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Historical rivalries - anything more than just that "(some) Touhou fans vs (some) Undertale fans" episode?


CountVonNumenor

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Happy New year everyone!

After watching and reading some content recently, I have started to become very curious about the subject of rivalries between Touhou and other series. (This does not deny the fact I am quite happy the Touhou fandom is actually friends with other communities as well, probably the best example coming to my mind right now being the TF2 community) Especially since for as long as I have been in Touhou community (entered my third year), I have not seen anything serious going on.

I have heard a lot about the times when some parts of the Touhou and Undertale fandoms clashed, and actually seen some of those in comments for old videos (they really feel like a time capsule reflecting the times).

  1. But there are some old, perhaps gone rivalries I have heard about, yet know too little about what happened, and would like to learn more about those times. First one I would like to ask about was apparently between Touhou and Kantai Collection (Kancolle) fans. From the very little I know, Kancolle was nicknamed something like "the Touhou killer/the series that will kill Touhou"? I would like to know what actually happened at the time, how things developed, and what is current state of the relation between the two fandoms.
  2. The second thing I was going to ask about, despite possibly not being a fandom rivalry, but really got my attention as I was writing this, is regards to a Twitter post (confirmed to be fake news - I will cover that in the following days). Apparently, Touhou has been replaced this year from the Comiket introduction booklet by Blue Archive, and that this is the only other time it happened was in 2007 (which again, was confirmed to be false). Does anyone have more context on this issue? I don't really know what is going on, how it ended up like this, and if there are any possible consequences if fandoms start acting up again. From the way that tweet was framed, it implies that Touhou was used for the booklet for a long time, and this year it was for the first time replaced by another series after a decade and a half?

I would like to learn more about the topic, especially about the relation with all the series that through time were framed as "the series that will kill/overthrow Touhou". But to me, one thing is clear: you can't kill Touhou. No matter if is is no longer the most popula series or ends up getting outshined by some new sparkly thing, Touhou will continue to exist. Therefore, I would add it as a third thing that would survive a nuclear fallout, along with cockroaches and rats. 

Edited by CountVonNumenor
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  • CountVonNumenor changed the title to Historical rivalries - anything more than just that "(some) Touhou fans vs (some) Undertale fans" episode?

 

Ah rivalries, I always thought that rivalries were kind of dumb if they were started over which one was better than the other. Whelp guess I'll answer those two questions.

1. Touhou and Kantai Debate

Spoiler

Kancolle being the "Touhou Killer" was probably some type of bait to attract those who fumed at the thought of something overthrowing an already large franchise, because yep, people like clickbait! It happens to a lot of other franchises that have a large population.

Though it did bring up the case of the artist migration question, as a lot of artists were migrating from Touhou to Kancolle, and the general thought of Kancolle being more "ecchi" than Touhou given the fact that a lot of people saw Kancolle to be more fetish-oriented wasn't helping the general sentiment at the time of those migrating to an inferior series to those who saw and knew. Though kind of ironic given the fact Touhou has some questionable fetishes from the fanbase. . .

Some doujin circles have also made content for both Kantai Collection and Touhou, one of which was IOSYS's music video, though it seems like it doesn't exist anymore on YouTube.

It was also thought that Kancolle was pandering more to fans given the previous statement and how a lot of "ships" are high school girls or lolis. Yep, it has lolis.

Some people thought Kancolle was some type of imperialism given the fact that a lot of ships are based upon the Japanese Imperial Navy from World War II, which will garner some negative attention.

Ultimately, I don't think there is much fighting between Touhou and the Kantai Collection nowadays, because the Kancolle series seems to have a rivalry with Azur Lane. Azur Lane seems to be winning in terms of size and general availability outside of Japan.

2. The Clickbait wars

Spoiler

Ah, yes, the Comiket thing. My guess as to why something like that popped up as fake news was probably just to drum up drama between these two franchises in order to gain clicks. Because yes, people love to see the world burn and get attention from it.

Personally, I don't think it's really that big in the first place. Touhou has ultimately migrated to Reitaisai (Touhou's version of Comiket), which has existed for a long time and contains a lot of Touhou-related works. Blue Archive and Touhou are ultimately different things, and people who have seen how franchises work and have enough maturity will watch as children fight over which franchise is better. (All opinions respective to themselves)

From the way I see it, there will be some drama from those who want to drum it up, but ultimately it won't be as big as Touhou fans already have. Reitaisai and Touhou already is a big franchise on its own who has faced a lot of other franchises.

People will always try to compare things to already big franchises and portray them as the "killer of [insert franchise here],"  but in the end, all series have their own things that make them unique to the people that enjoy them. It doesn't matter if you are part of one or another. Everyone who is mature enough would understand that having fun is what people should be focusing on instead of having arguments that lead to general anger on both sides.

 

 

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 1683735564_GapEyeIcon.png.510261214f2118b1068fb86f8b100dcb.png Touhou Enjoyer & World Building Enthusiast  1683735564_GapEyeIcon.png.510261214f2118b1068fb86f8b100dcb.png

 

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Undertale vs Touhou in a nutshell

 Everything started when Undertale became pretty popular in 2017, some  Touhou fans noticed the Subterranean Animism (and not only) references Toby Fox has made in his game and so they claimed Undertale is copying Touhou 11  

Then some other were mad because they noticed that Bad Apple and other famous MV were "stolen" by the Undertale fanbase (they were really considering it as stealing but tbh it was just some parodies)

And finally, the video Sakuya vs Frisk(Chara) was born it’s an animation made by JzBoy and Sakuya : Undertale fans were angry and some debate about multiversal Frisk is stronger than Sakuya etc… 

To bring back the two communities together, JzBoy made the video Asriel vs Marisa ; Toby Fox admitted he likes Touhou and that’s it

What you must know is that most of the fans at this moment were 12-15 years old  so they were kinda immature :/

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  • 5 months later...
On 1/11/2023 at 5:23 PM, Nekofire said:

Undertale vs Touhou in a nutshell

 Everything started when Undertale became pretty popular in 2017, some  Touhou fans noticed the Subterranean Animism (and not only) references Toby Fox has made in his game and so they claimed Undertale is copying Touhou 11  

Then some other were mad because they noticed that Bad Apple and other famous MV were "stolen" by the Undertale fanbase (they were really considering it as stealing but tbh it was just some parodies)

And finally, the video Sakuya vs Frisk(Chara) was born it’s an animation made by JzBoy and Sakuya : Undertale fans were angry and some debate about multiversal Frisk is stronger than Sakuya etc… 

To bring back the two communities together, JzBoy made the video Asriel vs Marisa ; Toby Fox admitted he likes Touhou and that’s it

What you must know is that most of the fans at this moment were 12-15 years old  so they were kinda immature :/

i know two versions of how it might have started(both involve bad apple)

1. so the first version i know of is when making badapple shadow art videos of stuff was a trend someone made one for UT then UT fans saw original version and though touhou stole it

2. UT fans basically listened to original bad apple and thought touhou stole their "yellow soul theme"💀

idk which one is true though

Edited by Gonna_make_you_die_say_goo
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Random though: honestly, I always found the "Touhou killer" (especially with other big frachinses in Japan that were supposed to  I free throw Touhou in popularity, beginning with Kantai Collection, Idolnaster and so many more until nowadays) reputation as something interesting, especially since the supposed "the King is dead; long live the King" situation did not really happen. And that's been for like 20 years. No matter how many supposed "Touhou killers" there have been, this series has managed to remain popular and relevant to some degree for so long 

Edited by CountVonNumenor

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On 1/11/2023 at 6:53 AM, Nekofire said:

To bring back the two communities together, JzBoy made the video Asriel vs Marisa ; Toby Fox admitted he likes Touhou and that’s it

What you must know is that most of the fans at this moment were 12-15 years old  so they were kinda immature :/

Toby Fox doesn't "like" Touhou, he adores it!
ZUN and Toby actually had an interview together in 2018 (i guess that stopped the "war", i didn't even notice something was happening, even if at that time i was a big Undertale fan)
Here's a translation of the most important details, definetly a recomended read: https://clarste.tumblr.com/post/179204742441/interview-with-toby-fox-undertale-and

Toby was so obsessed with Touhou he played before there where any good transaltion proyects and he was good enough to beat PCB's phantasm stage. Coincidentally, Yukari and Ran are his favorite characters.
He even arranged Necrofantasia and got a standing ovation in school, what else to say?

Something i discovered by searching the wiki is that Toby helped compose the Stage and Boss 1 songs for the fan-game Touhou Nemuri Sekai (Sleeping World) ~ Wonderful Waking World . If you want to experience it yourself:
https://oligarchomp.itch.io/wonderful-waking-world

 

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  • 5 months later...
On 1/10/2023 at 11:44 PM, CountVonNumenor said:

The second thing I was going to ask about, despite possibly not being a fandom rivalry, but really got my attention as I was writing this, is regards to a Twitter post (confirmed to be fake news - I will cover that in the following days). Apparently, Touhou has been replaced this year from the Comiket introduction booklet by Blue Archive, and that this is the only other time it happened was in 2007 (which again, was confirmed to be false). Does anyone have more context on this issue? I don't really know what is going on, how it ended up like this, and if there are any possible consequences if fandoms start acting up again. From the way that tweet was framed, it implies that Touhou was used for the booklet for a long time, and this year it was for the first time replaced by another series after a decade and a half?

EPILOGUE: It's been almost a year since the opening post. It looks like Blue Archive has scored again the highest at the Comiket in terms of content creator panels, at over 1700 (compared to the 766 Touhou had). I guess more power to them, especially if they are apparently as liberal with fan-made content as I may have heard. It does not make me want to try out that series, but it's interesting how things evolve.

On a different note, it's impressive how Touhou can still have hundreds of panels even now, at over 20 years since the series came to be.

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