Giantess Reimu Hakurei | That miko won't stop growing!

Reimu Hakurei (博麗　霊夢 Hakurei Reimu) is the main protagonist of the Touhou Project series along with the deuteragonist, Marisa Kirisame. As the shrine maiden of the Hakurei Shrine, she manages the Hakurei Border of Gensokyo and exterminates troublesome youkai. She is a woman around 20 to 27 years old.

Reimu Hakurei's personality is typified by her desires, such as the desire to be wanted, to have good food, and to find happiness. Her biggest internal conflict comes from balancing her duties as the Hakurei shrine maiden and her own desires, though she does not seem to prefer acknowledging many of her internal conflicts.

Her duty as the shrine maiden gives Reimu a sense of purpose and identity, however, it conflicts with her desires in that it distances her from others and has her dealing with incidents and other related problems on a frequent basis. Despite her duty making it seem as though she antagonizes youkai, in truth, she wishes for peace between humans and youkai.

Reimu is generally a joyful and airheaded person. She’s also incredibly prideful and quite arrogant due to it. She’s often seen in a good mood until her routines are broken by some outside influence, be it a youkai or the like. She is quick to anger, but she’s also quick to forget. Reimu tends to speak bluntly, not afraid to express herself if she wants. Reimu also expresses some form of pragmatism whenever trying to resolve incidents, heavily focusing on any suspects and battling them with danmaku until she finds and defeats the culprit. Reimu is much more intimidating when she resolves incidents, being nicknamed "The Crimson Slasher" for her casual victories against her opponents. When not involved in work, Reimu is much more casual and laid back.

While many inhabitants of Gensokyo are capable of flying, Reimu's ability to "float" extends beyond that; she is someone who excels at floating through life, displaying a level of oneness with her surroundings that has been compared to a hermit. While she "goes with the flow" Reimu displays superhuman instincts and incredible luck, naturally ending up on the path of least resistance through most situations. On one occasion observers saw Reimu dodging an attack like she was made of air, while Reimu herself saw the attack swerving to avoid her; on another Reimu unknowingly walked across a river without getting wet, by stepping on fish that swam beneath her feet. The ultimate expression of this ability is Innate Dream, which allows Reimu to float away from reality and become impossible to attack; this was considered too powerful for use as a spell card until Marisa gave it a name and time limit.

As the Hakurei shrine maiden, Reimu can handle the Hakurei Yin-Yang Orbs, and is trained in youkai extermination techniques as well as standard duties like performing blessings. Reimu is also capable of channeling Gensokyo's gods, but she isn't well-trained enough to do so reliably.

Reimu displays great aptitude with magical barriers (beyond that normally associated with shrine maidens), presumably related to her work in maintaining the Great Hakurei Barrier. Among her techniques are barriers that explode, push enemies (or herself), or allow her to teleport. Reimu is capable of dismantling barriers and seals too complex for Marisa Kirisame and Patchouli Knowledge to understand.

Reimu has the ability to permanently strengthen herself in all feasible ways, including physical, mental, and spiritual aspects, all by changing her size. Even if she returns to normal scale, she will always retain whatever boosts she has obtained prior from earlier usage of her ability. This ability also fittingly allows Reimu to change her own size on a whim, though it can also trigger passively whenever she destroys something. This does not have any apparent cap, which she sometimes finds annoying.

Reimu is destined to ascend beyond godhood and to become ABSOLUTE. In her apotheosis, her form will gain radiant white wings as well as a golden halo to solidify her godhood.

Reimu is the shrine maiden of the Hakurei Shrine, and one of the main "incident resolvers" in Gensokyo. She and others characterize the time she spends at the shrine as largely boring and uneventful. While she is sometimes serious about her duties, she can't seem to get many worshippers at her shrine. It appears that youkai extermination is her only method of earning even a thin salary.

Yukari Yakumo describes Reimu's job as not being that of a youkai exterminator, but rather a "balancer between humans and youkai", who prevents youkai from attacking humans and humans from becoming youkai. Wild and Horned Hermit depicts Reimu as frequently coming up with various schemes to make money, which generally fail due to her own lack of foresight.

In most of the Touhou games, Reimu uses the Yin-Yang Orbs in combat. In Subterranean Animism they also functioned as communicators with people above the surface. In addition, she usually carries a gohei, sometimes referred to as her purification rod. She also possesses a great amount of ofuda, sacred paper charms with anti-youkai properties that she uses to fight, seal or exterminate youkai of any kind in her danmaku. Apparently, she can also use them to create barriers and even clones of herself. Like the Yin-Yang Orbs, she uses them in most, if not all, games she has appeared in, either as a normal shot (usually with homing properties) or as bullets for her spell cards. Aside from this, the other projectile she uses is a large collection of throwing needles hidden within her sleeves. Reimu is of moderate height, standing at a height of 172 centimeter at a normal scale. Her best known design is that of the Windows era. She has brown-black hair which varies in length and style between games, and her eyes vary from brown to red, but she still wears a red ribbon and matching tubes on her sidelocks. She's seen in her "shrine maiden uniform", but it bears little in common with the standard uniform beyond the red-and-white colour scheme. This uniform consists of a red skirt rather than the standard hakama, a sleeveless red top with a white collar, tied with a ribbon whose color varies across games, and a pair of white detached sleeves which exposes her sarashi. Due to the color scheme, she's occasionally called the "red-white shrine maiden." Her shaman clothing and her purification rod came from Rinnosuke Morichika, but it's unknown who designs them.

Although Reimu often shows up as the main character, she doesn't participate in mundane activities to the extent Marisa Kirisame does, limiting her familiarity with most of Gensokyo's population. Nevertheless, she has interacted with almost every other character that has ever made a physical appearance, with a few exceptions.

Reimu’s closest friend is Marisa Kirisame, and the two of them spend most of their time together. They are seen together most often where they hang out at the shrine together, chatting about the latest rumors and news in Gensokyo. Reimu and Marisa often quarrel and spar with each other, for reasons ranging from resolving incidents to hotpot ingredients. Regardless, Reimu and Marisa usually resolve their differences and continue being as close as ever. Marisa has also worked with Reimu on numerous occasions, such as when they chased down an enenra, or worked to exterminate a vengeful spirit. Though generally, they solve incidents at their own pace.

Despite her antagonistic personality, Yukari Yakumo mentors Reimu by pushing her to increase her spiritual powers, such as learning how to invoke the gods in Silent Sinner in Blue. In that case, Reimu followed her instructions and orders to train hard despite Yukari not informing Reimu why she needed to do so, displaying how much Reimu either trusts Yukari or has decided it's pointless to argue with her. Yukari occasionally seeks Reimu's assistance in resolving incidents in Imperishable Night and Subterranean Animism. In this regard, she is an employer of sorts, as she remarks about compensating Reimu accordingly. Yukari is also secretly a benefactor as well, donating to the shrine behind Reimu's back.

Suika Ibuki, who often freeloads her shrine after the events of Immaterial and Missing Power, was also one of her allies during Subterranean Animism. Reimu saw Suika's presence as a nuisance at first, but never really bothered with driving her away.

Aya Shameimaru, who frequently writes articles about Hakurei Shrine, was another ally during the events of Subterranean Animism. Reimu finds her to be an annoyance, but they don't mind helping each other occasionally, such as when Reimu gave Aya information to try and expose Miyoi Okunoda as a youkai.

Reimu is familiar with Rinnosuke Morichika, a shopkeeper who owns Kourindou, who she sometimes visits to hang out or for wares she sometimes shoplifts. She apparently has a large unpaid tab for requested items and services, but denies it since Rinnosuke "never accepts money." Rinnosuke was also the one that originally prepared her purification rod for her use.

Despite being the priestess of a rival shrine, Sanae Kochiya is on friendly terms with Reimu and appears frequently in Wild and Horned Hermit alongside Reimu and Marisa. She came on a bit strongly when she and Reimu first met, but she really thought she was helping the Hakurei Shrine out by attempting to get it to switch gods to Kanako Yasaka. After Mountain of Faith, Sanae offered to help Reimu as a fellow shrine maiden to gather faith for the shrine, and she appears to have been friends with Reimu since then. Nonetheless, the two have no qualms about antagonizing the other at times, though these quarrels are usually resolved by the next time they meet.

Kasen Ibaraki is a regular at the shrine and acts as a mentor (and sometimes guardian) of Reimu, whom she fears is too concerned with worldly desires. Kasen actually initially became Reimu's mentor as part of her own plan, but she continues to view herself as a mentor after her goals were achieved. Reimu mostly thinks of Kasen as a nagging, preachy busybody. However, Reimu often concedes, either because Kasen is usually right or she doesn't want to deal with her. Kasen is openly critical of Reimu, believing her to be too greedy and slack in her duties. In spite of this, Reimu views Kasen as a genuine friend. When fighting Kasen's arm, Reimu was unable to bring herself to fight Kasen whole-heartedly until she realized that the arm battling her was actually a separate entity from Kasen. By the present day Reimu knows that Kasen is secretly an oni.

Reimu knows next to nothing about the god dwelling in her shrine, making her unable to provide it with faith despite her efforts. Byakuren stated in one of the endings for Undefined Fantastic Object that the god is mad due to this.