right...
I remember beating MoF with about 10 continues and marisabugged.
Considering I didn't know about the glitch until after I beat it, I still consider my run legit.
Stage 4 is part of the Where the Forks Are Them Bullet Coming from ARGH Splat Boom category...
However parts of it are doable.
It was through playing MoF that i discovered an interesting techniuque for dealing iwth streaming attacks. I just move to to top left or right of the screen to POC, but instead of coming down, I wait for the enemies to spawn and shoot homing bullets. The homing bullets are now aimed at the top and the programming will continue to strike at your last position, so then you can freely move to the bottom center of the screen and have a couple seconds of bullet-free space before they retarget. In which case you simply move to the sides to dodge.
I call this trick misdirection.
Also MoF gives you more bombs than any other touhou game I've played, use them..use them lots. I personally like to do something I now call point blank bombing. I blow off a bomb right beneath the boss as they declare their spellcard and then proceed to shotgun. This makes short work of many spellcards.
When I said I needed 10 continues to finally beat MoF, 8 of those continues were for Kanako.
Sanae's non-spells are okay, but her spellcards are just insane...
And my jetman score was so good...if it wasn't for the red lances during that part.
Her stage is a example of how misdirection can help you.