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A few of the more important charactersnote 
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Touhou Project ("Touhou", ę±ę–¹, meaning Eastern or Oriental, pronounced "Toh Hoh", the same way as the film studio Toho), commonly referred to as just Touhou, is a series of doujin vertical-scrolling Shoot 'em ups in the Bullet Hell and Cute 'em Up subgenres, developed by Team Shanghai Alice. It is most famous for its high difficulty level involving intricate bullet patterns, and that instead of having spaceships and warfare vehicles, it has girls in frilly dresses: nearly every character is a Little Miss Badass, Cute Monster Girl, or Cute Witch, and wears some degree of Lolita clothing. It's also outstanding in that despite the name "Team Shanghai Alice", the entirety of the main games, including the sprite graphics, 3D graphics, character portraits, dialogue, story, music composition, programming, bullet-patterns, and concept, are all done by one guy, known as "ZUN."note 

The basic story of the setting is set in the land of Gensokyo, a Fantastic Nature Reserve hidden in the mountains of Japan, and the various humans, youkai, gods, and other mythological creatures living there. Created in response to the waning belief in such entities by modern humans and the advancement of technology, Gensokyo was (mostly) isolated from the outside world by a boundary of fantasy and common sense in the 1800s, creating a region where humans and youkai live in delicate balance to maintain co-existence. Although much of Gensokyo reflects an antiquated Japanese society, most games in the series take place in the real-life year of their release, with a steady continuity and the gradual introduction of more Outside World technology and concepts as the years go on.

Most main games in the series revolve around an "incident" that occurs, ranging from harmless curiosities like flying ships, to concerning events such as land-smothering mists, to threats to Gensokyo itself like otherworldly invasions. In any case, the duty of resolving said incidents falls onto the shoulders of main protagonist Miko Reimu Hakurei, her best friend Marisa Kirisame, and typically one or two other recurring characters per installment. After beating up several tangentially-involved bystanders in the early stages of each game, they eventually discover the person or parties responsible for the incident and trounce them and their friends or Battle Butlers; when all's said and done, many of them show up uninvited to drink tea or attend afterparties with the protagonists, and quite a few go on to become friends, acquaintances, or even playable allies in future games. Despite the dark insinuations of some characters' backstories and origins, and the stakes of some incidents, battles in-universe are more akin to fair-sportsmanship duels that prioritize beauty over efficiency, and the villains of most games run on White-and-Grey Morality.

Gameplay-wise, the main series games (excluding the first one) are vertical scrolling shooters divided into 6 stages, with a bonus Extra stage unlocked after beating the main game without continues. The games focus more on the bosses than the stages, with each stage boss of each game being a colorful character given their own musical theme and trademark bullet patterns, each distinct boss phase known both in-universe and out as a "spell card". The spell cards and the boss themes are also given fanciful names that hint at the character's backstory and personality. This steady accumulation of bosses is the source of the series' infamous amount of characters, while the spell cards and Leitmotifs keep them distinct enough to be memorable to the fans.

Besides this there are a number of Gaiden Gamesnote  including somewhat similar yet mechanically distinct shooters which don't fit the pattern above, Mascot Fighters, and an action game developed in collaboration with the doujin circle Twilight Frontier. Aside from generally being more dialogue-heavy than the main games, the fighting games are also known for their unconventional gameplay which adds in elements of Bullet Hell (think Mega Man: The Power Battle with Senko no Ronde bullet patternsnote ), as well as strange mechanics which vary from game-to-game including Spell Card decks, unlimited Flight, weather effects and popularity meters.

In addition to the games, several non-game installments of The 'Verse have been printed over the years, including several canon manga and short story collections written by ZUN and authored by various mangaka. These print works tend to veer towards the Slice of Life or Mystery of the Week format, often providing a glimpse of normal life in Gensokyo, minor incidents and altercations between the various characters, the introduction of new characters (many of which later appear in the games in some form), or more information on the aftermath of the games' events. While they remain light in tone, these media make it more obvious that Gensokyo's long years of isolation, as well as being a place where the fantastic is commonplace and The Fair Folk outnumber humans, have given it an unusual culture that's prone to apparent Deliberate Values Dissonance on the surface. The accompanying stories of ZUN's Music Collection are especially notable for not being set in Gensokyo at all, but Kyoto in the near future.

Much of its popularity comes from its huge body of Fan Works, with tremendous numbers of not only amateur comics, but also fangames and arrangements/remixes of the games' music - in fact for many years, it has had the single largest fan-Doujin output of any franchise by a large margin. Indeed, while the series includes a large number of official supplementary material, its odd writing style means that many aspects of the setting are left vague - most characters can be interpreted in multiple ways or are given only a framework personality to begin with, exposition generally comes from sources that have reason to be biased or distort the truth, and even the artstyle of the games makes it hard to tell the body type of the character being depicted, creating a goldmine of Fanon interpretations. Perhaps most strikingly, series creator ZUN has given his blessing to the fans to release fanworks commercially, resulting in high-quality fangames being released on multiple platforms; despite the main series games having no official English translations, several fangames have even seen Western release.

See also the extensive wiki about the game series.

The official games in chronological order: note 

    open/close all folders 

    The Games 
PC-98 era:
Most characters and stories from this era have been retconned or otherwise ignored by the series' canon. Four characters from these games were re-introduced in the Windows eranote , but with significant changes from their past appearances.
  • Touhou Reiiden ~ Highly Responsive to Prayers: (1997)Translation note  Someone or something has smashed the Hakurei Shrine, and resident shrine maiden Reimu sets out to find and punish the perpetrator. Unlike most "core" games in the series, HRTP is a block breaking game similar to Arkanoid, with Reimu using the Yin-Yang Orb to damage enemies.
  • Touhou Fuumaroku ~ the Story of Eastern Wonderland: (1997)Translation  Reimu returns from a mountain training session to find her shrine overrun with youkai, and sets out to find the source atop her flying turtle, Genji. The first bullet hell game in the series, and the first game to feature Marisa, albeit as a boss.
  • Touhou Yumejikuu ~ Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream: (1997)Translation  Mysterious ruins appear not far from the Hakurei Shrine, drawing the attention of a number of characters, but only one may enter and discover the truth. Features split-screen competitive gameplay with nine characters, including Marisa's debut as a playable character.
  • Touhou Gensokyo ~ Lotus Land Story: (1998)Translation note  Youkai are once again swarming the shrine, leading Reimu and Marisa to seek the source, a strange lake in the mountains. The first game to offer alternative shot options for each character, as well as a nonstandard scoring system.
  • Touhou Kaikidan ~ Mystic Square: (1998)Translation  A demonic invasion from a mountain cave leads Reimu, Marisa, Mima and Yuuka to investigate. The last PC98 game, and the one that solidified the series' main gameplay mechanics.

Windows era:
Even though the numbering system continues from the PC-98 era, the sixth game is considered the beginning of the series' main canon.

  • Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: (2002)Translation  A scarlet mist is enveloping Gensokyo, blotting out the summer sun and emanating from a mysterious mansion near a lake; Reimu and Marisa embark to find the culprit. EOSD establishes Gensokyo as a setting and introduces the spell card and Item Collection Boundary systems.
  • Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom: (2003)Translation  Spring has come, yet snow continues to fall even in May, and cherry blossom petals drifting from above the clouds send Reimu, Marisa and Sakuya to follow the trail. Features the Cherry scoring system, the introduction of focused shots, the concept of the Great Hakurei Barrier, and is currently the only game to feature two Extra stages.
  • Touhou Suimusou ~ Immaterial and Missing Power: (2004)Translation note  The first Fighting Game spinoff in the series. Following the events of PCB, the yearly feasts to accompany the cherry blossom viewing season come at an abnormal frequency, and are often accompanied by a strange mist, leading the eleven playable girls to investigate. Combines standard 2D fighting mechanics with a heavy emphasis on projectile play.
  • Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night (2004)Translation  On the eve of the harvest festival, many youkai suddenly sense something wrong with the moon; more precisely, it's somehow been replaced with a fake. With youkai enlisting humans to help, the teams of Reimu and Yukari, Marisa and Alice, Sakuya and Remilia, and Youmu and Yuyuko work together to uncover the truth, with each individual character being unlockable on their own. Features the Time Orb system, and Last Spells for bosses.
  • Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View: (2005)Translation  Spring has come once again, but instead of just the usual springtime flower blooms, flora from all seasons are spontaneously flowering at once. A spiritual successor to Touhou Yumejikuu ~ Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream, POFV features competitive split-screen gameplay, with 16 playable characters.
  • Touhou Bunkachou ~ Shoot the Bullet: (2005)Translation  Tengu reporter Aya Shameimaru sets out to photograph various humans and youkai for her newspaper, all while dodging their danmaku. The first photography spinoff, the player cannot attack normally; instead, the goal is to safely get close to bosses and photograph them mid-fight.
  • Touhou Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith: (2007)Translation  When an autumn visitor to the Hakurei shrine demands it be torn down in the name of a newly-settling mountain god, Reimu and Marisa decide to scale Youkai Mountain and discover the party responsible for the claim. The start of a new "trilogy" in terms of gameplay and engine, MOF features the Faith scoring system, reduces to the number of playable characters back to 2, and simplifies some elements of gameplay.
  • Touhou Hisouten ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody: (2008)Translation  The second Fighting Game spinoff, and a sequel to IAMP. Bizarre weather conditions simultaneously strike Gensokyo, with rain, hail, fog and even an earthquake that levels the Hakurei Shrine. Features 15 playable characters, a Weather system that alters game mechanics on the fly, and a deck building system for super moves and other abilities.
  • Touhou Chireiden ~ Subterranean Animism: (2008)Translation  When a sudden geyser creates a wintertime hot spring, spirits from the underground begin flowing into Gensokyo. Unable to investigate due to an ancient treatise, the surface-dwelling youkai instead send the human girls into the earth, with Reimu (aided by Yukari, Suika or Aya) and Marisa (aided by Alice, Patchouli or Nitori) embarking downwards. Features a return to the partner system of IN, and a scoring system heavily dependent on grazing.
  • Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object: (2009)Translation  A mysterious flying ship appears in Gensokyo, with rumors abound as to its contents. Duty, greed, or both send Reimu, Marisa and Sanae to investigate. Features a UFO-based scoring system, and the return of character-specific bombs.
  • Touhou Hisoutensoku ~ Choudokyuu Ginyoru no Nazo o Oe: (2009)Translation note  A combination sequel and expansion pack for SWR, adding 5 new characters and 3 new stories set during UFO. A mysterious giant appears in Gensokyo, leading Meiling, Cirno and Sanae to each come up with their own explanation and investigate.
  • Double Spoiler ~ Touhou Bunkachou: (2010)Translation  The second photography game, and a followup to STB. Rival tengu reporter Hatate Himekaidou investigates Aya's reporting methods, and eventually declares a media war on her. Features 2 playable characters, with differing photography orientations.
  • Yousei Daisensou ~ Touhou Sangetsusei: (2010)Translation note  A tie-in to the Touhou Sangetsusei manga. When the Three Fairies of Light decide to unite fairykind and cause an incident, they demolish Cirno's house to prove their strength. Months later, Cirno remembers, and declares war on the Three Fairies. Features Cirno as the sole playable character, with a gameplay system revolving around freezing enemy danmaku.
  • Touhou Shinreibyou ~ Ten Desires: (2011)Translation  Gensokyo finds itself inundated with divine spirits. Initially suspecting Yuyuko to be responsible, the truth leads Reimu, Marisa, Sanae and Youmu to investigate an ancient mausoleum. Another Soft Reboot in terms of gameplay details, TD features Divine Spirits as collectable objects and the Trance Gauge mechanic.
  • Touhou Shinkirou ~ Hopeless Masquerade: (2013)Translation note  The fourth Fighting Game, with a new engine and gameplay system based on aerial combat. Following the streak of incidents in the past few years, the people of Gensokyo fall into pessimism, leading the various adherents of Buddism, Taoism and Shinto to stage battles and prove their faith the cure to hopelessness. Features 11 playable characters, customization in the form of Religion options, and the Popularity mechanic.
  • Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character: (2013)Translation  Weak youkai are rebelling, a huge building floats in the skies, and the signature weapons of Reimu, Marisa and Sakuya are taking on a life of their own, leading the three to set out and discover the cause. Features different story dialogue for each character's shot type (whether or not they wield their bewitched weapons), and an emphasis on the Item Collection Border mechanic.
  • Danmaku Amanojaku ~ Impossible Spell Card: (2014)Translation  Following the events of DDC, Seija is a wanted youkai in Gensokyo. With a bounty on her head, various youkai and eventually humans throw away the rules of spell card duels and attempt to defeat her with seemingly unfair and unwinnable patterns. Playing as Seija, ISC gives the player several unique equippable items that allow them to break the rules themselves and counter-cheat their opponents.
  • Touhou Shinpiroku ~ Urban Legend in Limbo: (2015)Translation note  The fifth Fighting Game, and a followup to HM. Urban legends are spreading in Gensokyo, with various characters appropriating them as playthings and power-ups...until mysterious objects known as Occult Balls begin manifesting as well. Features a heavy emphasis on urban legends and classic myths, with each of the 15 playable characters being associated with a particular legend.
  • Touhou Kanjuden ~ Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom: (2015)Translation  Gensokyo faces an invasion plot by the Lunarians, seemingly intent on terraforming its lands to be suitable for their own kind, at the expense of all those who live there. Reimu, Marisa, Sanae and Reisen set out to find whoever is responsible and protect Gensokyo. Features a unique, optional Pointdevice Mode, replacing the lives system with checkpoints at each stage, as well as changes to the grazing mechanics.
  • Touhou Hyouibana ~ Antinomy of Common Flowers: (2017)Translation note  The sixth Fighting Game, and a followup to ULIL. Gensokyo is being swept up in the Perfect Possession phenomenon, where one's body and mind can be entirely controlled by another, leading to a number of team-ups and investigations. Features 19 playable characters and a Master and Slave system, with players creating teams of two.
  • Touhou Tenkuushou ~ Hidden Star in Four Seasons: (2017)Translation  It's the middle of summer, yet the Hakurei Shrine is bathed in spring petals, snow falls in the Forest of Magic, and Youkai Mountain is in the throes of autumn. On top of that, the fairies are rampaging with bizarre, uncontrollable strength, so Reimu, Marisa, Aya and Cirno (with a tan) set out to solve the incident. Features a seasonal subshot system, allowing players to mix and match characters with secondary abilities.
  • Hifuu Nightmare Diary ~ Violet Detector: (2018)Translation  The third photography game. After ULIL, Sumireko Usami finds her mind pulled into Gensokyo whenever she sleeps, but she suddenly ends up trapped in a seemingly endless nightmare of being attacked by the various inhabitants. The solution: photograph their spell cards and post them on social media until she finds a way to end the nightmare. Features an emphasis on photographing danmaku instead of the bosses themselves, unlike prior photography games.
  • Touhou Kikeijuu ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature: (2019)Translation  Beast spirits appear before Reimu, Marisa and Youmu, claiming that their fellow animals are planning to invade Gensokyo and leading them to travel into Hell itself to stop them. Features a Spirit Item system based on UFO, equippable spirits akin to HSIFS's seasons, and achievements.
  • Touhou Gouyoku Ibun ~ Sunken Fossil World: (2021)Translation note  Black water is suddenly gushing forth from formerly pure sources across Gensokyo, malodorous and sticky. A "horizontal danmaku water action game" with unique gameplay for the series thus far.
  • Touhou Kouryuudou ~ Unconnected Marketeers (2021)Translation  Mysterious cards are circulating in the streets, containing secrets about both humans and youkai. Without knowing anything, the shrine maiden Reimu, plus Marisa, Sakuya, and Sanae, goes to investigate, each with their own motives for collecting the cards. Features a card system where money earned during gameplay can be used to buy cards at the end of each stage that provide active or passive effects.
  • Black Market of Bulletphilia ~ 100th Black Market (2022) A follow-up spinoff of Unconnected Marketeers starring Marisa and using a modified version of its Ability Card system. Despite Chimata no longer overseeing the Ability Cards, their value is still climbing higher and higher. Marisa sets out to investigate the black markets which have been popping upā€”and collect as many cards as she can.
  • Touhou Juuouen ~ Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (2023)Translation  Due to the Ability Card market, Gensokyo's land has been rendered ownerless, and both Gensokyo natives and spirits from the Animal Realm vie for ownership. Reintroduces the competitive split-screen gameplay from Phantasmagoria of Flower View.

    Side Materials 
Stories:
  • Touhou ā€“ ZUN's Music Collection (2002 - Ongoing) — A set of albums containing Touhou remixes and new music by ZUN, with accompanying stories. The first one is quite odd and likely not canon anymore. The rest follow Maribel and Renko, a pair of female college students in future Kyoto who form the Secret Sealing Club and may or may not be tied to major Gensokyoan characters.
  • Touhou Kourindou ~ Curiosities of Lotus Asia (2004 - 2007, 2015 - Ongoing)Translation  — A series of Slice of Life short stories from the perspective of Rinnosuke, a Non-Action Guy and old family friend of Marisa's. The proprietor of the Kourindou antique shop and gifted with the ability to instantly know an object's name or purpose, most stories feature Rinnosuke waxing philosophical and dealing with the girls' frequent visits.
  • Touhou Sangetsusei (2005 - 2012, 2016 - 2019)Translation  — A Slice of Life manga focusing on the various misadventures of the Three Fairies of Light (and later Clownpiece), a trio of mischevious fairies who often play pranks on Reimu and Marisa and get themselves into trouble with other inhabitants of Gensokyo. Has been published under several titles:
    • Eastern and Little Nature Deity — Ended early due to original artist Nemu Matsukura's health issues; all future installments were illustrated by Makoto Hirasaka.
    • Strange and Bright Nature Deity
    • Oriental Sacred Place
    • Visionary Fairies in Shrine — A revival released four years after OSP's end, adding Clownpiece to the main cast.
    • Fairy of the Moon — A short story included in EaLND's compilation release, focusing on Luna and Yukari.
  • A Flower Blooming Fragrant Violet Every Sixty Years (2005) — A short story contained in the otherwise non-canon fanbook Seasonal Dream Vision. From Yukari's perspective, it explains a bit more of just what the hell was going on in Phantasmagoria of Flower View.
  • Touhou Bougetsushou (2007 - 2012)Translation  — A series of stories told in multiple formats, concerning Remilia's attempt at invading the moon and Yukari schemeing against the Lunarians. Can be considered a sequel of sorts to Imperishable Night. Consists of:
    • Silent Sinner in Blue — The main story.
    • Cage in Lunatic Runagate — Mostly character-focused side stories. Also contains most of the backstory and the ending.
    • Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth — A gag comedy set around the same time, starring the Eientei crew. Unlike the other manga, where ZUN is credited with the scenario, here he's credited with characters and setting, putting it on a lower tier of canon than everything else.
  • Touhou Ibarakasen ~ Wild and Horned Hermit (2010 - 2019)Translation  — A manga focusing on the titular Kasen Ibaraki, a hermit who frequently visits the shrine and attempts to push Reimu and Marisa into bettering themselves. Features a more comedic take on Reimu's personality, and a series-long arc about Kasen's true identity.
  • Touhou Suzunaan ~ Forbidden Scrollery (2012 - 2017)Translation  — A Mystery of the Week manga focusing on Kosuzu Motoori, a young girl who works at her family's book rental shop in the human village. With her recently-awakened ability to read any text and her innocent adoration of youkai and demonic youma books, Kosuzu slowly finds herself more and more involved in the affairs of Reimu and Marisa, her close friend Akyuu, and the schemeing Mamizou.
  • Touhou Chireikiden ~ Foul Detective Satori (2019 - ongoing)Translation  — A manga focusing on Subterranean Animism's Satori Komeiji, acting as a detective and solving mysteries alongside her pet Orin and her ability to read the hearts and minds of others. Went on hiatus for several months in 2021 as original artist Ginmokusei was unable to keep up with a monthly schedule due to her health issues; Yuu Akimari took up artist duties when it returned.
  • Touhou Suichouka ~ Lotus Eater-tachi no Suisei (2019 - ongoing)Translation  — A manga focusing on Miyoi Okunoda, the poster girl of the pub Geidontei. Appearing at the Hakurei Shrine's drinking parties and seemingly manipulating the memories of those around her, Miyoi's presence leads to the confluence of several major youkai at Geidontei, and the various antics that come with inebriation.

Artbooks:

  • Touhou Bunkachou ~ Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red (2005)Translation  — A book presenting articles from Aya's newspaper, the Bunbunmaru. Most are focused on individual characters from EoSD through IN with accompanying interviews, but there are also editorials on major locations and Aya's perspective of what happened in the games. The book also included some music commentary from ZUN, an interview, a one-shot official manga, and several fan-made doujinshi.
  • Touhou Gumon Shiki ~ Perfect Memento in Strict Sense (2006)Translation  — Part of the Gensokyo Chronicles, as written by the ninth child of Miare, Hieda no Akyuu. Like BAiJR, many of the articles are focused on characters up through PoFV, but there's also some general setting background information and expands on powers and relationships. It too has an associated one-shot manga, but less other goodies.
  • The Grimoire of Marisa (2009) — Marisa's comments on characters' spell cards, covering the games from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil through Subterranean Animism. ZUN compares it to an in-universe Let's Play.
  • Touhou Gumon Kujo ~ Symposium of Post-Mysticism (2012)Translation  — A sequel of sorts to Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, covering most of the characters introduced since. In lieu of the non-character encyclopedia entries it has a number of newspaper articles and a transcript of the titular symposium between Byakuren, Kanako, Miko and Marisa.
  • Touhou Bunka Shinpo ~ Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia (2017)Translation  — A sequel to Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red and Symposium of Post-Mysticism, with Aya trying her hand at a gossip magazine focusing on the daily lives of characters who don't show up as often.
  • The Grimoire of Usami ~ Hifuu Kurabu Ikai Satsuei Kiroku (2019)Translation  — A sequel of sorts to The Grimoire of Marisa, covering the danmaku games from Undefined Fantastic Object through Violet Detector. Has a manga Framing Story where Reimu (with Sumireko advising) decides to hold a fireworks festival, with danmaku in place of fireworks, and various characters turn up to offer their opinions on the spell cards.

Magazines

  • Touhou Gairai Ihen ~ Strange Creators of Outer World (2015 - Ongoing)Translation  — Contains newcomer-friendly guides to the Touhou cast and setting, as well as a continuation of Curiosities of Lotus Asia (see above) and various features dedicated to Touhou doujins, including interviews with famous circles and samples of their works. Strange Creators has also directly published several non-canonical, multi-part doujinshis, including:
    • The Shinigami's Rowing Her Boat As Usual — Komachi struggles to balance her powers and duties over the souls of the recently-deceased, her growing internal conflicts and desires as a person, and finding as much time as possible to slack off. By Aya Azuma, illustrator of Wild and Horned Hermit.
    • Starving Marisa's Blessed Meal — Marisa's ineptitude at wintertime food stockpiling and habitual hunger puts her in a variety of comedic situations to get a meal. By nva222.
    • The Gensokyo of Humans — When Hieda no Akyuu's condition seemingly suddenly deteriorates, it's up to Reimu, Marisa and Kosuzu to find the cause and save their friend, discovering the secrets of the Hieda family in the process. By Ashiyama Yoshinori.
    • Sanae-San is On the Run! — Fed up with Kanako and Suwako's antics, Sanae runs from home in a lighthearted, clothes-swapping comedy that sees her seeking employment across Gensokyo. By Aya Azuma.
    • The Tiles I Cannot Discard Are Next To None! — A Mahjong craze is sweeping Gensokyo, and when Yuyuko puts Hakugyokurou in immense debt through her losses, newbie Youmu steps up to save her and her mistress' home. A shock upset over the mind-reading Satori catapults the half-ghost gardener into the spotlight, and before long she finds herself facing some of the greatest players in Gensokyo. By Uki Hayahiro.
    • Go For It Gensokyo -Four Seasons- — A relaxed comedy 4koma with a rotating cast each chapter. By Toshihira Arata, the writer and illustrator of Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth.
    • The Magician Who Loved a Fake — A book which has the ability to temporarily turn humans into magicians has surfaced, forcing Reimu and Marisa to investigate after the fake magicians start causing incidents. By Ashiyama Yoshinori.


See FanWorks.Touhou Project for a list of derivative works, including Fan Games, Fanfic, Fanime, music, Web Animation and Webcomics. See Seihou for the sister series, and Len'en for the non-fan work game series heavily inspired by both Touhou and Seihou.


Touhou Project provides examples of:

    open/close all folders 

    Tropes in the games' gameplay 
  • Air Jousting: Marisa's broom charge attacks in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.
  • All Monks Know Kung-Fu: Not only do the Buddhist monk characters in Hopeless Masquerade specialize in martial arts, Buddhism itself is associated with melee attacks as a game mechanic.
  • Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: From Lotus Land Story onward, bosses will change the background.
  • Ambidextrous Sprite: In the fighting games, characters' sprites are mirrored for movement, resulting in oddities such as Utsuho's arm cannon and asymmetrical legs switching places if she moves left.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: Using a continue drops several pickups that instantly fill the power meter, so players won't be starting from zero power in the middle of a boss.
  • Arbitrary Weapon Range: Some spellcards have bullets generated around the boss, but the bullets don't have the hitspot immediately. Because of this, a player can get very close to the boss before the bullets are fired, and hence without taking any damage. This video provides examples, like 1:02, 8:46 and 9:52.
  • Artificial Stupidity: The fighting games. Highlights include not particularly understanding if the character is melee or range oriented, using moves that can't possibly hit, virtually never using cards,note  and difficulty selection in arcade mode doing nothing. This was bad enough for people to start work on an AI hack but the project seems to have died since.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Pretty much all of the experimental shot types (ie, not spread, homing, forward concentration, or piercing) fall under one or Difficult, but Awesome, depending on who you ask.
    • Marisa's Master Spark bomb in Undefined Fantastic Object on definitely falls under Awesome But Impractical, at least during stages. The massive speed penalty it saddles her with makes it nearly impossible to collect anything.
    • Death bombing introduced in the fifth game on. When your character gets hit, you have a fraction of a second to press the bomb button to save yourself. The timing varies with each game, but is rarely enough for the average player to do so as a reaction. You basically need to predict your own death in order to use it.
      • Alongside the normal timing window, Imperishable Night introduces an expanded death bomb window which instead casts a Last Spell. This still is not all that practical, as this consumes two bombs, saps your time orbs as if you had died, and the bomb itself is treated as being of the opposite of your focus status when you got hit, potentially pushing the human/youkai gauge in the wrong direction at the wrong time for the purposes of scoring and time orb collection.
    • Last Words in Hopeless Masquerade; super-powerful spellcards that can only be used at max popularity, but drop your popularity to zero when used. The problem is that timeout victories are decided by popularity, making this a major risk, and gaining that much popularity likely requires you to be fairly decisively winning in the first place, making it an unnecessary risk.
  • A Winner Is You:
  • Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick:
    • The four playable teams in Imperishable Night:
      • The Boundary Team has the best coverage with homing attacks, but (theoretically) the worst damage.
      • The hard-hitting Magic Team has Marisa, who has stronger, but less spread-out shots, as the human, while Alice, the Youkai, shoots a strong laser that can hit multiple enemies. They also have the Good Bad Bugs, nicknamed by fans as MAlice Cannon, which allows them to basically attack together at the same time for heavy damage.
      • The Scarlet Team is fairly balanced with a weak spread unfocused and decent concentrated damage focused (and a bit of a gimmick with locked options while focused).
      • Then there's the gimmicky Ghost Team, which reverses the usual setup, but making the attacks stronger than other teams. It's the half-human Youmu who has the focused shots, while the Youkai side Yuyuko is the one with spread-out shots. They're also the only team whose Youkai meter maxes at 50% Human.
    • Ten Desires works similarly: Reimu is nominally balanced with weak homing shots unfocused and strong needles focused, Marisa hits everything in front of her hard, Sanae is a pure spread type, and Youmu is even weirder here. Youmu's unfocused options are ghosts that trail behind her, while her focused "shot" is a charge attack that will release a series of huge sword slashes.
    • Back again in Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom: Reimu is balanced with more or less the same shot type as above, Marisa is pure power, Sanae has the best coverage in the game, and Reisen is weird with low damage but a bomb that lets her spend most of the game invincible.
  • The Battle Didn't Count: Justified in that all the fights are technically exhibition matches, but... in Fairy Wars, the boss fight against Marisa. Cirno is the one that starts looking beaten up and begging for a break as she whittles down Marisa's health, although Marisa does express surprise at how much effort she needs to go to against a "mere fairy."
  • Battle Intro: Hopeless Masquerade is the first of the fighting games to feature this.
  • Beam Spam: Every single character, with Shou being the worst offender.
  • Beyond the Impossible: In Impossible Spell Card, Seija is being hunted by humans and youkai who are "cheating" by using spell cards that are considered impossible to dodge. In normal gameplay, you counter this with magic items that also let you "cheat", however, to get the highest rating, you have to forsake the artifacts and dodge the "un-dodgeable" spells on your own.
  • Bonus Dungeon: Where the extra boss hangs out.
  • Boss Banter: Usually restricted to before and after fights, but the final boss in Ten Desires is eventually accompanied by her flunkies, who start taunting the player while the fight is still going on.
  • Boss Rush: The entirety of Shoot the Bullet, Double Spoiler, Impossible Spell Card, and Violet Detector is this.
  • Boss Subtitles: Everybody gets these, even most characters from the side materials, and they're known to change as well. Head over to the Touhou Wiki for the full list. The notable exception is Junko, who despite being a Final Boss has no official title; her in-game profile simply says "(Nameless Being)" where her title would be, likely because she's purified herself of all identifying information.
  • Boss Warning Siren: In Subterranean Animism, Utsuho Reiuji, the nuclear-powered Hell raven girl (and final boss) of the game, has the distinction of prefixing each of her spell cards with klaxons while the text "CAUTION!!" flares on-screen.
  • Breaking Out: Highly Responsive To Prayers has many elements of this.
  • Brutal Bonus Level: Extra Stages. And the (so far) only Phantasm stage in Perfect Cherry Blossom.
  • Bullet Hell: The Touhou games are a well known example of the genre, quite possibly even more so than Cave's shooters, at least outside of Japan. Mind you, Cave shooters are commercial, while Touhou is doujin.
  • Calling Your Attacks: Any spell card declaration results in the name of the card showing up at the top/bottom of the screen. Also, in the fighting game Immaterial and Missing Power, you choose one specific spell card out of three for each of your life bars, and you cannot actually use them until you input a command to declare them.
  • Central Theme: Boundaries, both physical and metaphysical, as well as paradoxical dreams.
  • Cherry Tapping: Hopeless Masquerade includes special animations if someone lost due to this.
  • Chromosome Casting: Most entries in the franchise feature exclusively female characters.
  • Clever Crows: Aya Shameimaru is a Crow Tengu Paparazzi who publishes a rumor mill tabloid; if not an outright trickster, she's at least clever and annoying. There's also Utsuho Reiuji, a nuclear-powered hell raven who's a bit more... straightforward. Fan interpretation is split on whether Utsuho is just an idiot, or if all of her brainpower is focused on nuclear physics.
  • Climax Boss: Typically, the Stage 4 boss has the most lavish presentation of any boss in the main game barring the Final Boss and has different attack patterns depending on not just the difficulty level but which character you're using.
  • Close-Contact Danger Benefit: Most games starting from Touhou Gensokyo ~ Lotus Land Story have a graze mechanic accompanied by a sharp pop/crackle sound and small white particles flying off from the hitbox area. Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil increases the value of bullet cancels instead, as well as giving a raw score bonus at the end of every stage. Later games would increase the value of point items.
  • Clothing Damage: If there is a dialogue after a boss fight, the loser often has her clothing damaged. Downplayed, since the damage includes dusty hair, torn sleeves and ribbons, and everything else perfectly fine.
    • One interesting case is the dialogue after you beat Marisa in Fairy Wars, where it's Cirno who has her clothing damaged instead of Marisa.
    • Similarly, Remilia will also look beaten up after defeating Utsuho in Hisoutensoku.
  • Code of Honour: The Spell Card Rules, which are based around allowing humans and youkai to fight without destroying Gensokyo.
  • Contractual Boss Immunity: Ex-Bosses will not receive any damage from bombs during their own spellcards and any given Final Boss will probably also have the same immunity during their last spellcard.
  • Colour-Coded for Your Convenience:
    • Red items give power, while blue items give points. After Mountain of Faith, green items (small green circles in DDC) increase the value of Point Items.
    • In Ten Desires, Blue Spirits increase the Point Item value, Purple Spirits are Life Pieces, and Green Spirits are Bomb Pieces.
    • Similarly, Red UFOs in UFO give Life Shards, Green UFOs give bombs, and Blue UFOs give points, although Flashing UFOs invert the item type.
  • Computers Are Fast: Not present in the normal Shoot Em Up games, but have fun beating Lunatic AI in the two-player games.
  • The Computer Shall Taunt You: In the PC-98 games, with the exception of Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream, after completing a playthrough, the game rates you according to how well you played, and if you're rated poorly, will throw you an insult such as "Kind of bad" or "A failure of a person". It's also Inverted in that the game will praise you if you get a good rating. Oddly, in the second, fourth and fifth games, the rating system is biased against you in the main story, where the game may insult you even if you win without continues, but biased in your favor in the Extra Stages, where it may praise you even if you don't make it to the boss.
  • Cosmetic Award: Clearing a scene with a high enough score in Shoot the Bullet or Double Spoiler unlocks commentary from Aya or Hatate. Score has no other purpose.
  • Contrived Coincidence: "Punk Rock in my Touhou" sounds completely strange out of context, but it actually predicted the next two games. The name of the band, "Chojuu Gigaku", comes from "gigaku", one of the oldest forms of masked plays in Japan, also known for its heavy use of taiko drums, and "choujuu giga", a set of scrolling images primarily known as being farces of their time period. Come Kokoro (whose Noh plays were influenced by gigaku) being influenced by Mamizou (who has a Spell Card in said game of the exact same images from choujuu giga) and Raiko (who is a Tsukumogami of a taiko drum set) and you have early Japanese dance history in a few games.
  • Costume Exaggeration: Reimu originally wore a realistic Miko outfit; however, after the Continuity Reboot she switched to a more stylised and less practical version, complete with detached sleeves. Sanae also wears a similar outfit.
  • Criss-Cross Attack:
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Impossible Spell Card features a camera that works similarly to Aya's camera in Shoot the Bullet and Double Spoiler, but in ISC, you take pictures with X as opposed to Z in StB/DS. Cue StB/DS players dying a lot when they try to take pictures with Z.
    • If you're used to the modern Windows games, when you play the older games, you will often move to the POC area and wonder why you can't collect all the items on screen. Older Windows games needs full power before you can collect all items on screen when in POC while the modern ones doesn't need full power to do so. Also if you're so used to the Windows games, PC-98 games doesn't have that kind of feature.
  • Dark World: Downplayed. The final stage of Hopeless Masquerade is the Human Village, but at nighttime. While daytime Human Village is one of the more colorful stages, with a lot of villagers watching and cheering. The night version, on the other hand, is dark and bleak, with the spectators standing still and wearing creepy white masks due to Kokoro absorbing their emotions.
  • Defeat Equals Explosion: For bosses in the shooting games. Characters can also explode in the fighting game Hopeless Masquerade, depending on how they are defeated. Note that danmaku fights are non-lethal ā€” the player character often has a chat with the boss after defeating her ā€” so the explosion is presumably just a showy special effect.
  • Desolation Shot: In Mystic Square, the Amazing Technicolor Battlefield disappears when you dispel Shinki's penultimate spell and blast her wings off. The background of the battle's final phase is a slow pan down over Makai, which is now on fire as a result of the fight.
  • Divine Birds: Played with when a Yataragasu is eaten by an ordinary hell raven youkai, who gains the power of nuclear fusion from it. This was orchestrated by the goddess Kanako, as part of her plan from shifting her worship from lakes and mountains to technology.
  • Drums of War: Raiko Horikawa is a drum tsukumogami with a thunder-god motif, meaning her attacks and theme heavily feature drums.
  • Dual Boss:
    • Yuki and Mai in Mystic Square.
    • The Prismriver sisters in Perfect Cherry Blossom.
    • Sunny Milk, Luna Child and Star Sapphire in Fairy Wars.
    • Seiga and Yoshika in Ten Desires.
    • Miko, Tojiko, and Futo for one of the former's spellcards in the same game ā€” although Miko does not do a single thing during it.
    • Reimu, Miko, and Byakuren in Kokoro's Hopeless Masquerade story mode. Reimu fights by herself, but during spellcards, in the first spell, Miko joins in the attack. In the second spell, Byakuren does tag with Reimu. Third and fourth spells? The religious trinity itself, Reimu assisted by Miko and Byakuren.
    • The Tsukumo sisters, usually fought one at a time during regular gameplay in Double Dealing Character, unite as the ex-stage midbosses.
    • During the boss fight against Hecatia Lapizlazuli in Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, normally she takes turns attacking you with Junko, the game's Final Boss. However, for the finale, they attack together.
    • Mai Teireida and Satono Nishida first appear as the midbosses for Stages 4 and 5, respectively, of Hidden Star in Four Seasons, before coming together to serve as the Stage 5 bosses. Yes, the gimmick of the Stage 5 boss this time is being a Dual Boss. They later reappear as the midbosses of the Extra Stage.
  • Dynamic Difficulty: 4-6 have a system where the bullets become faster and denser over time. In the case of 4 and 5, it's somewhat tied to how well you're doing, but in 6, it just keeps going up until you die, which resets it.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:

  • Easy-Mode Mockery: For most part, it's actually Inverted. The only games that punish players for playing on Easy are Lotus Land Story, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (where the games ends at Stage 5), Mountain of Faith (where the player faces the Final Boss but gets the bad ending regardless), and in Subterranean Animism (due to an oversight, Easy clear relocks the Extra stage), though not all games unlock the Extra Stage after an Easy clear. For the most part, the description of Easy difficulty level is rather friendly, such as "for people who are not good at shoot em ups" or "for people who are busy", with the mockery often instead being for Lunatic, describing it using words such as "this difficulty is a joke, feel free to bring booze" or "for weird people".
  • 11th-Hour Superpower: In Antinomy of Common Flowers, during Shion Yorigami's final spellcard, Reimu's spellcard meter recharges very quickly, allowing her to spam it.
  • Every 10,000 Points: In many games you get extends at certain score thresholds, usually starting at some number like ten million points and at increasing intervals thereafter.
  • Expansion Pack:
    • Touhou Hisoutensoku, an add-on to Scarlet Weather Rhapsody that introduces a new storyline and playable characters, including Meiling and Cirno.
    • Double Spoiler can be considered this for Shoot the Bullet, which was originally meant to be updated as new characters appeared.
    • Urban Legend in Limbo was ported to the PlayStation 4 gaming console, and will include new playable characters (such as Reisen sporting her Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom gun) and an all-new story mode that will take place after the original's story.
  • Fake Difficulty:
    • It's arguable that all of the Touhou games suffer from this, due to the ambiguity of the hitboxes on the bullets requiring more a ton of Trial-and-Error Gameplay, although that really comes with the Bullet Hell territory. Story of Eastern Wonderland was the worst about it though, as your hitbox was rather large, and if you died it would offset slightly — enough to make some previous safe spots no longer safe.
    • Undefined Fantastic Object's fifth stage clouds the screen with literally hundreds of Point and Power Items. Normally, this would be a great thing for scoring and power alike, but the items can often cover the bullets onscreen, usually resulting in a "WTF just hit me?" reaction from the player. Also, MarisaA uses very shiny lasers to attack, which shoot from four options around Marisa. Almost all of stage 5 uses very shiny bullets, approximately the same size as said options. It's not uncommon for a player to run into a bullet because they look almost exactly alike. The fact that the red bullets can also blend into the red background makes it even worse. This problem is present in Mountain of Faith and Subterranean Animism as well, though to a lesser extent.
  • Fictional Constellations: Youkai have their own constellations, distinct from those known by humans. Of particular note is that they consider the Big Dipper to be a dragon. Not just a pattern of stars that resembles a dragon, or is based on some mythological dragon, but an actual living dragon made up of stars that lives in the sky and seeks to swallow the North Star.
  • Field Power Effect:
    • SWR and Hisoutensoku have the weather system that can cause all kinds of effects from powered up spellcards to super armor and all hits counting as counters. Some spellcards and characters can manipulate this to their advantage.
    • Urban Legend in Limbo uses the Occult Ball system that, when active, creates one occult ball that the player can attempt to grab as well as one random field effect. These can range from the occult ball healing oneself or damaging the opponent, to causing the play area to shrink or creating outright tears in reality that drain health for as long as the effect lasts.
  • Fighting Game: Five and a half fighting game spinoffs: Immaterial and Missing Power, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and its Expansion Pack Touhou Hisoutensoku, Hopeless Masquerade, Urban Legend in Limbo and Antinomy of Common Flowers.
  • Fighting Your Friend:
    • Stage 4 of Lotus Land Story has you fighting whichever character you didn't choose. Only Reimu and Marisa were playable at this point.
    • It was repeated in stage 4 of Imperishable Night, which has you fighting either Reimu or Marisa, depending on the team you choose.
    • Much of the story of Immaterial and Missing Power, Phantasmagoria of Flower View, and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.
    • Hopeless Masquerade plays it straight and averts it at times. Reimu and Marisa fight each other in their own routes (they're probably used to it by now), but the buddhists and taoists never fight amongst themselves (except for stage 5 in Ichirin's and Futo's routes, but that's Mamizou in disguise both times). And then there's Koishi, who, while not being a part of the Myouren crew, still is a freshly converted buddhist, so her fighting against either Ichirin or Byakuren may or may not count.
  • First-Person Snapshooter:
    • The Gaiden Games Shoot the Bullet and Double Spoiler, in which you play a reporter whose sole method of dealing with enemies and bosses is taking pictures of them. Similarly, Violet Detector has you playing as Sumireko who does the same with her smartphone.
    • In Impossible Spell Card Seija can equip the Tengu's Toy Camera to both slots to imitate Aya.
  • Flawless Victory:
    • Capturing spell cards, which requires wiping the spell card's corresponding Life Meter segment or, in the case of a survival card, surviving it without losing any lives or bombs.
    • Fairy Wars gives golden medals for capturing cards without dying, bombing or freezing any bullets. That was probably ZUN's idea of a joke.
    • Impossible Spell Cards will recognize if you can beat an attack without cheating (although some passive effects can still be used), and the Achievement System has a secret achievement for players who beat every attack that way, with the description basically being ZUN asking people who got it to tell him in-person about it.
  • Flying Saucer: One of Mononobe no Futo's spellcards will sometimes cause one to smash into her enemy.
  • Four Is Death: The enemies of the fourth day of Impossible Spell Card are Yuyuko (a ghost), Yoshika (a jiang shi who's closer to being a zombie), and Seiga (a necromancer).
    • Yuyuko also appears as the first stage boss of Ten Desires, with the most spell cards of any Stage 1 Boss. Whereas her peers have two to three spellcards at most, she has four.
  • Genre Shift:
    • The first game on the PC-98 was basically Breakout or Arkanoid with Reimu hitting a ball. The second game was a shooter, but the closest one can get to the modern gameplay is with Mystic Square, the last PC-98 game.
    • The two Phantasmagorias; the other games are single-player scrolling shooters whilst Dim. Dream and Flower View are versus shooters.
    • Immaterial and Missing Power, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, Hisoutensoku, Hopeless Masquerade, Urban Legend in Limbo, and Antinomy of Common Flowers are 2-D fighters.
    • Nobody is entirely sure what to call Shoot the Bullet, Double Spoiler, and Violet Detector. ZUN calls Shoot the Bullet a "Danmaku photography game" in his notes for the game.
    • As seen from the overall theme of the series, while Touhou is always about a shrine maiden and a witch fighting against supernatural menace of the game, around Symposium of Post-Mysticism there's a notable nuance of political drama between the keep increasing number of factions within Gensokyo over their influence in the human village.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: In Hisoutensoku, there was a giant catfish from nowhere as the final boss for Meiling's route.
  • Guide Dang It!: Woe the players who die several times over trying to deal with Shion's "The Most Despicable and Disastrous God of Destitution and Misery" spell card in Antinomy of Common Flowers. So, what are you supposed to do? Well, the kanji won't hurt you... if you dash into them. They even refill your spell meter. No one tells you this.
  • Harder Than Hard:
    • Lunatic mode. It's aptly named.
    • In the 1.10 update of Antinomy of Common Flowers, Overdrive mode is added as a new difficulty.
  • Hitbox Dissonance: Intentional, as the games are quite impossible until you learn to exploit it to the fullest. The radius of the hitboxes of large bullets are smaller than the radius of the sprites, so it is typically possible to move the player's hitbox into the very edge of the bullet's sprite and not die. In addition, the boss' hitboxes are usually purposefully larger than their sprites in order to make it easy to shoot the boss.
  • Hitodama Light:
    • As the princess of a ghost palace (and a ghost herself), Yuyuko Saigyouji seems to be continuously surrounded by hitodama. Yuyuko can use them as an Attack Drone in combat.
    • Her servant, Youmu Konpaku, also has one of these next to her at all times, which happens to be half of her own soul ā€” because she's only half ghost (don't ask us how that works). She can use the hitodama as an Attack Drone in combat.
    • Rin Kaenbyou is surrounded by what appears to be small balls of flaming skulls ā€” appropriate, since her job is to carry off corpses into the underworld. In some spell cards, she is accompanied by zombie fairies, which look pretty similar (though a later guidebook claims that they're just normal fairies who like to dress up).
  • Hit Stop: Some high-power spellcards in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and Hisoutensoku, like Komachi's "Unpitiable Pitiable Life", Suwako's "Mishaguji-sama" and Meiling's "Light Lotus Palm" use this effect.
  • Hold the Line: Some of the bosses have spell cards that make them invulnerable, and you can't do anything other than dodge and wait for time to run out. Those are commonly known as "Survival" or "Time-Out" Spellcards.
  • Inexplicably Speaks Fluent Alien: Either this trope, Aliens Speaking Japanese, or some magical version of Translator Microbes is why the Moon-dwelling Ambiguously Human Lunarians are able to converse with the heroines.
  • Jack of All Stats: Reimu tends to have the most balances shot types in terms of power and range.
  • Kaizo Trap:
    • After beating bosses, it takes a second before the projectiles turn into tokens. So if you aren't careful, you can win, but still die. This can cause a glitch in games that use the second version of the engine (Mountain of Faith to Undefined Fantastic Object; Shoot the Bullet uses that engine as well, but this glitch doesn't occur because of different stage mechanic). Basically if this happens at the end of third stage, and you'll respawn after the "Stage Complete" message, you'll be stuck in that stage. You'll still have full control of the character, but some people reported being unable of alt-tabbing out of the game in fullscreen mode. Subverted with Story of Eastern Wonderland's final boss, beating Mima's final phase immediately boots you into the cutscene mode, even if the game was in middle of processing death on your last life, as well as Imperishable Night, which specifically grants invincibility immediately upon defeating the boss's last pattern.
    • Last Spells are often this. When you think you have defeated the enemy, you rush to the top of the screen to trigger the auto-collect and the enemy respawns right on you, giving no reaction time.
    • In Highly Responsive to Prayers, there is a slight delay between clearing the stage and the score screen. A careless or unlucky could lose a life over getting hit by the Yin-yang orb or enemy shots. Thankfully, boss battles avert this.
  • Lag Cancel: Urban Legend in Limbo has the "Fast-talk Declaration" mechanic where any action can be interrupted with a spell card declare by pressing Spell button rapidly twice.
  • Made of Explodium:
    • There's a shot-type and four separate spellcards based on frogs blowing up.
    • Artful Sacrifice. Yes, Alice uses gunpowder as filling for her dolls. And it results in a hilarious dialogue between Alice and Marisa in Subterranean Animism.
  • Magic Harms Technology: Zigzagged, while electronic devices can work in Gensokyo as long as you have a means of powering them, the Great Hakurei Barrier prevents wireless communications from cell phones and the like from connecting to the Outside World and vice versa.
  • Magic Missile Storm: With the series being a fantasy-themed Bullet Hell series, this trope is basically the premise.
  • Marathon Boss: By shmup standards, anyway. Each game has a Superboss which typically takes 8-10 minutes to defeat.
  • Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
    • The Really 700 Years Old goddess Suwako Moriya from Hisoutensoku. Her standing is actually crouching, and her crouching is conjuring a lily pad underneath her, making her taller. Her regular walking is slowly hopping like a frog (and while hopping she counts as being in the air), and her ground dash is swimming underground, making her invincible to all attacks. Her air movement is her flapping her arms around, and is limited to several directions. Her attacks are relatively normal, though.
    • Koishi Komeiji is the whacky fighter of Hopeless Masquerade. To start, like Suwako, her dash is her prancing around while invisible, making her immune to all attacks. Unlike Suwako, her main whackiness is in her attacks. For most of her attacks, she doesn't instantly perform them when you input the commands. Instead, she "stocks" them and use it automatically when certain conditions are met. For example, her 8B is performed only when she's under the opponent, and Catch and Rose is activated only after you hit the opponent with another attack. Also, she needs about 1-2 seconds before the moves are ready to activate, so you really need to predict the situations beforehand.
    • To a lesser extent, Byakuren, who needs to charge her specials first before being able to actually use it.
  • Mickey Mousing:
    • Some levels try to perfectly synchronize themselves with their music, to the extent where you get bonus enemies to destroy if you kill the midboss quickly, and perhaps even skip a pattern if you kill the first few too slowly. Part of this have to do with the fact that ZUN composes the music first, then creates and sync the levels and characters to it.
    • In Double Dealing Character, Raiko's last two spell cards are in sync with the music.
  • Midair Bobbing: In the fighting games, characters who hover will usually bob up and down, such as Patchouli and Cirno in their standing idle pose, as well as almost all characters in Hopeless Masquerade and Urban Legend in Limbo, where combat happens in midair.
  • More Dakka:
    • Taking your time in some of Imperishable Night's last words will eventually result in the bosses reaching the bullet limit, causing some of the patterns to glitch up. This is just about the closest you can get to having enough dakka.
    • If you don't have enough, try Touhou Ultra. It has so much more it can screw up patterns completely.
  • Multiple Endings: At the very least, each shot type gets its own ending. Beyond that, specifics vary:
    • Most games give you a character-specific bad ending for beating the game after using a continue. The Phantasmagoria games don't care, and Fairy Wars just doesn't give you an ending if you continue. Mountain of Faith gives you one regardless of continues if you played on easy, and in Lotus Land Story and the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, after beating the fifth stage in easy mode, you proceed to the bad ending directly.
    • The games that have route selections give you an ending based on which route you take.
    • Imperishable Night combines the two above into something odd. You get a Bad Ending for running out of continues (or lives on Final B). You get a normal ending for facing Eirin as the final boss, who you'll be locked into fighting if it's your first time playing with that character or if you continued.
    • Ten Desires gives you a 'Parallel Ending' if you beat the game on normal or higher with at least three bombs in stock (bombs from unused lives don't count).
    • Unconnected Marketeers has Alternate Endings which can be unlocked on a second playthrough or beyond by achieving the requirements for a good ending with a Blank Card in your inventory.
  • Multiple Life Bars: Each life bar represents an attack pattern. Stage bosses have at least four patterns.
  • Nintendo Hard:
    • It's fairly easy to get to the end by arcade shmup standards, as it wasn't designed to take your money. Doesn't stop it from being frustrating when you're going for that elusive one-credit clear, though. Especially on higher difficulties, getting a good ending is quite a feat. With that said, although the games are hard, they are also fair; most patterns are generally good with being about learning how to avoid them rather than just tossing cheap shots at you, so every death is your own fault.
    • Games 10 through 12 made things worse by having continues send you back to the beginning of the stage (thankfully reverted back in Fairy Wars) and removing the option to increase your base lives above three (this one still stands).
    • Shoot the Bullet is 11 levels of the most sadistic, multi-layered spell cards in the whole series. Unlike any of the other games, you have no extra lives, no bombs, you lose when you time out, your only weapon is a camera that needs to be charged and manually aimed for long distance attacks, and some bosses are only vulnerable for a fraction of a second. Lastly, the difficulty is not adjustable at all; while the scenes start simple enough that anyone can clear them with some practice, the game ups difficulty around every other stage; by the Stage 9 you start seeing scenes involve Lunatic level of dodging. You do take on each spell card individually and have infinite retries, but the incredible difficulty makes clearing it impossible for most people.
    • The sequel, Double Spoiler, is somewhat better thanks to improved camera controls and a new unlockable character that makes most cards easier to beat. It's still harder than the normal Touhou games, though. ZUN even had this on his blog.
      Warning: Compared to the other works in the series, the difficulty level of this game in terms of full completion is rather high, so be prepared.
    • Even fan-made crossover games fall into this, probably a direct result of putting danmaku in genres where you're actually affected by gravity and don't have a tiny hitbox.
    • Touhou arranges are a somewhat common source for licensed songs in modern arcade Rhythm Games such as the BEMANI series and maimai. Most of the time in these games, licensed songs never have endgame-level charts. Touhou arranges, however, are an exception to that rule; expect many Touhou arranges to have a rating of 10 out of 10 on their hardest charts in jubeat, at least 16 out of 20 on SOUND VOLTEX, 10 out of 10 on the arcade versions of Groove Coaster, and so on.
    • For the really masochistic people, there's Ultra mode hacks, or cranking up the framerate to play at 150% speed...
    • Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom takes this trope up to eleven. It uses a new game mode called PointDevice mode where you get infinite retries and can start from the beginning of checkpoints called Chapters if you die. However, the game is overall much, much harder than the standard Touhou game. How hard you ask? ZUN modeled it after I Wanna Be the Guy-style gameplay! And that's not even going into playing on Legacy mode, which removes the infinite retries and plays like a standard Touhou game.
    • While the games may be easier than many other Bullet Hell games in terms of patterns, Touhou lacks an Anti-Frustration Feature that many of these other games have: the game does not slow down for you when there are a large number of bullets on the screen; you have to dodge them in real time. Any slowdown is the result of your PC not being able to handle the game, and in fact, abusing slowdown (often reflected by a high slowdown percentage in ranking tables and reply lists) is grounds for disqualification in many score attack circles.
  • Non-Indicative Difficulty:
    • This happens to some spellcards in the series particularly since easier difficulties tend to slow down the bullets, which sometimes just makes the patterns denser, leaves more bullets on the screen, and requires more micrododging. A good example is Touhou Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith, Kanako's last spellcard, on Easy and Normal: see this video for a comparison.
    • Sometimes, on higher difficulties spellcards get replaced by ones that don't work quite the same way as the previous versions (ranging from difference in how the bullets are spawned to straight up not having much in common with the other version). There are cases where the version on higher difficulty is actually easier to deal with, or at the very least easier to get into the "flow", such as Marisa's Lunatic version of Shoot the Moon compared to Normal's Eartlight Ray.
    • The difficulty system in the games in general isn't always what you expect. For example, both Perfect Cherry Blossom and Imperishable Night are considered to be rather decent starting points, but where Easy in the latter makes the game noticeably easier by removing various aspects of attacks or spellcards, Easy in the former has most of the meaningful differences be on the final boss, with Stage 5 boss and her complex attacks being barely any easier (and the infamous Merlin nons being as awful as on other difficulties)
  • Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: An in-game feature later games gives you a very tiny window after you are hit to bomb, thereby preventing a loss of a life. The eighth game actually makes an entire gameplay mechanic based around this, although that instance is more of a Big Damn Heroes moment as the teammate of the one that was hit comes in and uses the bomb.
  • No-Sell:
    • The final card of the final boss is immune to bombs, though they still clear the bullets away (though usually with some diminished effect, like a smaller radius or only getting half of them or somesuch). You'll have to grind down their health the normal way.
      • The only exception to the rule is Utsuho Reiuji, the final boss in Subterranean Animism, which gains armor instead. In other words, you can continue doing reduced damage to her with a bomb, but this comes with the cost that the bombs don't clean the bullets in the screen.
    • All Extra and Phantasm stage bosses have this effect for all spellcards, except in Fairy Wars. In the versus shooters they are completely invincible for a certain period of time.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: Standard for Bullet Hell game protagonists. Curiously enough, when you meet playable characters as bosses they gain Super-Toughness instead.
  • Pacifist Run:
    • The bosses' attacks are all on timers, and it's possible to beat them just by outlasting them. They'll even blow up at the end regardless of whether you fired any shots at them. Since this requires inhuman dodging skills on some of the harder attacks, it has become a favorite Self-Imposed Challenge for Touhou gamers.
    • Most of the extra bosses actually have a secret difficulty on their last (or second-to-last, in Yukari's case) spell card, triggered by attempting to go pacifist. Normally, those spell cards start off easy, but get harder as the boss loses HP. To prevent cheesing the game and trivializing what should be a climactic end by just waiting, the spell card will have an extremely hard pattern, even harder than the normal final pattern, starting at 30 seconds left if the boss has not lost enough HP.
    • Ironically and counterintuitively, this is the easiest way to defeat the Phantasmagoria AI. The computer opponents basically only get hit when they want to, easily demonstrated by watching two Lunatic A.I.s fight each other (it can be hours before someone gets hit, as they seem to be capable of getting hit without taking damage). The number of bullets on screen only gets more dense over time if both players are killing enemies, using spell cards, and reflecting more bullets back each time. Level 3 spellcards are also safe, as they cannot have any of their bullets be reflected. If one player never shoots anything, the feedback loop never happens, as the AI's only means of sending bullets at you will be killing fairies, and bullets stay at a manageable level. Bullet density means nothing to the AI, so playing normally only makes it worse for you. The AI will get hit on purpose after a certain time limit is reached, even if there is only one bullet for them to get hit by.
  • Parabolic Power Curve: It's generally accepted that the stage 5 boss will be harder than the final boss, or at least as hard. The reason for this is that stage 5 bosses tend to have more experimental or random patterns, with fewer bullets but much trickier dodging. Final bosses are all about large quantities of bullets at all times, but because they're fired in easily predicted patterns, they're not nearly as challenging for experienced players, even if it's their first time fighting that particular boss.
  • Pinball Scoring: Typical scores after beating the game are in the millions. Highscores are in the billions. You can score more points on the final level than the rest of the game combined.
  • Recurring Boss: Despite having tons of characters, there have been many instances of characters appearing outside their debut games as bosses, as well as bosses in one game being faced multiple times. Discounting spin-offs like Shoot The Bullet, Double Spoiler, Impossible Spellcard, and Violet Detector, which are essentially Boss Games dedicated entirely to having previous bosses showing off, as well as the Fighting Games, we can mention:
    • Cirno has midboss appearances in Perfect Cherry Blossom and Double Dealing Character, both in Stage 1. In the earlier case, it's winter, Cirno's home season, while in the latter, the stage is the Misty Lake, the very same stage in which Cirno debuted in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.
    • Counting the PC-98 era games, Imperishable Night marks the return of Reimu and Marisa to the boss scene. Marisa latter gets a spotlight opportunity as the Superboss of Fairy Wars.
    • Daiyousei and Lily White have appeared a few times as well, with both appearing as midbosses in Fairy Wars and the latter also making a return in Hidden Star in Four Seasons in Stage 3 (which is the "spring stage", the very season for which Lily White heralds its arrival).
    • Sanae returns from Mountain of Faith as the Extra Stage midboss of Subterranean Animism. Makes sense, since the stage is the Moriya Shrine rather than the underground like the other stages.
    • Of all people, Yuyuko, the Final Boss of Perfect Cherry Blossom, reappears as the first boss of Ten Desires. In the same game, Kogasa from Undefined Fantastic Object is the Stage 3 midboss, and Nue, the Superboss of UFO, is TD's Extra Stage midboss.
    • While it's normal for a previously defeated boss to reappear later as the midboss of a later stage in the same game, we have to make a special mention to the Final Boss of Hidden Star in Four Seasons, because she's pulling double duty as the Superboss(where the Stage 6 confrontation is where she's actually holding back, unlike in the Extra Stage). The only boss in the series that does something similar is Yuka, who was the boss for Stages 5 and 6 of her debut game.
  • Recursive Ammo: Some spell card bullets create their own bullets.
  • Redemption Demotion: Playable characters are never anywhere near as strong as when they were enemies. Played straightest in the fighting games, where the main threat in single-player are the various unlimited-duration, amped-up spell cards that you of course don't have access to.
  • Scenery Porn: Next time you watch a replay of any game from Mountain of Faith onward, ignore the pretty bullets and look at the backgrounds. They're absolutely stunning.
  • Schizophrenic Difficulty: Significantly more the case in the photography games, which have things like Double Spoiler's 11th level being easier than its 8th level, and the bizarrely difficult 3rd level of Shoot The Bullet. Great Fairy Wars is also infamous for its difficulty spike, even for a Touhou game.
  • Schmuck Bait: About the upper quarter of the screen is an area called Point of Collection, or POC. If you're in this area with maximum power (TH06-TH08) or in general (TH09 and on), all items that enemies drop will float towards your character. This is essential to racking up points. Except... it's highly recommended you stay away from the POC area unless you know you can sweep around. Sometimes it's too tempting to grab up all the items and then enemies suddenly come out to take a life.
  • Scoring Points: The mainline games have scoring systems. The PC-98 games' scoring tend to be pretty simple, but the Windows games make figuring scoring out a chore.
  • Semantic Superpower: Almost every named character has a special ability of what they are "capable of to a degree" (ē؋åŗ¦ć®čƒ½åŠ›), which is intentionally vague, accounts for Alternate Character Reading, and is sometimes self-proclaimed. Which lets them do practically anything as long as it's within a theme. For example, Yukari Yakumo's "manipulating boundaries" ranges from Thinking Up Portals, to being a Reality Warper and Meta Girl, while Reimu's "float" instead of "flying" means "floating through life", turning it into a version of Winds of Destiny, Change!.
  • Serial Escalation: The whole series could be characterized as "And here, ZUN thought if you can win after 20 tries, the game is too easy".
  • Sincerest Form of Flattery: Wondering why some game mechanics look a lot like DonPachi's and Darius? ZUN is a Fanboy of Cave's and Taito's shooters, praising their stories and characters.
  • Smart Bomb:
    • "Spell cards" are Vancian style magic attacks. Whenever someone uses a spell card, the screen goes to an abnormal background, a portrait of the character appears on the screen, the name of the spell card is shown in the corner, and a circle surrounds the user, getting smaller and smaller until the effect runs out. When a boss uses a spell card, a bullet pattern appears on the screen. When a player uses a spell card, they use a Smart Bomb.
    • In the 2-player Phantasmagoria of Flower View, the game uses a Split Screen approach in which using a spell card Smart Bombs your side of the screen and puts bullets on your opponent's side of the screen.
    • It's a notable source of Gameplay and Story Segregation, since in Imperishable Night the playable characters become bosses and use their Smart Bomb attacks on you as bullet patterns which look nothing like each other. This is lampshaded in the in-game commentary, where the author says, "This is another spell card that doesn't look much like when the player uses it."
  • Sound Test: Each game has a Music Room that lets you listen to the tracks you've heard in-game. Earlier games let you listen to them regardless of whether or not you've done this, but still hid the tracks' names. With the exception of the fighting games, each track also has developer commentary, which is named "Music Comments".
  • Spinning Paper: Appears in Hopeless Masquerade at the end of a match, with the headlines indicating who won.
  • Sprite/Polygon Mix: All of the Windows era main series games uses this. Hopeless Masquerade is the first of the fighters to incorporate this.
  • Stalked by the Bell:
  • Step into the Blinding Fight: The Night Sparrow Youkai, Mystia Lorelei, who can cause night-blindness with her songs. In the boss fight against her, this is implemented as you being unable to see anything except a small area around your character.
  • Super Move Portrait Attack: The player's and the boss's spell cards. Utsuho's nuclear-based spell cards come with warning sirens and big yellow "CAUTION!!" tape on top of that.
  • Trial-and-Error Gameplay:
    • When Mima flashes in Story of Eastern Wonderland it means she's about to ram you. Moving to the side is recommended.
    • Yuuka has an attack more or less guaranteed to kill you the first time you see them in both fights in Lotus Land Story. In her first fight, there's her so-called "Master Spark"; it's very obvious that she's about to do something, but there's no indication that you need to be on the side of the screen to survive. In the second fight, she has an attack that places a shrinking circle under the player: Gamer instinct is to get as far away as possible... and the attack hits everywhere ''except'' in the circle.
    • The fourth stage of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil has certain enemies that will cancel all bullets on screen when they die. The stage is much more passable if you know about them, but a first-time player won't.
      • In the same game, the normal bullet pattern Remilia uses after her second spell card is essentially a cheap shot against anyone not expecting it/not being careful enough, because it comes out WICKED fast.
    • Mokou's aptly named Forgiveness "Honest Man's Death" has a gimmick that's completely unique in the entire series: The laser won't kill you if you move towards it when it's firing. Most people have to get help with this one online ā€” it is actually the case that the laser's hitbox only activates when it passes through your position at the point in time when it was originally fired: moving towards the laser's point of origin at any point after this will save you. Of course, this still requires some trial and error to figure out alone.
    • Yuugi's Four Devas Arcanum "Knock Out In Three Steps" is basically impossible to capture unless you already know what to expect. It relies on you being in the right place before the bullets start moving.
    • There's several instances in the ENTIRE series where memorizing where enemies come from at which point in each stage and destroying them as soon as possible greatly reduces the number of bullets you have to dodge. It's safe to say that it is virtually impossible to not be subject to this when playing these games.
    • Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom takes this trope up to eleven by making it the main gameplay mode. By dividing every stage into several "chapters", making checkpoints after each one is cleared, disabling lives, and granting infinite retries, the point of the mode is to clear the whole game on what is essentially a game-induced No Death Run. This is necessary to grant the average player even a snowball's chance in hell of clearing the game, because "Nintendo Hard" does not do it justice. For the record, "Legacy Mode", the other gameplay mode which is standard Touhou-style, is for the hardcore.
  • True Final Boss:
    • In Imperishable Night, there are two versions of Stage 6. Though both Eirin and Kaguya are considered Final Bosses, the actual Final Boss of the story is Kaguya, but the player must first clear the Eirin version of Stage 6 before being able to choose to fight Kaguya in a new playthrough.
    • In Hidden Star in Four Seasons, the heroines fail to defeat Okina due to her final attack being too lopsided in her favor (she strips you of your options, release ability, and Power, and uses it to create a difficult multi-stage attack) and end up running away. Thus, they regroup and learn to harness a new power before invading Ushirodo-no-Kuni again and challenging Okina to a rematch, which is the Extra Stage of this game. This makes it a first for the series, where the Extra Stage is actually truly "Stage 7" and a continuation of the story, and the first game where the Superboss is also the True Final Boss.note 
    • In Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, the script goes out of its way to say that things are not as they seem. Even the final boss points out how suspicious the events are, making the heroines question their motives. This only momentarily stops them from beating her up like they do with other final bosses. Turns out sheā€™s completely correct; Keiki was telling the truth when she said she was protecting the human world. With Keiki out of the way, Extra Boss Saki goes on to invade both Hell and Gensokyo before being confronted by the heroines. It follows a similar pattern to that of Hidden Star in Four Seasons, the second to have the Superboss act as the True Final Boss.
  • Turns Red:
    • Almost all the the spell cards in Shoot the Bullet, Double Spoiler, and Violet Detector as you take successful shots.
      • This appears to be what those spell cards would look like from Easy mode to Lunatic difficulty.
    • Inverted in the main series, where some spell cards will speed up if the player isn't damaging the boss fast enough.
  • Unexpected Shmup Level: In the 1.10 update of Antinomy of Common Flowers, Tenshi's final spell uses mechanics similar to a regular Touhou game, but the moving is slow and float-like, and it's horizontally-oriented. Melee shots can be used, Jo'on's basic special move is used like a shot type, and her spell card is used like a bomb.
  • Units Not to Scale: With the exception of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, bosses are markedly larger than the player, regardless of how large they're supposed to actually be. This is also lampshaded by ZUN. Occasionally, fan art makes jokes based on how large the hitbox of a boss is.
  • Vanilla Unit: If Reimu has a needle-based shot type, it probably serves as the "vanilla" shot type: the needles only go forward and have no special abilities, but they have high power to compensate. Marisa's missile-based shot types may have this property too. However, there are exceptions, like Subterranean Animism giving the Needle Reimu shot type the unique ability to warp between the left and right edges of the screen.

    Non-gameplay trope, A-M 
  • Aborted Arc:
    • Rumia's profile in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil mentions that the ribbon in her hair is actually an ofuda that she is unable to touch, heavily implying it to be a seal of some kind. This has never been mentioned since then, and Rumia has been relegated almost exclusively to cameos in official material.
    • Eirin's profile in Imperishable Night her being surprised to meet Sakuya for reasons only she is aware of, suggesting a connection to Sakuya's Mysterious Past. Despite both having made multiple appearances since then, a connection between the two hasn't as much as suggested.
    • Sakuya's backstory in general. In e-mails he exchanged with fans, ZUN said he would elaborate on Sakuya's past in future works. Those e-mails were sent back when there were only seven games in the series, yet Sakuya's backstory still hasn't been touched on. The closest there has been was Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, where Akyuu comes up with a possible story about Sakuya being a former vampire hunter, but it's explicitly pure speculation.
    • At the end of Mamizou's profile in Ten Desires, it's mentioned that she would go on to start a conflict with the kitsune of Gensokyo, but that would be a story for "another time". While Mamizou has been a major character since then, no such conflict has played out, over a decade since her introduction.
    • The end of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature seemed to be setting up Keiki as a recurring character, with her talking about her plans to move to Gensokyo with Mayumi and the human spirits under her. This has not been referenced once since then, indeed, Keiki has yet to make an appearance in any of ZUN's works since her introduction in 2019.
  • Adaptational Curves: Several of the girls have differing levels of curviness depending on the game and artists involved, including among the official titles. For instance, Komachi is noticeably well-endowed in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, but not as much in Phantasmagoria of Flower View. One of the most noteworthy characters subject to this is Sakuya, whose differing bust size between various titles gave rise to her numerous "pad" memes.
  • Adaptation Expansion: Some of the mythologies Touhou draws inspiration from are expanded. For example, in the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a pair of old bamboo cutters found a baby princess Kaguya inside a bamboo stalk and adopted her. When she came of age, she revealed that she came from the moon and has to go back, leaving an elixir of immortality. In Touhou, Kaguya is an immortal herself. She was a Lunarian noble who got exiled to Earth for drinking the elixir of immortality, bringing "impurity" to the "pure" moon. Also, she didn't actually return to the moon, but wandered around Earth for several centuries before ending up in Gensokyo.
  • Adventure-Friendly World: Much of the Universe Compendiums are devoted towards explaining how Gensokyo is the perfect setting for a series of Shoot 'Em Up games while still remaining largely pleasant.
  • The Ageless:
    • Magicians who become "complete" gain this ā€” they stop aging, but disease may or may not still kill them, as they're still as fragile as humans.
    • Lunarians don't age, since it's apparently caused by "impurity", which they've isolated themselves from. They can die by non-natural means, though, and it's implied that despite their efforts, they still carry small traces of impurity from before they moved to the moon and will eventually die of old age, just much, much slower.
    • Toyosatomimi no Miko and company were seeking this, as was Byakuren.
  • The Alcoholic:
    • At least every other picture of ZUN shows him drinking alcohol, with several bottles of it at his side, or both.
    • In the series canon, oni are the heaviest drinkers out of everyone, followed closely by the tengu, and the cast really loves their alcohol in any shape or form in the Expanded Universe.
    • Reimu is such an alcoholic, she bullies Sanae for choosing not to drink, and even calls drinking her chosen method of worshiping the gods.
  • All There in the Manual: See that list of side materials up above? That's where the vast majority of the world-building is. On a smaller scale, a considerable amount of any given game's story is in its prologue and character profiles.
  • Apple of Discord: Mokou implies that during Iwakasa's mission at the top of Mount Fuji to dispose of the Hourai Elixir, many of the soldiers they traveled with tried to take the Elixir for themselves and were presumably killed by Konohana-Sakuyahime. And eventually, even Mokou got trapped by the Elixir's lure leading her to kill Iwakasa.
  • Arc Welding: According to an interview with ZUN for Ten Desires, this was said game's intention: to connect the new trilogy, (Mountain of Faith, Subterranean Animism, and Undefined Fantastic Object) to the older trilogy (Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Perfect Cherry Blossom, and Imperishable Night). Due to a certain fan theory, Ten Desires may have been able to connect to every Windows game in one go.
  • Art Evolution: Inevitable in a long-running series like this. There's a noticeable bump in quality from Undefined Fantastic Object onwards. There was an even starker bump in quality come Unconnected Marketeers.
  • Artifact of Doom: The Occult Balls' true purpose is to take advantage of rumors to create a new Lunar Capital in Gensokyo. It would also have the unfortunate side-effect of killing everyone present.
  • Asian Rune Chant: Referenced in some of Sanae's spellcards.
  • Author Tract: Flat out defied. ZUN tends to have a lot of subjects on his mind, but also goes out of his way to try and be subtle and sensitive about various issues, thinking that doing otherwise would not be fun for those watching and would make him come across as preachy.
    • The closest thing to this would be maybe Hecatia's interview in AFiEU, and even then, it's still explained against the backdrop of the setting, making it fairly downplayed.
  • Autobots, Rock Out!:
    • Two songs, "A Tiny, Tiny Clever Commander" and "Nuclear Fusion", are uniquely in the rock genre by default, the former practically a synthtar and the first boss theme of UFO, the latter is simply epic and the final boss theme of SA.
    • The remix of one of Reimu's themes used in Hopeless Masquerade named "Colorful Path".
    • "Strawberry Crisis" in Po DD is the PC-98 take on this, utilizing several FM synth guitars.
    • The last word theme from Hopeless Masquerade.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: The Spellcard Rules fall into this, since it prefers beauty rather than lethality. ZUN himself lampshaded that:
    Beauty of danmaku is total nonsense for the bosses. If they really have the intent to kill someone, they won't even need 1/10 of those bullets.
  • Backstory Horror: Many characters have nasty things in their past, and Gensokyo itself was originally far more dangerous, but none of it ever comes up in the current storylines.
  • Batman Gambit: The entirety of Silent Sinner in Blue is Yukari using one to troll Eirin while wrapped in a Xanatos Gambit.
  • Battle Butler: Many penultimate bosses are a servant of the final boss and have very unlikely job descriptions for someone of their combat abilities:
    • In Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream Chiyuri is Yumemi's research assistant in "comparative physics".
    • Mystic Square and The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil both have Ninja Maids in the form of Yumeko and Sakuya.
    • Perfect Cherry Blossom introduces samurai gardener Youmu.
    • Komachi from Phantasmagoria of Flower View, whose official job is to be The Ferry Man of the Sanzu River.
    • Eirin and Reisen from Imperishable Night both fit the part, being Kaguya's pharmacist and pet respectively. However, ZUN states that Eirin is actually stronger than Kaguya and limits her power out of respect for the princess.
    • In Mountain of Faith Sanae is the priestess of both the final and extra boss, who are both gods.
    • Subterranean Animism reverses this trend by having the Big Bad and the stage 5 boss be the pets of the stage 4 boss. Similarly, the stage 5 boss of Double Dealing Character is the actual Big Bad, with the stage 6 boss being someone she tricked.
    • Undefined Fantastic Object introduces some typical Touhou weirdness with Shou and Byakuren, the stage 5 and 6 bosses respectively. Technically Shou is Byakuren's servant, but she's an avatar of Bishamonten, who Byakuren worships, so she worships her own servant.
    • In Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, stage 5 boss Clownpiece is the subordinate of Hecatia, the extra boss, and has been enhanced by stage 6 boss Junko.
    • In Hidden Star in Four Seasons, stage 5 bosses Satono Nishida and Mai Teireida are the dancing servants of stage 6 boss Okina Matara.
  • Badass Boast: Every final boss, and many of the other bosses. Makes sense, as spell card duels are all about being as flashy and bombastic as possible.
  • Balance of Power: Gensokyo has amassed so many Youkai and gods, if it's not Reimu enforcing the rules, there are many others who can. Not many care about personal conflicts, but they all benefit from the current system, so it's generally a bad idea to disturb it. Which is why the antagonists are usually newcomers and are Easily Forgiven if they agree to follow the rules.
  • Barred from the Afterlife: We have Yuyuko Saigyouji, the princess of the Netherworld, the place where souls wait for their Reincarnation. However, because her body is being used to seal the Saigyou Ayakashi she cannot enter the cycle of reincarnation and is stuck forever as a ghost. She seems to be enjoying it, though.
  • Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: The semi-legendary Prince Shoutoku of Japanese history is credited for spreading Buddhism in Japan. In Touhou, Toyosatomimi no Miko is him, resurrected through Taoist magic. Miko was actually a Taoist who is looking for immortality, all while spreading Buddhism as a front to control the masses. When they almost died, they set up a ritual to let them revive when the time is right. And like most Touhou characters, he is now a she, although whether she's a girl all along, or just her resurrected form is left unclear. Unlike Prince Shoutoku's gentle image, Miko's personality is best described as "I'm better than you".
  • Berserk Button: May the Lord have mercy on you if you tell Reimu she has awful night vision.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Most characters are rather friendly when there isn't an incident, and even those with a low "human friendship level" like Yuuka are nice as long as you don't hit their Berserk Button. They're still powerful combatants with huge reserves of magic who won't hesitate to beat you to a pulp in a duel.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: Nearly everyone. Most pre-battle conversations are rather bizarre before the danmaku starts.
  • Black Eyes of Crazy: Inverted with the hobgoblins in Wild and Horned Hermit that despite them having black sclera, in this setting they come of as the Only Sane Man.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: Since most official games do not have official English translations and are instead translated by fans (as ZUN prefers to leave translation matters to fans), the early ones could veer into these. Specifically, the patches used to be pre-done (and sometimes changed enough things they would outright cause replay desync) and weren't always done by people with knowledge of Japanese, leading to... questionable translation quality, given the effort required to correct mistakes and then distributing the patch again. This could range from minor things, like using a wrong word but still retaining most of the sentence's meaning to more serious mistakes where the meaning has been altered or lost (or even making up sentences or entire paragraphs that did not exist in original Japanese). With the advent of the more dynamic patch system created by the THCRAP project, quality control of patches has been made easier, making it easier to correct any cases of this. Perhaps the most notable example of this is how Cirno's name should actually be transliterated as Chirno (and is pronounced as such), but the incorrect spelling has since been ingrained into everyone's mind so much, that nobody really bothers using the correct spelling.
  • Blood Knight: As ZUN explains, the only characters we meet are the sorts of people who get into fights at a drop of the hat, because that's what the game revolves around. All the peaceful, boring people sit around at home without names.
  • Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: In Forbidden Scrollery, the three main characters are Marisa (blonde), Reimu (brunette), and Kosuzu (redhead). There's also the Three Mischievous Fairies, Luna Child (blonde), Star Sapphire (brunette) and Sunny Milk (redhead).
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Youkai as a whole act "odd" by human standards, and Yukari is weird even by their standards. In the fandom, this ranges from justifying youkai being murderers, to being ditzy weirdoes.
  • Bigger on the Inside:
    • Yuuka's mansion, Mugenkan, in Lotus Land Story.
    • The Scarlet Devil Mansion. Hand Waved ā€” Sakuya uses her time and space manipulation to cause the effect.
    • Eientei. Hand Waves involving timehax are also involved, courtesy of Kaguya.
    • The Palanquin ship of Undefined Fantastic Object appears a lot larger on the inside as well ā€” despite it being a massive wooden ship already.
  • Borrowed Without Permission: Marisa Kirisame always justifies her kleptomaniac habits with the statement that she's not stealing; she's borrowing them until she dies. Of course, that's ignoring the fact that she's looking for ways to become immortal.
  • Bootstrapped Leitmotif: A character's Leitmotif usually ends up being the music from their boss fight, but this trope happens a few times. Meiling, Alice and Youmu all get their stage themes as Leitmotifs (along with their boss themes); Suika gets her pre-battle theme (again, along with her boss theme).
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: Every game has at least one "doom fairy" ā€” a seemingly normal fairy that has attacks and health comparable to most bosses. They always come from the top-center of the screen, and, like bosses, have abnormally elaborate bullet patterns.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall:
    • Kogasa appears on the disc for Undefined Fantastic Object in an attempt to surprise you. She also does this on the game's Steam page by appearing in one of the preview images.
    • Kogasa states in Ten Desires that she keeps losing to Yoshika because she always times out.
    • Flandre tells Marisa in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil that she can't use a continue.
    • The trial versions of Story of Eastern Wonderland, Lotus Land Story, Mystic Square, and Embodiment of Scarlet Devil all end on someone saying that you can't go any farther because it's a trial.
    • Reimu and Rika talk about the latter being the stage 1 boss in Story of Eastern Wonderland during the extra stage.
    • The bad ending of Mystic Square has Yuuka telling you that you need to train harder.
    • One of Sumireko's win quotes against Reimu in Urban Legend in Limbo is that The Girl in the Gap is unfitting for a protagonist.
    • In Sanae's scenario in Undefined Fantastic Object, she mistakes the Power items for secret treasures.
    • Seija in Double Dealing Character has the ability to flip anything over. What does she use this on? Your screen.
    • If you try to beat Embodiment of Scarlet Devil on easy, Sakuya won't let you go any further simply because you're playing on easy. Cue bad ending.
      • Later in the game, she mentions wanting to make you waste a bomb before Remilia gets mad at her.
    • In Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, Junko knows if you've been playing on Pointdevice or Legacy Mode. If you're playing on Legacy Mode, and haven't lost any lives, she admits she underestimated you for getting that far. If you have been hit, she chastises you for dying so many times.
  • Breakout Character:
    • Mima and Marisa all the way back in Story of Eastern Wonderland.
    • Yukka, a boss in Lotus Land Story, and playable in Mystic Square and Phantasmagoria of Flower View.
    • Cirno received her own game in Great Fairy Wars, then she became a playable character in Hidden Star in Four Seasons, the 16th numbered game.
    • Seija has her own game, Impossible Spell Card.
    • Many stage 5 bosses such as Sakuya, Youmu, Sanae, and Reisen eventually became playable characters in the main numbered games.
  • Brick Joke: From Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth, the Banana Yogurt Natto Drink.
  • Broke the Rating Scale: The Grimoire Of Marisa includes a star rating for each spell card, but several are passed over for being too weak or too strong for the rating to matter, and others get silly ones, such as "Mega-Disgusting Score" for Wriggle's bug attacks.
  • Butterfly of Doom: Just about every game from Mountain of Faith to Hopeless Masquerade (barring the Gaiden Games), which some fans call the "Moriya Shrine conspiracy". It starts out with an incident caused by a group of newcomers (the Moriya Shrine) arriving in Gensokyo. They then try to give Genokyo nuclear power, which causes another incident. That incident then sets free the followers of a sealed youkai priestess, starting yet another incident. And then the sealed youkai and her followers come into conflict with the subject of the next incident, a resurrected ruler from ancient Japan and her own followers. Hopeless Masquerade then has a religious conflict breaking out between the two groups. All because the Moriya Shrine was trying to modernize the place. Thanks, Kanako.
  • The Cameo:
    • Wild and Horned Hermit is absolutely covered in these. The story hasn't used many characters, but Azuma Aya seems to want to draw as many as possible.
    • Hopeless Masquerade features almost every character from the Windows games (and the supplementary material), if not as a player character, then as a spectator in the background. Notable exceptions are Akyuu, the Watatsuki sisters, Kasen, Meiling, and Flandre.
  • Cannot Cross Running Water: Remilia and Flandre Scarlet (and supposedly other Touhou vampires) have this among their weaknesses.
  • Carnivore Confusion:
    • Gensokyo has a food chain. You're not at the top of it, since most non-human characters will attempt to eat helpless humans away from the protection of a village. At least that's what the youkai officially want humans to believe.
    • Most humans eat meat even though all animals in Gensokyo can become youkai if they live long enough/become closer to enlightenment. One of the articles in BAiJR is about the rabbits protesting the Hakurei shrine serving rabbit stew.
  • Cast Herd: Given the enormous number of characters, it isn't surprising they tend to be split into distinct groups. Sometimes this is done per game, but other times, it's done based on location (Eientei/Moriya), based on intellect ("Team 9-ball"), and so forth. Tends to be subverted over time as each group stars in print works that elaborate on their members' characterizations.
  • Celestial Bureaucracy: Used repeatedly, given how many of the settings have to do with the afterlife. One recurring gag is that the Ministry of Right and Wrong (ie: Hell) is constantly running into budget problems and has to either downsize, come up with alternate sources of income like publishing guidebooks, or whatever else the story requires.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • Perfect Memento in Strict Sense was released in 2006 before the game Mountain of Faith. With that in mind, look through some of the articles and realize just how much of Perfect Memento became used in future games.
    • Both the games and the side materials have been foreshadowing some kind of big social upheaval that's about to occur. What form this will take exactly however is currently unknown.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Most of the characters that appeared in the PC-98 games (read: every character except Reimu, Marisa, Alice, and Yuuka) have not made any more appearances outside of the game they originally appeared in. Compare that to the cast members of the games since Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, who make appearances in multiple games and source material.
  • City with No Name: The Human Village (somewhat justified in that there seems to be only the one), and the Former District of Hell (also called the Ancient City or the Subterranean City). There's also a Tengu City somewhere up Youkai Mountain (ugh...) and a Lunar Capital on the Moon, but they may just be a product of people only talking about it indirectly.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe:
    • If Rinnosuke's theories are correct, the entire realm of Gensokyo inverts this. According to him, things such as magic, youkai, gods, etc. are able to exist in Gensokyo because people in the outside world actively disbelieve in them. For instance, in the tie-in manga Silent Sinner in Blue, he manages to find information on the Moon landings because, as he claims, enough people have become convinced that they never happened. There is also evidence to the contrary (what with him being a Know-Nothing Know-It-All), so this is hardly conclusive proof.
    • In general, this is how youkai and gods come into being. The belief in them makes them stronger, while forgetting them causes them to either disappear (youkai) or return to being nameless Divine Spirits (gods). Gods, however, are shaped by their myths, which allows them to change their titles and powers due to their followers believing in them. Kanako was originally a Storm god before she became a Mountain god, for example. The real reason for Gensokyo's existence is to separate the Youkai from human imagination, allowing them to shape themselves. This trope is played straight, subverted, and inverted all at the same time.
  • Cliffhanger: The trial of Urban Legend in Limbo ends with the appearance of an unknown character and Reimu deciding to strike first. It cuts out in the middle of her strike, followed by a "to be continued".
    • Reisen's scenario mode in the PS4 version of Urban Legend in Limbo also ends with a Cliffhanger tying into Touhou 15.5.
  • Coins for the Dead: In keeping with her job as The Ferryman, Komachi Onozuka wears a Chinese-style coin tied around her waist, and often throws them as projectiles.
  • Comic-Book Time: Explicitly referenced by ZUN in that Touhou apparently operates on "Sazae-san time"note . Years go by, generally matching the calendar of the real world, but mortal characters such as Reimu and Marisa don't seem to ever age past some vague point in their twenties. This is more apparent with Akyuu, who apparently has a shorter lifetime with every reincarnation. Justified in the case of other characters, however, who fall into The Older Immortal trope.
  • Conservation of Competence: Most "servant" characters in the series are portrayed by the narrative as fairly useless or lazy compared to their hyper-competent bosses. However, they're still strong enough to make stage 5 a challenge.
  • Continuity Creep: The plots of the games were originally largely standalone. Each game was generally self-contained. However, starting with Mountain of Faith, the series has gained continuity, the events happening in each game becoming connected in various ways. ZUN has both stated that "Touhou is not a series" and included the phrase "Touhou series" in manuals.
  • Continuity Reboot: The first 5 games were released between 1996 and 1998 on the Japan-only PC-98 computer. In 2002, the series continued on the Windows platform starting with Touhou 6, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. Although the numbering scheme still includes the PC-98 games, most of the characters and events in these games have never been mentioned again in any canon materials, including Perfect Memento in Strict Sense. The only exceptions are PC-98 characters who made reappearances in the Windows games: Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, Alice Margatroid (looking much older than her appearance as a child in Mystic Square and with a different backstory), and Yuuka Kazami. Fans still argue if the rest of the PC-98s are canon and if Alice's new backstory can compliment hers in Mystic Square.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: There are many examples, but some notable ones involve flying through the Burning Hells and fighting a boss who throws miniature suns at you routinely. Some of this can be justified by Gameplay and Story Segregation, but the player characters should have really died well before reaching Utsuho. Reimu does comment on how incredibly hot it is and that she's feeling like she's about to get roasted. She (and probably Marisa too) is most likely only saved by her very powerful magic shielding her. Still, that doesn't explain how Cirno managed not to be disintegrated when she went inside that very same place to fight Utsuho in Hisoutensoku.
  • Cool Gate:
    • The Hakurei Shrine serves as a gateway between our world and Gensokyo, and has a traditional Japanese arch.
    • The gate at Hakugyokurou is placed at the entrance to the Netherworld, but it doesn't open. People just fly over it instead.
  • Crapsaccharine World: Neo-traditionalism of Japan gives us a viewpoint of the future world Maribel and Renko live in; in summary, the world is what would happen if Seihou was given a dose of Tales Series formula. This is jarring because this storyline is surprisingly dark.
  • Creepy Cemetery:
    • Muenzuka, the location of the final stage of Phantasmagoria of Flower View, and resting place of humans who died without any living family, as well as humans who came from the Outside World. It's also covered in poisonous spider lily flowers and watched over by youkai cherry trees, the latter inducing sadness in whoever watches them. Save for Rinnosuke and Nazrin, who search the place for treasures due to the fact that it's one of the weakest spots of the Hakurei Barrier because of its intersections with the Outside World and Netherworld, it remains mostly deserted because of its dangers to both humans and youkai. The Road of Reconsideration that leads to it, on the other hand, is allegedly infested with human-eating youkai waiting to prey on the hapless Outsiders that get brought there.
    • In Ten Desires, it's revealed that Myouren Temple has a very vast cemetery in its backyard. Our heroes fight the Jiangshi Yoshika and her very oppressive poisonous kunai danmaku over it. Then it's revealed that the Buddhist monks deliberately built the cemetery over a different mausoleum to prevent their rival Taoist liches from resurrecting themselves. The entire travel to the mausoleum is characterized by its BGM echoing on the cave walls and vulgar spirits floating about as the heroes fly through the tunnel at max speed.
  • Crop Circles: Instead of aliens or the like, crop circles in Touhou are meeting spots for fairies during emergency situations.
  • Cross Cultural Reference: ZUN loves slipping in references to Western literature, though it's mostly present in the earlier Windows games, with later games relying far more on references to Japanese and nearby cultures.
  • Crossover: "If it exists, there's a crossover with Touhou" is almost an internet rule. Seriously, it even has its own page.
  • Curtains Match the Window: All of the PC-98 characters have a same eye color as their hair (given that they're in their regular outfit). There is a fair share of Windows characters with this as well.
  • Cute 'em Up: Thankfully, Gensokyo's not a Sugar Bowl, but it's still a major dietary source of Moe.
  • Cute Monster Girl: Almost every youkai depicted in the series is one of these.
  • Deadly Euphemism: Inverted. Shrine maidens like Reimu have the task of "exterminating" youkai, which sounds very lethal, but in the context of Touhou it usually just means that they beat the youkai in question in danmaku duels and tell them to stop doing whatever naughty thing they're doing. Forbidden Scrollery shows that there have been exceptions to this rule.
  • Deconstruction: The Komeiji sisters provide a harsh look into the lives of mind readers. The two are feared and hated by humans and youkai alike for their mind reading abilities (which they have no control over) which is only exasperated by the fact the satori race as a whole has a tendency to blurt out all the thoughts they hear. Not only did this drive them to isolate themselves in the Palace of the Earth Spirits in the Underworld (where even the other resident outcast youkai shun them) with only their pets for company, Satori became a shut-in who rarely ever leaves her room while Koishi closed her third eye to outright remove her telepathy, turning her into an Empty Shell in the process.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: At least one ending to every game involves the main character having a drinking party with the Big Bad, and dragons Sakuya Izayoi, Youmu Konpaku, Sanae Kochiya, Reisen Udongein Inaba, and even Marisa Kirisame have become playable characters after getting defeated.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: To match with the Blue-and-Orange Morality, standards in Gensokyo are sometimes nothing like ours, as it can only thrive when there are active battles between humans and youkai. This is the whole point of Symposium of Post-mysticism, with Kanako, Byakuren and Miko arguing about the role of humans and youkai in Gensokyo.
  • Demonic Vampires: Vampires are considered a subtype of devils. The most prominent vampire in the series, Remilia Scarlet, is even known as the Scarlet Devil.
  • Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Pretty much every game has an ending like this.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In the PC-98 games, you defeat the Angel of Death, two goddesses who created their own dream world (just because your player character was bored), and The Goddess of Hell. In the Windows series, the protagonist stops the mistress of the Netherworld with the power to invoke death in mortals, the local Charon equivalent, one of the Judges of the dead (who is implied to be more powerful than anything in Gensokyo), a hell raven channeling the power of a sun god to control nuclear fusion, not to mention the reality-warping youkai who may have created Gensokyo itself. This is one of the purposes behind the spell card system - it allows even weak humans and youkai a chance at fighting stronger opponents to settle accounts, without needless, one-sided bloodshed.
  • Do Not Spoil This Ending: ZUN has requested that the fanbase keep the endings of the games secret and, for the most part, the fanbase complies (although you can find all of them if you know where to look). Given that request, and the fact that, to get a good ending, one has to 1 credit clear the game, seeing the good ending of a game is a great accomplishment, indeed.
  • Dragons Are Divine: The most powerful god in Gensokyo is the unnamed dragon god, who is worshiped by both humans and youkai alike as a creator god found in the ocean, sky, and rain. It also serves as a protector deity. Akyuu describes it as so large that it's thicker than a thousand-year-old tree, and so long that it could blot out the sky. In terms of power, she mentions that its cry is said to part the sky and create thunderstorms, and that just by moving it can create earthquakes. It can also easily move between Gensokyo, hell, heaven, and the Netherworld without being stopped by the Great Hakurei Barrier. Its last appearance was when the Barrier was first erected in 1885, where the youkai sages managed to placate the dragon god by staking their very existences swearing eternal peace towards it.
  • Dragons Up the Yin Yang:
    • Dragons are rarely seen, but they are said to be in the highest class of beings in Gensokyo. One dragon spoken of in canon is worshiped as a god by human and youkai alike for his power to create or destroy anything. It's said that he appeared in the sky on the day the Great Hakurei Border was erected.
    • Kasen has a baby pet dragon and its status as a godlike being makes itself known right away by causing a (very local) rainstorm. She alludes to the fact that simply hatching was enough to cause a calamitous thunderstorm.
    • At one point in Wild and Horned Hermit, Nitori mentions a water dragon "Lord Suiryuu" as being the only thing she can think of powerful enough to create the waterspout that was the focus of the chapter. Although it turns out it was a Kishin.
    • In Forbidden Scrollery, Marisa accidentally helps an Evil Dragon (that's its name) unseal itself from one of Kosuzu's scrolls. Despite being Evil, it politely thanks them for the help and gives them gifts being flying away to rest for a few hundred years.
  • Dream Land: The later stages of Story of Eastern Wonderland and the extra stage of Lotus Land Story.
    • Also where the Lunarians are hiding in Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom.
  • Drop-In Character: Half the cast, to one degree or other, and into various locations, the most common being the Hakurei Shrine.
  • Drunken Master: The creator of the games, ZUN, is a drinker, and Memetic Mutation has progressed it to the point where, much like all the oni characters, he is never sober. This isn't too far from the truth. Practically every image of him seems to show a beer within arm's reach, and ZUN himself admitted being drunk during some of Imperishable Night's development. In-Universe, the Oni are this. Suika Ibuki's even stated to never be sober.
  • Earth Drift: Early into the series, while the setting was vaguely defined, it was implied to just be located on Earth. The setting was originally known as "the Eastern country", the bad endings for the first game show Earth blowing up, and Mima's ending in the third game shows the Moon orbiting Earth. The sixth game eventually defined the setting as a fantasy land named Gensokyo, and the seventh game established that Gensokyo is separated and hidden from the Outside World (i.e. Earth as we know it) by a mystical border called the Great Hakurei Barrier, albeit sometimes things and even people from outside get spirited away to Gensokyo.
  • Earth/Wind Juxtaposition: Suwako Mariya and Kanako Yasaka are downplayed examples. Suwako is a sky goddess and Kanako is an earth goddess; they used to be enemies, but are now good friends. However, Suwako's profile says they still argue quite often.
  • Easily Forgiven: No matter what schemes or grievous bodily harm has been committed, after the incident is over, everything goes back to normal and everyone is invited to the Hakurei shrine for partying and booze. For a while, Tenshi Hinanawi was notable for being the only character who didn't receive this, a unique status she retained until Impossible Spell Card, wherein Seija Kijin is hunted by the majority of Gensokyo as a fugitive for her actions in the previous game.
  • Eldritch Location:
    • The Great Hakurei Barrier is actually not really a barrier in the traditional sense and by its very nature defies common sense. Marisa once attempted to cross it, but no matter how far she flew, the scenery just stretched on forever, and the moment she turned around, she was back where she started, giving the appearance that she had gotten nowhere. It is even described as non-Euclidean.
    • Gensokyo's secondary barrier, described as the Boundary of Fantasy and Reality, was erected by Yukari Yakumo alone about 500 years ago, and covers the entire world, beckoning youkai from even outside Japan and the rest of Asia to head to Gensokyo.
    • Ushirodo-no-Kuni, the Land of the Rear Door and personal realm of Okina Matara, is a seemingly infinite black abyss with floating doors leading to places in Gensokyo.
  • Elegant Gothic Lolita: A large chunk of the cast wears clothing in this style, though later characters' designs have moved away from it as their outfits take inspiration from other fashion styles.
  • Elite Four: Among the oni, there was a famous group called the "Four Devas of the Mountains". When the oni decided to leave the human world, each of the Four Devas went their separate ways. The confirmed members are Suika Ibuki and Yuugi Hoshiguma. Kasen Ibaraki is heavily implied to be the third Deva, although it has not been said outright. ...At least until Reimu ends up fighting her missing arm in Wild and Horned Hermit, where it is outright confirmed.
  • Elixir of Life: Shows up twice:
    • Eirin Yagokoro came up with the Hourai Elixir, which induces complete Resurrective Immortality in the drinker after three sips (the first prevents aging, the second prevents disease), and was banished to Earth from the Moon along with Kaguya. When Kaguya left the Earth, she left the elixir behind and he Emperor ordered it destroyed, but Mokou (whose father had been humiliated by Kaguya's Impossible Task) stole it and drank it herself.
    • Junko launched an invasion of the Moon to get revenge on Chang'e (her son was killed by Houyi, the husband of Chang'e), unaware that the Lunarians had imprisoned her for drinking the Hourai Elixir as well.
  • Empty Quiver: Kanako gave Utsuho power over nuclear fusion via Yatagarasu because she believes becoming known as a god who grants miraculous technology would serve as good advertising for the shrine. This ends up backfiring when Utsuho decides to use it for herself, and to turn Gensokyo into a living hell. Her status in later games have diluted to what can be classified as "Bent Spear" (we know the bomb is there, but it's not a priority) and "Faded Giant" (an event that involves a nuclear reactor that's currently in use by the military, e.g. Moriya Shrine).
  • Everyone Has a Special Move: The spellcards each character have in stock help themselves become distinct, like their hats. They tell stories, they reference user's power, and even the shapes of the bullets used in the spellcards can become a special trait for a character.
  • Everyone Is a Super: From common fairies to even average Gensokyo humans, who have some magic powers, it is flat-out assumed everyone has some kind of special powers or danmaku powers here. So, when Sanae first came to Gensokyo, she was unhappy at this fact, as she's not special anymore. Likewise, Rika is one of the few characters to not have a special ability, and offsets the fact by using technology that is normally off-limits to a non-outsider, and by not fighting by the rules.
  • Evil DoppelgƤnger:
    • In Antinomy of Common Flowers, as a side effect of the ongoing incident, Dream World versions of the characters start appearing in the real world. These copies have Brutal Honesty and are often violent. In the Yorigami Sisters' scenario, they are tasked with capturing these copies that are running rampant in the real world.
    • In Sumireko's scenario, there are two copies of herself, her Dream World self and the Dream World self's doppelgƤnger.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: In the story of Urban Legend in Limbo, both Reimu and company treat the power of the strange rumors as playthings and manipulate them to be either harmless or even in a way to fit their own agenda. However, one night, a crack is formed in the barrier, and it also becomes clear that everyone had been under the rumors' influence without realizing it, causing them to collect the occult balls and leading to said crack forming in the first place.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
    • If we were to tell you that kedama essentially means "fuzzball" in Japanese, could you guess what enemy it refers to?
    • Hopeless Masquerade is a love letter to Noh theatre.
  • Excuse Plot: Progressively less as the series progresses, but the PC-98 games in particular had very flimsy plots.
    • Danmaku Amanojaku Gold Rush is an unreleased game made in two days meant to be played at the Digital Game Expo 2014 where Seija takes the Miracle Mallet and uses it to rob the Hakurei Shrine. When asked how Seija can use said Mallet (since only inchlings are able to use it), ZUN just said that she can't, that since he made the game so quickly he didn't think about the plot at all.
  • The Fair Folk: Youkai tend to act like this. They have been relatively behaving this generation due to a lazy yet powerful miko and trigger-happy Cute Witch who have been befriending them constantly.
  • Fairy Tale: Fairy tales are sometimes referenced in spell cards.
  • Fanime:
    • Touhou Project Side Story by SOUND HOLIC, released at Comiket 73. Features a now non-canon depiction of the Lunarians. It introduced a Spotlight-Stealing Squad of Original Characters, leaving the canon characters standing on the sidelines without doing much to instigate or resolve the plot. It also follows the Leave the Camera Running school of cinematography.
    • Musou Kakyou: A Summer Day's Dream by Maikaze, the first episode of which was released at Comiket 75. Managed to bring in such big names as Rie Tanaka to do voice work. Unfortunately, it had poor sales and it wasn't until 2011 that another episode was announced, and another year until it was released.
    • Manpuku Jinja's Gensou Mangekyou (or Fantasy Kaleidoscope), which retells the story of Perfect Cherry Blossom in the first episode, the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil in the second to fourth episode, and Phantasmagoria of Flower View in the fifth and sixth episode.
    • Patchouli to Explode, released at Reitaisai SP2. Unlike the other examples here, it's based on a doujinshi and follows a small cast.
    • A Chinese fanime titled Hifuu Club Activity Record ~ The Sealed Esoteric History by Kyoto Fantasy Troupe. This one focusing more on Gensokyo and its characters' pasts alongside adapting the CD stories with Maribel and Renko as well.
  • Fantastic Caste System: The Tengu has a set up caste system based around their type at birth.
  • Fantastic Ghetto: The underground is basically a place where despised youkai eventually settle down.
  • Fantastic Nature Reserve:
    • The purpose of Gensokyo's existence, which was eventually made clear from Mountain of Faith onward. Since belief in such beings as youkai and gods is rapidly disappearing in the outside world, Gensokyo is a haven for them.
    • On a more mundane level, Gensokyo due to its nature as a place where forgotten things end up is also a haven for mundane species that are either extremely rare, extirpated from, or completely extinct in Japan and elsewhere in the world, such as crested ibises, the Japanese wolf, and the Japanese otter.
    • The "nature reserve" part is also noted in Chapter 33 of Wild and Horned Hermit, where Yukari mentions that she always makes sure to do sterilization procedures in order to prevent Gensokyo from being accidentally populated by things that aren't on the ropes in the Outside World. She figures out Kasen can go through the Barrier (And hasn't done similar procedures) because otherwise the western dandelions out-competing the Japanese dandelions in the Outside World would not have gotten inside. One reason Yukari lists for terminating them with extreme prejudice is the dandelions managing to form more belligerent fairies in Gensokyo, displacing the old ones.
  • Fantastic Racism:
    • The residents of the underground are mostly youkai who are hated or feared, usually for their power. A notable example is the satori species. According to Hatate's comments from Double Spoiler on Satori's spells, there used to be many satoris on Youkai Mountain, but they were banished to the underground because of their ability to read other people's minds.
    • Undefined Fantastic Object brings up the question of whether it's youkai who are oppressing humans or the other way around. It should be noted that the cycle of youkai terrorizing humans and being "exterminated" in turn is actually necessary for Gensokyo's survival. Not that that excuses some of the remarks our heroines make...
    • Reimu is unique in that, despite one of the few dealing with youkai being jerks on a daily basis, she doesn't care about them one way or another.
    • Mamizou is noted for her dislike of foxes and was responsible for driving them away from her native island of Sado. Whether Mamizou will attempt to do something similar in Gensokyo in the future is unclear.
    • Youkai in general, harmless or not, are treated this way by humans. However, given how many times youkai who call themselves "harmless" have manipulated the main characters into doing their bidding, it might be justified, even if depictions of that justification are off-screen and Hand Waved, and even if the Youkai themselves don't exactly have a choice.
      • This may be increasingly downplayed; the temple Byakuren opened up with her disciples proved to be pretty popular with the villagers straight away, and Wild and Horned Hermit, humans are seen trading with kappa at festivals (held at the Hakurei Shrine, no less) regularly. Kogasa is also popular with village children (though she's not exactly thrilled about it). Furthermore, humans seem to have no problem with being entertained by youkai; both the Prismrivers (and Raiko) and Choujuu Gigaku, formed by Mystia and Kyouko, are popular with humans (even Akyuu likes the latter), and once they realized youkai were behind (most of) the fireworks during The Grimoire of Usami's fireworks festival, they were having too much fun by then to care. Not only that, but when Seija showed up with a bunch of more rowdy youkai so as to inject some genuine danger into the whole thing, the crowd completely ate it up.
      • This may be justified by the fact that youkai across the board, but particularly the ones that began being introduced in later games, have wildly varying functions. While certain characters at least present themselves as monsters that eat people, figures like Aunn are explicitly friendly and helpful, in turn based on legends of genuinely helpful youkai.
  • The Fantastic Trope of Wonderous Titles: Most Touhou games tend to have whimisical titles such as Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream or Undefined Fantastic Object.
  • Fan Vids: a whole page of them.
  • Fanwork-Only Fans: Touhou is typically introduced to will-be fans through a fan video or music before those people discover the games themselves. There are many people who are fans of fandom interpretations and doujin circles and have never played an actual Touhou game.
    • This created the bizarre situation of people commenting on any given Touhou fanwork, especially a Fan Vid, asking "What anime is this?" despite there not being a Touhou anime. It's considered to be a Berserk Button and has happened so often that "What anime is this" became a meme on its own.
  • Flanderization: Fanon is fond of this, characters commonly reduced to a single character quirk which may or may not have been a major part of their character in the original games. Given that this happens to every single character, often in multiple ways, a full list of every change would far, far larger than this page.
    • And yes, this does hit Flandre a lot, especially when it comes to portraying her as a psychotic, unstoppable murder machine, or a Creepy Child who breaks people like toys. The canonical Flandre's madness is a mild mental disorder at worst, and she seems to be cognizant enough to understand the danger she represents to remain locked up in the Scarlet Devil Mansion willingly. Her relative lack of canonical appearances is probably to blame for some of that, but even her original appearance as a Superboss established that she is lucid enough to follow danmaku rules.
  • Fleeting Demographic Rule: Formerly-inanimate objects plot social upheaval. Are they a dollnote , or musical instrumentsnote ?
  • Floating Clocks: Sakuya can temporarily freeze time, usually seen in animated works as clocks appearing and fading all over the screen.
  • Flying Firepower: Everyone in the series who fights is capable of flying and firing danmaku.
  • Foul Flower: Yuuka Kazami is a flower youkai... and one of the oldest and most powerful in a setting that includes Physical Gods. Fandom nicknamed her the "Ultimate Sadistic Creature" and likes to show her inflicting Disproportionate Retribution on people who disturb her sunflower field.
  • Friendly War: The main purpose of the spell card system is to allow youkai to "attack" humans without killing them, and to be "exterminated" without actually being killed themselves; this system gives the youkai sustenance so they don't die by Puff of Logicnote  and can live their lives freely.
  • Full-Contact Magic: At least in the fighting games, as well as in Fan Works, the intense nature of spell card duels is portrayed as having a fierce physical combat aspect, especially for the more physically abled girls.
  • Functional Magic: Inherent Gift, Theurgy, Device Magic, Alchemical Magic, Rule Magic, and Force Magic are all present.
  • Gaiden Game: Anything with a decimal point in its number.
  • Gambit Pileup: So Sumireko's (reasonably complex) plan was actually part of Sagume's plans, which were themselves entirely within the scope of Junko's plans. Then Eirin figures out what's going on and fixes it with her own plan.
  • Game-Breaking Bug:
    • In UFO, reaching 1 billion points would up and crash the game. A patch was released to fix this 12 days after release.
    • In Fairy Wars, hitting Retry from the pause menu on Stage C2-2 or C2-3 and then subsequently beating the game on route C2 without returning to the menu would crash the game. This one has not been patched.
    • In Ten Desires, the game would crash if you are not using a bomb, a valuable resource, when the Survival Card of the Extra Boss ends. This is the second-to-last attack in the entire game. Even worse, that makes it impossible to capture in Spellcard mode because you aren't given any bombs to start with. Be grateful the patch for that only took 4 days after release.
    • In Hopeless Masquerade, the game will crash if Mamizou's Last Word is blocked.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: There tends to be a disconnect between what a character's powers are said to be, and what they can actually do. No matter what a character's stated powers are, they only manifest in the form of danmaku in-game. Justified, in that the spell card rules require danmaku to be used to solve disputes. It's what stops every stage 5, 6, and extra boss from curb-stomping you. See Holding Back the Phlebotinum. The in-universe explanation for this is that the character's powers are listed in the Universe Compendium as whatever the character says they are, even if it doesn't reflect reality in any way.
    • Although divine beings are said to be poisonous to youkai, Remilia can safely suck Tenshi and Suwako's blood in Hisoutensoku in her alternate special move "Vampire Kiss".
  • Ghibli Hills: What most of Gensokyo's landscape consists of, Scenery Porn included.
  • Good All Along:
    • As with White-and-Grey Morality, almost nobody is really evil in Gensokyo, which helps facilitate Defeat Means Friendship. Actively noted by ZUN, who mentioned that the "darker" plots of Mountain of Faith and Subterranean Animism (see Sorting Algorithm of Evil) would be shifted back to the lighter tone of the rest of the series in subsequent games, which was indeed the case with UFO, save for the aforementioned philosophising about the nature of youkai and humans.
    • The only aversions so far in canon are Seiga Kaku and Seija Kijin. Seiga is explicitly described as evil by everyone else (mostly the necromancy) and no one likes her, while Seija was not forgiven for what she did in Double Dealing Character, and not even her defeat guarantees friendship with the player characters; during Impossible Spell Card, she's on the run because everyone is after her for what she did (not that she really minds, due to her contrarian nature).
  • Gratuitous English: The joke is usually lost in fan patches, but it does indeed happen. Though, this isn't readily apparent anyway, as most of the time, they're spelled out in kanji.
    • In Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, Clownpiece yells "It's lunatic tiiiime!".
    • Hecatia's shirt has "Welcome ā™„ļø Hell" written on it, in plain English.
    • Before Antinomy of Common Flowers made it canon, Calling Your Attacks was a fairly common thing in fanworks. And since spell cards usually have parts of English in their names, you can imagine this was done a lot.
    • In Marisa's scenario in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Flandre recites a verse from Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None in fluent English.
  • Gratuitous Princess: Due to having an Improbably Female Cast and numerous characters, naturally there are a number of princesses, including Yuyuko (princess of the spirit world), Kaguya (former princess of the moon), the Watatsuki sisters (current princesses of the moon), and Shinmyoumaru (princess of the inchlings).
  • Great Big Library of Everything: Voile, the Magical Library note  in the Scarlet Devil Mansion's basement. It's large enough to allow for a stage roughly five-minute-long aerial battle over the bookshelves traveling in one direction without ever reaching the end. The library is maintained by Patchouli Knowledge, who spends her days locked up inside adding to the already-massive cache of knowledge ā€” she's not just the librarian, but also the author of an unspecified proportion of the tomes in her library, and probably the overwhelming majority of the magic books in the library, given the esoteric rules for wizardry in the Touhou 'verse. While 100 straight years of this this have given her anemia, asthma, and Vitamin A deficiency, you are more than likely to find anything you could ever want in there (Marisa sure does).
  • The Greatest Story Never Told:
    • By the end of Imperishable Night, only all the team members, Kaguya and company, and Keine know that the real incident was the corrupted Moon. Everyone else thinks that the real incident was the unending night, which was actually caused by the protagonists you chose in order to buy time to fix the Moon.
    • From Reimu's interview in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, it would seem Gensokyo's residents are unaware of her resolving any of the incidents. Later on in Wild and Horned Hermit, she decides to start throwing big "Incident Resolution Parties" to make sure everyone realizes that she was the hero. Although apparently this fails, since in Forbidden Scrollery, Akyuu hadn't noticed that Double Dealing Character had occurred, despite that being the same Incident we saw Reimu host a party for.
  • Hard Work Hardly Works:
    • Most youkai seem to get by with whatever talent they're born with and no training whatsoever.
    • Reimu's laziness, yet apparent genius lets her get by without any training either. Averted with Marisa, who works her butt off just to keep up.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: Pretty much every character has some Informed Ability that is nearly useless if taken at face value, and the ones that don't are basically triple-7s on the Superpower Lottery. Danmaku prowess is sometimes even completely exclusive to what power a character has, though more frequently the character's ability plays a role in their danmaku to varying degrees, such as Cirno's ice projectiles making up most but not all of her attacks.
  • Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Many of the playable characters are acknowledged not to be the most virtuous people around, and fighting the villain of the day is often done for purely selfish reasons. Aside from their motives, the Boss Banter also tends to reveal serious lapses in moral judgement on the protagonists' part.
  • Historical Character's Fictional Relative:
    • Remilia Scarlet claims to be descended from Vlad Tepes (and this is the title of her stage theme). It's complete BS, however: if anything, she's old enough to have been his daughter.
    • Yuyuko Saigyouji is implied to be the daughter of the famous Japanese poet Saigyou.
    • Byakuren Hijiki is the sister of the actual Buddhist priest Myouren Hijiri.
    • Fujiwara no Mokou was the daughter of a Fujiwara noble of high enough rank to be a princess' suitor. However, due to the princess humiliating her father by refusing his proposal, Mokou swore revenge, drank the Hourai elixir she was supposed to destroy, and now fights Kaguya whenever she can (since both are immortal).
    • The relation between Yukari Yakumo (one of the oldest and most powerful youkai in Gensokyo, able to do whatever the hell she wants with boundaries) and Maribel Hearn (a young girl who can see boundaries) is uncertain, but fanon generally accepts that Yukari was Maribel very (very) long ago, despite existing in the same time period (which, admittedly, means very little in Gensokyo). When asked about this, ZUN only said "There once was a man named Lafcadio Hearn" (Lafcadio being a 19th-century Irishman who eventually settled in Japan, taking the name Koizumi Yakumo).
  • Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: The creation of the Great Hakurei Barrier in 1885 also acted as the lead event for changing the Gensokyan calendar to its own system. This makes the year 2015 for us, for example, into the year 130 for them.
  • Holding Back the Phlebotinum: The spell card system was created because the youkai would have no other way to fight Reimu and cause incidents, who is canonically unbeatable by any method when she isn't messing around, and killing her would possibly result in the collapse of Gensokyo's barrier, which separates it from our world and would thus eradicate Gensokyo and everyone in it, and numerous other characters could crack the planet in half if they got serious. For Reimu it may just be an excuse to be lazy and not take things seriously. Some of the more forward thinking youkai recognize that the spell card system allows them to sit down and have tea with mortal enemies, and keeps the place at least safer, if not totally safe.
  • Honorary Princess: It features a lot of princesses, though very few have actual royal status.
    • Toyohime, Yorirhime, and Kaguya are princesses in Lunarian society (Kaguya being the one from The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter).
    • Fujiwara no Mokou was the daughter of a high-ranking nobleman (high enough to ask for Kaguya's hand in marriage), but her status as ex-nobility is rarely mentioned.
    • Yuyuko Saiyouji is a ghost princess, who was the daughter of a Japanese court poet in life.
    • Kotohime is from one of the early games, a Cloud Cuckoolander who thinks she's a police officer.
    • Wakasagihime, despite the name, shows no sign of being royalty, being a mermaid named after a Japanese fish.
    • Parsee Mizuhashi is a hashihime (bridge princess), a youkai based on a Woman Scorned who waits under bridges to kill loving couples.
    • While her general attitude is The Ojou (especially in fandom), the vampire Remilia Scarlet's only link to princessdom is her theme, "Septette for the Dead Princess" (she claims to be descended from Vlad Tepes, but this is a bold-faced lie).
  • Hufflepuff House: Many species and groups are introduced to having a presence in Gensokyo with one character who has a few lines, and is then never mentioned again. Various Expanded Universe material, well, expands on these groups, with the tengu in particular being the most fleshed out society, but groups like Heaven and Makai are still just there with no other information.
  • Hyperactive Sprite:
    • In the fighting games, Suika keeps goofily swaying back and forth when standing in place.
    • In Mountain of Faith, Hina spins while shooting bullets in all directions. A lot.
  • I Am Not a Gun: Youkai, as beings born from human fears or as explanations for the unknown, tend to have a specific "purpose" that they were born to fulfill, most commonly to antagonize humans. Not all of them want to though, despite the risk of death or worse for being forgotten after abandoning their "purpose". Byakuren's Buddhist temple was created to help youkai either find a new purpose or simply come to terms with non-existence. Of course, most of the younger ones don't even know they have a purpose or why they should care.
  • I Believe I Can Fly: Pretty much everyone. By this point, the series has stopped trying to justify it. Originally, Reimu walked or used Genji, a flying turtle.
  • Iconic Sequel Character: Many, MANY characters, especially since most of the characters from the first five games have disappeared without a trace, and the very first game barely has any story at all. Among the popular protagonists, Marisa debuts in the second game, and Sakuya in the sixth. Yukari, who has been part of Gensokyo's history since it was founded, doesn't even appear until the seventh game, and Sanae doesn't appear until the tenth.
  • Idiosyncratic Cover Art: Almost every game's boxart in the Windows era uses a silhouette of the Final Boss or True Final Boss in the background, and in rare cases one of the protagonists.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: With the exception of Sangetsusei and some of the music CDs, the Japanese title of every official Touhou work shares at least one kanji with the name of a character introduced in it (or involved, in the case of Seasonal Dream Vision).
  • Immortal Immaturity: Practically everyone. Notable exceptions are Kaguya and Yuyuko, when she's not busy harassing her guardian. It's also implied that Suwako's childishness is really just an act.
  • Improbably Female Cast: Not in the first game, but afterwards nearly the entire cast just happens to be female, with a literal handful of exceptions; men do live in Gensokyo, but they're rarely ever relevant to the plot. However, statements by ZUN imply that this isn't so much a personal taste as it is something that's enforced, since so many people associate Touhou with "girls shooting bullets at each other" that changing it would ruin that dynamic. ZUN has mentioned that for Undefined Fantastic Object, he originally planned to have Byakuren's brother Myouren be the final boss, but didn't go through with it since having an "old man" be the final boss of a Touhou game would be weird. Subsequently, the final boss of Ten Desires is a Gender Flipped Prince Shoutoku, and the final boss of Double-Dealing Character is closely tied to Issun-boshi and has a very boyish name.
  • Informed Ability: Due to how danmaku battles work,note  most characters' stated abilities have very little relevance to their gameplay performance.
  • Inn Between the Worlds: The Hakurei Shrine technically isn't part of Gensokyo proper, instead being located on the eastern portion of Great Hakurei Barrier that separates Gensokyo from the Outside World, and simultaneously existing within both. As a result of its dual existence, objects from the Outside World and occasionally even people can be spirited away to Gensokyo through the Shrine's Outside World counterpart, though the exact mechanism remains unknown.
  • Internal Deconstruction: As the series progresses and accumulates continuity, several elements of the setting that were previously ignored or laughed off have come under increased scrutiny. The casual youkai-hunting done in the games has been revealed to be part of a far more sinister and intentional Forever War between humans and youkai, and there are differing opinions on how justifiable the youkai-hunting is in the first place. Undefined Fantastic Object got the main characters chewed out by Byakuren for their casual racism.
  • It Amused Me: Bored characters do a lot of crazy things in this series and are occasionally responsible for the entire plot with no further motive than to shake things up. Many extra stage fights are along these lines on the part of both protagonist and boss. This is the entire reason why Tenshi comes down in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.
  • It Runs on Nonsensoleum: In Silent Sinner In Blue, the rocket to reach the moon is designed by taking some out-of-context tidbits from the Apollo moon missions, and hammering them back together with Insane Troll Logic. The result is this adorable thing that basically looks like a vaguely rocket-shaped cottage with frilly curtained windows. When Eirin sneaks in to check up on it, she's shocked... at how perfectly made it is without her assistance. This is Gensokyo, so of course it's space-worthy.
    • And then Sakuya offers to open the window for some 'fresh air'...
  • It's Personal:
    • Mokou holds Kaguya responsible for the humiliation and eventual death of her father, and her grudge hasn't died even after an eternity of mutually despising and killing each other.
    • Reimu and Yukari are not amused at all with the Hakurei Shrine's destruction in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, and so when they find out that Tenshi basically did it because she was bored, well, they get very physical in expressing their displeasure.
    • Chang'e has wronged Junko so terribly that the latter has become a nihilistic incarnation of hatred, and in the pursuit of her revenge, she has practically ousted the Lunarians from the Moon, uncaring of who or what got in her way. Hecatia Lapizlazuli also has beef with Chang'e for shooting down the suns (Here described as Apollo), so she was more than happy to lend Junko a hand.
  • Justified Trope: So many. The Spell Card Rules, drafted by Reimu, justify Non-Lethal K.O., Let's You and Him Fight, Super Move Portrait Attack, the ability to have crazy semiregular incidents while maintaining White-and-Grey Morality, and even the use of the Bullet Hell genre itself... because the tropes are the law. And for very good reasons: it lets youkai do what they need to in order to be feared, lets Reimu easily resolve the incidents, and lets youkai fight back without fear of killing Reimu, which would be a very Bad Thing.
  • Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Almost everyone wears pretty frilly dresses and fights in them as well.
  • King of All Cosmos: The portrayal of some of the gods in the series are decidedly unusual. For example, Hecatia Lapislazuli is the Touhou version of the Greek goddess Hecate, making her one of the few non-Japanese characters. Here, she is one of the rulers of Hell, ranking much higher than the yamas. Hecate being a triple goddess is expressed as Hecatia having three bodies at three different hells at once, each for the Earth, the Moon, and the Otherworlds. She also seems to have taken a liking to modern teenager fashion, as she wears an "I HEART HELL" black T-shirt.
  • Leitmotif:
    • Each boss in the main series gets a unique song for her Boss Battle, which naturally becomes her Leitmotif in fanworks.
    • Shrine of the Wind ~ Theme of Eastern Story (an unused track from the first game) has become the Leitmotif for the series as a whole, with the intro music of all the main Windows games being remixes of it. Some Final Boss themes also incorporate elements of it, and considering the remixes of it that are the themes of Stages 4 and 3 of IN and DDC respectively, it might qualify as the Leitmotif of the Bamboo Forest of the Lost.
    • The Gensokyo the Gods Loved from Mountain of Faith is often considered the unofficial Leitmotif for Gensokyo itself.
    • This spreads over to Pixiv, where the Leitmotif acts as a special tag for exceptionally beautiful artwork, even for unofficial Leitmotifs for special characters. For example, the original kanji for "Lunate Elf" along with its English reading is a tag for beautiful Daiyousei works.
  • Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: The justification for the danmaku combat system.
  • Let's See YOU Do Better!:
    • Interestingly enough, that's how the games were created. ZUN couldn't find any game he really liked, so he created his own. And boy, did it work.
    • In addition, a good chunk of the fandom's appeal is the opportunity to do this with ZUN's artwork/character designs.
  • Like an Old Married Couple:
    • Reimu and Marisa's conversations tend to default to mild bickering and teasing.
    • Marisa and Alice more so, in both Imperishable Night and Subterranean Animism, more than once ignoring the boss just to trade snipes.
  • Little Miss Badass: Nearly everyone in the series.
  • Living Forever Is Awesome: The youkai are living it and loving it. Only Mokou has a problem with immortality.
  • Loads and Loads of Races: A large number of youkai and other groups, with every mainline game adding at least one more. Even "youkai" is just an umbrella term, and they can range from angry, ravenous monsters, to classical vampires, to beings that might as well be human.
  • Long Runner: The first game came out all the way back in 1996, releasing either yearly or bi-yearly from then on, and yet the series continues to be very popular across the world.
  • Lower-Deck Episode:
    • Fairy Wars, a much shorter game than usual, focuses on a quarrel between Cirno and the Three Faeries. Every single person in the game is a fairy, with Daiyousei, Lily and the Three Faeries themselves as bosses, rather than any of the usual "A-list" cast members. Except at the end of the extra stage, where Cirno takes on Marisa.
    • Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia is mostly about gossip centered around characters who haven't appeared much at the time.
  • Lucky Rabbit's Foot: Tewi the rabbit, an unabashed prankster whose explicit power is giving people good luck.
  • Lunacy:
    • Youkai in general tend to be more powerful during a full moon.
    • Byakuren notes in Reisen's scenario of Urban Legend In Limbo that urban legend phenomena tends to be strongest during the full moon.
  • Lunarians: Kaguya and Eirin, with Reisen technically counting due to being a Moon Rabbit. More are seen in official manga and Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: Often used in Touhou Fan Vids to represent danmaku in three dimensions.
  • The Magic Goes Away: Gensokyo was created as a safe haven for magical creatures and gods who can no longer exist in the outside world. It's also implied that humans can't cast spells out there either. Although given the existence of immigrants it's not as though there's no magic outside. Yet.
    Byakuren: But then, because of the Westernization of Japan, folklore became superstition, shugendou gave way to secularism, and they were forgotten about along with humanity's fear of the dark. The tengu who were working together with humans starting appearing less and less. For this reason, the existence of these youkai was endangered. And not just tengu, but all youkai...
  • Magic or Psychic?: The term "magic" is most commonly used to describe the Sufficiently Analyzed Magic used by magicians and Onmyoudou, but it can also be used as an umbrella term to describe supernatural powers in general, such as Sumireko Usami's psychic powers.
  • Main Character Final Boss:
  • Meaningful Name: Most characters have at least one name (the family name, most often) that's vaguely related to what they do.
  • Mirror Match:
    • Miko's fifth match in Hopeless Masquerade is against herself. Of course, it's just Mamizou, and the fight ends after one spell card, only for the real fight to begin.
    • Eiki's last spellcard in Shoot the Bullet has her turn into Aya. It's probably some sort of test of character.
  • Mission Control: In Subterranean Animism, various youkai provide this to Reimu and Marisa, leading to different ammo/bombs, different special skills for Reimu, different dialogs and endings, and different ways of getting horribly mauled by Satori.
  • Moe Anthropomorphism: A lot of the characters are humanoid representations of abstract concepts.
  • Mono no Aware: One of the Central Themes of the franchise, becoming particularly prominent when the cast interact with immortal beings like the Lunarians, as well as in the future setting of Touhou ā€“ ZUN's Music Collection.
  • Monster Clown: Featured heavily in the Dolls in Pseudo Paradise story.
  • Monster Mash: It's fairly commonplace in Gensokyo for miko, witches, vampires, ghosts, aliens, faeries, oni, goddesses, and all sorts of other youkai to have tea or sake together.
  • Mook Promotion: Most of the normal enemies in every game are fairies. However, the ice fairy Cirno is a self-proclaimed strongest fairy, and may well be one, appearing as a boss in few games and being the sole protagonist of Great Fairy Wars with an ability to freeze bullets. She also has the distinction of being one of three and a half non-human characters playable in a mainline single player game.
  • Mooks: Fairies, in addition to the lesser-used Fuzzballs and Doofy Ghosts. Fairies are suicidally overconfident, weak, and effectively immortal (regenerative), though the last doesn't manifest in the games, probably because they "respawn" somewhere safe offscreen. These factors combine to make them pretty much perfect mooks
  • Mortality Grey Area:
    • Youmu Konpaku is a half-human, half-ghost who lives in the Netherworld where dead souls await reincarnation. She's often described as half alive and half dead.
    • The Lunarians. In the lore, kegare (commonly translated as "impurity"), is the source of life, but also death because they are two sides of the same coin. By living on the pure moon and removing impurities from their body, they practically achieved immortality as they are technically not alive.
  • Mundane Utility:
    • Touhou Soccer, where the girls use their massively destructive spell cards to play Soccer.
    • Turns out that ghosts make excellent air conditioners.
    • Similarly, there used to be an entire pool on Danbooru of Cirno being used for mundane ends, such as chilling drinks.
    • Both Sakuya's and Kaguya's timehax abilities are used to maintain their homes in various ways.
    • Yukari regularly uses her Phenomenal Cosmic Powers as a glorified transportation system.
    • The official comics feature something of an aversion, in that the characters - particularly the human characters - don't seem to use their powers of flight very much.
      Marisa: Where's your ladder?

    Non-gameplay trope, N-Z 
  • The Needless: Magicians who are turned into youkai don't need food or sleep, though they do both out of habit or leisure. They don't age, either.
  • Never Gets Fat: One of the powers granted by the Yin-Yang Orb is the ability to eat sweets without getting fat, which Reimu makes great use of.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: Built into the descriptions. Almost all ability descriptions include ē؋åŗ¦ć®čƒ½åŠ› (Teido no nouryoku), which is (as of June 2012) translated as "capable of". Basically, everyone can do more than what's stated. This is confirmed in Forbidden Scrollery; according to Reimu's discussion with Kosuzu, her powers had recently awakened, suggesting that Muggles who don't have powers now can have them later on.
    • ZUN has clarified that these abilities are also self-declared, meaning that while everyone could do more than what their profiles say, they could also be capable of far less, making for a potential inversion of this trope.
  • Next Sunday A.D.: Most of the Touhou games and spin-offs are generally set anywhere from a few months to a year after their release (e.g. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, which came out in 2002, takes place in 2003). Of course, with Touhou taking place in a fantasy land isolated from the "real" world, this is rarely noticable.
  • Nice Day, Deadly Night: While Gensokyo is allegedly fairly dangerous to outsiders at any time of day, youkai tend to be most active at night.
  • Night and Day Duo:
    • Two of the Three Fairies of Light are the bright and energetic Sunny Milk, who has the power to refract light and is powered up by sunlight, and the clumsy and pessimistic Luna Child, who has the power to silence sounds, and is powered up by moonlight.
    • Two of the Prismriver Sisters are eldest sister Lunasa, who wears a hat with a moon decoration, and has the power to produce depressing sound with her violin, and second child Merlin, who wears a hat with a sun decoration, and has the power to produce uplifting sound with her trumpet.
    • This also applies to Kaguya Houraisan and Fujiwara no Mokou, though more thematically than anything else. Kaguya is a fair Lunarian princess who was exiled after she drank the Hourai Elixir to obtain Complete Immortality, and Mokou is the tomboyish daughter of one of the noblemen that Kaguya humiliated in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter who drank the Hourai Elixir in order to even the playing field with her sworn nemesis, after which she took up fire magic with motifs based upon The Phoenix. Now, the two of them are locked in an unending Cycle of Revenge, likened to the cycle of the Sun and the Moon that fall and rise as the days come and go.
  • Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: One of the oni Suika's Boss Subtitles is "Tiny Night Parade of One Hundred Demons". She can also split herself into multiple smaller versions of herself, make herself gigantic, and attract people to parties thanks to her power of controlling density (population density in the latter case).
  • The Night That Never Ends: The plot of Imperishable Night plays with this. It's your characters causing it, so they can find the source of the real incident. Another character in it also extends the night by temporarily erasing history to extend the night.
  • Nobody Can Die: A function of the spell card rules. Aside from the few ghost characters, the only confirmed deaths outside of the manga are briefly-mentioned background characters.
  • Nocturnal Mooks: While they can be seen during the day, youkai in Gensokyo are most active at night because they tend to be nocturnal.
  • No Hugging, No Kissing: Despite what the majority of fan work will tell you, all the official content has virtually no romance (and always kept to backstories or non-sequitur jokes) and absolutely no sexual themes. Amusingly a couple of the characters are even married (the Watatsuki sisters) but this seems to serve the single purpose of making them the nieces-in-law of another character and their husbands are never seen or mentioned at any point.
  • Nominal Hero: A big recurring element of the series. Characters operating as heroes are almost never doing so out of a sense of altruism, and possess very obvious flaws. The two most common protagonists, Reimu and Marisa, have the motivations of "it's my job, which I hate doing," and "it gives me opportunities to steal stuff," respectively.
  • Non-Lethal K.O.:
    • The spell card rules mean the games follow this trope. There is very strong lampshading of this, and very good reasoning for characters not wanting to kill the human characters. Also, since most of the characters are youkai, odds are many of them can't be killed by physical damage anyway, while the fairies which provide most mook enemies are said to have very short lifespans but constantly revive, giving them little concept of mortality.
    • A good number of characters are implied to have killed people, but no one that's introduced ever dies. The only exception to this is Mokou apparently dying during her battle... and it doesn't count, since she's immortal.
  • Nonindicative Name:
    • Team Shanghai Alice, the name ZUN operates under, is (1) a single person, not a team; (2) based in Ebina, Japan, not Shanghai; and (3) he isn't named Alice. From Touhou 13's staff roll: "Lately I've been wondering if there's a real point to the staff roll."
    • Many of the cast's powers fall under this, since they provided the official names themselves and may be trying to either hide or exaggerate their true strength. Examples include Reisen (who can "manipulate madness") actually having wave-based abilities that can be used for illusions and hypnosis among other things, Kogasa (who can "surprise humans") never actually managing to do so, and Futo referring to her style of magic as "feng shui" seemingly just to keep up her image.
    • Most of the humans in Gensokyo live in a settlement called the Human "Village", but a panoramic shot in Visionary Fairies in Shrine shows it's actually roughly the size of a large town or small city.
  • Non-Specifically Foreign: With the sole exceptions of Hong Meiling, Seiga Kaku, and Junko (all being Chinese), the Scarlet sisters (who are from Europe, but they're never stated from which country are from), Hecatia and Clownpiece (who seem to be Greek) and, to a lesser degree, Parsee Mizuhashi (possibly from Iran), all the characters with non-Japanese names are never stated from which country are from, or even if they were born outside Japan in first place. This is weirder regarding their names along with the nationality of their species; Letty Whiterock is an English-sounding name, but she's a yuki-onna, a Japanese type of youkai. Double Dealing Character takes it to the next level by having the first three youkai described as Japanese youkai in their profiles but also referred to as Western youkai in the song titles (ningyo/mermaid, rokurokubi/dullahan, etc).
  • Not Allowed to Grow Up: Though a number of years have passed both in and out of universe since they were introduced, the few human characters don't seem to age at all, and they always look like they're somewhere in their teens (though since the official manga are able to get away with having Reimu and Marisa regularly drinking alcohol, they're likely 20note  at least). The lone aversion is Hieda no Akyuu, who's the only human character who's visibly aged over time; she was only 10 years old in her debut in Perfect Memento (and an article in the same book states that she was born in 1994), but by Forbidden Scrollery she's clearly older than she was when first introduced.
  • Not Drawn to Scale: In particular, boss characters tend to look taller in cut-ins than they would logically seem to be based on their sprites or other aspects of their character. Most fans depict Remilia as fairly short, but her cut-in makes her as tall as Reimu.
    If their sizes appear to be different on the game screen than given above, it's because of some mystic force like perspective, so pay it no mind. :-)
    ZUN, after discussing some characters' heights in an e-mail
  • The Nothing After Death: The Hell of Avici is an endless black void where nothing, not even time exists, and where wicked souls are trapped for eternity. Specifically, they are effectively locked within themselves, robbed of all senses. It's also here that a piece of Kasen's spirit is located, the spirit of her true right arm.
  • Not So Extinct: It was widely believed that there were no oni in Gensokyo, despite otherwise being a Fantasy Kitchen Sink - and then, of course, they immediately meet one. In fact, it's not even mentioned until they meet her and it comes up in their conversation with her as Arbitrary Skepticism.
  • Off on a Technicality: Someone tried to trademark "ę±ę–¹ćƒ—ćƒ­ć‚ø悧ć‚Æ惈". He succeeded, but it didn't affect anything except ZUN's mood, since the series actually uses the Gratuitous English title "ę±ę–¹Project". Said person also attempted to trademark that and "äøŠęµ·ć‚¢ćƒŖć‚¹å¹»ę؂団" (Shanghai Alice Gengakudan) and failed.
  • Older Than They Look: Applies to pretty much every character that isn't stated to be completely human, which is Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya, and Sanae. And even then, questions have been raised about Sakuya, both in and out of universe. In-Universe this comes from the fact that all supernatural beings are extremely Long-Lived, if not outright immortal, and they retain their younger looks most of their lives. Out of universe it's because ZUN's art style early on made it very hard to discern a character's age from looks alone, but this has started to become downplayed with ZUN's Art Evolution, noticeable in the more clearly adult figures of characters like Urumi.
  • Only Six Faces: Not only is ZUN susceptible to this with his famously crappy character art, but so are some of the official manga artists, such as Aki Eda (Silent Sinner in Blue) and Makoto Hirasaka (Touhou Sangetsusei). One step up in the fighting games, since as far as Alphes' character portraits go literally everyone has the same face.
  • Oni:
    • Suika Ibuki and Yuugi Hoshiguma are powerful oni based on the legendary Shuten-douji and Hoshiguma-douji respectively, who once worked together as part of a group called the Big Four of the Mountain. The two are heavy drinkers, with Suika having never been seen sober in 700 years, and Yuugi being unable to be intoxicated. Kasen Ibaraki is heavily implied to be another member of their group, based on Ibaraki-douji, who has chosen to disguise herself as a human for unclear reasons. A notable trait of oni in Touhou is their honesty; they Will Not Tell a Lie and they hate liars.
    • Remilia and Flandre Scarlet are vampires implied to be of European origin, but reference the "blood-sucking oni" translation by possessing the traditional weaknesses of oni in addition to their vampiric ones.
  • Or Was It a Dream?: After returning from the outside world at the end of Urban Legend in Limbo, many characters felt like they had had a really strange dream and start to question if what they saw really happened.
  • Our Elves Are Different: "Elves" are essentially fairies, while the Lunarians are fundamentally Space Elves.
  • Our Monsters Are Different: Including fairies, angels, demons, vampires, ghosts, gods, robots and likely at least one dragon.
  • Parental Abandonment: Mr. Kirisame is the only parent of a canon character who is not dead, missing, or otherwise unaccounted for. And even then, he's only mentioned, and Marisa quickly ignores and attempts to change the subject.
  • Parting the Sea: Sanae does this in her spell card Sea Opening "The Day the Sea Split" (or on higher difficulties, Sea Opening "Moses Miracle"), as part of her theme of recreating famous miracles. However, the "sea" in this case is just a mass of blue energy that's conjured as part of the attack.'
  • Popularity Power: Popularity is one stat in Hopeless Masquerade. It goes up as you land attacks, declare spellcards, and goes down as you take hits and play too defensively. At 100% Popularity, you can perform a Last Word spell, and if the match goes to a time-out, the player with more Popularity wins, as opposed to the one with more health, as in most fighting games. Toyosatomimi no Miko's special ability is that she gains more power the more popularity she has, complete with her cape changing colors to match.
  • Power-Up Full Color Change: In Hisoutensoku, characters with superarmor become red-tinted, while the auto-counterhit state Meiling can acquire is indicated by her becoming yellow.
  • Public Domain Soundtrack: Sakura, Sakura ~ Japanize Dream appears to be an arrange of the Japanese folk song Sakura, Sakura.
  • Punny Name: Hisoutensoku ("lacking perception of natural laws"), the Humongous Mecha that Touhou 12.3 is named after, is a pun on/Shout-Out to Gakutensoku ("learning from natural laws"), Japan's first robot built in 1929.
  • Puny Earthlings: Humans in Gensokyo are vastly outnumbered and outpowered by youkai (and other subraces), and the number of humans who can go toe to toe with them can be counted comfortably.
  • Real Event, Fictional Cause: The failure of the Apollo 13 mission is caused by Lunarians who don't want Earthlings on the moon.
  • Recurring Riff:
  • Red Sky, Take Warning: The plots of The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody begin with a red sky caused by the incident inducers.
  • Red Spider Lilies of Mourning:
    • The Road of Reconsideration is a distant area of Gensokyo lined by red spider lilies where suicidal people from the Outside World and those without family often end up on their way to Muenzuka. The Great Hakurei Barrier is at its weakest due to intersections from the Outside World and the Netherworld, and so malicious youkai have learned to prey on the hapless humans from the Outside who end up here. The Road gets its name from the fact that, ironically, when a suicidal person interacts with the toxins of the red spider lilies, they gain an increased will to live, inverting the trope.
    • Muenzuka is a wooded area in Gensokyo that is also known for its red spider lilies, and also serves as a graveyard for the nameless dead, most often those without family or those slain by youkai. Much like the Road, the barriers between the Outside World and Netherworld are much weaker here.
  • Reference Overdosed: The series is full to the brim with references to mythology, science, and some popular culture.
  • Resurrective Immortality:
    • All who drink the Hourai Elixir gain the resurrective type, at least functionally. The very concept of death is removed from their being, but in practice this works by having them "respawn" whenever they take what would've been lethal damage.
    • The fairies work like this: As embodiments of nature, they are reborn immediately whenever they die. Gameplay-wise, this is the explanation for how you can blow them away by the hundreds without feeling guilty, and in the written stories, we see them fall asleep in the snow, die of hypothermia, and wake up the next morning. Akyuu says they don't really understand what death is.
  • Retraux: The soundtracks for Perfect Memento in Strict Sense and Silent Sinner in Blue are made in style of PC-98 synth.
  • Ridiculously Alive Undead: Yuyuko is a ghost but has no issue eating and loves doing so.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter:
    • The rabbits in the Inaba comics.
    • There's a meme about depicting Keine's hakutaku form as one.
  • Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Most of the the monsters in this series are one or two features away from looking entirely human. Some do look completely human.
  • Sacred Hospitality: The number one rule for Muggles in the backstory: be polite. All the rude people the series focuses on have the firepower - or at least regeneration - to survive not being so.
  • Schizo Tech: There are actually four different technology levels in Gensokyo: humans and youkai in general, who are pretty much at medieval or mid-19th Century level; items that come from the modern world outside (and, in the PC-98 games, came with the Outsiders themselves); the kappas, who are tinkering and working on Magitek, including Optical Camouflage and Hellfire-powered geothermal power plants; and the Lunarians, who top the tech tree in canon and have futuristic technology, which in Silent Sinner in Blue is revealed to be a Japanese version of Crystal Spires and Togas. Even the outdated technology that the renegade Lunarians displayed in an exposition in Gensokyo is far more advanced than anything on Earth.
  • Schrƶdinger's Player Character: In most games the characters the player didn't select still exist, just don't expect to hear from them until the ending.
    • In both Lotus Land Story and Imperishable Night, the character you didn't select shows up as one of the bosses.
    • Averted in the versus shooters and fighting games where you get to fight most of the characters you didn't pick. Phantasmagoria of Flower View and all the fighting games have everyone's scenario canonically happening in some order.
  • Secret War: While a massive array of characters avidly use the spell card system, it's implied that out of all of Gensokyo's population, only a handful of the major characters understand the system's real purpose. Reimu and Yukari are the best examples.
  • Seinfeldian Conversation: Er... often. Some of it is due to the heavy use of references to eastern mythology or folklore and metaphors that only make sense in Japanese.
  • Sequel Hook:
    • The question of how Sumireko Usami managed to obtain the Lunar Capital's Occult Ball when it should be impossible for anyone on Earth leads into the story of Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom.
    • The ending of Reisen's scenario in the PS4 version of Urban Legend in Limbo ends on a very open note, seemingly setting up for the incident featured in Antinomy of Common Flowers.
  • Serious Business: The Spell Card System and the Danmaku duel rules enforce Non-Lethal Warfare and everyone has to agree to them, even if it means everyone has to be a Tactical Suicide Boss. This lets the supernaturals legally cause trouble because they can be stopped with no consequences. Utsuho Reiuji was Easily Forgiven for trying to nuke Gensokyo because she lost to Reimu fair and square. Tenshi Hinanawi accidentally damaging the Great Hakurei Barrier in the middle of a rather petty incident was a serious enough issue that getting Killed Off for Real was on the table. Seija Kijin not going through Defeat Means Friendship by the end of Double Dealing Character has branded her an equivalent of a wanted war criminal and Impossible Spell Card is about everyone fighting without the usual handicaps.
  • Signature Instrument: This game has a few notable characters who are identified with their instruments, and like with the other characters in the series, will utilize them in danmaku combat.
    • Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom introduces the Prismriver Sisters; a trio of poltergeist musicians who show up as the bosses of Stage 4. Lunasa plays the violin, Merlin plays the trumpet, and Lyrica plays the keyboard.
    • Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character introduces three more instrument-based characters. The first two are the Tsukumo Sisters; Benben and Yatsuhashi, who are tsukumogami yokai based on the Japanese biwa and koto instruments respectively. Both show up as the bosses of Stage 4. Finally, there's Raiko Horikawa; the Extra Stage boss, who is also a tsukumogami based on the taiko drum.
  • Sinister Silhouettes: Starting with the Windows era, the box art of each game with the exception of 100th Black Market features a character's sillouette. Usually, it's the game's Final Boss or Extra Boss, though the spin-offs tend to have a character that's at least important to the game's plot.
  • Slave Race: While hinted at before, Forbidden Scrollery has Reisen outright stating that the moon rabbits are more or less slaves for the Lunarians.
  • Slice of Life: Very common in official written works, especially the three Touhou Sangetsusei manga series and the short story serial Curiosities of Lotus Asia. This tends to put off some fans who are used to the combat-heavy games, though others enjoy the laid-back view of Gensokyo.
  • Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: One of the most Integrated franchises in existence, explaining nearly all gameplay mechanics as a function of the setting and exploring the implications of them in the story.
  • Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: All the important characters who actually do anything are female.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: A land full of fairies and beautiful girls in elaborate dresses enjoying sake together, punctuated by such "crises" as too many flowers blooming. There are a few darker elements tucked away in there, mostly as Noodle Incidents and perhaps Offscreen Villainy. On the other hand, Fantastic Racism is a recurring plot point.
  • Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: Canon Touhou works in general tend to be on the silly side, while fanworks can be anywhere on the scale. ZUN seems to encourage this intentionally, for instance by never explicitly nailing down how dangerous it really is for humans to live in Gensokyo.
  • Society of Immortals: The Lunar Capital, rather explicitly, but also youkai society in general, as youkai are implied to have no natural lifespan. Although most of them don't exactly form societies, other than exceptions like the Tengu.
  • Space Elves: The Lunarians, who are of the "Mystical Enlightened Race" subtype. As their name indicates, they hail from the moon, though they originally lived on Earth thousands of years ago before leaving to escape the Shinto concept of impurity.
  • Space Is an Ocean:
    • The key to making the magic-powered moon rocket in Silent Sinner in Blue is to realize that they should be thinking of it as a voyage across the sea and call upon gods associated with sailing and seaships.
    • More literally, the moon is associated with the sea (as opposed to Earth being a "mountain"). The Lunar Capital is even the same place as the Dragon Palace, meaning that if you get lost at sea you might end up on the moon.
  • Space Station: Torifune, introduced in Trojan Green Asteroid. It isnote  a Japanese space station designed to test terraforming practices. Then it somehow became an illusion and is now a fantasy jungle floating in outer space.
  • Special Occasions Are Magic: The goddess Chimata Tenkyu's "Lunar Rainbow Market", where she personally partakes in the selling of Ability Cards, only occurs during a titular lunar rainbow or similarly dramatic event such as a meteor impact or volcanic eruption.
  • Spell My Name With An S: Official spellings for character and place names can vary within the series. For example, ZUN writes "Gensokyo" in English in Perfect Cherry Blossom—this is predominantly the spelling the fandom uses. The back cover of Grimoire of Marisa spells it as "Gensoukyo." "Gensoukyou" and "Gensokyou" are alternate spellings directly derived from the romanization from the kanji involved, and there has been a push by some fans to make either spelling the common variant.
  • Spring Is Late: In Perfect Cherry Blossom.
  • Status Quo Is God:
    • In general, this trope is invoked. This is essentially the driving force behind most of the games, though it has become increasingly prevalent in the latest installments, sometimes almost crossing over with Blue-and-Orange Morality. Solving incidents is about restoring stability to Gensokyo, A.K.A bringing things back to how they have always been; As a result, this doesn't necessarily mean bringing the most beneficial outcomes to humans, even if most of the protagonists are human to begin with. One of the earliest examples of this trope can be found in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, where Eiki, while telling Reimu to "exterminate more youkai", also tells Yuuka to "scare humans more" (in a nutshell, do your job). As a result, it's sometimes not about what's humanely right most of the time, but rather what keeps the realm stable. This is also why a character like Seija is perceived as the worst of the worst by other characters in Touhou's canonicity (to the point where Impossible Spell Card can be summed up as "the entirety of Gensokyo tries to wipe Seija out of existence"), as her very essence is the disruption of Gensokyo's balance, something which is unacceptable for many of its residents, and especially for the very few who oversee the realm as a whole. However, Hieda no Akyuu, the main historian of Gensokyo, does note that there's a significant paradigm shift going on Gensokyo and even calls the current era an unprecedented golden age in human-youkai relations.
    • In Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, we can see Reimu, usually seen as an icon for youkai exterminationnote , defeating a God whose sole purpose was to bring salvation to human spirits in a realm where they are essentially brought to slavery by belligerent animal spirits.note  In a humane point of view, one may see this as abhorrent, but upon looking at the big picture, the ultimate objective was to give the Beast World back to the Beast Spirits, which had fallen into disarray after haniwa soldiers essentially wiped them off the map, therefore restoring its balance. She'd already turned against other humans in the past and/or helped fellow youkai, but this example perhaps pushes this philosophy to the extreme.
  • Story Arc:
    • The first arc is made up of the five PC-98 games. Its canonicity status is vague, beyond a few Shout Outs in the Windows games.
    • The second arc is the "Windows Trilogy" of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Perfect Cherry Blossom, and Imperishable Night, with Immaterial and Missing Power taking place between the latter two games. This has more to do with recurring characters than any over-arcing plot. The game Phantasmagoria of Flower View is something of a bridge between this part of the series and the next.
    • Starting with Mountain of Faith, all main games kick off the plot of the next, until Double Dealing Character, which is stand-alone. Ten Desires kicks off something of a sub-arc that's continued in the databook Symposium of Post-mysticism and the fighting game Hopeless Masquerade.
      • Scarlet Weather Rhapsody occupies an odd place; it was released after Mountain of Faith (and is numbered as such) and canonically takes place after it, but is essentially unrelated to the arc since none of the characters introduced in Mountain of Faith show up or are referenced in it. In fact, it's probably closer to being part of the previous arc. On the other hand, Touhou Hisoutensoku is clearly part of this era since it references both Subterranean Animism in the story mode and Undefined Fantastic Object in the VS mode.
    • Urban Legend in Limbo leads into Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom along with both games pulling in elements from side materials, including Bougetsushou, which is already a sequel to Imperishable Night. The PS4 port of Urban Legend in Limbo includes an extra mode featuring Reisen that takes place after Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, which introduces another incident that is the focus of Antinomy of Common Flowers.
      • Antinomy of Common Flowers starts its own sub-arc centering around Sumireko Usami for Violet Detector and The Grimoire of Usami.
    • Wily Beast and Weakest Creature begins an arc regarding the major powers of the Animal Realm interfering with Gensokyo that continues into Sunken Fossil World. The previous arc then combines with the arc of Unconnected Marketeers and 100th Black Market detailing Chimata's special market market and how it effects Gensokyo for Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, which has beings from the Animal Realm taking advantage of Gensokyo's land losing ownership to stake their own claims.
  • Strong as They Need to Be: Player characters beat everyone they fight regardless of whether it makes any sense. Most blatant with Kokoro, who spends nine storylines losing, only to then beat absolutely everyone without resting, finishing with Miko, Byakuren, and Reimu at the same time. Cirno is also able to beat anyone she's up against whenever she's a playable character, even though it's stated that while she's strong for a fairy, she's still weak compared to most of the other characters. Though, this is also played with: In Fairy Wars, while the Extra Stage boss is Marisa, Cirno doesn't so much "win" as "fight until she's had enough of Marisa's ridiculous barrages".
  • Stronger Sibling: More often than not, if two or more characters happen to be siblings, the youngest one is the strongest, though this doesn't always hold true.
    ZUN: 'When it comes to Gensokyan sisters, in general the younger one is "broken"'.
  • Stronger with Age: A general rule of the setting. Animals will turn into youkai if they manage to live long enough, and something similar appears to apply to humans, going by the immortals we've seen.
  • Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Interestingly, magicians are shown following The Scientific Method more than the obviously technology-based characters, though most of the latter are closer to engineers than scientists. Rinnosuke even refers to the modern technology of the outside world as "a type of magic that requires no spiritual power".
  • Super-Sargasso Sea: The Great Hakurei Barrier between Gensokyo and the Outside World attracts things or concepts which have "become fantasy" in the outside world. While it's mainly a justification for the existence of youkai, it also attracts other things such as extinct or endangered species, and yes, a bunch of lost items from the outside.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: As a result of the weather disturbances caused during Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, the prologue of Undefined Fantastic Object mentions that there was a bad harvest that year.
  • Thanatos Gambit: One of the chapters of Forbidden Scrollery involves a fortune teller's plot to become a youkai by committing suicide and then resurrecting as a vengeful spirit by having his work plagiarised. He does become a youkai, but the plan fails in the end because he didn't anticipate being confronted, and then promptly exterminated for real by Reimu shortly afterwards.
  • Theme Music Power-Up: In Hopeless Masquerade a unique theme for every character starts playing once they reach Max popularity.
  • Theme Naming: Both Wild and Horned Hermit and Forbidden Scrollery use theme titling, though it's more obvious in Japanese.
    • In Wild and Horned Hermit, all of the titles take the form of four kanji describing the character (usually an idiom), followed by the character's species. For example, "The Sparrow of Two Birds With One Stone".
    • In Forbidden Scrollery, all the titles are a brief descriptive phrase followed by their job/role in English, which is naturally difficult to convey through translation.
  • Thin Dimensional Barrier: The Road of Reconsideration and Muenzuka are places where the Great Hakurei Barrier between Gensokyo and the Outside World are particularly weak, and according to Akyuu youkai lie in wait there to prey on humans brought to Gensokyo via barrier fluctuations.
  • Title Confusion: Most entries in the series have a Japanese title and an English subtitle. Often, Japanese-speaking fans are only familiar with the Japanese part of the title, and English-speaking fans are only familiar with the English one.
  • Title Drop:
    • The final spell cards in Perfect Cherry Blossom, Imperishable Night, Mountain of Faith, Ten Desires, and the story mode of Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. Also tends to happen in dialogue.
    • Some character names borrow kanji from the Japanese titles themselves but are read slightly differently. These characters are also central characters in their respective games (Sanae borrows from Mountain of Faith and half of the Touhou title, while Eiki Shiki borrows two from Phantasmagoria of Flower View). This gets funny when a forum post joked that the then-upcoming Final Boss of Hisouten would be called "Hisou Tenko" ("-ko" being a common suffix for female names) shortly before it turned out to be "Tenshi" (same kanji as Tenko, different reading).
  • Too Dumb to Live: Perfect Memento in Strict Sense marks fairies as such. Fortunately (for them) they respawn.
    Marisa: Only death can cure that level of stupidity.
  • To Serve Man: There's multiple mentions that the youkai of Gensokyo eat humans. Akyuu says in Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, though, that it doesn't happen so much today The Hakurei Spell Card Rules may have been responsible for this change.
  • Translation Convention: Their language is described in-universe as "human", in contrast to youkai languages. ZUN has lampshaded this:
    Is the language the girls use Japanese?
    Gensokyo IS Japan. :-) However, note that even if they use obscure or archaic words, so long as there is no precise intent, they basically express themselves in Japanese in the games.
  • Tsuchigumo and Jorogumo: Yamame Kurodani is a tsuchigumo with powers over disease. She herself is rather friendly, but her disease powers caused her to be lumped with other hated youkai who lives underground.
  • Tsuchinoko: In Strange and Bright Nature Deity, Marisa adopted a rather cute tsuchinoko as a pet after chasing it out of a fairy's house.
  • 20 Minutes into the Future: The stories with Maribel and Renko are partially set in the near-future of the outside world.
  • Two Lines, No Waiting:
    • Chapter 18 of Wild and Horner Hermit runs parallel to Hopeless Masquerade but we see events that happen from Kasen's perspective.
    • Chapter 10 and 11 of Forbidden Scrollery takes place during the same game's final ending but from Kosuzu's perspective.
  • Undying Loyalty: A staple archetype of the series by now. Sakuya towards Remilia and Youmu towards Yuyuko are the most obvious examples, but Futo towards Miko and Murasa towards Byakuren are becoming more popular as well.
  • Universe Compendium: All of the artbooks, though The Grimoire of Marisa is less conventional.
  • Unmoving Plaid: Utsuho's cape in Hisoutensoku. It has stars and galaxies on it, which always appear at the same angle. Sumireko's cloak in Urban Legend in Limbo as well.
  • Unnaturally Looping Location: This is one effect of the Great Hakurei Barrier that separates Gensokyo from the outside world. According to Marisa in Touhou Ibarakasen ~ Wild and Horned Hermit, she once tried flying as far as possible, but the same scenery kept repeating over and over no matter how far she went. When she looked back, she found herself in the same spot she started.
  • Unreliable Canon: The series has problems with this. It's not clear if the first few games are canon, the ones we're sure about are still vague on which route is canon, and all the Universe Compendiums are written from the point of view of openly biased sources. And that's ignoring the things that just plain contradict each other.
  • Urban Legend: The main gimmick of Urban Legend in Limbo is the cast having fun with these, going as far as putting them into their Last Word spells. They carry over to Antinomy of Common Flowers with new additions.
    • Reimu - The Girl in the Gap: Catches the target in several painful ropes before splitting open a dimension gap right into them and emerging from it. Almost certainly imitating Yukari, who is the genuine article.The Legend 
    • Marisa - Hanako-san: Whacks the enemy far away, right into a bathroom stall where Hanako's hands catch her and drag her in. Marisa then locks the door from the outside.The Legend . Marisa's overall Urban Legend is The Seven Mysteries of School, which Hanako-san is part of.
    • Kasen - The Monkey's Paw: Makes a wish, turning the paw into a huge claw of energy that crushes the victim.The Legend 
    • Nitori - Loch Ness Monster: Summons ol' Nessie and blasts the enemy with its Breath Weapon. Heavily implied to be mechanical, though... and given it's Nitori, this is something she'd do. Though in the ending of her scenario, she ends up attracting the real one and turning it into a tourist attraction.The Legend 
    • Byakuren - Turbo Granny: Runs the opponent down with a motorcycle. Yes, really..The Legend 
    • Miko - Aka Manto: Slashes the victim with endless streams of red and blue that her cape transforms into.The Legend 
    • Ichirin - Hasshaku-sama: Summons the titular entity, which assaults the target with dark power.The Legend 
    • Futo - The Tale of Okiku: Summons the well from the story and sucks the enemy into it, whereupon the titular Okiku kicks them out.The Legend 
    • Mamizou - The Men in Black: Deals a heavy beatdown, then wipes their memory with a Neuralizer.The Legend 
    • Kokoro - Slit-Mouthed Woman: Performs a Jump Scare using her horned mask.The Legend 
    • Koishi - Mary-san: Calls the victim with eerie messages before saying she's behind them, then slashing them with a knife. Astonishingly fitting given Koishi's chronic habit of sneaking up on people.The Legend 
    • Shinmyoumaru - Little Green Men: Except not so little when Shinmyoumaru uses her Miracle Mallet on one, who then stomps the enemy.The Legend 
    • Mokou - Spontaneous Human Combustion: Mokou lights herself up like the 4th of July and explodes in a powerful blast before reviving. Considering her power over fire, she may well be a literal example of the legend.The Legend 
    • Sumireko - Seven Wonders of the World: Channels power from said wonders, or rather the "occult orbs" she collected from them, manifesting as a purple column of energy that crashes into the opponent from above. The power of the orbs allows her to breach the Hakurei Barrier and enter Gensokyo.The Legend . In AoCF, it is replaced with DoppelgƤnger, though her Last Word is the same.
    • Reisen - Kunekune: Has the titular creatures surround her as she activates her Lunatic Eyes.The Legend 
    • Tenshi - HAARP: Uses antenna arrays to call forth a giant lightning storm.The Legend 
    • Yukari- Teke-teke: Traps the foe with her gaps, then uses her fingernails to slice them in half.The Legend 
    • Doremy - Sleep paralysis: Binding the opponent inside their dream soul with metal chain and lock.The Legend 
  • Vague Age: Basically everyone that isn't the Scarlet sisters, who have known ages although their apparent age is more of an open questionnote , and the characters of Ten Desires who are specific historical figures with documented birth dates. We have a rough idea of what centuries Mokou, Kaguya, and Byakuren came from, and that's about it. Even the normal humans have so little past and such rough art that's hard to tell, though there are two notable exceptions: Sumireko, (who's explicitly stated to be a first year high school student, and since Japanese high schools start at tenth grade this would make her 15 or 16) and Akyuu (who was apparently born in August of 1994 according to an article celebrating her birth in Perfect Memento).
  • Vampires Sleep in Coffins: Remilia Scarlet insists that she would never sleep in a coffin, saying they're for dead people. Eventually, however, we're shown her actual bedroom, and it contains an elaborate four-poster bed... with a coffin on it.
  • Van Helsing Hate Crimes: The playable characters care little if the youkai standing in their way are actually evil or not, they're getting shot anyway.
  • Violence is the Only Option: Enforced in Urban Legend in Limbo. The occult balls cannot change hands without battle, so even when Miko is willing to pay for Nitori's in her scenario, combat is inevitable.
  • Weather Dissonance: Basically the premise of Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.
  • Webcomic Time: Averted: stories take place in the year they're released, give or take a few months to set them in the right season. Since games tend to be released roughly annually, Incidents also occur annually.
  • Whale Egg: In one of the manga, it's suggested a couple of times that a mysterious egg may be from a cat youkai. The same chapter also confirms crow tengu having eggs, and while they're related to birds, the two examples we've seen of that species look basically human.
  • Wham Episode: Despite being a spin-off, Urban Legend in Limbo has a couple of plot twists that change the image of some characters. The Occult Orbs that everyone are gathering turn out to be power stones that can punch through the Hakurei Barrier, and Kasen, rather than risk the barrier getting destroyed completely, punches a hole in the barrier with the stones herself and sends Marisa to stop the perpetrator while she takes advantage of the gap to search for her arm. Also, the perpetrator of the incident, Sumireko Usami, is the founder of the Sealing Club from the Music CDs and is heavily implied to be Renko's ancestor. And if that weren't enough, the Lunar Capital snuck their own power stone in with the others, with the probable intention of connecting Gensokyo directly to the Lunar Capital, leading into Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom.
  • Wham Shot: One before the penultimate fight of Marisa's route of Urban Legend in Limbo that demonstrates the stakes of this incident. Kasen activates the Occult Orbs...and the ground falls apart, revealing the Outside World.
  • Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Gensokyo is located somewhere deep in mountainous inland Japan, but its exact location is unknown. However, due to Youkai Mountain's appearance being that of Mt. Yatsugatake, before Konohana-Sakuyahime reduced it to the mountain range we know today out of jealousy according to legend, it's believed that it's probably within Nagano Prefecture.
  • Where the Magic Went: Gensokyo is a land where things that have been forgotten or have become "fantasy" in the regular world, such as youkai, lost items, and other such things, wind up. It is isolated from the regular world by the Boundary Between Reality and Fantasy set up by Gensokyo's creator, Yukari Yakumo, as well as by the Great Hakurei Barrier created in 1885.
  • White-and-Grey Morality:
    • Those who are good are apathetic to everything unless it affects either their interests or Gensokyo itself.
    • Most of the final bosses in the series are more selfish or irresponsible than outright evil, having a lack of consideration for the rest of Gensokyo whether due to selfish interest (Remilia), lack of foresight (Eirin and Kaguya), or outright stupidity (Utsuho Reiuji).
    • A few notable exceptions: the Saigyou Ayakashi of Perfect Cherry Blossom - a mindless, man-eating tree; and Taisui Xingjun, provided he actually exists. There are also the Beast Spirits of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, who mercilessly rule and exploit a world built off the back of suffering human slaves. Notably, the heroines help them regain their power no matter the ending.
  • Wings Do Nothing: Everyone in Gensokyo has a method for flying, whether they use wings or not. One footnote in Perfect Memento says that "... even without wings we can all fly." This shouldn't be too surprising given that Everyone Is a Super.
  • Mage Species: "Magician" is both a species and job description. Natural magicians are born able to use magic and don't need to eat, but are otherwise identical to humans. Human magicians need to learn a spell to replicate the bit about not eating. After that, they can both learn spells to stop aging, at which point they're considered "complete" magicians.
  • Word Salad Title: The titles of most official materials tend to be a 3 kanji compound word followed by an English subtitle. Sticking to this pattern makes a lot of them way more complicated than they need to be.
  • Work Info Title: Touhou Project.
  • Worldbuilding: The point of the artbooks. Fan works do this extensively, and it's seemingly half the reason the fanbase is so big.
  • A World Half Full: While Gensokyo is claimed to be a dangerous place, especially to normal humans, it nonetheless has things about it worth appreciating.
  • World of Action Girls: Not at first, but following the first game, almost all characters are female powerhouses. In contrast, the few named male characters aren't known to be fighters, with the sole exception of Unzan.
  • World of Badass: Everyone has some kind of power and, due to the spell card rules, can put up a good fight. Indeed spell card battle is "the most beautiful pointless game in the universe", according to Marisa and everyone plays it.
  • World of Jerkass: Most dialogue consists of the girls insulting each other, clashing egos, death threats, and in the case of defeating Mokou, casual murder and cannibalism.
  • World of Technicolor Hair: A large number of characters have brightly-colored hair. While many of these can be explained by most of the characters being some kind of Youkai or other magical being, a number of humans, such as Sanae and Akyuu, have saturated green or purple hair that's completely taken for granted.
  • Youkai: Youkai of various types make up a very large portion of the cast, even when not taking the minor stage bosses into consideration. The term is also used to describe Western mythical creatures such as vampires and hobgoblins.
  • Zigzag Paper Tassel:
    • Reimu's and Sanae's haraegushi.
    • Kanako's and Tenshi's shimenawa.

Alternative Title(s): Touhou

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