Should You Pull? Festival: Reverse Rebel Heroes

Maybe, with a slight lean toward No. While these are both new Festival Friends, they are unfortunately timed with some stiff competition. Most notably being the Ultra Festival Friends B3 Sagume Kishin (Seija must be scowling at her fellow amanojaku), Z1 Marisa Kirisame, and R2 Yuyuko Saigyouji as well as the limited A-Type Festivals A8 Reisen Udongein Inaba and even A7 Youmu Konpaku. The Water EX Festival even holds a slight bit more over this prayer in terms of relevance due to the Water EX Battle Stage. However, it is not like these Friends are entirely unsalvageable, they are just faced with some hard meta picks at the moment.

Seija Kijin stands out as a Technical hard hitter with some utility through being able to cast and break Blind anomalies. Meanwhile, Shinmyoumaru is a more direct Attack Friend, boasting a full-Star Last Word and many handy Yang buffs. Both of these Friends do share a common weakness in lacking many elemental breaks on their spells and not having much team utility at times, but their benefits bring them back to being good Friends for challenging quests. Plus, they even have some synergy together since Shinmyoumaru can break the Blind anomalies that Seija sets! Fitting for two characters who caused an incident together. Overall, both pass their Festival Friend status as A+ Tier characters.

Along with this duo is the debut of the 5* story card Sweet Dreams. It’s definitely not a bad card, being a debuffer instead of the usual spell card buff. 3 levels of Evasion DOWN (2T) and CRIT Evasion 3 levels DOWN (2T) can be good accuracy support for the entire team, but it doesn’t entirely change the value of this prayer as a whole or even work super well with the featured Friends.

Shinmyoumaru and Seija will be around for only a week, leaving on April 28th, so make your choice of claiming them pretty soon. Additionally, there will be an Ascending God Crystal Step-UP for this prayer, allowing for a 10-pull with 60 God Crystals and costing 100 more GCs for each consecutive 10-pull step (60, 160, 260, 360, 460). Since both Friends are Festival units, it will cost 150 Exchange Points to exchange for a copy of either Friend. Sweet Dreams can be exchanged for 50 Exchange Points, like other featured 5* story cards.

+ 0P Star on Focus shot
+ Fully Star Last Word hits hard with set up
+ Comes with her own Accuracy support
- Lacking in elemental breaking on spells
- Team support mainly on spells instead of skills
- Evasion debuff on Last Word is a tad excessive

+ 0P Moon break on Spread
+ Last Word can hit hard after setting up from self-Blind buffs
+ Flash breaks on Spread and first spell; can be used for synergy
? Specular bullets makes her Yin attacks target Yang DEF (depends on the opponent if it is a boon/bane)
- Underwhelming Moon and Fire breaks overall
- Very low team synergy
- Blind anomalies on team forces team to waste a barrier

[Numbers in brackets are buffs at Max Limit Break or stat sticks at Max Enhance]

• Target’s Evasion 2 [3] levels DOWN (2T)
• Target’s CRIT Evasion 2 [3]levels DOWN (2T)
• DMG from indoor people 15% DOWN (2T)
• Yang ATK +34 [+60]
• Yin DEF +26 [+120]

Shinmyoumaru Sukuna is an inchling, a rare race of tiny people whose treasure is the Miracle Mallet, an artifact with the power to change the size of anything; but only inchlings can use it. Shinmyoumaru is the current owner of the Miracle Mallet, and uses it in battle, as well as using it to create the tsukumogami Benben Tsukumo, Yatsuhashi Tsukumo, and Raiko Horikawa (albeit by accident). In the Social Upheaval Incident, Seija Kijin took advantage of Shinmyoumaru's ability to use the Miracle Mallet to start a rebellion, but Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame and Sakuya Izayoi eventually defeated Shinmyoumaru and convinced her that Seija lied about why she wanted to start the rebellion, returning Shinmyoumaru to a docile state. She lived with Reimu for some time after the incident while waiting for her Miracle Mallet to recharge, but returned to her original home, the Shining Needle Castle, some time after, and has lived there ever since.

In LostWord, Shinmyoumaru fights back against those who decided to pick a fight with someone smaller through focusing on raw strength. Both of her spell cards have pre-ATK effects focusing on Yang buffs for the entire party, not only herself. Her first spell, Mallet: Grow Bigger!, is 2 levels of Yang ATK UP (2T) while her second spell, Bewitched Sword: Shining Needle Sword, is 2 levels of Yang DEF UP (3T). The Yang DEF is specifically meant for Shinmyoumaru’s Hard scaling, which is present on all of her attacks but highest on her Last Word, Giant Killing. In a…rather long fashion, Shinmyoumaru throws out a strong, Star and Yang only Last Word that excessively decreases the singular target’s Evasion and CRIT Evasion by 4 levels (2T). 

Naturally, Shinmyoumaru’s skills follow up the trait of straight-on power, mainly helping the inchling herself while manipulating size via the Miracle Mallet. Her first two skills, Shrink Just a Little and Grow Just a Little, both provide 0.80 Spirit Power, but the latter has an extra benefit of a whopping 3 levels of Yang ATK UP (2T). Along with her plentiful Spirit Power restoration comes her third skill, Grant a Little Wish, which provides the entire party with 2 levels of Accuracy UP (3T) along with Charge for herself. This can be counter-intuitive if you are trying to use Giant Killing to debuff Evasion while everyone else uses their Last Words, as Shinmyoumaru will end up setting the debuffs after everyone goes. Still, Grow Just a Little and Grant a Little Wish stand out for helping Shinmyoumaru’s offensive role while helping the team out as well.

Unfortunately, Shinmyoumaru doesn’t provide much else outside of these buffs and attack power. A small issue with her main buffs being on spells is that, unless spells are restored via Bomb items, the buffs will not be re-applied in an extended battle situation, making her utility somewhat limited. Still, with a Power link, she can swap out of the battle after buffing her Friends and provide Spirit Power to the rest of the team afterward. Her elemental breaking is also rather lackluster, outside of the 0P Star on her Focus shot or the 6/6 Star on Giant Killing. Overall though, don’t underestimate this Friend’s size or overlook her long history of powerful ancestors!

Seija Kijin, like Sagume Kishin, is an amanojaku: a species of youkai who have the ability to "reverse" phenomena in one way or another. But unlike Sagume's ability to reverse complex concepts like situations and outcomes, Seija's ability to "turn over anything" literally flips stuff over! She used this during the Social Upheaval Incident when she fought Reimu, Marisa and Sakuya, flipping them upside down in the air to disorient them during the battle. Seija is often very contrarian, and will go against the natural flow of things just to be different and cause trouble, like manipulating Shinmyoumaru into believing she is seen as a lower being than the rest of the residents of Gensokyo in order to cause the Social Upheaval Incident. And although Seija is generally disliked by the other residents of Gensokyo for her mischievous tendencies, she can actually be personable and enjoys talking.

The immediate thing to “reflect” on Seija’s kit is one aspect that all of her attacks- shots, spells, and Last Word- all share: the Specular effect. With this, any bullet that is a Yin attack will deal damage based on the target’s Yang DEF, and any Yang attack becomes based on the target’s Yin DEF. This mainly comes into play for Seija’s Last Word, Inverse Matrix. As an entirely Yin-based attack, it will end up going straight for the foe’s Yang DEF, making any Yang DEF debuffs valuable for its damage potential instead of Yin DEF decreases. Outside of this, Seija’s attacks feature some fair breaking potential thanks to Flash bullets, which can break Blind anomalies. Seija can apply 2 of these on everyone herself with her second spell, Reverse Bow: Dream Bow of Heaven and Earth. The attacks with the Flash bullets themselves are her first spell, Deceit Sign: Reverse Needle, at 3P and her Spread shot and 3P (which conveniently has a 0P Moon break as well!).

The rest of Seija’s kit, mainly her skills, are focused on strengthening herself like a usual Technical-Class Friend. Fun fact though, all of Seija’s Skills and Characteristics are directly based off the items she used throughout Touhou 14.3: Impossible Spell Card! Her first and third skills, Drained Decoy Doll and Weary Substitute Jizo, have a similar theme in applying 2 Blind anomalies to herself or the whole party respectively. This is to synergize with Seija’s character ability of turning over anything, which allows her to see through the blindness and increase her Yin, Yang, and CRIT ATK and CRIT Accuracy instead of lowering her Accuracy. Combined with Inverse Matrix applying 2 layers of Blind to herself, Otherwise, her second skill, Replica Replica Mallet, serves as a helpful 1.00 Spirit Power increase and Weary Substitute Jizo increases the party’s Yin DEF by 2 levels (3T), mainly for Seija’s Hard scaling, and decreases all opponents’ Yang DEF by 1 level (2T) for some self-synergy with her Last Word.

At the end of the day, everything Seija does is primarily there to help herself, natural of someone trying to be different from everyone else. While the rest of the team can end up benefiting from her defensive debuffs, they can likewise find annoyance from Seija’s team-wide Blind anomalies from Weary Substitute Jizo. While she might have done better working together with everyone else more, Seija stays true to her own character and does rather well for her archetype.