Should You Pull? 48-Hour Rerun Festival: The Sages of Gensokyo

Only if you really want to pick up Yukari Yakumo or Kasen Ibaraki. Both of these Festival Friends are some of the earliest Festivals in the game, only being released after Yuyuko Saigyouji. While they may be old, their utility and practicality is still very above-average. Yukari Yakumo is one of the better tanks in the game, capable of restoring her own Barriers and HP, applying Focus UP to keep attention on her, and giving defense buffs to herself and the rest of the team. Kasen Ibaraki is more offensive, being one of the best options for Solo-target elimination due to her plentiful self-buffs and Solo-target spells. Additionally, both Friends have Fantasy Rebirths available to obtain in-game, although currently their main purpose is to increase their Yang ATK stats, something that might not be worth the additional 2 Spirit Point cost for deploying them.

The prayer only lasts for 48 hours, from July 13th to July 15th, so deciding to pull on this prayer when compared to other prayers is more challenging to consider (although yes, the co-running Ultra Festival Friends and even Takane Yamashiro and Misumaru Tamatsukuri are slightly better than these older Friends). Instead, what should be considered is that both of these Friends will lose their Festival status and become available in the General Friend Pool instead sometime in mid-to-late August. While this sounds like even less of a reason to pull for them now, this prayer serves as the best way to obtain Yukari or Kasen before they become General Friends and will likely not be featured in many future prayers.

The special Ascending God Crystal Step-UP plays into this prayer acting as the best way to get these Friends before becoming General as well. Not only does Step 5 guarantee 2 Friends upon pulling, but one of these Friends is guaranteed to be Yukari or Kasen! While it can be somewhat difficult to desire these Friends due to their age and limited time before they become General, this prayer still serves as a great way to find some Friends that are still used in a fair amount of difficult content to this day!

+ Unparalleled team-wide Barrier restoration, restoring 2 Barriers every 5 turns team-wide
+ Access to Earth on a Basic Shot at 0 Power
+ All targeting Spell Card with 2 Earth and Sun Breaks at 3 Power
+ Very solid damage on All Last Word at 3 Power
- Last Word deals low damage at 1 Power
- Utility is entirely defensive, leaving her somewhat lacking for shorter fights

+ Powerful Solo-target Last Word that deals high damage in 1 turn and an incredible amount at 3P
+ Access to both Water and Earth element on spells
- Entirely selfish damage dealer with no utility
- Although she doesn’t entirely need support, for the rare fight she does self-Quick can make it tricky to support her.
- The number of Element Breaks on her Spell Cards is merely average; both Spell Cards and her Last Word have 1/1/2/3 Breaks at 0/1/2/3 Power.

One of the sages of Gensokyo, a group of individuals who collaborated to create it and work behind the scenes to keep it safe, Yukari Yakumo is a youkai with mysterious origins. Known as the gap youkai, she has the power to manipulate boundaries - such as the boundary between day or night, instantly changing the time of day from noon to midnight, or the boundary between heavy or light, making a feather weigh as much as a ton. Combined with this, she has the ability to open up ‘gaps’ between points in space, allowing her access to just about anywhere she pleases. 

Still, for all this terrifying power, she’s also awfully lazy. She tends to sleep many of her days away, or otherwise spends her time amusing herself and being a general menace. For such an important person, she’s really more of a lazy trickster most of the time, and garners fairly little respect from most who know her as a result. Still, everyone knows that deep down, there’s nobody who cares more about Gensokyo than her, and when it comes down to it, she’ll ultimately act to protect the land if things are truly dire. So, if she’s getting involved in something, you can either be assured it is a deadly serious matter - or she’s just really bored. It really could be either one.

In LostWord, Yukari at least retains a serious nature while fighting for you…though still takes the easy way out of battling as a tank rather than being a heavy hitter. However, don’t count her out of being useful, as she still has everything that any great tank should have. Her first skill, Boundary Manipulation, is a testament to this thanks to both healing Yukari by 35% of her HP and giving herself 5 levels of Focus UP for 3 turns. Some newer players may be confused by why Focus UP on a tank is so relevant, but increased Focus on a tank is essential so that they actually get the chance to tank attacks instead of the opponents deciding to take down a more squishy attacker instead. Focus UP means Solo-target attacks are more likely to target Yukari, and All-target attacks will do more damage to her compared to the allies without Focus UP. This can be slightly problematic, even when Yukari has higher defenses set up, which is where her third skill, Reinforced Barrier, comes in. The main appeal of this skill are the 2 layers of Barrier restored on the whole team, which not only allows Yukari to block more damaging All-target attacks, but also increase Focus on the turn she Grazes so that even less damage is done to the rest of the team! Since this is partywide, other allies can easily do more Grazes to block damage or trigger other good buffs! Additionally, her second skill, Guardian Sage, is a partywide 3 levels of Yang DEF UP for 3 turns to help everyone tank more damage. It also decreases the Yang ATK of one foe by 3 levels for 3 turns, a debuff that is more relevant for a tank so that they can shove off more damage than usual.

Yukari is really not going to be a powerhouse in the battles she is attempting to control. Her Last Word, Profound Bullet Barrier - Phantasm, Foam, and Shadow, is pitifully weak at 1P and is backloaded, practically requiring a full setup to do good damage with. However, the attack does come with some actually strong Hard scaling, meaning any increase in Yukari’s Yang DEF during the fight will come back to dish out stronger hits as well. The rest of her spells, sadly, do not have great pre-ATK effects, although her second spell, Shikigami: Ran Yakumo and Chen, at least is another extra 1 or 2 levels of Focus UP for 3 turns. Barrier breaking is also pretty underwhelming for Yukari compared to modern-day standards, but she still tries her best with a below-average amount of Earth breaks in general and 2 Metal breaks on Shikigami: Ran Yakumo and Chen. At the very least, she has 0P Earth on her Focus shot, Apparition Needle, giving Yukari a good way to spam Earth breaks, something that a tanky unit can easily abuse!

In the end, Yukari Yakumo may not be defining the winner of challenging fights, but she nevertheless can easily be an important asset in them. With her important tanking skills that obtain cooldowns at low as 5 or even 4 turns, Yukari can easily spam Focus UP and barrier restoration to keep herself alive throughout many turns as Friends prepare their damaging finishers. There’s good reason why Yukari is one of the sages of Gensokyo, and her battle performance should show at least one of them.

Kasen Ibaraki, also known by her pseudonym Ibarakasen, is a woman who attempts to keep the fact she is both a sage of Gensokyo (a group of founders of the land, who work behind the scenes to keep it protected) and a oni a secret, claiming instead to be a simple hermit. Whilst her ability to keep either of these things a secret is somewhat lacking, she has a good reason to keep them hidden - neither sages nor oni have the best of reputation amongst the humans of Gensokyo, and Kasen wishes for the betterment of both human and youkai. Lately, she’s set her sights on Reimu Hakurei, attempting to scold and lecture her into a better person, almost like an adoptive mother - only time will tell if she can manage such a feat. Outside of her latest pet project, Kasen is a nice woman with time for just about anyone, if something of a hypocrite. She can tend to be more than a little gluttonous, and occasionally acts in ways one might consider less than ethical. But ultimately, she has the wellbeing of all (or at least the ones she deems the good ones) in mind. 

On the battlefield, Kasen tries to keep her true abilities a secret - there’s nary a hint of the fact she’s an oni in combat, save for the fact she has rather overwhelming strength. She primarily favors guiding her beloved animals in combat to help fight on her behalf, but when that’s not enough, her seemingly bandaged right arm is actually entirely a fake. Made up of black smoke held together by bandages, she can use both the smoke and bandages to whip lightning, wrap up and fling her foes, and even manipulate it into larger shapes to use as a blunt weapon (such as a dragon’s maw). She can even use it to fire blasts of energy and rainbow colored spheres! 

Kasen may seem pretty off-putting to use at first due to only containing Solo-target attacks and spells, which can make her annoying to use in stages with multiple targets. However, instead of focusing who is getting hit, you should be focusing on what they are getting hit by. Specifically, Kasen’s main claim to fame is her heavy self-buffs on the pre-ATK effects of her spells, which inevitably snowballs into her very powerful Solo-target Last Word, When the Ice Melts, the Waves Wash the Old Moss’s Beard. Ironically enough, both of her normal spells have the same pre-ATK effects: buffing all of her offensive stats (Yin ATK, Yang ATK, and CRIT ATK) by 2 levels for 3 turns. While When the Ice Melts, the Waves Wash the Old Moss’s Beard is made up of both Yin and Yang bullets, an aspect that usually makes it harder to optimize a Last Word’s damage, Kasen buffs both Yin and Yang to make the attack still very strong. 

Kasen’s skills play into this as well, or mainly her second and third skills. Her first skill, Breath Control, only serves to buff Yin DEF and Yang DEF, something that doesn’t really fit Kasen’s offensive style due to lacking any Hard scaling. However, her third skill, Ibaraki Box, more than makes up for this by buffing Yin ATK and Yang ATK by 2 levels for 2 turns and even providing 1.00 Spirit Power for an easy boost. Everytime Kasen Boosts, she gets an additional Accuracy level that turn, meaning she can make her own accuracy support even without having direct buffs or debuffs on her skills. Her second skill, Qi Movement, is possibly even more important for Kasen’s damage, as she both gains 3 levels of CRIT Accuracy UP for 3 turns and self-Quick, something she can use to strike first before allies or enemies. While the self-Quick is really only relevant to maybe activate Kasen’s Impact bullets that stop an enemy from attacking that turn, Qi Movement’s 3-turn cooldown means that she can basically have the CRIT Accuracy buff on for the entire battle!

Overall, Kasen’s role may not be to single-handedly nuke all of the opponents at once, but she definitely has a specific purpose to fulfill, and she does it pretty well. There are many challenging stages in the game that either only have one enemy to take down or have singular targets that should be prioritized first, giving Kasen’s single-target nuke strategy plenty of viable options. Support her with other Friends, and Kasen’s sage-liness should shine just as much as Yukari’s!