/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Playing music with the Tsukumogamis.

Even if she loses out on the drums in her theme, she actually has an extremely solid rhythm going on with her danmaku. Almost all her patterns are about seeing and switching between lanes: Her first and seventh cards have you sneak into alternating safespots of every drum wave, her second card has lines of triangle bullets that you need to dodge when they first come out and close into when they slow down, for her third you need to sneak in and out of the drum waves as they come, fifth and eighth require you to choose a lane (as defined by the lasers) unoccupied by the yellow bullets, her survival has you switch your attention between four (and later five) sets of notes and her final has you go through the triangle pellets in time to avoid the thunderbolts from trapping you into them. I also like how there's nothing about her cards that's frantic, it almost feels turn-based at times. You go through one lane of bullets, wait for the next, go through that and repeat. Once you start feeling that tempo, you can really get into the mood during her cards, and it really gets across that "danmaku is for play" feeling.

Screw fast bullets and dense clipdeath walls, Raiko gets what danmaku is supposed to be. She's an absolute pleasure to fight, has one of the most coherent danmaku themes alongside Eirin's hidden bullets and Ran's movement restriction (but unlike Raiko, both of these are absolute balls to face). Tsukumogami are the best youkai.