Post by CountVonNumenor on Dec 29, 2021 0:35:04 GMT
I could be talking in a general way about this game series, but that would literally take me ages, just by starting with the official materials, then falling down the endless rabbit whole of fan content that was possible to the extremely relaxed rules imposed by the author, Jun'ya Ota (better known worldwide as ZUN). Instead, I will talk about my experience with these games and their fandom in the past yea since I grew interested in them.
For a better explanation on what this series is, there are some good explanatory videos like this one from AspreyFM
...and gaijin hunter
One month ago, there has been one year since I have decided to get into this wonderful rabbit whole called Touhou Project and its community. Now that I think about it, the whole way I got into this has been quite a cluster. So, let's take it from the beginning.
Before eve getting into the fandom officially, I have had a few contacts with Touhou. The first one of them most likely has to be a parody video. At the time, I was a Warhammer 40K (and If the Emperor had a text-to-Speech Device) fan, and found this parody about space marine captain Diomedes and his obsession about Baneblade super-heavy tanks. The video was is using U.N Owen was Her? as the background music, thing I have only realized after finally getting into Touhou.
Around the same time, I have also watched this video from Kaliningrad General as some sort of "WW1 in a nutshell" where, again, the background music was what I would discover later to be Native Faith. Also much later, I would discover that Kaliningrad has a second channel called Kaliningrad Alternate where he just shows how much he likes Touhou by making animations related to it.
In both of these case, I can talk about earl contacts with the music, way longer before discovering the game series. At the time, I could not understand all the references to this series, yet at a second look in the following moths, things started to look different once I finally got into Touhou.
But what actually brought me into the fandom was the fandom came indirectly, in the form of getting an interest in Rhythm Heaven after the RH Reanimated video from September 2020. After more than a month of watching custom remixes, I stumbled upon a video called Nico Nico Douga Ryuuseigun.
That video featured a few bits of Touhou stages, one of which getting my attention. It was a segment in which Karate Joe, wearing a Reimu wig, was in the same room as a girl dressed in red, with blonde hair and funny looking wings. She got my curiosity, and saved an image for later research to find out who she is. The very same day, during a general conversation on Discord, a colleague showed in a screenshot the song he was listening to - something from the album Bullet Hell by Richaad EB. Right at the moment, I was a bit shocked. The girl on the album cover was exactly the same one from my video - Flandre Scarlet. Since that person in the screenshot was listening to a song I only knew at the time it was called "Bad Apple", I went on YouTube to look it up. I was not disappointed, as it was quite a good rock cover. After listening to the song and seeing for the first time the name "Touhou", my first instinct was that of going online and looking up the series. This must have happened on the 15th of October, as that is the date of the first Touhou-related image I have saved, the image of the album cover for Bullet Hell.
In the following days, the YouTube algorithm has decided to push me more and more Touhou content, mostly 2009-2012 era animations. One of those that caught most of my attention was one called "Rampaging Sakuya", which actually made me draw my first bit of fanart - a recreation of one of the hallway chase scenes, finished on the day of the November 1st, 2020. At the time, I also did start talking to one of my best friends, telling him that I have found out about this series called "Touhou", and a game called "Embodiment of Scarlet Devil" (at the time I did not know there are multiple games in the series). When I mentioned the name of the game, he seemed a bit confused, especially since my attempt at explaining EoSD was rather clumsy (I was forgetting names every now and then, as well well as details). However, a few days later, he called me back and told me that "wait a minute, this sounds familiar" (he used to be familiar with the EoSD cast a few years before I got into the thing, but forgot about it since he did not have who to talk to about).
All I can say to have come next until the end of December was mostly more YouTube exploration, watching animations and slowly discovering the music groups, first being Shibayan Records, followed by Akatsuki Records (who I still love and listen to up to this day) and Shinra-Bansho with their 24/7 music livestream I used to boot into whenever I had some work to do or wanted some chill music for study. Shinra was also the first group to make me feel stuff (mostly a couple days of getting messed up and sad) after watching the music video for Junjo Arumeria (even to this day I find it hard to get back watching the PV without having that feeling of empty stomach like when feeling strong emotions, despite still listening to the song). It was very recent that I had watched a version of Caramelldansen featuring the cast from Immaterian and Missing Power. That one girls with grey hair, sword and floating phantom that I would go about like "who is this", would soon become Youmu Konpaku, my favourite character from the series - quite a quick evolution, but one influenced by reading the official materials available on the wiki, as well a listening to the original music themes associated to her.
Until the end of December, everything seemed to be going wonderful. I started discovering the fanart, music groups and official works (at the time I was reading Bohemian Archive), as well as joining the Discord community, until disaster struck, things that gave me a rather whole image about the community and its content. During one read on TVtropes listing Touhou fan animatons on December 31st, there has been one name the struck me: Koishi Komeiji's Heart-Throbbing Adventure. Not knowing what it was about, I started reading the synopsis. 5 minutes later, I was shocked someone could create such a cruel, gory and brutal piece of media on what seemed like a cute series. When asking a few fellows what's with this series, they told me this is how Touhou is supposed to be depicted as such. It has left me messed up for a while, and only months later would I get some more info on the context thanks to my spring threads on this subreddit. Combined to listening + reading the story for Dolls in Pseudo Paradise, it has become clear Gensokyo would be a horrible place to live in, especially if you are an outsider who got spirited away. I started imaging that if that ever happened to me, I would have just started crying and wishing for a quick death at how much my vision of the Touhou universe got ruined.
Until mid spring, things started getting back on track, and I regained more of my positive view on Touhou. Early into 2021 I started watching the fan-made anime Memories of Phantasm, which unfortunately I did not manage to finish, getting stuck at Episode 8. At the same time I also started trying to play Perfect Cherry Blossom as my first Touhou game (even now, I still suck at that game, even on Easy Mode), and wanted to read more of the official materials available. But, just like before, another trip to TVtropes has ended up giving me a few more days of negativity about Gensokyo after reading the "Nighmare Fuel" section of their Touhou article, which further ruined my view on the fictional universe and lead to these two threads: one on trying to enjoy this series, as well as one about character flanderizations. Anyway, the second blow, combined with the original KKHTA blow, gave me two extremely conflicting images about Touhou - one fanon (+ apparently canon according to TVtropes) that was showing Gensokyo as grimdark, an another one represented by other bits of fanon (+ some canon too) that seemed rather chill and nice (at the time, I was also watching the Touhou M1 Grand Prix series, which which I was having lots of fun). In the end, it seems like I have focused more on the nicer aspects of the series, or just those that made me feel happy and relaxed - it was in the days when I was preparing for the Baccalaureate, so I was looking for something nice to keep my morale high and not depress me even further.
Ever since the beginning of the summer, there has been nothing new or worth noting besides starting to play Lost Word. I kept on drawing, albeit with long breaks between drawings, and listened to more of both official and doujin music - most recently listening to Changeability of Strange Dream and Neo-traditionalism in Japan, while also keeping in touch with the newly released PVs from Akatsuki Records. And in the past couple week, I have become more active on this forum again.
Overall, after more than a year of being in this fandom, I think there are multiple shades of it. One one side, you have all the cool fan art, music remixes, fan-made and official materials as a whole, as well as a lot of nice people that you can have a chill conversation with. On the other hand, there are bad apples too. Not too many, but they still exist. And if you bother too much with them, will just end up losing the enjoyment of the series. To me, Touhou has been a way of getting more easily over a rough part of my life (ending high school and an entire era of my life, the Baccalaureate exams and applying for college + college life), as well as one that strengthened my friendship with one of my best friends, since both of us had one more common topic to discuss about and share our passion for art, music and other works. Last but not least, Touhou has also been a source of inspiration for me to get better at drawing, especially since I wanted to depict my favourite characters in a better manner than I used to before.
For a better explanation on what this series is, there are some good explanatory videos like this one from AspreyFM
...and gaijin hunter
One month ago, there has been one year since I have decided to get into this wonderful rabbit whole called Touhou Project and its community. Now that I think about it, the whole way I got into this has been quite a cluster. So, let's take it from the beginning.
Before eve getting into the fandom officially, I have had a few contacts with Touhou. The first one of them most likely has to be a parody video. At the time, I was a Warhammer 40K (and If the Emperor had a text-to-Speech Device) fan, and found this parody about space marine captain Diomedes and his obsession about Baneblade super-heavy tanks. The video was is using U.N Owen was Her? as the background music, thing I have only realized after finally getting into Touhou.
Around the same time, I have also watched this video from Kaliningrad General as some sort of "WW1 in a nutshell" where, again, the background music was what I would discover later to be Native Faith. Also much later, I would discover that Kaliningrad has a second channel called Kaliningrad Alternate where he just shows how much he likes Touhou by making animations related to it.
In both of these case, I can talk about earl contacts with the music, way longer before discovering the game series. At the time, I could not understand all the references to this series, yet at a second look in the following moths, things started to look different once I finally got into Touhou.
But what actually brought me into the fandom was the fandom came indirectly, in the form of getting an interest in Rhythm Heaven after the RH Reanimated video from September 2020. After more than a month of watching custom remixes, I stumbled upon a video called Nico Nico Douga Ryuuseigun.
That video featured a few bits of Touhou stages, one of which getting my attention. It was a segment in which Karate Joe, wearing a Reimu wig, was in the same room as a girl dressed in red, with blonde hair and funny looking wings. She got my curiosity, and saved an image for later research to find out who she is. The very same day, during a general conversation on Discord, a colleague showed in a screenshot the song he was listening to - something from the album Bullet Hell by Richaad EB. Right at the moment, I was a bit shocked. The girl on the album cover was exactly the same one from my video - Flandre Scarlet. Since that person in the screenshot was listening to a song I only knew at the time it was called "Bad Apple", I went on YouTube to look it up. I was not disappointed, as it was quite a good rock cover. After listening to the song and seeing for the first time the name "Touhou", my first instinct was that of going online and looking up the series. This must have happened on the 15th of October, as that is the date of the first Touhou-related image I have saved, the image of the album cover for Bullet Hell.
In the following days, the YouTube algorithm has decided to push me more and more Touhou content, mostly 2009-2012 era animations. One of those that caught most of my attention was one called "Rampaging Sakuya", which actually made me draw my first bit of fanart - a recreation of one of the hallway chase scenes, finished on the day of the November 1st, 2020. At the time, I also did start talking to one of my best friends, telling him that I have found out about this series called "Touhou", and a game called "Embodiment of Scarlet Devil" (at the time I did not know there are multiple games in the series). When I mentioned the name of the game, he seemed a bit confused, especially since my attempt at explaining EoSD was rather clumsy (I was forgetting names every now and then, as well well as details). However, a few days later, he called me back and told me that "wait a minute, this sounds familiar" (he used to be familiar with the EoSD cast a few years before I got into the thing, but forgot about it since he did not have who to talk to about).
All I can say to have come next until the end of December was mostly more YouTube exploration, watching animations and slowly discovering the music groups, first being Shibayan Records, followed by Akatsuki Records (who I still love and listen to up to this day) and Shinra-Bansho with their 24/7 music livestream I used to boot into whenever I had some work to do or wanted some chill music for study. Shinra was also the first group to make me feel stuff (mostly a couple days of getting messed up and sad) after watching the music video for Junjo Arumeria (even to this day I find it hard to get back watching the PV without having that feeling of empty stomach like when feeling strong emotions, despite still listening to the song). It was very recent that I had watched a version of Caramelldansen featuring the cast from Immaterian and Missing Power. That one girls with grey hair, sword and floating phantom that I would go about like "who is this", would soon become Youmu Konpaku, my favourite character from the series - quite a quick evolution, but one influenced by reading the official materials available on the wiki, as well a listening to the original music themes associated to her.
Until the end of December, everything seemed to be going wonderful. I started discovering the fanart, music groups and official works (at the time I was reading Bohemian Archive), as well as joining the Discord community, until disaster struck, things that gave me a rather whole image about the community and its content. During one read on TVtropes listing Touhou fan animatons on December 31st, there has been one name the struck me: Koishi Komeiji's Heart-Throbbing Adventure. Not knowing what it was about, I started reading the synopsis. 5 minutes later, I was shocked someone could create such a cruel, gory and brutal piece of media on what seemed like a cute series. When asking a few fellows what's with this series, they told me this is how Touhou is supposed to be depicted as such. It has left me messed up for a while, and only months later would I get some more info on the context thanks to my spring threads on this subreddit. Combined to listening + reading the story for Dolls in Pseudo Paradise, it has become clear Gensokyo would be a horrible place to live in, especially if you are an outsider who got spirited away. I started imaging that if that ever happened to me, I would have just started crying and wishing for a quick death at how much my vision of the Touhou universe got ruined.
Until mid spring, things started getting back on track, and I regained more of my positive view on Touhou. Early into 2021 I started watching the fan-made anime Memories of Phantasm, which unfortunately I did not manage to finish, getting stuck at Episode 8. At the same time I also started trying to play Perfect Cherry Blossom as my first Touhou game (even now, I still suck at that game, even on Easy Mode), and wanted to read more of the official materials available. But, just like before, another trip to TVtropes has ended up giving me a few more days of negativity about Gensokyo after reading the "Nighmare Fuel" section of their Touhou article, which further ruined my view on the fictional universe and lead to these two threads: one on trying to enjoy this series, as well as one about character flanderizations. Anyway, the second blow, combined with the original KKHTA blow, gave me two extremely conflicting images about Touhou - one fanon (+ apparently canon according to TVtropes) that was showing Gensokyo as grimdark, an another one represented by other bits of fanon (+ some canon too) that seemed rather chill and nice (at the time, I was also watching the Touhou M1 Grand Prix series, which which I was having lots of fun). In the end, it seems like I have focused more on the nicer aspects of the series, or just those that made me feel happy and relaxed - it was in the days when I was preparing for the Baccalaureate, so I was looking for something nice to keep my morale high and not depress me even further.
Ever since the beginning of the summer, there has been nothing new or worth noting besides starting to play Lost Word. I kept on drawing, albeit with long breaks between drawings, and listened to more of both official and doujin music - most recently listening to Changeability of Strange Dream and Neo-traditionalism in Japan, while also keeping in touch with the newly released PVs from Akatsuki Records. And in the past couple week, I have become more active on this forum again.
Overall, after more than a year of being in this fandom, I think there are multiple shades of it. One one side, you have all the cool fan art, music remixes, fan-made and official materials as a whole, as well as a lot of nice people that you can have a chill conversation with. On the other hand, there are bad apples too. Not too many, but they still exist. And if you bother too much with them, will just end up losing the enjoyment of the series. To me, Touhou has been a way of getting more easily over a rough part of my life (ending high school and an entire era of my life, the Baccalaureate exams and applying for college + college life), as well as one that strengthened my friendship with one of my best friends, since both of us had one more common topic to discuss about and share our passion for art, music and other works. Last but not least, Touhou has also been a source of inspiration for me to get better at drawing, especially since I wanted to depict my favourite characters in a better manner than I used to before.
