Awesome / Touhou Project

Spoilers are unmarked below.

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• Clearing any of the shooting games on one credit, otherwise known in gaming as 1CC, or 1 credit clear. The higher the difficulty, the more awesome. Better yet, you can save a replay to show off your awesomeness.
• The Music has an entire page of its own.
• ZUN in general, for creating a game series that rivals most mainstream video games in popularity, all on his own.
• The nature of the games doesn't allow for much of these, but the final boss of Subterranean Animism easily counts. You're fighting a fusion-powered Hell Raven above a respectably huge artificial sun whilst dodging other artificial suns, all accompanied by an incredibly epic Awesome Music. Notable in that actually beating her is just as much a CMOA for you as it is for the character you play as.
  • It's so awesome that the Nico Nico Douga users have created a 3D movie of Reimu's fight against Utsuho. See it here.
  • And animator MinusT has created another, arguably even more stunning one here... and the battle versus Koishi's next.
• There are enough example of awesome bosses in the series for its own page.
• Cirno's goal is to be the strongest. She's the weakest species in a land of uber-powered gods and monsters. She's the Butt-Monkey. Everyone tells her "Not a chance". HOWEVER! Eiki's dialogue in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, and Fairy Wars in general indicates that she's succeeding in becoming, at least, far more than any fairy has ever been. That's right: Screw Destiny; screw what anybody else says; screw reality; and most of all, screw common sense. In a land where the impossible is possible, Cirno strives for Serial Escalation. Keep plugging, Cirno. We're rooting for you.
  • Another example of this? Take the Extra Stage of Fairy Wars for example, where she manages to defeat Marisa. That's right, one of the most recurring and weakest bosses in the series managed to defeat a main character. Admittedly, Marisa was going easy on Cirno, but even she admitted she didn't expect Cirno to be that powerful.
  • Cirno managing to hold her own against Utsuho in Hisoutensoku, despite the fact that she is starting to melt just from being around her.
  • And in Hidden Star in Four Seasons, Cirno is capable of defeating Okina, a powerful goddess and one of the Sages of Gensokyo, twice! Okina is even shocked that a mere fairy is able to oppose her so handily. [Although Cirno; like all fairies; is SIGNIFICANTLY powered up by the ongoing incident; she's still far stronger than the other fairies; like Eternity.]
    • Talking about fairies, there is one overlooked fact that Luna Child having USA flag in her possession, which should be impossible due to Gensokyo being isolated from Outside World. So how did Luna Child manage to obtain the flag? By flying to the Moon at night and stealing the USA flag implanted there by American Earthlings, decades after The Apollo Incident occured. Simple, huh? Easier said than done. Furthermore, Luna Child came back to Gensokyo uninjured.
• Did someone order a 1:1 scale Minecraft model of Gensokyo?
  • This particular one is a CMOA in another way as well: Those who created it really went out of their way to make sure it was accurate and contains not only what we're familiar with, but also a lot of very obscure Touhou lore.
    • The old server is back with a new IP at touhoucraft.servegame.com, hopefully it will stay for a long time.
    • ...or not. Fate of Six Years and all.
    • They usually use their Steam Group for all their information. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/TouhouCraft
• The Touhou Danmaku All-Star Medley deserves a mention. It features all of the Windows-era characters up to Ten Desires attacking one at a time, even the ones who don't appear in games. The spellcards are very creative and the widescreen format allows for even more beautiful danmaku to be shown off.
  • The only characters not in it are Kosuzu, due to FS being released after this, Koakuma, and maybe Daiyousei, due to not being named in the games.
  • The medley also has various hilarious moments that easily constitute Funny such Mokou sprinkling the player with deadly One Ups while making a killer "Full Bomb" item chase them, Nue's spellcard Breaking the Fourth Wall again by imitating Nico Nico Douga, Rinnosuke chasing after you while wildly swinging the Kusanagi-no-tsurugi, Kaguya... just helplessly floating asleep in midair, etc., etc.
  • And now someone else made a playable version, adding in all the bosses up to TH16.
• The Touhou Danmaku All-Star Medley creator also made Unreasonable Mechanism, a (video of a) ridiculously hard game where you have no lives or bombs. You have to clear the entire thing without dying once, or you're forced to start over. The player is forced to deal with the title text falling on them, fairies that have Master Spark and turn into homing versions of Utsuho's giant bullets, instant death when timing out boss attacks, stalking killer 1UPs, and so much more. When Marisa comes from below and rams into them after they clear the stage section for the first time, you can see the player banging on the keyboard in frustration. After suffering 220 deaths, they manage to pull off a completely perfect run which makes this an incredible Moment of Awesome.
• The final battle of Hata no Kokoro's story mode in Hopeless Masquerade, where Kokoro fights Reimu, Byakuren, and Miko all at once. The only thing more badass than that matchup is the fact that she wins.
• Komachi's fight against Tenshi in her Story Mode definitely qualifies. She gets so pissed at the Celestial for abusing the cycle of death and rebirth that she breaks her carefree facade and completely demolishes her. And unlike most of Tenshi's fights, she never returns to pay back the beating in her story mode, suggesting that she was already going all-out the first time around and got beaten cleanly.
  Komachi: Not underestimating a shinigami would be in your best interest. Even the Celestials fear Death, you know?
• Sanae's final battle in Hisoutensoku against Suwako due to the incredibly creative uses of the latter's abilities, including causing the nuclear reactor they are in to erupt and battling using lava frogs. This culminates in a free-fall battle between the two.
• Seija Kijin is not the most powerful youkai ever. She's not even a stage 6 boss. However, she is clever and very creative, as proven by her being the Stage 5 boss. She doesn't have that high a bullet count, but she makes every bullet count as she peppers you from the top, bottom, and the mind by reversing your controls. In Gensokyo, where power seems to be the key to every solution, Seija manages to prove that boring is practical.
  • What's even more impressive is that she goes on to take on half of Gensokyo by herself, and none of them are holding back. Through clever usage of several cheat items, she gets to beat every single one of them, up to and including powerhouses like Yukari, Byakuren, and Miko. Furthermore, because of her despised nature, everyone uses spellcards that are normally almost impossible to dodge, something that was normally forbidden in spellcard battles, and yet she wins anyways.
    • It is possible (as shown here and by many others) to beat the game without using cheat items at all. It can be said that Seija was able to avoid being beaten at her own game by not cheating against those who broke their own rules to beat her!
      Seija: If I beat these guys, I'll have nothing more to fear. I will become the new ruler!
• When Playism announced that it would begin carrying Touhou games for digital purchase and download, the news was so big that the site crashed.
• Sumireko Usami is a human from the Outside World with psychic powers, strong enough to battle a shrine maiden who has fought powerful youkai and gods, two ancient saints, and among various youkai, a being that may or may not be an oni. The sudden Last Spell at the end of Reimu's story mode also qualifies, as it gradually fills with different kinds of bullets within the oppressive, purple, hazy world, with Sumireko herself clad in shadow and surrounded by the Power Stones.
  • Whats even more amazing about Sumireko is the fact she single-handedly brought Gensokyo to its knees. While she was manipulated by the Lunar Capital, they never gave her any support except for mysteriously providing the orb of the Lunar Capital. It took the concentrated efforts of multiple final bosses and extra bosses to confront her, and even then, Sumireko managed to escape, albeit temporarily. If it wasn't for Reimu's intervention, Sumireko would have been able to destroy Gensokyo at the cost of her own life. Mind you, this is a freaking 15/16-year old girl who is in high school. Regardless of how steel-willed she is, she can take on gods and demons from myth and win!
• Junko in Legacy Of Lunatic Kingdom being able to force the godlike Lunarians off the Lunar Capital with the use of fairies by exploiting the Lunarians' thanatophobia. The only thing that she didn't account for was that the Lunarians would try to relocate to Gensokyo, triggering the wrath of the main protagonists. If not for that, she would have gotten away with her plan.
  • And while Word of God has stated they will never be in an official game, the implication is present that Junko managed to take out even the Watatsuki sisters, something not even Reimu and Yukari working together could do.
• Aya decides to interview Hecatia about immigration issues and other problems in Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia. Aya starts making some subtle jabs at the ideology of Hecatia and the people living in Hell. Hecatia decides to take a few jabs back at Aya's by suggesting that she might be an Unwitting Pawn for the Lunarians. It hits Aya so hard that she decides to leave the contents of Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia unpublished in-universe.
  Aya: I do nothing but expose the truth.
  Hecatia: The Truth? Have you EVER done that? All you do is choose the truth that's most beneficial for you and try to dye the world in that color. Heck, that way of thinking would make you a perfect match for the Lunarians. No wait, this magazine of yours is already chock full of prejudice. Seriously, you should go back over every article in here and ask yourself if it's really the truth.
  Aya: ...It's the truth.
  Hecatia: Well, I guess with the Lunarians' power, anything you write WOULD end up true anyway. I guess that would make newspaper reporters the best profession for anyone looking to take over Gensokyo. Or maybe they've already gotten their venomous fangs into you. Oh well, all I can do is hope that we aren't seeing the reflection of the moon in your articles.
• Kanako's inauguration of the cable car to the Moriya Shrine. While everyone arrives bright and early, the service doesn't start for a while, so everyone lounges around the kappa stands. Later on, whispers of how the tengu are buffeting the cable car with wind, so in response, Kanako steps in with a show of her godly power and allows the service to start. It's, indeed, Kanako's finest PR moment — she bolsters the kappa revenue by stalling everyone at their stands, she invites fear of the tengu and thus their power and prestige, she increases her popularity and power by presenting herself as a strong deity capable of imposing her will, and most impressively, everyone wins with exactly zero shots fired, made all the more impressive given it's Gensokyo.
• Mamizou gets one in the final chapter of Forbidden Scrollery where she manages to easily subdue the oni of the Night Parade Scroll. How does she do this? By transforming into the moon and then the sun, exploiting the legend that since the Night Parade is a celebration of the moon god Tsukuyomi, causing the dawn to come makes the scroll rest, and terminating the oni's possession of Kosuzu without destroying her humanity.
• In Antinomy of Common Flowers, there's two moments back to back:
  • Yukari and Reimu get one in the final story mode of Antinomy of Common Flowers. Up to that point, everyone who fought against the Yorigami sisters couldn't beat them due to their trump card of switching Shion with one of the protagonist's slaves, forcing the protagonist of that story into a 2-on-1 battle. During the final story, Yukari manages to bait Jo'on into switching Reimu and Shion up. However, Yukari counters by manipulating the boundary so that Jo'on and Yukari become useless slaves of Reimu and Shion respectively, allowing Reimu to deal with Shion 1-on-1 and finally defeat the sisters once and for all.
  • Afterwards comes Shion's finest moment. When the Yorigami sisters fall into Yukari's trap and are cornered, Jo'on dismisses Shion for being a weakling. Shion, in response, decides that it's the moment to stop holding back, then she starts to emanate a bigger negative aura than her sister to bring everyone, including her sister and herself, down in misery. Yes, even if Jo'on is the one leading the bunch, Shion is the stronger and more dangerous of the two, and even causes Reimu to dread that they did the wrong thing by putting the poverty goddess on the center stage. Even Shion got a fitting badass boast:
    Shion: The plague and poverty gods were the worst, most disastrous combo? Don't make me laugh! I was the worst and most disastrous all on my own! I am the god of poverty, Shion Yorigami! Die cowering before poverty!
• Okina's final attack in Stage 6 of Hidden Star in Four Seasons, where she revokes the power of the seasons that the main character has been using for the entire game to use for herself, only for the protagonist to win anyways. Especially in Cirno's story, where she is repeatedly mocked by the later bosses for relying on that power and then defeats the final boss without it, proving them all wrong.
• Almost as a contrast to Okina's final spell, Keiki's final attack in Stage 6 of Wily Beast And Wicked Creature has Beast Spirits completely flood the screen turning it into an absolute power trip where you get to tear Keiki to shreds with your character's Berserk Roaring Mode.
• The climax of Wild and Horned Hermit: Kasen manages to pull off an almost Yukari-tier Batman Gambit against the darker half of her own soul and recreate the entire process of how her arm had been cut off and sealed, allowing Reimu to snuff out the spark of sentient malice that had formed inside of the severed limb. Reimu even manages to make genuine profits off the whole incident by showcasing the withered, half-alive arm at the shrine... which in turn allows Kasen to also pull a Mamizou and effectively blackmail Reimu into keeping her true nature and species a secret.
  • And when Reimu's own lazy nature nearly scuttles everything - the fragment of the Onikirimaru being hidden in the leaf wrapping of the meal Kasen had offered her, which she was too distracted and angry to even touch - who is the Big Damn Hero but Tenshi, redeeming herself for the shenanigans of Scarlet Weather Rhapsody by holding Kasen off and revealing the concealed McGuffin to Reimu, allowing them to nullify the arm.
• After 19 years of being one of the most popular characters in the series, yet almost never appearing since her debut... Flandre Scarlet is playable in an official Touhou game! Not only is Flandre playable, but she's essentially the true protagonist of Gouyoku Ibun, as she was specially picked by Okina Matara to assassinate Toutetsu due to her immense destruction powers. After nearly two decades of her power being used in memes or Nightmare Fuel-worthy fanworks, little Flan uses her powers to blow Toutetsu to smithereens! Sadly, it doesn't stick, but it does force the Animal Realm clan boss to expend all the power she'd gained consuming the oil to survive. On top of that, Flandre's constant training and fighting against the water-wielding bosses of the game has granted her a resistance against flowing water, the only major vampire weakness that normally still works on her and Remilia.
• Credit where it's due, even if you want to blame Plot Armor, Mizuchi has been skunking quite literally everyone in Foul Detective Satori, up to and including ultraweight youkai like Yukari and Yuyuko, often consided the two most cunning women in the franchise and probably only beaten by Eirin in sheer intelligence. And her most recent masterstoke in chapter 22 has her completely wipe out Moriya Shrine, which had attempted to quarantine itself, then sucker punch Marisa and run off with Sanae's body. By chapter 23, she's caused enough havoc that Yukari decides recruiting Flandre is the best possible option.