>>49808145
This is gonna sound pretty dumb, but... which one's the living fossil? I assume you're talking about Nareko, since she's the only one that fits that description, but I can't find any information on the Touhou wiki (yes, I know) calling her that

I haven't even played the demo very far, in fact I only played it once, died in stage 1 and immediately gave up

I'm not good at STGs and never really enjoyed them, it was always my biggest problem with Touhou: it's a great series, but STGs aren't for everyone

I do enjoy the games, I've played every game so far, I have some normal 1CCs and I've defeated a couple of the extra bosses, but yeah

Anyway, back to what you were saying: "life and death" certainly fits that, but I think there's a different dichotomy here: human bodies are soft and squishy, while fossils are hard as a rock (obviously because they ARE rocks)

From the Tao te Ching (chapter 78):

>Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
>Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.

>The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
>Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.

It's soft and hard: life is soft, death is hard

It's saying that water is the elixir of life, since water is essential for all life on Earth, and that life will always win over death in the end

I'm waxing philosophical here, but you get what I mean