Power of the ladies: How do they work?

[Drake]

Considering that Kanako needed Reimu's help in summoning gods, I would say that Reimu is pretty good at it, compared to Kanako, Suwako or Sanae.

Even though I think you're basically right, Reimu can channel and communicate with basically any god she learns to. They needed her help because none of them could summon a very specific god, not because she's "better" at summoning or something. Suwako controlling the Mishaguji isn't really comparable either way, Kanako doesn't "summon" other gods and Sanae only channels the powers of her own two, she doesn't summon them. So you're right, but trivially so.

Really the matter is just how Reimu's summoning ability stacks up against Yorihime's, and the context of their fight. In SSiB, Reimu barely had any grasp over summoning at the beginning and was trained into it. Reimu became proficient quickly just because she's a genius. Yorihime on the other hand has probably been summoning everything under the sun for several human lifetimes. Her experience and knowledge is what overpowers Reimu in this case. But when they fight, Reimu is already in the mindset that she's going to lose. She knows they're the villains on the Moon, so she really doesn't care about winning. While she does put up a fight, even if she could do better, she didn't care nearly as much as Yorihime did about defeating them all. Those two contrasts between them are the core themes of their fight, not really that either was "holding back" per se.

You aren't supposed to go all out on spell card duels and you aren't supposed to use overwhelming force or something like that.

Suika received a complaint from Marisa concerning the latter.

Marisa complained that Suika's danmaku often becomes less danmaku than it does a blob of bullets smashing the opponent to bits. Basically it's a complaint about her superdense attacks.

[Starxsword]

Yeah, you are right, holding back is misleading. I meant Reimu isn't trying her best, like she would be doing if she is solving an incident, where she is the good guy. While Yorihime is trying her best, since she is defending the moon.

[ToyoRai]

Suwako controlling the Mishaguji isn't really comparable either way,

Is Mishaguji term for cursed gods or is it just a particular god? Just asking, as if Kanaki needed Reimu's help to summon gods, it would just mean she wants a god what isn't one of the cursed ones.

[Starxsword]

I believe Mishaguji is a specific set of cursed gods, the Mishaguji, as the name implies. Suwako won't be able to control/summon someone like Hina for instance.

Kanako needs Reimu's help, because Sanae isn't proficient enough to do it.

[Drake]

Is Mishaguji term for cursed gods or is it just a particular god? Just asking, as if Kanaki needed Reimu's help to summon gods, it would just mean she wants a god what isn't one of the cursed ones.

Curse gods, not cursed gods.

http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Mishaguji
http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Symposium_of_Post-mysticism/Suwako_Moriya

Hina is also not a curse goddess, she's better referred to as a misfortune goddess. The translation of 厄神 to curse god is more or less accurate, but it's a bit misleading and confuses things with the Mishaguji, who really are curse gods (祟り神).

[Prime32]

As I understand it, Suwako is good at controlling the Mishaguji because on some level she is the Mishaguji, the two being embodiments of the Suwa region generated from the same body of faith.

[Drake]

Well they are both part of the yaoyorozu no kami and were native to the Suwa region, and their faithbase is probably linked in some way, yeah. I don't think it really follows that this is why Suwako is good at controlling the Mishaguji, and I don't really think she needs a reason besides "she tamed them". I would like to hear a meta-explanation for why the Mishaguji were chosen and so forth, though.

[ToyoRai]

I decided to look at the character's abilities and I noticed that Chen has the ability to surpise people as bakeneko. So is this one of few people, if only time, when an ability appears with multiple people? Note, I am not counting Marisa and Byakuren, as they specialize in different types of magic.

[Fujiwara no Mokou]

She cannot be killed and is therefore invincible. It's pretty simple, but Mokou has effectively attained eternal life having tasted the elixir of immortality. Most folk think of 'immortal' as just a mortal that's really really hard to kill, but I like how it's true meaning is revived when played in IN. Mokou quite literally is missing death, which is why she scared the daylights out of Yuyuko. I don't think the nature of it is regenerative like cell division, rather her existence endures because there is no possibility for an alternative. I guess with her there is no defining line between body and soul, which represents life and death. In IN, she even explicitly declared that she's free from those boundaries.

I think it's already been discussed, but I think Keine's abilities regarding history are based on substituting timelines with illusionary realities. If you think about it, everyone, including Keine, have memories of the events Keine erased or rewritten. Yes, the village was gone when she hides it, but Yukari easily saw through it and found the real one 'underneath it all', seeing as mingles with borders between reality and fantasy all the time. And Keine has to have memory of the things she undoes or rewrites. The grandfather paradox demands the real thing exists somewhere, wherever it could be.

[Starxsword]

I think it's already been discussed, but I think Keine's abilities regarding history are based on substituting timelines with illusionary realities. If you think about it

I think there is some confusion. Her ability does not substitute anything. She cannot affect reality at all, that is not what she does. She affects the perception of reality. In Imperishable Night, it was clear that Reimu is able to remember that the human village is there, even if she can't see it. It is also mentioned that she cannot affect the Gensokyo Chronicles.

Think of her ability as a historian. She writes a chapter on history and that is history. However, that may or may not be what happened, since as you know, history is written by the people and people make mistakes. It is really up to the person to believe whether that history is real or not.

For example, several decades ago, the commonly believed history and what is taught in schools is that Christopher Columbus is the first to discover America. Then, someone came along and refuted that, so the current history is that Christopher Columbus did not discover America.
That said, while the history changed, the facts do not. What happened back then did not change, no one modified anything. It is just that the writers of history made modifications on the past.

[Drake]

it just so happens that if you have faulty history recorded with several thousand-year-old youkai you're bound to get outed if it isn't in their best interests

[ShiroiMahotsukai]

Didn't Yukari say something similar to Akyuu once. Something like "I am the truth of Gensokyo and you are its memories. We should ensure that your memories match my truth." in that little manga chapter thing for PMiSS.

[Clarste]

Can she control animals? I got the impression she could just talk to them and was good at convincing them to do things, but I don't remember anything suggesting that she has the supernatural ability to control them.

Kasen's power (which isn't necessarily her "power", but the closest we've got) isn't to control animals, but to guide animals. She actually says as much in the chapter of WaHH about the gun-badgers or whatever. "It's my power and my duty to guide the animals of the mountain onto the correct path." So basically her power is to tell animals what they should do, and they listen because she's a very reasonable person who they respect.

Personally, I would call this her power and everything else she does simply magic (youjutsu or senjutsu, depending on if she's actually a hermit or not). Ignoring the specific implications of "mahou" and the magicians who use it, everyone also seems to have generic magical abilities unrelated to their "power". Although I guess even "mahou" is an overly broad term covering a huge variety of mystical arts, as stated by Akyuu in Byakuren's article.

[TrueShadow]

Regarding Keine's power, I've always thought the reason her power didn't work on Yukari is simply just because Yukari is just so much stronger than her, rather than Yukari manipulating boundaries or anything.

 I also think that abilities aren't absolute, and there are other factors involved. For example, Yukari can't just breach through the Lunar Capital barrier whenever she wants. She needs to wait until full moon.

[Drake]

Considering how it's explained how Keine's ability works, both "boundaries" and "more powerful" are wrong. "Being really old" is more or less the reason. First two pages cover this.

The fact that abilities aren't absolute is absolutely true, and personally I regard it as one important barrier fans go through to start understanding Touhou lore.

(Although, Yukari doesn't have to wait for the full moon to break the barrier, she has to wait for it to travel to the moon's surface and back; she does have significant problems in breaking the barrier around the Lunar Capital though, so you're still right in that Yukari's ability has limitations on time and complexity of boundaries)

[TrueShadow]

About Sekibanki's power, maybe her power to detach her head is actually her individual power instead of her species power? So she can both stretch and detach her head. Hence why her title IIRC is something like "Strange Rokurokubi", because usually rokurokubi don't detach their heads.

[ShiroiMahotsukai]

Nukekubi detatch their heads don't they? Maybe it's poking fun at people who get the distinction between them wrong. Lafcadio Haern did it and it is apparenty a very common mistake.

[ToyoRai]

Nukekubi detatch their heads don't they? Maybe it's poking fun at people who get the distinction between them wrong. Lafcadio Haern did it and it is apparenty a very common mistake.

ZUN was only consufed during the time he made Sekibanki. Why he didn't change her species, I don't know. Also TrueShadow, why would she have a power what would pretty much counteract her entire species' power? Really weird if you ask me.

[Clarste]

She also does the neck stretching thing. At the same time.

[ToyoRai]

She also does the neck stretching thing. At the same time.

She does the elactic neck thing as a spellcard. A neck made out of danmaku. The neck not being even attached to her body. I think the spellcard is just relfecting back to her species instead of her actually having that thing.

[Sagus]

I'd just like to comment that using danmaku to simulate your supposedly extending neck is by far the coolest thing I've seen a touhou character do with danmaku.

[Maiden Synnae ミ☆]

Mmm... I'd like to post something on this thread...

Koishi's ability is actually extremely useful. Having it could open multiple possibilities... I know that if I had it, I'd probably rob a bank and then escape from there unnoticed. Nobody would remember me anymore anyway :V

[Imosa]

Mmm... I'd like to post something on this thread...

Koishi's ability is actually extremely useful. Having it could open multiple possibilities... I know that if I had it, I'd probably rob a bank and then escape from there unnoticed. Nobody would remember me anymore anyway :V

I don't think anyone ever doubted the usefulness of Koishi's ability.

[Ikari]

Koishi's ability is actually extremely useful. Having it could open multiple possibilities...

Actually, implying she can really control the subconscious itself, wouldn't she be able to toy with your subconscious reflexes? Basically, stopping what you subconsciously do and force you to do it manually?

You know, like breathing or blinking, which isn't too bad... Unless she targets your heartbeat. Good luck learning how to manually beat your heart before you die. <3

[ShiroiMahotsukai]

I thought her ability only made her forgettable in the same manner as a particularly boring background event is forgettable. If she robbed a bank that wouldn't be background at all, the same way getting in a fight with the protagonist of MoF wasn't background so they remember her.

[lightdreamer]

On Yorihime and her using her powers, the question is not "who is holding back" but "who isn't holding back". For example, where Reimu isn't that skillful on summoning gods, she still can do that (I think she did summon atleast one tu curse one of her ofudas in SSiB). Heck, Suwako can control multiple cursed gods, though she mainly only channels their powers. Yorihime just summons any god she likes (like the freaking Amaterasu) sounds something which would be toned down, if not banned from Spellcard battles

Why ban it? Just make it a spellcard (something like "God Sign: Amaterasu")

We'll have Yorihime slashing around the screen while Amaterasu spams lasers from the top.

[Maiden Synnae ミ☆]

Good luck learning how to manually beat your heart before you die. <3

I'm not the right person to say this since I know very little about cardiology, but I don't think subconsciously would be the correct way to express how someone's heartbeat is performed. I'd replace the expression with automatically/involuntarily instead. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

I thought her ability only made her forgettable in the same manner as a particularly boring background event is forgettable. If she robbed a bank that wouldn't be background at all, the same way getting in a fight with the protagonist of MoF wasn't background so they remember her.

I don't think that's the way it works. I imagine that any event, whether they are boring or not, would be forgotten if it was centered around Koishi. As for the bank, perhaps people would remember that the bank was robbed, but not who robbed it. If she is only forgotten given the circumstance that she was part of a boring background event, then anyone else has Koishi's ability as well since as long as you don't cause a significant impact in the world, you will always be forgotten by the others.

[Ikari]

I'm not the right person to say this since I know very little about cardiology, but I don't think subconsciously would be the correct way to express how someone's heartbeat is performed. I'd replace the expression with automatically/involuntarily instead. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Hmmm... You'd be right, depending on how we define the word "subconscious" in Koishi's ability. It's not a clear and perfectly precise concept yet, so it could or could not include such things. Koishi DOES seem based on the Freudian psyche model, so you are be right about how it's more automatic than subconscious in this case.

Damn, no instant glare kill Koishi I guess. Only deep, creepy, deadly staring Koishi. (AKA her Last Word in Hopeless Masquerade)

[ShiroiMahotsukai]

I don't think that's the way it works. I imagine that any event, whether they are boring or not, would be forgotten if it was centered around Koishi. As for the bank, perhaps people would remember that the bank was robbed, but not who robbed it. If she is only forgotten given the circumstance that she was part of a boring background event, then anyone else has Koishi's ability as well since as long as you don't cause a significant impact in the world, you will always be forgotten by the others.

True, I think it's exactly that but much stronger. I think anything she does becomes a boring background event unless you are particulary emotionly invested and personally involved. I.e: you would remember if you were the cashier being robbed because of the terror and because your're directly interacting with her. but not if you were a bystander in the bank whose afraid but not the threat is being directed to.

[Ikari]

if you were the cashier being robbed because of the terror and because your're directly interacting with her.

I just can't put Terror and Koishi in the same sentence in my mind.

Koishi: Give me all your money! c:
Cashier: Awwwww <3
Koishi: Rawr, I'm a Koishisaur!
Cashier: D'awwwwwwrrrr <3