#tmama

To do that, I plan on conducting a survey where participants will be repeatedly presented with two random Touhou characters. They must simply choose which of them they would rather have as a mother, before being presented two new characters. This repeats until the participant decides they’ve seen enough.  Once enough people have participated, we will have the data to get our answer, as well as the less sought title of “least awful mother”.

The first step in this grand plan in simple: Creating a list of all Touhou characters. But hang on, there are over 200 characters in Touhou, depending on how you slice it. A large chuck of these are unrecognizable to even the determined fan (We love you Manzairaku!), so we first need to parry that number down a fair bit. Ideally we want a list of characters that fans will mostly recognize. Of course, nobody knows everybody, but this survey set-up allows participants to skip if they are unfamiliar with one or both characters.

Right now, the qualification criteria I am proposing is that characters must fall into one of two categories:

They appeared as boss or playable character in one of the mainline Touhou games.

They were ranked in the top 100 by the 2022 THWIKI Popularity Poll

This ensures that all the stars of the games get a chance, while also letting popular manga-exclusive characters take part.

What I need from you

I have created a table of all characters that I believe meet these criteria, but I would be shocked if I haven't made a mistake somewhere. Take a look through, see if your favorite characters are there, let me know if they've been missed.