Are fairies really that weak?

[Drake]

Man I was about to lay some smackdown, good thing we have other members here.

Also, Yuuka reminds me of one of those little dudes in high school who talk a big game with little to back it up.

Yuuka reminds me of a cheerful kid in high school who mostly keeps to herself and her hobbies, briefly gets targeted by a bully and then rigs an explosive to the bully's car.

[Tengukami]

Hm. Yeah, that might be more accurate.

[Power]

yay that kind of makes her moe and dangerous.  Kind of like a yandere except sort of sane unless you piss her off.   :3

[shadowbringer]

taking some excerpts from PMiSS

This class of youkai is not interested in the average human, and only pays attention to equally strong youkai or humans with special abilities.
However, when ones with power clash, both sides are aware that they cannot come to a conclusion easily
To counter this, rules will often be decided beforehand and a formal battle will take place.
By fighting with these rules, even if one could continue after losing, they must admit their loss.
Once that is done, the other side will not continue further.
That is the wisdom of youkai who have lived long.

....

There are no countermeasures; it's impossible for ordinary humans to exterminate her. They can only be vigilant.
Luckily, she isn't interested in boring battles, so as long as you don't attack, set up a trap, or set her field of flowers on fire, you should be fine.
If you come across this youkai battling with someone else, do not get yourself involved.
However, these fights are based on certain rules, so as long as you do not disturb the fight, she'll be polite.
If you can keep your distance, it's also a good idea to watch.
Battles between non-humans are full of breathtaking beauty.

I used to respect Yuuka's ability with flowers as an extreme example of someone "blessed with suck" that can kick ass (and thinking that it was responsible for her super strenght, besides her ultimate magic thing), until realizing that it's independent :p (still, if you think about how she, as Benny once mentioned iirc, could use Kyokutai lasers while half-asleep and still have stamina to fight for yet another stage.. /powerleveldiscussionlol)
She can still extrapolate her abilities due to no defined limits for her abilities, too.. Gensokyo's full of cheaters.

people asking for how Cirno would do against Reimu or herself forget that PoFV exists

I think that fairies are weak (generally; there are some strong ones in later stages and extra stages), unless some exceptional one has some sort of exceptional backstory explaining her exceptional abilities. But their strenght would probably lie in numbers, like nature's "elementals", just my opinion though.

[haoreos2]

Heheheh. Yuuka is youkai moe. They should call that language Japunese (or Nippun, for the purists).

Yuuka reminds me of a cheerful kid in high school who mostly keeps to herself and her hobbies, briefly gets targeted by a bully and then rigs an explosive to the bully's car.

What kind of explosive would Yuuka use? A flower bomb! Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

[Blackraptor]

Yuuka, eh? One thing you have to remember about Yuuka is that flower manipulation is not her only power, it was just the thing she started out with. Super-Strength? Check. Created a spell that utilizes magic into a coherent beam of destruction? Check. Can make a double of herself who can also do anything she can? Check. Has her own pocket realm? Check. Has been able to manipulate flowers at will for centuries? Check.

Even without all the extra stuff, flower manipulation should never EVER be underestimated. After all, Mother Nature can be a very spiteful bitch.

On Cirno being more and more powerful as time went on, someone from another board I frequent gave out an explanation for that:

Hmm, my personal theory was that Cirno was just too dim to know that fairies weren't suposed to be able to get that broken. All her power comes from the fact that she didn't know it was impossible and anyone who says it is is obviouly lying because she can do it. She just managed to Hax the Fairies class skill of "Idiot".

In other words: "Anything is possible if you're too dim to realize it isn't."

[Starxsword]

I think Fairies are supposed to be somewhat powerful, at least some of them. There are hints that even Youkai stay away from Lily White during Spring.

[Drake]

I think Fairies are supposed to be somewhat powerful, at least some of them. There are hints that even Youkai stay away from Lily White during Spring.

isn't that just because she's a pest, basically

[Savory]

I don't know about you all, but regarding Yuuka's ability, if The Batman version (the one running from 2004 to 2008) of Poison Ivy taught me anything, it's that flowers and other kinds of plants can be really dangerous if you make them do what you want them to do...  This is assuming that Yuuka's ability works the same.

In my perspective it's the same as Wriggle's power. Controlling insects might appear "lame" to some, but this means that Wriggle could have the more deadlier insects in her control. And in Yuuka's case, some flowers are indeed poisonous, so there's a lot to be said about underestimating powers.

Yuuka gives a whole new meaning  to "flower power"

[Darth_Sirov]

In my perspective it's the same as Wriggle's power. Controlling insects might appear "lame" to some, but this means that Wriggle could have the more deadlier insects in her control. And in Yuuka's case, some flowers are indeed poisonous, so there's a lot to be said about underestimating powers.

Yuuka gives a whole new meaning  to "flower power"

Last thing I really want is to have Wriggle have an army of killer bees (or giant hornets that are bigger than your thumb). Come to think of it, poison pollens are more of Medicine's thing.

[iK]

To be honest, manipulation of flowers is oddly specific. She stops being able to control the plant as soon as it stops budding, if it's taken literally.

I think this thread got derailed at some point but I'm not entirely sure where.

[Amraphenson]

If Yuuka's power is in direct correlation to her ability, then the logical thing is to say 'she can manipulate flowers in any sense of the word', because we have people like Reimu and Yukari who have powers that sound lame but are in effect extremely powerful because the wording on their ability is used literally.

But yeah, I'm a fan of the theory that her power isn't in correlation to her ability. She probably has a definite advantage in some places (like the Garden), since she gets another tool, but ultimately she's just absurdly powerful by virtue of experience and age. It's also stated "Furthermore, there were also such statements like "this ability is more of an extra," and "completely unrelated to her abilities, she uses an umbrella and scatters flower petals to perform graceful attacks" and because of this, one would think that this is not an ability oriented for battle (although one might still wonder if scattering flower petals is not included in manipulating flowers)." on the wiki. PC-98 says she's the most powerful class of youkai, but Windows doesn't say anything either way.

She picks a fight with Shikieiki pretty confidently, who is someone Yukari is scared of. (In a 'oh god she's more powerful than me' or a 'scary like my old grandma' way, who knows)
When she's beat in Phantasmagoria, it's a lot like beating Marisa in Fairy Wars. She's the one driving you away, not the other way around.
Perfect Mementon mentions she's really powerful a lot, and that even the claims that Reimu's exterminated her several times is 'probably bogus'.

Those are the sources quoted on the Touhou Wiki.

[Nekomata-chan]

Last thing I really want is to have Wriggle have an army of killer bees (or giant hornets that are bigger than your thumb). Come to think of it, poison pollens are more of Medicine's thing.

If Medicine and Wriggle teamed up... it would be a massive disaster. Call Reimu in advance, I say!!

[Drake]

She picks a fight with Shikieiki pretty confidently, who is someone Yukari is scared of. (In a 'oh god she's more powerful than me' or a 'scary like my old grandma' way, who knows)

More like the latter.

[Desu_Cake]

Speaking of fairies and Yuuka, anyone think that Yuuka's options and shot in MS look uncannily like a certain fairy in a certain well-known property  :derp:

[iK]

They plainly just want her to listen to their tutorial about how to open doors.

[Starxsword]

She picks a fight with Shikieiki pretty confidently, who is someone Yukari is scared of.

It doesn't really seem like it. Yuuka seems to be somewhat afraid of Eiki, or at least wary of her. Unlike everyone else, she is respectful to Eiki, that is saying a lot.

[Tiamat]

Maybe she sees Shikieiki as a "worthy rival" of sorts. That would explain why she speaks to Shiki respectfully (not including when she's mad at being lectured, of course) yet is also eager to prove which one of the two is strongest in Gensokyo.

Perfect Memento says that most long lived youkai of Gensokyo have been helped out by Shiki at least once in their lives, although I imagine if anything that would just encourage Yuuka to want to prove herself the stronger even more.

Hilariously enough, Shikieiki almost certainly doesn't care. She responds to Yuuka that she isn't even a Gensokyo resident.

[Starxsword]

Well, she is technically right. Eiki resides in Higan and that is not part of Gensokyo. She and Komachi can presumably cross the Hakurei Barrier without any issues, since one resides in Higan and the other needs to row spirits to Higan.

I am also under the impression that Yuuka believes Eiki to be the strongest when she made that comment.

[haoreos2]

I'm not sure the barrier actually blocks anything except travel to and from the real world. It seems entierly possible for anyone to go to heaven and its subterranean counterpart, and the netherworld (post-border weakening in any case), or other realms like makai and such that probably aren't part of gensokyo.

[Starxsword]

Actually, we don't really know that. Higan is the only area explicitly said to be not from Gensokyo. I don't believe the other areas mention that.

[haoreos2]

Hence why I said probably. I do think that it doesn't make much sense for the entierty of heaven and the netherworld and the like to be relegated to one tiny area of Japan, however.
I suppose there's always the possibility that there's a seperate heaven/netherworld for gensokyo and makai was created as a pocket dimension in it, or perhaps the barrier extends to the 'Gensokyo' part of heaven (so you can go directly up, but if you tried going too far west or somesuch you'd still encounter the barrier)

[Tengukami]

I love the idea of a Gensokyan Heaven, with a barrier of its own. I wonder if it would have the same qualities, i.e., obfuscation. Could a portion of Heaven be unknown and invisible to the rest of it? Really weirdly appealing idea.

[Drake]

Or even the idea that Bhava-Agra in and of itself is a place forgotten by the outside world and thus is just as part of Gensokyo as everything else is, rather than existing as a separate entity.

[Tengukami]

I love how this board is becoming my idea board for fiction.

Although fairies reportedly resurrect "immediately", this does mean that for the briefest of moments, they are no more - you can't resurrect without having first passed away, even if only for a very short instant. I wonder if they might appear as tiny blips in Heaven when they die. Their little spirits momentarily appearing there, for a split second, before resurrection.

[Darth_Sirov]

That is assuming that fairies come out as spirits first. If they do, then maybe they appear on heaven. But when they do resurrect, where exactly do they appear? It's not like they have the Pacman ghost's area of resurrection.

But my guess is that they would return to once they came after they supposedly die (we already talked about them fairies being offshoots of nature, thus would come back to said area, like Cirno may probably revive herself near ice or the misty lake). It's reminding me of a Serious Sam quote "Didn't I just kill you 2 rooms back?", in this case "Weren't you in Touhou 6?"

[iK]

I like to think of fairies dying like Pikmin, with their little souls going "WEHH!!!" except then they instantly rebirth.

[Zil]

I wonder if they might appear as tiny blips in Heaven when they die. Their little spirits momentarily appearing there, for a split second, before resurrection.

That would be pretty funny seeing that going on. You see a bunch of them popping up then goin away, "looks like another incident's being resolved."
If they did have a Pacman style respawn you'd get a gigantic pile of fairies somewhere. Scoring stage 6 in UFO with a Master Spark would have an intersting effect in all this. An army of them shows up in Heaven for a split second, if anyone can witness it they wonder what the hell happened, then someone walking though the forest somewhere is buried under 50+ fairies exploding out of nowhere.

[Sality]

Well sadly her power is really lame.  I mean you have fate manipulation, miracle powers, gap powers, time manipulation, and lots of other powers.  I mean all these people that have these powers are pretty strong in their own right.  Yuuka seems more like an curve ball to me.  Very unusually but very powerful in it's own right.   It's more like her power's so lame that she has to be the weakest type of yokai before.  Kind of makes it more impressive given her strength.

I believe Yuuka's power is impressive in a different sense than just 'powerful'. If I recall correctly, it's stated that she can made flowers either wither or bloom. To control something into such extent is more than just simply manipulate in my opinion.

[Amraphenson]

I believe Yuuka's power is impressive in a different sense than just 'powerful'. If I recall correctly, it's stated that she can made flowers either wither or bloom. To control something into such extent is more than just simply manipulate in my opinion.

Pretty much this. In a place like Touhou, impressive=/=powerful. By sheer virtue of being beautiful, Yuuka's power is pretty impressive danmaku wise.