(OUTDATED) Marisa Kirisame vs Yuffie Kisaragi (Touhou Project vs Final Fantasy), Matchup Breakdown & Analysis
“Magic will find those with pure hearts, even when all seems lost.”― Morgan Rhodes
Marisa Kirisame, the youkai exterminating, completely ordinary witch of the Touhou Project!
Yuffie Kisaragi, the Materia hunting, thieving ninja warrior of Wutai from Final Fantasy 7!
The pursuit of magic has existed throughout all of human history. Individuals who believed in the fantastical, those who practiced the mystical arts, those who wanted to command powers far beyond regular human capabilities and become something greater, while still remaining human. What would happen if you were to give someone the full capabilities of magical might? Well, these two should show you what one could do.
These two humans started from little, and each grew to master the art of magic in their world, rising up to the occasion to do incredible things. They protect those they value and the very world itself, matching up to incredible odds and prevailing all the same. As a magical battle nears, will the ordinary magician succeed against the odds yet again, or will the thieving ninja magician steal herself yet another victory?
Before We Start…:
If you wish to get straight into the nitty gritty of the matchup itself, skip straight to the “Let’s Get This Started” segment, as that is where the official analysis begins. This preliminary does go over some important information outside of my explanation for why I did this matchup.
Hello there! I’ve generally made this blog for a couple reasons. For one, I'm a big fan of this matchup, I think it's likely Yuffie's best matchup, and is definitely one of the best 2 options for Marisa (alongside Rose Lalonde from Homestuck) and I really wanted to make a full breakdown on the MU. I also wanted to be able to give all the people learning about this matchup through the fantastic track I commissioned that Therewolf has made, so this blog generally exists to handle both my urge to infodump, and my urge to let others learn about Versus Stuff I care too much about.
I know Touhou isn’t the most familiar franchise for many people, so this blog generally covers some info about how Touhou applies in Versus, and it’ll also cover the matchup itself! I hope the information presented here is interesting if nothing else, and hopefully clarifies why I like this matchup so much if the comment I left on Therewolf’s upload didn’t clue you in.
I am going to try and comb over the fight as best I can, but keep in mind I likely won't touch on every little detail or ability or feat or scaling these characters have. This doc will generally only go over the most pertinent information. In terms of feats and stats, it’ll generally only really touch on their most powerful feats as those are the ones we’ll largely want to compare here.
This document also might be composed a bit more weirdly than typical blogs are, this is the first one I've ever created so I'm a bit new to all of this, and I also don't have a large amount of time to dedicate to this, mostly just being something I did in my spare time while waiting for Therewolf to finish the track.
If you want to see any specific scans for these statements, I’ll try to provide them wherever possible, and I’ve also linked the Versus Battle Wiki pages for Marisa and Yuffie at the bottom of this blog in the “Notable Links and Sources” section, as they have a very good index for both character’s abilities along with relatively comprehensive scans, I sourced both of them frequently when trying to fill in the blanks. I’ll also include a couple of other websites I frequently visited for information about this matchup there as well. Anything of my own research I’ll try and include scans for myself though. Though do note that I have Marisa’s stats as higher than VSBW does, and will include my explanation/reasoning/research as for why.
I’ll also be honest and up front, and say that some of the ability descriptions, especially for Marisa’s section, I copy-pasted from VSBW. But I can tell you I don’t really feel bad doing that when many of these ability descriptions, at least the Touhou related ones, were either put there by me or the friend who’s helping me write this blog in the first place, lol. I did try to reword things to be more understandable to new readers, however.
While this blog was majorly a solo effort on my part, I did receive a large amount of help that if I’d never received, this blog would have never been completed, so I’d like to take to time to thank my friend @sukuviolence, also known as Fujiwara, who was an absolutely massive help when it came to creating and researching for this blog. She provided a lot of assistance when it came to writing this blog and especially the research for the more complex parts of Touhou’s research, she typed out the Touhou Cosmology and What is Touhou? sections entirely by herself for instance. I’d also like to thank @REClassicFGC, REClassic was also a huge help when it came to developing this blog, and gave a lot of necessary info on Yuffie’s side of the coin, and helped source and check my info and gave me pointers where needed, they also helped me write Yuffie’s story section. Yuffie being their favorite character helped a lot! Follow them both on Twitter if you get the chance!
Matchup Connections:
What’s the reasoning for this MU? Well, despite the vast difference in franchises these two come from, they have some similar traits to one another, being:
Both are feisty videogame tomboys who are very proud of their abilities and take pride in what they do.
Both are ordinary humans originating from relatively normal societies (Wutai and The Human Village), who would go on to become incredibly powerful magic users beyond that of an average human due to their own hard work and adventures.
They originally began as enemies to main protagonists (Cloud and Reimu) but sometime afterwards they became pretty good friends with them and even helped them in their later adventures.
Despite their loud, showy (and arguably obnoxious to some) personalities, underneath the bravado they are kind and helpful individuals willing to help others in need.
Have a close friendship with a blonde and blue eyed person who's very closed off and open to very few people (Cloud & Alice)
Both have a troubled relationship with their families because of disagreements they have with them (Yuffie's father chastised her for her desire to save Wutai and warned that a desire for strength merely begets a dangerous cycle & Marisa stating that she's broken off relations with her family, and avoids everything related to them, which is speculated within the verse because Kirisame Shop doesn't handle things related to magic items)
They also are notorious in their worlds for being thieves, and have a long history of stealing things from others
Both of their ultimate spells consist of a massive energy laser (All-Creation and Master Spark)
Connections aside, the fight these two have is an absolutely wild one with an absurd amount of moving parts that would never go how you’d expect, it’s just fun to think about!
What Is The Touhou Project?:
While a franchise such as Final Fantasy is quite self explanatory and well known, Marisa’s home franchise is a different story. I have a feeling that not everyone here will be familiar with what Touhou is, and by proxy, who Marisa is, so I'll give a quick prefacing of what Touhou is to those not in the know…
Touhou Project, more commonly referred to as Touhou, is a series of doujin bullet hell games developed by Team Shanghai Alice and its sole member, Jun’ya Ota (better known by his alias, ZUN). Due to the series’ widespread popularity, there have been many spinoffs released (primarily fighting games), as well as numerous different manga, short stories, and other official media such as magazines. Touhou is notable for its loose restrictions on fanmade content, allowing virtually any derivative work of the source material to be made and sold, mainly at conventions such as Comiket. This has made Touhou a cornerstone of the Japanese doujin scene, and is arguably one of the most recognizable doujin works of all time. Even if you’re unfamiliar with Touhou itself, you’ve likely at least heard of the fanworks derived from it, like Bad Apple!, Memories of Phantasm, or Lost Word.
Touhou’s premise is one built upon belief in the supernatural, with entities like gods and youkai existing alongside humans. Relying on humanity’s belief in them, these beings started to die out once humans entered the age of reason and replaced old superstitions with a society built on science and logic. In response to this, a group of sages sealed away a remote village, creating a new world where the existence of supernatural beings could continue unhindered. This place is known as Gensokyo, and is the primary setting of most of the series. Other locations that are supernatural in nature, such as Hell, Heaven, and the Netherworld, also exist within Touhou.The games usually follow a set structure, where some figure is causing widespread issues across Gensokyo, like spreading a thick scarlet mist or stealing spring itself, leading the protagonists to chase them down and put an end to the problem, almost always through fighting. In-universe, this is known as an Incident, and they are usually the primary focus of both the main series games and the spinoffs. These fights are usually accomplished through traditional bullet hell-style stages and bosses, which in-universe is attributed to the spell card rules, a system of non-lethal duels intended to allow humans to fight on par with youkai far stronger than them, whilst still allowing youkai to attack humans and spread fear in order to sustain their existence.
The manga, music CDs, and short stories take a different approach, acting as a series of short, slice-of-life style stories, covering smaller issues and often expanding the world beyond what the games show, and even covering various aspects of the world that the mainline series could never cover, such as what the Outside World’s future is like.
Overall, Touhou is a very varied series with a lot to it beyond its initial bullet hell roots. It’s become a vast multimedia franchise with several moving parts, and has become the embodiment of doujin spirit and a cultural touchstone whether one is aware of it or not.
Setting Up The Fights:
Within this blog, we will be covering two versions of the fight between Marisa Kirisame vs Yuffie Kisaragi. We’ll be pitting Marisa against both original canon Yuffie, as well as her Dissidia incarnation. Why do this? Well, Dissidia’s incarnation of Yuffie is an interesting case, as while there are arguments that Dissidia is canon to mainline FF, this topic is hotly debated in the VS Community and you’ll get different answers everywhere you go. Due to the wildly different nature of Dissidia’s scale and feats, giving the characters a host of new abilities, techniques, and wildly different stats and scalings, there’s enough here to reason splitting them here. It seems most appropriate to compare original canon FF7 Yuffie to Marisa, and then a fight between Dissidia Yuffie and Marisa.
Going forward, I’m going to break down Marisa’s stats, as well as FF7 Yuffie’s, compare the two, and then move onto Dissidia Yuffie and make that comparison. I’ll cover their equipment, stats, briefly go over their verses’ cosmology where necessary, their abilities and haxx and how they counter or resist one another, as well as any other minor things that could make a difference in the fight.
Clearing Up Canon:
In terms of canon, Yuffie has two keys for two different fights. The first fight will be Yuffie from her original appearance in Final Fantasy 7, as well as any supplementary FF7 material, such as Crisis Core, Advent Children, and Dirge of Cerberus. The second fight will be Yuffie from Dissidia, which is essentially a combination of everything from her original appearance, as well as everything from the Dissidia series.
I will not be including any scaling from Final Fantasy Tactics for a variety of reasons. For one, most of that scaling belongs to Cloud and would just downscale to other characters such as Yuffie. For two, Dissidia’s feats are generally significantly better than what Tactics offers. For three, nothing within Tactics ultimately would affect the verdict in a meaningful way, so going over it would ultimately be very time consuming for little reward.
Marisa is a little bit of an interesting case, as Touhou is split into two major eras, PC-98, which covered Touhou 1-5, and the Windows Era, starting with Touhou 6 to the most recent game, 18.5. The series generally underwent a soft reboot around Touhou 6, with elements of the series changing and much of what was created in the PC-98 era being left behind. While these locations and characters still exist in Windows canon, they’re typically left untouched.
This has led to some debate over if the events of PC-98 are canon or not. However, ZUN has made statements in the past that so long as nothing contradicts it in Windows canon, the events of PC-98 are canonical to Windows canon. Since nothing major has been done to retcon PC-98 much, there’s no reason to not use PC-98 material in this blog, as it covers an entire period of 5 games of Touhou’s history, and some of Marisa’s earliest feats. Windows canon will generally be prioritized in this blog, and the majority of Marisa’s best feats originate from Windows canon as well, so view the PC-98 material as just supporting evidence if this canon debacle truly bothers you.
However, we will not be taking Marisa’s appearance in the Seihou Project series into account at all. While it could have canonically happened in between the events of Touhou 5 and Touhou 6, and there’s nothing preventing it from happening, it's crossover nature and some oddities involving Marisa’s appearance in that game (such as having Angel Wings, which, while awesome, are never seen again). So that means no abilities used in and no scaling from Seihou will be taken into account.
Now, with all the preliminary explanations out of the way…
Let’s Get This Started!
Marisa Kirisame:
“If it’s going to bring me a boring life, I’d rather die!”
The earliest parts of Marisa’s story are shrouded in mystery and theories, as her personal life before her adult years are completely unknown and personal. Hailing from the fantastical realm of Gensokyo, she was born in its Human Village to the Kirisame Family, the owners of one of the largest second-hand shops in the village, called the Kirisame Shop. Something, however, would cause Marisa to leave her family, ending relations with them, refusing to ever return home to them, and avoiding everything relating to them. While some theorize a reason she might have left is her family’s refusal to deal in magical goods, her full reasoning has never been revealed, and likely never will.
After leaving her family and being gifted her Mini-Hakkero to defend herself by her close family friend Rinnosuke, she would go on to live on her own from a young age, settling down in the Forest of Magic, one of the most dangerous locations in all of Gensokyo, where she would begin her personal quest in the study of magic, to become a powerful human magician utilizing some of the most powerful classes of magic around. She constantly, diligently works alone to study magic and improve her craft, always working to improve herself and her magical ability.
At some point in her early years, she would come across a powerful vengeful spirit named Mima, who, for one reason or another, would take Marisa under her wing. Mima would be the only person Marisa would ever refer to honorifically and act subservient to, indicating she respects her immensely. While under Mima’s tutelage, she would continue to develop her magical skills, and assist Mima in her goals. Then, one day, she would meet the Shrine Maiden of Paradise, Reimu Hakurei, and everything would change.
In their first encounter, Marisa was in opposition to Reimu, and would be deftly defeated by her, and she would immediately take an interest in her. After this, they would begin hanging around one another frequently, becoming best friends. Together and alone, they would go on several adventures, slowly growing in power alongside one another. While Marisa struggled for years with Reimu’s innate, god given talent, she still continued her training, always staying comparable to Reimu despite the gap between them, slowly mitigating said gap overtime.
Eventually, Marisa would leave Mima’s tutelage, parting separate ways, and she would become one of Gensokyo’s peacekeepers, acting as a Youkai Exterminator and Incident Resolver, ensuring the balance of Gensokyo is protected. Alongside this, she would continue her endless pursuit of power and personal growth, becoming a greater magician by the day, eventually one day catching up to Reimu’s innate skill to the point that she can win 40% of their duels. She would even attend a meteor shower viewing at Rinnosuke’s shop, which would give her the inspiration she needed to finally pursue Star Magic as her specialized form of magic, pushing her even further.
Alongside Reimu, and occasionally some others, she would solve an incredible amount of incidents, saving Gensokyo countless times. Such as: preventing the Scarlet Mist Incident, when she would reverse the effects of Gensokyo being doused in a poisonous mist, the Spring Snow Incident, where she would retrieve Gensokyo’s stolen spring to prevent an eternal winter, the Eternal Night Incident, where she would notice the moon had been replaced with a fake, and would set out to restore the true moon, or the time she would face the Yama herself, defeat her, and still silently follow her advice and begin working on her flaws as a person, as to avoid going to hell, or when she would prevent Gensokyo and the entire Earth being invaded and purified by the Lunarians, and many, many, many more incidents.
One of her most notable incident resolutions however, would be when she solved the Four Seasons Incident. Once she noticed the Seasons across Gensokyo were going completely out of whack, with different regions entering intense winters, summers, springs, and falls well before they should, and fairies and other youkai start going berserk from its effects, she sets out to find the culprit. After adventuring through Gensokyo, she finds a portal to an alternate dimension, where she would face the perpetrator of the event, Okina Matara, a secret, hidden god who can manipulate the very energies of life and the mind, and also one of the four sages who assisted in the very creation of Gensokyo.
Okina offers Marisa a role as her servant, in order to help maintain the balance of Gensokyo behind the scenes, but in the moment, she turns down the offer, being forced to fight Okina for her freedom. Despite Okina’s immense, incredible power, Marisa is able to overcome and defeat her, even when the power of the seasons she gained is stolen from her, proving herself to one of the most powerful Gods within all of Gensokyo.
After their encounter however, Marisa ruminates on if she truly made the right decision, acknowledging that she isn’t against the idea of acting as a behind the scenes “fixer” for Gensokyo, ensuring it's balance is always kept and that it remains protected, however, she also realizes that she simply doesn’t want to give up the lifestyle she’s currently living, and continues her life as is, with the thought of Okina’s offer continuing to hang in the back of her mind. After this, she would continue to solve a myriad of other incidents, even going on her own solo adventure in the newest game, 100th Black Market.
Throughout all of flaws as a person, she’s always remained one of Gensokyo’s main human protectors, with good intentions deep within her heart, she constantly works and strives to improve herself, to become stronger and a more accomplished magician, and keep up with her best friend Reimu. Despite all her bravado and the act she puts up, she’s a caring individual who’ll try her best to protect her home, and if you dare endanger her home, you’d best expect a visit and a whooping from Gensokyo’s own Ordinary Human Magician.
Yuffie Kisaragi:
"I'm Wutai's greatest warrior! If you wanna go further, you'll have to get through me!"
In the world of Final Fantasy 7, conflict is inescapable, even to those at a young age. Born on November 20th, 1991, in the great village of Wutai, Yuffie Kisaragi would be the newest child brought into a life of war and conflict. Born and raised by the leaders of Wutai, Godo and Kasumi Kisaragi, only a year of her life would be spent in peace, just a year after her birth in 1992, the industrial enterprise Shinra would arrive upon their humble village, and attempt to open Mako reactors within her home. When the village would reject their offer, Shinra would retaliate brutally, beginning a long nine year war that would be known as the Wutai War.
It is this war that would shape Yuffie’s childhood, completely dominating the entirety of her youth, as she would grow up being told the stories of Wutai’s greatness by her father. Consolidated with the loss of her mother at a young age, watching the war wreaked upon her home and knowing the legacy of greatness her village’s name withheld, the young Yuffie would be slowly shaped into a strong (if Materia obsessed) warrior, with a profound and deep love for her home of Wutai. This love of her home would make the inevitable defeat of her village in the Wutai War, and it's subsequent transformation into a resort town even more devastating, leading her to not only have her relationship with her father soured, but to also want nothing more than to restore her home back to its former glory, the glory she grew up learning about and the glory she knew her village held.
This very wish is exactly what would lead Yuffie on her own quest, eventually resulting in her fate crashing headlong into that of Cloud Strife and his party. While she would initially act in opposition to him, initially confronting them, before being soundly defeated, before then trying to steal from them again. Once those attempts miserably fail, she decides to join their party with the initial goals of stealing from them later when they least expect, and after a few more incidents of her running off with their Materia, she would ultimately elect to just stick with the party for good.
While it would take time for her to earn back the team’s trust (for completely legitimate reasons), what they would end up finding is another close ally and friend, one who would stick with them through thick and thin, tragedy and success. Yuffie would provide the team with invaluable assets, due to the training she received from the strongest Warrior of Wutai, her father, she had incredible prowess in battle, stealth, reconnaissance, and thieving abilities.
Side by side along with everyone else in Cloud’s party, Yuffie would help them throughout the events of FF7, ultimately saving not only just Wutai, but all of Gaia from complete ruination, as she would go through hell and back to prevent Sephiroth’s plan for the complete destruction of Gaia and his rise to godhood, standing on the frontlines with Cloud to fight off and ultimately defeat Safer Sephiroth.
However, this act of being a planetary savior wouldn’t be where Yuffie would cap her story, she would choose to continue putting her skills to use, joining the World Regenesis Organization, putting her skills to good use as head of the espionage and intelligence gathering division. She would continuously aid her friends through numerous battles and struggles in the future, proving herself as a reliable and powerful ally that shouldn’t be underestimated.
In the end, Yuffie would redeem Wutai’s legacy, as their greatest warrior would go on to not only save the entire planet from a threat beyond comprehension, but would continue to protect it even after the fact. Despite the constant strife she was surrounded with, from her youngest years to the current day, she never gave in, and strove to be the greatest warrior she could be, proud of her abilities and her homeland to the very end and even further beyond.
Marisa’s Equipment:
Starting off with Marisa’s Standard Equipment….
The Mini-Hakkero
The Mini-Hakkero is Marisa’s most treasured item, and essentially her main weapon. It’s a magical furnace that can operate as a simple tabletop stove, to a flamethrower, or as a weapon of mass destruction known as a magicannon. She mainly uses it to empower her magical attacks, and shoot her signature attack, Master Spark. It was created by, and then given to her by Rinnosuke Morichika, as a farewell gift for when Marisa left her family to live on her own in the Forest of Magic, despite the dangers of such an item being wielded by someone so young at the time. Ever since obtaining the item, Marisa has valued it immensely, going so far as to state that "I can't even think of makin' a livin' without it."
The Mini-Hakkero is quite special, being the only one to exist in Gensokyo. It’s made of Hihiirokane, an incredibly powerful metal that is completely immune to change, and incapable of rusting. It does have some weaknesses, in that it has some massive recoil and needs a few seconds to cool down and recharge after usage. It should also be noted that Marisa doesn’t necessarily need the Mini-Hakkero to utilize her magical attacks, and has used attacks such as the Master Spark and even its stronger variants without the Hakkero, such as in Hisoutensoku. The Hakkero serves largely as an amplifier for her magic, and seemingly massively increases the potency of her attacks, outside of being a generally incredibly useful tool.
ZUN has described using the Mini-Hakkero as so: "While shooting concentrate your mind, gently muttering the spell to the Mini-Hakkero. Aiming at someone you don't like, a magicannon of love will be unleashed!”
Magic Broom
A mostly regular broom that’s composed of bamboo that she rides to fly on. She considers it integral to complete her look as a magician. While she doesn’t need it to fly, and has flown without the broom on multiple occasions, being a witch and flying without one just feels wrong! She can also use the broom as a blunt force weapon, and even use it to fire danmaku. She has several attacks and spell cards based around charging her broom with magical energy, and then using it to rocket around at high speeds and barrel into opponents, or to shoot shotgun-esque magic blasts from it. For such a standard household item, it’s quite effective as a weapon. Presumably from constant exposure to magic, it’s gained some magical properties…
It should be noted that she doesn’t actually require her broom to fly, as seen in Immaterial and Missing Power, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, Unthinkable Natural Law, and Great Fairy Wars, where she can fly around freely without using her broom. In fact, even some of her broom specific spell cards such as Comet "Blazing Star", which is entirely based upon ramming into an opponent by rocketing into them at top speed with her broom, can be used without her broom, where she instead just does a shoulder tackle type maneuver. It’s likely that she would be unable to use any specific Skill Cards where she shoots danmaku from her broom without the broom itself, or any attacks which require the broom itself for the strike, however.
Spell Cards
Spell Cards are the most integral form of attack within the verse of Touhou. Originally designed as a non-lethal form of combat meant to allow youkai and humans to combat each other on even terms, it has since become the most widespread form of combat present throughout the series. Virtually all fights are handled via spell card duels, which are restricted by a number of rules. First, one must give a ‘name’ to their spell cards, which defines the meaning, and thus the power, of an attack. Second, one must make their attacks stylized or ‘beautiful’, usually in the form of complex danmaku patterns. In the words of Marisa herself, if one were to solely opt for the strongest, most powerful danmaku, there would only be a single ‘best’ variation, leading to repetitive and boring fights, and thus, a boring and repetitive lifestyle. These patterns are usually used to represent concepts tied to the user (eg; Marisa’s penchant for star-based magic being commonly represented in her spell cards), their personality, or even their history. Third, the spell cards must be fair in nature; While Touhou’s danmaku is infamously difficult, in-universe it is designed to be dodgeable by even novice fighters, serving the aforementioned purpose of equalizing fights with a large discrepancy in power. Finally, a spell card duel concludes when one person has successfully dodged all the spell cards of their opponent, or has ‘timed out’ their opponent.
While spell cards are generally designed to be used for non-lethal combat, the rules are ultimately still just rules, and can be broken. It is stated that accidents do occur under spell card rules, implying that injury and death are still possible, and Marisa has compiled a small sampling of spell cards capable of outright killing their targets. Furthermore, Junko’s spell cards are designed with the specific intent of killing people. Thus, spell cards are still capable of being used as fully lethal attacks; The distinction between lethal and non-lethal is ultimately the choice of the user. Finally, a spell card user is still capable of using unfair danmaku patterns, with many gladly using impossible to dodge patterns against those they deem threatening enough (such as Seija).
While spell cards were initially intended to be literal cards that one carried on their person, this idea has since been retconned, and spell cards are now solely stylized representations of one’s abilities that do not require any sort of extra equipment (save for instances such as Marisa’s Mini-Hakkero).
Ability Cards
Ability Cards are items available in Touhou 18: Unconnected Marketeers, and Touhou 18.5: 100th Black Market. By using dragon gems, one is able to copy the magic that all beings inherently possess. This magic is then sealed within a card, and can then be utilized by anyone who owns the card as though they were using the ability that was originally copied (eg; A card that copies Cirno’s ice manipulation will grant the holder of that card a similar degree of ice manipulation). This means ability cards contain exact 1 to 1 replicas of an ability of the individual the card is based on. They’re perfect copies in terms of how the ability works, and potency. Meaning if the haxx represented by the card is layered, then the haxx you can utilize through the card will be layered as well.
While these items initially started as optional equipment for Marisa, as of 100th Black Market, the most recent Touhou game specifically focused around Marisa, at the end of the game, Marisa requests for the markets to remain open specifically so she can hoard every last ability card, and over the course of the game she collects literally all of them for herself, so yes, they're now part of her regular arsenal.
Seeing as there are so many of them and many of Marisa’s abilities and haxx are reliant on them, I have sourced every ability card available in both 18 & 18.5 in the “Notable Links and Sources” section.
Bombs
Marisa carries a variety of bombs with varying destructive outputs and effects. Typically just as explosives, but some can also let off danmaku and laser beams of their own and have some relatively devastating effects.
Skill Cards
She has a hell of a lot of em….
Skill Cards are similar to Spell Cards in that they’re not actual cards, but instead are representations of attacks and abilities accessible to the user. Skill Cards contain a variety of different types of attacks of Marisa’s, various different spells, danmaku, and magical blasts are all available through these cards. They also include modified variants of pre-existing attacks of hers, brand new magical blasts, modifications to her potions
Weirdass Mushrooms
Hidden away within her skirt and hat, she keeps some of the results of her magical mushroom experiments. These strange mushroom implements serve one purpose, to be used as mini magical explosions. Upon throwing them and making contact with something, they explode. All that magical experimentation for long stretches of time for some funny mini-grenades. Keeping things like that in your skirt and hat must be dangerous, no?
Magic Wand
Spirit Manipulation
While not quite EQUIPMENT, it’s a major part of Marisa’s arsenal and is worth mentioning.
I also just had to cut the Notable Techniques sections due to time constraints…
All things in Touhou, both living and spiritual entities, possess ‘Spirit’, acting as a universal energy source across the series. Spirit is not only a fundamental aspect of the use of magic, but is also directly tied to the existence of magic itself due to its connection to the mental layer of reality. This is shown through how Spirit in the fighting games acts as the meter used to achieve supernatural feats such as flight and most projectile attacks, while in the danmaku games, Spirit is the measure of your current shot’s power. However, Spirit is more than just energy; As is explained throughout Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and a few supplementary materials, Spirit is in fact the same as temperament, the emotional state of living things. Temperament is then stated to be the same thing as phantoms, which are the souls of living things. A few separate statements confirm that Spirit is also the stamina, chi, and subconscious of an individual.
Throughout the games, in addition to using Spirit as a primary source of energy, characters are frequently depicted as being able to reduce or absorb the amount of Spirit available to their opponent. This triggers on most basic attacks, and while the depiction of this mechanic varies somewhat, it is consistently shown to be a result of someone hitting their opponent.
Marisa herself also possesses the ability to manipulate Spirit in unique ways, such as through magic diffusion missiles that absorb Spirit at an increased rate, and spell cards that transmute enemy attacks into even more Spirit.
However, Marisa also has some Optional Equipment…
Player System Cards
Player System Cards are “cards” that represent a specific item or character’s ability. There is a large volume of these with a massive variety of effects, ranging from spiritual strikes, healing, distance manipulation, summoning The Great Catfish for an assist, and far more.
The Occult Ball
The Occult Ball is a major item in Touhou 14.5: Urban Legend in Limbo. They are objects empowered by Power Spots, defying the common sense of the Outside World. This allows them to gain entry into Gensokyo. Through using these balls, the character Sumireko Usami sought to destroy the barrier separating Gensokyo and the Outside World, though she was ultimately stopped. There exists a variant of the standard Occult Ball, which was created by Sagume Kishin as a part of the Lunar Capital Transfer Plan. This ball, unlike the others, makes use of Sagume’s ability to control truth itself. This is what causes urban legends to begin materializing, and had Sagume succeeded in her plan, it would have caused the entire Lunar Capital to materialize within Gensokyo.
While Marisa does not have access to the balls normally, she managed to take one home from the Lunar Capital during the events of Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom. This is the exact same ball Sagume originally used, as Marisa claims to have met its creator during the course of the game, and both she and Yukari recall how it was used to materialize urban legends and almost cause Gensokyo to fall into chaos.
Note that while the Occult Balls were originally used to power the use of the Last Word mechanic in Urban Legend in Limbo, Marisa no longer requires Occult Balls to activate it, as shown in Antinomy of Common Flowers where she is able to use her Last Word despite not possessing one. This extends to other techniques stemming from the Urban Legend incident, such as perfect possession.
Ultramarine Orb Elixir
An elixir that was created by Eirin Yakogokoro and given to Marisa for the events of Touhou 15: Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom. The elixir weakens the effects of life and death on the user, effectively turning them into a “pure human”. This is similar to the effects of the Hourai elixir, another powerful elixir made by Eirin, which removes the concepts of life and death from their users entirely. Should the user die while the effects of the elixir are active, time will rewind to a point a few minutes prior to their death. The user then keeps their memories of the future, effectively allowing them to know exactly what will happen in the future, due to having already experienced it. This allows for unlimited “retries” of any event, should that event lead to the user’s death. However, even in the case the time travel does not activate, the user will still retain their existence as a “pure human”, an immortal unbound by the concepts of life and death.
Marisa canonically never uses the elixir to complete the game’s events, meaning that she still would have her elixir and could use it at any point needed.
Yuffie’s Equipment:
Four Point Shuriken
Yuffie’s standard weapon, the Four Point Shuriken, is exactly what you can see it as, an absolutely gigantic four pointed shuriken. She can throw it around to the same effect as a boomerang, and even modified it as time went on. She attached a ribbon to one of its ends in Advent Children, and would go on to implement a flashbang feature to it by the events of Dirge of Cerberus.
The Conformer
Yuffie’s Ultimate Weapon, a 5 pointed shuriken, and much more colorful than her previous one. This weapon has unique attributes, in that it modifies Yuffie’s power compared to the strength and level of who she’s fighting. This means that even if Yuffie is fighting someone stronger than herself, her weapon will modify her own power to make her attacks stronger than they would be otherwise.
Red Ribbon
Yuffie has a red ribbon tied to her left arm, in order to commemorate her friend Aerith, who you might be aware, died during the events of Final Fantasy 7. This ribbon, through completely unknown and unexplained means, protects her from any and all status effects within FF7. These status effects include: Sleep, Poison, Sadness, Fury, Confusion, Silence, Frog, Mini, Slow-numb, Petrify, Death sentence, Berserk, Paralysis, and Darkness.
Materia
Materia are items within FF7 that allow characters to cast their spells, use summons, boost their stats, use command abilities, and use support abilities. Materia are made of crystalized Mako, the liquid of the planet’s lifestream. Materia calls upon the power of the lifestream in order to manipulate nature, manifesting as magic, or enhancing the user’s abilities. Materia is the only way that regular humans can utilize magic within FF7’s world. Yuffie, both from being a Materia hunter, as well as her exploits across the FF7 series, has procured quite the collection of different types of Materia, and thus has a massive selection of abilities, summons, and more she can utilize from them.
It should be noted that Yuffie is not restricted to utilizing a single spell or single summon off of Materia at once, and can actually perform two spells or two summons simultaneously via the W-Magic and W-Summon commands. She is unable to do more, however.
Armor
One of the main types of equipment in FF7 would be armor, but they’re essentially just bracelets. There are several different types of bracelets with different types of effects, giving varying stat buffs, ability enhancements, and elemental damage reduction or nullification. Yuffie’s initial bracelet, the Carbon Bangle (see image above), simply buffs her defense and magical defense, making her more resilient.
Restorative Items
Being an RPG, Yuffie can gain access to a host of consumable items with varying effects, ranging from restoring either small amounts, or all of her HP and MP, status effect removals, and items that can inflict status effects.
As expected, Yuffie also has some Optional Equipment…
Non-Initial or Ultimate Weapons/Equipment:
Seeing as Yuffie originates from an RPG, she has a wide variety of weapons and equipment at her disposal besides her initial equipment and her ultimate equipment. Due to the nature of optional and alternate equipment in RPGs, including it in her standard equipment would be a little disingenuous, as there’s no standard, canonical set of equipment she’s used throughout the series, and every piece of equipment available to her could also be used or equipped by other characters. Seeing as there’s no reasonable way to quantify any of this equipment as standard, we’ve rendered it as optional, but will still be factoring it all into the fight.
Something to take into account as I describe this equipment going forward, is that accessories and armor have 3 methods of affecting elemental damage. “Absorb” will heal the user if they’re struck with the element the item absorbs, “Nullify” will completely negate the damage the user would take, while halving or reducing just simply reduces or halves the damage the user would have taken from the attack.
Armor/Bracelets:
(The Minerva’s Band)
While Yuffie has her initial standard armor, there are several later obtainable bracelets that can give much larger defense buffs, as well as other major effects. The most notable* bracelets that Yuffie can equip would be:
Ziedrich: Increases Strength and Magic. Halves Fire, Ice, Lightning, Earth, Poison, Gravity, Water, Wind, Holy, Cut, Hit, Punch, and Shoot damage.
Accessories:
Accessories are items that are used to supplement weapons and armor in order to give the user extra boosts in combat. They have a wide variety of beneficial effects similar to armor, ranging from statistical enhancements, to increasing magical damage, or reducing or completely nullifying elemental damage. The most notable* accessories for Yuffie would be:
Fire Ring: Nullifies fire damage.
Ice Ring: Nullifies ice damage.
Bolt Ring: Nullifies lightning damage.
Water Ring: Nullifies water damage.
Poison Ring: Nullifies poison damage.
Tetra Elemental: Absorbs Fire, Ice, Earth and Lightning elemental damage.
Cat’s Bell: Recovers HP as she walks, slowly healing her with every step.
Silver Glasses: Prevents the blind status effect.
Headband: Prevents the sleep status effect.
Star Pendant: Prevents poison.
White Cape: Prevents the toad and mini status effects.
Fairy Ring: Prevents poison and blind status effects.
Jem Ring: Prevents the petrify, gradual petrify and paralyze status effects.
Peace Ring: Prevents the berserk, fury, sadness, and confuse status effects.
Safety Bit: Prevents Death, Death Sentence, Slow-numb, and Petrify status effects.
Rising Sun
A weapon Yuffie stole off of the Diamond Weapon. It is one of the best weapons available to her. While it doesn’t give the benefit of statistical amplification like The Conformer does, it offers strong stats and Double Materia Growth.
*I obviously did not include every piece of equipment in FF7, as frankly much of it would not make a difference in this fight or would be redundant to list, due to only having minor variations of defense buffs, such as the Bronze, Iron, Titan Bangles, or are outright not equippable to Yuffie such as the Escort Guard. I opted to instead include the equipment that offered the most notable statistical buffs, and the most notable elemental effects.
Marisa’s Feats & Stats:
For the breakdown of different feats, we’ll have a “Direct Feats” section, as well as a “Scaling” section. Direct Feats will count as feats Marisa directly performed herself, or her defeating an opponent who is capable of a specific feat. “Scaling” would apply to Marisa scaling to fighting and scaling to someone, who fought and scaled to someone else, who was capable of doing a specific feat.
Durability for both Marisa and Yuffie scale to any AP feats, unless specifically stated otherwise.
Attack Potency:
Direct Feats:
NOTE: Marisa’s higher end statistics are reliant on scaling to large portions of Touhou’s cosmology, the full size of which is difficult to explain in short segments like the scaling presented below. Due to this, a cosmology section explaining Touhou’s cosmology in greater detail is written below.
-Her Mini-Hakkero is stated to have enough power to vaporize a mountain, which requires this much energy (Small Country Level).
-Marisa can easily defeat Hong Meiling. Meiling, despite being a low mid tier of the verse, was revealed in her fight with the Great Catfish that even a portion of her strength is enough to disintegrate the surface of the Earth*, which would take this much energy. (at least Moon Level)**
-One of her spell cards, Magic Space "Asteroid Belt" is stated to be able to pull away two large planets (Large Planet Level).
-Marisa considered one of Sanae’s spell cards, which is able to increase the brightness of stars to the extent that they’re visible during the day, as far below her own level of power (Star Level, potentially higher?).
-Marisa is able to fight and contend with Suika Ibuki, who is capable of casually tossing around objects with mass comparable to that of a black hole at high speeds (Small Star Level to Large Star Level).
-In the PC-98 era, she fought with and defeated the Goddess of Makai, Shinki. Shinki created the realm of Makai on her own, which was shown to contain several stars, constellations (the creation of which would need this much energy), and even the arm of a galaxy. Makai even appears to be completely destroyed during her fight. (Multi-Solar System to Galaxy Level)
-Marisa (alongside Alice Margatroid) has fought and defeated Kaguya Houraisan. Kaguya has the capability to create an infinite corridor, which is composed of infinitely linked pieces of the space-time continuum (Universe Level+).
-Survived an attack from Kanako Yasaka that was likely intended to kill. Kanako was superior to Suwako Moriya during her tenure as a native god, with native gods possessing power rivaling and even surpassing that of the highest gods once they have enough faith. These ‘highest gods’ are likely superior to their original forms, which were responsible for the creation of the entire cosmology (High Complex Multiverse Level [10/11D]).
*Given that only a portion of Meiling’s strength was capable of this, it’s likely her full strength is far greater.
** Despite the context of Meiling's power being used to potentially vaporize the surface of the earth taking place within an extended dream sequence, it is important to note that dreams in Touhou are equal to reality, making such distinctions meaningless when it comes to scaling. Furthermore, dream versions of characters are perfectly equal to their real world counterparts, making scaling between them acceptable.
Scaling:
-Almost killed Seiga Kaku on accident. Seiga, having taught Toyosatomimi no Miko, should scale to the following:
Hermits like Miko and Kasen are able to create personal pocket realms known as Senkai, which are large enough to contain entire moons (Large Planet Level) or starry skies (Multi-Solar System Level). Individual Senkais can also be infinitely enlarged using space-time manipulation (Universe Level+).
-Stated by Kaguya to be on par with members of the Lunar Capital, among which reside the highest gods. These gods should be at least comparable to their original forms, which were responsible for the creation of all things in the verse (High Complex Multiverse Level [10/11D]).
-Could hold her own against Momoyo, who was going all out, though she was exhausted by the end and required ability cards in order to win. Momoyo is able to overpower and eat dragons, which exist as some of the highest gods in all of Touhou, residing in the Lunar Capital (see above; High Complex Multiverse Level [10/11D]).
Is somewhat comparable to Reimu based on their repeated duels, meaning she should by extension scale to the following:
Comparable to Joon and Shion, who fought Tenshi’s dream self, which was capable of shaking the heavens and threatening to destroy them in their entirety. At minimum, Heaven is large enough to contain gods like Amitabha, who is 10^125 yojana tall (1 yojana = about 7 kilometers). This would make Amitabha, and by extension Heaven, 86 Sexseptuagintillion* times larger than our own universe (EXTREMELY far into Universe Level). Additionally, Heaven is larger than the Netherworld, which is larger than the infinitely sized Hell (High Universe Level), and is composed of many separate realms (Low Multiverse Level).
Inferior to, but still able to survive serious attacks from, Kasen Ibaraki. Kasen should be comparable to other oni of her position, like Suika, who has fought Yukari numerous times prior to the spell card rules. Yukari is capable of undermining reality with her power over boundaries, is comparable to the gods who shaped reality at the beginning of creation, and possibly has control over the boundary of red and white, which dictates existence and non-existence and is the origin of all things (High Complex Multiverse Level [10/11D]).
Yukari is also able to attack via dreams, which are realities capable of containing higher-dimensional realms like the Outside World (Low Complex Multiverse Level [5D]).
*I will not lie, I thought this was a fake number when researching, and this calc was given to me by someone else. I have tried to verify myself and their calculations seem to be correct however.
Speed:
Note: We will be disregarding Marisa’s claim that nothing can move faster than light, as it is wildly inconsistent with other feats performed throughout the series, and Marisa herself disproved this claim mere moments after making it.
Direct Feats:
-Marisa is generally depicted as one of the fastest characters of the series, and considers Aya Shameimaru to be a “Worthy contender in speed”. Aya has been specifically noted by ZUN to be “The fastest in Gensokyo”
-Can dodge sound-based danmaku from characters like Kyouko, Yatsuhashi, and Benben (Supersonic).
-Can react to and dodge lightning-based attacks from characters like Iku and Tojiko (MHS+).
-Laughably superior to fairies, who can react to and deflect light-based projectiles (0.6c-0.8c).
-Can dodge attacks from Reisen, which are based on radio waves, which travel at the speed of light (Relativistic).
-Could dodge out of the way of redirected sunlight. (Relativistic)
-Regularly keeps up with Sakuya in spell card duels, who is stated to move faster than light (FTL).
-Easily outsped her own Master Spark and fired a second one before the first one hit its target. Her Master Spark is made of light, stated to be light speed, travels in a straight line, and reflects off of mirrors, meaning it is genuinely light speed (FTL).
-In the PC-98 era, she was able to fly interstellar distances in a short timeframe, which would require moving hundreds of millions or several billion times faster than light (MFTL+).
-Flew across the entire Dream World to reach the Lunar Capital. At minimum, this required flying across an interstellar distance due to the sheer number of stars contained by the Dream World (MFTL+). However, the Dream World is where all dreams in Touhou are stored. Each dream functions as an alternate reality, with dreams containing entire worlds like the Outside World and Netherworld (for more information, read the cosmology section of this blog). Thus, it can be assumed that each dream is universal in size. As all living things possess dreams, there should be billions of dreams stored within the Dream World. Flying across a location billions times larger than our own universe in such a short timeframe would necessitate moving approximately 22.5 septillion* times faster than light (MFTL+). As dreams contain infinitely sized realms like the Netherworld, this could mean the Dream World is infinite in size as well, meaning Marisa must possess infinite speed to have crossed it. (Infinite)**
-Flew across the entirety of Kaguya’s corridor, which is repeatedly stated to be infinite and endless, and was created by infinitely linking pieces of the space-time continuum. (Infinite)
-Comparable to the Palanquin Ship, which flew to Hokkai, a realm located at the edge of the infinitely sized Makai. (Infinite)
-Crossed the Sanzu River without assistance, a river filled with an infinite amount of water that is infinitely wide. (Infinite)
-Capable of dodging Sakuya’s knives, which are stated to move through time. However, she is unable to move while in Sakuya’s Deflation World, which compresses the past, present, and future into one; Thus, it is unlikely that Marisa can physically move at speeds that surpass time itself, while she is still capable of reacting to such speeds (Immeasurable combat speed/reactions).
*It should be noted that, inherently, this number is a massive lowball, as it doesn’t take into account variable universe sizes, such as Amitabha scaling for Heaven, and counts out at 7 billion people, ignoring any possible extra humans or youkai, or any beings from other realms, as simply there is no way to reasonably calculate these variables, so we went with the absolute bare minimum numbers possible for this calc.
**We understand the concept of “Infinite Speed” might be strange to some, as inherently as a concept it’s unbelievable. Keep in mind however that the deed of crossing infinite distances or occupying two spaces at once through sheer speed, or any other infinite speed feat is something that occurs frequently throughout fiction to require indexing (these feats are seen in other mediums such as DC Comics, BlazBlue, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, God of War, Pokemon, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and several others), this is a recurring concept in fiction and should be indexed regardless, even if it’s “unrealistic”. Logistically, even surpassing light speed is improbable in real life and would have absurd effects if it did occur, making that argument nonfunctional. Infinite speed isn’t even the highest classification of speed in Versus either, it’s beaten out by both Immeasurable Speed and Irrelevant Speed, classifications that transcend concepts of time and even dimensions. Even in the event you dislike or completely disagree with the existence of infinite speed, infinite speed doesn’t change the outcome of the verdict regardless.
Yuffie’s Feats & Stats:
Something of note for Yuffie’s feats, we will be scaling her to her summons for several of her feats of AP and durability. An important aspect of using summons in Final Fantasy, is that in order to summon and control a beast in FF, you either have to defeat it in combat to earn it's respect, or your power must correlate to that of what you’re summoning, meaning that every summon Yuffie can use, she can match in strength.
Attack Potency:
Direct Feats:
-Can control and summon Leviathan, who has control over every single body of water on the planet, including all oceans. (Multi-Continent Level)
-Can tank Typhon’s Disintegration attack, which flips the entire world upside down, and would be this strong (equivalent to 1.019 tenatons of TNT, Dwarf Star Level)
-Can control and summon Bahamut Fury and Bahamut ZERO, beings who are strong enough to sustain their own personal space containing countless amounts of stars, upon defeat, this space disappears. (Multi-Solar System Level)
-Was able to defeat pieces of Jenova, including Jenova DEATH, who scales far above being such as Bahamut Fury & ZERO, and even the strongest summon Zirconiade, who was so powerful it warranted the Planet to create a single weapon in response to it's threat level. Jenova’s appearance warranted the planet creating EIGHT weapons in self defense, making it an unprecedented crisis in FF7’s world.(Multi-Solar System Level)
-Can control and summon the Knights of the Round. When summoned, the Knights proceed to destroy a space with multiple visible galaxies (Multi-Galaxy Level). Being one of the most powerful summons in FF7, they scale above even summons such as Bahamut Fury.
-Was able to fight against and assist in the defeat of Sephiroth, and even survive his Supernova attack, which decimated several planets in the solar system, before eventually piercing the sun, causing it to supernova and decimate the entire space, which contained countless stars, the Milky Way, and possibly even an irregular galaxy. Sephiroth himself was also able to endure the might of the Knights of the Round, likely even being more powerful than them. (Multi-Solar System Level minimum, likely Galaxy to Multi-Galaxy Level)
Scaling:
-Comparable to Cloud Strife and other members of the party Post-Midgar. The party is able to defeat Shinra Mechs such as Sweepers, which are capable of giving Ifrit a worthy fight, Ifrit having the power to burn down the entire world, which would take this much power (Multi-Continent Level). She is also capable of directly summoning Ifrit herself, meaning she directly compares to him.
-Can summon and control Bahamut, who was far superior to Medusa, who was capable of bringing down the entire Floating Continent. (Multi-Continent Level)
-Should be comparable to, if not stronger than Red XIII, who can create a starry sky utilizing his own power with his Limit Break, Stardust Ray.
Speed:
Direct Feats:
-Can block gunfire with her Shuriken
-Could keep up with Sephiroth, who could detect and interact with a comet moving at these speeds throughout outer space. (20.571 Trillion x FTL, MFTL+)
Scaling:
-Should be comparable to the rest of the party Post Midgar, such as Cloud or Barret, who were capable of dodging the lasers from Shinra’s security systems and weapons (0.05c, Sub-Relatavistic+)
-Should be comparable to Red XIII, whose power is capable of interacting with stars in the sky, which would require these speeds. (65.9 Million x FTL, MFTL+)
-Scales and has defeated opponents superior to Bahamut FURY, who has the ability to quickly travel between entire star systems, as seen here, in order to perform such a feat, he would be moving at these speeds. (17.8 Million x FTL, MFTL+)
Miscellaneous:
-Compares to Tifa, who was able to lift and throw the Diamond Weapon, which would take this level of strength. (281.35 megatons, Class G)
Marisa’s Haxx & Abilities:
I will not be mentioning every single one of Marisa’s abilities here, just mainly the ones that would affect the battle or are generally important enough to mention, I feel. Because I have a feeling Marisa's cloth manipulation won't quite help her in this fight.
Spirit Manipulation - The main energy system of all magic users in Touhou is Spirit, and many characters are capable of reducing or absorbing this energy through a number of methods, including repeated basic attacks. This yields an incredible amount of abilities and resistances, which will be noted in this ability subgroup.
Soul Manipulation & Absorption - Marisa can reduce an enemy’s spirit/soul by attacking them, as well as absorb said reduced spirit/soul. This would allow Marisa to continually reduce Yuffie’s own spirit and restore her own throughout the fight, gradually chipping away with and weakening Yuffie with every hit she lands.
Statistics Reduction & Amplification - Increasing the amount of one’s spirit increases their power, while reducing one’s spirit greatly weakens them. Meaning that as Marisa damages & absorbs someone’s spirit, she grows more powerful/replenishes her own spirit as she attacks, and her opponent becomes gradually weaker.
Stamina Reduction & Absorption - One’s stamina also correlates to one’s spirit, meaning that as your spirit is reduced, so is your stamina, meaning Marisa can essentially fuel herself to keep fighting.
Soul Regeneration (Mid-Godly) - She can regenerate her spirit from nothingness in just a few seconds, meaning damn near any attacks on her soul are functionally meaningless.
Resistance Negation - Marisa’s Soul Manipulation/Absorption is layered, meaning it's powerful enough to bypass other characters who have a resistance against soul manipulation/absorption and still affect them regardless despite their resistance.
Resistance to Soul Manipulation - Marisa can survive having her Spirit damaged or absorbed, even to the point of lacking Spirit entirely. She also was capable of surviving Tenshi absorbing the Spirit of all living things across the cosmology.
Attack Nullification & Transmutation - Striking an opponent will cause their projectile attacks to be converted to Spirit and be automatically absorbed by the attacker, meaning that every time Marisa lands a solid hit, any projectiles that Yuffie sent out will automatically be absorbed by Marisa.
Empathic Manipulation, Mind Manipulation, & Chi Manipulation - Spirit within Touhou is equivalent to that of Temperament, which is the emotions of living things and their subconscious, meaning that manipulating spirit would mean you could manipulate these concepts as well. One could passively affect or destroy another’s emotions or mental state as a fight goes on by manipulating their spirit.
Supernatural Willpower - Via the natural regeneration of Spirit, allowing one to regain their stamina or recover from mental attacks in a short period of time.
Regeneration Reduction - By fully depleting an opponent's Spirit, one can reduce the rate at which their Spirit naturally regenerates.
Power Nullification - Spirit is required to utilize many supernatural techniques, such as skill cards and flight. Due to this, draining an opponent's Spirit will render them unable to use their abilities. Spirit is also considered a fundamental component in the usage of magic, and due to the mental layer of reality, is directly tied to magic itself.
Status Effect Inducement - By reducing an opponent's Spirit enough, one may induce a 'guard crush' that leaves the enemy briefly stunned.
Subjective Reality, Creation, Weapon Creation - Spiritual power can be shaped into physical objects like a ship or the wood needed to build a temple, or into weapons composed of Spirit itself.
Forcefield Negation - Even if an opponent is blocking, regardless of it’s through physical or magical means, Spirit Manipulation will still trigger (though it will merely reduce the opponent’s Spirit, not absorb it).
This gives Marisa a lot of benefits and options, and her ability to negate resistances to Soul Manipulation means she can bypass most people’s resistances and still affect them regardless, making all abilities she is netted through Spirit Manipulation layered. Check here for more detail on Spirit Manipulation as a system.
Spell Card Creation & Usage - Marisa has the ability to create Spell Cards, in order to define its form and power. This would give Marisa:
Limited Creation & Conceptual Manipulation (Type 1) - The process of creating a spell card requires giving it a 'name' to define its form and power, not unlike how the gods gave 'names' to everything at the beginning of reality to give them form from nothingness, albeit on a much smaller scale. This has somewhat limited combat applicability, and extends largely to her ability to create new attacks.
Conceptual Power Modification - Spell card users are capable of changing the traits of any attack or ability by naming it, being able to turn ordinarily lethal attacks into nonlethal ones, or severely restricting the potency of an ability by 'gameifying' it. This would allow Marisa to alter her opponents capabilities midway through the battle and make potentially lethal attacks non-lethal, or significantly less dangerous. This ability does have a limitation, however, in that not only is the modification not permanent, but characters still have access to the full extent of their techniques without Spell Card Rules. For someone outside of the world of Touhou, they would still need to be aware that their powers aren't permanently restricted, and use the non-modified version of the attack. However, they would have to KNOW this, which does mean it's still combat applicable.
While there are limitations to this ability, making it not as effective as full Concept Manip, it still has some potent uses within battle.
Light, Heat, Fire, and Explosion Manipulation - Most of Marisa’s magic is specialized in light magic and heat magic, and it's notable that many of the attacks, specifically those outputted from her Mini-Hakkero, consistently affect people who are unaffected by the heat of artificial suns, nuclear reactor cores, and layers of hell that are so hot that things don't even leave ashes behind, making it especially powerful. Many of her spells and attacks also result in an explosion as well, with some of her potions specifically built to function as explosives. She also has fire manipulation from Okuu’s Ability Card, Underground Sun, which shoots an artificial sun.
Space-Time Manipulation - As of 100th Black Market, Marisa has access to a magic circle. Everything within this radius is slowed down to a near stop, and takes constant damage while inside. While the circle takes the form of a short-range aura, Marisa can project it outwards at will, though it will take several seconds to regenerate. With the Player System Card, Yesterday’s Money, Marisa can utilize Komachi’s spatial manipulation abilities and could manipulate the battlefield, allowing her to keep herself in an advantageous position by manipulating the space between her and her opponent.
Gravity Manipulation - With her spell card Black Magic "Event Horizon", she can create a gravitational pull akin to that of an Event Horizon.
Ice Manipulation - With Love Sign “Master Spark Frozen”, an altered form of her Master Spark acquired during the events of Hidden Star in Four Seasons, imbuing her Master Spark with cold.
Water Manipulation - According to her profile in Perfect Cherry Blossom, Marisa is able to cast a spell that summoned a hot spring under her house. In Gouyoku Ibun, she is capable of absorbing water and using it to heal herself, as well as using it to charge up concentrated Water Master Sparks. It’s also stated that her magical affinity is that of water, but it is unclear what additional abilities this grants her, if any.
Healing & Spirit Restoration - Besides the aforementioned healing through water absorption, with the Ability Card Illness Recovery Charm, Marisa can heal herself, she can also restore her spirit through the Player System Card, Magic Potion.
Power Mimicry / Technique Copying - Marisa has stolen, copied, and enhanced other characters’ spells and attacks in the past, such as Patchouli Knowledge & Yuuka Kazami's techniques, enhancing & empowering them in the process. This means Marisa could likely mimic and steal some of Yuffie's magic or techniques throughout the fight.
Forcefield Creation - Marisa can create force fields to block and defend herself from all forms of attack, and can even passively create a barrier around herself to protect herself from attacks, even when she’s stunned.
Magic Absorption - Using her spell card Magic Absorber, Marisa can absorb her opponents attacks and projectiles, turning them into magical energy for her. Her basic shot type can do this as well.
Transmutation - She has multiple forms of this:
Spirit Manipulation allows her to instantly turn any of her opponents projectiles into spiritual energy to absorb as soon as she strikes them.
Marisa’s Magic Absorber in DDC transmutes enemy projectiles into magical energy.
Shinmyoumaru’s ability card, Miracle Mallet, creates a shockwave that transmutes any projectiles into money.
In Gouyoku Ibun, Marisa is able to transmute enemy projectiles into water by grazing them.
Through Life Explosion Elixir, every time Marisa is hit, a spiritual strike is released from her, creating a small shockwave that transmutes anything within its radius into money.
Flight - As long as Marisa has enough spirit energy, she can fly freely and at incredibly high speeds. While she uses her broom to fly throughout most of the series, she doesn’t need her broom to fly, as she’s used her flight without it on a couple occasions, most notably in her fight with Cirno in Great Fairy Wars, and in the fighting games 7.5, 10.5, and 12.3, where she can freely fly around without using her broom..
Acausality - Marisa was unaffected by Keine erasing the Human Village from history. This should have erased Marisa from history, seeing as she was born in the Human Village and it not existing historically means she never could have been born, but she resisted it regardless. She was also able to move inside of Eintei, which is stated to operate outside of time and causality.
Extrasensory Perception - Like all magic users, Marisa is able to detect changes in temperament. Temperament, being equivalent to Spirit, is the soul, emotions, subconscious, stamina, chi, and statistics of a person, allowing Marisa to track changes in these aspects. Furthermore, Marisa can detect other forms of energy, like the magical energy pouring out of Narumi’s back or the unknown aura emanating from Junko.
Invulnerability, Size Manipulation, and Damage Boost - Marisa can make herself temporarily invulnerable with the player system cards Gale Geta, Three Heavenly Drops, and Divine Raiment of the Dragon Fish. These could potentially save her from durability bypassing attacks she can't avoid. Additionally, every three attacks she lands triggers Three-Tiered Embellishment Magic, which causes her next attack to either make herself temporarily invulnerable, increase the size of her next attack, or increase its damage.
Time Stop - With Sakuya’s Ability Card, Stopwatch, she can briefly stop time. Considering this ability card is a replication of Sakuya’s abilities, it would be a layered time stop, just as Sakuya’s is.
Possession - During the events of Antinomy of Common Flowers, Marisa gained access to perfect possession, a technique that allows one to take over one’s body and mind. While this can be done consensually, it is still able to forcefully take control of a person if desired. While this ability was tied to a singular incident, it should still be accessible by Marisa even after the incident ended, as its existence was tied to that of the Urban Legend incident, which never canonically ended.
Resurrection - If she’s killed, the ability cards Death Avoidance Elixir and Money Is The Best Lawyer In Hell can revive her at least once each, potentially more. Phoenix’s Tail offers her 3 extra lives.
Teleportation - With Yukari’s Ability card, Screen Border, Marisa can teleport to different locations, which could help her evade attacks and possibly escape Dimensional Banishment.
Portal Creation - With Okina’s Ability Card, Back Door, Marisa can open portals to The Land of the Back Door.
Poison Manipulation - With the Player System Card, Spell Breaking Drug, Marisa can poison her opponent’s soul directly.
Statistics Amplification - Can amplify the power of her spell cards with Spell Power, as well as amplify them and her abilities through several different Ability Cards and Player System Cards, those being: Ringo-Brand Dango, Law of the Survival of the Fittest, Sutra of Dharmatic Power, Gale Geta, Reliable Tanuki Apprentice, Gluttonous Centipede, Great Tengu's Barley Rice, Tengu Fan, Left-Handed Folding Fan, and Control Rod.
Intangibility - With Koishi’s Ability Card, Pebble Hat, Marisa can turn intangible, this has limited usage though, as it seems to only work on the bodies of opponents, not their attacks.
Telekinesis & Attack Reflection - With the Ability Card Psychokinesis, Marisa can utilize a limited form of Sumireko’s Telekinetic abilities, using them to reflect projectiles back at her attacker.
Shockwave Creation - Through intense vibration manipulation, Marisa can create shockwaves around her to knock opponents away.
Ice Manipulation - Through her spell card Love Sign “Master Spark Frozen” it’s just an ice based version of the Master Spark. She can also utilize Cirno’s Ability Card, Ice Fairy, which results in her attacks gaining ice shards.
Sound Manipulation - Through Raiko’s ability card Heavy Bass Drum, she can create sound shockwaves strong enough to destroy enemy projectiles.
Fungus Manipulation - Can cause mushrooms to instantly grow, and then rocket out of the ground as an attack. This may seem meaningless to mention but it was one of Marisa’s major & highly effective attacks in 17.5.
Non-Physical Interaction - She can interact with and harm youkai, spirits, and other entities that lack physical forms. She's also fought gods and divine spirits who exist solely as abstract ideas and "pure will", as well as Junko, who purified herself to such an extent that she no longer exists on a conceptual level.
Radiation Manipulation & Statistics Amplification - Utilizing the PSC “Control Rod”, which would allow Marisa to regulate the energy of nuclear fission, as well as modifying her stats, increasing her attack at the cost of her defense lowering. It’s also likely that Okuu’s Ability Card, Underground Sun, is also a radioactive attack.
4th Wall Awareness - She has a minor degree of awareness of the fourth wall, via having knowledge of game mechanics such as lives, continues, and bosses. How she knows this is unknown. She also directly speaks to the player in the manual of SoEW. This isn’t pertinent to the matchup at all, I just thought it would be funny to mention.
Subjective Reality - Via the ability card Sheep You Want to Count. This card makes it so, upon picking it up, every combat encounter past, present, and future (up until a certain point), is regarded as nothing more than a dream the user can wake up from at any time. Essentially, it lets the user skip a fight by merely choosing to believe it isn’t real.
Fortune - The Mini-Hakkero is supposedly a charm that grants good fortune. Within the context of Touhou, ‘fortune’ is the measure of one’s luck, and consequently, their passive control over the memory layer, which dictates probability and fate. Those who control fortune can cause projectiles to swerve away from themselves, tilt the odds of any situation in their favor, or just generally make their entire lives easier. As a magic user, Marisa likely possesses these abilities to some extent as well, as magic requires fortune as one of its most fundamental components. Fortune is an incredibly varied mechanic, granting access to the following passive abilities:
Probability & Fate Manipulation - Fortune allows one to control the memory layer itself, using it to manipulate the power of probability and cause any event to occur in such a way that favors the user (eg; having a die land on a desired number). The memory layer is not just limited to probability, as it controls fate as well, and fate users such as Remilia are stated to use fortune/misfortune as a basis for their powers.
Law & Physics Manipulation - The memory layer exists beyond the physical layer, which is where all physical laws reside. Essentially, fortune is not bound by these laws, and can produce effects that ignore the laws of physics.
Causality Manipulation - Fortune manipulates the ‘memory’ stored within all objects, which acts as a recording of all actions that thing has undertaken (eg; the past results of rolling a die, and which way the die landed).
Creation & Soul Manipulation - Both objects and souls result from probability, allowing one to alter these should they alter probability.
Clairvoyance - Good fortune makes it easier to find one’s way through difficult to navigate areas, like the Bamboo Forest of the Lost.
Statistics Reduction & Statistics Amplification - Fortune adjusts the power levels of one’s opponents to be easier or harder depending on what is more beneficial to the user at the moment, while misfortune does the same, except work against those affected by it (eg; someone with fortune will face weaker enemies, and someone afflicted with misfortune will face stronger enemies).
Acausality Negation - Fortune is always shown to work against those who are not bound by causal laws, such as those who could act normally inside Eientei (a place devoid of cause and effect entirely) and those whose pasts were not affected by the human village being removed from history.
Resistance to Diseases, Curses. Pain, BFR, & Resistance Negation - Good fortune is often used to protect against misfortune, the latter of which brings diseases, curses, can send ripples of pain throughout a victim’s body, or even cause their body to fall into Hell or across the boundary between worlds. Misfortune is also unable to be resisted through conventional means.
Limited Resistance to Power Nullification - Fortune is the most vital aspect of magic, and even if the other components of a successful magic spell are absent, an adequate amount of fortune can allow the spell to be cast anyways. However, this does not guard against more traditional means of nullifying powers, or nullifying magic after a spell has already been cast.
The Occult Ball - This is an interesting little piece of equipment, as while incredibly powerful, they can only access their most potent abilities when one has collected all 7 of them at once, meaning that even if Marisa brought this item into a battle, she only has 1 of the 7, meaning that she would not be able to utilize abilities such as Subjective Reality, Space-Time Manipulation, and Conceptual Manipulation. However, each orb on their own still possesses a good amount of power, meaning abilities such as the teleportation and dimensional teleportation offered by then should still be accessible to Marisa if she were to utilize this optional equipment. Individual Occult Balls have also been shown to shroud the wielder in darkness, break free from sealing, and possibly teleport other unwilling people alongside themselves.
Yuffie’s Haxx & Abilities:
I will not be noting every single ability Yuffie has at her disposal, because not every ability she has is relevant to the fight itself or would even affect it. Being from an RPG Yuffie has an absurd amount of abilities but many of them would either not be worth mentioning or would just inflate this section. Mentioning her limited teleportation ability to “escape battles” wouldn’t matter much to this fight, for instance, and her Mime ability is useless without allies.
Limited Dimensional Travel/Pocket Reality Manipulation - Using a summon results in drawing your target into a different dimension in order for the summon to utilize their attacks. Once the summon is finished, the dimension either fades, is destroyed, or is left.
Healing - Yuffie can heal herself via the spells Clear Tranquil, White Wind, Angel Whisper, Cure, and FullCure. The Regen status also gradually heals her every 4 seconds
Purification (Type 3) - White Wind and Angel Whisper, alongside healing Yuffie, can remove negative status effects. Poisona and Esuna also cure the poison status and most general status effects respectively.
Power Nullification - Yuffie has various methods of nullification. Her most notable, is the status effect Silence. Despite the name of this spell being “Silence”, it doesn’t actually prevent her opponent from speaking, no, it actually completely constrains her opponents magical ability, making them unable to use magic so long as they’re afflicted with the status. The effect isn’t permanent however, and will wear off in time. She has a handful of attacks that can inflict silence, and her summon Hades can also inflict it.
Her other notable methods are: Her spell DeBarrier, which can destroy her opponents barriers or completely destroy their function. The other would be her spell DeSpell, which also has the effect of destroying barriers and their functions, but also removes other status effects, such as time acceleration, slow, stops, and regeneration.
Elemental Manipulation - Yuffie has several elemental spells and attacks via her own magic and the various enemy skills she can copy, ranging from:
Fire Manipulation - The Fire and Flare line of skills offer fire based attacks. She also can manipulate fire via the Beta and FlameThrower enemy skills. Her summons Ifrit and Phoenix also utilize fire.
Ice Manipulation -The Ice line of skills offer ice based attacks.
Lightning Manipulation - The Bolt line of skills offer electricity based attacks. She can also manipulate lightning via the Trine enemy skill. Her summon Ramuh also attacks utilizing electricity.
Wind Manipulation - The Tornado spell is the only wind elemental skill Yuffie has.
Earth Manipulation - The Quake line of spells all offer earth based attacks. The Break spell and Yuffie’s Limit Break Landscaper are earth elemental attacks as well. Her summon Titan attacks with earth elemental magic as well.
Gravity Manipulation - The Demi line of skills all offer gravity related attacks. The enemy skill Laser is also gravity elemental.
Water Manipulation - Via the enemy skill Aqualung. Her summon Leviathan is also capable of manipulating vast stretches of water.
She also has some multi-elemental attacks, such as the enemy skill Magic Breath, which attacks with fire, ice, and lightning all at once.
Absolute Zero Ice - Through her summon, Shiva, which emits and attacks with ice at absolute zero temperatures, which freeze the target on the molecular level. She can also augment some of her magic and her weapon with absolute zero ice through specific materia.
Holy/Light Manipulation - Her summon Alexander attacks utilizing Holy/Light elemental attacks.
Energy Projection - All Creation and Gauntlet are essentially large laser beams/energy bursts, pretty self explanatory.
Summoning - Yuffie can summon a large number of monsters and deity’s to assist her in battle, all of which have a variety of abilities and effects. She can also summon meteorites using the Comet spells.
Durability Negation - Gauntlet can bypass an enemies durability by ignoring an opponent's magical defenses. Her Demi and Gravity spells can also bypass an opponents’ durability.
Statistics Amplification - Yuffie’s ultimate weapon, The Conformer, increases Yuffie's physical attack capabilities by several times, her strength boost becoming stronger the more powerful her opponent is in terms of raw powers. It should be noted that this cannot make her *match* her opponents strength, it simply just increases her own by an unknown amount to help her stay in the fight a bit more.
She can also utilize the command Death Blow to boost her damage, boost her defensive capabilities with the enemy skill Dragon Force
Damage Reduction & Time Acceleration via Barriers - Yuffie can create various barriers to reduce the damage of attacks with the spells Barrier, M Barrier, and Shield. They cannot block or reflect damage however, only reduce it. One of her best barriers is Big Guard, which not only has the greatest damage reduction, but also accelerates her time with the haste status effect.
Attack Reflection - Yuffie’s barrier spell, once at level 3, gains the effect to reflect spells used on her. However, it has the effect of also reflecting healing spells to her opponent if she were to use or receive any.
Dimensional Banishment - Through her spell Remove (Dezone), which banishes her opponent to another dimension. Her summons also drag an opponent to an alternate dimension, though they’re brought back to where they were initially fighting once the summon is complete, or if the person escapes the dimension.
Instinctive Reactions - She can instantly counter-attack if she’s linked to an offensive Materia, and she can also instantly heal herself, saving herself from death if she’s linked to a defensive/support Materia.
Matter Manipulation - Via the spell Flare, which creates an explosion of heat by colliding the target’s atoms. Her summons Bahamut, Neo Bahamut, and Bahamut ZERO, who utilize the Megaflare, Gigaflare, and Teraflare attacks respectively (each one is progressively more powerful) all trigger a fusion reaction on impact.
Death Manipulation - Via the spell Death and Flash, which has a chance of instantly killing her opponent, or the enemy skill Death Sentence, which instantly kills her opponent after a short window of time. Her summon Odin can also inflict instant death.
Poison Manipulation - Via the series of Bio spells, which inflict poison upon her target. Her summon Hades can also inflict poison as well.
Size Reduction - Via the spell Mini, which can reduce her opponent to miniature sizes, heavily reducing their attack in the process. Her summon Hades can also inflict this status.
Transmutation - Via the spell Toad, which can transform her target into a frog, severely reducing their attack and battle capabilities. The spell Break also has the side effect of petrifying her target. The command Morph can also transmute her target into an item, but only so long as the attack is the killing blow. Her summon Hades can also inflict Toad or Petrification.
Berserk Inducement - Via the spell Berserk, which can drive her opponent into an enraged state for a brief time period, which causes them to only use physical attacks, but heavily increases their speed and attack power in the process. Her summon Hades can also inflict Berserk.
Time Manipulation - Via the Spells Slow, Haste, and Stop, which slow down the target’s time, speed up the target’s time, and stop the target’s time respectively. She can use these spells on both herself and her opponents for various effects. The Choco/Mog summon can also time stop. Her summon Hades can also inflict the Slow status.
Limited Madness Manipulation - Via the spell Confuse, and the spell Tornado has a chance to inflict confusion as well. Confusion causes the target to lose control and act wildly/erratically out of pure confusion. Her summon Hades can also inflict Confusion.
Body Puppetry - Via the command Manipulate, which allows for you to manipulate the body of your target. This manipulation is limited however, in that as soon as the target is attacked, they’re freed of the manipulation.
Information Analysis - Via the command Sense, which allows Yuffie to learn the amount of health, magic, and her opponent’s elemental weakness. This command generally has difficulty analyzing opponents above a certain calibur of strength, however (within FF7, if the target has more than 30,000 HP, they cannot be analyzed).
Extended Range & Simultaneous Attacks - With her spells 2x Cut and 4x Cut, she can attack 2 or 4 times almost simultaneously, and with her attack Slash All, she can attack an area far beyond her usual reach. The Long Reach materia can also make attacks reach a few meters beyond their usual range as well.
Energy Absorption - With the enemy skill Magic Hammer, which drains the target’s magic reserves, reducing their MP. She can also do this with the MP Absorb, which drains small fragments of the target’s MP on attack, reducing their magical reserves.
Life Absorption - With the skill HP Absorb, she can drain the target’s HP and absorb it for herself on attack, generally about 10% of the damage dealt.
Sleep Inducement - With the spell Sleep, which causes enemies to be forced into a state of sleep, unable to act.
Self-Sustenance (Type 1), Enhanced Vision and Underwater Breathing - With the skill Underwater, which allows the user to fight and operate underwater with no issue, to the point they can even fight at the bottom of the ocean.
Spatial Manipulation - King Arthur’s final strike of the summon Knights of the Round destroys the dimension the summon pulled the target to.
Paralysis Inducement - Her summon Hades can inflict paralysis upon her target.
Non-Physical Interaction - She is able to hurt and defeat the ghosts and souls of the deceased Gi Tribe.
Immortality Negation - Yuffie was able to permanently kill the souls of the deceased Gi Tribe, as well as permanently kill Jenova and all her pieces. Jenova is capable of regenerating from single cells, and can even remain surviving in existence so long as her cells exist, even if they reside within another person.
Marisa's Haxx Resistances:
(gif by Fr00sk, from Touhou 17 in a Nutshell, its a cute vid check it out, Fr00sk unfortunately deleted their channel though.)
Now let’s cover the various haxx at Yuffie’s disposal that Marisa resists. I’ll mostly be covering the haxx and abilities that are actually important to the MU, as some of Yuffie’s magic just isn’t game changing enough to be talked about, and could generally be avoided by Marisa’s higher speed.
Death Manipulation - Marisa actually resists this via being able to freely enter and leave the Netherworld, a realm that instantly kills any normal person who enters it, she can also survive being near and fighting Yuyuko, who's mere touch can induce death, and she’s done this on multiple occasions.
Transmutation, Transformation, Petrification, and Purification - Marisa resists transmutation via being able to survive in hell, a realm that purifies and crystallizes your soul, as well as literally living within the Forest of Magic, a realm that changes the nature of any creature within it, without ever being affected.
Dimensional Banishment - Marisa would be able to escape via her ability cards that give portal creation/teleportation, as well as the Occult Ball she owns allowing her to travel dimensions. She has also resisted being hit by Dream Souls, which instantly put an opponent to sleep and banish their Soul to the Dream World, meaning she could be completely immune to being BFR’d in general, if not, she’s at least immune to spiritual BFRs.
Time Manipulation - This one's weird, as she's actively resisted time-stops before, having been able to move within Eintei without restriction despite Eintei having a frozen flow of time. However, she has been affected by Sakuya's time manip. Sakuya's time manip is typically considered to be *layered* however, which would make it particularly potent. Despite that, Marisa is still able to keep up with and defeat Sakuya in fights regardless of this, so she might still be able to survive any time stop attempts, and her speed advantage would likely be minimally affected by time-slow, so this one's actually less of a dealbreaker than expected. Marisa also has her own time stop via an ability card of Sakuya's timestop (it is somewhat limited though)
Space-Time Manipulation - Has resisted the effects of one of Keine's spell cards, Reincarnation "Ichijou Returning Bridge", which reverses time. She's also fought Sakuya on multiple occasions, who has a variety of space and time manipulation abilities
Poison Manipulation - Marisa actually resists most types of poison via literally living in the Forest of Magic, a place filled with miasma so thick that it paralyzes most people upon entering it. She's also spent her entire life experimenting with various mushrooms and magical materials that have increased this resistance further. She was also unaffected by Remilia's Scarlet Mist, which could sicken humans, and could survive in Former Hell, where the air is so toxic it's stated to be even more toxic than a geyser emitting poisonous air.
Water Manipulation - Not only is Marisa capable of summoning and utilizing water herself, any kind of water-based attack Yuffie could use would just be used against her by Marisa. 17.5's entire gimmick is the absorption of water for self healing and empowerment, and would even allow Marisa to charge up stronger special attacks as well. Summoning say, Leviathan, could cost Yuffie the entire fight (she can do the same with oil, for some reason)
Sleep Manipulation - As stated before, she resisted being hit by Dream Souls, which instantly force an opponent to sleep, she would be unaffected by any attempts to force her into sleeping
.
Fire, Ice, Wind, and Gravity Manipulation - Marisa can counter these via... also having these abilities with her own magic, spell cards, and ability cards, and her higher speed, mobility, and battlefield control would generally allow her to evade most of these attacks. Yuffie’s fire-based magic in particular may not be effective against Marisa, considering she’s survived fighting characters who weaponize artificial suns, and could live in the Former Hell of Blazing Fires, which is so hot that the things that burn there don’t even leave ashes behind.
Mind Manipulation, Emotional Manipulation, and Madness Manipulation - Marisa survived being around Phantoms, which passively destroy the mind and change the emotions emotions of those nearby them, she would also resist attempting to be driven mad via her resisting and being unaffected by the effects of the True Moon, which drives any human who looks at it mad.
Perception Manipulation - Marisa is totally fine living in the Forest of Magic, where mushrooms ordinarily passively cause hallucinations in anyone who comes near them.
Soul Manipulation - Marisa has a number of full blown counters to soul manipulation, anything Yuffie is capable of doing would be ineffective to her. She survived Tenshi absorbing the souls of everyone in Gensokyo in SWR, for example, and survived in Hell, which crystallizes and purifies one’s soul.
Blindness - Marisa was able to look at Okuu during their fight in Touhou 11, who was stated by Orin to induce blindness simply upon looking at her. She was also able to survive and view artificial suns being shot at her at point blank range by Okuu, which is good supporting evidence. Even if she were to be affected by blindness, her self-healing should allow her to recover her eyesight.
Radiation Manipulation - The same as above, her fight with Okuu would have had her contending with and dealing with incredibly high amounts of radiation, both from the environment she was fighting in, and from Okuu's attacks themselves, which are almost entirely nuclear based.
Metal Manipulation - The Mini-Hakkero is made of hihiirokane, a powerful metal immune to change, and thus rusting. Any attempts to render the Mini-Hakkero malfunctional through these means would likely fail.
Type 1 Conceptual Destruction, Existence Erasure, and Void Manipulation - Marisa was able to survive being trapped in a space where boundaries cease to exist. Within the world of Touhou, boundaries are type 1 concepts, and erasing a boundary has the capacity to reject one's existence. Essentially, Marisa was trapped within a conceptless void, and while within this void, Marisa resisted the effects of being within a void, as well as resisting having her very existence erased and concept destroyed.
Yuffie’s Haxx Resistances:
Elemental Resistances via Materia - Yuffie’s various Materia give her a variety of buffs, but also resistances. While she is unable to fully negate the effect of any type of magic with just Materia, she can at least resist and lower the effectiveness of the magic and take less damage from it. She would have varying levels of resistances to all these types of magic:
Resistance to Fire based attacks
Resistance to Absolute Zero Ice
Resistance to Electricity based attacks
Resistance to Wind based attacks
Resistance to Earth based attacks
Resistance to Water based attacks
Resistance to Gravity based attacks
Resistance to Holy attacks (Light Manipulation)
This would allow her to reduce the amount of damage she would take from much of Marisa’s arsenal.
Elemental Resistances, Absorption or Nullifications via Equipment - Yuffie has several types of armor and accessories that can either resist, absorb, or nullify various types of attacks. These include:
Resistance to physical damage (via Ziedrich)
Fire Manipulation
Resistance via Dragon Armlet and Ziedrich
Absorption via Fire Armlet and Tetra Elemental
Nullification via Fire Ring and Minerva’s Band
Water Manipulation
Resistance via Ziedrich
Nullification via Water Ring
Electricity Manipulation
Resistance via Dragon Armlet and Ziedrich
Absorption via Bolt Armlet and Tetra Elemental.
Nullification via Bolt Ring and Minerva’s Band
Wind Manipulation
Resistance via Ziedrich
Earth Manipulation
Resistance via Ziedrich
Absorption via Tetra Elemental
Ice & Absolute Zero Manipulation
Resistance via Dragon Armlet and Ziedrich
Absorption via Aurora Armlet and Tetra Elemental
Nullification via Ice Ring and Minerva’s Band
Poison Manipulation
Resistance via Ziedrich
Nullification via Poison Ring, Star Pendant, and Fairy Ring
Gravity Manipulation
Resistance via Ziedrich
Nullification via Minerva’s Band
Light Manipulation (Holy)
Resistance via Ziedrich
Nullification via Minerva’s Band
As one can see here, the most useful equips for Yuffie resisting Marisa’s abilities would be the Minerva’s Band, and Ziedrich. Marisa’s main specialized forms of magic are light and heat, these types of attack would generally translate to holy and fire, meaning that Yuffie could actually completely resist Marisa’s main types of magic if she were to equip the Minerva Band, as well as some of her alternative magic types such as gravity and ice. The Ziedrich, while not nullifying, would halve the damage of any of her physical attacks as well as halve the damage of the previously mentioned magic she has.
Resistance to Status Effects via Aerith’s Ribbon - Yuffie wears a Ribbon around her arm as a memorial to Aerith, but this piece of equipment also gives her a resistance to every status effect within the world of FF7. She also has some backup equipment that can also resist every status effect I’m about to mention, which were mentioned in Yuffie’s Equipment section to avoid redundancy. These status effects are:
Poison Manipulation & Acid Manipulation
Sleep Inducement
Silence Inducement
Transmutation
Power Nullification
Petrification
Size Manipulation
Madness Manipulation
Berserk Inducement
Time Slowdown
Time Stop
Death Manipulation.
Telekinesis - She was able to resist Sephiroth’s Telekinetic abilities with little issue, meaning any type of telekinetic attack Marisa could use against her would likely be ineffective.
Biological Possession - Same as above, she was able to resist any of Sephiroth’s mental abilities, which include him utilizing the Jenova Cells within your body to enforce his will over yours, effectively possessing you and controlling your mind.
Power Mimicry & Power Absorption - Yuffie’s Limit Breaks cannot be copied or replicated by Marisa in any way, due to the specific properties of Limit Breaks. Limit Breaks are born via a user’s Spirit Energy, and exist as a representation of the user’s mind and soul, and thus are specific to the user.* Due to Spirit Energy in FF7 existing through the Lifestream and not a typical form of spiritual energy, Marisa likely would not be able to replicate the abilities properly. At best, she may be able to create a variation of the ability.
Radiation Manipulation - Yuffie was able to survive the extreme radiation of a supernova, none of Marisa’s potential radiation related options would affect her.
*While Zack Fair has the capability to copy character’s limit breaks within FF7, he is noted to be an incredibly strange case within the verse itself, and his imitations of characters abilities are more so variations than full replications, meaning even he doesn’t fully bypass this rule.
What Marisa Doesn’t Resist:
Marisa doesn’t resist EVERYTHING in Yuffie’s arsenal however, there are a key few abilities of Yuffie’s that Marisa wouldn’t be able to retaliate against, such as:
Silence - If Yuffie manages to inflict Marisa with the Silence status effect (which is varies, since the percentage of it landing is 60% with a Seal Materia, but 80% with the Mute Mask item, and a 100% chance of inflicting with the Bad Breath Enemy Skill), it could potentially result in Marisa being unable to utilize her magic at all as long as she’s afflicted with Silence.
(It is entirely possible that this could end up not affecting Marisa, however, due to Fortune. Fortune is the most important component of Magic within Touhou, ensuring that so long as you have fortune, you can still cast spells. So long as Yuffie doesn’t nullify Marisa’s fortune, she could still potentially have access to her spells. Outside of this, even if Marisa’s magic was completely negated, she still has access to her Ability Cards, which give her a bevy of options against Yuffie, allowing her to stall until the effects of Silence eventually end. Should silence completely devastate Marisa’s capabilities in the fight, Sheep You Want To Count would allow her to restart the battle and have another shot.)
Absolute Zero - While Marisa has options against regular ice or cold based attacks and regularly deals with users of such attacks, Absolute Zero is beyond what she’s used to, as it would freeze her at a molecular level, which would be potent enough to kill her should it connect. While she can regenerate her soul, she cannot regenerate her body, so this would cost her the fight if she had no more resurrections. However she does have counterplay to this, particularly by “gamifying” the ability and rendering it non-lethal. Alternatively, she’d be forced to evade this at all costs, which would be quite doable due to her higher mobility, flight, higher speed, and battlefield control.
Body Puppetry - This one is…. Strange. Marisa is susceptible to possession, but is able to realize when she’s possessed and temporarily break out of it, as seen when she was able to temporarily regain thought when possessed in Wily Beast and Weakest Creature. Body Puppetry is different however, as it directly controls the body itself through outside means, being directly controlled by the Manipulate Materia. Marisa seemingly has no resistance to this. However it should be noted that this manipulation has limitations, as whoever is under the effects of the body puppetry will be freed as soon as they are attacked, meaning almost any attack Yuffie could pull, while it would be near guaranteed to land, wouldn’t kill Marisa due to her higher durability. Not to mention she could potentially alter the effects of the manipulation by “gamifying” it.
Paralysis Inducement - Marisa doesn’t seem to have any immediate resistances to Paralysis, meaning she could totally be induced with paralysis.
Size Reduction - Marisa doesn’t seem to resist having her size altered. However, she could likely “gamify” the spell and make it less potent, such as applying a timer to the amount of time she would be shrunk.
Power Nullification - DeBarrier or DeSpell could definitely destroy any barriers she sets up, alongside any passive barriers. However, she can still easily regenerate barriers, meaning the usefulness of this is limited.
What Yuffie DOESN’T Resist:
Soul Manipulation & Soul Absorption - While Yuffie DOES have a resistance against Soul Manipulation & Absorption, being able to resist her soul being diffused or absorbed into the Lifestream, she simply doesn’t stack up to Marisa’s layered Soul Manip/Absorption, which is powerful enough that it negates other character’s resistances and still manips/absorbs their soul regardless. This means that Marisa would be able to bypass Yuffie’s resistances and still affect her soul regardless. This means every attack Marisa lands, not only will Marisa benefit by restoring her own spirit, she’ll also weaken Yuffie overall, resulting in her weakening and losing power, losing stamina, being open to having her guard crushed, and could outright nullify her own abilities and prevent her from accessing her own magic. The end result of chipping away at Yuffie’s soul would result in its complete destruction, and unlike other Touhou characters, Yuffie has no method of restoring or regenerating her soul besides maybe being resurrected.
Empathic Manipulation, Mind Manipulation, & Chi Manipulation - While Yuffie does resist Empathic and Mind Manipulation regularly, this is another case of Marisa’s being layered and surpassing Yuffie’s resistances. Since Marisa’s empathic & mind manipulation is directly related to her spirit manipulation, which bypasses Yuffie’s resistances, she’d be able to directly affect her emotions and mind during the battle, essentially deteriorating her mental state as the battle goes on.
Soul Regeneration (Mid-Godly) - While this isn’t something Yuffie needs to resist, it's an ability of Marisa’s she can’t bypass. She has no way to kill Marisa through damage to her soul. However this can generally be bypassed if she could kill Marisa physically.
Possession - While Yuffie can resist a biological possession, like the aforementioned Jenova Cell possession, she’s shown no resistance to a spiritual & mental possession that Marisa’s Perfect Possession would be capable of. Considering Marisa’s possession passes through the Dream World, and then shares your spirit with the target’s, becoming one with mind in soul, and then assuming control of you that way, she should be able to possess Yuffie.
Time Stop - Marisa’s time stop would be a perfect copy of Sakuya Izayoi’s, meaning it would be a layered timestop, which would bypass Yuffie’s resistance and still freeze her regardless.
Poison Manipulation - While Yuffie can resist typical poisons quite well, Marisa’s poison manipulation is significantly more potent, as her Player System Card “Spell Breaking Drug” poisons the soul directly. Yuffie has never shown resistance to spiritual poisoning, and thus should be affected.
Touhou Cosmology:
Marisa’s high-end stats detailed in her statistics section are primarily reliant on specific interpretations of Touhou’s cosmology. Due to the complex and confusing nature of this topic, it’s important to take time to discuss just how large Touhou’s setting truly is, as well as who scales to it and why. Please note that this is a very abridged version of these arguments.
The first structure to make note of is the Great Hakurei Barrier, which separates Gensokyo from the Outside World. This barrier acts as a conceptual border between reality and fantasy, but more importantly than that, it designated Gensokyo as an entirely separate dimension with laws that differ from our own; Time, gravity, and the laws of physics all act differently within Gensokyo. However, this extends far past the island-sized space of Gensokyo itself; The barrier in fact encompasses almost all of the notable locations in the series, extending past the Lunar Capital. This includes infinitely sized realms such as Hell, the Netherworld, Heaven, Makai, and Higan. Therefore, the barrier is infinite in size as well. Given the presence of a unique flow of time and an infinite spatial extent, Gensokyo, when including the Hakurei Barrier, is a 4-dimensional universe (or Universal+ in VSBW terms).
From here, a brief explanation of higher dimensions is needed. Imagine you, a 3-dimensional being, looking down upon a 2-dimensional object. From your perspective, the lack of a Z-axis would make a true 2D object infinitely small. Seeing a living being in this way would grant the illusion that they are not real, and are instead perceived as fictional entities. The same is true for how 4-dimensional entities see 3-dimensional entities, and so on. Essentially, you can think of dimensionality in two terms; The ability for a dimension to view another as infinitesimally small (eg; An infinite 5D space would view an infinite 4D space as infinitely small, due to the difference in dimensions), or the ability to view a lower dimension as nothing more than mere fiction, such as how we view comic book characters and so on.
With that out of the way, we can now discuss the relationship between Gensokyo and the Outside World. From the perspective of Outside World citizens, Gensokyo appears as though it is an infinitely small world; This is notable, as Gensokyo is infinite, while the Outside World is not, due to being smaller than a god with finite size (Amitabha). This is supported by how the world of Gensokyo is described as quantumly small on several occasions. But more consistent is the degree to which the Outside World views Gensokyo as fiction. In Strange Creators of Outer World, it is confirmed that Touhou exists as the Touhou series of games within the Outside World. That is to say, the Outside World views Touhou as we view it; Nothing more than levels in a game or pages in a manga. This is strongly supported throughout the series. For example, Akyuu canonically owns the soundtracks to the PC-98 games, which are stated to have come from the Outside World. Sumireko recognizes Marisa’s iconic outfit as a cosplay she’s seen in the Outside World, and immediately recognizes Reimu as the ‘protagonist’ of the series despite never meeting her prior and having no other information that would indicate this.
In conclusion, the Outside World fits the primary qualifications for being a higher-dimensional space; An infinite size difference above an infinite 4-dimensional space, and viewing that space as though it were fiction. Therefore, the Outside World is a 5-dimensional universe (Low Complex Multiverse Level).
Next is the nature of dreams and the Dream World. Dreams are not just mere dreams within the context of Touhou; Rather, they act as entire alternate realities, where one can go anywhere they wish. Numerous locations are confirmed to exist in dreams, such as Former Hell, the Netherworld, the Lunar Capital, and most importantly, the Outside World. From this, we can conclude that dreams are 5-dimensional as well, by virtue of containing a 5-dimensional space within themselves. The total number of dreams that exist is very likely infinite, as we know they exist in a self-recursive fashion; Dreams are realities that are ‘seen’ by dream souls (manifestations of one’s dream). Thus, from the perspective of dreams, there exist more dreams within that dream, with those dreams containing their own subset of dreams… so on and so forth, repeating infinitely. This is supported by one of Yuyuko’s spell cards, where she dreams of butterflies, yet said butterflies are dreams themselves; Literally dreaming of more dreams. This form of infinite recursion by itself would be Multiversal+, but with the aforementioned context of dreams scaling to 5D realms, this would be an infinite number of Low Complex Multiversal realities. And that leads us to the Dream World, where all dreams are stored. All dreams exist here, which means all locations within dreams exist as well. This would include the Outside World; As dreams are infinite in number, and the Dream World contains all of them, it would contain an infinite number of Outside Worlds. This means the Dream World sees a 5-dimensional universe as a mere infinitely small fraction of itself, making the Dream World 6-dimensional.
And that brings us to another facet of Touhou’s cosmology: Brane theory and string theory. Within Touhou, all worlds are confirmed to be brane worlds; Notably, these worlds are D-branes, as they follow the ‘weakness of gravity’ theory commonly explained through the existence of these branes. This by itself has no bearing on the standing of any individual world; Rather, all brane worlds exist embedded in an infinite, higher-dimensional structure known as the ‘bulk’. For example, our 4-dimensional universe exists as an infinitely small subset of the 5-dimensional bulk under this theory. The same should hold true for Touhou, so we can reasonably add another layer of dimensionality to its overall cosmology. Via being infinitely above the 6-dimensional Dream World, the bulk in Touhou’s cosmology is an infinite 7-dimensional structure (Complex Multiverse Level).
However, string theory is closely related to discussions regarding brane theory, particularly the topic of D-branes. Strings exist as incredibly small, 1-dimensional structures by themselves. However, in a cosmological structure with D-branes, the branes come into contact with the strings. This causes the strings to effectively ‘open’, making them comparable in size to higher dimensions. Touhou follows this by repeatedly mentioning the ‘theory of everything’, of which string theory is a part. Modern interpretations of this theory postulate that the multiverse possesses 10 or 11 dimensions, which is High Complex Multiversal under VSBW tiering standards (or just 10/11-dimensional attack potency).
There is one potential issue with the scaling presented above. As mentioned prior, the Outside World sees Touhou and the events that take place within it as pure fiction. Meanwhile, the Dream World contains all dreams, including those with recreations of the Outside World. One may be led to believe that this creates a contradiction, where both structures paradoxically transcend each other. However, the Dream World is notably excluded from the Outside World’s perception of Gensokyo; The ‘dream world’, from the perspective of the Outside World, is in fact Gensokyo itself and not the Dream World. Thus, the Dream World that transcends the Outside World exists outside of their perception, and is not included in the Outside World seeing other cosmological structures as fiction.
In conclusion, Touhou has extensive evidence of higher-dimensional structures, ranging from 5D, 6D, 7D, and 10/11D.
Yuffie vs Marisa - Summary:
Marisa:
“It ain't magic if it ain't flashy. Danmaku's all about firepower.”
Advantages:
Her spirit manipulation/absorption ensures that with every attack she lands, she’ll chip away at Yuffie’s soul, meaning that Yuffie will gradually weaken throughout the fight, and eventually have her soul completely destroyed with no way to restore it
Can restore her own spirit/energy by absorbing Yuffie’s soul with every attack she lands, as well as negating Yuffie's own projectiles
Massively faster than Yuffie at lower ends, being 22.5 Septillion x FTL, while Yuffie is at best 20.6 Trillion x FTL, at her higher ends it’s even worse, with Marisa capable of performing feats of Infinite speed, completely outclassing any of Yuffie’s measurable calcs.
Has significantly better battlefield control, via higher mobility on ground & especially air, better range, the ability to manipulate distance with PSCs, and oppressive firepower
Marisa’s AP and durability is much higher, being Low 2C (Universal+) at the absolute lowest, while Yuffie is 3B (Multi-Galaxy Level) at the very best
Resists almost all of Yuffie's fight ending haxx, as well as much of her less crucial haxx as well
The haxx of Yuffie’s that Marisa DOESN'T resist, she can modify the power to make non-lethal or significantly less potent to her, meaning she can effectively remove Yuffie's wincons as the fight goes on, such as gamifying Absolute Zero, Body Puppetry, or Size Reduction.
Danmaku, especially Impossible Danmaku, would be highly overwhelming for Yuffie
Not needing to follow spell card rules means her attacks are unrestricted & she can use impossible spell cards & danmaku patterns
Marisa’s soul regeneration would be able to protect her from any soul-based attacks
She has several ways to negate Yuffie's magic, from barriers, to transmuting her projectiles, becoming intangible or invulnerable, absorbing them, grazing them and turning them into water, and just retaliating with her own attacks
On top of regenerating her spirit through attacking, Marisa can heal herself with an ability card or player system card to undo any major damage Yuffie could do
Can resurrect herself from death several times, giving her several chances to finish the fight.
She can escape all of Yuffie’s Summons via traveling out of the Dimension of the summon with either Screen Border, Back Door, or the Occult Ball
Sheep You’ll Want To Count means that, even in the event that Yuffie somehow killed Marisa enough to run through all of her resurrections, the entire fight up to that point could be restarted and deemed as just a dream, giving Marisa a clean slate to restart the fight with prior knowledge of Yuffie’s abilities. Alternatively, she could just activate the ability whenever she wants for an instant restart and potentially execute a plan to instantly win the fight. She could also just choose to believe that this fight was nothing more than a dream that she won, and instantly skip ahead to Yuffie’s defeat.
Marisa can directly poison Yuffie’s soul with the PSC Spell Breaking Drug, something Yuffie would be unable to cure and would be heavily affected by.
Marisa’s Time Stop Ability card would be too potent for Yuffie’s time stop resistances to prevent her being affected, meaning she would be susceptible.
Marisa’s Perfect Possession would bypass Yuffie’s biological possession resistances, as her possession is derived explicitly through a spiritual & mental connection.
Could potentially replicate & improve much of Yuffie's magic & techniques for herself
If included, Ultramarine Elixir would guarantee Marisa the win
Has much better plushies
Iffy Elements:
Has frequently fought & defeated opponents with much of Yuffie's haxx, making her familiar with most of what Yuffie could pull out
While Body Puppetry could affect her, Yuffie is unlikely to properly capitalize on such an opportunity, and the limitations for the manipulation are quite strict, Marisa’s passive barriers could protect her from an attack, which would then break her free of the manipulation.
Doesn’t need her gear to cast her magic or fly, meaning if Yuffie manages to steal any of her equipment, at worst she’s just going to be slightly less effective. Even if she was to theoretically steal an Ability Card with dangerous effects, Marisa has so many it likely wouldn’t make a difference, and would be familiar with the cards and know how to work around them. But considering her massively higher speed, mobility, and reactions, having anything stolen at all would be unlikely.
While Yuffie can easily destroy Marisa’s barriers, she can just as easily regenerate them, ultimately making this point relatively moot.
Disadvantages:
Struggles with hand to hand combat, especially when compared to her magical ability
Should Marisa be afflicted with the Silence status and her Fortune not be high enough to cast spells anyways, it could completely shut down her magical capabilities, leaving her counterplay to fight with only her physical abilities, Ability Cards & Player System Cards, and just stall until the status effect wears off.
Absolute Zero could kill her, as while she can regenerate her spirit, her body isn’t as lucky, so long as she doesn’t gamify it.
Marisa’s typical magic is less versatile than Yuffie’s (though her Ability Cards can level things)
Could be affected by Size Reduction, but this would likely just make her a harder target to hit.
Somehow, against all odds, is completely susceptible to paralysis.
Cannot replicate Yuffie’s Limit Breaks
Her LoLK Sprite (and all the Hellspawn Kanmarisa it spawned)
Yuffie:
"You gotta do it then. You gotta live true to yourself"
Advantages:
Could completely shut down Marisa’s magical arsenal with the Silence status effect.
Could reduce damage much of Marisa's magic from her Fire resistant & Holy resistant materia, due to her magic largely using light & heat
If she wears Minerva’s Band, she could completely negate Marisa’s light, heat, and gravity based magic, which takes up most of her arsenal
Is superior in hand to hand combat
Large amounts of magic and summons gives high versatility, much higher than Marisa’s base ability set.
Her healing magic could keep her in the fight longer
Her Absolute Zero magic could kill Marisa
Could affect Marisa with Size Reduction and Paralysis if they’re un-gamified
DeBarrier and DeSpell allow her to destroy Marisa’s barriers
Can resurrect herself from death at least once
While her attack potency is lower, her lifting strength is massively higher.
Is arguably the best party member in FF7
Iffy Elements:
Her ultimate weapon, The Conformer, would amplify her attack power against Marisa, as due to Marisa’s higher AP & durability, it would cause Yuffie’s power to grow. While it wouldn’t match Marisa’s significantly higher AP or durability, it’d at least give Yuffie’s attacks a bit more kick.
Body puppetry should work against Marisa, but it's usages are limited and the manipulation is easily broken upon a single attack
Disadvantages:
Limited pool of MP means she could eventually run out of magic, though she can mitigate this with MP restorative items
Is significantly slower in measurable speed, and massively slower than her infinite speed feats
Marisa’s higher AP would take her out relatively quickly even with her resistances, and Marisa’s higher durability means she would likely never be able to land a killing blow
Is prone to make rash decisions and make mistakes when under pressure, something Marisa could easily incite. Marisa would also be unlikely to crack under pressure, meaning that in a battle of attrition, Yuffie would be more likely to crumble first, especially when she’s constantly being weakened by Marisa
She doesn’t resist Marisa’s layered soul manipulation/absorption, which means Marisa will chip away at Yuffie’s soul with every attack, meaning that Yuffie will gradually weaken throughout the fight, and eventually have her soul completely destroyed with no way to restore it, causing her loss
Even her specific wincon spells against Marisa could be removed as the fight goes on, if Marisa modifies them to be non-lethal. The chance of Yuffie being able to recognize what's wrong with her spells are low, and if anything it would cause her to crumble faster.
If she only reduces the damage from Marisa's magic, she's getting pelted by spells from someone much stronger than her, that would wear on her overtime. She’d be forced to equip her nullifying equipment very early on in the fight to survive for even a bit.
Summoning Leviathan would put her in a very bad place, as she'd make the battlefield an pool of healing & method of attack for Marisa
Has no answer to Sheep You Want To Count, as Marisa can ultimately just continuously retry the fight until she wins, or immediately take out Yuffie on the first fight restart after learning the best way to instantly shut her down, or just decide to believe she won the fight, instantly defeating Yuffie.
Has no answer to the Ultramarine Elixir, as soon as Marisa uses it, she’s lost
Verdict:
Yuffie vs Marisa, at least Yuffie’s original canon, doesn’t necessarily need a massively detailed verdict. Marisa should win against Yuffie pretty easily, as she holds the stat trinity by a massive margin even when lowballed significantly, Universal + AP and Durability against someone who’s Multi Galaxy at best is a bad look. She also has complete battlefield control via high mobility on the ground and the air, as well as the ability to manipulate the space of the battlefield to constantly keep herself at an advantageous position. Her soul manipulation/absorption also guarantees an eventual win, slowly draining Yuffie of her stamina, energy, magic, and power as the match goes on until her soul is completely destroyed, as well as affecting her mind and emotions, which could cause Yuffie to crumple under the pressure even faster, and possibly even completely nullify her powers after enough time. Marisa also has methods to negate most of Yuffie’s arsenal, through transmutation, absorption, or barriers, and her higher speed means that she could evade most of Yuffie’s other options. While Yuffie does have methods that could kill Marisa, they would require her to be able to handle the pressure and plan accordingly to even land the attack in the first place, something very unlikely as the fight goes on. While she also has equipment that could negate much of Marisa’s arsenal, she’d need to equip it first in order to negate anything, meaning Marisa would have ample opportunity to shut her down while she’s open due to her significantly higher stats and soul manip/absorption, and even if Yuffie manages to negate most of Marisa’s options, Marisa’s massively higher stat trinity and wall of resistances would still net her a win regardless. Should Marisa utilize the Ultramarine Orb Elixir, she guarantees herself a victory as well. Marisa just has everything she needs to handle Yuffie.
What About Dissidia?:
Since Marisa can defeat main canon Yuffie pretty handily, I wanted to see how she’d stack up to Dissidia Yuffie, who not only has every feat and piece of equipment from og FF7 and to her name, but is also generally a massively more powerful character, with significantly better stats, much better haxx, and more benefits in her court, and see if Marisa can still stack up to her. Below I’ll cover the major stat buffs and abilities she gains, and then do another comparison to see if Marisa can handle Dissidia Yuffie.
Dissidia Yuffie’s Feats & Stats:
(Her Opera Omnia key art is so scrunkly)
“GONE IN A SECOND, ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION”
I will be making no distinctions between scaling and direct feats here, as there is less to work with, and frankly 95% of what Dissidia introduces is scaling. Yuffie doesn’t gain an incredible amount of feats off of Dissidia, but what she does gain is staggering.
ANY AND ALL FEATS ORIGINAL YUFFIE IS CAPABLE OF, DISSIDIA YUFFIE SCALES TO AS WELL
Attack Potency:
-Assisted in the defeat of Shinryu, one of the strongest entities in the FF Multiverse:
Shinryu, after evolving to its form Shinryu Verus, was comparable in strength to Feral Chaos. Feral Chaos is significantly stronger than his alternate self, Chaos, who was so superior to all Warriors of the Cosmos that they needed the power of the crystals to defeat him. (Multiverse Level+, 2A)
Shinryu Verus would eventually consume the Crystal Core of Darkness, obtaining its power. This core was stated to be superior to the Void, and would have been used by Ardyn to destroy the entire FF Multiverse. (Multiverse Level+, 2A)
-Magic is capable of reaching across the Void/Interdimensional Rift, a realm that spans the entirety of the Final Fantasy Multiverse. According to one of the novels for FF4, normal magic is capable of messing with space and time to the point the past, present and future converge into one. Performing these feats would require magic that can affect a higher level of dimensionality. (Multiverse Level+, 4D) [Scans for FF4 Novel: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.]
Speed:
-Is comparable to other Warriors of Materia and keep pace with Shinryu, who all match or upscale from warriors such as Gilgamesh, who can consistently keep up with others who travel at these speeds. (6.31 trillion x FTL)
Dissidia Yuffie’s Abilities & Advantages
ALL PREVIOUS ABILITIES THAT ORIGINAL CANON YUFFIE HAD ACCESS TO, DISSIDIA YUFFIE DOES AS WELL.
Dimensional Travel - Can open Torsions, rifts in time and space that can travel to alternate dimensions.
Summoning - Yuffie can summon various Eidolons from Summonstones and the World of Illusions to aid her in battle.
Immortality (Type 2) - Due to the crystal core of darkness’ influence on Ardyn, Warriors are incapable of death no matter how injured they are.
Immortality (Type 8) & Regeneration (Low-Godly) - Yuffie’s immortality is also reliant on her crystal, as long as it exists, she can be brought back to life, as several characters have survived fading from existence due to their crystals still existing. It should be noted however, that while Yuffie’s crystal is never seen in Dissidia, it SHOULD still exist, for the sake of this fight, Yuffie will have her crystal on her person to allow her access to this ability.
Willpower Manipulation - Within the world of Dissidia, a person’s will is their power, and allows them to do a multitude of things if their will is strong enough. This gives Yuffie access to abilities such as:
Reactive Power Level - The greater someone’s will, the greater their power becomes, allowing Yuffie’s power to grow the stronger her willpower grows.
Law Manipulation - Beings with strong wills have the ability to overwrite the laws of the world, bending them to their whims.This largely extends to feats of creation, however, there’s been no offensive uses utilized so far.
Creation - If one’s will is strong enough, one can create a variety of things, from simple structures such as aircrafts, to entire countries and worlds.
Sealing - With enough willpower, one could seal away large areas and people, major examples being Cecil sealing himself within Castle Baron, or the main cast sealing Kefka away inside of a Torsion.
Soul Manipulation & Absorption - With her Eidolon, Zalera, the Death Seraph, which was going to absorb the souls of every living thing on the planet.
Spatial Manipulation, Deconstruction, and BFR - With her Eidolon, Atomos, who can manipulate space, crush enemies down to a molecular level, and warp them to another dimension.
Death Manipulation and Space-Time Manipulation - With her Eidolon, Odin, who's Zantetsuken instantly kills an enemy and then opens a rift in space time to take their remains
Matter Manipulation and Radiation Manipulation - via Megaflare, an attack made of radioactive power.
Poison Manipulation and Corrosion Inducement - Via the Poison status effect, which is so potent that it corrodes the target.
Ice Manipulation, Absolute Zero Cold, and Duplication - With her Eidolon, Shiva, who’s ice attacks, and even her aura operate at absolute zero cold, including her attacks such as Diamond Dust. Her Dissidia incarnation can also duplicate herself.
Darkness Manipulation and Perception Manipulation - Via the Darkness status effect available through various equipment types, which would render the target blind.
Power Nullification & Petrification - With her Eidolon, Malboro, with its Bad Breath ability, which can induce the Silence and Petrification status effects.
Healing - With her Eidolons, Sylph and Asura.
Light Manipulation & Holy Manipulation - With her Eidolon, Alexander.
Attack Reflection - With her Eidolon, Carbuncle.
Earth Manipulation - With her Eidolon, Titan.
Hellfire Manipulation - With her Eidolons, Ifrit, Phoenix, Rubicante, and Marilith.
Water Manipulation - With her Eidolons, Kraken, Cagnazzo, and Leviathan
Dissidia Yuffie’s Resistances, and Marisa’s Resistances/Lack Thereof:
Yuffie’s Resistances:
Resistance to Mind Manipulation, and Soul Manipulation - Via Zalera, the Death Serpah, who was going to absorb the souls of every living being on the planet.
Gravity Manipulation - Was unaffected by the gravitational pull of the True Moon, meaning she could resist the pull of Marisa’s gravity based attacks.
Empathic Manipulation, and Madness Manipulation (Type 3) - Yuffie was resistant to the effects of the True Moon, which is capable of affecting the hearts and minds of every living being on the planet.
Spatial Manipulation, Deconstruction, and BFR - Yuffie can resist the attacks of Atomos, who, as stated above, can manipulate space, crush enemies down to a molecular level, and warp them to another dimension.
Extreme Cold and Cosmic Radiations - Yuffie can fight freely unrestricted on the moon.
Absolute Zero Cold & Ice - Yuffie can survive the attacks of Shiva, which as stated earlier, operate at absolute zero cold.
Corruption & Body Puppetry - Due to their light, warriors can dispel attempts to control them through such means.
Marisa’s Resistances/Counters:
Willpower Manipulation, Reactive Power Level - Marisa’s spirit manipulation would allow her to directly affect Yuffie’s mind, slowly deteriorating her mind as the fight goes on. This would cause Yuffie’s willpower to waver, directly affecting her ability to use her willpower related abilities. Combine that with her noted weakness of crumbling under pressure, and Marisa’s spirit manip could potentially shut down Yuffie’s most dangerous new options quite quickly.
Sealing - Marisa could potentially escape any potential seals by using Screen Border or The Occult Ball to travel dimensions. If she’s unable to dimension hop where she was sealed to, she’d be forced to use Sheep You Want To Count to restart the battle.
Water Manipulation - For the same reasons listed earlier in the blog, it would only benefit Marisa and serve to heal her and give her more methods of attack.
Petrification - The reasoning for this has not changed, Marisa has survived several locations that should transmute or petrify her just by existing with no issue.
Perception Manip & Darkness Manip (?) - Marisa may resist this for the same reasons she resisted blindness earlier in the blog. She was able to bear witness to Okuu, who was capable of blinding anyone simply by looking at her.
Corrosion Inducement - While Marisa can resist poison manipulation, she has no resistances to her body literally corroding. If left unchecked, this could likely kill her, prompting a resurrection or reset.
Deconstruction - Marisa seems to have no resistance to literally being molecularly deconstructed, meaning her only options if faced with Atomos would be to escape the Dimension it’s summoned in, or kill it before it could kill her.
Absolute Zero Cold - Same reasoning as earlier in the blog, Absolute Zero could absolutely kill Marisa, however she still has the counterplay option of “gamifying” the Absolute Zero to prevent it from outright killing her, or could just escape the situation altogether.
Law Manipulation - While she can’t resist law manipulation, it ultimately seems to pose minimal threat in this fight, as she’s only ever shown feats of creation with law manipulation.
Silence, Power Nullification, Size Modification, Paralysis Inducement, and Body Puppetry all still affect Marisa as mentioned before.
Dissidia Yuffie vs Marisa - Final Breakdown:
How has Dissidia Yuffie’s new stats and abilities changed the matchup? Well…
Marisa:
(From Memories of Phantasm)
Advantages:
Is still significantly stronger and more durable than Yuffie, potentially to massively higher degrees of dimensionality (H1C Complex Multiversal at best, 10-11D vs Yuffie’s 2A Multiversal+, 4D at best)
Is still massively faster than Yuffie, as she received no speed upgrade from Dissida, with her lower ends, being 22.5 Septillion x FTL, while Yuffie is at best 20.6 Trillion x FTL, at her higher ends it’s even worse, with Marisa capable of performing feats of Infinite speed, completely outclassing any of Yuffie’s measurable calcs.
Her spirit manipulation/absorption ensures that with every attack she lands, she’ll chip away at Yuffie’s soul, meaning that Yuffie will gradually weaken throughout the fight, and eventually have her soul completely destroyed with no way to restore it
Can restore her own spirit/energy by absorbing Yuffie’s soul with every attack she lands, as well as negating Yuffie's own projectiles
Has significantly better battlefield control, via higher mobility on ground & especially air, better range, the ability to manipulate distance with PSCs, and oppressive firepower
She could counter Yuffie’s willpower manipulation via her soul manip gradually degrading Yuffie’s mind, ensuring that she’ll never be able to utilize the amps high willpower could give her, as her will would constantly be damaged the entire fight
Resists a massive amount of Yuffie’s haxx, especially most of her immediate match winning haxx
The haxx of Yuffie’s that Marisa DOESN'T resist, she can modify the power to make non-lethal or significantly less potent to her, meaning she can effectively remove Yuffie's wincons as the fight goes on, such as gamifying Absolute Zero, Body Puppetry, or Size Reduction.
Danmaku, especially Impossible Danmaku, would be highly overwhelming for Yuffie
Not needing to follow spell card rules means her attacks are unrestricted & she can use impossible spell cards & danmaku patterns, giving Yuffie little to no opportunity to dodge.
Marisa’s soul regeneration would be able to protect her from any soul-based attacks
She has several ways to negate Yuffie's magic, from barriers, to transmuting her projectiles, becoming intangible or invulnerable, absorbing them, grazing them and turning them into water, and just retaliating with her own attacks
On top of regenerating her spirit through attacking, Marisa can heal herself with an ability card or player system card to undo any major damage Yuffie could do
She could escape being sealed away in Torisons with either her Occult Orb, or teleporting using the Screen Border Ability Card, this also goes for any of Yuffie’s summons or BFR attempts, they wouldn’t keep Marisa away..
Has several revives to allow her multiple chances, meaning that even if Yuffie can get off one of her wincons once, it doesn’t guarantee her a kill.
Sheep You’d Want To Count could either allow Marisa infinite retries of the fight should she ever be losing, simply by believing the fight up to this point to be a dream, she could also elect to just instantly win the fight by believing everything up to this point having been a dream, an incredibly powerful tool Yuffie has no counter to.
Could potentially replicate & improve much of Yuffie's magic & techniques for herself
Marisa can directly poison Yuffie’s soul with the PSC Spell Breaking Drug, something Yuffie would be unable to cure and would be heavily affected by.
Marisa’s Time Stop Ability card would be too potent for Yuffie’s time stop resistances to prevent her being affected, meaning she would be susceptible, not even her Dissidia scaling would save her.
Marisa’s Perfect Possession would bypass Yuffie’s biological possession resistances, as her possession is derived explicitly through a spiritual & mental connection.
Any of Yuffie’s water based Summons or Eidolon’s would only fuck her over in the end, as it would just provide Marisa significant amounts of healing and full charges on her Water Spark.
Dissidia Yuffie, even with her immortality negations, would not be able to work around the deathless immortality Marisa would gain from the Ultramarine Orb Elixir, and would lose the instant Marisa choses to use it.
The official Hori ULiL Marisa Kirisame Fightstick (can someone please buy me this)
Iffy Elements:
Has frequently fought & defeated opponents with much of Yuffie's haxx, making her familiar with most of what Yuffie could pull out
While Body Puppetry could affect her, Yuffie is unlikely to properly capitalize on such an opportunity, and the limitations for the manipulation are quite strict, Marisa’s passive barriers could protect her from an attack, which would then break her free of the manipulation.
Doesn’t need her gear to cast her magic or fly, meaning if Yuffie manages to steal any of her equipment, at worst she’s just going to be slightly less effective. Even if she was to theoretically steal an Ability Card with dangerous effects, Marisa has so many it likely wouldn’t make a difference, and would be familiar with the cards and know how to work around them. But considering her massively higher speed, mobility, and reactions, having anything stolen at all would be unlikely.
While Yuffie can easily destroy Marisa’s barriers, she can just as easily regenerate them, ultimately making this point relatively moot.
Marisa’s massively superior stats means Yuffie may be unable to sense her to learn her stats and weaknesses.
While likely not as effective as Yuffie’s higher grade summons, Marisa can summon The Great Catfish with a Player System Card, which could serve as a distraction or occupy the attention of a summon of Yuffie’s while Marisa continues to target Yuffie.
While Yuffie could definitely get a numbers advantage off of summoning multiple summons at once, Marisa is familiar with fighting several opponents at once, having taken on multiple duo fighters at once and frequently battling large swathes of enemies when solving incidents.
Disadvantages:
Struggles with hand to hand combat, especially when compared to her magical ability
Should Marisa be afflicted with the Silence status and her Fortune not be high enough to cast spells anyways, it could completely shut down Marisa’s magical arsenal as long as she’s afflicted with it, leaving her counterplay to fight with only her physical abilities, Ability Cards & Player System Cards, and just stall until the status effect wears off.
Her gravity based spell cards and magic would no longer have an effect on Yuffie without equipment resisting such magic, as Yuffie gained a resistance to gravity manipulation in Dissidia.
Absolute Zero could still kill Marisa outright, and Shiva is even more threatening now as Dissidia Shiva can duplicate herself, meaning Marisa could have to deal with at least 3 opponents with access to absolute zero at once
If she doesn’t escape or kill Atomos quickly, its Deconstruction could definitely kill her.
If she doesn’t heal herself immediately, the Corrosion inducement from Yuffie’s poison would absolutely kill Marisa overtime, and considering Marisa’s resistance to poisons, she may not even notice she’s in danger until her body has already begun corroding. It's unlikely there’d be a way to “gamify” the corrosion either.
Marisa’s typical magic is less versatile than Yuffie’s (though her Ability Cards can level things)
Would be affected by size reduction, although this would likely just make her a harder target to hit
Somehow, against all odds, is completely susceptible to paralysis.
Cannot replicate Yuffie’s Limit Breaks
Touhou Lost Word
Yuffie:
Advantages:
Could completely shut down Marisa’s magical arsenal with the Silence status effect, so long as Marisa doesn’t have enough Fortune to cast spells regardless.
Could reduce damage much of Marisa's magic from her Fire resistant & Holy resistant materia, due to her magic largely using light & heat
If she wears Minerva’s Band, she could completely negate Marisa’s light, heat, and gravity based magic, which takes up most of her arsenal
Is superior in hand to hand combat
Large amounts of magic and summons gives her high versatility, much higher than Marisa’s base ability set.
Her healing magic could keep her in the fight longer
Her Absolute Zero magic could kill Marisa
Could affect Marisa with Size Reduction and Paralysis if they’re un-gamified
DeBarrier and DeSpell allow her to destroy Marisa’s barriers
Can resurrect herself from death should her body be completely destroyed, so long as her crystal is still intact.
While her attack potency is lower, her lifting strength is massively higher.
Iffy Elements:
Her ultimate weapon, The Conformer, would amplify her attack power against Marisa, as due to Marisa’s higher AP & durability, it would cause Yuffie’s power to grow. While it wouldn’t match Marisa’s significantly higher AP or durability, it’d at least give Yuffie’s attacks a bit more kick.
Body puppetry should work against Marisa, but it's usages are limited and the manipulation is easily broken upon a single attack
Disadvantages:
Limited pool of MP means she could eventually run out of magic, though she can mitigate this with MP restorative items
Is significantly slower in measurable speed, and massively slower than her infinite speed feats
Marisa’s higher AP would take her out relatively quickly even with her resistances, and Marisa’s higher durability means she would likely never be able to land a killing blow
Is prone to make rash decisions and make mistakes when under pressure, something Marisa could easily incite. Marisa would also be unlikely to crack under pressure, meaning that in a battle of attrition, Yuffie would be more likely to crumble first, especially when she’s constantly being weakened by Marisa
She doesn’t resist Marisa’s layered soul manipulation/absorption, which means Marisa will chip away at Yuffie’s soul with every attack, meaning that Yuffie will gradually weaken throughout the fight, and eventually have her soul completely destroyed with no way to restore it, causing her loss
Many of her specific wincon spells against Marisa could be removed as the fight goes on, if Marisa modifies them to be non-lethal. The chance of Yuffie being able to recognize what's wrong with her spells are low, and if anything, noticing her spells becoming less effective overtime would cause her to crumble faster.
If she only reduces the damage from Marisa's magic, she's getting pelted by spells from someone much stronger than her, that would wear on her overtime. She’d be forced to equip her nullifying equipment very early on in the fight to survive for even a bit.
Summoning Leviathan or any of her Water based Eidolons would put her in a very bad place, as she'd make the battlefield an pool of healing & method of attack for Marisa
Has no answer to Sheep You Want To Count, as Marisa can ultimately just continuously retry the fight until she wins, or immediately take out Yuffie on the first fight restart after learning the best way to instantly shut her down, or just decide to believe she won the fight, instantly defeating Yuffie.
If her crystal is destroyed, she cannot be resurrected, spelling her end.
Has no answer to the Ultramarine Elixir, as soon as Marisa uses it, she’s lost
Is technically an optional party member
Verdict:
Now Dissidia Yuffie vs Marisa is generally a lot more complicated with much more going into it compared to Original Canon Yuffie, and thus, will require a much more complicated breakdown.
Stats:
Statistically, Marisa still holds the advantage even over Dissidia Yuffie. Strength and durability wise, while it’s no longer a complete blowout even at Marisa’s lowest, with Yuffie’s best outdoing Marisa’s minimum lowball of Universal +, even Yuffie’s highest end Multiversal+ attack potency and her 4D magic just simply isn’t enough to overcome the upper limits of Marisa’s strength, which is able to hurt and affect opponents on significantly higher levels of dimensionality, 5D at minimum and up to 10/11D at her highest ends. No matter how you slice it, Marisa is just going to be hitting Yuffie a lot harder than she would be hitting her, even with any potential buffs or statistical modifications she could use, and even with any potential ways of debuffing or mitigating Marisa’s attack power. This massive statistical advantage over Yuffie would also likely make her unable to use the Sense skill to learn any potential weaknesses Marisa might have, making things worse for Yuffie.
That only covers two corners of the stat triangle however, and to move onto speed, Marisa also has this ball firmly in her court. Dissidia unfortunately doesn’t bring any notable new speed scaling to Yuffie, meaning that her best feats of speed would mean she could react and fight at speeds over 20.6 Trillion times faster than light, that absolutely, completely pales in comparison to Marisa’s lower ends of 22.5 Septillion times FTL, that number gap is absolutely massive and something Yuffie would always struggle against. At absolute minimum, Marisa is over 1 QUINTILLION times faster than Yuffie, and just as a reminder, that’s Marisa’s absolute lowest ends, as she has plenty of non-measurable feats, with a large amount of infinite speed feats, and even an immeasurable reaction speed feat.
Frankly, Marisa is either outpacing Yuffie at a rate of over 1 quintillion times her best speed, or perceiving Yuffie as so slow that she appears frozen in time. Add onto this with Marisa’s higher maneuverability, air control, and battlefield control, and Yuffie would have a hard time not only keeping up with Marisa, but even reacting to her in the first place, if she wasn’t getting blitzed, she’d essentially be forced to play defensively and always be playing catchup against Marisa, a character you ultimately, do not want to be playing catchup against due to her wide variety of oppressive attacks and abilities. Add on the staggering strength gap and things are already looking rough for Yuffie.
Arsenal & Abilities:
This is where the brunt of the argument and most of the debate with this battle comes to, both of these characters are fucking haxxlords, and even with Marisa’s staggering AP and durability gap, haxx could still even the playing field or tip it in Yuffie’s favor. Both of these characters have an abundance of haxx, and ultimately resist at least 90% of one another’s arsenals, as mentioned in Marisa’s Haxx Resistances, Yuffie’s Haxx Resistances, and Dissidia Yuffie’s Resistances, these two resist an absurd amount of abilities that they could throw at one another, so it’d frankly be best to only go over their absolute most important resistances, and then go over what one another DON’T resist, and any potential counterplay they have to these options, as if we were to go over every little ability they have and resist in full detail again, we’d be here all day.
To start off, Yuffie’s equipment and armor give her a massive leg up on Marisa, she has at least one piece of equipment that can negate a major type of elemental magic from Marisa, and with equipment such as the Minerva’s Band, she can completely negate Marisa’s main forms of magic, in light, heat, fire, and gravity (note that Dissidia Yuffie already has a resistance against gravitational pulls). Even if the Minerva’s Band were to be stolen mid fight, she still has several other pieces of equipment that could negate, or at the very least, massively reduce Marisa’s magical attacks in damage output. While she would have to know how to equip this gear in the first place, the fact she has this gear at all is a massive boon in her favor. The ribbon she keeps tied to her arm would also protect her from most status effects Marisa could induce upon her, and also protect her from Marisa reflecting her own attacks back at her.
In terms of abilities of Yuffie’s that Marisa doesn’t resist, there’s actually a handful of them. Yuffie has plenty of ways to utilize Absolute Zero magic, either by modifying her own attacks to have AZ effects, or summoning Shiva, who has multiple attacks utilizing attacks of AZ temperatures. Considering this would freeze Marisa on an atomic level, it would bypass any cold resistances she may have and destroy her physical form. However, this isn’t as big a game changer as it may seem, Marisa’s massively higher speed and maneuverability means she’d easily be able to maneuver away from any attack aimed at her, and once she realizes the threat of absolute zero, should could potentially try gamifying any attacks utilizing it, to make the cold non-lethal to her.
Dissidia Yuffie also brings two new kill methods to the table, that being Deconstruction via her summon Atomos, which by all means, if Marisa couldn’t kill Atomos in time or didn’t elect to escape the realm he’s summoned in, and were to be hit with deconstruction, her physical body would not survive it's effects, and she would be killed. Poison within Dissidia is also much more potent, as it results in corrosion being induced. While Marisa would resist the effects of the poison, the inevitable corrosion would result in her physical body… corroding, something she simply wouldn’t survive. And due to her pre-existing poison resistances, she may end up not paying enough attention to the effects of the poison until it’s too late and she’s already beginning to corrode, resulting in a death.
Yuffie also has a handful of status effects that Marisa would be affected by, size manipulation should affect her with little issue, but ultimately would just be more of an issue for Yuffie, as it would result in turning Marisa into the equivalent of a fly with the ability to shoot lasers for a brief time period, making her a much harder target to hit. Paralysis Inducement absolutely could affect Marisa, but her only method of inducing paralysis is through a random chance through her summon Hades, making landing on Marisa at all an unlikely possibility. While body puppetry should be able to affect Marisa, Yuffie being able to properly utilize it with the restrictions of the skill itself are low, as any attack that isn’t guaranteed to be fatal such as AZ or deconstruction, would be unlikely to kill her, or has potential to be blocked by her barriers and end the puppetry. Speaking of barriers, while Yuffie can definitely easily shatter Marisa’s barriers through the DeBarrier or DeSpell spells, Marisa can just as easily regenerate the barriers after the fact, meaning that Yuffie would have to constantly waste time casting this spell to have any meaningful effect.
One undeniably major ball in Yuffie’s court however, would be the effects of Silence Inducement. Yuffie has several different ways of inducing this effect, either through spells, skills, commands and summons, and if any of them were to connect with Marisa, there’d be a chance she could be afflicted with the Silence status effect. This would effectively completely restrict her magical abilities, a major blow to Marisa considering what her arsenal consists of. This would force her to restrict herself to only her physical attacks, the items she carries on hand such as her bombs and mushrooms, and utilizing Ability Cards and Player System cards until the effects of Silence wear off. While definitely not optionless and she could totally stall out its effects, Silence would be a major blow against her….. If it wasn’t for one major thing. Fortune. Fortune allows for magic to be cast, even if all the major components of casting a magic spell in the first place are missing, meaning that so long as Marisa’s fortune is high enough, she could still cast off spells regardless of her silenced status. While this is a band aid solution, and could fail her should her fortune be in low supply at any point during this fight, but even Yuffie’s biggest factor she has a workaround for.
Moving onto Yuffie’s case now, Marisa also has a handful of haxx that Yuffie doesn’t resist, however, unlike Marisa, has little counterplay towards. Starting small, Yuffie has no way to bypass Marisa’s mid-godly soul regeneration. Yuffie has no method of killing Marisa spiritually or killing her through any form of soul manipulation or attack. Marisa’s soul will simply regenerate from it due to her spirit manipulation. However, Yuffie has a simple workaround to this, in that she just has to kill Marisa physically, not spiritually to win the fight.
While Yuffie has a resistance to poison manipulation, time stops, and possession on their own, Marisa’s iterations of these abilities are… unique. Yuffie has shown an ability to resist or outright negate poisons through her gear, but that gear has never protected her from being poisoned on a spiritual level, which Marisa can do through her PSC Spell Breaking Drug. Simply put, Yuffie would be afflicted with a spiritual poisoning that she has no way to restore that would heavily damage her overtime. Once again, while Yuffie DOES have a resistance to timestops through her various equipment, Marisa’s time stop is a direct copy of Sakuya Izayoi’s, who’s time-stop is so potent that it can affect and freeze characters that can exist in realms with stopped time regardless, meaning even Yuffie’s base resistance would be bypassed. Yuffie has also shown a resistance to biological possession, being unaffected by Sephiroth’s manipulation of Jenova Cells, however, Marisa’s Perfect Possession possesses her target by connecting the two spiritually and mentally, before assuming control of them, a method of possession Yuffie has simply shown no resistance towards.
The most damning thing for Yuffie, and this matchup as a whole however, would be Marisa’s spirit manipulation. Putting it frankly, Yuffie not being able to resist spirit manipulation as potent as Marisa’s is a death sentence. While she can resist basic soul manipulation abilities, Marisa’s spirit manip is simply on another level, able to affect characters with several layers of resistance to soul manipulation such as Reimu Hakurei or Mononobe no Futo. Even the most basic fodder characters in Touhou have strong resistances to spirit manipulation, levels of resistance Yuffie simply doesn’t have, meaning that all the effects Marisa could induce through spirit manipulation would be at full capacity.
This means that with every hit Marisa lands on Yuffie, whether she blocks it or not, Yuffie’s spirit will be gradually reduced and weakened, resulting in her attacks and power weakening, her stamina reducing, her guard being crushed, and even her own magical abilities being nullified, and eventually resulting in the complete and utter destruction of her soul. Since Yuffie doesn’t have any method of regenerating her soul, if she were to have her spirit completely reduced by Marisa, it would spell a definitive loss for her. That’s not even all the effects spirit manip can have either! The effect of Yuffie’s spirit being depleted overtime would result in a gradual effect on her emotions and mind as well, effectively deteriorating her mind as the battle goes on, creating a perfect counter for Yuffie’s willpower related abilities from Dissidia, her reactive power level, sealing, creation, and law manipulation can only be performed with high levels of willpower, and if her mind and emotions are constantly deteriorating, she’ll never be able to achieve the levels of willpower needed to perform these abilities.
This isn’t even mentioning the fact that Marisa only benefits from every hit she lands with spirit manipulation as well, as the spirit she’s gradually reducing off of Yuffie with every single hit, Marisa is absorbing into her own spirit, meaning as the battle goes, Marisa will only be replenishing her own spirit, or outright increasing her spirit, restoring her own stamina and power as the fight goes on. As the battle progresses, Yuffie will only grow weaker and weaker, while Marisa will constantly be replenishing herself, constantly staying ahead of Yuffie.
While that may seem damning enough on its own, Marisa has even more in her favor. Her wide variety of ability cards nets her several resurrections, ranging from at LEAST 4-8 minimum, potentially far more. Meaning that even should Yuffie manage the miraculous and get off a wincon on Marisa, she’ll just be back and at full power all over again, and she can do so several times. Should she somehow be low enough on revivals that she’s in danger of losing, just apply a use of Sheep You’d Want To Count’s subjective reality to restart the fight completely, and approach with a new battle plan, or just outright believe herself to have won the fight and… win it.
On top of that, Marisa just has several other benefits in her favor, she has innumerable ways to counter Yuffie’s attacks besides just dodging them, she can transmute them in several ways, either turning them to gold to net herself more potential revives with the Best Lawyer in Hell ability card, grazing them and turning them to water to absorb for self heals or a powerful water spark, turn the projectiles into absorbable spirit by hitting Yuffie, using her Magic Absorber spell to transmute projectiles into magical energy, and hell, even her being HIT sets off a spiritual strike that would transmute anything in her range into more money, thanks to the Life Explosion Elixir Ability Card. She could use her various barriers to block Yuffie’s attacks outright, or just negate her attacks with her own.
Marisa doesn’t have to fight fair either, within Touhou, she’s bound by spell card rules and forced to use fair, dodgeable danmaku patterns. Outside of a SCR enforced battle? There are no such restrictions, meaning Marisa could spam completely undodgeable torrents of danmaku upon Yuffie, each attack another method to slowly sap and drain away her spirit until it's inevitable destruction, slowly deteriorating her mind and emotions in the process, overwhelming Yuffie, exploiting her own mental weaknesses to crack under pressure in the process.
On top of this, Marisa just has superior battlefield control, she’s significantly faster, has superior air mobility, is more mobile in general, and can control the very distance of the two fighters with the Yesterday’s Money PSC, allowing her to manipulate the distance between her and Yuffie at all points, ensuring that she can always maintain the position that’s more advantageous to her.
What about Yuffie’s immortality? Or her crystal? Does that make any difference, with it she’s functionally immortal, and could be brought back to life from her physical form being completely erased? Well, no, not quite. Yuffie’s immortality is only reliant immortality, which just allows her to survive fatal injuries that would kill any regular person regardless, meaning that if her physical form were to be completely obliterated, or her soul were to be destroyed she would still die just like anyone else. Her crystal meanwhile is more interesting, as it allows for her to come back to life from her body being completely erased! Against Marisa though, this wouldn’t cut it, ignoring the fact that if Yuffie were to be killed through spirit manipulation, it's unlikely the crystal would be able to bring her back, as it's only ever revived people who were killed physically, nothing is stopping Marisa from just, destroying Yuffie’s crystal, preventing her resurrection. Honestly, with how destructive her firepower is, it’s likely she’d end up inadvertently destroying the crystal during the battle in the first place, and once she figures out the crystal is what Yuffie is regenerating from, she’d prioritize its destruction.
Mentality - Believe it or not, Marisa’s mentality actually gives her a good advantage in this fight. A notable weakness of Yuffie’s is that she can crumble under pressure, often making rash actions and poor decisions when her back is pressed against a wall. Marisa on the other hand, doesn’t have this same notable problem, and will force her way through every problem until she makes her solution. She can fight solo against several other opponents for long periods of time back to back, can deal with incredibly powerful foes who’d put strong pressure on her, and there’s no history of her crumbling under pressure in a similar way as Yuffie. In a battle of pure attrition, which this could likely become, Marisa would hold the advantage of being able to hold on longer against Yuffie, who would start to perform worse and worse as the battle goes on.
Thievery - Marisa and Yuffie are both noted for thievery, meaning that, theoretically, they could both steal each other’s weapons or gear. Marisa’s higher speed, mobility, better reactions, and battlefield control would make Yuffie stealing any of her gear less likely than the Marisa stealing Yuffie’s, but if Yuffie were to snick any of Marisa’s major items such as her Mini-Hakkero, it actually wouldn’t make a major difference on Marisa’s end. Marisa has fought without using her Hakkero on a couple of occasions, such as one of her routes in DDC, where it was cursed, and she decided to just leave it at home. She was still able to use her magical abilities regardless, and in the fighting games such as Soku, Marisa is able to cast her magic, including some of her most powerful spells such as her various Master Sparks without using her Hakkero. Yuffie stealing her broom would at worst make a few of her attacks less viable or have a bit less kick, but Marisa is still perfectly capable of flight without it, as seen in the grounded fighting games, and even using some of her broom-based spellcards without one, as seen in her fight with Cirno in Great Fairy Wars, meaning that she wouldn’t receive any major mobility losses either. Yuffie on the other hand, would be significantly more handicapped if Marisa stole any of her equipment, losing major resistances in the process. If Marisa stole, say, her Minerva's Band, Yuffie would lose her ability to negate all of Marisa’s major types of magic, or if she ripped Aerith's Ribbon off her arm, she would now be quite susceptible to Status Ailments without the proper equipment, and would be forced to utilize other equipment. While Yuffie stealing an ability card could be potentially pose a problem if Yuffie steals a card with an important ability, this wouldn't benefit Yuffie at all, seeing as one cannot use an ability card if it is not gained through fair trade, and stealing, isn't fair trade, meaning she wouldn't be able to use Marisa's ability cards against her. This is again, even assuming Yuffie would have the chance to steal something off of Marisa in the first place.
Tldr, Marisa would be largely unaffected by Yuffie’s thievery, but Yuffie would be affected by Marisa’s
Ultramarine Orb Elixir - There’s no real way to beat around this bush, if Marisa used the UMOE at any point in the fight, Yuffie’s lost it. The elixir removes the user's impurity of death and allows them to see the immediate future by experiencing it, and then reversing time. This gives Marisa precognition and type 5 immortality, meaning even if Marisa were to be killed by Yuffie, not only would she resurrect, time would simply rewind, Marisa would remember everything that occurred, and would be able to try again with that in mind, and would be able to act accordingly. While Yuffie can negate immortality, she cannot negate Deathless Immortality specifically as Marisa would become unbound to the conventions of life and death. Yuffie would require an attack such as existence erasure to finish her off at that point, which is something she doesn’t have access to.
Conclusion:
This matchup is literally the equivalent of two players joining an online lobby, initiating PVP, both snickering to themselves, thinking the other player won't know they’re a hacker, only to find out once they start fighting each other that they're actually both hackers. A completely insane and batshit matchup on all fronts that, during the research of this blog, resulted in me and Fujiwara bouncing back and forth on who actually took this.
But upon reaching the end of my research and accumulating both character’s highest ends and all of their abilities, and comparing everything both fighters have, it became abundantly clear that this fight was skewed heavily in the direction of the Ordinary Magician. While Yuffie isn’t completely washed, having some definitive wincons and methods to kill Marisa and a large amount of ways to hamper Marisa’s arsenal, to put it bluntly, Marisa just has more wincons that are much more reliable and easily accessed, and any method Yuffie has to kill Marisa, is unlikely to take her out of the fight permanently, due to her countless revives and ability to just restart the fight.
Marisa is massively stronger, more durable, and faster to an absolutely absurd degree, she resists the majority of Yuffie’s game ending haxx, exploits several of Yuffie’s weaknesses, has complete battlefield control, several haxxes Yuffie can’t resist that cause major problems, and has the potential to end the fight in record time through her higher AP and spirit manipulation, which completely spells Yuffie’s doom, and if we were to even consider counting the UMOE, would have an utterly guaranteed win. She frankly shuts down Yuffie in every possible front. While Yuffie put up an absolutely incredible fight, Wutai’s Greatest Warrior simply just couldn’t take down Gensokyo’s Completely Ordinary Witch.
THE WINNER IS: MARISA KIRISAME
Artist: Baba
Notable Links and Sources:
VSBW Pages:
These both give a good overview of the two as characters, and index their abilities and stats quite well. Several abilities for both characters that went un-mentioned in this blog can be found on their pages here. I've done a lot of work in terms of making additions and revisions to this page and others (though it was mostly Fuji) so I havee no shame in blatantly stealing a lot of into lol. Also please note that Marisa's stats aren't as high as they are in this blog, though hopefully one day they'll reach that point.
https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Marisa_Kirisame#Base
https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Yuffie_Kisaragi#Inherent_and_Equipment
Marisa’s Ability Cards & Player System Cards:
A large amount of Marisa's haxx and abilities come from the variety of ability cards and player system cards, here's full lists of the different cards she has access to. I specifically named some within this document and didn't feel like linking every single one, so here they all are.
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Unconnected_Marketeers/Ability_Cards
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/100th_Black_Market/Ability_Cards
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Hisoutensoku/Spell_Cards/Player_System_cards
Touhou English Wiki:
The most comprehensive source of generally correct Touhou information available in the West. Helped a lot in filling in the spots of any information me and Fuji didn’t immediately remember or have on hand.
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki
Final Fantasy Wiki:
Provided a good amount of information about the games and helped a lot in accumulating and listing every piece of equipment notable for Yuffie, the variety of status effects and magic she had access to, and a major amount of useful details that would have been a complete pain to get otherwise.
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Wiki
Major Assistance From:
https://twitter.com/REClassicFGC
https://twitter.com/sukuviolence
My Socials:
https://twitter.com/KirbonicPikmin
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6KhcUmYFX3KG9DQwrSra4g
Final Notes:
If you made it to the end of this absolute behemoth of a blog, I thank you! This has been a passion project of mine for months now and something I’ve been working on just as long as Therewolf has been working on the track for, potentially even longer! While I unfortunately had to cut a few segments from this blog due to time constraints, things such as Yuffie’s summons, commands, and limit breaks unfortunately didn’t get the indexing or explanations they deserved, among my work life and college life and the time restraints to finish this blog in time for the track upload, I simply couldn’t take any longer on it.
After long enough, this blog became very personal for me, not just because I was covering one of my new favorite versus matchups to a godlike commissioned track, but also because this is the first major project of my own volition I’ve actually COMPLETED and released despite all the hiccups I faced along the way. This project was absolutely batshit insane and frankly, I know only about two people are going to ACTUALLY read it (and massive thank you to those two people), but this became largely a work for myself, to prove something to me as a person, as absolutely silly as that may seem. This blog has capped out at over 80 pages and took an absurd amount of research, time, and dexterity to put together. To say I have more respect for G1 bloggers now is a massive understatement LOL.
My silly preamble aside, I hope you enjoy the banger track Therewolf made, and I’d love to commission him again for another Touhou matchup. Can’t guarantee I’ll get another blog out for them, and if I do, they abso-fucking-loutely will be nowhere near this goddamn long.
This blog being uploaded on the 21st of September was also unintentional but honestly that makes it funnier, celebrate with this. Made by @ALLHAILDURIANS on Twitter.
EDIT 1 (10/18/22): Removed the Miko infinite corridor absorption feat, as it was found to be a mistranslation, and replaced it with just scaling to Kaguya directly. Added a few resistances to Marisa that I missed, and edited the Thievery section, as evidence was found that means Yuffie couldn't steal ability cards.
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