Touhou: Difference between revisions

** In ''Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream'' Chiyuri is Yumemi's research assistant in "comparative physics".

** ''Mystic Square'' and ''The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil'' both have [[Ninja Maid|Ninja Maids]] in the form of Yumeko and Sakuya, the latter being by far one of the most popular characters of the franchise.

** Eirin and Reisen from ''Imperishable Night'' both fit the part, being Kaguya's pharmacist and pet respectively.

** Komachi from ''Phantasmagoria of Flower View'' also counts, since her official job is to be [[The Ferry Man]] of the Sanzu River.

** In ''Mountain of Faith'' Sanae is the priestess of both the final and extra boss.

** ''Subterranean Animism'' reverses this trend by having the [[Big Bad]] and the stage 5 boss be the pets of the stage 4 boss.

* [[Berserk Button]]: The fandom has one in the question "What anime is this?" as well as when someone on YouTube claims that ''Touhou'' [[A Worldwide Punomenon|stole from]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssh71hePR8Q the McRoll.] For the uninitiated, the McRoll is based on Flandre's theme, ''not'' the other way around. Western fandom is also beginning to detest old memes ([[Hilarious in Hindsight|pads]], etc.).

** May the Lord have mercy on you if you tell Reimu she has awful night vision.

* [[Flying Firepower]]: ''Everyone''.

* [[Full-Contact Magic]]: At least in the fighting games, as well as in [[Doujinshi|fanworks]], the intense nature of spell card duels is portrayed as having a fierce physical combat aspect, especially for the more physically abled girls.

* [[Fun with Acronyms]]: Most of the games' names have both a Japanese portion and an English portion. The Western community refers to games by the acronyms of their English parts: ''Perfect Cherry Blossom'' - ''PCB'', ''Imperishable Night'' - ''IN'', etc. One wonders if ZUN took notice, as the 12th game's English name is ''[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Undefined Fantastic Object]]''.

* [[Gaiden Game]]: Anything with a decimal point in its number.

* [[Game Breaking Bug]]: In Ten Desires, the game will up and crash if you are not using a bomb, a valuable resource, when the Survival Card of the Extra Boss ends. This is the ''second last'' attack in the entire game.

*** Toyosatomimi no Miko and company were seeking this, as was Byakuren.

* [[Immortal Immaturity]]: Practically everyone. Notable exceptions are Kaguya and Yuyuko, when she's not busy harassing her guardian.

* [[Informed Ability]]: Due to how danmaku battles work,<ref>they're essentially a formalized dueling system designed to level the playing field and reduce lethality</ref> most characters' stated abilities have very little relevance to their gameplay performance.

* [[It Amused Me]]: Bored characters do a lot of crazy things in this series and are occasionally responsible for the entire plot with no further motive than to shake things up. Many extra stage fights are along these lines on the part of both protagonist and boss. This is the entire reason why Tenshi comes down in ''Scarlet Weather Rhapsody''.

* [[Justified Trope]]: ''So'' many. The Spell Card Rules, drafted by Reimu, justify [[Non-Lethal KO]], [[Let's You and Him Fight]], [[Super Move Portrait Attack]], the ability to have crazy semiregular incidents while maintaining [[White and Grey Morality]], and even the use of the [[Bullet Hell]] genre ''itself''... because the tropes are the law. And for very good reasons: it lets youkai do what they do best, lets Reimu easily resolve the incidents, and lets youkai fight back without fear of killing Reimu, which would be a very Bad Thing.

* [[Kicking Ass in All Her Finery]]: Almost everyone wears pretty frilly dresses.

* [[Leitmotif]]: Each boss in the main series gets a unique song for her [[Boss Battle]], which naturally becomes her [[Leitmotif]] in fanworks.

* [[Let's Fight Like Gentlemen]]: The [[Justified Trope|justification]] for the danmaku combat system.

* [[Mooks]]: Fairies, in addition to the lesser-used Fuzzballs and Doofy Ghosts. Fairies are [[Suicidal Overconfidence|suicidally overconfident]], weak, and effectively immortal (regenerative), though the last [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|doesn't manifest in the games]], probably because they "respawn" somewhere safe offscreen. These factors combine to make them pretty much perfect mooks.

* [[Multiple Endings]]

* [[Mundane Utility]]:

** Turns out that ghosts make excellent air conditioners.

** Similarly, there's an entire pool on Danbooru of Cirno being used for mundane ends, such as chilling drinks.

* [[Parental Abandonment]]: Mr. Kirisame is the only parent of a canon character who is not dead, missing, or otherwise unaccounted for. And even then, he's only mentioned, and Marisa quickly ignores and attempts to change the subject.

* [[Pettanko]]:

** The [[Fighting Game]] installments of the series have really muddied the waters here, as the art was done by an artist who is perfectly capable of and willing to draw girls with busts.

* [[Poor Communication Kills]]: In ''Imperishable Night'', the [[Let's You and Him Fight|boss fight with either Reimu or Marisa]] is the result of one or both sides either not understanding what's actually going on, or outright ''refusing'' to listen. When the Ghost Team tries to mention the Moon to Marisa, Marisa says "this has nothing to do with the Moon!" and if Magic Team brings it up to Reimu, she turns around and blames them for the Moon as well!

** Might be the case for some unexpected creatures. In one chapter of one of the manga, it's suggested a couple of times that a mysterious egg may be from a ''cat youkai''.

** The same chapter also confirms crow tengu having eggs, and while they're related to birds, the two examples we've seen of that species look basically human.

* [[White and Grey Morality]]:

** Those who are [[Designated Hero|good]] are [[Somebody Else's Problem|apathetic to everything]] unless it affects either their interests or Gensokyo itself.

* [[Artificial Stupidity]]: The fighting games. Highlights include not particularly understanding if the character is melee or range oriented, using moves that can't possibly hit, virtually never using cards,<ref>Arcade mode only. Story mode AI doesn't have cards to use.</ref> and difficulty selection in arcade mode doing nothing. This was bad enough for people to start work on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcBtCUEV-K0 an AI hack] but the project seems to have died since.

* [[Awesome but Impractical]] / [[Difficult but Awesome]]: Depending on who you ask, certain shot types are straight on unwieldy or rather useful but take some getting used to.

*** MarisaA in ''SA'' isn't too bad, and she still has enough power in her focused state to still deliver hurt to enemies up front.

** ''Undefined Fantastic Object'' is actually pretty good with avoiding this, with all-around great shot-types... and MarisaB.

* [[Computers Are Fast]]: Not present in the normal Shoot Em Up games, but have fun beating [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x8cs2V2-Bg Lunatic AI] in the two-player games.

* [[Cosmetic Award]]: Clearing a scene with a high enough score in ''Shoot the Bullet'' or ''Double Spoiler'' unlocks commentary from Aya or Hatate. Score has no other purpose.

* [[Desolation Shot]]: In ''Mystic Square'', the [[Amazing Technicolor Battlefield]] disappears when you dispel Shinki's penultimate spell and blast her wings off. The background of the battle's final phase is a slow pan down over Makai, which is now on fire as a result of the fight.

* [[Difficulty Spike]]: Most games seem to have one, usually around stage 4.

** Sunny Milk, Luna Child and Star Sapphire in ''Fairy Wars''.

** Seiga and Yoshika in ''Ten Desires''.

* [[Dynamic Difficulty]]: 4-6 have a system where the bullets become faster and denser over time. In the case of 4 and 5, it's somewhat tied to how well you're doing, but in 6 it just keeps going up until you die, which resets it.

* [[Early Installment Weirdness]]/[[Oddball in the Series]]: ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieDudS_yi24 Highly Responsive to Prayers]'' isn't even a danmaku game. It's more of a weird ''[[Breakout]]'' clone, with some [[Shoot'Em Up]] elements in boss fights.

* [[It Got Worse]]: Most final bosses' and extra bosses' final spell cards start out fairly simple, even elementary... then it gets faster, or stacks more components simultaneously over time/damage. By the end, the spell is an all-out nightmarish mess that fills the screen or moves very quickly, or both.

* [[Kaizo Trap]]: After beating bosses, it takes a second before the projectiles turn into tokens. So if you aren't careful, you can win, but still die.

* [[Marathon Boss]]: By shmup standards, anyway. Each game has a [[Bonus Boss]] which typically takes 8-10 minutes to defeat.

* [[Mercy Mode]]: After running out of continues a few times in ''Imperishable Night'', the game's options allow you to start with a few additional lives. "A few" ultimately resulting in a continue's worth of lives totaling 8, where most other games only let you have half as many. Perhaps another reason for [[Easy Mode Mockery]] specifically in ''IN''. Somewhat played with - continuing after a certain point gets you a bad end and the inability to continue.

** Most games give you a character-specific bad ending for beating the game after using a continue. The ''Phantasmagoria'' games don't care, and ''Fairy Wars'' just doesn't give you an ending if you continue. ''Mountain of Faith'' also gives you one regardless of continues if [[Easy Mode Mockery|you played on easy]].

*** And in ''Lotus Land Story'' and ''the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil'', [[Easy Mode Mockery|after beating the fifth stage in easy mode, you proceed to the bad ending directly]].

** The games that have route selections give you an ending based on which route you take.

** ''Imperishable Night'' combines the two above into something odd. You get a Bad Ending for ''running out'' of continues. You get a normal ending for facing Eirin as the final boss, who you'll be locked into fighting if it's your first time playing with that character or if you continued.

* [[Normally I Would Be Dead Now]]: An in-game feature later games gives you a very tiny window after you are hit to bomb, thereby preventing a loss of a life. The eighth game actually makes an entire gameplay mechanic based around this, although that instance is more of a [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment as the teammate of the one that was hit comes in and uses the bomb.

* [[Won't Work On Me]]:

** All [[Bonus Boss|extra and phantasm stage bosses]] have this effect for all spellcards, except in ''Fairy Wars''. In the versus shooters they are completely invincible for certain period of time.

* [[One-Hit-Point Wonder]]: standard for [[Bullet Hell]] game protagonists. Curiously enough, when you meet playable characters as bosses they gain [[Super Toughness]] instead.

** The bosses' attacks are all on timers, and it's possible to beat them just by outlasting them. They'll even blow up at the end regardless of whether you fired any shots at them. Since this requires inhuman dodging skills on some of the harder attacks, it has become a favorite [[Self-Imposed Challenge]] for ''Touhou'' gamers. Given the [[Nintendo Hard|difficulty]] of the games to begin with, this kind of challenge is usually considered another sign that ''Touhou'' players are insane.

** Most of the extra bosses actually have a secret difficulty on their last (or second-to-last, in Yukari's case) spell card, triggered by attempting to go pacifist. Normally, those spell cards start off easy, but get harder as the boss loses HP. [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|To prevent cheesing the game]] and trivializing what should be a climactic end by just waiting, the spell card will have an extremely hard pattern, even harder than the normal final pattern, starting at 30 seconds left if the boss has not lost enough HP.

* [[Parabolic Power Curve]]: It's generally accepted that the stage 5 boss will be harder than the final boss, or at least as hard. The reason for this is that stage 5 bosses tend to have more experimental or random patterns, with fewer bullets but much trickier dodging. Final bosses are all about large quantities of bullets at all times, but because they're fired in easily predicted patterns, they're not nearly as challenging for experienced players, even if it's their first time fighting that particular boss.

* [[Recursive Ammo]]

 

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[[Category:The Nineties]]

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[[Category:Fantasy Video Games]]

[[Category:Vertical Scrolling Shooter]]

[[Category:Shoot'Em Up]]

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