While symbolic and all, all I can think of is that purple isn't a colour you'd see from a prism. Pardon if I misuse the terms, but in a chromaticity diagram there's an arc between red and violet, which passes the colours of the rainbow. Purple, on the other hand, is on a line straight between red and violet. That also makes it a boundary colour, since the line completes the 2D shape (which kind of looks like half of an oval).
Feather7603: You're taking the word "violet" too literally. In this context, it refers to the color of the rainbow with the shortest wavelength, since it's meant as a relative comparison between the powers of Chen, Ran, and Yukari. It's not a statement about the literal color of something.
The real problem here is that a spectrum is a smooth gradient without steps.
You mean "purple". I'm well aware of the meaning and naming scheme of the Yakumos. In that sense, violet and purple are different colours. In the sense of Yukari's name, and possibly the word translated as purple, I think it can mean either, although I don't know all that much Japanese. I do think violet would be a far superior translation.
Now, taking the distinct shades as being exactly as they are represented in the comic is taking it too literally, in my opinion. That goes especially since Reimu seems to see several shades of violet as the same shade, which would make it look like one distinct colour. That may apply for other colours as well, as distinct colours of grey.
"Yukari" does mean "violet"; I assume the translation comes from both words traditionally denoting the "last color of the rainbow" (as if such a thing existed) in their respective languages. It's Roy G. Biv, after all, not Roy G. Bip. But arguing about color names is stupid.
Feather7603 said: Now, taking the distinct shades as being exactly as they are represented in the comic is taking it too literally, in my opinion.
True, but the text does say "the borderline between purple and not purple", which doesn't exist in a spectrum. Of course, when I said the above I hadn't read the whole thing, and it turned out colors being clumped together was a plot point.
The borderline...Here.and not purple…of purpleNow here’s the problem