Touhou Project

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Video game fandom
NameTouhou Project
Developer(s)ZUN (as Team Shanghai Alice)
Release date1996
External link(s)Team Shanghai Alice official website

ZUN's blog

ZUN's Twitter
Related articles on Fanlore.

Touhou Project is a series of "bullet hell" vertical shooting games created and published by the doujin circle Team Shanghai Alice (上海アリス幻樂団 Shanghai Arisu Gengakudan, formerly known as ZUN Soft). It comprises 19 mainline games, with its first game conceived in late 1996. It is notable as one of the largest fandoms represented in Comiket, as well as being one of the small number of surviving franchises of its genre.

Games

The games listed below are made by Team Shanghai Alice, and contains Touhou's canon.

Aside from these games, there are also a myriad of fan-made games of various genres, ranging from platformers to puzzle games.[1]

ZUN

ZUN is the only known member of Team Shanghai Alice, and considered to be the creator of Touhou Project. His real name is Jun'ya Ota (太田順也 Ota Jun'ya), and is known to have worked in Taito Corporation (a Japanese video game company). He is known to be fond of beer, and is rather reclusive. Despite his reclusiveness, he has given some lectures and interviews.[2] Outside of Touhou Project, ZUN has produced a few standalone games,[3] and also took part in the production of several of Taito's games.[4] ZUN has collaborated with the artists Alphes [5] and Moe Harukawa [6] for promotional art, official manga, and art for the fighting games[7].

Fanworks

Touhou Project is best known outside Japan for its prodigious amount of fanwork. While a typical Japanese fandom will have its fair share of doujinshi and written work, Touhou ups the ante with fan-made music remixes, fan-made video clips (often video clips of said remixes), fan-made games of various genres, and even two fan-made anime OVAs.[8][9] Most of these products are released in Comiket, although fans outside of Japan can buy them via online shops. Touhou also had its own annual convention, Hakurei Jinja Reitaisai, usually held in March or April. In 2011's summer Comiket, fans estimated that circles selling Touhou fanstuffs will number at a staggering 2,808, more than any other fandom represented in Comiket by a large margin.[10]

One of the most striking aspects of Touhou fandom is the wealth of music remixes. ZUN himself has released 11 soundtrack albums,[11] and fan circles have created over two hundred remix albums.[12] To put the sheer number of remix CDs in perspective, there is a torrent 1.9 terabytes in size comprised of thousands of Touhou remixes,[13] outstripping the likes of Final Fantasy.

Fans outside Japan largely limited themselves to fanart and fanfiction, although fan remixes of Touhou music do surface from time to time in international forums. The Touhou Project subcategory on fanfiction.net contained 659 fics and 124 crossovers[14] in July 2011. However, there are also a relatively small number of Touhou stories created before the establishment of the subcategory in fanfiction.net, and not included in the subcategory.

Shipping

There are a vast number of ships for Touhou Project, due to the large number of characters and its enormous fanbase. ReiMari (Hakurei Reimu and Kirisame Marisa, the two most common playable characters in the games) is the dominant ship, but there are many, many more.[15] Another popular ship is Kirisame Marisa/Alice Margatroid. Because almost all the characters in the games are female, the shipping is overwhelmingly yuri.

Touhou Wiki's Relationshipping page lists many of the well-known ships, along with their ship names on Pixiv.

Challenges

Games

Fanvids and Series

Zines

Essays & Meta

Archives & Fannish Links

References

  1. ^ http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Fangames
  2. ^ http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/ZUN#ZUN_Speaks
  3. ^ http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/ZUN#Doujin_Games
  4. ^ http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/ZUN#Works_with_Taito_Corporation
  5. ^ https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Alphes
  6. ^ https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Moe_Harukawa
  7. ^ It is also worth mentioning that ZUN has also contributed to a few Touhou fangames in the early 2010s, one example being of Rinnosuke's theme for Touhou Mahjong; this also reflects his growing stance towards collaborative fanworks towards the end of the decade, both commercial and non-commercial.
  8. ^ http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Musou_Kakyou:_A_Summer_Day%27s_Dream
  9. ^ http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Project_Side_Story
  10. ^ http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2011/07/25/comiket-80-touhou-vs-fujoshi/
  11. ^ http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/ZUN#Music_Soundtracks
  12. ^ http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/List_by_Groups
  13. ^ "TLMC v.19 (2018.01.01)". tlmc.eu. January 1, 2018. Archived from the original on 2022-06-10. Retrieved April 3, 2019.
  14. ^ http://www.fanfiction.net/game/Touhou_Project/10/0/0/1/0/0/0/0/0/1/
  15. ^ Relationshipping page at TouhouWiki, accessed Feb. 5, 2014.
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