Obligatory

It's never Mima.

Crack theory time: The two vengeful spirits come from the same person in some kind of weird anatomy of the soul situation, possibly to do with her attempt to join team youkai. The second will go by Mizuchi _______(something that starts with 'ma') or Mima for short.

What's got me leery about this exposition is how the end of the first arc didn't just hint at unfinished business with Mizuchi's death, but Satori herself said Miko was going to "make a move" regarding the string of possessions. Miko's first appearance having her covered in shadow suggests a dark motive, and as we know she is every bit an opportunist.

It's possible she's spinning a yarn of nonsense to throw off the investigation because, imo, this new spirit's MO doesn't fit how Mizuchi did her thing; this one seems MUCH more openly aggressive against bystanders. If the newbie is just rampaging against youkai, then a hermit would have an incentive to support her.

I'm hoping that when Satori wakes she's going drop a real truth nuke that will turn this on its head. It's bizarre to give her a fresh new outfit just for her to be a jobber of no consequence. There's too much setup for it to be something random like Miko magically intuiting it's another Mizuchi.

Then again, it is ZUN.

meanwhile, plotting complaints aside (D.S. does seem to…Challenge. the limits of Touhou’s storytelling, even if its broadly enjoyable still XP), I’m happy to see Sukuna again! (…”i saw [Shinmyoumaru] and i clapped!!”)

So I've been thinking about this in the extended wait for a new chapter, and I've come up with a new theory. Be warned, FNAF theorizing-level psychosis incoming.

What if Miko isn't bullshitting? About there being two vengeful spirits, I mean; the part about it being two Mizuchis is clearly bullshit. The one currently possessing Hijiri is Mima because, c'mon, look at that face, and the second one is the First Hakurei Miko who we'll soon find out is laying low inside Toyosatomimi no Miko. In a mid-to-late story twist, we'll learn First Miko's name is also Hakurei Reimu but written using the kanji 博麗靈夢 just like Reimu was written in the PC-98 games. And this entire second run is ZUN's way of soft-canonizing the first 5 games, by having them set two generations ago.

But if that's the case, I don't know why the the First Miko would give up such a valuable bit of information so easily. It is possible they're working against each other, but if that's the reason, why all the subterfuge?

last edited at May 28, 2026 12:50PM

We got the Mima cope.

There will never be a concept of "Mima" in CDS (im afraid)

^^
Maybe, ninryu. Maybe. But, consider the following:

1. Mima is a badass ghost MILF and Marisa's surrogate mom. Imagine her having a personality like Sarah Connor's from T-2 Judgment Day but without the PTSD, now imagine her going on adventures across the land with Marisa. We could have that.

2. I won't suggest you actually play the PC-98 games, but I would suggest you watch a few let's-plays of them and listen to the music, and I'm sure you'll understand why we're like the way we are (if you aren't already one of us, that is). But failing that...

3. There will come a time, far sooner than you think it will come, where what Touhou actually is will feel so radically different from the Touhou you fell in love with despite seemingly nothing at all changing, and you will not be able to rationalize why it feels that way. Your mind will tell you you should just leave the series, but your heart and soul won't be able to bear leaving all these memories behind. So you'll sit and wait, and eventually, you'll begin to irrationally believe that if this one character just comes back, everything you used to love about Touhou will come back with her, and everything can go back to the way it used to be.

That is what "Mima cope" is truly about.