You make it sound like ZUN designed the title screen background first and then put Reimu in like she was an afterthought. It's probably coincidence, but I'd like to believe otherwise.Yeah, no, that shit ain't gonna fly.
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Plus, she looks very-much like how she does in the Windows era.
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The results screen doesn't use as many colors as the title screen, so he was free to be more liberal with Reimu's color scheme. Granted, it's still darker than on the cover art, but maybe ZUN just didn't have that particular shade on hand.Īs for Mystic Square's results screen, it could very well be a palette issue. (Notice that Marisa uses the same color as Reimu.)Marisa in LLS (in-game, I mean) has a very vibrant purple as her dominating color. To me, Reimu's hair looks much more purple than black, though it should be pointed out that HRtP's and SoEW's cover arts have much stronger colors than the other three games. Okay, HRtP and SoEW's cover art clearly depicts Reimu with black hair with purple highlights.That is very much a point of contention. That would mean planning a trip to some kind of event in which he appears at, hopefully with an English interpreter. Of course, the only way we'll know the true answer is to ask the man himself. Plus, Konngara's hair is up against a blue background, so black actually stands out in this case. Konngara, on the other hand, is a much larger sprite, so he can afford to add details like highlights in his/her hair. On top of that, it's shown in ZUN's art from the Windows era onwards that he's anything but shy about using pitch black as a hair colorThat really doesn't say anything about the PC98 games, does it? The Windows platforms have a much-higher color depth than the PC98 did, so it made much more sense to depict a small character sprite with a more-vibrant color. It's probably coincidence, but I'd like to believe otherwise.
![touhou pc 98 games touhou pc 98 games](https://imageproxy.ifunny.co/crop:x-20,resize:640x,quality:90x75/images/d6d598f977443eb3283f82a09da441d5d093e28a112fe6b9b85fad8a4fa37e97_1.jpg)
Whether or not making Reimu monochrome was a stylistic choice, or if he was trying to depict her like in the game, I cannot say.Īs for Mystic Square's results screen, it could very well be a palette issue. As for PoDD and LLS, it looks like ZUN got lazy and just used the same marker for Reimu's entire body (Notice that Marisa uses the same color as Reimu.). Okay, HRtP and SoEW's cover art clearly depicts Reimu with black hair with purple highlights. On top of that, it's shown in ZUN's art from the Windows era onwards that he's anything but shy about using pitch black as a hair color, so personally, I think he always intended for Reimu to have purple hair when he first designed her. Whether ZUN opted for purple to depict black or not is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose, but that would be forgetting about Konngara, who has been depicted with actually black hair. On top of that, that depiction of Reimu was taken directly from the title screen, where her hair is very much purple.
![touhou pc 98 games touhou pc 98 games](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/i/428b9ea7-7c92-4861-bb7f-8b40c744a286/d8mhska-e1ad04af-8ca9-4c52-a148-043b7517e06d.png)
![touhou pc 98 games touhou pc 98 games](http://blog.eternicity.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/screenshot007.jpg)
I strongly assume that ZUN drew all of these traditionally, meaning there wasn't much in terms of color count limitations, though you could argue that he purposely designed her this way to make her use as few colors as possible.Īs for your example from Mystic Square's results screen, isn't that basically just a drained color palette? Calling Reimu a brunette from that one image would be like looking at a sepia picture of a group of people with diverse hair colors and claiming they were all brunettes. All it takes is a look at every single game's box art. Kinda late to the party here, but I'm pretty sure Reimu's hair in the PC-98 era has always been intended to be purple.