Wriggle nightbug - Touhou

Wriggle Nightbug (リグル・ナイトバグ Riguru Naitobagu) is a firefly youkai with the ability to control other insects who first appears in Imperishable Night as the stage 1 midboss and boss.

Wriggle is quick to anger, and seems to take it personally when someone offends insects. She is concerned about the decrease in the amount of insects lately, especially due to insecticide. Wriggle is annoyed at the low social status of bugs, and has at one point expressed interest in proving they can be useful to humans to break their status quo, something she and the bugs quickly got tired of. She forgot about it in a matter of days afterwards, stating that insects get rid of old information once it served its job.[1] ZUN notes that he thinks Wriggle is "a bit slow in the head", and that Cirno would be a more suitable person to play with for her than the player characters.[2]

Being an insect herself, she cannot stand the various kinds of countermeasures against them, including cold and insecticide.[3]

Abilities Manipulation of insects Wriggle possesses the ability to control insects of all kinds of varieties at will. Among these varieties are fireflies, moths, centipedes, and crickets; and also include deadly, venomous insects such as hornets. She always appears with a large number of bugs in her company, which makes humans find her particularly unpleasant. Hieda no Akyuu writes that she is essentially the leader of insects.[4]

Her spell cards utilize synchronized flickering of firefly swarms and large swarms of bugs - Marisa Kirisame notes that experiencing them essentially amounts to a swarm of insects completely obscuring your field of vision.[5][6]. Akyuu notes that her ability is frightening because, while insects by themselves don't have much power, in swarms they are difficult to deal with - particularly for insects such as hornets that can kill a human with one sting. An especially dangerous kind of bug Wriggle can control are harvest mites - bugs invisible to the naked eye that can cause a deadly fever with their bites, with no effective treatment - which she summons a swarm of when she's particularly upset and serious.[4][3]

However, while this ability makes her a fearsome opponent for most humans, since the insects she controls still have their typical weaknesses, such as cold, fire, fumigation and insecticide, one can greatly weaken her capabilities by exploiting one or more of these weaknesses. In addition, Wriggle herself is almost harmless, and confronting her while she is alone, such as during the winter, would lead to an easy victory.[4]

Occupation At one point, Wriggle was in charge of the "Insect Notification Service", in order to improve the social standing of insects. It worked by sending a large swarm of insects to a person to make announcements, given a time and date, and was particularly useful in functioning as a morning alarm, as a recipient notes that they "broke out in a cold sweat and woke up right away". However, during the span of time between Aya Shameimaru's article and her interview, she stopped, and forgot all about it.[1]

Species Wriggle is a firefly that has matured into a beast youkai after living a long life - this is easier for insects such as fireflies and butterflies because they are popular with humans, so they can avoid being exterminated by humans. Long ago, the prestige of bug youkai were equal to mighty youkai such as the oni and tengu, and many could defeat youkai with a single sting.[4] Wriggle herself does not know this. However, bug youkai have since fallen from grace, and Aya Shameimaru notes that Wriggle is not much more powerful than a regular insect.[1]

Wriggle has blue eyes, teal hair, and bug-like antennae. She wears a white shirt with stylized short sleeves, a black cape with red lining, which is shaped to resemble insect wings (however, Hieda no Akyuu describes her as having actual wings), and baggy blue knee-length shorts.

According to Akyuu, she looks like an average human aside from the insect appendages, and her childlike appearance is a testament to the fact that insect youkai are no longer equal to oni and tengu in terms of inspiring fear.