Wanna Drink?

DISCLAIMER: The target audience of this essay is people who are interested in exploring how misogyny and other biases manifest in fandom spaces. If this sounds too woke to you then you are not the target audience and probably shouldn't read past this line. Intelligent discourse from people who have actually read the following is welcome, otherwise I have anon on if you wanna argue with the wall.

One of the reasons I’ve become fascinated with the Watatsuki sisters, after years of not having much interest in them, is how they manage to evoke such strong emotions from Touhou fans. The most notable thing about them is how much the fandom loves to hate them. While a lot of people have discussed in detail whether the assessment of them as OP, badly written, Mary Sues is actually accurate, I've personally been interested in the very gendered hatred expressed towards them.

Touhou is a series featuring an almost exclusively female cast, where the stories told very rarely involve men, let alone centre them. Touhou's fanbase has historically been overwhelmingly male-dominated, and this fact significantly influences how certain characters are perceived. Misogyny doesn’t vanish just because the cast is all women; instead, it mutates into subtler forms.

Despite Touhou's female-dominated cast, there’s an unmistakable hostility toward certain types of women, especially women who refuse to be approachable, humble, or easily “liked.”

The Watatsuki sisters are perfect examples. They’re elegant, powerful, and utterly convinced of their superiority over the inhabitants of Earth. They arrive in SSiB, defeat the protagonists with insulting ease, and vanish just as coolly. They don’t apologise for being stronger, they don't change sides or defect to Gensokyo, and they also don't take the usual Touhou antagonist route of mellowing out and attending a tea party at the shrine.

I’ve noticed that much of the fandom vitriol directed at the sisters is draped in accusations of them being “Mary Sues.” The term originally referred to idealised self-insert characters in fanfiction, perfect in every way and adored by all. But over time, “Mary Sue” became a loaded, gendered insult aimed at female characters who are competent, exceptional, or who simply win too often. It’s rarely used against male characters who exhibit the exact same traits.

(Of course, their reputation also hasn't been helped by things like KKHTA, but to discuss that would open a whole other can of worms)

Misogyny in a Woman's World

There’s a kind of double bind at work here. Women in fiction are supposed to be strong, but not too strong. Confident, but not arrogant. Special, but not so special that they overshadow the protagonists fans are already attached to (especially if the protagonist is male). And in an all-female cast like Touhou, this contradiction becomes even sharper. Because if everyone is a woman, then “who’s the relatable one” and “who’s the threat” becomes a game of picking favorites, and of resenting any character who dares to disrupt the balance.

The Watatsukis disrupt it spectacularly. And instead of being punished or humbled, they simply walk away, the status quo of the Moon unchanged. They aren't comedic foils, tragic victims, or villainesses begging for redemption. Their power isn't out of place in Touhou, despite many accusing them of being OP. At the end of the day, Yorihime is just Reimu if she were older and locked in. Neither of them displays power that we haven't seen in other characters.

From a narrative perspective, their 'OP'-ness is there to show off how powerful the Lunarians are, but for fans, it lands more like an outsider showing up uninvited and making everyone’s faves look embarrassingly weak. And in a series where all the characters are women, it’s not just narrative dissonance, it’s social competition. It's perceived as the Watatsukis not playing by the same rules as the rest of the cast.

Because Touhou’s cast is so overwhelmingly female, any woman who stands out too much, who’s too powerful, too perfect, or gets too much screentime, gets scrutinised to hell and back. In a mixed-gender series, a powerful male villain is just another Tuesday. But in Touhou, a woman with unstoppable competence suddenly becomes an interloper.

Characters like Reimu or Marisa can get away with arrogance because they’re comedic, scrappy, or already beloved. But the Watatsuki sisters’ confidence doesn’t read as cheeky or charming. It reads as cold, alien, and above it all. Instead of fun rivals, fans brand them as “Mary Sues,” “overpowered,” or “boring,” projecting frustration because these women refuse to slot into the usual roles of comedic foils, fanservice bait, or tragic backstories.

Hypervisibility means women like the Watatsukis are judged way more harshly for stepping outside the fandom’s comfort zone. There’s this unspoken rule that a 2hu should be quirky, approachable, maybe a little chaotic, but never untouchable and utterly certain of her superiority.

Touhou fans are fine with scrappy underdogs, mischievous troublemakers, or elegant women who still feel warm and accessible. But the Watatsuki sisters remind us that power doesn’t have to come wrapped in charm or comedic timing. A woman can exist in her own lane, unapologetically aloof and unstoppable, and that makes a lot of fans deeply uncomfortable.

So even in a universe full of powerful women, there’s still a kind of glass ceiling. Not a ceiling of strength, but a ceiling on how likable you’re allowed to be while wielding that strength.

The Price of Being Unlikable

This is nowhere more obvious than in fandom culture. The fandom has come to "affectionately" refer to them as 'moonbitches', which has always stood out to me. The term moonbitches might sound like harmless fandom slang, but let’s be real, it's a term dripping with misogynistic venom.

Calling them bitches exposes the raw nerve of gender expectations: fans are fine with powerful women as long as they’re funny, flawed, or willing to play humble. The Watatsuki sisters don’t play. The fandom responds by dragging them off their pedestal with a word that’s always been used to punish women for stepping out of line. Moonbitches isn’t just an insult, it’s a neon sign flashing know your place, girl.

(And we've seen this before with other Touhous who faced the ire of fans for various, nonsensical reasons. Sanae the slut comes to mind. In fact, a lot of the memes from the late 00s, early 2010s are incredibly gendered, but that's for another essay.)

Another thing that sticks out to me is the disproportionate amount of violent NSFW content involving the sisters, particularly Yorihime. While there probably isn't a single Touhou character who hasn't been implicated in someone's violent rape fantasy, compared to other characters, the ratio of run-of-the-mill NSFW to violent NSFW, guro for the Watatsukis (and other Lunarians like Sagume), is disturbingly high.

And while moonbitches may just be a silly nickname, and NSFW drawings may just be drawings, they're very telling. They’re fandom’s way of declawing women who refuse to play nice. Women like the Watatsukis must be taken down a peg, whether by sexualisation, humiliation, or mockery. It’s not enough for the sisters to exist as they are; fandom demands they be made palatable.

Beyond the Waifu Comfort Zone

It's strange to level an accusation of misogyny against a fandom for a series that is almost all women. But the truth is, even in a female-dominated fandom, there’s a very narrow template for how a woman can be strong. Fans will embrace funny tomboy girls like Marisa, morally ambiguous schemers like Yukari, or elegant but tragic figures like Yuyuko. But a woman who refuses to be vulnerable, funny, or sexualised, a woman like Yorihime or Toyohime, is labeled a problem.

It reminds me of how female characters throughout literature and media are forced into boxes: they can be relatable underdogs, femme fatales, quirky comic relief, or suffering saints. But a woman who wields power without apology is seen as threatening.

The Watatsuki sisters are fascinating precisely because they resist that reduction. They exist as entities in their own right: lofty, aloof, and absolutely certain of their authority. And fandom’s collective discomfort with them says far more about fandom and its misogyny than it does about the characters themselves.