Hit box

From Touhou Wiki

The area of an object used to determine collisions. In danmaku games, these are traditionally smaller than the actual image, in order to present some extra confusion to the player and to enable the appearance of extremely complex, yet still dodgeable patterns.

In the Touhou games, the character's hitbox is a small circle around the waist. In Perfect Cherry Blossom and later games, the hitbox can be made visible by pressing the focus button. The bullets also have various hitboxes, the general rule being that larger bullets have a smaller ratio of hitbox to image than small bullets (i.e., the larger the bullet, the larger its "safe area" is). In addition, many of the bosses have hitboxes larger than it would appear, allowing the player to hit them more easily.

Delving further into specifics, the general size of a Touhou character's hitbox is around 5 pixels in diameter (the actual shape seems to be a rotating square with rounded corners). Reimu traditionally has a smaller hitbox, measuring about 4 pixels in diameter.

Even without going into focused mode, however, it is generally possible (and quite easy once you get the hang of it) to give a decent approximation of a hit box's size and location by taking a look at the characters; usually, a small design on their clothing around the character's waist usually can point out where it is.