Overview

Patchouli Knowledge is a character from the Touhou Project series, and a bit of a personal obession of mine. I’ve been a Patchouli fan for like, 10+ years now so I’ve got a lot of thoughts about her.

Patchouli’s magic

Patchouli’s magic is her own obsession, and a natural extension of her rigid, logical approach and inclination to neat structures. Patchouli specialises in elemental magic making up seven elements: Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, Earth, Sun and Moon. Naturally, the focus here is not overwhelming power but versatility, having an answer for any situation, as reflected in pretty much every appearance so far: in EoSD, she has a different set of spell cards based on which character you’re playing, in SWR, where characters naturally have a lot of versatility, Fire, Water, Wood, Metal and Earth are effectively mapped to a direction each. In SA, her gimmick is a shot that has 5 different firing modes, while in most touhou games you can switch between at most 2.

Official appearances (games)

Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: Patchouli’s debut appearance, appearing as the stage 4 boss and the EX stage midboss. Most notable bit to me is that EoSD is the start of a trend among stage 4 bosses, where the boss has different attacks based on your chosen player / shottype. Patchouli stands out to me for this, not just for starting the trend but having a much cooler explanation for it. Usually stage 4 has multiple bosses, so you’re just fighting a different one with different players. SA’s stage 4 is the mind-reading Satori, using her power to pull different attacks from the chosen player’s past. Patchouli has none of that, she just has so much magical experience that she has a wider base of attacks to pull from. I like that.

Immaterial and Missing Power: Patchouli’s first playable appearance, and good showcase of her (quite bad) social graces and (substantially better) investigative skills.

Scarlet Weather Rhapsody: Another great showcase of Patchouli’s by-the-book process. Particularly big fan of the way she gets to Tenshi (the obvious villain of the game) a stage early, and strolls right past her without realising she’s the culprit.

Subterranean Animism: Patchouli appears (in text only) supporting Marisa. This is another example of her rigid, by-the-book scholarly approach

Hisoutensoku: It’s a smaller appearancce here but the interaction between her and Meiling is fun

Unconnected Marketeers: Patchouli doesn’t make much of a visual appearance here, but she’s the main motivation behind Sakuya’s appearance in the game. This game is great example of both her study process and the way she gets on with the rest of the SDM.