天下制覇

 

When winter fades to… more winter.

Spring has sprung! Or at least… it’s supposed to. It’s already May and the winter storms show no signs of stopping. Clearly something must be affecting Gensokyo, so Reimu, Marisa or Sakuya head out to try to find the cause. Perfect Cherry Blossom is the often hailed as the flagship of the modern series, replacing the randomness of EoSD’s ‘explosion’ patterns with much more aesthetically pleasing and fractal patterns as well as adding the Cherry meter, making scoring a complex strategy above and beyond simple survival. PCB is also the first time that a significant difference appears in the characters above and beyond speed and shot patterns. Reimu has a small hitbox and longer counterbomb timer, Marisa collects items easier and gets full points from point items slightly lower than the others and Sakuya generates bombs on death and has a larger graze area.

The Cherry meter is relatively simple in execution. As you shoot enemies or collect Blossom items, your Cherry meter goes up. The rate is dependant on the character, though shooting in focus mode reduces the accumulation by about a tenth. Every 50,000 points reached activates Border mode for about ten seconds, autocollecting all items and giving you huge bonuses (as well as increasing the max of the Cherry meter) for grazing. Again, more points for grazing unfocused. Border mode is cancelled by running into an item, or can be manually cancelled with the bomb button and turns all the nearby shots into minor Cherry items. If the Border is allowed to naturally expire, your Cherry max and Cherry meter are increased by 10,000 and you gain points dependant on your current Cherry value. After the border expires in any way, the amount of Cherry you need for the next Border is reset to 50,000 and you can start accumulating it again. The Cherry value is also the number of points you get when you collect a point item high on the screen. Your Cherry value decreases by bombing or getting hit (the character being used determines the amount), but any accumulation towards 50,000 and Border mode is preserved. As you might guess, skillfull manipulation of the Cherry meter and making sure that you hit border mode just prior to mass grazing opportunities (like stage 4 for example) is key to getting massive scores.

  

Letty Whiterock is a spirit of the winter. She attacks the heroine as they travel through the snow, but even she realizes that the winter has gone on for far too long so doesn’t attack seriously. She’s preceded by Cirno as a midboss, but the poor little ice fairy doesn’t have any lines in PCB, so is just shot down. Letty soon follows suit though and lets the player continues onward.

   

The cat demon Chen seems to just be around for the sake of being around. The heroine stumbles upon her after getting lost in the snow and like all things that are randomly stumbled upon, must be shot down. Once in Extra mode, Chen gets powered up quite a bit and is revealed to be the servant of the servant who started the whole problem in the first place. She’s still fairly weak, though does become significantly more powerful near her master Ran. Still, she’s pretty much just a speeddbump on the path.

  

Alice Margatroid is an extremely powerful sorceress, but rarely uses her full power, instead relying on her dolls. She did open her grimoire and use most of her power as the Extra stage boss of Mystic Square, but doesn’t like to think that she’d lose if she uses her full power so holds back even then. Her two most famour dolls are Shanghai and Hourai. Shanghai appears in many of her attacks and profiles, but Hourai takes her place in Lunatic difficulty for her final spellcard and her 2nd level spellcards in Immaterial and Missing Power. She’s also good friends with Marisa and the two both live in the Forest of Magic, so they’ve picked up the reputation of being a couple in many fan works, or at least Alice having a crush on the clueless Marisa.

  

The Prismriver Sisters, Lyrica the keyboardist, Merlin the bugler, and Lunasa the violinist, are preceded by Lily White. Lily is yet another one of the midboss characters without any actual presence outside of spewing some bullets and then disappearing. The Prismriver Sisters are just in the area to prepare for a concert in the Netherworld’s cherry blossom garden when the heroine happens upon them. They are one of the more variable bosses of the Touhou series with how the battle progresses actually controlled by how the player attacks and you might face Lyrica between spellcards one time, but Merlin or Lunasa the next. Merlin is a little special though, as there is a bug in her code where she’ll sometimes go berserk and screw up the other spellcards… as well as keep attacking even after the stage is over.

  

Youmu is the steadfast gardener of the Netherworld and Yuyuko’s personal servant. She had nearly drained Gensokyo dry of its Spring when the heroine showed up in her garden with a tiny bit of Spring with them, which she then attempted to take. Youmu has a pair of swords, one that can cleave through 10 demons in one slash, and another that slices through a human’s confusion. Her actual sword style is unknown, but she doesn’t have any supernatural powers above and beyond her swordsmanship. Youmu is a half-ghost, with her human side and ghost half both present, so is able to travel between the world of life and death. The ghost half doesn’t have a name, but has picked up the unofficial nickname of Myon.

  

The ghost princess of the Netherworld, Yuyuko Saigyouji, is the cause of Spring being drained from Gensokyo. She heard that when Saigyou Ayakashi tree bloomed, somebody would be resurrected. She decided to bring the person back to life by gathering enough Spring to the tree to let it bloom. Since she’s been dead for a millenium, she had forgotten that the body was her’s, and it was being used to seal the tree in the first place. Yuyuko possesses the ultimate power over life and death and can instantly kill any human, but will almost never use her power. She is quite a bit more of a ditz than most of the other characters and enjoys winding the very straightlaced Youmu up, but has a very keen insight into most things. She also possesses a nearly bottomless appetite and through the events of Imperishable Night, ends up eating the sparrow demon Mystia.

  

Ran Yakumo is Chen’s master, though she is the servant of Yukari. Given how lazy Yukari is, and how irresponsible Chen is, Ran is basically responsible for making sure both of them survive. Like most fox demons, her number of tails is an indicator of her power, so with 9 tails, Ran is one of the most powerful. As strong as she is though, Yukari still treats her as a simple object, throwing her around or even using her as a piece of furniture in many doujins.

   

Yukari Yakumo is the demon of boundaries and the cause of the weakening of the border between life and death that let Yuyuko reach into Gensokyo. She knew that Yuyuko would fail though, so obliged her, but then went back to sleep, forgetting to restore the borders. She’s immensely lazy and sleeps pretty much constantly, but also somehow manages to know all of the legends of Gensokyo and is friends with all the strongest demons. She’s also fairly capricious and most of her activities in Immaterial and Missing Power involve her travelling from person to person to steal their alcohol and food. Yukari also holds the dubious honor of being the most stacked Touhou character going by official art.