New Touhou Print Book Announced: "東方文果真報 Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia"

[D-T]

ZUN always comes up with more interesting character writing than the fandom does anyway, so while it's not healthy for the popularity of the series I always like seeing fan depictions and relationships get written out.

[the old guy]

Oops i should have explained what i meant. Well, heres a post by Iced Fairy that explains what i was talking about, but the short of it is that SoPM basically destroyed alot of people's conceptions of certain characters (Like, as mentioned, Nitori.), and set up a "Religious War" that ALOT of people were excepting to be something other than a overly dramatic popularity contest. Which HM was (IMHO that was a good thing). That, and a broken mess of an game. Oh and then Kancolle(or as its better know as, Japanese Empire Propaganda But With Cute Ship Girls) happened.

Aaaaand rereading the post that i got this from i JUST realized that i massively over exaggerated things by saying that it "Almost destroyed the fandom." really, what it really did was make it smaller and make the Taoists, Buddhists, and Chireidens alot less popular. Sorry.

So really, it didn't kill fandom, more that it caused a giant backlash towards how certain characters were seen and made them almost unusable in the fandom (Which is more the fandoms fault, honestly).

Nitori is a bit more complex but I don't think her "shift" was nearly as dramatic as Youmu from PCB/IaMP into IN.

What character shift are you talking about? Youmoo's behavior in IaMP seemed pretty consistent to her later appearances for me.

[martelefort]

Well, after reading yours and Iced Fairy's post, i can't help but blame the fandom, they brought it upon themselves, honestly.  I've read the scenario from both MoF and SA and compared it to SoPM, and nothing really shocked me. It was the fandom's fault to misinterpret things and try to deeply dig into a character's personnality with only as much as an ingame dialogue. If i take MoF's depiction of Nitori, as en example, it only says she's a shy geek that change her manner of speech and run away from humans, i don't see how she couldn't be that nasty overall after you get to know her.

Not to mention, SoPM is supposed to be from the point of view of a human villager, who's likely biased towards humans and dislikes youkai ( refers to how humans like Reimu and Marisa are listed under " heroic legends " ).

Anyway i hope i'm not too off topic and that i didn't misinterpret things either. Even though i'v read a ton of works, i'm not in Touhou since very long so i guess you guys know about it well more than I do, but i can't help but think that the fandom was just pissed that their ideal interpretation was'nt was Zun planned for the characters.

[N-Forza]

What character shift are you talking about? Youmoo's behavior in IaMP seemed pretty consistent to her later appearances for me.

It seemed consistent to me as well, although I've seen more than a few people note how the edge of her "I WILL CUT YOU" fixation was gradually dulled by things like having a load of snow dumped on her in CoLA and being scared by other phantoms and bad horror stories.

And Iced Fairy's post is a lot more recent than I imagined it would be. Maybe it's just because I have the privilege of seeing the Japanese fanbase that it's solely what I focus on (with a few exceptions since I started my new circle), but plenty of people seem to like the later games' setting adjustments just fine. Kokoro in particular helped make Miko more popular (and Byakuren to a lesser extent). And whether because of inertia or not, a lot of people ignore certain points (like Momiji not liking Aya in canon) to do what they want to do and no one pitches a fit or whatever. The SDM crew is still overwhelmingly popular but if anything is to blame it's not necessarily ZUN futzing with recent canon.

[ToyoRai]

Honestly, I am happy to learn anything about the characters, especially the new ones. It is bit too early for a compendium and the mangas aren't really helping the lesser characters, so I take what I get.

[Drake]

A lot of these problem areas are also inherently cultural; ZUN using ideas from and references to religion, traditions, cultural icons, and the like, is guaranteed to mess people up unfamiliar. This is not helped by ZUN's tendency to write these things in without explicitly pointing them out. The english fandom, and probably overseas fandoms in general, are pretty apt to keeping to themselves due to the language barrier, and we don't have a whole lot of people that can bring over knowledge from the Japanese side. That being said, I think that as a fandom we're slowly improving and catching up to speed. At least I feel that way.

I agree with Forza. I don't tread quite as much as he does into the Japanese fandom, obviously, but there does not seem to be a particular aversion to later works. There was definitely a drop in new fans that bottomed between UFO and TD, but there was a distinct rise since that's been pushing somewhat consistently.


Note that for the last two popularity polls, which had the favorite works poll, LoLK was 6th, DDC 8th, UFO 9th. TD was 12th and 13th and is probably the only one consistently considered a bit weaker, and given that the TD characters aren't very popular with male Touhou fans either, it's kind of expected.

Something else shown by the popularity polls that helps explain the prominence of early works, is that game ownership throughout the series is essentially linear.


One would expect that there's even a small relationship between game ownership and the date people got into the series, but since it seems the trend is that people start at the beginning and go through sequentially, we get this startlingly steady drop in which games have been played.

[game2011]

So in summary, is the series's popularity falling or not?

[Labyz_]

Hi everyone.

Do you have other graphs like these ones Drake? It's really interesting. (And are there some with the titles in english?)

Did SoPM had such an influence as Iced Fairy said? It seemed to me that the fandom didn't follow very precisely the canon when it didn't please them (the Aya / Momiji relationship for exemple).

[mauve]

What character shift are you talking about? Youmoo's behavior in IaMP seemed pretty consistent to her later appearances for me.

iamp nerd here

iamp youmu is _very_ cut first, ask questions later, particularly in her own storyline, and it's kind of a meme amongst japanese fans that it's her most dangerous incarnation by far.

here's some choice story quotes:

Marisa: 「で、何のようだ？幽霊諸君。」 "So, what do you want, ghostly one?"

Youmu:「取り敢えず、斬りに来た。話はそれからだ。」"For now, I came to cut. Talking starts from there."

Patchouli: 「誰？」 (Who's there?)

Youmu: 「斬る。」 (Cut you.)

In SWR she has this win quote:

「何かすっきりしない時は取り敢えず斬ってみるって事ね！」
"It's like, whenever I'm not feeling clear-headed, I'll just cut something up!"

she's generally considered to have considerably chilled out from in onwards, but iamp youmu's disposition is basically that if she's feeling like there's a problem, and you're in front of her, she's going to cut you.

[mauve]

on a side note: as someone who more actively follows the jp touhou scene way more than the en one these days

i don't get the fuss about sopm. even when it came out i didn't think more than a small handful of people cared. characters are contradicted continuously in this franchise and fans haven't exactly stopped from interpreting them the way they like one way or another. and people definitely like the new games' content. (i quite like the casts of ddc/llok, personally, and i was not a big fan of ufo/10d)

people like to make up a lot of pointless drama where there really isn't any because it's more fun than thinking people get along fine, which they do, so i think people are drastically overrating how much various 'factions' exist and fight. people take what they like from it, ignore what they don't, and move on. touhou's a very, very diverse franchise with a little something for everyone and zun's own attitude of not taking it too seriously pans over to fans interpreting things how they want.

also, like, kancolle taking a large portion of the population is more a blessing than anything else. some things to note:

* the population that kancolle took is one that drifts from Big Thing to Big Thing, and is also generally an audience that was drawn in not by interest in the franchise or its setting, but by memes, videos, and doujinshi-related content. wouldn't be surprised if kemono friends took a big chunk out of it this year.
* ... and, of particular note for disappearing fans: porn. here's a chart showing a breakdown of tables by franchise at c91, blue bars are 'for all ages,' red bars are 'for men.' (green is 'other' so i'm assuming 'for women' and 'not for human consumption') top row is kancolle, second row is touhou.
* ... which, you'll note, touhou is still the second most popular franchise by doujin content at comiket, either in total or when counting only all-ages works, and has not shrunk at all from c90.

so, touhou as a whole is distinctly *less* oriented towards a certain breed of otaku now, which has opened room for far more diverse creators and interest in the actual touhou franchise than had existed even during touhou's peak. i see a lot more women involved now than i did even a few years ago! it's actually really nice to see, honestly.

the franchise is not dying, it's showing surprising health and resilience. y'all need to chill out and enjoy your silly frilly dress girl series more casually. also: play more iamp.

[N-Forza]

Another thing that might explain the reduced number of Touhou circles at Comiket was the organizers wanting to give newer franchises an opportunity to flourish, like they did for Touhou a few years ago. Touhou doesn't need to dominate Comiket anymore anyway since they have tons of doujin events across the country with yearly attendance improvements. Moreover, a lot of the newcomers in Japan are middle/high school-age kids, which is a good sign for sustaining the fandom.

And even on the western side, the fact that there are now Touhou fangames on PS4 is something that would be unthinkable a couple of years ago.

[Drake]

So in summary, is the series's popularity falling or not?

It's on the rise currently. More people than ever are reading the written works; FS placed 7th in the 12th and 13th works polls with the lowest ratio of 1st-votes out of the top ten, indicating mass appeal (WaHH was 12th). The manga are also quite popular with the female fanbase, which helps explain some small rise in that demographic. Bunka Shinpou is coming, AoCF is coming; I imagine if th16 comes soon it'll be a good time.

Do you have other graphs like these ones Drake? It's really interesting. (And are there some with the titles in english?)

I make them from my compiling of results from the popularity polls. What information I end up compiling and what I decide to make into a graph are entirely dependent on whimsy, but the goal is to have enough whimsy over a long period of time to cover a lot of data.

The titles of the works in the graphs are partially because they're taken straight from the poll and partially because honestly it's starting to get easier for me to read those than the subtitle acronyms, which when all stacked together just end up looking like a meaningless jumble of letters (AFiEU? Really?)

Did SoPM had such an influence as Iced Fairy said? It seemed to me that the fandom didn't follow very precisely the canon when it didn't please them (the Aya / Momiji relationship for exemple).

Like I said, that's largely the english fandom thing blowing things out of proportion. Iced Fairy's post uses very strong wordings and a viewpoint that's coming almost entirely from the english fandom's reaction, and I disagree with many of the premises. What bits and pieces of the series people decide to use or not use for derivative works is not fazed (at least directly) by new canon messing up those ideas. Derivative works tend to simply ignore the unfriendly/terrible parts of characters unless the work fits it, and there's no real problem with that.

[Labyz_]

I make them from my compiling of results from the popularity polls. What information I end up compiling and what I decide to make into a graph are entirely dependent on whimsy, but the goal is to have enough whimsy over a long period of time to cover a lot of data.

The titles of the works in the graphs are partially because they're taken straight from the poll and partially because honestly it's starting to get easier for me to read those than the subtitle acronyms, which when all stacked together just end up looking like a meaningless jumble of letters (AFiEU? Really?)

Well if you feel like you have enough data someday, I think a lot of people would be interested! It's a nice indication of the popularity of later works. (And I have to insist if you make them public one day than an english version would be appreciated (or even just the numbers of the games which are I admit nicer to handle than the acronyms)). Thanks for your response!


All of this is making me quite optimistic about the future of the series. I think than the popularity of such games as Undertale or Nier Automata for example may also help introduce the bullet hell genre to the western public.

[PK]

This is looking interesting from what i read on tv tropes forum. Also, is it true that it includes an actual piece of story other than articles and interviews?

[aListers]

* ... and, of particular note for disappearing fans: porn. here's a chart showing a breakdown of tables by franchise at c91, blue bars are 'for all ages,' red bars are 'for men.' (green is 'other' so i'm assuming 'for women' and 'not for human consumption') top row is kancolle, second row is touhou.

Can I ask if you have charts like that for precious years? I always thought we had a low amount of porn even before we had a competitor. I've been looking for statistics like these since I had an argument with a fan of our competitor who claimed that porn gave them staying power.

Not to mention it's a source of pride to not be reliant on such things - given that I'm somewhat disappointed that the porn ratio for Vocaloid has gone up.

[Splashman]

And here we have it (rips by Clarste):



















It appears to be a variety gossip & tabloid magazine, containing articles, interviews, ads, and whatnot.

*Some editorials, some interviews, etc
*Marisa advertising her store
*3-page spread of tengu in seductive poses
*Miko advocating for health & fitness doing a copy-pasted Trump speech, "Mexicans" replaced with "youkai", "Build a wall around the human village"
*Wild speculation about what Sagume is doing at Eientei
*Sumireko's first visions of Gensokyo

Can't wait for translations.

[the old guy]

The Donald Dump thing was actually a speech about health and fitness. Aya just lazily copy and pasted an speech from the outside world and called it a day. Just another reason why she's a shitty journalist and, really, all around a asshole.

[Splashman]

The Donald Dump thing was actually a speech about health and fitness. Aya just lazily copy and pasted an speech from the outside world and called it a day. Just another reason why she's a shitty journalist and all around asshole.

lol
See? The fake news spreads itself already.

[Leon゠Helsing]

[the old guy]

I think this is the most memey official touhou work yet!

[Splashman]

The SDM ad is adorable:

Why don't you apply at the most stylish work place in Gensoyko?

Scarlet Devil Mansion
Now recruiting Fairy Maids

<We provide>
*Daily necessities! Includes uniform
*Charismatic employer and a gentle superior
*You can make lots of friends!
*Wage is negotiable. Experience warmly welcomed

The best "At home" there is

Lots of smiling faces
Every day is fun here

[game2011]

Momiji's ear inconsistency strikes again!

[N-Forza]

The SDM ad is adorable:

Good, but not sure where you got "beach" from. That line actually says "Every day is fun here."

The page with Seija, Miyako, and Kogasa is about proving that the urban legend where the middle person in a picture with 3 people will die is true.

[Leon゠Helsing]

The page with Seija, Miyako, and Kogasa is about proving that the urban legend where the middle person in a picture with 3 people will die is true.

>the one in the middle is a sodding undead
well there's your problem :V

[Splashman]

Good, but not sure where you got "beach" from. That line actually says "Every day is fun here."

毎日, 海日
Honestly, sometimes me and my kanji tools are just stupid...

[game2011]

You know, the pic with Momiji, Aya, and Hatate looks a lot like fan art.  In fact, people might actually mistake it for fan art if they're not told that it's official.

[Nyxnyx]

I believe, with passion, that Momiji has doge ears.

[N-Forza]

I just picked up my own copy and I agree the illustrations are a lot racier than usual on the whole. Not sure why exactly, especially how he mentioned he's cutting back on post-battle clothing damage in his own game because of younger audiences, but it's mostly harmless.

[Kilgamayan]

Okay, I'll bite: Why are the tengu posing for pictures like that (in Aya's own publication, no less(maybe??))?

[Lt Colonel Summers]

Few things I want to point out about the sample pics posted by Splashman.

1. The art style is inconsistent with each panel. Some looks to be hand-drawn, while some are very obviously computer-drawn. The one with Seiga, Yoshika and Kogasa seems to be drawn in the style of Wild and Horned Hermit, while the one with Seiran and Ringo looks to be Forbidden Scrollery.
2. In the "Miko giving a Trump-esque speech" panel, there is a cat (Orin?) tugging at Miko's cape at the bottom right.
3. In the same panel, the podium has "Toyosatomimi" written in English alphabets instead of Japanese writings. Has Miko ever been shown to know English?
4. Kokoro is at the bottom of this panel, still wearing the replacement Mask of Hope from Hopeless Masquerade.
5. Seiran and Ringo both opened Dango stands. From the pic alone, it seems Ringo has a better business, and Seiran is angry about it. Then again, Dango is Ringo's expertise, so she probably knew how to prepare them.
6. The aforementioned Dango stands are located in what looks like the Human Village. As Moon Rabbits are technically Youkai too, this makes me wonder why they have such successful businesses with the humans who are known to hate Youkai just because...
7. The SDM fairy maids recruiting advert has something fishy about them. Namely the fact that the fairy maids posing with Sakuya appears to be sweat-dropping nervously, and that their smile seems to be forced. Also note Sakuya's hands being concealed behind their back...

That said, I wonder if Sumireko is going to make comments about Miko's whole anti-Youkai speech and walling the Human Village being similar to Donald Trump's anti-Mexicans speeches...