The 2023 Touhou Popularity Poll results are up...

[CountVonNumenor]

It's been over 24 hours since the results were published, but only now I got the chance to write something on the topic.

Honestly, this year I am very content with the results. Last year, I remember that at first I was a little disappointed by the EoSD stomp over everything, but it was rather understandable given the symbolism of last year (20 years since the beginning of the Windows game series). But this year, it seems like things did not repeat for PCB (Youmu scored 4th place, and Yuyuko scored 10th). Now, I am quite curious to see what next year will bring... (credit for the tables goes to Maribel Hearn, who translated the results at super-speed just after the official publish)

Probably one of the most interesting things is the fact our two main characters, Reimu and Marisa, have taken the first two places. I do not when this happened last time, but it must have been quite some time ago. Flan and Koishi are still keeping strong, same with a few more of the SDM cast. 

 

I will not say too much about music, because these are results that never change, and probably never will. I think we expect UN Owen, Septette or Hartman to be in the first 5 songs until the heat death of the universe...

 

And on a more personal note, things are going not so bad. The characters I have cheered for seemed to either keep their spot or slightly go up, with some exceptions. At least compared to last year, they are performing a little better. ALSO AKYUU WENT UP BY 1 POSITON, AND KOSUZU BY 4? DAMN, THEY BE DOIN' NUMBERS! I am so proud of them. Big OOF though for Hecatia, and especially Raiko. They deserved more...

 

Anyway, what do you thing about this year's results? Are you satisfied with them? Has any of the characters you have voted for gone upper or lower in the charts? Is there anything you wish could have changed? Tell your thoughts about this edition, and see you until next thread (whenever that may be...) 

Edited October 1, 2023 by CountVonNumenor

[Eulogous]

With all the L's Marisa took in Cheating/Foul Detective Satori, it's nice to see a W for once.

 

Honestly, I really only care about how newer characters/works stack up and rank compared to existing characters/works. Everything else I tend to ignore (especially in the music category), because I find that most people have the same opinions/consensus on everything and it's boring.

It's funny to me that 80% of voters combined never voted before or have done so at least 1-3 times before, yet EoSD is voted best Touhou work, even though it's a largely inaccessible experience (legally lol). That's also to say nothing of the large chunk of those voters who admit to not have played the game (or most of the games really). I'm fully aware of why it ranks 1st all the time (people are voting in terms of cast, not game quality), but it's why I don't put a ton of stock into the results.

[buskerdog]

I get a certain satisfaction from seeing the two main protagonists at the top, like all is well in the world again. But maybe that just shows that I'm basic

Regarding rankings, its worth noting that the release of a new game has bumped up the total range of possible positions. So for characters who don't typically rank in the top spots, it's much harder for them to maintain their position or rank up when new additions are pushing them down (take the case of Raiko as an example, it's not necessarily that 11 characters have overtaken her, but more like 6 characters have overtaken her and 5 new characters have just appeared increased the amount of competition (this also effects vote distribution, since each participant can only nominate a limited number of characters)

So with all that being considered, Kosuzu still being able to go up 4 places from a relatively low position is a POWER MOVE

[Pepi]

5 minutes ago, buskerdog said:

So with all that being considered, Kosuzu still being able to go up 4 places from a relatively low position is a POWER MOVE

It is! But the biggest power move in the poll belongs to Yuuma.
She was 53th on her first appearance, but she jumped all the way up to 29! She went up 24 positions.

What makes me sad is that Sumireko dropped 16 spots, life is rough.

 

There where some interesting things in the songs. Alice In Wonderland went up 7 spots (from 89 to 87) and Memento of the Avaricious Beast went up a mind blowing 59 spots, from 136 to 77!
Other song that made a big difference was Necro-Fantasy, it went up 24 spots from 91 to 67.

[Ken Hisuag]

On 10/1/2023 at 1:55 PM, CountVonNumenor said:

I will not say too much about music, because these are results that never change, and probably never will.

It's hard for me to be to disappointed in these rankings. We may say a lot of these songs are overrated, but that tends to be in context of all the tracks that don't get their deserved recognition; considered each on their own, every one of these tracks are masterpieces. Nor are occasional changes impossible; Idolatrize World is a relatively recent addition compared to the rest of the top ten, and seems to be there to stay. I'm just happy that some of my favorite tracks are still in the top twenty-five.

Basic Overview:
Highest Akiyama track is still Broken Moon at #13
Highest PC-98 track is Bad Apple!! at #58
Highest Music Collection track is Greenwich in the Sky at #70
Highest new-to-the-poll track is The Deviants' Unobstructed Light ~ Kingdom of Nothingness at #43
Eight tracks received only one vote each; one from the PC-98 era, six from the fighting game spin-offs, and one that I can't identify (I figure it's a translation confusion; anyone know where "Big Talk" comes from?). Side note, why doesn't Soul's Resting Place have a recorded ranking from the past two polls?

[vanyk]

The 8th part of Questionnaire ("When did you discover Touhou?") is really surprising. If the statistic is true (most of the participants answered honestly), a big percent of fans who knew about Touhou since PC-98 remained, but most of the fans from the Golden Age (PCB-UFO) didn't participate in voting. Did they move to other fandoms? But still characters and soundtracks from EoSD-SA are most highly ranked, Most of voters discovered Touhou in the period from 2015 to 2020. So it might explain, why for several years in each voting around one third of participants had not voted before (this year again). But it can't explain some strange results from previous years.

Spoiler

There are some other interesting moments. Around half of the fans have not played most of the mainline games. In "Touhou original game competitions" (question 11) there are UDoALG (the latest "Phantasmagoria" (which is not a "Phantasmagoria")) and Soku, but no AoCF. More than one third of participants discovered Touhou via Youtube, so it maybe the best instrument for popularization. Less than half of the fans likes Touhou Fandom (IMO, it is a problem), even Touhou games are more loved.