Analysis: Tsurbami Senri

It's quite tiring, having to hold myself back in one fight after another like this...


Backstory


The head priest of the Senri Shrine, little is exactly known about Tsurbami’s past beyond the fact that they hailed from the Outside World. What is known is that at some point they made it into Mugenri and tyrannically ruled over it with an iron fist, oppressing its people and its youkai. Because of their immense power that nobody dared to challenge, several youkai began hiding during the day. For a while this was life for the people of Mugenri, and despite their dictatorship style of ruling, Tsurubami kept the nation from collapsing upon itself.


Things would begin to change one day when Tsurbami decided that they needed a vacation and wanted to go to the Outside World (though it's speculated they had other reasons). Mugenri however needed a priest to attend to youkai extermination while they were away. To accomplish this Tsurubami would drag several people from the Outside World, then disguise themselves as Tsubakaura to test the strength of the outsiders. Afterwards they would confront Yabusame and the real Tsubakura to who were the top candidates of being worthy successors. After the two passed their test Tsurubami would take off to the Outside World for their vacation. Unfortunately their absence caused a major rise in youkai incidents, leaving Yabusume and Tsubakura to fend them off on their own.


Since then Tsurubami has continued their vacation, with many unknown of their true motives. What can be said is when they finally return, a new age of Mugenri will surely follow.


Weapons


Charms


The charms that are around Tsurubami’s clothes are stated to be their weapons that they can write words on


Swords


While not fully elaborated on, one of their attacks produces seemingly “Double Swords”


Spell Cards


Like Touhou, Spell Cards are the primary method of attack throughout the series. While it takes a while to make one, once created the user can make indefinite copies of them. The cards can be used by anyone, but because a card contains a portion of the user's power a card can be too strong for the user in question and be weakened in the process. Only the original user can make use of a card's true power. Tsurubami themselves has around 28 spell cards to use.


Powers And Abilities


Youkai Extermination Techniques


As a youkai exterminator and the head of the Senri Shrine. Tsurubami has the ability to perform special techniques relating to youkai extermination, namely exorcisms and good luck charms.


BFR


With one of their jobs being to maintain the Mugenri Barrier, Tsurubami can “spirit away” people into Mungeri, a world that’s separated from reality. Tsurubami in particular spirited away people to the Dimensional Airspaces within the Dimensional Cave, an area that only opens up when two dimensions are connected. The airspaces are noted to be in “interdimensional space


Dimension Related Techniques


Tsurubami has some ability to create and mess with general dimensions. They is noted as the creator of the airspaces within the Dimensional Cave which are tailor made for specific characters. After the events of Evanescent Existence, she was able to close off these spaces as well. They also seem to have the ability to manipulate or utilize gaps, as their ending mentions them lying down in a dimension gap


Manipulating Letters


One of Tsurubami’s main techniques. By writing on talismans with ink Tsurubami can disguise themselves as anyone they please and imitate their attacks. They can perform this relatively quickly and seemingly switch between the disguise and their main form at a rapid pace. Throughout the main story of Evanescent Existence Tsurubami disguises themselves as Tsubakura in order to test the characters of the story. 


Raising Poultry


The other main ability Tsurubami has is the ability to “raise poultry”. More specifically they can raise the latent potential of something besides themselves. She can do this either through touch or by deploying a barrier that utilizes the ability in question. While there isn’t a blatant size for the barrier, we see it surrounds a large portion of the area in Evanescent Existence. 


The most notable part is after they accomplish this they can make use of the strength and effectively copy their opponents abilities, regardless if the ability was already present or awakened through her power. This has allowed Tsurubami to make several techniques based on other opponents they have fought in series. 


Copied Powers


Crossing Dimensions: Yabusame’s main ability, which as the name makes very clear, allows them to barge into other dimensions easily. They are capable of creating hyper dimension pockets, allowing them to store objects within them. This has even allowed them to enter areas that aren’t accessible to others, such as the corridor within the Dimensional Cave.


Manipulating Ink: Tsubakura’s main ability. Despite the name its described as utilizing nanomachines, allowing them to materialize swords  made of ink and change its shape depending on their mood. 


Manipulating Whirlpools: Aoji Shitodo’s main ability. This allows them to create whirlpools, be it in gasses, liquids, or solids.


Controlling hot and cold: Hooaka’s main ability. While specializing primarily in heat Hooaka has shown using both hot and cold effects, with implications of sub-zero attacks.


Manipulating Gravity: Clause’s main ability. Clause is able to manipulate gravity of all things, and is able to focus said ability into black holes and other gravity related danmaku. 


Reverse Front and Back: Kruoji’s main ability. They are able to use this ability to reverse things, be it the danmaku they fire or even the positions of themselves and the opponent.


Resistances


Electricity, Confusion, Death, Critical Hits, and Evasion Debuffs/Effects: In “Book of Cafe” Tsurubami has resistances to the named spells, debuffs, and status effects.


Probability Manipulation (Possibly): Its established that Xeno A and Tsurubami often fight to the death, with Xeno A admitting they are the only person to make them feel real terror. Xeno A’s ability allows them to manipulate probability, to the point where they can reduce their chances of injury or accidents down to zero, something which is referenced as making them immortal.  While its not fully clear how Tsurubami accomplished this, they are the only one to give Xeno A a real battle, meaning its very likely they can possibly nullify or are just immune to probability manipulation. 


Time Manipulation and Memory Manipulation (possibly): Due to copying the powers of Yabusame, it's arguable that they can resist the powers of Suzumi. Suzumi is able to overwrite memories and rewind history as a whole. Despite this, it is pointed out that rewind doesn’t work on Yabusame and memory overwriting is “faint”.


Feats 


Strength 



Speed 



Durability


  • Is the only character to never have a traditional “damaged” portrait

  • Lol I got nothing for this one


Scaling


Tsurubami is confirmed to be the strongest character in all of Len’en Project. They consistently hold back against everyone and many characters have noted they wouldn’t stand a chance against them. JynX even states he doubts anyone can defeat Tsurubami. Needless to say they get all the notable feats in the series.




Weaknesses


While they seem invincible, Tsurubami does have some notable cracks in their armor. While it is easy for them to spirit people away inside of Mugenri, it's notably difficult to actually send themselves or others back into the Outside World. Even Yabusume’s dimension crossing ability is noted to have a difficult time exiting the barrier that surrounds Mugenri.


Book of the Cafe also seems to give them other weaknesses, namely spirits/illusions attacks, defense and special defense debuff spells, and sleep and fear status effects. They also seem to not be immune to soul manipulation, as it's stated their soul can be consumed, though the user would not gain the power of Tsurubami as a result.


Lastly their powers seem to notably weaken outside of Mugenri, making them fighting in the Outside World seemingly pointless.


Overall


So Tsurubami is needless to say a very strong individual and given the Len'En Project is still going on can likely get stronger. From a stats perspective at the absolute minimum City to Large City level seems logical given the statements of mountain busting and splitting large amounts of clouds, with Mach 2 speeds. On the higher end you can argue Star level via the Dimensional Airspaces, and possibly FTL via Clause’s black holes, though those are not fully confirmed to be black holes.


Ability wise the most dangerous thing to watch out for is the ability to copy powers with a touch, and use them with enhanced capability. Beyond that they have several dimension related esque abilities that could allow them to do things like BFR people into pocket dimensions or use them to copy their abilities. They also have some resistances that while not all clear cut, could be very useful such as probability resistance and memory alteration. 


However they do seem to have some limits on their abilities, namely through losing their true power when they are in the “Outside World.” Soul manipulation also seems to be a very good out, even if the user can’t gain the powers of Tsurubami in question.


Possible Opponents


Yukari Yakumo 


  • Extremely powerful characters who debut as extra bosses

  • Maintain the balance between their illusionary worlds and Outside Worlds

  • Manipulative as fuck and are behind major events of the series

  • Exoteric powers that relate to alternate dimensions and gaps

  • Yukari is a Youkai while Tsurubami is a Youkai Hunter so woo

  • If the name wasn’t obvious Len’En is a Touhou inspired series with the series creator being responsible for remakes of the PC-98 games


Hmm I wonder if I copy and pasted this from another blog.


Okina Matara 


Yeah, another Touhou character surprise surprise. Okina in universe is already a foil to Yukari so most of the themes that apply to her apply to Okina as well. While more new in comparison to Yukari, Okina has a large amount of importance and has been in the most recent games as well, so she’s certainly not lacking in content.



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