I wonder: Is the problem more that your monitors are too bright? There are two areas in all of Touhou where I can blame deaths on the fact that I can't see them, and those are MS stage 2 (stars flying by in the background + pellet bullets that look just like them = augh) and MS stage 4 (white pellets on the background is worse than the blue bullets believe it or not).
The part of MS I've always had trouble with visually is the second half of stage 5. This is because of a.) The blue bullets that blend in
really well with the blue background (way more than in stage 4 imo) and b.) The round red bullets look way too much like powerups, which often has me dodging point items and collecting bullets. There's something about those two distractions together that simply rapes my eyes. I always count on at least three bombs going off during that section just because I'm so afraid of randomly dying to something I can't see.
And yeah, that's it. Also, Azinth, you can 1-bomb away Source of Rains by streaming UP from your inital position while firing and then bombing while nearly over Kanako. Kefit does it in one of his videos, just check it out there for an example.
I see. The most important thing is that I get to VoWG with 4 power or more, so it's usually not that big a deal, but this will make that easier.
SA (Just like IN, I sort of have a love-hate relationship with this game)
-Yamame's Opener (I'm starting to think that this actually
can be captured consistently... but it's still really disproportionately difficult for a stage 1 boss attack)
-Tongue-Cut Sparrow (This takes way too damn long, which would be ok if it weren't just boring streaming)
-Stage 3 Laser Mesh (This thing is ten times harder than anything Yuugi throws at you. I think I've captured it twice)
-Shackles (What is the point of this card's existance?)
-Knock-out in Three Steps (Trivial, except when it randomly clips/walls you. Yuugi in general is sort of a meh fight...in fact, the first half of SA in general is pretty underwhelming... luckily the second half makes up for it)
-Double Black Death Butterfly (It's not a bad card, but I'm just so embarassingly bad at it [which inspired some rather childish whining on my part a while back]. I usually expect to die within the first 7 seconds of this card)
-Catwalk (how do I dodged bullet?)
-Possessed Fairy (Like DBDB, it's not a bad attack, but I'm shamefully sucky at it)
-Blazing Wheel (What is this rhythm game doing in my Touhou?)
-Uncontainable Nuclear Reaction (The pattern is pretty fun... but every time this thing kills me I have no idea exactly why I died. And that can be really fucking annoying)
-Ten Evil Stars (Donut is right. You really can't keep yourself from using the safespot once you know it's there. How sad)
-Hell's Tokamak (I've never had trouble with seeing the bullets, but it's still kinda tedious and has an obnoxiously long healthbar.)
-I haven't played SA's extra in a while, so I'm not really in a position to judge it