And what does the orb itself get? You know, it's actual form?
I say "there's not a lot a fanartist can do with a faceless ball" not as a statement of fact, but as a challenge.
Did somebody already speculate that the dude represents humans and the girl represents youkai and the yin yang is balance between them because blah blah Hakurei shrine maiden?
No, no one guessed that yet. Well, the girl does have horns...
It's almost enough to make one wonder about some sort of misogynistic undercurrent when the male gets the respectable priestly form and the female is a horned demon. Except this is Touhou
so the overwhelming majority of characters of any alignment are female.
Honestly, though, I hadn't considered a possible human/youkai duality there, but it would certainly make a great deal of sense. The Yin yang orb perhaps works against the likes of Miko (not a youkai) because anything that disturbs the delicate balance is a valid target for it.
So either every single one of Reimu's opponents has been an unbalanced individual, or else a big block of whatever the yin-yang is made of is effective regardless of karma.
I like this idea of human/youkai balance. Shingyoku only shows up in the first game, when Reimu's all alone at the shrine and thus imbalanced. She must therefore pass a test to see if she is even capable of making use of such precision equipment. Why does it never appear again? Because after that she had Genji, clearly not human and likely a youkai. Balance is restored and the keeper is no longer needed.
A better explanation than "she broke it," certainly.
I also like the idea of Shingyoku being the god of the Hakurei Shrine and the first boss fight was a test to see if Reimu was capable of handling the threats to come. Both the Hakurei and Moriya shrines follow Shinto right? And while my knowledge of any religion is worth dirt, would a being of balance fit into that? I mean, no impurities or whatever.
Wait, a being of pure balance would be by definition uniform, and therefore composed of entirely one material rather than an equal amount of two or more materials, but if said material was balance then my brain.
Anyway, I dunno. Reimu seems a well-balanced individual, in her own way, but I'm not sure that would be the theme of her shrine, since the Hakurei bloodline seems to be more about border patrol than balance. I guess you could make the case that for a border to exist you need a balance between whatever's on either side of it. Or maybe the orb is an artifact possessed by the Hakurei bloodline without being necessarily a relic of the Hakurei Shrine. So the shrine and the clan's main focus is borders, but they happen to have the balance to use the Orb as well?
[...] you could make a case that Shingyoku is a Shintou god of Taoist extermination methods
Kinda like how Shou's a what-the-Japanese-consider-a-tiger youkai?
Or the god of the orbs themselves.
Or that. An ally of the still nameless Hakurei Shrine deity? Bound servitor?
Makes me wonder how Meira - ah, that will be later.
At any rate, it looks like the "entity of the Orb" theory is making more headway than the "guardian of the Hakurei Shrine" theory. Which is good, because the latter raises the question of why Shingyoku failed to prevent the attack that kicked off HRtP
and where heandshe was during attacks.