conspiracy by fashion designers.
    • This is just a WMG of mine, but maybe youkai has Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism in action. Male youkai looks like their traditional depictions, while female ones look like the Cute Monster Girls we often see.
    • It's not that all youkai are girls, it's just that almost all the plot-relevant youkai are girls. There are male human and youkai in Gensokyo, it's just that none of them are prominently featured.
    • That raises even more questions, im sticking to my theory, although I do know that most of them wear hats to protect themselves from the lunarians fearsome gaze.
    • At first it might have been because ZUN was bad at drawing male characters (even worse than he is for drawing females), but after Touhou caught a large fanbase ZUN probably became aware that one of the main things his fans follow Touhou for is the Waifu material it provides, and that's probably why he replaced UFO's boss, who was originally going to be a male, for Byakuren Hijiri before releasing the game.
  • Danmaku (and therefore fighting, I guess) is considered girly, so most participants are girls. Most of the time, no one else is relevant so they don't show up in the stories. ZUN's given this answer in more than one interview.
  • If you want a watsonian explanation, then it's because the people of humanity believe that said yokai are girls. Simple as that.
    • To explain the female cast, well, most of the yokai (or ghosts, for that matter) encountered are female or, at least, appear as women and miko (which Reimu is) are girls.

Which came first: the rabbits, or the youkai?

• The touhou wiki states that because the Moon Rabbits invented monsters, they may have been responsible for the creation of youkai. However, it has also been stated that the moon's lunacy effect on humans causes the rise of youkai. Therefore it wouldn't make much sense for rabbits to have invented youkai, wouldn't it? Additionally, as moon rabbits come from the "rabbit on the moon" myth, shouldn't they be youkai as well? Or not.
  • its implied the Lunarians and the Moon Rabbits are just real living creatures the same as humans who just inspired some legends, as opposed to Yokai who are effectively living embodiements of the legends themselves, Lunarians(even the servant class of the rabbits) are also known for being full of themselves so there claim to have created yokai should be taken with a grain of salt, more then likely its an exageration or them taking credit just because it came from there homeland of the moon

Where did ZUN get the inspiration for...

• ...The Gaps? Seems like they're the fantastical explanation for "being watched when you're alone" or are just how youkai teleport around. But I'd like a clear explanaton.
  • Yukari is loosly based on "the girl in the gap", just her power has been expanded from "Gaps in the furniture" to "gaps in anything" in this case, shes manipulating gaps in reality to create wormholes
    • If I remember right, a lot of the characters were inspired by the chars from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and there's a guy, Sticky Fingers (is that his name?) that does something like Yukari does but with zippers. The yokai the latter is referring to is the "sukima onna" and, as far as folklore goes, that yokai is kinda new, as some of the earlier mentions of her or anything similar to her date back to the Edo period.

"Fading away due to a lack of faith"

• If Youkai, Gods and magic are verifiably real phenomena that can actually affect the world, why are they fading away due to people not believing in them? Its not like there is a Weirdness Censor preventing most people from interacting with them similar to The Mist or that these things are shadowy boogeymen that only exist to frighten children.