Since Reimu is moved to NPG, Marisa is the only Touhou character in this wiki, now I have brought two more candidates here, two "girls" who are over one thousands year old. Thanks Rmb-bousca for giving me the whitelist!
What's the Work?
Copied from my another proposal in NPG wiki.
Touhou Project is a Shoot 'em up video game series developed by Team Shanghai Alice, as well as its spinoff manga and book series. The story takes place in Gensokyo, a remote realm which is created by Sages of Gensokyo through a barrier to isolate itself from outside world. The Gensokyo is a place filled with various types of Youkais, many of them would cause Incidents that violate the balance of Gensokyo and cause harm to the residents in it. Reimu Hakurei, a shrine maiden who is in charge of managing the Hakurei Border, and her best friend/arch-rival Marisa Kirisame, a human magician resides in the Forest of Magic, is tasked with resolving the incidents and exterminate the youkais who caused them.
Who are they?
Yukari Yakumo is an ancient youkai known as the "Youkai of Boundaries" and one of the sages of Gensokyo. She is responsible for creating the boundaries of Gensokyo and holds the highest authority in Gensokyo.
Yuyuko Saigyouji is a ghost princess of the Netherworld. She used to be a human girl who committed suicide out of despair over her ability to control death. After that, she becomes a ghost, while her body is buried to seal the evil blossom tree Saigyou Ayakashi.
What have they done? What makes them admirable?
Background
Over a thousand of years ago, Yukari Yakumo met a human girl Yuyuko Saigyouji and became a good friend with her. Yuyuko was a mistress of Saigyouji clan, had the ability to manipulate death, as the power went out of control, she tempted many others into their death. Feeling terrified about her uncontrollable ability, Yuyuko committed suicide. Yuyuko's body was buried to seal Saigyou Ayakashi, a youkai cherry blossom tree which would lure humans into death and drain their life, and turned Yuyuko into a ghost who can neither reincarnate nor vanish. Yukari continued to befriend Yuyuko after the latter became a ghost, though Yuyuko already lost her memories as a human and the reason why she has died.
At some point, Yukari Yakumo organized an army of youkai to invade the Lunar Capital in order to take the Lunarians' technology, but they are defeated and retreated to the earth. However, Yukari's true intention is teaching the youkai a lesson that starting wars of conquest was a bad idea, and since then, no youkai have attempted to expand their territory beyond Gensokyo.
About 500 years ago, youkai around the world was pressured by the increase in the human population. Yukari created the border between illusion and reality on her own, sending the youkai outside to Gensokyo, making it a place youkai can continue to exist.
120 years ago, Yukari along with other Youkai sages came up with the plan to create Great Hakurei Barrier, which isolated Gensokyo from the outside world. When the Great Hakurei Barrier was created, a Dragon God appeared, renting the sky with constant thunder, engulfing the land in a flood that threatened to submerge it, and caused the sky to instantly turn dark. Yukari and other sages staked their existence on pledging eternal peace to dragons, and then, waters drew back, and light was returned to the heavens, since then the Dragon became a god everyone in Gensokyo worships. At the beginning, there were some youkai opposite to the plan of creating Great Hakurei Barrier, and started a conflict with the youkai sages. As the conflict distracted youkai from attacking humans, the Barrier became widely acclaimed among the humans of Gensokyo. After the word of the usefulness of the Great Barrier were circulated among the youkai, the youkai no longer opposed the idea.
Touhou Project
In the events of Perfect Cherry Blossom, Yuyuko read a book that by breaking the seal on the Saigyou Ayakashi, making it bloom fully, a corpse beneath the tree would be resurrected. Yuyuko started gathering spring's essence from Gensokyo to make Saigyou Ayakashi bloom, not knowing the corpse is Yuyuko herself who was buried to seal the tree. This caused Gensokyo to turn into winter, making the heroines, Reimu, Marisa and Sakuya set out to bring the spring back. The heroines defeats Yuyuko to put a stop to the eternal winter. After Yuyuko knows that by unsealing Saigyou Ayakashi would destroy her own ghost and unleash the unspeakable evil, she abandons the plan, brings the spring essence back and makes peace with the heroines. To mend the problem she has caused, Yuyuko requests Yukari to use her power to repair the border between the Netherworld and Gensokyo, but Yukari is too lazy and has always been sleeping, which causes the conflict between her and the heroines.
In Immaterial and Missing Power, there are strange mists appearng in Gensokyo and feasts are happening every three days in Hakurei Shrine, and the culprit is Yukari's old friend Suika Ibuki. Yukari makes everyone give their vintage sake to her, then forces Suika to show herself by withholding all the alcohol she gathered and claims Suika drank all of it. Both Yukari and Yuyuko defeated Suika Ibuki in their seperated personal routes and put a stop to the incident.
In Imperishable Night, the real moon is replace by the fake moon. Yukari and Yuyuko are respectively Reimu and Youmu's youkai partner who sets out to investigate the incident. The partner ventures into the bamboo forest and finds out the culprit is Eirin Yagokoro, who replaces the moon to prevent the Moon's People from traveling to earth to capture Kaguya Houraisan, the princess who was exiled from Lunar Capital long ago. The heroines fight and defeat both Eirin and Kaguya and recover the true moon.
In Silent Sinner in Blue, Yukari orchestrates a invasion to Lunar Capital a second time in the name of procuring its technology to improve the life of youkai. Yukari and Ran invade the home of Watatsuki sisters, but fall into a trap by Eirin Yagokoro and captured by Watatsuki no Toyohime. Yukari surrenders to Toyohime and they are sent back to Gensokyo. However her true plan is by detracting Watatsuki sisters outside, Yuyuko Saigyouji stalks into Watatsuki house and steal the valuable items in it. The plan worked and Yukari used the wine stolen from Lunar Capital to have a feast with the heroines in Scarlet Devil Mansion.
In Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, unnatural weather is occuring all across Gensokyo, and there's an earthquake that destroys the Hakurei Shrine. Yukari Yakumo goes to instruct the other heroines that the culprits are in the sky so the heroines can go to heaven to defeat Tenshi Hinanawi. Yuyuko on the other hand, goes around Gensokyo using her newfound power to cover everything in snow, while secretly investigate the culprit. Following Tenshi's defeat, Tenshi is ordered to rebuild the Hakurei Shrine, but Tenshi leaves a keystone beneath the shrine so that she can make it the shrine her own clan and let her live in it. Yukari finds it out and gets angry, she battles with Tenshi which destroyed the shrine again and the shrine has to be built a second time.
In Subterranean Animism, after Patchouli Knowledge reports to Yukari that Vengeful Spirits are emerging from underground, Yukari and Patchouli discusses it and comes up with the plan to send humans to underground. Yukari modifies Reimu's Yin-Yang Orbs so she could communicate with Reimu, providing instruction to Reimu in the underground, and eventually helps Reimu defeat Utsuho Reiuji, stopping Utsuho from incinerating the entire Gensokyo by nuclear power.
In Ten Desires, Reimu, Marisa and Youmu sets out to investigate the reason why Divine Spirits are appearing unnaturally, Yuyuko instructs the heroines to go to the cemetery behind Myouren Temple.
In Impossible Spell Card, both Yukari and Yuyuko takes part in capturing the rebellious amanojaku Seija Kijin.
In Antinomy of Common Flowers, Yukari instructs the heroines to find the culprit of Perfect Possession incident Joon Yorigami and Shion Yorigami, and helps Reimu defeat Joon and Shion by swapping the masters and slaves.
Admirable Standards
The admirable standard of Touhou Project is set by the two main heroines Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame, who resolves incident in every game and saved Gensokyo from dangerous threat many times, while the other incident resolvers would all fail the admirable standard to the two since they are less active in incident resolving. To pass the admirable standard the character need to have unique Goodness Zone to stand out from the two.
But Yukari Yakumo, she is the key reason Gensokyo could exist in the first place. Without her creating the border between illusion and reality, the youkai couldn't have the habitat known as Gensokyo; and without she and other sages creating the Great Hakurei Barriers, Gensoko wouldn't be the stable place where humans and youkai could exist together. Throught hundreds of years Gensokyo existed, Yukari is the one maintaining the boundaries of Gensokyo and protecting the youkai society, even before both Reimu and Marisa are born. Yukari also has a close tie to the Hakurei Shrine maidens, including Reimu herself. She serves as a mentor figure to Reimu, teaching Reimu things about Gensokyo and how to do her job as a shrine maiden, tells Reimu not to damage the barrier in Curiosities of Lotus Asia, reminds Reimu of her duty as a youkai exterminator in Imperishable Night, providing guidance, training Reimu in Silent Sinner in Blue. She is also the one giving Reimu several missions in Subterranean Animism, Imperishable Night and Silent Sinner in Blue.
As for Yuyuko, while contribution towards resolving incident is not as much as Reimu and Marisa did, she has a unique Goodness Zone on her own: When knowing her unstoppable ability of manipulating death is starting to kill people, she commits suicide so that there won't be more people die because of her. And while her body sealing Saigyou Ayakashi is not out of her own intention, after knowing that Saigyou Ayakashi is a extremely dangerous youkai tree who would lure people to their death, she decides to keep the tree sealed in Netherworld forever despite this would make her a ghost for eternity, preventing any further possible deaths Saigyou Ayakashi might cause.
What makes them Inconsistent?
Yukari Yakumo
| “ | Kasen: So, could it be that the ultimate goal of youkai is to... Yukari: Don't think any further than that. After all, Gensokyo is getting enough food to fill the stomachs of all its youkai from somewhere. |
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| ~ Yukari when Kasen asks her why she spies on humans in human village. |
Despite everything she has done, Yukari is still a morally grey character who has committed many villainous deeds across the story. She has started a war towards Lunar Capital, even if the attempt failed, she still put the Lunar Capital in the danger of a brutal war. Through her ability of manipulating borders, she is also the one responsible for outsiders ending up in Gensokyo, where most of them get devoured by youkai. Yukari fully knows it but enables it anyway as youkai feed on humans, and the word she tells Kasen that refer to humans as "food" implies she is a man-eater too. So overall Yukari is not entirely a force of good, she is a ruthless extremist who has no qualms sacrificing the innocents for the greater good, making her both an Anti-Hero and Anti-Villain.
What's more, even though she is such an important figure in Gensokyo, she is also incredibly lazy, leaving Reimu or her Shikigami Ran to do the job for her most of the time while she herself stays sleeping. This has caused various troubles such as in Perfect Cherry Blossom she sleeps over and doesn't repair the border between the Netherworld and Gensokyo.
Last but not least, she is sometimes abusive to her Shikigami, Ran Yakumo. While she "loves" Ran, she only loves her as "tool", often physically disciplines Ran when she makes mistakes.
Yuyuko Saigyouji
| “ | Tenshi: Your purpose here is to defeat me and return the weather to normal. Isn't it? Yuyuko: No, no, absolutely not. If it returned to normal so quickly, I'd be quite vexed. Tenshi: Eh? Yuyuko: After all that effort invested in making this summer snow, wouldn't it be better to enjoy it for a bit longer? Tenshi: Wha... Am I being looked down as a fool? |
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| ~ Yuyuko when confronting Tenshi Hinanawi |
While Yuyuko has redeemed herself as a villain in Perfect Cherry Blossom, she is still an Anti-Hero, only does whatever she wants and doesn't have much desire for justice. Whenever she helps resolving incident it is mostly for self interest, such as in Immaterial and Missing Power while she partners with Youmu to investigate the fake moon, Yuyuko is more interested in having a feasting tour with a "dragon dish" as the crowning attraction; and in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody she only goes out to enjoy the unnatural weather caused by the incident, and feels unsatisfied when the weather goes back to normal.
Also, while she genuinely cares about her servant Youmu, she has some side of control freak to Youmu, as there are many instances Youmu wants to go out to resolve the incident but Yuyuko disallows her to do for no reason.
Final Verdict
I'll give a solid yes to Yukari Yakumo while a relatively weak yes to Yuyuko Saigyouji, but it's up to you guys to decide.