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Retrospective 2022

CountVonNumenor

CountVonNumenor

Onshi
The year is about to close. Therefore, I think it might be time for us to go through a little recap of things that happened this year within the Touhou community. Initially, I was planning to turn it into a timeline thread, but then I realized that I forgot the date for some of the events. This does not prevent us however from making the timeline once more events are collected to the list. Therefore, what do you consider to be some of the most important events to have happened this year? The good, the bad and the ugly, anything is welcome here and can contribute to a greater image.

As my own vision of the things may be limited, I am looking for all of us to bring a contribution to the list, and have a discussion about some of these events (do not just list them; I think a better approach would be to also add a comment/opinions on said events). With that mentioned, let's get into the content itself:

Official games:

  • 2022 marks the 20th anniversary of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil/Touhou 6, and therefore 20 years since our beloved series has made its way to Windows
  • in the anniversary year, we have also received one new official game - Touhou 18.5 or 100th Black Market, the first game that features Marisa as the sole protagonist and works as a continuation of the mechanics from Touhou 18, with an added "rogue-like" layer (something new for the series)
  • Touhou 17.5 has received a new patch, adding a story for everyone's favorite goat with oversized spoon Yuuma Toutetsu 
  • Touhou 9 received an official release on Steam



Fan games

  • like every year, the community has held its famous Game Jam (the 8th Touhou Game Jam), where we got more new interesting projects 
  • some new games started making a name for themselves, probably the ones I am most familiar with being Hina-Chan Big Trade Millionnaire, Hina-Chan 2nd Break, Mystia's Izakaya and Touhou Lost Branch of Legend



Official music 

  • this year, we have not received any new official music album; the only thing I could count this year in terms of official soundtrack would be the music associated with Touhou 18.5



Fan music

  • 2022 has been a year in which music circles have shined - every brig group, from Shinra-Bansho, Akatsuki Records to beatMARIO and so many more have produced music videos that are not ingrained into the culture of our community 
  • and probably the greatest star in terms of fan music this time has been Internet Survivor; released just around the 20th anniversary of EoSD, the song and music video could not have landed any better for the fans. Some even consider it to be one of the things that boosted the popularity of Flandre and her game in all charts of the 2022 Touhou popularity poll
     





Community 

  • overall, 2022 has been a very interesting year for the community 
  • a lot of people have celebrated the 20th anniversary of the series on Windows, occasion which allowed them to pump out of a lot of new fan-made content
  • Fumo as a whole have become more accessible to find, but the the same time getting one has turned into a warzone, which lead to a lot of frustration each time a new batch was sold in mare minutes after the beginning of the sale
  •  Moriya Shrine received a DMCA from ZUN, this act marking a change in the stance towards piracy (stance that everyone seemed to be status quo since 2009); the reactions to the events have been mixed, some defending the website while others condemning its actions
  • while Moriya Shrine was hit, another frontline opened temporarily as there was the "Touhou wiki vs shippers" incident, which was needlessly dragged to Twitter and made the things uglier than they should have been 
  • there has been an attempted at a trademark related to the famous Yukkuri, or at least a phrase associated with them, which led to serious backlash and eventually the cancellation of the trademark
  • Touhou Danmaku Kagura announced its End of Service at the end of July, and the game was officially closed down on the 27th October; during the final goodbye to the game, it was however teased that DanKagu would come back in a new form the following year, through a Steam game. The crowdfunding campaign for the game has been un astonishing success, the financial goal being fulfilled in just a matter of hours
  • after years of controversy due to its shady background and creation process, a new officially licensed Touhou mobile gacha game, Arcadia Record, has been released. Since the game is currently available only for the Japanese side of the community, there is not much talk about it
 
This year was like the rebirth of Touhou, I’ve seen more and more Touhou merch in some average geek store in France, I’ve discovered Touhou Lost Word and the fandom got bigger !! Also I’m so happy that I’ve finally find a place to discuss about Touhou, this place is the Moriya Shrine forum of course !! Thanks to the interesting topics or debate that are here and this is most of the time your threads that I like the most so, thank you for your implication Count !!!
 

By the way CinderSquad’s video should be considered just as a "Touhou Overview" since he missed a lot of basic informations like : Flandre is able to destroy anything only if she is able to aim the "center" or the heart of it, she also stayed 495 years locked in her basement but didn’t mind because she have everything she needed in it so there was no point for her to go out of her basement

I won’t make a list but it’s kinda a quick introduction to the franchise for those who just want to know the basic informations of each Touhou games

 
Nekofire said:
By the way CinderSquad’s video should be considered just as a "Touhou Overview" since he missed a lot of basic informations like : Flandre is able to destroy anything only if she is able to aim the "center" or the heart of it, she also stayed 495 years locked in her basement but didn’t mind because she have everything she needed in it so there was no point for her to go out of her basement
Click to expand...
Happy New Year! 🎉

Honestly, I do think "overview" is indeed a much more suited word. But I do not think an overview is bad either. I was writing that bit of text as I was listening through the IN video, and that one opened with an overview of the traditional tale of Kaguya. And as I was getting through the video, I got excited to have actually found another YouTube channel that I could put in the category of "good content" (or at least better than the average last year has offered us). 

Anyway, what do you consider to be some some of the highest highs and lowest lows of the Touhou community last year? What are some of your favorite moments, or things that will remain to be remembered for the future?

 
So, I tried to find what are the thing I could add in this retrospective but it seems that this year was soooo full of new stuff that I had to make a choice in order to not make a too long list ^^​



Negative points of the Touhou community/content in 2022 ​

  I'm starting with the negative points because, for once, there isn't a thing that I considered as "bad", there was only some stuff and subjects that got me utterly upset  ​

  • Fumo OVERDOSE !!!  

Fumo are cute but this year I got a Fumo overdose thanks to the HUUUUUGE amount of memes implying Fumos in it... 

View attachment 3074


  • Fusu.    :)  (do I need to explain ^^)
  • Low quality memes :(

Yeah... I didn't find any funny Touhou memes this year and in 2021 neither actually. It often revolves around a Touhou girl saying something and the other one gets angry or sad I really got used to this kind of joke. Maybe I missed some funny memes on r/Touhou since I don't go on Reddit anymore.

  • Moriya Shrine's reputation

It's not finished yet with all the videos saying the same thing about this website, now, the whole community think that we are just some uncool pirates and that we don't give a sh1t about ZUN getting payed for his content : what I despise the most is that nobody among them seems to be able to think by themselves !! Like we've already discuss it, Touhou before its release on Steam, was  impossible to get physically and it didn't seem worth to get it since it was in Japanese only, so it's sad to admit it but it's only thanks to piracy that Touhou western community could play the games :(

Good things by the Touhou fanbase in 2022​

To be honest, I really loved what the Touhou fanbase has made for the year 2022, it mostly revolved around EoSD (you know why of course) and I've discovered a lot of new artists :3​

  • New animators !!

Here's some animators I've discovered last year 







What I'll remember of 2022​

  • The end of Danmaku Kagura :(
  • (very personnal) Lot of Touhou merch in some local geek stores which means that Touhou community has really grown bigger !!
  • The celebration of EoSD 20th annniversary with all the cool fanarts and especially the music video Internet survivor 💗
 
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