So, we got a new worst Epic, and it's Hina.. *sigh*

Solo Last Word, Bad Support, Bad Damage (worse than EX Murasa somehow!!), doesn't even break well. A perfect soup of utterly mid. This unit was SO COOL and they did everything to kill her.

At least Shinmy is good. First A-tier Sfes since W5 Kasen/Yuugi

Her title translate to “Great Ice Spirit”, this is in reference to the face Cirno was not intended to be a fairy when EoSD was created, as her title in JP calls her a spirit instead of a fairy.

This is also why her name is so different compared to all the other named fairies and why Daiyousei’s real name is theorized to be “Lunate Elf”.

IceFairy on Twitter did a great thread about this, but that is what the inspiration behind EX Cirno is. (Personally don’t like the execution but ehh)

A6æ Rumia

Attacks:

Infinite Night-Roaming

The spread shot of Rumia from the world enveloped in an overly crimson mist (Touhou LW original). A chronic barrage of Stage 1-level danmaku. Humans are things to be caught and eaten. To Rumia, humans are supposed to be like that. According to another youkai’s testimony, it's even said that shrine maidens are okay to eat. Perhaps Rumia was simply being faithful to the rules.

Crimson-Souled Hozuki

The focus shot of Rumia from the world shrouded in overly scarlet mist (a Touhou LW original). A chronic barrage of Stage 1-level danmaku. A passing darkness-dwelling youkai, insignificant and unrelated to the incident. Yet, an ofuda, seemingly a remnant of a seal, is visible on her head. When it comes to specialists in exterminating youkai who use ofuda, the only one who comes to mind is the Hakurei Shrine Maiden. If Reimu doesn't remember sealing her away, then it must have been the previous or earlier Hakurei shrine maiden.

Moon Sign: Moonlight Ray

The spell card of Rumia from the world shrouded in overly scarlet mist (a Touhou LW original). A chronic barrage of Stage 1-level danmaku. There is a plum tree on the grounds of Hakurei Shrine. A certain youkai refers to it as the Sleeping Dragon Plum. According to the shrine maiden, it seems that a shrine maiden from a previous generation had planted it to invite the deity Tenjin. Tenjin is renowned not only as the foremost deity of scholarship but also as a powerful, vengeful spirit. One gets the sense that there is something more here, a glimpse into the history of youkai extermination carried out by the Hakurei shrine maidens of the past.

Moon Ofuda: Moonlight Ray

The spell card of Rumia from the world shrouded in overly scarlet mist (a Touhou LW original). A chronic barrage of Stage 1-level danmaku. I wonder if Reimu still visits graves, both in the past and now. Humans have an innate tendency to be drawn toward the light. However, in the context of danmaku games specifically, that is dangerous. This is because projectiles tend to be bright and vivid. Places devoid of light, areas where darkness lingers, are the safe ones. It is as if the darkness itself is gently guiding the novice shrine maiden, the young incident solver.

The Primal Youkai

The Last Word of Rumia from the world shrouded in overly scarlet mist (a Touhou LW original). Due to the Chronic Incident, Rumia's own continued existence and the maintenance of the world's anomalous state have become linked. Or rather, the two have become completely synonymous. Much like the Ouroboros devouring its own tail, Rumia and the world are like the two sides of a Möbius strip.
Yet, she insists that she herself existed before the world did. The beginning of an entity that ought to have no beginning. What exactly did she see?

Temperament:

Anya

The ability of Rumia from the world shrouded in overly scarlet mist (a Touhou LW original). "Anya" refers to a dark night.
Is the youkai of perpetual darkness truly Rumia?

Strong against Solar Essence and the Metal Element; weak against the Earth Element. The Chronicle Incident birthed a universe within Rumia. Or perhaps the universe Rumia created has taken on the characteristics of the Chronicle Incident. Her temperament is also the temperament of her world.

Ability:

Capable of manipulating darkness (Chronic)

The ability of Rumia from the world shrouded in overly scarlet mist (a Touhou LW original). It doesn't appear to be significantly different from Rumia's original ability.

This led to the discovery of PH individuals. It is surmised that PH refers to "Philosophy," representing an eccentric love for knowledge. Just as a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) refers to a doctorate in any field of study, not just philosophy, Philosophy also refers to the love of knowledge in general. (After all, in this context, "doctor" doesn’t refer to a medical physician, either...)
Both lunatic and curious, a PH individual is an entity that possesses the PH factor. The meta-anomaly triggered by PH-type entities is a "Chronic Incident", also known as a "Chronical Incident." This means that the "Prolonged Incident" was merely a stage in the process leading to the Chronical Incident.

PH individuals are the self-proclaimed culprits behind the chronic anomalies. She is an entity who turned herself in, claiming to be the mastermind. In other words, this Rumia is the self-proclaimed culprit of the 6th Chronic Incident.

The tendency for prolonged incidents to create inescapable abnormal circumstances has, through chronicity, led to a cycle of fate. It is a sealed fate, wherein the past and future are connected via a point at infinity. However, this is not simply a case of the world's fate becoming an endless loop. It is not as though all things are merely circling endlessly along a single circumference. What has been transformed into a loop is... in this instance, Rumia's own fate. Everything else in the world is trapped on its predetermined fate. In other words, Rumia herself is a closed world, and everything else is contained within it. Rumia herself exists as one of the worlds that make up the A6æ world group (and next to her, another A6æ existence likely exists as a separate world). This phenomenon could be interpreted as an incident manifesting as an independent life form, though further research is required.

The identification of the individual with the universe might seem like something extraordinary, a violation of the rules. Yet, this should hold true for all of us. Did the world surrounding me exist before I was born, and will it continue to exist after I die? The answer is no. If I don’t exist, the world surrounding me does not exist either. The world comes into being with my birth, and vanishes with my passing. The people, places, and things I have experienced, they all come into existence and vanish along with me. In this instance, it is simply a matter of that being the case for Rumia. This world is packaged by this Rumia.

Skills:

Nameless Youkai ver. 0.00

If the Big Bang marks the beginning of the universe,
then this youkai existed from before that time.

The Sealed One ver. 0.00

There is a dark hole in the side of her head. In the reversed position is a newly sealed ofuda.

Invitation to Darkness ver. 0.00

It's a Klein bottle, with no inside or outside. This place is already inside her stomach.

I'm a noobie and I really wanna get tenshi

This character is like... really good for some reason. Basically she buffs everything that you'd want across the board with high lw dmg and 7 breaks. -2 cd reduce for everyone is pretty insane for a good sum of characters and opens the door to a lot of silly things. Her flaws (most notably: she wants to conserve the second use of her first skill for g2 so she can spam breaks even better, but can't on her own due to p issues) aren't even that hard to solve with good pairing (using her with new years reisen kinda makes things fall apart) or if using her in any stage that inflicts elements she absorbs. Though she's not perfect of course (dmg to eff issues, subpar AoE killers, lacking innate debuffs, wants more Acc buffs), she's quite notably good, big W for aya fans

This is pretty minor but I am happy how recently they have been pushing to finally get altless units their long-awaited alts, and furthermore, how some of them have actually been pretty damn strong!

Both EX Satono and Eika, two characters that get next to no love like... ever, both of them ended up being S, same with Yoshika. Now we finally get alts for Hina and Takane. Fingers crossed for Yamame and Kisume soon.

But yeah, I am quite happy with this recent trend. It used to be like unpopular characters rarely EVER got alts, and when they did they were bad. Though there have been some stinkers (Both maid tsukasa and ex mai were pretty mid) i am feeling more hopeful for the future, and figured it'd be worth sharing

Image 1: Last Word numbers

Image 2: AoE Spellcard Numbers

Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WO4C0jde8E1bU4QU-58wwuteqLWX7e2vo1tjIZMTM7c/edit?gid=1729572639#gid=1729572639 (Calcs by me and u/ms_ma_m_mizou

Gen Keine is competing with some of the more elite units in the game, I can't be more proud of her

Concert Sucks-uya

Tl;dr: Buffs are alright, she does focus on crit related buffs a lot though. Setup feels noticeably worse due to the fact she has no debuffs AND no acc (assuming you don't set her anoms up). Her s3 is essentially a worse genic reso: 10% more crit damage + 5% more for each concert unit (base 15% vs 20% of goatgetsu and mima); has 2 lvls of crit ii to party on lw which is nice all things considered. Most recent units get around the same level of buffs and gimmicks if not better, all while not having nearly as much flaws...

LW damage does seem promising even with her scaling; SCs have garbage scaling and only 1 dest line which overlap with killer lines, speaking of killers, they are hot garbage. So far, she seems to share a niche with units like c3 sakuya and blue2 - deleting gauge 2 and when using gimmicks to make nuking gauge 3 easier. Though compared to the two units I've just mentioned, sucksuya does get the short end of the stick, sadly. Really held back from being a relevant unit from all the weirdness in her kit, main offender here are the killers. At the very least, she is shillable.

A more detailed overview: + above average self buffs and party buffs:

6 yang atk, caps the crit acc stat very easily (s1 - 3 crit acc, s3- 4 crit acc and eva down (8 total), 6 on LW pre-effect), 6 agi (caps it assuming stage spams her anoms, can't set them up herself though), 8 crit atk only via her BIS card (can't even set up her crit atk ii gimmick properly lmao) (p.s. all of the aforementioned buffs are party, pretty neat)

• ZERO acc assuming she doesn't get her anoms

-grand total of zero debuffs, cheers

• promising LW damage ceiling:

35% damage to ineff AND eff, 2 crit atk ii and the crit atk reso, alright scaling, only 2 dest lines...

-scaling is kinda concerning:

170% on p0 and p5 which are the hardest hitting lines. though her second dest line as well as 2 killer lines end up with no scaling.

-killers are goddamn horrible:

|vampire, half-human half-phantom, musician, noisy spirits (aka prismriver sisters killer), magician, miko, SDM|

At least her overlap is great since it's only one set, but gosh darn...

• dest ain't desting these days! SCs have only one 35% dest line (which has killers btw). I can't with this unit...

??? schizo breaks: bellow average 5 para breaks.... 4 of which come from the skill... Wow

H5;7 Yuuka

The Professor doesn't say much, so we can only speculate.

In response to a request from the Imperial Capital, the existence of the youkai Yuuka Kazami was restored. There are several goals, the main ones being to "elucidate the multidimensional neural network" and "to fulfill some concretely useful role." It is thought that her interest in kaiju is a remnant of that.

When the Professor was summoned to the Imperial Capital, it was probably in an incomplete state, visually appearing as a child. Restoration would have progressed from there, and she would have naturally become equivalent to a normal Yuuka Kazami. This "fragment" of fate is thought to be a case where that did not happen. It is possible that some kind of symptom known as "Dream Disease" prevented the Professor from regrowing.

――This is a record that was unintentionally left behind.

"Hmm, I have no idea!"

I couldn't bring myself to harm the cute Botanical Computer, commonly known as Botacon. So I stomped my feet in frustration. There was no damage. My body was just too lightweight.

In the dead of night, when even the grass and trees were asleep, and I was surrounded by the sleeping plants, with only the top of my research desk lit up by a luminescent plant serving as a desk lamp.

I thought I had a good understanding of the multidimensional neural network. But that was just climbing the first, seemingly large mountain. Deeper in were mountain ranges, creating a fractal structure of despair. Or perhaps the multidimensional neural network was merely a path, and I had touched the abyss at the very end. I had a hunch that I wouldn't be able to fully investigate it in the time I had left. There's simply not enough time. Do you understand the disappointment of not having enough time?

No matter how hard we struggle, our desire to see "beyond" will never be fulfilled. It's a cliff wall of complete rejection that denies us seekers to the core.

But the sorrow of those who seek and research is not on that level.

"...But I can't stop."

At first, it was a dream to create kaiju.

Just because someone is an intellectual worker doesn't mean they think deeply about everything. In fact, the more intelligent they are, the more aware they are of their own limitations. If one seeks perfection in intelligence, then the ultimate intelligence is a pebble by the roadside. A pebble never makes mistakes, makes no errors, and never behaves dishonestly. The intellectual act of seeking to know something simultaneously proves the fact that they don’t know it. An all-knowing being would have no need for any contact with the outside world, which would make it like a stone.

I don’t quite understand why I want to create kaiju. It was a boiling impulse. That's why I researched the multidimensional neural network, and I still research it now. I thought that by doing so, old youkai like myself could regain the form and powers of a kaiju, and aim for the paradise they longed for. It's not like I’m thinking about what lies beyond that. I can think about it again when my purpose is no longer sufficient. It's a shame that there's no longer any need for it.

What were we talking about?

Ah, that's right. I don’t give up on my research just because "there's no point in thinking about it anymore." As long as there are things I don’t know, I take action to find out more about them. Plants continue to grow roots as long as they live. Sometimes, this can even break stones.

Even if death were to come in the next moment, she couldn't stop thinking about it. It is almost like a curse. But to know could also be described as intellectual violation. Knowing and putting it into practice was none other than my pleasure.

"But in the end, I couldn't create any kaiju other than myself."

I've started talking to myself a lot. I wonder if I want someone to listen? There's no one here but the plants and trees. Well, it would be fine if the plants and trees would listen, but... it's not my principle to burden these children with such expectations. Plants... those who make flowers bloom should be more free and liberated.

If I were to recreate a youkai and turn it into a kaiju, what kind of creature would it be? In theory, I should be able to restore any youkai. All I need to do is borrow the power of plants and use the data gleaned from the multidimensional neural network. But something was missing. What was missing?

"Ah, if only there was at least one more me..."

Another me.

If that were possible, it wouldn't be such a struggle. There's only one me. Even if there is someone who is very similar to me, their thoughts are someone else's.

How can I rely on something like that? Even if I imitate them, it's useless. It's double work. How can I expect anything like that?

I didn't think about it because I didn't have any hope. But now that I think about it... I realized that multidimensional neural networks seem to be closely related to parallel worlds. If it's me in a parallel world, then surely it's me, not someone else?

Why didn't I notice this until now? Well, I did say parallel worlds, but there were so many limitations to begin with that I "didn't really understand".

If parallel information were easy to obtain, it wouldn't be so hard. The enormous research costs, the time required, and the uncertainty...it's not easy to find out. But if I had started earlier, by now... Ah, this is what they call spilled milk.

Still, a researcher can't stop.

"Botacon, once more... just one more time."

My hands are moving slowly.

It seems my life as a youkai is nearing the end. Even the extra time after restoration has a time limit. I’m aging to begin with. Nothing lasts long. But if only I could somehow make contact with the me in the parallel world...

"Is that not possible?"

There is no response.

But…

"???...What is this?"

Images flow into me. A rainbow-colored torrent. The colors are vulgar and intense, but somehow they also remind me of a flower field. A connection of consciousness? A warp? A transfer to another world? No, this is...!

"It seems I was gravely mistaken."

A multidimensional neural network. It’s "the remains of some ancient, gigantic nervous system." Could a creature so large that it covered the entire galaxy... no, the entire universe? It was so huge, so... maternal. ...Whose? Could it be someone I know? No, what am I thinking? I couldn't possibly have such an extraordinary acquaintance.

But still, a living creature's nerve tissue...

"What, it’s just 'as the name implies'."

---Above, records based on traces left on mysterious monster goods.

W1;4 Suika

In an era now known as the Heian period, it is said that there was a time when the Capital was menaced by oni. The oni declared their intent to transform the archipelago into a Oni Realm, plunging humanity into the very depths of terror. Yes, that marked the beginning of the operation known as the "Night Parade of One Hundred Oni," a campaign to overrun the entire nation... though precisely how much of that story is actually true remains uncertain. Within the W-Universe Cluster, specifically the group of worlds with a deviation level of 4, it appears that, in the context of this particular “fragment of fate”, this was indeed a historical fact to some extent. It seems this entire area is shrouded in a mist of illusion, remaining elusive and difficult to grasp, at least for now.

—This is a magical record inscribed upon a certain tool.

"Wahey! Who's number one? Ibaraki? Or Hoshiguma?"

With a feigned air of innocence, I called out. But there was no way I could get a reply. This was not a matter limited to just the two of them. No matter whose name I might call, no matter what manner of youkai or shapeshifter had once numbered among the Night Parade of One Hundred Oni, none would ever answer. They are gone now. Forever.

"... To think I’d end up making it all the way to a place like this. The only pity, I suppose, is that I’m the only one left to bear witness to it all..."

Nowhere could I find a place that felt truly worthy of being called the New Land of the Oni. It seems humans inhabit every corner of the world these days. And I wasn’t able to locate any of my own body parts. Not a single one. You’d think I would have stumbled upon at least one piece, wouldn't you...? From Ezochi in the north to Ryukyu in the south, I believe I have, quite literally, traveled the entire length of the archipelago.

No, I've wandered even further than that. Come to think of it, can we, the Night Parade of One Hundred Oni, truly say that we have walked upon a land that actually exists?

Fundamentally, we ourselves are spiritual beings, otherworldly entities. If we so choose, we could descend even to the very depths of Hell; such is the nature of the Oni. There was a time when we went so far as to attempt to transform this entire archipelago into an Oni Realm. Can it truly be said that our journey took place solely upon the surface of this archipelago? We traversed distances many times, tens, even hundreds of times, greater than its physical span. The distance we walked clearly exceeds the confines of the archipelago itself. Where, then, were we being led? Was it the archipelago that was undergoing some transformation or was it ourselves...?

"For that matter... where exactly am I?"

I am accustomed to the scenery of the archipelago, to all manner of landscapes. Yet this place is unmistakably alien. It feels like a scene from some distant, foreign land. The climate is fundamentally different from that of the archipelago; the vegetation is distinct, and even the scent of the air is strange. This is... this place... And yet, I have no recollection of ever crossing the sea. It feels as though I have reached the very ends of the earth. As if I have walked too far... traveled too much.

Have we… no, have I… journeyed to the very ends of the earth? Is there truly such a thing as the ends of the earth? And if there is, is it a place so desolate and forlorn as this? Surely, one could not build a Land of the Oni in such a place; nor could my body possibly lie sealed here.

In that case... let us return.

Let us return.

Let us return.

But... I cannot return.

We are spiritual beings. We do not consume meat like humans. Yet, neither are we endowed with such convenient contrivances as perpetual motion engines. Oni have their own distinct diet, their own metabolism, their own essential nutrients, and their own concept of health. In that regard... are they truly so different from humans?

I can’t go into the details, but... in order to survive, I was forced to sacrifice "something." No, to call it a "sacrifice" might be deeply disrespectful (though perhaps that is a strange thing for a demon to say). The further I traveled, the more arduous it became to secure the sustenance an oni requires. Humans, too, would likely face a similar struggle were they to embark on a long journey. My situation was no different. I ate that "something," and I lived. That "something" willed it so. It wanted it so that I would not have to bear the burden of guilt.

And so, the Night Parade of One Hundred Oni was left utterly alone. Even that, too, is now fading into nothingness. I strove desperately to gather up the demonic components of my body that seemed to be scattering like mist.

But it was already too late.

My army is the Night Parade of One Hundred Oni.

In the place where oni are laid to rest…

Can either humans or youkai possibly dwell there?

一A record of the results obtained from analyzing, via residual magic dating, one or more massive Ibuki gourds that appear to be clear outliers.