anueutsuhos-touhou-profiles
Subjective Summaries of the Touhou Project
@anueutsuho wrote a number of profiles of the various characters from Touhou. I'm putting them here for reference and so anyone can comment on them.
Artwork used is mostly by either kankan33333 or meimaru_inuchiyo
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I think I'll wait for the Strange Creators to come out in case any Touhou 18 or 19 characters are prominent.
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Yuuma Toutetsu:
Image by Charmaruk
Yuuma Toutetsu is the Undefeated Matriarch of the Gouyouku Alliance, and the main villain and final boss of Touhou 17.5: Sunken Fossil World.
She is a Taotie, a Chinese mythological creature that is one of the Four Great Calamities, and is a goat or sheep-like creature with an endless greed and gluttony. She has the ability to eat anything, even abstract concepts.
The Gouyouku Alliance consists almost entirely of birds, yet she is a land-bound creature, for reasons I can't explain. As such, the eagle spirit from Wily Beast and Weakest Creature is her minion.
Well, maybe minion is a bit of a stretch. You see, she actually does almost all the heavy lifting herself, leaving her followers to do pretty much anything they want. She doesn't seem to really like the idea of having servants, actually. For this, she's beloved by them.
Their organization works primarily by asking people to join them. If they refuse, they at least offer a compromise of some kind (though usually one incredibly one-sided in their favor). Fighting is usually a last resort.
While Saki is suprisingly friendly at times, and Yachie Kicchou maintains a false politeness, Toutetsu absolutely revels in being evil. She takes great pride in being the self-proclaimed greediest being in existence! That said, how nasty she is depends heavily on what she's eaten, and she can be pretty reasonable at times.
Toutetsu was mentioned in passing by Saki Kurokoma during Wily Beast and Weakest Creature's Extra stage. However, Toutetsu would not appear in person until until over two years later! In the meantime, a lot of neat fan designs popped up.
As it turns out, Toutetsu wasn't interested in the war between the beast spirits and the Haniwa. What she had eyes on was a hidden part of Gensokyo not touched for eons. A layer of Old Hell even deeper than the Hell of Blazing Fires. The Hell of Blood Pools.
She desired to drink all the blood there, and become even stronger than she already was. If she drank enough, it's possible that no force in the universe could stop her.
Okina Matara realized the threat Toutetsu posed to Gensokyo, and caused an incident to get people's attention. She created oil spills all over Gensokyo, polluting every inch of water. This would lure people down to Old Hell to fight Toutetsu.
Initially, the Hell of Blood Pools appeared as an ocean of petroleum, but as Toutetsu fought harder, it revealed its true form. Toutetsu doesn't really see the difference, as to her, oil is basically the blood of the Earth anyhow.
Sadly, every single person who came was effortlessly defeated by Toutetsu, who consumed every bullet sent her way, and created a geyser to kick them all out.
That's right, she's a villain Reimu is flat-out incapable of defeating whatsoever!
The only person who could stand up to her... is Flandre Scarlet, the most popular character in the entire canon! Flandre's ability to destroy anything with her mind was the only thing that could touch Toutetsu!
As it turns out, Okina luring everyone down there to fight Toutetsu was not so they could beat her, it was so they could be jobbers, to make Toutetsu more intimidating. This in turn made fighting Toutetsu more appetizing for Flandre. But first, Okina had Flandre fight people all around Gensokyo in order to train her to overcome her vampiric weakness to running water.
Flandre Scarlet didn't care about the fate of Gensokyo, she's no hero of justice (Gensokyo doesn't have any of those, really). All she wanted, was to destroy that which had never been destroyed before.
Shortly before the battle began, Okina came to give a power boost... to Toutetsu! She claimed that power naturally went to the greedy, and Toutetsu is the greediest woman in existence! In reality, it was to overload Toutetsu with power so that Flandre could burn her out easier.
Flandre was able to push Toutetsu to the edge, forcing her to assume a colossal, bloody monster form and begin consuming everything in sight! Unfortunately for her, this only made it easier for Flandre to destroy her. She exploded in a bright flash of white light.
However, Toutetsu was not dead, and she reformed shortly afterwards. Toutetsu, of course, absolutely loved her own defeat, and still wishes that Flandre would join her. It turns out Toutetsu was heavily corrupted by the blood of Old Hell, and became incredibly hostile of the blood pools as a result. When Flandre destroyed her, she returned to her... slightly less evil self.
Toutetsu and Okina came to an agreement: they would have joint ownership of the Hell of Blood Pools, and it would be kept hidden away from any other eyes, as Okina is the hidden god.
However, shortly afterwards, people suddenly came to the Hell of Blood Pools in droves as... tourists! Toutetsu fought them off, and began suspecting Okina has betrayed her. She accused Okina Matara of plotting to take the blood pools for herself, and decided that she should resume her previous schemes.
She and Okina fought, but an inspection of Old Hell revealed the culprits:
The Yorigami Sisters were acting as tour guides to the Hell of Blood Pools! They safeguarded people there, then abandoned them to their fate after they signed a waiver absolving the Yorigami Sisters of any responsibility.
This sickening scam was of course, very impressive to the embodiment of greed. She thought about inviting them to join her, but Okina pointed out they'd just ruin everything for her as they fail at life. The partnership between Toutetsu and Gensokyo was rekindled, and the Yorigami Sisters got the crap beaten out of them by Reimu offscreen.
Toutetsu reappears in Touhou 19: Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghosts, where she becomes blood-drinking buddies with a Chupacabra, and once again tries to conquer Gensokyo. Perhaps more interesting is a shocking development regarding a previous character. It turns out Ran Yakumo, Yukari Yakumo's faithful kitsune servant, used to be friends with Toutetsu! Yes, before she became Yukari's attendant, she lived in the Animal Realm, but eventually left out of disgust for their Social Darwinist ways. Toutetsu feels betrayed by this, saying that Ran had become weak by living in the (relatively) more free and peaceful Gensokyo.
Ran actually never told Yukari about this, and in fact still keeps it a secret from her master.
Toutetsu exclusively attacks using oil, blood, or other liquids. She can shape them into large bubbles or even goat-horned serpents! Of course, as mentioned earlier, she's one of the only Touhou characters to have a more powerful 2nd form, a gigantic bloody version of herself.
Funnily enough, she's usually rather short! She's shorter than Flandre, the eternal 10-year-old! In fact, Yachie Kicchou and Saki Kurokoma are short too! It seems all of the Animal Realm runs on Napoleon complexes.
Oh, and yeah, her color scheme is probably not a coincidence, but we still have no confirmation from ZUN.
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Saki Kurokoma:
Saki Kurokoma is the Matriarch of the Keiga Crime Family. She's a black pegasus ghost. The Keiga family is populated by apex predators that use brute force. The wolf spirit is a member of her gang.
She appeared as the Extra boss of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature. While the initial call for a beast spirit invasion of Gensokyo might have just been a lure, Saki said "hey, that sounds like a good idea!" She then led her Keiga army to take over all of New Hell, and all of Gensokyo! She was, however, defeated by the protagonist, potentially even using her wolf spirit subordinate against her! She calls off the attack, but expresses an interest in coming to Gensokyo to fight strong people. She eventually makes due on this in Touhou 18.5: The 100th Black Market.
She also returns in Touhou 19: Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghosts, renewing her ambitions of Gensokyo's conquest. While she is ultimately defeated for the second time after making little progress, she promises to return to conquer Gensokyo at a later date.
Saki Kurokoma has the power of having the strongest legs in the universe! So she can kick really hard. The fact that she's a ghost who can't affect inanimate objects probably also makes this ability completely irrelevant. How is she on par with Yachie? Strength in numbers, perhaps?
Unlike Yachie, who primarily rules through fear, Saki is beloved by her subordinates for her headstrong attitude and willingness to fight alongside them. Still, she's as brutal of a thug as the rest of them. She's actually incredibly stupid. She's not very good at strategies more complex than "ATTACK!" and pretty much lives on impulse.
That said, she respects the power of anyone who can stand up to her, as with many characters in this series. She comes across like an oni in horse clothing at times.
She's not just a black pegasus, she's Kurokoma, the former steed of Shoutoku Taishi himself! In other words, she and Miko knew each other in their previous lives! Kurokoma, even back then, was notoriously violent and prone to rage. We actually still have yet to see one acknowledge the other, but it's an incredibly popular subject matter for fanfiction, as you can expect. Usually in a... romantic kind of way.
Her spellcards have very bombastic and over the top names often referencing anime. She primarily waves of bullets that resemble horse hoofprints.
I would like to remind you that Touhou Project has a Yakuza Cowboy Ghost Pegasus. Wrap your head around that one.
Oh, and in regards to fan depictions, she's kind of the opposite of Eiki Shiki. While Eiki Shiki is very tall yet fans depict her as a tiny girl with a Napoleon complex, Saki is actually very short but most fans depict her as a colossal unit of a woman.
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Keiki Haniyasushin:
Keiki Haniyasushin is a sculptor god, capable of making idols of all shapes and sizes. They can be used for a variety of purposes, like toys, religious sites, and even just home decorating. She cannot create life, per say, but a spirit almost always inhabits the bodies she makes.
The beast spirits fear and despise her as an "evil god of destruction", and to be honest, they're not that far off. She and her Haniwa army have been destroying the nature of the Animal Realm and replacing it with cold technology. And, to some extent, her defense of the humans was because she could gain faith and power from them. Indeed, some people would say she is only exchanging one dystopia for another.
That said, nothing she does has been done with hate and malice in mind. She did truly desire to help the human spirits, and even wished to eventually make peace with the beasts. She finds it awful that Yachie keeps referring to the human spirits as "resources".
Keiki is, of course, the "villain" and final boss of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.
Keiki's lair was within a massive Kofun tomb in the Primate Spirit Garden. While the outside looked like it matched the time period these were built in, on the inside, it looked like a vast futuristic hallway, like something out of Tron.
When Keiki is confronted by the protagonist, she tries to explain to her that the beast spirits are manipulating her, and that the idols serve the side of humanity. The beast spirit possessing the protagonist gets into an argument with Keiki, which ends in the protagonist ultimately siding with the beast spirits.
Keiki declared that she intended to destroy the protagonist's weak organic body, and give her a new, immortal clay body. This horrified the beast spirit possessing the protagonist enough that they assumed control and forced her to run away, Keiki giving chase. As the fight progressed, they exited Keiki's tomb and fought in the skies above the Animal Realm. The entire Haniwa army and all the beast spirits came out to help their respective sides.
After an intense final battle with awesome music, Keiki was finally defeated, and she surrendered.
She met with Yachie Kicchou afterwards, and agreed leave the Animal Realm and move into Gensokyo, taking her army and her loyal human spirit followers with her. She wished that everyone could just get along, but Yachie rebuked her.
The technological advancements in the Animal Realm still remained, however, and in fact the rest of Hell now envies it for how modern it is.
The ending heavily implied Keiki was going to somehow cause more problems in Gensokyo, but she's never appeared again since this game. It's possible that Covid-19 caused ZUN to have a change of plans for Touhou 18 and onwards, considering he's mentioned it affecting his work.
Her spellcards take the form of basic shapes, like squares, triangles, and circles. They appear to have been brought to life if their names are any indication. Her attacks are mostly colored using the primary colors of pigment: red, blue, and yellow.
ZUN has stated that Keiki's reign over the human spirits represents humanity overrelying on technology. Basically, you could see the Haniwa as a robot army, and Keiki as like a god supercomputer who enslaves humanity "to protect them from themselves".
Keiki is actually based on Haniyasushin, the god borne of the feces left behind when the mother god, Izanami, burned to death after giving birth to Kagutsuchi, god of fire.
Yes this makes her a literal piece of shit.
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Mayumi Joutougu:
Image by GiantCaveMushroom
In the Animal Realm, human spirits are enslaved and raised like cattle. They are corralled into a zoo of sorts called the Primate Spirit Garden. As it turns out, when animals are as sentient as humans, they can easily dominate humanity. However, the human spirits are no less sentient than they were in life. And they could pray. They prayed to anyone, any god who could save them from their torment.
And a god answered. A god of creation, of craftsmanship. She created an invincible army of Haniwa idols to defend them.
These idols were soulless automatons that the beast spirits were completely incapable of even touching. The spirits could only touch other spirits, you see. To make matters worse, the soldiers did not need rest or repair. The idols rapidly began transforming the landscape into one dedicated to the humans.
However, the humans' worship of the idols soon became blind, and their unquestioning servitude made them not much different than they were before under the beast spirit gangs. The idols set out to conquer all of the Animal Realm.
Suddenly, Yachie Kicchou had a plan, to lure a human from Gensokyo down to fight these idols for her! If it failed, she could always just take over Gensokyo and move all her beast spirits there.
Mayumi Joutougu is the Lance Corporal of the Haniwa army. She acts as the 5th boss of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature. Since they haven't actually faced any real threat yet, she's woefully unprepared for the human in front of her. Still, she figures out the beast spirits' plans very quickly.
Mayumi's spellcards have her summoning her various Haniwa soldiers to attack you. They include archers, swordsmen, and horse riders. The horses are also Haniwa idols.
Mayumi is named after Mayumi Tanaka, a Japanese voice actress famous for voicing a Haniwa idol on a children's TV show.
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Yachie Kicchou:
The Animal Realm is one of the many afterlives in Buddhist cosmology. It’s only barely better than Hell, basically the silver medal in pain and suffering.
In Touhou Project, it's a world dominated by a small number of crime syndicates. In order to survive, you have to pledge your eternal servitude to one of these organizations. These three or four organizations often fight amongst each other, but no one outshines the others for very long. It's a world where animals rule and have domesticated humans for food and labor. It's a world where individual thought is rejected in favor of groupthink, and where the strong crush the weak with an iron fist.
Nobody exemplifies this cruelty more than Yachie Kicchou, Matriarch of the Kiketsu Crime Family. The Kiketsu family is comprised of animals that specialize in sneak attacks and the like. The otter spirit from before is one of her henchmen.
Yachie Kicchou is a jidao, a Chinese half-turtle half-dragon hybrid. I don't know much about them because every time I google them it just brings up Yachie.
She's a cold Social Darwinist who views everyone around her as mere tools to be used. She even outright rejects the idea of friendship. She feels that's simply the way everyone feels in the Animal Realm. At most she relishes a challenge as an opportunity to improve and evolve. And she'll always say "nothing personal, it's just business". Sometimes she may appear to help someone by say, saving their life, but she always has some ulterior motive. She makes her minions work 24/7/365, because she's just that cruel.
Yachie has what are effectively mind-control powers. Well, she calls it "the ability to remove a person's ability to fight back". It's very subtle, but you'll suddenly trust every word she says unquestionably, and you'll start addressing her in polite professional terms, regardless of how rude you usually are.
Yachie Kicchou appeared as the 4th boss and potentially the real main villain of Touhou 17: Wily Beast and Weakest Creature. She was the one who sent the beast spirits to Gensokyo to warn everyone of an upcoming invasion. As it turns out, it was her invasion!
She showed up in the middle of New Hell, and quickly put the protagonist under her thrall. She still fought them, but only as a test of strength to see if they were up to the task. After the fight, she told them that she was not their enemy, that the real enemy lay deep within the Animal Realm.
None of the three main characters were able to resist her at all. Even the headstrong, independent Marisa was reduced to calling her "Master". The only person she's ever called that before was Mima back in the PC-98 days.
If you got a game over throughout the game, Yachie even attempts to kill the protagonist for failing her, with only the protagonist begging for another chance being enough to stay her hand.
Yachie reappeared in Touhou 19: Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghosts, as with the rest of the Animal Realm leaders. She actually winds up having a much poorer success rate in this game, failing miserably in her goals of conquering Gensokyo and destroying the Hakurei Shrine, as well as getting lost in Gensokyo along the way.
Yachie's spellcards are neat. She can shoot green laser beams that form the hexagon patterns of turtle shells. She can also breathe fire. They're all named things like "Hell Sign" or "Oni Sign".
In summary: Yachie is a vile tyrant and probably the most evil character in the series.
Oh, and she is the titular Wily Beast. The Weakest Creature... is humanity. So the name of the game basically means Yachie Kicchou and the human spirits.
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Kutaka Niwatari:
Kutaka Niwatari is a chicken god! A god of chickens! She has all the power of chicken soup! Beware her sore-throat healing!
No, seriously, that's her superpower. I'm not making that up.
Kutaka acts as a guardian of Hell, keeping people who shouldn't be there out, and keeping any power-hungry demons in. She works in Higan, acting under Eiki Shiki the Yamaxanadu like Komachi does. However, she actually lives in Gensokyo, at the Youkai Mountain.
That said, she has other goals in life. Her biggest dream is to restore the chickens of the world to their former glory, before they were domesticated and reduced to food. She's mostly a kind and just god, but, just like Utsuho Reiuji before her, she's very birdbrained. Maybe even dumber, since she doesn't know anything about nuclear fusion. She's willing to admit she's got a horrible memory.
That said, she's got more knowledge on Hell than any of the protagonists. She warns them not to trust the beast spirits, and turns out to be completely right.
She first appeared as the 3rd boss of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, testing the protagonist's strength to see if they're eligible to enter Hell or not. She reappears as the Extra Stage miniboss, leading the counterattack against the beast spirit invasion.
She later reappears in Touhou 17.5: Sunken Fossil World, where she inspects potential Animal Realm activity in Old Hell, but basically fails to accomplish anything except get beaten up.
Kutaka's spellcards take the form of bright yellow light. She's also able to attack using water, which references folk rituals where water was splashed on chickens to cure throat illnesses. She later displayed the ability to summon blue fire spirits with a whistle.
Kutaka Niwatari is based on the god Niwatarijin, a rural god associated with agriculture, safe passage, and of course, chickens.
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Urumi Ushizaki:
Urumi Ushizaki is an Ushi-oni. They're quite the youkai, looking like a cross between a spider and a bull! Sadly, only the cow part really shines in her design. They usually look pretty ugly, but Urumi is quite pretty.
This might go without saying, but that baby she's holding is a stone fake. She has the power to control the weight of objects, you see, and she often "pranked" people by asking them to hold her baby, only to suddenly increase its weight to absurd levels, and cause them to sink to the bottom of the river, drowning them.
However, since killing humans from Gensokyo is basically illegal now, she can't do that as much anymore. Instead, she goes to swim in the Sanzu River.
The Sanzu River, which connects our world with the afterlife, is populated by all kinds of prehistoric sea life, extinct in the world of the living. Urumi fishes and domesticates these creatures, like Dunklosteus and plesiosaurs. She makes a living by selling their meat in Gensokyo.
Some youkai think of her as completely defanged, living like this, but she's proud of her current life.
She appears as the 2nd boss of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, confronting the protagonist and trying to do her stone baby trick for old times sake. It doesn't work, though, and they fight, after Urumi threatens to feed them to her pets instead. After being defeated, Urumi takes it in stride, respecting their power. Reimu even promises to tell her all about what happened once the incident is resolved.
Urumi's spellcards symbolize her weight-changing abilities by having bullets that slowly grow in size the closer they get to you.
... yes. You thought I ignored the elephant in the room, didn't you? I've said it before, this series only rarely has anything resembling fanservice. And when it does, it's usually by artists who aren't ZUN himself.
But, ZUN felt it was kind of an low-hanging fruit to give the cow character large... well, he apologizes. It's just she's a cow, with that whole, mother motif... Even though his art just has her breasts *visible at all*. Anyway, I'll be less weird now.
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Eika Ebisu
At the shores of the Sanzu River, the ghosts of dead babies play. The region is called the Sai-no-Kawara, and the infant spirits have lots of rocks to stack. Sadly, their stacks often get knocked down by the oni for fun.
Eika Ebisu is kind of a celebrity or leader among these babies. She has the terrifying ability... to stack rocks together. But she does it really good! She arranges rock-stacking contests among the babies there, and usually wins.
Eika Ebisu appeared as the first boss of Touhou 17: Wily Beast and Weakest Creature. She attacked the protagonist for knocking over her latest stone stack.
Yes, this does mean Reimu is willing to beat up a dead baby. Some hero she is. Well, she might not have been herself during this incident.
Eika Ebisu is usually innocent and childish, but she can throw massive temper tantrums. Eika is much smarter than your average baby, since she apparently knows how to make money in the black market.
Ebisu attacks by stacking stones, as you'd expect. Nothing more to her than that.
Eika's last name is based on the god Ebisu, who was born without bones. Ebisu is one of the Seven Gods of Fortune, associated with good luck and fishermen.
She has a jellyfish motif too, but she isn't actually one.
Funnily enough, Ebisu was the first born son of Izanami and Izanagi; the original mother and father gods in Shinto creation myth. If Eika really is Ebisu (and it's heavily implied so), this means she's actually the oldest character in the entire series! She's a ghost baby, but she's been dead longer than anyone else has been alive!
In the demo for Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, her name was Youka Ebisu, but this was changed for the final release.
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Wily Beast and Weakest Creature:
Image by GiantCaveMushroom
Touhou 17: Wily Beast and Weakest Creature came out in 2019.
The storyline begins with a trio of animal goasts (sic) come to Gensokyo and tell Reimu, Marisa, and Youmu that an army of beast spirits are planning to invade Gensokyo! In order to combat this incoming invasion, the protagonist has to let one of the beast spirits possess them and take them to Hell, where a war has been brewing for the past year or so.
The three beast spirits each slowly influence the protagonist as they progress, altering their personality a bit.
• The wolf spirit makes you more violent and aggressive
• The eagle spirit makes you narcissistic and haughty
• The otter spirit makes you cowardly and somewhat of a suckup.
What appears to be a trip to new Hell quickly takes a turn to the Animal Realm.
The Animal Realm is one of the six realms of rebirth in Buddhist cosmology. It's second-place in pain and suffering to Hell. More about it later.
Overall, Wily Beast and Weakest Creature is one of the darkest, most serious games in the series, and one which kickstarted another trilogy. The Animal Realm will continue to attempt to conquer Gensokyo in Touhou 17.5: Sunken Fossil World, and Touhou 19: Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghosts. In general, the series starts gaining a larger number of pure evil characters from hereon out.
Though, it's not TOO dark. Keep in mind everyone's still using spellcard rules, so nobody's dying.
Oh, and the Animal Realm in Touhou has a rather interesting inspiration. This fanmade documentary/review explains it better than I can. It has to do with the second season of hit anime Kemono Friends. You don't need to watch the whole thing, just like, the first 11 minutes, and then 1h52m30s in.
https://youtu.be/OJ6nP9ExLeY
Basically, the bizarre juxtaposition of cute animal girls with the harsh reality of the modern corporate machine was ZUN's main artistic inspiration for this game.
A little bit more on the beast spirits:
ZUN thought about giving them each individual names, but ultimately decided against it. Despite this, they actually have more lines of dialogue than many named characters!
Overall, despite the cruelty of their masters, none of them appear to be especially bad people, and genuinely thank the protagonist for helping them.
They're actually not just dead: they're extinct! Each of them is an animal that has gone extinct or endangered due to human interference: a Honshu Wolf, a Japanese River Otter, and a Japanese Golden Eagle.
Though, the Golden Eagle is still thriving elsewhere, and is only endangered in Japan, the other two are definitely extinct. In Gensokyo, however, all species are alive and thriving.
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Yep I was right. Though I expect they won't be changed much since their personalities are probably still "I'm evil and I don't care"
I think I'm gonna wait until Touhou 19 comes out to do any more of these because you just KNOW at least one WBaWC character is gonna be in it and I don't want anything to be outdated.
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I think I'm gonna wait until Touhou 19 comes out to do any more of these because you just KNOW at least one WBaWC character is gonna be in it and I don't want anything to be outdated.
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Sumireko Usami, Part 2:
In Touhou 15.5: Antinomy of Common Flowers, Sumireko tries to go to Gensokyo in her dreams as usual, but finds herself trapped in the Dream World! Doremy Sweet appears, and reveals she trapped Sumireko in the Dream World for her own safety: as the nature of Perfect Possession involves someone's Dream World counterpart being pushed out into the real world, it might cause issues with Sumireko's unique condition. As it turns out, this condition has kept the Dream World Sumireko trapped and incapable of doing anything, which has resulted in her developing quite the grudge against her real self.
Suddenly, Yukari Yakumo gaps Sumireko out of the Dream World and sends her to the Outside World, where Sumireko finds her Dream World counterpart is there too... along with another Sumireko! The three duke it out, each insisting she's the real Sumireko and the others are doppelgangers. The outcome is that one of the Sumirekos is left standing, and Sumireko wakes up. Initially, she's relieved it was all just a dream... only for Doremy to be right by her bed. She reveals that she couldn't tell which of the Sumirekos had won that fight, so Dream World Sumireko could be in control of Sumireko's body right now. Doremy doesn't care, though, thinking it doesn't matter either way.
This ambiguity is resolved in the next game, Sumireko's very own starring role, Touhou 16.5: Violet Detector (violetdetector is apparently her Instagram username). In it, she seems to have become trapped in the Dream World yet again, facing the Dream World counterparts of the cast of Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom and of Hidden Star in Four Seasons. She is able to wake up from this, but for around three weeks she's essentially locked out of Gensokyo. She decides to take advantage of this by taking photos of all their attacks and posting them to social media. Eventually, Okina Matara appears before her and gives her superpowers, admiring her spunk and tenacity. To make things more interesting, Doremy Sweet appears to be attacking her at every turn.
Suddenly, at the very end, the truth is revealed: you were playing as the Dream World Sumireko the whole time, and were keeping Real Sumireko in the Dream World so the Dream World Sumireko could live her life! Doremy was there to try to stop you, and she sends the real Sumireko your way to solve the issue... or rather, her way, as player control abruptly shifts to the Real Sumireko. Another fight between Sumirekos breaks out, and the real one emerges victorious. She wakes up with no memory of the events (like with most dreams), but has a large number of nifty pictures on her phone for some reason.
The explanation for Sumireko's coming to Gensokyo is finally revealed! She was using an urban legend: that of the doppelganger: the idea that someone who looks and acts identically to you lives somewhere in the world, and if you both met, one or both of you would die. This means that in the world of Touhou Project, there are THREE Sumireko Usamis!
Sumireko thinks this makes her a youkai, which is the perfect explanation for her being better than everyone else: she's a superior being to those puny humans! This is still up for debate, however. This does seem to mean that she's never in any danger in Gensokyo. If she died, she'd just abruptly wake up as if it were a mere nightmare. It also means that if the Urban Legend incident ever was resolved, she'd never be able to come to Gensokyo again. Thank Sagume the Urban Legend incident is the new status quo.
Sumireko's story arc seems to have finished with the book The Grimoire of Usami. She inspires Reimu to create a fireworks festival to get donations, having grown tired of the ones she's seen in the Outside World. Reimu invites a few of her friends and Sumireko along as judges for a contest: whoever has the most beautiful spellcards wins!
Of course, things quickly go out of hand, as Shinmyoumaru Sukuna hijacks the fireworks festival with the help of Seija Kijin and Okina Matara, and invites all the most bloodthirsty youkai in Gensokyo to go absolutely nuts without regard for the safety of the audience. Reimu, Marisa, Sanae, Sakuya, and Youmu all have to band together to keep the human audience from getting hurt. Sumireko is one of the many who think it’s all part of the show, especially with how strangely chummy Seija Kijin is getting with her. What does that mean?
Sumireko is amazed at everyone's beautiful, intricate spellcards, and at how passionately they enjoyed themselves. She decides in the end that she doesn’t care if anyone in the Outside World believes in her stories or photos. Gensokyo is real to her, and that's all that matters.
Oh, and she finally interacts with Sanae Kochiya, the other human girl from the Outside World! Their interaction mostly boils down to bonding over their hatred of the public school system in the Outside World.
Sumireko still reappears from time to time, mostly in Curiosities of Lotus Asia, mainly to elaborate more on the political themes of the most recently released game.
Oh, and a bit more characterization: Yukari Yakumo scares Sumireko enough that she refers to her politely as Miss Yakumo. Keep in mind Sumireko refers to fellow sage Kasen as "Kassie".
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Fun fact: I actually wrote the Moriya Shrine profiles first, before anyone else. You might spot a few oddities because of that.
Basically, I just really like them, and felt that they, Kanako especially, were good indicators of what I love about the series.
You might ask "wait I thought Utsuho was your favorite character, why not her?" Well, I felt her backstory required knowing who the Moriya Shrine were to really comprehend.
Other out-of-order profiles include:
I initially skipped over Wriggle and Mystia when texting these to my dad.
Just yesterday I posted Lily White among the HSiFS cast rather than PCB
I wrote the DiPP essay in-between UFO and TD, and then forgot to post it here until like before LoLK!
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Okina Matara:
The third and most recent of Gensokyo's founders to appear, is Okina Matara, the Secret God. She is a god of many things. A mother god. A god of the disabled and ostracized. A god of Noh theater. A god of silkworm breeding and insect metamorphosis. Perhaps most notably, she's the god of backdoors.
Okina Matara is a god of immense power, on par with if not more powerful than Yukari Yakumo. She boasts that she could snap Gensokyo out of existence and then back into existence without breaking a sweat. Essentially, the only reason why anyone in this series is still alive is because Okina Matara sees no reason to kill them.
While ZUN has implied Hecatia is more powerful, there hasn't been any real comparison between them to show this. Especially since Hecatia doesn't really throw her weight around the way Okina does.
As far as her actual powers, they primarily revolve around creating backdoors on anything. In this way she is able to open portals to and from anywhere in almost the same way Yukari can. Her backdoors can also be opened up on anyone's behind and transfer immense power to them.
Okina Matara first appeared as the main villain and final boss of Touhou 16: Hidden Star in Four Seasons. She used her backdoors, along with her backup dancers, to draw out the latent powers of people in Gensokyo. Allegedly, her plan was to find powerful people to hire as replacement minions for Satono and Mai. However, her real plan was simply to announce herself to Gensokyo, and remind everyone of her and her vast powers. Her reactions to the player character depend on who you're playing as.
• She rejects Reimu on the spot, saying that she's already Yukari's servant, she doesn't want the Hakurei Shrine maiden.
• She also rejects Aya on the spot, as warding off Tengu is another of her many domains.
• She doesn't even consider Cirno as a potential servant and reprimands her dancers for letting some stupid fairy inside.
• With Marisa, however, she actually asks the ordinary witch to become her new servant. However, Marisa refuses, not wanting to replace her life of freedom with being a mindless pawn.
During the initial fight, she turned the protagonist's season energy against them, since the power came from her putting a door on their back in the first place. She was seemingly invincible.
However, the protagonists challenged her to a rematch for the Extra Stage, where the protagonist used the power of Doryu (the Chinese concept of the border between seasons) to defeat her properly. It was here she revealed her true form... which pretty much looks the same as normal except she's not on her chair.
Since then, she's manipulated events in Gensokyo from the shadows. While she doesn't seem to outright want to replace her backup dancers, she has a pattern of finding one person in Gensokyo she really likes, and slowly manipulating events to their advantage, seemingly to gain their support. Maybe she really does want new minions?
She quickly appeared again in Touhou 16.5: Violet Detector. Or rather, her Dream World counterpart did. Here, she gave a power boost to the Dream World Sumireko because she admired her determination to escape the Dream World into reality.
She appeared in The Grimoire of Usami, showing up alongside Shinmyoumaru and Seija when they hijacked Reimu's fireworks festival. She was quickly revealed to have acted as an anonymous benefactor for Shinmyoumaru, subtly leading her to people who would agree with her view that spellcards are a weapon first and foremost. It seems that she was trying to play "catch up" on all the powerful women she missed out on during her long absence. She especially loved Junko's appearance, and was impressed when it turned out Junko's murder-frenzy was just an act.
She then appeared as the main antagonist of the finale of the manga Visionary Fairies in Shrine. She used her vast powers to turn almost all the fairies of Gensokyo into red crystals called Soul Cherries, which in turn reduced Gensokyo to a barren wasteland. The remaining fairies (which of course consisted of all the named ones) figured out she was behind it and challenged her to a fight to save their friends.
It was a one-sided slaughter and Okina wasn't even trying very hard. Okina grabbed Clownpiece by the neck, and told her to tell her superiors about the power of Gensokyo's Hidden God. She then immediately changed mood and turned all the fairies back to normal! It turns out the entire reason for her plan, was that she had heard that the forces of Hell were intruding into Gensokyo, and she wanted to test if they were actually planning on taking over. Hecatia actually told Clownpiece to collect all the Soul Cherries and take them to Hell, but Clownpiece defied her master/mother figure, and Okina figured they really weren't a threat.
Her most recent appearance was in Touhou 17.5: Sunken Fossil World. Here, she lured people down into the deepest levels of Old Hell in order to fight the main villain, but her real target was Flandre Scarlet, returning in a game for the first time in 20 years! More about that later.
ZUN has said Okina Matara is loosely based on him wanting to show that disabled people weren't useless or weak, but were actually stronger for it. I say loosely, because Okina isn't actually handicapped, as ZUN was scared of portraying her offensively or making her disability an informed attribute. She is often seen in a wheelchair, but apparently this is not because she's disabled, but because she represents disability as a concept. She's perfectly capable of walking around if she wants. Personally I think it'd be easier if she just was wheelchair bound rather than that roundabout symbolism explanation but that's me.
Okina Matara is based on two different dieties: Matara-jin, and Okuninushi. If she really is both gods, then she's connected even further to the people of Gensokyo than you could ever know. She saved the White Hare of Inaba (Tewi Inaba) from being skinned alive. She adopted the human guise of Hata no Kawakatsu and knew Shoutoku Taishi (Miko) personally. Shoutoku comissioned her to make 66 masks, effectively making her the mother of Kokoro. She was even the father of Takeminakata, and thus should technically be Kanako's mom or mother-in-law! And yes, you heard me right, he was a dude in the original mythology.
Okina has a fairly... incomprehensible morality. Generally she acts callous towards Gensokyo, perfectly content with turning it into a barren wasteland to get what she wants. Yet, she also has a soft side. She allowed dozens of servant youkai to "work from home" in her pocket dimension for seemingly no reason other than the goodness of her heart. In general, whenever she appears, it's because she's found someone neglected by Gensokyo (not necessarily the fans), she becomes obsessed with them, and manipulates events to show the true potential of this person, often directly assisting them.
Furthermore, while she is god of the ostracized, she respects anyone who shows impressive power and doesn't hold back. In general, ZUN describes her as "one of the old gods", a woman beyond human concepts of morality. But with absolute certainty, she is an immense boon as an ally and a nightmare as an enemy.
Her relationship with the other Sages is bittersweet. She seems to enjoy Kasen's company, but Kasen hates her as much as Yukari. Her interactions with Yukari in the Grimoire of Usami show them as something of... frenemies. Yukari insults her and calls her a casual fan of Gensokyo, but they seem to respect each other's power.
Her relationship with her backup dancers is a bit mixed as well. She considers them incompetent and sometimes wants to replace them, but it seems that bumbling is also just endearing enough to her that she keeps them around.
Each of those flames on her represents a different season: orange for autumn, blue for winter, pink for spring, and green for summer.
In her first fight, she shoots kunai according to this four-color pattern. In her second fight, however, she fires kunai in reverse-rainbow order, beginning with purple and moving back to red and then magenta.
In her first fight, her spellcards are based on the four seasons, with the last attack being the season of the player character. In this last attack, she sucks out the seasonal powers of the player character, weakening them. She also takes you out of the World of Backdoors and all around Gensokyo!
In her Extra boss fight, her spellcards are based on all her various domains, like silkworm breeding, burning rituals to scare away Tengu, or theatre performers. They mostly emphasize her nature as god of backdoors, with many of them involving her attacking you from behind. She also has an attack where laser beams fire at you from the shape of the Big Dipper. Her final attack has her shooting a bunch of magenta laser rings at you while she moves around in circles, called "Anarchy Bullet Hell". This is a pun on "anaaki", meaning "holed" in Japanese.
In Sunken Fossil World, her attacks create portals to throw all kinds of liquid at you: water, petroleum, and blood.
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The Backup Dancers:
Art by GiantCaveMushroom
These two girls are the attendants of the hidden god, Okina Matara. While they used to be completely human, after falling under Okina's influence, they're currently on a strange border between human and youkai. Their official profile labels them as "Human?" Yukari Yakumo offered to "fix" that (read: turn them into youkai fully), but Okina seems to prefer them this way.
Together they act as Okina's "arms and legs" and through them she influences events in Gensokyo. During Hidden Star in Four Seasons, she had them empower all the fairies in Gensokyo, making them go berserk.
How did they empower the fairies? By dancing behind them! That's their special ability. They're actually pretty bad at dancing, but the effect works.
Satono Nishida is the magenta one. Mai Teireida is the green one.
Mai Teireida acts scatterbrained and hasty, while Satono Nishida is more discrete, but also more arrogant. But regardless, Okina Matara has complete control of both their minds and they obey her without question.
Mai Teireida appears as a miniboss in Stage 4, and directly empowers Narumi by dancing behind her. Satono appears as the miniboss of Stage 5, and both backup dancers appear together as the boss of Stage 5, and the miniboss of the Extra stage.
They each shoot ofuda that's colored the same as the opposite dancer (green for Nishida, magenta for Teireida), and laser beams that match their own color. Nishida has curving magenta lasers, Teireida has straight green lasers.
The two of them are directly based on Nishida and Teireida, the attendants of Matara-jin.
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Narumi Yatadera:
Art by GiantCaveMushroom
Narumi Yatadera is a living Jizo statue, brought to life during the Four seasons incident. She lives in the Forest of Magic, which is in an endless winter during the incident.
She first appeared as the Stage 4 boss of Hidden Star in Four Seasons. She was encountered last, after the protagonist had spent the game aimlessly wandering through Gensokyo. She felt an immense power coming from behind her, and she wanted to test it out. After the battle, the protagonist discovered a DOOR popping out of her back, with immense power flowing out. It led to a strange dimension where the culprit behind the incident resided.
Afterwards, she became friends with her sorta-neighbor Marisa Kirisame.
Narumi is a magician, with the special ability to imbue life into inanimate objects. This includes her danmaku.
She shamelessly steals Utsuho's miniature suns for her "bullet golem" attacks. Even without the miniature suns, she often uses crimson fireballs, which is nice since you fight her in wintertime. She refers to her living bullet golems as her pets. Granted, there are worse options for pets out there. You don't need to litterbox train or clean up after laser beams, I suppose.
Also she sometimes leaps into the air and attemps to crush you, which is probably a reference to Tanuki Mario from Super Mario Bros 3 having the ability to turn into a Jizo statue and do the same thing.
Jizo is a famous Buddhist monk often worshipped as the guardian of children, alive or dead. Statues of him are placed all around Japan, especially along roads or near cemeteries. It's said that he refused to fully attain enlightenment as long as people remained in Samsara, and he promised to leave Hell empty by the time he reached Nirvana.
Jizo statues are traditionally adorned with straw hats, based on a story where a man in winter time gives six straw hats to statues Jizo statues, including giving up his own, and is rewarded by the statues for his generosity on New Year's Day.
Narumi was originally going to be named Naruko, but ZUN changed it because he felt the series already had too many characters with "-ko" at the end of their names.
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