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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.