Touhou Project: A Fan-tasy Bound Reality

What is Touhou Project? Touhou Project, or simply Touhou(東方, which directly translates to eastern direction) is a series of bullet hell shoot em’ up games, or also known as shmups or Danmaku games created by a single man known as ZUN in the community. 

Despite what it’s known for today, the first few games in the series were much simpler and easier in concept. The first game of the series- Highly Responsive to Prayers, which was a game for the NEC PC-9800(or simply PC98) – was developed in 1995 by Amusement Makers and was first showcased in November of 1996 only to be released on August 15th 1997 at the 20th Hayotama Matsuri. Thing is, it wasn’t a bullet hell game and features gameplay similar to Arkanoid with bullet hell elements. However, the second game of the series -Story of Eatern Wonderland- was released alongside HRtP in Comiket 52, and was the first instance of the vertical scrolling shoot em’ up the series is known for. After three more games and help with other projects, ZUN left Amusement Makers and rebooted the series in 2002 with Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. As of now, he has made 13 mainline games for windows by himself and 6 fighting game spin offs with the doujin circle Twilight Frontier.

The main plot of Touhou takes place in Gensokyo, a fantasy realm in Japan sealed off by a border where humans and youkai strive to live in harmony. As one might easily notice, Touhou contains a large cast of predominantly female characters, ever growing with each new installment in the series. The main character and protagonist of the series is Reimu Hakurei, who’s been in almost every installment since HRtP. She is a shrine maiden with the ability to float from reality, her job is to exterminate troublesome youkai and maintain the Hakurei Border, a border that separates Gensokyo from the Outside world. Due to her reputation of exterminating youkai and solving most of the incidents that transpire, she’s dubbed as one of the incident solvers of Gensokyo along with her friend and secondary protagonist, Marisa Kirisame. Marisa is an ordinary magician, a human with the capabilities of using magic without turning into a youkai (hence ordinary in her title). Incidents vary in their severity, it can be as simple as a vampire who blocks out the sun since she wants to go out or as dangerous as a hell raven who’s about to burn the world to a crisp simply because she’s a birdbrain. Nevertheless, they both do their jobs and make up with the one who’s responsible for the incidents in the end.

Touhou games are available to purchase on steam, though most spin-offs and 1-9 will require the use of other methods to obtain. While all the games are in Japanese you can simply apply language patches from Thcrap(Touhou Community Reliant Automatic Patcher) to play in your preferred language. As we’ve established that Touhou games are in the shmup genre, it’s easy to say you will have one hell of a time when playing a game. Despite this, Touhou is regarded as an easier franchise in the genre mostly due to the bullet patterns and its mechanics. Unlike most shmup games, you have the ability to focus using your shift key which will allow you to slow down, concentrate your shot and show your hitbox. Not only that, but the bullets come in patterns, usually very pretty patterns in comparison to the mess of bullets that most shmup games would have. Each game also introduces a certain mechanic exclusive to their specific games. Some are usually more broken than others but that’s what makes each game their own unique entry, besides the new characters and style of music of course. To clear a Touhou game you must go through 6 stages without losing all your lives, resulting in a 1cc(One credit clear) which results in the good ending and unlocks the extra stage, which consists of one long stage, one long boss fight and no continues.             Besides usual shmups, Touhou also offers a variety of spin-off games. From fighting games to photo games- where you take pictures of bullets instead- to games where it might be impossible to clear without the mechanics of those games. The roster of fighting games usually include popular characters adored by fans like stage 5 and 6 bosses or someone that ZUN included just because he wanted it to fit the story, though most of them include at least one new character. The roster of the photo games on the other hand features characters from the previous games with new, very hard attacks.

However, if you just want to know the characters’ story and personalities without suffering, you can read the official mangas and printworks instead. Currently there are 10 mangas and 11 printworks all written by ZUN and they usually include one new character that’s exclusive to the printwork and are accompanied by a CD with a few original tracks or remixes.

Now then, when talking about this series, we can’t simply ignore the very thing it's popular for, the music. Every Touhou game includes at least 17 tracks- 7 stage themes, 7 boss themes, the title, ending and staff roll themes. And if there’s one thing that the community agrees on it’s that Touhou music absolutely slaps. In fact, you can find at least 5 remixes on every track whether it’d be an overshadowed or even an unused one. ZUN even mentions that he mainly uses his games to sell his music and the stages are coded in a way that it resembles a sort of music video for the music itself. He’s also released a series of music CDs with remixes and original tracks accompanied by a story revolving around Renko Usami and Maribel Hearn, which takes place in the future(Though exactly how far is unknown). Besides the series itself, ZUN also made music for Seihou Project(西方, literally meaning western direction)- a sort of sister series to Touhou Project- and Torte le Magic when he was still in Amusement Makers.

Even with so many remixes and uploads of themes, none of them ever got stroken down, except usually the CD tracks. This is mainly because of ZUN’s community guidelines which mainly states that you can’t show any of the endings without permission or use anything related to the endings. Besides that, you can use the characters and music in any way you’d like, which results in the abundance of fanworks from simple remixes to fan games with 500 times the budget to marketable plushies and figurines.             In fact, most of the music you hear that’s considered Touhou music are actually remixes. Most notably being Night of Nights, Bad Apple, Tiny Little Adiantum, Galaxy Collapse and many, many more. Other great fanworks are of course fan-games, which come in almost all genres. Whether you want a fast paced action game like Luna Nights, a calm and heartwarming experience like Mystia’s Izakaya or a simple shmup like Ido’s fangames, I’m sure one will fit your taste! Other fanworks also include fan mangas or a web series, usually putting the characters in a unique position and allowing the writer to give their take on the characters and their story. You can find a lot of them on Niconico-which is basically Japanese Youtube- but you can also find some translated to English on youtube. Personally I’d recommend Osana Reimu, Wheelchair Detective Satori(not to be confused with Foul Detective Satori, an official manga), and if you’re up for it, Koishi Komeiji’s Heart Throbbing Adventure(though it can get pretty graphic).

So in conclusion. Touhou is a franchise that explores many genres of media, with a wide cast of characters and stories with many memorable tunes and characters. And due to the flexibility of ZUN’s rules people are able to make as many fanworks as they want. Some even better than ZUN’s own works, but even then they keep his original works in their hearts. In fact, I’m sure many people wouldn't even know Touhou if it weren’t for the fanworks themselves. It’s gone so far as to inspire other amazing works such as Undertale and Len’en Project with its amazing music, characters, stories and gameplay. 

Thank you ZUN, and thank you so much for reading through my article of Touhou Project until the end!!! This series inspired me to write my own stories and it helped me get through some tough times in my life. I truly can’t thank ZUN enough for making this series and for the community for creating such masterpieces!! Happy shooting and see you in the next phantasm~

Written by: Joice Giovanni of CS2