Elegant Impermanence of Sakura (v1.0.6) - Lunatic - NMNBFS - Marisa & Yuyuko

It's finally over. Started grinding this in June 2020 and gave up from lack of interest. Played boss practice for fun sporadically and started seriously relearning strats only in mid-Jan 2022. Finally started doing full runs on Sunday and got this on Thursday.

A fresh perspective on the game really helped a lot (and I might have gotten a bit better at dodging? probably not though). My PB from 2020 was 2MNB, and I matched that PB every day of attempts this week until I finally did it.

Also the game is unexpectedly long, I wasn't expecting the run to stretch up to 37 minutes. That explains why the game's so gruelling I suppose.

Noteworthy segments:
- Kaguya's LS @ 3:38 - Downright awful for a stage 1 pattern. Bullets can come at you at weird angles, and the spell can decide to unceremoniously wall you if it decides to clump a few flowers together while the next wave of lasers is spawning. Also, the lasers can and will spawn on top of you if you're not careful with your positioning. It's possible to get boxed in with a bad wave and then get spawnsniped by a laser.
- St2 opener @ 4:37 - This section has somewhat unstable routing as Marisa. I've gotten a lot better at it recently but it's still really spooky. I even briefly threw this strat out the window and killed the enemies focused at some point, but where's the fun in that?
- Emitsu's Sp2 @ 8:07 - Generally unpleasant spell. The fireballs can snipe you if you're not watching for them.
- Reimu/Yukari's Non3 @ 14:19 - This non kinda sucks and has a tendency to snipe you. I've found it significantly more doable if you try your best to never cut through the amulet walls. Try not to get pushed around too much.
- Hisoka's Sp3 @ 21:03 - This spell can be nasty if the random bullets decide to block the gaps between the walls. I try to aggressively push up through the walls instead of playing passively.
- Hisoka's Sp4 @ 21:51 - Arrowheads are not static and can come in various formations; some of them are particularly weird to deal with. I suggest practicing a bunch to get a better sense of how to deal with the various situations.
- Lily @ 24:46 - Non is spooky but relatively stable across runs. Spell is RNG galore. Pray. (I have a tendency to go to the corner between waves to give myself more time to read, but this doesn't always work out.)
- St5 post-midboss @ 25:32 - This section as a whole sucks. It's easy to get blocked from killing fairies further away if the other stuff decide to get in the way, and this typically causes the screen to fill with bullets, which means you have even more trouble killing the next wave, etc. Mistakes snowball really easily; the difficulty here is not getting 620 chain but not dying while trying to do so.
- Inori @ 26:27 - Other than Non1/Sp1/LS, none of her attacks are trivial. There is a general method to the madness but the patterns can be a bit unstable across runs and there are usually multiple factors you need to remain aware of.
- Shizuka's Sp1 @ 33:39 - This spell used to be free until they made the arrowheads aimed. The petals are static so I memorise where the big gaps appear and stay around that area. You can still get memed by the random flowers though.
- Shizuka's Sp4 @ 35:43 - The only other attack with random elements on the final boss. The petals that spawn during the laser streaming section can be nasty and get in your way (especially when the next wave starts). I have multiple 2MNBs that died once here.

Almost run-ending mistakes:
Reimu's LS @ 15:56 - Indecision. You can see me consider going over the purple ball before I think better of it and choose to go below instead. Could have died if I hesitated for too long.
Hisoka's Sp2 @ 20:17 - Just a spooky wave. This spell likes to do that from time to time.
Inori's Sp4 @ 29:43 - Late decision to move to the other side of the amulet wall caused the aimed rests to spread out. I had a hunch that I'd messed up the streaming, but wasn't aware that it was that bad. So I was slightly on edge and while it caught off guard, I was still able to barely react in time.
Shizuka's Sp5 @ 36:24 - Moved too quickly to position myself for the off-center dodge, causing me to get a late kill on the fairy on the right (my route usually kills the middle two simultaneously). This caused an extra star to block one of the gaps I was going to use in a memorised dodge later. I had to improvise and I'm honestly really lucky I didn't die; this spell is super dense and its only saving grace is that it's otherwise static.

Credits:
Unless otherwise listed below, all strats here are my own.
- St3 post-Reimu, St4 opener, Hisoka Non4: LYX
- St5 post-midboss dye route (adapted): ATM
- Inori Non3: cody
- Shizuka Non1: me, but 411022 independently made the same discovery

Special thanks:
cody - moral support (please LNN with Reimu, you can do it)
NME - keeping the fangame lnn dream alive
the dev team - for making two incredible games, both of which are in my top 5