Touhou Questions that don't Deserve their own Thread

[Anonymous No.]

There seems to be a recent influx of Touhou questions being made as threads and flooding the catalog. Maybe it's a summer thing, or people just returning to Touhou now that they have some free time. Let's try to condense these some.

If you have a fairly straightforward question about Touhou, be it lore or otherwise, please drop it here. Spare a thread or two.

[Anonymous No.]

I'll start with one - are youkai supposed to stay out of the human village or not? Some say that it's completely forbidden for youkai. Some youkai enter it while disguised. And some just enter it openly. What's going on?

[Anonymous No.]

Is it allowed to use the terrain (such as trees) to protect yourself from the Spellcard of others? To play Danmaku do you have to be capable of flight? Do we know how they make cartain spellcards non-lethal?

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996179
>are youkai supposed to stay out of the human village or not?
The policy seems to be that Youkai can enter the village as long as they don't cause trouble and don't blatantly look like Youkai. Yuuka for example regularly visits the village with no disguise but Suika has to hide her horns.

[Anonymous No.]

To what degree can youkai control their appearance?

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996179
PMiSS lore was that everyone could enter it
current lore is that youkai aren't allowed to enter it, but plenty do by putting in the bare minimum effort into disguising themselves.
if we go by ZUN roleplaying as Reimu in the TTRPG sample session, then he (and Reimu) think that fairies shouldn't be allowed either, but in AFiEU we had fairies and hecatia enter the village openly, and in SoPM we had people like orin being brought into the myouren temple cemetery to figure out why yoshika was there and the villagers seemed fine with that.
I think basically if you're one of the overwhelmingly powerful lot like Hecatia or Yuuka, or you're with the overwhelmingly powerful lot, you can get away with just brazenly walking in because no one can really stop you, but otherwise you have to at least disguise yourself.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996196
Yuuka is one of the examples that made me wonder. We know she's highly feared, yet she openly enters the village sometimes. I believe Ran too but I don't remember the source for that. And then in contrast you also have Kogasa who causes mischief in the village and is understood by everyone to be a youkai. When neither of those two use disguises, why do youkai like Sekibanki do so?

[Anonymous No.]

How much does Reimu charge for paizuri? Asking for a friend.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996226
Reimu has never engaged in such actions. At no place in canon do we see Reimu engage in anything that could be sexually explicit, with the only even close to romance being when she jokingly flirts with a girl in Touhou 2, and when she ponders if a god is handsome in Silent Sinner. However, nothing which could be considered in the realm of sexual. In canon, Reimu is portrayed as a young teenager, so such actions would be frowned upon, even in Gensokyo. Zun also has shown no interest in writing or depicting such actions.

I hope this helps!

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996165
How does Renko's ability of determining her location by looking at the moon work? Does she know her coordonates, does she see them on a map or does she just know the location she is in?

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996205
>if we go by ZUN roleplaying as Reimu in the TTRPG sample session,
That was translated? Got a link? I completely forgot about it until now.

[Anonymous No.]

What is the exact Japanese term for "nothing" in Chimata's "let all return to nothing"?

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996356
無
ZUN uses かみ in the furigana for it though because she's not just saying return to nothing but return to god

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996382
That's the kanji for Mu, the Buddhist concept, isn't it? Interesting. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996245
We do however know that Reimu (and Marisa as well) are rather innocent when it comes to romance since a single meeting where a man gave a woman a love letter was enough to get them flustered

[Anonymous No.]

is it worth getting into touhou? where should I start? how long did it take you to beat the games?

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996503
No, never, and only losers play the actual games.
If this isn't a bit then just start from 8, see if you like it after a run, and then skip around from my personal recommendations of 5, 7, 10 or even 12.3.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996503
>is it worth getting into touhou?
In my opinion yes it is.
>where should I start?
Touhou 6 then follow the release timeline https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Release_Timeline
>how long did it take you to beat the games?
Depends on your experience and skill with these types of games. If you suck at them then you can simple read the Story over at the Wiki
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Embodiment_of_Scarlet_Devil/Story

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996181
>Is it allowed to use the terrain (such as trees) to protect yourself from the Spellcard of others?
Yes i guess, I mean in UM you can spawn tenshi bullets to block bullets. I think a danmaku battle always takes place in an open area. So, if you're using trees, rocks, etc, you're probably already losing and your opponent will likely lose interest to continue if you resort to guerrilla tactics like that

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996654
>tenshi bullets
rock*

[Anonymous No.]

What even is the Dragon God? Is he some metaphysical deity that's a functional cornerstone of the concept of Gensokyo, or is he just some all powerful God that's fucked off somewhere? There's only maybe a combined total of 20 pages talking about it but it's played up by both humans and Youkai as a big thing only to basically never come back outside of being a weather forecaster.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996503
yup, totally. you're on /jp/, you might as well go down the rabbit hole. as far as 'getting into' touhou or whatever - most people hear about it through the music or shitposting, or fanfiction/doujins maybe, so go on the wiki's release timeline if you're clueless ig

you can jump into pretty much any one of the games, they're all varying levels of very hard so be warned (i first tried IN because of the music and got my ass handed to me). if you've never played a bullet hell it'll take quite awhile. they're arcade style shmups so the story is more of an afterthought unless you're knee deep into lore. but to answer your question IN took me a week or two to beat and SA took around a month

anyway the first 5 games require a pc98 emulator to set up, and touhou 1 is a breakout game instead of a shmup, so most people skip them. i liked mystic square though, it was pretty fun

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996686
An even more secret god than the supposed absolute ultimate secret one.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996686
He's literally just Watatsumi. Read up on Shinto Myth, especially about Ryugujo, to get a better idea.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996503
>is it worth getting into touhou?
Yes.
>where should I start?
The easiest and most approachable games are 4 and 8 by far. 4 requires a PC-98 emulator, and some people use that as an excuse to argue why you should skip the first five games. In reality setting up an emulator isn't hard at all.
>how long did it take you to beat the games?
Don't remember, it's been so many years. I do remember watching a replay of PCB extra stage and thinking I could never do that, then clearing it NM about a month later.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996503
>how long did it take you to beat..?
My first 1cc was around two and a half months, but my scorefile playtime was only around 8 hours

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996245
>In canon, Reimu is portrayed as a young teenager
I always figured that was the case for the PC98 canon, but is that wholly correct for everything EoSD and up? Correct me if I'm wrong but I always figured Reimu was more of the slightly-put-upon-yet-capable young adult type, perhaps around 20 "years" or so if we are to assume she is on the younger side of things (years in quotes cause Gensokyan-aging-time-dilation shenanigans).
Even without anything sexual implied, just based upon her as an individual and what she gets up to

[Anonymous No.]

"Awakened powers" for normal people. Other than Kosuzu, we haven't seen any other normal humans with a supernatural ability, but when she was describing it to Reimu early in FS their not too surprised reaction and dialogue implied it is not all that rare. Even if the extent of these abilities are minimal or harmless, how common would they be and how would it affect the village?

>>46996179
It depends on source material. Honestly I don't buy into the "masquerade" idea that some have. FS shows Mamizou breaking disguise into her usual Tanuki self in the middle of the street and in front of Reimu because she didn't recognize her in disguise. As Reimu's not losing her shit over youkai in the village, I'm of the assumption that they're allowed if they put in the bare minimum to fit in and don't make too much trouble, or if they are just in a completely different league that they don't need to, such as Hecatia and Ran since they are both in the village and obviously not human. Take Hecatia's case, are you going to tell her—the goddess of several hells—that she's breaking the rules?
It's a "secret" in the sense that you don't acknowledge it, everyone knows and since the village is a safe neutral area they can afford to play around like that. If you don't cause a fuss or hurt anyone the powers that be don't care. If they're not doing anything wrong, making a scene about it is more trouble than it's worth.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996296
Doesn't her power work in the Netherworld? This would imply the last option is true, since I don't know how the Netherworld could have coordinates that she would understand.

[Anonymous No.]

what stances would the various touhous take on the israeli-palestinian conflict?

[Anonymous No.]

>>46997479
every single one would say "israel? It doesn't sound very real."

[Anonymous No.]

>>46997479
Yukari is 100% pro-israel.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46997479
Listen, buddy. I think you may be more comfortable on that board over there
>>>/v/

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996296
The latter, she's not a cyborg. You draw your sense of location from your past memories and experiences, Renko just has an extra source to draw from if that makes sense.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996686
Dragon Palace in Heaven and Moon are the same. It's funny that celestials and lunarians don't even recognize each other's existence.

[Anonymous No.]

With which of the printed works should I start?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47000723
Read in chronological order. Start with PMiSS.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996226
>How much does Reimu charge for paizuri
She cant paizuri

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996879
Since this is an episodic series, there is no pass of time

[Anonymous No.]

>>47000737
Sangetsusei

[Anonymous No.]

>>47000844
Ah, right, and BAiJR was also released earlier.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46997275
I would imagine a higher percentage of humans in 2hu would have "Awakened powers" compared to the "real world". Reimu's is perhaps the most obvious..........

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996348
Narratograph ttrpg, fully translated aside from some of the art pages. Contains a replay where zun plays reimu, and he wrote flavor texts, one liners, and descriptions for characters and places.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996348
>>47000958
Worth noting that it, as usual for stuff from ZUN, has plenty of weird decisions and some outright retcons. Calling Myouren Temple a Zen Temple when all the info we have indicates it would be Shingon, for example, and how Alice's brand-new one-liners just make her sound like a schizo.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996727
Yeah that'd explain it then.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46997275
>>47000930
In fairness, Renko and Maribel outright seem to have their powers be things you might classify as "awakened." We also know from the latter's case that it's possible for such Abilities to grow with time.

[Anonymous No.]

How the fuck did Sakuya gain such specific powers?
>inb4 she was born with them
that would mean she is a god of time

[Anonymous No.]

>>47002816
she's Eirin's kid or a vampire hunter with wacky vampire hunter powers

or... yknow ZUN got drunk one day and wanted to throw in another jojo reference

[Anonymous No.]

>>47002816
>that would mean she is a god of time
There's always the theory that she's a Lunarian, which Bougetsushou could arguably support. Most of the Amatsukami (Heavenly Kami) are supposed to be there, as the Lunar Capital is all-but-stated to be Takamagahara. Moreover, considering the Moon Rabbit/Earth Rabbit dynamic and the fact that CiLR confirms Lunarians have finite lifespans if exposed to Kegare, the possibility of her having something to do with Konohanasakuyahime is a real possibility.

The meta answer, though, is that ZUN planned on elaborating on her backstory and forgot.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47002816
Same reason any other non-god 'hu got their powers. ZUN roughly thought "hey that'd be cool" and gave it to them.

[Anonymous No.]

Which characters have the biggest breasts in canon?

[Anonymous No.]

>47001807
Oh no, the mentally ill has escaped his thread.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47003013
Miyoi.

[Anonymous No.]

>47003221
>Anon still thinks ZUN is consistent
It's amazing how what started as a touhou containment board has devolved into a cesspit of tertiaries.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47003536
Who quote?

[Anonymous No.]

If a hourai immortal has a kid will that kid be immortal too?

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996612
>spoiler
based sokuroller

[Anonymous No.]

>>47003755
I don't even think they'd be fertile, since the whole deal with the Hourai Elixir is that it effectively removes you entirely from the cycle of life and death by truly separating the soul from the body and making it so nothing done to the latter can affect the former in any way. I know Taoism beliefs involve the Yin and Yang which is a mixing of the two forces of life energy created by the soul, but if nothing done to the physical body can affect the soul in any way then there'd be no way for your Yang to touch her Yin in the first place. Alternatively, think of it like a phylactery only instead it's stored in the Nth dimension, if the whole steel cage ovaries explanation doesn't work for you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47003755
Depends. Vestiges of the elixir should still exist in the liver, and the body can be altered to a certain degree from what we see with Mokou. If you want a serious answer you'd probably want to generally study what can affect children in the womb in general.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47003829
Replying to myself to say I totally forgot about the whole three sips rule, so I can now say definitively even if conception happened you would have a kid, as the process of going from a sperm cell to zygote to fetus to baby is also aging. So my thoughts are:
A. can't have kids in the first place
B. you'd knock her up and she'd be left with a permanently fertilized egg, a fetus, or give birth to a Forever Baby at best, because we don't know where the spiritual concept of life truly starts in 2hu but it is definitely after birth at the absolute latest
C. it just would be a normal kid, no immortality.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47003955
>we don't know where the spiritual concept of life truly starts in 2hu but it is definitely after birth at the absolute latest
Eika's existence would cast doubt on that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47003969
You're completely correct, I forgot about her entirely. So the Forever Baby is out of the question and it's just the first two then.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47003984
I think it's just a question of how much of a spiritual component is necessary to conceive in Touhou, which probably is a non-zero amount considering we have half-youkai like Rinnosuke. Physically if you get to that point it's also possible that the immutable nature of a Hourai Immortal might leave your child physically normal, but somehow spiritually deformed or otherwise gimped.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004002
Well we know the Hourai also has a physical component to it as well like >>47003912 said, which kinda makes things messy given the whole "spirit is immune to changes in the body and will revert back to its default state eventually" thing. It's explicitly supposed to be disconnected and yet it's also explicitly connected specifically with the liver, which is the go-to organ for gaining powers of supernatural beings for some reason. I wonder if ZUN's ever actually answered this question during a con or interview since I don't think we'd ever get a good answer even if we all wracked our brains about it, and I don't think the answer he could give would be so bad people would reject it like Altria.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004057
>I don't think the answer he could give would be so bad people would reject it like Altria.
I haven't heard of this, please elaborate.

[Anonymous No.]

1. What does it feel like to be hit by danmaku?
2. Would Rumia eat a child from the outside world if they fell into Gensokyo?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47000723
I think Curiosities of Lotus Asia is one of the most fun print works, the first 20 something chapters only really require vague knowledge of what a 2hu is, but when sumireko is introduced you should probably read some of the manga, the Aya works and the Akyuu works, of the manga, sangetsusei are the most fun and easiest to get into

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004074
Oh god, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this. So you know how in Fate/Stay Night, Saber's True Name is King Arthur right? I hesitate to even put it into a spoiler since it's blisteringly obvious once you hear certain terms but I also can't remember where exactly they first come up so whatever. Anyways, this character is a female with the reading of her version of Arthur's name being アルトリア. Ah-ru-to-ri-ah, a feminine-sounding variant of the name Arthur, which is just アーサー, Ah-saa in katakana. But katakana being the way it is means that you can read a lot of katakana as many different things, especially when a letter starting with R is involved, as it could be R followed by a letter, just by itself, or the same two things with an L instead of an R. See Flandre, Frandoll, Frandoor, and many other schizophrenic readings of the word フランドール.

But instead Nasu, in all his genius, decided on Altria being the official name. Which is also technically a valid reading of the name, but it's so disconnected from the name Arthur that people basically refuse his reasoning and refer to her exclusively as Artoria or some variant.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996245
Nice answer Yukari, but I don't trust you. I'll ask Reimu herself.
>>47000808
Yes she can.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004194
It hurts according to the type of danmaku used and the power behind it, for example, Cirno uses actual ice for her danmaku, so getting hit by her danmaku would hurt about as much as getting hit with a block of ice, in The Grimoire of Usami, the characters are shown to be capable of controlling their danmaku to be not-harmful, and capable of making it powerful enough to be potentially lethal
Maybe, if they fell literally in front of her while she was floating around, in BAiJR, she mentions that humans don't let themselves be attacked by her, Aya tells her that if she really wants to attack humans she should at least ambush people by the side of the road, but Rumia considers it a pain, so she seems to be kinda lazy and presumably hasn't attacked humans in a while

[Anonymous No.]

>>47000818
Has ZUN ever said anything about why none of the characters age up across the games and print works?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004314
Sazae-san time. Or Simpsons time if that term means nothing to you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004314
Yes, he has used a japanese term for it which I dont remember.
Basically, its the same reason as the simpsons.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47003755
The whole hourai elixir but is essentially peak end goal of eastern (and on a practical level western) alchemy. Reaching immortality through the use of a tangible fantasy that the maker brought into reality.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004262
Oh, I thought that might've been what you were referring to, but I wasn't certain. Regrettably, if the recent interview is any indication, I wouldn't actually be surprised if he pulled off something of that caliber.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47003755
I mean I don't actually see how having the hourai Elixir would actually stop you from having a kid, the baby isn't part of the hourai immortal and would only be connected to keep sustenance and basic functions until shit grows in on it's own. Getting the baby out would actually be a bitch though, it would be some straight up alien chestburster shit. If you want to argue the getting a spiritual part from the Elixir person it's probably similar to qhen say mokou or kaguya fight and lose limbs, shit eventually grows back like a starfish.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004551
Adding to this, all things considered I imagine some of the effects of the Elixir would cross over, but less then the full amount, so the baby would have crazy regen powers, but I don't necessarily think immortality. A long life, sure, but not the true immortality drinking the Elixir does.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004551
>If you want to argue the getting a spiritual part from the Elixir person it's probably similar to qhen say mokou or kaguya fight and lose limbs, shit eventually grows back like a starfish.
No, that's specifically the physical body. We can see that especially with Mokou in the fighting games, where destroying her own body is part of her own attacks. The soul is rendered basically immutable by the third sip of the Hourai Elixir. It's read only and can't be altered in any way, for better or for worse, otherwise, for starters, the Hourai Immortals would have kishin after them much like hermits for living too long. The other issue as was brought up earlier is how much of the physical half of conception would count as "aging" for the purposes of the Elixir's eternal youth effect, though once the embryo has its own soul, that shouldn't be as much of an issue.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996165
Was Miko really a trans woman?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004714
That's just an annoying Twitter meme. Miko in Touhou is like Saber in Fate, she was always a woman. Same with Yoshika, Suika, etc.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004714
The West likes to lump anything that isn't strict gender roles into trans. Tomboy? Trans. Crossdresser? Trans. Otokonoko? Trans. Gender expression in Japan has historically and to this day been more varied, so keep that in mind.

Anyways, with regards to Miko, it's not explained why the Prince is a girl now and was depicted as a boy in the past. You are free to interpret this in many ways, whether Miko became a girl during her ascension (by choice or Seiga shenanigans), or was always a girl and history just chose to change it for some reason or another (maybe sexism, maybe the story changing over time, who knows), there's no canon explanation. If you go for the genderswap interpretation though, it's far more likely to be a Ranma kind of thing as opposed to gender dysphoria. Genderbender stuff is a common trope in Japanese media. Nothing in Touhou suggests that Miko suffered through gender dysphoria and changed herself due to it.

In short, you can interpret Miko in many ways (one of the fun parts of Touhou). However, saying that Miko is canonically trans is an untrue statement. Lastly, keep in mind that Miko is not the only Touhou character who is based off of a male historical or mythological figure.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004741
>>47004762
Well, thanks for the explanations

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004762
My point of view is Miko pretended to be a man during her life and was never found out publicly, thus history remembers her as such. History is rarely set in stone and the finer details may be not as true as we believe. We know how Miko is and if pretending to be a dude gives her more political power then it's a no brainer.

[Anonymous No.]

In regards of actually playing the games for the story. I know that really going and playing everything is always the best option, but if you get to roadblock with any particular difficult thing would it be better to just watch the rest you couldn't do on YT or is that not encouraged by the community? How does it usually work around here?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004851
If you're just interested in the story and genuinely are struggling to get the 1CCs needed to see the endings, I don't think anyone but the most elitist fans would give you shit for watching the endings on YouTube. Most people only get called Secondaries or Tertiaries in a derogatory way because they don't pay close attention to the lore and spout nonsense that's usually more based off of fanon.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004851
So long as you actually play the games and your interest is in them to at least some degree, you can look up the endings and dialogue all you want. Nowadays I wouldn't even fault you for misremembering something since it's happened to me more than a few times over the past decade or so.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004874
>>47004884
Thanks for the short clarification.
Yeah I am actually interested in the game's and want to try to learn them to get to 1cc eventually, it's just that I don't want to get stuck on a single game too long and miss out on knowing the rest of the series. I have already been doing that for the PC98 games but I thought I would ask going into the windows ones since they are the main content.

Also while I'm at it, how should I go about side/extra content like manga and all that stuff?
And are there any good places/videos to learn/deepen myself on the lore and characters after playing or are the games enough?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005147
>Thanks for the short clarification.
You're very welcome.
>it's just that I don't want to get stuck on a single game too long and miss out on knowing the rest of the series.
Understandable. I personally refuse to play the mainline, non-phantasmagorias out of order if I haven't 1CC'd the previous ones, but I don't expect others to hold themselves to such a restriction.
>Also while I'm at it, how should I go about side/extra content like manga and all that stuff?
Release order is the simple answer. Generally, you probably want to go through those in parallel to the games, since a number of manga chapters reference events in the games, and the decimal point games are relevant for that too, like Fairy Wars being referenced in Sangetsusei. Moreover, there are some really obscure ones that you might not even hear about unless you look really deeply into all the works that are classified as canonical. A Beautiful Flower Blooming Violet Every Sixty Years, for example.
>And are there any good places/videos to learn/deepen myself on the lore and characters after playing or are the games enough?
Always remember to read the omake.txt for each game. Granted, those sometimes contradict things in-game or get contradicted later (IN and WBaWC are the worst cases of this) but they're important for fully understanding the lore.

The final, biggest piece of advice I'd give for getting into the lore is to treat it like a mystery to be solved, but also to understand even by IN ZUN admitted to forgetting details. The most accurate canon understanding is only going to come from looking at the conflicting info, and figuring out what's most consistent, since even Word of God statements get contradicted all the time. Also, any sort of in-universe document (PMiSS, BAiJR, SoPM, AFiEU) should be looked at with even further scrutiny.

If you're dedicated to puzzling it all out for yourself, I wish you the best of luck.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005147
So long as you've got the mindset to not get stuck on just one game you're fine. It's important to learn the patterns obviously, but so long as you're having fun as a baseline you can find out what game clicks with you the most. As for the extra stuff, you'll find yourself falling deep into most of it eventually. There's not really a piece of official media I'd outright call bad per say, but if I did have to give you one to recommend I'd highly recommend CoLA, the pseudo-light novel detailing Rinnosuke's daily life as a knick-knack shop in a land where shit just appears in his backyard sometimes. The common chapter people will tell you about is the one where he runs into a Gameboy, and using his ability to "immediately understand the name and usage of a tool or object", he thinks it's a portal to a variety of different worlds leading to a relatively introspective but also inherently comedic chapter. I've gotta agree with the other anon that release order for side content is the best way to do it anyways, especially since the further you go down the chronology the more side-works tie into main works. For example a good chunk of the Occult Ball arc is technically in sideworks, and it's arguably the longest "arc" Touhou's had stretching I believe 2 works and 4 games I think?

As for a specific place to learn about Touhou, to be honest with you, there's not really one as most places have a mixture of fanon or headcanons mixed in: from MotK to here, there's always going to be something that didn't actually happen being mixed in with what did, especially combined with some things that were true for a time but no longer are. Once again like the other anon said, but honestly debating about some retconned stuff is still pretty interesting as nothing ever gets 100% retconned, at least off the top of my head. The ideal way to experience it is just going through the stuff yourself, really.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005198
>Also, any sort of in-universe document (PMiSS, BAiJR, SoPM, AFiEU) should be looked at with even further scrutiny.
Not so say you should take it at face value, but they hold a good amount of truth and best reflect how Gensokyo really is as it comes from the people living there. Though, AFiEU is tabloid garbage, hence why it has "Alternative Facts" in the title, still entertaining. I would also describe BAiJR's interviews the most truthful part of Aya's writings. Akyuu catches a lot of flak for being biased and embellishing details, but she's still the best source of information since her whole life's purpose is making a guide on Gensokyo and its inhabitants for a Human audience. The falsehoods she writes are either because she didn't know (lunarian characters), imaginative speculation (Sakuya's background) or she made someone appear stronger/cooler than they actually are i.e. how they want to be seen and treated. Acting on bad information can get someone hurt or killed, so there is an incentive to write something more true to reality at best and overestimate it at worst.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005293
Absolutely. I simply mentioned it because there's plenty of things that definitely are false, and understandably so because Gensokyo's pretty much constantly one bad day from collapsing in canon, even if that isn't typically lampshaded. For as awful as the implications of WaHH's Zashiki-Warashi chapter are, Yukari isn't wrong to suggest that a single human starting to ask themselves "Why haven't the youkai just wiped us all out yet?" could within a very short time completely disrupt Gensokyo's stability.

That said, the way several characters are written about is still questionable. Yuuka seems to have largely chilled out after the questionably canon PC-98 entries, and her eyewitness report section feels more like someone who's just socially awkward than outright malicious. And then Yukari's article is easily the most obvious case of "She just outright told Akyuu what to write." And then SoPM is one where it's just important to understand most of it is in-character dialogue. Byakuren's claim that Youkai take human forms because they're "free from human imagination" for example is complete bunk.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47004714
Miko is the sword, not the woman, so no, she just changes bodies to fit the setting shes in.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005147
>I don't want to get stuck on a single game too long and miss out on knowing the rest of the series
Don't worry too much and take it easy. Enjoying content and aiming for a 1cc can be done separately and parallelly. As you spend more time on the game, you'll eventually get better and achieve a 1cc faster, so you can move on to another game if you wish

[Anonymous No.]

Do the residents of Gensokyo know about any places that exist outside of Japan like the US or Africa?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005367
By residents, what do you mean? If by youkai, absolutely so. If by humans, yes but with an asterisk. The human village of Gensokyo can even consist of naturalized outsiders, so they can spread what knowledge they have, along with whatever winds up falling into Gensokyo. However, most people who end up in Gensokyo aren't people with an encyclopedic knowledge of the outside world, and even if they were smart they'd likely not have all of their materials committed to memory. And what books from the outside world end up in Gensokyo, assuming they can even be read or are of interest to anyone, would almost certainly be outdated at the least.

So in short, if you asked the average human villager who wasn't an outsider if they knew what the world outside was like, they could probably name a few countries. China certainly, America too, but any further understanding of them would likely be blurry, mixed with fact and fiction and their own understanding of how the world works (for an example of what this would likely be, look up historic Japanese depictions of countries overseas. Pic related is George Washington fighting a tiger.) Human villagers know that an outside world exists, but their knowledge would be incredibly incomplete and muddled.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005401
Your post is summarized by this gem.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005410
>Road work ahead?
>Uh, yeah, I hope it does!

[Anonymous No.]

>>47000737
What is the chronological order?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005410
Dumb Suzu

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005426
Anon probably means release order which is effectively the same thing. Just check the front page of the wiki and know that if you haven't read a print work between games, you've probably missed one. Also check out the CD's too because there's a lotta good stuff in there beyond just music, and you're going to need to know who the Hifuu Club is eventually.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005459
Oh, that's convenient if the wiki has them in release order. I've been intending the go through the Hifuu Club materials myself anyway because I was intrigued by the story in the latest one. Do you think it's fine to read in order before going through the print works or am I going to miss something if I do this?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005497
See, that's a rough one because certain manga like Wild and Horned Hermit can take place before, during, and after multiple games. For example I think it was Urban Legend in Limbo where it started off a prelude to the game, but then didn't finish said prelude until a couple months after it came out? I imagine there's a chronological list somewhere of when to stop reading to switch over to a game, but to be honest I've read everything as it was happening since CoLA started or was early on so I really couldn't tell you, and personally I've always found those stop-and-go's to be annoying ever since my Shounen anime watching days so I can't really give you a true recommendation on where to stop and where to go aside from a vague "after IN read the Bougetsushou series of works, after PoFV read BAiJR PMiSS and Sangetsusei series of works, and then just click around the wiki after you play each game until you find an official work that started afterwards".

[Anonymous No.]

Oh actually there is one thing I can say for sure does not really matter (I am probably wrong), read CoLA up until it goes on hiatus and changes magazines. It's relatively disconnected from most other parts of the series and Rinnosuke's a fun character.

[Anonymous No.]

An average human villager is said to be stronger than fairies and spirits. Doesn't that mean that basically everyone in the village can handle a weak youkai? Can everyone use danmaku to some capacity?
I also wonder why we never see other youkai exterminators beside Reimu and Marisa. The village has been resisiting attacks for hundreds of years so surely there are plenty of other strong youkai exterminators, right?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005821
The PCB Prologue indicates that the villagers are all descendants of the sort of badass monster hunters you'd hear about in myths, but largely speaking it seems that by the present era they've been effectively domesticated. This is probably the result of a certain individual actively disappearing any that happen to have dangerous ideas like actually exterminating youkai.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47003912
>Vestiges of the elixir should still exist in the liver
I cast doubt on that.
The people who claim the elixir is stored in the liver are all not authorities on the subject, and the concept of it is explicitly mixed with other, similar legends such as the one about eating mermaid flesh, with the mermaid thing even being mentioned explicitly in the narration of IN's Extra Stage prologue.
Remilia is just reiterating things Patchouli told her about, which she may or may not remember correctly, and Yuyuko, while generally more reliable, wouldn't really know much more about the elusive Hourai Elixir either, other than fearing it due to the immortality it grants. She also seems to be under the impression that the immortality can only be transferred, rather than duplicated, which is why it would be so terrible for a gutless ghost to consume it, as it would be completely impossible for it to be passed on any further.
Meanwhile, in Marisa's route, Mokou remarks that there's no elixir left remaining, after Alice shows interest in it, with no suggestion to just extract it from the liver. She also talks about the nature of the regeneration and how the immortal soul would simply create a new container, which Mokou seems to agree with, which suggests that Mokou has had her body completely destroyed (or at least enough to damage it beyond repair), and still regenerated, which would've destroyed any remnants of the elixir remaining inside of her.
Once someone consumes the elixir, it probably cannot be passed on, and eating their liver wouldn't do anything.
>>47003955
>three sips rule
Probably not a thing at all, anyway. It's derived entirely by a single statement from Mokou, who is not an authority on its creation, and definitely didn't experiment with various dosages, as she by all accounts just chugged down the whole thing in one go.
Mokou was really just being chuuni there, trying to make a poetic statement about something that seems great at first glance turning out to be horrible in the end (and even then, it's just her, as the others have no problem with their immortality).
It's important to remember that the characters are all talking from their own perspective and they're often mistaken or outright making shit up.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005834
>disappearing any that happen to have dangerous ideas
Any confirmation on that? I know about the spying part but not about the disappearing part. Besides, she can just use her gap mindfuckery to keep them from trying anything dangerous, no need to make them disappear. I would also like to point out that Akyuu's PMiSS is basically a youkai extermination manual and she even says that some aggressive youkai should be systematically exterminated or they'll enter the village. Hell, even stopping youkai exterminations is seen as a threat to the balance of Gensokyo.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46997479
All Youkai are 100% pro Isreal because the human village is exactly like the people stuck in the gaza.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47002816
She's one of Dio's bastards.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47002816
A normal human who is spirited away by Lunarians to experiment with purities and impurities. Eventually, he escapes and lands somewhere near pre-Gensokyo SDM in the outside world.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47006814
>he

[Anonymous No.]

>>47007059
Whoops, my bad. But yeah, I'd say she's more of a modified human.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47007059
Know how she wears pads, has a thing for little girls, is obssessed with throwing knives and is autistic?
Yeah. That's why.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47007096
Modified human indeed.

[Anonymous No.]

Does Sakuya's timestop have any weaknesses?

[Anonymous No.]

Why sanae is a slut

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005335
This is the most correct way of looking at it in my opinion. People often forget the whole soul transfer thing with the Taoist crew, that's why she never uses her sword to actually cut or hit someone and why Miko brandishing it can be seen as going around naked.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005335
>>47007224
A slight correction. Miko changed her form once in the process of shikai. It is unlikely that she can change shape again now that her soul has moulded its vessel and the process is complete.

Also, since "you" in Touhou are the soul, complete with storing your memories (see: Mokou's case), Miko is still Miko. It's just that her body is made of the sword's matter and thereby slides the rule of mortality, since inanimate objects' physical forms have no prescribed lifespan.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47007338
>It's just that her body is made of the sword's matter and thereby slides the rule of mortality, since inanimate objects' physical forms have no prescribed lifespan.
If she's made of blade, shouldn't she rust over time?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47007399
She's fleshy. The shikaisen process is more about defrauding the afterlife than anything.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005432
Wrong, it's smart Suzu. Her saying it was poorly constructed was a critique of planned economy and her saying she hopes no one was hurt was her hoping for peaceful regime transmissions in eastern europe.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47005821
Fairies have the strength of small children, if even that. A story in PMISS mentions a random human boy catching Lily. Granted, they can use Danmaku but we don't know how dangerous that is to a normal person. Weak danmaku could be like getting hit by a snowball at worst.

>>47005916
>Any confirmation on that?
Prone though I am to going full Grimdark, I have to admit: No. We know that Yukari is spying on people with the intent of taking action if they cause trouble. What exactly that action entails we don't know.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47007127
heh

[Anonymous No.]

>>47007399
In Touhou, the soul shapes the vessel. Miko's soul is human, so it shaped the sword into a humanoid form with everything that goes. It just doesn't have an assigned lifespan since it started out as an inanimate object. It's a loophole, which is why shinigami go after shikaisen hermits.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47008061
>a random human boy catching Lily
A-And then what happened?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47007947
>hoping for peaceful regime transmissions in eastern europe
Dumb Suzu

[Anonymous No.]

>>47007128
Yes, if you attack her in every direction that she cannot evade the attack.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47007128
Yes. Stands, I mean Lunarians of the same type.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47008393
They played tiddlywinks.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47008061
I'm just wondering if an average human can use danmaku and partake in spell card duels. One of the reasons they were implemented was to let youkai attack humans without killing them after all so I wonder how common it is. I just like to imagine that most sentient youkai ambush people outside the village and act very smug after winning but ultimately let them go mostly unharmed. The new canon looks very different though and I'm sad about that. No more humans coming to Prismriver concerts, challenging Meiling to test themselves, trying to catch Mystia singing, opening businesses for youkai customers and no more youkai coming to the village to play or build some stuff on demand. This seems like such a missed opportunity to me.
All the grimdark stuff still remains though so I guess you're lucky.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47008393
She talked. And it wasn't even a harudesuyo
rather she started screaming and demanding to be let go, so Lily White is capable of at least two sentences

[Anonymous No.]

>>47008061
>What exactly that action entails we don't know.
We also know from Kasen's interactions with her that Yukari resorting to murder isn't anywhere near unthinkable. It's far from unreasonable to suggest that when Yukari speaks of having Zashiki-Warashi spy on the villagers to "keep them from having any dangerous ideas", she'd dispose of ones that start asking questions that could undermine Gensokyo's stability.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47009942
>And it wasn't even a harudesuyo
Yeah, it was a hanase, instead.
However, Lily White *is* in fact capable of speaking in full sentences.

[Anonymous No.]

If Yukari got pregnant would she be able to use a gap on the baby so that someone else would carry it? How would it work then?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47008465
Is there any limit for how long she can freeze time, or can she keep it frozen for as long as she wants?

[Anonymous No.]

Are there any "Good" characters in this setting? I can only think of Aunn, Keine, Eiki and Komachi.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012818
Keine's a weird one considering her BAiJR article and how she's kind of a fed in that, but that also is somewhat OoC for her and a ZUN Sockpuppet moment, even if it's not the worst.

Marisa and Kasen come to mind as the ur-examples. Keiki is also solid. Not sure where you get Komachi as an example of a particularly "good" person, she's just not a remarkably bad one, and Eiki isn't bad, but her metric for judgement is a bit skewed, to the point where just living for too long is a sin by the Ministry's rules.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012830
>BAiJR
Thats a new abbreviation, what does it mean?
>Marisa
I never thought of Marisa as "good", but now that I think about it, besides her kleptomania, she doesnt have anything bad going on, huh.
>Kasen
I have seen so much shit about Kasen that I dont even know how to interpret her character at this point.
>Keiki
I havent finished her game yet, and I havent made an investigation on her, but I once heard someone say that shes one of the most evil ones, but I will give her the benefit of doubt because again, havent finished her game.
>Not sure where you get Komachi as an example of a particularly "good" person
What bad has she done? Shes willing to lend an ear to the souls she ferries and she has a strong enough moral compass that if she senses that you are too much of an asshole and evil she just kicks you out of her boat.
>Eiki isn't bad, but her metric for judgement is a bit skewed, to the point where just living for too long is a sin by the Ministry's rules
Yeah, but I guess Im a bit biased, shes just following orders and cant really do much else, and when it comes to herself, she genuinely wants people to improve themselves.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012818
Has Kogasa ever done anything evil? She likes to spook people (though she fails at it), but she's regularly shown to be extremely kind, helpful, and just wanting people to like her. Are you defining good as in someone actively doing kind things, or simply not evil? Because if the latter, I think many Touhou characters would fit that bill. Most characters, though they may act like jerks, don't usually do malicious things for the sake of it. That's why most incidents end in tea parties.

The only characters in Touhou I'd say are pretty on the evil side are Seija, Seiga, Renko, and Yachie. And even then, Seiga is still a really nice lady.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012872
Kogasas existences slips my mind whenever I stop looking at her, but youre right.
>Are you defining good as in someone actively doing kind things, or simply not evil?
I dont really know, I am just separating characters in black, white and shades of gray, rather than just black and white, because as you said, there arent that many "true" evil characters besides the ones you mentioned and a few more.
>Renko
Really? I have tried to avoid Hifuu the best I could so I dont her deal, why is she evil?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012858
Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red. It's one of the print works.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012911
Renko is a monster who vandalizes innocent Jizō statues. These statues do their best protecting the trails and travelers and she just goes around kicking them. She's an irredeemable monster.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012911
>Really? I have tried to avoid Hifuu the best I could so I dont her deal, why is she evil?
I think that Anon might just be tweaking. The worst thing Renko does is enable Maribel, but it's not like she knew her friend would go off the deep end and become one of the worst people in the franchise.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012927
Ahhh, that, yeah, I know that, I just havent heard of anyone using that abbreviation, I never even hear of anyone mentioning BAiJR at all.
>>47012942
Narumi I need you to calm down.
But thats bad if true though.
>>47012944
I see.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012858
>I once heard someone say that shes one of the most evil ones
Zun himself said in that interview which everyone touts as an evidence of her being "evil" that she gave her worshippers exactly what they wanted. It's just that her worshippers couldn't imagine a system where the alternative to brutal opression would be something else than becoming cogs in a bigger machine that could beat the former opressors to pulp.

How much can we judge people living in literal hell for not being able to imagine some beatiful future where they are liberated without having to use violence? How much can we blame them for only being able to dream up a new system of opression?

Wily Beast really needs to be seen as a complex, internally self-contradictory exploration on the dark sides of modernity rather than some tale of who is right and who is wrong because in hell, everyone is wrong and everyone is suffering.

The Animal Spirits are utterly horrible. The ending of Touhou 19 describes the Animal Realm as a place where even the Animal Spirits are brutally opressed, being forced to work every single hour of the day. Human spirits really are just at the bottom of the food chain where the Animal Spirits then vent their frustrations.

They are nasty, hypocritical beasts. The Animal Spirits claim to stand for individuality and the rule of strong, but in reality their strenght lies in the mobs that they build. They are upset that Keiki destroyed their last nature preserve, not asking themselves why they went and destroyed all of what passed for nature before that themselves. Those skyscrapers - Keiki didn't make them. The Animal Spirits obviously represent this kind of primal, brutal, libidinal side of the industrial society and capitalism, merciless, short-sighted, ill-tempered and emotional.

At the same time Zun describes Keiki as some kind of a clay SHODAN, a malevolent AI hell-bent on optimizing the new system and crushing the opposition. This is somewhat contradicted by the fact that Keiki would apparently have been willing to make some kind of an arrangement with the Animal Spirits - Zun is notorious for not really keeping up with his own canon.

Anyway, that's beside the point. The Human Spirits wanted to create a mechanical system strong enough to fight against their opressors and got what they asked for. Keiki represents this fear that the industrial, capitalistic system we live in isn't really in our control anymore. It's not even our nasty impulses that rule, but some mechanical force much greater than humanity, outside of our control.

On a purely personal level, I much prefer Keiki to the Animal Spirits. The Animal Spirits are so cartoonishly evil, abusive, wretched, and as Touhou 19 shows, ultimately a bunch of incompetent losers easily outplayed by a moderately ambitious and skilled former monk turned oni. They have zero redeeming qualities. Only those at the very fringes of their organizations - Enoko and Chiyari - are tolerable.

In contrast, whatever is evil in Keiki is the evil of the people who called her forth, the evil of the vengeful opressed desperately praying for salvation. And even then, I feel there is a fundamentaly good core in her. She's a good goddess that gives her believers exactly what they want and stood up to protect them, not with some even greater force of destruction, but with the gift of creation. It's just that in a hellish world, even goodness distorts, shatters and corrupts untill it's unrecognizable as such.

This all is of course a dire warning to us all here in the real world. We better shed the "Animal Spirits" "possessing" us before the "Keiki" we are "praying" into existence manifests in some terrible form. I know it's almosti mpossible to imagine, but we don't have to use the tools of creation we have to make this kind of hell world we live in.

Wily Beast is superd, one of the best Touhou games when it comes to story and themes and how rich the characters are. Too bad the gameplay and a lot of the character designs are such duds.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012957
>But thats bad if true though.
You wouldn't say that if you knew how good it feels

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012944
Is Yukari really that bad?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013029

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013029
Mayumi enthusiast? Is that you?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013200
I don't know where I'd even begin when it comes to discussing Yukari's issues. The only good thing you can say about her as an improvement over Maribel is that her loneliness means you might have an easier time fixing her.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013225
>The only good thing you can say about her as an improvement over Maribel is that her loneliness means you might have an easier time fixing her.
You are forgeting about Yuyuko, the replacement Renko

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013230
Yukari still complains when her furry laptop doesn't go along with her LARP of being popular. The touch of a man is something she'd no doubt go to great lengths for.

Mostly so she can show off to Okina and Kasen.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013230
Yuyuko is not smart enough to be the replacement Renko

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012858
Kasen seems like a victim of bad character writing if anything. She's supposed to be a sage but doesn't know how Gensokyo works for some reason. That along with many other things makes her a consistent inconstistency.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013263
Yuyuko is way smarter than Yukari, though. She puts on a front of being an airhead, but she's always the first to solve an incident if she gets involved, and she immediately realized that Youmu was probably wrong about Keiki being a villain, too.
She's also sexier.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013200
Yukari is a bit of a weird one for me. There's so much room for interpretation with her character that you can make her either a benevolent troll or the absolute worst. Does she make people with dangerous ideas disappear or does she alter their minds like with Kosuzu? She is the cause of spiriting away but is it actually on purpose (could even be both)? Why did she spare Sumireko after everything she had done? How many of the things she says are true and not just scare tactics to uphold her image? Even the Vampire contract is not very straightforward. They get humans to feed on but the details after that is just speculation on Akyuu's part. Why would her lazy ass bother looking for an outsider whose death is of no consequence when she can just nab some people from the village for compulsory blood draining (they won't die) and then make them forget about the whole thing? I also like the theory that Yukari kidnaps criminals from the outside world not because it's necessary for the balance but because she, a former human, hates them.
But even if all the good things about her are true, I still don't like her because she's annoying.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013490
I'm not saying Yuyu is stupid, but she doesn't compare to Renko, no one does.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013029
>being forced to work every single hour of the day
CoLA walked this one back
>Even in the Beast Realm, hardly anyone would work this much overtime. She was already the only person left in the room, and was hardly embarrassed to be muttering to herself with her nose to a monitor.
it's a dystopic modern city, but no ruler is dumb enough to think that making your workers work 24 hours a day is a good strategy

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013595
I lean towards benevolent troll, simply because Maribel seems good natured and people don't just drastically change like that.
The only weird and unexplainable thing about her is her gruge against the lunarians.
>I still don't like her because she's annoying.
Completely understandable.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013605
But Yuyuko has many qualities that Renko lacks

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013723
Such as...

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013738
boobies

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013771
Good point, but two is not exactly "many".

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013696
They're arrogant dicks who consider themselves superior to everyone. They are the ones who created youkai to control the number of human population and in the process cursed them to forever depend on humans to survive. Lunarians are scum.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013771
Don't be mean to Renko, she's just a late bloomer.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013875
>They are the ones who created youkai
What, really? Where's that from?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013900
Renko is flat! FLAT! Flatty flatty flatty
probably balances it out in the ass department though

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013919
>spoiler
have you ever SEEN a japanese girl? they can have tits, but 99% of japanese girls have no ass

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013900
Reimu probably has bigger boobs than Renko. And Yuyu's yuyus are so big that it make up for all of Renko's other qualities.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013958
Yeah well Yuyuko is fat enjoy your tub of lard

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013910
It's from some of Kaguya's lines in Sakuya's route in IN, but it's never been expanded on further, like much of the other stuff in there relating to the moon and how it's supposedly different from how it used to be.
>Kaguya:
>Heh heh.
>We Lunarians turned some on the Earth into monsters,
to regulate the Earthlings' impurity.
>But, that's all over now.
>The Earthlings have sealed the monsters by themselves.
>All that's left of them are beings who don't know how to do
anything but attack humans as part of some old contract.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013964
Yuyuko can't be fat, she's a ghost. Her body is just pure soul, her digestive system remained under the tree, everything she eats turns into thin air.
I know you are a little self-conscious about your tits, Renko, but coping like this is no way to go about it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013989
Yukari also mentions that youkai owe their existence to the moon in Cage in Lunatic Runagade (I think??) so it's pretty much confirmed I'd say.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013595
I find it pretty hard to imagine her not being a complete monster. Between the massive espionage, openly mentioning she uses outsiders as food, getting Reimu to murder any humans that turn into Youkai and general ruthlessness' I tend to assume the absolute worst of her. The only real question for me is her motive. If she is Maribel, I think a lot of her behavior is based on her trying to act like a Youkai. Despite the fact she gets no respect from any Youkai.

>>47013696
>people don't just drastically change like that.
They do though. In fiction and reality. I could see Maribel going full Darth Vader pretty easily considering her general misanthropy.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014113
How is Merry misanthropic?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012872
>Has Kogasa ever done anything evil?
No. Unless you think scaring people is evil.

She is a pretty shit babysitter though.

>The only characters in Touhou I'd say are pretty on the evil side are Seija, Seiga, Renko, and Yachie.
I would add Rumia, Letty, Chen, Sakuya, Yukari, Mystia, Medicine Melancholy, and plenty of other people and Youkai that are mentioned as having attacked and presumably killed people.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012818
I would say Mokou, Marisa, Kasen, Hina, Nemuno and MABYE the Aki sisters count.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013929
Counterpoint: It's seen as a bad thing/a joke in nip culture, so it's fitting because it'd be another reason to bully her (even if they're objectively wrong about it)

[Anonymous No.]

>>47009591
>I'm just wondering if an average human can use danmaku and partake in spell card duels.
Going by PMISS, yes. But the print works since then have all implied that they do not.

>>47009948
I agree. But, if I had to be honest, we don't know 100%.

>>47008393
>Perhaps because she immediately said "Let me go!" and my child promptly let her go, there fortunately wasn't any damage.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014137
Mostly her disdain for the world she lives in. It often reads like a more general disdain for human civilization as a whole, which I generally view as misanthropic.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014050
The entire plot of IN revolves the youkai freaking out over Eirin mucking around with the moon, thus them starting the Eternal Night incident, since they're all super dependent on it (even Alice, who as a magician is still close to humanity), so there's definitely a connection, but it's never fully confirmed, and we know that the Celestials with their heavy anti-youkai nature precedes even the Lunarians, so I'm not sure if Kaguya was telling the full truth there.
As the ones in control of the moon, they could certainly manipulate it to their benefit, but it might also just be old lore ZUN no longer cares about.

Personally, I just want to know what Kaguya meant by this:
>Now, the original power of the moon has been revived.
>This moon, with no impurity, throws its pale light upon an Earth with no impurity...
>This light is an ancient memory, forgotten even by the superior Lunarians.
Like, why is this ancient moon so different from the current one? Is it the result of the Lunarians' own impurity encroaching on it, happening so slowly that not even the (average) Lunarians notice it? Is it a deliberate change? Is Kaguya aware of it because her powers over eternity gives her far more insight over impurity?
All these questions and we're never getting answers.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014113
>espionage
Not the worst thing, I can accept that.
>mentioning she uses outsiders as food
Could be one her scare tactics/playing the villain type of thing, I wouldn't believe Yukari even if she told me the grass was green. But even if it's true, it seems she only kidnaps bad people which means she has some sense of justice and it would tie in well with her being former human and all. We all know humans are the biggest haters of other humans.
>getting Reimu to murder humans that turn into youkai
There's no mention of that. In fact, Reimu herself seems to believe that humans who turn into youkai are a danger to the balance of Gensokyo and she has her intuition thing so she's probably right.
>Ruthlessness
If she were that ruthless Sumireko would be fucking dead.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014183
You shouldn't bully Renko, but if you do, at least choose one of her real defects, even though they are few and small.
Defects such as her nerdiness, her maniacal tendencies, the fact that her only friend is a schizophrenic outcast, the fact that she is a schizophrenic outcast, her arrogance, the fact that her grand grand grandma shared most of these traits and of course, the fact that her power becomes useless the moment clouds or the sun enter the equation.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47013595
>Why did she spare Sumireko after everything she had done?
Because her name is Usami and Yukari plays favorites. She's like the worst example to use to make Yukari look good.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014143
Literally none of those characters you added I would call evil. For the vast majority of that list, youkai attacking humans is just part of their nature. Arguably, if they entirely ceased doing so, Gensokyo would collapse as the youkai need their belief and fear. Youkai following their nature can hardly be called evil anymore than a snake for biting a human. And most of these characters have no confirmed kills in canon. Rumia is noted for, despite her maneating nature, to be shit at her job, easy to outwit or lose, and having normal ass humans beat her up.

The only two characters that aren't a part of that are Yukari and Sakuya. And quite frankly, unless you went full Grimsokyo in your interpretations of both the setting and character interactions and motives, I don't see that either.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014143
Isn't Letty harmless, Akyuu just hates her for whatever reason?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014345
That's why I pointed out how it's all up for interpretation. What you said is a real possibility too.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014306
>it seems she only kidnaps bad people
There is literally no evidence to say this. We get more evidence that she kidnaps outcasts and people that wouldn't be noticed if they vanished. Maribel herself was never a very good person either, her muttering in Dr. Latency's Freak Report and the way she talks in that in particular seems to indicate that she viewed Gensokyo residents murdering Outsiders as perfectly fine even as a human.
>Reimu herself seems to believe that humans who turn into youkai are a danger to the balance of Gensokyo
And who do you think taught her about the balance of Gensokyo, smart genius?
>If she were that ruthless Sumireko would be fucking dead.
Again, Usami favoritism.

[Anonymous No.]

Do Touhou fans (especially Japanese ones) have a more specific colloquial categorization of "eras" of game releases beyond "PC-98 era" and "Windows era"? Like any kind of grouping of the games based on the story, how they play, the artstyles, etc?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47016295
06-08 form a coherent story arc, use the same engine, and were the only three really conceptualised at the start of the Windows era.
Compare that with 10, which changes a few major game mechanics (e.g. bombs), starts a new story arc, updates the engine, and was more-or-less intended as a secondary reboot to the series (hence why it takes a while for anyone from earlier games to reappear).
06, 07, and 08, then, pretty clearly form their own era, with 09 usually thrown in to cap it off because it uses the same engine.
Beyond that things get a little messier with classification and there are probably several points you could cite as the next cutoff

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014305
Have someone bring it up at a future Q&A session with ZUN.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47016295
I don't know if they've got specific names for it, but you've typically got the early windows stuff from 6-8 with 9 as a sort of epilogue, then there's the religious arc which is from 10-13.5, and from there it gets a little more murky. 14 through to 16.5 are a bit confusing in how they're grouped, but then you've got the much more clear-cut beast realm arc of 17 through to 19, though 18 and 18.5 are like a mini-arc that's kind of separate from the others until it ties back in for 19

[Anonymous No.]

>>47017588
He'll probably say he forgot. Anon's assumption that it was a pre-Lunarian moon is probably the best one we'll ever get.
>>47016295
https://touhou-x.jp/history/
https://dic.pixiv.net/a/東方Project#h2_1
Seems like a solid no.

[Anonymous No.]

What supports the theory that Sakuya is a lunarian?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47017796
The biggest arguments come down to the possible connection to Konohanasakuyahime, the fact that she's seemingly unaffected by the True Moon's light which is allegedly supposed to drive people mad, and the statements that manipulating time is an unusually strong Ability for a human to have. The last detail could be argued against, however, as Abilities growing stronger, or even growing where there wasn't one, is one of the few consistent bits of worldbuilding in the series.

[Anonymous No.]

How effective are modern firearms against Youkai?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47017888
If the bullet is a silver bullet I think they could have some effect

[Anonymous No.]

>>47017888
Basically irrelevant. Unless you have a model that's memed to hell and back like a Deagle, Glock, or SAA, or use something like Silver Bullets, you'll only be dealing physical damage, which even the weakest Youkai will eventually regenerate from. Guns could work, and engravings would give you a tactical advantage, but you'd have to prepare primarily so you're inflicting spiritual wounds on your prey.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47017902
Would a famous gun model + silver bullets deal 2x damage like in Pokemon?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012830
>where just living for too long is a sin by the Ministry's rules
She is part of the organization that governs the cycle of life and death. Trying to escape and cheat this cycle by never dying breaks natural law which is a big no-no. Since evil people like Seiga can sidestep the whole karmic system it means you can be unrepentantly evil and not face the consequences. It makes sense for the Enma ruling the afterlife to punish those trying to escape their judgment, and by extension Eiki who is a by the books person to also feel the same.
It's also the wrong way to go about it. The end goal is non-material immortality which means enlightenment, escape from the cycle, and an end to suffering. Just living forever is cheating this and you remain ignorant and only pretend to be enlightened.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47016003
>Dr. Latency's Freak Report
You're referring to exactly ONE line from there that she says before going into detail on how youkai attacked her for being an outsider. How does it indicate anything?
>we get more evidence that she kidnaps outcasts
Can you give that evidence? From PMiSS, Road of Reconsideration:
>Depressed people, spiteful people bearing grudges, criminals and the like are the favorite food of youkai. There are plenty of those kinds of people here.
We can't even be sure if she's doing it on purpose or it's just an unfortunate side effect like it was with Sumireko.
>who taught her about the balance
Don't try to present it as a bad thing. If Gensokyo fell, it would end in bloodshed and be a lose-lose situation for everyone. She knows this and she came to a conclusion that people who turn into yoikai are a danger to peace. Besides, abandoning your humanity is gay.
>Usami favoritism
Yeah, that makes sense. Still, ruthlessness and needless cruelty are two different things. Being ruthless just means you would do anything for your goal, it doesn't mean you can't choose a victimless option if it's equally as acceptable.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47017888
Weapons need to have an "origin" to be preferable and names and legends are effective. Therefore the only weapon you'll ever need is God's Greatest Gun and God's Chosen Caliber: the M1911 and .45 ACP.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47017888
Modern?

Useless.

Now, a historical musket blessed by a kannushi when it was crafted 400 years ago, used in battle by a samurai, turned into a priced heirloom that has had a poem written about it, loaded with hand-crafted blackpowder based on a 1200 year old taoist recipe and cast iron balls (everyone knows it's really iron that the supernaturals hate)...now that is going to show the youkai what real danmaku means.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018332
>everyone knows it's really iron that the supernaturals hate
sir here we worship silver

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018370
A fairy plot, a distraction.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018273
>You're referring to exactly ONE line
Which, combined with her general misanthropy displayed throughout the entire series, I'd say is fairly damning.
>We can't even be sure if she's doing it on purpose
Yukari isn't nearly as intelligent as some people like to claim she is, but even I wouldn't suggest she's THAT incompetent.
>If Gensokyo fell, it would end in bloodshed and be a lose-lose situation for everyone.
Maybe for a short duration. Gensokyo is still a de facto police state, and I don't hate humanity enough to support how it's run.
>Being ruthless just means you would do anything for your goal
Unfortunately, Yukari's goal is the upholding of the status quo, no matter who, human or youkai, has to be trampled underfoot for that to remain. If addressing the underlying issue (nonhumans being dependent on belief to exist) was the goal, there are already the seeds of a solution in the existing worldbuilding that have yet to be explored further, primarily with how Magicians become Youkai.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018421
>there are already the seeds of a solution in the existing worldbuilding that have yet to be explored further, primarily with how Magicians become Youkai
NTA but do tell more, the magicians becoming youkai thing is something I know very little of in general.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014164
>Mokou
She just got bored of killing random people, she never repent about it.
>Kasen
Ehhhh...

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018451
We don't have a clear explanation of what Magicians do to become Youkai, and it probably varies from case to case. Byakuren's method obviously isn't the type that, say, Alice may have used. On the other hand, since they're Youkai Magicians, we know the result is largely the same. Why this is so important is what we understand of the Mental and Physical Layers thanks to CoLA, and how both humans and nonhumans essentially interact with the Layers like levers and fulcrums. Nonhumans can interact with the Physical Layer to greater effect but their Mental Layer presence is more rigid and essentially their anchor. Likewise, hunans are physically weaker than most nonhumans, but the entire Mental Layer is dependent on them.

In theory, if the process used for Magicians to become Youkai could be reversed, it would allow them to exist without belief, in exchange for probably being a lot weaker. If anyone were to try and "fix" Gensokyo, that would be the best place to start.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014164
>Marisa, Kasen
A-Anon..

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018515
Interesting idea, but that is of course a very big "if".

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018537
He's not wrong. Marisa is the only Incident Resolver with consistently good motives, and Kasen actively reduces the number of man-eating Youkai in Gensokyo.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018568
Marisa's motives are literally just 'I wonder what I can steal today' half the time

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018421
>general misanthropy
I didn't see it at all. How is telling the truth a misanthropy? Does criticizing flaws of the modern world make you a bad person that would kill people needlessly?
>I wouldn't suggest she's THAT incompetent
It's not a matter of incompetence but of the barrier's nature. Sumireko caused people to disappear every time she came to Gensokyo, forgotten objects from the outside world appear without Yukari doing anything, there are actual holes in the barrier in Muenzuka due to it being the crossroads between three different worlds. Is it really that hard to believe that people could appear there and it's not her fault?
>maybe for a short duration
No. It would either result in death of all humans and, subsequently, youkai. Or the youkai would subjugate humans and we would have a Promised Neverland (the anime) situation as opposed to a police state situation. Whether it's actually a police state though is another thing entirely but I don't care to go into it now.
>yet to be explored further
Kek, isn't that touhou in a nutshell? Blame ZUN.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014164
>MABYE the Aki sisters count.
I'd say they're all-around helpful to humanity, even if it's part of their nature to be so.
Shizuha is fairly neutral I suppose just due to only making pretty scenery, but I don't think she would have anything to gain from attacking anyone. In fact she'd probably help you a decent amount, grattitude probably counts as faith.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018618
And thats her only fault, shes not evil, she doesnt do evil things, and shes a saint compared to Reimu and the other magicians.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018620
>It would either result in death of all humans
What are you on? If the Barrier goes down, you'd probably see issues when it comes to the overlap between Gensokyo and Hakuba, but it certainly wouldn't be anything as extreme as complete human extinction, and unless they somehow started being believed in again, the nonhumans of Gensokyo would largely die out pretty quickly.
>Blame ZUN.
Don't you worry, I already do bro. :)

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018697
I meant that all humans in Gensokyo would die if there were serious troubles and then the youkai would disappear. Or the youkai would win and prevent the collapse of Gensokyo but then they would rule over humans much, MUCH harsher. Humans in the outside world would obviously be fine.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018767
Fair enough, I interpreted 'Gensokyo falling' (gorillions must believe) as the Barrier going down. Minor misunderstanding, then. I will definitely concede that for as much as I'd largely argue Yukari to be a horrible person, her control freak type behavior really is the main thing keeping Gensokyo stable.

[Anonymous No.]

Touhou is much more compelling when the characters are silly agents of chaos rather than serious agents of chaos, why cant it be that way?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018789
All good, bro. The real villains here are lunarians anyway, fuck them all.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018804
behold the silliest agents of chaos

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018841
>The real villains here are lunarians anyway
Nah, barring Tsukuyomi being a giant pissbaby, and what little we get of Chang'e, all the named ones seem fairly relaxed, mellow, and decent beyond their elitism. Considering they formed their society to get away from the constant warfare and bloodshed on Earth, which I'm hard-pressed to disagree with as a motive, I'm willing to give them a bit of leeway.
>fuck them all.
That's the idea, yeah.

[Anonymous No.]

How many people has Reimu killed?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018920
She wouldn't know, she only ever killed youkai.

[Anonymous No.]

I'm working on making a game, and I'm hoping to maybe reskin it as a 2hu fangame. A mechanic I'm looking to keep, but can't seem to fit in with 2hu lore are DoTs (bleed/burn/poison) and debuffs. Are there any notable instances of touhous having these abilities?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018958
Medicine, her whole thing is literal poison, theres also Yamame.
You can use Mokous fire for fire DoT.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018958
Bleed can just ve any Touhou that cuts, like Sakuya. But if you want specific blood relations, Remilia, Flandre, and Tenkajin.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018983
>blood relations

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018958
Just put Medicine and make her an Asshole

[Anonymous No.]

A human supremacist character would be cool, Sumireko sometimes does that but it's not much

[Anonymous No.]

>>47019086
You can always gaslight yourself into believing that Miko is that.
>>47019050
So Medicine?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47019086
The taoists and Reimu fill that niche, and Sumireko too

[Anonymous No.]

>>47019096
Yes!

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012775
we dont know. even in touhou, Nothing comes from nothing (the suika gourd extracting humidity from all gourds in gensokyo) its sensible to asume that until her power asisted clock run out of energy, she could move at super fast speed.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47017888
we have going with this a million times, Silver, OR have a priest or religious authority bless the weapon/ammunition, Reimu gohei and ofuda are tecnicaly nothing out of the ordinary in the material universe, they just have kami names inscripted and the gohei also is said to be blessed/contains a kami.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018332
how to remove youkai with one simple trick!

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018973
>>47019050
>>47018983
In TH9, Medicine attacks with poison clouds. That's fairly straightforward and can be used.
Yamame's danmaku are moreso webs than disease, but I suppose they can be interpreted as a ground-effect diseased web, with DoT+slow. That could work.
I feel like most of Mokou's fire is portrayed as explosive, rather than burning/lingering. The only exception I can think of is the spellcard `Immortal "Fire Bird -Flying Phoenix-"` in TH8. Perhaps I'll use that as a projectile that leaves a lingering damaging trail.

I suppose I can make bleed effects more abundant/generic to any sharp weapon. Maybe I shouldn't care about this, but another issue is that the enemies are generic fairies, furballs, spirits, and yin-yang orbs, none of which should really bleed...

[Anonymous No.]

>>47019453
My guy, just do whatever you want, part of Touhous thing is how you can interpret things in a miriad of ways.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47019127
reimu work against humans even if the doesnt know it

[Anonymous No.]

>>47019669
she*

[Anonymous No.]

>>47019127
>a bunch of people who rejected their humanity and a bunch of dangerous youkai
>filling that niche

[Anonymous No.]

>>47019669
>>47019676
>>47019685
You're telling me the racist supremacist group is filled with people from the race they're racist against and feds/controlled opposition? That's wild dude

[Anonymous No.]

>>47019718
what

[Anonymous No.]

>>47019453
You could add in a bruised effect, where a significantly strong physical or danmaku impact would have a similar effect to bleeding. But like the other anon said, being literal is lame and you should just experiment with what's fun first and foremost.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018958
Burn: You have many characters using fire for attacks, from Remi's fireball non-spells to many spellcards like from different characters, Flan, Kaguya, Futo, Narumi etc. Suika also spits fire in the fighters, Patchouli and Yuki have fire magic and Okuu's attacks also feel pretty hot.

Bleed: Any weapon user or character that uses fang/claw based attacks could work so every beast youkai can fit for starters... Bleeding is pretty straightforward and a lot of shit should cause it but most videogames tend to ignore that for gameplay reasons.

Poison: Maybe some generic status that could fit more things like blight in Darkest Dungeon could work to make it DoTs? Youkai with the whole Kegare thing could kinda fit in there... but irrc the closest things to poison excluding Medi, Momoyo, alcohol, Yamame and DiPP seems to be Miasma from the forest of magic and Makai as well as the scarlet mist. Maybe corpse related characters like Yoshika, Seiga, Orin, Kisune can also infect/poison characters.
Also gotta say I like how ZUN did poison in an STG and how it breaks the cpu. That being said in Touhou poison seems to be more in the debuff category(although Momoyo's card buff's you put the card supposedly worked due to poisoning enemies I think)

Debuff: Luna and Merlin have depressing and uplifting music magic respectively, Kokoro also manipulates emotions.
Madness could also work for debuffs like with Clownpiece, Reisen, moonlight.
Vision impeding skills like Rumia, Mystia or Sunny can work.
As well as fortune/misfortune related stuff.
Stuff like cold based attacks could also reasonably produce debuffs, as well as bug swarms from Wriggle or Yamame's web.
Urumi's weight manip also feels debuff-worthy as well as Suika's black holes.
Satono and Mai abilities are basically buffs.
You can also use what many RPGs use with psychological stuff like roar/intimidation reduces enemy stats, altered mental states like berserk, breathing techniques... In Touhou it's even more fitting since the mental state of someone might influence reality and not just oneself and people around.

Also rember >>47019550

>>47019453
>Yamame's danmaku are moreso webs than disease,
Eh, half of her spells are web and half of them disease/poison, so still fitting
>Mokou's fire is portrayed as explosive,
All fire burns... It's a bit like all blades should inflict bleed, wouldn't be weird if all or some fire attacks had burn chance, some cases like Alice's gunpowder dolls bombs is a bit more questionable, but would still not be to weird if they caused burn.
>none of which should really bleed...
Many games have skeletons being immune to bleed and poison(or at leas resistant). So you can have that or get creative and make them leak some sort of ki/energy thing instead by recoloring the blood or something.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47012830
>Eiki
Eiki is perfectly impartial. She is just, not good or evil.

How would Remilia's power be interpretated? This is something that has been asked a lot before but I want to read fresh takes on this, especially because I have been thinking lately about an oddly trio of Keine, Remilia and Sagume and how each one manipulates the past, the present and future respectively.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47020620
>She is just, not good or evil
If she was perfectly neutral she wouldnt care about people improving themselves, shed just do her job and thats it.
>How would Remilia's power be interpretated?
Prophecy, ever played FFT, FFV or FFXIV? Something like that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47020637
>ever played FFT, FFV or FFXIV?
No.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47020668
>make statement with varying levels of vagueness
>the more powerful it is, the more time it takes to fulfill
>it eventually ensues
The only "example" I know of of Remilia using that shit is when she said "one day this winter will end" before PCB.

[Anonymous No.]

>>46996165
Give me advice to start on Touhou franchise from zero to master

Including obscure tips, trivia, doujins and whatever I need

[Anonymous No.]

>>47020877
https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/dichromatic_butterfly
start with the classics

[Anonymous No.]

>>47020897
>yurishit

[Anonymous No.]

>>47020570
Thanks for the detailed response.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47020924
its ironic yuri™

[Anonymous No.]

So Enoko is immortal because she ate Zanmu's flesh back when she was a monk, right? This is a thing from Journey to the West afaik (Demons thinking that by eating Hsuan Tsang's flesh they can become immortal)

What exactly is Marisa trying to solve in Enoko/Marisa's ending in 19? She's investigating the necklace and getting sent to hell by the teleportation trap.
Why does she think the necklace is linked to her immortality?
Is the necklace referencing anything?

[Anonymous No.]

When is Multitu posting Kirisame Magic Shop onto AO3? I've been checking every couple months ever since the story and threads ended and there's nothing on their profile still.

[Anonymous No.]

Is there any knowledge on what was ZUN's thought process when he was designing the Taoist characters? I know he said in some interview something along the lines that it would be shocking and funny if a character historicaly associated with Buddhism (Prince Shotoku) was actually Taoist (and a girl), but what's the deal with rest of them?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47014143
Is a lion evil because it eats humans?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47021323
It can be depending on intent, with enough cruelty and sadism in an animal they develop into beast youkai.

[Anonymous No.]

How come Shinigami hunt di3dn't Celestial? As far as I understand, If you are a good person you can (technically) go to heaven and become a celestial, so why is the Ministry sending their lacky to kill the very people they send there?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47020620
>Eiki is perfectly impartial. She is just, not good or evil.
Eiki is completely impartial when you are dead and about to be judge but outside of that she is good as she truly wants the best for everyone, for them to live a good life so that none have to go to Hell.

So overall I'd say that Eiki is the goodest character in Touhou

[Anonymous No.]

>>47020620
>How would Remilia's power be interpretated?
Remilia says she can manipulate fate but Flan hints in BAiJR that she's just boasting and all she can do is see the future

[Anonymous No.]

>>47021436
Or they could eat the right human at the right time. Stumble upon a dead monk or hermit and they get a free awakening into a higher form. Though it begs the question on what separates instincts from what we define as cruelty. A cat playing with a mouse seems cruel, but to the cat it's just what you're supposed to do.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47021668
Celestials aren't immortal in the same was as Sages are, anon.
Heaven and the Underworld are part of the same system, so if you've ascended to Heaven that's basically your spot and Shinigami have no business with you.

OTOH if the ledger of death says you're meant to die, but you're a Sage/Immortal and NOT of Heaven then yeah it's within their jurisdiction to correct that

[Anonymous No.]

>>47021668
They do, actually. It's Kishin, though, not shinigami, same with hermits. We learn that thanks to Tenshi dialogue in (iirc) WaHH.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47022645
I think he's asking why they do that if they're the ones sending people to heaven in the first place
to which I think the answer is that the kishin hunt people who've lived too long which includes hermits, and hermits who have ascended to being celestials. I imagine the ones the ministry sends to heaven (no one because heaven's closed) are exempt because they actually died

[Anonymous No.]

>>47021708
An arrogant vampire with an insight into the future, attempting to manipulate fate... Just where have I heard that before?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47022675
I wonder If kishin also hunddown Youkai and the like

This kinda makes me wonder if the people working at the Ministry also are subjected to the same rules and will die/ be judged someday

[Anonymous No.]

>>47022675
When Kasen and Seiga talk about it in WaHH it seems like it's just part of the job to them, although Kasen is as always oddly un-knowledgeable about the whole affair.
Seiga for her part just thinks of it as an occupational hazard of sorts since she seemingly isn't even trying to get into heaven and just want to enjoy her immortality.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47022743
>Kasen is as always oddly un-knowledgeable about the whole affair.
She's an oni, and we never see Kishin sent after her, likely because she hasn't gone past her prescribed lifespan.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47022830
Yeah, I guess she wouldn't have any prior sources on that info, I guess there are some myths about Yoshika being a hermit.
But Touhou Yoshika is clearly a failed Hermit of some sort since she became a Jiangshi.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47022894
Touhou Yoshika is a bundle of loose plot threads and character interactions that will never be capitalized upon.

[Anonymous No.]

anyone else feel like /jp/ has just become another /c/ but even more repetitive and boring?
every thread feels like a general and nothing new is really talked about, and any time i try to make a thread thats different from the ones posted every week it immediately gets shot down
i cant help but feel like this board is way too autistic over touhou to the point where nothing else meaningful or interesting actually gets talked about
and yea go ahead and get pissed at me for wanting something new but if even half these threads had something new or interesting related to touhou to talk about i wouldn't be bitching about it like i am
touhou just feels dry

[Anonymous No.]

>>47023346
>i cant help but feel like this board is way too autistic over touhou
/jp/ IS the Touhou board, newfriend. That's quite literally what it was created for.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47023346
/jp/ is the Touhou board, if you want anime or manga for to /a/, if you want video games go to /v/, /vg/, /vr/, /vst/, etc. If you want cosplay, go to /cgl/. If you want Japan, go to /trv/. Honestly, what /jp/ really needs is to ditch the 3dpd generals that clog shit up, and the vtubers for the love of God.

But this isn't a metathread, this is a thread about Touhou questions.

[Anonymous No.]

Is it known what kind of youkai yukari is specifically?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47023359
>>47023392
then make better posts, its not that hard, this board is full of brainrot these days
i agree though, the moment the mods start getting rid of the constant 3d shitters i'll get on my knees and worship them, banning them will probably filter out a lot of the retards from here aswell
chances are the mods are 3d shitters themselves though

[Anonymous No.]

>>47023490
Maybe a witch it she's a former human?
Gap Youkai isn't a species, she's just a youkai who controls gap, but personally I'd go for magician/witch.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47023492
>then make better posts
Honestly, this is the best possible place to talk about touhou lore and characters because the rest of the fanbase is basically memes and fumo, moreover if you frequent other places on 4chan you will notice that there is a low amount of schizos compared to them. About the rest of /jp/ I don't care because I filter all non-touhou threads

[Anonymous No.]

>>47023490
Mokumokuren is the closest analogue, but it's likely she isn't exactly one.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47020943
Your welcome, hope your rpg developing goes smoothly, unlike mine

>>47020620
>How would Remilia's power be interpretated?
Good luck with that, she might have some predicting skills like with the meteorite in BAiJR, might have some luck manipulation to find rare items and changed Sakuya's fate according to Akyuu and maybe her red mist is also kind of fate manip, since it changed her fate of not walking under the sun but it seems to be very subtle and I think there aren't many other references of her powers aside from those and this >>47020677.
Keine I think is more about changing how the past is perceived aka history, but it would still be able to change the present especially considering how Touhou works. Still fun and wild interpretations of 2hus are nice to see.

>>47021247
Her profile mentions it being a gem similar to those from the moon hence why Seiran also thinks it's her gem. I think the flesh made her youkai and the gem made her immortal/pure... Not sure how to really interpret it maybe she got immortality independent of belief or whatever powers other youkai.

>>47023490
You have the sukima onna from some edo tale that appears from small gaps in the wall and kidnaps people iirc.
Probably the irl myth that's closer to her.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47023346
/jp/ is literally the only place to talk about 2hu with actual people. Even if you wanna say the website was good, MotK is also deader than us.
This isn't a meta thread either so I don't know why you're doing this here, especially with the idea of "nothing new being talked about" when I've personally never once thought about things like how the Hourai Elixir would effect reproducing or if people in Gensokyo actually know about countries in the outside world anymore.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47025999
>>47021247
In Seiran's ending, her and Tsukasa talk about the gem's
Seiran's is a glorified air filter removing the stink of death and germs from the environment around her.
While Enoko's is much more powerful and makes it target Pure, Enoko uses it to make herself stronger and extend her life span, she should be immortal in the same sense the moonies are in that she just has a greatly extended life and can exist without impurity.
Also can probably hide herself from youkai like the Lunarians do by making themselves unable to be detected by the vastly more impure youkai.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47025999
>sukima onna
Seems quite fitting the way you describe it. Interesting. Nice trips too.

[Anonymous No.]

Where does Lily White go when haru ja nai?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47026124
She digs her way back into Letty's chest cavity, so she can violently burst out of it the next year

[Anonymous No.]

Does time in Gensokyo passes the same way as the outside world (like 1 year there is also 1 year outside) or is it a case of different time scales/outside normal time entirely.

Pic semi-related.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47026208
it's the same

[Anonymous No.]

>>47026208
Time moves the same way, except if time magic is involved, such as during the events of Imperishable Night, which was a localized event limited to Gensokyo.
Since none of the characters actually age, the passing of time ultimately doesn't make much sense, though you shouldn't worry too much about it., and I doubt that it will ever be acknowledged in-universe.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47026208
It's the same but Eientei's curse of history never advancing is permanently applied to Gensokyo, preventing the status quo from ever changing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47026313
Wait what

[Anonymous No.]

>>47026313
>Eientei's curse of history
Huh? What the hell is that? Thats the first time I hear of such thing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47023490
>>47025999
>>47026091
Sukima-onna is also Reimu's urban legend in ULiL, since she's the closest thing to Yukari that game has: when AoCF came out, the latter had to settle for Teke teke.
But at the same time, it seems ZUN treats this creature more like an inspiration and less like Yukari's actual species, which gets listed simply as "Youkai" whenever infotables come up, albeit she does get described as a "gap youkai" in more narrative texts (and these all use gap "youkai": I don't know if there are instances where they specifically use 隙間女 to refer to her).
She never really gets described as "that one youkai hailing from that one myth" in the same way, say, Kyouko is "a yamabiko youkai from that Japanese myth about yamabiko". She's more like other nondescript youkai with their individual identities from early Windows.
In fact, the urban legend thing gives credence to this view where the sukima onna served to inspire Yukari's character but isn't really the same thing as her: otherwise, Reimu would be just channeling Yukari, whereas the narrative obviously treats the sukima onna as its own thing, under the category of an urban legend, to boot.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47026363
It's just a writing thing. If ZUN had truly kept it in lockstep with our time Akyuu is about ready to keel over and die since she'd be 30 this year and Reimu would be in or approaching her 30s, most of the cast would be christmas cakes. It's Sazae-san time. Time is objectively passing and events happen but the characters themselves are about the same as they were 10-20 years ago, unless ZUN says so like Akyuu clearly aging from a child to where she is now. At the time of the SoPM (2011) interviews it has been 4 years since MoF (2007).

[Anonymous No.]

>>47026556
Yeah, but Eientei isn't even remotely a part of it. It's literally just ZUN not wanting to draw the characters aging in real time but still wanting things to happen in real time, so incidents don't become another 5 minutes on Namek.

[Anonymous No.]

Does Sanae have any family in the outside world?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47026363
>>47026441
I think it says in Cage in Lunatic Runagate that between Eirin and Kaguya coming to earth and the events of IN, the Bamboo Forrest of the Lost was stuck in time and had no history. I think this is what anon is referencing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47027040
is not mentioned

[Anonymous No.]

>>47021323
No, Lions dont have Conciousness, reason and Self awarenes. The moment you aquired one or all of the three, then you forfeith you Innocence, there is only Accountability
thats why in my headcannon I dont believe in the excuse of "its in their Nature"

[Anonymous No.]

>>47027335
>reason and Self awarenes
>Accountability
Women don't grasp those either.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47027040
The only characters with meaningful family are Marisa, Youmu, and Kosuzu, and even in their cases, the family in question amounts to like a throwaway mention without any actual relevance ever, to the point where we don't even know Youki's exact relation to Youmu.
I guess Kosuzu at least interacts with her family off-screen, but even then they don't really matter.
In all other cases, they're just completely unmentioned. We don't even know if Reimu is supposed to be an orphan, an outsider, or if there's even a "Hakurei bloodline" at all.

[Anonymous No.]

Can youkai turn into gods? Or vice versa? What about fairies?
>>47027373
That's why you should marry youkai.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47027582
>Can youkai turn into gods? Or vice versa?
We get an explicit yes to that question in CoLA chapter 25
>What about fairies?
Unsure. Eternity's whole Tokoyo deal was never fully explored, but she should at least be able to act like an avatar in a similar vein to Shou.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018082
maybe, also you could just stick some ofudas in the gun and engrave your bullets with prayers

[Anonymous No.]

Is the Japanese word for "annihilated" in WaHH chapter 49 page 7 the same one used in Buddhism?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47018856
do the Yorigami sisters have the most character development in touhou
it feels like they do

[Anonymous No.]

>>47028287
That's not exactly a high bar, but Jo'on does get a decent character arc, although you could argue 17.5 ran it back a bit.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47028287
The most? No, not even really remotely. A lot? Eh, yeah I'd say they get a good chunk of it. I feel like the one who goes through the most character change is Yuuma, even if technically it's not really a "change" but something we already knew was possible given her power.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47026554
True forgot about sukima miko. Most Yukari get's called is youkai or boundaries (結界の妖怪).

>>47028110
Picrel is 消滅 different from the 無 of Namusan, Chimata and Zanmu (if that's the buddhist anihilation)

>>47027813
>CoLA chapter 25
>Anyway, a divine spirit is different from a youkai in that it has two personalities.
>These divine spirits are just another kind of youkai that enjoy the relaxing life in Gensokyo.
We have Rinnosuke saying they're different and they're the same... So not so sure about that question.
According to Kananko in SoPM gods can become youkai if they only threaten people to get faith and that almost all stray gods without shrine become youkai. So god to youkai seems to happen, not sure if then they would banish like youkai or become nameless again like gods if they lose all faith in that state.

>>47014305
>Like, why is this ancient moon so different from the current one?
I think ZUN had a different idea on lunarians and changed his mind a bit so I think it's meant to be a Moon and Earth without impurities, so I thought that ZUN wanted to make Lunarians precede even life on Earth(or maybe Earths life was pure in the past).
Also Eirin in IN says she was born in the moon like Kaguya and Reisen and I think the Yagokoro family never got mentioned after Eirin's IN profile.
>>47013989
I think IN has quite a few things rebooted in CiLR, like youkai being intentionally made by Lunarians or them appearing as a consequence of moonlight, but in that case it could also be that Kaguya or Yukari is wrong or that both are right and the lunarians made the moon reflect sunlight in a way that would increase youkai being born.
Kaguya also uses 魔物 (monsters) when talking about the regulating the Earth's impurity which I think only is used there and never again...
Or maybe the moon made human and animal based youkai and the youkai born from shadows/fear are just due to human myths.

[Anonymous No.]

What was the nature of the relationship between these two gods? Are they really in love?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47026363
Kaguya used her Ability over Eternity to cast a spell on Eientei so that history never progress, things never rot, fragile things don't break etc. so that the place becomes pure like the moon. She stopped doing that after IN. Its all in her CiLR pov chapter

[Anonymous No.]

what exactly is the relationship between Sagume and Toyohime and Yorihime?
Are they her masters? Equals?
What even is Sagume's role on the moon?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47028961
None, it's purely a fanon pairing due to their parallels game-wise.
>>47035239
She's one of the Moon's Sages, it's safe to say she's roughly equivalent in importance to the Lunar Capital to the Watatsukis, and Toyohime herself, while never referred to as a Sage of the Moon, likely took over Eirin's role after the latter's desertion of the Capital.

[Anonymous No.]

want to test something quickly because i feel like i'm retarded
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,.ﾍ,）､　　）＞,､ _____,　,.イ　 ハ　　　　レ ル｀ ー--─ ´ルﾚ　ﾚ´</span>

[Anonymous No.]

ok it works

[Anonymous No.]

This was a great thread

[Anonymous No.]

>>47035319
Toyohime isn't a Sage. She just serves as one of the leaders of the Emissaries of the Moon, a role previously held by Eirin, but that doesn't put her into a leadership position of the Moon in general, and the Watatsuki's are somewhat distrusted by the others, given their failure to capture the notorious criminals that escaped to the Earth.
Sagume far outranks the Watatsuki sisters.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47021280
I doubt you'll see this now but the reason it hasn't been posted yet is because I've had to run through it more than I expected to get as many of the inconsistencies out, as well as fixing all my poor grammar, spelling, and using the wrong word issues from writing about 80% of the story in notepad
And I got pulled in a couple different directions with some other fic writing that was time-sensitive
I'm hopeful that I'll be done soon, though

[Anonymous No.]

>>47038056
>time sensitive

[Anonymous No.]

>>47038211
yes, as in there was a deadline for it

[Anonymous No.]

>>47038629
>yes,
>as
>in
>there
>was
>a
>deadline
>for
>it.

[Anonymous No.]

Why do all the fatties like this genre?