Touhou in Another Sense (Development of the World and general feelings towards the Cute and Mature)⛩️

[Reitisen]

To give clarification to the title, ZUN seems to put the Touhou series in a kind of Sazae time space (characters generally do not age and the story generally stays the same), which has put Touhou in a kind of slice-of-life period if it were boiled down to a really generalized statement used in the Doujin scene.
This kind of development makes Touhou not really feel like it has developed nor have any kind of sense of concern for any kind of incident, as most people in the Touhou fandom never really had much concern for the story as the characters never lose nor change, which leads to the more prevalent aspect of Touhou as a fandom, the Moe-blob, and the general sentiment towards the more mature aspects of the fandom (no, its not the constant posting of horny on big platforms, but Touhou as a real-world aspect).

I'm going to state this here: I see Touhou in a more two-way street aspect. I don't like it when people see Touhou as only cute girls, nor do I like Gensokyo's Extreme Depression Edition. A general balance and progression is what most series, such as Adventure Time or Neon Genesis Evangelion, have made in terms of not being overly bearing towards the fanbase while also respecting that the fanbase can handle more mature themes rather than only relying on newcomers to make the fanbase as it is without any kind of change.

This leads me to the mature works, as I don't often see many Touhou works that do take this concept and spin it into what other series have made, except for maybe certain Doujin artists such as Zounose, who, even though they depict Gensokyo as a place for Youkai, make Gensokyo feel like a real world with characters that self-reflect on their own place within an eccentric world of Gensokyo rather than something of a setting that other Doujins seem to rely on for Slice-Of-Life scenarios with no focus on characters.

To give context to Zounose's works, they generally are for the more mature fanbase as they focus on more introspective topics rather than light-hearted stories as even though they do include violence, it isn't just violence for the sake of it, but a story to impact with it.
as an example in on of his works, Reimu isn't seen as the Hakurei shrine maiden, but rather herself and her responsibility with the duty as a shrine maiden, which is kind of covered by the official doujins, but not to the extent in which she is introspective enough to give a real thought to Reimu as a human being (Same with Sanae if you know other works from Zounose). 

Though most people seem to hate the general sentiment of more mature works as it seems they mostly ignore and or comment about how violent it is without the general context in contrast to what most people see as a generally cute series as I found out that discussions about series like this are generally buried with very few dedicated users talking about mature works in a forum-like way while Slice-Of-Life/4-Koma has been the most prevalent type of Doujin genre for Touhou in both people liking and discussing about it. (Set aside the KKHTA which is often used for edgy memes and shock humor nowadays).

That aside, I want to clear up some things that most fans seem to think is true with Touhou in its spell card rules and violence.

ZUN himself seems kind accepting of violence and the general breaking of rules in Touhou, as he does seem to generally accept the fact that violence is indeed the normality if you have played Imperishable Night in YUYU/YOUM scenario and also the whole entire character of Rumia eating humans without any kind of repercussion unless the person can fight back (which breaks the rules). Who's Who H&Y Rumia. So to keep in mind the Spell card rules aren't some kind of law that every being in Gensokyo follows, they are generally a rule that one must follow and can be broken as "Impossible Spell Card" did to which I found interesting as a story as to characters breaking the rule just to catch one Youkai, but it was never really covered as it was a side game rather than a main game which disappointed me as it was an interesting for Seija Kijin to be an actual Youkai that follows their own way of thinking rather than peaceful existence to be only put off as a nothing burger in the end even though they were probably the most antagonistic character in the series for what they did and planned. as stated here, "She's just a simple rebellious attention-seeker. She's pretty unusual for a Touhou character, in that she's clearly malicious and evil." Who's Who Seija Kijin
 

So here comes the question, do you guys think Touhou is being held back in terms of what is being done? In this sense, is the story itself affecting the way most people see Touhou as in fan works? Or is it something only Touhou has that all other franchises don't as most people covet the Characters more than the games and story themselves?
 

[Pepi]

You make some great points here.

I will expand more on the "Sazae time space" a bit more.
The PC98 games where even less linear than the Windows games. On the current series of games we get linear developments of the story in the form of story arcs:
06-09, 10-13, the lunarian storyline, the hifuu storyline, 17-19 and there are probably more story arcs i missed.
ZUN just doesn't seem to want to give Touhou a sense of time and it's even likely this is beneficial to fan works as you can give Touhou the sense of time you want, with an ever expanding cast of characters.

I do think that he needs to give more character development, like what happened with LoLK making Reisen's character very interesting. He could also make more "important events" that affect all of Gensokyo, like the Animal Wars of recent games or LoLK, driving things forward, for example Ran recently got some nice character development with her relationship to the Animal Realm.

The amount of high quality slice of life media proves that you can develop interesting stories with character development and significant events while keeping the passage of time mostly frozen, but you have to take some risks.
An example i can give are the first seasons of My Little Pony (4th gen), they follow a mostly slice of life story-line until the season ends and they do a big event that drives the story forward, refreshing the narrative, like how it happened with Discord's introduction or the Marriage arc with Chrysalis.

[Space Banana]

We need more evil/hostile characters. Not enough characters in the universe are evil, and those that lean more towards the evil side usually have a more reasonable cause for what they are doing (Junko wants revenge, etc) or are just assholes.

Seiga is an evil character but that is thrown casually, not much is done about that. Seija is rebellious and evil-ish but after th14 she becomes neutral. Characters like Rumia are the extreme opposite: It doesn't fit a Touhou character to do things like what Rumia does. It's also not as common for death to happen in Touhou, and we wouldn't really want to see most characters die. We already have enough characters that become friendly after being defeated, we could instead see more characters that stay neutral or hostile even after their first appearance.

The manga books follow a more slice of life approach. I read and finished Forbidden Scrollery and it mostly feels like a slice of life to me. It has action, plot, enemies, but they are mostly divided between chapters, it's sort of a routine.

Spoiler

Only at the last volumes you start to see a bigger plot happen, but everything ends well and everything returns to normal and I ended up forgetting why Yukari even did what she did. The only permanent change in lore is the death of the fortune teller, but that character is pretty minor too.

Zanmu is a character that can be seen as an active enemy, and the idea that she took control over hell against Hecatia would be an interesting story, then we could have a plot for Touhou 20 where you can have a dual character style similar to Touhou 8, where it's a playable character and Hecatia together taking control of hell back from Zanmu, after she attempted to [insert taking control over something else]. The only problem is that Hecatia is too OP to need a partner to take care of this business, but it could work. The final boss could be a dual boss of Zanmu + Hisami to compensate the power difference. And maybe for different playable characters, your partner is not Hecatia but Shikieiki or someone else that has a relation to hell.

[Pepi]

29 minutes ago, Space Banana said:

Zanmu is a character that can be seen as an active enemy, and the idea that she took control over hell against Hecatia would be an interesting story, then we could have a plot for Touhou 20 where you can have a dual character style similar to Touhou 8, where it's a playable character and Hecatia together taking control of hell back from Zanmu, after she attempted to [insert taking control over something else]. The only problem is that Hecatia is too OP to need a partner to take care of this business, but it could work. The final boss could be a dual boss of Zanmu + Hisami to compensate the power difference. And maybe for different playable characters, your partner is not Hecatia but Shikieiki or someone else that has a relation to hell.

To make that idea work, maybe Hecatia could be in a weakened state were she can only access the powers from one of her planetary bodies and make that be the shot type selection.

edit: typo

Edited May 5 by Pepi

[TheM3ds]

Seeing the argument of people wanting Touhou to be lighthearted or dark reminds of how people complain how Persona isn't as dark as SMT, but I digress, while I do enjoy Touhou for the slice of life elements I just feel like there could be much more done with the story or at least with the setting, not saying it needs to be as depressingly dark as say most Touhou darkfics but I just want to be some sort of balance of lightheartedness and tragedy (like with Little Reimu for example), I don't know I'm just not a fan of Touhou being edgy or shocking I just prefer something that's more atmospheric or dark in a tasteful way, I agree with the examples you've given considering this series does a dark backstory to it but it's not it's main focus.

2 hours ago, Space Banana said:

We need more evil/hostile characters. Not enough characters in the universe are evil, and those that lean more towards the evil side usually have a more reasonable cause for what they are doing (Junko wants revenge, etc) or are just assholes.

Seiga is an evil character but that is thrown casually, not much is done about that. Seija is rebellious and evil-ish but after th14 she becomes neutral. Characters like Rumia are the extreme opposite: It doesn't fit a Touhou character to do things like what Rumia does. It's also not as common for death to happen in Touhou, and we wouldn't really want to see most characters die. We already have enough characters that become friendly after being defeated, we could instead see more characters that stay neutral or hostile even after their first appearance.

The manga books follow a more slice of life approach. I read and finished Forbidden Scrollery and it mostly feels like a slice of life to me. It has action, plot, enemies, but they are mostly divided between chapters, it's sort of a routine.

  Hide contents

Only at the last volumes you start to see a bigger plot happen, but everything ends well and everything returns to normal and I ended up forgetting why Yukari even did what she did. The only permanent change in lore is the death of the fortune teller, but that character is pretty minor too.

      EXACTLY! I feel like there is a serious lack of evil characters in this franchise, but at the same time I don't want a villain that's the equivalent to a cartoon villain, no I want a villain with a reasonable point of view that challenges them both on an individual and ideal point of view, not saying they need to be some sort of evil genius but just someone with different point of view.

I know it's asking for too much but it's all I can ask for, I just wish there was much more done with the characters and lore but fortunately that's where fanfics/doujins come into play.

Edited May 5 by TheM3ds