Should You Pull? Festival: Perfect Shikigami & Sleepy Sage

Maybe, with a slight lean toward Yes. The primary bosses of the extra stages of Touhou 7 (Perfect Cherry Blossom) join Touhou LostWord as A7 Yukari Yakumo and A7 Ran Yakumo. A7 Chen was sadly not able to make it to the family reunion, but will hopefully find her fox owner soon.

While it has been around 3 months since her debut, A7 Yukari still stands very strong in terms of power, raising her Yin DEF in bulk to buff the Hard scaling on her spells. She also extends support to her teammates, primarily in Yin-related buffs (both ATK and DEF) as well as Yang DEF and even Accuracy. Her main drawback really comes down to the excessive elemental spread she carries, making her lacking in Elemental EX content, but she still holds a lot of elements for side utility.

A7 Ran is the true newcomer in this prayer, and she makes a very great first impression. Practically all of her skills carry some form of partywide utility with them, the highlight definitely being the Spirit Power UP on every skill that allows for over 1.00 Spirit Power. Her other buffs of Accuracy, Agility, Yin ATK, and Yin DEF definitely have their moments to shine as well, with the latter being a great backup for her own master and co-runner on the prayer, A7 Yukari. Topped with several beneficial, partywide buffs on her spells that are strong with Slice scaling and great Metal and Moon breaks, and you have an extremely powerful Friend up for grabs.

There are still more powerful co-running prayers going on, which mainly boils down to the Relic Friend L80 Alice Margatroid. B3 Reisen Udongein Inaba is also a great alternative pick, being a powerful Ultra Festival Friend who carries support via debuffing. However, with these contenders being Friend types that require more exchange points (350 for L80 Alice and 250 for B3 Reisen), there might be more value to go for either of the Friends here. Just be aware that all 3 of these prayers will end at the same time, on September 2nd!

There is a Descending God Crystal Step-UP available for this prayer, allowing for some Free 10-pulls between some normal and discounted God Crystal 10-pulls. Both A7 Yukari and A7 Ran are Festival Friends, meaning both will cost 150 Exchange Points to exchange for a duplicate of.

+ Great overall damage
+ Very flexible due to ease of supporting
+ Has good teamwide Yin and Accuracy support
+ Incredible element density on Spell Cards and Shots alike
- Elemental variety limits usefulness in Elemental EX

+ Good access to Metal elements
+ Powerful utility with spammable skills and ability
- Damage is weaker than the other strong characters
- Current farm potential is on the lower end

Yukari Yakumo is one of the strongest, smartest and oldest youkai to exist in Gensokyo. Her ability, “to manipulate gaps and boundaries”, comes in many forms, such as being able to escape any situation, teleport at will, as well as teleport many other things outside of herself. “Manipulate” falls under the ability to create and pass through boundaries as well. She is one of the Sages of Gensokyo, and the person who originally proposed the Great Hakurei Barrier as well as aided in its creation over 100 years ago. In the Spring Snow Incident, she was asked by Yuyuko Saigyouji to repair the border between the Netherworld and Gensokyo, and was accosted by Reimu, Marisa and Sakuya in the process, allowing them all to meet her for the first time.

A7 Yukari’s versatility can’t be understated; besides all of the content she can be useful in which was already talked about above, her individual spells and skills are great too. Both of her spell cards provide teamwide Yin DEF 2 levels UP (3T) and Yang DEF 2 levels UP (3T) respectively, and they each have full elemental lines; “Boundary of Humans and Youkai” is AoE, with 2 Star, 2 Water and 2 Earth lines, and “Barrier: Boundary of Life and Death” is ST, with 3 Fire and 3 Metal lines. Both Spell Cards even have some pretty solid Hard scaling, just like her Last Word, “Profound Bullet Barrier - Phantasm, Foam, Shadow, and Life”, which has even better Hard scaling, as well as Yin ATK and Yin DEF 3 levels UP (2T) to complement the Hard scaling and the majority Yin damage.

A7 Yukari gives even more teamwide buffs in her skills, with ACC 2 levels UP (1T), Yin DEF 2 levels UP (3T), and Yin ATK 2 levels UP (2T), not even accounting for all of her personal buffs. Yukari uses every stat so well that no kind of support is really wasted on her, making her a solid fit into any team, aside from the fact that she even does good support herself. Yukari’s passive skills are also pretty good, with having both the Yin and Yang ATK versions of the “after being attacked, 1 level UP (3T) both with an 80% success rate, so they’ll be activating often. And to add a little bit of tankiness, her last skill has a 30% chance to negate ALL incoming Yang damage, which can be really strong in some matchups.

Though she serves as a Shikigami to the Gap Youkai, Ran Yakumo herself is no slouch in the least. Her vessel is a nine tailed fox, and she is powerful enough to have a Shikigami of her own, in Chen. Her mind is comparable to a super computer, and she is said to have calculated the width of the ever-changing Sanzu river, an unimaginable feat, simply to pass the time. However, she primarily serves as a caretaker for Yukari and Chen, as Chen herself is not yet ready to be doing Ran’s tasks, and can be seen shopping in the Human Village, or working at repairing the boundary. With all of these in mind, it comes as no surprise as she is an S+ Tier friend.

For farming, Ran, while a decent farmer for event stages, struggles in farming the current story card stages due to her elements. While she may have the potential to do a good deal of damage with her Last Word, Falling Petals - Demon-Binding Chain, the full metal elements present hold her back from being effective in most of the relevant story card stages. As such, the only relevant stage that she may be able to farm is Mysterious Sword Master (3-3-3). 

Don’t be fooled though. What makes Ran a good character is her power in more challenging content. Ran shines when it comes to utility in her skills, ability, and Spell Cards. With her 1st skill, Inari Recipient, she can provide 3 levels of Accuracy to the party for 3 turns. In addition, she also provides herself with quick and the party with 0.4P. In terms of usage, this skill can let Ran use her Spell Cards to help the team with their useful pre-effects in addition to potentially letting the team get an extra boost for extra breaks or damage. Her 2nd skill, Sun Circle Sign, brings additional  utility by providing the team with 3 levels of Agility and Yin DEF for 3 turns. In particular, characters who scale with either Yin DEF, Agility, or even both can appreciate these buffs. This skill also provides Ran with 0.8P which allows her to buff teammates’ yin attack  by boosting more often, have access to even more barrier breaks, or deal more damage. Finally, her third skill, Forbidden Arts, provides 3 levels of Accuracy to the party for 3 turns as well as 0.5P to the party. While the 1st and 3rd skill have overlap by both providing accuracy and P to the team, this actually can come at an advantage as Ran can stagger her skills to have indefinite uptime on Accuracy for the party by using either skill 1 or 3 on the first turn, and using the other skill after 2 turns. That way, there is no downtime on accuracy support for the team. As all of these skills provide power for her to use, Ran can make great use of her ability, Capable of using Shikigami. With this ability, both grazing and boosting provide the party with Yin ATK which can come useful in boosting the team’s damage output. However, this does come at a downside–unless you utilize a particular story card or her Last Word to extend her Yin ATK buff, she won’t sustain the Yin ATK for longer than a turn.

Ran’s spell cards also showcase her excellent utility.. With her 1st spell card, Illusion God: Descent of Izuna-Gongen, she provides 2 levels of Agility for the party for 4 turns as well as 0.8P for the party as a post effect. This spell card also can inflict up to 3 layers of freeze anomalies to all enemies with 3 boosts. Her 2nd spell card, Shikigami: Channeling Dakiniten, heals the party by 45 % of her own HP and restores 0.8P. Finally, her Last Word can provide 2 levels of Yin ATK, CRIT ATK, and Yin DEF for 3 turns. Her Last Word does have the ability to break freeze barriers with 2 boosts, but the damage may admittedly top out a bit lower than the more powerful characters due to her lackluster scalings.

Barrier break wise, Ran does possess a good amount of Metal barrier breaks. Possessing a P0 Metal focus shot, Ran’s 1st spell card can provide a total of 3 Metal and Moon breaks with the potential for more thanks to the freeze anomalies she inflicts. Her 2nd spell card also shares the same elements with one boost allowing her full access to all three moon breaks. Finally, her Last Word can provide 6 Metal breaks with an ability to break either burn or freeze anomalies with 2 boosts. 

Ultimately, Ran provides a great deal of utility but outputs some relatively mediocre damage compared to her compatriots. Don’t be fooled though, as the shikigami of one of the sages of Gensokyo, Ran does have power in spades and can certainly help you out