Underrated Characters

[Beet]

Who do you think is the most underrated character? Can be anyone.. as long as they aren't PC-98, because that would make it too easy of a decision, just being a pick-and-guess of PC-98 characters.

[AngryEclectus]

Patchouli. In terms of who's popular, everyone loves everyone from Touhou 6, maybe excluding Rumia. Pache needs more love!

[Kotоhime]

I'll range by games I guess.

Touhou 6: Hard to find anyone, but as the previous poster I'd head towards Patchouli or maybe Meiling (that is for named characters). Other from that, the obvious choices are Dai and Koa, though Touhou 6 is a hard thing to digest due to its popularity so even the underrated characters from Th6 still get more recognition from the games below.
Touhou 7: A bit easier task. Letty, Prismrivers and possibly Chen.
Touhou 8: Wriggle, Keine (Unsure because she gets recognition thanks to Mokou), Tewi.
Touhou 9: Medicine (not a hard choice), Eiki (I'm walking on a thin ice here, but that's mainly because this is her only appearance in games apart from end screens and Phantasmagoria games are often forgotten, though Eiki is often brought up because she is a final boss).
Touhou 10: Aki sisters (Shizuha has it harder from Minoriko though), Hina.
Touhou 10.5: Iku (Heavily overshadowed by Tenshi. This is the only instance of a spinoff with two new characters).
Touhou 11: Kisume, Parsee (I kinda disagree, but overall she is just there, isn't she? That could probably apply to Yamame, but from my experience she has at least a bit more recognition).
Touhou 12: It's hard to pick anyone, but I'll go with Unzan, I mean Ichirin, Shou and Nue!
Touhou 13: This is where it gets a bit tricky for me due to these games still being more recent from the past ones so characters from here on now have still a chance to shine in the fandom... Anyway, Kyouko is sometimes forgotten, but she's held greatly by her relation with Mystia, so... Tojiko. Definitely Tojiko. Maybe Yoshika too, but she's also held, by Seiga.
Touhou 14: Tsukumo sisters. That's about it. The first three youkai have a really big recognition and later bosses do too. Maybe Raiko is also a bit forgotten, but not as much as Yatsuhashi and Benben
Touhou 15: Seiran and Ringo? That's it.
Touhou 16: Nemuno.
Touhou 17: Eika was kinda popular at first, but she got forgotten pretty quickly, didn't she? Same with Urumi. Other from that, everyone else seems to have it easy.
Touhou 18: irefuseitsstilltooearlytomakesuchassumptionskthx Takane, Sannyo, Misumaru, Momoyo.

Spinoff characters are generally forgotten too, like Suika at times (I guess I could put Yuugi in Th11 section, but she got back up I think). Print works characters - I don't know how do they do, but I think Akyuu, Kosuzu, Rinnosuke and Kasen are fairly popular.

[Felis-Licht]

Rinnosuke. I feel he's pretty underrated, especially nowadays as Sumireko is slowly pushing attention away from him in his own stories. I think he's an interesting character with a past and other mysteries never fully elaborated or touched upon.

[DeityDiz93]

This is a really neat topic to me, so what the heck? I'll bite, as I feel this is a nice chance to share some obscure character insights. Apologies for bumping an older thread though.

To be quite clear, the most obscure Touhou characters in the windows era are the ones without name or game. While some could point to Rin Satsuki since she the lost Touhou 6 playable character, this seems to be fairly well known thus less underrated, and the character Beerko is a promotional character for a real life event, so I wouldn't technically count her due to lacking Touhou ties outside of ZUN. So, my choices is tailored around clearly Touhou themed characters in places like wiki's Miscellaneous illustrations by ZUN page starting with zun005.JPG through zun010.JPG, any one of these characters would be a good set of picks. There are also the Oekaki girls of the same page that are even more so obscure, but sort of like Beerko, ties to Touhou are not known but more plausible at least for these two, so otherwise I'd pick them.

However, top020729.jpg is interesting as this girl became the album cover art character for Dolls in Pseudo Paradise, but even MORE obscured is the Comiket 62 Version of this music album which features ANOTHER hidden shrine maiden girl on the physical music CD. Since this comes from a less popular album on one CD that already isn't as popular as Maribel and Renko's series of music, if I had to pick who is the most underrated girl in Touhou that isn't PC-98, it would be this CD shrine maiden character as my pick.

There are other obscure characters exist out there like the gods Yorihime summons during her fights in Silent Sinner in Blue or a couple of the listed individuals on the Minor characters page with one of my person favorites being the Evil Dragon from Forbidden Scrollery, but even so, I didn't pick them here because they are a lot more widely available if a little more glossed over and not remembered. Still, characters these can find a new life out there fan works, if not ever seen again in official ones, in my eyes. Given how unofficially named characters like Daiyousei can get a promotional piece for something official using a fan name, it would be nice something like that where to happen for the mysterious shrine maiden characters I mentioned.

Hope this was a good answer, and insight into the more hidden side of Touhou's media. ^^

[Ibarakurei]

Kisume easily

[Shiina]

Akyuu and the Prismrivers.

[Vance_croowa_08]

I think that kisume, yuugi, hina, sekibanki, yoshika and many others are VERY underrated

I mean, i kinda get why they're underrated like they tend to be very ignored in canon

[moons1de_]

I would say Meiling is pretty underrated, but even then EoSD is one of the most popular games in the series and has the most well-known characters out of all of them, so it's not really that fair. Another underrated character is my opinion has probably got to be Letty. I rarely see any die-hard Letty fans, or Letty fans at all. It's a shame that not many people care about Letty, because she has great stage and boss themes, and her boss battle is really fun to fight and is a big improvement over Rumia's fight overall.

[nav]

Hard to say, it seems like everyone is well loved by the community. Maybe Wakasagihime?

[Branneg Xy]

I'll range by games I guess.

Touhou 6: Hard to find anyone, but as the previous poster I'd head towards Patchouli or maybe Meiling (that is for named characters). Other from that, the obvious choices are Dai and Koa, though Touhou 6 is a hard thing to digest due to its popularity so even the underrated characters from Th6 still get more recognition from the games below.
Touhou 7: A bit easier task. Letty, Prismrivers and possibly Chen.
Touhou 8: Wriggle, Keine (Unsure because she gets recognition thanks to Mokou), Tewi.
Touhou 9: Medicine (not a hard choice), Eiki (I'm walking on a thin ice here, but that's mainly because this is her only appearance in games apart from end screens and Phantasmagoria games are often forgotten, though Eiki is often brought up because she is a final boss).
Touhou 10: Aki sisters (Shizuha has it harder from Minoriko though), Hina.
Touhou 10.5: Iku (Heavily overshadowed by Tenshi. This is the only instance of a spinoff with two new characters).
Touhou 11: Kisume, Parsee (I kinda disagree, but overall she is just there, isn't she? That could probably apply to Yamame, but from my experience she has at least a bit more recognition).
Touhou 12: It's hard to pick anyone, but I'll go with Unzan, I mean Ichirin, Shou and Nue!
Touhou 13: This is where it gets a bit tricky for me due to these games still being more recent from the past ones so characters from here on now have still a chance to shine in the fandom... Anyway, Kyouko is sometimes forgotten, but she's held greatly by her relation with Mystia, so... Tojiko. Definitely Tojiko. Maybe Yoshika too, but she's also held, by Seiga.
Touhou 14: Tsukumo sisters. That's about it. The first three youkai have a really big recognition and later bosses do too. Maybe Raiko is also a bit forgotten, but not as much as Yatsuhashi and Benben
Touhou 15: Seiran and Ringo? That's it.
Touhou 16: Nemuno.
Touhou 17: Eika was kinda popular at first, but she got forgotten pretty quickly, didn't she? Same with Urumi. Other from that, everyone else seems to have it easy.
Touhou 18: irefuseitsstilltooearlytomakesuchassumptionskthx Takane, Sannyo, Misumaru, Momoyo.

Spinoff characters are generally forgotten too, like Suika at times (I guess I could put Yuugi in Th11 section, but she got back up I think). Print works characters - I don't know how do they do, but I think Akyuu, Kosuzu, Rinnosuke and Kasen are fairly popular.

  THanks (!) for your thought-on+typing work&posting (!) 

... Agreed yes on the bases of "Half-too early Half-on their time", and "Not Completely or Nearly so(Touhou+Touhou Community/ies+Correspondencs+Relations) and "Minor/Secondary Characters are mostly-Justified by their Localized Leeway"

Touhou 18 U.M: Takane, Misumaru.
Touhou 18.5 B.M.o.B:  Takane (again).
Others, and likely, very few  to add:... so far blank but Not definitively settled as Blank.