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What is the state of the Touhou fandom? (early 2022 analysis & discussion)

CountVonNumenor

CountVonNumenor

Onshi
WARNING! Highly controversial opinion incoming. Please keep it civil, as I would like this to be a constructive discussion on how things could be done better and what would you like to see more from our side of the fandom.



 

[SIZE=12pt]Ever since finding this series, most of the content I got exposed to comes from the Japanese side of the fandom (which is actually not that odd, given they are the origin country of the series, so they may have the strongest fandom). However, I would like to see a bit more of what does the Western side have to offer.[/SIZE]

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[SIZE=12pt]Until now, this is what I have found from the English speaking part of community:[/SIZE]

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  • [SIZE=12pt]Music: RichaadEB and his metal covers were my introduction to Touhou, while Lyrica Live is the first artist from which I have listened anything sung in English (besides stuff like one of the Shinra-Bansho songs or the English version of The Show from Akatsuki Records)[/SIZE]

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  • [SIZE=12pt]Animations (in English): all I could count would be Sr Pelo and his EoSD in a Nutshell video (as well as the yearly Touhou cameos in Spooky Month), as well as a one-off manzai from the same Lyrica Live mentioned in the music section, MTB (cool MMD animations) and whatever one-off short animated clip/meme westerners are doing[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt](there is also this one thing that seems to have been extremely visible 10-12 years ago when YouTube channels like reddevils500 (with all his mains and secondaries) were bringing Touhou videos from NicoNico to YouTube, which actually helped me get a taste of the fandom in early days; some like “reddevils500” (with all his accounts), “Suika Ibuki” and "Moriya Salesman" still do it up to this day)[/SIZE]

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  • [SIZE=12pt]Fanart: in this section, I can say the West does have a decent collection of people drawing good art, be it on Twitter, DeviantArt (whenever it is not, you know... DeviantArt moment) or Pixiv[/SIZE]

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[SIZE=12pt]And now, going back to the original question: how much more is there is terms of Western fandom works when it comes to animations, music and more?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Note: This original question started for me a few days ago when I was thinking if the West has its own version of the Touhou M-1 Grand Prix, or at least anything similar to it (despite the fact manzai is something Japanese) - speaking of which, besides Lyrica and her one manzai in English done as an April's Fool’s joke, has anyone else tried doing it in the West? Then the original thread has been merged with a second one, as it will be noticed the further one reads through these lines. [/SIZE]

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[SIZE=12pt]Probably one of the most notable aspects of the current state of the Western fandom is given by the quality of Touhou content available over on YouTube. Recently, I have been struck by a large amount of shitposting, and wondered if there is also good stuff. Then I realized something. I got afraid that if I simply removed those kinds of posts from my recommendation feed, I would remain without 95% of the Western fandom content.[/SIZE]

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[SIZE=12pt]Which brings me to a bit of a controversial opinion. Are we, the Westerners, just a bunch of silly creators? Some are trolling, others are thirsty after character X or Y, and some simply want to settle the community ablaze with controversial opinions and bad takes. Is this really what we are as a community in this part of the fandom? In a way, I would not remove this kind of content since again, I would run out of Western content, ie stuff in English. I have a bad feeling however.[/SIZE]

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[SIZE=12pt]There might be a few gems in the Western community too, such as animators like MTB, Mochi and minusT or musicians like RichaadEB. But I feel they might end up overshadowed by the mass of shitposting. I know, I know... I should not complain about such kind of content, but I feel there is a bit of an imbalance in terms of the quality and what is available between the Japanese and Global community.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] [/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]· [/SIZE][SIZE=12pt]Recently, I have summed up the situation in the Western community the following way:

[/SIZE][SIZE=12pt][/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]The rise of English Touhou shitposting (January -> ongoing) - it all started with a single video in the first days of January 2022. Signs of a rise in shitpost content became real since the spring of 2021, especially with Pearldrop starting to post daily his voiced memes. It started a "Touhou fans be like" title from one XE3G weeb going with a simple and easy to replicate, but catchy formula: "I want mommy / I want milk / I want to be held / I want to be comforted / And if you don't give me any of these / I will ruin your life". These words seem to have change the face of the Western (predominantly USA and Western Europe) kind of Touhou content forever, with effects visible up to this day. The format spread, started to get milked by anyone who wanted to make a quick video and get thousands of views in hours, and the meme diluted quickly. The first few were fine, but after a while everything became too repetitive. When the "mommy format" seemed to have lost its steam, it was replaced by the "x (Touhou) character fans be like", which lasts up to this day. Many have played it as if they were doing this kind of content purely for some views, after which they were complaining in a community post about not liking they have to do this content, since low effort shitposting brought them more views than high(er) effort content. XE3G himself made such a "confession" saying he is done with this kind of content. However, what a shock, few days later, along with numerous and regular posts of being all "thirsty" for Reisen, he got back to the content he swore he hated the most. All through February, this made me feel quite a bit frustrated, especially when comparing what content the Japanese part of the fandom creates compared to the Western counterpart (I have expressed it all in a very harsh manner at the time, and that text will come here too, even if a bit watered down in terms of wording). I thought the West is lost, without any chance for quality content, but from time to time, you still find that little bits of actually good content, even if it is not as visible. Many of the names that remarked themselves in the shitpost era seem to have disappeared. Forgotten into the mass of other new creators that did the same thing or with channels that disappeared from radar. However, you can still find this sort of stuff recommended on a daily basis, be it that you watch it or not.[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=12pt]Looking again, just by chance, through the mind and post of those who brought to life this whole recent image the western fandom gained, the trends are quite easy to notice, like a pattern applied for a good part of the newly appeared content creators. Everyone starts with “I want mommy / I want milk”, then going into “Touhou fans”/ “(Touhou character) fans (when)”, Touhou LW edits, and most recently an overuse of Japanese Goblin. Problem is that the latter, a meme recently brought back to life thanks to MTB and his Reanimated version, has made even him get concerned over the hate he’s now gathering (yes, people started directing their hate towards MTB just because others overused his work to the point of becoming annoying). [/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]There are other scary things too, like recently discovering the creation of lewd GyateGyate and Fumo art, but I really do not want to get into that since it is rather creepy.[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=12pt]To be fair, JP also has their own amount of shitposting and weird stuff, but at least they also do have the music doujins, animations, a good chunk of the fanart, the comics, [/SIZE]Fumo[SIZE=12pt] etc. Many of those are exclusive to them, while we in the West get the bare bones and just shitpost like a bunch of monkeys believing that is funny. But I also mean in terms of doujin creators. How many Touhou music creators do we have in the Western fandom? How many serious animators? How many comic writers? That's what I'm trying to point out. There are moments when Western Touhou fandom in a nutshell can be summed up in a "Cringe Compilation". Apparently, shitposting and other questionable quality content is not something new for this community, the only difference now being that instead of shitposting being gory or violent (case study: KKHTA), not it is more oriented towards horny, and perhaps [/SIZE]frustrations[SIZE=12pt] people need to vent considering the way these past two years have been like. Or maybe it is just "haha, funny bnnuy and 21st century humour"...[/SIZE]

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[SIZE=12pt]I am very sorry for having to say something like this. I feel the need to vent some of the frustration gathered in the past few weeks, combined most likely with irl stress and just a wish for improvement. I just do not think this kind of content is any fun or entertaining, and would also like to see the more serious side of the fan represented on YouTube. For example, besides small quality gems like Lyrica Live, minusT, MTB, AspreyFM and MegaPig9001, I feel like the Western Touhou essay style video is very much missing, as well as more people gaining interest in fan game creation or just animating for more than just memes. Besides, I think I may have got too much of a personal beef against a few specific creators that have slipped into my recommendations recently, and who I either did not enjoy, or just outright found to be making us look like a bad community (promoting gatekeeping and exclusion of certain people from what can be called "Touhou fans", expressing lust over fictional characters, overusing the same meme format over and over again and so on). [/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]I know I have no power in changing the mindset of an entire fandom, but I just wish to contribute myself too at trying to make a better image for the Touhou fans. I would like to create my own fangames, sing or compose music, draw, but I feel like being too stressed over real life problems (little free time due to college) and stress, but I want eventually to get at least one of those done. Just to bring my own contribution to the fandom. Until that, I still have to learn.[/SIZE]

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[SIZE=12pt]Again, I am very sorry about all the anger and frustration expressed in the text, especially if anyone got offended and I did not come with a clear plan for how to make things better. And in order to end up on a more positive note, what do you feel about the overall representation of the community in the west on platforms like YouTube? If you were able to change something for the better, what would you do and why?[/SIZE]

 
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Hmmm, I'd definitely like to post my thoughts on this and make some recommendations to you, but I am once again reading this at an inconvenient time. I will come back later.

 
buskerdog said:
Hmmm, I'd definitely like to post my thoughts on this and make some recommendations to you, but I am once again reading this at an inconvenient time. I will come back later.
Click to expand...
Feel free to reply whenever you consider yo have more time or it is most suited. The thread will stay here open for anyone to contribute

 
CountVonNumenor said:
Are we, the Westerners, just a bunch of silly creators?
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Respectfully, I disagree. But yes, there is a lot of low-quality Touhou shitpost content on Youtube. So to start, I would like to attempt to give what context I can to this situation.

Why is there so much shitposting?

I know there is a lot of shitpost content out there from the western Touhou community, but I don't watch it, and it generally only appears in my feed very rarely. But why? Well besides the fact that I ignore it, the reason I reckon it doesn't come to my attention so much is because my feed instead gives me the animation, music, etc. content that it's already been recommending me for years - you see, all this shitpost content is a relatively recent thing. Now please understand here, that I am not trying to play the "blame all the new fans" card - that being said, I do think this has something to do with an influx of new fans. The main reasons I think for this are Touhou Lost Word and the popularity explosion of fumos – it’s hard to say if either of these are directly responsible for beginning this shitposting train, and I’m not really involved enough in either of them to offer a lot of insight, but I do believe that fumos (and fumo memes) have spread to the point where some people’s first introduction to the series is through fumos – and I know there’s a lot of meme content surrounding fumos. Anyway, however these shitposts originated, it was then adopted by other people quickly for various reasons, whether it be a large number of new fans not knowing better, or people who just want to farm clicks/views.

The topic of "is a big influx of new fans good?" is something that has cropped up on this forum before. And while yes, it can lead to annoying occurrences like these, most of us agree that it is fundamentally a good thing overall.

What will happen next?

The main point I wanted to make with that previous section is basically that there was a time not very long ago where all this shitposting wasn't here. And in the way that all trends come and go, I think that unless another event leading to a flood of new fans unexpectedly happens in a short time, these repetitive posts will die out relatively soon and better content will rise to the surface again.

CountVonNumenor said:
In a way, I would not remove this kind of content since again, I would run out of Western content, ie stuff in English.
Click to expand...
Western content may be dwarfed by the Japanese side of things, but I believe there is plenty to be happy about in the western Touhou community without having to lean on memes to be entertained. These are list of some things I know of the Western Touhou Community which I think show that we are, in fact, really awesome. I recommend checking these out.

Cool Stuff Section

Music Creators

In the Japanese side of the community, I think it is likely that doujin music is the biggest and most prolific form of fan engagement. I’d say this is true of the western community too. Western Touhou arrangers are generally harder to find, but if you broaden the kinds of music that you listen to, you will find that there are lots more of them out there than you think. We’ve found and mentioned plenty of them on the Musical Discoveries in Touhou Fandom thread, which, by the way, is the most active thread on this site. I highly recommend checking it out, from what I can tell reading about your experience exploring the fandom I think you would really like it. I won't make a list here right now since I don't think my efforts would do it justice, but really, there's quite a lot.

Animators

We don’t have lots of animators who are active right now but I do know of a few that you may not have heard of. The two most common forms of animation from western fans: MMD animators, MTB probably being the most talented I know of but Spotty Len is another pretty good one. The other is Walfas animation, which is unfortunately a dying art but there’s this one Walfas channel I really like called Reimu and Cirno. And of course there are other miscellaneous types of animation as well, Daniel Renard comes to mind, he makes some cute shorts.

Discord Communities

Discord communities are a way which lots of fans with similar specialty interests use to hang out and share content. Of course the quality of these servers can vary wildly, but you can find communities for all kinds of things like art, cosplay, game dev etc. I don't generally interact on public discord servers much, but I am in a few which have content I find interesting.

Fan Games and Game Jamming

I’d say there’s also a lot of game dev stuff going on in western community. There’s Touhou Fan Game Jam, which happens multiple times a year, there are people making Touhou themed mods for games (I used to be one of those people) and there’s also, like, 5 Touhou smash bros clones in development by western devs although I don’t think anything has actually come of any of those. And outside of just video games, there’s also a western made Touhou card game called Danmaku!! by Mystery Parfait. I’ve got it! Too bad I have no one to play it with…

Hisoutensoku

Despite being one of the older Touhou fighting games, Hisoutensoku still has a very active playerbase that hosts weekly tournaments if I’m not mistaken. This is largely thanks to Tessiro who has done a great effort keeping the game alive. These matches can be really fun to watch if you’re into it, you can find videos on Tessiro’s channel and on the Hisoutensoku community channel, Spell Break. And on the offchance you wanted to get involved, there’s a discord server where they organise all this.

Commentary Channels

Lastly, this is a point I can agree on, there is a severe lack of commentary type Youtube channels for Touhou. But there is one very good one I know of, and that is Surnist. He hasn’t uploaded in a while but his videos generally don’t come out regularly anyway, he’s probably taking a break.

 
Very interesting answer, with lots of details. I really need to get back later today with a more developed reply (it is 3 am, so I'd better go to sleep). But again, thank you for the contribution and I'll be back in the afternoon. 

 
buskerdog said:
Respectfully, I disagree. But yes, there is a lot of low-quality Touhou shitpost content on Youtube. So to start, I would like to attempt to give what context I can to this situation.

Why is there so much shitposting?

I know there is a lot of shitpost content out there from the western Touhou community, but I don't watch it, and it generally only appears in my feed very rarely. But why? Well besides the fact that I ignore it, the reason I reckon it doesn't come to my attention so much is because my feed instead gives me the animation, music, etc. content that it's already been recommending me for years - you see, all this shitpost content is a relatively recent thing. Now please understand here, that I am not trying to play the "blame all the new fans" card - that being said, I do think this has something to do with an influx of new fans. The main reasons I think for this are Touhou Lost Word and the popularity explosion of fumos – it’s hard to say if either of these are directly responsible for beginning this shitposting train, and I’m not really involved enough in either of them to offer a lot of insight, but I do believe that fumos (and fumo memes) have spread to the point where some people’s first introduction to the series is through fumos – and I know there’s a lot of meme content surrounding fumos. Anyway, however these shitposts originated, it was then adopted by other people quickly for various reasons, whether it be a large number of new fans not knowing better, or people who just want to farm clicks/views.

The topic of "is a big influx of new fans good?" is something that has cropped up on this forum before. And while yes, it can lead to annoying occurrences like these, most of us agree that it is fundamentally a good thing overall.

What will happen next?

The main point I wanted to make with that previous section is basically that there was a time not very long ago where all this shitposting wasn't here. And in the way that all trends come and go, I think that unless another event leading to a flood of new fans unexpectedly happens in a short time, these repetitive posts will die out relatively soon and better content will rise to the surface again.

Western content may be dwarfed by the Japanese side of things, but I believe there is plenty to be happy about in the western Touhou community without having to lean on memes to be entertained. These are list of some things I know of the Western Touhou Community which I think show that we are, in fact, really awesome. I recommend checking these out.

Cool Stuff Section

Music Creators

In the Japanese side of the community, I think it is likely that doujin music is the biggest and most prolific form of fan engagement. I’d say this is true of the western community too. Western Touhou arrangers are generally harder to find, but if you broaden the kinds of music that you listen to, you will find that there are lots more of them out there than you think. We’ve found and mentioned plenty of them on the Musical Discoveries in Touhou Fandom thread, which, by the way, is the most active thread on this site. I highly recommend checking it out, from what I can tell reading about your experience exploring the fandom I think you would really like it. I won't make a list here right now since I don't think my efforts would do it justice, but really, there's quite a lot.

Animators

We don’t have lots of animators who are active right now but I do know of a few that you may not have heard of. The two most common forms of animation from western fans: MMD animators, MTB probably being the most talented I know of but Spotty Len is another pretty good one. The other is Walfas animation, which is unfortunately a dying art but there’s this one Walfas channel I really like called Reimu and Cirno. And of course there are other miscellaneous types of animation as well, Daniel Renard comes to mind, he makes some cute shorts.

Discord Communities

Discord communities are a way which lots of fans with similar specialty interests use to hang out and share content. Of course the quality of these servers can vary wildly, but you can find communities for all kinds of things like art, cosplay, game dev etc. I don't generally interact on public discord servers much, but I am in a few which have content I find interesting.

Fan Games and Game Jamming

I’d say there’s also a lot of game dev stuff going on in western community. There’s Touhou Fan Game Jam, which happens multiple times a year, there are people making Touhou themed mods for games (I used to be one of those people) and there’s also, like, 5 Touhou smash bros clones in development by western devs although I don’t think anything has actually come of any of those. And outside of just video games, there’s also a western made Touhou card game called Danmaku!! by Mystery Parfait. I’ve got it! Too bad I have no one to play it with…

Hisoutensoku

Despite being one of the older Touhou fighting games, Hisoutensoku still has a very active playerbase that hosts weekly tournaments if I’m not mistaken. This is largely thanks to Tessiro who has done a great effort keeping the game alive. These matches can be really fun to watch if you’re into it, you can find videos on Tessiro’s channel and on the Hisoutensoku community channel, Spell Break. And on the offchance you wanted to get involved, there’s a discord server where they organise all this.

Commentary Channels

Lastly, this is a point I can agree on, there is a severe lack of commentary type Youtube channels for Touhou. But there is one very good one I know of, and that is Surnist. He hasn’t uploaded in a while but his videos generally don’t come out regularly anyway, he’s probably taking a break.
Click to expand...


Note: this took me much longer than I wanted due to technical issues mentioned on the main forum chat. Thank you for waiting 

Alright, I finally have some time to write a proper answer. I might have lost ideas from last night, but I will try formulate them now the best I can. So, where should I start from...
 

Why is there so much shitposting?

At least in my feedback, I was getting a lot of these low quality, copy-paste videos for a decent amount of time. And everything started after I watched XG3E's original "mommy" video. Afterwards, my main page was getting clogged by this kind of content, no matter how much I was ignoring it. To be fair, before the 2022 wave, I used to watch daily, for over half a year, the voiced memes posted daily by Pearldrop. From when he started and until taking the break, I watched those daily. I think it might have also affected my algorithm in terms of recommendations. As for other kinds of contente, those were appearing much more rarely, even if I was looking to get them. But not often does YouTube recommend me something actually good, so I have to search for it manually. And YouTube is not the only platform where I saw a lot of shitposting, on the list adding Discord and Reddit too. But since this is r/touhou and the nature of the redditors, you cannot really expect for much better. 

I understand that we should not really blame the new fans for this whole wave. I am actually quite for new fans, as I think fresh blood is something needed in any fandom if we want it to survive. I am also not so sure if we could blame Lost Word and the Fumo either, even if those exploded i popularity for the past half a year at least. No matter who these new shitpost creators are, whether they are new in the series or seasoned veterans, it is that some of them can actually have quite a bit of a misconduct, which ends up with stuff like promoting gatekeeping (quite an ironical thing to come from someone like that). Possibly one of the best examples: Blank Guy. I have had quite a bit of a personal beef against him ever since he randomly got into my recommendation feed on YouTube. His post, which I have tracked for a while, started appearing following the fiasco of the September-October sale. At the time, he was inciting towards gatekeeping and hate on some categories of fans. Whether he was writing things just to incite flame wars or was actually legit, this Kaguya lover ()nothing bad with liking Kaguya Houraisan; just that he was always presenting her in post as "his wife"). So shitposting would not be so bad if those involved in creating it would also not be jerks towards the community itself. The original purpose of this thread, when created for Reddit, was that to be a commentary on people like Blank and XG3E, despite never mentioning their names there directly, but in time gathered more material and turned into...well, this. 




What will happen next?

I wholeheartedly agree with yo on this one. However, I am a bit uncertain this will end too soon. With new formats being somehow made and still milking lots of views, as well as the "2hujerk" groups starting to become more vocal in the West, it feels there will take a while until more quality content might come back into focus again. I still hope that will happen though. 

I know I do not have to rely on memes for entertainment, but I feel any other sort of content is rather lacking, to be frank. But I will elaborate on the better parts once I get to the next section. 




Cool Stuff Section


Music creators

As far as I am aware, the few Western musicians I know about are the following:
- RichaadEB (thanks to him, we also have a very cool cover for Bad Apple, sang by Christina Vee) 
- YaboiMatoi (both him and RichaadEB produce awesome rock/metal covers for songs from different franchises, Touhou included, and I think the two actually collabed in the past)
- Lyrica Live
- Demetori (I think they are from Italy or something?)


I will probably have to check the thread you mentioned. I have noticed it is very active, and perhaps I will find a lot more things to listen to. I honestly know more Japanese groups than from the rest of the world combined, so I think that could be a good idea to give the thread a look.



Animators

Again, the list os a bit short short, but these are the ones I know about:
- Daniel Renard (really use to chat with him whenever we meet on the animation drawing streams of Ninoseyasunori)
- MinusT
- Sr Pelo (whenever he introduces Touhou as an easter egg of the EoSD video; after his interview with AspreyFM from a few months ago, only then did I realize how big of a Touhou fan Pelo actually is)
- MTB

Maybe they are the same person, maybe I confuse them, but the only Spotty Len I know is from the big community server on Discord, where they do awesome art. I don;t know it it's the same person as n the case of the YouTube animator, but I think I may have seen something from them long ago.



Discord communities

Currently, I am only part of one Touhou-related server, the one with 24K members on it. I was looking to see if there is anything on a more local level, and even if I have not joined it yet, I was completely surprised to see there is a Romanian community server. Even if it has like 100 or so members, I am simply amazed it exists, since I thought Touhou is something completely alien in my small country at the edge of the Balkans and Eastern Europe.



Fan games and fan jamming

I have heard of the Touhou Game Jams that take place every year, Some of the games look interesting, and saw some of those from the most recent edition thanks to Asprey, but I was told I should avoid these games due to their low quality and lack of replay-ability. As for bigger fan-games, I am going to write very soon a thread on that topic as some sort of "help required" in finding a fan-game to suit me. 



Commentary channels

The ones I know about are AspreyFM, MegaPig9001 and Surnist. I used to watch a lot of Surnist in the past, really appreciated the Iku art he uses, but kind of forgot about his existence due to the 8+ months hiatus in making videos. But like you said, this area is severely lacking in terms of content creators. I would definitely love someone talking about the symbols, the historical, cultural and religious references made in the series (since Touhou is full to the brim with such), and overall just help people understand better different aspects of the stories and world-building. This reminds me of a saying I heard multiple times in the past that fits in context: "having only superficial knowledge on something might make you a weeb; if you actually get to learn about that thing and understand it (even if just slightly better), you can actually say you got interest in it; because, as seen many times on the internet, weebs only have superficial knowledge of something or only know it as <<the thing that appeared in X or Y series>>"

 
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Gonna change a bit the profile of this thread, in order to make it closer to my new idea of an analysis on the state of the fandom.
When I get obsessed by something, I tend to get more determined to fulfil my task. And now, my proposed task is to contribute in analyzing th situation of the Touhou fandom. Since discussion on the official ZUN materials has already been done is essay videos, and nobody has covered the fandom itself i either fear of lack of interest, someone has to do it in the end. Plus, it is not like the fandom sort of represents like 90% or more of what Touhou is and and what it is known for. 

 
been writing my view for about an hour lol. will maybe finish later, it's not that long but I need some time to collect my thoughts.

 
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I have actually seen a video on this very topic today. Unfortunately, it did not go very deep into the matter, it was not a dedicated essay video (but more like answering some questions during a livestream, then the segment was put in a 10 minutes video), and last but not least that creator is part of the "Genso Boys" group (the group of friends formed around Pearldrop who also like Touhou and have YouTube channels), so quality has to be either questionable or be taken by a large pinch of salt (said youtuber is also guilty of being for a while in the "I want mommy"/"Touhou fans be like" bandwagon of posting). 

Here it is. First (and only) time I have seen someone even mention this issue 



By now, it is becoming a bit difficult to keep track of the threads, especially that Tenkko and I are having each a thread on vey much the same matter running simultaneously 

 
If there is one thing I have completely forgotten to mention here from the western creators, that thing has to be fr00sk. Relatively famous, yet it sees like I have discovered her (honestly I am a bit surprised to find out it's a she, but in a good way) quite late. From what Ii could gather, the original YouTube count has been fr00sk, but after some drama that took place last year, her channel disappeared, together with the original uploads. Good thing people re-uploaded the animations though, or at least whatever could be saved.
 



As well as two very entertaining music-related video. I never knew I need conductor Sanae so much in my life. If she keeps up like this, she might end up liking every song from the games...

 
CountVonNumenor said:
Commentary channels

The ones I know about are AspreyFM, MegaPig9001 and Surnist. I used to watch a lot of Surnist in the past, really appreciated the Iku art he uses, but kind of forgot about his existence due to the 8+ months hiatus in making videos. But like you said, this area is severely lacking in terms of content creators. I would definitely love someone talking about the symbols, the historical, cultural and religious references made in the series (since Touhou is full to the brim with such), and overall just help people understand better different aspects of the stories and world-building. This reminds me of a saying I heard multiple times in the past that fits in context: "having only superficial knowledge on something might make you a weeb; if you actually get to learn about that thing and understand it (even if just slightly better), you can actually say you got interest in it; because, as seen many times on the internet, weebs only have superficial knowledge of something or only know it as <<the thing that appeared in X or Y series>>"
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Apologies if my reply seems lacking since I'm getting beat up by lectures. 

Anyways, there seem to be quite a number of channel from 2012-2015, they seem to have disappeared like Illogical Pine. We're truly lacking the info role but there seems to be a shinning star among the wastelands, by the name of MegaFrog: seems promising, he doesn't upload lore stuff that much but caught my attention with this one 【東方】The Cosmology of Gensokyo - YouTube. (Speaking of age, I still need to give my view on those two games)

Some mildly stuffs appears in my feed. I believe Trollhou content? Well, the premise is you create a ridiculous plot with unexpected character generating even more wacky outcome; I enjoy it nonetheless, it's better than most of the "shitposts" of the west. (There's Kuumin and Hecc Onlyfans)  I believe this is person who started it: Ciryes. He channel is dead; The man has received so much hate and switched to music and eventually he quit youtube. I saw one of his statements about "using the same persona in the internet for 12 years and he got tired of the stuff" (Pardon, if this is inaccurate 'cause I saw this 6 months ago in one of his descriptions and he deleted most of his content since some fans doesn't like that kind of stuff and they targeted him.) It's similar to the case with fr00sk when some fan loses their sh*t, they targeted the creators. I really don't want any of this to happen to anyone at all; even Blankguy, sure he has caused some questionable stuff but that doesn't mean that you can send death threads, doXxes, hate towards the fanbase, their shadow follow their actions, if they've done bad, the same bad can happen to 'em. 

(Anyways, I'm half alseep while typing this so, please bare any inconsistencies in speech; also I accidentally delete half of the reply but CTRL + Z saved my butt)

 
Gou the frog said:
Apologies if my reply seems lacking since I'm getting beat up by lectures. 
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No problem. I always keep saying anyone is welcome to join the talk, no matter how late they might be to the party. 

 

Gou the frog said:
Anyways, there seem to be quite a number of channel from 2012-2015, they seem to have disappeared like Illogical Pine. We're truly lacking the info role but there seems to be a shinning star among the wastelands, by the name of MegaFrog: seems promising, he doesn't upload lore stuff that much but caught my attention with this one 【東方】The Cosmology of Gensokyo - YouTube. (Speaking of age, I still need to give my view on those two games)
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Quite a few things here:

  • Illogical Pine is the first Touhou lore channel I have watched, and his "Who is Hakurei Reimu" probably the first lore video I have seen; soon after, I did find MagiFTW and continued on "who is..." kind of videos there
  • incidentally, I have seen the Touhou Iceberg video from MegaFrog quite a long time ago; The Cosmology of Gensokyo seems like an interesting topic, and the rest of the channel looks very good



Gou the frog said:
Some mildly stuffs appears in my feed. I believe Trollhou content? Well, the premise is you create a ridiculous plot with unexpected character generating even more wacky outcome; I enjoy it nonetheless, it's better than most of the "shitposts" of the west. (There's Kuumin and Hecc Onlyfans)  I believe this is person who started it: Ciryes. He channel is dead; The man has received so much hate and switched to music and eventually he quit youtube.
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Hecc Onlyfans is a name I am quite used too, even if I have not watched too much of their content. However, I think I did watch Ciryes very long ago. I do remember some videos on that premise you have talked about, and I think it was that channel.

Gou the frog said:
It's similar to the case with fr00sk when some fan loses their sh*t, they targeted the creators. I really don't want any of this to happen to anyone at all; even Blankguy, sure he has caused some questionable stuff but that doesn't mean that you can send death threads, doXxes, hate towards the fanbase, their shadow follow their actions, if they've done bad, the same bad can happen to 'em. 
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I am sorry to hear he quite the YouTube scene (talking about Ciryes). In the case of fr00sk, I do not know if it was due to this specific video. but I heard she got quite a bit of harassment after her Yukari vs Sans animation. At least she managed to get back and create new things. As for Blank, I am not too sure what to say. My opinion of him is mixed at best. He did disappear though, and I really wonder what happened to him. 

 
What is the state of the fandom? Well, this is the state of the fandom
 



Apparently, he has taken notice of what happened and is now discussing with a legal team. What world do we live in? To make it even worse, rumor says the guy who trademarked Yukkuri is not even a Touhou fan, so he just did it to troll everyone and for monetary interest. Normally I really do not care about Yukkuri (I actually really hate them, and put them among the most controversial stuff created by the fandom), but this situation is just very annoying. Further rumor says this has become a big topic of discussion in Japan. 

I am still not fully sure what is actually going on, but maybe you have heard more about this.

 
I'm not sure if this is the best thread to post this, but it seems close enough. Recently a new Youtube channel name GensouChronicle has cropped up and while he has only uploaded a couple of videos, they are very high quality. So if you've got a craving for western Touhou lore discussion, check him out. Here is his latest upload 




 
PriestOfPain said:
I'm not sure if this is the best thread to post this, but it seems close enough. Recently a new Youtube channel name GensouChronicle has cropped up and while he has only uploaded a couple of videos, they are very high quality. So if you've got a craving for western Touhou lore discussion, check him out. Here is his latest upload 
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Hello, this is the perfect place for the video. I have discovered GensouChronicle about a month ago, when his channel only had two videos. I was going to watch this one soon, but thank you for sharing it here. This is one of the positive examples I was really looking for within the English community for high effort, passion projects that show how much people enjoy Touhou 

 
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