Actually there is another stipulation to the IP. Which is to not spoil the endings online. Which has been respected by the fanbase until now. I remember that one because Masahiro Sakurai threw a public temper tantrum when the Subspace emissary was shown on TH-cam.
Copyright is the enemy of creativity. The ever-expanding copyright laws stifle creative inspiration. The sad example Nintendo has become is the perfect example of this. Touhou's freedom is its greatest weapon. The series would be nothing of what it is without allowing the fans the freedom to let their minds wander and to create some of the best content the internet has ever seen.
copyright itself isn't a bad thing.The true problem is the abuse of it.Touhou itself is a copyrighted property but the creator doesn't abuse he's rights.There were some instances where touhou fan games were taken down.If copyright wouldn't exist someone would find a way to steal the creative rights and make a monopoly.Unfortunately the monopoly is build with the laws meant to not allow a monopoly.
To elaborate on ZUN's copyright stance: The rules boil down to: 1: Credit me, do not claim the characters or IP as your own 2: Do not portray the characters in such a fashion that could cause damage to the IP [So nothing along the lines of games like Hatred] 3: If you are a corporation; ask me for permission. If you are not, you don't need to 4: If you want to do something highly monetized like a gatcha game, ask me first. [This kinda links to 3; Lost Word for example has to keep checking with ZUN that they're not going too far with things like beach outfit designs.] Also; a lot of the popularity comes from artists; who basically were inspired by ZUN's... uh... not great art and wanted to do better. Also; the sheer premise of the characters; being based on youkai and such and various myths and legend. Which also draws curiosity and fan interpretations. People can fill gaps.
2: for the past 12-13 years, ever since the times where Windows had bright blue window frame, bright red close button, and blue-ish welcome and shutdown screens, i've seen that rule was often violated, especially in H-n--i sites and those "dojins" are made as a work for sale... but that's the author's problem not mine. Just informing.
I am 90% sure that the whole Touhouified genre thing is a Rule of the internet at this point "If it exists there is a Touhou version of it, if it doesn't exist yet it will soon" or something along those lines.
The English titles are not supposed to be translations or different titles for the English market, the naming convention of the mainline games are simply 東方 followed by 3 kanji, forming the title, followed by an English sub-title. Fans usually do not use the numbering system of the games to talk about them, likely because the numbers do not usually appear in the title. In Japan and China, they usually use the 3 kanji of the title, often completely disregarding the English sub-titles and in the west we usually only use abbreviations of the English sub-titles. Some other minor facts are also wrong, such as saying that PCB added focus despite EoSD also having it, the on screen correction saying that "Touhou 8 added the curser" while on screen you can see that PCB has it already, the reasoning for games being numbered as X.X not being the chronological placement of the story (All games content likely happens in chronological order to their releases but not all of them are necessarily linked), but simply that they are not mainline games and are being developed/released in-between these games or the fact that characters always have unique features in almost every Touhou game (like Reimu's smaller hitbox) and every Touhou game has a unique scoring gimmick but you only mention them for specific ones as if other games don't include them. Still a great video that you obviously put effort into :)
I think that the 12.x stuff is based on chronological order, since a few of the 12.x games released after touhou 13, same with 17.5 and 18 (17.5 is todo with COVID, but some of the 12.x games were released days after 13 did)
Part of Touhou's success is its characters. Zun has invested a lot in building his character, from personality, appearance to abilities. It's not difficult to understand that many people who don't know Touhou can still hear about characters like Reimu, Flandre or Sakuya.
Huh? They’re all young, light skinned girls. I’m just glad people try differently these days. Weird vid given magnitude of game varieties and homages. Arzette was a fun idea imo.
@@MrVariant Thats kinda the idea, on the surface their just all bubbly cute girls and then you look into them and they all have alot of unique stuff going on in terms of powers abillity and history.
@TheThebigice I did play tale of beautiful memories and didn't really notice much outside girls ripping off mario rpg but can get lost, though it seems you can differentiate the games. I think I played a couple games like luna nights but I guess it fulfills a niche like Archie comics does, especially when crossing genres like these touhou girls do. I know some go crazy for star ocean, tales of, fire emblem, and trails rpgs though I can't really tell much apart outside of they talk too much 😅.
ZUN's comment about not confusing the focus on female characters for fanservice definitely explains a lot. One of the biggest things that drew my curiosity about Touhou was the surprising lack of fanservice. I mean, especially in this day and age, if you introduce me to a game by telling me it's about cute anime girls fighting each other in a fantasy setting, I'd definitely expect it to be some sort of fetishy waifu thing complete with all the exhausted tropes like the "small breasted" main character being teased about her measurements, or upskirts and skimpy outfits. But Touhou doesn't do stuff like that. The girls are all consistently dressed really modestly, and from my experiences so far (only having played EoSD and PCB), innuendo and sexual references are extremely few and far between. (I think there was a vague adult reference in Reimu and Rumia's dialogue in EoSD but I'm not even sure if that's intended or if the actual joke has gone over my head.) Of course, a fandom on the internet will make all the fanservice they could ever want themselves, but I really admire that ZUN hasn't gone the easy route with character design and instead makes his characters stand out with sympathetic backstories. I don't feel like I have to defend myself or feel embarrassed when talking about Touhou and I don't have to preface the topic with "I know what it looks like, but hear me out..." As someone who *genuinely* enjoys learning more about the characters even in highly sexualized franchises, I can't tell you how exhausting it is to just *know* that everyone thinks I'm just covering for horniness. So to have a game where the shrine maiden protagonist isn't just a cute, clumsy girl who gets flustered at the mere implication of holding hands with little depth beyond that but is instead a young lady burdened with the heavy responsibility of enforcing the law of the land yet can still find simple joys in the process by throwing around trash talk and never, or rarely, shows signs of insecurity is absolutely delightful. I don't personally have anything against fanservice and content that is clearly just made for horny sake, but I'm just glad to have something like this to affirm that it really *is* more than just fanservice that makes these kinds of worlds and characters appealing. I think the Touhou series inspires a sense of nostalgic, innocent bliss that's rarely able to be captured and maintained today. It puts me in a very specific kind of mindset, similar to that of other highly emotional yet goofy franchises like Undertale and Earthbound, that I just find really difficult to describe.
Also, that mention of "nostalgic, innocent bliss" and how it's impossible to describe is spot-on. So many times I have found myself crying to Touhou songs and remixes because of the wave of nostalgia they cause me to experience, yet the flavor of nostalgia is so varied and complex in each scenario that I couldn't possibly find the exact right words to describe how I feel
Same. One of the reasons I "stayed" in the fandom, is because of the personalities of the characters. When I played EoSD in 2009, I was in middle school and liked harem and shoujo anime a lot. What struck me the most was how these all female cast behaved not like any previous female characters I've ever seen. They were confident and bitchy with other. And I loved that. The all female cast and music were awesome, as well. I liked there being no male characters to limit them and make them act stupid, or fanservice, like I was used to seeing back in the day.
@@IERServer "What struck me the most was how these all female cast behaved not like any previous female characters I've ever seen. They were confident and bitchy with other" Yep. Even back in the day when i was enamored to Touhou (12-13) there's lots of female characters in series that only exist to treat the indecisive and foolish male protagonist (Highschool DxD, who stole Sakuya's design for a side character) as a trophy, or female characters that simply made as object to lewd jokes (ISUCA, one of the few anime that disgust me) Sure there are lewd-heavy fanbases in certain sites but the wholesome ones are still a lot.
I clicked on this video expecting a video essay on what creators can learn from Touhou Project. What I got was an overview/summary of Touhou Project. That being said, my first encounter with Touhou Project was a number of doujin scanlaltions. After that, I encountered a lot of fan art and was intrigued by some of the character designs. An encounter with its music and games happened after a few years. I now have several volumes of Forbidden Scrollery and a handful of music remixes. I am also subscribed to Touhou doujin circles/creators on TH-cam.
For me, first is that one video showing us which shmups we should begin playing with (one of them is Touhou), and second is that one minecraft video playing Touhou's fan mv "Bad Apple", next is I end up watching its full mv but edited with who's the characters behind the black-and-white silhouette (and I ended up having crush with Reimu, alonside Toaru's Misaka)
I still love the Touhou game called "Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity" and its on Switch/Ps4/steam offically in english, its the 3rd title in that series and its plays like a Ys game. Ys has been around since the 80's and is still releasing games to this day. I also love the fact ZUN has helped out other game creators from time to time and in those titles ZUN has helped out they have made Reimu/Marisa bosses in those games or appear in some ways.
My first time playing anything Touhou related was a Terraria mod called 'Gensokyo,' which basically just adds Touhou bosses (and their music), enemies, and weapons. I was at least a little familiar with a few characters, like Reimu, Marissa and Cirno, but everything else was a surprise. Then, I got another Touhou mod for Library of Ruina, and it was really cool seeing bullet hell mechanics turned into a turn based card battler. Before that, though, I just read a wikipedia article on ZUN on a whim, not even knowing he made the IP.
I've played Terraria for over a decade, dumping thousand of hours into it across PC, mobile, and even 3DS About 500 of those hours have come from modded, and Gensokyo is by far my favorite Terraria mod Very clearly, Calamity is the BEST Terraria mod, but the way Gensokyo manages to slide Touhou and its gameplay into a game that is built specifically against that style of gameplay (slow base acceleration, massive hitbox, few precise movement options) blows my mind away Welcome to Touhou!
Ys mentioned. Instant sub. Great vid! Only thing would be about Touhou 14. What makes that game unique is the emphases on the point of collection line since that’s how you get resources. It’s the best example of high risk/high reward imo but it is the most basic game since EoSD Great vid overall though and I loved the Ys shoutout
His drawing is suck, but his music and programming are amazing. My game used to lag when I try implemented bullet hell mechanics, but thanks to the internet (especially after 201x), I found the right way to do it. Hats off to Junya Ota doing that at 1995!
Zuncode moment when Marisa B has 10 times the damage in MoF or when you can shiftspam to get 2 goheis for ReimuA in DDC or when the Bloodthirsty Yin-yang Orb subitem reduced hitbox size only work on lasers Also when transforming bullets change sprite but keep their original hitbox
I discovered Touhou because McDonalds... or the "McRoll". Back in the mid-late 2000's. When I discovered the song from McRoll was from some Japanese rail shooting series, I've been hooked; or rather, I was more hooked to the music and doujin music based off the games.
15:20 touhou 14 have a gimmick revolve around point of collection locate at the upper half of the screen When your player move there items will be automatically collected and base on the amount of item you collect at the poc the game will reward you with life or bomb pieces
Stumbled upon your channel while finding videos about Last Armageddon, and found your videos pretty simplistic, straight to the point, yet still very informative, and with many game titles I've never heard about but looks very interesting. And since I'm a TH fan, I watched this one as well! Though I can't really remember which exactly is my first contact with TH, it could be either IOSYS' MVs, Night of Nights, Bad Apple MV, or even the MAD videos Please keep up the good work!
Nice video! Even being very familiar with the series, there was some really neat trivia I hadn't known about. Touhou is such an enigma and it's always cool to find out more about it 15:10 Regarding DDC's unique gameplay element, it would have to be the point of collection system expansion, where the number of point/power items you collect in one fell swoop at the top of the screen can give you both a score bonus and part of a life/part of a bomb. This is the main means of obtaining resources in the game apart from clearing boss attacks and introduces some really interesting risk/reward where you can greed for a bigger bonus or grab several smaller ones.
My first touhou experience was, its doujin music songs that were everywhere in rhythm game like osu and soundvoltex since 2016. Then i took a liking on them and started to collecting the albums, on 2022. Then finally on Feb 2024, i played the games and binged thru the official manga. I only have 1cc'd EoSD, IN twice, and MoF
I heard from somewhere that zun said he wanted imperishable night to be the last game of the series. And i can see it in the amount of detail that game has, the remixes of old themes, a boss fight against the protagonists and the beauty of the game, it was planned to be the last, but im happy this series continued!
I love the concept of this video. Exploring Touhou's unique success in gaming and media at large is highly fascinating and something we've recently started to see somewhat replicated in the west (specifically Scott Cawthon and his relationship with FNAF fan works) I'm disappointed by how the video fails to deliver on the concept within the title, but I believe in your knowledge, writing, and VO skills, so I'd like to give some constructive criticism in the hopes of you taking a second crack at this 1. 2/3rds of the video was spent on giving an introduction to every official game and their mechanics. If your intended audience is people who don't know what Touhou is, the intricacies of gameplay mechanics and exact character introductions won't matter. If your intended audience is existing Touhou fans, you shouldn't be covering the official games so much more than the fan works 2. You spent way too little time talking about Touhou's legacy in the doujin world, and gave way too few details. "Here's Bad Apple in Touhou 4. Here's this video with 91 million views. Wow!" is nowhere near enough information. Talk about how that MV started as a doujin circle remix, then got a storyboard made by some random fan on NND, then got the MV made by some other random fan on NND. That chain of fans iterating off of the work of other fans is vital. I timed the amount of tiem you spent talking about doujin works to be about 5 minutes in this nearly 30-minute long video, and that is simply not enough. In summary, less time should be spent giving a video recap of every official Touhou release and more time should be spent covering the fan works 3. Continuing the previous two points, this video is aimless. Why do we suddenly spend so much time summarizing every official game? Why are fan projects getting mentioned only in passing? What actually came out of Touhou's peak popularity in 2013/2014? 4. The concept of the video as promised by the title is not executed. Touhou's success is not talked about. One can infer how successful Touhou was and is based on you mentioning ZUN leaving TAITO and fan projects getting dozens of millions of views, but you should be spelling that out in the video itself If you, creator of this video, are reading this sentence, thank you. I truly believe that you have the ability and knowledge to cover this topic well, and I promise to support you if you decide to revisit this and do it better
Fun fact, League of Legends character design for Lux is inspired by Touhou's Marisa Kirisame. One attack (spellcard) Marisa uses commonly is called "Master Spark", whereas Lux has an ultimate skill named "Final Spark", both are huge "laser beam" attacks. And many of the skins for Lux have themes referring to Marisa's character traits.
You called scarlet symphony a metroid vania, isn't it just a regular castlevania? It's linear after all. Also a nice chunk of your video was just explaining each game very, VERY, briefly and barely in an analytical sense. More ZUN insights would be cool, like his process of making the games. I.E. make the music 1st, make the gameplay match 2nd.
00:53 The record is for the Touhou franchise not the the first game and it was obtained in 2011 22:24 Koumajou Remilia is a parody of Castlevania's Japanese title Akumajou Dracula
The one thing I really, absolutely, overwhelmingly love about Touhou Project is how it absolutely shattered video game conventional wisdom. An essentially all-female cast can be a huge success. A non-slavish take on Japanese mythology can be a huge success. Serious threats to the world handled with a light tone can be a huge success. Villains reforming and occasionally even becoming heroes through the power of friendship can be a huge success. A beautiful, colorful, vibrant, diverse world full of beautiful, colorful, vibrant, diverse characters can be a huge success. *Games NOT full of disgusting crap like microtransactions and lootboxes and season passes and overpriced DLC can be a huge success.* I don't exaggerate that in a few years Touhou may very well be the only reason a great many players care about video games at all (I've already reached that point).
And apparently Touhou is a public domain, like Alice in Wonderland or anything Disney has ever "tarnished" as a comparison. Meaning that derivative works based on Touhou is open and easy to use even profiting to them, however... no using assets from the actual games directly.
Man this video feels pretty lazy, and fault of that is obviously trying to cover every single game in a single video Half a hour of duration means nothing if its spend just giving a super brief introductions of only a few seconds to each game, brief introductions that sounds like just lazy readings from a store front page with barely any research done for most of them you for example, dismissed DDC as if it had no special gimmicks, just a small amount of online searching can easily land you on online articles and fan wiki pages talking about its unique tsukumogami Option system but nope, no mention whatsoever of it You should just have split it multiple indepth vídeos and sppend more time researching
Thank you for watching my video!
No thank you for making the video!
Actually there is another stipulation to the IP. Which is to not spoil the endings online. Which has been respected by the fanbase until now. I remember that one because Masahiro Sakurai threw a public temper tantrum when the Subspace emissary was shown on TH-cam.
no epilespy warning moment.
Copyright is the enemy of creativity. The ever-expanding copyright laws stifle creative inspiration. The sad example Nintendo has become is the perfect example of this. Touhou's freedom is its greatest weapon. The series would be nothing of what it is without allowing the fans the freedom to let their minds wander and to create some of the best content the internet has ever seen.
This is true.
for me copyright should be Corpo. vs. Corpo. thing
@@kaimoro agree with this!
copyright itself isn't a bad thing.The true problem is the abuse of it.Touhou itself is a copyrighted property but the creator doesn't abuse he's rights.There were some instances where touhou fan games were taken down.If copyright wouldn't exist someone would find a way to steal the creative rights and make a monopoly.Unfortunately the monopoly is build with the laws meant to not allow a monopoly.
How does copyright prevent monopoly’s?
To elaborate on ZUN's copyright stance:
The rules boil down to:
1: Credit me, do not claim the characters or IP as your own
2: Do not portray the characters in such a fashion that could cause damage to the IP [So nothing along the lines of games like Hatred]
3: If you are a corporation; ask me for permission. If you are not, you don't need to
4: If you want to do something highly monetized like a gatcha game, ask me first. [This kinda links to 3; Lost Word for example has to keep checking with ZUN that they're not going too far with things like beach outfit designs.]
Also; a lot of the popularity comes from artists; who basically were inspired by ZUN's... uh... not great art and wanted to do better. Also; the sheer premise of the characters; being based on youkai and such and various myths and legend. Which also draws curiosity and fan interpretations. People can fill gaps.
Man lost word community is one of best gacha game community ever not gonna lie
2: for the past 12-13 years, ever since the times where Windows had bright blue window frame, bright red close button, and blue-ish welcome and shutdown screens, i've seen that rule was often violated, especially in H-n--i sites and those "dojins" are made as a work for sale... but that's the author's problem not mine. Just informing.
@@meyers0781the lolis talk and act like a kid
Fym they're "legal"
I am 90% sure that the whole Touhouified genre thing is a Rule of the internet at this point "If it exists there is a Touhou version of it, if it doesn't exist yet it will soon" or something along those lines.
ZUN's art style is probably the reason why people draw Touhou in any style they want. It's a good thing!
The English titles are not supposed to be translations or different titles for the English market, the naming convention of the mainline games are simply 東方 followed by 3 kanji, forming the title, followed by an English sub-title. Fans usually do not use the numbering system of the games to talk about them, likely because the numbers do not usually appear in the title. In Japan and China, they usually use the 3 kanji of the title, often completely disregarding the English sub-titles and in the west we usually only use abbreviations of the English sub-titles.
Some other minor facts are also wrong, such as saying that PCB added focus despite EoSD also having it, the on screen correction saying that "Touhou 8 added the curser" while on screen you can see that PCB has it already, the reasoning for games being numbered as X.X not being the chronological placement of the story (All games content likely happens in chronological order to their releases but not all of them are necessarily linked), but simply that they are not mainline games and are being developed/released in-between these games or the fact that characters always have unique features in almost every Touhou game (like Reimu's smaller hitbox) and every Touhou game has a unique scoring gimmick but you only mention them for specific ones as if other games don't include them.
Still a great video that you obviously put effort into :)
When talking about the games fans use both the title's abbreviation and the number like 'TH6', 'Touhou 6', 'EoSD' or just simply the number itself.
@@HyperVanilo Hence "usually"
PCB added the visual indicator for focus so he probably got confused with that
focus was in LLS
I think that the 12.x stuff is based on chronological order, since a few of the 12.x games released after touhou 13, same with 17.5 and 18 (17.5 is todo with COVID, but some of the 12.x games were released days after 13 did)
Part of Touhou's success is its characters.
Zun has invested a lot in building his character, from personality, appearance to abilities.
It's not difficult to understand that many people who don't know Touhou can still hear about characters like Reimu, Flandre or Sakuya.
Huh? They’re all young, light skinned girls. I’m just glad people try differently these days. Weird vid given magnitude of game varieties and homages. Arzette was a fun idea imo.
@@MrVariant Thats kinda the idea, on the surface their just all bubbly cute girls and then you look into them and they all have alot of unique stuff going on in terms of powers abillity and history.
@TheThebigice I did play tale of beautiful memories and didn't really notice much outside girls ripping off mario rpg but can get lost, though it seems you can differentiate the games. I think I played a couple games like luna nights but I guess it fulfills a niche like Archie comics does, especially when crossing genres like these touhou girls do.
I know some go crazy for star ocean, tales of, fire emblem, and trails rpgs though I can't really tell much apart outside of they talk too much 😅.
@@MrVariantWhat you are describing is fan games. What the other people in this thread are talking about is the official games.
@@PneumaAsh what I mentioned aren't fan games at all. They're sold on switch/steam.
ZUN's comment about not confusing the focus on female characters for fanservice definitely explains a lot. One of the biggest things that drew my curiosity about Touhou was the surprising lack of fanservice. I mean, especially in this day and age, if you introduce me to a game by telling me it's about cute anime girls fighting each other in a fantasy setting, I'd definitely expect it to be some sort of fetishy waifu thing complete with all the exhausted tropes like the "small breasted" main character being teased about her measurements, or upskirts and skimpy outfits.
But Touhou doesn't do stuff like that. The girls are all consistently dressed really modestly, and from my experiences so far (only having played EoSD and PCB), innuendo and sexual references are extremely few and far between. (I think there was a vague adult reference in Reimu and Rumia's dialogue in EoSD but I'm not even sure if that's intended or if the actual joke has gone over my head.) Of course, a fandom on the internet will make all the fanservice they could ever want themselves, but I really admire that ZUN hasn't gone the easy route with character design and instead makes his characters stand out with sympathetic backstories. I don't feel like I have to defend myself or feel embarrassed when talking about Touhou and I don't have to preface the topic with "I know what it looks like, but hear me out..."
As someone who *genuinely* enjoys learning more about the characters even in highly sexualized franchises, I can't tell you how exhausting it is to just *know* that everyone thinks I'm just covering for horniness. So to have a game where the shrine maiden protagonist isn't just a cute, clumsy girl who gets flustered at the mere implication of holding hands with little depth beyond that but is instead a young lady burdened with the heavy responsibility of enforcing the law of the land yet can still find simple joys in the process by throwing around trash talk and never, or rarely, shows signs of insecurity is absolutely delightful.
I don't personally have anything against fanservice and content that is clearly just made for horny sake, but I'm just glad to have something like this to affirm that it really *is* more than just fanservice that makes these kinds of worlds and characters appealing. I think the Touhou series inspires a sense of nostalgic, innocent bliss that's rarely able to be captured and maintained today. It puts me in a very specific kind of mindset, similar to that of other highly emotional yet goofy franchises like Undertale and Earthbound, that I just find really difficult to describe.
It's the difference between being a fan of Blue Archive and being a fan of Sailor Moon, to summarize your point into one simile
Also, that mention of "nostalgic, innocent bliss" and how it's impossible to describe is spot-on. So many times I have found myself crying to Touhou songs and remixes because of the wave of nostalgia they cause me to experience, yet the flavor of nostalgia is so varied and complex in each scenario that I couldn't possibly find the exact right words to describe how I feel
Lack of sexual fanservice isn't even a unique trait or anything like that, he just isn't interessed in adding that to their games
Same. One of the reasons I "stayed" in the fandom, is because of the personalities of the characters. When I played EoSD in 2009, I was in middle school and liked harem and shoujo anime a lot. What struck me the most was how these all female cast behaved not like any previous female characters I've ever seen. They were confident and bitchy with other. And I loved that. The all female cast and music were awesome, as well. I liked there being no male characters to limit them and make them act stupid, or fanservice, like I was used to seeing back in the day.
@@IERServer "What struck me the most was how these all female cast behaved not like any previous female characters I've ever seen. They were confident and bitchy with other"
Yep. Even back in the day when i was enamored to Touhou (12-13) there's lots of female characters in series that only exist to treat the indecisive and foolish male protagonist (Highschool DxD, who stole Sakuya's design for a side character) as a trophy, or female characters that simply made as object to lewd jokes (ISUCA, one of the few anime that disgust me)
Sure there are lewd-heavy fanbases in certain sites but the wholesome ones are still a lot.
I clicked on this video expecting a video essay on what creators can learn from Touhou Project. What I got was an overview/summary of Touhou Project.
That being said, my first encounter with Touhou Project was a number of doujin scanlaltions. After that, I encountered a lot of fan art and was intrigued by some of the character designs. An encounter with its music and games happened after a few years. I now have several volumes of Forbidden Scrollery and a handful of music remixes. I am also subscribed to Touhou doujin circles/creators on TH-cam.
I believe what the guy wanted to say is. Don't be a Masahiro Sakurai.
For me, first is that one video showing us which shmups we should begin playing with (one of them is Touhou), and second is that one minecraft video playing Touhou's fan mv "Bad Apple", next is I end up watching its full mv but edited with who's the characters behind the black-and-white silhouette (and I ended up having crush with Reimu, alonside Toaru's Misaka)
I still love the Touhou game called "Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity" and its on Switch/Ps4/steam offically in english, its the 3rd title in that series and its plays like a Ys game. Ys has been around since the 80's and is still releasing games to this day. I also love the fact ZUN has helped out other game creators from time to time and in those titles ZUN has helped out they have made Reimu/Marisa bosses in those games or appear in some ways.
My first time playing anything Touhou related was a Terraria mod called 'Gensokyo,' which basically just adds Touhou bosses (and their music), enemies, and weapons. I was at least a little familiar with a few characters, like Reimu, Marissa and Cirno, but everything else was a surprise. Then, I got another Touhou mod for Library of Ruina, and it was really cool seeing bullet hell mechanics turned into a turn based card battler.
Before that, though, I just read a wikipedia article on ZUN on a whim, not even knowing he made the IP.
I've played Terraria for over a decade, dumping thousand of hours into it across PC, mobile, and even 3DS
About 500 of those hours have come from modded, and Gensokyo is by far my favorite Terraria mod
Very clearly, Calamity is the BEST Terraria mod, but the way Gensokyo manages to slide Touhou and its gameplay into a game that is built specifically against that style of gameplay (slow base acceleration, massive hitbox, few precise movement options) blows my mind away
Welcome to Touhou!
Ys mentioned. Instant sub. Great vid! Only thing would be about Touhou 14. What makes that game unique is the emphases on the point of collection line since that’s how you get resources. It’s the best example of high risk/high reward imo but it is the most basic game since EoSD
Great vid overall though and I loved the Ys shoutout
His drawing is suck, but his music and programming are amazing. My game used to lag when I try implemented bullet hell mechanics, but thanks to the internet (especially after 201x), I found the right way to do it. Hats off to Junya Ota doing that at 1995!
Zuncode moment when Marisa B has 10 times the damage in MoF or when you can shiftspam to get 2 goheis for ReimuA in DDC or when the Bloodthirsty Yin-yang Orb subitem reduced hitbox size only work on lasers
Also when transforming bullets change sprite but keep their original hitbox
I discovered Touhou because McDonalds... or the "McRoll". Back in the mid-late 2000's. When I discovered the song from McRoll was from some Japanese rail shooting series, I've been hooked; or rather, I was more hooked to the music and doujin music based off the games.
15:20 touhou 14 have a gimmick revolve around point of collection locate at the upper half of the screen
When your player move there items will be automatically collected and base on the amount of item you collect at the poc the game will reward you with life or bomb pieces
solid video and genuane content. LOVE IT
Stumbled upon your channel while finding videos about Last Armageddon, and found your videos pretty simplistic, straight to the point, yet still very informative, and with many game titles I've never heard about but looks very interesting. And since I'm a TH fan, I watched this one as well!
Though I can't really remember which exactly is my first contact with TH, it could be either IOSYS' MVs, Night of Nights, Bad Apple MV, or even the MAD videos
Please keep up the good work!
Of the lot, I have the most fondness for Tohou 8: Imperishable Night.
A franchise made with a labor of love from both developer and fans
Nice video! Even being very familiar with the series, there was some really neat trivia I hadn't known about. Touhou is such an enigma and it's always cool to find out more about it
15:10 Regarding DDC's unique gameplay element, it would have to be the point of collection system expansion, where the number of point/power items you collect in one fell swoop at the top of the screen can give you both a score bonus and part of a life/part of a bomb. This is the main means of obtaining resources in the game apart from clearing boss attacks and introduces some really interesting risk/reward where you can greed for a bigger bonus or grab several smaller ones.
My first touhou experience was, its doujin music songs that were everywhere in rhythm game like osu and soundvoltex since 2016. Then i took a liking on them and started to collecting the albums, on 2022. Then finally on Feb 2024, i played the games and binged thru the official manga. I only have 1cc'd EoSD, IN twice, and MoF
I heard from somewhere that zun said he wanted imperishable night to be the last game of the series. And i can see it in the amount of detail that game has, the remixes of old themes, a boss fight against the protagonists and the beauty of the game, it was planned to be the last, but im happy this series continued!
Ngl Touhou got me into trying to make music again
I love the concept of this video. Exploring Touhou's unique success in gaming and media at large is highly fascinating and something we've recently started to see somewhat replicated in the west (specifically Scott Cawthon and his relationship with FNAF fan works)
I'm disappointed by how the video fails to deliver on the concept within the title, but I believe in your knowledge, writing, and VO skills, so I'd like to give some constructive criticism in the hopes of you taking a second crack at this
1. 2/3rds of the video was spent on giving an introduction to every official game and their mechanics. If your intended audience is people who don't know what Touhou is, the intricacies of gameplay mechanics and exact character introductions won't matter. If your intended audience is existing Touhou fans, you shouldn't be covering the official games so much more than the fan works
2. You spent way too little time talking about Touhou's legacy in the doujin world, and gave way too few details. "Here's Bad Apple in Touhou 4. Here's this video with 91 million views. Wow!" is nowhere near enough information. Talk about how that MV started as a doujin circle remix, then got a storyboard made by some random fan on NND, then got the MV made by some other random fan on NND. That chain of fans iterating off of the work of other fans is vital. I timed the amount of tiem you spent talking about doujin works to be about 5 minutes in this nearly 30-minute long video, and that is simply not enough. In summary, less time should be spent giving a video recap of every official Touhou release and more time should be spent covering the fan works
3. Continuing the previous two points, this video is aimless. Why do we suddenly spend so much time summarizing every official game? Why are fan projects getting mentioned only in passing? What actually came out of Touhou's peak popularity in 2013/2014?
4. The concept of the video as promised by the title is not executed. Touhou's success is not talked about. One can infer how successful Touhou was and is based on you mentioning ZUN leaving TAITO and fan projects getting dozens of millions of views, but you should be spelling that out in the video itself
If you, creator of this video, are reading this sentence, thank you. I truly believe that you have the ability and knowledge to cover this topic well, and I promise to support you if you decide to revisit this and do it better
Genuan Thump nail and titel. something you dont see in this era but the video quality is also solid
genuan???
@@Jarncool-real real legnds dont spell cheack
Nice video, my introduction to touhou was with Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Stepmania, a DDR emulator
Touhou is one of my biggest inspos for art in general.
Fun fact, League of Legends character design for Lux is inspired by Touhou's Marisa Kirisame. One attack (spellcard) Marisa uses commonly is called "Master Spark", whereas Lux has an ultimate skill named "Final Spark", both are huge "laser beam" attacks. And many of the skins for Lux have themes referring to Marisa's character traits.
You called scarlet symphony a metroid vania, isn't it just a regular castlevania? It's linear after all. Also a nice chunk of your video was just explaining each game very, VERY, briefly and barely in an analytical sense. More ZUN insights would be cool, like his process of making the games. I.E. make the music 1st, make the gameplay match 2nd.
you should add music in the BG! also, great video [^◡^]
Touhou my beloved
My introduction was a video explaining what a Touhou doujin circle is
00:53 The record is for the Touhou franchise not the the first game and it was obtained in 2011
22:24 Koumajou Remilia is a parody of Castlevania's Japanese title Akumajou Dracula
You don't need the first point. He said "first game in a series that would go on to".
The one thing I really, absolutely, overwhelmingly love about Touhou Project is how it absolutely shattered video game conventional wisdom. An essentially all-female cast can be a huge success. A non-slavish take on Japanese mythology can be a huge success. Serious threats to the world handled with a light tone can be a huge success. Villains reforming and occasionally even becoming heroes through the power of friendship can be a huge success. A beautiful, colorful, vibrant, diverse world full of beautiful, colorful, vibrant, diverse characters can be a huge success. *Games NOT full of disgusting crap like microtransactions and lootboxes and season passes and overpriced DLC can be a huge success.* I don't exaggerate that in a few years Touhou may very well be the only reason a great many players care about video games at all (I've already reached that point).
What got me into Touhou?
It has to do with a bad apple.
And apparently Touhou is a public domain, like Alice in Wonderland or anything Disney has ever "tarnished" as a comparison.
Meaning that derivative works based on Touhou is open and easy to use even profiting to them, however... no using assets from the actual games directly.
No men = success
*No men for certain games + no ugly nor fat women + good music + emgaging gameplay = major success.
Banget video
Man this video feels pretty lazy, and fault of that is obviously trying to cover every single game in a single video
Half a hour of duration means nothing if its spend just giving a super brief introductions of only a few seconds to each game, brief introductions that sounds like just lazy readings from a store front page
with barely any research done for most of them
you for example, dismissed DDC as if it had no special gimmicks, just a small amount of online searching can easily land you on online articles and fan wiki pages talking about its unique tsukumogami Option system but nope, no mention whatsoever of it
You should just have split it multiple indepth vídeos and sppend more time researching
Racism saves
this video is really good bro great work