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This is the characters page for the Bullet Hell series Touhou Project and related official works. Wherever possible, character images come from the official portraits used in the Touhou fighting game spinoffs; images of characters who do not appear in the fighting games are labeled " (fanart)".
CONTAINS SPOILERS
(Always under heavy construction. 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.)
- Concerning the romanization of names
First, there are two principal methods Japanese names could be written 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.
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- The PC-98 Series
Between 1996 and 1998, the first five games in the Touhou series were made for the PC-98 personal computer by a doujin circle known as Amusement Makers, which ZUN was a part of. However, the games and most of the characters from the PC-98 era have either been ignored by the series' continuity or have been retconned outright. So far, only Reimu, Marisa, Alice, and Yuka are the only characters to have appeared in the Windows series.
Debuted in Highly Responsive to Prayers
- Reimu Hakurei
Shrine Maiden of the Hakurei shrine and the main protagonist of the Touhou series in general. Extremely talented, but hates training and is very lazy. She's also a friendly person who gets along well with everyone, including Youkai. This passive attitude towards monsters doesn't sit well with most of the humans in Gensokyo, which means her shrine doesn't get many visitors... or donations. Also well known for her armpits of doom.
Tropes associated with Reimu:
- Ancestral Weapon (The Hakurei Yin-Yang Orbs)
- Art Shift (Reimu's appearance has changed particularly often and dramatically since the start of the series — after all, she's been in all games but one. Most infamous in Mountain of Faith, where an oddly jaundiced skin tone led to the joke that Reimu had become an undead zombie.)
- Barrier Maiden
- Barrier Warrior
- Berserk Button (Messing with the Hakurei shrine is a very good way to bring down Reimu's wrath on your head, as the first two games demonstrated.)
- Colour Coded For Your Convenience (Reimu and Yukari form the "Border team" in Imperishable Night. It's rather convenient that the colors of their outfits correspond to the borders between visible and invisible light.)
- Defeat Means Friendship (Anyone she defeats, she invites to her shrine for a tea party. May lead to Shipping.)
- Detached Sleeves
- The Ditz (Occasionally.)
- Final Boss (She's the last character you fight in the regular final boss' Story Mode of Immaterial and Missing Power, Phantasmagoria of Flower View and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, as well as the last extra boss of Shuusou Gyoku, the first game of Touhou's sister series, Seihou.)
- Friend To All Living Things (Not shown often, unless you count the whole Defeat Means Friendship routine, but animals seem to really like Reimu. She's been seen feeding wild rabbits by hand, summoning birds with a whistle, and crossing a river without noticing it because fish rose up to form a bridge under her feet.)
- Hard Work Hardly Works (She's already talented. This makes her extremely lazy, to the point that the holy power of the Hakurei Shrine has weakened enough that Remilia, who is a vampire, can visit regularly without ill effects. Were she actually to train her ability, though, it's highly possible that she could reach the same level of power as Yorihime, if not more.)
- Hyperspace Arsenal (Her ofuda)
- Intangible Man (when using her Last Word from Imperishable Night)
- Jerkass (Canonically, Reimu is guilty of attacking Orange, who wasn't even causing any trouble, robbing the youkai Tokiko, admittedly after mistakenly assuming the books she was carrying were stolen, and invading Mayohiga, beating up Chen, and stealing valuables for herself. In fanon, it gets worse - she does just about anything from bullying Cirno to going Ax Crazy and extorting donations from everyone after getting fed up of being perpetually poor.)
- Kleptomaniac Hero (When she encounters the legendary village Mayohiga in Perfect Cherry Blossom, her first thought is to loot it for magical artifacts that bring good fortune.)
- Miko
- Mundane Utility (Most of her abilities only have mundane utilities. She's certainly not going to win fights by eating sweets and not growing fat at them.)
- Off Model (See also the "zombie Reimu" meme)
- Onmyodo (Ofuda (rectangular paper charms) are her weapon of choice along with giant Ying-Yang orbs)
- Perpetual Poverty (Because of her lack of donations)
- Plot Armor (When you're actually up against her in the shooters (In Lotus Land Story and Imperishable Night) she ranks high up on the That One Boss scale. Thanks to her role as Barrier Maiden and Designated Hero otherwise, fanon portrays her as having a suit of Plot Armor heavy enough even Jesus Yamato would have problems donning it. In canon, of course, fights are supposedly non-lethal anyway, but Reimu does lose sometimes.)
- Shout Out (Reimu's infamous Last Word card "Fantasy Heaven" is a homonym to Kenshiro's Musou Tensei of Fist Of The North Star. In Touhou 12.3, using said spellcard under certain conditions even causes a Fatal KO remix of Reimu's theme, Mystic Oriental Love Consulation, to override the current music (and if you squint it, the beginning sounds like repeating the phrase 'YOU WA SHOCK' lots of times). For bonus points, if the opponent is stupid enough to actually let it activate, it cannot be blocked and is automatically a win. You are already dead indeed!)
- One of her palettes in 12.3 uses Toki's colours (even the hair), another thing fans have run away with
- Vague Age / Not Allowed To Grow Up (Information provided in print works and the passage of seasons in the games suggest that at least six years have passed between Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and Unthinkable Natural Law, so Reimu should probably be over 20 years old by now — more if the PC-98 games still count. However, she is always depicted as being around her mid-teens.)
- Shingyoku
The gatekeeper to Hakurei Shrine, and the first boss in the entire series. Very little is known about Shingyoku, as it has neither dialogue nor an official profile.
Tropes associated with Shingoku:
- Degraded Boss (Sort of. Story of Eastern Wonderland and Undefined Fantastic Object have enemies that appear to be based on Shingoku's first form.)
- Gender Bender (One form appears female, another looks male.)
- Sequential Boss (Three forms)
- YuugenMagan
A generic boss Reimu encounters in the Makai, YuugenMagan is a set of five independently moving eyes that are connected by electricity.
Tropes associated with YuugenMagan:
- Elis
Elis is the second boss Reimu faces in the Makai. She is a blonde girl that has devil wings, can turn into a bat, and carries a wand. Little else is known about her.
Tropes associated with Elis:
- Sariel
(fanart)
Sariel is an angel of death and the final boss of the Makai route.
Tropes associated with Sariel:
- Mima
(fanart)
A vengeful spirit whom Reimu originally ran into during her trip into Hell. She later reappeared in Gensokyo, trying to get revenge on not just Reimu, but all people. After being shot down a second time, she gives up being evil and spends her time hanging around the Hakurei Shrine and making fun of Reimu. The fandom is still waiting for her to make a reappearance in the Windows series.
Tropes associated with Mima:
- Kikuri
(fanart)
The second boss Reimu meets in Jigoku, Kikuri is a bronze disk. Okay, there's an image of a girl on the disk, but it's still pretty strange.
Tropes associated with Kikuri:
- Power Floats (Beyond the disk itself, the engraving shows a ball of energy hovering.)
- Konngara
(fanart)
Konngara is the final boss of the Jigoku route.
Tropes associated with Konngara:
- Final Boss
- Katanas Are Just Better (Averted! She uses a straight sword)
- Nightmare Fuel (If you look at it carefully, you'll notice that there's blood dripping from the base of her "horn". It's likely a spike driven through her head.)
- Wild Mass Guessing (Sometimes thought to be an Oni, as she has a horn. Not that she's thought of much. Oh, and she looks remarkably like the modern version of Reimu.)
Close Debuted in Highly Responsive to Prayers
Debuted in Story of Eastern Wonderland
- Genji
An old turtle who serves as Reimu's transportation since she hadn't yet learned how to fly under her own power. Disappeared without a trace after Mystic Square and Word Of God has stated that he's "probably living in the lake at the back of the shrine". Retconned further in Perfect Memento in Strict Sense where Akyu states that "even without wings we can all fly," making Genji's existence rather pointless.
Tropes associated with Genji:
- Rika
(fanart)
Some sort of scientific genius. Before Story of Eastern Wonderland she creates a bunch of monsters and ghosts and decides to hang out at the Hakurei shrine while Reimu was gone. Naturally, she gets her ass kicked. First boss in a Touhou shooting game.
Tropes associated with Rika:
- Meira
(fanart)
Attacks Reimu in an attempt to get the Hakurei powers for herself. Fails, and is never heard from again.
Tropes associated with Meira:
- Marisa Kirisame
A magician who lives in the Forest of Magic. She just happened to be the " Ordinary Magician" in the middle of a crowd of superpowered beings, so she worked her ass off HARD to eventually become one of the more formidable opponents in Gensokyo. She's rude and loud-mouthed, but is a straightforward person. She also steals precious things.
Tropes associated with Marisa:
- Amulet Of Concentrated Awesome (The Mini-Hakkero, a pocket-sized octagonal magical reactor from which Marisa fires her Master Spark.)
- Art Shift (There's a Memetic Mutation, known as Cho-Marisa, where Marisa is drawn with more muscles than The Incredible Hulk. Her body proportions even get changed to be more manly.)
- Ascended Extra (After her initial appearance as a villainous minion with no real backstory or motivation, she went on to become the secondary main character of the series.)
- Ass Kicks You (Only in the fighting games.)
- Badass Bookworm
- Badass Normal (Normal human with no native powers - such as Reimu's divine intuition or Sakuya's time control - yet can go toe-to-toe with god-like characters like Yukari. One could argue that she's the only human in the games without supernatural assistance past her self-taught magic.)
- Beam Spam (Non-Directional Laser)
- Black Magician Girl
- Brought To You By The Letter M (In Undefined Fantastic Object)
- Chaotic Neutral (Despite being one of the two main heroines of the series, Marisa has no qualms with ransacking other people's homes whenever she has the free time to do so.)
- Chick Magnet (Fandom quite often turns Marisa into a Les Yay version, which results◊ in comedy/drama.)
- Cute Witch
- Deadpan Snarker (Of all the playable characters, Marisa usually has the most sharp-tongued dialogue, though she's not too deadpan about it)
- Evil Redhead (Her original appearance in Story of Eastern Wonderland. Her hair was changed to blonde in the next game.)
- Eyes Of Gold
- Flying Broomstick
- Game Breaker (In Mountain of Faith, her B-type shot has a glitch that makes it insanely powerful under the right circumstances, earning it the Fan Nickname of MarisaBugged. And it's much less severe, but Marisa's teamup with Alice in Imperishable Night has access to another highly damaging exploit, which fans have dubbed the Malice Cannon.)
- An experiment has shown that the Malice Cannon may well have been intended, as she's almost the slowest of all the teams to beat a boss that is in the teams optimum conditions for doing damage. Less of a Game Breaker than an intended power... or just very bad testing.
- This continued in Subterranean Animism, again with Marisa's B-type, and again at 3.xx power. Ironically, her B-type in Undefined Fantastic Object is one of the weaker shot types, with no currently known exploits.
- Hard Work Hardly Works (She rarely wins against Reimu, but she's still among the strongest of Gensokyo thanks to her training. Somewhat averted in that she's probably the absolute strongest human in all of Gensokyo short of Reimu, who has special powers due to her status as Shrine Maiden.)
- Kamehame Hadoken (Love Sign: Master Spark, her signature attack. ZUN's comments on the spell literally translate to "a freaking huge magical laser.")
- Kleptomaniac Hero (In a literal sense in terms of items and skills.)
- Leitmotif (Moreso than any other character. Love-Colored Magic, her boss theme from Story of Eastern Wonderland has been reused and remixed in all but two of her appearances as an enemy character.)
- Magic Wand (Started carrying one in UFO.)
- Mega Manning (She has stolen several spells from other characters she has fought over time. Even her signature Master Spark was originally held by Yuka Kazami. This tendency spawned the fan-made game MegaMari, which is Exactly What It Says On The Tin.)
- More Dakka (Everyone's danmaku attacks are like that, but Marisa is notable for constantly looking for ways to get bigger firepower from her magic.)
- Mouthful Of Pi (In at least one instance in the games, Marisa gets impatient while travelling across levels and wonders if she could finish reciting Pi by the time she got to her intended destination.)
- Mushroom Samba (In a sense. Canon states that Marisa uses literal magic mushrooms as a common ingredient/fuel source for her spells. The jokes in fandom are obvious. Extensive too, with the mushrooms having basically any effect imaginable for the unwitting Marisa... or her victims.)
- Opposites Attract (Platonically. Consider the talented but lazy, blunt, dispassionate Reimu, passive and tricky in her fighting style, popular despite her lack of active socializing, associated with sunshine and spring — and then the hard-working, energetic, dishonest, excitable Marisa who lives by brute force, bothers people everywhere she goes, and is associated with rain. They're competitors and rivals. They're also best friends who spend a lot of time just hanging out.)
- Power Of Love (The description of the aforementioned Love Sign: Master Spark includes "Whisper tenderly into the magical reactor, point it at someone you don't like, and release the Annihilation of Love!" What exactly that means is still a matter for debate.)
- Shipping (And how! She gets paired with: Reimu, Mima, Alice, Patchouli, Flandre, Nitori and many, many more (The girls mentioned are her most common pairings).)
- Trash Of The Titans (Both in canon and fanon, her house is portrayed as being a real mess - even Rinnosuke has once commented about how she doesn't take care of most of her "gathered" treasures. Legendary treasures have actually been found in her junk piles, completely unknown to her.)
- Vague Age / Not Allowed To Grow Up (Like Reimu, she always seems to be in her mid-teens regardless of the passage of time.)
- Verbal Tic (Marisa tends to end her sentences with the masculine, informal and assertive 'ze' particle)
- Wave Motion Gun (Final Spark, Easy Harvest Master Spark in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody)
Close Debuted in Story of Eastern Wonderland
Debuted in Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream
- Ellen
(fanart)
A witch that's eternally young in both body and mind.
Tropes associated with Ellen:
- Kotohime
A princess, who is also a cop. Yeah, she weirds out pretty much everyone she meets, and not just because of her occupational choices.
Tropes associated with Kotohime:
- Kana Anaberal
(fanart)
A poltergeist produced by an unstable girl. She normally haunts a western mansion, but the owner has gotten used to her, so she's bored.
Tropes associated with Kana:
- Blood Knight (Her dialogue ingame suggests that she finds some pleasure in battling.)
- Just Ignore It (The owner of the mansion she was haunting stopped paying attention to her, so she plans to search for a new home.)
- Meido (She wears a maid's uniform.)
- Our Ghosts Are Different (She's a poltergeist who was created by the mind of a mentally unstable girl.)
- Rikako Asakura
(fanart)
A rare inhabitant of Gensokyo that values science above magic. Despite this, she's actually a very powerful magically.
Tropes associated with Rikako:
- Epileptic Trees (See Rika's entry above.)
- For Science (Her main reason for getting involved.)
- The Heretic (Reimu slaps this label on her because she's one of the few people in Gensokyo who values science over magic.)
- Magic From Technology
- Meganekko (the only one in the series, interestingly enough *
except Luna Child, who only sometimes wears glasses .)
- Schizo Tech
- Willfully Weak (She's quite strong magically, but she dislikes magic too much to use it often.)
- Chiyuri Kitashirakawa
(fanart)
Chiyuri is Yumemi's assistant and mostly spends time collating her research data. She also put out the fliers advertising the contest to reach the centre of the "ruins" that recently appeared in Gensokyo. She doesn't always have a clear idea of what her boss intends, which results in her getting whacked over the head when she treats the contest winner rudely (read: threatens them with a gun). Yumemi then orders her to fight the heroines in order to collect more data. Oh, and her major is in "comparative physics". Whatever that means.
Tropes associated with Chiyuri:
- Yumemi Okazaki
(fanart)
Yumemi is a professor of "comparative physics" (whatever that means) at a university in another dimension where all natural forces have been explained by a Grand Unified Theory. When she dares to suggest that the theory doesn't explain magic, she is laughed out of the university and sets off on a journey to prove that it exists. Her ship lands in Gensokyo to capture someone to use in her experiments. Asskicking ensues and she leaves empty-handed. In spite of her disappointing failure, she still rewards the heroines generously.
Tropes associated with Yumemi:
- Ruukoto
When Reimu beat Yumemi, she asked for an assistant who could handle all of the day-to-day chores around the shrine (Reimu being Reimu, after all). What she got was a nuclear-powered robot maid who isn't necessarily good at her job. Ruukoto was never seen again.
Tropes associated with Ruukoto:
Close Debuted in Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream
Debuted in Lotus Land Story
- Orange
A mountain youkai that gets attacked by the player character for no particularly good reason.
Tropes associated with Orange:
- Chinese Girl
- Epileptic Trees (Is Hong Meiling her Expy? Or is Chen? Or are both of them? You decide.)
- Moral Dissonance (Despite being a boss, Orange never really had any intention of fighting Reimu or Marisa, they just started shooting at her because she was there.)
- Kurumi
A vampire that attempts to stop the player from reaching the island in the lake filled with blood.
Tropes associated with Kurumi:
- Elly
(fanart)
The gatekeeper to Yuuka's mansion. She's completely useless at her job, letting both Reimu and Marisa by. Not that Yuuka even needs a gatekeeper considering her own power and how isolated her mansion is...
Tropes associated with Elly:
- Yuka Kazami
(fanart)
An old and extremely powerful flower youkai who lives in the dream world, Mugenkan. She is sleeping at the time and only defends herself because Reimu and Marisa broke in and woke her up. Naturally she loves her flowers and is actually more like a force of nature than a typical youkai.
Tropes associated with Yuka:
- Mugetsu
The god of the dream world the player character stumbles into during the extra stage, apparently.
Tropes associated with Mugetsu:
- Bonus Boss (One of the two Extra Stage Bosses of Lotus Land Story)
- Giant Space Flea From Nowhere (Mugetsu is not in any way connected to the main plot. She just attacks for the lulz.)
- Meido (She seems to like wearing the uniform.)
- Physical God (It's not really clear whether she actually created it or not, but she claims that the dream world that the Lotus Land Story's bonus stage takes place in is "her world".)
- Spell My Name With An S (Mugetsu or Mugetu?)
- Gengetsu
Mugetsu's older sister. Seriously, that's about all we know about her.
Tropes associated with Gengetsu:
Close Debuted in Lotus Land Story
Debuted in Mystic Square
- Sara
(fanart)
Another one of those useless gatekeepers. Seems to consider humans food.
Tropes associated with Sara:
- Luize
(fanart)
A tourist from the makai. Had the bad luck of running into the heroine before she could make it to Gensokyo.
Tropes associated with Luize:
- Alice Margatroid
Another magician that lives in the Forest of Magic, and neighbor to Marisa. Her power seems to center around the manipulation of her dolls. She's mostly aloof and self-confident, but Fanon says otherwise and sometimes turns her into a Tsundere, co-dependent girl, especially towards Marisa.
Tropes associated with Alice:
- Attack Drones (Her dolls.)
- Badass Bookworm
- Black Magician Girl (Somewhat)
- Bonus Boss (In the fifth game, Mystic Square.)
- Creating Life (Her greatest ambition is to create a doll that can act independently.)
- Cute Witch (What she originally was.)
- Deadpan Snarker (Her dialogue with Marisa in Imperishable Night and (to a lesser extent) Subterranean Animism consists essentially of the two witches throwing snarky comments at each other and occasionaly at their opponent. She's much more polite and subdued when speaking alone to the others characters, so we can just blame the black-white's bad influence)
- Go Ask Alice
- Hyperspace Arsenal (Her dolls.)
- Just Add Bitch ("NOW BITCH, GET OUTTA THE WAY.")
- Kamehame Hadoken (Seems to have some form of it, although it is inconsistently named.)
- Make My Doll Grow (The Level Titania & Goliath Doll, her last 2 cards in Cirno's Final Boss fight in UNL. The latter is a Survival Card.)
- Marionette Mistress (Her dolls.)
- Mundane Utility (Alice uses her Doll Army to do the chores.)
- Ret Con (In 'Mystic Square, Alice is a resident of Makai, supposedly created by Shinki like everyone else there. However, when she was reintroduced for the Windows series, her background was changed so that she is a human-turned-youkai living in the Forest of Magic. Fans have come up with numerous theories to explain this discrepancy.)
- Shout Out (Her name is a reference to Miss Murgatroyd in Agatha Christie's A Murder is Announced.)
- Well, her last name is. Her first is to Alice In Wonderland. (Or was, as the connection is only apparent in Mystic Square.)
- Suicide Attack (She sends dolls stuffed with gunpowder blow up in people's faces)
- The Beastmaster (The puppeteering variety. Her puppets, however, have no degree of automation, so even though she uses them to clean her house, it doesn't really make it much easier since she has to micromanage every single one of them. It makes her habit of holding two-sided conversations with them a little odder, too...)
- Theme Naming (Alice's dolls (or at least the Spellcards using them) are all named for places. Most famous are her Cursed Shanghai Dolls and Hanged Hourai Dolls, to the point where fanworks almost universally portray her with individual dolls named Shanghai and Hourai.)
- Colourful Theme Naming (Using a color theme similar to the one used in Ran, Chen, and Yukari's names, Alice's title is the "Seven-Colored Puppeteer". Since Reimu is only a red and white shrine maiden, Alice asserts that Reimu is only 28.5714% (or 2/7ths) as strong as her in the dialogue before her boss fight.)
- Tome Of Eldritch Lore (She's always seen carrying a sealed book. The only time she's opened it is as the Bonus Boss in Mystic Square.)
- Tsundere (Canon has her as one in a non-romantic sense towards people in general. Fanon either amps it up into a romantic version, usually towards Marisa, or cranks the dial over to Yandere territory.)
- Witch Species (What Alice eventually became.)
- Unknown Rival (Reimu doesn't recall her name both times they fight after her initial appearance, first in the Extra stage of Mystic Square. She fails to recognize her completely in their reunion in Perfect Cherry Blossom. Naturally, Alice seems to have a little enmity for her after this. Somewhat subverted in that she doesn't really seem to care much about it.)
- Willfully Weak (She never fights at her full strength, because she's afraid of what it might mean if she lost while going all out.)
- Yuki
Tries to stop the player character once she gets into Makai, alongside Mai. Looks a lot like Marisa.
Tropes associated with Yuki:
- Mai
Fights the heroine alongside Yuki. Quieter, but claims to be stronger.
Tropes associated with Mai:
- Yumeko
(fanart)
Tries to protect Shinki. Fails. Basically Sakuya without the time powers.
Tropes associated with Yumeko:
- Shinki
(fanart)
The creator of Makai. Since she allowed a travel agency in Makai to organize tours into Gensokyo, the heroines decide to beat her up.
Tropes associated with Shinki:
Close Debuted in Mystic Square
- The Windows Series
After a hiatus of about four years, the Touhou Project series was started back up again for Windows-based PCs, and the series is now being produced by a doujin circle known as Team Shanghai Alice, which ZUN is the lone member of. 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 is considered by most fans to be the main canon of the series.
Debuted in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
- Rumia
(fanart)
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 spellcard rules.
Tropes associated with Rumia:
- Daiyousei/Greater Fairy
(fanart)
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:
- No Name Given
- Cheerful Child
- Immortality (The resurrective kind, as with all fairies)
- Sure Why Not (Though she never got official art from ZUN, she has a probable cameo in one chapter of Strange and Bright Nature Deity looking very much the way fanart tends to portray her, with the distinctive side ponytail.)
- Winged Humanoid
- 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 card that can be completely dodged by placing yourself directly in front of Cirno.
Tropes associated with Cirno:
- An Ice Fairy
- Baka (see below, and also leads to...)
- Berserk Button ("The one who says 'idiot' is the idiot!")
- BFS (In Unthinkable Natural Law, she pulls out a large sword made of ice for some of her attacks.)
- Butt Monkey (Cirno's cocky attitude combined with her relatively weak powers and childish incompetence means she often ends up in humiliating situations. The author even takes a stab at it in the Phantasmagoria of Flower View game manual. One page had a screenshot from the game with the different user interface elements labeled with a number. Cirno, shown as the rival player, was labeled ⑨. In the legend below the image it said:
1. Player
2. Score
3. Health
...
9. Idiot
- The Ditz (Memetic Mutation transforms her into a Ralph Wiggum)
- Ensemble Darkhorse (For a little Ice Fairy, Cirno sure has a massive, and I mean MASSIVE, fanbase, partly due to her childish cockiness, and partly due to her leitmotif. She even graces the cover of Unthinkable Natural Law despite not being terribly important to its plot.)
- Fan Nickname (The above game manual humiliation lead to "⑨" becoming her nickname.)
- Harmless Freezing (Averted. About 1/3rd of the frogs she freezes winds up shattering.)
- Immortality (The resurrective kind, a stated property of all fairies; they tend to be fragile and short-lived, but respawn immediately on death. Not much used with the other fairy characters, but for fans it goes very nicely with Cirno's tendency to recklessly get in over her head.)
- Interestingly, she does actually show self-preservation instincts when she's up against someone vastly stronger than her, despite not needing to.
- Japanese Pronouns (Cirno is infamous for her use of the rough-sounding/childish pronoun "Atai". Some English translations render this as "Eye", as in "Eye'm the strongest!")
- Recurring Boss (Originally the Stage 2 Boss of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Cirno reappears as the Stage 1 mid-boss of Perfect Cherry Blossom.)
- Winged Humanoid (Ice crystal wings)
- Worlds Strongest Fairy (Self-proclaimed. She is by far the strongest known fairy, but common fairies in Gensokyo are essentially Cannon Fodder. This can be extended to Ted Baxter levels.)
- In fanworks she's almost always a self-professed genius as well. Unfortunately, most fairies in Gensokyo are something like intellectual Cannon Fodder too.
- Hong Meiling
Gate guard for the Scarlet Devil Mansion and Stage 3 boss. Possesses perhaps the most well-known fan nickname in the series, "China".
Tropes associated with Hong Meiling:
- Alternate Character Interpretation (She's one of the weakest bosses in the games, but many fans prefer taking the 'magic is not her forte' asseveration from the author to mean that she'd actually be greatly dangerous in an actual physical fight, as a trained martial artist. Sadly, in Gensokyo, physical conflicts just don't happen, everything instead being resolved by wizardly duels)
- Boobs Of Steel (Inverted: Her boobs appear visible, but she's one of the weaker youkai in Gensokyo)
- Butt Monkey (Often shown in fanon being abused by her boss Sakuya. Furthermore, everyone seems to have a hard time remembering her name. Then again, Meiling and Sakuya are also shipped together, sometimes without the abuse.)
- Captain Ethnic
- Chew Toy
- Chinese Girl
- Ensemble Darkhorse (So popular that it lead to her winning the Touhou Saimoe tournament.)
- Expy (Possibly of Orange, due to similar appearances.)
- Fan Nickname ("China" is so widespread that even the series creator has admitted to using it. Also "Kurenai Misuzu" as a Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters that make up her name.)
- Fiery Redhead
- Heavy Sleeper (Not as much as Yukari, but probably this is one of the reasons there's lots of intruders in the SDM: she tends to sleep in front of her gate. Even moreso in Maikaze's doujin anime where she didn't notice Aya taking pictures of her in front of her face... while sleeping)
- 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.)
- My Name Is Not Durwood (And to her distress, EVERYONE calls her 'China.' Even in Immaterial and Missing Power, one of her victory phrases asks the loser to remember her name.)
- Shout Out (During her brief time as a playable character in Immaterial And Missing Power, she has variations of Yun's moves.)
- The Woobie (Possibly one reason as to why she's so popular is how badly she's treated.)
- Koakuma/Little Devil
(fanart)
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 to Patchouli, since she's the library midboss.
Tropes associated with Koakuma:
- 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:
- Alternate Character Interpretation (Patchouli has some of the greatest fan disagreement over how old, exactly, she is supposed to look, and how cheerful or bitter her personality is. It doesn't help that she has apparently very different personalities in the actual games, and the also-canon (to those who admit it) Silent Sinner In Blue.)
- Badass Bookworm
- Beam Spam (Non-Directional Laser)
- Catch Phrase ("Mukyuu", a nonsense sound, is generally attributed to her after she uttered it exactly once in canon.)
- The Daria (Most interpretations of Patchouli show her as completely deadpan and cynical (especially in her lines regarding Sakuya in Subterranean Animism or Immaterial and Missing Power), but nevertheless a good and caring friend of Remilia, and often is shown as having a crush on Marisa.
- Elemental Powers (Invoked. She likes to convert her spells to fit into one of seven different elements based on their function.)
- Fan Nickname (Her name is often shortened into "Patchy". Remilia uses a similar nickname for her in canon.)
- Hikikomori (Patchouli rarely ever leaves the library in the Scarlet Devil Mansion.)
- Hot Librarian (Or cute, depending on whoever is drawing her)
- Ill Girl (Because of her Hikikomori lifestyle, she has developed anemia, asthma and a vitamin A deficiency, leaving her unable to recite some of the spells she learns.)
- Squishy Wizard (Genius spellcaster, but probably can't lift anything heavier than a book.)
- Throw The Book At Them (Her melee attacks in the Touhou fighting games.)
- The Spock (Sometimes blends with Little Miss Snarker)
- Witch Species (She was born a youkai sorceress.)
- 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:
- Amulet Of Concentrated Awesome (Fanon assumes that the stopwatch she carries is a magical artifact (usually called the Luna Dial after her theme music) that she uses to stop time. The games do not explicitly say whether her time-stopping ability is tied to the stopwatch.)
- Battle Butler
- Berserk Button (In many Touhou fanworks, it's generally not a good idea to make comments relating to Sakuya's "padding" tendencies.)
- 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.)
- Defeat Means Friendship (Akyuu suggests that she was a vampire hunter that was defeated and taken in by Remilia. Of course, this is just a rumour.)
- 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, seeing the two chatter as if nothing ever happened.)
- The Ditz (Depictions of her this way are rare in fandom, but canonically, 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.)
- Epileptic Trees (Eirin's character profile says she was surprised to see Sakuya in Imperishable Night, but never explains why. Fanon has explored several possible connections between them, including Sakuya being a Lunarian, Eirin having made her Luna Dial, or the two characters being related in some way. There's also a lot of speculation about how and why Sakuya became Remilia's servant.)
- Expy (Probably of Yumeko, as both are Knife Nuts, Ninja Maids, and have a similar appearance.)
- Fan Nickname (PAD-Chou/Pad Chief. Fans noticed her bust size change considerably between her character art in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and Immaterial and Missing Power. While this is probably due to the fact that EoSD's art was done by ZUN, who many believe simply isn't good enough at perspective to draw breasts, the tongue-in-cheek fan theory that she started padding her bra between the two games caught on. Fanon has it that mentioning such in her presence is a good way to wind up knifed to death.)
- She's also called Sakuya Brando due to her similarities to Dio Brando.
- Flat Earth Atheist (In Immaterial and Missing Power, she tells Reimu she doesn't believe in the gods.)
- Hyperspace Arsenal (Handwaved by the author saying that she regularly stops time and picks up all her knives to throw them again.)
- Knife Nut
- Knife Throwing Act (In a lot of fanart)
- Lady Of War (She's called "The Perfect and Elegant Maid" for a reason.)
- Mundane Utility (Hey, you'd be a perfect maid too if you could just stop time to do your work instantly.)
- Ninja Maid
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot (Ninja Maid Time Mage Serial Killer Stage Magician)
- Pettanko (Some fanart portays her this way, to go along with the padding jokes. Others go the other way.)
- Red Eyes Take Warning (Exactly What It Says On The Tin. If she does that, beware.)
- Reverse Shrapnel (Her "Killer Doll" spellcard, when used by the player.)
- Rie Tanaka (Her voice in the Maikaze's Touhou Fanime.)
- Serial Killer (There's a definite serial killer theme with her spellcards, such as "Jack the Ripper" and "Another Murder".)
- Shout Out (Both her time stopping skills and her use of knives are a reference to Dio Brando of Jojos Bizarre Adventure. In her first appearance, she even had a spellcard named after his famous "The World"/"ZA WARUDO", and she has similar poses in the fighting games.)
- Stage Magician (A number of her spellcards have this theme and her profile says that "deceitless sleight-of-hand is her pride")
- Time Stands Still (Literally so, given Sakuya seemingly can manipulate time as she sees fit.)
- Vague Age (Akyu 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 EoSD also refers to her as "10-20.")
- White Haired Pretty Girl
- 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.
Tropes associated with Remilia:
- Bloody Murder (Grimoire of Marisa reveals that she can control and use blood to attack in some of her spell cards. Blood is amazing!)
- Blood Magic: obviously.
- Creepy Child
- 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.)
- Fan Nickname (Analagous to Patchouli's example, both she and the fanbase often shorten Remilia's name to Remi.)
- 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, and her dress is usually stained red afterwards.)
- Final Boss
- 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.)
- Norse Mythology (She wields Odin's spear Gungnir)
- The Ojou
- Our Vampires Are Different
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old (Remilia was born in 1503, making her 500 years old at the time of the game's release.)
- Shipping (With Sakuya, Reimu, and occasionally Patchouli)
- Sibling Yin Yang (in contrast to Flandre, she's much more calm and collected)
- Royal Brat (Somewhat.)
- 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.)
- Winged Humanoid (Bat wings)
- Your Vampires Suck (Remilia actually likes cross imagery, and can't fathom why she should be weak to them.)
- Point: Her spellcard "Red: The Nightless Castle" appears as a towering crimson cross.
- Flandre Scarlet
(fanart)
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 centuries. Despite this, she doesn't usually try to escape, and is actually quite fond of her older sister. Her theme song "U.N. Owen was her?" must hold some kind of record for most remixes for any piece of music anywhere (and the list is growing). ZUN himself has remixed it.
Tropes associated with Flandre:
Close Debuted in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
Debuted in Perfect Cherry Blossom
- Letty Whiterock
(fanart)
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:
- Lily White
(fanart)
Stage 4 sub-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:
- Layla Prismriver
(fanart, appearance is completely speculative)
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.
Tropes associated with Layla Prismriver:
- 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:
- Lunasa Prismriver
(fanart)
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:
- Merlin Prismriver
(fanart)
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.)
- Fan Nickname ("Merupo".)
- 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
- Memetic Mutation (Caused by the Game Breaking Bug, and notable because it makes her the most recognizable sister. ξ・∀・)
- That One Boss (The main downside to playing as Sakuya in PCB: You're forced to fight Merlin at the start.)
- White Haired Pretty Girl
- Lyrica Prismriver
(fanart)
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:
- Youmu Konpaku
Half-ghost swordswoman and gardener of Hakugyokurou, the netherworld court. 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 Gensokyo 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!")
- Battle Butler
- Bullet Time (Either to demonstrate her Super Speed, either to show Hakurouken's (One of her swords) confusion cutting powers as the protagonist experiences a zen moment.)
- Cute Girl With A Sword
- Doppelganger Attack (Her ghost half can also turn into a body double. Or even a triple.)
- Dual Wielding
- Fan Nickname (Her ghost half is referred to as "Myon" among fandom due to a quote of hers from Perfect Cherry Blossom.)
- Ghost Lights (Her half-ghost side, always present and independently visible around her. Don't try to make sense of this.)
- Half Human Hybrids (She is half-human, half-ghost. How this could possibly happen goes unexplained, but her father is likely to be that way as well.)
- Maybe she was just half-killed?
- Idiot Hero
- Shout Out (Alot 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 JoJosBizarreAdventure, one of her colour palettes from Unthinkable Natural Law is even entirely silver like Pol's Silver Chariot stand)
- 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.)
- White Haired Pretty Girl
- Why Did It Have To Be Snakes (Despite the fact that she serves a ghost and is one (or half of one, anyway,) Youmu is terrified of ghost stories.)
- Youki Konpaku
(fanart, appearance is completely speculative)
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 in Youmu's character description for Perfect Cherry Blossom.
Tropes associated with Youki:
- 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 (and she likes it too), because the resurrection of her body would destroy her, and unleash the evil tree to doom mankind.
Tropes associated with Yuyuko:
- 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:
- Ran Yakumo
(fanart)
She serves Yukari as a shikigami, and looks after the house while her mistress sleeps. Has enough power to have her own shikigami in Chen.
Tropes associated with Ran:
- Yukari Yakumo
The youkai of boundaries, and quite possibly the most powerful being in Gensokyo (as well as the laziest). Yukari has the power to manipulate borders, which would presumably grant her the task of being Gensokyo'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 helps or annoys Reimu.
Tropes associated with Yukari:
- Ancient Tradition (A one-woman variation, but only helps when she sees fit.)
- 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 series)
- Boobs Of Steel (One of the few characters portrayed in-game with a noticeable bust... and possesses almost god-like powers.)
- Brilliant But Lazy
- Colour 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 "Purple" in Japanese. See Chen's entry above.)
- Cool Train (Attacks with one in one of her spellcards in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.)
- Dogged Nice Girl (In fanworks, she often acts this way towards Reimu.)
- Fan Nickname (Affectionally called 'Yukarin')
- Fastball Special (Her usual method of using Ran. Yukari is the pitcher.)
- Good With Numbers (She's even better than Ran.)
- Hammerspace (Tends to become a Hyperspace Arsenal at times as well.)
- Hard Work Hardly Works (Even MORESO than Reimu)
- Heavy Sleeper
- 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.)
- There's also her outfit in the illustrations◊ for Curiosities of Lotus Asia.
- Magnificent Bitch (Slight heroic example. Led a youkai invasion to the Moon and let them get routed... Just to teach them it's not good to be greedy.)
- And then we have Silent Sinner In Blue. Turns out the whole invasion this time was a distraction so that Yuyuko could steal lunar treasures. Yuyuko found the treasures boring and brought back sake instead, but that still pissed off the Lunarians who were supposed to be protecting that stuff.
- Onmyodo (She's such a powerful magic user that her Shikigami has its own Shikigami.)
- Parasol Of Pain (She always carries a parasol and uses it as a weapon in the fighting games.)
- Reality Warper (She's capable of manipulating "Boundaries" in any sense of the word. 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. )
- Teleporters And Transporters (She thinks with Portals!)
- Trickster Mentor (Acts this way towards Reimu.)
Close Debuted in Perfect Cherry Blossom
Debuted in Immaterial and Missing Power
- Suika Ibuki
An oni girl with the power to manipulate density, which apparently extends to influencing emotions or causing people to gather. She caused the inhabitants of Gensokyo to have more parties for a while, hoping to attract more of her kind to Gensokyo.
Tropes associated with Suika:
- Bird Run (her method of walking normally)
- Bonus Boss
- 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
- Bottle Fairy (She carries a gourd of sake that never runs dry. No one has seen her sober.)
- Drunken Master (See above. She's almost always drunk, and yet a formidable opponent.)
- 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
- Gravity Sucks (Perhaps an off-shoot of her ability to manipulate density, Suika can summon a black hole that draws her opponent toward it.)
- 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.)
- Little Big Man (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.)
- Pettanko (There's a whole song about it!)
Close Debuted in Immaterial and Missing Power
Debuted in Imperishable Night
- Wriggle Nightbug
(fanart)
A firefly youkai with the ability to control insects.
Tropes associated with Wriggle:
- Mystia Lorelei
(fanart)
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:
- Berserk Button (You'll either frighten or anger her if you talk about grilled/fried chicken around her.)
- Book Dumb (She's illiterate and perhaps a total airhead but she is actually brilliant in making profit out of her powers (That is, a lamprey stand con-act - she makes people night-blind, then sells them a food touted as a cure for it.).)
- 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.)
- Petting Zoo People (Night Sparrow)
- 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.)
- Temporary Night-Blindness (What you'll get if you listen to her song.)
- Ted Baxter (Not as featured as Cirno, but still has her moments. Enough to make Alice say "Mpf. Enough chirping, you windbag.")
- Keine Kamishirasawa
(fanart)
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. She's also a friend to Mokou and one of the only people who understands her.
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 horns (complete with ribbon) and her hair turns green.)
- Boobs Of Steel (to go with the Hot For Teacher image.)
- Lunacy (Slight 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...)
- Memetic Molester (One 2ch user once lamented his failure at clearing Extra stage of IN, and his words were translated as "I GOT CAVED BY EX-KEINE!!!!", the Japanese word for "burrowing" being also a slang for gay sex. This resulted into her being portrayed as this trope in fanwork, Kaguya and Mokou being her usual victims owing to their constant warring irritating her.)
- Never Live It Down (Because of the above, it will be a long time before Keine is taken seriously again. IOSYS effectively turning it into a forced meme didn't help.)
- Our Werewolves Are Different (In her case, a were-hakutaku.)
- Paint It Black (A variant: when she becomes a hakutaku, her blue dress turns green to match her hair.)
- Petting Zoo People (When transformed)
- Rapunzel Hair
- 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!
- Shipping (With Mokou)
- Stern Teacher (Just don't forget to hand in your homework.)
- Sure Why Not (Because of her connection with history, her home in the human village, and a comment by Remilia, Keine was frequently cast as a teacher to other characters in fanworks after Imperishable Night. Later official works made this canon.)
- White Haired Pretty Girl (With blue or green highlights depending on her form)
- Tei Inaba
(fanart)
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 (As stated, 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)
- Crazy Prepared - In (the semi-canon) 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.
- Everythings Better With Bunnies
- Petting Zoo People (Earth rabbit)
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old (While this could be said of most of the characters on this page, she deserves particular note because she was specifically mentioned as being one of the oldest youkai in Gensokyo. There are records of her existence dating back to the creation of Gensokyo, which makes her over 1300 years old.)
- Screwy Squirrel (She is a known occasional liar, a prankster (usually at Reisen's expense), and a scammer.)
- Species Surname (Inaba is what Kaguya calls all rabbits.)
- 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. This may be more a case of people Spelling Her Name With A Wi in order to reflect the fact that her name has an unusual character in it.)
- 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.)
- Reisen Udongein Inaba
A Lunar Rabbit who fled from the Lunar War, abandoning her comrades (it's not known whether she did it out of cowardice or her friends considered her too weak and had her to retreat alone). She is found in Eientei by Kaguya and becomes her pet, as well as learning under Eirin. Nicknamed 'Udonge', 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 mind waves.
Tropes associated with Reisen:
- Beethoven Was An Alien Spy (the aforementioned Lunar War supposedly started with Neil Armstrong landing on the moon and planting a flag.)
- 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. Earth rabbit Tei often pulls pranks on Reisen as well.)
- Epileptic Trees (Her ears have what look like buttons at their base, which led to speculation that she wears fake ears. However, in Silent Sinner in Blue, the other rabbits in the Lunar Defense Corps have the same buttons too, except for Reisen II, their new recruit. Perhaps the buttons are rank insignia of some kind?)
- Everythings Better With Bunnies (Even if she's just a useless little bunny, only good for her sex appeal.)
- Evil Eye
- Explosive Overclocking (Drinking too many potions in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody causes an explosion and a loss of the buffs given by the potions.)
- Eye Beams (In Scarlet Weather Rhapsody)
- Fan Nickname (They were probably just intended to look like they're glowing, but the fact that most of her bullets in Imperishable Night are colored white caused some fans to speculate that they're suppositories. The name stuck, in no small part to another flash by IOSYS (the Marisa Stole The Precious Thing people) so some call her "Suppository".)
- Glowing Eyes Of Doom (If she does that, you are fucked.)
- 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
- Onee Sama (She takes care of Tei, but got pranks pulled on her instead of getting affection)
- Petting Zoo People (Lunar rabbit)
- Rapunzel Hair
- Red Eyes Take Warning
- Species Surname (See Tei above.)
- The Straight Man (Ironic since she's a master of Lunacy).
- The Woobie (Often played for comedy in fanon.)
- Eirin Yagokoro
(fanart)
A Lunarian and a genius pharmacist who serves Princess Kaguya. She is the one who created the Hourai elixir consumed by Kaguya and Mokou. Eirin was a member of the lunar envoy sent to retrieve Kaguya, but instead betrayed 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.
Tropes associated with Eirin:
- Alchemy (She makes immortality potions along with her varying medicines and potions.)
- Beethoven Was An Alien Spy (she is credited in an ingame spell-card description with being responsible for the Apollo 13 disaster)
- Beware The Nice Ones
- Boobs Of Steel (Is considered one of Gensokyo's most powerful... and look at her boobs.)
- The Dragon (noted to be harder than the final boss Kaguya. Which leads to... HELP ME EIRIIIIINNN!!!)
- 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.)
- Mad Doctor (The worst she comes up with in canon are nightmare pills *
and they're an offshoot of the sweet dreams pills for people who are bored with their lives, but in Fanon it's a whole other story.)
- 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.)
- Say It With Hearts (Any time she says "Punishment time" to Reisen.)
- Straight Arrow (She is always seen with a bow.)
- The Medic (Eirin is Gensokyo's resident doctor.)
- 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.)
- Kaguya Houraisan
(fanart)
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 (although it seems that her Jeweled Branch of Hourai is the real deal somehow). 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.
Tropes associated with Kaguya:
- Amulet Of Concentrated Awesome (The Jeweled Branch of Hourai)
- Cloud Cuckoolander (Her depiction in Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth.)
- Most fanon characterizations of her show her as a Hikikomori (see below) who shuns outside interaction, or acting as The Libby to Mokou. Seeing her with her canon personality is fairly rare.
- Everythings Better With Princesses
- Fairy Tale (She's literally a fairy tale Princess.)
- Fan Nickname (Due to her status below, fans usually call her NEET. Mokou in Fanon also uses this as an insult, although Kaguya has taken to rebutting by calling her a hobo.)
- Final Boss (Of the B-route, which can only be accessed after completing the A-route, thus, sort of making her a Bonus Boss.)
- Hikikomori (Rarely leaves Eientei, except to pick fights with Mokou. This led to Memetic Mutation about her Fan Nickname.)
- The real reason she doesn't do any work or leave the house is that this was how medieval Japanese society expected noblewomen to live.
- Hime Cut (Being based off of Kaguya-Hime, this is hardly a surprise.)
- Impossible Task (Her stage is called "Five Impossible Requests", and her spellcards are named after the impossible requests from the original fairy tale.)
- Immortality (specifically the regenerative kind)
- The Ojou (A lunar 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 Tei.)
- 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.)
- Who Wants To Live Forever (Before her lighthearted official portrayal in Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth, authors of Darker And Edgier doujinshi assumed that immortality had driven her Ax Crazy.)
- Fujiwara no Mokou
(fanart)
The Extra Stage boss of Imperishable Night, Mokou was the daughter of a nobleman 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:
- Bonus Boss
- Cycle Of Revenge (She and Kaguya are constantly killing each other... with absolutely no success. Both are immortals anyway.)
- Glass Cannon (A funny case; an attentive player can see her dying after each emptied lifebar... and respawn right off the bat.)
- 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.)
- Immortality (She'll keep resurrecting indefinitely but that doesn't mean that getting killed doesn't hurt.)
- Immortality Immorality
- Its Personal (Mokou's entire grudge against and rivalry with Kaguya is because she embarrassed her father when he couldn't complete her "Impossible Requests". Fanworks tirelessly point out that she should be over it by now.)
- 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.)
- 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.)
- Playing With Phoenix Fire (She gives the impression of a phoenix with her fire powers and resurrective abilities (she incessantly shoots firebird danmaku at you and lit by a similarly-shaped aura when she resurrects)... which adds more symbolism about her immortality.)
- Rapunzel Hair (Imperishable Night is clearly a Touhou full of Rapunzel Hair owners.)
- Revenge Before Reason (Kind of inherent in a cycle of revenge murders between immortals.)
- Shipping (With Keine. And, less frequently, Kaguya.)
- Spell My Name With An S (K-S Romanization: Huziwara no Mokou)
- Tsundere (Sort of. She's only irritated by Kaguya (who knows Mokou won't die) and seems almost amused at anyone else who tries to kill her, especially in the Trial of Guts at 2 AM. Despite her grudge against Kaguya, she also feels that they mitigate each other's immortal loneliness as no one else can; there's also the Jerkass Facade and pretty much anything she ever does in the semi-canonical Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth. Needless to say, fandom takes it further.)
- White Haired Pretty Girl (Fanon invention, actually. In-game her hair is just a light violet color.)
- Who Wants To Live Forever (She spent most of her immortal life alone (though she prefers it now), alienated from society that was suspicious and frightened of her agelessness. She's thought to befriend Keine. Kaguya, knowing full well it's impossible to kill Mokou, endlessly tries to kill her.
Close Debuted in Imperishable Night
Debuted in Phantasmagoria of Flower View
- Aya Shameimaru
One of the Tengu who inhabit Gensokyo, Aya runs the tabloid newspaper known as the Bunbunmaru; because she gets carried away when writing the articles, people don't really like to be featured in her paper. While she is strong, she prefers to work on her paper far more than fighting.
Tropes associated with Aya:
- A Day In The Limelight (Notably, her spinoff game Shoot the Bullet is the only one in which neither Reimu nor Marisa appear at all)
- Amateur Photographer (In this case, taking photos of your enemies kills them - or so it seems, judging by aforementioned spinoff game.)
- Blow You Away (As a crow tengu, she has the traditional fan and the wind power to match.)
- Camera Fiend (In both canon and fanon!)
- Catchphrase ("Ayayayaya...")
- Fan Nickname ('Slut', or 'ZUN's girlfriend'; detractors of her Wesley tendencies sometimes suggest that she seduced ZUN to secure her spot in every Touhou game after her debut (until Undefined Fantastic Object), not to mention that spotlight-grabbing spinoff game and her general high power level. It also doesn't help that ZUN once wore an outfit matching hers◊.)
- Hot Scoop
- Intrepid Reporter
- Paparazzi (She's also portrayed as a pervert who takes compromising photos of the other girls, going to any lengths to get those pictures.)
- Petting Zoo People (Inconsistently shown with and without crow wings in official works, but has yet to be seen with wings in any of the games.)
- Ravens And Crows (Crow tengu)
- Spell My Name With An S (K-S Romanization of her last name: "Syameimaru".)
- Super Speed (Easily one of the faster individuals in Gensokyo, and quite possibly the fastest. It's one of the reasons she can be such a pain to fight in the games.)
- The Wesley (Borderline case. Accused of stealing the spotlight, but has an actual fanbase of her own.)
- Medicine Melancholy
(fanart)
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.)
- 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.)
- Creepy Child (Easily the creepiest character.)
- Epileptic Trees (Is the little doll that follows her around actually her, and the main body just a puppet?)
- Game Breaker (As this video shows, Medicine's poison clouds can mess up the AI enemies badly.)
- Madness Mantra (Given the chance, she'll lapse into rambles about poisons and their effects.)
- Nietzsche Wannabe (Harbors a fierce hatred towards humans, and will happily experiment her poisons on them.)
- Poisoned Weapons (in this case, big clouds of poison)
- Shipping (She's a sentient doll. Alice Margatroid isn't even in any non-fan games with her and there's still murmurs of Les Yay.)
- They ARE seen talking together in the party scene of Silent Sinner in Blue, though. It's not much to base a ship on, but...
- Shout Out (Her name comes from the Ray Bradbury short story collection A Medicine For Melancholy.)
- 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 when dead souls begin accumulating in the world of the living.
Tropes associated with Komachi:
- Catch Phrase ("Kyan!" Mostly whenever Shikieiki whacks her on the head.)
- Dont Fear The Reaper (If she even bothers...)
- The Dragon (She works under Shikieiki but her boss wasn't initiating the problem in Phantasmagoria of Flower View. She does, because she's such a slacker)
- Fiery Redhead
- Girlish Pigtails
- The Grim Reaper / Shinigami (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.)
- Japanese Pronouns (Like Cirno, Komachi uses "Atai". However, unlike with Cirno, this is never translated as "Eye" in English)
- Most Common Superpower (The Perfect Memento in Strict Sense fanbook describes her appearance as "imposing": because of this, in fanwork she's usually portrayed as a shapely amazon. Shikieiki will sometimes be envious of her assets, also because she's portrayed as a shorty by contrast. SWR somewhat canonized this by making her taller than most characters and giving her a noticeable chest (see Boobs Of Steel).)
- Sinister Scythe (of course)
- The Slacker (...of course!)
- Spell My Name With An S (K-S Romanization of her last name: "Onoduka")
- Shikieiki Yamaxanadu
(fanart)
Komachi's boss and the 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 (in the figurative sense), which leads her to be a bit moralistic, although she always means well.
Tropes associated with Shikieiki:
- Celestial Bureaucracy
- Fan Nickname (Her name is commonly shortened to Shiki or Siki for obvious reasons. However, this is also canonical in an odd way; "Yamaxanadu" is stated to be the title of her position, and her name was originally Eiki Shiki (using the Western order, Eiki being her given name).)
- Final Boss
- Lawful Good (In fanon especially, her being a stickler for the rules is played both straight and humourously. One remarkable example is the Akadako doujinshi "Mossarism", where she announces she'll do "naughty things" on her day off. Turns out her idea of "naughty things" is laughably tame.)
- Lawful Neutral (Her job, however, requires her to be this when judging.)
- The Judge: (Of the Netherworld, no less.)
- Spell My Name With An S (K-S Romanization of her first name: "Sikieiki")
- Values Dissonance (Since this is a world dominated by youkai rather than humans, some of her advice comes off as a wee bit questionable. Like telling Yuka to terrorize humans as a good deed. She does tell Medicine to stop hating humans, though.)
- Notably, the sin she calls Yuuka out on is living too long.
- What The Hell Hero (She calls everyone out, mainly out of concern that everyone's going to go to Hell or worse.)
Close Debuted in Phantasmagoria of Flower View
Debuted in Mountain of Faith
- Shizuha Aki
(fanart)
The older of the Aki sisters, despite bearing the lowly position of midboss with no dialogue. Fanon thus has it that she's less reliable than Minoriko.
Tropes associated with Shizuha:
- Minoriko Aki
(fanart)
The younger of the Aki sisters, she is often portrayed as being more mature than Shizuha. Both of the Aki sisters love Autumn, and get very disappointed when Winter rolls around.
Tropes associated with Minoriko:
- Hina Kagiyama
(fanart)
A curse goddess who can absorb misfortune. She's also known for spinning, which she does nonstop during a large chunk of her stage. Spin Hina spin! Spin for all to enjoy!
Tropes associated with Hina:
- Curse (Not deliberately, but...)
- Dark Is Not Evil (She's a yakubyougami (a curse god who would normally spread misfortune and illness), but she absorbs misfortune and curses so they won't affect humans, and in Mountain of Faith she tries to drive away the protagonists so the youkai above won't harm them. She is said to leak misfortune if you stay too long with her though.)
- Everythings Better With Spinning (Fanon even has it that her other special ability is to never get dizzy when spinning.)
- Physical God
- Nitori Kawashiro
(fanart)
A river kappa with a knack for engineering and great love for humans. However, she's very shy, and attempts to scare the heroines away from Youkai Mountain for their own safety.
Tropes associated with Nitori:
- Momiji Inubashiri
(fanart)
Another of the Tengu folk, and another character with no dialogue. She's said to have a cooperative personality and executes her duties faithfully, and so is often portrayed as Aya's subordinate or junior. Or just the hapless straightman to her antics.
Tropes associated with Momiji:
- Cool Sword (Looks like a scimitar, from what we can tell by her sprite. May be drawn as a BFS Depending On The Artist.)
- Detached Sleeves (Generally her default appearance in fanon has them)
- OC Stand In (Lack of ingame dialogue and portrait art are why her physical appearance and/or personality in fanon vary so much. Momiji is particularly subject to this due to association with the popular Aya.)
- The most common fanon interpretation of her personality makes her into an Expy of Youmu. Canon already establishes that both Momiji and Youmu have white hair, use swords, and have potentially annoying bosses.
- Petting Zoo People (She's a wolf tengu, but wolf features are (yet again) restricted to Fanon as she has been seen only as a small sprite in the games.)
- Spell My Name With An S (K-S Romanization of her name: "Momizi Inubasiri")
- Sure Why Not (Much like with Daiyousei and Koakuma, Momiji makes a cameo appearance in one panel of Oriental Sacred Place Chapter 1 looking exactly the way fanon imagines her to, with wolf ears and detached sleeves. It might be worth noting that the artist for SaBND and OSP was a Touhou fan doing doujinshi long before being recruited for the official project.)
- White Haired Pretty Girl
- Sanae Kochiya
A human wind priestess from outside of Gensokyo, she runs the Moriya Shrine. During her life before entering Gensokyo, her power to channel Kanako's divine abilities earned her a reputation as an avatar of the goddess.
Tropes associated with Sanae:
- Animal Motifs (To represent her Goddesses, she wears hair accessories shaped like a frog's head and a snake. In Undefined Fantastic Object, depending on which route she takes, she can use either frog or snake-shaped bullets.)
- Beware The Nice Ones (In her A-scenario in Undefined Fantastic Object, she begins her mission of "Youkai Hunting" with some degree of doubt in her abilities to do so. However, by halfway through the game, she has become particularly enthusiastic about it, something a noticeable number of fans have run away with.)
- Blow You Away
- Detached Sleeves
- Dub Induced Plot Hole (A long-standing mistranslation of Mountain of Faith lore involving Sanae and Suwako's relationship: The mistaken translation said that Sanae was unaware that two gods inhabited her shrine (which doesn't make much sense, unless Suwako was hiding from her the whole time); the actual meaning is that Sanae's not sure why two gods are in the same shrine (the reason being Kanako's defeating Suwako in battle but not kicking her out completely from the shrine).)
- Eyes Of Gold (In her initial appearance, but they became green in UFO.)
- Famous Ancestor (She's a descendant of Suwako)
- Fantastic Racism (She spends a fair amount of UFO complaining about youkai. She's not really worse than Reimu, although the fandom doesn't seem to believe that. Then again, she's the only human from the outside world in Gensokyo, so it's understandable that she's not really used to fantastical people eaters.)
- Has Two Mommies (It's popular in fanon to have her being raised by Kanako and Suwako.)
- Joshikousei (Fanon has labelled her the "only actual high-school girl in the cast". For this reason, she is often depicted in fanart wearing a high school uniform. This goes as far as the character artist for the fighting games, alphes, drawing Sanae in something that strongly resembles a school uniform for an advertisement for Unidentified Fantastic Object.
- Most Common Superpower (Often depicted with curvy breasts, though not as huge as Yukari's or Eirin's. Also one of the few characters with visible breasts in ZUN's art.)
- Otaku Surrogate (We learn in Unthinkable Natural Law that she digs giant robots.)
- However, her ideas about the Hisou Tensoku's nature turn out to be Wrong Genre Savvy.
- Pals With Jesus (As odd as it sounds, Sanae lives with the deities she worships. What's more, Suwako is, Depending On The Artist, often portrayed as a very young girl, in spite of being a God who is several thousand years old. Sanae is also her direct descendent, and the main priestess of her shrine. This means she lives with her own great-great-great-great-great-etc. grandmother, who is also her God, and is younger than her in appearance. This also means that Suwako, often portrayed as a young child, has given birth. Many fanfictions even portray Sanae as something of a motherly figure to her own deity and ancestor.)
- Recurring Boss (across the span of two games — after appearing as the stage five boss in Mountain of Faith, she made a surprise appearance as the Bonus Midboss in Subterranean Animism.)
- Shipping (She's often paired with her Goddesses and Reimu, and with Alice in God's Children's Day. More recently, she's been shipped with Kogasa, at least when she's not bullying the poor umbrella.)
- Spell My Name With An S (K-S Romanization of her last name: "Kotiya")
- What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic (One of her spellcards is based on Moses' parting of the Red Sea.)
- Vague Age (Presumably a Joshikousei, as mentioned above, which makes her about the same age as Reimu or Marisa, if not slightly younger. She hasn't been in enough games for us to know if she's Not Allowed To Grow Up, but she probably won't be.)
- Kanako Yasaka
(fanart)
The current Goddess in charge of Moriya Shrine. She moved the shrine to Gensokyo because she could not gather enough faith from humans, and decided to gather faith from youkai as well. She still has a reasonably good friendship with Suwako despite their past rivalry and the occasional arguments.
Tropes associated with Kanako:
- Animal Motifs (Kanako uses the imagery of snakes in her symbols - the rope circle represents a curled-up snake that invokes reincarnation. She picked up the frog-eating snake motif and a sacrifical ritual where one sacrifices frogs to her after beating the frog-aspected Suwako and conquering her kingdom.)
- Blow You Away
- Boobs Of Steel
- Fan Nickname (Because of a spellcard of hers that attaches pillars to her shoulders, she is constantly depicted and referred to by the fandom as a Guncannon.)
- Final Boss
- Gods Need Prayer Badly (Her modus operandi throughout MoF - it's why she moved the shrine to Gensokyo.)
- Physical God
- Red Oni Blue Oni (With Suwako. Kanako's the Blue Oni.)
- Suwako Moriya
The original Goddess of Moriya Shrine, Suwako lost control of her shrine to Kanako in a duel, where her steel weapons were rusted by a single counterattack by Kanako's divine vines, as depicted in a flashback in this rematch. She's also noted for a love of "danmaku festivals", willingly taking all comers.
Tropes associated with Suwako:
- Animal Motifs (Suwako is associated with frogs. In canon, this led Kanako to adopt snakelike elements into her own symbols. In fanon, it just as often leads to bitter clashes with the frog-freezing Cirno. Or to the two of them pairing up.)
- Bonus Boss
- Catch Phrase ("Aa-uu-". As with Patchouli's "mukyuu," she only said it once in one game, but it immediately caught on with the fandom.)
- Cheerful Child (She's actually the only Bonus Boss in the series that takes on the heroines without any ill will - because she's glad to have the company.)
- Curse (Subjugated native curse gods of Suwa, and can use their power.)
- Doppelganger Attack (Native God "The Red Frog in the Fourth Year of the Houei Era" )
- Elemental Powers (Being a God of the earth, she has a variety of tricks up her sleeve)
- Dark Is Not Evil (She can curse enemies, but she can hardly be called evil — quite the opposite, it's because she tamed the local curse gods when originally establishing herself.)
- Green Thumb (She can make trees spring up from the ground.)
- Making A Splash (Since she's a frog.)
- Dishing Out Dirt (Power to create earth and all that.)
- Lethal Joke Character (If this is to be believed, Unthinkable Natural Law will undoubtedly turn her into one of these.)
- Nice Hat (ALL of Touhou can be classified, but Suwako in particular applies since, due to the frog-like googly eyes atop it, Fanon has suggested that her hat is self-aware, or even possibly the one in control.)
- Physical God (Mountain of Faith is filled with goddesses.)
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old (Despite looking like a 10-year-old (give or take a year or two), she's Sanae's great great great (times many) grandmother. Also a source of squick (or not) for some, considering what it implies...)
- Red Oni Blue Oni (With Kanako. Suwako's the Red Oni.)
- Rings Of Death
Close Debuted in Mountain of Faith
Debuted in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
- Iku Nagae
A messenger of the Dragon Palace, she's a youkai of oarfishes. The shape of her shawl and scarf, resembles an oarfish's long, narrow body with red fins, and she has "antenna" on her nice hat that look like the spines on an oarfish. Not to mention the fact that the Japanese term for "oarfish" literally means "Messenger of the Dragon Palace".
Tropes associated with Iku:
- Tenshi Hinanai
Born as Chiko Hinanai, she ascended alongside her parents when they became celestials, and chose to rename herself Tenshi.
Tropes associated with Tenshi:
- Ascend To A Higher Plane Of Existence (Her ancestors did.)
- Berserk Button (She easily takes offense if you belittle her abilities.)
- Dishing Out Dirt (other than spamming beams, she has a lot of Earth-based attacks)
- Fan Nickname (She has been known as "Chiquita Dragonforce," "Peaches," and "Momoko" due to the fruit in her hat.)
- Final Boss
- Jerkass (She created all sorts of unusual weather all over Gensokyo, leveled the Hakurei Shrine, threatened to unleash a massive earthquake powered by human souls she harvested, and subverted the Hakurei Shrine to come under her influence while it was being rebuilt. All because she was bored. This is partly due to her upbringing, as she was made a Celestial without being taught about the major responsibilities of her powers. Some fanon works put forth the possibility that Iku is at least partially responsible for this because she pampered Tenshi too much.)
- Kamehame Hadoken (Her ultimate spellcard, "Scarlet Weather Rapture")
- Though as Marisa notes in Grimoire of Marisa, it's not actually a beam, but a shower of countless bullets condensed together so that it looks solid.
- Spell My Name With An S (Her family name can also be spelled "Hinanawi". See Tei's entry above for more info.)
- The Kanji in her given name can also be read as "Tenko." This has become another Fan Nickname for her and she is occasionally included in Ran's "Suppa Tenko" meme.
- Too Kinky To Torture (As a result of Tenshi demanding you punish her in some of her quotes in SWR, she has been portrayed as a masochist.)
- Weather Control Machine (Her weapon, the Sword of Hisui, has the power to alter the weather.)
Close Debuted in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
Debuted in Subterranean Animism
- Kisume
(fanart)
Another midboss with no dialogue, Kisume is a tsurube-otoshi, a type of youkai which was sometimes said to drop buckets on people. She just spends most of her time in buckets herself out of shyness.
Tropes associated with Kisume:
- Yamame Kurodani
(fanart)
A tsuchigumo or spider youkai, and a bright, fun-loving girl who's popular among the youkai underground.
Tropes associated with Yamame:
- Bad Powers Bad People (Avoided. She has the power to manipulate infectious diseases, but she'd never use it on someone for no reason. She's actually a pretty nice person.)
- Petting Zoo People (In one of the few instances where it's portrayed cutely, she's a spider girl. She has six buttons down the front of her dress for spider eyes, and her skirt poofs out and in again to look like a spider's abdomen with a yellow ribbon tied around it that makes her look like an argiope spider. She was even on the cover of the game's demo CD hanging upside-down.)
- Parsee Mizuhashi
(fanart)
A bridge princess youkai who guards the bridge to the underworld. After centuries of jealousy towards those who cross the bridge freely, she has developed the power to control jealousy in others.
Tropes associated with Parsee:
- Doppelganger Attack ("Egotistic Animosity to the Humble Rich Man" and "Large Box and Small Box")
- Green Eyed Monster (Pretty much her schtick. She even has a spellcard named Green-Eyed Monster, and her boss theme is called Green-Eyed Jealousy.)
- That One Boss (Despite only being a stage 2 boss, she's become rather infamous for surprising players with how difficult her spellcards are. Green-Eyed Monster is particularly brutal, as she uses it when she encounters the players as a midboss, and it actively tracks the player's location, a quality typically reserved for the bosses of stages 5 and 6 in a Touhou game.)
- Tsundere (How her jealousy is usually portrayed. "Y-you got me a present? To have money to buy something nice for me... I'm jealous.")
- Yuugi Hoshiguma
(fanart)
A powerful oni and one of the four Devas of the Mountain, along with Suika Ibuki. She possesses great strength, and like most oni, loves competition with others. She agrees to help guide the heroines if they'd give her a good fight.
Tropes associated with Yuugi:
- Boisterous Bruiser
- Boobs Of Steel (One of the few characters regarded as having a large chest, and, being an Oni, she possesses extraordinary strength.)
- Bottle Fairy (Her sake NOT EVEN DROP!)
- Chained By Fashion (Like Suika, she has shackles and short, broken chains on both ankles and wrists. Must be a common fashion trend among Oni.)
- Excuse Me While I Multitask (The sheer fact that she doesn't even bother putting her drink down while fighting you.)
- Impossibly Low Neckline (An advertisement for Subterranean Animism featured a drawing by alphes, the artist who drew the character portraits for the Touhou fighting games, showing Yuugi wearing a blue kimono pulled off her shoulders. Since it's from an official ad, the kimono is considered to be a canon alternate costume for her.)
- Shout Out (She fights without spilling a drop of sake, much like the character Johnathan Joestar fought without spilling a drop of wine from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and has a star on her horn like Johnathan has the star birthmark. ZUN himself has even outright said he wants to make her seem awesome like Jojo.)
- Superpower Lottery (She can manipulate Supernatural Phenomena, which is too vague to know what it actually does...)
- Satori Komeji
(fanart)
The mistress of the Palace of Earth Spirits, Satori is a youkai with the ability to read minds. Her power makes her feared by humans and youkai, but beloved by animals. She keeps many pets in her home, including Rin and Utsuho.
Tropes associated with Satori:
- Rin Kaenbyou (Orin)
(fanart)
A Kasha who can control evil spirits and carry them to the Hell of Blazing Fires. She dislikes long names, so she has everyone call her Orin instead of by her full name. She thinks highly of her mistress Satori, and is good friends with Utsuho, but becomes terrified once Utsuho starts going mad from her newfound power. Afraid that Satori may find out and punish Utsuho, Rin instead tries to lure the above-ground youkai down to help her out.
Tropes associated with Rin:
- Catgirl (A Kasha)
- Fiery Redhead
- Ghost Lights (technically skull lights, but close)
- Girlish Pigtails (Among the Touhou characters who have them, only Orin's pigtails are braided.)
- Japanese Pronouns (Like Cirno and Komachi, she also uses "Atai" for "I"; again unlike Cirno, it is never bastardized as "Eye.")
- Kansai Regional Accent
- Night Of The Living Mooks (Some of Orin's spellcards feature invincible or implacable zombie fairies that follow the player around while shooting bullets. This can further complicate things if you're using a character/partner setup with homing projectiles. The Grimoire of Marisa claims they're actually just normal fairies done up as zombies, though.)
- Recurring Boss (Stage 4 midboss (twice), stage 5 midboss AND boss, stage 6 midboss. How's that for persistence?)
- Stealth Pun (She has a wheelbarrow, or "cat cart" in Japanese)
- That One Boss (If Parsee didn't trip you up, Orin definitely will.)
- Unusual Ears (As seen in her official portrait, Orin has both human ears and cat ears.)
- Voluntary Shapeshifter (She is capable of shapeshifting into either a cat or a humanoid form.)
- Utsuho Reiuji (Okuu)
A Hell Raven who manages the former Hell of Blazing Fires. Prior to the events of Subterranean Animism, Utsuho was visited by Kanako (of Mountain of Faith) and told to swallow the corpse of the sun god Yatagarasu, thus gaining the power of nuclear fusion. Kanako presumably wanted the power to bring electricity to Gensokyo, but Utsuho instead goes mad from the immense power she gained, and plans to torch Gensokyo and turn it into hell on earth.
Tropes associated with Utsuho:
- Arm Cannon (According to Unthinkable Natural Law, the control rod on her arm can function as one. Though the fans figured that out well before it got released.)
- Badass Cape (It covers (partly) her wings.)
- Catch Phrase ("Unyu?" Again, only said once, this time with a mouthful of eggs.)
- The Ditz (to the point where one of her Fan Nicknames is "Onric" or "⑥"; basically, the opposite of Cirno. However, she's really more gullible than outright stupid. Her claim to be the strongest hell raven is part of it too.)
- Evil Eye / Extra Eyes (The red eye of the Yatagarasu on her chest, which looks suspiciously like Sauron.)
- Fan Nickname (Chernobyl-tan, due to her Nuclear Fusion powers, or Bahamuko, from Bahamut of Final Fantasy fame, and also because one of her spellcards is titled Mega Flare.)
- Fashionable Asymmetry (Her right foot is encased in concrete, her left foot has electrons orbiting around it, and her right forearm is a control rod.)
- Final Boss
- Gravity Sucks (her final spellcard)
- Impossibly Cool Clothes (The cape probably falls under this.)
- Kill It With Fire (She wants to torch Gensokyo and turn it into the new Hell. With Great Power Comes Great Insanity indeed.)
- Mighty Glacier (in Unthinkable Natural Law)
- Nuclear Weapons Taboo (She breaks it, and then some.)
- Rapunzel Hair
- Ravens And Crows (She's a Hell Raven.)
- Red Eyes Take Warning (More or less universal in fanart, though her in game portraits are somewhat ambiguous.)
- Self Fanservice (Frequently drawn in fanart with normal-looking arms and legs. Even when she is drawn with her Yatagarasu attributes, the concrete encasing her right foot is often interpreted as a gray ruffled legwarmer.)
- Also inverted. The eye of Yatagarasu is frequently depicted as fused into her chest, with freaky scar tissue surrounding it (a Shout Out to Evangelion's S2 Engines?)
- One of the endings has her with her Third Leg off and a normal arm where it was. This troper thinks it's safe to say the idea stems from that.
- Shout Out (Many of her moves in Unthinkable Natural Law are similar to Souther's, even including a spellcard. Some of her other moves bear a similarity to X's attacks as well, most notably the Nova Strike.)
- Spell My Name With An S (K-S Romanization of her last name: "Reiuzi")
- Trademark Favorite Food (Boiled eggs.)
- Cannibalistic much?
- Ravens are omnivorous, and since Reimu was cooking the eggs at her shrine, they were probably chicken eggs.
- Unmoving Plaid (The inside of her cape has an independently scrolling galaxy pattern)
- Koishi Komeji
(fanart)
Extra Stage boss and Satori's younger sister. She too was born was the power to read minds, but hated how it made everyone fear her, so she willingly sealed away her "third eye" that gave her the power.
Tropes associated with Koishi:
- All Psychology Is Freudian (Almost all of Koishi's spellcards are themed around Freudian psychology, including the id and the superego.)
- Blessed With Suck (Same reason with her sister Satori; Due to this, she has concealed her ability to read minds, which in turn, blocked her own mind from being read or sensed. Patchouli describes her state-of-mind as perfect akin to perfect 'mu' in the Extra Scenario of SA.)
- Bonus Boss
- Extra Eyes (Like her sister, on her heart, although it is always closed.)
- Freud Was Right (Many, many fans ridicule her "Embers of Love" (a.k.a. "Heart Missiles") (a.k.a. "A Different Body Part Missiles") spellcard.)
- Stronger Sibling (She also explicitly states that her sister isn't really that good at fighting.)
Close Debuted in Subterranean Animism
Debuted in Undefined Fantastic Object
- Nazrin
(fanart)
A mouse youkai who was sent to hunt for the jewelled pagoda of Vaisravana by Shou. She carries a pair of dowsing rods which appear to be a cross between bent coathangers and weather vanes, and can control field-mice to help her find lost objects.
Tropes associated with Nazrin:
- Kogasa Tatara
(fanart)
Kogasa is an umbrella that eventually came to life because she was unsold, becoming a youkai after she was swept off by the wind.
Tropes associated with Kogasa:
- Boatlights
- Chew Toy (Many pieces of fanart have her being bullied by Reimu, Sanae, Yukari, and Yuka. Less savoury ones even go as far as to depict her as "damaged goods".)
- Ensemble Darkhorse (Out of the new characters from the UFO demo, she has by far the most fanart and the most fans gushing about her awesome combination of moe-factors.)
- Everythings Better With Eggplants (Her umbrella has an eggplant motif.)
- Parasol Of Pain (A youkai umbrella or karakasa; her accessory umbrella comes complete with an eggplant motif and a giant tongue.)
- Actually, according to translations of the dialogue from the game, her accessory umbrella is her. The body carrying the umbrella is just a representation of her spirit that she grew from being unwanted for so long.
- Poke The Poodle (She only "attacks" humans to surprise them; as her skills at frightening people aren't good, she trains by researching classic ghost stories.)
- Recurring Boss (Surprise, she's the extra stage midboss! Imagine the looks on the faces of the fans that teased her for her power before.)
- Shout Out (A couple of her spellcards are named after games in the Bubble Bobble series.)
- What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway (She has the "power to surprise people," and she's not even very good at it.)
- The Woobie (She's an unwanted umbrella who can't even use her power to surprise people properly. Fanart often takes to buttmonkey status, sometimes even going so far as to put her crying on a pile of trash while dressed in tattered clothes.)
- Ichirin Kumoi
(fanart)
Self-appointed guardian of the UFO that appeared over Gensokyo. She possesses a "partner" entity named Unzan. Ichirin's headdress could be a nod to Buddhist nun gear, her being a Nyuudo (collective term for youkai that resemble monks).
Tropes associated with Ichirin:
- Fan Nickname (Due to the way Unzan supports her in combat like a Stand, a noticeable number of fans have begun calling her Ichirin Kujo. Cue the fist-versus-knife-fight with Sakuya.)
- Find The Cure (Her motivation for guarding the UFO is that she's been collecting "gems" to help revive Byakuren, and she assumes that the heroines are out to achieve the same goal.)
- Frickin Laser Beams (She is probably the biggest user to date of a specific variety of laser whose wonky hitbox enrages certain experienced players.)
- The Generic Girl (Ichirin herself would be easily forgetable if it weren't for Unzan)
- Meaningful Name (Her name means "one wheel in clouds", and her character title is "The Big Wheel Who Guards And Is Guarded".)
- That One Boss (together with Unzan as of the demo)
- Unzan
(fanart)
Cloud-like "partner" entity to Ichirin. He is able to shapeshift into giant fists or a giant face.
Tropes associated with Unzan:
- Eye Beams (For the duo's final spellcard. That's one scolding you don't want to receive.)
- Memetic Mutation (Taking off on the old "brofist" meme and its odd connection to Western Touhou fans, Unzan's attacks renewed the joke with full force.)
- Real Men Wear Pink (He's a giant pink cloud, and also the manliest character in the series.)
- Rocket Punch (Or, at the very least, giant fist danmaku)
- Stealth Pun ("Nyuudo", his species, can be also read as the Japanese for "thundercloud".)
- The One Guy (Currently the only remotely male character overall to have appeared in the Windows games. Considering he's also depicted in a non-Bishonen way (unlike Rinnosuke), it adds up to some Memetic Badass status about his manliness.)
- Captain Minamitsu Murasa
(fanart)
The ghost-turned- youkai of a drowned girl that spent some time capsizing ships until she was unbound from her place of death by Byakuren who offered her a new ship to captain. She and her vessel ended up bound in the underworld with Byakuren until Utsuho's geyser blew it off into the sky, kick-starting the game's plot.
Tropes associated with Minamitsu:
- Shou Toramaru
(fanart)
An "honest and straighforward" tiger youkai who was turned into an avatar of Vaisravana/Bishamonten, through the intercession of Byakuren.
Tropes associated with Shou:
- Animal Motifs (Tiger-patterned clothes and hair.)
- Blade On A Stick (She carries a spear, just like the Buddhist god of warfare Bishamonten, whom her character is based on.)
- Creepy Cool Crosses (More like a giant spinning laser cross of death.)
- It's actually a vajra/dorje, Hinduist/Buddhist scepter that represents the thunderbolt.
- Failure Knight (She was so loyal to her duties as Bishamonten's avatar she wasn't present when Byakuren was dragged away and imprisoned. The regret stemming from this eventually motivates her to begin the quest for the Tobikura and put all her power into setting Byakuren free.)
- Frickin Laser Beams (This seems to be her gimmick: every attack she uses involves lasers in some way.)
- And they curve in midair.
- Gender Blender Name (Because of this and her mention of being Bishamonten's avatar, many people on /jp/ assumed that she was a boy.)
- Multicolored Hair (it looks like tiger stripes!)
- Spell My Name With An S (K-S romanization: "Syou")
- That One Boss (...Then Shou certainly will! Her curvy lasers are insane.)
- Why Does Everyone Think Im Deadpool? (Ever since she appeared and was revealed to be Nazrin's master, everybody started looking at them as the new Chen and Ran. Even though the only real similarities are "both are animal youkai" and "Shou is blonde, like Ran".)
- Byakuren Hijiri
(fanart)
A Buddhist nun turned magician. She pretended to specialize in youkai extermination, but helped the youkai by relocating them far from human settlements, like Minamitsu, instead of killing them. When her eternal youth raised suspicion, she was sealed in the underworld. Nazrin, Ichirin, Minamitsu and Shou are now trying to free her.
Tropes associated with Byakuren:
- Becoming The Mask (She originally protected youkai to maintain the source of her powers, but as she gradually learned of their stories she sincerely committed to help them.)
- Being Good Sucks (Her reward for aiding both youkai and humans? Sealed for a millenium in Makai.)
- Boobs Of Steel (As the resident Sealed Badass In A Can, Byakuren has been commonly depicted with these.)
- Cute Witch (What Byakuren began as.)
- Dead Little Brother (See Myouren below.)
- Elegant Gothic Lolita (and how!)
- Expy (Apparently she's the Yumemi to Murasa's Chiyuri. They do have similar designs, swapping crosses for scrolls.)
- Fan Nickname (Youkai Jesus, Youchrist, Gensokyo Gandhi, the anti-Marisa, Suigintouhou)
- Anti-Marisa may require a little explanation - see Shout Out below but note that she also pillages patterns from Yukari, Yuyuko and Marisa herself. Add to the fact she is a magician, and an opponent, and you get Anti-Marisa, similar to Anti-Miko for Sanae.
- Final Boss
- Flower Motifs That Shoot Lasers (Her name means "white lotus", to boot.)
- Hero Antagonist (Even among Touhou's general lack of evil characters, she bears special mention. Her goal is to bring peace and harmony to humans and youkai.)
- Messianic Archetype: According to Memetic Mutation at least.
- The Messiah: There's a reason her Fan Nickname is "Youchrist".
- Multicolored Hair (although it's debated whether if she really does have gradient hair or if she just has brown hair and the purple is just light emitting from her scroll thingy.)
- Razor Floss (Used in her Flying Fantastica and Legendary Flying Saucer spellcards. It can't hurt you but pulls in bullets around you like a noose. So, in a way, it can.)
- Sealed Badass In A Can (Whether she's good or evil actually gets debated in the game dialogue. Although this being Gensokyo, of course the answer leans towards the former.)
- Shout Out (Among her Spell Cards is a faithful reproduction of one of Shinki's most distinctive attacks. Some fans who didn't like her (and the rest of the PC-98 era characters') Brother Chuck-ing did not take it well.)
- Status Buffs (The Manual says Byakuren specialises in magic that enhances her physical abilities.)
- Spell My Name With An S (K-S romanization: "Hiziri")
- Witch Species (Like Alice, this is what Byakuren became.)
- Myouren Hijiri
Byakuren's little brother, a monk that taught Byakuren Buddhist magic. His death made her fear her own, and drove her to seek eternal youth.
Tropes associated with Myouren:
- Death By Origin Story (Myouren's death, as mentioned, is the catalyst that eventually put Byakuren where she is at the start of UFO.)
- Shout Out (Myouren is a reference to famous Buddhist monk who was the star of 12th-century tales such as the ''Shigisan-engi''; Byakuren may be a shout-out to the unnamed Buddhist priestess mentioned in the story.)
- Nue Houjuu
(fanart)
Nue is a youkai who has the ability to hide her true form, and thus all accounts of her appearance vary wildly. When she got tired of frightening humans, she hid away underground, although her dialogue indicates a human sealed her after discovering her true form. After getting caught up in the rising of Byakuren's ship she decided to tag along and attempt to cause trouble for them.
Tropes associated with Nue:
- Bonus Boss
- Expy (Due to her status as the Extra stage boss, her bizarre wings and her vaguely similar sounding Leitmotif, some fans have connected her to Flandre Scarlet.)
- However, there seems to be a considerable backlash growing among fans who don't think the similarities run that deep.
- Fashionably Asymmetric Wings (One wing red and angular, the other blue and like curvy, bent arrows.)
- Fate Worse Than Death ("Now, human! Boil me! Bake me alive! Do anything you wish! Oh, but please, just don't seal me underground again." She's shocked when the main characters let her go.)
- Fan Nickname ("U.F. Owen", due to the above-mentioned similarities to Flandre, and her UFO-themed spellcard.)
- Flying Saucer (Some of her attacks involve the very UFOs you've been blowing up for powerups the whole game.)
- Master Of Illusion (She disguised the Palanquin Ship as a UFO, and her true appearance is unknown.)
- Meaningful Name (Nue is the name of her species. Houjuu translates to "sealed beast", because, like most of the other characters, was sealed away before the events of Subterranean Animism.)
- Monochromatic Eyes (Her eyes are all dark red in her offical artwork. What makes it creepier is that you can still see the outline of where her pupils should be.)
- Screwy Squirrel (She enjoyed messing around with Byakuren and the other girls, tagging along and interfering every so often because she thought it would be funny if they failed in their goal. In fact, she attached "Seed[s] of Non-Identification" to the ship and the Tobikura fragments, making them appear as UFOs to the untrained eye. When she found out that their mission would help her as well, she felt guilty about it.)
- Species Given Name (As you would expect, she's a Nue: a Japanese chimera.)
- Why Does Everyone Think Im Deadpool? (Despite their only similarities being the fact that they're both Extra stage bosses with bizzare wings and vaguely similar themes, Nue is compared to Flandre, some fans even going as far to call her a rip-off.)
- Zettai Ryouiki
Close Debuted in Undefined Fantastic Object
Debuted in Unthinkable Natural Law
- Namazu
If the "I Am Not Making This Up" page still existed on this wiki, we would certainly be needing it here. Namazu (which may simply be a or the namazu) is...well..a Big Freaking Catfish. He appears in Hong Meiling's story as the final boss, as an avatar of the "Taisui Xingjun" that Meiling believes is about to attack Gensokyo.
Tropes associated with the catfish:
- All Just A Dream (Meiling dreams that every other character she fights in her story mode are minions of the Taisui Xingjun that took the form of familiar characters. It explains Reimu's freaky dark aura.)
- In addition, the background to the fight is rendered in a cartoony, childish style, in comparison to the Scenery Porn-filled backdrops of the other stages.
- The kicker is that the battle with Alice does not use these childish backgrounds, and thus is presumably not a dream, despite responding to Meiling's claim that she's a fake sent by Taisui Xingjun.
- Bullfight Boss (Its 3rd spellcard.)
- Fan Nickname (fans have started calling him 'Primeus' in a reference to a MUGEN joke character of that name made by Ricepigeon, to the point that some people actually think that's its name.)
- More recently, people have taken to calling him Namazu, which is just the name of his species.
- This is somewhat justified by the fact that he is referred to as 'namazu' in the game's files.
- Giant Catfish From Nowhere
- Ground Pound (It'll often leap into the air and crush you from above.)
- Rock Steady (In traditional Japanese folklore, (a/the) Namazu was a giant catfish that caused earthquakes by thrashing underground. So despite being a fish, it has earth-based powers, creating earthquakes and launching rocks into the air.)
- Shout Out (It's very possible that this thing is based on the giant catfish that Sakuya served as a meal in the end of Tenshi's ending in SWR; note that this was also a probable reference to the above folklore, as earthquakes were important to SWR's plot)
Close Debuted in Unthinkable Natural Law
- Related Official Works
Ever since the series was rebooted for Windows-based computers, a number of characters have been introduced solely though side stories and similar works.
Debuted in Curiosities of Lotus Asia
- Rinnosuke Morichika
(fanart)
The owner of the shop Kourindou, he uses his power to identify strange objects with True Names and figure out their function. Thus, his shop deals with objects from outside of Gensokyo that won't be easily identified, like his own oil-burning heater, a Gameboy that Yukari claimed as payment for supplying his heater with fuel (which he mistook for an Artifact Of Doom), and various knick-knacks that Marisa gathers from time to time.
Tropes associated with Rinnosuke:
- Collector Of The Strange (In addition to selling goods from the outside world, he also likes to collect them and is reluctant to part with his merchandise.)
- Crack Pairing (Since he's almost the only straight option in Gensokyo, there are a lot of crack pairing pictures with Rinnosuke and one of the girls. Somehow, a few fans even manage to slash him despite the rather limited options.)
- The most common person he is slashed with? Zun.
- Fan Disservice (Fanon only. He is sometimes portrayed as an excessively muscular pervert who wears nothing but fundoshi loincloths. This version of Rinnosuke is usually referred to as "MANnosuke".)
- Half Human Hybrids (half-human, half-youkai)
- My Name Is Not Durwood (As a result of the name of his shop, Marisa calls him Kourin.)
- Namedar (His Ability is to recognize the name of an object and its purpose. This doesn't come with the instruction manual.)
- Non Action Guy (Despite his half-human, half-youkai nature, he doesn't seem to be any tougher than a regular human, and he admits that he's unable to do anything rough. Lampshaded by Marisa and Reimu, who wonder how he managed to live so long without knowing how to handle himself.)
- Shipping (Due to his history of knowing the Kirisame family, and his connection to Marisa, some people like to pair them up. He's also often shipped with Yukari, the supplier of his outside goods.)
- Stoic Spectacles
- The One Guy (The only humanoid male character in the series who's had actual screen time.)
- Tokiko
(fanart)
An unfortunate book-reading Youkai who was beaten up by Reimu, who mistakenly assumed she had stolen some books.
Tropes associated with Tokiko:
- Fan Nickname (Canonically, Tokiko has no actual name; if we were to get technical, she'd be listed here as 'unnamed book-reading youkai', but that doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely. 'Tokiko' translates to 'crested ibis', and was given to her after fans noted her resemblance to the bird in question.)
- One Scene Wonder (She appeared in one scene in one chapter of one series which half the fans don't bother to read, with no name and a small appearance in the background of the cover image. She spent that time getting beaten up twice and complaining about it. She's not incredibly popular, but yes, even Tokiko has a following.)
- Winged Humanoid
Close Debuted in Curiosities of Lotus Asia
Debuted in Ghostly Field Club
- Maribel Han
(fanart)
A human from outside the border, she is one of the members of an Occult Studies Club. She has the power to sense (and possibly cross) boundaries, and has entered Gensokyo in her dreams.
Tropes associated with Maribel:
- Epileptic Trees (A fan theory has Maribel and Yukari Yakumo being the same person. The basic idea is that when Maribel sleeps, she dreams she is Yukari. And when Yukari sleeps, she dreams she is Maribel. It doesn't help matters that they look similar.)
- Puppies Are Precious Strawberries Are Steep (Maribel and Renko apparently come from Twenty Minutes Into The Future, when some foods such as bamboo shoots and, yes, strawberries, are only available as synthetics.)
- Spell My Name With An S (Her first name is occasionally romanized as "Maryberry" or the like, and her last name more commonly as "Hearn" — the latter being relevant to the Yukari theory.)
- Time Dissonance (Although Maribel is from the future, Perfect Memento in Strict Sense mentions that a note she wrote was found in Gensokyo several centuries in the past.)
- Renko Usami
(fanart)
Maribel's friend, who lives outside of Gensokyo, and the other member of the Occult Studies Club; Renko initiates most of their activities. She has the ability to determine her exact position and the current time by looking at the moon and the stars respectively. Some fanworks have her sense coordinates in imaginary numbers whenever she tries to sense her location in Gensokyo.
Tropes associated with Renko:
- Agent Scully (A notable subversion. Renko is the scientific, logical, objective one of the pair and shoots down some of Maribel's odder notions, but she's also much more enthusiastic about their occult activities, driving their investigations and efforts to find another world.)
- My Name Is Not Durwood (Type D: she can't pronounce Maribel's full name and calls her "Mary".)
- Schedule Fanatic (Subverted: she can be late, but she'll always tell Maribel down to the second how late she was.)
- Unusual Ears (As an Incredibly Lame Pun on her family name, Usami, Japanese fanartists sometimes draw her wearing bunny ears (usamimi).)
Close Debuted in Ghostly Field Club
Debuted in Eastern and Little Nature Deity
- The Three Mischievous Fairies
Three fairies who love playing pranks on others and go treasure hunting, and often get punished for their practical jokes. Each fairy possesses a different power and are able to combine their talents. Though, while they are known for their teamwork, it is often haphazard, and they are often unsuccessful at pulling off their pranks. In Eastern and Little Nature Deity and Strange and Bright Nature Deity they lived in the Forest of Magic like Alice and Marisa, but as of Oriental Sacred Place they've moved their home behind the Hakurei Shrine.
Tropes associated with the Three Mischievous Fairies:
- Kryptonite Factor (The fairies are surprised to find that Reisen's powers can completely nullify theirs.)
- Meaningful Name (Each of the three fairies' powers relies on the presence of their namesake.)
- Screwy Squirrel
- Spell My Name With An S ("Starsaphire" was presumably just a misspelling, "Sunnymilk" isn't much of a difference, but "Lunarchild" is trickier, especially since all three fairies tend to call each other by the first part of their names)
- Theme Naming (All three are named for the heavenly body their powers rely on.)
- Winged Humanoid (All three of them have wings that do not appear to be directly attached to their bodies.)
- Sunny Milk
(fanart)
Self-proclaimed leader of the Three Mischievous Fairies. Sunny can manipulate light via refraction. Sunny Milk is at her strongest during the day when the sun is out, but she is weakened if the weather is cloudy.
Tropes associated with Sunny Milk:
- Luna Child
(fanart)
Luna can manipulate sound, dampening it so she can sneak around. Luna Child is at her strongest when the moon is out, but, like Sunny Milk, she is weakened if the weather is cloudy.
Tropes associated with Luna Child:
- Star Sapphire
(fanart)
The smartest member of the Three Mischievous Fairies. Star can sense any animate thing in a wide area, making her sort of a living radar. Unlike Sunny Milk and Luna Child, Star Sapphire is unaffected by the time of day or the weather.
Tropes associated with Star Sapphire:
Close Debuted in Eastern and Little Nature Deity
Debuted in Perfect Memento in Strict Sense
- Hieda no Akyu
(fanart)
The ninth reincarnation of the Child of Miare, who is born with the memories of each of the previous incarnations. She is the author of the Gensokyo Chronicle, an anthology of Gensokyo's history (published in Real Life as Touhou's Universe Compendium, Perfect Memento in Strict Sense), which she updates each time she is reincarnated.
Tropes associated with Akyu:
Close Debuted in Perfect Memento in Strict Sense
Debuted in Silent Sinner in Blue
- Reisen
(fanart)
An apparently ordinary Moon Rabbit who's gotten herself deeply involved in the events of Silent Sinner in Blue. Reisen is just a literal pet name given her by the Watatsuki sisters (in honor of the other Reisen, their previous pet) but her original name is unknown.
Tropes associated with Reisen:
- Watatsuki no Yorihime
(fanart)
The younger of the Watatsuki sisters, Lunarian princesses and leaders of the Lunar Defense Corps. Yorihime is the more serious of the two.
Tropes associated with Yorihime:
- Absurdly Sharp Blade (Sharp enough to cut Marisa's Master Spark in two!)
- All Of The Other Reindeer (It's vaguely implied that the other Lunarians distrust her due to her power.)
- Badass Bookworm
- Deus Ex Machina / New Powers As The Plot Demands (approaching God Mode Sue levels. No matter what kind of attack the Gensokyo team throw at her, Yorihime is always able to summon a god from the Shinto pantheon with exactly the right kind of power to counteract it.)
- Except there really are that many Shinto gods. And seeing how Reimu has the same power, she could probably reach this level of hax if she ever got off her lazy miko butt and trained for once.
- Evil Counterpart (Arguable case with Reimu, as they both have the power to channel the gods.)
- Everythings Better With Princesses
- Fan Nickname ("Moonbitch," as popularized by her detractors, though her name being hard to remember didn't help her. Both Watatsukis together can also be referred to as the moonbitches, or even all Lunarians more rarely, but the singular Moonbitch seems to be Yorihime.)
- Lady Of War
- Not So Invincible After All (In Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth Chapter 26, she gets knocked out by accidentally falling into one of Tei's Pit Traps.)
- Sibling Yin Yang
- Training From Hell (What she subjects Reisen and Reisen to during her visit to Eientei.)
- Tsundere (Loudly insisted to Toyohime that she couldn't go to Earth to visit Eirin because she had to stay behind to defend the Moon, but ended up going anyway out of admiration for her former teacher.)
- The Wesley (Fans of the series were annoyed with the way she had been defeating some of the series' most popular characters rather cheaply in Silent Sinner in Blue. Furthermore, she had been going at the pace of defeating only one character per chapter, thus causing the arc to span several chapters.)
- Watatsuki no Toyohime
(fanart)
The older of the two princesses, Toyohime has a more carefree personality than her sister, though she can get serious too.
Tropes associated with Toyohime:
- Big Eater (When it comes to peaches, at least.)
- Boobs Of Steel (Often depicted with a large bust in fanart, and is, well, one of the Watatsuki sisters. 'Nuff said.)
- Made canonical by Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth, where she, Eirin and Keine are the only characters to have noticeable breasts. Everyone else, including Yorihime, is drawn as a Pettanko.
- Everythings Better With Princesses
- Evil Counterpart (Arguable case with Yukari, as Toyohime can also manipulate boundaries, although her ability may be restricted in scope to the lunar capital.)
- Eyes Of Gold
- Fantastic Racism (As she explains after Yukari surrendered to her, Lunarians believe that only the Moon is pure, and everything on Earth is tainted by sin.)
- Paper Fan Of Doom (One that can "instantly purify" things at the atomic level!)
- Trademark Favorite Food (Peaches, which leads to her sometimes being paired with Tenshi.)
- Wave Motion Gun (What her fan is implied to be.)
- The Wesley (Not quite as hated as her sister, though she does garner some hate for Yukari seeming to cave to her instantly. Still, people tend to prefer her over Yorihime, due to her "peach-eating moe~")
Close Debuted in Silent Sinner in Blue
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