SinGyoku

SinGyoku Sin Gyoku, Shingyoku More Alternative Spellings
The three sprites of SinGyoku in Highly Responsive to Prayers Gatekeeper More Character Titles
Occupation	Gatekeeper
Location	Near the Hakurei Shrine
Music Themes
The Positive and Negative (Highly Responsive to Prayers)
Appearances
Official Games
Highly Responsive to Prayers (Stage 5 Boss)

SinGyoku appears as Reimu Hakurei approaches the gates to Hell and Makai in Highly Responsive to Prayers, where the two battle. Next to nothing is known about this enemy, as it does not exchange dialog with Reimu and has no official profile. Judging from its appearance, SinGyoku is likely related in some way to the Hakurei Shrine.

Character Design

Name

Its name is SinGyoku. There is no official kana of SinGyoku, however it is commonly written in the Japanese fanbase as Shingyoku (シンギョク), but it is unknown whether the "si" (シ) part of the name is really prounounced "shi" or not. There is a possible kanji conversion to show shingyoku (神玉). Shin (神) means "God" since a likely connexion is the fact that SinGyoku is shown at the Hakurei Shrine, and Gyoku (玉) means "ball", a reference to its yin-yang form.

Design

SinGyoku seems to have three different forms from the sprites in Highly Responsive to Prayers:

1. a large, brown Yin-Yang with red markings. One side seems to be transparent. Has a strong resemblance to the Yin-Yang Orb.
2. a female priestess(?) in red robes with long, flowing red hair, horns, and glowing red eyes.
3. a male priest(?) in white and blue robes with glowing red eyes. It has a slight resemblance to a feudal souhei or a onmyouji (陰陽師).

Should SinGyoku's 3rd form be a male priest, then he would be the first male character to appear in a Touhou game, with Genjii and Sokrates appearing after him. Also, SinGyoku's "male" form is one of the only PC-98 characters whose hair and eyes are not the same colour. The only other PC-98 characters with this trait are Elis and Konngara. This is due to the 16-colour limit the PC-98 hardware imposes on the other PC-98 characters.

Additional Information

• SinGyoku is the first boss in the entire Touhou Project series.
• The stage enemies flying yin-yang from the Windows era and the Blood-Vessel Yin-Yang Orbs‎ from Story of Eastern Wonderland bear a resemblance to SinGyoku's first form, as well as the Yin-Yang Orb.
• Mononobe no Futo seems to look similar to SinGyoku's "male" form.
• Reimu's Boss Attack in Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream resembles SinGyoku's first form.

Fandom

Main article: Fandom: SinGyoku

Official Sources

Official sources

• 1997/08/15 Highly Responsive to Prayers