< Touhou PC 98

Touhou PC 98/Characters


Between 1996 and 1998, the first five games in the Touhou series were made for the PC-98 personal computer by a doujin circle known as Amusement Makers, of which ZUN was a part of. However, the games and most of the characters from the PC-98 era have either been ignored by the series' continuity or have been retconned outright. So far, Reimu, Marisa, Alice, and Yuuka are the only characters to have appeared in the Windows series.

This page is for Touhou characters who debuted in Highly Responsive to Prayers, Story of Eastern Wonderland, Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream, Lotus Land Story and Mystic Square. To see the characters who debuted in the Windows games, see Touhou Windows One and Touhou Windows Two. For characters from related works such as short stories and manga, see Touhou Other Official Works.

Wherever possible, character images come from portraits not drawn by ZUN used in official games and print works. Images of characters without quality official portraits are labeled "(fanart)".

Please remember to only use examples that are either canon or have undergone mass Memetic Mutation so that the page doesn't become overcrowded with tropes that only occur in one person/circle's works.

CONTAINS SPOILERS

Concerning the romanization of names

First, there are two principal methods for transcribing Japanese names into Latin letters: the Hepburn System and the Kunrei-shiki System. In general, ZUN favored the Hepburn System before Phantasmagoria of Flower View, but changed to the Kunrei-shiki System afterward. This page uses the Hepburn format for the sake of argument, as it is the most widely recognized and makes the pronunciation obvious to English speakers.

Debuted in Highly Responsive to Prayers

Windows era
PC-98 era (fanart)


Shrine Maiden of Paradise
Reimu Hakurei

[1]

Shrine Maiden of the Hakurei Shrine and the main protagonist of the Touhou series in general. Extremely talented, but hates training and is very lazy. She's also a friendly person who gets along well with everyone, including Youkai. This passive attitude towards monsters doesn't sit well with most of the humans in Gensoukyou, which means her shrine doesn't get many visitors... or donations. Also well known for her armpits.

Tropes associated with Reimu:

  • Ambiguous Innocence: Reimu is consistently described as carefree at heart, guileless, and simple in her thinking. She also just plain doesn't see things quite the way everyone else does. It never seems to occur to her that her way of doing things can cause people a lot of unnecessary grief before the resolution, or that what seems straightforward to her might be a mind-bending trick to others, or that her own natural gifts can be an unfair advantage in some things... And as the flip side to her impartial view of others, ZUN says, she's not particularly attached to anyone either; no matter how popular she is, "she's actually alone in her heart."
  • Ancestral Weapon: Reimu's main weapon are the Hakurei Yin-Yang Orbs.
  • Art Evolution: Reimu's appearance has changed particularly often and dramatically since the start of the series -- after all, she's been in all games but two. Most infamous in Mountain of Faith, where an oddly jaundiced skin tone led to the joke that Reimu had become an undead zombie.
  • Badass Normal: While she possesses the powers of channeling gods now, back then in the PC-98 era she had absolutely zero powers and only relied on her giant ying yang orb (which she used like a soccer ball) and her generic ofuda; she also had to use her turtle Genji in order to fly. Despite that, she managed to beat, in order of status: A realm-warping human with magical powers, an absurdly powerful evil spirit who even had Marisa as a henchman, the supposedly strongest youkai of all, the angel of death, and a god that creates worlds.
  • Bad Liar: Whenever she tries to lie, it's so painfully, obviously forced that it's practically impossible to not realize it immediately. She is really that incredibly bad of a liar.
  • Barrier Maiden: Should anyone dare to kill her, Gensoukyou will collapse and everyone will vanish.
  • Barrier Warrior: Only actually seen in the fighting games.
  • Berserk Button: Messing with the Hakurei Shrine is a very good way to bring down Reimu's wrath on your head, as the first two games and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody demonstrated.
  • Bonus Boss: The last extra boss of Shuusou Gyoku, the first game of Touhou's sister series, Seihou.
  • Born Lucky: Reimu is downright notorious for her luck and incredible intuition. It's why her default method of problem solving seems to be to pick a direction and go, since she'll always manage to end up headed towards the Big Bad eventually.
  • Brilliant but Lazy: As noted above. Indeed, fans have noticed that Watatsuki no Yorihime owes her God Mode Sue status to essentially being a version of Reimu that has trained herself.
  • Brutal Honesty: The idea of lying often never even comes across Reimu's mind, and she'll bluntly, unabashedly say exactly what she thinks no matter who she's talking to or what the situation. This is in fact one of the major contrasts between her and Marisa - while Marisa will often lie just for the heck of it, Reimu is simply far too honest to even attempt it. Her sheer honesty is one of the reasons that the two Oni of the series take a liking to her, as honesty is a favourable trait to Oni.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Reimu's values and views of the world are... different from everyone else's, a trait that's frequently brought up both by ZUN and Rinnosuke. This is most often shown by her occasional strange comments and the abnormal conclusions she tends to draw.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Reimu and Yukari form the "Border team" in Imperishable Night. It's rather convenient that the colors of their outfits correspond to the borders between visible and invisible light.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Anyone she defeats tends to end up at her shrine for a tea party. May lead to Shipping.
  • Desperation Attack: In Highly Responsive to Prayers, her bombs can damage bosses when she's out of extra lives.
  • Detached Sleeves: Led to the fandom's tongue-in-cheek armpit fetish.
  • Expecting Someone Taller: This little exchange.

Shou: You're the human who gathered the flying treasure? You look a lot more scrawny than I imagined.
Reimu: How rude.
Shou: I'm sorry, you're quite right. I simply thought that if you'd made it this far, maybe you were some sort of ascetic scholar.

  • Face Fault: Has one when talking to Rika in SoEW.
  • Fantastic Racism: Zig-zagged. While she is a youkai exterminator, she'll generally beat down anyone who gets in her way, no matter who or what they are, whether they're human (as Marisa, Sakuya, and Sanae can attest to) or gods (Kanako, Suwako). And afterwards, she'll sit down and have tea with them without the slightest malevolence whatsoever. Outside of duty, she treats youkai the same way she treats humans, with vague disrespect. ZUN has said that she doesn't particularly care about humans or youkai, and she personally considers everyone the same, neither negatively nor positively. This is supposedly part of why powerful youkai tend to be drawn to her.
    • Wild And Horned Hermit has given a motivation to her "jerkass" behavior. Youkai by definition oppose humanity; and they are opposed by humanity. If they didn't do this, they wouldn't be youkai. (What would happen isn't stated, but it would likely be bad.) Pranks and "youkai extermination", softened by spellcard rules, give some pretense to following this paradigm.
  • Final Boss: She's the last character you fight in the regular final boss's Story Mode of Immaterial and Missing Power, Phantasmagoria of Flower View, and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.
  • Friend to All Living Things: Not shown often, unless you count the whole Defeat Means Friendship routine, but animals seem to really like Reimu. She's been seen feeding wild rabbits by hand, summoning birds with a whistle, and crossing a river without noticing it because fish rose up to form a bridge under her feet.
  • Genre Savvy: One particularly amusing example in Perfect Cherry Blossom was Reimu waiting around for a boss to arrive.
  • Good Is Not Nice: Not nearly as bad as the fans (or Kasen) believe, but when duty calls, she's a bit of a jerk.
  • Hard Work Hardly Works: She's already talented. This makes her extremely lazy, to the point that the holy power of the Hakurei Shrine has weakened enough that Remilia, who is a vampire, can visit regularly without ill effects. Were she actually to train her ability, though, it's highly possible that she could reach the same level of power as Yorihime, if not more.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power:
    • Reimu's ability is the power to float in the sky, which every girl in the series is capable of doing already. Except then you reach Fantasy Heaven. ZUN's description: "Supreme Master-Art. With Reimu's ability to float, she floats away from physical reality and becomes invincible. If it wasn't just for play (with time limit), no one could beat her by any method". She can't be hurt, and the only way to win is to wait for her timer to run out while she's free to bombard her opponent at her leisure.
    • One of the laughably Mundane Utility "powers" of the Hakurei Yin-Yang Orb - the power to eat sweets and never get fat - is believed to give her the smallest hitbox.
  • Hime Cut: As a miko, this is the traditional haircut for her. She's depicted with a lot of different hairstyles throughout the series, but the early games and ZUN's art leans towards this more often than not.
  • Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball: The Yin-Yang Orb in Highly Responsive to Prayers, when it was used as a weapon and not a backup firer. One of her moves in the fighting games gives a nod to this.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Her ofuda.
  • Intangible Man: When using her Last Word from Imperishable Night.
  • Jack of All Stats: Her attack and speed are just barely adequate, and she has no real glaring flaws, as far as standard gameplay goes. Her attacks are highly flexible and she's good for just about any situation. Reimu A is usually a homing type, and sacrifices power for range and accuracy. Reimu B is usually the forward-focus type, similar to Marisa's gameplay, but not quite as strong. In exchange, her attacks have a wider range, making it easier for her to hit the targets. Finally, she consistently has the smallest hitbox and longest deathbomb period, making her ideal for survival play.
  • Jerkass: In fanon, she's done just about anything from bullying Cirno to going Ax Crazy and extorting donations from everyone after getting fed up of her Perpetual Poverty. However, other fans have adopted a more charitable interpretation of her as having poor social skills and/or being forced by her position to keep everyone at arm's length.
  • Leitmotif: She has a couple, but "Maiden's Capriccio" is her most iconic.
  • Miko
  • Moral Dissonance: Despite being a boss, Orange never really had any intention of fighting Reimu, who just started shooting at her because exterminating youkai is what she does.
  • Mythology Gag: In the Fighting Game spin-offs, a portion of Reimu's moveset is taken from Highly Responsive to Prayers.
  • Mr. Vice Guy: Lazy and greedy, but ultimately a good person who's devoted to her job.

Komachi: "That shrine maiden didn't have any evil thoughts to begin with. [...] Just about all humans have that level of worldly desires. Working hard despite that amount of desire isn't evil, it's innocent. Among the innocent ones, you get people like that shrine maiden."

  • Off-Model: See the "zombie Reimu" meme.
  • Opposites Attract: Reimu is rather serious by Gensoukyou standards and has no tolerance for mischief, yet her closest friends tend to be extra-strength weird, such as the maniacal Marisa, the gregarious Suika, and the whimsical Yukari.
  • Onmyodo: Ofuda (rectangular paper charms) are her weapon of choice along with giant yin-yang orbs.
  • Parental Abandonment: Despite the importance of her bloodline, it's unknown exactly what happened to the rest of the Hakurei clan, just that Reimu has been living alone since at least Highly Responsive to Prayers.
  • Perpetual Poverty: Reimu doesn't get donations, and the Hakurei Shrine is often described as "shabby-looking", though she has no problems providing for herself.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Teleport Spam:
    • Dream Sign "Fantasy Dimensional Hole" and Divine Spirit "Fantasy Seal: Blink".
    • Her final attack phases as the extra boss of Shuusou Gyoku, which may have been the inspiration for "Fantasy Dimensional Hole".
  • Vague Age: Information provided in print works and the passage of seasons in the games suggest that at least six years have passed between The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and Hisoutensoku, so Reimu should probably be over 20 years old by now -- more if the PC-98 games still count. However, she is always depicted as being somewhere in her teens.
  • Wrap Around:
    • Her entire gimmick for her boss fight in Imperishable Night. For her spell cards, she creates borders around and inside the battlefield to shoot danmaku through. Those shots will eventually reach around to aim at the player character from various directions. Her last spells involve flying off one end of the screen and coming out of the other while shooting at you.
    • Her support power for her A type shot in Subterranean Animism, since Yukari is her partner.
(fanart)


Gatekeeper
Shingyoku

[2]

The gatekeeper to Hakurei Shrine, and the first boss in the entire series. Very little is known about Shingyoku, as it has neither dialogue nor an official profile.

Tropes associated with Shingyoku:

  • Death From Above: When in ball form, Shingyoku tries to squash Reimu.
  • Degraded Boss: Sort of. Story of Eastern Wonderland, Subterranean Animism, and Undefined Fantastic Object have enemies that appear to be based on Shingyoku's main form.
  • Gender Bender: One form appears female, another looks male. The concept of yin and yang represents duality, after all.
  • Horned Humanoid: The female form has four horns.
  • Leitmotif: "The Positive and Negative"
  • Meaningful Name: Shingyoku can be written in kanji as 神玉, which translates to "divine orb".
  • Onmyodo: Its main form is a yin-yang orb.
  • Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Not exactly, but the Female's red hakama and the Male's blue one stand out.
(fanart)


Evil Eyes
YuugenMagan

[3]

A generic boss Reimu encounters in the Makai, YuugenMagan is a set of five independently moving eyes that are connected by electricity.

Tropes associated with YuugenMagan:

(fanart)


Innocent Devil
Elis

[4]

Elis is the second boss Reimu faces in the Makai. She is a blonde girl that has devil wings, can turn into a bat, and carries a wand. Little else is known about her.

Tropes associated with Elis:

First form (fanart)


Angel of Death
Sariel

[5]

Sariel is an angel of death and the final boss of the Makai route.

Tropes associated with Sariel:

Story of Eastern Wonderland, second form (fanart)


Vengeful Ghost
Mima

[6]

A vengeful spirit whom Reimu originally ran into during her trip into Jigoku. She later reappeared in Gensoukyou, trying to get revenge on not just Reimu, but all people. After being shot down a second time, she gives up being evil and spends her time hanging around the Hakurei Shrine and making fun of Reimu. Highly popular despite her long absence, speculation abounds as to her reappearance.

Tropes associated with Mima:

  • A God Am I: Contemplates about becoming a Shinto god in her Mystic Square good ending, but decides to take it easy and goes to bother Reimu instead.
  • Badass Cape
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Despite being present in four out of the five PC-98 games, a fan favorite, and having a significant connection to one of the characters who did make the transition to the Windows series, she has yet to even be mentioned in the the Windows series. She's received a Shout-Out in the form of Soga no Tojiko, however.
    • Before Ten Desires, one of the PC-98 music re-release CDs has her on cover.
  • Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: Her excuse for going to Makai in Mystic Square is that tourist devils are "trespassing on her turf".
  • Consummate Liar: Subversion. While she is quite capable of sticking to the trope, she more often than not just tells flat out lies for fun.
  • Cute Ghost Girl
  • Cute Witch
  • Defeat Means Friendship: The original one in Touhou.
  • Final Boss: Of "Story of Eastern Wonderland".
  • Fog Feet
    • Subverted in Mystic Square, possibly due to her wish in her Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream ending.
  • Ghost Amnesia: She doesn't even remember how she became... whatever she is.
  • Ghost Lights: As options!
  • A Glass of Chianti: In Mystic Square Extra ending served by Meido Alice.
  • Japanese Honorifics: Marisa called her "Mima-sama". This has spawned many a fan theory, from mentor to mother, as it's the most respectful Marisa has been to anyone.
  • Kamehame Hadoken / Wave Motion Gun: Since the release of Touhou Soccer 2, in the eyes of the fandom, Mima has her own version of Master Spark, The Twilight Spark.
  • Leitmotif: She's racked up a few of them:
    • Her first theme was "Angel's Legend," which she shared with Yuugen Magan in the first game.
    • "Complete Darkness," which played during the final showdown of Story of Eastern Wonderland.
    • "Reincarnation," her theme from Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream.
  • Like a Badass Out of Hell: Almost literally.
  • Lunacy: In her Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream ending, she wished that the Full Moon will always be in the sky so that she will be at full power at all times. Yumemi grants it a little too literally, by placing a moon in geosynchronous orbit.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: She denies being "dead", and refers to herself as simply being a soul.
  • Perfect Run Final Boss: Her final phase in Story of Eastern Wonderland.
  • Power Gives You Wings: Grows four additional wings in her final attack phase in Story of Eastern Wonderland.
  • Razor Wind: One of her attacks in Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream.
  • Recurring Boss: Originally a lower level boss in Highly Responsive to Prayers, she returned as the final boss of Story of Eastern Wonderland.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Explicitly stated to be her ultimate goal in Story of Eastern Wonderland.
  • Say It with Hearts: A good deal of her dialogue in Mystic Square.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Was this very, very briefly in the Story of Eastern Wonderland ending.
  • Star Power
  • Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: She decides to dress like one for fun in her good ending in Mystic Square.
  • Sword Beam: In Highly Responsive to Prayers, she used a knife to shoot lasers.
  • Winged Humanoid
(fanart)


Hellish Moon
Kikuri

[7]

The second boss Reimu meets in Jigoku, Kikuri is a bronze disk. Okay, there's an image of a girl on the disk, but it's still pretty strange.

Tropes associated with Kikuri:

  • Battle Aura: Has a sun-like fire aura around her.
  • Eye Beams: She attacks with these at one point.
  • Ghost Lights: As options.
  • Leitmotif: "Magic Mirror," a theme she shares with Elis.
  • Power Floats: Beyond the disk itself, the engraving shows a ball of energy hovering.
(fanart)


Astral Knight
Konngara

[8]

Konngara is the final boss of the Jigoku route.

Tropes associated with Konngara:

  • Cute Ghost Girl: Sometimes depicted as this as a result of her formless lower body, a part of standard Japanese ghost depiction.
  • Excuse Me While I Multitask: Carries a sake plate while she fights Reimu, from which she fires more bullets.
  • Final Boss
  • Fog Feet
  • Horned Humanoid: Due to her horn, in fan depictions where she's not a ghost, she's usually depicted instead as an Oni. The above-mentioned sake plate probably contributes to this idea as well, given that Oni (especially the Gensokyou variety) are notorious drinkers, and one of the two confirmed Oni characters also carries a sake plate in battle.
  • Leitmotif: "Swordsman of a Distant Star"
  • The Southpaw: Wields her sword with her left hand in HRtP, and what little fanart of her there is (like the one to the right) tends to stick with this when her sword is drawn.
  • Sword Beam: With bullets and lasers.
  • Sword Lines


Debuted in Story of Eastern Wonderland

(fanart)


Turtle
Genjii

An old turtle who serves as Reimu's transportation (since she hadn't yet learned how to fly under her own power), and on occasion attempts (unsuccessfully) to be her mentor, or at least give her advice. Disappeared without a trace after Mystic Square, though Word of God has stated that he's "probably living in the lake at the back of the shrine".

Tropes associated with Genjii:

(fanart)


Engineer
Rika

Some sort of scientific genius. Before Story of Eastern Wonderland she creates a bunch of monsters and ghosts and decides to hang out at the Hakurei Shrine while Reimu was gone. Naturally, she gets her ass kicked. First boss in a Touhou shooting game.

Tropes associated with Rika:

(fanart)


Samurai
Meira

Attacks Reimu in an attempt to get the Hakurei powers for herself. Fails, and is never heard from again.

Tropes associated with Meira:

Windows era
Story of Eastern Wonderland (fanart)
Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream (fanart)


Ordinary Black Magician
Marisa Kirisame

A magician who lives in the Forest of Magic. She just happened to be the "Ordinary Magician" in the middle of a crowd of superpowered beings, so she worked her ass off HARD to eventually become one of the more formidable opponents in Gensoukyou. She's rude and loud-mouthed, but is a straightforward person. Also a notorious thief, and damn proud of it.

Tropes associated with Marisa:

  • Acquired Poison Immunity: In Wild and Horned Hermit Marisa ignores a sign warning of toxic fumes, since she's been exposed to so many poisonous substances as part of her research. It's implied that she's even become resistant to mercury poisoning in this way.
  • Always Second Best: Next to Reimu. In fact, Marisa has admitted several times that she is the second-best in Gensoukyou, a fact she seems to, surprisingly, hold pride in. Given that Reimu can and, canonically, has kicked everyone's ass there, Marisa's pride is probably justified.
  • Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: The Mini-Hakkero, a pocket-sized octagonal magical furnace which Marisa uses for many things... including her Master Spark.
  • Art Shift: There's a Memetic Mutation known as "Cho-Marisa" where Marisa is drawn to resemble a man more muscular than The Incredible Hulk, often with a beard (while still wearing a frilly Cute Witch outfit).
  • Ascended Extra: After her initial appearance as a villainous minion with no real backstory or motivation, she went on to become the second main character of the series.
  • Ass Kicks You: an attack in the fighting games, known as the "Flying Doombutt" for its surprisingly high damage and range. As it makes Marisa immune to projectiles, it has given rise to an obscure meme known as Marisa's Bulletproof Bloomers.
  • Badass Bookworm: In spite of her apparent unconcern for obtaining anything honestly, all of her abilities were gained by either studying the necessary magical texts or inventing them herself.
  • Bad Liar/Consummate Liar/Blatant Lies: All of them, at various times. When the judge of the dead tells you that you're going to hell for lying too much and your immediate response is that you've never told a single lie in your life, you just might have a problem.
  • Black Magician Girl
  • Bonus Boss: In both Shuusou Gyoku and Fairy Wars. Granted, in the latter case she's the Bonus Boss for Cirno.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Nearly the entire Alice scenario in Subterranean Animism. Oddly enough, however, they're treating the game as an RPG. In The Story of Eastern Wonderland Marisa is aware of how many continues you used, and in the trial version informs Reimu that the game ends on the third stage.
  • Brought To You By The Letter M: In Undefined Fantastic Object.
  • The Charmer/Chick Magnet: Fandom quite often turns Marisa into a Les Yay version, which results in comedy/drama.
  • Composite Character: Spell attacks and books aren't the only things she's stolen from people. In the transition from PC-98 to Windows, she's picked up Mima's habit of lying and her general personality, Chiyuri's speech patterns, Ellen's 2P costume[9], and PC-98 Marisa's witch motif and laser/stars theme.
  • Curtains Match the Window
  • Cute Witch
  • Doppelganger Attack: For her final attack phase in Shuusou Gyoku.
  • Evil Redhead: Her original appearance in Story of Eastern Wonderland. Her hair was changed to blonde in the next game.
  • Eyes of Gold
  • Flying Broomstick: Almost always shown riding it in the games. Oddly, she uses it for attacking but not for flight in the fighting games. Word of God states that she only rides the broom for appearances, for the Cute Witch motif. She can fly on her own just like anyone else if she wants to.
  • Genre Savvy: Sometimes the wrong genre, like the Alice scenario in SA.
  • Glass Cannon: She often has high firepower and speed compared to other characters in the Windows danmaku games. Of course, as with any other Touhou character, she'll instantly die if just one bullet touches her hitbox.
  • Hard Work Hardly Works: Played straight when compared to Reimu, but averted in that she's still extremely powerful thanks to her training, quite possibly the next strongest human in all of Gensoukyou.
    • In Symposium of Post-mysticism, Byakuren explains the Six Buddhist Perfections. Marisa dismisses the first two (Generosity and Discipline) but...

Byakuren: "Forbearance" is to withstand humiliation or pain from others. "Diligence" is the effort exerted to continue training.
Marisa: Everyone does that, not like you have a choice.

  • I Let You Win: Sort of. She goes easy on Cirno during the extra stage of Fairy Wars, using variant lasers that don't actually kill her, instead chipping away at her motivation gauge. However, multiple times during the battle, she finds that Cirno is stronger than she thought, and steps up the complexity of her attacks. At the end, she thinks that Cirno might have been a problem even if she was going all out, and the effort from the battle is still enough that she has to go home and lie down afterwards. On the other hand, it's Cirno rather than Marisa who gets a "beaten up" portrait after the fight.
  • Kamehame Hadoken: one of her attacks in the fighting games.
  • Kung Fu Wizard: Mild example. Marisa is a lot more physically fit than most spellcasters of the setting, and gets more physical attacks in the fighting games.
  • Leitmotif: More so than any other character. Marisa has six themes so far with "Love-Colored Magic/Master Spark" being the most recognisable.
  • Magic Wand: Carries one in UFO and Story of Eastern Wonderland.
  • Magic Mushroom: Marisa uses phantasmal mushrooms as a common ingredient/fuel source for her magic. The Forest of Magic where she lives is known for being full of them... but even better known for being full of "magic" mushrooms. Fandom pushes both ends of this routinely, with mushrooms that can have basically any effect imaginable for Marisa or her victims.
  • Mega Manning:
    • She has stolen several spells from other characters she has fought over time. Even her signature Master Spark was originally held by Yuuka Kazami. The whole point of the Grimoire Of Marisa is her cataloguing the spell cards of everyone she meets, with the stated plan of using them to learn more magic.
    • This tendency spawned the fan-made game Mega Mari, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
    • Then in Ten Desires her shots have picked up the explosive abilities of Sanae's Cobalt Spread, while Sanae herself ended up with something resembling Marisa's Super Shortwave. A con job rather than theft this time, it would seem.
  • More Dakka: Everyone's danmaku attacks are like this, but Marisa is notable for constantly looking for ways to get bigger firepower from her magic.
  • Mouthful of Pi: In Mountain of Faith, Marisa gets impatient while travelling across levels and wonders if she could finish reciting pi by the time she got to her intended destination.
  • Mythology Gag: Marisa's Player 2 colour scheme in PoFV.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity/Smarter Than You Look: Marisa rarely draws attention to how hard she trains/researches, either because she doesn't want the attention or she doesn't want people like Reimu taking pity on her.
  • Opposites Attract:
    • The Brilliant but Lazy, blunt, dispassionate Reimu, passive and tricky in her fighting style, popular despite her lack of active socialising, associated with sunshine and spring -- and then the hard-working, energetic, dishonest, excitable Marisa who lives by brute force, bothers people everywhere she goes, and is associated with rain. They're competitors and rivals. They're also best friends who spend a lot of time just hanging out.
    • Marisa's numerous fandom couplings, romantically or otherwise, also tend to be based on this. Along with Reimu, the withdrawn bookworm Patchouli, the cold-hearted and tactically oriented Alice, and the shy Nitori are opposites of Marisa as well.
  • Power Gives You Wings: She sports a demonic pair of wings for her boss attack in Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream, and a pair of angelic ones in Shuusou Gyoku's Extra stage.
  • Power of Love: The description of the aforementioned Love Sign: Master Spark includes the instructions "Mutter the spell to the Mini-Hakkero tenderly; aim at someone you don't like; now unleash your annihilation of love!". What exactly that means is still a matter for debate.
  • Princess Curls: Back in the PC-98 days. Ultimately morphed into the side-braid of the Windows games.
  • Ramming Always Works: Marisa's final spell card, Comet "Blazing Star", consists of her firing a Master Spark backwards and trying to ram her opponent repeatedly.
  • Shoryuken: Her Miasma Sweep move in the fighting games.
  • Shotoclone: Her default skill set in the fighting games include a Kamehame Hadoken, a Shoryuken, and a flying horizontal attack, all with the traditional button inputs to use them.
  • Sociopathic Hero: Marisa enjoys beating people up a bit too much.
  • Star Power: Marisa loves watching stars and meteor showers, and as a result most of her spells are themed after space or heavenly bodies. If the PC-98 games are canon then she learned her first few spells of this type by copying Mima.
  • Sticky Fingers: In terms of items and skills. Her presence in both Lotus Land Story and The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil is explicitly due to her searching for new theft victims, and in Imperishable Night she introduces herself to the Eientei staff as a thief, much to Alice's exasperation. She figures that human lifespans are so short compared to those of Youkai, that the Youkai can have their stuff back after she's dead, so they shouldn't mind.
    • There's Hypocritical Humor in Perfect Memento in Strict Sense when Sakuya swiped the Mini-Hakkero (to build a moon rocket). Marisa is quoted as complaining, "Her takin' whatever she wants gets on my nerves. She said she'd give it back later, but she was obviously lyin'."
  • Supernatural Is Purple: Wears purple in her PC-98 appearances.
  • This Is for Emphasis, Bitch: In A Fan Translation Woolseyism version of her Pre-duel dialogue from IN stage 4.

Alice: (About Reimu) Why the stuttering? Just yell at her like you always do. "Bitch, get out of the way!" Like that.
...
Marisa: (To Reimu) Okay, okay, I give up. You're right. The endless night, stealing the full moon, hiding the human village, and putting hats on stone statues, it's all Alice's fault. Now, bitch, get out of the way!

  • Tomboy: Marisa speaks roughly for a girl and has a fighting style based around brute force. She's sometimes joked to be the manliest character in the series (though newer characters like Unzan give her competition).
  • Trademark Favorite Food: fanon tends to expand the Magic Mushroom thing to her being fond of mushrooms in general.
  • Trash of the Titans: Her house is a real mess, crammed with everything she has stolen but hasn't yet bothered to sort. Legendary treasures have actually been found in her junk piles, completely unknown to her.

Marisa: (flying through Eientei) It'd take one hell of a janitor to clean a hall that long.
Alice: Still easier than cleaning your house, Marisa.

  • Unskilled but Strong: Subverts the "unskilled" part somewhat, as she worked very hard for her powers, unlike most other inhabitants of Gensoukyo. However, her personal philosophy is that danmaku is all about power, so her basic attacks are usually very dense and unstructured. And when push comes to shove she will throw all pretense of finesse out the window and just start Master Sparking half the screen and/or trying to ram her opponent, which is borderline breaking the Spell Card rules as lampshaded by ZUN himself.
  • Useless Useful Spell: The laser shot-type that hits the top of the screen instantly and pierces through enemies has no particularly great uses and is invariably weaker than the game's forward concentration shot-type[10]... except in UFO, where there's actually enough things to hit at one time for piercing to be really useful. This is generally to balance the fact that her laser shot-types also tend to have the most powerful bomb(s).
  • Vague Age: Like Reimu, she always seems to be in her mid-teens regardless of the passage of time.
  • Verbal Tic: Marisa tends to end her sentences with the masculine, informal and assertive "ze" particle.
  • Wave Motion Gun: Love Sign "Master Spark", her signature attack. ZUN's comments on the spell literally translate to "a freaking huge magical laser".
  • Weak but Skilled: Compared to most of Gensoukyou's inhabitants, who rely on innate abilities and rarely improve upon them, while Marisa has none and is constantly seeking new spells.
    • It's a bit dubious however, as her attacks are actually more powerful than those of other characters.
  • Wolverine Publicity: Has been in every Touhou game since her debut in Story of Eastern Wonderland except for Shoot the Bullet... where she appears as the game's logo anyway. Furthermore, she has been the game logo for every ZUN-made Touhou game made in the Windows era except for Double Spoiler and Fairy Wars, even though she does appear in both games.
  • Why Didn't I Think of That?: This dialogue from Perfect Cherry Blossom:

Marisa: Well, will you open the door?
Prismriver Sisters: This door does not open.
Marisa: Don't you go through it now and then?
Prismriver Sisters: We just fly over it.
Marisa: ... Oh.

(fanart)


Evil Eye Sigma

A flying tank built by Rika.

Tropes associated with Evil Eye Sigma:

Debuted in Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream

(fanart)


Hardworking witch who dreams of love
Ellen

A witch that's eternally young in both body and mind.

Tropes associated with Ellen:

(fanart)


A princess dreaming of beauty in danmaku
Kotohime

A princess, who is also a cop. Yeah, she weirds out pretty much everyone she meets, and not just because of her occupational choices.

Tropes associated with Kotohime:

  • Badass Princess
  • Cloudcuckoolander: She's a princess who thinks she's a cop and likes to randomly collect things that only seem to interest her. The title of her theme suggests that she's insane.
  • Everything's Better with Princesses
  • Fair Cop: Claims to be a policewoman who is "undercover" as an ordinary person. Given that her idea of an "ordinary person" is a princess...
    • She visits Reimu in her police uniform in the epilogue if she wins.
  • Fragile Speedster
  • Genius Ditz: Despite telling Yumemi to her face that science is heresy, Kotohime recognizes the electrical equipment in the ship, and her victory quote to Chiyuri is to start reciting the Periodic Table.
  • It Amused Me: Suggested as her most likely motivation for exploring the "ruins" with all the other player characters. This is supported when she defeats Yumemi and can't think of anything to wish for.
  • Leitmotif: "Maniacal Princess"
  • Mad Bomber: Not Ax Crazy, but she is both mad and a bomber.
  • Say It with Hearts: Shows up in the late-game encounters with Chiyuri and Yumemi.

Chiyuri: ... You'd better do what I say if you know what's good for you!
Kotohime: Okay, I will. ♥

(fanart)


Maiden poltergeist who's lost her dreams
Kana Anaberal

A poltergeist produced by an unstable girl. She normally haunts a western mansion, but the owner has gotten used to her, so she's bored.

Tropes associated with Kana:

(fanart)


Scientist that looks for dreams
Rikako Asakura

A rare inhabitant of Gensoukyou that values science above magic. Despite this, she's actually a very powerful magician.

Tropes associated with Rikako:

(fanart)


Resident of fantasy that runs through time
Chiyuri Kitashirakawa

Chiyuri is Yumemi's assistant and mostly spends time collating her research data. She also put out the fliers advertising the contest to reach the center of the "ruins" that recently appeared in Gensoukyou. She doesn't always have a clear idea of what her boss intends, which results in her getting whacked over the head when she treats the contest winner rudely (read: threatens them with a gun). Yumemi then orders her to fight the heroines in order to collect more data. Oh, and her major is in "comparative physics". Whatever that means.

Tropes associated with Chiyuri:

(fanart)


Fantasy legend
Yumemi Okazaki

Yumemi is a professor of "comparative physics" at a university in another dimension where all natural forces have been explained by a Grand Unified Theory. When she dares to suggest that the theory doesn't explain magic, she is laughed out of the university and sets off on a journey to prove that it exists. Her ship lands in Gensoukyou to capture someone to use in her experiments. Asskicking ensues and she leaves empty-handed. In spite of her disappointing failure, she still rewards the heroines generously.

Tropes associated with Yumemi:

Yumemi: Oh, a real Miko / magician / witch / evil spirit? How wonderful!

Ruukoto with Mimi-chan (fanart)


Ruukoto

When (and if) Reimu beat Yumemi, she asked for an assistant who could handle all of the day-to-day chores around the shrine. What she got was a nuclear-powered robot maid who isn't necessarily good at her job. After this, Ruukoto was never seen again.

Tropes associated with Ruukoto:


Debuted in Lotus Land Story

(fanart)


Supernatural Creature
Orange

A mountain youkai that gets attacked by the player character for no particularly good reason.

Tropes associated with Orange:

(fanart)


Vampire Girl
Kurumi

A vampire that attempts to stop the player from reaching the island in the lake filled with blood.

Tropes associated with Kurumi:

(fanart)


The Porter of a Mansion
Elly

The gatekeeper to Yuuka's mansion. She's completely useless at her job, letting both Reimu and Marisa by. Not that Yuuka even needs a gatekeeper, considering her own power and how isolated her mansion is...

Tropes associated with Elly:

Phantasmagoria of Flower View (fanart)
Lotus Land Story, first form (fanart)


Flower Master Of The Four Seasons
Yuuka Kazami

An old and extremely powerful flower youkai first found living in the dream world, Mugenkan. She is sleeping at the time and only defends herself because Reimu and Marisa broke in and woke her up. Naturally, she loves her flowers and is actually more like a force of nature than a typical youkai.

Tropes associated with Yuuka:

  • Ax Crazy: In Fanon, due to her motivation in Mystic Square being "I was bored", "I'm going to kill you" dialogue, and her "genocide is a game" joke. In Phantasmagoria of Flower View, she says her previous creepy claims were just teasing.
  • Berserk Button: Those caught disturbing her flowers have a nasty habit of getting vaporized on the spot.
  • Boobs of Steel: Typically portrayed as having a large chest, and her claim of being the strongest in Gensoukyou may actually not be far from the truth.
  • Cute and Psycho: One of her quotes in the PC-98 games says she treats genocide as a game. She's teasing about it, but it's creepy none the less. Not helped by her article in Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, containing a drawing of her smiling serenely in a field of flowers while explaining her aforementioned Berserk Button - and it's canon that she scares people. In a lot of fanon, she could be endearing and smiling innocently one second, and snapping your head off in the next.
  • Doppelganger Attack: A few of her attacks as Lotus Land Story's final boss. Fandom remembers the Dual Spark.
  • Final Boss
  • Friend to All Children: Recent fanart and stories with her depict her as this in regards to Team 9 with mixed results.
  • The Gadfly: Loves rubbing people the wrong way. Goes hand in hand with It Amused Me. How much is up to the reader.
  • Good Powers, Bad People: Depending on how you interpret her character, she can be anywhere between a socially awkward weirdo, to a jerk, to youkai moe~, to criminally insane.
  • Green Thumb
  • It Amused Me: When she's a protagonist, her main motivations for picking fights were "it amused me".
  • Lady of War: According to Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, she incorporates flower petals in her attacks and her fights are said to be beautiful to watch.
  • Leitmotif: Like Mima, she's racked up a few:
    • "Sleeping Terror," the theme when you first fight her.
    • "Faint Dream ~ Inanimate Dream," her final boss theme in Lotus Land Story.
    • "Lovely Mound of Cherry Blossoms ~ Flower of Japan," her theme in her cameo appearance in Kioh Gyoku.
    • "Gensokyo Past and Present ~ Flower Land," her theme from Phantasmagoria of Flower View.
  • Mighty Glacier: Relatively speaking, with the slowest move speeds in Phantasmagoria of Flower View but very high charge speeds. Closer to a Glass Cannon, as defense is entirely based on dodging.
  • Moe: Invoked in her bizarre character profile in Kioh Gyoku, with ZUN repeatedly referring to her as "youkai moe~" and the term became almost endemic. Possibly a pun - moe literally means budding.
  • Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: She acts like she was just teasing... with jokes about genocide and murder.
  • Not Me This Time: She's the prime suspect behind the flowers blooming in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, as she has caused an incident before and is a youkai of flowers, but it turns out to be a (mostly) natural phenomenon.
  • Parasol of Pain: She always carries a parasol (though it is actually a flower that never withers). She used to use it to cast Dual Spark.
  • Perfect Run Final Boss: Just like with Kaguya, if you used a continue before the final stage, you never saw it. If you lost all your lives during it, it would end immediately. Unlike Kaguya, it also doubles as Easy Mode Mockery.
  • Power Gives You Wings: In her cameo appearance in Kioh Gyoku.
  • Recurring Boss: In Lotus Land Story, she first appears as the stage 5 boss, then comes back for the final stage.
  • Right Man in the Wrong Place: Her route in POFV is only because random people kept running into her and accusing her of starting the whole Incident. Her response is a Sure, Let's Go with That.
  • Say It with Hearts: Much of her dialogue in the PC-98 games.

Yuuka: In a few hours, you'll become a mist of atoms. ♥

(fanart)


Maid
Mugetsu

The god of the dream world the player character stumbles into during the Extra stage, apparently.

Tropes associated with Mugetsu:

  • Bonus Boss: One of the two extra stage bosses of Lotus Land Story.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Boasts that she thinks nothing of human lives.
  • Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: Mugetsu is not in any way connected to the main plot. She just attacks for the lulz.
  • Leitmotif: "Illusion of a Maid ~ Ice Milk Magic"
  • Meido: She seems to like wearing the uniform.
  • More Dakka: Though not as brutal as her sister's, her timeout danmaku are hard.
  • Physical God: It's not really clear whether she actually created it or not, but she claims that the dream world that the Lotus Land Story's bonus stage takes place in is "her world".
  • Spell My Name with an "S": K-S Romanization is Mugetu.
  • Teleport Spam
(fanart)


Demon
Gengetsu

Mugetsu's older sister. Seriously, that's about all we know about her.

Tropes associated with Gengetsu:


Debuted in Mystic Square

(fanart)


Gate Keeper
Sara

Another one of those useless gatekeepers, Sara guards the doorway to Makai. Seems to consider humans food.

Tropes associated with Sara:

First form (fanart)


Demon Boundary Person
Luize

A tourist from Makai. Had the bad luck of running into the heroine before she could make it to Gensoukyou.

Tropes associated with Luize:

Windows era
PC-98 era (fanart)


Seven-Colored Puppeteer
Alice Margatroid

Another magician that lives in the Forest of Magic, and neighbor to Marisa. Her power seems to center around the manipulation of her dolls. She's mostly aloof and self-confident, but is still willing (if reluctant) to work together with Marisa and isn't above showing kindness to others.

Tropes associated with Alice:

  • Action Bomb: She sends dolls stuffed with gunpowder to blow up in people's faces.
  • Alice Allusion
  • Ascended Extra: Not Alice herself, but one of her spell cards. Curse "Eerily Luminous Shanghai Dolls" was just Alice's final spell card on most difficulties in Perfect Cherry Blossom, but after a solo doll was used in the spell card and artwork in Immaterial and Missing Power, fans latched onto the concept of Shanghai being a unique doll that's always with Alice. How much of a personality Shanghai has varies from work to work. The hardest version of the card, Curse "Hanged Hourai Dolls", also tends to get depicted as her own character, but somewhat less frequently.
  • Attack Drones: Her dolls.
  • Attack Reflector: She has this in Mystic Square.
  • Badass Bookworm: Like all Magicians.
  • Black Magician Girl: Somewhat.
  • Bonus Boss: In Mystic Square. She's also the only Bonus Boss in all of Touhou that gives the player an ending and credit sequence after beating her, although it is actually a list of all the PC-98 characters.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Along with Marisa in Subterranean Animism. This continues into the Extra stage, where after defeating the mid-boss, Alice says to Marisa: "Look, it's the extra dungeon for after you beat the game. Good luck!"
  • Companion Cube: Alice desires to make a doll that can move, think, and such all on it's own. Which means she hasn't done it already. She has made semiautonomous dolls, but even before she could accomplish that feat she has manipulated dolls to act as though they were alive and interact with them as though they were alive.
  • Creating Life: Her greatest ambition is to create a doll that can act independently.
  • Cute Witch: What she originally was.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Her dialogue with Marisa in Imperishable Night and to a lesser extent Subterranean Animism consists essentially of the two witches throwing snarky comments at each other and occasionally at their opponent. She's much more polite and subdued when speaking alone to the other characters, so we can just blame the black-white's bad influence.
  • Difficult but Awesome: In the fighting games.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Her dolls.
  • Kamehame Hadoken: Seems to have some form of it, although it is inconsistently named.
  • Leitmotif: Where to begin?
    • From Stage 3 of Mystic Square, "Romantic Children and "Plastic Mind"
    • From the Extra Stage, "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Grimoire of Alice"
    • From Perfect Cherry Blossom, "The Doll Maker of Bucharest/Bucuresti" and "Doll Judgment ~ The girl who played with people's shapes"
  • Make My Doll Grow: The Level Titania & Goliath Doll, her last 2 cards in Cirno's Final Boss fight in Hisoutensoku. The latter is a Survival Card.
  • Marionette Mistress: Her puppets, however, have no degree of automation, so even though she uses them to clean her house, it doesn't really make it much easier since she has to micromanage every single one of them. It makes her habit of holding two-sided conversations with them a little odder, too.
  • Mundane Utility: Alice uses her doll army to do the chores.
  • Recurring Boss: In Mystic Square, she is the stage 3 boss and the Extra stage boss, then in Perfect Cherry Blossom, she appears multiple times in stage 3.
  • Retcon: In Mystic Square, Alice is a resident of Makai, supposedly created by Shinki like everyone else there. However, when she was reintroduced for the Windows series, her background was changed so that she is a human-turned-youkai living in the Forest of Magic.[11] She also looked a lot older, despite only one game being in between and no one else aging as distinctly. Fans have come up with numerous theories to explain this discrepancy.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Theme Naming:
    • Location Theme Naming: Alice's spell cards are all named for places. Most famous are her "Eerily Luminous Shanghai Dolls" and "Hanged Hourai Dolls", to the point where fanworks almost universally portray her with individual dolls named Shanghai and Hourai.
    • Colourful Theme Naming: Using a color theme similar to the one used in Ran, Chen, and Yukari's names, Alice's title is the "Seven-Colored Puppeteer". Since Reimu is only a red and white shrine maiden, Alice asserts that Reimu is only 28.5714% (or 2/7ths) as strong as her in the dialogue before her boss fight.[12]
  • Tome of Eldritch Lore: Since her appearance as Bonus Boss in Mystic Square, she's always seen carrying a sealed book, but hasn't opened it since then. This is what happened when she did.
  • Tsundere: In canon, she's more a loner engrossed in her studies who doesn't speak much. When she does get away from her books long enough, she's known to be friendly to anyone who isn't Marisa. Fans just liked her better as a tsundere.
  • Witch Species: What Alice eventually became.
  • Unknown Rival: Reimu doesn't recall her name both times they fight after her initial appearance, first in the extra stage of Mystic Square. She fails to recognize her completely in their reunion in Perfect Cherry Blossom. Naturally, Alice was annoyed. She didn't really seem to care much after that, and they're shown to be on at least decent terms later on.
  • Willfully Weak: She never fights at her full strength, because she's afraid of what it might mean if she lost while going all out.
(fanart)


Black Witch
Yuki

Tries to stop the player character once she gets into Makai, alongside Mai. Looks a bit like Windows era Marisa.

Tropes associated with Yuki:

(fanart)


White Witch
Mai

Fights the heroine alongside Yuki. Quiet. Usually.

Tropes associated with Mai:

(fanart)


Maid
Yumeko

A blade-throwing maid and one of Shinki's strongest servants. Tries to protect Shinki from the heroes. Fails. Basically Sakuya without the time powers.

Tropes associated with Yumeko:

Final form (fanart)


Goddess of Devil's World
Shinki

The creator of Makai. Since she allowed a travel agency in Makai to organize tours into Gensoukyou, the heroines decide to beat her up.

Tropes associated with Shinki:

  1. ↑ PC-98 博麗　靈夢 Windows: 博麗　霊夢
  2. ↑ シンギョク
  3. ↑ 幽玄魔眼
  4. ↑ エリス
  5. ↑ サリエル
  6. ↑ 魅魔
  7. ↑ 菊理
  8. ↑ 矜羯羅
  9. ↑ Or Yuki's costume. Or Yumemi's 2P costume. It's a design ZUN liked
  10. ↑ Except in LLS, where it is the forward concentration shot-type
  11. ↑ Should be noted, however, that the only source that supports this background is Akyuu's entry on her. All official profiles never mention her once being a human.
  12. ↑ Ignoring the fact that white contains every color of the spectrum.
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