Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara
She/Her- 9,828
- 12,447
my gift to you this year is another touhou crt that will remain unevaluated for several months
no this doesn't mean im back to doing crts regularly. it'll happen next year, probably
Touhou’s danmaku range is pitifully low for a series where ranged combat is a key focus. 36 meters stems from how Sakuya can throw knives with great accuracy at that range, which is fine, but it’s always been treated as a lowball since no concrete method for getting higher numbers was found (hence the “at least” present in range sections). Until now, anyway.
During Grimoire of Usami, Reimu gets the bright idea to create a fireworks show in Gensokyo, going off of Sumireko stating that there’s not much difference between fireworks and danmaku visually. This implies danmaku and fireworks are similar enough in appearance to warrant a comparison in size, which we can use to determine the general range danmaku scales to.
Supporting Sumireko’s own knowledge is the very first firework set off, which is an actual firework used by the kappa. As time goes on, no members of the audience can tell the fake fireworks from the real ones (they only do so when people start using non-firework-y danmaku), so evidently danmaku is just as visibly convincing as real fireworks in all visual aspects, such as size.
But how do we determine the firework size? Well, early on, we get a comparison shot of a kappa next to a real firework launcher. We can scale the Kappa’s head to the launcher to get a rough idea of the shell size used. I’ll just use the average head height for women, giving us a range of 19.8/21.8/23.8 inches, which we can pixel scale with the launcher to determine its width is 32.5/35.8/39.1 inches. This is actually shockingly consistent with the largest real-life fireworks launchers, which use shells that are 24-36 inches wide.
The shell size of a launcher determines the size of the resulting explosion, with every 2 inches of shell size adding an additional 45 feet in radius for the explosion. Using the launcher width we just calculated, we can multiply that by 45 to get the radius of these fireworks, and thus, the danmaku used. This gives us a low end/high end range of 445.77/491.0328/536.2956 meters.
This is surprisingly supported by a few other visual feats. In Grimoire of Marisa, illustrations are given of characters performing danmaku, where we see some of Kanako’s bullets reaching far-off mountaintops and Aya’s danmaku similarly stretching off into the distance.
Finally, we have Mokou performing this feat, which shows us that basic danmaku attacks can eclipse treetops from ground level. Not really as big as the other feats, but it does show that 36 meters is still a lowball.
TL;DR: Standard danmaku range goes from 36 meters all the way up to about 500 meters, with some implications of even higher ranges, thus mandating a change from “at least tens of meters with danmaku” to “at least hundreds of meters with danmaku”.
no this doesn't mean im back to doing crts regularly. it'll happen next year, probably
Touhou’s danmaku range is pitifully low for a series where ranged combat is a key focus. 36 meters stems from how Sakuya can throw knives with great accuracy at that range, which is fine, but it’s always been treated as a lowball since no concrete method for getting higher numbers was found (hence the “at least” present in range sections). Until now, anyway.
During Grimoire of Usami, Reimu gets the bright idea to create a fireworks show in Gensokyo, going off of Sumireko stating that there’s not much difference between fireworks and danmaku visually. This implies danmaku and fireworks are similar enough in appearance to warrant a comparison in size, which we can use to determine the general range danmaku scales to.
Supporting Sumireko’s own knowledge is the very first firework set off, which is an actual firework used by the kappa. As time goes on, no members of the audience can tell the fake fireworks from the real ones (they only do so when people start using non-firework-y danmaku), so evidently danmaku is just as visibly convincing as real fireworks in all visual aspects, such as size.
But how do we determine the firework size? Well, early on, we get a comparison shot of a kappa next to a real firework launcher. We can scale the Kappa’s head to the launcher to get a rough idea of the shell size used. I’ll just use the average head height for women, giving us a range of 19.8/21.8/23.8 inches, which we can pixel scale with the launcher to determine its width is 32.5/35.8/39.1 inches. This is actually shockingly consistent with the largest real-life fireworks launchers, which use shells that are 24-36 inches wide.
The shell size of a launcher determines the size of the resulting explosion, with every 2 inches of shell size adding an additional 45 feet in radius for the explosion. Using the launcher width we just calculated, we can multiply that by 45 to get the radius of these fireworks, and thus, the danmaku used. This gives us a low end/high end range of 445.77/491.0328/536.2956 meters.
This is surprisingly supported by a few other visual feats. In Grimoire of Marisa, illustrations are given of characters performing danmaku, where we see some of Kanako’s bullets reaching far-off mountaintops and Aya’s danmaku similarly stretching off into the distance.
Finally, we have Mokou performing this feat, which shows us that basic danmaku attacks can eclipse treetops from ground level. Not really as big as the other feats, but it does show that 36 meters is still a lowball.
TL;DR: Standard danmaku range goes from 36 meters all the way up to about 500 meters, with some implications of even higher ranges, thus mandating a change from “at least tens of meters with danmaku” to “at least hundreds of meters with danmaku”.
