List of Touhou Project Characters - Major Characters

Major Characters

Reimu Hakurei (博麗 霊夢, Hakurei Reimu?)

• Species: Human
• Ability: Mainly able to fly in the sky. Can also call on heavenly powers in her spellcards.
• Residence: Hakurei Shrine
• Theme Songs
  • Mystic Oriental Love Consultation (PoDD, IaMP, SWR, Touhou 12.3)
  • Maiden's Capriccio (LLS, IaMP)
  • Dichromatic Butterfly ~ Ancients (Seihou: Shuushou Gyoku, Touhou 12.3)
  • Maiden's Capriccio ~ Dream Battle (IN)
  • Small Color of Spring ~ Colorful Path (PoFV)
• Also known as: Shrine Maiden of Paradise

Reimu is the main character of Touhou games 1-13. Even without doing any training, she is the fairly strong, and is the strongest in Gensokyo. Since her freedom is to the level of the impossible, she does have a negative disposition.　Since she does not believe at all that hard work pays off, she hates putting in a great amount of effort for something. As she has a simple and not double-sided personality, her human emotions are tempestuous, and she often has hasty conversations with angry words. She has a strange atmosphere that attracts others regardless of whether they are human or yokai. Since her job is yokai extermination, she takes a stern pose against yokai, but she herself does not have a particular interest in humans or yokai. With an impartial personality that is neither gentle nor stern towards anyone, in Silent Sinner in Blue she looked after the fainted yokai rabbit (who was actually Reisen) and in Curiosities of Lotus Asia for some reason or another made a surprise attack on a yokai who was enjoying reading her book, and stole her book. Since she likes yokai extermination itself, when incidents do not occur for a long time, it was shown that she grew irritated due to not being able to perform yokai extermination. This is a personality that especially strong yokai like, but since at times she exterminates yokai without even any talk, she is feared by the weaker yokai. It is a carefree personality, but on the opposite side of her impartial nature, she does not see anyone as a companion, and even when she acts together with other humans or yokai, she is always alone. As she is ruthlesse in her job, especially in the middle of yokai extermination, she exterminates the yokai and fairies she comes across without mercy. She is also similar to Alice Margatroid in having a personality of not showing her true power due to nothing being left afterwards if she lost with her full power.

In Subterranean Animism, there was a scene where she held a pen (the purification rod) in her right hand, but she often used her left hand.

From Rinnosuke Morichika's viewpoint, she has good relations with Marisa Kirisame. Meanwhile, there was not an instance where she fought together with Marisa. When she confronted Watatsuki no Toyohime in Silent Sinner in Blue, she did not cooperate with her allies Marisa, Remilia Scarlet, and Sakuya Izayoi.

She serves the role of the miko of the of the Hakurei Shrine located at the boundary between Gensokyo and the outside world, called the "Miko of Hakurei." The job of the miko of the Hakurei shrine is to exterminate yokai and resolve incidents, and Reimu herself possesses strong power, but she habitually lives a life of drinking tea and having naps, she does not have enough training. The plentiful lifelihood of Gensokyo is sustained by the maintenance of the indispensable relationship of yokai attacking humans and humans exterminating yokai, and the Miko of Hakurei plays a part in that. Since the Miko of Hakurei also in an indispensable position of maintaining Gensokyo, it has become forbidden for the Miko of Hakurei to exterminate yokai and for yokai to attack the miko, not to mention humans coming to the Hakurei Shrine grounds to meddle. However, since the relation of yokai attacking humans has thus been lost, yokai have been in decline, so Reimu approved of a request she received from yokai to establish battle rules for bouts with yokai and kill time, thus preserving the relation between yokai and humans in a mock style, allowing strong and weak ones to have equal fights without bad aftertastes, called the "spell card rules" in the "Spell Naming Law." The customs related to the job have been preserved from time immemorial without fail, and as she follows the custom, she takes an attitude of not worrying about the results.

Her main abilities are flying in the sky, good intuition, and getting along with everyone; even those who were once her enemies. In the games, she is characterized by her homing amulets and yin-yang orbs. In addition to being in all of the Touhou games (save Touhou 9.5 and 12.8), she is featured in Seihou: Shuushou Gyoku as one of the Extra Bosses and in Graffiti Kingdom as "Flying Maiden", on which these games ZUN is involved. Due to the way she is often dressed, Reimu's exposed armpits are often used as targets for Internet jokes and memes.

Marisa Kirisame (霧雨 魔理沙, Kirisame Marisa?)

• Species: Human
• Ability: High-powered magic
• Residence: Forest of Magic
• Theme Songs:
  • Love-colored Magic (SoEW, Touhou 12.3)
  • Dim. Dream (PoDD)
  • Vessel of Stars ~ Casket of Stars (LLS, SWR)
  • The Witches' Ball ~ Magus (Seihou: Shuushou Gyoku, IaMP)
  • Love-colored Master Spark (IN)
  • Oriental Dark Flight (PoFV)
  • Magus Night (FW)
• Also known as: Ordinary Magician

Marisa is the secondary main character of Touhou games 3-13, although she makes her first appearance in the second game (Story of Eastern Wonderland) as an enemy. Marisa is a human magician who lives in a cluttered house in the Forest of Magic. She is friends with Reimu and visits her often, but otherwise is solitary and spends most of her time researching magic. She is also an avid collector stuffing her house with various items, and would go "borrowing" things from others without returning them. She is selfish, somewhat tomboyish, violent, and has a disagreeable manner, as seen in her lines when she talks like a man. Underneath, though, she is honest and a hard worker. This makes it strange that she is friends with Reimu, whose powers are purely from talent while she had to work very hard to get her own to the same level. Her ability is high-level destructive magic. In the games, her attacks are characterized by stars and lasers. Consistent to her "borrowing", many of her spells are lifted from other characters, such as her signature "Master Spark" which was originally Yuka Kazami's, or her "Nondirectional Laser" attack, which was originally Patchouli's attack. She also appears in Seihou: Shuushou Gyoku as one of the Extra Bosses.