< Touhou Windows One

Touhou Windows One/Characters


In 2002, after a hiatus of about four years, the Touhou games were started back up for Windows-based PCs, and the series is now being produced by a doujin circle known as Team Shanghai Alice, of which ZUN is the lone member. Team Shanghai Alice has also collaborated with Tasogare Frontier to develop the two Fighting Games based on the Touhou universe. Games and other media made by or in part by Team Shanghai Alice are considered by most fans to be the main canon of the series.

This page is for Touhou characters who debuted in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Perfect Cherry Blossom, Immaterial and Missing Power, Imperishable Night, and Phantasmagoria of Flower View. To see the characters who debuted in the PC-98 games, see Touhou PC 98. For the rest of the Windows characters, see 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

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 Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

(fanart)


Youkai of Darkness
Rumia

A darkness youkai and stage 1 boss. She wears a ribbon that's actually a magic amulet that she can't touch, leading to many fan theories as to what it does. Rumia has the distinction of being the first boss in the series to fight using the modern spell card rules.

Tropes associated with Rumia:

  • Biblical Motifs: To appear more menacing and badass, she always imitates a "the saint was crucified" pose when attacking someone.
  • Bird Run: She has her arms fully extended to their sides at all times. She chose this pose as if to resemble "the saint was crucified on the cross". However, it ends up making her look more childish instead.
  • Catch Phrase: "Is that so~" -- originally fanon-only, ZUN adopted it into one of the books.
  • Casting a Shadow: As implied by her title.
  • Cheerful Child: Sometimes shown this way if the artist decides to ignore her creepy tendencies.
  • Creepy Child/Enfant Terrible: Especially cheerful when talking about eating people or crucifixion, and would be a horrible man-eater if she wasn't so incompetent at hunting.
  • The Ditz: Likely the stupidest character in canon - she can't eat anyone because she blinds herself instead of the target every single time. Fanon manages to make it even worse.
  • Leitmotif: "Apparitions Stalk the Night"
  • Perpetual Smiler
  • Required Secondary Powers: She usually surrounds herself in a bubble of darkness that even she cannot see through, causing her to spend most of her time crashing into trees.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: A widely accepted Epileptic Tree states that the amulet tied in her hair is a magical Restraining Bolt holding back the ultra-powerful "EX-Rumia". This started a minor trend, with EX versions of nearly every low-level boss being created.
  • To Serve Man: At least in theory. There is no actual evidence for this, and could easily be simply bluster. The expanded universe states she's too moronic to be able to catch any human.
(fanart)


Daiyousei/Greater Fairy

A fairy who lives at the same lake as Cirno and is the midboss of her stage. She doesn't have an official name, so fans call her Daiyousei, or "Greater Fairy", even though that's also a generic term for any of the game's stronger fairies. She was probably intended to just be a nameless Elite Mook, but in Fanon, she's generally considered to be Cirno's close friend.

Tropes associated with Daiyousei:

  • Blue Oni: To Cirno. She is depicted as the observant and level-headed member of Team 9.
  • Leitmotif: Not officially, but she is often pictured with "Lunate Elf," the stage 2 theme.
  • No Name Given
  • Only Sane Man: Fanon portrays her having more common sense than most fairies. Some even portray her as smarter than some humans.
  • Resurrective Immortality: As with all fairies.
  • Shrinking Violet: Her depiction in Strange and Bright Nature Deity has her act like this, especially around Reimu.
  • Winged Humanoid
Ice Fairy of the Lake
Cirno

An ice fairy who lives at the lake surrounding the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Her favorite hobby is freezing frogs and watching them thaw. Surprisingly, Cirno is one of the few characters that realizes what's going on during Phantasmagoria of Flower View, even though she mistakes it for a festival. Is best known for both an infamous Memetic Mutation detailed below and Icicle Fall -Easy-, a spell card that can be completely dodged by placing yourself directly in front of Cirno.

Tropes associated with Cirno:

  • Badass Boast:
    • Even back then in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, she tried to do this with "I'll cryo-freeze you together with some English beef!".
    • "I'm the strongest!" in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, adopted by fans as her Catch Phrase.
    • She also gets about one for each of the six paths in Fairy Wars, each one quite silly:
      • "I'm Cirno! The freezer of crybabies!"
      • "I'm not scared of youkai or gods! I'll show you what "Recklessness is courage" is all about!"
      • "I'm Cirno! The eternal omiwatari!"
      • "I'm an ice fairy who can pound a nail in with a banana! And this unstoppable fairy's gonna win fair and square!"
      • "Nah, I'm fine going solo. I'm strong enough on my ownsome! Breaking three arrows at once should be faster than breaking them one by one!"
      • "I've been going easy on you 'til now, but now I'm gonna get serious! On a night of spring when the cold returns, it's time for you to run out of sake and freeze to death!"
  • Berserk Button: "The one who says "idiot" is the idiot!"
  • Big Ol' Eyebrows: Her art in Fairy Wars has very noticeable eyebrows.
  • Blood Knight: Cirno's dialogue in Great Fairy Wars seems to imply so.
  • BFS: In Hisoutensoku, she pulls out a large sword made of ice for some of her attacks.
  • Breakout Character: The main character of Fairy Wars and is on the cover for a second time - a first for anyone who is not Reimu.
  • Butt Monkey: Cirno's cocky attitude combined with her relatively weak powers and childish incompetence means she often ends up in humiliating situations. Even ZUN himself is not immune, as a page in the manual [dead link] for Phantasmagoria of Flower View has a screenshot from the game with the different user interface elements labeled with a number, with Cirno, shown as the rival player, labeled ⑨. In the legend below the image it said:

1. Player
2. Score
3. Health
...
9. Moron

  • Day in The Limelight: Main character and only playable character of Fairy Wars, much to the fandom's surprise.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: Although she does have a few moves that would qualify as single-hit nukes, Cirno's (possibly) greatest strength in the fighting games is being able to dish out tiny bits of damage really fast, since her moveset is full of techniques that hit lots of times.
  • The Ditz: Very immature and stupid, though Flanderization turns her into a complete idiot.
  • Elemental Powers: Aside from the ice powers, there are fan-made palette swapped versions of Cirno for almost every element, with Achi Cirno (fire) being the first and most popular counterpart.
  • Failed a Spot Check: In SaBND, when playing hide and seek with Daiyousei, she fails to notice the Three Fairies behind her, even though they weren't trying to hide themselves. Made worse when it takes Cirno several seconds to realize someone is talking to her.
  • Harmless Freezing: Averted. About 1/3rd of the frogs she freezes winds up shattering. Interestingly, some frogs can survive being frozen and thawed with no ill effects. It's implied that the ones that shatter are unfortunate victims of Cirno being a klutz with the ice.
  • An Ice Person: An Ice Fairy.
  • Immortality: The resurrective kind, a stated property of all fairies - they tend to be fragile and short-lived, but respawn immediately on death. Not used much with the other fairy characters, but for fans it goes very nicely with Cirno's tendency to recklessly get in over her head.
  • Implacable Fairy: Cirno appears to die every time she gets hit in Fairy Wars and lets her resurrective immortality take over, unfazed. You only get a Game Over when her motivation to continue bottoms out.
  • Japanese Pronouns: Cirno is infamous for her use of the rough-sounding/childish pronoun "Atai".
  • Large Ham: Cirno in general, but most noticeable in Fairy Wars.

Cirno: This atmosphere... it smells of WAR!

  • Leitmotif: "Tomboyish Girl in Love", and its subsequent remixing.
  • Not So Harmless: While the Bonus Boss tried to shrug off her defeat at the end of Fairy Wars, pointing out that she was holding back a bit, even she has to admit that Cirno is quite a bit more powerful than she expected.

(Regardless, even fairies aren't to be trifled with...)
(Even if I had pulled out my most powerful lasers, she could've been trouble...)

    • As a playable character in Phantasmagoria of Flower View and Hisoutensoku it should be noted that technically she can defeat EX level bosses. She is still considered weak in canon.
  • Overly Narrow Superlative: She's the strongest of all fairies. Normal fairies are low-level cannon fodder mooks.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Cirno is by far the strongest known fairy, and it's made clear in Hisoutensoku that she's also one of the shortest characters in the series, being smaller than both Remilia, who is about a head shorter than pretty much everyone else, and Suika by a few pixels. In Fairy Wars, her sprite is absolutely minuscule, especially when put up in comparison to the other characters. Whether or not her small stature contributes to her Ted Baxter attitude is unknown.
  • Power Incontinence: She constantly cools the air around her, and anyone touching her could get frostbite. Naturally, it is common for fans to depict other characters using her to invent air conditioning.
  • Recurring Boss: Originally the stage 2 Boss of The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Cirno reappears as the stage 1 mid-boss of Perfect Cherry Blossom.
  • Red Oni: Ironically enough, to Daiyousei. Cirno is arguably the most annoying fairy you will ever hear, while her friend is the quiet, reserved person.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Declares herself to be the strongest fairy. While definitely true (Eiki even notes that a fairy with her level of power is dangerous), she is still severely outmatched by any of the main characters, and confrontations rarely end well for her. In many fanworks, she's a self-professed genius as well. Again, this has some basis in fact, as she is one of the few low-level youkai that can read, but Cirno's self-assessments are still woefully inaccurate.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Often depicted with various frozen foods in fanart. Most commonly suika bars[1], but popsicles and ice cream have also been seen.
  • Winged Humanoid: Ice crystal wings. In fact, Seraph-style ice crystal wings. Popular Fanon states that if Cirno were to increase in power, her wings would get bigger.
  • With Catlike Tread: When she is playing hide and seek, she spends most of it loudly yelling about how sneaky she is. It even takes her a few seconds to realize that the Three Fairies are talking to her.
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair
Colorful Rainbow Gatekeeper
Hong Meiling

Head gate guard and gardener for the Scarlet Devil Mansion and stage 3 boss, a Chinese master of martial arts and physical combat. Possesses perhaps the most well-known Fan Nickname in the series, "China".

Tropes associated with Hong Meiling:

  • Boobs of Steel: Canonically, she has large breasts, and there is evidence to suggest she is among the physically strongest characters in the series despite her sub-par magic. Despite this, usually attacked by Sakuya.
  • Butt Monkey: Often shown in fanon being abused by Sakuya, and less often other members of the Mansion, despite recent canon portraying Sakuya being stern with Meiling, but otherwise perfectly reasonable, including very considerate treatment when she thinks Meiling may be hurt. For that matter, Remilia herself apparently lends Meiling manga, although Patchouli's still derisive of her (but given that Patchouli is canonically a Deadpan Snarker who's derisive of Sakuya as well, that probably isn't saying much). It's too little way too late to change the course of fandom, though.
    • Canon also holds that Meiling is actually quite good at keeping the riffraff out of the Scarlet Devil Mansion...except for Marisa, who nobody can keep out.
  • Captain Ethnic/Chinese Girl: Even her subtitle in EoSD is simply "Chinese Girl". This added to her initial recognition and popularity, since, for a while, her only claim to fame was that she was Chinese. Hence her memetically famous Fan Nickname, "China".
  • Cool Big Sis: When she's not portrayed as a Butt Monkey, she's almost universally this to either Cirno and her friends, Flandre or even young Sakuya. Sometimes, she's this even while being portrayed as a Butt Monkey.
  • Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: Her "Colorful Windchime" and "Extreme Color Typhoon" spell cards from the fighting games.
  • Everything's Better with Rainbows: Her main schtick, aside from being Chinese, is her rainbow-colored bullet patterns. Everything she attacks with is full of colors, even in the fighting games.
  • Flash Step: In Hisoutensoku, it takes the form of Brilliance: "Rainbow Brilliance Palm". Given, it's not as fast as many other flash steps out there, since you can still see it. It is, however, fast enough to put her almost instantly behind the opponent after running them through with a heavily-chi-infused palm strike, followed by a Delayed Explosion of rainbow colored lights.
  • Flunky Boss: In EoSD.
  • Heavy Sleeper: Not as much as Yukari, but she's portrayed as this in fanon. In official works, she only takes a nap in the afternoon.
    • The fanon perception of Meiling as being incredibly lazy evolved, in a slightly convoluted way, from her Captain Ethnic nature. In Japan, even more so than in America, China has a reputation for producing low-quality merchandise. This led to jokes that Meiling (largely defined in fandom by being Chinese) was another unreliable Chinese product. This in turn led to the idea that what made Meiling unreliable was that she was always sleeping on the job.
  • Joke Character:
    • Meiling was added into Immaterial and Missing Power in an official patch. She didn't get a Story Mode route, and it is almost certainly agreed that she is the worst character in the game, due to her terrible bullet spread. She was very good at irritating people though, as her melee was tricky to read sometimes.
    • Not so in Hisoutensoku: Although her bullets are still not particularly good, her melee's damage and combo ability improved, to the point where she is actually very dangerous in the right hands. Still not top tier, but definitely not bottom.
      • Her story mode in Hisoutensoku, however, is...odd.
  • Ki Attacks: Her ability is the manipulation of qi.
  • Leitmotif: In EoSD, she has "Shanghai Alice of Meiji 17" as her official boss fight theme, but she's more associated with her stage theme "Shanghai Teahouse ~ Chinese Tea."
  • My Name Is Not Durwood: Everyone also seems to have a hard time remembering her name. Even in Immaterial and Missing Power, one of her victory phrases asks the loser to remember her name.
  • Punched Across the Room: In Hisoutensoku, her Red Cannon, Attack Sign: "Roc Fist", and Fiery Attack "Roc Killing Fist". Each is an upward punch that sends the opponent flying at a very sharp upward angle for a good distance. How far they fly depends on the attack. Rock Killing Fist tends to send the opponent completely off screen for at least three seconds. Fan depictions sometimes give her the Chuugoku Satsu.
  • She's Got Legs: Meiling's outfit includes pants. Fan artists frequently ignore this, most commonly in favor of a Qipao.
  • Shout-Out:
    • During her brief time as a playable character in Immaterial And Missing Power, she has variations of Yun's moves.
    • There's a reason why Krizalid is often shipped with Meiling. Why? One of her moves is a rainbow-colored carbon-copy of Krizalid's.
  • Statuesque Stunner: While her exact height has not been given, she's one of the tallest female characters in the series. Fans frequently depict her as taller than Sakuya, though Word of God says they're around the same height.
(fanart)


Koakuma/Little Devil

One of the many lesser youkai found in the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Like Daiyousei, she had no name, dialogue, or profile included with the game, and was instead given her descriptive name by fans. The appellation seems to have been adopted by ZUN himself, but it may just be referring to her species. Fanon usually portrays Koakuma as an assistant (or possibly familiar) to Patchouli, since she's the library midboss.

Tropes associated with Koakuma:

  • Cute Demon Girl
  • Dummied Out: There's an unused sprite for a possible "EX-Koakuma" with purple hair in the EoSD files.
  • Fiery Redhead: Word of God says she's supposed to have a mischievous personality.
  • Hot Librarian: To go around with being Patchouli's assistant in the library. Her sprite only shows that she wears a long black skirt, a black top, and white sleeves, but Fanon has turned it into an Office Lady uniform with a vest, dress shirt, and necktie.
  • No Name Given
  • Our Demons Are Different: She's believed to be a demon, or possibly a succubus, that Patchouli summoned to serve her. Some writers muse that she was thus summoned from Makai, and has a connection to Shinki.
  • Verbal Tic: Fanon varies this for her saying Koa every now and then, to her using just that as if she was a Pokemon.
  • Winged Humanoid: The bat wings on her back are a Fanon interpretation. However, she's had a small cameo in Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth and an even tinier one in Strange and Bright Nature Deity, both including the wings.
The Unmoving Great Library
Patchouli Knowledge

Librarian and tutor for the Scarlet Devil Mansion household, and stage 4 boss. Patchouli is known as the "One-Week Wizard" due to her mastery of the seven elements of the Japanese calendar week. She is indeed a powerful elementalist, but suffers from poor health, which limits her battle prowess.

Tropes associated with Patchouli:

  • Adorkable
  • All Your Powers Combined: She regularly combines elements to create new/unique attacks and spells. Philosopher's Stone attacks with five elements at the same time. The remaining two, Sun and Moon, have their own spell cards and are later combined into a different one as well.
  • Badass Bookworm
  • Black Mage: Fits the bill with her Elemental Powers, and wouldn't be out of place in Final Fantasy.
  • Catch Phrase: "Mukyuu," a nonsense sound, is generally attributed to her after she uttered it exactly once after being defeated in Marisa's story route in Immaterial and Missing Power.
    • She repeats it after being defeated in Tenshi's route in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.
  • Cute Witch
  • Depending on the Artist: Her figure is ambiguous under those robes, so fan depictions vary from childlike to busty. In addition, her EoSD portrait has darker purple areas on her dress which appear to be stripes (and are even drawn as such in her fighting game sprites), but Word of God says they're shadows cast by two strips of fabric.
  • Elemental Powers: Invoked. She likes to convert her spells to fit into one of seven different elements, associated with the days of the Japanese week, earning her the title "The One-Week Wizard."
  • Everything's Better with Spinning: Non-Directional Laser, though Marisa significantly upped the rotations after she copied it from Patchouli.
  • Hikikomori: Patchouli rarely ever leaves the library in the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Before the events of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, she apparently never left the library for more than a century.
  • Hot Librarian: Especially in fanart.
  • Ill Girl: She suffers from anemia, asthma, and a vitamin A deficiency, leaving her unable to recite some of the spells she learns. Even walking is a chore, much preferring to levitate herself. This leads to some major fluctuations in her power. In Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, she appears as the boss of stage 4, but also appears as the midboss of the extra stage and is much more powerful there, explaining that she got better.
  • In-Series Nickname: Remilia is known to call her "Patchy/Pachu."
  • Leitmotif: "Locked Girl ~ The Girl's Secret Room"
  • Magic Librarian
  • More Dakka: Try playing against her in the fighting games on Lunatic.
  • Motor Mouth: This is noted as one of her characteristics in Perfect Memento in Strict Sense. While there's no explicit example of it, presumably she chants quickly for many of her spells.
  • Shout-Out: One of her alternate skillcards in SWR and Hisoutensoku is called Emerald City.
  • The Snark Knight: Patchouli is at least a little sarcastic and cynical, especially in her lines regarding Sakuya in Subterranean Animism or Immaterial and Missing Power, but she's nevertheless a good and caring friend of Remilia.
  • Squishy Wizard: Genius spellcaster, but probably can't lift anything heavier than a book.
  • Supernatural Is Purple
  • Throw the Book At Them: Even her melee attacks are usually just spells thrown at close range, but when she does actually hit enemies, she uses her book. This is surprisingly powerful, considering how physically weak she is.
  • The Spock: Sometimes blends with Little Miss Snarker.
  • Vague Age: Patchouli has some of the greatest fan disagreement over how old, exactly, she is supposed to look.
  • What Exactly Is Her Job?: Her job in the SDM is "to solve and create problems". What exactly this entails is a bit sketchy. It appears that she lives at the mansion mostly because she's Remilia's friend. She's also capable of curbing Flandre's rampages by summoning rainstorms that keep her from leaving the mansion.
  • Witch Species: She was born a youkai sorceress.
The Perfect and Elegant Maid
Sakuya Izayoi

Chief Maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Despite being the leader of the maids at the SDM, Sakuya usually has to do all of the work herself because the fairy maids are completely useless. Uses knives and time manipulation to fight and do maid tasks. Much of Sakuya's origin is left to speculation, although it is implied that she may not be human and "Sakuya" may not be her real name.

Tropes associated with Sakuya:

  • A-Cup Angst: Some fanart portrays her this way, to go along with the padding jokes (iPad, for example). Others go the other way.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Invoked by the fanbase. Often seen as the lapdog of Remilia and Flandre, fanart has led to something along the lines of this characterization, and the name "Inu Sakuya."
    • Also done in-universe: Akyuu notes there are a godawful lot of theories about her and her background.
  • Ambiguously Human: See Vague Age below. For a variety of reasons, many fans have concluded that Sakuya is really a Lunarian.
  • Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: Fanon sometimes assumes that the stopwatch she carries is a magical artifact that she uses to stop time, usually called the Luna Dial after her theme music "Luna Clock ~ Luna Dial". It is used in Hisoutenkou as a super move, as a possible Sure Why Not.
  • Animal Motif: Associated with dogs by fandom, because of her Badass Nickname "The Dog of the Devil," which comes from her ferocity and loyalty to Remilia. Fandom even has a version of her called "Inu Sakuya" that has dog ears and a tail.
  • Badass Arm-Fold: Often sports one in the fighting games.
  • Berserk Button: She didn't take well to Tenshi implying she was stupid. In fanon, padding jokes and Meiling slacking on the job are a good way to get on her bad side.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Sakuya is usually polite, elegant, and very calm. However, if you try her patience, she may do terrible things to you with her knives.
  • Boobs of Steel: Despite the fandom's padding jokes at her expense, Sakuya is canonically well-endowed, and definitely one of the most formidable fighters in Gensokyo.
  • Clock Tower: Her stage in the fighting games. It's the SDM's tower, to be precise.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Akyuu describes a common rumour that she was a vampire hunter that was defeated and taken in by Remilia.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen: Loyal beyond question to Remilia Scarlet, to the point she'd stop at nothing to protect her. However, she regains some humanity after seeing Reimu defeat Remilia and, afterward, the two chatter as if nothing ever happened.
  • The Ditz: She has her moments, such as trying to buy a broken teacup to replace the one Remilia broke, and opening a window while in space.
  • Easy Mode Mockery: Performs a highly literal form of it if you beat her on easy mode in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. It basically amounts to "Ok, Ok, you beat me. But I'm not letting you go on to Remilia, since you aren't even playing on normal difficulty! Come back when you've practiced some more."
  • Expy: The original blade-throwing maid in Touhou is Yumeko, from Mystic Square. And if we branch out into Seihou, there's Muse, who looks like this.
  • Fantastic Racism: Akyuu says she's "cold-hearted" towards humans (besides the main cast). Often taken as a sign she's a Lunarian.
  • Fantastic Time Management: Often uses her time manipulation power to speed up housework.
  • Flechette Storm: She even provides the page picture. In extreme cases, her knives can fill the entire screen.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Hand Waved by ZUN saying that she regularly stops time and picks up all her knives to throw them again. Doesn't explain how she can have hundreds knives on the screen at once, though her Required Secondary Powers may answer that.
  • Knife Nut
  • Knife-Throwing Act: In a lot of fanart. In canon, she can hit an apple balanced on the head of a fairy maid a hundred feet away.
  • Lady of War: She's called "The Perfect and Elegant Maid" for a reason.
  • Leitmotif: Associated equally with both "Lunar Clock ~ Luna Dial" and "Flowering Night".
  • Mayfly-December Romance: Though only sometimes invoking romance, many fans note that as a (relatively) normal human amongst a Cast Herd of youkai she won't be around for much longer compared to them, with Remilia or Meiling in particular depicted as being devastated by the loss. As noted below, officially, she was offered immortality by Remilia but refused it. Fanon runs away with this, either making her a Lunarian or the ever popular tragedy of her dying and being missed by the others in SDM.
  • Multiple Choice Past: Perfect Memento in Strict Sense offers several backgrounds for her, with the note that it's likely that none of them are actually true. Akyuu notes the one most favored and has the most evidence is that she's an ex-vampire hunter.
  • Mundane Utility: Hey, you'd be a perfect maid too if you could just stop time to do your work instantly. Stopping time supplies another benefit according to EoSD's afterword -- dust won't be raised, thus making cleaning more efficient.
  • Nay Theist: In Immaterial and Missing Power, Reimu asks her to give a donation to her offertory box, so she may please the gods and have good luck and and their blessing, but Sakuya tells Reimu she doesn't believe in the gods, in the sense she doesn't need their help to make her own way.
  • Ninja Maid: Knife-throwing time-stopping serial killer illusionist ninja maid to be precise.
    • If you take the Lunarian theory into account, along with the gamut of in-universe theories in PMISS, she's a technical-alien vampire-slaying time-stopper maid From Space!
  • Pinball Projectile: In the fighting games does many of Sakuya's spellcards behave this way, however her Light Speed "C. Ricochet" is just ridiculus.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Had red eyes in her first appearance and generally blue afterwards. Scarlet Weather Rhapsody has her eyes turning red when she uses some of her more powerful moves, making this trope particularly literal.
  • Reverse Shrapnel:
    • Her "Killer Doll" spell card, when used by the player.
    • Same thing with her "Phantasmic Killer" spell card, except different - the knives from this spell card completely leave the screen before coming back to skewer your opponent.
  • Scarf of Asskicking: Only showed up in Perfect Cherry Blossom. Of course, it was winter for the whole game.
  • Serial Killer: There's a definite serial killer theme with her spell cards, such as "Jack the Ripper" and "Another Murder". Some doujin turn her into one in her backstory, and there's theories that believe her to be THE Jack the Ripper.
  • Shout-Out: Both her time stopping skills and her use of knives are a reference to Dio Brando of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. In her first appearance, she even had a spell card named Illusion World "The World", after his famous ZA WARUDO, and she has similar poses in the fighting games. And while she might not be a vampire, like Dio, she certainly is very closely associated with two.
  • Simultaneous Blade Spam: Justified, as she has the ability to stop time, and her main combat style involves throwing thousands of knifes to the enemy; she can combine both abilities to basically make an instant rain of blades on the enemy, making this a cross between this trope and Storm of Blades.
  • Stage Magician: A number of her spell cards have this theme and her profile says that "Deceitless sleight-of-hand is her pride". Another one of her fan backstories is that she was a magician or had a family that did stage magic.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: Perfect Memento in Strict Sense directly states that Remilia's hiring policy for the subordinate fairy maids is quantity over quality -- and fairies who can accomplish even Cirno's (human eight-year-old level) abilities are incredibly rare. Fans have come to the conclusion that the only reason Remilia hires the fairy maids at all is that a large mansion is supposed to have a lot of maids. As a result, despite the swarms that Reimu and Marisa meet, Sakuya is pretty much a one-woman work force. No wonder she doesn't take breaks...
  • Time Stands Still: Literally so, given Sakuya seemingly can manipulate time as she sees fit.
  • Vague Age: Akyuu writes, "She claims to be in her late teens, but this is unlikely judging by her refined manner and the level of her abilities. Rather, she seems to be a human who has been living for hundreds of years." Her profile in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil also refers to her as "10-20". Also, in Imperishable Night, Eirin seems to recognize Sakuya, though it's seemingly implausible for them to have met unless Sakuya was a good deal older and used to live on the moon. Or all of the above theories.
  • White-Haired Pretty Girl
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Has explicitly told Remilia that she is loyal to her until the day that she dies a natural death, but that she does not want to be a Hourai immortal or a vampire. Fandom's run away with doujinshi of her either dying, turning out to be Lunarian (can only die by unnatural means), or being turned into a vampire against her will.
The Scarlet Devil
Remilia Scarlet

Vampire mistress of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and final boss of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. She is the source of the mist that blotted out the sun, because sunlight is harmful to her. (It turns out she can just use a parasol, though.) Feared by many youkai, she is incredibly vain and proud despite her relatively low position in the hierarchy of Gensoukyou, (falsely) claiming to be a descendant of Vlad Tepes himself and is very open about her being one of the few youkai that still eat humans, though she rarely takes enough blood to kill them.

Tropes associated with Remilia:

Marisa: So, how many times have you drank blood?
Remilia: Do you remember how many times you've eaten bread?
Marisa: Thirteen. I prefer Japanese food.

  • Creepy Child
  • Creepy Cool Crosses: Has two attacks that involve creating a giant energy cross from her own body.
    • Three; the two mentioned above are super moves. The last one is a much smaller one that can be used regularly as a normal attack.
  • Deflector Shields: In the fighting games, her Parasol of Prettiness doubles as a temporary shield that can block anything for a few seconds.
  • Detachment Combat: She can dissolve herself into a potentially unlimited swarm of bats.
  • Famous Ancestor: She claims that Dracula was her ancestor, but ZUN says she's bluffing.
    • Since Remilia is one of the only Touhou characters whose exact age is known (she was born in 1503), we know that she was born just 27 years after Vlad Tepes' death. If we presume he became the vampire Dracula at the exact time history recorded his death, that would mean she'd have to be very closely related to him indeed if her claim had been true. Thus, if she'd bothered to do the research, Remilia could have made her lie more impressive by claiming to be "Dracula's daughter."
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Her eyes glow brightly when she uses spellcards in the fighting games.
  • Meaningful Boss Subtitles: She's known as the Scarlet Devil, because she's a light eater, who doesn't drain all of a person's blood when she feeds, but also a messy eater whose dress is usually stained red afterwards.
  • Everything Is Better With Spinning: A considerable number of her physical attacks involve spinning. 'Course, those tend to be her heavier hitting ones too.
  • Final Boss
  • Flash Step: Her Demon Lord Walk move lets her disappear for a quick moment and smack the opponent if they're close enough.
  • Healing Factor: She can regenerate even if most of her body is destroyed, as long as about one of the bats she splits into survives. Considering she can spawn an unlimited number of bats, she might as well be able to regenerate From a Single Cell.
  • Immortal Immaturity: Though many Touhou characters exhibit this trope, Remilia exemplifies it, impetuous and selfish and overall acting as the child she appears to be despite her centuries. ZUN notes that "Creatures of her kind forfeit their growth and maturity in exchange for eternal life. In other words, she can live forever because she never grows up."
  • In-Series Nickname: Patchouli calls her "Remi."
  • Japanese Honorifics: And Sakuya calls her "ojou-sama."
  • Large Ham: Remilia can ham it up with the best of them in fanworks, particularly when she's getting her evil on.
  • Leitmotif: "Septette for the Dead Princess/Queen."
    • Non-Indicative Name: as ZUN himself notes, no one's dead[2], there's no princess, and it's not actually even a septette.
  • Life Drain: In the fighting games and some fangames, Remilia has this in the form of "Vampire Kiss", a special attack. Also made into a status effect, of all things. "Vampire Of The Millenium" will grant this power on you for 10 seconds for all your attacks, but will also lower your defense by 10%.
  • Norse Mythology: Has an attack named after Odin's spear Gungnir. Remi's is an energy spear made of danmaku.
  • Ojou
  • Our Vampires Are Different
  • Parasol of Prettiness: She's known to have one, and it shows up in fanworks and some of the game's endings. Present in the latter fighting games, where it acts as a temporary shield.
    • And in up-to-date Hisoutensoku, having one parasol in your deck allows her to fight outdoors. Without this, her battle fields are restricted.
      • Back to Immaterial and Missing Power, she can only appear in night stages, even if you select a day stage.
  • Punched Across the Room: Archdemon: "Remilia Stretch". Fighting games. 1 second charge up. Get hit by this, and you can say good-bye to about half your life bar.
  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Remilia was born in 1503, making her 500 years old at the time of the game's release. Her apparent age varies Depending on the Artist (ZUN's official art is too simplified to really say) but she's never drawn looking older than early teens at most.
  • Royal Brat: Pretty classy outwardly, but her attitude can be as childish as her appearance.
  • Shout-Out: See But for Me It Was Tuesday above.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: Compared to Flandre, she's much more calm and collected. Not that that's saying much.
  • Unwitting Pawn: In Silent Sinner in Blue, when Ran told Remilia that Yukari was planning to invade the Moon, Remilia immediately started looking for a way to get there before Yukari -- which was exactly what Yukari expected her to do.
  • Use Your Head: Fond of using head-first body tackles on her enemies in the fighting games. Notable because she will move at great speeds when doing this.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifter: She is capable of shapeshifting into a bat.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Sunlight, flowing water, including rain, sardine heads, shattered holly branches, and roasted soybeans.
  • Winds of Destiny Change: Her ability to manipulate fate.
  • Winged Humanoid: Bat wings.
  • Your Vampires Suck: Remilia actually likes cross imagery, and can't fathom why she should be weak to them. Her spell card "Red: The Nightless Castle" appears as a towering crimson cross. She also seems to be perfectly fine with holy water. One of her win quotes in the fighting games is to ask Reisen to make her some holy water dumplings.
    • She is still weak to other things: Sunlight, flowing water (rain and rivers) are the 2 most known
(fanart)


The Sister of the Devil
Flandre Scarlet

Younger sister of Remilia Scarlet and the extra stage boss. She possesses the power to destroy anything at will, but due to her immaturity and mental instability, she's been kept locked up in the mansion basement for around 495 years. Despite this, she doesn't usually try to escape, and is actually quite fond of her older sister. It goes without saying she is quite popular. Her theme song "U.N. Owen was her?" must hold some kind of record for most remixes of any piece of music anywhere. ZUN himself has remixed it.

Tropes associated with Flandre:

  • Ax Crazy: There's some debate about exactly how nuts she is, though.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall/Shout-Out: When Marisa faces her in the Extra stage, Flandre offers to play with her for "one coin", because "you can't continue". Continues are indeed disabled on the Extra stage.
  • Bonus Boss
  • Cheerful Child: In her more lucid moments, she can be quite personable.
  • Creepy Child: Fanon loves jacking this up to insane (pardon the pun) levels.
  • Does Not Know His Own Strength: Her ability, along with her immense physical strength, tends to leave all of her playthings destroyed. (She considers destroying a ton of meteors hurtling toward the mansion as unimpressive.) Whether this also applies to people that she considers "playthings" is unknown, but fanon tends to interpret it that way.
  • Doppelganger Attack: "Four of a Kind". Likely using the same principle as Remilia's ability to split into an infinite number of bats.
  • Immortal Immaturity: Even more so than Remilia. Whereas Remilia can act mature when the situation requires it, Flandre never does. On the other hand, it's actually justified in Flandre's case, as she's been locked away from society for the last five centuries.
  • Invisibility: Secret Barrage "And Then Will There Be None?" Well, the post-battle dialogue says she's invisible, but in-game you'd still be able to hit her if she was actually on screen.
  • Japanese Honorifics: Sakuya addresses Flandre as "imouto-sama," imouto being "little sister," and basically translating to "Young Mistress."
  • Jekyll and Hyde: A widely accepted Fanon interpretation. This Super-Powered Evil Side was the result of the anger accumulated from staying locked inside the basement, the famous "I will break you!" line being one such example. However, she also has a very kind and childish personality and only wants to play with other people. Notably, most fanon has them as the same personality - she only gets evil when threatened.
  • Leitmotif: "U.N. Owen was her?" Arguably the most popular Leitmotif of the series.
  • Madwoman in the Attic: She's been shut down in the Scarlet Devil Mansion's basement for 495 years, since her birth.
  • Norse Mythology: Has an attack named after Laevatein, the "Wounding Wand of Loki". This is commonly thought to be the oddly-shaped staff Flandre carries in her portrait, although the Grimoire of Marisa describes the attack as an enormous Flaming Sword.
  • No Social Skills: Kinda justified in her case.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: In a series that runs on ludicrously powerful girls beating the crap out of each other, Flandre surpasses nearly all of them in sheer damage potential. Even Marisa makes it a point to avoid her whenever she's at the Scarlet Devil Mansion to steal books, which is impressive considering the things she's faced.
  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Younger than Remilia by five years.
  • Riddle for the Ages: Why do her wings look like that?
  • Shout-Out: Flandre's survival card and the title of her theme both refer to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.
  • Slasher Smile: Her silhouette seen in "Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth" sports one of these.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": While "Flandre" is pretty widely accepted in the Western parts of the fandom, no one else is certain how to spell it. The fact that "furandouru" wouldn't be pronounced much like "Flandre" probably helps. "Frandle", "Frandre" and "Frandoll" are the most often seen alternate spellings.
  • Stronger Sibling
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Not so much "favorite", but she's often seen with flan in fanworks.
  • Tyke Bomb: Subverted. Remilia doesn't raise her as a Tyke Bomb; she hides her in a basement to prevent her from destroying something.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifter: Like her sister, Flandre can also shapeshift into a bat. Oddly enough, her unique wings don't carry over to bat form.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Same as Remilia's.
  • Winged Humanoid: Best described as Christmas lights wings. Explicitly stated to be useless for flying, but she's capable of flight anyway. Then again, so is the rest of the cast.
  • Your Vampires Suck: Flandre also seems to like cross imagery - in Shoot The Bullet Aya's notes on her second spell card say that "she just came out and played with it..."

Debuted in Perfect Cherry Blossom

(fanart)


Youkai of Winter
Letty Whiterock

The youkai of winter and stage 1 boss. She is only ever seen during the winter, and disappears as soon as spring arrives. While she attacks the heroines for attempting to end the long winter, she's only half-serious as she has already accepted that spring must eventually come.

Tropes associated with Letty:

  • Cool Big Sis: Pun not intended, but she plays this role to Cirno in Fanon. Word of God, however, says that while she does watch out for Cirno from time to time, it's only because she knows that ice fairies are an important natural part of winter.
  • Hollywood Pudgy: As a result of her larger-than-average hitbox[3], many fanartists had portrayed her as this.
  • An Ice Person: She is a Yuki-onna, a youkai of winter.
  • An Ice Suit: The heavily dressed version.
  • Leitmotif: "Crystallized Silver."
  • Shout-Out: Her name is a reference to Lettie Blacklock in Agatha Christie's A Murder is Announced.
CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNN~~!!!
(fanart)


The Black Cat of Evil Omens
Chen

A nekomata youkai and shikigami to Ran Yakumo. As her own master is also a shikigami, this means that she too is a servant to Yukari Yakumo.

Tropes associated with Chen:

(fanart)


Fairy Herald of Spring
Lily White

Stage 4 Mid Boss, a fairy who heralds the coming of spring. For some reason, the only way she knows how to do so is with a shower of danmaku. Despite a few appearances and descriptions throughout canon, she generally shows up as a one-note character with no dialogue, though her enthusiasm is hard to miss.

Tropes associated with Lily:

  • Genki Girl: And how! Her sheer enthusiasm fuels magic barrages strong enough for the late stage she is in without even declaring a spell card.
  • Implacable Man:
    • In Phantasmagoria of Flower View. Sure you can shoot her down, but wait a minute or so and she comes right back. Goddamned Lily.
    • She behaves similarly in the fanmade game Mega Mari, as well.
  • Mid Boss: This is basically her schtick, from Perfect Cherry Blossom to Fairy Wars. She even manages to be a midboss in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, which doesn't have stages.
  • Paint It Black: Lily wears a long white dress, but in PoFV, if she appears on Eiki's stage it becomes black. Fanon has declared "Lily Black" to be either a completely different personality than her original cheery self, or more often a separate being altogether. ZUN has said in a recent interview that all the fairies including Lily White are cosplaying as the judge on Eiki's stage in PoFV, although the above is conflicting with the appearance of Lily White and Lily Black as separate people at Remilia's dinner party in Silent Sinner in Blue.
  • What Kind of Lame Power Is Announcing the Coming of Spring Anyway?: Apparently Lily has such a deep connection to spring that her presence actually brings it - plants even burst into flower during the seconds it takes her to pass by. Still doesn't help her much when she's shooting at people from sheer excitement, since they all shoot back.
(fanart, appearance is completely speculative)


Layla Prismriver

Layla Prismriver is one of the daughters of Count Prismriver and could not bring herself to leave their home after he tragically died in an accident, and his orphaned daughters each went their separate ways. Instead, she invoked powerful sorceries in order to create three poltergeists with the appearance and personalities of her three older sisters. Layla and her sisters have long since passed away before the events of Perfect Cherry Blossom.

While Layla has no official appearance, what little fanart of her exists almost universally depicts her with long green hair to complement her sisters' colors.

Tropes associated with Layla Prismriver:

Three Poltergeist Sisters
Prismriver Sisters

The Prismriver sisters are a trio of poltergeist sisters who serve as the stage 4 bosses. The sisters are talented musicians whose performances are popular among youkai. According to their backstory, the three poltergeist Prismriver sisters are the creation of the youngest Prismriver sister, Layla. While the original four Prismriver sisters have long since passed away, the three poltergeists have remained in their ancestral home to this day, continuing to hone their musical skills.

Tropes associated with the Prismriver Sisters:

(fanart)


The Poltergeist Violinist
Lunasa Prismriver

The eldest of the Prismriver trio, who specializes in stringed instruments. Lunasa is an honest, hard-working, honor student type who is nevertheless pessimistic in general.

Tropes associated with Lunasa:

(fanart)


The Poltergeist Trumpeter
Merlin Prismriver

The middle sister of the Prismriver trio, who specializes in wind instruments. Merlin is energetic and easily excitable. She possesses greater raw power than her sisters, but lacks precision and control.

Tropes associated with Merlin:

  • Brown Note: Her trumpet playing has the polar opposite affect of Lunasa's violin. It can cause people to break out uncontrollably into dance or become unable to hold a coherent conversation.
  • Elegant Classical Musician: Canonically she plays the trumpet without touching it, but fanartists ignore this.
  • Frickin' Laser Beams: All of her attacks involve lasers.
  • Game Breaking Bug: Sometimes, Merlin will fail to transition into the trio's last card properly, leading to much pain as she can actually keep killing you after the fight is over.
  • Genki Girl
  • Joke Character: In Phantasmagoria of Flower View.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Most official sources give her name as Marlin.
(fanart)


The Poltergeist Keyboardist
Lyrica Prismriver

The youngest of the Prismriver trio, who specializes in percussion and keyboard instruments. Lyrica is very intelligent, but dislikes exerting effort, so she usually tries to trick her sisters into fighting for her.

Tropes associated with Lyrica:

The Half-Ghost Gardener
Youmu Konpaku

Swordswoman and gardener of Hakugyokurou, the Netherworld court. She's half-human and half-phantom, half-dead and half-alive, half-phantom and half-reality, and altogether half-baked. She is Yuyuko's faithful servant, but her seriousness and naivete contrasts with her mistress's whimsical and carefree nature. She is the one who has been stealing the essence of spring from Gensoukyou in Perfect Cherry Blossom, under orders from Yuyuko.

Tropes associated with Youmu:

  • Absurdly Sharp Blade: "The things that cannot be cut by my Roukanken, forged by youkai, are next to none!"
  • Badass
  • Battle Butler
  • Bifauxnen --> Bishoujo: Fanon has noted her appearance changed like this in Ten Desires, for some reason. It is suspiciously appropriate due to her general portrayal, but that's not the weird part: a tag that roughly translates to "the face that knew men" is used for her Ten Desires fanart, and some areas of the the Japanese fandom speculate she found a boyfriend, and decided to clean up her appearance. No, we're not making this up.
  • Bullet Time: Either to demonstrate her Super Speed, or to show Hakurouken's confusion cutting powers as the protagonist experiences a zen moment.
  • Butt Monkey: Her profiles call her "half-baked" in many ways, and also mention that due to her straightforward, simple, and somewhat immature personality, she often gets made fun of or bullied.
  • Catch Phrase: "Myon." As with Patchouli and Okuu, this is something she said only in PCB's Afterword that Japanese fandom has turned into a catchphrase, usually denoting surprise or frustration, or used as a nickname for Youmu herself. In Western fandom, "Myon" has become the nickname for Youmu's ghost half.
  • Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: To Yuyuko. Though since Yuyuko is mostly faking it, and Youmu has a rather one-track mind, it's sometimes inverted.
  • Cute Girl With Two Swords
  • Difficult but Awesome: When she's playable in the shooting games. In Imperishable Night she's part of the Ghost Team, which reverses the usual unfocused spread, focused concentration, but is stronger than average (and Youmu herself has an option that fires opposite of how she moves, which can be very irritating or very useful depending on how used you are to it). In Phantasmagoria of Flower View she has horrible stats and a weak offense, but a charged attack that can cancel bullets (bit low on the awesome here. It's generally not considered very useful). In Ten Desires she again reverses the spread/concentration fire, but this time with Gradius-style options unfocused, and a piercing charge attack that hits a large area focused. Her Ten Desires incarnation is probably the best example, as she can be quite a bit more effective than anyone else, but is hard enough to play that most players can clear the game with everyone else in the time it takes to get the hang of her.
  • Doppelganger Attack: Her phantom half can also turn into a body double. Or even a triple.
  • Dual-Wielding: The long sword is called Roukanken (Lookout-Tower Sword) and the short one is Hakurouken (White Tower Sword).
  • The Gardener Who Doesn't Do Any Gardening: She is supposed to be a gardener but Canon and Fanon depicts her more like a bodyguard. In fact, all the gardening she does in canon is using her "Two Hundred Yojana in One Slash" technique to quickly trim the ludicrously vast expanses of the Cherry tree garden of Hakugyokurou.
  • Ghost Lights: Her phantom half, always present and independently visible around her. There's an Asian belief that human souls actually have two parts (Kon and Paku, hence her name). There's the immortal "higher" soul (Kon) that either becomes a ghost, like Yuyuko, or enters the cycle of reincarnation, and the transient "lower" soul (Paku) that animates the body and houses the earthly passions and which could, after death, become an unintelligent "evil ghost", such as those seen in Subterranean Animism. Youmu's phantom-half is apparently her higher soul, while her lower soul remains in her body, giving it life.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: She is half-human, half-phantom. "Phantoms" being the shapeless ghost-lights of the Netherworld, which were "born" that way, rather than being dead human spirits. Whether Youmu is classified as half-phantom because she hasn't actually died yet, or whether someone in her family bred with phantoms, is unknown. As is how a human breeding with a phantom would even work. Her father/grandfather Youki is likely to be that way as well.
  • Highly-Visible Ninja: Her idea of stealth includes standing out in the open with no disguise.
  • Ironic Fear: She's afraid of ghost stories, despite her ancestry.
  • I Take Offense to That Last One:

Reimu: You're a talkative ghost.
Youmu: I'm half non-ghost, you know!
Reimu: That was what needed correcting?

  • Katanas Are Just Better
  • Leitmotif: Her boss fight theme from PCB, "Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird ~ Till When?", and her stage theme, "Mystic Oriental Dream ~ Ancient Temple."
  • Shout-Out: A lot of her attributes including her sometimes childish sometimes serious attitude, ghostly companion, sword skill and fast movement make Youmu a fairly clear paralell to Jean Pierre Polnareff of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. One of her colour palettes from Hisoutensoku is even entirely silver like Pol's Silver Chariot stand. Meanwhile, that line for Absurdly Sharp Blade above is a reference to Super Robot Wars.
    • Her Fatal KO in Hisoutensoku replicates the Turbid Current sword tech in SaGa Frontier with a final blow.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: A minor case. Youmu's level of skill is actually quite impressive and she doesn't often brag about it, but she's young and has a poor idea of her own limits.
    • From Cage in Lunatic Runagate:

Youmu: "I don't mean to boast, but I am skilled in tailing. As I am half-human and half-ghost, the presences of both are less noticeable than a full one."
Sakuya: "I wonder how long our little stalker will continue to believe she has not been spotted."

  • Spin to Deflect Stuff: One of her moves in Immaterial and Missing Power and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. She spins her sword to reflect the opponent's danmaku attacks.
  • The Stoic/Tsundere: Often featured as such in both fanworks and in-game. Goes deredere mode whever with Yuyuko, and its so adorable.
  • Super Speed: One of her spell cards is called "Two Hundred Yojana in One Slash." A Yojana is about 6 to 15 km, so the spell card implies that Youmu can travel 1200 to 3000 km in the 2 frames (out of 60 f/sec) or so it takes to make a single slash. That's pretty damn fast. One comic has explored the idea of the characters trying to measure her speed. The measurements given in said comic show that Youmu can move at about 93% of the speed of light.
    • Said comic includes a race between Youmu and Aya (officially the fastest character in Gensokyo, but Youmu can surpass her in short bursts), in which both of them finish the race before the third participant, Reisen, even has a chance to move.
  • Undying Loyalty: Youmu is intensely loyal to Yuyuko.
  • The Unexpected: Returns in Touhou 13: Ten Desires as a playable character, well after most people had given up on ever seeing her again in a danmaku game.
  • White-Haired Pretty Girl
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
    • Despite the fact that she serves a ghost and is half one, Youmu is terrified of ghost stories. Made doubly ridiculous by the fact that with the Roukanken, she is one of the very few people actually capable of killing ghosts.
    • Youmu is just one huge scaredy-cat when it comes to imaginary horrors. In one chapter of Oriental Sacred Place she participates in a test of courage and spends most of it running hysterically from people in cheap Halloween costumes. Since she knew perfectly well there was nothing to be afraid of, most of them assumed she was just playing along, but her mistress knew better.

Youmu: I'm no good with scary stuff.

(fanart, appearance is completely speculative)


Youki Konpaku

Youmu Konpaku's father (or possibly grandfather) and mentor, who served as Hakugyokurou's gardener before her. He disappeared sometime before the events of Perfect Cherry Blossom, which Youmu took to be just another one of his lessons. Strictly appears only in Youmu's character description for Perfect Cherry Blossom.

Tropes associated with Youki:

  • Badass Beard: Often portrayed with one.
  • Disappeared Dad: No one really seems to know his current whereabouts. Some fans jokingly suggest that Yuyuko ate him.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Like Youmu, he too is half human, half ghost. Or at least, presumed to be.
  • Old Master: He's often portrayed in fanworks as an old man with silver hair and a short silver beard.


Ghostly Girl in the Netherworld Tower
Yuyuko Saigyouji

Ghost Princess of Hakugyokurou, also an old friend of Yukari. When she was living as a human, she discovered that she has the power to invoke death with mere thoughts alone. Frightened with her power, she committed suicide, and then her body was used to seal an evil cherry tree. Over time, she forgot about her life and hatched a plan to resurrect the body sealing the tree. When she realized that it was her own body that sealed the tree, she changed her mind and lived her life as a ghost, perhaps for the better, because the resurrection of her body would destroy her, and unleash the evil tree.

Tropes associated with Yuyuko:

  • Bad Powers, Good People: Having the power to invoke death as one pleases is dangerous. Good thing Yuyuko is responsible enough to know how dangerous it is, Cloudcuckoolander tendencies aside.
  • Battle Aura: A massive, pink paper fan with a classical motif etched on it appears behind her.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Though she's usually a happy and upbeat person, you do NOT want to make her angry, at least according to Akyuu in Perfect Memento.
  • Big Eater: She seems to treat her journey in Imperishable Night as a "Wonderful Midnight Snack Tour". One line implies that she actually went as far as to eat Mystia. However, the latter appeared alive and well in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, so it's likely that this was just a joke. Memetic Mutation turns her into an Extreme Omnivore, with numerous examples of her eating Youmu's ghost-half and Kirby parodies. The joke goes that she's a Hungry Ghost.
    • In both Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red and A Beautiful Flower Blooming Violet Every Sixty Years, when Yuyuko has to compare two things she immediately thinks of them in terms of food.
  • Boobs of Steel: Often drawn with a nice figure, and no slouch in terms of power. May be justified however, since all that food has to go somewhere.
  • Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: She has many butterfly-themed spell cards and projectiles. Indeed, she was the first boss in the series to use butterfly bullets. Many bosses have since used them, but never to Yuyuko's level.
  • Cherry Blossom Girl: For someone not named Sakura, she sure hits a lot of points for the trope. She's got themes relating to death by simply being dead. She's aiming for the rebirth of the person buried beneath the giant cherry tree Saigyouji Ayakashi, not knowing she's the one buried there, and does this by collecting spring in the form of cherry blossom petals. Her powers are the exact opposite of healing: The ability to kill with a thought. She has an aura of traditional Japanese elegance (ruined by her constant trolling of Youmu), which includes wearing kimonos that sometimes have cherry blossom patterns. Finally, she tops it off with her pink hair.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: May or may not be Obfuscating Cloudcuckoolandity.
  • Cute Ghost Girl
  • Dissonant Serenity
  • Driven to Suicide: Her eventual reaction to realizing what her power was.
  • Everything's Better With Ghost Princesses
  • Famous Ancestor: Not exactly ancestor, but her father may or may not have been the famous Japanese poet Saigyo, who wrote a poem about his wish to die under blossoming trees. According to Perfect Momento in Strict Sense, Yuyuko's father was indeed a celebrated poet who did end up dying under the influence of the Saigyou Ayakashi, a youkai cherry tree.
  • Final Boss
  • Ghost Amnesia: To the point that she forgot that she is the one whose body is buried under the Saigyou Ayakashi.
  • Ghost Lights: Well, she is one, so it makes sense she'd have two or three floating about.
  • Graceful Ladies Like Purple
  • Gradual Grinder: Her boss fight in Perfect Cherry Blossom has shades of this, as much as can be had in a danmaku: her bullet patterns aren't necessarily complex for a stage six boss and are relatively slow to boot. This can easily cause a player to lose their focus and glide into one of the many, many bullets that are trailing around them.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: Even when she and Yukari began their friendship a millennium ago Yukari was already ancient, and now she is still many times Yuyuko's age. Neither of them care in the slightest.
  • It Amused Me: She decided to make the Saigyouji Ayakashi blossom because she was curious as to who was buried underneath it and wanted to see them resurrected, not knowing it was herself.
  • I Wished You Were Dead: Her manipulation of death is described as "Invoking death as she wishes" -- Yuyuko can literally wish people dead.
  • Leitmotif: "Border of Life", and all of its subsequent rearranges.
    • And now she has "Ghost Lead".
  • Ms. Exposition: She explains the plot to Youmu in Silent Sinner in Blue.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Using the cover of The Ditz to cover her intellect.
  • Ojou: She is a ghost princess whose home is a towering pagoda with an immense garden.
  • Own Death By Origin Story: See Driven to Suicide above.
  • The Pollyanna: Has easily the most heart-wrenching backstory in the cast and yet is one of the funniest and most cheerful characters. This may be originally due to her completely forgetting about her past. However, she recovered her memory at the end of PCB, and nothing seems to have changed.
  • Power Gives You a Giant Fan
  • Rose-Haired Girl
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: She seals the cherry tree, and it seals her, forever preventing her from ever being part of the Reincarnation cycle. She realizes she's happier that way.
  • Soul Jar: Inverted - her body being sealed prevents her soul from passing on. The end result is still functional immortality, though.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": K-S renders her last name as "Saigyouzi."
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Mystia.
  • Troll: At the end of Silent Sinner in Blue, she steals a 1000-year-old bottle of sake from the Moon to piss the princesses off, which was what Yukari wanted her to do -- but she also trolls Yukari by not stealing anything more valuable than a bottle of sake.
  • The Unexpected: Who could have thought she'd be the stage 1 boss of Ten Desires?
    • Recurring Boss
    • Degraded Boss: But to be fair to her...
    • Willfully Weak: ...she's not even trying; she just wants to give you a little spellcard practice before you go off to investigate the divine spirit incident.
  • Yamato Nadeshiko: She is an unusual case. She's whimsical and prefers pulling pranks on her servant/guardian, but she can be serious if the time comes. She is, however, the elegant mastermind befitting the character type.
Saigyou Ayakashi

An evil cherry tree sealed by Yuyuko and Yukari centuries ago. Currently it is the only truly evil character in the Touhou universe. It has the power to lure people to rest underneath its branches after which it drains their souls.

Tropes associated with Saigyou Ayakashi:

(fanart)


Shikigami of the Youkai of Boundaries
Ran Yakumo

A kitsune, Yukari's beleaguered but loyal shikigami, looking after the house and her duties while her mistress sleeps. A grand youkai in her own right, she is wise and strong, old enough to possess a full set of nine tails and is powerful enough to have her own shikigami, Chen.

Tropes associated with Ran:

  • Action Mom: In Fanon, she and Chen generally have a mother-daughter relationship, which normally her going "CHEEEEEEEEEENNNN!!!".
  • Badass Boast:
    • "I am leagues different from Chen. Leagues, columns, digits, and colors."
    • "I am the shikigami of a powerful master. As such, my powers far exceed those of any youkai you've ever seen... Not to mention those of humans. Or dogs."
  • Bonus Boss
  • Butt Monkey: Tends to be abused a lot by Yukari in fanon, and canon probably doesn't treat her much better due to Yukari literally throwing her into the battle and generally being very strange.
  • Colourful Theme Naming: Her name means "indigo" in Japanese. See Chen's entry above.
  • Everything's Better with Spinning
  • Fastball Special: Yukari often literally throws Ran into the fray.
  • Good with Numbers: Capable of doing complex calculations in an instant.
  • Happiness in Slavery: Both Ran and Yukari believe that a shikigami is a tool, and that to achieve her full power as a shikigami, Ran must always do precisely what is ordered of her. An article in BAiJR describes Yukari beating her for getting into a fight without permission [4] A shikigami gains power from their master so long as they obey, so getting into fights that the master doesn't authorize deprives the servant of potential power.
  • Kitsune: She's a nine-tailed fox, which are traditionally quite powerful in mythology (almost divine). Presumably this is meant to contrast with her status as a shikigami and make Yukari seem even more threatening. Indeed, it may be hard to remember at times, but Ran is a fully-fledged Ex-Boss, placing her in the same general league as Flandre Scarlet, Suika Ibuki, Fujiwara no Moukou, Suwako Moriya, Tenshi Hinanai, Koishi Komeji, Nue Houjuu and Mamizou Futatsuiwa. In fact, Ran is also a Mid-Boss for the only Phantasm-level enemy in the series (Yukari), which technically puts her in a league above all the others.
  • Leitmotif: Her official boss theme is "A Maiden's Illusionary Funeral ~ Necro-Fantasy," but she also tends to be associated with "Charming Domination."
  • Mama Bear: Her reaction to the playing character "bullying" Chen in the PCB extra stage. Insert "CHEEEEEEEEEEEENNNN!!!" when appropriate.
  • Multiple-Tailed Beast
  • Little Bit Beastly: Nine-tailed kitsune.
  • Nosebleed: A lot of fanart tends to have Ran do this when Chen does anything that Tastes Like Diabetes. Often to epic levels -- it's even sparked a meme called "Nosebleed Spark".
  • Onmyodo: She has her own shikigami even though she herself is a shikigami.
  • Say My Name: Fanon tends to toy around with this due to her Action Mom status... "CHEEEEEEEEEEEENNNN!!!!"
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Fried tofu is traditionally loved by kitsune, and according to Perfect Memento in Strict Sense Ran is no exception. It's said that one could persuade her out of fighting by offering her some.
  • The Watson: To Yukari, especially in Silent Sinner in Blue.
Youkai of Boundaries
Yukari Yakumo

The youkai of boundaries, and quite possibly the most powerful being in Gensoukyou, as well as the laziest. Yukari has the power to manipulate borders, which would presumably grant her the task of being Gensoukyou's Barrier Maiden, except that she sleeps during the day, hibernates through winter, and she's extremely lazy, so she leaves the Hakurei Border to Reimu, and most other tasks to her shikigami, Ran. She tends to mess around with people, but ultimately she usually means well. She is an old friend of Yuyuko, and after the events in Perfect Cherry Blossom, she tends to hang around in the Hakurei Shrine and either help or annoy Reimu.

Tropes associated with Yukari:

  • Ancient Tradition: A one-woman variation, but only helps when she sees fit.
  • Awesome but Impractical: Yukari's ultimate spell card in the fighting games, Obsolete Line: Trip to the Old Station, trumps most every other card used by any other character in sheer damage output. However, it can be avoided by flying over it (not grazed or blocked, however), and the portal for summoning the train takes a long time to open, so any opponent worth their salt will knock you upside the head while you're channeling it. If Typhoon is active, however....
    • It is, however, one of the best Okizeme (wake up game) supers in the game. Yukari has some very easy set ups that give her ample time to channel the super while the opponent is flailing through the air and or getting up from the floor, and if done correctly these setups lead to the opponent rising to an unblockable, ungrazeable train to the face.
  • Barrier Maiden: She was instrumental in gathering support for the construction of the Hakurei Border, and her powers are based around manipulating barriers, but she's too lazy to bother maintaining it.
  • Bad Boss: Poor Ran.
  • Bonus Boss: Notable for being the only "bonus bonus boss" in the main series, the boss of Perfect Cherry Blossom's Phantasm stage.
  • Boobs of Steel: One of the few characters portrayed in-game with a noticeable bust... and possesses god-like powers.
  • Brilliant but Lazy
  • The Chessmaster: She's had a hand in many, many schemes over the years, the complexity and scope of which makes Kanako look upstart. Including the disastrous Moon invasion 1000 years ago that taught youkai not to overstep their boundaries, and made Yukari well-known, even among the humans (whether Yukari knew they would lose and this would happen is up for debate). Then, 500 years later, in order to return leverage to the youkai over that of the humans, she laid the groundwork for the Hakurei Barrier, by establishing the area of Gensoukyou as a youkai haven, where they could emigrate to and be free from the outside, after which the Barrier took 400 years more to be completed. Even the debates and conflicts over the Barrier and their use in distracting from Gensoukyou's vulnerable human population until youkai and humans could live together there were possibly foreseen by her. Lastly, in Silent Sinner in Blue she played the Watatsukis, Eirin, and Remilia against each other in an infamous Batman Gambit.
    • Yukari openly acknowledges herself as this when playing as Sakuya in Perfect Cherry Blossom.

Yukari: "If you were stronger than Enma, you could do what you want. This place is... No, this place too, is a world like that."
Sakuya: "Strength of economy you mean?"
Yukari: "Craftiness, it is."

  • 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.
  • Colourful Theme Naming: Her name means "violet" in Japanese. See Chen's entry above.
  • Compressed Hair: Somehow manages to hide almost all her hair in her hat in the fighting games.
  • Cool Train: Attacks with one in one of her spell cards in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. All Aboard the Yukari Express!
  • Eyes Do Not Belong There: The gaps that she creates are often portrayed as sort of a void full of eyes, one of her creepier traits.
  • Fastball Special: Her usual method of using Ran. Yukari is the pitcher.
  • Frame Break: Sort of. In Scarlet Weather Rhapsody Yukari's spell cards Boundary "Border Between 2D and 3D" and Boundary "Obective Border" travel along the edge of the screen.
  • The Gods Must Be Lazy: So powerful she might as well be a god. So lazy she sleeps 12 hours a day and "hibernates" though the whole winter. Even when she's awake, she still doesn't take much direct action, instead manipulating others into doing her job for her. Even though in most cases it would require minimal effort for her to get things done on her own.
  • Good with Numbers: She's even better than Ran.
  • Graceful Ladies Like Purple
  • Green Lantern Ring: What does "Manipulating Boundaries" do? Whatever the hell you want it to do!
  • Hammerspace: Tends to become a Hyperspace Arsenal at times with traffic signs, tombstones and a train.
  • Hard Work Hardly Works: Even more so than Reimu.
  • Heavy Sleeper: She hibernates through the wintertime. Some fanon theories claim that this is because Yuyuko's death traumatized her in some way, but there is no evidence of this.
  • Immortal Immaturity: Fans tend to portray her this way.
  • I'm Taking Her Home with Me: Fluctuations in the Hakurei Border that sometimes send clueless humans into Gensoukyou are entirely her doing, "spiriting away" some of the folk she finds fascinating. In fanon this sometimes is manifested as literally taking people home with her.
    • In Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, Aya confronts her about being a Bad Boss to Ran (which Aya describes as "animal abuse"). Yukari's response?

"My, my, you are quite the cute one.... Become my shikigami. Maybe you will come to understand by putting yourself in Ran's shoes?"

  • Kansas City Shuffle: In Silent Sinner in Blue. Relying on Remilia's greed to create a decoy is one thing. Being a second decoy is quite another.
  • Leitmotif: In the fighting games, she has "Night Falls ~ Evening Star", though she's more pictured with "Necrofantasia" even though it's only appeared once.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Avoided. She wore a western-style one-piece dress in her debut appearance in Perfect Cherry Blossom, but Immaterial and Missing Power gave her a new dress in a mishmash of western and Chinese styles to further symbolize her boundary-related powers. Although the latter outfit appears to have stuck in the games for the time being, fanworks tend to depict her in either outfit, depending on the artist's tastes.
  • Mighty Whitey: Maybe. It's been implied that Yukari was originally a Western human (not that you could tell from the art).
  • Mundane Utility: In Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, Reimu complains that Yukari uses her portals to steal food, apparently right off Reimu's plate. Marisa complains that Yukari "keeps poppin' into my house and I wish she'd cut it out. Can't she at least use the door like a normal person?" And in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, an illustration for Aya's article on a party at Hakurei Shrine[5] shows Yukari using one of her portals as a chair.
  • The Omniscient: Type 2. Yukari is likely the most well-informed person in Gensokyo, deriving from her network of shikigami spies, divination magic, ability to travel to the outside world and the lunar capital, and possibly being from the future.
  • Onmyodo: She's such a powerful magic user that not only is her shikigami an old and mighty Kitsune, but her shikigami has its own shikigami (and Silent Sinner in Blue shows that she simultaneously uses numerous lesser shikigami as spies). She occasionally tutors Reimu in the use of her own powers.
  • Opera Gloves: In at least her PCB appearance.
  • Parasol of Pain: She always carries a parasol and uses it as a weapon in the fighting games.
  • Parasol of Prettiness
  • Power Perversion Potential: Her ability to manipulate borders normally manifests as a combination of Hammerspace and Instant Portal Picture To Anywhere. And looks suspiciously like a vagina. With multiple unblinking eyes staring from the inside.
  • Purple Is Powerful: See Colorful Theme Naming under Chen.
  • Reality Warper: She's capable of manipulating "Boundaries" in any sense of the word, including abstract concepts. That could mean anything from opening a portal into a painting or a dream to grabbing the horizon with her hand and pulling it around to manipulating the border of truths and lies in the reflection of the moon to create a portal to it.
  • Schrödinger's Butterfly: Footnote 5 in Yukari's entry from Perfect Memento in Strict Sense:

Indeed, she may spend the winters and the daytime, when she claims to be sleeping, in the outside world, and some even say that the world in Yukari's dreams is the outside world.


Debuted in Immaterial and Missing Power

Tiny Hyakki Yakou
Suika Ibuki

An oni girl with the power to manipulate density, which extends to gathering or dispersing emotions and people, along with more destructive applications. She caused the inhabitants of Gensoukyou to have more parties for a while, hoping to attract more of her kind to Gensoukyou and reuinite her people that had been scattered long ago. Currently living in Bhava-Agra (one realm of Heaven) after threatening the inhabitants to allow her to stay there.

Tropes associated with Suika:

  • Adaptation Dye Job: Suika's sprites in fighting games represent her with brown hair, however, her artwork shows her with light orange hair. Her sprite in Double Spoiler confirms that her hair color is more orange than brown. Though, fanworks sometimes depict her as blonde or brunette, depending on the artist's preferences or color judgements.
  • Badass: She tore the Celestials a new one so badly that they had to give up a chunk of Heaven to her just to make her stop.
  • Bird Run: Her method of walking normally.
  • Bottle Fairy: She carries a gourd of sake that never runs dry. No one has seen her sober.
  • Chained by Fashion: Her wrists and the back of her hair sports shackles and short chains, and these chains are connected to geometric shapes.
  • Cute Bruiser: About as developed as a seven-year-old. Can tear apart mountains with her bare hands.
  • Cute Giant: Suika is normally pretty small and adorable, but has the ability to change her size at will. She's still adorable when she's huge, but you're probably not thinking such as you're trying to avoid getting squashed by her!
  • Drunken Master: She's almost always drunk, and yet a formidable opponent. ZUN even states in her profile that she becomes stronger the more intoxicated she becomes.
  • Excuse Me While I Multitask: Her guarding animation has her drinking from her gourd. Even more ridiculous is her crouch guard, where she does the same thing while lounging.
  • Fire-Breathing Diner: For one of her attacks in the fighting games, Suika takes a sip from her gourd before spewing out a wave of fire.
  • Final Boss
  • Glacier Waif: She could probably move glaciers.
  • Grievous Bottley Harm: Her gourd is connected to a chain, which lets Suika use it as an Epic Flail for a few attacks.
  • Horned Humanoid
  • Intangible Man: Suika can become mist at will.
  • Interface Screw: "Pandemonium", Suika's last spell as the Final Boss in Immaterial and Missing Power destroys portions of the game HUD as she takes more and more damage, eventually leading to the near-breakdown of reality itself.
  • Leitmotif: "Onigashima in the Fairyland ~ Missing Power" and "Broken Moon."
  • Little Miss Snarker: Jolly most of the time, she nevertheless has harsh comments for everyone in Immaterial and Missing Power.
  • Me's a Crowd: She can make tiny clones of herself, using her power to manipulate density.
  • Pettanko
  • Sizeshifter: She can also change her size at will, either becoming a really large oni or a really small oni. She can even use her hair to form mini-Suikas. Interestingly enough, at her normal size she's one of the shortest characters in the series.
  • Stalker Without a Crush: She tells everyone in Immaterial and Missing Power that she's been watching them, so she sometimes gets depicted like this.
  • Superpower Lottery: Controls density. Physical density, like making herself into mist or just really big/small, and things like, say, population density.


Debuted in Imperishable Night

(fanart)


The Insect Of Light Crawling In The Dark
Wriggle Nightbug

A firefly youkai with the ability to control insects.

Tropes associated with Wriggle:

  • Bifauxnen: A lot of fanart likes to depict her as looking very boyish, to the point where most posts of her on Danbooru get the "reverse trap" tag.
  • Bokukko: In fanon she's often depicted with a personality similar to that of Souseiseki.
  • Butt Monkey: As with a lot of minor characters, she is often depicted as being abused by the more powerful denizens.
  • Dynamic Entry: [6]
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: Gathering and controlling insects may not seem too impressive, but think about how many freaking scary insects there are: acid spitting hornets, bullet ants, killer bees, etc. Not to mention the vast numbers of insects. And according to Perfect Memento In Strict Sense, she is capable of gathering a demonic breed of harvest mites - a kind of microscopic bug, whose bites are hard to detect and fatally poisonous.
  • Leitmotif: "Stirring an Autumn Moon ~ Mooned Insect"
  • Little Bit Beastly: Firefly antennae.
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: Back-to-back bosses Wriggle and Mystia are often portayed as the respective tropes.
  • Wholesome Crossdresser: This is on the other side of the Bifauxnen, a Memetic Mutation that started with ZUN confirming she is a girl. Fans went along with her dressing up as a guy, and why the above fanart makes her look like a guy.
(fanart)


Night Sparrow Youkai
Mystia Lorelei

A night sparrow youkai who loves to sing. Her singing causes night-blindness to those who hear it. In-game, it shrinks the player's field of view.

Tropes associated with Mystia:

  • Badass Boast: "All humans fear me in the darkness! If I wanted, I could call enough youkai here to eradicate every human in this land.", or "I'll show you the true terror of darkness!" It's all empty bluster, though. And she really makes herself look stupid by using the "terror of darkness" line when talking to Remilia. A vampire. You know, lord of the night?
  • Berserk Button: You'll either frighten or anger her if you talk about grilled/fried chicken around her.
  • Brown Note: Her singing will cause confusion and possibly night-blindness for any human who hears it.
  • Chew Toy: Yuyuko's, both figuratively and literally. Rumia also tries to eat her during their combination attack in Touhou Soccer.
  • Creepy Child: Likes singing. Likes eating people. Likes singing about eating people.
  • Interface Screw: her night-blindess power reduces the player's field of view.
  • Leitmotif: "Deaf to all but the song"
  • Little Bit Beastly: Night sparrow wings and ears.
  • Self Fanservice: Fanart often ignores her claws or reduces them to fingernails.
  • Snake Oil Salesman: In Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, Mystia has started a food stand, selling grilled lamprey that she claims can help cure night-blindness. It turns out she's inducing the night-blindness with her songs and cancelling the effects herself as her customers eat.
  • Punk Rock: Seriously. Together with Kyouko she becomes Choujuu Gigaku (dance of bird and beast), a punk group that holds 'guerrilla concerts' at the dead of night.
  • Ted Baxter: Severely overstates her abilities. She's so confident that she can defeat the heroines that after she's defeated as a mid-boss, she immediately starts the boss battle. No other character in the series does this. After the border team beats her Yukari says "A weakling acting strong leads to despair all the faster."
  • Temporary Night-Blindness: What you'll get if you listen to her song.
  • Unusual Ears: Feathered wing-shaped ears -- weirdly, as sparrows don't have external ears.
    • It's possible they are head wings like Koakuma's.
  • Winged Humanoid: Sparrow wings.
(fanart)
(fanart of her hakutaku form)


Half-Beast Of Knowledge And History
Keine Kamishirasawa

The were-hakutaku who protects the human village, she also runs a school. Fanon has it that various "child" characters, like Cirno, Mystia, Rumia, Daiyousei, and sometimes even Tenshi, Parsee, and Kisume, all attend her school as well. Possesses the ability to "eat" and hide history, and create brand new history in her hakutaku form, though she is really bad at controlling it. She's also one of Mokou's few friends.

Tropes associated with Keine:

  • Animorphism: She turns into a Hakutaku during the full moon, but it seems that the only apparent physical feature that changes is that she grows a tail and horns, complete with ribbon and her hair turns green.
  • Badass Boast: "I will feed upon your history tonight!"
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Fanon sometimes portrays Keine as a gentle if stern person who becomes an Ax Crazy psychopath that likes to CAVE people during a full moon.
  • Leitmotif: "Plain Asia" and "Extend Ash ~ Hourai Victim" for her Extra Stage appearance. Occasionally "Nostalgic Blood of the East ~ Old World" as well.
  • Little Bit Beastly: When transformed.
  • Lunacy: Subversion - While she does turn into a hakutaku during a full moon, she doesn't become evil or anything. Though it's still best not to interrupt her work.
  • Nice Hat: A bento box? A miniature pagoda?
  • Our Werewolves Are Different: In her case, a were-hakutaku.
  • Paint It Green: A variant - when she becomes a hakutaku, her blue dress turns green to match her hair.
  • Protectorate: Both the human village and Mokou.
  • Sadist Teacher: Forgot to hand in your homework? Headbutt. As noted in the supplementary materials, this is particularly painful on a full moon, when she has horns. According to The Grimoire of Marisa, she even uses spell cards in her lessons!
  • Unperson: Her ability as a human is to hide history, not destroy it. As in, hiding an entire Human village from history to make sure Youkai don't find it, yet still letting it exist. It is also a Running Gag in the fandom that missing characters were also hidden by her powers, like Rin Satsuki. In the aforementioned character's case, this is almost accurate.
  • Use Your Head: Keine gives out headbutts to anyone who fails to hand in their homework. Getting headbutted on the full moon when she's in EX-mode is the other major definition of CAVED.
  • White-Haired Pretty Girl: With blue or green highlights depending on her form.
(fanart)


White Rabbit of Good Fortune
Tei/Tewi Inaba

An earth rabbit youkai and leader of the earth rabbits of Eientei. Her explicit power is the ability to bring good luck to people, but usually she's just a prankster. Started as another stage midboss with no dialogue, only a name and profile, but later got more coverage, including a major role in Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth.

Tropes associated with Tei:

  • Ascended Extra: She was originally a midboss who wasn't even named in-game, just in the manual. She however got a speaking role in Phantasmagoria of Flower View and then became one of the main characters of Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth.
  • The Barnum: In an interview she claims that while she's selling people lies, she still sort of gives them what they want.
  • Born Lucky: It's her explicit power to bring luck to other people, but as shown in Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth, she can use her power for herself as well. This resulted in the finding of a gold and jewels filled chest and... an anti-tank mine.
  • Crazy Prepared: Again in Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth, Tei is shown to have packed sake on a fishing trip to go along with the fish they catch. When Reisen says it's only good if they caught fish, Tei pulls out four dried sardines on a stick, just in case the trip is a total loss.
  • Does Not Like Shoes: The majority of the Fanon usually draw her barefoot.
  • Everythings Better With Bunnies
  • Immortal Immaturity: While very intelligent and capable of handling responsibility, she much prefers mischief.
  • King Incognito: In Cage in Lunatic Runagate, Reisen asks why Tei's shenanigans are tolerated. Eirin's private thoughts reveal to the reader that it's Tei who allowed the Moon natives to stay in Eientei when they first arrived, offering to help keep the exiles hidden so long as Eirin shared her knowledge with the earth rabbits, whom all obey Tei. The reason the Earth rabbits obey Kaguya and Eirin is only because Tei tells them to. So the Lunarians are not tolerating Tei. Tei is tolerating them.
  • Leitmotif: Her official theme in Phantasmagoria of Flower View is "Lord Usa's Elemental Flag", though she's more associated with the stage five theme from Imperishable Night, "Cinderella Cage ~ Kagome, Kagome."
  • Little Bit Beastly: Earth rabbit.
  • Pettanko
  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: She was specifically mentioned as being one of the oldest youkai in Gensoukyou. There are records of her existence dating back to the creation of Gensoukyou, which makes her over 1300 years old. If you take The White Hare of Inaba, a tale of a trickster rabbit, as the legend Tei is based off of, then this places her as several thousand years old, as the myth appears in the Kojiki, the oldest surviving text of Japan.
  • Screwy Squirrel: She is a known chronic habitual liar, a prankster (usually at Reisen's expense), and a scammer.
  • Species Surname: Inaba is what Kaguya calls all rabbits. It probably refers to the fairy tale The Hare of Inaba.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Her given name has also been spelled "Tewi". However, the "wi" character has been rendered obsolete in modern Japanese, and is pronounced the same as the Japanese "i" anyway. Considering that Tei is supposed to be over 1200 years of age, the "wi" character could have been chosen as a note to her actual age, despite her childish looks and attitude. See also Tenshi's entry.
  • Troll: Fanon often depicts her going too far with her pranks. Like Yukari, this has earned her a Danbooru pool of her trolling.
  • Verbal Tic: fan material has her ending her sentences with "usa", short for "usagi" (rabbit).
Lunatic Moon Rabbit
Reisen Udongein Inaba

A Lunar Rabbit who fled from the Lunar War,[7] abandoning her comrades. It's not known whether she did it out of cowardice or something else. She was found in Eientei by Kaguya and became her pet and Eirin's student. Nicknamed "Udonge" by the latter and "Inaba" by the former (though that is how Kaguya refers to all rabbits), Reisen now loyally serves and protects her master and teacher. Being a Lunar Rabbit, she is gifted with the madness-inducing eye, though Phantasmagoria of Flower View reveals that her eyes also control waves in general, including mind waves and electromagnetic waves.

Tropes associated with Reisen:

  • Alternate Character Reading: Reisen's spell card names are an oddity - they all have one name in kanji, but they're then given an official pronunciation in katakana, which creates a totally different phrase. For example, her first spell card's name is "Wave Sign: Red Eyes Hypnosis," but going by the katakana will get you "Wave Sign: Mind Shaker". Interestingly, only the katakana expression will change with difficulty level.
  • Badass Boast: "The moon can drive people mad. So can you really beat me, the rabbit whose eyes contain the moon's power?"
  • Badass in a Nice Suit/Hot Chick in a Badass Suit: She only wore a suit jacket in her first game appearance, and exclusively wore short-sleeved dress shirts in all subsequent games, but the suit has become her Memetic Outfit. In Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth, she wears the suit most of the time, and only takes the jacket off in summer.
  • Bad Powers, Good People: Her power, aside from being able to manipulate waves, is to drive people insane with her eyes. She doesn't really do this, though; she's depicted as one of the most level-headed characters in all of Gensoukyou, and only uses this power during Imperishable Night in order to protect Kaguya.
  • Butt Monkey: Everyone Reisen met treated her as a Butt Monkey in the semi-canonical Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth. She often suffers through "punishment time <3" at the hands of her master Eirin who sometimes knocks her out for days at a time, takes the brunt of whatever whims Princess Kaguya is having, and is the favorite target of Earth rabbit Tewi for her pranks. Both Mokou and Keine considered eating her, Suwako beat her up, Patchy teleported her into a wall after she almost got eaten by Books That Bite, she almost became bait for Flandre, Alice used her as bait against a carnivorous mushroom, Reisen II kicked her in the face when she landed, Yorihime ran her through Training from Hell, and even Wriggle, a stage one boss, completely overwhelmed her with her bugs. Poor Moon Rabbit.
  • Confusion Fu: Fittingly for a character who induces insanity.
    • In Danmaku games, her gimmick is bullets that do not behave as they initially appear. Bullets will seem to fly in all directions, only to fold into patterns that are manageable if the player didn't panic and try to dodge the initial pattern. Bullets will vanish, multiply and divide, slow to a crawl at the oddest times, etc.
    • In the fighting games, her moveset is similarly built around deceptive attacks, like a missile whose explosion appears ahead of the missile itself, two physical attacks that look the exact same on startup, or a movement technique that creates copies of herself.
  • Double Meaning: She is a Lunatic Rabbit. This can be taken to mean that she causes insanity, and it also fits her because of the fact that she is from the moon.
  • Evil Eye
  • Explosive Overclocking: Drinking too many potions (more than 3) in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody causes an explosion and a loss of the buffs given by the potions. Despite the loss of the buffs, this is actually a useful attack. The explosion does not harm Reisen herself and deals ludicrous amounts of damage to her opponent.
  • Eye Beams: As an attack in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, and expanded on in Hisoutensoku with her new Red Eye "Viewing The Circle Moon (Lunatic Blast)" spell card.
  • Finger Gun: Fanworks love showing off her skills without guns by using this instead. This, for example, shows it off.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: If she does that, you are fucked.
  • The Gunslinger: In Touhou fanworks, Reisen is the character who is most likely to be seen with a gun of some sort. Though given the nature of her danmaku, she's just as likely to be depicted firing actually bullets without a gun.
  • Invisibility: Sometimes (usually in the fighting games) she makes appearances by revealing herself to have been in the room, invisible, the whole time. It's part of her manipulation of waves; by keeping light waves from contacting her, she becomes invisible.
  • Leitmotif: "Lunatic Eyes ~ Invisible Full Moon."
  • Little Bit Beastly: Lunar rabbit.
  • Lunacy: In both senses of the word.
  • Master of Illusion: She can use her Evil Eye to induce illusions/repositioning objects to her liking, enough to cause lunacy to the target. Ironically, given her powers, she is said to be one of the most stable characters in the series.
  • Mind Rape: The usual result of her powers.
  • Moon Rabbit
  • Won't Work On Me: Her power over waves makes the stealth abilities of the Three Fairies of Light useless against her.
  • Only Sane Man: Ironic since she's a master of Lunacy.
  • Rapunzel Hair
  • Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: The Lighter and Softer version, but one interpretation is that everyone treats Reisen as the Butt Monkey as a kind of karma for her abandoning the moon's army during wartime.
  • Small Girl, Big Gun/The Gunslinger: Reisen is often depicted in fanon carrying and using a wide variety of guns, from pistols, rifles, and uzis, up to rocket launchers and even a turret-mounted chain gun. Conversely, she is just as often depicted firing bullets from her fingers, with just the index finger pointed and thumb raised, as she does in the fighting games. Because of this, Reisen is the only Touhou character who may actually qualify as a Walking Arsenal.
  • Shout-Out: Reisen has Miku, Rin/Len, Luka, Meiko, Kaito, Gakupo and Gumi as alternate palettes in Hisoutensoku.
  • Species Surname: See Tewi above.
  • Telepathy: Can communicate psychically with any other moon rabbit. Normally she doesn't in order to hide Eientei from the Moon, but in Cage in Lunatic Runagate, Eirin has her asking other moon rabbits about rumours about spies and an incoming attack from Earth. Which, intentionally on Eirin's part, caused those rumours to start existing.
  • Zettai Ryouiki: In her article in Perfect Memento in Strict Sense. Nowhere else, though.
(fanart)


Brain Of The Moon
Eirin Yagokoro

A Lunarian and a genius pharmacist who serves Princess Kaguya. She is the one who created the Hourai Elixir consumed by Kaguya and Mokou, as well as many other miraculous creations. Eirin was an elite member of the moon's ruling class and part of the Lunar envoy sent to retrieve Kaguya, but instead betrayed and killed the other envoys and fled into hiding with Kaguya at Eientei. During the events of Imperishable Night, it was she who stole the moon, by sealing earth itself in a magic chamber, thus preventing the Lunarians from coming to Earth. Subsequently she has opened a pharmacy catering to both humans and youkai.

Tropes associated with Eirin:

  • Alchemy: She makes immortality potions along with her varying medicines and potions.
  • The Archer: Often depicted with a bow and arrows. She's never seen using them in-game, but was depicted firing danmaku from her bow in her illustration in The Grimoire of Marisa.
  • Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: She is implied in an ingame spell-card description to have been responsible for the failure of the Apollo 13 mission.
  • Beware the Nice Ones
  • Boobs of Steel: To go along with the other members of the Fanon Cast Herd "Old Maids Alliance": Yukari, Yuyuko, Kanako and Byakuren.
  • The Dragon: Noted to be harder than the final boss Kaguya.
  • Final Boss: Of the A-route.
  • Foxy Grandma: Her usual Fanon depiction.
  • Hypercompetent Sidekick: Eirin usually does most of the work at Eientei while Kaguya does nothing much at all. Though, Eirin usually delegates most physical work to Reisen.
  • Insufferable Genius: Mild example, as while condescension and even outright mocking are not uncommon she is generally a pleasant person, especially when considering that as possibly the most intelligent person in the solar system she must deal with the equivalent of ignorant children on a constant basis.
  • Leitmotif: "Gensokyo Millennium ~ History of the Moon".
  • Mad Doctor: The worst she devises are nightmare pills[8] for people who are bored with their lives, the "fish bait" that caused fish to mutate into monsters and the bamboo fertilizer that made bamboo grow super fast and super strong in The Inaba of the Moon And The Inaba of the Earth, but in Fanon it's a whole other story.
  • The Medic: Eirin is Gensoukyou's resident doctor.
  • Playing with Syringes: A common Fanon trait for more villainous or "edgier" portrayals.
  • Proud Scholar Race Girl: She calls humans too stupid to get her charms in IN during the Border Team scenario. Akyuu says she comes off as a jerk to people to who don't get what she's talking about/moron.
  • Rapunzel Hair: At least reaches past her hips and she usually has it in a large braid. However, in the latest chapters of Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth, she has been seen wearing it loose.
  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Likely 2000+ years old, but some vague hints suggest she may be older than humanity itself. At the very least, she was instrumental in the founding of Lunar civilisation some tens of thousands of years ago.
  • Say It with Hearts: Any time she says "Punishment time" to Reisen.
  • Shout-Out: One of her spellcards is named after The Game of Life.
  • Subordinate Excuse: Aside from the aforementioned betrayal and self-exile solely to be with Kaguya, she only manufactured the Hourai Elixer in the first place specifically because Kaguya asked her to do so.
  • The Paragon Always Rebels: This is what it looked like from the moon's perspective anyway. She continues to be the most wanted criminal on the moon, thousands of years later.
    • Immortality Immorality: Taking the Elixir is this in the Lunarians' eyes, and her making it only made it worse.
  • White-Haired Pretty Girl
  • Willfully Weak: ZUN says she's actually far stronger than Kaguya, but she limits her power out of respect for the princess. Possibly, she's one of the strongest Lunarians, whom are already pretty high on the power scale. She was the teacher to the Watatsuki sisters after all.
(fanart)


The Eternal Moon Pricess
Kaguya Houraisan

A Lunarian princess who was exiled to Earth centuries ago for having consumed the Hourai Elixir, which made her immortal. While on earth, her beauty attracted many suitors, including Mokou's father, but all were unable to complete her five impossible requests. When her exile had ended, she refused to return to the moon, and instead convinced Eirin to betray the Lunarians and escape into hiding with her. Her backstory is based largely on the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, the oldest known example of Japanese literature and quite possibly the original Science Fiction tale.

Tropes associated with Kaguya:

  • Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: All her regular spell cards are powered by the items from her impossible requests. She only uses her manipulation of eternity after she loses to break the imperishable night during her last spells.
  • Badass Boast: "My five impossible requests that defeated so many humans in the past... how many can you fulfill!?"
  • Breathe on the Fan: In Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth, chapter 2.
  • Call on Me: Fanon generally has her summoning Eirin as soon as trouble arises, instead of solving things herself. Funnily enough, in canon, she has actually come to Eirin's aid during the "Hourai Elixir" spell in IN.
  • Cavalier Competitor: Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth implies that she treats Mokou's feud with her like a game, whereas for Mokou it's Serious Business.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Her depiction in Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth.
  • The Collector: She somehow has all of the items she demanded as part of her famous Five Impossible Requests, despite the fact that no one ever found or brought her any of them. Whether or not she had them before making the requests, or collected them afterwards herself or came by them through some other means, is unknown.
    • As Marisa notes in her grimoire, Kaguya is unusual in two regards: First, in that her Spellcards don't follow a unified theme like virtually everyone else's, as each one derives from its item entirely. Second, that each Spellcard's power comes entirely from the item rather than Kaguya. In a way, this makes her the Touhou Project's equivalent to Gilgamesh, from Fate/Stay Night.
    • After Imperishable Night, Kaguya starts expanding her Spellcard repetoire by collecting new items which are rare, unique or "impossible", including a wooden temple-ceiling that seems to be made of a single wooden panel... despite the fact that no tree could possibly be that big.
  • Cycle of Revenge: It is stated that she kills Mokou back as often as Mokou kills her.
  • Everything's Better with Princesses
  • Everything's Better with Rainbows: Her Impossible Request "Dragon Necklace", Impossible Request "Rainbow Danmaku", and "Tree-Ocean of Hourai" spellcards and their variations.
  • Fairy Tale: She's literally a fairy tale Princess.
  • Hikikomori: Rarely leaves Eientei, except to pick fights with Mokou - and even then, prefers to send assassins at her. This led to Memetic Mutation about her Fan Nickname NEET. But Cage in Lunatic Runagate reveals that Kaguya rather wants to leave the mansion, explore Gensokyo and interact with its people... or at least find something to do.
    • Perfect Memento in Strict Sense implies that Kaguya most likely spent a great many years using her power of Eternity to make Eientei unchanging and undetectable, never leaving the mansion during that time. A very extreme extension of the lifestyle.
  • Hime Cut: Being based off of Kaguya-Hime, this is hardly a surprise.
  • Impossible Task: Her stage is called "Five Impossible Requests", and her spell cards are named after the impossible requests from the original fairy tale.
  • Immortality: Hourai immortals do not age and they regenerate from anything. They are eternal, period. One can beat one by tiring them out and simply making them not want to fight you anymore, but it is literally impossible to kill one. And the process of becoming a Hourai immortal is irreversible; the very concept of death has been removed from her being, and not even a nigh-omnipotent character like Yukari could do anything about it.
  • Leitmotif: "Flight of the Bamboo Cutter ~ Lunatic Princess".
  • Nice Hat: Averted outright. One of the handful of Touhou characters to have no headgear of any kind.
  • The Nicknamer: As stated in Tewi's entry, Kaguya refers to all rabbits as "Inaba", resulting in that part of the name for both Reisen and Tewi.
  • Ojou: A Lunarian princess in self-imposed exile who currently lives in a mansion hidden deep within a bamboo forest. Also living with her is Eirin and a horde of rabbits, which includes Reisen and Tewi.
  • Perfect Run Final Boss: She's the boss of the B-route, which can only be accessed after completing the A-route. If you lose all your lives in Final B, you can't use a continue and are punted directly to a bad end. If you used a continue by the time you beat stage 5, it punts you into Final A and the boss fight with Eirin instead.
  • Public Domain Character: Her backstory is based of a Japanese folktale, but with a twist.
  • Rapunzel Hair: It reaches her ankles.
  • Rebellious Princess: Kaguya was originally exiled to Earth for the crime of becoming immortal. Years later, she was forgiven for her crimes and Lunar emissaries were sent to bring her back to the Moon. However, she decided she would rather stay on Earth and proceeded to elude the emissaries while enlisting the aide of Eirin in the process. This would eventually lead to the events of Imperishable Night.
  • Shout-Out: In Shoot the Bullet, One of Kaguya's spell cards directly refers to The Red Stone of Asia, a McGuffin from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
  • Super Strength: Possibly. In the Grimoire of Marisa, Marisa talks about how Kaguya can lift a solid wooden panel, large and wide enough to be a temple's ceiling, using only her hands. Whether this is simple physical strength or a magic trick, or super-strength AS a magic trick, is unknown.
  • Time Master: Her power is the manipulation of the Eternal and the Instantaneous. Her control over Eternity allows her to lock something in time, making it impossible for the thing to be detected, changed, or harmed. This power was what went into the Hourai Elixir. Her control over the instantaneous allows her to perform actions in intervals of time too small to be detected. It's suggested that she can mess with quantum events and manipulate alternate timelines with this power.
    • Interestingly enough, when she discovers that the player's team has been causing the eternal night, she very quickly rips the spell apart using her power of Eternity. Which means that, in some respects, she's a stronger Time Master than Sakuya.
  • The Un-Reveal: In the last chapter of Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth, we never find out what happened during the second Lunar Exposition because Reisen was drunk the whole time.

Kaguya: So you don't remember me at my best? I stunned everyone.

  • Weapon of Choice: She's often depicted with the Jewelled Branch of Hourai, one of her five impossible requests, and the last of her spell cards based on them.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: While Mokou's a more popular target, Darker and Edgier portrayals commonly depict her as having been driven insane by the pain/boredom of living forever, or angsting about it. The former is more popular than the later, as a result of doujin artists taking "lunatic princess" too seriously.
  • World's Most Beautiful Woman: What Princess Kaguya was in "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter". In Touhou, let's just say that out of all the characters ZUN has drawn, she has the most symmetrical face.
(fanart)


Hourai Incarnate
Fujiwara no Mokou

The Extra stage boss of Imperishable Night, Mokou was the daughter of a nobleman (presumed to be Fujiwara no Fuhito, the founder of the powerful Fujiwara clan) who was scorned by Kaguya centuries ago. She swore revenge against Kaguya, and ended up stealing the Hourai Elixir and consuming it, becoming immortal.

Tropes associated with Mokou:

  • Animal Motif: Associated with the phoenix, due to her immortality and fire powers.
  • Badass Boast: "Ghosts without a soul cannot be born... People who can't die cannot know the world of the dead. Eternally born into darkness is life. Eternal death at the end of the dark. I know not death and surpass this darkness. See this beautiful danmaku from the dark tales!"
  • Battle Aura: Adapts an aura shaped like a phoenix for her spell cards. Many fanworks portray them as wings of fire instead.
  • Bifauxnen: Somewhat more masculine-looking than most other characters, and one of the very few ones who wear trousers rather than a skirt or dress.
  • Bonus Boss
  • Bored with Insanity: Went crazy for about two centuries by her reckoning, or so she tells Keine in Cage in Lunatic Runagate. Burned anything and anyone she came across.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: See Stronger with Age below.
  • Cycle of Revenge: She and Kaguya are constantly killing each other... with absolutely no success, since both are immortal anyway. Some Alternative Character Interpretation have them getting some kind of catharsis from fighting each other. There is evidence this is true for Mokou at least, her character profile referring to their eternal stalemate as "magnificent", and in a chapter of Cage In Lunatic Runagate Mokou makes reference to "The joys of killing each other over and over."
  • Demonic Possession: Her survival card, Possessed By Phoenix. Mokou's not-quite-yet resurrected spirit possesses the player's team, causing them to manifest her usual phoenix-wing aura, which begins to produce bullet-shooting familiars to attack the player.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Hates Kaguya enough to steal the Hourai Elixir she gave to the Emperor of Japan and attempt to kill her repeatedly... because Kaguya humiliated her father when he failed to complete her impossible requests for her hand in marriage. Given the traditional Japanese view of family honor this may not be nearly as unreasonable as it first seems.
  • Elemental Kick: In fanon.
  • Extremity Extremist: Fanon tend to portray her this way with her only using her legs in melee combat.
  • Forgets to Eat: Only one of the many ways in which Mokou neglects her immortal body. She'll never actually die of hunger no matter how long she goes without eating, and she actually thinks that it's more her style to endure some hunger pains rather than look for food. However, when it gets to be too much pain, she will go ahead and make something to eat.
  • Fireballs
  • Glass Cannon: A funny case - an attentive player can see her dying after each emptied lifebar... and respawn right off the bat. She seems to have some trouble coming back for her last card.
  • Hands in Pockets: Of all the hands that Zun hides, hers are the only ones that are actually kept in pockets. This has since become a rather common character tic of hers in fanworks.
  • Hime Cut: In an unusual color and with added decoration, but the distinctive side locks give it away. Mokou was a nobleman's daughter in about the right time period for it.
  • Hot Wings: Her aura manifest's in the shape of phoenix wings. Fandom sometimes gives her actual wings.
  • Immortality: She'll keep resurrecting indefinitely, though that doesn't mean that getting killed doesn't hurt. Akyuu mentions that Mokou can regenerate if even a single hair of her is all that's left. This applies for Kaguya too, but Mokou uses it more.
  • Immortal Life Is Cheap: Mokou and Kaguya are constantly literally killing each other so this comes naturally.
  • It's Personal: Mokou's entire grudge against and rivalry with Kaguya is because she embarrassed her father when he couldn't complete her "Impossible Requests", tried to cheat by presenting Kaguya with a fake, and Kaguya called him on it in front of everyone present.
  • Jerkass Facade: She'll help anyone who gets lost in the Bamboo Thicket or wants to cross it, but won't exchange a word with them, and in general she doesn't socialize. A rough demeanor and short temper add to it too.
  • Leitmotif: "Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke". Sometimes shares "Extend Ash ~ Hourai Victim" with Keine.
  • Magic Pants: Literally. A popular theory says that all the charms on her pants are here to protect them from catching on fire because of her attacks.
    • Same case for her hair.
  • The Phoenix: The symbolism that Mokou uses. Whether she actually is possessed by a phoenix in never made clear.
  • Playing With Phoenix Fire: It's only reasonable for someone with fire magic and immortality to invoke the image of a phoenix, so she shoots firebird danmaku and surrounds herself with an aura shaped like bird wings... which adds more symbolism about her immortality.
  • Power Gives You Wings
  • Rapunzel Hair: It grows all the way down to the soles of her feet.
  • Revenge Before Reason: Kind of inherent in a cycle of revenge murders between immortals.
  • Shaping Your Attacks: Some of her spell cards shoot blasts of fire shaped like birds.
  • Smoking Is Cool: Often seen smoking in fanart. It's not like she has to worry about the health effects. All started with side-story where she mentions cigarettes as the cause of a forest fire, which was in fact almost certainly started by her and Kaguya during one of their battles. Somehow fans assumed this means Mokou smokes.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": K-S Romanization - Huziwara no Mokou.
  • Stronger with Age: According to Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, all the Hourai Elixir did was make her immortal. All of her firepower has come from more than a millennium and a half of practice. If you consider her to still be human, she is the only human EX-Boss in the entire series (except maybe Yumemi or Alice, if PC-98 counts). Strong arguments could be made that, if she can be considered human, she is the most powerful human magician in the world (Marisa can beat her, but she's also teamed up with Alice, who is an EX-Boss in her own right.) Of course, this also assumes that her powers don't come from being possessed by an actual phoenix, which is another popular theory.
  • This Is Unforgivable!: She likes saying this to Kaguya in Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth, but never actually delivers on it, making her look like a Tsundere rather than a mortal enemy.
  • Training from Hell: In Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth she is shown to have developed a high tolerance for pain by intentionally taking danmaku point-blank to the face.
  • Tsundere:
    • Despite her grudge against Kaguya, she also feels that they mitigate each other's immortal loneliness as no one else can, even with Kaguya being firmly on the Living Forever Is Awesome side of things. Cage in Lunatic Runagate has her explaining to Keine how terrified she was when she heard about the Moon rocket in Silent Sinner in Blue. She thought Kaguya was taking it to the Moon and was going to leave forever.
    • There's also the Jerkass Facade and pretty much anything she does in the semi-canonical Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth. Naturally, fans exaggerate it.
  • White-Haired Pretty Girl: Similarly to Lyrica, in Imperishable Night Mokou's hair is largely white with dark purple shading. Most fanart as well as The Grimoire of Marisa unambiguously depict her with white hair.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Finding Kaguya and getting into that cycle of mutual murders was a step up for Mokou after she spent most of her immortal life alone, alienated from a society that was suspicious and frightened of her agelessness. Notable for being the only immortal character in the entire series to not think Living Forever Is Awesome.


Debuted in Phantasmagoria of Flower View

Traditional Fantasy Reporter
Aya Shameimaru

One of the crow tengu who inhabit Gensoukyou, Aya runs the newspaper known as the Bunbunmaru. Because she gets carried away when writing the articles and exaggerate things, people don't really like to be featured in her paper. While she is strong, to the point that sometimes she accidentally wins fights when she was really just trying to take pictures for her newspaper, she prefers to work on her paper far more than fighting.

Tropes associated with Aya:

Mokou: If you stick your beak where it doesn't belong, something... unfortunate might happen to you. Because this place is a... how was it, a Mecca for yakitori, right? ... Is today's lucky food foie gras? ... Since your head is so hard, maybe we should roast it a little?

  • Spell My Name with an "S": K-S Romanization of her last name - "Syameimaru".
  • Super Speed: Easily one of the faster individuals in Gensoukyou, definitely the fastest, along with Hatate, as far as average speed goes.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Admits to playing fast and loose with the truth when it suits her needs. Also her comments about Nitori make no sense unless we invoke this.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Her taking photos during the middle of a heated battle results in some epic shots within Fanime.
  • Winged Humanoid: Inconsistently shown with and without crow wings in official works, but has yet to be seen with wings in any of the games.
(fanart)
Little Sweet Poison
Medicine Melancholy

A doll that has come to life as a youkai, she works hard for the emancipation of all dolls. Unfortunately, most dolls are unable to live as she can. She has the power to control various kinds of poison.

Tropes associated with Medicine:

  • Artificial Human/Living Toy: She's a doll that gained sentience. It is likely the little doll that follows her around is the real Medicine and the big doll is an external body projection.
  • Bad Powers, Bad People: Played absolutely straight. She controls poison and is a genocidal Creepy Child maniac who rambles about how humans should all die and has no problem killing everyone who stumbles into her field.
  • Catch Phrase: "Konparo, konparo."
  • Creepy Child/Creepy Doll: Easily the creepiest character.
  • Leitmotif: "Poison Body ~ Forsaken Doll."
  • Madness Mantra: Given the chance, she'll lapse into rambles about poisons and their effects.
  • Master Poisoner: Mainly relies on flower-based toxins. In-game this manifests as poison clouds that slow the oponent down, making her one of the worst characters to be against.
  • Nietzsche Wannabe: Harbors a fierce hatred towards humans, and will happily experiment her poisons on them.
  • Non-Indicative Name: She is... somewhat less than medicinal.
  • Poisonous Person: Her body is permanently coated with a cocktail of poisons.
  • Shout-Out: Her name comes from the Ray Bradbury short story collection A Medicine For Melancholy, while her backstory is also similar to Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story Rappaccini's Daughter.
Guide of the Sanzu River
Komachi Onozuka

A Shinigami whose job it is to ferry the souls of the dead across the Sanzu River to await judgment. However, she's an incorrigible slacker, which ends up leading to the events of Phantasmagoria of Flower View[9] when the amount of dead souls overwhelms her and begin accumulating in the world of the living.

Tropes associated with Komachi:

  • Berserk Button: She's easily one of the most laid-back and friendly characters in the series. But in her Scarlet Weather Rhapsody scenario, when Tenshi killed ghosts to alter the weather and defeated her fellow shinigami to feign immortality, Komachi put aside her role as a ferryman and gave the Celestial a good old-fashioned attitude adjustment.

Komachi: Not underestimating a shinigami would be in your best interest. Death comes even for the Celestials, you know?

    • According to PMiSS, not paying her right away will cause her to dump you into the Sanzu. In other words, she'll let you get horribly maimed by various sea life and deny you your afterlife for not paying immediately. Some fans interpret this as just a threat and not something she'll actually do, though.
  • Boobs of Steel: Canonically depicted as having large breasts, although fandom has a habit of exaggerating it. Fans also often juxtapose Komachi with Eiki, as they commonly depict the latter as being short in comparison.
  • Brilliant but Lazy: One Fanon interpretation is that the Yamas put up with her constant slacking and irreverent attitude because when she bothers to do her job, she's hypercompetent to the point that any amount of trouble with her work ethic is worth keeping her around. Scarlet Weather Rhapsody pretty much confirmed this.
    • Bunny Ears Lawyer: She's a greedy slacker with a possible drinking problem who loves having one-sided conversations with the souls she's ferrying. She's also the best damn shinigami there is.
  • Catch Phrase: "Kyan!" Mostly whenever Eiki whacks her on the head.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: A slacker that barely manages to do her job... right up until someone messes with the cycle of reincarnation.
  • Don't Fear the Reaper: If she even bothers.
  • The Dragon: She works under Eiki but her boss wasn't initiating the problem in Phantasmagoria of Flower View. She does contribute somewhat, because she's such a slacker.
  • The Ferry Man: She has the role of Charon from Greek mythology -- a ferryman whose duty is to guide souls to Higan, where they're judged. She's not allowed to actually go out and reap souls.
  • Girlish Pigtails
  • Japanese Pronouns: Like Cirno, Komachi uses "Atai." However, unlike with Cirno, this generally goes unmentioned by the fandom.
  • Leitmotif: "Higan Retour ~ Riverside View".
  • Money to Throw Away: Literally, as she uses coin danmaku. Maybe that's why the Celestial Bureaucracy is always broke.
  • Shout-Out: Komachi's victory line against Patchouli mentions a book that kills the person whose name was written in it. It is also explicitly mentioned she can see lifespans.
  • Sinister Scythe: Of course.
  • The Slacker
  • Space Master: Her power is "manipulation of distance", which she uses during her job to change the width of the Sanzu river according to the deceased's life, as well as in the fighting games, to trap the opponents on one spot so she can scythe and coin them to death.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": K-S Romanization of her last name -- "Onoduka".
  • Tranquil Fury: When confronting Tenshi after having her aforementioned Berserk Button pushed, appearing to be as calm and carefree as always despite her anger.
(fanart)


Highest Judge of The Court Of Paradise
Yamaxanadu Eiki Shiki

Komachi's boss and Gensoukyou's resident judge of the dead. Unlike Komachi, she takes her work seriously, and is oftentimes lecturing her subordinate, as well as everyone else. She possesses the power to see everything in black and white, which leads her to be a bit moralistic, although she always means well. For reference, her name is simply Eiki Shiki, while Yamaxanadu is a job title.

Tropes associated with Eiki:

  • Catch Phrase:
    • "Yes, you have [sinned] a little too much."
    • "This is the good deed you can do right now." Following the advice she doles out in almost all of her victory quotes.
  • Character Filibuster: Due to her job, she gets to preach upon the characters fault, and due to those characters' Chaotic Neutral tendency, they have tons of faults. One might suspect that she is basically ZUN's in-story speaker.
  • Celestial Bureaucracy
  • Fashionable Asymmetry: Her hair is longer on one side than the other. She also has different ribbons on either side.
  • Final Boss
  • The Judge: Of the Netherworld, no less. It's on her authority that Yuyuko is queen of Hakugyokurou.
  • Leitmotif: "Eastern Judgement in the Sixtieth Year ~ Fate of Sixty Years."
  • Legal Jailbait: It is extremely common to see fan art of her as a very short girl, especially compared to Komachi. Somewhat confirmed by Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, with her portrait depicting her as short and almost prepubescent. On the other hand, art of her in-game suggests she's almost as tall as Komachi.
  • Little Miss Badass: Yukari, who is often seen as nigh-godlike due to her reality warping powers, said she would not stand a chance against Eiki even with both Yuyuko and Reimu backing her up, if Eiki was serious. Bearing in mind Yukari fighting probably means Ran and Chen too, you can realise just how powerful Eiki is.
  • Nice Hat: remarkably ornate even for a series where almost everyone has nice headgear.
  • Psychopomp
  • She's Got Legs: Any fan interpretation that does not depict her as a kid depicts her this way.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": K-S Romanization of her name - "Sikieiki". Which is also misleading in that it's really supposed to be two separate names: her surname is Shiki and her given name is Eiki. While the Si/Shi confusion has been cleared up, the combining of her two names into "Shikieiki" is something that's stubbornly wormed its way into the English speaking fandom and is unlikely to go away.
  • Super Strength: The Rod of Remorse that Eiki holds takes on the weight of a person's sins. But no matter who she faces, the rod is never so heavy that Eiki cannot hold it up. She is the Highest Judge of Paradise, after all.
    • Alternatively, it may be that it's only heavy to the sinner. So to Eiki, who by job description would be nearly sinless, the rod would be feather-light.
  • Talking the Monster to Death: Judging by how everyone seems to try to avoid her lectures, it must feel like this trope for failing to avoid her.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: She calls everyone out, mainly out of concern that everyone's going to go to Hell or worse if they don't change their ways right now.
  1. ↑ a frozen watermelon slice on a popsicle stick
  2. ↑ it's not clear whether Touhou vampires are undead or not
  3. ↑ only compared to the next two bosses, but that's enough
  4. ↑ Presumably, this is when Ran fought the heroine in Perfect Cherry Blossom because the heroine wanted Ran to wake up her master.
  5. ↑ "The Night Parade of One Hundred Oni Every Four Days"
  6. ↑ To autocollect items in Imperishable Night you fly to the top of the screen and focus. Midboss Wriggle zooms in from the top of the screen with very little warning, so it's very common for a beginning player to die unexpectedly by colliding with Wriggle. This has mutated into the WRIGGLE KICK!
  7. ↑ which supposedly started with Neil Armstrong landing on the moon and planting a flag
  8. ↑ an offshoot of the sweet dreams pills
  9. ↑ though the event was simply the 60-year cycle and not Komachi's fault; however, her slacking exacerbated the situation, if only a little
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