WMG / Touhou Manga

This page is for theories about the Touhou Project manga or characters from them, sorted by arc.

Human Village Arc (Rinnosuke, Tokiko, Marisa's family)

Marisa's father is actually her adopted father.

Mima, during one of her usual attempts to make herself more powerful, was constructing a servant worthy of her majesty, but instead of a youkai she managed to create a human that simply possessed magical abilities. Instead of going to the trouble of destroying it she opted to dispose of it instead, and one day, with absolutely no-one noticing how it got there, a blonde-haired baby appeared in the Human Village. Mister Kirisame, long obsessed with the unusual and unexplained (and predictably a frequent customer of Kourindou), decided to adopt the baby and name her Marisa. For a while things went well, until Marisa began experiencing severe Power Incontinence. Fearing that she would be banished as a youkai imposter, he had Rinnosuke care for Marisa more and more frequently to hide her abilities from the Village residents, until Marisa eventually realises that she is a Magician. She wanted to explore her abilites while he wanted her to hide them, and subsequently Marisa ran away to live in the Forest of Magic. Mister Kirisame is still bitter over his beloved daughter leaving him and has mostly stricken her from his life, but part of him still yearns for those few happy years.

Three Fairies Arc

Star Sapphire = Kaguya Houraisan.

First of all, they look exactly alike. You're probably thinking, "But Star Sapphire has wings!" Kaguya could have clip on wings, or Eirin has made a potion that can temporarily give wings to someone (most likely the former). Star Sapphire is also the only one of the Three Mischevious Fairys that isn't affected by the time of day. Neither is Kaguya. Both have resurective immortality. As for why they have different abilities, she could temporarily seal one of them while in each of her personas to prevent accidental ability discharge, or she could just choose not to use them. Also, we've never exactly seen Star's spellcards in action, so we don't know whether or not they are the same, and if they aren't, she could have two sets of spellcards. (This WMG has been brought to you by This Troper.)

• Star Sapphire is about a meter high.
  • Kaguya takes care of that with Eirin's "shady drugs"
• A doujin actually played with this by having Kaguya replace Sapphire.
  • And at least one fanwork has Kaguya turn Sapphire into her Mini-Me.

News Arc (Photo Games, Hatate)

Hatate Himekaidou will be one of the Touhou 13 Bosses.

Because it happened to Aya, right?

• Hataters gonna Hatate
• Kinda makes sense given what's known at this point. Holy spirits. Spirit photography.

Lunar Arc (Reisen, Toyohime, Yorihime)

Why hats are so popular in gensokyo.

Because they are the only thing that can stop the lunarians fearsome gaze.

Toyohime's fan works the same way as Enuma Elish and her regular ability can be used like Gate of Babylon.

From the way the fan is described I can't think of any other way it would behave. And her ability allows her to teleport objects and the Lunarians have a treasury that most likely have many powerful weapons.

Kasen's Arc

Kasen is/was an oni.

She's the titular character of a manga titled Wild and Horned Hermit. Her personal title is 'One-Armed, Horned Hermit'. It's not much of a stretch to assume that she has horns. The only horned characters so far are oni. Also has a shackle on her left arm, which is also an aesthetic so far unique to oni.

So, at some point she had a falling out with the oni (probably related to whatever cost her her right arm) and decided to live as the purest form of a human (or possibly being a hermit is the only way for youkai to be human). At this point she changed her name from Ibaraki Kasen to Ibara Kasen and broke off her horns (the remains of which are under those double buns).

• Youkai (even the low level ones) can recover from all physical damage as long as they are not properly exterminated. According to Akyuu the knowledge of how to exterminate oni has been lost even before the creation of Gensokyo. So she must have lost the arm after becoming a hermit, especially considering eating hermits is fair game even in present days. Alternatively, she could be some kind of human/oni hybrid. Maybe she became a hermit to gain the strongest traits of both species or she needed the mental discipline (a quality not very popular among oni) in order to control her power, which she seems unusually shy about.
• In Japanese mythology, it's entirely possible for an oni to become a hermit, and in fact that's the only real way an oni can overcome their baser desires. So if Kasen was unsatisfied with being a party animal like sake-guzzling Suika and Yugi, becoming a hermit would be the way to go.
  • That even fits in with the 'blue oni' WMG somewhere above this one on the page.
    • This is looking more and more likely, in chapter 9 of Wild And Horned Hermit she hides from Suika to "avoid being identified."

Kasen Ibara is the new version of the previously Dummied Outed Satsuki Rin

How does this make sense, you ask? Well, Kasen is called a "horned" hermit, and kirin do indeed have horns (not that I'm stating that she's a kirin, although it could be a possibility...). Also, the entry for Satsuki Rin states that she had the attack types Flower Sign and Wind Sign associated with her, and the name Kasen is written with the characters for "flower fan", so...

• I would like this: let's see what kind of spell cards she knows, before deciding.

Kasen broke Hell

She looked at the operating of the Hell of Blazing Fires and thought: "This much gratuitous suffering existing in the world is wrong. I shall do something about it!" Then she punched Hell so hard that it broke, and also her arm exploded, or something similar.

Thus why the shinigami is mad at her, and why she is concerned with the leakage of evil spirits out of Hell, and why considers herself a 'great villain', but also feels people ought to be grateful to her.

Kasen wants to become more human. Kosozu wants to be more youkai.

Kasen became a hermit to escape the restrictions that Youkai have. Kosozu is getting more and more seduced by the Youkai side of the Force through her books and Mamizou. Even if they never change, they are the "eyes" in the Yin-Yang symbol; the part that resembles the other side.

Kasen is a Hermit because she genuinely wants Enlightenment.

Whether she's an Oni or not; she wants understanding of humans and youkai. She doesn't seem interested in Hermit Longevity. Granted, if she is an Oni; she wouldn't need that anyways.

Kasen is not an Oni.

She's a Kishin.

No one is fooled by Kasen's hermit disguise. Reimu chooses not to out her so she can feign ignorance and do nothing about it.

• Reimu has impeccable instincts. She can tell whether someone's the true final boss or not just by feeling, and she can tell the direction that trouble is coming from without any clues.
• Reimu responds to Kasen's lie about the true origin of Setsubun with "That kinda makes sense! I'll buy it!" Reimu's lies are always blatant and terrible, so she all but outright states that she's choosing to believe a lie.
• Kasen's lies are just as terrible, and she clearly has no poker face.
• Chapter 24 is a big turning point where Kasen realizes the Reimu and Marisa have good detective abilities. Despite this, Reimu and Marisa let her off the hook despite a paper-thin alibi.
• Given that the intro subtitles start out haughty and condescending, then slowly turn into normal subtitles, WAHH is likely written from Kasen's point of view, and in her Po V, she starts out thinking everyone else is an idiot, then she slowly learns to respect them despite setting out to do the opposite.
  • The others' apparent competence level has slowly risen with time.
  • The characters are depicted as much more competent in other canon works.
  • This isn't due to them getting smarter, but Kasen slowly realizing they're not (total) idiots.
  • Kasen's arrogance is the only thing that's kept her from realizing she outed herself a long time ago.
• Reimu is sometimes kind and merciful to Youkai she likes (which is why the youkai characters aren't sealed away when defeated, and she allows them to party at her place after every incident), but above all else, she is lazy. If she outed Kasen, not only would she be crushing Kasen's dreams of being closer to humans, she'd probably have to make a show of doing something about it to appease the now-fearful village humans.
  • Also, Kasen's Blatant Lies are hilarious.

• Given the series Unreliable Narrator style of narrative, I can definitively see this to be the case. Show, Don't Tell at it's finest.

Library Arc (Kosuzu)

Kosuzu Motoori has an extremely changed consciousness due to her hobby of reading Eldritch Tomes.

The reason she hasn't turned into eyes and tentacles is her ability and that she's a resident of Gensokyo; Land of Illusion. However; even in the brightest depictions, consider; language isn't just translation. There's idioms, values, assumptions, etc. that are fundamentally different in each language. See Paradigms To understand completely a language (which her ability does) is to be able to comprehend and somewhat accept the paradigms and fundamental thought processes of the mind and culture that created said language. Overcoming the language barrier of a book of poetry, or even a simple instruction manual for a simple task; is to change one's Self. She's doing this with ancient youkai cultures that no longer exist, books turned into yokai, books that are the written souls of unmanifested youkai, field guides for Hell, magic grimoires; and the Necronomicon.

• In short, she's Weird (Wyrd); in the oldest; original meaning of the word. This isn't necessarily a bad thing in Gensokyo; but it will be interesting to she how she handles having this mindset and being human.
  • At the rate she's going, she may not be human much longer.

Forbidden Scrollery will end with a downer.

I think Kosuzu will eventually turn into a Youkai but it will happen in either the worst possible way or the worst time. She could even end up having Reimu as an enemy due to her statement that a village human turning into a Youkai is the gravest sin there is. So it is possible she ends up in exile just to survive with maybe Mamizou as her only comfort.

• Jossed. Kosuzu stays human and gets let in on The Masquerade.

The reason Jinyou are forbidden.

It's cause they are youkai in body but not in spirit. They have the power of them but doesn't think like them. In Gensokyou, this would of course be extremely dangerous, since if they choose to side with humanity, and using their powers against other youkai it could cause the whole social structure to collapse. This is also why Magician type youkai and those with a youkai like way of thinking are ignored, since they had abandoned their human ways completely, they are true youkai as a result.

Foul Detective Satori

Mizuchi's ultimate goal is possessing Reimu.

She seems very intent on destroying what little reputation Reimu actually has as a protector, and also seems intent on unseating youkai as Gensokyo's dominant power. The easiest way to achieve both ends is to get control of Reimu's body and then use her immense power to slaughter youkai in droves. At a critical point in their eventual fight, Mizuchi will dump her current host, then attack Reimu in the brief period of uncertainty. Given Kasen was able to almost casually rip out Reimu's soul and drop it into Avici for her scheme to seal away her arm, we know Reimu is not immune to spiritual tampering, and probably has no special resistance against possession. With the body and powers of her primary target, Mizuchi could then execute her other apparent goal - tearing down the status quo - by killing youkai in large numbers and riling them up beyond Yukari's ability to control them. Given Reimu can overpower almost anyone worth naming using Fantasy Nature, it would take some extremely clever plan from Satori to stop Mizuchi from using Reimu to do what no incident leader to date has achieved, absolutely wreck the current paradigm of Gensokyo. That, or some envoy from Hell would need to intervene, and only Eiki or Hecatia would stand a chance against a Mizuchi-possessed Reimu with access to Fantasy Nature and potentially even the Hakurei Yin Yang Orbs.