Touhou Character of the day: Flandre Scarlet

Facts from Touhou wiki

• The name Flandre is a modern French term for Flanders, a region which is now part of Belgium. Its official language is Dutch.

• A silhouette of Flandre occupies the front of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil's jewel case.
• Flandre's Second Spell Card (Taboo "Lävatein" or Lævateinn) shares its name with the sword (wand in some versions) of Loki, a Norse god known for causing mischief. This sword/wand is used by the fire giant Surt in Ragnarok (the Norse equivalent of the Apocalypse) to burn down the whole world, except for one safe haven. Fitting that Flandre would be wielding a tool of such destructive might.
• Her boss theme ("U.N. Owen was her?") and her second-to-last spell card ("Secret Barrage - And Then There Will Be None?") are references to Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None (also published as Ten Little Indians and Ten Little Niggers). U.N. Owen (which the characters of the novel naturally deduced to mean "Unknown" and also recognized as referring to Mr. Owen's wife) was actually seen in person in that thriller but was only revealed at the end.
• Her boss theme ("U.N.Owen was her?"), has become popular on various video websites because of videos such as this and this and has been the first contact with Touhou for thousands of internet users.
• Flandre was born in 1508 A.D., according to Gensokyo's timeline, and holds the distinction of being one of the few characters whose birth year is known, along with her sister.

• Flandre's wings have an unusual appearance which bear almost no resemblance to a vampire's typical bat-like wings (or even organic matter). It has been speculated that her wings are artificial and that she fashioned them herself and then attached them to her body. She may have lost her original wings or been born without them.
  • Strangely, if one uses a bomb against her in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil's Extra, she's shown to have normal wings in bat form.

Touhou Character of the day: Reisen Udongein Inaba

Facts from Touhou wiki

• Reisen's right hand is often depicted to be making a gun shape, which leads to fan assumption that she shoots danmaku in this manner, and she indeed does in SWR. Some fans even depict Reisen holding an actual handgun in artwork. Those are all based on ZUN's word that her normal shots were modeled after a bullet. The revelation in SSiB that all Moon Defense Corps Rabbits are drilled with rifles suggests that Reisen can also use the real thing.
• "Inaba" is a nickname given to her by Kaguya (just like Tewi). Her real name, Reisen, is written in katakana, but in order to fit in with people on Earth, the kanji with the same pronunciation, 鈴仙, was used. The characters for Reisen literally mean something like "Bell wizard", and Udongein "House of plantain flowers.". Additionally, in Japanese "reisen" can mean "Cold War". (see also notes on Reisen's spellcards) while in Germany it means "travels" or "voyages" as well as "to travel". Another meaning for "rei-sen" is "Type-0", as in the Japanese Navy designation for the famous Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane. (see also Imperishable Night: Music) A species of rabbit, called the Deutsche Riesen, may also be where her name comes from.

• "Udonge", the short version of the nickname Eirin calls her by, translates to "plantain flower," whose buds look remotely like rabbit ears.
• Some fans call her "Zayaku" (座薬, meaning 'suppository'), because her bullets look like them. Many, many jokes have been made about this, often of a crude nature. In addition, some species of plantains carry seeds that are useful for constipation and irritable bowel syndrome, similar to the functions of rectal suppositories.
• Reisen's Imperishable Night outfit, with a long-sleeved dark suit jacket, tie and short skirt, is considerably more modern than most of the other characters' and resembles a private school uniform. In Phantasmagoria of Flower View, with her jacket doffed, she looks more like an office intern.
• Reisen's rabbit ears, strangely, always have two accoutrement-like buttons on them. It looks like the ears were linked to Reisen's head by buttons. Many fans made fun of this and said Reisen's rabbit ears were artificial. However, Silent Sinner in Blue chapter 8 showed other rabbits in the Lunar Defense Corps for the first time, and they also have the same buttons on straight ears, unlike the floppy ears of "civilian" Earth and Moon rabbits.
• Reisen's line "I'm just a useless little bunny, only good for my sex appeal," from the doujinshi "Drunkards in Eientei" by Omchicken, has become a popular meme associated with her.
• Reisen's alternate outfit in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and Touhou Hisoutensoku is a homage to Hatsune Miku from Vocaloid. Her other alternate outfits in Hisoutensoku are also homages to fellow Vocaloids Kagamine Rin/Len, Megurine Luka, Meiko, Kaito, Kamui Gakupo, and even the new Vocaloid, Megpoid Gumi.
• Based on what Reisen says to Mystia and what Lyrica says to Reisen in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, it seems as if Reisen can also manipulate sound waves as well as light waves.

Touhou Character of the day: Ran Yakumo

Facts from Touhou wiki

• The characters for Yakumo literally mean "eight clouds", and Ran "indigo". All of the Yakumo family are named after colors.

• Ran Yakumo is apparently not her real name, according to Perfect Memento, and is only a name given to her by Yukari. Her real name is unknown.

• One of her Spell Cards, "Princess Tenko," made her one of the most popular joke characters in the Touhou community, second only to "Chuugoku" with the silliness of its sound. It might have something to do with a famous Japanese illusionist, considering how foxes are known for their tricks and illusions in folklore.

• Apparently this page (images on page defunct; archived here) is where the "Suppatenko" (literally, "Naked Heaven-Fox") trend started. [Note: Not recommended for pure Ran fans.] Since then, in many fan works, she's been pictured as a flasher.

• Even though Ran is only a boss in two games and has never been a playable character, she's a fairly popular character and is often seen in fan comics partly because of her master Yukari, who is another popular character.

• She's usually portrayed as a motherly figure, especially towards Chen.

• Ran is supposed to be a 9-tailed fox (called a "Kyuubi") which, according to ancient Japanese folklore, would be at least 800 years old. Foxes start life with 1 tail and gain an extra tail once every hundred years. So at 100 years old they would have 2, and at 800 would have 9. At this point, assuming Ran follows traditional folklore, she will eventually start losing tails until she has 4 and will be considered a "Tenko" (heaven) type of fox and will then be one step away from divinity.

• Ran is often depicted as Yukari's "voice of reason" in fan comics.

Ran is the only stage mid-boss in any Touhou game that is immune to bombs

Touhou Character of the day: Alice Margatroid

Facts from Touhou wiki (http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Alice_Margatroid)

• Alice appears on the cover of Mystic Square.

• The name Alice is a reference to the main protagonist in Lewis Carroll's famous novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, as the majority of enemies in Mystic Square's extra stage are card soldiers of the same type seen in the Walt Disney animated movie version of the novel. The title of the BGM used in that stage also directly translates to "Alice in Wonderland".

• Alice's last name is based on the character Miss Murgatroyd from Agatha Christie's book "A Murder is Announced".

• Because of Shinki's dialog in which she mentions that everything in Makai is her creation, it is thought that Alice is Shinki's daughter (although this definition would also extend to the other Makai residents). However, there's been no further mention of this since then, and Perfect Memento states that Alice was once a human who became a youkai magician. It is unknown whether this is a retroactive change of continuity, merely a mistake by Akyu, or if fans were mistaken from the beginning when thinking Alice was Shinki's daughter. The doujin entitled The Grimoire of Alice by Ear House attempts to reconcile this by portraying Alice as a human baby abandoned near or inside of Makai, adopted by Shinki, and turned into a youkai by her grimoire during the Mystic Square EX battle. But since there has yet to be any official statement by ZUN, this is merely speculation. However, it is interesting to note that her title is "Witch of Death." In John Milton's Paradise Lost, Death is the son of Satan.

• Two of the dolls she carries are called Shanghai and Hourai. Shanghai has appeared with several different outfits, but is always depicted with a red ribbon tied in a bow in its hair. No official artwork of Hourai exists (it appeared only as Alice's final spellcard), and thus all fan depictions of Hourai are original. In Imperishable Night, Alice uses Shanghai to assist firing her shots. Both dolls are used as weapons by Alice in Immaterial and Missing Power in spellcards; their sprites appear to be identical. However, in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, while both Shanghai and Hourai are still spellcards, the Hourai Spellcard summons multiple dolls at the same time, all with the same sprite as Shanghai. The treatment of Shanghai and Hourai as unique dolls is strangely at odds with Perfect Cherry Blossom, where there were many copies of the dolls, used in the spell cards Curse: Eerily Luminous Shanghai Dolls and Curse: Hanged Hourai Dolls. It is almost certain that the dolls were originally not meant to have names, and that "Shanghai" and "Hourai" are references to countries where the dolls were made, much like Alice's other dolls, such as the "Foggy London Dolls" or "Red-Haired Dutch Dolls".

• Alice is often portrayed in fanon as having an obsession for dolls. In some doujin, she is depicted as playing with dolls, making dolls, and in a 4koma series, trying to deliver a handmade doll to Sakuya, Santa-style. It is also widely assumed that she makes dolls of other characters for fun (such as putting on a puppet show with them). This might be somewhat official, as she has at least made dolls representing the Three Mischievous Fairies and used those to mock them in Strange and Bright Nature Deity. She has also used them, in some doujin, like voodoo dolls in a more sadistic manner.

• Despite being mistreated often in fanworks (or perhaps because of it), Alice is one of the most popular characters, similar to Meiling.

• Likewise in fanworks, because of her perceived cold exterior and cowardly true persona, she is frequently depicted as a down-on-her-luck tsundere (alternately hostile and lovesick) girl, especially when Marisa is involved (although recently the Patchouli X Alice pairing is gaining popularity).

• Being known as the "Seven-Colored Puppeteer" or "Rainbow Puppeteer", Alice apparently believes in a correlation between color and power level. During her dialogue with Reimu, she asserts Reimu's powers are only equal to 28.5714% (or 2/7) of her own powers, due to Reimu's outfit only consisting of two colors. This appears to be a recurring theme in Perfect Cherry Blossom, as Yukari, Ran and Chen are all named after colors and have relative power levels equivalent to their colors' place on the visual spectrum.

• According to Aya Shameimaru during her interview with Eirin Yagokoro, Alice has been a recurring customer of Eirin's, coming to see her to buy a medicine she developed called Kochoumugan (Butterfly Dream Pill). The medicine guarantees its imbiber to have pleasant dreams once they fall asleep, and was even featured in an article in Aya's newspaper. The reason for purchasing this medicine or even what kinds of dreams Alice is trying to have were never revealed, but instead are left purely to speculation. However, this might be a reference to "Alice in Wonderland", from which the concept of her character is derived.

• In some official material, like Imperishable Night's Prologue and Strange and Bright Nature Deity #5, Alice's dolls appear to be able to act and talk independently, but according to her Perfect Memento article, she hasn't yet succeeded in creating an independent doll, and a conversation between Marisa and Rinnosuke in CoLA #15 suggests that Alice just controls the dolls and pretends they are alive for her own amusement and for showing off.

• Alice's alternate palette from Scarlet Weather Rhapsody resembles Hina-Ichigo, a doll from the manga series Rozen Maiden. In Touhou Hisoutensoku she has palettes resembling the other Rozen Maiden dolls: Suiseiseki, Souseiseki, Suigintou, Shinku, Kanaria, and Kirakishou. Add the fact that, in Rozen Maiden, the aforementioned dolls are battling for the title of "Alice", the perfect doll.

• Alice is the only boss who appears 3 times in a single stage (2 times as midboss and 3rd as actual boss in her Perfect Cherry Blossom appearance).

• If you look closely at Alice's book in her character portrait for Imperishable Night you are able to see writing possibly spelling Grimoire. This further proves the theory of it possibly being the same Grimoire which Alice used back in the Mystic Square Extra Stage.

• The use of the name Alice, and her use of the "Eerily Luminous Shanghai Dolls" is likely a sort of recursive reference to Team Shanghai Alice.

• Her dolls are filled with gunpowder, as said in many of the games she appeared in.