I'm back, and I'll answer the few points posted above before wading into PCB.
First off, ack, I can see where the confusion came from regarding the 'improvised' malarkey. I certainly don't mean messy or poorly-prepared. I mean much what Helepolis said earlier - fitting a melody to the ongoing harmony, but with a lot of emphasis on free-form, to really show off a stream-of-consciousness effect. Consider jazz improvisation - that's the vibe I get.
As for the writing-it-down versus not doing so...eh, to me, improvisation is for its own sake - writing it down to perform later takes away from the general experience, but this is certainly a mileage-may-vary thing, if you think different, that's perfectly fine.
I hope that's cleared things up, so I'll get going!
Perfect Cherry Blossom
There's some very characteristic instrumentation going on throughout all of PCB - lots of piano, trumpets and a very specific type of electronic sound that, to me, do well to link together many of the themes we hear, reinforcing the (rather meager) overarching narrative. Perfect Cherry Blossom is the first Touhou game I've played, so I tend to subconsciously measure up every other one to it, music-wise also. This leads to issues with some of ZUN's more experimental tracks in UFO, but that's a ways away to talk about now.
Letty Whiterock - Crystallized Silver
What jumps out at me immediately are the sharp drum beats that permeate the entire piece, making the entire thing seem as if the listener is standing on thin ice that's constantly cracking under their feet, chasing them as they brave the oncoming blizzard, portrayed by the dual trumpets. The brass plays the melody here in long, undulating passages to give a feeling of persistence in addition to the clear and obvious power that brass generally adds to the feel of a piece.
Listening to the introduction and its transition into the melody, there's some very clear imagery here, which I'll tie into Letty's canon characterisation as a winter spirit of sorts. A few bursts of plucked strings suggest a few snowflakes falling here and there, biting in their cold, interspersed by somewhat whiny electronic chords (really obvious, can't miss 'em) to show chill wind picking up, then exploding with the trumpets as the blizzard finally catches up and envelops the listener.
The melody, to me, really catches the feel of a sudden winter blizzard, which suggests just how strongly Letty's character is tied to that - her very nature is to be chilling wind and biting cold. She doesn't dawdle around, she does not hide what she is and she takes herself very seriously - she shows up and gets to business.
Chen - Diao ye zong (Withered Leaf)
Okay, this one's a bit hard. It's characteristic instrumentation - that biting drum, the glassy undulating synthesiser sound with a bit of piano in the high octaves thrown in for good measure - are still very good for capturing winter-related imagery. Considering Perfect Cherry Blossom is all about the unending winter and hawt ghosts I feel this piece is less about Chen, but more there to reinforce this unending winter vibe. Honestly, I feel this even pervades to the next stage's theme (The Doll Maker of Bucuresti).
Listening to the piece again, I think there's something to get by focusing on the piano part, as that gives us something new over the glassy synthesiser and the biting drum. The piano gives us a simple repeating motif made up of clear, non-legato chords occasionally interspersed by a little bit of that wintrey glassy staccato. The listener would expect the piano to develop into something with more substance, however, it's quickly caught up in the undulating glass, which takes over and has the piano follow it in its wake. Or perhaps the piano is content to follow it and occasionally poke out to remind us that it's there. Maybe that gives us something about Chen - uncomplicated, playful in the snow, content with letting the winter roll over, confident that at some point, it'll go away and Chen will still be there, completely unperturbed.
Alice Margatroid - Doll Judgment ~ The girl who played with people's shapes.
I was going to add Doll Maker of Bucuresti to this as well, as I feel the stage as as much about Alice as the actual boss battle is, but for the sake of brevity I'll leave it out until later, if at all.
IOSYS may have been on to something - Doll Judgment is structured like a song. An oddly conflicted song, but a song nonetheless. Go on, listen to Marisa Stole the Precious Thing. IOSYS mess around a bit by mixing in bits of Doll Maker into Doll Judgment, and their verse versus chorus structure is a bit odd, nevertheless, I maintain it's a song, and that shows something about Alice - singers are typically portrayed as creative souls. They usually have a lot of love for their work, and I'd say they come in two flavours - those that sing for others, and those that sing for themselves. Hell, they can do both, depending on mood or situation.
The verse is nice and macabre with a single motif of broken chords repeating, but changing to a different key every time. Every key change is strongly non-standard (no tonic to dominant for us) and the motif repeats note-for-note, leading to parallel fourths (I think) in the resulting harmonic line. Parallel notes in a harmony is distinctly un-classical, which leads to this entire set of passages to sound just off. Better yet, there are two melodies that do this, exacerbating the effect. The verse shows us that Alice is unlike others, unusual, possibly a loner due to this - there are no secondary, classic motifs to offset the primary one.
The chorus breaks away from the strageness to offer us something more familiar, more comforting, strong and surprisingly melodic, with gentle melancholy hinted at by a few flute passages.
The verse comes back in, unchanged, perhaps to push us away, or, on the contrary, to keep us fixed, to hear that chorus again. And indeed the chorus comes back, twice, to make sure the listener does not forget that that part is as strong, or maybe stronger, than the strangeness that you heard at first.
Alice might be one of the more popular characters in the Touhou fandom, so my perceptions are rather coloured by the way she's portrayed by fans. This in mind, I'll hope to do her character justice without falling back on the usual standbys.
Alice is creative, and enjoys her creations. It's not immediately obvious why she keeps making her dolls - whether for herself or for others, but the fact that she's lives a solitary lifestyle suggests the former - thus meaning that she is introspective, perhaps looking for a greater meaning that would be revealed in her creations.
She might confuse and bewilder on first impressions, and even when one is familiar with her, and that's an ever-present part of her character, something that is hard not to notice when she's around. Perhaps she is aware of this, and would go to rather great lengths to establish that no, she isn't all that weird, she has normal sensibilities as well, she has all the same troubles that everyone else has.
Prismriver sisters - Phantom Ensemble.
Hmm...not entirely sure what to do here. There are three characters, and one theme. Hell, the theme doesn't even really use the instruments of the Prismrivers, so it's not possible to evaluate their characters by contribution to the piece (to naysayers - there's an accordion and a guitar in there, not to mention drums, in addition to the distinct lack of violin). So what I'll do is judge them as one character.
The Prismrivers are a laugh a minute. The piece keeps blatantly changing instruments, tempo and texture. On the other hand, the melody has two very basic patterns, which are repeated by a constantly-shifting jumble of instruments to provide the feeling of variety. And that's basically it for the Prismrivers - they're a colourful lot, each one with as much personality as the other, each contributing her distinct share to the general din that we get from them. Individually they're not much to look at, but put together their presence can easily overwhelm that of other characters' - there's certainly more volume to them than to Letty, Chen or Alice.
I don't really feel I've done the Prismrivers justice, so if anyone has anything to say, please do.
Youmu Konpaku - Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird ~ Till When.
Every time I hear this I get the feeling of inevitable, colourful and prettily arranged death. This isn't irrelevant - Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird explodes into fast-paced pipe organ and piano and doesn't let go even when changing gears into its melody. This is Youmu through and through - poweful, explosive and unrelenting.
However, Youmu is also surprisingly simple. Her melody is no more than 8 bars long, repeated in one different key, then back to the original key. Of those 8 bars, it's basically 4 bars repeated twice. But goshdarnit, those few bars will be repeated with the force of a thousand suns (or one overdrive guitar, in this case), as Youmu doesn't appear to be able to do much else. Now, consider that melody played on something far more mellow - flute, cello, something like that, and a smidge slower. It's a very pleasant melody, actually, quite lyrical, with a bit of longing, maybe. Youmu is actually quite emotional, just those emotions are expressed through the filter of the "shoot first, ask questions later" approach that is established in the introduction.
It's unfair to say that this is how she would always behave, however - imagine, in, say, a movie, where you might have a character with a central theme, which might have variations based on situation - a high-octane rock variation for fighting, a mellow flute-and-violins variation for introspection, a majestic horn variation for those walking-slowly-down-a-corridor moments... I feel that this particular rendition of Hiroari is simply Youmu's "fighting" theme, showing a unilateral, unwavering Youmu when she's repelling intruders - powerful, ruthless, fast. She will still remain refreshingly simple, however, with her 2x4-bar melody.
Up next - Bloom Nobly, Cherry Blossom of Sumizome ~ Border of Life and A Maiden's Illusionary Funeral ~ Necro-fantasy. I'm not sure if I should do Border of Life and Necrofantasia as they're both remixes, but they're both there for very good reasons.
