Not bad, man. I've been trying to figure out how exactly to get the Golden Ship, and I haven't figured it out just yet. I thought it may have had something to do with beating the game without using a continue. Perhaps it's doing it without dying? Or even killing absolutely every enemy? One interesting thing I did notice, which I'm not sure is or isn't a bug (outside of the obvious ones) is selecting the boss rush instead of the next level selection for every level. Even beating the whole game like that didn't yield the gold ship for me, however.
Anyway, somethings I want to point out:
Bullets versus Explosions:
Because there are so many particles flying all over the screen from killing enemies from large packs, you literally stop being able to see the bullets. It's like a kind of sensory overload, and that's likely what the other complaints are regarding. Something a little more low-key for explosions or something a bit louder for the bullets would be the best bet here. I know you said you never played Touhou, and you should. You'd learn a lot about Danmaku and get some ideas on what will and will not work visually.
Enemies on the Rear:
Some of your waves with these things are just annoying. There are circumstances, even on the aggressive route, where I just can't kill the buggers because they actually take more than three or four shots to kill. When they're coming from two directions, or are meshed with one or two frontal waves, It gets downright silly trying to kill everything - and then my bonus multiplier goes down the toilet because of it. Worse still, these are the situations that are the most frantic, as well, blinding me entirely from what's going on.
And that's about it. I'll just kick back and enjoy my 1, 106, 230 point score now ;)