"Living in a Lovely Cemetery"

I'm either reblogging my interests (Touhou, Len'En, Reverse 1999) or shouting into the void.

[touhou-memories]

Just learnt today that apparently if you go to duckduckgo.com and search for reimu hakurei, the icon will turn into a duck Reimu. The icon will also change according to various other keywords.

[evilisk]

My brain: it makes sense that they would remake Touhou 6, I mean the source code is missing for it and the other Classic Era games, so a direct port is impossible. They're even recreating the classic version of the game in the remake, and releasing it on PS5 (unlike fan games personally flipping me the bird by releasing on PC / Switch only) so you have no reason to hate this

My gut reaction: bloody Touhou 6, getting the special treatment, as always

(I'm still gonna get the game, probably double dip even, but I doubt you'd see this much care or excitement for the Touhou games not released in the 2000s)

[chireikiden]

I've heard that ZUN won't focus on Abrahamic religions because it would make the eastern religions seem bad compared to the true good western one. Doesn't Nirvana in Buddhism though require everything else to be fake and not real?

I've actually talked about the Abrahamic question before, myself.

Definitely never heard it put like "the Eastern religions seeming bad compared to the true good Western one", so that's either poor phrasing or you've been given the wrong idea. Might as well copy the relevant part from the SCoOW interview (every second line is the interviewer):

If you just mean how Buddhism as a religion and philosophy posits that all other pursuits are ultimately meaningless and the goal of one's existence should be its cessation and all that, yeah, that checks out. In that sense, Buddhism claims to be the "true, good" religion.

However, the essential difference is that putting aside philosophical discussions of what is "real", Buddhism is highly syncretic. It can easily not just share space with but actually integrate other religions, either fully acknowledging or coming up with its own interpretations of their deities and whatnot. It just then adds the idea that what you should be doing, amongst all these supernatural distractions, is pursuing Nirvana. Some of those deities may be willing to help you. This is especially pronounced in Japan, where Shinto-Buddhist syncretism was the religion for over a thousand years and remains in many forms to this day. The Abrahamic faiths only ever syncretize other faiths' gods in a rather, uh, let's say more "assimilationist" manner. It's a complex topic but the difference is clear.

It's just kind of a fact that practically all religions consider themselves "the true one". How monotheistic religions differ is that even on the most surface and everyday level, they're very difficult to square with other, polytheistic faiths in a way that isn't inherently adversarial (besides just agreeing to disagree, obviously, but that doesn't work so well when the gods are tangibly present in the story). Obviously all religions have e.g. mutually exclusive world creation myths and stuff like that, but especially the ones prominent in Touhou have a long history of sharing space and are easy enough to mash together into one fictional setting, at least at the level of detail and seriousness that they're usually discussed in Touhou.

The Abrahamic faiths aren't simply hard to fit in because they claim to be the bestest. They're hard to include, in practical terms, without either overshadowing the others or just seeming objectively wrong about the things most central to them, as I discussed in the older ask. And that's besides the other challenges that ZUN associates with using Abrahamic faiths in games.

[chireikiden]

While obviously none of them are perfect representations of their faiths in real life, you can easily put Kanako, Byakuren and Miko in a room and have them debate religious ideology for hours without ever needing to question each other's nature or even so much legitimacy, only their priorities within a pretty well shared basic world-view. You really couldn't imagine the same with an angel of God in the room. Or even a devout believer thereof.

[evilisk]

Thinking About Labyrinth of Touhou 3

Just learned that this is totally a thing that’s in development. Below, I talk about potential new characters with the help of some charts

Keep reading

[evilisk]

Just found this old roster speculation post for LOT3

I was at least correct about Sumireko and Junko being added. I really didn't expect LOT3 to lose characters though, I should do a post about that

[evilisk]

Quick and Dirty Labyrinth of Touhou 3 Impressions

Yeah it's out now, anyway

Note: An LOT3 demo has been out for a good while. I did not end up playing the demo because I wanted to go in as fresh as possible.

So far:

+Story: This is easily the biggest improvement with LOT3. There's like an actual story now instead of just an excuse plot like with the previous games. The biggest surprise is Akyuu getting a decent amount of screentime in the opening stretch of the game. We'll have to see if writing quality holds up, but even if it doesn't it will still be easy to say "LOT3's story is trying more than the other LOT games"

+Quality of Life: There are too many of these to list, but I love enemy details (stats + resistances) being shown in-game (no more looking at the Touhou Wiki unless I need specific strategies), you're also able to look at the enemy's turn order/scripting to see what they're going to do. You can also quick reset in boss fights now, which is just perfect for me.

Neutral:

=Not sure how I feel about "Elite" characters. I just unlocked the first Elites and their balancing seems to be "they are strong but you can only bring 1 in your party" (for now). The appeal of any Touhou RPG is letting players use any party they want, this mechanic very specifically prevents you from running specific characters together. It's like if I played LOT2 but was restricted from playing Mamizou and Miko on the same team.

=For the first time in the series some characters got dropped. I kind of get it, LOT2 had 56 characters and not every character was super well balanced (I'm looking at you, Nazrin and Shou). At the same time, I do resent the fact that most of the dropped characters happened to be my personal favorite characters. I've never been the biggest Classic Era fan, so I rejoiced at seeing Hina, Parsee, Mamizou and Futo in LOT2. None of these characters (apparently) made it to LOT3, only Miko managed to survive the cuts.

=I'm sure a big reason for the character cuts is the big character revamps. Someone like Minoriko is kinda redundant with how LOT3 Reimu works. Hina, with her Misfortune/debuff mechanic, can be done by some other characters. Parsee used LOT2 Terror's stat in a specific way but LOT3 completely changed how Terror works etc.

I'm still getting used to the kits, but I am annoyed at some of the changes for the characters. The biggest offenders are probably Maribel and Renko. Instead of giving the player a basic "yeah I can your buff ATK and MAG" these two can only buff on EVEN TURNS. I don't understand why this type of mechanic exists.

=They added a new difficulty mode, Lunatic Mode. I am currently playing on Lunatic and as much as I like a good challenge, Lunatic feels closer to the developer (3peso) going "what's the absolute lowest level you need to beat X boss? That level? Okay. You are now going to fight that boss at that level. Have fun watching your character just barely die to attacks!"

Bad:

-Upgrade trees: Sorry but this is a complete downgrade from Labyrinth of Touhou 2. What LOT2 had was perfect, you could upgrade anything in whatever order you wanted, even resetting and adjusting your build when necessary (e.g. maybe I want X character to have a more offense-orient role in one fight, but in this other fight I'll just unlock their defensive passives instead).

The LOT3 upgrade tree is a hot mess. It feels like it exists more for the developer's convenience than the player's. In a "if I restrict the player from having this skill until Level 22, that makes it easier for me, the LOT developer, to balance all these other bosses" kinda thing.

-Performance: This game runs like shit for me, sorry to say. The game only takes 800MB to install but the game's frame rate tanks whenever most characters use their attack animations. This is more of a personal issue but it still sucks, also makes it impossible to record footage of this game without LOT3 looking like a slideshow.

[evilisk]

It's that time of year again; free official Touhou M-1 Grand Prix with English subs

R-Note continues their tradition of making (one of their) comedic Touhou M-1 Grand Prix videos free until the end of the year (that is, 2025. If you're reading this post in 2026, sorry but it's too late).

This GP features skits from the following pairs:

Reimu and Marisa

Tsukasa and Megumu

Joon and Shion

Sumireko and Rinnosuke

Okina and *checks notes* Fortune Teller

*checks notes* *double checks notes* Snake Youkai and Anxious Moustached Villager, both from Forbidden Scrollery

No, seriously:

Anyway go watch it now!

[britttaperryhasmoved-deactivate]

[aurevoir-mes-amis-deactivated20]

YOU GUYS IT’S DECEMBER 10TH YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS HAS BEEN IN MY QUEUE SINCE FEBRUARY

[donttwalkaway-deactivated201302]

you have the rest of the day to reblog this

[naoiikumo]

Len'en Project 12th Anniversary!!

[chireikiden]

The differences in Futo's manner of speech in the new CDS chapter are pretty obvious in Japanese. They're inevitably gonna be less so in the translation, both because the quirks are hard to get across in English to begin with and because readers are already used to a lot of variation depending on the translator.

(I previously talked about Futo's usual mannerisms in this ask.)

She's lacking pretty much all her usual Futoisms, like the particles and conjugations and whatnot. But most strikingly, she

calls Miko "Miko-sama", which I don't think anyone in canon does, rather than "Taishi-sama" (usually translated as Crown Prince or Your Highness).

uses the generic first-person pronoun watashi rather than her usual archaic ware. (She does say wareware for first-person plural, but that's more common in general.)

In my experience, these are the two things that even fan writers basically always keep straight even when her speech patterns can otherwise be all over the place. This makes it doubly odd to see them missing in an official work.

CDS dialogue has always been a little weird about things like this, such as using first names a lot more. (On that note, I find it pretty unusual that Miko would even talk about "Kyouko" rather than "that yamabiko" or something.) I would generally consider it the strongest argument for the CDS script not being word-for-word written by ZUN, if you wanted to think so.

It doesn't really need to be anything more than that. However, in context, it does make me think about the theory (somewhat crack, given the thin evidence) that there's a new spirit on the block who's pretty bad at spiriting, caused Kyouko's state "on accident", is currently possessing Futo and is just a way worse actor than Mizuchi.

If so, I can only hope that Miko is fully aware of this and simply messing with her.

[evilisk]

Boy are these charts getting taller and taller. For the record, I'm only going to do up to Touhou 12. I might do one for the spinoff / print work characters but that's it... for now. Maybe I'll get bored enough to do the earlier games next year.

Despite calling Ten Desires my absolute favorite Touhou game ever I admit that I never actually paid attention to the Poll results until now. So I was pretty surprised to find that Futo was the most popular TH13 character and for a good while too. The big gap between Futo and everyone else in Touhou 13's debut poll shows she was clearly a bit of a breakout character. It's not until 2019 that Miko successfully asserted dominance over her subordinate. So what changed?

I don't think it's from any canon appearances, Miko and Futo are almost always a package deal there. The only explanation is going to be a fanwork and while I'm not as in the know these days, if I had to point to any work influencing Miko's popularity, it might be kawayabug's Horned Owl and Bat series.

Horned Owl and Bat stars Remilia (who is the Bat in the title) and Miko (who is the Horned Owl. If you're wondering where they got the 'Miko = Owl' from, it's probably the fighting games). The series is reasonably popular (1M views with English subs for the YouTube version) and started at around 2017 (before the Futo-Miko Shift). It would be one way to expose a lot of Touhou 6 only fans to Miko. That's the only explanation I can come up with, though maybe someone more knowledgeable with the Japanese Touhou fanbase can chime in?

Even without the regime change halfway through, the polling history of this cast is so interesting if you simply compare 2012 to 2025.

Seiga, who debuted as the #2, ceded to Miko after the first poll. Besides Mamizou catching her off guard once in 2015 she's basically been Ten Desires' diligent gatekeeper. Her placement sticks out simply because Miko, Futo and Mamizou appear somewhat frequently in the official works while Seiga's popularity is maintained purely through fanworks.

Tojiko debuted as the least popular character in this cast. I don't know the exact timeline of TH13's demo, full release and the 2012 poll, but I do think Yoshika and Kyouko would have benefited from the demo featuring their stages. Tojiko would have only showed up after the full release as a mid-boss, and not even a super talkative one like Tsukasa, so the low ranking was almost inevitable. After that first poll she's moved up (and down) the polls.

She somehow got to 4th place, around the same time as Miko was becoming leader of this cast in 2019. While she did enjoy a slight jump for the first two years, it seems like she retained her position there simply because of other characters falling in popularity. Tojiko is back to being 5th after Mamizou received a recent boost (most likely because of Touhou 19). Despite her lowest placing yet, she's still not the bottom of TD like her debut.

Speaking of 'low placings', Yoshika went from 4th to last to second last. Yoshika's tracking seems easy to explain. Symposium of Post-Mysticism released in 2012 and revealed that canon Yoshika is... basically a glorified prop for Seiga. She has no real personality of her own, she exists at the extremes of either "being bossed around by Seiga" or "reciting poetry absentmindedly".

Despite a hard fall, Yoshika seems relatively consistent and she even managed to escape last place. She's mostly been hovering around the 80s-90s. She's starting to get pushed out as of 2025, but that's not really surprising. There are so many Touhou characters now that it's a miracle she wasn't pushed into the triple digits sooner.

Kyouko is another character whose fall off was probably inevitable; she's a Stage 2 Boss who isn't Sekibanki OR Kogasa. Her debut was the peak of her popularity and while 2019 was Kyouko's last windfall there was a steep decline going from 74 to 87 to 102. It seems like Kyouko enjoyed a more casual voting base that eventually jumped ship to another character.

Last but not least is Mamizou. She was the second last character in TH13's debut poll and though she is more used to being in 4th and 5th spot after more than a decade of polls, her initial placement is still an anomaly. Though Mamizou outranks a bunch of later Extra Bosses, there aren't any Extra Bosses after Ten Desires that have been second last within their own cast, even if it only happened to Mamizou once.

Who knows where Mamizou would be if ZUN hadn't turned her into a series regular almost immediately. By the time of the second poll, Mamizou had major appearances in Forbidden Scrollery AND Hopeless Masquerade. Even when Forbidden Scrollery had ended, Lotus Eaters picked her back up.

The only other thing worth mentioning is 2020. For some reason, every Taoist character jumped while TD's Youkai characters fell. I like to imagine that Miko and the other Taoists held a very strong, anti-youkai voting campaign that year (in-universe).

[evilisk]

I suddenly realized that I didn't show off my votes for 2025's Popularity Poll so here they are.

I didn't put too much thought into my votes this, besides "Mamizou as #2 instead of Miko so she gets more points". I intended to vote Akyuu last year because of the really good Slay the Spire Mod for her until all those annoying memes put me off.

Mystia is a character I always liked, I just never had a good excuse to vote her, so I finally did it this year. Kosuzu is in the same situation except instead of "I like Mystia's design and theme" it's "I really like Forbidden Scrollery".

Son Biten is because *checks notes* ... *realizes there are no notes* ...hmm. I think it was the Lotus Eaters chapters with the Monkey Alcohol and a small cameo from Nemuno. Yes, let's say that was the reason why I voted her...

I almost didn't vote this year, and only ended up picking my votes in rush. I should probably play/read more Touhou...

Works:

Forbidden Scrollery

Wild and Horned Hermit

Lotus Eaters

Ten Desires

Urban Legend in Limbo

Music

Capital City of Flowers in the Sky (Touhou 7)

Entrust This World To Idols (Touhou 17)

Emotional Skyscraper (Touhou 12)

Pristine Beat (Touhou 14)

Shotoku Legend (Touhou 13.5 version)

Cinderella Cage (Touhou 8)

Green Eyed Jealousy (Touhou 11)

Immemorial Marketeers (Touhou 18)

Faith is for the Transient People (Touhou 10 version)

Maple Dream (Touhou 3)

No in-depth explanation for these, since I just copy-pasted these votes from a previous year. I'm definitely going to revamp my Music list for the next poll though.

I did not vote for any Touhou 20 characters. Not because I didn't like the cast, but they put the poll way too close to Touhou 20's release. I'd rather just ruminate for a while. As a Hollow Song of Birds fan I'm still bewildered we got a canonically Egyptian (adjacent) Touhou character.

[evilisk]

This one took a while since I decided to set up a proper Google Sheets to hold all the voting data, but here it is, the Double Dealing Character cast's polling history. For the longest time I've felt like Touhou 14 had the most popular early game bosses of any Modern Touhou game and the results seem to validate that feeling.

It seems like the leader of this cast and its losers were established almost immediately. Raiko has always been 5th, Wakasagihime 6th and then the Tsukumo sisters in the order of Benben and Yatsuhashi as 7th and 8th.

In case it's not super obvious, the Seija hijack was the result of Impossible Spellcard releasing in between the 2014 and 2015 polls. Unlike Doremy being a flavor of the month pick the year of her fighting game revamp, however, Seija seems to have largely retained her popularity, staying in the Top 40.

Despite hovering around the 100s, Wakasagihime is still above every other Stage 1 boss introduced after her (Seiran, Eternity, Eika and Mike). Sekibanki is an even more extreme example of this, sitting at the mid-60s while all proceeding Stage 2 bosses are some of the most unpopular Windows characters (Ringo, Nemuno, Urumi and Takane).

Compared to her Grassroots buddies, Kagerou isn't quite as dominant in her field. Kutaka basically hovers around the same area while Doremy is THE Stage 3 boss as far as Modern games go, with the Baku enjoying her position around the late 50s. Despite enjoying a long period as DDC's #2, she seems to have lost her spot in recent years and not even because of Sekibanki necessarily making gains, it just seems like people don't like Kagerou as much these days.

Last and (probably) least is Yatsuhashi. She's always been seen as THE unpopular character as far as Modern Touhou characters go. People joked about her being "Not Benben" back in the day, there's also that "we combined every Touhou character" picture leading to a... brown haired character that looks suspiciously like Yatsy.

To be honest, I don't know if she was actually that unpopular in earlier polls, but it seems unlikely with every new game having at least Yatsuhashi level of unpopular character. There is one thing that's convenient about Yatsuhashi's placement; it's a good way of gauging the popularity of other characters. If you're not above Yatsuhashi, well...

I know I said Yatsuhashi was last, but I suppose Shinmyoumaru needs a mention. As far as Windows Stage 6 / Final Bosses go, Shinmyoumaru might be one of the most unpopular ones ever. I have yet to check out the fighting game bosses but Zanmu is the only Stage 6 boss lower than the Inchling. Shinmyoumaru doesn't feel like an unpopular character so that's fairly surprising.

I don't think there's much else to say about these results. It is worth pointing out that pretty much every character in this game is connected: Seija/Shinmyoumaru; the Stage 1-3 bosses; and the Tsukumo Musicians. You rarely see one of these characters without their connected characters in fanworks, and yet there's somehow a huge disparity between e.g. Sekibanki and her friends. I doubt that Sekibanki fans think that much less of Wakasagihime and Kagerou so I'll blame this on "the Touhou Popularity Poll not giving fans enough votes" as always.

[evilisk]

Now for a chart I didn't do last year, it's the cast of Touhou 15 since their voting debut in... 2016?! (oh god has it really been that long)

...Anyway, compared to Touhou 16, the polling history for this cast is a bit more varied.

Sagume made her debut in the Top 15 and even in 2025 that's pretty insane. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any Touhou game past LoLK has any character breaking past the Top 30. Keiki in her debut poll is the ONLY example I can think of right now. Even if Sagume eventually slipped, Junko still seems to be the most consistently popular character from the last 5 main games.

"Why was Sagume so popular?" I assume it was because of her specific ability. Her ability is better understood now, but it was easy to interpret her power as "Sagume will always cause the opposite of what she says to come true". There's very obvious potential (comedy or otherwise) with an ability like that.

I also wouldn't underestimate Sagume's status as a Lunarian character. People didn't like the Watatsuki's for being so overpowered, meanwhile here comes a new Lunarian character that not only can be "defeated" in-game (until Touhou 20, it was generally accepted that the Watatsuki's were too strong to appear as bosses) but that Lunarian also seems to have a power that actively hinders her. Even with her drop off, she seems to have carved a spot for herself in the 30-40s, which isn't too bad.

Before Junko established dominance in this poll, Doremy also had her time in the spotlight. The explanation for this one is pretty easy, Antinomy of Common Flowers released in late, late 2017 and her revamp by Tasofro gave her enough visibility to affect the 2018 poll. Despite not being popular enough to stay in the Top 30, Doremy never went as low as her debut position, so it's fun to imagine where she would be without Tasofro's redesign.

As far as cast dynamics go, the top spot and bottom spots seem ironclad. Junko is just that popular, while Seiran and Ringo are about where most generally unpopular Modern Windows characters go.

Though Touhou 15 should have been the end of Lunar-Hell War, it seems like a cold war version of it continued in the Popularity Poll if we look at the fight for the #2, 3, 4 and 5 spots. Hecatia, who is never seen without Junko in fan works, doesn't seem to share Junko's popularity. She did manage to unite with Junko in the 20s as of 2022 (Junko 28, Hecatia 29), but the following year they were separated again with Sagume claiming the #2 spot. Was this the work of a Lunarian conspiracy? You decide.

There was also a mini-war between Doremy and Clownpiece from 2019-2022, though Doremy seems to have come out on top in the end. While Doremy hasn't gained any spots, it seems like Clownpiece is bleeding votes at a much faster rate.

Despite her two moms thriving, it seems like Clownpiece is currently going through some hard times. She was the #2 character and in the Top 30 in her debut poll, but she's now dropped more positions (47) than the worst polling TH15 character, Ringo (44). Will the Hell Fairy ever recover?

[evilisk]

I just wanted to listen to the new Touhou 20 tracks extended for about 30 minutes, but somehow came away with the feeling that either 1) the YouTube Algorithm is really bad now or 2) some Touhou OST upload channels got nuked while I wasn't looking.

Because I swear it was not this hard to find 30-minute extensions before. ScarletFlameFlandre's channel is still here (though not active), meanwhile all other extensions come from this one channel and were uploaded only a year ago (and there's no way that's right, I've been listening to extensions way, way longer than that).

Also just want to note that after all that, I still couldn't find extensions for the full Touhou 20 OST. How the heck weren't there any extensions of Ariya's theme after the first day, this is the real proof that the Touhou community is losing its edge (half-joking)

[evilisk]

The Touhou 16 cast is nothing if not consistent in its polling results.

The results kinda speak for themselves. Compared to Touhou 17 and 18 and there's less of a drop (Satono actually managed to hold strong at 129 despite stuff like the Touhou 20 demo or Mizuchi lore reveals in 2025), though I almost want to ignore Okina's gain because she seems incapable of dropping past the 40s. This must be the power of a Gensokyo Sage.

Nemuno saw her first jump in any poll. I'm not sure what caused this, was it a mass of pity votes after that "Nemuno is unpopular" post made the rounds on Tumblr...? I dunno about that one...

Another potential explanation is the release of Touhou 20. The demo was set in the part of Gensokyo where Nemuno lives (the Sanctuary) and the Stage 1 boss is another Yamanaba, specifically a Chief Yamanaba. Demo characters tend to get a lot of attention and Nemuno is the only other Yamanaba (besides Sannyo) that's kinda built in for our new Chief to interact with.

I don't know if fans are actually having these two interact, but as somebody that was fascinated by the Sanctuary/Yamanaba lore established in Touhou 16, it's been nice seeing that part of the world expand with additions like Sannyo, Biten and Ubame.

...I'm kinda jumping ahead of myself here. Yes Nemuno climbed, but she's still (probably) in the Bottom 10 Windows characters lineup for this year. Still as a Nemuno fan, I'll take the small victory.

[evilisk]

Touhou 17 in the 2025 Popularity Poll

And here's the results for the Touhou 17 cast. Like I said in the Touhou 18 post, all the newer Touhou games (except for Touhou 20) experienced a general drop.

It's hard to really comment on these specific results, it seems like this cast's dynamics are mostly set in stone. Keiki, the final boss, is the breakout character. Saki is less popular than Yachie and Kutaka, but still more popular than Mayumi, and Mayumi in turn is still "more popular" than Urumi and Eika who are always circling, if not in, the Bottom 10 of Windows characters. I think the only uncertainty right now is the 2nd and 3rd place characters.

If it were me, I would put my money on Yachie. Kind of like Seiga being able to fill specific roles in fanworks because of her more morally dubious nature, Yachie can do the same thing with a "Gensokyo foreigner/invader" flavor. Also she's a Stage 4 boss, and Stage 1-3 bosses tend to have less going for them, and Kutaka's only surpassed Yachie once so far.

I don't think it's impossible for Kutaka to become more popular though. Out of the Hell Residents added to Touhou 17, she's clearly the most popular and from what few Touhou fanworks I have seen (I'm honestly not as into Touhou as I used to be) she tends to get grouped in with Eiki and Yama and those two still get "Classic Era Touhou character privileges", even if it's not as much as Touhou 6-8 characters.

The only other interesting thing here is how unpopular Mayumi is. While not every Master/Servant duo is as ironclad as Sakuya and Remilia or Miko and Futo, the gap between Mayumi and her mistress is honestly a bit ridiculous. I guess people just don't like Mayumi huh.

[evilisk]

Touhou 18 in the 2025 Popularity Poll

I had fun putting these charts out for the last poll, so I decided to do it again. I said a bit on last year's chart and it was basically "the Popularity Poll should just give us more votes" because there are way too many characters and not enough votes to go around. It's just very hard to believe the placement of some characters e.g. Urumi having a truck load of fanart in 2024... and still placing in the bottom 10 of Windows characters.

While 2024 was a pretty good year to be an Unconnected Marketeers character, 2025 was not. I don't think this drop was necessarily exclusive to Touhou 18, but I haven't checked every game, I've only confirmed a general drop for more recent Touhou games. Overall, only Megumu really made out like a bandit, climbing by 13 spots. The rest of the cast dropped by more spots combined than other Touhou 18 characters gained.

Megumu retaining her spot as the #1 Marketeer is interesting. There's no way to know if she'll keep this up, but Megumu is fairly unique for a Stage 5 boss so she might do it? Rather than being an underling of the Stage 6/Final Boss of her game, which is a fairly common dynamic, she's the superior of a more popular character, Aya.

This might explain Megumu being able to overshadow Chimata; Aya gets more fan content and you're more likely to see Megumu pop up in an Aya story, so Megumu is more visible to certain fans than Chimata, who could show up in Aya stories, but probably has to rely more on general Touhou 18 fanworks (and we all know how neglectful Touhou fans can be of later games). This is all just speculation, maybe Chimata or Tsukasa will reclaim their spots as No. 1 and it'll just be an endless war between those three.

I don't have a lot to say on the other characters, I still believe that a lot of poorly performing Stage 1-3 bosses from newer games are because of the only 7 votes allowed in a poll with 150+ characters.

Saying that, I think it's possible some of these characters are genuinely unpopular (like Nemuno) and out of Touhou 18's cast, I suspect the "unpopular one" might be Misumaru. Just because ZUN hasn't give her much to work with. According to the Touhou Wiki, her only appearance since Touhou 18 has been on the fortune slip thing that it seems like every character received.