AMT

Canonically, the youkai protect the human village from natural disasters and such, as they require the fear of living humans to even exist. The youkai need humans more than the other way around really.

It just is as you mentioned, because this is a piracy site, and I can understand their sentiment as unlike most piracy sites, we aren't stealing from some million dollar megacorp, but from one dude. I would actually have zero issues with all of these decisions if there was a way to get 6-8. And I also understand why ZUN took down those, it would be stupid to enforce your copyright for one thing but not for the other. 9 was brought to Steam recently so I hope that the rest will be too.

ZUN isn't making money from fan merchandise.

Furthermore. In Magical Astronomy's story there is this. And in Curiosities of Lotus Asia Chapter 36 there is this.

Discussed this with someone else and this is what he had to say: The Komeiji sisters being loathed by other people isn't the result of racism but the result of them being capable of breaking into your mind and forcibly prying out any potentially nasty secrets you may be hiding up there. It's a proverbial type of mindfuck. And the 'social ladder revolt' of TH14 only exists on the surface. Half of the cast is brainwashed into aggro mode by the power of the Miracle Mallet, Shimmy successfully painted herself as a gullible idiot for trusting Seija, and Seija herself is a sociopathic contrarian who couldn't give less of a damn about her supposed comrades. If anything, the game could be seen as dry satire about social movements that mostly exist to line the pockets of their dear leaders. I do agree with this now.

ZUN often uses Touhou for social commentary, here's some that I spotted. Would be cool if you people could find more. AFiEU is a direct parody of the 2016 American presidential election and sensationalist media. TH18 is clearly based on the current state of the world and the effect on marketplaces alternative currencies and COVID had, and Mike's backstory is also analogous to racism. TH17.5 is entirely about consumption of fossil fuels. TH17 literally takes place in a ultra-capitalist social darwinist hellhole via its own admission. TH14 had a group of youkai seen as the lower rung on the social ladder revolt. TH11's Komeiji sisters backstories are pretty obviously analogies for racism. That's just a handful of things. The series touches on current issues pretty often.

It's almost certainly a false alarm. This specific example is for SA but I'm sure that it applies to the other ones too.

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

What about Eternity Larva though?

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

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

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.

It's not nearly as dramatic as you're saying it is, the people that WANT the games are still going to get them one way or another, at most this'll deflect some less dedicated people.

This whole DMCA claim is literal bullshit. Like someone just decided to "anonymously" file a DMCA complaint, technically all copyrights to the Touhou games belong to ZUN and his company. DMCA complaints like these are to us like what bomb threats are to airports, and what SWAT'ing is to gamers on Twitch. Literally trolled. It's still wise to take precautions as they have been

Yeah, just look at their contributions. https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Special:Contributions/NoobyKai Back in October 21 they did literally the exact same thing.