gensokyo and the should-be overpowered youkai (Read 720 times)

[Aeon]

gensokyo is a place where the things forgotten and no longer feared by the modern world can persist. that isn't its whole deal, but it's a major part of it. youkai are forgotten as actual threats, but maintain that presence in gensokyo. kourindou is able to operate because of how precise gensokyo's construction is at allowing things from the past in. while its designer says that "gensokyo is a place that accepts everything", it was built to be easy to enter by the human fears of the past.

it works pretty well. both youkai and humans can thrive in gensokyo and are basically free to do whatever they want. after thinking about it for a bit, though, there is something that i have found that seems out of place.
long before, and even persisting with the fear of youkai and miscellaneous demons humans have had, there was a much stronger danger. plague that would destroy countries, winters that would bring armies to their knees and leave cities in famine, darkness that could conceal all earthly, manmade, and demonic traps and would leave humans helpless in it, and bugs that can bring disease and kill young and livestock.
even someone living alone in poor conditions like reimu doesn't seem to be bothered by any of these particularly until it's part of an incident.

so why are people like yamame kurodani, cirno, rumia, and wriggle nightbug so weak? not just in danmaku, they seem to have no chance of influencing human life or gensokyo at all.

cirno is, while strong for one, just a fairy. even in hidden star in four seasons when she gains some extra power, it's not her own and it starts putting her in danger. even in winter, she can't do anything special.
rumia can't even control her own power of manipulating darkness. apparently she sometimes bumps into things while using it because she can't see. it doesn't seem like she can expand its range beyond a few meters as well.

yamame and wriggle are a bit of a different case. the former is benign to humans and a bit reclusive, but the fact remains that she does not have much of a presence in gensokyo. maybe it's because disease is still quite the danger out here. wriggle is still weak in all appearances, but there isn't too much to be said about what is known about her power and importance to gensokyo than "small and small".

returning to the aspects of winter and darkness, it could be said that they are intentionally being restrained in gensokyo. seeing cirno, there is another avatar of cold. letty whiterock is a youkai that only exists in winter. this could be said that it is because she doesn't need to appear in other times, but cirno and particularly lily white, who's main ability is to announce the presence of spring, are seen outside of their respective seasons.
looking further at letty, her ability is closer to manipulation of winter than cirno's is. it was also said that she is far stronger than she displays herself as in perfect cherry blossom, being able to cause an incident at her full power. that's a statement from ZUN instead of something found in one of the print works, which means it's 100% reliable and free of akyuu bias.
about rumia, you've heard the tales, yeah? of the EX rumia that can be unleashed if she decides to stop accessorizing. there's nothing that really endorses that beyond the fact that her ribbon is an ofuda, but i can't imagine a youkai just keeping that on themselves for fashion.

and that's all i've got. yukari shooes away letty and slaps a seal on rumia to stop them from having a bit too much non-danmaku fun? maybe. this is just my gensokyo conspiracy theory no. 8. i would make a killing working for aya.

[spongelevator]

I think most of those youkai like rumia and cirno and whatever fairies and such are said to be pretty unintelligent
so at least for them I would think it's less their powers aren't enough and more they aren't intelligent enough to use them properly (assuming they want to do anything with them)
I don't think there is any sort of correlation between size and power because of vampires and such though I always see most of those small fairy or fairy-like characters seen as pretty not smart so I think it's probably something like that
I did not know about the rumia ofuda though lol I thought it was only in fanworks
now I have acquired new fact
other characters that are more intelligent probably don't want to cause any problems both because it is bothersome but also because they shall get a miko stick up the ass
this kinda reminds me of those pokemon discussions where the pokedex mentions the absurd powers that pokemon have (magcargo mode) but then in the actual universe none of that stuff ever happens
the only explanations I heard were "the pokedex is inaccurate" and "the pokemon choose not to use those powers" so I probably just thought the same of the youkai
it does remind me of those videos where the pokemon use their full powers though and now I wonder what a gensokyo where nobody holds back would be like lol
I know there's the power level discussions though those always seemed pretty inconsistent and past lolk everyone just ended it with "ZUN said hecatia is stronger than anyone" though I mean more just
everyone against everyone no spellcard no items final gensokyo
I have no idea what would happen really because ability≠power level and powers/characters seem pretty vague at times
like how alice is supposed to have some absurd power level with grimoire or how yukari can just "manipulate things with gaps" which could mean anything from being able to get a soda out of the fridge without getting up to taking away the powers of opponents or something like removing immortality from kaguya+eirin+mokou
ok I do not know where I am going with that though yeah powers is weird and I do not know what happening in there

[Aeon]

holy hell dude i took six days to get back to you in my own thread my apologies. i had some important things going on but now i return

rumia and cirno are kinda dumb that makes sense, especially because even if they could use decent power they wouldn't be able to display it in danmaku very well. spellcards are a battle of intelligence and beauty, after all

i think pokemon's abilities are a lot more consistent with their pokedex if you think of nuzlocke as canon. can't belive the games still don't support that kind of run officially though
the gba and ds mystery dungeon games also are a bit better about that? i don't rememer em super well but i know they had some cool bits

not a fan of "hecatia is stronger than anyone". girl can't even do all ten spellcards as an extra boss and gets junko to help out
i think that statement is better considered as a pure power thing or a political thing compared to a "can do literally anything" thing. she can kind of throw idols of planets around which i would wager pack quite more of a punch than a single pichuun outside of a spellcard, and i might have read somewhere that her body is like super heavy and resistent to all kinds of stuff. i could be wrong about that, but i'd say she's just like yuuka in that she just has a ton of nonabstract strength
and politically, she holds high rank in hell. she's eiki's boss, and eiki is already someone people like yukari don't want to mess with. losing the cooperation of certain otherworlds would probably be pretty bad for gensokyo
i figure hecatia can also access the outside world freely, since she's got a whole earth body and more obviously the funny shirt. goddesses these days really show up to an extra stage in a $22.99 tshirt huh

yukari has "ability to the extent of boundary manipulation" which i'm pretty sure includes both soda-grabbing and hourai-killing. in imperishable night she says she specifically cannot do the latter but yukari is a liar and it probably highly benefits her to have eientei around
they are weird tho we will only know what happens in the no spellcard no items final gensokyo (one stock youkai only) if something really big happens

[spongelevator]

lol yeah icicle fall easy moment
though it may sound quite extreme hear me out
what if rumia is so dumb
that she does not know there is ofuda at all
but hey, that's just a theory- a GAmE theory

some pokemon have some absolutely wack abilities though like uuh
ok the only one I remember right now is magcargo who is 18000 degrees and that is hotter than the sun
I guess akyuu's stuff is touhou pokedex where it's maybe accurate depending on what is stated and whatever such things
and there's youkai like keine who aren't the strongest but then her power is to literally consume or create history depending on her form
and well that sounds like a power where you cannot beat it
just like how sakuya can manipulate time and space and also should not be able to lose
or yuyuko who can make her opponent die instantly and should have no difficulty doing so
maybe it's just that power and ability are completely separate
which is why there's low power youkai who sometimes have way too good powers
though at least from what I remember all the particularly powerful youkai also have particularly strong abilities
maybe there's... something greater!
ok lol I do not know still
I don't think ZUN actually stated any sort of abilities for hecatia and he basically just said she is beyond anyone in gensokyo or the lunar capital which is incredibly vague
so at least with the information that exists right now I would agree with power/status
I don't know if anything was even said about how the three bodies work
like do they all have the same power or do they have different abilities or what's going on with that stuff
all I know really is there are three distinct flavors for each location's local cuisine
and that you have to defeat all three to get anywhere
well the power is in the fashion I guess lol I dunno either
I think youkai are able to have multiple abilities unlike star platinum so maybe we just are not being told all of them and that's where this whole power ability contrast thing goes
or something like the usability of an ability is based on the youkai's power level and hecatia is just over 9000
maybe yukari should throw us a bone and leak the gensokyo tier list on whatever new fangled website the kids are using today
well I dunno if I even consistently differentiated between "ability" and "power" when writing this but hopefully I did because I cannot read words anymore

[Aeon]

i am snoozer again but slightly less so

rumia may not know about the ofuda. it is quite fashionable
no way magcargo is that hot lemme check
(alpha) sapphire, diamond/pearl/platinum, and all of gen 5 say "approximately" or "roughly" 18,000 degrees F". that is quite the claim considering that should not just melt but evaporate all organic material it encounters and just about all manmade and crust-level natural objects. it should just constantly be turning the environment to lava wherever it is

bulbapedia has an image of this thing just sitting on the ground
johto may have "scientists" and "researchers" but i would entrust my biology homework to a fairy before getting a checkup there

anyway yeah uh
akyuu's stuff is not entirely without misinformation
you're right about the super-busted youkai although i bet that keine is not so destructive. less of a "i can change history" and more like "i can shove history in a zip file and make some things different" like she did in imperishable night
the thing about sakuya is that if she stopped listening to the spellcard rules she could timestop for a massive duration and just wreck the opponent but also
if the spellcard rules are ignored, that probably won't do much at all. the only reason humans other than reimu can go toe-to-toe with youkai is because fights don't take pure strength or endurance into account. timestop is nothing to scoff at but the difference is between an apparition that may not even need a physical body to survive and a flesh-and-blood homo sapien that gets ended with a shot to the head or a knife to the heart
they do have magic so they are proooobably a bit better on that front but i think the biology is too much of a difference for sakuya to be going around solo fighting everyone with no spellcard rules

i think power and ability are seperate though yeah
there's people like miko who don't have an ability applicable to battle at all. it's very strong politically, but knowing what people want isn't going to make bullets hit more
yuuka also famously has an incredibly underwhelming ability compared to her power.
still, it makes sense that a lot of strong people have strong abilities. even with no training, no magic, a fatal disease, and intense muscle atrophy, it probably doesn't take even a week to have more power than any human with something like border manipulation. now that i think about it, flandre kinda fits those descriptions if you consider "dies in the sunlight" as a fatal disease

yukari dropping a gensokyo tier list? maybe she would have at some point but now if sumireko sees it and blabs everybody is gonna be mad and fight. must be tough babysitting a nation of magic-people

[spongelevator]

man akyuu misinformation is not a fun time huh
hopefully it's not magcargo tier stuff in there lol

if keine just puts history on top of the fridge so the kiddies can't reach then that is a lot less than what I imagined
at least she is very cool #1 teacher in human village

if sakuya can do that thing where uuh
someone selectively chooses what objects can move in stopped time
then she can just go pick up flandre from the daycare and have her explode everything maybe
and nobody will know she cheated because they can't see it happening lol
ok but in an actual fight yeah she probably can't do much other than throw too many knives

I think there would just be strong/weak matchups if fights were 1 on 1 but if it was just a free for all then someone like yukari could just go to australia for a few days until it's all over
I forgot if this thread was about power levels or just who could win in a fight and I tried rereading but eh brain not workin this time around
though it might just be about who is best using their ability like imagine suika just shrinking very small and flying up hecatia's
never mind we will not speak of such things
alright well if this post is coherent then that is pretty good

[Aeon]

that is a pro sakuya strat
if gensokyo goes to war you've got a job secured as a strategist

original topic doesn't matter too much because it was just a presentation of potential "yukari is fooling around again", my favorite thing to do. i am the rugged detective on the trail of this woman always one step, two continents, two 1ccs, and a significant amount of complex bounded fields behind

i think there are a couple ones like suika that could just be used to physically destroy any single object without any questions like okuu, komachi, yukari as always, and probably saki
it's still uncertain how much youkai need to rely on their physical bodies to survive but it probably varies. monster-like guys like remilia and yoshika probably have more of a stake (ha) in it but i can't imagine blood being a big deal for suwako or someone like that

SPOILER: Click to show

{and basically,}

[spongelevator]

ok yeah I comin back to this thread as well
it has been over a year since this one but I did not actually read any of the official stuff until this summer so now I will do power levels thread justice instead of taking many guesses

I'm not sure if I am understanding properly but if I am
then I would probably say the same thing I did last time about how abilities are definitely capped at some point but ZUN isn't really clear as to where
and low-power characters can have seemingly amazing abilities that are actually pretty weak and not useful
which as you said is the reason these power level arguments happen in the first place lol
with yamame and wriggle I wouldn't expect them to have much power in gensokyo because the human village is constantly under protection and those abilities seem to exclusively affect humans/their livestock unless youkai can get sick and I forgot
I think it was something like human and youkai disease exist but are different
if it is like that I don't know if yamame can manipulate youkai disease but probably not considering how insignificant she seems
if they tried to do something in the human village it would just piss a lot of youkai off and otherwise their powers are basically useless unless wriggle wants an ant army like it's pikmin or something
I would think medicine's manipulation of poison would probably be more useful than disease because it has shown to affect youkai (also depending on the poison maybe she can make medicine and sell it/work with eientei and become very wealthy and powerful with the ability to pay powerful youkai to do her bidding and eventually own the entire gensokyo if she sells crack) but she is also almost never put in the list of more powerful youkai due to her inexperience
and cirno is a fairy and they are supposed to be like
weak youkai forms of nature or somethin
letty is more the "winter" youkai as you said
I am guessing ZUN means that she could cause an incident by like
strengthening winter to a point that people start to get pissed perhaps
powerful but eh I am not really sure if the ability to cause an incident means a whole lot
probably meant more back when he said it and there was only like 7 or 8 incidents ever
there's also rumia's "manipulating darkness" which usually is her covering herself in darkness and not knowing how to use it compared to mystia's thing
where mystia is able to make it hard for her opponents to see (almost a manipulation of darkness except in a way that actually does something) so it's basically a straight upgrade from rumia (and she can make some cash on the side take that rumia)
also yeah spellcard rules limit unintelligent youkai even more so any chance they had at getting somewhere in battle is gone

to prevent this from being literally just "yeah honestly I would still agree with all of this" I will now say new things
heck and also the moonies (if they're on the moon) have the most power but yeah they don't exactly have limitless abilities
yorihime can summon gods far better than raymoo and toyohime has border abilities that allow her to change the entire state of the moon or be able to gap anywhere she wants (without having to rely on moon phases like yukari) so I guess they have a good amount of potential but I do not know
they showed up in two pieces of canon media and basically just existed to be superior versions of raymoo and yukarin to make the ending of "weak beats strong through wit" more satisfying or something I suppose
I guess they would be up there in potential with their abilities like that but I do not really know
classic example in power level argument would be yukari but she can only gap to the moon on very specific occasions and needed multiple gaps to scale youkai mountain and reach heaven and all that
also seemingly needing to witness a lot of perfect possession to find out how to stop the incident unless I remember wrong
seems to have far more intelligence than power and has her reputation through deception so she does not fit up to the role of all-knowing all-powerful mastermind just like how sakuya probably cannot stop time forever and win by default or flan can't just explode the entire world
I am pretty sure okina is confirmed to have more power than yukarin and she has done a bunch of weird stuff with her doors and energy manipulation so I guess she is more fitting for that role except okina still isn't really able to do endless god things
power level arguments don't really seem to get anywhere because it's either people who have no concept of ability limits or people who can only work with what has canonically happened and don't have enough to go on so they just accept the boring "heck is strongest" (she is coolest though)

this along with many other powers kinda just feels like people getting confused because of ZUN's vague descriptions
like what do you mean this girl can "destroy anything" or "eat anything" or this teacher can "erase history"
what is "border manipulation" or "time manipulation" or "manipulation of death" or "dimensional floating"
people hear these abilities and then think they are absolutely limitless but in reality chillno can't make the whole universe absolute zero she can just make your drink have ice cubes in it or maybe freeze your pool to go ice skating
and since ZUN said he prefers to make new characters rather than expand on old ones we will probably not see most of these characters again outside of a single panel of a party scene and therefore never find out what he meant by this

I suppose the power is the friends they made along the way
one weak youkai can't do much but 20+ years worth of youkai drunk sitting at a shrine can probably beat anything other than dante from the devil may cry series soon to appear in touhou 17.5 patch

what I have learned from this experience is uhh
ZUN why yuuka not show up for 15 years and uhh
ZUN why you make akyuu unreliable and uhhh
wriggle is a bug and not very powerful




barkleypost and hearnpost in a very long time