Touhou

Touhou is more of a subcultural phenomenon than it is a collection of video games, so I should probably make a new subforum for the Japanese forum that can house threads like this one. But for now, it goes here.

What is Touhou?
a fan-made commercial line of shmups (specifically danmaku, or "bullet hell") starring an almost entirely female cast of characters

I want to know more!
Knock yourself out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touhou_Project is a good (lengthy) start, and the Touhou Wiki will keep you busy for days should you so choose.

Okay, I want to know more, but not that much more!
If somebody decides to talk about "Touhou," you've got to figure out first of all whether they're talking about the actual Touhou games or whether they're talking about the fanbase (and the derivative works produced by said fanbase) which surrounds it. Touhou fans are a subgroup of anime nerds, who are in turn a subset of nerds, who are in turn a subset of humanity. So as you can probably guess, Touhou is very very niche and its fans are usually very very rabid.

But I'm a casual fan, so you don't have to worry.

Who likes Touhou?
Well, if any of the following applies to you, you may like Touhou:

• I like manga-style artwork of cute girls between the ages of 5 and 17 ( , says I)
  
• I like shoot 'em ups ( to says I)
  
• I like insanely difficult video games ( , says I)
  
• I like virtual communities ( says I)
  
• I like being a fan of something where each character has a distinct personality trait / thing that they're known for ( says I)
  
• I like fighters ( says I)

So you can see why I'm only a casual fan. The fighting games (all two of 'em) form the minor segment of the franchise, whereas the danmaku shoot 'em ups are the main attraction video game-wise. Likewise, I love cute anime-styled artwork as much as the next guy, but (a) I don't go for girls, and (b) those who do tend to be pretty rabid about that sort of thing -------> as you might guess, the Touhou fanbase has a huge loli fanbase (i.e. guys who go gaga for cartoon minors) and these pariahs of our society make it pretty well known who they are and why they belong. Translation: your average Touhou fan gets on my nerves a lot. lol But not enough to ruin the franchise for me. And not enough to keep me from enjoying it with my own small group of like-minded friends.

So why did I even make this thread? Well, the first post was an obligatory way to catch you up to speed if you had no idea what Touhou was. Now that you've read it, I can post what would have otherwise been the first post of the thread (lol) ...

In between studying for final exams, I started playing Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (after putting off unrar'ing the rar for almost a year now) and I also went ahead and went back and played games 10 (Mountain of Faith), 11 (Subterranean Animism), and 12 (U.F.O.).

And why did I go back and play them? Because a friend of mine has been creating a custom Touhou-themed expansion of 200+ cards for Magic: the Gathering casual play in Lafayette and he's been chatting about it with me off and on over the last few months. And just this last Saturday, he showed me this awesome video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sib2L6A6xgw (388,263 views at the time of this post). It's a silhouette (or "shadow art") video of most of the major Touhou characters set to one of the character's theme songs.

It's fun and beautiful to watch just for itself, but it's even better if you recognize who/what you're looking at. Doubtless there is some level of excitement when you see your favorite girl make her appearance (mine being Yukari 2:21 and Yuyuko 1:04), not to mention the kneejerk reaction of pleasure when you spot a girl, any girl who you can recognize. (For me, this was originally somewhere like one-third of the cast. After subsequent reviewings of the video, I can recognize a good two-thirds to three-quarters of them from boss fights I have fought them in. Mostly because of the heavy showings from one of the shooters and both of the fighters. )

But the video is also beautiful in another way: and that's when you stop to consider that this was a fanwork. It was made by some ... dude! Some guy, somewhere in Japan, who felt like making this and ended up doing exactly that. He didn't do it for pay. He didn't do it as work. He did it on his own time for no profit of any kind. This video is a powerful testament towards just how diehard and prolific the Touhou fandom is. Over the years, the fans have produced hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of unique artworks, and have all but defined for ZUN (the inventor of the games) who the girls are and what they look like. This is in part because ZUN can't draw for shit (and so better fan-drawn depictions are welcome) and in part because he doesn't give the girls much more than five or six lines per game. With most girls only appearing in one game ever, this means that the girl's personality would be the sum of those six sentences were it not for fan (over-)interpretation of what those lines tell us about the person and their subsequent fleshing out of what becomes her ultimate character profile.

To put it into perspective, could you see this video being done for Firefly? Maybe. How about Star Trek? Possibly. But could you see videos of this caliber being made on a monthly basis? Videos of lesser quality on a daily basis? And tens upon tens of new drawings every hour? Doubtful.