Touhou Music Versus

Yatagarasu (八咫烏, yatagarasu) is a divine three-legged crow. In East Asian mythologies the three-legged crow is most often associated with the sun, and in the Nihon Shoki, was the envoy of the highest sun god, Amaterasu Oomikami, who is the sister of Tsukuyomi no Mikoto.

In the Touhou Project, the Yatagarasu was a deity that Kanako Yasaka persuaded Utsuho Reiuji into eating part of its spirit to gain its power. As Yatagarasu is the avatar of Amaterasu Oomikami, the sister of the founder of the moon capital, Tsukuyomi (along with Eirin Yagokoro), Watatsuki no Yorihime made a warning about the crow, although Watatsuki no Toyohime noted that it did not have the features of Yatagarasu.
The Yatagarasu is thought to have been a raven that lived in the sun; sunspots are said to be its form, visible to humans. The sun is a divine flame, thus the powers of the Yatagarasu will never burn out, and are thus difficult to control. As Utsuho is extremely dumb, she made the perfect vessel for channeling its power.

• She is the only undead Touhou character to not be a Ghost.

• She wears a star on her hat that is similar to Hong Meiling's one, but without a symbol.

• Her last name Miyako (宮古) literally means "Ancient Palace". Her first name Yoshika (芳香) could mean "Fragrant Incense".

• She is the only character in the series who can heal herself during battle.

• Yoshika and Seiga's relationship was likely caused by the story Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. This is a possibility because the inspiration for both characters appear in the story and there is a story, "dead body incident" (simplified Chinese: 尸变; traditional Chinese: 屍變), in the 3rd chapter of the 1st volume.

• According to legends, Ibaraki-douji, the model for Kasen Ibaraki, was very impressed with Miyako no Yoshika's works. Kasen can be seen one of his poems in Wild and Horned Hermit because of this.

• Yoshika's model is Miyako no Yoshika, a poet of Heian period. Yoshika was jealous of Sugawara no Michizane, a renowned politician because he got promoted and took higher position than Yoshika. Yoshika, driven by jealousy, resigned as a royal poet and retired to hermitage.

• According to legends, after 100 years from his resignation, a man met Yoshika in a cave, alive and looks like a healthy young man.

• Alice appears on the cover of Mystic Square.

• The name Alice is a reference to the main protagonist in Lewis Carroll's famous novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, as the majority of enemies in Mystic Square's extra stage are card soldiers of the same type seen in the Walt Disney animated movie version of the novel. The title of the BGM used in that stage also directly translates to "Alice in Wonderland".
  Alice's last name is based on the character Miss Murgatroyd from Agatha Christie's book "A Murder is Announced".

• Because of Shinki's dialog, in which she mentions that everything in Makai is her creation, it is thought that Alice is Shinki's daughter (although this definition would also extend to the other Makai residents). However, there's been no further mention of this since then, and Perfect Memento states that Alice was once a human who became a youkai magician. It is unknown whether this is a retroactive change of continuity, merely a mistake by Akyu, or if fans were mistaken from the beginning when thinking Alice was Shinki's daughter. Since there has yet to be any official statement by ZUN, this is merely speculation. However, it is interesting to note that her title is "Witch of Death."

• Two of the dolls she carries are called Shanghai and Hourai. Shanghai has appeared with several different outfits, but is always depicted with a red ribbon tied in a bow in its hair. No official artwork of Hourai exists (it appeared only as Alice's final spell card), and thus all fan depictions of Hourai are original. In Imperishable Night, Alice uses Shanghai to assist firing her shots. Both dolls are used as weapons by Alice in Immaterial and Missing Power in spell cards; their sprites appear to be identical. However, in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, while both Shanghai and Hourai are still spell cards, the Hourai spell card summons multiple dolls at the same time, all with the same sprite as Shanghai. The treatment of Shanghai and Hourai as unique dolls is strangely at odds with Perfect Cherry Blossom, where there were many copies of the dolls, used in the spell cards Curse: Eerily Luminous Shanghai Dolls and Curse: Hanged Hourai Dolls. It is almost certain that the dolls were originally not meant to have names, and that "Shanghai" and "Hourai" are references to countries where the dolls were made, much like Alice's other dolls, such as the "Foggy London Dolls" or "Red-Haired Dutch Dolls".