A thread for Touhou Project - Frilly dresses, overpowered lasers, and eight million gods

There are already Touhou fans on BF. Let's make a Touhou Project thread. You can discuss anything Touhou-related here.

What follows is "cuc explains Touhou Project".

What is Touhou Project?

Touhou Project, meaning "Project East", is a doujin (hobbyist, self-published) video game/writing/music project created by the Japanese indie game developer Team Shanghai Alice. Team Shanghai Alice has only one member, a beer-loving man known as ZUN, who designs the games, writes the story, makes the artwork, and composes the music, often in his spare time.

While lacking formal training in music and art, ZUN is a talented composer and character designer, capable of creating extremely memorable melodies and character designs. Partially for this reason, and partially due to a twist of fate, Touhou Project has become tremendously popular in the Japanese game/manga/anime world. Its fans (among which are many professional artists and musicians) have created a huge amount of fan works, from fan art and music remixes, to full-blown games and anime shorts.

From in-game artwork...

...to fan art

Despite such popularity, ZUN has tried his best to keep Touhou a personal project, rather than turning it into a commercial franchise (like what the other two contemporary doujin success stories, Higurashi/Umineko and Type-Moon had done). To foreign fans, this has a downside: most Touhou products, including many fan works, are not available outside of Japan, and can only be obtained through importers.

Some Touhou discs in an import bookstore.
The two DVD cases on the right and the paper sleeve on the lower right are fan anime discs.
The CD cases with a character's silhouette on the cover are official games. The rest are official music CDs.


The games

The main games in the series are danmaku shooters, also known as "bullet hell" games, where your oponents cover the screen with their bullets (thus "danmaku", meaning "curtain fire"), and before you can shoot them back, you have to navigate the barrage of bullets in order to survive.

In terms of gameplay, compared to other games in the genre, Touhou stands out for two reasons:

- A focus on the beauty of intricate bullet patterns, often consisting of slowly travelling bullets that are much easier to dodge than it appears, rather than sheer difficulty;

- Gradual learning curves that allow anyone, even beginners with slow reflexes, to eventually improve at the games through practice.

ZUN has also made a few innovative spinoff games, including photography games where you play as a journalist taking pictures of bullet patterns, and Fairy Wars, a game where you can freeze those bullets you can't dodge.

Some danmaku patterns from the main games


Twilight Frontier, another acclaimed doujin game developer, is responsible for developing the official Touhou fighting games. They are all great fun, and if you ask expert players, they'll tell you the first fighting game (Touhou 7.5) is superb.

Screenshots from Touhou 12.3, the third fighting game


In addition to the self-published games and music CDs, ZUN has also written (via commercial publishers) several manga and other books set in the Touhou universe, with artwork done by other artists. Unlike most "transmedia" gimmicks, those are also vital components of Touhou Project.

A fan's collection of all official books as of 2012


The fiction

The main setting of Touhou Project is Gensokyo (Land of Fantasy), a paradise hidden in the mountains of Japan, away from the modern world. Since modern humanity has stopped believing in gods and youkai (an umbrella term for ghosts, monsters and other supernatural creatures), Gensokyo serves as a retreat for youkai where they can keep on living as monsters without fading from existence. Gensokyo is protected by the very, very easy-going shrine maiden Hakurei Reimu, whose duty is to beat up anyone who threatens to disturb the peace in this tiny valley.

It also happens that nearly all Gensokyo residents that matter are bored, self-centered teenage girls who lack social graces and love to fight. When they engage in a magical danmaku duel, they are fighting under the Spell Card rules, which mandate that duels must be non-lethal, and the beauty of danmaku is of the foremost importance.

With this premise, ZUN has created a universe that's equal parts whimsical escapism and epic satire, rich with allusions and subtext about Japanese culture, mythology and legends, telling stories that can often be cute, witty, dark, thoughtful and poignant at the same time.

Fan art depicting all playable characters from Touhou 12.3

Frequently asked questions:

Q: How do I get started with the games? They look so intimidating.
A: You can start with the fighting games, whose Easy modes are always easy, or the simpler shooting games. Of the shooting games:
Imperishable Night has the easiest Easy difficulty, and can be used to get familiar with the genre, but the game also has a complicated system, a large gap between Easy and Normal, and can teach bad bombing habits, so you may want to switch to other games to actually learn how to play.
Mountain of Faith is designed to be accessible to newcomers, with simple system, easy danmaku, and very powerful bombing ability. The only downside is the difficulty spikes in Stage 4 and at the very end.
Ten Desires is another easy game, but is often considered the weakest entry in the series.
The first two Windows games, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and Perfect Cherry Blossom are also relatively accessible. DO NOT start with Subterranean Animism, Undefined Fantastic Objects or Fairy Wars unless you are already good at shooting games.

Q: Do I really have to start with the danmaku and fighting games?
A: You don't have to. Many people come into contact with Touhou through the music and other fan works, and have hardly touched the "canon" anyway. You can lose countless hours listening to fan music, and the best Touhou fan games are good games in their own right, including games inspired by Castlevania, Mega Man, Romancing SaGa, Super Robot Wars, Age of Empires, and a bananas soccer series modeled after the NES Captain Tsubasa games.
Touhou wiki (and Touhou Endings wiki) is an important resource. You can find transcriptions and translations for the games and books, translation for various fan games, some gameplay info and useful tools there. There are still many old inaccuracies and errors on the wiki, so don't take everything written there for guaranteed.

Q: What does "fanon" mean for Touhou?
A: The Touhou "fanon" refers to the in-jokes, character depictions and story interpretations shared by the fandom. There is one problem: the majority of Japanese Touhou fans are male otaku (the gender balance of overseas Touhou fans is better), and as a result, the "fanon" too often involves the kind of juvenile sexuality you are familiar with from any number of otaku-oriented fiction.

Q: What's the deal with the PC-98 games (Touhou 1-5)?
A: They are games ZUN made in college. He sort of rebooted the series with Touhou 6, the first Windows game. You can read this DIYGamer article for a little more details on all the games up to 2010.

OK, the main posts are done. Have a great pic of all Touhou characters so far:
http://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=970771

The fan art example is from NEKO's "Five Elders" series:
http://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=854594
http://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=864876
http://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=917667
http://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=944686
http://safebooru.org/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=977849

I love these games.

My favourite characters are Hong Meiling, Utsuho Reiuji, Cap'n Murasa and Momiji :3

I have cosplayed as Aya Shameimaru for the big anime convention on my country two years in a row.
And thank you for the reminder for actualizing wine, so I can try to play those games again.

Man, I love Touhou but when I tried to play it I couldn't even get past the first stage. That's how much I suck at bullet hells.

I love the fanart, the music and pretty much everything in the series though. My favourite characters are Byakuren and Sanae(I think I got into the fandom around the time Mountain of Faith was released), and my favourite theme is probably Green-Eyed Jealousy.

Also, I've been playing this since yesterday. Touhou x Homestuck, yo.

I... this is a thing? Wow. That's...

I need to try this.

I forgot which one of the game had 2 player splitscreen versus, I just remembering playing the shit out of that game with my roommate in college.

It was more fun than Puzzle fighter.


P.S.

found it, it's Phantasmagoria of Flower View. Surprise you didn't mention it.

There are Touhou crossovers with everything. Everything. (And if there isn't, it will soon be made.)

Also, the competitive Hisoutensoku scene is scary. Was scary, rather, since it kind of broke down while waiting for 13.5.

Last week I read a totally awesome crossover Ranma 1/2 and Touhou fanfiction.

Flower View actually wasn't the first time that mechanic was used. It is, however the only time it's been used in a Windows game. The last time it was used was in the third PC-98 game; Phantasmagoria of Dimensional Dream.

Speaking of which, has anyone tried out the 13.5 demo yet? Thoughts?

I find Ichirin underpowered - Unzan looks huge, but it only attacks directly ahead and its moves barely do anything. Whereas Marisa is ridiculously overpowered - relatively large attack range, moves that stun and can combo repeatedly into each other, plus decent damage. Reimu is okay, as usual.

That's basically it. Twilight Frontier says the stun and combo problem will be fixed in the future, but I do wonder what else they can do to improve the gameplay.

I'm totally pumped up for the storyline, though. I'm especially looking forward to more characterization for the UFO and TD characters, as well as Keine's part in the story (a hakutaku can be spotted in the intro).

Sorry for omitting the one game you enjoyed the most! I was trying to be as concise as possible with the first post, so I had to choose a focus (in this case, merits of danmaku shooters and the fiction), and leave out many other important topics. Explaining PoFV would by necessity, drag the PC-98 games and Twinkle Star Sprites into it, making the post much longer.

Topics I considered but didn't address include:
- the doujin culture and Comic Market from which Touhou Project is born;
- ZUN's insistence on not turning fully commercial means all those Touhou paraphernalia (figures, etc) created by other companies are technically fan works, not licensed products, and can only be sold through mail order or doujin channels;
- ZUN's encouragement of doujin culture also makes publishing the games on, for example, Steam, especially problematic, due to the American IP laws' harsher requirements on enforcing your own copyrights;
- the generally held perception that Touhou is a "DIY franchise" by fans and for fans, where the author is only a supplier of raw materials, and everything else is built by fans themselves;
- Touhou's writing style is to be as ambiguous as possible and leave most things to readers' imagination, which along with ZUN's insufficient drawing and musical skills, both drives the fans into making fan works, and adds to the perception above ("Touhou has no story"); etc.

I've added a photo of a fan's collection of official books to the first post.


If you ask me, it's perfectly right to be a fan that only enjoys the fan works and pay no attention to the "canon". As for me, I only began looking into Touhou seriously since 2012, and am not nearly as knowledgeable about the world of fan creations as long-time fans.

On the other hand the AI in Hisoutensoku (12.3) at least is so dire it's of little use in learning how to fight humans. If you're interested in playing other real people the EU/US IRC community is small but generally friendly, and now FireSeal has written the awesome SokuRoll netplay addon it's even possible to fight people on the other side of the Atlantic without it dissolving into a mess of insane lag. The Hisoutensoku wiki has huge amounts of info on the gameplay mechanics and info about where to find the IRC channel is here. I'm not sure how much people play IAMP these days, maybe they just do it places where I'm not. I'm not sure there's much point playing SWR when you can play 'soku (which is basically the expansion pack to SWR, with more characters and balance fixes).

I play a pretty poor Patchy :-) I got into Touhou via 'soku, have broadened out into some of the music and reading the occasional doujin, and have never played any of the shooting games.

I could never really get into the fighting games. I don't have a usb controller, and I'm terrible at completing complex move input sequences on a keyboard. :x Plus, it doesn't help that the one person I fight is at a severe advantage when it comes to experience, and brags about it incessantly. "LOL! I was only playing with you, didn't even have to try, lolololol."

I am however pretty good at the shooting games. Can usually get to at least the last stage(uuh... except for UFO. Damn Shou and her twisty lazers.)-- and have actually beaten one or two-- on normal. Hard mode is still kinda painful, but I can get at least to stage three consistently without continues. I beat my fight games friend at PoFV and rubbed his nose in it. Didn't matter what character I was playing as, I could beat him. He even played Medicine Melancholy, whose extra "shots" incense me to no end in the story mode.

Spoilers for the new chapter of official manga WaHH is out. The official works take place in approximate "real time", giving us a window on the current goings-on in Gensokyo, so it's winter in Gensokyo at the moment, too.

Ahh...Touhou...
Fourth stage how I hate thee...

I've actually only played Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil and Perfect Cherry Blossom.

Anyone want to talk about music remixes?

I kinda do...

So I'll just leave this here.

Hey, that's a lot better than previous O-Life.Japan stuff I've heard.

Vocal version of "Broken Moon" by TAMAONSEN:

Another pic added to the OP, showing how Touhou should be: the official work sitting alongside fan creations.


Is there any demand for more "cuc explains Touhou Project"? I still don't have the skills to do a proper Touhou LP, but I probably can explain the story and characters better than anyone else writing in English.

Also, Kirandra, would you tell us more about your Touhou x Portal crossover VN? Are you sending GLaDOS and Wheatley into Gensokyo?

It, uh, got abandoned after the production team disbanded (read: my friend and I had a falling out). The basic premise is that Yukari sent some Touhou characters on a cruise, the boat gets destroyed in a danmaku battle, and they get stranded and stuck in an old Aperture Science building. There's the Cirno POV route, which is complete, and the Nitori POV route, which will probably never be completed.

I might upload it here eventually, but I'll have to go look for it first.

I have to say, this remix works surprisingly well.

I'm interested! I'm horrible at the games and there's vast amount of fan works. Where do I start?! I've had someone tell me bits and pieces before, but most of it flew over my head and now I don't remember anything.

Yes

Hey, to all of you Touhou fans out there, Me and Edelweiss were interested in doing a Touhou run of Zafehouse:Diaries. If you're... um... intimidated by the size of the thread, you don't have to read it entirely to get the gist of the game.

We still need three people to sign up for the run, though!

Oh, cuc, if you're interested in being Utsuho, I don't mind relinquishing my Utsuho profile to you and creating another character.

Ooh? This sounds interesting.

A new game, presumably Touhou 14, will see a demo on Reitaisai 10 (May 26), and full game on Comiket 84 (August 12).

Groovy

Flowering Night (Sakuya's second theme) + The Trooper (Iron Maiden, duh) =

Cavalrymaid!

The final design meeting of Hopeless Masquerade ended yesterday. Its release should be in sight, probably on Reitaisai.

Here's the cover art for Forbidden Scrollery Vol. 1:

Eeee

I really want to know who the other characters will be in HM...

Gonna drop this off because Touhou related stuff:



BTW, that isn't an official anime. Once again, the fans are AMAZING.

Since we're talking about the games, what are your favorite games in the series? Mine so far, for the atmosphere and story would be Subterranean Animism because it's one of the darkest games in the series and Mountain of Faith for the beauty of the backgrounds. Imperishable Night because of the abundance of characters and replay value (plus, beautiful songs) then finally, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody being my favorite among the 3 fighting games.

I'm quite sad for the newer games because Sakuya is no longer a playable character (replaced by Sanae) but I still like the games.

What is everyone's first Touhou game/what game were you introduced with and what are your reactions to it? (Mine personally was Perfect Cherry Blossom which is partly the reason for my fondness over Sakuya :D)

I guess it would be a bit embarrassing if 13.5 released after 14...

On music remixes, I love the way you can find Touhou music in just about every style under the sun (metal, disco, folk, orchestral...). This is my favourite Bad Apple version, for traditional Japanese instruments and with the lyrics in classical Japanese:

I really like Touhou mixed with jazz for some reason.

Some spoilers from Forbidden Scrollery Vol. 1:

Unfortunately, what this page depicts is a story within a story, rather than actual events in Gensokyo.

Marisa's house has recently been upgraded with an astronomical telescope.

Mentions of an LP make me want to stream some Touhou, but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to get such a thing started. \o/

I would totally stream a Touhou game too, but not only do I not know how to do it, but I'm quite horrible at it. I can never beat the final boss and only 50% of the time, I can get past 5th stage.

I always fail to understand why people play it at hard difficulties. Play it on super easy.

Tasofro released a new web demo for TH13.5. The game is now much more polished. Also, you must check out the Marisa's human village stage! For this version, the graphics may have some problems on Windows XP, though.

Mediafire mirror:
http://www.mediafire.com/?6lqvsn67ongivu1

Koumakan.jp mirror:
http://shinkirou.koumakan.jp/files/th135_trial.zip