Magic Mirror (Tōhō Reīden Arrange ver) — Jun'ya "ZUN" Ōta, 1998

COMMENT: 東方霊異伝　Fantasy arrange ver.
Elis and Kikuri's theme
This piece has a pretty good feel to it. This kind of tune (with a touch of mystery) is indispensable for mid-game. Well, not that my current stuff's all that different.

Yeah, this one reminds me of a wind rather than a mirror. Because of how it builds up and goes intense, like one of those winds that come with a rain. Almost like a hurricane.
Works well with the Rhythm part too, which's actually the case with all the original tracks of the first Touhou game. In fact, without it, the soundtrack sounds dull and eerie.

Also, I'm actually stuck on that boss in the original game as well··· because it's the only game with a completely different mechanic, I can't figure stuff out as easily. The English mistakes on it makes it funny too xD
Really gotta point out how ZUN's English improved a lot from that game onwards. Or maybe it's not him who's translating the games, but someone he knows that happens to speak broken English too, tho' not as broken.

This remake of the original tracks both has bangers and stuff that sounds boring compared to the original. The ear-scratchiness of the original does have a charm in certain tracks. I wonder why the tracks are so high-pitched, however··· there's no information I could find about that; I first thought it was a music driver error like the one in Mega Man II, but there was no mention of it in the Wiki page for it.

I guess it's a mystery, just like the vibe of this track.

Also··· the drop on this one seems to have been reused in Maiden's Capriccio later on, which's kinda cool. I like how you can hear some of ZUN's early works in some of his modern ones, even on the Windows games, which have a wildly different instrumentation. This guy really has a strong essence···