I don't know what happened, but somehow everything in SA has just "clicked" for me. I suddenly get stage 1, Yamame's opener is rarely an issue anymore, stage 2 was never really an issue, I finally get how to do post-midboss stage 3, I finally get Yuugi's opener, Ooe suddenly feels a lot easier, I can actually get through stage 4 and get to Satori with 3+ power left, I can FINALLY do Terrifying Hypnotism, midboss Orin's non-spells are no longer a mystery to me... And the list goes on. And this all suddenly clicked within the last hour or so. I still dislike SA's life/bomb system, but hell, I feel as though I understand the patterns well enough that I can get through despite that.
Playing through as a non-ReimuA shottype is really eye opening.
Oh also as a minor accomplishment, I was kind of frustrated with SA yesterday, so I tried SA stage 6 Hard. I perfected it out of the blue. So weird considering just how hard I thought Utsuho was. Also, was everything in Hard really that slow? It's hard to believe that I ever found that stuff difficult anymore :V