Analysis: Remilia Scarlet

 Let’s get some sick Touhou beats

Background

Little is known about Remilia’s origin other than she came from “the west” alongside her sister Flandre Scarlet, whom prior to the Scarlet Mist Incident was locked up inside the mansion by Remilia due to being…..a problem. Wanting to move around during the day without the sun getting in the way, Remilia would produce a mist over Gensokyo, attracting the attention of incident resolvers Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame. After the incident was resolved Remilia would begin utilizing a parasol to wander throughout the day while joining Reimu and Marisa in their various escapades to stop Gensokyo from being fucked by whatever Youkai has an issue with it, naturally for her own altruistic means. 

Abilities

Vampire Physiology

(credit to the OG artist of this)

Despite the title of this section, I’m going to have to dive into the physiology of Youkai first to showcase how Vampires differ in comparison to them. Naturally the Youkai have more powerful characteristics in comparison, primarily due to their spiritual nature. This includes the ability to live for much longer periods and regenerate from being split into five parts instantly. Their spiritual nature is also a weakness however, as spiritual damage can cause fatal wounds to them such as “names and traditions.” 

Vampires, while relatively new to the Touhou world, contain one of a kind combination of abilities that give them the edge above others. They’re granted super strength, speed, the ability to summon many devils with a single word, turn into bats or mist, and even regenerate their body within a single night even if their body has been blown away so long as their head remains intact. This goes for even spiritual based attacks that are often used to combat Youkai. 

Skills

Skills are essentially normal abilities and attacks that Remilia can do without having to utilize her Spell Card techniques. 

Bullet: The most common tactic used in the series when battling normally. Remilia has various bullet firing methods that can trip up an opponent if they don’t recognize the patterns in time. 

Demon Lord Walk: Allows Remilia to move at blinding speeds to attack her opponent.

Servant Filer: Remilia produces magic circles to fire bat bullets.

Demon Lord Cradle: Possibly a Darkstalkers reference, Remilia produces a red aura around her while attacking in an upward position. 

Demon Lord Arrow: Bounces back to the wall and uses it to dash forward, helping her graze bullets (or projectiles in general) in her path.

Night Dance: The name of her regular shot in Imperishable Night.

Vampire Claw: A triple melee slash combo. Pretty good for landing Rekka combos.

Chain Gang: Remilia’s inner Scorpion is channeled as she summons a chain to chase the enemy. Remilia can’t move while this is occurring however. 

Rocket Kick Upper: Sends a projectile from a kick that’s effective at snatching airborne opponents. 

Ceiling Fear: Remilia flies up and comes rocketing down straight to the ground.

Demon’s Dinner Fork: Produces spears concentrated with magic.

Trickster Devil: Remilia appears behind the opponent and slices the enemy.

Vampire Kiss: After going for a hug Remilia proceeds to suck the blood of her opponent.

Stigmanizer: Gathers magical energy in the form of a cross which she utilizes as a projectile.

Spell Cards

The spell cards are a system developed by Reimu in order to give humans and even weak Youkai a chance to win in duels and prevent as much bloodshed as possible. The rules can be summed up as “dodge or die” though an opponent can still be killed if chosen. Funnily enough this system was implemented for the first time during the Scarlet Mist Incident, with Remilia being one of the first to utilize this system. Overtime Remilia has developed more cards, gaining more power to help her keep up with the continuous threats. It should be noted that these aren’t literal cards, just names for special attacks.

Heaven’s Punishment “Star of David”: A giant stream of lasers and bullet explosions

Nether Sign “Scarlet Netherworld”: A shower of scarlet rain and uh...bullets

Curse “Curse of Vlad Tepes”: Blood dripping daggers pierce the opponent 

Scarlet Sign “Scarlet Shoot”: Cannon blasts of Scarlet Power

Red Magic: Seemingly the purest form of red magic in spite of all of the bullets on the screen.

God's Punishment “Young Demon Lord”: An array of lasers and bubbly waves. Don’t ask why Remilia thinks 500 years old is young.

Hell Sign “Mountain of a Thousand Needles”: A wave of scarlet knives and needles. 1000 at least (though its Touhou so that’s not gonna stick lol)

Divine Art “Vampire Illusion”: A spread of blood dripping orbs (these fucking attack names are fucking insane)

Scarlet Sign “Scarlet Meister”: Rapid fire cannon blasts, mixing speed and power. 

“Scarlet Gensokyo”: The purest undulating form of blood-red magic (I guess the last one was bullshit) 

Scarlet Sign “Red the Nightless Castle: A giant cross with the same energy of her typical bullets. No, the cross has no meaning to it.

Scarlet Devil “Scarlet Devil”: This fucking nam-I mean an upgraded version of the Nightless Castle attack.

Certain Kill "Heart Break": A spear shaped bullet that pierces other bullets.

Divine Spear "Spear the Gungnir": An upgraded version of the Heart Break attack.

Night Sign "Demon King Cradle": A powerful rising attack that potentially leaves Remilia open.

Night Lord "Dracula Cradle": An upgraded version of Demon King Cradle.

Night Sign "Bad Lady Scramble": Remilia travels to the wall and proceeds to fucking slam into her opponent.

Destiny "Miserable Fate": Summons a slew of chains to strike the opponent.

Night Sign "Bombard Night": Creates notably sized shockwaves.

Bat "Vampire Sweep": Remiila flies into the air and releases bats, which later converge at a point.

God Devil "Remilia Stoker": Remilia charges an attack which releases a swarm of bats bullets.

Second Card "My Heartbreak": Summons a spear that if made contact briefly freezes the character in place.

Third Card "Hell Catastrophe": A combination of several attacks. Large Orbs, lasers that attack at random positions, or lasers directly below her.

"Scarlet Destiny": A big fuck off stream of bullets meant to power flex.

Devil Sign "All the World in Nightmare": Another line of bullets. More Dakka is good.

Scarlet Sign "Bloody Magic Square": Dakka nigga. Dakka.

Scarlet Bat "Vampirish Night": Bats really fucking hurt (you can tell there’s not much for this besides Dakka)

"Millennium Vampire": DRAGON INSTAAAAAAAAA- I mean a powerup that Remilia can give herself to increase her overall stats.

Devil "Remilia Stretch": One big fucking bitchslap.

"Fitful Nightmare": So anyways I started Dakkaing

"Duck, Duck, Bat": Remilia blasts in an unusual pattern, potentially to throw an opponent off.

Scarlet Devil Sign "Bloody Catastrophe": A quick spread of bullets. This can be used to describe her other two techniques Superhuman Bloody Knife and Divine Scarlet Sign “Bloody Laser of Seventeen Articles” (they are literally the same attack)

Misc.

Custom Parasol: An ability that allows Remilia to conduct a shield that can absorb projectiles for six seconds (Despite the image the ability is noted to specifically be Reimilia’s card).

Fate Manipulation: You’re probably reading this and getting PTSD of some kind but once I lay it down it won’t sound so crazy. Effectively yes Remilia is confirmed to have this ability but the way it works is a lot more mysterious. It’s noted that misfortune will befall those in her vicinity and she can change the lives of anyone with but a word, such as being able to encounter more rare items. That being said its unknown if Remilia is even aware that she has this ability, and it's clear she can’t use it to the most potent extent as she has been shown to still lose fights even with this ability in hand. 

Feats

Strength/Attack Potency

• Vampires can uproot thousand year old trees single handedly.

• Responsible for the mist over Gensokyo

• As strong (arguably stronger) than Sakuya who fought a casual Yukari. Yukari had removed the boundary between Gensokyo and the Netherworld (boundaries are established to prevent everything from merging into one singular object)

• Sakuya also fought Miko who created Senkai, a infinite realm (you might hear this a lot)

• She also fought Komachi who could extend the Sanzu River to become infinite.

• Fought Suika who can casually toss and create black holes (which should be legitimate given Suika’s main ability is the power to manipulate and control density). More impressively Suika was shown later to shatter the heavens (Heaven is larger than Hell which contains a realm that’s infinite in size)

•  Fought Kaguya who created the infinite corridor connected to Eitei (which was made by infinitely linking gaps in space-time together)

Speed

• Vampires can run across the human village in a blink of an eye

• Can outrun Suika’s aforementioned black holes.

• Comparable to Marisa who can dodge Reiuji’s artificial suns which utilize photons and rays of light

• Oh and Sakuya is faster than light or something

• Can keep up with Reisen who along with other moon rabbits use the Dream World as a common passageway (Said world containing interstellar distances)

Durability

• Can survive attacks from Marisa who has spells that can separate two large stars

• Can withstand Suika’s aforementioned black holes (third time’s a charm)

• Takes hits from Eirin who can use far weaker spells to seal the Earth in a “giant sealed chamber”

• Comparable to Reimu who’s fought all of the big named bosses in the series

• All of this is before getting past her regenerative prowess.

Weaknesses

Despite her overwhelming confidence (which is a weakness of itself due to arrogance), Remila can be extremely childish, leading to more rash decisions in the long term, such as when she forced Sakuya to drag shitloads of characters so she could wail on them for information about the current incident. More importantly sunlight is a major weakness for Remilia (though it should be noted this is moreso natural sunlight) and can kill her almost instantly if she is without protection of some kind. Finally while her regen is extremely potent, it can be nullified if her head is blown to bits.

Summary

"The moon tonight is red. You will know death."

Advantages

• Great stats across the board, notably in attack potency and durability

• Regenerative abilities make her hard to permanently kill.

• A large variety of abilities with differing effects and large scale AOE.

• Has a large catalog of experience fighting foes with varied abilities.

• In more closish fights fate manipulation could help sway victory in her favor

Disadvantages

• Said fate manipulation isn’t something Remilia is fully aware of and hasn’t shown weaponizing it to an extreme extent.

• Regen can be nulled via head destruction.

• Arrogant and Childish to a fault.

• Natural Sunlight can kill her almost instantly. 

A quick note on the Infinite Realm stuff

I can understand why terms like “infinite realm” and whatnot sound pretty capricious and I won’t necessarily blame anyone for not buying into it 100%. With that being said I do think in the context of Touhou at least infinite realm meaning Universe sized should be fine with what we know. Concepts like space and constellations and even the observable universe do exist and have been thoroughly looked into by the cast. Many of the infinite statements we get aren’t from people who either exaggerate or lie and have decent to large knowledge of the cosmos so it's fair to me at least that when they say things like “infinite” it’s not meant to be taken hyperbolically. Heck places like the Hell or Senkai have stars at the minimum and the corridor Kaguya made was accomplished through pulling infinite amounts of space-time into it. I don’t want to make this too much longer so I hope this did a decent job of convincing you if you felt shaky on it. 

Possible Opponents

Rachel Alucard

Probably (to my knowledge) the most common matchup for Remilia and I think it’d be a pretty neat idea all things considered. Rachel has some of the more abstractish and weird abilities for BB and the sprites are right there for both so it could be a really fun animation if both are utilized properly. Plus the interactions could be entertaining. The only fear is if BB lore is treated as badly as it was in S2 but well...that was S2.

Valvatorez

This kinda serves as my more out there idea. Val is D4’s main protag and was once a tyrannical vampire before settling down as a Prinny Instructor alongside his wolf assistant Fenrich. The more comical like tones of Touhou and Disgaea could bounce off each other pretty well, especially with Val’s more eccentric personality going against Remilia’s more relaxed personality. Val also has plenty of unique and interesting powers of his own and would make for a pretty crazy animation given Disgaea’s nature. The biggest hurdle is the sprites for Val are more weirdish in comparison to Remilia’s but I do think its possible to make it work.  

Anyhow I hope you enjoyed reading this. Next blog I might cover either an animoo or another video game character, albeit one with even less resources to go off of. Go give the Touhou anime a look since I got a good amount of my gifs from that (it's somehow fanmade).