Going through (almost) every Touhou game in release order #5 - Perfect Cherry Blossom

[Cosmic]

Last time, we talked about the first Touhou game on Windows, so now, it's time to talk about the first good Touhou game on Windows!

In a way, Perfect Cherry Blossom is like what would happen if you fixed everything that was wrong with Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, and then added a handful of new quality of life changes in while you were at it. For example, for the first time in the series, when you hold shift to focus, you can now see your exact hurtbox, which is a huge help in some of the more tightly-packed spellcards later in the game, and there's also an indicator at the bottom of the screen labelled "ENEMY" during boss fights that shows you the boss' horizontal position. Everyone always talks about the visible hurtbox as a great addition that makes the games that don't have it much harder to go back to in hindsight, but I honestly find the enemy indicator to be more helpful in most situations; both are very much welcome additions, though. Additionally, if you gather enough cherry items and defeat enough enemies, you'll activate a "Supernatural Border", a temporary shield which clears out all on-screen bullets once you get hit, or if you try to use a bomb. This does kind of just make the game a bit easier, and as the player there aren't many interesting ways to interact with it as a mechanic, but it did help me 1cc this game as Sakuya, so I'm still thankful that it's here. A way to turn it off admittedly might have been nice, though.

Remember how I said EoSD had like 3 good songs? Yeah, no, ZUN is back to composing peak again, this game's soundtrack is way better. Right off the bat, Deep Mountain and Crystallized Silver are two instantly memorable songs, both from just the first stage, and the soundtrack is consistently great after that point too. Diao Ye Zong excellently captures Chen's playful nature, with a subtle hint that there might be more to her as well, and Doll Judgement takes a while to get going, but once it does, it becomes a contender for one of my favorite songs in the game (at least if we ignore one particular song which I'll go over later). Mystic Oriental Dream is another great one that gives the Netherworld a truly otherworldly feeling, as well as this sense of a "peaceful, yet dangerous" place that fits the area perfectly, and Necrofantasia feels to me like the perfect kind of theme for someone as hard to reach as Yukari, even if I've never actually gotten far enough to fight her myself. It's also just generally a banger, although that applies to most of the game's soundtrack.

Ok, so now feels like a good time to mention that if you've never played Perfect Cherry Blossom, you should go back and do that right now, and make sure to fully finish the main game. It doesn't matter if it's a 1cc or not, just go do that right now. I get that there's an inherent assumption in these posts that I'm going to spoil things, and the possibility that anyone reading this has never played PCB is unlikely to say the least, not to mention that the game's nearly 20 years old by now, but even still, I think what I'm about to go over is something worth including this warning for anyway, as it won't hit nearly as hard if you're aware of it in advance, and the feeling you get from it when it happens for the first time is unlike anything else in the series. Ok, have you done that? Promise? Good.

Yuyuko's final spell might actually be one of my favorite moments in the entire series. You manage to defeat her, just like you would any other boss, and by all means, the game should end now. But then, it just... doesn't. You wait there for a few seconds, not really knowing what's going on, and then some kind of bizarre quote fades in on the screen, and then that godforsaken piano starts up, and suddenly Yuyuko is back now??? Shit shit fuck fuck what do I do why is she here aaaaAAAAAA- ok, assuming you know what I'm referring to, you don't need me to explain any more, but the feeling you get from seeing her suddenly come back for one last-ditch effort to stop you in your tracks is unlike anything else this series has to offer, and Border of Life is the PERFECT song to accompany it with. If anything here had been at all misplaced, this moment wouldn't hit nearly as hard, but the moment of anticipation and not quite knowing what's going on at the start, followed by an ominous piano theme suddenly starting up, and then Yuyuko herself appearing is all timed to perfection, and I think Border of Life is the main reason this works so well. After the starting piano, it quickly changes into something that sounds panicked, yet all the same triumphant, as if to express this feeling of not quite knowing what's going on, or how or why it's happening, but that all the same, you're almost there, and that whatever this is, if you can overcome it, you've won. It's not a song that I ever go out of my way to listen to, but all the same, I can acknowledge it as one of the best in the series for the way it manages to perfectly turn the moment where it plays into something truly special.

Now, for the story. Now, I can't actually beat Ran, and this is one of those games where the extra stage adds a lot of extra context to the story that wasn't there before (as opposed to EoSD's which was largely entirely irrelevant to the wider story), so I've largely had to just piece together what happened in this game by absorbing information about it through the internet, so to be honest, I'm not 100% sure what actually happened in this game, but I'll try my best to summarize it. On a basic level, it's fairly straightforward - someone has been absorbing Gensokyo's Spring, leading to an extended Winter, so either Reimu, Marisa, or Sakuya, in her first appearance as a playable character, has to find out who did this and put a stop to their plans. Eventually, it turns out to have been Yuyuko Saigyouji, the head of the Hakugyokurou Shrine in the Netherworld, who wanted to make the Saigyou Ayakashi cherry tree bloom. Shortly after discovering this, the heroine defeats her, and returns Spring to Gensokyo. But, how was Yuyuko able to interfere with Gensokyo so easily from the Netherworld, and why was she so obsessed with the Saigyou Ayakashi?

This is where it gets a bit strange, although that could just be me having not finished the extra or phantasm stages (this game has two extra stages, by the way). As far as I can tell, Yuyuko is the spirit of a woman who committed suicide underneath the Saigyou Ayakashi, and once it fully blooms, it'll start to draw more humans toward itself and make them kill themselves too. It's never explained why exactly Yuyuko wants to make it bloom, but the implication seems to be that she's unaware of what it does, or the fact that she killed herself underneath it, and is just drawn to it by her subconscious. Anyway, for some reason, Yukari then shows up and decides to mess with the border between Gensokyo and the Netherworld, allowing Yuyuko to collect Gensokyo's Spring, and then once the incident ends, she forgets to make it go back to normal, prompting the heroine to go and fight her to make her restore it. Why Yukari wanted to go along with Yuyuko's plan in the first place I have no idea, but oh well. Basically, this game's story is confusing, and trying to make myself understand it by looking it up online was a mistake. I have heard that apparently even if you play the extra and phantasm stages, a lot of this information is really poorly communicated anyway, which honestly wouldn't surprise me, but I have no room to say for sure if this is the case or not.

Anyway, lastly, the characters! These are also much better than EoSD's cast, although they're not perfect. Their personalities, for the most part, are actually conveyed in their dialogue again, which leads to them feeling like actual characters as opposed to EoSD's faceless obstacles that were carried by their much better portrayals in later games, and the difference is obvious immediately. Alice is back from Mystic Square, although aside from the blonde hair and her use of dolls, she's basically a different character here. As opposed to Mystic Square Alice, who I can only describe as an annoying child, PCB Alice is actually sincerely polite and helpful to the main cast, and yet for some reason gets ignored anyway, leaving her completely baffled in the process, an interaction which plays out in several different ways but is consistently at least somewhat amusing each time. Chen and Youmu are also great new additions, Chen being a hyperactive zoop zoop cat child with no real idea of what's going on (just like me fr), and Youmu being somewhat similar to Sakuya in that they're both serious, diligent characters who you fight on stage 5 and who are both dedicated to serving the stage 6 boss they work for, but Youmu still having enough of a personality of her own to make her feel distinct - I particularly enjoyed the moment in stage 6 where she practically begged the main character not to go on, as she had gone from wanting to drive them out to just being afraid for their safety now that the possibility of them actually reaching Yuyuko and being killed as a result had become all the more likely to her. Yukari I also quite like in her future portrayals, although I can't say how much of what I like about her is present here due to my previously mentioned inability to reach her.

The rest of the characters are a bit of a mixed bag. Letty is boring, but gets away with it due to being a stage 1 boss and having a banger theme, and the Prismriver sisters never really did anything for me either, although the fact that their designs mirror the main 3 characters is a nice detail. Yuyuko herself, on the other hand, is a character I still haven't quite made my mind up on yet. She doesn't grab my attention quite as much as Chen/Alice/Youmu/Yukari, and for the most part I'm not particularly fussed either way about her, but she's still at times a likeable character, and she still manages to show enough personality here that I'd still put her well above the EoSD cast.

Overall, PCB is another great game in the series, and for me represents the point where ZUN really started to find his footing with the Windows games. It's not my favorite Windows game by any means, or even my favorite of its time, but it's still a really fun, enjoyable experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed going back to it for this post.

[Gri]

About the Cherry Border: This is a great mechanic for beginners. Having this shield remove the stress of losing a life if you get hit, so while it's there you can focus on just dodging. For score player, you can choose whether to keep the border and get bonus points, or release it on purpose to generate many cherry items and get another border shortly. You can also use unfocused-shot to charge to border more quickly, I used this often when a boss starts a spell card and I am close to getting a border. So yeah, there is some interaction with that mechanic, and I also like the fact that it make power items still useful once you reached full power, since all power items are converted to cherry items. In previous game, power items becomes similar to point items, except there value change depending on how many you collected, rather than the height at which you collect them.

Oh, and yeah the "Enemy" indicator is indeed a blessing.

About the soundtrack, while I also really enjoyed it, I don't like how some tracks have very-high pitched Zunpets (to the point it makes my ears bleed). Ran's and Yuyuko's themes come to mind. It isn't the worse game for Zunpets, that price goes to IN with the Stage 6 bosses themes.

Edited May 13, 2023 by Gri

[Cosmic]

1 hour ago, Gri said:

You can also use unfocused-shot to charge to border more quickly, I used this often when a boss starts a spell card and I am close to getting a border.

I actually didn't know this, that's good to know

[Eulogous]

Perfect Cherry Blossom is my favorite of the first three Windows games. It has solid gameplay, an easy to understand mechanic, and the overall most memorable ost. All Power Items being replaced by Cherry Items at max power is nice, since nowadays being at full power in more modern entries still have Power Item drops instead of being replaced by Point Items or something.

The enemy indicator is a nice quality-of-life addition, though I don't know why the text of "Enemy" was dropped in later games leaving only the red smear I can barely notice half of the time.

3 hours ago, Gri said:

About the soundtrack, while I also really enjoyed it, I don't like how some tracks have very-high pitched Zunpets (to the point it makes my ears bleed). Ran's and Yuyuko's themes come to mind. It isn't the worse game for Zunpets, that price goes to IN with the Stage 6 bosses themes.

Yeah, I agree on this. I've never cared for Zunpets tbh, especially when they reach the super-high octaves of screechy noise.

[Cosmic]

34 minutes ago, Eulogous said:

The enemy indicator is a nice quality-of-life addition, though I don't know why the text of "Enemy" was dropped in later games leaving only the red smear I can barely notice half of the time.

Yeah this is true, I never liked that they changed it.

[Gri]

8 hours ago, Eulogous said:

Yeah, I agree on this. I've never cared for Zunpets tbh, especially when they reach the super-high octaves of screechy noise.

Well, I think the games starting from MoF are using Zunpets pretty well. There are still loud Zunpets at time, but they are not as high-pitched so they don't mess up the track. I actually quiet like Zunpets, the mix of Zunpets + Piano is just enjoyable to listen to.

 

8 hours ago, Eulogous said:

The enemy indicator is a nice quality-of-life addition, though I don't know why the text of "Enemy" was dropped in later games leaving only the red smear I can barely notice half of the time.

Yup, that's a shame. At less there's still the audio cue to know whether you are hinting the enemy and whether it's close to dying.

This is similar to how MoF-SA-UFO dropped Spell Practice, and how all games after IN (excluding PoFV) no longer display your stats at the end of the game. It was a nice way of knowing whether you were improving or not (looking at the bomb used + number of hit + final score) But I am getting ahead of myself. This ain't related to PCB.
 

8 hours ago, Eulogous said:

Perfect Cherry Blossom is my favorite of the first three Windows games. It has solid gameplay, an easy to understand mechanic, and the overall most memorable ost. All Power Items being replaced by Cherry Items at max power is nice, since nowadays being at full power in more modern entries still have Power Item drops instead of being replaced by Point Items or something.

 

PCB and SA are both my favorite. Both are straight forward games for survival runs (SA has more complex shot type, but once you learn how to use them, the game is pretty straight. Life fragment are easy to collect and the amount you get per run is consistent, so you just have to focus on dodging rather than grinding resources), and have good OST (at less for me). They also have two of my favorite final boss fight (the other being UFO).

As Cosmic said, the Final Boss Final attack is just one of the most epic moment in the whole series.

[Flame Sniper]

Ahhh PCB, my first Touhou game and the first one i 1cc'd (with ReimuB).
Oh, feel free to skip the quotes as i usually put the big chunk of text if you like to read it without reading what came before. 

14 hours ago, Cosmic said:

In a way, Perfect Cherry Blossom is like what would happen if you fixed everything that was wrong with Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, and then added a handful of new quality of life changes in while you were at it. For example, for the first time in the series, when you hold shift to focus, you can now see your exact hurtbox, which is a huge help in some of the more tightly-packed spellcards later in the game, and there's also an indicator at the bottom of the screen labelled "ENEMY" during boss fights that shows you the boss' horizontal position. Everyone always talks about the visible hurtbox as a great addition that makes the games that don't have it much harder to go back to in hindsight, but I honestly find the enemy indicator to be more helpful in most situations; both are very much welcome additions, though. Additionally, if you gather enough cherry items and defeat enough enemies, you'll activate a "Supernatural Border", a temporary shield which clears out all on-screen bullets once you get hit, or if you try to use a bomb. This does kind of just make the game a bit easier, and as the player there aren't many interesting ways to interact with it as a mechanic, but it did help me 1cc this game as Sakuya, so I'm still thankful that it's here. A way to turn it off admittedly might have been nice, though.

I agree with all of this. Once ZUN finished all the heavy work with the game engine, he did an amazing work at polishing the game's mechanics. 
Eulogous is right, removing the ENEMY was a mistake (and in some games that have the game borders with reddish colors, it's a nightmare). Thank god there's a Thcrap patch that brings back the text, ZUN has a tendency to unintentionally hate anybody with bad eyesight. 
Oh, and the Cherry Border's one of my favorite mechanics, Touhou is one hell of a game and it's pretty helpful to have it present. 
For some reason, Reimu's focus speed is ungodly slow (to the point i got good at dodging most things unfocused, that would hurt me in future games where Reimu's faster) and not being able to change the bomb amount in the settings is strange (Marisa hurts with only 2 bombs per life)  

14 hours ago, Cosmic said:

Remember how I said EoSD had like 3 good songs? Yeah, no, ZUN is back to composing peak again, this game's soundtrack is way better. Right off the bat, Deep Mountain and Crystallized Silver are two instantly memorable songs, both from just the first stage, and the soundtrack is consistently great after that point too. Diao Ye Zong excellently captures Chen's playful nature, with a subtle hint that there might be more to her as well, and Doll Judgement takes a while to get going, but once it does, it becomes a contender for one of my favorite songs in the game (at least if we ignore one particular song which I'll go over later). Mystic Oriental Dream is another great one that gives the Netherworld a truly otherworldly feeling, as well as this sense of a "peaceful, yet dangerous" place that fits the area perfectly, and Necrofantasia feels to me like the perfect kind of theme for someone as hard to reach as Yukari, even if I've never actually gotten far enough to fight her myself. It's also just generally a banger, although that applies to most of the game's soundtrack.

PCB's has one of the most atmospheric (and overall best) OSTs in the series. "The Capital City of Flowers in the Sky" gives you the feeling you are flying at top speed with ever-increasing spring (matched with Lily White, the fairy of spring), "Hiroari" (the names are too long) captures Youmu's stoic but fierce and impulsive slashes and "Border of Life" tells you that something is hidden beneath Yuyuko's almost goofy dialogs. 
I agree with Gri, the Zunpets (especially in Stage 6 and Extra/Phantasm) are waaay too high, every time i reach Stage 6 i have to lower the volume and miss out on Border of Life (one of my favorite touhou songs). Necrofantasia is just ear bleeding, thank god ZUN remade it (and Necro-fantasy) in the CDs, only Border of Life left. 

14 hours ago, Cosmic said:

This is where it gets a bit strange, although that could just be me having not finished the extra or phantasm stages (this game has two extra stages, by the way). As far as I can tell, Yuyuko is the spirit of a woman who committed suicide underneath the Saigyou Ayakashi, and once it fully blooms, it'll start to draw more humans toward itself and make them kill themselves too. It's never explained why exactly Yuyuko wants to make it bloom, but the implication seems to be that she's unaware of what it does, or the fact that she killed herself underneath it, and is just drawn to it by her subconscious. Anyway, for some reason, Yukari then shows up and decides to mess with the border between Gensokyo and the Netherworld, allowing Yuyuko to collect Gensokyo's Spring, and then once the incident ends, she forgets to make it go back to normal, prompting the heroine to go and fight her to make her restore it. Why Yukari wanted to go along with Yuyuko's plan in the first place I have no idea, but oh well. Basically, this game's story is confusing, and trying to make myself understand it by looking it up online was a mistake. I have heard that apparently even if you play the extra and phantasm stages, a lot of this information is really poorly communicated anyway, which honestly wouldn't surprise me, but I have no room to say for sure if this is the case or not.

You get a lot more information on the games on some text files that came with the game (but the digital versions don't carry them), you can read them on https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki at the bottom of each of the character's pages (something that i recently discovered). This is what was written in an old book Yuyuko found that triggered the events of PCB (found in Yuyuko's text file, from the wiki).
Heavy spoilers ahead for PCB. It's interesting that EoSD's text files are a lot less deep than PCB's. 

"On the day the Saigyou Ayakashi had reached full bloom, the daughter of Fujimi crossed the boundary of life and death (in other words, passed away). So that her soul may rest in peace within Hakugyokurou, I shall seal the tree's blossoms and hereby fashion these limbs into a barrier. It is my hope that she will never again reincarnate, and thus never again have to suffer pain..." 

But it only gets more strange once you look at Yukari's text file: 

"The next time she woke up, she received a request from Yuyuko asking her to restore the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead. It was a ridiculous request since Yuyuko was the one who weakened it to begin with, so Yukari rubbed the sleep from her eyes and set out for repairs."

Then it follows with: 

"Everyone always seemed to be bent out of shape about that youkai cherry tree, and nothing else. Surely, it had drained the life out of so many humans. Yukari knew it was dangerous. However, she realized there was nothing she could do about it.

Yukari had known Yuyuko since before her death. She also knew that it was not Yuyuko who was sealed by the Saigyou Ayakashi...

... but that it was Yuyuko's body that was sealing the Saigyou Ayakashi."

Pretty confusing stuff, right? I also got the first impression that Yukari messed with the border, but Yuyuko was so decided to revive the person in the Youkai Tree that she weakened the border. 
My theory is that Yuyuko took his life not only out of fear of herself, but to seal the Youkai Tree and that another member of Yuyuko's family was the one who accidentally triggered the Youkai Tree's wrath. 
 

14 hours ago, Cosmic said:

Anyway, lastly, the characters! These are also much better than EoSD's cast, although they're not perfect. Their personalities, for the most part, are actually conveyed in their dialogue again, which leads to them feeling like actual characters as opposed to EoSD's faceless obstacles that were carried by their much better portrayals in later games, and the difference is obvious immediately. Alice is back from Mystic Square, although aside from the blonde hair and her use of dolls, she's basically a different character here. As opposed to Mystic Square Alice, who I can only describe as an annoying child, PCB Alice is actually sincerely polite and helpful to the main cast, and yet for some reason gets ignored anyway, leaving her completely baffled in the process, an interaction which plays out in several different ways but is consistently at least somewhat amusing each time. Chen and Youmu are also great new additions, Chen being a hyperactive zoop zoop cat child with no real idea of what's going on (just like me fr), and Youmu being somewhat similar to Sakuya in that they're both serious, diligent characters who you fight on stage 5 and who are both dedicated to serving the stage 6 boss they work for, but Youmu still having enough of a personality of her own to make her feel distinct - I particularly enjoyed the moment in stage 6 where she practically begged the main character not to go on, as she had gone from wanting to drive them out to just being afraid for their safety now that the possibility of them actually reaching Yuyuko and being killed as a result had become all the more likely to her. Yukari I also quite like in her future portrayals, although I can't say how much of what I like about her is present here due to my previously mentioned inability to reach her.

The rest of the characters are a bit of a mixed bag. Letty is boring, but gets away with it due to being a stage 1 boss and having a banger theme, and the Prismriver sisters never really did anything for me either, although the fact that their designs mirror the main 3 characters is a nice detail. Yuyuko herself, on the other hand, is a character I still haven't quite made my mind up on yet. She doesn't grab my attention quite as much as Chen/Alice/Youmu/Yukari, and for the most part I'm not particularly fussed either way about her, but she's still at times a likeable character, and she still manages to show enough personality here that I'd still put her well above the EoSD cast.

Overall, PCB is another great game in the series, and for me represents the point where ZUN really started to find his footing with the Windows games. It's not my favorite Windows game by any means, or even my favorite of its time, but it's still a really fun, enjoyable experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed going back to it for this post.

Headcanon incoming:
Alice's interesting here, as my theory is that she rebooted the world as a last resort after you defeat her in the Extra Stage, with only the most powerful surviving (Yuuka, Reimu, Marisa, and it's insinuated Shinki too due to Stage 6 of UFO). She would have felt pretty guilty about all of this (thinking she killed Shinki due to Makai being a wasteland in Windows Canon), explaining why The Grimoire is sealed. This would also explain why she is more mature (aside of being older) and helping out even lost humans in the Forest of Magic (even if she's a Youkai). 

Yuyuko's one of my favorite characters, she hides her wisdom with goofiness and food jokes (as in future games, it's clear she knows with a lot of detail all the reasons for the incidents) and it's just delightful to read. 
I also enjoy that she doesn't treat Youmu like an object (like how Eirin does or Remilia to a certain extent) and overall the mysteries behind the character's story really intrigue me. 
This video might have to do with me liking Yuyuko... (it highlights the hidden story with a bit of fan canon). 
This got long, holy god.

 

[Cosmic]

4 hours ago, Pepi said:

You get a lot more information on the games on some text files that came with the game (but the digital versions don't carry them), you can read them on https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki at the bottom of each of the character's pages (something that i recently discovered). This is what was written in an old book Yuyuko found that triggered the events of PCB (found in Yuyuko's text file, from the wiki).

Heavy spoilers ahead for PCB. It's interesting that EoSD's text files are a lot less deep than PCB's. 

"On the day the Saigyou Ayakashi had reached full bloom, the daughter of Fujimi crossed the boundary of life and death (in other words, passed away). So that her soul may rest in peace within Hakugyokurou, I shall seal the tree's blossoms and hereby fashion these limbs into a barrier. It is my hope that she will never again reincarnate, and thus never again have to suffer pain..." 

But it only gets more strange once you look at Yukari's text file: 

"The next time she woke up, she received a request from Yuyuko asking her to restore the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead. It was a ridiculous request since Yuyuko was the one who weakened it to begin with, so Yukari rubbed the sleep from her eyes and set out for repairs."

Then it follows with: 

"Everyone always seemed to be bent out of shape about that youkai cherry tree, and nothing else. Surely, it had drained the life out of so many humans. Yukari knew it was dangerous. However, she realized there was nothing she could do about it.

Yukari had known Yuyuko since before her death. She also knew that it was not Yuyuko who was sealed by the Saigyou Ayakashi...

... but that it was Yuyuko's body that was sealing the Saigyou Ayakashi."

Pretty confusing stuff, right? I also got the first impression that Yukari messed with the border, but Yuyuko was so decided to revive the person in the Youkai Tree that she weakened the border. 
My theory is that Yuyuko took his life not only out of fear of herself, but to seal the Youkai Tree and that another member of Yuyuko's family was the one who accidentally triggered the Youkai Tree's wrath. 

Interesting stuff, I like it! Although, it does highlight one of my main issues with early Touhou writing, that being ZUN's inability to convey the story of the games through the actual in-game cutscenes and dialogue alone, and reliance on external text files to have any clue what's going on. This hasn't been an issue for a while, DDC was entirely comprehensible without external resources and the same largely goes for everything since, but it does get annoying when you try to play the games that came before it.

4 hours ago, Pepi said:

Alice's interesting here, as my theory is that she rebooted the world as a last resort after you defeat her in the Extra Stage, with only the most powerful surviving (Yuuka, Reimu, Marisa, and it's insinuated Shinki too due to Stage 6 of UFO). She would have felt pretty guilty about all of this (thinking she killed Shinki due to Makai being a wasteland in Windows Canon), explaining why The Grimoire is sealed. This would also explain why she is more mature (aside of being older) and helping out even lost humans in the Forest of Magic (even if she's a Youkai). 

Ooh, I like that. It'd certainly explain why she's suddenly become much more mature and responsible since Mystic Square, and it gives her an extra amount of character depth beyond just "I am a different person now". It would be weird for someone like Mima to not survive that if the four you mentioned could, but if I remember correctly, ZUN said everything from PC-98 Touhou not contradicted by Windows is canon, so who knows, maybe she's still out there somewhere. Probably not in any context that means she'll show up (Mima copium is a dangerous drug and I don't want to get started on it), but she's probably just floating around Makai or something like that, that seems like a place she'd like.

[Flame Sniper]

7 hours ago, Cosmic said:

It would be weird for someone like Mima to not survive that if the four you mentioned could, but if I remember correctly, ZUN said everything from PC-98 Touhou not contradicted by Windows is canon, so who knows, maybe she's still out there somewhere. Probably not in any context that means she'll show up (Mima copium is a dangerous drug and I don't want to get started on it), but she's probably just floating around Makai or something like that, that seems like a place she'd like.

I didn't mention Mima because ZUN didn't give any hints, but with the Detective Satori manga having a character from the same species and 19's big roster, there's a big chance she could return soon.

7 hours ago, Cosmic said:

Interesting stuff, I like it! Although, it does highlight one of my main issues with early Touhou writing, that being ZUN's inability to convey the story of the games through the actual in-game cutscenes and dialogue alone, and reliance on external text files to have any clue what's going on. This hasn't been an issue for a while, DDC was entirely comprehensible without external resources and the same largely goes for everything since, but it does get annoying when you try to play the games that came before it.

This is why LotLK has my favorite story until now, Reisen's story dialogs are pretty good at covering the complete story

[Cosmic]

2 minutes ago, Pepi said:

This is why LotLK has my favorite story until now, Reisen's story dialogs are pretty good at covering the complete story

That is true, although I feel like the subsequent games are all pretty good at establishing what's going on. In HSiFS and UM, the seasons incident and card market respectively are both clearly established very early on, and in WBaWC, you don't really get the full picture of what's going on until the end, but it's very much done intentionally here due to how the story actually works, as opposed to just being an issue of poor communication, and you're still never reliant on external materials to figure anything out with.