>>90892The omikuji book is so interesting. Like a year ago when this all started, if I would have said "ZUN will release an official Touhou fortune telling book" people would have been haha yeah keep on dreaming schizo. On some mundane level it makes sense - he's drawn a handful of Touhou-themed omikuji before, but there's just...something about it all.
In particular, the framing of how Reimu needs to do the omikuji to re-define the nature of Gensokyo's inhabitants is so...Shinto. Everything is ever changing, but by doing the proper rituals, it's possible to return to balance and into a kind of timeles state.
Something about him throw the beans at that shrine during New Year's, activity usually reserved for priests, just feels like he is either wilfully taking or being prodded to take that "High Priest of Hakurei Shrine" role he has chosen for himself more seriously.
There's also that on Japanese government document about the state of religions in Japan, and they use some YouTube video where Hatsune Miku gives worship instructions at the Hakurei Shrine as an example of "virtual religion".
>>91118I love that song, it's like a hymn to her.
>>91148Gyate Gyate is only a part of the mantra, the full thing goes:
Gyatei gyatei haragyatei harasōgyatei boji sowaka
The way it was explained to me, it's intended to awaken the prajna wisdom of the one who recities it. Prajna is insight into the nature of things, in a Buddhist sense.
The Heart Sutra is incredibly popular among the various Japanese Buddhists sects. Because it is a relatively short text, a tradition of reciting and copying it as an offering in itself has risen. It is a cool wink to broader Japanese culture, but because of what it is associated with, almost an offering in itself. And even if he didn't intend so, multiple people have read the Heart Sutra because of "Gyate Gyate"
>>91150There really is something special in some of those songs. There's some which feel explicitly religious - OMEN is a good example of this. There's even more stuff which plays with ideas from East Asian religions, most commonly Buddhism. And then there's the stuff which feels like it is tapped directly to the source, like it's shamanistic, the way Stack sings from the character's POV with this incredible power and grandiosity, like she is just letting them flow out of her.
>>91153If I remember correctly there are Japanese people who have done some rather modern adaptations of Buddhist sutras and mantras into music, so inspiration might be newer and closer to home for them.
>>91175Yukari is super interesting because she is not explicitly based on anything. The sukima-onna thing seems like a red herring. I don't know who or what she is yet, and prying too much feels wrong. But the parallels with Xiwang Mu are extremely interesting. If the portrayal of Yukari is some kind of manifestation of her, it feels so genuine in the sense that it's so effortless, unlabored, feels so "coincidental" and unlabored, like she whispered to ZUN through the broken telephone that spirit-to-human communication tends to be, and he just felt compelled to create Yukari.