So this guy I met at an anime convention had asked me this and I told him I'd email him giving him the rundown. This is the email I sent him and I think it breaks it down pretty nicely.
Feel free to copypaste this if anyone asks "what is Touhou". Just modify the shit at the end cuz they'll be sending me messages if you don't, lol
My apologies on the late response; the weekend sort of burned me out and I had to get stuff handled yesterday.
Anyway, as far as Touhou goes, the "go-to" resource would probably be Touhouwiki.net. It has basically all the information you would need. However it being a wiki, it can be a bit "daunting" in the sense that there's a lot of information and it might be hard to go through it without knowing where to go or look.
To sort of recap what I said when I met you at the convention, Touhou's primary attration can be broken down into several different categories.
First, there's the games and "official" material. Since Touhou is actually a series of shoot 'em up vertical scrollers known for its immensely difficult games, some people love that. Aside from the difficulty there is the fact that the "bullet patterns" created in the games themselves are absolutely mesmerizing in their beauty. (Symmetricity is beautiful) For a great example on both "difficulty" and "beauty", check out this video. If you want to check out the games and play for yourself, this link is a great place to find direct downloads. If you prefer torrents, this link is a good pack for all of them. If you want translations for the games, there's this tool to help with that.
=============================
Second, there's the music. As I mentioned when we talked, just with the "official" music alone, there are over 600 unique and amazing tracks coming from the games and bonus CDs from the mangas, which I'll get to in a bit. This said, that's already an amazing and voluminous set of music. However, the Touhou community - both Western and Eastern - have created this sort of environment where people take these unique tracks and mix/arrange them to create an entirely new experience for the music lovers. Though it's hard to give an exact number, a pretty conservative estimate on the amount of music that's been produced and uploaded says that if you played all the music available, it would be able to play for over 2 years straight, non-stop. (Remember, there's a lot of music no one ever uploads on the internet, so in reality there's more) Personally, I came into Touhou through the music so this is a pretty big one for me. Again, Touhou music arrangements exist in virtually any conceivable genre. Some popular groups for popular genres include:
Rock/Metal: Xi~on~, Demetori, CROW'SCLAW
Pop/variety: COOL&CREATE, Yellow Zebra, C-Clays, SOUND HOLIC
Jazz: Swing Holic, Azure&Sands
Classical/epic: WAVE, Tutti Sound
Alternative/unique: T=Node
Electro/Trance: EastNewSound, Alstroemeria Records, REDALICE
Dubstep/Hardcore: Syrufit, IZMIZM, ALiCE'S EMOTiON
Classical Guitar: Forest306 (Just one of my favorites, lol)
Piano: Marasy8
I don't even know what to classify these guys anymore: IOSYS
And this is just a glimpse at the hundreds, if not thousands of other groups that produce top-notch music. If you go on youtube and just type in "touhou -insert some genre here-" you'll get plenty of great results. Pretty interesting genres exist out there, lol. Loli metalcore, Extratone, Goa/Psy/Trance, etc etc
One last thing I might mention is that some big groups release their songs with flash animations or otherwise some video-component to the song. Some groups that are famous for doing this are IOSYS, Innocent Key, Silver Forest and various others. Some of the most well known videos are Cirno's Perfect Math Class, Rampaging Sakuya, Memories of Phantasm and Grip & Break Down!! There are literally hundreds of others of equally high quality works. (Former two are flashes, latter two are full animations) The thing to remember here is that all this is created by the fans themselves. None of this is corporate or mass distributed via sponsorships or any of that.
=============================
Third, there's the lore and characters themselves. The "universe" of Touhou, a "dimension" called Gensokyo, exists parallel to the world as we know it. In Gensokyo there lives a vast set of characters, over a 100 unique characters each with a full backstory, lore and personality. Many come into Touhou after finding out about one character, liking them, doing a bit of research on them and realizing that an entire universe exists that this character belongs to. For this, the wiki I linked earlier is a great resource. Just by looking up the character in question it gives you a pretty solid overview of the characters. However, not mentioned on these wikis are the "fanon" portions or otherwise little quirks or memes that surround these characters. Many of these originate via popular "flash videos" or otherwise a series of popular or funny images that might be floating around the internet. The only downside to this is that it's hard to get many of the nuances of the characters without joining some community or a group of people who know Touhou well and basically "immersing" yourself in the series.
=============================
Finally as a wrap-up there's tons of miscellaneous... "things" for the lack of a better classification that exist for Touhou. There are entire lines of figures from many groups, literally any kind of merchandise imaginable, amazing creations related to Touhou and just an utterly astounding fanbase whose prolificity is very much unlike any other series in the world. I might also mention that currently there exist two groups that have created several full "anime episodes" for Touhou - again as fans with no real fundings and done as derivative works. You can find these on youtube if you look up "Maikaze touhou anime", "manpukujinja touhou anime" (The two series' titles are "Memories of Phantasm" and "Fantasy Kaleidoscope")
=============================
Well, that was a lot more text than I was originally intending to write, lol. Anyway, I hope I don't scare you too much with this walloftext, but it's really difficult to "compress" the question of "What is touhou?" due to the vast amount of ground it covers. Either way, I hope this gives you a sense of what Touhou is and why it's immensely popular in Japan and has substantial representation in the West as well.
If you have any questions, obviously feel free to respond and ask questions or message me on
skype (fforigens),
steam (Mr. Bromilia Scarlet),
facebook (here),
IRC (ping me, "w0lf", on irc.rizon.net. I usually idle in #evetaku and #ahodomo)
or heck, even hop on the community I run, Yukkuricraft (We're a server that recreates the entirety of the universe of Gensokyo in Minecraft, but are also otherwise just a standard Touhou community)(If you do join, just tell everyone "Remi invited me" in an introduction post or something)
But yeah, hope that somewhat gives a "crashcourse" on what the heck Touhou even is, lol
- Yuto Takamoto
Feel free to copypaste this if anyone asks "what is Touhou". Just modify the shit at the end cuz they'll be sending me messages if you don't, lol
My apologies on the late response; the weekend sort of burned me out and I had to get stuff handled yesterday.
Anyway, as far as Touhou goes, the "go-to" resource would probably be Touhouwiki.net. It has basically all the information you would need. However it being a wiki, it can be a bit "daunting" in the sense that there's a lot of information and it might be hard to go through it without knowing where to go or look.
To sort of recap what I said when I met you at the convention, Touhou's primary attration can be broken down into several different categories.
First, there's the games and "official" material. Since Touhou is actually a series of shoot 'em up vertical scrollers known for its immensely difficult games, some people love that. Aside from the difficulty there is the fact that the "bullet patterns" created in the games themselves are absolutely mesmerizing in their beauty. (Symmetricity is beautiful) For a great example on both "difficulty" and "beauty", check out this video. If you want to check out the games and play for yourself, this link is a great place to find direct downloads. If you prefer torrents, this link is a good pack for all of them. If you want translations for the games, there's this tool to help with that.
=============================
Second, there's the music. As I mentioned when we talked, just with the "official" music alone, there are over 600 unique and amazing tracks coming from the games and bonus CDs from the mangas, which I'll get to in a bit. This said, that's already an amazing and voluminous set of music. However, the Touhou community - both Western and Eastern - have created this sort of environment where people take these unique tracks and mix/arrange them to create an entirely new experience for the music lovers. Though it's hard to give an exact number, a pretty conservative estimate on the amount of music that's been produced and uploaded says that if you played all the music available, it would be able to play for over 2 years straight, non-stop. (Remember, there's a lot of music no one ever uploads on the internet, so in reality there's more) Personally, I came into Touhou through the music so this is a pretty big one for me. Again, Touhou music arrangements exist in virtually any conceivable genre. Some popular groups for popular genres include:
Rock/Metal: Xi~on~, Demetori, CROW'SCLAW
Pop/variety: COOL&CREATE, Yellow Zebra, C-Clays, SOUND HOLIC
Jazz: Swing Holic, Azure&Sands
Classical/epic: WAVE, Tutti Sound
Alternative/unique: T=Node
Electro/Trance: EastNewSound, Alstroemeria Records, REDALICE
Dubstep/Hardcore: Syrufit, IZMIZM, ALiCE'S EMOTiON
Classical Guitar: Forest306 (Just one of my favorites, lol)
Piano: Marasy8
I don't even know what to classify these guys anymore: IOSYS
And this is just a glimpse at the hundreds, if not thousands of other groups that produce top-notch music. If you go on youtube and just type in "touhou -insert some genre here-" you'll get plenty of great results. Pretty interesting genres exist out there, lol. Loli metalcore, Extratone, Goa/Psy/Trance, etc etc
One last thing I might mention is that some big groups release their songs with flash animations or otherwise some video-component to the song. Some groups that are famous for doing this are IOSYS, Innocent Key, Silver Forest and various others. Some of the most well known videos are Cirno's Perfect Math Class, Rampaging Sakuya, Memories of Phantasm and Grip & Break Down!! There are literally hundreds of others of equally high quality works. (Former two are flashes, latter two are full animations) The thing to remember here is that all this is created by the fans themselves. None of this is corporate or mass distributed via sponsorships or any of that.
=============================
Third, there's the lore and characters themselves. The "universe" of Touhou, a "dimension" called Gensokyo, exists parallel to the world as we know it. In Gensokyo there lives a vast set of characters, over a 100 unique characters each with a full backstory, lore and personality. Many come into Touhou after finding out about one character, liking them, doing a bit of research on them and realizing that an entire universe exists that this character belongs to. For this, the wiki I linked earlier is a great resource. Just by looking up the character in question it gives you a pretty solid overview of the characters. However, not mentioned on these wikis are the "fanon" portions or otherwise little quirks or memes that surround these characters. Many of these originate via popular "flash videos" or otherwise a series of popular or funny images that might be floating around the internet. The only downside to this is that it's hard to get many of the nuances of the characters without joining some community or a group of people who know Touhou well and basically "immersing" yourself in the series.
=============================
Finally as a wrap-up there's tons of miscellaneous... "things" for the lack of a better classification that exist for Touhou. There are entire lines of figures from many groups, literally any kind of merchandise imaginable, amazing creations related to Touhou and just an utterly astounding fanbase whose prolificity is very much unlike any other series in the world. I might also mention that currently there exist two groups that have created several full "anime episodes" for Touhou - again as fans with no real fundings and done as derivative works. You can find these on youtube if you look up "Maikaze touhou anime", "manpukujinja touhou anime" (The two series' titles are "Memories of Phantasm" and "Fantasy Kaleidoscope")
=============================
Well, that was a lot more text than I was originally intending to write, lol. Anyway, I hope I don't scare you too much with this walloftext, but it's really difficult to "compress" the question of "What is touhou?" due to the vast amount of ground it covers. Either way, I hope this gives you a sense of what Touhou is and why it's immensely popular in Japan and has substantial representation in the West as well.
If you have any questions, obviously feel free to respond and ask questions or message me on
skype (fforigens),
steam (Mr. Bromilia Scarlet),
facebook (here),
IRC (ping me, "w0lf", on irc.rizon.net. I usually idle in #evetaku and #ahodomo)
or heck, even hop on the community I run, Yukkuricraft (We're a server that recreates the entirety of the universe of Gensokyo in Minecraft, but are also otherwise just a standard Touhou community)(If you do join, just tell everyone "Remi invited me" in an introduction post or something)
But yeah, hope that somewhat gives a "crashcourse" on what the heck Touhou even is, lol
- Yuto Takamoto
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