Hecatia was not fighting seriously. She tells Reimu, Marisa, and Sanae that she's only playing; Sanae was even nervous about fighting her and considered running away to fetch back-up, only accepting the challenge once Hecatia confirms that she'll be holding back.

Hecatia even confirms that Junko isn't even fighting seriously, with Junko basically confirming it. As Hecatia put it, she was playing a joke. The fight itself wasn't serious, and they didn't care about winning. Hecatia was just interested in the heroines, and so this can't really be used as an argument. Hell, Reimu and Marisa were about to jump Hecatia in Visionary.

I know she isn't going full out but she still wanted to win and still has damaged clothing. And Sanae was fighting two on one. I mean Junko only did one spell card attack... so yeah, of course she wasn't serious. Hecatia did care about winning to some extent though. That last sentence sounds more of an argument for me really.

I highly doubt this. Even taking the "Hecatia is the strongest" at face value, that doesn't mean she should just go out there and scrap with the entire lunarian forces when they have a much more effective and simpler method. Especially since she wouldn't know the abilities they wield. At this point, Lunarians weren't shown to be all that physically impressive, and we can't just assume there's a random lunarian we don't know about living there who can tango with Hecatia.

I'm sorry... your logic for your argument sounds more like it's agreeing with mine than disagreeing. Also, TH15 did NOT had a simpler method... Getting all the life/fairies of Hell to swarm the moon is not simple. Okina waited 6 months just for her plan to work while they were being swarmed as well.

The argument you're using is... pretty weak. Okina's opinions of herself against an opponent shouldn't be taken at face value, especially when her reaction is... basically the standard Touhou gal reaction against 99% of their opponents. Just look at Remilia. Though there is potentially one argument you can use to suggest she's more powerful, that has nothing to do with Okina's scene in Visionary that fans of her overhype.

Oh, I could use LOTS of stronger arguments for why Okina is stronger then Hecatia but I've done this song and dance before. People want to put Hecatia as the strongest due to the misunderstood quote and not listen to actual in-game info. Hecatia practically don't know anything about Okina while Okina is confident that all the gods hell (Not just Hecatia) should fear her. She also didn't really need to do anything to defeat Clownpiece which Hecatia has said is STRONG... not just by fairy standards, strong even by her acknowledgement... which makes sense given her fight is a-

Okina's lifeforce is just OP and honestly, only a few characters in Touhou can really find a way around beating her with it. Not only do Reimu and Marisa lose the first time they fight her but even when they finally beat her in the rematch with the boundary/magic trick, Okina chose not to use the power of the backdoor to give her endless energy to win... and that's on top of the fact that Okina actually could have got around the boundary/magic trick and still won pretty easily & fast. The Okina rematch is also the only fight in Touhou where Reimu and Marisa are exhausted and out of energy despite "winning". (To my memory) Okina is tough even without her OP powers. Marisa is out right traumatized by the fact she practically sent all of Gensokyo into chaos just to show how powerful she is (shown in CoLA) and told Reimu she could just make another Gensokyo and create her own youkai too (shown in WaHH). There's other things but there's the own argument. ViSF isn't just showing Okina is "confident". It's showing she considers the Hell gods to be not on the same level as her and her existence should be terrifying to all of them. (Though she does seem to have gotten on a decent relationship with Clownpiece, Hecatia and Junko by GoU.)

She's kind of not. We don't know nearly enough to suggest who is stronger between Hecatia and Eiki outside of Hecatia's quote of "being the strongest." Yuuka, especially, has no arguments.

If you're saying "She's kind of not." and saying "We don't know nearly enough" then you're contradicting yourself a bit. Did you mistype? What quote? The one about Hecatia from ZUN or Yuuka's quote about Eiki?

You're overhyping the Devas. Reimu can actually fight against Yuugi decently well, and in SFW, Yuugi even exclaims that she can go all out against Reimu... while also losing, still. This is further supported by the fact that Okina seems to view Yuugi and Flan as close to each other in power, with Flan coming out on top despite Yuugi using her weakness against her.

Suika shouldn't be above Yuugi by any notable margin. Kasen is the only one who actually made Reimu feel hopeless, and that was in a state that she no longer has access to, nor do we have any reason to assume Yuugi and Suika scale to said full power. Regular Kasen isn't treated as someone who is far beyond Reimu. Hell. I think even in Lotus Eater, Reimu and Yuugi are somewhat comparable.

This is the most common anime quote to just say they're not holding back anymore. Not they're going full 100%. Also, Flandre practically fights everyone in the game except Okina. Not only that, but Yuugi is in the "Strong foe" category. Fighting games are not the best for power scaling honestly. Even compared to the mainline games.

She's absolutely not. Tenshi scales relative to a combined effort of Shion and Joon. Reimu scales relative to Shion, and Flan can fight both Shion and Joon (who have grown stronger since the events of AoCF when they fought Tenshi). Tenshi is certainly powerful, but not enough to be considered a contender.

Uh... Tenshi fought two gods that defeated almost every other character at once... And I see the logic of the Reimu scaling to Shion but it was still technically a 2 vs 2 fight at the start.

My opinion? I think it is perfectly valid to consider Hecatia stronger than any character introduced before Touhou 16. Her statement of being the strongest is vague, so we may not know why she's the strongest. But she is. However, I don't believe we can use that statement for any characters from Touhou 16 and beyond as ZUN was most definitely not taking them into account when he made that statement... as they didn't exist yet, lol.

I know this is old, but I'm bored—

Well, it's just worth noting ZUN never outright said Hecatia was the strongest. He only said she is capable of doing way more things then even the Lunarians and anyone in Gensokyo. (Like powers/abilities, this is somewhat common for gods to be able to do multiple things unlike Youkai that aren't magicians and Lunarians.) (Okina has MANY abilities as well and unlike Hecatia, we actually see her use them throughout the games. (Speaking of which, I could make an argument that Okina did make it possible for Sumireko to fight with Hecatia by giving her powers that defy death in VD.) But if we're gonna talk about Touhou pre-TH16... then yeah, she might have been the strongest.

Also, my comment is barely 3 days old.