Touhou Project 101

What Is Touhou?

Touhou Project is an indie/doujin game series which is extremely popular in Japan, created entirely by a single man by the name of Jun'ya Ōta, or more commonly known as ZUN. He originally created the games as a way to promote his musical ability, though nowadays he simply makes the games for fun - for himself, because he can.Primarily a series of shoot-em-up games, the original set were created for the now obsolete PC-98 computer system. At the time these games were a group effort, and were more of a testing ground for exactly what ZUN wanted to do going forward in the future. Though the gameplay had yet to be fully solidified and stream-lined into what would later be seen in the Windows series, these games solidify the setting, the Hakurei Shrine Maiden, a few locations of the world they live in, and the role everyone plays.However, ZUN went on hiatus and ultimately created his own group, Team Shanghai Alice, and essentially soft-rebooted the setting into the Windows series that currently exists.While ZUN has confirmed that the settings and characters featured in the PC-98 era still exist, only four of the characters first seen here have officially come back in the Windows era.As of today, the core series still consists primarily of vertical scrolling bullet hell shooters (shmups), but has also now expanded into fighting games, a variety of print works, music releases, and a giant amount of fanworks, many of include derivative games which can be enjoyed completely legally on mobile, consoles, and through platforms such as Steam.There are a large variety of culprits for the game’s popularity beyond it’s gameplay style - ranging from but not limited to: the hilariously selfish and quirky characters, the folkloric setting, the music, the odd situations that occur, and the creative liberty the author gives the fandom.All in all, it attracts a large variety of fans who lean towards making their own derivative works based on the series, whether that be fanart, doujinshi, fangames, music remixes, fan anime… heck, it’s got it’s own convention, and last i checked, even has an entire day reserved out of Comiket dedicated to selling it’s fanworks.

… which means that I have to give this TL:DR:It is a common misbelief that Touhou Project is something akin to a dating sim full of cute monster girls. I regret to inform you that the R-18 doujins lied to you - there is virtually no fanservice in the series proper, and most romantic or otherwise implication is purely fanwork. The official material veers deep into the nature of philosophy and altruism, and the vast majority of these characters are man-eating monsters simply being what they are. There’s much, much more to the series than cute girls.

Though of course, that’s just my own perspective about the series - overall, Touhou Project as a series means something different for each person that indulges in it. Each fan, including me, will probably give you a widely different reason and explanation for why they like it, and what it’s about. It’s all a matter of personal perception - you are actively encouraged to enjoy this series in whatever way you please.Overall, It's a big series with a good solid near 20+ years behind it. It's a lot to sift through, but ultimately a very fun dive - just remember that the series is best enjoyed in whatever form of guilty pleasure you take from it.

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fandom

There is a HUGE amount of fanworks for this series - ie: on Danbooru, at the time of writing this, there are 662k images tagged ‘Touhou’, out of the 4.3 million posts on the website. According to Wikipedia itself, Touhou Project artwork makes up to 3.9% of all submissions on Pixiv (basically japanese DeviantArt).Many of these artists also have their own doujin circles, both with content that is safe for work and that which is not, which can be bought either online through their websites, or at conventions like Comiket and Reitaisai - the former of which has an entire day dedicated to the series due to how many fans it has. The latter is a Touhou-specific convention.On top of that, some of these artists are animators, and have created their own fan pvs and anime for the series, often sold at the same conventions mentioned above. Certain doujin artists have gone on to make their own manga and anime - most noticeably there is Nio Nakatani, the creator of Bloom Into You. She was previously the artist behind the touhou circle Rireba. The artist of Daily Lives of High School Boys is highly suspected to be the artist behind the Touhou circle Bomber Grape. The creator of Pop Team Epic is notorious for the Honking Chen character, with the same art style, and has solid roots in the Touhou fandom. And Toby Fox, creator of Undertale, has stated ZUN to be one of his inspirations, and you can tell in the musical score of his works.You can find music remixes from all sorts of Touhou music circles, in any genre under the sun - from folk, to classical, to metal, to electronic, to country. Last i checked the volume of remixes that have been produced as Touhou fan content is up to 6 terabytes worth, it is likely much bigger now.Similarly, many of these artists and musicians have their hands in producing content for outright fangames, whether they be legitimate derivatives of the Touhou Project series itself, or being expy’s of other games, like mario and castlevania and pokemon.Tl;dr: This series attracts highly-creative types - people who like to make things, and people who like to think. And you are actively encouraged to do so.It is also worth mentioning that it is fairly common for references to Touhou to wind up in other media, like a picture of Suika appearing on ESPN during technical difficulties, the touhou PV ‘Bad Apple’ being covered on CNN, the main character’s outfits being referenced in Haruhi Suzumiya, and Utsuho being expy’d as a sandwich-based figurine in the western cartoon Craig of the Creek. You have absolutely run into this series in one way or another, through some shape or form, though you might not have realized it at the time. Although the series as a whole is fairly underground, it simply has that big of a cultural presence.It is probably important to mention, though, that many popular fandom interpretations you see a lot aren’t canon - purely the result of the fandom going wild with their own ideas, to the point where many fans mistakenly believe these to be canon due to how prevalent they are. Common misconceptions of this nature are the concepts of Masochist Tenshi, Moemiji, Shy Nitori, Insane Flandre, Sakuya Wears Pads, the idea that there are no men in Gensokyo, and pretty much anything involving Cirno. Basically, if the touhou circle IOSYS has made a song about it, then it’s probably a fan-made concept and not something actually canonical to the series.To get a proper idea of this series, you really do need to read the source material for yourself, whether it be reading the mangas wherever they can be found, or reading the summaries and dialogues of the games on the wiki. If only so you can make a proper opinion on the series with your own two eyes, that isn’t colored by anyone else’s perceptions.

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About The Setting

The Touhou Project setting revolves around the inhabitants of a pocket realm hidden on earth, separated by a ‘Boundary of Disbelief’.Back in the late 1800s, when the industrial revolution started changing the course of humanity's collective beliefs, humanity as a whole started driving their progress forward using the power of science rather relying on their beliefs. Due to this, the creatures which had been spawned into existence by humanity's collective imagination - and thus require humanity's collective fear and belief in them to survive - decided to seal themselves away from humanity as a whole.Using humanity's disbelief in what they cannot understand as the main principle to support this boundary between accepted reality and abandoned fantasy, they created a pocket realm for themselves - a Land of Illusion, existing as a delicate isolated sanctuary, giving refuge to all sorts of creatures and ideas of fantasy which humanity as we know it no longer believes in.Though it has no true name, the land has been collectively given the name ‘Gensokyo’ by the fandom. It's name is less important than what function the land serves, though.Beyond Gensokyo’s boundaries, within the “Outside World” - the world which we view and accept as reality - these creatures risk fading away quite literally into non-existence.In essence, the primary world of Touhou Project is a very fragile forest preserve for the supernatural, the paranormal, and the forgotten.And the overarching plotlines that take place within? Well, it's a small little preserve dedicated towards keeping a bunch of dangerous and rowdy supernatural entities alive.It stands to reason that for the entities which now call the lands home, they tend to get a bit bored - inevitably resulting in some sort of trouble or another being caused just to liven things up, which spurs the resident peacekeepers into acting in order in order to make sure the realm's boundaries and ecosystem is keep stable.Sometimes, these incidents are all good and light-hearted fun. Other times, they are not.

Now... that's what we know about the realm that the majority of the series takes place in. A fragile forest preserve trapped technology-wise about a hundred years in the past.But that's just one side of the coin. The other side - the world that progressed with science and abandoned it's old beliefs, is the modern world. The world that we observers perceive as our own reality.It's not perfectly to scale with the world we are used to, though it is similar enough to be eerily familiar. But truthfully, we know virtually nothing about Touhou’s version of the modern world in comparison to what we know about Gensokyo.
What we do know is brought to us by Maribel Hearn - an Outsider who resides in the 'near future' of Kyoto. Or well... resides in what sounds like a completely ‘utopian/actually dystopian’ version of said future.From what we have gleamed thanks to her insight, the reality of her future is one where there are no more mysteries or wonders to discover - where any illness which can feasibly be cured has been virtually eliminated, where everything that can be questioned has received an explanation, where where science has reached the highest peak humanity can feasibly reach... where the children no longer have reason to smile.They have reached the limitations of scientific advancement, and the human instinct to explore and discover has thus reached a road block, stifled due to lack of things that can be discovered through human hands alone.Humanity is stagnating.Of what little we know, we are at least able to confirm that a very select few youkai and mythological beings are able to survive out there due to lack of belief - though there are a few stragglers like Cryptids and Urban Legends, and there is some degree of magic that can be found. But they are a far cry from the true youkai and legends which now reside in the Land of Illusion.Of the Outside World proper, it sounds like it’s basically our reality. Or at least, a dystopian view of it. Livable, but a very hollow echo of what used to be. An existence devoid of the playfulness of human imagination.

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PC-98 Arc

Windows Arc

Music CDs

Music CDs: Hifuu Club Arc
_{^{(Renko and Merry focused)}}

Comic Arcs

In-Universe Books

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Q&A

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