Before Translation:

oh, Patchy is clever. Making sure Koa doesn't know the plan until she pulls it off the bag, and staying far away from Satori, makes things much harder for the mind reader

Dang, if only they will go with usual font instead of handwriting. I have been spraining my brain figuring out the katakana in the third panel.

*noticed the words on the bags*

Still, seems like Patchouli is one of the rare masters who actually care for their summons.

But yea, since even Koakuma has no idea what she got out of the bag, even Satori will not get the prediction as fast as she can. And while she is multitasked, Sakuya might get a chance...

F.I.A said:
Dang, if only they will go with usual font instead of handwriting. I have been spraining my brain figuring out the katakana in the third panel.

*noticed the words on the bags*

Still, seems like Patchouli is one of the rare masters who actually care for their summons.

But yea, since even Koakuma has no idea what she got out of the bag, even Satori will not get the prediction as fast as she can. And while she is multitasked, Sakuya might get a chance...

Actually, I think that the plan on the paper is a distraction, without any real porpouse. Just something to confuse the enemy. A fake...

ok, this is interesting and all, but man do I feel like this particular stretch has been drug out waaaay longer than it needed to be as well as padded out unnecessarily....

Giant+Robot said:
ok, this is interesting and all, but man do I feel like this particular stretch has been drug out waaaay longer than it needed to be as well as padded out unnecessarily....

What do you mean...?

Wow, Patchy, that's smart of ya.
I honestly don't know who has the upper hand now. If Koakuma manages to take out Satori's mind-reading ability, Sakuya will have the upper hand. If not, then it's almost a given that Orin will beat Sakuya hard, at least for a while.

after that Sanae vs Flandre fiasco IMO

If Sakuya loses there will be a riot

POPULARITY POWER DAMN YOU!!!

Harouki said:
after that Sanae vs Flandre fiasco IMO
If Sakuya loses there will be a riot
POPULARITY POWER DAMN YOU!!!

That depends on the circumstances of the loss. If Sakuya loses in a fashion that is believable in the context of this comic (e.g., not godstomped or an asspull), I don't think that many people would mind.

Flan/Meiling was a different matter since Jelly left the result of that match in the fans' hands (which is just asking for trouble because it then becomes a popularity contest).

Harouki said:
after that Sanae vs Flandre fiasco IMO

If Sakuya loses there will be a riot

POPULARITY POWER DAMN YOU!!!

Hopefully he won't get pulled into that again. Sakuya in the context of this tournament is average at best.

Giant+Robot said:
padded out unnecessarily....

Sakuya's here. Of course it'll be padded.

I will be the first to say this:
Patchouli looks good in black.

Actually I think if all of the koakuma shout out a single random number should enough to confuse Rin and break Hell team's plan

dpsiko said:
That depends on the circumstances of the loss. If Sakuya loses in a fashion that is believable in the context of this comic (e.g., not godstomped or an asspull), I don't think that many people would mind.

Flan/Meiling was a different matter since Jelly left the result of that match in the fans' hands (which is just asking for trouble because it then becomes a popularity contest).

This makes me wonder where so many Moriya fans came from then, since the sdm cast is among the most popular of Touhou characters with only the case of PCB coming close. Also Sanae/Suwako asspulled their way through two fights, not just Flandre and Meiling. Sure Suwako once she was defrosted could have given Yuuka a decent fight to the end, but nope, Sanae had to do the cheap pin.

Pyrolight said:
Hopefully he won't get pulled into that again. Sakuya in the context of this tournament is average at best.

Sakuya isn't that bad, seems pretty skilled if not all that powerful. She seems to keep even with Orin if not for Satori's interference. Unlike some fights, this is pretty even on paper. I'm tempted to call Reimu/Remi vs Youmu/Reisen close, but a Motivated Reimu and Remilia are a killer team in a physical only tournament.

I think among the humans, the ranking would be:

Reimu (She's shown herself in the fighters to do pretty nicely in melee)
Sakuya (Likewise, but not exactly strong)
Marisa (Does decently, but it's not her strong suit)
Sanae (Newbie Booby Miko)

Now the matches and how even they were.

Ran/Chen vs. Yuugi/Orin: Mismatch; while Ran's pretty strong, she's no where near an Oni in might and Chen's rather helpless without Ran's help. Yukari's assistance might have even things up, but Kanako stopped that.

Mokou's team vs Kaguya's team: Another Mismatch. Kaguya's very well read on things, and Eirin's skill quickly turned things on their heads. Even superior might is no match against a doctor's skill.

Moriya vs "The Strongest": The latter is misbalanced but overall stronger. If the asspull didn't happen, Suwako would need to fight a long hard battle for a chance of victory.

Reimu/Remi vs Youmu/Reisen: In addition to what was said earlier, the former had the advantage because Remi prefers melee and even in the face of all the dirty tricks possible, those two still won.

Moriya vs Flan/Mei: The latter had an advantage with the only weak spot being Flan's inexperience and childishness. And the way things turned, Meiling had to face a god... and did pretty well. It does seem like not much went right for the latter. Is it any one folks suspect the artist of favoring Sanae too much? Since she was the one who made the pin both times.

Knowing Patchy....

I agree that is a feint, because her attention is focusing now on Koakuma rather than Sakuya and Suika, and ALLLLSOOOO, knowing her, she also could feinted Koakuma itself, so her backup could help, this is rather interesting, since Satori seems to rely a lot on her mind-reading ability.

Also, she said herself, she can't read at multiple foes, so if the real Koa doesn't know, maybe the others do, and because they're in mass, it's a mindblast confusing riot for Satori

StriderTuna said:
This makes me wonder where so many Moriya fans came from then, since the sdm cast is among the most popular of Touhou characters with only the case of PCB coming close. Also Sanae/Suwako asspulled their way through two fights, not just Flandre and Meiling. Sure Suwako once she was defrosted could have given Yuuka a decent fight to the end, but nope, Sanae had to do the cheap pin.

Well I was using the the SDM/Moriya match as an example of the two because that was a blatant example of someone's popularity power winning the match. I mean, it was decided by fan-vote and all.
As for the sudden popularity, well Sanae does have playable status, so that has to account for a lot Plus she's currently ranked 2nd in the recent popularity poll, while Flan, Suwako, and Meiling place 10, 17th, and 20th, respectively. The point gap was larger than implied.

Honestly that entire fiasco rubbed me the wrong way with this comic for a couple of months and I've only recently been trying to get back into it. Hopefully Jelly doesn't pull anything like that again.

dpsiko said:
Well I was using the the SDM/Moriya match as an example of the two because that was a blatant example of someone's popularity power winning the match. I mean, it was decided by fan-vote and all.
As for the sudden popularity, well Sanae does have playable status, so that has to account for a lot Plus she's currently ranked 2nd in the recent popularity poll, while Flan, Suwako, and Meiling place 10, 17th, and 20th, respectively. The point gap was larger than implied.

Honestly that entire fiasco rubbed me the wrong way with this comic for a couple of months and I've only recently been trying to get back into it. Hopefully Jelly doesn't pull anything like that again.

That's mainly in japan, and US fans are trying to figure out how that makes sense, since Sanae becoming playable definitely earned her some hate in the states. Also in the US, Flandre has a devoted following, something that Sanae doesn't quite have.

But I know what you mean, since those two matches lent a bit of a bitter taste viewing this. I'm Glad Gensokyo Tag Tournament is better in this regard, a spell melee type thing where sometimes the weaker team wins in some very cool ways.

I don't understand why people consider the Moriya vs Yuuka ending to be cheap. Yuuka left herself wiiiiide open to...tell her teammate she hated her. The ending of the fight made perfect sense.

Kaguya/Eirin vs Mokou/Keine was quite balanced match - There were dangerous situations for both teams, and, at some point, i even thought mokou will win. Like this gonna happen in touhou doujin

And when Yuka started painting her swimsuit red it was already obvious that Sanae would win. Things like that in comics are like "i gonna get defeated" flag

Are they just trying to play with Satori's mind-reading skillz?

Heh, it's like Zhuge Liang in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. He gives one of the Shu generals a little bag with a plan in it, and says "When you find yourself in trouble, open this".

Best way to ensure secrecy is to make sure only the maker of the plan knows. In this case it's probably less strong when employed against a mind-reader, but it still denies Satori the chance to plan ahead since not even the recipient has taken the time to comprehend the plan ahead of time. It's a daring gambit that shows absolute trust in your strategist.

Zaku_Zelo said:
I don't understand why people consider the Moriya vs Yuuka ending to be cheap. Yuuka left herself wiiiiide open to...tell her teammate she hated her. The ending of the fight made perfect sense.

Because it was puny human Sanae that did it (she would have broken out... and broken Sanae in the process). If it was Suwako, there wouldn't be so many complaints. It just reeks of Sanae favoritism, after all the one who ultimately scored the win both times was Sanae.

StriderTuna said:
Because it was puny human Sanae that did it (she would have broken out... and broken Sanae in the process). If it was Suwako, there wouldn't be so many complaints. It just reeks of Sanae favoritism, after all the one who ultimately scored the win both times was Sanae.

Well, I think the reaction around here just reeks of Sanae dis-favoritism, but eh.

Zaku_Zelo said:
around here just reeks of Sanae dis-favoritism, but eh.

In the context of this ongoing story? So far, yes. There IS. This 'orenji zerii' person should never have done that shit with the Mei/Flan team losing. Stupid. One of those 'Why the FUCK would you do that? You fuckwit!' moments for me.

From a narrative stand-point I thought it would make sense for Meiling to have earned the win. Her fight with Suwako was a David vs Goliath fight. But the Goliath won. Plus, Meiling pulled out a secret technique that she had a training flashback for. Clearly a flag for victory.

What's interesting is that there's also a plan for Shikieiki/Komachi should they get that far.

TheBigN said:
What's interesting is that there's also a plan for Shikieiki/Komachi should they get that far.

...And they'll end up losing to Eientei, forcing me to recruit Anonymous to wipe this entire pool off the face of Danbooru.