Touhou Abilities and Power Levels Explained | Touhou Lore 

So many roadblocks just to get a 3 minute video out. I'm just surprised I managed it somehow. In any case, I'd like to thank @NaokiP72 and @richard_effendi for their research into the topic. I wouldn't have known about the Pixiv Dictionary link otherwise. And with that... I'm getting on my plane finally.

I think that Zun just wanted it to be vague since that’s his style of writing like how he mostly leaves a lot of the lore to the reader’s imagination. It can also be that he wanted a special ability for each character but didn’t want to restrict them to only one or make it the only defining characteristic of a character.

Eika Ebisu is the epitome of "vaguely described abilities that can be described in multiple ways". Some people see her as being able to stack literal _planets_ on top of each other, making even the strongest gods shiver with fear.

I think the true interpretation for an ability is just in how it manifests itself. Like, Akyuu's ability is complete recall, but her memory also extends into past lives because of how the in-universe mechanics work out. For Remilia's ability to manipulate fate, she says in the PCB prologue that Spring would return ONE DAY after Sakuya left the mansion, and Sakuya's ingame route has her mentioning that it took her ONE DAY to reach Yuyuko & return spring. Yukari can manipulate many boundaries, but she presumably can't manipulate the boundary between good & evil because she states that she can't oppose Shiki Eiki. Sakuya uses her time manipulation ability to also manipulate space, as stated by Patchoulli in EoSD, when asked why the mansion seems bigger on the inside than on the outside. I would take the ability descriptions as more of a metric by which you measure an ability, as opposed to being the actual measurement. It's like saying, the extent of a ruler's ability is in its measurement of length. This doesn't describe WHAT that extent is; the information isn't given on how long the ruler is, how precise its measurements are, what units it uses, we just know that the ruler has the ability to measure length. Similarly, when we say Parsee has the ability to manipulate jealousy, we don't know to what extent, just that the extent is measured in how well she manipulates jealousy. She's able to make herself jealous of other people to find reasons to attack, she binds one world to the next through her regrets, she can "fan the flames of jealousy in the hearts of others," but we don't know if she can also reduce or eliminate jealousy, if her ability drains her like Satori's does, if she has precision control of how jealous to make someone, if she needs the person to have already been jealous in order for her to fan the flames, if there's an upper limit to how jealous she can make someone, just a lot of things that are open to interpretation but that still all fall within the ability to manipulate jealousy. It describes the nature of the ability, the extent or degree BY WHICH you measure it but not the extent or degree TO WHICH it measures up. For what purpose, I would say it's because it's very healthy for discovery writing, as ZUN both doesn't know what he'll want his characters to do in the future and enjoys there being a plurality of fan interpretations since he was a patron of doujin circles to begin with, even before he made Touhou.

Some of the confusion is due to characters like Yukari canonically using multiple definitions of a word in her powers. There's also special cases like Kogasa, whose ability to "surprise" is sometimes understood as surprising the *player* from beyond the fourth wall for being the CD poster girl and extra boss.

Zun "ability to drink beer nonstop and making game at the same time"

I like to think that having the characters abilities so vaguely described allows for some pretty interesting interpretations, and the mystery of how much of their descriptions are true and how much are just deliberate exaggerations makes it all the more fun to speculate about it all. And i agree, Kosuzu definitely has the ability to be cute no matter what she is doing : D

The comparison of abilities in Touhou to Stands was presented as a joke in the video, but I actually somewhat share that theory; I believe they're pretty similar in the sense that they're deliberately left vague enough to allow for more creative freedom in how the characters utilize their powers. In Touhou, this is of course expressed primarily through Spell Card bullet patterns; whereas in JoJo, a large aspect of its confrontations is figuring out how the opponent's powers work, and that often involves said enemy utilizing their Stand is unexpected ways.

This is just one other reason out of many why touhou is a nightmare for power scalers.

Imo it's for the same reason why ZUN doesn't directly tell the complete backstories & whatnot of each character. To keep it vague to allow interpretations, but also to encourage interpretation & to encourage people to create. Its for the "doujin spirit" as ZUN himself once put it. He's always wanted people to get into creating doujins & find the same success that he has. And if you look at pretty much every aspect of Touhou, you'll realize that a lot of it is built in a way to really make you want to create something yourself; whether simply creating your own interpretation, or loving a character so much you want to tell a story with them, or maybe hearing a piece of the OST & thinking it's got a lot of potential if applied to a particular genre, etc.

I think Touhou characters are suppose to be a halfstep between powerful entities who can influence the rules of the world and normal relatable people. It is true that they have absolutely crazy ablilties, that however have set limitations. I think this approach works extremely well for the series, with some hickups here and there in the printworks, which is understandable, because writing such characters is extremely hard.

Honestly one of the vague powers I love to death is Seija's power to flip things. While it was primarily used to rotate things, the thought that she flipped the roles in her special spin off game was fun. Plus it makes me think of what god like things she could do if strengthened, like flipping night to day

Good video, I always thought that yokai and the magic in gensokyo were powered by "faith" /the humans perception of things and that extended to how things work. Like yes if someone in our world could fly they would have the ability to manipulate gravity or whatever other forces they use to do it, but since most people when asked to imagine a person flying they picture someone just moving as they please that's how yokai and magic flight works. Like Reimu has the ability to create barriers and people think of barriers as something that blocks or impedes not the underlying physics of stopping something she can seal things because yeah barriers keep things in, but couldn't manipulate gravity to separate an atom.

Zun be like: we do some trolling to an extent

Really like how vague ZUN makes their powers to be as it allows for a huge range of interpretations/creativity. Especially like how Kaguya's power is interpreted in some doujin works I.e turning a single instant of time into an infinite one (stopping time) or shortening a certain length of time into an instant (fast forward)

Touhou is so vague that the characters could be just street level or world ending depending on how much you stretch the extension to their abilities. And i love to see fan works reimagining those abilities.

The first video (instead of a forum thread/post) discussing this Only takes the fandom some 20 years I think we can all agree Reimu nocliping out of reality is broken as hell

if the abilities of youkai were stated more clearly, humans would fear them less. and youkai need human fear. but that is just an in universe explaination for one group of people.

Nah, to me once he started with the windows era Zun just wanted to mess around, he didn't expected it to become so popular, so he just kept with the bit and now he can't back down, a true Chad

Well you weren't joking about this video being 3 minutes, it definitely felt shorter than usual. That being said, i quite enjoyed it as it was brief and right up to the point while still being informational. Good work!

hey man stacking stones is difficult

Yes! Each wonderful character is unique to themselves! Let us further this to love each character more! There is a movement of Touhou literalists, and I say: implicated power levels say much in themselves; I'll love the characters and rank them on my own accord!

The closest translated meaning that I could explain is that the characters have the listed abilities, but they aren't always capable of using them. Basically, they cannot be used at any given time and are circumstantial. Some abilities are more circumstantial or limited than others, like Remilia's fate manipulation (limited in practice) versus Kosuzu's ability to read any text (nearly unlimited). That said, the style of the phrase is also likely to do with its usage, as ZUN is a known fan of using unusual Japanese stylistically.

Would love to hear in-depths explanation to ALL of the tuhu abilities, or what of power degree it implied so far in the series. I always wonder why Remilia power is manipulation of fate, when it has nothing to do with her skill, or mentioned/shown to use her power at least once?

I really like how "powerscaling" and tier list shenanigans don't really work in Touhou due to how varied the abilities are. The Lunarians beat Yukari, and lost to *fairies*. Matchups are far more important than simple stats or... weapons, armor and skill.

I think you're right about the JoJo similarity. It's not out of character for him and there are a lot of parallels. Thanks for the concisely made video!

0:05 You got that freaking right

ZUN clearly made the abilities vague so the fans can imagine how they want to be but it just leaves more confusing questions. I mean I love the series and setting but WTF. Large planet level MFTL Cirno? Seriously? She was unable to freeze a lake where the fuck is "large planet level" coming from? The most impressive thing done with magic (that can be kind of quantified) that I know of was changing the orbit of the moon slightly. The highest firepower "showing" that I know of is extrapolating on Yukari being said to be able to "devastate Gensokyo" to being able to life wipe a small country or The Lunarian fan said to be capable of purifying a forest on the atomic level. Yeah there are more esoteric stuff like using dissolving the boundary between truth and fiction to get to the true moon via a reflection in a lake. But that is hard as hell to quantify. But there is literally nothing near planetary/moon destroying. This level of fire power also dose not make sense from a narrative perspective because Marisa's Mini-Hakkero is supposed to be impressive yet on the high end it can only store enough energy to turn a mountain into ash. There is at least a little "truth" in the MFTL component. There are three feats and I believe there is a spell card description that can be used to justify FTL speeds. Marisa and Watatsuki no Yorihime in SSiB. Though this one is kind of weird because in the double spark one Master Spark travels faster than the other one. Marisa possibly dodging a beam of light from Sunny Sunny Milk blocking light. Sunny is not a very strong resident of Gensokyo, though her ability is specifically to bend light so that should have been light. Though notice the other Fairies are unable to dodge the same attacks. While these are all pretty decent but, In Extra of the Wind (#MFTL) Marisa gets food stolen out of her hand by a crow. In Oriental Sacred Place Reimu gets surprised by snow falling on her. Chen gets scratched by normal cats in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red. (Chen is also supposed to be capable of going FTE to normal humans) Characters also worry about travel time and silly shit like "it will get dark before we get home" when if they are relativistic they could do that in less than a second. In Imperishable Night it takes hours to travel from the start to the bamboo forest (Gensokyo is not very big). Though to muddle this a bit they were constantly fighting things along the way. There are also some feats much lower than the speed of light but still on the higher end of the scale. In Legacy of a Lunatic Kingdom, the player character travels half way around the moon in presumably minutes to hours. In Cage in Lunatic Runagate, Yukari's familiar crosses across the Seas of Tranquility and Serenity on the moon over the course of a conversation. In Silent Sinner in Blue, Remilia presumably travels the moon in a few panels. Touhou speed is not consistent. I do not think we can definitively call a character that is relying on a degree of power scaling to say they are FTL. Though as a disclaimer I have not read all the mangas so their definitely could be feats I am missing.

Honestly a lot of (if not most) touhou characters have an ability that's completely busted and strong enough to destroy the entire world or turn it to chaos. Remilia, Sakuya, Yuyuko, Kaguya, Flandre, Yukari, that one-winged Lunarian, and many others. Gensoukyo is pretty much an utopia and it's a miracle, because all it takes is one strong individual and everyone is dead. Good thing they all respect the balance and the spellcards rules and don't execute us on the spot (ie: what Yuyuko could have done in 7)

My interpretation of Touhou power levels is whatever will piss off dumb powerscalers the most at any given moment.

Way back, years before I got into Touhou, one of my friends used the phrase "ability to the extent of" when he was doing write-ups on a bunch of the characters. I thought it was just a weird translation thing at the time. Neat to finally learn where that comes from and what it could mean!

This topic needs to be expanded more. Especially when Ms. "Ability to manipulate flower" ability is shooting giant laser, Ms. "Having three bodies" canonically being the strongest, Ms. "Ability to heal sore throat" is something and so much more

2:44 ...okay you're gonna have to explain this one to me.

Stuff like this is why I feel like ZUN both puts relatively little effort into his plots, but also plans them out with a tonne of thought and creativity. Kinda feels like Reimu's Fantasy Nature, I guess. Takes the writing with a chill mindset, but doesn't skimp out on the results. Maybe if he stressed out over writing more, he'd get weaker results.

All abilities are born with some extent of ambiguity, but some abilities are better defined than others. I like to believe the latter are what ZUN put some deep thoughts into. e.g. Hina Kagiyama is specified to absorb phantoms of misfortunes, rather than the vague and wild 'manipulate fate'. In conjuncture with what was written about phantoms, it can be theorized that it is the feelings or ideas on misfortune that give the phantoms the properties to cause bad things to happen. I think ZUN wanted to imply that the zeitgeist on bad luck has changed so much in the outside world that the old-fashioned faith spirited away.

I'm 100% in agreement with your idea why he used the terminology and gave them the powers.

0:45 Ahh yes. My favorite source. Even better than wikipedia and the invisible voices.

I think they are purposefully left vague because power scaling has never been the focus of the series, especially looking at the entire concept of Spell Card rules. It may also be that those powers aren't absolute, like Yukari manipulating borders or Yuyuko manipulating death can only work on those who are weaker than them. Either way, everytime there's a power level discussion about Touhou, it usually becomes stale if you mention Lunarians, which powers are on a complete different scale than the humans and youkais on Earth... even though even them aren't invincible. It's kind of useless to just make 1 vs 1 discussions when the focus of the series is entirely different.

Power levels in Touhou are basically impossible to imagine, mostly because of spellcard rules and the fact that some bosses do not scale with power Also, ZUN is really really good at making vague lore. He said once in an email that Hecatia was the strongest canon character, even though Junko’s stage was arguably more difficult. And if we fixed the spellcard rules situation, some character would end up winning because of what is literally stated in the wiki (Ex: Sakuya would do the old abdomen stabbing, Flandre would just explode everyone)

Flandre: ability to destroy anything. How it actually works: Can teleport the energy within her hand to the most fragile location within an object. In other words she can implode an object which has its weakest point being weaker than her hand. Pretty ineffective against things that aren’t solid. Yup these ability descriptions sound legit.

As Frank Hebert would say "The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it", so I don't really dare try to explain powers in Gensokyo lol, I just accept the basic description as fact, and consider everything within that description as "acceptable" to some degree.

keeping it up to interpretation seems like the motto even by pc-98 standard ig. at least it sure became convenient once we got into deep lore. an artificial mean for depth is to just say "you will probably never know", just to remind the ropes of this world actually stretch on a scale far bigger than daily life. besides fanwork loves to mess with these, so it flourishes with slightly distinct powersets or tackle dilemmas relating to it. well not they necessarily need that much, a damn ribbon is all it takes to get fan writers going. though honestly zun seems a little more bold than this explanation would suggest. one of the manga once tossed a simple "iunno sakuya stopping time is just her moving at infinite speed or zero mass", whereas we could have stayed at "sakuya fucs with tiem" forever. just hilarious how the magical world gets actual physics into the mix.

An airplane has the ability to fly to some degree, but since every airplane comes with its flight envelope, it doesn't have the absolute capability of flight. Capability of flight can be interpret as being able to get to any point in an atmosphere, while Capable of flight to some degree means being able to get off the ground.

i enjoy when zun makes things vague because it leaves room for independent interpretation (i enjoy filling in the gaps of speculated things) also mima wtf

"did you know"

Writing about the abilities of characters worries me as a (hopefully soon to be) novelist, but I came up with a really good excuse of interpreting the powers of some characters in my series. I can't really elaborate on that here though because it's actually a big spoiler lol. Even though my novel is really just about action and entertainment, not plot.

0:45 So in other words "My source is that I made it the f*ck up!"

Neat explanatory video, for how short it was, it made the idea of the abilities pretty clear. Now, answer me with your words. What do you understand about Remilia's ability? Secondly, I hope your trip to Japan goes well! (despite the internet problems)

pretty sure ZUN just phrases it like that cause he doesn't like clearly defining things anyways i once wrote a wall of text about how yuuka was pretty powerful, just don't take it too seriously Yuuka Kazami is the second boss in the series to have timeouts. One of them is Master Spark in Stage 5 which is borrowed by Marisa Kirisame. She's invincible while using it, and it's larger than Marisa's Master Spark, and about as big, if not bigger than even her Final Spark. What's more interesting however, is her Stage 6 and Extra Stage timeouts. In all of them, she turns into an intangible ball of light. Since spell card rules didn't exist yet (or rather, spell cards in general), she can probably stay invincible all day and shoot you at the same time. Who else does this? Reimu Hakurei, of course. While she doesn't become a ball of light in her spell card, Fantasy Nature, the concept is essentially the same. She even becomes a ball of light in her third last pattern in Shuusou Gyoku's Extra Stage. Of course, both Yuuka and Reimu aren't the only ones to have timeouts, but they are a unique case in this regard, because it's more like an ability rather than a spell card. Marisa also borrows Yuuka's cloning ability in said stage. Again, spell card rules didn't exist, so there exists the possibility that she can have more than one clone, or her clones can clone themselves. Yuuka's other abilities are teleportation, invisibility, and of course, controlling flowers. At first, her flower ability sounds useless. However, if you saw Reimu B's bad ending in Lotus Land Story, you would know that a huge flower destroyed her entire shrine, so this ability is probably better than you think. She also has a parasol that can block rain, ultraviolet rays, lasers, and danmaku. In Phantasmagoria of Flower View, it is said to be the only flower in Gensokyo that never withers, whatever that means. She's said to be very strong physically. Although it's claimed that she's as slow as Internet Explorer, this is most likely false, as she can become a ball of light to go faster, or just teleport, and she probably intentionally slows down to challenge herself. In her Mystic Square ending, she knows no magic, so she tries to learn from Marisa, but ultimately acquires Ultimate Magic from Alice Margatroid in her Extra ending, as stated in Kioh Gyoku. Yuuka has beaten Shinki without any magic, the God of Makai, who can create and destroy infinite space (if you assume that the burning background in her final phase is the entirety of Makai which is infinite according to Murasa). Yuuka has also defeated Eiki Shiki Yamaxanadu with full confidence, who is vaguely implied to be stronger than Yukari Yakumo and Yuyuko Saigyouji in Seasonal Dream Vision, A Beautiful Flower Blooming Violet Every Sixty Years, a story that takes place before PoFV's Extra Stage. Yukari considers Eiki to be a very strong presence, and hesitates to oppose her, retreating with Yuyuko. Only Medicine and Komachi truly beat Yuuka. Everyone else runs away from her. You might think she's weak to poison, but in VS. Mode, if Yuuka beats Medicine, she mentions gelsemium elegans, which are the most poisonous plants that could kill even Medicine. You also might think she's weak to fire, but MS Extra Alice has two red phases, which can be assumed to be fire-elemental, but she still gets beaten by Yuuka anyways.

well... ZUN is a jojo fan since he did make some references with kaguya's items and sakuya. or you know the man's just drunk when making them lmao

The new strongest Touhou character will have the ability to exist

Yeah I think ZUN was just inspired by Araki's thing of describing a power very broadly and then blowing your mind with all the creative ways it could be interpreted. In JoJo's there is no E-to-S linear power level per se, there's just the different ways powers can interact with each other and the creativity with which characters deploy theirs. It's an ingenious way of dodging the power creep problem that long-running series' face and why comparative small fry like the Yorigamis, Megumu, and Kokoro can be credible lead antagonists even after literal world destroyers like Okuu and Junko

Flandre's ability to be adorable should not be mentioned

It's just vague and roundabout, "illogically" so if you will. And you know what else is not defined by the boundaries of logic? GENSOKYO!

Hecatia's power is to be three people.

Maybe he just never wanted to give it too much thought, because if you do then there is ton of follow-up questions to resolve, and the more you build your fantasy universe the harder it gets. No time for that, no desire, "I just want a colorful game with cute girls and cool music". When Touhou blew up it got even worse to try and resolve all that. It's easier to "she kinda maybe can to some degree" and move on, leave it fo fans. Fans gain more freedom, you have less work to do, profit, beer time (it's always beer time). Not sure how much of % "it's too bothersome" and "I want to give my fans freedom and encourage creativity", but I'm pretty sure both reasons are there. It worked before and still works, so why not.

The "self interpretations" thing is definitely the most probable reason why all the abilities seem so open-ended/vaguely stated. I believe that part of Touhou's popularity comes from the fact that ZUN actively wants the community to make their own interpretations. If he were to specifically and clearly describe each character's abilities, it would make more logical sense in-world, but it can end up causing a lot of fanworks to be super obviously fan-worked. aka, instead of "this character's ability in X game is very different from the canon ability," it's instead "this character's ability in X game is a plausible interpretation of the character's canon powers." Leaving the abilities as more guidelines than hard-set rules allows for more creative freedom both for ZUN and Touhou fans.

Power scaling in touhou be too goofy bruv

As well as what’s been said about Zun deliberately leaving stuff vague, I think it’s also important to remember how most of what we know is from unreliable narrators. Be it more overtly manipulative like Aya, or more honest but clearly flawed like Akyuu, I would hazard a bet that Zun has set up how information is conveyed to give as much wriggle (nightbug) room as possible, leaving it to the audience to decide what is and isn’t trustable information. Even in his interviews he often talks in a way that makes characters almost semi-autonomous in themselves, leaving open many possibilities for how he might continue to write them in the future, and how fans might expand on them. This clearly extends to their abilities, where we have to take multiple different pieces of information about each one to come to a conclusion.

To me they seem more like some of HXH's powers, the one about cirno which is to absorb heat and turn it cold.

Basically their ability is only the rough guess or in a nutshell description the only way to know for sure is to have someone fight them to truly gauge their abilities. As in the wiki itself it is written with ambiguity to the point that despite being the most reliable source one must take it with a grain of salt in order to fully determine the ability like for example Remilia's Fate manipulation may or may not be working and a lot of variables take into account such as the willpower of the target, strength and magic as someone who's stubborn enough or powerful enough may not or perhaps cannot be manipulated by her

Another complexity to the Abilities is that they aren't necessarily descriptive of the user's actual power. Like Miko's understanding of the Ten Desires™or Eirin's doctorate in magic medicine. That's how I interpret how anyone could win against Yuyuko or Yukari anyway since Hecatia is supposed to be the strongest with the very OK ability of having three bodies.

No reason to rank and tier Touhou characters Power Levels, because they're all strong. Good point

As someone who is kinda trying to get into the series- Perhaps he means that these abilities are meant to make sure that whenever you see them in the story, their power will range from “oh yeah, I can do this skill”, to “I am perfect in this skill”. It leaves room for improvement. Say you have someone who’s ability is to “Have the ability to control Jump height” or something like that. When we first meet them, they could be using their power in obvious ways- essentially flight with small hops in between/kick attacks. But when you meet them later, their ability has been fleshed out, and they have learned that as long as a being “jumps” they can control that beings height. Basically letting gravity kill any being that can’t survive re-entry, or just let them fly into space. Both of these abilities fall under the description given, so the vague wording allows for advancement of a person’s skills throughout their existence.

What I gather from this is that Cirno could, in fact, be the strongest.

Strong legs

I mean, knife maid is literally DIO down to the vampire house. I think you hit the nail on the head at the end.

zun just wanted to make something that we can measure, it is all on tje mind of the player/lore rat, if you explore mythology it will be clear

Zun is a troll and enjoys trolling powerscalers with the capability of reading the future he was playing a game of 5D chess the whole time just to confuse people

Yukari exists. Entity stronger than Yukari exists. Manipulates the border between their gap in power and becomes more powerful than said entity anyways. - Touhou

I like to think of this as " These characters' abilities are not set in stone, this is their current basis but over time, under proper conditions, their ability could change into something different but similar to the original". Kinda like MHA's quirks I suppose.

Being vague is how Touhou works.

Im not touhou fan, or really know alot about this universe at all, but from all what I know, I think it's better to not take those powers and abilities seriously, touhou not have balance **absolutely** and never will, because even abilities described just in two words like "can control" or "can manipulate" there's no exact description of limits of abilities (by the way that's why you shouldn't try compare powers of (almost ) any touhou character(s) to character(s) from other games, animes etc. in my opinion, it just not have a point) , and as one of comments I saw under this video says: "it's left to readers imagination" and I agree with it. Tho, im taking touhou more as "comedy" where everyone just (mostly) fights with different abilities for fun, so it's better to nor focus on their abilities and powers im sure, personality of characters, their relationships between each other and etc. is alot interesting (atleast for me) for sure. So im trying to know more about this universe and just enjoy it. (P.s. sorry if there mistakes in text, English not my main language)

I always had this interpretation that Touhou characters are glass cannons. They can hit real hard, but can't take a hit. Unless they are Onis, Gods, or Yukari. There's probably more that i missed, but that's what I think.

Thanks a lot ! I finally understand why Remilia lost More seriously, the lines that graduates the differents powers, even if there are really vague sometimes are the key to understand and those lines are too often neglected on the western community which is kinda sad. So thank you for bringing that up ! Keep it up !

I can see abilities describing things that characters can do to a certain degree, but after seeing Kogasa's ability, that degree ranges from 0 lol

As someone who's spent a little too long analyzing the character's abilities, powersets and scaling and such, I feel like his wording was to allow for a degree of interpretation for how abilities can be used. Something like Seija's ability could have a bunch of potential uses, and since we only ever see it used a few ways in canon, someone creating a fanwork could make up a lot more applications for the ability due to the ambiguity presented in the description. In something like a Versus Debate, we'd only be able to take the ability's description at face value, and what feats the characters have actually performed with said abilities (Yukari has an extensive list of usages of her Boundary Manipulation that back up the explanations behind it, for instance) because of the specific limitations/expectations of Versus Debating as a whole. But when it comes to just, simple interpretation, I think ZUN's wordage allows for people to take things in their own ways while still having the characters similar to their original intent.

Tbf this discussion is more on hax not powerscaling. But it would be quite interesting to analyze all the direct feats in the verse cuz Touhou has a lot of infinite statements and feats like with the infinite corridor for example. And I think most people know them translated like that and not in the original Japanese, so it would be fun to see if these feats are actually meant to be literally infinite or just hyperbolic and we're misinterpreting them

I clicked on this video knowing nothing about Touhou but having heard the word ...so Touhou is...Eldritch gods, but cute little girls?

You can argue over the power level of every single character for at least 10 minutes straight, heck for some not even an hour would cut it. Power level discussions are interesting but it's utter chaos for Touhou there are too many different aspects. The kind of abilities on their own are not even clear most of the time and the extent of those even less often and can your own power level simply counter certain abilities? For a lot of character we simple have no idea how strong they are, do we go by shown powers only, or told/implied levels of those? Most conflicts are solved by the "Danmaku rule" and certain character like Marisa excel in that discipline far more than her general power level (not that she is weak). Would an "all out fight" even work? and how would it work? Could someone like Yuyuko just kill you? or can she only kill you if you would lose anyway? Way too many unknowns to have any form of conclusive power ranking.

2:45 Are we supposed to be seeing something here or am I being had?

The capability of 1CCing Lunatic to some degree...

2:52 When you think about it, Reimu has been manipulating the positive and negative flow for years before the concept even existed in JoJo Suck it, Wonder of U and D4C love train

"even the humans" Rika and Yumemi: Guess I'll die. (Unless you count the engineering/scientific genius as a power. and yes I know it's PC-98 early shenanigans, but you still have PC-98 Reimu and Marisa.)

maybe "flight is to some extent is what Reimu is capable of" the abilities have a theme but the extent they can go to is unbound as long as it stays in that range

one thing i've found confusing here with good ol teido no nouryoku is that it doesn't imply that the ability is unique nor that it is all that they can do. i usually see it translated as "capable of", which can even just be something like a learned skill. marisa, for instance, is "capable of using magic", which is not just not special amidst youkai, it's not even special for a human. youmu's, and even renko's, could be interpreted as just something they learned or have a great aptitude for and not part of the series of anomalous special abilities like kosuzu's or yukari's

Do you have any social media to talk? I too see touhou project as a underestimated masterpiece.

The powerscaling thing made me get alot confused in the first time, even when i saw yukari ability, it made me wonder "how she isn't supposed to be just a deus ex machina in any incident?" Or "how she is not the strongest character?" And it got even worse when i discovered a official work that has shown her breaking the 4th wall, i still quite confused about how it works

Don't matter when sunny milk negs

I think Zun meant with Degree of Ability, how does Abilities are effective for this Character. Some Characters Like Reimu are both Gifted to be naturally Strong in Terms of her ability to perform barriers but also have the experience and knowledge to perform this Ability Very effective, which is why Reimu is the best at Youkai Extermination. Some Characters Like Marisa and Sanae don't really have a naturally Strong Abbilites, which is why they depend more on their experience and knowledge, which is why Marisa only uses Stars as her danmaku while the Master Spark is more of a copied Ability, Sanae at this Point only can use Danmaku, since Miracle is either Just her Gift to Land either lucky Hits or Its Just plain uselsss. Some Like Cirno and Youmu are naturally Strong, but their Lack in experience might Limit the degree of this Ability.

Since we know these abilities are self-stated, my favorite interpretation is these are just what each character would answer to the question "Hey, what's your special ability?" Reimu: "Uhhh, I can fly I guess." Marisa: "I can use magic! I've been working hard my entire life for it." Aya: "Like all other Crow Tengu, I can control wind." Hatate: "I can do spirit photography! It sets me apart from other Tengu." Kogasa: "I can surprise people!....never mind that I haven't surprised anyone yet" Ichirin: "Uhhh shitshitshitdoievenhaveany OH YEAH I'M THE ONLY ONE UNZAN TALKS TO" Remilia: "I CAN MANIPULATE FATE LMAO" Flandre: "I can destroy anything. Btw my sister is fucking lying" Eika: "I can stack stones really high! No kids can beat my record!" Saki: "Look at these LEGS!!" Eirin: "I can make any medicine. And magic spells. And nuclear weapons. And quantumrelativethingamajig. And anything really. But mostly medicines." And so on. These may or may not be the characters' actual special abilities, but what *they* are most proud about.

I think the "To some degree" part is so that characters don't spam that ability/keep doing it unlimited times

The only exception here is the hourai immortality which is.. well.. true immortality. A lot of characters in the series have the ability to be immortal but it has to follow some rules. Fairies are immortal but they can actually die and respawn where there is nature. Monks and celestials are said to be immortal but they are not, they extend their lives by defeating every once in a while the shinigami/kishin who hunts them. Gods can live if only enough people give faith to them. Something similar can be said for the Youkai ( believing in their existence can make them real ). But Hourai Elixir "makes one completely immortal to the truest sense "

If I was warped to gensokyo and could give myself my own ability. I would choose "To be able to manifest and manipulate metals to some degree"

i think these powers are vague on purpose because gensokyo is all about fantasy mystery etc. (like some myths are told differently and noone knows which version is right)

So that means I can scale touhou to boundless?

I think it's probably because he's lazy to be specific/precise or just wants to screw with the power scalers

cant we just ask ZUN

in conclution... touhou is jojos but girly and a lot of drunk things (in the script too)

could it be that he is messing with us