Patchouli Knowledge

Patchouli often refers to the science and technology of the outside world as magic. This is actually not ignorance but more due to her personal beliefs as she tells Marisa Kirisame in her Touhou Hisoutensoku victory quote that science and magic are the same.
In Immaterial and Missing Power, Patchouli refers to intruders/thieves (e.g., Marisa Kirisame) as "rats" and guards (e.g., Sakuya Izayoi and Hong Meiling) as "cats". She rates the catness/effectiveness of a guard on a scale of 1 to 96 because that's the highest number under 100 that is divisible by both 2 and 3. After defeating Sakuya in Immaterial and Missing Power, she gave her a rating of 24. As for Meiling, Patchouli compares that cat to a sieve in her Immaterial and Missing Power victory quote.
The crescent on Patchouli's hat could be the crescent in the Sanskrit "Hum", part of the Mantra "Om mani padme hum". In Buddhism, it stands for knowledge and purity and is associated with the color white—all the 7 colors combined.
As of Double Spoiler, Patchouli has had appearances in 9 of the 13 Windows games (counting Touhou Hisoutensoku as a standalone). This makes her the third most featured character, behind Reimu Hakurei and Marisa.
In Touhou Hisoutensoku, one of Patchouli's alternate colors resembles Hina Kagiyama's outfit.
The books in Patchouli's spell card, Fire Water Wood Metal Earth Sign "Philosopher's Stone" are arranged in a similar way to the Five Magic Stones.
It's suggested in Immaterial and Missing Power that Patchouli drinks coffee occasionally when she's studying, unlike the other residents of Scarlet Devil Mansion who almost always drink tea.
Unofficially, Patchouli Knowledge's library has often been called "Voile" based on its stage theme. However, based on an erratum for Eastern and Little Nature Deity correcting the name of Patchouli's library from "Voile, the Magic Library" (ヴワル図書館) to "a library inside the Scarlet Devil Mansion" (紅魔館内の図書館),[16] the name "Voile" is not considered canon.

Marisa Kirisame is a thief who steals books from the library of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. She states that she's only borrowing but Patchouli reacts by telling Marisa in Oriental Sacred Place that she has no intention to lend Marisa books in a rather serious tone.[15] However, she's one of three people who assists Marisa during Subterranean Animism's events, showing some sort of affinity despite Patchouli having her own agenda. Marisa has copied Patchouli's regular danmaku attack and named it Love Sign "Non-directional Laser", it is used as her normal B-type bomb in Perfect Cherry Blossom, as a spell card in Imperishable Night and in other games.

Patchouli Knowledge is Remilia Scarlet's old friend.[11] In Perfect Cherry Blossom, they called each other "Remi" (レミィ) and "Pache" (パチェ) respectively. The two have been depicted having tea and casual conversations together in Silent Sinner in Blue and Oriental Sacred Place where Patchouli offhandedly commented that they're both creatures of the night. As stated in Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, Patchouli's role at the mansion is to solve problems and to cause them. Patchouli will often volunteer her services when she sees Remilia in need of them.[12][13]

Patchouli is unlikely to be formally employed by Remilia. Sakuya Izayoi referred to Patchouli as "The Mistress's magician friend" while talking to Rinnosuke Morichika about her[14] as opposed to any sort of employee title. She is referred to as Remilia's friend in other materials as well.

The head maid, Sakuya Izayoi is occasionally seen serving Patchouli. Patchouli tends to be rather sarcastic and condescending with her and Hong Meiling but seems to appreciate her as she always remembers to thank Sakuya for tea or for completion of other jobs. With Meiling however, she tends to tell her to read books to improve her brain. Koakuma is an employee of Scarlet Devil Mansion seen working in the library; any dialogue interactions between the two are unknown.

Not much is known about the relationship between Patchouli and Flandre Scarlet. Patchouli is aware of Flandre's existence and the need to keep her confined to the mansion. As Remilia noted, Patchouli was probably causing a rainstorm around the mansion to keep Flandre from getting out.

Shown in various works, her hair and eyes are purple and has many ribbons tied to her hair and other parts of her clothing. She wears pink pajama-like clothing and a night-cap with a gold crescent moon on it, which ZUN says is her daily wear. Her dress in some appearances looks like it has stripes of purple and violet but according to ZUN, they are not stripes. In the Immaterial and Missing Power OST booklet, a comment from Iruka Unabara notes that ZUN's design draft didn't have stripes but they somehow ended up in the final design anyways.[9] A comment from (presumably) Alphes remarks "Everybody thinks Patchouli has stripes except ZUN-san."[10]

Her alternative outfit in Immaterial and Missing Power and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody is mostly lavender while her hair is a darker shade of violet.

In the early chapters of Foul Detective Satori drawn by Ginmokusei, Patchouli wears a laced-up shirt and star-shaped earrings.

With the exception of her story cards Sign I "St. Elmo's Explosion" and Sign II "Forty-Day Deluge" in Immaterial and Missing Power, whose prefixes are patterned in the style of other cards in that game, all of Patchouli's spell names are prefixed with one or more of the kanji for the seven elements she manipulates. The longest of these is Fire Water Wood Metal Earth Sign "Philosopher's Stone" (火水木金土符「賢者の石」 Ka-sui-moku-kin-do-fu "Kenja no Ishi"). Except in the fighting games, all other card with multiple elements have the kanji for those elements separated by an ampersand in the prefix.

Patchouli has many books in the library of the Scarlet Devil Mansion which are mostly used for magic. Some of these books appear to act "independently" and can shoot danmaku, as shown in Stage 4 and the Extra stage of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. She also has waterproof books that Marisa finds interest in reading in the bath.[8]

Manipulation of fire, water, wood, metal, earth, sun and moon
Patchouli manipulates the five Chinese elements, making her an "Eastern style Western magician", an antithesis existence to Marisa Kirisame: "Western style Eastern magician". Patchouli is able to handle the five phases (commonly called Wu Xing, sometimes known as the five elements) with the addition of the sun and moon elements. The order of elements she uses follows the days of the week on a Japanese calendar. Due to this, she's known as the "one-week girl".[4] In the Japanese language, the weekdays are named after the classical planets, which in turn were named after the Wu Xing phases (e.g. Mercury, water star), plus the Sun and Moon as heavenly bodies. As this ordering is based on the planetary hours, there is no direct relationship between the weekdays and Wu Xing. The ordering of Patchouli's elements follows the weekday sequence but places the Wu Xing phases first and "Sun" and "Moon" last.

Element Weekday Description
Fire (火) Tuesday (火曜日) Change and movement. Fire assists earth and inhibits metal. Fire's ashes pile up to create earth, but it melts metal.
Water (水) Wednesday (水曜日) Silence and purification. Water assists wood and inhibits fire. Water nourishes wood, but it quenches fire.
Wood (木) Thursday (木曜日) Life and awakening. Wood assists fire and inhibits earth. Wood feeds fire, but it absorbs away water and nutrients from the earth.
Metal (金) Friday (金曜日) Wealth and abundance. Metal assists water and inhibits wood. Metal gives forth water (by condensation), but it tears up the roots of trees.
Earth (土) Saturday (土曜日) Foundation and immobility. Earth assists metal and inhibits water. Earth contains metal, but it absorbs water.
Sun (日) Sunday (日曜日) Activity and offense.
Moon (月) Monday (月曜日) Passivity and defense.
Elemental magic (属性魔法) (also spiritual magic (精霊魔法)) borrows the powers of spirits that exist in nature.[5] Through this, she's able to receive great output from a small input.

Patchouli is known to be highly capable, experienced and studious magician, usually found researching the countless tomes within the house library. However, her great abilities are offset by her poor health caused by long-time recluse and asthma. She doesn't have a very proactive personality but rather always walks her own path. However, she's always interested where knowledge is concerned and will proactively go and try to acquire it. She does everything by the book but still makes a lot of mistakes. She's also described as very dark and taciturn, which in this case means she is introverted and silent in expression and manner.

scarlet devil mansion

Librarian, scholar

magician

Manipulation of fire, water, wood, metal, earth, sun and moon

about 100

pache

Patchouli Knowledge