This is for theories about the girls of the eighth Touhou Project game (ninth counting Immaterial and Missing Power).
Wriggle
Wriggle Nightbug was originally a boy
Gensokyo has some sort of Gender Bender-inducing field, and Wriggle wears pants because she only recently made the switch-over and hasn't adjusted. This also explains why there are so few males known of in Gensokyo — only those who can resist this effect remain male — the unconvincing Word of God that there are as many men, but they virtually never show up in-game just because is intended as a cover for this dark secret.Keine
Keine's powers...
Keine consumes peoples' memories of her power actually working, and intentionally pretends that it is useless, for the sake of Obfuscating Uselessness. Keine has Yokai longevity.
She refers to a Hakutaku as a "beast" but it's really another species of Yokai. That one-three days of the month she's in Hakutaku form; her body is "not eating" that period of time. She has aged up to this point because Immortality Begins at Twenty. This will manifest one of two ways:- That one-three days of the Full Moon; her Hakutaku body repairs any aging cellular damage that occurred during her human days. It will take a little longer for her to realize this as having natural white hair make lack of greying difficult to distinguish. So probably in her 40's/50's she'll realize.
- Her human self will age and die; and then she'll become a full Hakutaku.
Keine's transformation into a hakutaku is extremely painful.
Thus the apparent anger in her IN extra stage appearance. She's not only protecting Mokou; she's lashing out from physical torment.Tewi
Tewi's ability isn't to give people luck, but rather solace.
It's stated in her article in Bohemian Archive that she can give anyone who meets her a little happiness. It's possible that when people are more happy/ content, they work more efficiently, bringing in more fortune, and thus over time, the humans associated Tewi with fortune and luck altogether. Tewi, being who she is, didn't exactly object to this potentially useful belief.
- According to her (admittedly not very trustworthy) statement in her interview: "I don't lie just for my own happiness, it's for theirs too. If you want someone to be happy you've got to lie.", it's possible that she doesn't have any magical abilities at all, but is just so good that she can trick people into feeling happy. Certainly fits her personality well.
Reisen
Reisen Udongein Inaba is actually a Lunarian, not a moon rabbit.
But she somehow ended up in trouble with the Lunar authorities, so she disguised herself and changed her name so as to blend in with the moon rabbits. Unfortunately, the disguise worked a little too well, and she was drafted into the Lunarian army with the others. Eirin has already seen through it, of course, but keeps her around so she can have a human to test on. Plus, look at her ears in her portraits in Touhou 8 and 9. Those black dots look suspiciously like buttons or fasteners...note - Every moon rabbit in the army has those buttons, as far as I know. I think they are a sort of distinctive mark. I remember reading something like that on the Touhou Wiki.
- Maybe they're all Lunarians disguised as moon rabbits...
- 'Moon rabbits' are just people, you know? The Moon Princesses make them wear ears because they think it's funny.
Renko Usami is secretly a lunar rabbit.
Usami. Usagitl mimitl . And she can tell time just by looking at the moon. Most likely that hat is hiding her bunny ears.Eirin
Eirin is genetically modifying Reisen.
In Cage in Lunatic Runagate, Kaguya muses on how "Udonge"; Eirin's nickname for Reisen is also the name of a lunar plant that becomes jewelled when exposed to "impurity". (IE, Earth) She considers that Eirin is trying to see if Reisen can become something greater than what she was on the sterile moon. The "Punishment Time" that takes several days of Reisen being unconcious is Eirin modifying Reisen's body so that it adapts to Earth. Normally, Lunarian's have a magical shield against "impurities" like disease and bacteria (No The War of the Worlds type Deus ex Machina, no.); but long-term exposure gets past the defenses. The immortals gained immunity to Earth diseases the hard way, but Reisen doesn't have that option.
- Why? Well, first, it IS to keep Udonge alive. But Eiren has another goal. Now, consider, Lunarians are incredibly long-lived; but still mortal. Silent Sinner In Blue has them having an almost skeletal society; despite having a powerful one half a century ago. We only see the Watatsuki sisters and two guards as humanoid Lunarians in the entire city; (There's likely others, but probably not many) the rest being moon rabbits. The zealous pursuit of purity has resulted in cultural suicide; the lesser moon rabbits ironically enough not sharing this fate. Eirin foresaw this happening; and has decided to see if she can create a treatment to allow the most prolific of the Moon culture; the moon rabbits; to live on Earth. Sometime in the next couple of centuries (Eirin is patient), the population crisis will come to a head; with Moon Rabbits outnumbering human Lunarians to the point that they cannot be the dominant caste. Eirin will offer to take some of the Lunar Rabbits off their hands. Should the population crisis continue, Eirin will offer the treatment to any Lunarian who wishes to move to Earth. (Provided they accept Eirin and Kaguya's existence as is, of course.)
Eirin is a giant troll and the Hourai Elixir turns you into a human-sized fairy
Think about it. Both fairies and people who have taken the Elixir regenerate on death. Why bother figuring out human immortality when there is already an immortal species? Eirin is behind EVERYTHING in the Touhou and Seihou series
Eirin is millions of years old. Who's to say she hasn't been manipulating everything? Everything from Kaguya-Hime to Gensokyo was part of her plan. Even Yukari. The Brain of the Moon planned ALL of it. For her own amusement, of course.Eirin does math without words.
She must know some math in order to perform all her experiments, but she does make an error in describing her age: "Divided by 500, it would be equal to zero." She may have meant divided into 500, which would indeed be essentially infinite. Eirin's reaction to Sakuya is because she briefly thought she'd found family.
Eirin, being Omoikane, never took a spouse and never had children. But she has a nephew, Ninigi, whose sons married the Watatsuki sisters. Ninigi's wife, the patron goddess of Mt Fuji, has a particularly interesting name: Konohana-Sakuya. Eirin's surprise is thus easily explained in that she thought she had reunited with her niece-in-law. Explanations for this could range from simple mistaken identity, to Sakuya being the reincarnated soul of the goddess after she died of faith starvation. The latter would make things humorously awkward for the Watatsukis, given this would make Sakuya the reincarnation of their mother-in-law.Kaguya
Lunarians are genetically human.
First of all: the Border Team's ending states that for the purposes of the ongoing "Youkai must kidnap humans; humans must exterminate youkai" conflict, the Lunarians (apart from Reisen, presumably) are considered half-human. If there wasn't any "humanity" to them, why would they need to bring it up? Second of all, Cage in Lunatic Runagate mentions that Lunarians originated on Earth, and throughout that and Silent Sinner in Blue, they all (except Kaguya) make much of the fact that they are more "pure" than the people of Earth.- Akyu considers them human, and they were apparently telling people that they're human at the expo, so this is pretty likely.
- This also dovetails with the above theory that Sakuya is a Lunarian.
Kaguya refusing the proposal for marriage by Mokou's father held greater consequences than ZUN lets on.
All it says in Mokou's profile for the eighth game is that her father proposed to the supposed "commoner," Kaguya Houraisan, and was presented with an impossible request. Naturally, he failed the impossible request and Kaguya denied his proposal. Now, all we know beyond that was that Mokou is very angry with Kaguya and that's where the rivalry starts, but let's think about things for a second. It says in Mokou's profile that she wasn't usually allowed out of the house, implying that she was an unwanted child. Her father was an aristocrat, which means his life would have depended very heavily on what his fellows thought of him. When he found Kaguya and proposed to her, he thought she was a commoner. The fact that she demanded he complete an impossible request would have been insulting enough, but when he failed and she refused his offer that would have been the ultimate blow to his honour: being shot down by a commoner of all people. This sort of dishonour most likely wouldn't have gone over well with the man's fellow aristocrats, and his standard of living would have dropped fast. The fact that Mokou was already stated to be unwanted before he was dishonoured would mean that Mokou would have also been hit hard by this. Her father likely would take all his anger and sorrows out on her, which means Mokou could have and probably did suffer a lot of abuse as her father fell and hit rock bottom. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to assume that the man eventually committed suicide, his life in shambles, leaving Mokou alone. Who would Mokou have to blame for the abuse she received from her father and his eventual demise? Kaguya. She wouldn't have simply dishonoured Mokou's family, she would have completely destroyed her life.- Now that sounds like it could actually hold alot of water.
Kaguya does have a head accessory.
It's called the roof of Eientei, which she never leaves.Mokou
Mokou and Kaguya symbolise the Sun and the Moon, respectively.
I'm not sure whether this is really a Wild Mass Guess or whether I'm just stating the obvious, because it does seem pretty obvious to me. The unending rivalry between Kaguya and Mokou is a symbol of the cycle of the Sun and the Moon. Fiery phoenix girl Mokou is the sun while shadow Lunatic princess Kaguya is the moon. As the Sun drives the Moon away during the day, only to disappear leaving the sky to the Moon at night, so does Mokou kill Kaguya, only to get killed by her later on, ad infinitum. Mokou was given the power of a Phoenix by an actual Phoenix.
Popular fanon, putting it down here. Unless it's an mutant ability, immortality usually doesn't grant door prizes. At some point in her immortal life; Mokou met an everliving phoenix that either wanted to die or was touched by her existence such that it gave its power to her. This would have burnt a mortal to cinder; but Mokou was able to absorb it. Nevertheless, this bleached her hair white. Which is rather impressive; given that the description of Hourai Elixir is that it renders every physical aspect of someone Eternal. Mokou and Kaguya have a noble women's agreement to tone down their feud in front of friends and family.
Even in the most vicious interpretation of their continuous killing of each other; Mokou never harms the mortals in Eientei. Kaguya tries to avoid Keine as well; but Keine tends to butt in anyways. Hence Kaguya getting other people to do it for her in the Trials of Guts.- Despite her burning hatred of Kaguya, Mokou is actually on rather good terms with Eientei's inhabitants and doesn't associate them with her grudge. There is nothing to indicate that Kaguya possesses a similar opinion though, and indeed Mokou could easily have become a hermit to avoid anyone becoming a target of Kaguya (or even they already did and Mokou is attempting to avoid it occuring again).
- The point is, whenever people see them together; they seem rather relaxed despite being Immortal Enemies. This is because other people are there. When they're alone; and nobody else can get involved; that's when the mutual killing starts.
Mokou and Kaguya were dummied out of Hisoutensoku because their planned movesets at the time made Gill look like a cakewalk.
the way i pictured them is them acting like gill when KOed after triggering a certain card only they can resurrect several times (due to being able to have several cards) which would lead to a long and boring fight which is probably why they got dummied then cut out of the game because there wasn't a way to make this balanced. The Hourai Elixir doesn't keep hair from graying.
An illustration in the fourth chapter of Cage in Lunatic Runagate shows pre-Elixir Mokou with dark hair, but no explanation is given as to why it turned white. This is obviously due to a flaw in the Hourai Elixir: even if you drink it, your hair still grays as if you were aging normally! (Kaguya's hair kept its color thanks to another one of Eirin's drugs.)- Alternatively, Mokou's hair grew out until it reached its maximum length and turned white from overexposure to sunlight, while Kaguya retained her black hair because she never goes outside.
- Or one of them dyes/bleaches her hair. Kaguya to keep up the appearance of youth, or Mokou in order to less resemble Kaguya.
- Another theory is that it was a side-effect from Mokou attaining the power of the Phoenix. Whatever it was that enabled this was so warping, it changed the hair-color of an Eternal. (Popular fanon is that she actually absorbed the power of a god-like Phoenix; which would have killed anyone else.)
- My theory is that, since two sips of the Hourai elixir will make it so the drinker never gets sick, it strengthens and stimulates the immune system drastically. Mokou's immune system destroys the black pigment in her hair, along with contributing to her frequently being on the verge of death. Either Mokou's immune system was already much stronger than Kaguya's, or she drank more of the elixir, or she has multiple genes for black hair and her body intreprets the rna transcripts from it to be viral. Either that, or Kaguya's immune system was very weak before drinking the elixir (possibly part of the reason why she drank the elixir in the first place.)
- Another personal theory (though it has less merit...): Hourai just turns your hair a funky color. What's the default hair color for Asian girls? Black. The opposite of black is white/gray. Reisen and Eirin both have white/gray hair, so we could possibly assume that white/gray is the default hair color of Lunarians. Kaguya? A Lunarian with black hair.
- Or maybe Lunarians, unlike humans, simply never have their hair color change. Lunarians are all "immortal" in the sense that they don't age once they reach adulthood, but they can die by other means like illness, injury or starvation.
- Mokou's hair is black...but it's all covered in ashes.
- Rather, it is ash. A continuous state of burning to cinders instantly yet retaining form.
- Alternative alternative theory: Mokou took the Hourai Elixer incorrectly. Now, the description for using the Elixir is simplistic, but in all probability magical potions are just as complicated as normal drugs - having too much or too little or in conjunction with certain other substances is incredibly dangerous. Eirin, having created it in the first place, would have been there to advice Kaguya on proper procedure, but Mokou had no such supervision and so while she did successfully gain immortality it came with myriad side effects, white hair being one of them.
Mokou has always had the ability to manipulate fire
Reimu has the ability to "float", and Sakuya can manipulate time and space, so there's a possibility that some humans can be born with an innate magical ability, albeit an extremely rare possibility outside of Gensokyo. Granted, fire being fire, she probably had little to no control over it besides causing things to spontaneously combust (including things she didn't want to burn) until she spent centuries learning to tame it.None of this contradicts the possibility that she might have encountered, and might have taken in power from the Phoenix, mind you (which would probably involve refining and amplifying both her fires, and her immortality).
- Supported by Forbidden Scrollery, Kosuzu tells Reimu and Marisa that she suddenly gained a strange power one day; and the two just nod and comment on how that sometimes happens.
Mokou and Kaguya don't hate each other
Sure, initially Mokou hated Kaguya's guts, but after centuries of catharsis from killing the object of your ire, even the strongest of hatreds will eventually fade. The only reason that they're still killing each other is out of a sense of tradition, and the only reason that Mokou claims to still hate Kaguya is so that people won't question why they're still doing it.- That, or they're both really Tsundere for each other. Or sadomasochists. It could be foreplay. xD
- An alternative alternative might be that they do hate each other...that way. They have a lot in common, by now they have a lot of history and a lot of respect for each other, plus Kaguya's manipulation of eternity may have unconsciously helped keep their relationship stable and mutually satisfactory. Perhaps their relative pleasantness toward each other in the games is blackrom's equivalent to bickering Like an Old Married Couple—they know they hate each other, they've had several lifetimes to do so, so agreeing or chatting peacefully isn't answered by accusations of letting the black flames die out.
