The discussion of the strongest Touhou character.

[AMT]

To begin with, I propose these three characters as candidates for the title of the strongest Touhou character.

• Hecatia Lapislazuli, Goddess of Hell.
• Okina Matara, Secret God and one of the Sages of Gensokyo.
• Shinki, Goddess of Makai.

Now, to address the two big elephants in the room:

1."But didn't ZUN already say that Hecatia is the strongest Touhou character?"

    Contrary to popular belief - no he did not.
    Here is what he actually said:
    "Since she's an enemy that doesn't play by the rules, you can't even call it a proper match. It's just playing around. She's completely past the level of anyone in Gensokyo or the Lunar Capital."

    And here we have it, while this does exclude the vast majority of Touhou characters, neither Makai (Shinki) nor the Land of the Backdoor (Okina) are located in Gensokyo or the Lunar Capital.

2. "Isn't PC-98 not canon?"
    
    This is only half-true, all of the PC-98 games and the events that occur in them are canon, however, when something in a Windows era game contradicts something that happened in the PC-98 era, the Windows iteration takes priority, rendering the PC-98 version as non-canon. Think of it more as a "lesser canon."
    Shinki and Makai's existence do not contradict the Windows era canon, Makai does appear in UFO, however, the location that is in stage 5 and 6 of that game is actually a sub-section of Makai called "Hokkai"
    Makai in the Windows era is more of an uninhabitable wasteland instead of a city like the PC-98 era, but these two aren't neccessarily mutually exclusive, during Shinki's battle in Mystic Square, the entire city is on fire as a result of the fight.

Now that I've answered these two questions, I'll proceed why I think that these three characters are candidates of that title.

• Hecatia Lapislazuli

 This is an obvious choice because of ZUN's statement, so I don't think I need to add much more to this.

• Okina Matara

    She is one of the Sages of Gensokyo, and therefore also one of the people that helped create it in the first place, she repeatedly brags about how easy it would be for her to remake Gensokyo, and these claims are certainly backed up by her already massive power.

    She lays chaos to Gensokyo while barely being bothered by it, twice actually, since she's also the true mastermind behind the incident in 17.5, and she caused another incident in the fairy manga.
    All of the protagonists in Hidden Star in Four Seasons lose against her in the stage 6 fight, and when they come back for a re-match in the Extra Stage, they are only able to "win" because Okina literally lets them win as to honour their courage, Aya herself realizes (and Okina confirms this) that she could've just ejected them back into Gensokyo again. She didn't even actually lose, since her goal in that game was to make a show of power as to make people aware of her, which has certainly worked, replacing Satono & Mai was either a secondary objective or just a straight-up lie, and I won't even begin to get into this, but her plans in 17.5 worked flawlessly, she basically played everyone like a fiddle.

    

• Shinki

    She's the creator of all of Makai and everything and everyone inside of it, which already speaks for her immense power in on itself. 
    Sariel - you know, THIS giant thing?

Sariel is the final boss of the Makai route in HRtP, and due to that, Shinki must also be its creator, and Sariel is already exceptionally powerful itself as demonstrated in HRtP.

Shinki's fight with the protagonist sets the entire city of Makai ablaze, I can't recall any other Touhou fight that has caused this much destruction. 

In conclusion, we'll probably never know precisely who it is, but these three are my picks. And please spare me the awful Cirno jokes, thanks.

Edited May 4, 2022 by AMT

[Gou the frog]

 My picks aren't that different from you. 

• Hecatia Lapislazuli: The Hell Goddess 
• Shiki
• Junko: A Divine Spirit
• Shinki & Okina: Goddess Of Maikai & A Secret God Of A Sage.

Hecatia

Well, you've already stated the reasons for Hecatia and she is strong. I wonder what kind of scaling we'll use when compared to others who are outside of Gensokyo and the Lunar Capital.

Shiki 

She is a Yama whom will judge the soul of the death and will decide who will go to heaven and who will not. I do believe she holds a lot of power being a judge. 

Shinki

She is a confusing one since Yuuka was no is confirmed to be the strongest Pc-98 character. If you use this she is more powerful than Shinki but Shinki can create a whole world and people by herself so she is theoretically the powerful one. I also think Shinki highly underestimated the main protags as well to lose.

Junko

She can purify anything to their original godly nature, before they had names. Therefore, she can create gods and will defeat the Lunar people. (I don't know who will come out victorious when Junko and Okina faces each other)

Okina

1 hour ago, AMT said:

She is one of the Sages of Gensokyo, and therefore also one of the people that helped create it in the first place, she repeatedly brags about how easy it would be for her to remake Gensokyo, and these claims are certainly backed up by her already massive power.

    She lays chaos to Gensokyo while barely being bothered by it, twice actually, since she's also the true mastermind behind the incident in 17.5
    All of the protagonists in Hidden Star in Four Seasons lose against her in the stage 6 fight, and when they come back for a re-match in the Extra Stage, they are only able to "win" because Okina literally lets them win as to honour their courage, Aya herself realizes (and Okina confirms this) that she could've just ejected them back into Gensokyo again. She didn't even actually lose, since her goal in that game was to make a show of power as to make people aware of her, which has certainly worked, replacing Satono & Mai was either a secondary objective or just a straight-up lie, and I won't even begin to get into this, but her plans in 17.5 worked flawlessly, she basically played everyone like a fiddle.

It's as stated above.

[SasaMisa]

Interesting takes for sure, but as per my avatar, someone has to say it:「アタイは最強だぞ！」"Eye'm the strongest!" (#^_^#)

[花落丿天使]

HSiFS Cirno > Okina Matara(Standing) (doge)

[Tayaya]

  I think a problem about this is Spell card rules. Cause if we look Reimu has mostly won every fight meaning she's the strongest despite other characters having far greater abilities. Take Flandre for example with her ability to destroy anything. Zun made that vague on purpose as it could mean she could destroy the entire universe and yet Reimu and Marisa survived against her.  Without spell card rules everything after SA would be Fallout 4.

On 5/3/2022 at 10:36 AM, AMT said:

Shinki's fight with the protagonist sets the entire city of Makai ablaze, I can't recall any other Touhou fight that has caused this much destruction.

Spell card rules are made to prevent needless destruction so unless Zun decided to show us their true powers it's impossible to tell. So really it's left to interpretation on what everyone's abilities mean and how they work so really anyone could be the strongest.

And with that IMO Aya is the strongest no cap 

[AMT]

24 minutes ago, Tayaya said:

  I think a problem about this is Spell card rules. Cause if we look Reimu has mostly won every fight meaning she's the strongest despite other characters having far greater abilities. Take Flandre for example with her ability to destroy anything. Zun made that vague on purpose as it could mean she could destroy the entire universe and yet Reimu and Marisa survived against her.  Without spell card rules everything after SA would be Fallout 4.

Spell card rules are made to prevent needless destruction so unless Zun decided to show us their true powers it's impossible to tell. So really it's left to interpretation on what everyone's abilities mean and how they work so really anyone could be the strongest.

And with that IMO Aya is the strongest no cap 

Spellcards weren't a thing in the PC-98 era.

[Darksymphony777]

1 hour ago, Tayaya said:

I think a problem about this is Spell card rules. Cause if we look Reimu has mostly won every fight meaning she's the strongest despite other characters having far greater abilities. Take Flandre for example with her ability to destroy anything. Zun made that vague on purpose as it could mean she could destroy the entire universe and yet Reimu and Marisa survived against her.  Without spell card rules everything after SA would be Fallout 4.

another thing is we can't really define strength in gensokyo in the same way we can in other fandoms due to the spellcard rules and the fact all the lore is vague across the board

 

do we measure strong via physical strength which would narrow down to the yuugi, suika, kasen, yuuka and aya

 

their abilities which would include: suika, shiki, toyahime, junko, both scarlet sisters, reisen, okuu, yuyuko and hilariously kogasa

 

infamy among the populous like yuuka, yukari, mokou, yuyuko, koishi. the yorigami sisters, marisa....sort of, shiki and seija

 

intelligence and information gathering which would just be aya, yukari, okina, mamizou and hecatia

 

we realistically can't judge someone like hecatia who we have no idea what her capabilities are outside of "she rules hell" and her biggest role in the lore is telling clownpiece to stay at reimu's, granted if it was to continue it may lead to a showdown with okina but will most likely be glossed over for more characters

 

though if i had to pick a winner, it be kogasa because then it be a surprise.

[Tayaya]

5 hours ago, AMT said:

Spellcards weren't a thing in the PC-98 era.

Exactly why we can't tell how powerful Windows Era is since every character held back within spellcard rules.

[Gou the frog]

3 hours ago, Darksymphony777 said:

another thing is we can't really define strength in gensokyo in the same way we can in other fandoms due to the spellcard rules and the fact all the lore is vague across the board

 

do we measure strong via physical strength which would narrow down to the yuugi, suika, kasen, yuuka and aya

 

their abilities which would include: suika, shiki, toyahime, junko, both scarlet sisters, reisen, okuu, yuyuko and hilariously kogasa

 

infamy among the populous like yuuka, yukari, mokou, yuyuko, koishi. the yorigami sisters, marisa....sort of, shiki and seija

 

intelligence and information gathering which would just be aya, yukari, okina, mamizou and hecatia

 

we realistically can't judge someone like hecatia who we have no idea what her capabilities are outside of "she rules hell" and her biggest role in the lore is telling clownpiece to stay at reimu's, granted if it was to continue it may lead to a showdown with okina but will most likely be glossed over for more characters

 

though if i had to pick a winner, it be kogasa because then it be a surprise.

It seems to be the case, spellcard rules or not, they're indeed powerful. Yes, this is why ATM started this topic in the first place. I've yet to wait more contributions on this thread.

 

[SasaMisa]

Come on, voting me down indeed! I was just having a bit of fun at the nineball's expense. (^_^)

Seriously though, isn't Yukari the only 'Phantasm Stage' boss?! I mean, she comes across like the unofficial "Empress of Gensokyo" to me; more often than not getting bored and letting the protagonist win rather than actually being beaten. She's certainly far more enigmatic than any other character, with it never being totally clear what her motivations are. Also, I would point out that the ability to control borders effectively means she can reshape reality at will. (*_*)

Edited June 17, 2022 by SasaMisa
Removing some text.

[ACE_DEUCE]

On 5/3/2022 at 5:36 PM, AMT said:

1."But didn't ZUN already say that Hecatia is the strongest Touhou character?"

I believe this misconception actually comes from another incorrect opinion held by some that since Yorihime is "too strong to be in one of the games", that automatically puts her above any of the bosses unless stated otherwise. Therefore, since Hecatia is stronger than any lunarian, that makes her the strongest character. However (to me at least) it makes more sense that Yorihime (other than likely being stronger than most Gensokyo residents) just has no reason to play by spell card rules or go easy on the player in any believable context, and would therefore not be a good fit for one of the shmups.

I wouldn't debate this question in such a general scope, not only because Touhou power scaling is weird, but because there's characters who do canonically exist within the Touhou world whose strength is entirely ambiguous:

• Ryujin: He is revered as Gensokyo's "creator god" as he is the one who made it inhabitable around the time that the Hakurei Border was created. It's unclear how he compares to the sages but it probably wouldn't be a stretch at all to say he's more powerful than any of them. If I recall correctly, he is also able to move through any barrier and freely enter Hell, Heaven, the Netherworld etc.
• Shinto gods: While it's obvious that (at the very least characters analogous to) the Shinto gods exist in Touhou, it's a little bit shaky and hard to say how well their power carries over into Touhou. For instance, Eirin is implied to be older than king Tsukuyomi, which would potentially make her one of the first beings ever to come into existence, but while she's definitely one of the most intelligent characters I don't think she can be compared to most of the bigwigs that are usually part of these debates. But on the flip side, Yorihime's ability to call on said gods does still put her on the level that it does, so there's probably way too many factors (and possible gods lol) to judge something like this accurately, such as conflicting sources relating to the mythology itself, the role that faith in individual gods plays etc. etc.

That being said there are certain things which we do know somewhat reliably:

The strongest youkai is Yukari: I doubt there's much debate on this, and official sources continuously reaffirm this one way or another.

The strongest beast youkai is Ran: This is also pretty unambiguous as it's been stated in PMiSS. While it's unknown how she compares to the Animal Realm inhabitants, those guys aren't youkai and thus don't fall into this category.

The strongest oni (that we know of) is probably Suika: Being based on the Shuten-douji, it's highly likely that Kasen and Yuugi, being based on the Ibaraki-douji and Hoshikuma-douji respectively (who were Shuten-douji's servants), aren't quite as powerful.

The strongest fairy is Cirno: Not counting hell fairies, GFW is canon.

That's all I could think of off the top of my head, if anyone else has any other more narrow comparisons like this I'd love to hear them.

Edited May 5, 2022 by ACE_DEUCE

[Darksymphony777]

If we wanted to, we can say reimu is strongest because she has plot armor

3 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

The strongest oni (that we know of) is probably Suika: Being based on the Shuten-douji, it's highly likely that Kasen and Yuugi, being based on the Ibaraki-douji and Hoshikuma-douji respectively (who were Shuten-douji's servants), aren't quite as powerful.

The only thing that might change this is that we don't know if suika is shuten-douji before becoming the oni ruler or after becoming oni ruler

[Darksymphony777]

There is one factor that we do have to consider with okina as a possibility. 

 

She's one of three sages that made gensokyo along with yukari and a currently unknown 3rd sage

[Gou the frog]

33 minutes ago, Darksymphony777 said:

She's one of three sages that made gensokyo along with yukari and a currently unknown 3rd sage

There also lies the Hakurei God and the unknown Forth Deva. 

[Darksymphony777]

8 minutes ago, Gou the frog said:

unknown Forth Deva

Wrong shuten-douji became the leader of the deva's so there's really two missing

[AMT]

On 5/5/2022 at 3:18 PM, Darksymphony777 said:

unknown 3rd sage

The 3rd sage is Kasen.
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Sages_of_Gensokyo

[SasaMisa]

I seem to recall watching an MMD animation ages back that had lots of characters dancing in front of a temple or something, including not least Konngara as the 4th Deva, along with Suika, Yuugi and Kasen. However, I can't for the life of me remember what it was called or where to find it on YouTube anymore. I remember mentioning it to my mate Chris too, when I was round his place one week, but he didn't have any luck finding it either. (^_^)

ETA: To prove I didn't make up the reference to Konngara, like a certain MGS senator (^_^;)

https://touhou.fandom.com/wiki/Four_Devas_of_the_Mountain

Edited June 17, 2022 by SasaMisa
Inserting a link.

[AMT]

On 5/5/2022 at 10:38 AM, ACE_DEUCE said:

The strongest fairy is Cirno: Not counting hell fairies, GFW is canon.

What about Eternity Larva though?

[ACE_DEUCE]

2 hours ago, AMT said:

What about Eternity Larva though?

Eternity Larva is a bit difficult to rank but I'd say she's probably not quite on Cirno's level? At the very least, she isn't as skilled in spell card battles. Cirno on her own is at the level of a Stage 2 boss while Eternity, even in her powered-up state in HSiFS is merely a Stage 1 boss. Okina also says she might not even be a fairy, if I recall correctly.

[AMT]

7 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

Eternity Larva is a bit difficult to rank but I'd say she's probably not quite on Cirno's level? At the very least, she isn't as skilled in spell card battles. Cirno on her own is at the level of a Stage 2 boss while Eternity, even in her powered-up state in HSiFS is merely a Stage 1 boss. Okina also says she might not even be a fairy, if I recall correctly.

The Wiki isn't sure about it either, so fair enough.

[Gou the frog]

Who is going to take the role of the strongest human and the strongest Tsukumogami? 

 

[Darksymphony777]

2 minutes ago, Gou the frog said:

Who is going to take the role of the strongest human and the strongest Tsukumogami? 

 

Human is reimu pretty handily

 

As for Tsukumogami that might be a toss up between aunn and uhhm........that drum one who's name I can't remember

[Gou the frog]

2 minutes ago, Darksymphony777 said:

As for Tsukumogami that might be a toss up between aunn and uhhm........that drum one who's name I can't remember

Yeah, my vote is on aunn so, about the drum does it have a tie? No? Then it isn't not Raiko. Still, I want to know about the dragons this time (Kichou?)

[Darksymphony777]

It's raiko, just couldn't remember her name but it be a toss up between the two

29 minutes ago, Gou the frog said:

 

Edited June 17, 2022 by Darksymphony777

[SasaMisa]

Isn't Raiko an Extra Stage boss in DDC though!? Clearly way more powerful than the good doggo. (*_*)

Edited June 17, 2022 by SasaMisa
Adding some text.