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Okay, so now that I have time to think about all this. Here is the next step forward in all this. First, the site will NOT die. We are still going to offer the same server we have been for the past few years. Second, we will be moving the site and the file server to a different country where the DMCA laws are a bit more...laxed. In the interim, since we can no longer host the files "directly", we will be providing other ways to offer the content that won't technically go against the DMCA notice. And lastly, i want to say thank you all for sticking by us all these years. We are glad that you still continue to come to us for all your Touhou needs. ?

Thanks to BlueMoon's help we managed to get our hands on Genso Wanderer again. How we managed to lose track of a 9-gigabyte game is beyond me. The download link is on Mega now for the time being since our database wasn't letting me upload it there directly, forgive me if your region/internet doesn't allow you to download from there. Better than nothing I suppose. All the DLC should still be intact. Don't be afraid to let us know if any issues arise. Cheers.

A lot of time has passed since most of our hosted content went down; over a year in fact. Sorry about that, everyone. Throughout that time though we managed to get things back on track, hopefully. Torm made a dedicated seedbox, and I recovered every missing piece of official content; print works, OSTs, and music CDs. That doesn't seem like a big deal though, right? Anyone could've done that in less than a week if they were dedicated enough. Yeah, I realize I slacked a bit. I'm not too proud of it. But I wanna make it up to you; to not just fix the site, but improve it as a whole. As a result, I also added FLAC versions for almost all available music albums and OSTs, where applicable. When torrenting a file, you can select which folders you want to download from said file, so you can choose whether or not you want lossless versions of an OST (these files will be bulky, beware). In light of that feature, certain OSTs that had multiple pages (like Oriental Sacred Place) now have all volumes in one page, with all track lists in the description. Also also, on top of that, I uploaded two print works that were never on the site before; The Grimoire of Usami and Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia. I never knew these actually existed until my friend brought it to my attention and sent me the files herself; many thanks, Seija. I guess all I have left to say now is, keep working towards your goals. I know it sounds cliché, but it doesn't matter how slow you are going, so long as you do not stop. Know that you are valuable and that you matter. As always, let us know if you find any issues. Tomorrow will be sunny; yesterday was not.

We recently had an issue that broke most of the fangame download links. This should no longer be the case. If you run into any issues still, let us know.

Just some Artwork done for some animation and pixel art I did for fun. -W-

Brief Introduction: Hm... So, i haven't been in the forum for months, and the reason is because i've been doing a lot on my personal life such as developing new personal relations and also working on myself, but before all that progress i had in my life, i went through the hardest times i could ever think of: the loneliness I'm an introvert, so i usually like to be alone, but it changes when it comes to feel alone I always loved to have my own time, thanks to that i discovered touhou and other things that made me happier, such as doing physical exercises and playing games, also thanks to that i found this forum where i did share a lot of my personal experiences and also opinions Since i disappeared, some people such as @CountVonNumenor asked what happened and if i was going to come back, and well, i'm not sure tbh, i found this forum cuz i wanted to share the few experiences i lived and also to know more about touhou, but in the transition between 2022 and 2023 my life changed completely, since i started dealing with several problems and also, with the loneliness feeling My experience with loneliness: So, since past year i've been talking to a girl which had several problems about health and her personal life, once she was a cocaine user and also a depression victim, but since i met her she changed, at least most of the time, she didn't use drugs or cut herself (due to her problems), it was life her life changed, even the subjects we used to talk about changed and instead of talking about negative stuff, we started talking about life and good things such as travels and etc Well, that was what i thought, this year she met another guy, but instead of trying to help her like i was trying to do, he did support her on all the shit she used to do, she even went to his house to smoke weed and have sex, and i didn't care at all, since it's her life and she can do what she wanted to I started to get away from her because she started saying weird stuff and asking me out, but i never wanted a relationship with her, and plus, some months ago she was having sex with another guy with the same problems as her, so why should i accept someone like that? Anyway, for some reason, i used to feel calm when she was near to me, but not because i loved her or smth, it's just because she was my only friend on work, once everyone went away from me since i started to meet up with her After some time she completely stopped to talk to me and blocked me on some places, and it made me get into a prison inside of my mind, i started to have a strong anxiety because i felt completely switched, i didn't have nobody to talk to, several times i did take my phone during the day to see if someone sent me a message or something, and nothing But then my friends tried to talk back to me, which didn't work, i got accustomed with being lonely, but i was still sad, so what i wanted at all? I wanted her company, i became a emotional dependant on her while she was hanging out with several friends who did the same drugs as her and had the same weird ideas as her And it made me notice what loneliness feels like, isn't just being alone, isn't just about not having nobody to count with, but yes about being in a prison inside of your head, a prison where you're feed with negative thoughts and self-devaluation, when you can't think about nothing aside from the problems in your life and when all you think of is about yourself and about how pathetic is your situation, thinking about how some kind of miracle would solve everything and make you get back to feel the way you used to when you were happier Nowadays, i'm with new friends and i don't have this feeling anymore, at least not at a very destructive point, i started dating again and now i have a way better life, but the first point to get better, was recognizing what i was feeling, and well, i know several people go through the same, and that's why i'll talk more about it now Loneliness: Well, being lonely isn't something that happens suddenly, but yes something that you only notice when it's already in it's extreme point, nothing is never enough at all, you feel alone even if there's people who would talk to you if you needed, you can't just ignore it because it will always get inside of your mind, when you lay down on your bed and look at the ceiling while thinking a lot about your life for example, when you're frequently feeling yourself empty and without value to others It is certainly worse when you really don't have nobody who cares about you, and well, due to that, several people end up developing depression and other problems, but a problem which always happen even if you have or not somebody who care about you, is the anxiety Being lonely causes a lot of anxiety, once you're frequently waiting for someone to send you a message or show some kind of interest on you, when you don't know what's wrong about you that apparently is making people get away and give up on having a talk with you, when you're thinking so much about the wrong points in yourself that you can't even work/study well, when you're always trying to find or receive something which can be a way to solve your problems And well, being lonely can end up making of you a true vegetable, which don't have any perspective of future and don't try to get better, and it can destroy completely someone, since those people can end up trying to be someone else instead of trying to be someone better I'm writing this because, nowadays, i opened my eyes about all this situation, and i can see a lot of people dealing with this same problem, and having no idea about how to solve it, i can't give a solution though, since the way i found to get better was forcing myself into new people till i found my friends i have now, and as much as i can recommend that, i'd say, everybody will always find their ways to solve their own problems Loneliness is literally killing people, and i say that not just because i had suicidal thoughts during that time, but also because i see a lot of people doing the same, and i did see people who actually did commit suicide due to this Please, take care of yourselves and try doing therapy or going to a psychologist, i'm not a doctor or a therapist, but yes one of the several people who already went through all that, and i don't desire this feeling not even for my worst enemy Maybe your problem can even be more serious, like depression or something, so, yeah, you should look for medical help if you identify with what i wrote, since i just got worse when i didn't look for this kind of professional help, i could get better alone, but this situation isn't the same for everyone See y'all someday! =D

Time to get this off my chest. Alright, this thread has been spurred out of both seeing @CountVonNumenor's thread about burnout and also the general state of the Touhou fanbase on other sites, most notably Reddit (which has been going through a ditch), in which most Touhou fans/internet denizens seem to be downright oblivious/blind to changes or downright hostile to those who are protesting changes which keep the site aware of the users and keep it useful to everyone. To give a synopsis for clarity, I'm going to cover how Touhou fans existed throughout the years and how the internet changed the Fandom from a mostly creative fandom to a sanitized corporate outcome over the years, which inspires no creativity. Some of it will talk about Touhou, some will not, given that this sort of thing can apply to any fandom that exists on corporate-owned websites and not fandom owned. This kind of progression is why I'm giving the outlook a Terribad stamp due to the short attention spans of Touhou fans and the rabid tribalism of people justifying how Reddit is right in their horrible changes which will shoot them right back in the butt. This is sort of the expansion of the forum thread about attention spans here: This discussion is for people who have an attention span. (You know who you are ) Information will be kept into spoiler sections in order to save on scrolling. This is all based on my own opinions on what has occurred over the years. 1. The Start of the Internet (Touhou Fans Eating Good) This kind of discussion will talk about the early internet | around the <2000> s 2. The Rotting Starts (Sanitization and blandness starts) Hmmm, this probably started around the 2008-2020 this is when sites started to go corpo mode and start profiteering off the users. 3. What it is now◝(^⌣^)◜--> ^o^ --> n-n (People capitulate to Greed for instant satsifaction) The complete change of culture in Touhou | 2020-Present Time to act as a boomer, even though I was born at the time in which old forums were going out. 4. Burnout Zone (Opinion on why the fandom is at an all time low for creativity) So how is this going to end up? (Conclusion - Touhou fans and everyone hate everyone else) What are you looking at?

I've been meaning to make this post for a while now. At one point I was gonna wait until the remix tournament had concluded for this, but uh, that doesn't seem so wise at the moment. So, what is this post exactly? Well, I've been on this forum for (almost) 4 years now. And a lot has changed in those 4 years, both in this virtual space and the real world. So, I wanted to take a moment to step back and reflect the changes within me, and how I fit into the context of this place. Things are changing about the way I use this forum - actually no, it's been evident for a while now, things have already changed about the way I use this forum. Back when I first arrived here, there was not much activity. But, I was excited to be able to share my time with other Touhou fans, and there were signs of life here, including from some moderators who had been with the site for a long time, so I made a lot of effort to show my face and drive up activity. Whenever a new post was made in the introductions section, I always made a point of welcoming members to give them the sign that there was indeed activity here. And with help from others who chose to stick around, a small but energetic ecosystem did begin to grow. Sometimes things got a bit lax, I didn't always have something to make a new thread on, but what I did have was a lot of time to be on the forum and interact with various topics of interest (not least of all the Musical Discoveries thread that cropped up after a year or two). Not everyone from those times has stuck around. Some only appear infrequently now, others have disappeared completely. However in more recent times, there has been an influx of new users. For me personally, the circumstances of my life have changed, what with me now studying Japan and Japanese at university. These are changes for the better! In fact, this is the best step in my life yet. However, it also means I no longer have the surplus of time for this forum that I used to. I'm content with that though; back then, I felt I needed to be active in order to keep the forum alive. But now, I see the forum in an exceptionally healthy state compared to what was here when I started. So, my input is no longer required. This isn't an "I'm going" post. My input is no longer required. Doesn't mean I'm about to quit inputting. However, I am reaching a stage in my life where I'm starting to distance myself from this forum. You may not see me as regularly as in the past. Don't get me wrong, I still love Touhou, but I'm also not quite as hyperfixated as I used to be, what with no longer being on the rush of experiencing all the games as new and fresh, back to back. Whenever a new game comes out though, I think you can expect to see me back here with something new to say. I'm also going to have the opportunity to spend a year in Japan at some point during my course, and when I do I absolutely intend to indulge myself in the Touhou experience, so if there's anything interesting I learn (or anything people want me to go and find out), I'll surely share it when the time comes! So in the meantime, just know that I'm still looking out for what goes on here, even if I don't post much. It's likely that from time to time, I'll still have something interesting to show or tell ya, and I'll still see discussions I want to take part in. But I've got places I want to go in life, and distancing myself from this website is something I'm ready to do, and thanks to the upsurge in users, something I feel comfortable doing.

I think we should have a good talk about this topic. I have had a lot of thinking about this topic for a long time. Recent twits by nmlgc and aggressive2hu inspired me to do more research to finally build a full picture. I understood that we should act now until it is too late. The more info I found for this post, the worse the situation became. And it is not just about Touhou, problems are much more serious, but mostly I will talk about Touhou because I really love Touhou and I hope to change situation for better at least for Touhou. The goal of this post is not to bring hate towards anybody in the fandom or ZUN, but to help people understand the roots of the problems to resolve them. CAUTION!! CAUTION!! CAUTION!! If you still want to believe that there are no serious problems in Touhou fandom, and still want to believe in Touhou and doujin magic, well this post may bring you down. You have been warned. CAUTION!! CAUTION!! CAUTION!! Before we start, I hope to see criticism which will explain where I am right and where I am wrong, because this topic is rarely discussed. Thank you. Have you noticed that something is not right? Have you noticed that there are much less new Touhou fangames, doujinshi and doujin music than for example 8 years ago? Have you noticed that a lot of new fan content is nearly unnoticed? Have you noticed that fandom is not united and split? Have you noticed that last Touhou games are rushed and story is less well-written? Doujin events examples: I suppose that everyone noticed at least some of those problems but I am surprised that nearly nobody tried to analyse why these have happened. Well, there are two main causes of the problems: the fandom and the franchise itself. Fandom: But there are other problems that may make people haters of not just fandom, but of Touhou itself. Franchise: But what I can say for sure if this topic is unnoticed and left undiscussed we won't be able to change the situation for better. I thought that Touhou was an islet of safety in current sea of crisis of mass culture, but alas it is already under the water. But wait, let's be clever and take a step further (unlike those haters): what about non-Touhou doujin scene, what is happening there? (Spoiler: the situation is similar there): But everything is not lost! We can change the situation for better if we will stop being scattered and will work together. The worst thing now is just giving up. Thank you for reading this. I would be really glad to receive criticism, corrections and proposals. I know this topic is controversial, but I think that it must be discussed. I just want Touhou fandom to become better. If you have any good ideas how to change the whole situation for better feel free to share them. Also feel free to share this post. There are also some other related thoughts about this topic: Afterwords: If after reading this post you want to hate ZUN or anybody else then I think you didn't understand this post. This post shows that hate didn't change the situation for better and only made it worse. We don't need to hate, We need to act. For the fans who are Still with us.

Hi everyone! While I was searching for Touhou content I have found a lot of lost media. The goal of this topic is collecting information about lost media and links in one place. There are some categories for systematization. In each category the media goes from more well-known or having more chances to be found to more obscure. If you have some info about this lost media or some other lost media, post it. Lost sites Lost games Lost music Lost fan anime Lost other media Lost Animations Strange disappearances Lost Youtube videos and channels

I don't know whether you're trolling or not, but I do know that trying to be preachy will only put others off. Don't try to police people; that's my job.

Whatever comes of this DMCA, I just really hope the forum doesn't get shut down because of it. At first I thought it was just some troll but more and more it now seems to be ZUN's legal team. I have no idea what the future of this site will be without the downloads, no one will have a reason to come here anymore, but I don't want the whole site to get destroyed because it means a lot to me. I knew something like this would come eventually but I was not prepared for it right now. I've visited this site nearly every day for 3 years now. Things are awful in my personal life right now and knowing I could come back here and talk with other Touhou fans on the forum has been an important escape for me. That's not to mention how important Moriya has been for making Touhou accessible. Without it, my life literally wouldn't be the same right now. I hope this isn't the end for Moriya Shrine.

A huge piece of history for everyone is their username online. Where did yours come from? Mine is from when I was very young, playing typing games in the computer lab. I hadn’t had a solid username yet, and I was obsessed with Pokémon sun and moon, which just released at the time. I also loved Kirby, and thus, loved meta knight. So, my first username became Metalunalion, with parts from meta knight, lunala, and solgaleo. This would be it for a long time, but along the way it became metalunalium for ease of pronunciation and the suffix on Z-crystals. Eventually, I got hit by character limits a lot. I had to shorten or change my name. So my alt tag for awhile( and still is ) was Maelstrom, just cuz I liked the word. Then, my current username came to me like an OC idea: out of completely random inspiration. I then got to Juunim as my username, which has stuck but was lengthened to Juunimeta to not erase my old one completely.

The ending CGs were good in the past, back in 1998 (25 years ago)... In Mystic Square, the ending has different fully colored drawings with a good art style despite the limitations of the PC98 hardware. Look at this: Now that the veins of hype are dry on my end, here's my opinion/review of Touhou 19. TLDR: The "Unfinished" in the title describes the game perfectly. Good Things: 1) The game has good mechanics. Charging attacks is intuitive and easy to pull off, getting the meter bar full is a simple collect the orbs, the spared hit is a good mechanic to make the game less punishing, although it's exploitable if you are good enough. Once a competitive metagame develops, we will know for sure how well done the combat system is. 2) Artistic department is beautiful. I really like the new designs and ZUN is improving his music, he used a lot of new instruments to him, the mixing is great, and the melodies still feel fresh even if he still composes with the same kind of tricks. 3) The story and writing is great. We still don't know the full details, but from what I've read, it depicts Gensokyo in the brink of a war, and it has a lot of interesting dialogue. For example, Son Biten being gaslighted into believing she's Son Goku's reincarnation, Hisami's possibly masochist tendencies and Chiyari being a hikikomori. She also managed to get me uncomfortable due to how creepy I find her. And that's all. Yeah i didn't like this game. I don't like a ZUN game since Touhou 11, it's incredible how massive his screw-up was in this one. I may dislike Touhou 11, but the game is finished and decently polished, not the case here. Bad Things: 1) The CPU is unbeatable. Especially when you take into account the "Human vs CPU" mode. As the CPU in this game is practically invincible, it's not like in PoFV where the CPU gets hits in normal. In about 2 hours of gameplay, the best I did was getting the CPU to drop 2 death bombs, meanwhile I was playing Orin VS Zanmu. 2) Lack of features. There's no replay and score system and ZUN can't justify it because he loves to reutilize assets, how hard is it to adapt the 18 game catalog's code to this game or hire someone? 3) Online is unplayable. I couldn't even join a match. The character selection screen dropped frames like crazy, and it had like 30 seconds of input lag. I won't be so critical here because I suppose that writing online multiplayer is very challenging. But why did ZUN not hire someone to make a reliable system? 4) Inconsistent art styles. It was a good idea to introduce new character sprites and boss sprites, but the job was badly done as returning characters like Sanae have their sprites from Touhou 12 meanwhile others are showing off new sprites. But not everyone got a fair deal, Ran's player/back sprite is vomit inducing. If ZUN at least allowed to remake all the player sprites, it would have consistent aesthetics. And he didn't fix the character selection screen to always be a hexagon, instead you get the ugly circle until you select someone. 5) Poor game balance. Half the cast encourages masochism, for example, I only managed to do decent damage with Orin thanks to the cards you get in story mode. Meanwhile, Reimu literally has infinite bombs with a good bullet slowdown aura. What the hell? 6) Atrocious pricing. I can't believe the game costs $15 with all the fundamental problems tainting the experience. For example, Terraria gives you tenfold the content for just $10 and Mystia Izakaya, a complete game without mayor problems (I didn't try it), is only $6. I can't even feel bad for pirating Touhou 19, it's simply not worth the $15. Before at least you got a finished experience with good polish and hours of entertainment. 7) ZUN's pride I believe we are entering a dark period of Touhou if ZUN doesn't drop the pride. Touhou is a FRICKING SOCIAL PHENOMENON in Japan, I'm sure he can hire more people to improve mainline Touhou even more. And not a gigantic amount of people that could bankrupt ZUN, he only needs a few beta testers, someone capable of providing a good online experience and a team of translators. 8) Development problems. If you pay close attention to how the story mode works, you will notice that once you reach a certain amount of time in a fight you automatically win, why is that? ZUN realized the CPU was unfair, but instead of fixing it, he made a quick lazy patch to allow players completing the story mode. Why did ZUN make that choice instead of fixing the problem? I don't know what happened, but Touhou 19 seemed to be stuck in development hell, as it's unusual that he didn't try to fix it by just reutilizing PoFV's CPU (I know he has the code, he kept the sprites after all). 9) Poor roster I know the roster makes sense for the story, but it's very strange that ZUN didn't include more characters. Combined with past games and the card mechanics of 18, he can easily introduce at least like 15 characters. And if it ruins the story, make them extra unlockable characters that aren't involved in the story. It would fit the style of progressively unlocking characters, like how it's done in Smash Bros. It also has some nonsensical character choices like Seiran or Orin, they don't add anything to the story. Something else that's weird is not having Kasen, Clownpiece, Keiki, Chen or Hecatia involved in the story as they are directly affected by the plot of the game. (yes, Chen technically appears in Ran's attacks, but why don't make her more independent?) Conclusion: I'm honestly impressed that, at the time of writing, ZUN is getting away unscathed after such a bad game. Steam's reviews are very positive and I can't comprehend how. Most of the critics I gave are due to a surprising lack of testing, polish and passion in developing this game, not me disliking core parts of the game entirely based on taste (like how I can dislike puzzle games because they don't entertain me). I want to like this game, as the things it does right are amazing, but it has fundamental issues that are only justified if the game was in early alpha. I really hope ZUN patches most of the game's issues (something unlikely to happen) and if that's not the case, at least that Touhou 20 or 19.X is a polished experience with good gameplay and new people on board. Maybe it's time for ZUN to either expand Team Shanghai Alice or hand over Touhou to new developers, it's unacceptable to have this experience in 2023 and a complete lack of improvements in a lot of areas. I just can't get over the fact that games made 25+ years ago on the very limited PC98 platform have comparable quality. Not even counting early Windows era games, my god. ZUN please do something.

Have AMA's recently become some kind of silly trend on this forum? Yes, yes they have. But whatever, it gives me something to discuss about, and having been here a long time I'd like to think I'm an interesting enough person for people to have questions about me. So, if there's anything you want to know about me, this is your opportunity to say it! It doesn't have to relate to Touhou in any way, you can ask me literally any question you want - although I am not obliged to answer, so I recommend keeping things tasteful if you actually want to be taken seriously. Other than that there's nothing else to say about restrictions, so ask away!

It has been some time, like... 2 months? Something like that xd Well, i wanna be honest, i left the forum for all this time due to some bad stuff, such as negative feelings and this kind of thing, but i'm slowly recovering from all that and getting back to be the way i used to be As i could see, a lot of new people joined the forum, that's great! I hope we can have good experiences here! =D I will come back later to talk about everything in more details, but is great to be back! Thanks for everyone who didn't forget about me and still want me here =) I'll take a look into the new threads now, see you guys later =D

CountVonNumenor is one of the dedicated members of the Touhou Project Community. He usually comes up with a thread to start discussion of said project, covering almost everything in and out. He brings out good points, sources, and overall very interesting topics and has earned a lot of lads' respect. He is the one who has brought so much life to this place. He is very much the reason that the author began discussing alongside him in the forums of Moriya Shrine. [Contents] 1. Basic Info 2. The Arrival 3. Profile Info 3.1 Status Updates And Ranks 3.2 Signatures 4. Threads That Haven't Got Much Traction 5. Author's Notes Basic Info A DeviantArt and a pixiv one is open to view one's work. Often seen dishing out points from reddit and twitter by summarizing said ones with information that doesn't overwhelm the reader. Warhammer 40K fan whom is seems to be interested in Battletech. His known favorite characters in Touhou are Hieda no Akyu as well as Eiki Shiki, Yamaxanad; he is also seen writing thread with big font usually 16 in size to make ease in the readers' eyes back in March 2022; A Romanian lad who speaks like a gentleman in polite yet elegant manner. The Arrival On 2022 March 5th, he joined the Moriya Shrine site not to download games but to discuss about one of his favorite series, Touhou project. In that day, he wrote out a carefully thought out thread covering Curiosities about fashion in Gensokyo. It was a very strong start as he had caught attention of the regulars of the Moriya Shrine forum. It will be a special day for the said place from that day forwards. Profile Info Has currently made 35 threads and overall achieved 337 as of now. Won most days in the Moriya Shrine Forum; according to the about page he is likely born in 03/22/2002. Status Updates And Ranks Have achieved 9 badges and gained a total of 11 followers. Rank: Proficient (10/14). Infact, even having a large number of faith braking 310 and a massive views on profile hence, a lot of visitors. Signature Formerly had troubles changing his signature but after a while, it was finally done. Threads That Haven't Got Much Traction (Excluding some few ones) Retrospective 2021 : Bringing the points out in 2021 Touhou community about games, music and so on. Any opinion and ideas are welcomed on this thread. Still haven't spark any discussion to this day. (Edit: Another Member Of The Community has posted a reply on said thread making it officially that CountVonNumenor has no more abandoned threads.) What are your favorite Touhou M-1 Grand Prix skit(s)?: Although it had been his second post that didn't get any reply after a month, the author made a post there, it gained traction but slowed down ever since. One year into Touhou - How one fell down the rabbit hole: Truly a journey of one who had fallen into the rabbit hole Touhou; It is a very interesting trip to read through. Gensokyo Mystery Zone - Misty Lake - Moriya Shrine : It's a shame that it has ended so soon without much discussion as the potential for this thread to grow as big as the "Official Random Thread " (A bit of an understatement) and last but not definitely least, What do people from outside the community think about Touhou: A very worthwhile thread to start a discussion. (He was seen using two emojis) Author's Notes I really appreciate the lad, Numenor he's very much like a friend to anyone here, making the site brighten. If not for him I doubt that I would be here sooner or later but he might as well be bringing and motivating newcomers to the shrine. I'm very grateful to him for bringing life to this place. "Thank you from the bottom my of heart, brother." This page was last edited on 12 June 13:37, Current UTC.

Here's Marisa and a freehand watercolor Meiling!

Recently got into 2hu so i made these

Do you know what is one thing I miss from the old days of the internet? OCs, Original Characters. For all the cringey self-inserts, Donut Steel jokes and recolors of Sonic the Hedgehog, there was a charming innocence to them. Most were a child or teen’s attempt at creating something new for a world they loved. Some did not fit the source material, but felt genuinely good enough to have their own story. Others fit flawlessly. For some reason though, I seldom see people talk about their Original Characters today. I’m not sure if it’s gone out of vogue with the rise of multiplayer games or I just don’t know where to find them. Touhou itself I have seen few OCs for, though I am sure there were a number of them in the 00s. The material is ripe for creativity, and there are OCs I have seen referenced as characters in fan games. In fact, I am willing to bet that all of you had an OC at some point. In honor of the innocence of youth and the joys of creation, let’s play a game. Post a character meant for the world of Gensokyo that you or someone else made. Write a little bit about them, their backstory and motivation. Any stories about them which make you proud or make you cringe. I’ll start, even if mine is a little unusual. A few months ago, I was having burnout from tabletop games, which have been largely the same in the West for more than a decade. D&D makes up the lion’s share of the game space, and most other big games imitate it. To shake me out of my rut, I had a group of friends on Discord pick out an indie or fan game they enjoyed the look of and we would run it. On the list was Danmaku Yuugi Flowers. A Touhou fan game I had put on the list for how different it was. My game was set in a homebrew world, but I wanted the characters to be authentic to Touhou's style. Starting my slide into the fandom. Naturally, a tabletop game needs NPCs. My first creation for the world was a vampire named Hope Black. I wanted to give her a wholesome, Midwest country girl vibe. Though I also designed her to be an inversion of Remilia. Instead of opulent glamor, she has a homely charm. She lives alone in a log cabin, and keeps a farm on her own. She’s also one of the guardians of the land, who I really should come up with a name for. Though she is still new to the role and uncertain in herself. I wish I could tell you more about her and what the others thought. Sadly my workload at my day job has spiked again, keeping us from playing. So now I am just left with this character concept and a doodle I made over a lunch break.

Alright this is something you all probably have dealt with and talked about. Every Touhou fan has seen that person talk about the Western side being not that dedicated to making Touhou content and or is less dedicated to appreciating good content. I feel like this is part of a deeper problem, maybe something dealing with the way the internet has changed the way most people grew up with consuming content. Tons of content on the internet is mostly just brain food with bright colors and or provoking material (Some edgy crap, and or sex appeal bait) Now here is the point. I feel like Western content in general is burning me out. I've seen everything from the darkest pits of the internet to the general tip of it. Now I feel like I've wasted my time as all of it was designed to prevent people from actually having a conversation and act like mindless machines who are driven by instinct for high-quality short form content and or constantly trying to be a dipshit to others for a reaction and or generally stupid takes because their parents never loved them. ( °□°) ︵ ┻━┻ "Take It Easy!" I CAN'T, GODDAMN IT! Everywhere I go, I see some crappy meme with a Fumo getting more attention than doujins. You know about Rick Rolls? "NO, NOT THE JAPANESE GOBLIN! IM BEGGING YOU!" "We are Japanese Goblin!" "AUGGHHH!" "AMONGUS, AMONGUS WHERE? AMONGUS IN YOUR GODDAMN EYES" *Sound effect cues* "Hey Mister!" "Want a Sprite Cranberry?" STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM. "AHHHHHHHHHHHH" Okay that's all.

Yeah dude, like I just did that 10-30 minutes ago and you don't know how happy I was. I really wanted to scream but it was kinda late at night so I just celebrated with a fist in the air or something like that. I know this achievement isn't crazy like the others, but I'm just so happy I beat the game that I have to post about it. When I saw the ending with Reimu,Remillia,Yuyuko,... talking to each other, I just smiled at the conversation. I'm just so glad about beating the game man. I calculated and practiced to beat the game! I was on my last bomb at the end! And when the time counted to 0 at the last stage? It was euphoria. I also want to say that I like the cherry border system because it really brings out the courage in you, what I mean by that is that when it's activated you kinda like force yourself to make risky moves and find a way to dogde to bullets. It makes the game pretty fun to play! I guess it's gonna be harder from here on out with the other games haha. But maybe that's what makes it fun or what the other games have to offer that is going to be fun, idk but anyways! Sorry if I wrote a bit too long, I'm just enjoying myself right now. Have a nice day everyone!

Hello one and all, its a pleasure to meet you all this fine evening. I am Yumetou, a man with too little time on his hands. My name is a portmanteau of Yume Nikki and Touhou, a game I know very well and a series I don't know that well, and both staples of the 2000s weeb scene. Unlike most of you, I have never actually played a Touhou game, and for a long time didn't know what it was. References to it were everywhere when I first started using the net, but no one I knew played or even knew what it was. It was a weird circumstance, with fan art and fan music remixes being everywhere. Yet I had no idea if it was a game, anime, manga or something else. I loved the music of course, but it felt awkward to sidle into the Youtube comments section or an image board conversation and ask 'Yeah I like this, but what is a Touhou and where can I get one?' Eventually, my family axed our internet to save on bills. I grew up, got a job, and almost forgot about that part of my life. Almost. Touhou recently reentered my life through the magic of the cute and cursed Fumo memes. Sharing some led me to discover a couple friends of mine were diehard fans of the series. While watching a video one of them recommended, Moriya Shrine was mentioned as a place to download older games not available in the West, and a place to meet other fans. Being a longtime lurker on old image boards, nostalgic for memories of the old Internet, and having never beaten a Touhou game, I thought I would join the Shrine. I have frightfully little free time, but I am hoping to browse, try various games and ask for tips, especially for the early bullet-hells. I used to love play-by-post forum roleplaying, so perhaps I will see you there. I am hoping to make more friends like those who introduced me to the series, and stir a little bit of my old nostalgia, before the last of my gamer skills fade away. Thank you for taking the time to read my autobiography. I am looking forward to seeing more of all of you!

On the 25th of February 2023, ZUN was invited to a high school talk show where he was asked several questions about Touhou. While there doesn't seem to be a video archive, a Twitter user called AQNAWNA made a recap of the questions and answers. And from there, the questions have been translated to English by user IceFairy. In the following presentation, I will use the translations of IceFairy, which can be found here: https://twitter.com/richard_effendi/status/1629816649493942273?s=20 [ZUN appears on stage and reveals a presentation slide] ZUN: I made the slide while I was on the bullet train heading here. (Note, I won't be translating every tweet as some of them have already known information. I'll be translating the interesting ones) Host: Are the music CDs connected to the games in any way? ZUN: If I say they're definitely connected, it might cause some sort contradiction somewhere. So I just have them as vaguely connected in some way. Host: Recently there's been a lot of current events related content in Touhou, hasn't there? ZUN: It's because the series is like my diary. Whatever I'm feeling at the moment, I put it in the games. I think the first time I put something that was undeniably current events was in DDC. At the time overseas indie games were becoming mainstream and I wanted to make a game that had my feelings of "Hey, we have doujin games here, too!" Host: The games have been popping up on Steam recently, haven't they? ZUN: Well... It's cause nobody buys CDs anymore, hahaha. PCs don't event have disk trays anymore. And most shops don't carry them either. I thought it'd be best to go with the flow. Host: As a doujin game creator, what are your thoughts on the world becoming less interpersonally connected? ZUN: I don't really need interpersonal connections when making games, since I make them alone, hahaha. But I do miss the fun I used to have going to offline events. Chatting with people online makes me feel a bit lonely. Host: There's been more officially recognized gacha games lately. Did you have a change of heart about them? ZUN: Nope, still not fond of them, hahaha. Don't think I'd ever make one myself... They say it's "free to play", but they're definitely not free to play. Host: What are your future plans for Touhou? ZUN: Well, I'm getting on in years. I plan to keep making it until I don't want to anymore, but I'm also afraid of when that time comes. So I've been ruminating on how to keep myself motivated in making Touhou. Host: Any plans on making things other than Touhou? ZUN: Everything I make ends up becoming Touhou anyways, so, nope, hahaha. Host: The moon appears often in Touhou, any special reasons? ZUN: I just think the moon is neat, hahaha. I like the words "lunar capital" and "lunar exploration". I also like Mars. Host: Any plans on having Mars appear in Touhou? ZUN: Hmn... Well, humans might be going to Mars in the future. We still don't know what's on it. It might be interesting to have Mars in Gensoukyou... hmn, not too sure about it yet. Host : Tell us about the Yukkuri trademark incident. ZUN : Well, Dwango took care of it pretty quickly. And the culprit also rescinded the trademark. But, we also needed to avoid a repeat of this incident, so... So a few days ago the patent office put out their opinion on Yukkuri as a genre. It should be alright now. To be honest, I feel like that incident became an advert for yukkuri (hahaha). I got excited when yukkuri started appearing on broadcasts. It was kinda fun. as a result of that, everyone became familiar with yukkuri (continued). In that way, I kinda way to say "thank you" to the instigator (hahahaha). Q: What's up with the clown in Dolls in Pseudo Paradise? ZUN: Clown? What Clown? Are you talking about the jacket illustration? It doesn't have any special meaning... To be honest it's been so long ago, there's a lot I don't remember. Q: How many Ultimate Foul Lifeforms have come up to you (note : the title you get if you clear Impossible Spell Card without Items). ZUN: A lot, hahaha. There were middle schoolers among them, too. Pretty amazing. Q: Are you an Ultimate Foul Lifeform? ZUN: Nope, I can't become one either, though I set the difficulty it so it's not impossible to become one. Q: How good are you at Shoot 'Em Ups? ZUN: I used to be pretty good at it. Though, lately I struggle to clear Lunatic... I make the games clearing the stages separately instead of all in one sitting. It's fine to set the difficulty to a level where I can clear it, but if I don't increase the difficulty some people will be able to clear it pretty fast just like that. Q: Any plans on reviving the PC-98 characters? ZUN: I'm not gonna say "yes" or "no". For questions like that, I'll just accept your desires. Q: How do you decide on the character names? ZUN: I ruminate about them until the deadline. If I use common names, then I'll and up with characters with the same surnames and given names. I also have to make sure the names fit with the character. If it doesn't feel right, I try again after thinking some more. If it feels right then I decide on it. Sometimes I change it pretty close to the deadline. And when that happens, I can forget to change the old name somewhere. (Narumi/Naruko) Q: What sort of Youkai is Meiling? ZUN: I believe... I had it written in PMiSS, "Youkai" simply means "other". If it's just "youkai", then there's no species, just think of it as "something that's not human". Q: Which games should I play? ZUN: I think you should ask the fans that not me (hahaha). But ok, the latest game.... right now is UM, so why don't you play that? Since the series is my diary, if it's too long ago, I don' remember it that well. Q: What do you think about the popularity poll? ZUN: It's fun to watch. Though, I don't entirely get Youmu getting first place or Flan getting first place. There should be a lot more bigger weirdoes than them in Touhou. Q: I'm a 20 year old male. How do I become Marisa Kirisame? ZUN: Well... Why don't you buy a pointy hat and put it on? (hahaha) But you know, Marisa is still a human, so it's pretty easy to become her. Otherwise you'd need to reject your humanity. Q: Do you have designs for characters who are only mentioned in the setting? ZUN: No, at least for the ones I don't plan on giving an appearance in the future. A part of these questions have also been covered by Megapig9001 in his most recent video: And an interesting conclusion someone has reached based on the Q&A: "Alright, this confirms something I've been suspecting for ages now: ZUN has literally no idea what goes on in the Touhou fandom. His insistence on not looking like he's playing favorites (or whatever's going on) has led to a profound ignorance regarding which characters are popular and why. He wasn't trolling by keeping Flan in reserve for two decades; he truly believed this whole time that no one was interested in seeing her again. That said, I'm glad to know he doesn't base his creative decisions off of whatever fans seem to want most. He neither caters nor trolls. For better or worse, he does what he feels is best from an artistic standpoint".

hello guys! my username is H4V3N (if you couldn't tell). I am very interested in getting involved with the forum, and help people with problems they are facing! like everyone else, I'm into touhou , I found 2hu via muse dash, they had a touhou dlc that they released a year or two ago i think. anyways, some things i like about touhou are the characters and their backstories, the backstories really captivated me and the girls are really cute. another thing i like about touhou is the music, its very unique and wasn't like anything else I have listened to before. I don't have a favorite 2hu yet, mainly because it's really hard to choose. ehhh.. thats pretty it, i look forward to some fun moments here. see yaaa (also how do you get that fancy text under your posts?)

https://touhou-project.news/news/8892/ I fucking predicted it

I don't want to touch this, and I'm far too upset about it to address it properly, but the longer its left the worse it's getting. RoboticSquire, with all due respect, you're out of line here. It's one thing to be concerned about the mannerisms and behavior of people around you; plenty of people from multiple perspectives will sympathize with the general sentiment. But you are not concerned; you are offended, and you have no right to be. You are making accusations in arrogance; you want people to change because you're uncomfortable, not because you actually care about them. 1 Corinthians 13:1-2 says "If I speak with tongue of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophesy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing." For your own sake, please stop this; you are not going to accomplish anything.

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 Fan animations this year has marked the rise and or/prominence of a number of animated content creators - Mirae Somang, Mush-Broom, lunaPrism, Vegemite-Flavored Indomie MMD, Jo2n, GoruposStudios and many more I may not be aware of MTB is still doing animated videos, this year making a variety of music video recreations based on Touhou characters (Baby Hotline, Killer Queen and Farewell, Narcissus) one cannot ignore the fact that Japanese Goblin has been revived by the same MTB; not only that, but the song actually spread even outside the Touhou community for a while; after some initial backlash, we have ended up with two versions of the music video Fan content creation (overall) early 2022 marked the beginning of the popular cookie-cutter format shitposting on the western scene of the fandom; making use of the horny nature of Touhou fans, formats like "Touhou fans be like", "Average Touhou Fan" or "Top 10 (something Touhou)" have ruled western YouTube for the first half of the year. They still exist up to this day, easily recognizable nowadays due to the use of either cropped Touhou hentai images of Fusu art (sometimes both, sometimes Fusu is both too), even if they are a mere shadow of the peak despite the bleak beginning of the year, quality gems also came from the overall pile of mediocrity new lore channels hava made their rise - Megafrog with the Cosmology of Gensokyo, Pantheon of Gensokyo, 2hu Bites and the monthly Hifuu Community Club podcast - Suwawako, for someone giving the vibe of shitposting and member of the Gensokyo Boiz group, actually came up with some very good videos and interesting topics to talk about, from obscure community events to Touhou fan game reviews - GensouChronicle has been probably the greatest star of this year; a new lore channel created this year, he has already started to make a name for himself in one of the niches that the western side of the community is really lacking: lore. His highlight video of the year has been Touhou: Worldbuilding with J. R. R. Tolkien, enjoyed by over 45 thousand people by the moment I am writing this thread. For a new channel, he has been one of the most pleasant surprises the Western Touhou community gave us, especially in a moment when I was starting to feel like everything is lost in terms of quality control of the "average (western) Touhou fan" and the content they produce. I have mentioned him many times recently, but I really believe he has potential to become a relevant name for the community, and perhaps in turn help create a better community one video and positive interaction at a time - one creator I have not had the chance yet to check, but who looks promising, is Cinder Squad; he is also a new channel, but the 3 videos already uploaded, on the explanation of lore behind Touhou 6, 7 and 8 look to be very promising in terms of quality 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

I'm going to be honest here. I think some people are taking the results way too seriously. At the end of the day, the popularity poll is just meant to be something fun for the community. It shouldn't affect how you feel about certain characters and themes, since it's your vote that matters the most. That being said, I love all the characters, so I'm happy with any outcome!

Sadly im not gonna show to much because most of my pixelart was lost on my old PC, but maybe i can save some and showcasing them as well. So yeah time to showcase my stuff, don't expect to be all touhou, i have other likes as well and i'm now 100% focused on Original Characters stuff, anyways some screenshots! Oh and a gif is also shown. The mario sprite is ripped from a very old fangame, so that's why is green, i tried to replicate the style on the left of the green sheet And the touhou stuff, well i got a bit on Suwako and Patchouli puzzle game, where you control somewhat tetris blocks and you need to guide a Suwako doll to the key and then the exit. The Suwako is cute, she has the lemming shape and it makes her look hilarious i love it. So much than i did those sprites for fun and they are animated too, you can see them in action now! As i said before, i'm gonna post more stuff i do here(as well some old ones), maybe i can reappear in Twitter again if i have a good mood on doing sprites! You can also help me to improve on pixelart, i'd like to see how you like it, because i really want to improve even more... 3 years doing this... Yippie!

Last year, I was feeling very distrustful when we saw the popularizing the stereotypical, generic pre-fabricated content. However, as 2022 went on, a number of new creators started to leave their mark in the community, especially in the west. I did mention some of them in the "Retrospective 2022" thread, but I will bring that up again (this time with links for some of the newer channels): I am happy to announce that since my complains, lore channels are starting to make their appearance in the western community, even if it might seem to be a shy, small scale beginning (quoting again from that very same retrospective thread): And one more thing (probably more of a subjective thing on my side): I see that the Touhou community has started getting their own art trends, or at least they have become more visible recently; what I am talking about is the wave of fanart depicting Sekibanki in the new/adapted outfit created by Akatsuki Records for the recent music video Rock 'n' Rock 'n' Beat: Illustration by teasmacker (source: https://twitter.com/teasmacker/status/1642901954383978497/photo/1) GIF by bmkro (source: https://twitter.com/BmkRo/status/1639995871944409088) Illustration by hajimakura (source: https://twitter.com/ma_kurane/status/1636368578579685387/photo/1) There are so many more great images based on that music video. For more than a week after release, there have been tens of images uploaded on a daily basis, and somehow really made me like Sekibanki more than I thought I would. I could have talked about so many more new things that appeared, but these are some of the ones I came in contact with or had a lot of fun with. But what do you think? Are we slowly going through a renaissance of Touhou content, especially in the western world? Is this just a recent event, or is has slowly been building up for a longer time? Whatever the answer might be, I am enjoying this time of being a fan of the series and its associated fan creations...

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...)

Valve operates Steam, the largest game distribution platform in the world. Its founder, Gabe Newell, has stated in the past that piracy is a distribution problem, not a criminal problem. And frankly, I would agree with that. I have digital copies of games that I own and enjoy, for no other reason than because digital is a superior format to a cartridge or disk that could be decades old. Mandalore Gaming recently covered an old strategy game, Myth the Fallen Lords. Its last entry was back in...I want to say 2001? The series has had no rereleases since then, and has no (legal) digital distribution. Meaning the only way to legally buy it is to pay an exorbitant price for a secondhand copy which may not even work. The money won't even go to Bungie, the company that made the game, but Take2 because they own the defunct company that distributed it two decades ago. Games like EoSD or the PC-98 games sit in a similar place. I would be more than willing to pay cold hard cash to Zun for his creations. $10 apiece for games old enough to be in the military. Yet Zun decides to deprive me of this joy. So, I have two choices. The first, I can learn Japanese, then once I learn the language learn kanji (which is much harder than speaking Japanese), then fly thousands of miles to Japan, search geek stores for a CD copy, bring it home, configure my PC to operate with a region-locked game, and *then* play Highly Responsive to Prayers as Zun intended. Or you could download it online in seconds from the comfort of your home and play an enhanced version modified by fans to play better on modern hardware for free. You'll notice how I only mentioned the 'but its free' part at the end. Piracy is theft and theft is stealing. Sure. Its not a good or noble thing to do. Simultaneously, its hardly like these pirates are stealing from the mouths of starving devs constantly. Zun is hardly going to live on the streets after I pirate a game he refuses to sell. Further, a number of pirates have taken to buying merch in bulk directly from mangakas, anime studios or game developers, as a way of paying for a game that is not for sale. I would definitely support that practice.

Alright, let's see how this works. There have been quite a lot of updates and additions when it comes to fan games and whatnot on this site since the beginning of this year. I'll try to list them all here. Downloads fixed/updated: New downloads: Fixed downloads for albums: New albums: Also, on another note, the tutorial on how to set up Neko Project 2 has been fixed. The Images have been added back in. In addition, the emulator didn't have a FONT.ROM file, which might be required for some to display text properly ingame. The file as been added into the archive that has the emulator.

Next time I have to explain to someone what Touhou is I'm just gonna show them this thread

Disagree? I completely agree with you and @Reitisen. I'm going to use other Online Spaces to get my point across and cover some of the general causes of the decline in quality in the Touhou Community. Keep in mind I will mostly complete the picture in what @Reitisen and @TheM3ds said, aside the "What can we do" section, so feel free to skip to that part directly. I have been a Touhou fan for over a year, so I can't comment much about how things have developed for the Touhou Community (hence my focus on adjacent topics). The least I can say it was a godsend to find this forum, it looks pretty healthy to me and I can't imagine talking seriously (as serious as possible for fantasy) about Touhou, without losing my mind with the practices that today's Web Monopoly enforces on users. I have been using the internet since I was 6 years old (around 2010) and I was blown away with the quality stuff I found of the series I liked (I mainly searched My Little Pony stuff as I was obsessed with it). Day after day, people created extremely high quality, near professional quality stuff. The animations that existed back then were the most amazing thing in existence, and I have fond memories of entering the main Spanish Forum for My Little Pony (20% mas cool). Slowly, but surely, the magic died off. Is The Internet dying? Monopolies and Brain Rot. What can we do? Is The Touhou Community affected by this? Or are we just declining? We are in an especially rough moment, not only we live in an age with lots of monopolies that due to their nature are already hard to get rid of, but they are manipulating us to become their slaves. Although this makes a big impact on the health of the community (with repetitive things like Fumos, Yukkuris or other types of Shitposting), we can't blame it all on Big Tech. We have to remember that Touhou's golden age is long gone and that the world is a very different place compared to the late 2000s. People grow and eventually change their interests or lack the time they used to have. It's normal to feel that Touhou's Community is declining, because it is. We have fewer people, that lack time on a system that favorites Quick Low Effort content, and on top of that lots of people like @CountVonNumenor are experiencing Burn Out. Honestly, we should look at the bright side of things. Even on this era of "decline" we have all of this: ZUN is still making content of all sorts (games, manga, music albums, etc.) we have the Moriya Shrine Forum and a lower but steady flow of high quality creations from the minds of people (and organizations) like: Touhou Patch Center, Touhou Wiki, Content Creators (like Suwawako, LunaPrism, Megapig9001, etc.), Music Makers (like Alstroemeria Records or RichaadEB), Game Developers (like Fumo Racing), Animators (like Mush-Broom), Writers (like the people on this Forum), Artwork of all kinds (just look up Touhou at Pixiv) and more!!! Only thing I'm missing here are some fanfics, but I'm probably looking at the wrong places. Let's survive this, and see a new Sunrise for Touhou! Did i get too poetic?

GRAGAGAGAGA I LOVE UFO I LOVE UFO- As you can tell, I really like this game, and while it's not my absolute favorite in the series, it does come close, so I'm probably just going to spend this entire post gushing about how great it is. Starting with the gameplay, Undefined Fantastic Object finally gets rid of the godawful power bomb system introduced in MoF and returns to having a dedicated bomb gauge, as well as introducing a new UFO system, where certain enemies will drop colored UFOs that fly around on the screen for a while, and can be picked up by touching them. When you pick up a UFO, it's added to your collection at the bottom left corner of the screen, with a maximum of three slots to keep them in, and if you can get three UFOs all in the same color, a giant one will appear at the top of the screen, remaining there for exactly ten seconds. This big UFO will consume any power and point items dropped by enemies, and once it's consumed enough, it'll drop a resource of some kind (a fifth of an extra life if it's red, a bomb if it's green, and points if it's blue), and will also drop the same kind of resource if the player can shoot it down in time. Alright, here's why this mechanic absolutely slaps and I love it. It mainly comes down to the extra depth it adds to the game, as well as the extremely fast pace it creates; most UFOs change color every few seconds, going from red to blue to green and then back to red, so if a UFO is of the color you want, you need to get to it quickly, incentivizing the player to zoom across the entire screen at all times. Additionally, there's also a nice sense of player freedom in which UFOs you want to go for; I usually just go for the red ones, since I like having the game be extra challenging with a lot of chances to mess up as opposed to being easier but with more punishment for when you do get hit, but if you'd rather stockpile bombs, or go for a high score, you can do that as well. Admittedly, I do think the blue UFOs just giving you points was a missed opportunity, as high score only means anything to a select few players as opposed to lives and bombs which are going to be useful no matter who you are, but I'm not really sure what else they could have been, so it's not a huge issue. Mainline Touhou, for me, is at its most enjoyable when it's encouraging you to move fast, and giving you a lot of opportunities to grab extra lives (but still expecting you to go out of your way for them, as opposed to in some games where they're just a thing that happens) in exchange for extra-challenging bullet hell, and thanks to the UFO system, this game is the absolute peak of that. I think on a pure gameplay level, this is my absolute favorite game in the entire series, even if there is one game in particular that I haven't gotten to yet which just barely ranks higher than it for me overall. Anyway, moving on from gameplay, the story of the game revolves around the expedition by Murasa, Shou, Nazrin and Ichirin into Makai to free Byakuren Hijiri, a Buddhist nun who was sealed away by humans a thousand years ago for her kindness towards youkai, the previously mentioned four all being youkai she helped at some point; aside from Nazrin, she was just sent by the god Bishamonten to help Shou specifically. Noticing the youkai's strange flying ship in the sky, the player's chosen character, either Reimu, Marisa, or in her first playable appearance, Sanae, decides to go and give it a look, for one reason or another. Some stuff happens, and eventually, the main character ends up freeing Byakuren by themselves, and after this, Byakuren is allowed to return to Gensokyo alongside the youkai who went to save her after all this time, and creates the Myouren Buddhist temple. After the events of the main game, though, Reimu/Marisa/Sanae are still curious about just what those UFO things that seemed to be everywhere were, so they investigate and find that they were actually fragments of a flying vault that were disguised as UFOs by Nue Houjuu, a youkai who was sealed underground but later released thanks to Okuu's actions in Subterranean Animism (loving the continuity between games here), and then decided to get a little silly just for the fun of it and make everyone think the fragments of the flying vault were UFOs. I personally quite like this story. Having covered each mainline game one by one through this series, I've noticed that this seems to be the point where Touhou stories start to have a little more to them than before, with a few more characters actually getting to do things that are directly relevant to the story in some way; EoSD had 1, Remilia, PCB and IN had 2 each, Yuyuko/Yukari and Eirin/Kaguya, PoFV had 2, Komachi and Eiki, and MoF/SA had 1 each, Kanako and Utsuho. UFO, by comparison, has 4, those being Nazrin (found the jewelled pagoda necessary to free Byakuren), Murasa (captain of the flying ship that sailed into Makai), Shou (brought the jewelled pagoda into Makai) and Nue (disguised pieces of the flying vault as UFOs); you can argue it actually has 5 if you count Byakuren, given that she's the whole reason anything here is even happening and creates the Myouren Temple at the end of the game, but during the main story she doesn't directly do anything by herself, so I didn't include her in the list. Regardless of if you count her or not, my point is that this is the first time more than 2 characters have had a direct role in the events of the game beyond simply helping someone else do stuff, like Sakuya or Reisen in previous games. Despite the game's relatively simple story, this still helps it feel like it has a bit more going on than previous games, a trend that continues to varying extents throughout future games, which I enjoy a lot. It's not particularly exceptional, but it's still on the upper end of Touhou stories for me, something which is definitely helped by its excellent cast of characters. I'm actually not sure which Touhou game has my favorite cast of characters, but this is definitely one I'd consider if I had to make that choice. Everyone here (except Ichirin) appeals to me on some level; Nazrin is admittedly a little carried by NYN memes for me, but I like her design, Kogasa is funny, Murasa and Shou just generally have really cool designs and I enjoy their vibes a lot, Byakuren is just eh here but I like her a lot in AoCF (I do love how she has a direct reference to one of Shinki's spellcards here though, that was a pleasant surprise when I first fought her), and Nue's design combined with her really just being a silly little gremlin creature who enjoys getting up to mischief makes her my favorite of this game's cast. Admittedly, I do kind of despise Ichirin, but that's more because she doesn't do anything for me personally and I'm annoyed she got the character slot in the more recent trilogy of fighting games instead of literally anyone else from this game, as opposed to it being down to any actually unlikeable traits she has herself, so I won't pretend she's poorly written or at all unlikeable by herself. While there's not a single character here that I'd personally consider a series favorite, or even a top 10, I like nearly everyone here enough that it's one of the most consistent casts in the series for me, and I don't think the fact there's only one single character introduced here that I don't actively enjoy to some extent is something that can be applied to any other game in the series, so credit where credit is due. This game also managed to give Sanae a personality, something which from what I've seen no other game in the series has managed to do, so I can appreciate its character writing for that as well. Lastly, I want to briefly talk about the game's soundtrack, or more accurately, one song in particular. The whole soundtrack is great, don't get me wrong (Captain Murasa is especially a banger), but there's not much I have to say about most of it... except for Fires of Hokkai. After the extremely chaotic but enjoyable stage 5, and the similarly hectic battle with Shou, stage 6 is comparatively easy, representing a slightly bizarre sense of calm as you finally reach the place where Byakuren has been sealed away for all this time, and Fires of Hokkai does an excellent job at enhancing the vibe stage 6 goes for, so I feel like that one in particular is worth mentioning by itself. Come to think of it, the dynamic between stage 5 and 6 here kind of reminds me of Mystic Square's fifth and sixth stages, which makes me wonder if it was partially an intentional reference to that game or if it's just a coincidence, but given the previously mentioned Shinki spellcard reference, I lean towards thinking it's the former. Overall, Undefined Fantastic Object is a great and extremely fun game, being by far my favorite of the second Windows era, and it's one of the ones I come back to the most of any game in this series. I honestly can't think of a single thing I don't like about it, which isn't something I can say of most of this series, and I think it's definitely worth playing if you somehow haven't already.

So at the start I'm Deiffu and i've been a touhou fan for atleast a year now. I'm really into bullet hell games and as for now i have 1cc'd four mainline games. Also im a somewhat skilled artist tho i'm not really good at it yet. My favorite 2hu is Mamizou.

Hi. So, I've been into touhou for roughly 3 years now, and I like and consume stuff around it quite frequently. Music, artworks, fumos, the works. But even though I've known touhou for so long... I've never actually got to play much of the original games. I have only played th06 and I didn't even manage to complete it on any diff. "But why?" You may be wondering. The answer for that is: I don't know. I honestly don't know. I have played lots and lots of fangames (playing lotus labyrinth right now, for example) but I never felt compelled or motivated enough to pick up the series to play, not even because I don't enjoy it, much on the contrary, I have a lot of fun with it! Even though I'm bad, I never got demotivated because of its difficulty (because, let's be honest, if you pick up touhou, you pick it up knowing it's hard). I just don't feel "interested" enough, so to speak. And it hits me hard because I feel weird by playing all these touhou themed games but never having the courage to just play the damn originals once in a while. I know it's a weird topic to bring up, but I've been thinking about it for a while now, and I had to put it out on words. What do you think?

I'm just gonna go ahead and shoot down this line of thinking immediately, and loudly for everyone in the back: Yes, you can be a Touhou fan and not play the games. Touhou Project is more than just a few space shooters. You've got fangames that cover pretty much every genre imaginable, tons of printworks (both official and doujin), full-blown anime made by some seriously dedicated fans, on top of the years and years worth of fan art and fan music. That is Touhou Project. Sorry if that's not exactly what your post was trying to ask about, but considering the fact that gatekeeping is a real thing, I don't want to leave any ambiguity on this. There is nothing wrong with deciding that the games aren't really your thing and just enjoying Touhou for the stuff you actually like. I wouldn't blame you in the slightest for not being "interested" in the shoot-em-up games. I also had a time when I was getting into Touhou, so I tried the official games, and I did have a good time with them. I had fun. A lot of fun, even. It was during a time when I specifically wanted to play something simple and arcade-y and I didn't mind that I was going through the same motions over and over again to try and get a little further than before. But, my tastes changed over time. I wanted to try something new, and moving from Touhou 7 to Touhou 8 isn't gonna give me that new experience I was craving. Now I only go back to them every now and then when I find myself in that certain "Touhou" kind of mood, and there's nothing wrong with that. So no, don't feel like playing the official games is some kind of necessity for keeping your membership card. If you feel like picking them back up, do it. And if you don't, then don't. The important thing is making sure you're enjoying yourself in whatever area of the fandom you're spending your time with.

In my personal opinion: The bad fans are the ones that try to categorize other fans because of what they like or what they have did about something Look, i have friends that i presented Touhou to, and i'm not a veteran or nothing, i only played some of the games and the first Touhous i've beaten were fangames like Thousand Night Anamnesis and Touhou Fantasia For me, Touhou stopped being just a game a long ago, nowadays it is a whole universe, the people i presented Touhou to haven't beaten any of the games but look, some know even more than i know about it, and look, is a universe just like Pokemon and that stuff, i barely saw a Pokemon fan that played the games or even watched the animes, but they really like the whole Pokemon universe, like, what categorize if you are or not a true fan? Exactly, only you, you know it the way you know, and the same goes to other people, like i said in the fanon vs canon thread, people can like any shit, it goes in their taste, and if they wanna know more about it, they can just search for it Like, i'm into Touhou for 2 months already and my friends that joined the community some weeks ago talk a lot about it and we can talk perfectly about the Touhou universe, people that categorize other people because of what they know about something aren't nothing more than brainless people living in their own shells where what they know is a standard that everyone else should follow Touhou is more than a game as i said, just look at that, hundreds and hundreds of characters, various kinds of games and fangames, figures and a lot of arts and even TV shows, like, what would be a true fan when there's thousands of stuff to like about Touhou? In the mid of everything into Touhou, if you like the fighting games, the bullet hell games, the animes or even the fanmade mangas and books, what matters? The important is that you like it, i started getting into Touhou thanks to fumos and what makes me someone with a "lower fan level"? The only thing that separates if you're a true fan or not, is what those shitheads put in their own minds, there's not a testament or anything you have to do to join the Touhou community Sorry if i said anything wrong btw!

Made a video compiling a bunch of things that could be helpful for those struggling with the games. I'm not a lunatic player or anything but I've been at it for a while so I thought I'd share what I learned over the years. I probably missed a lot of stuff so, do add anything else you know that could be good to keep in mind for the games.

(Tradition dictates a Star Wars reference, but I don't want to jinx it; doubles as a Mystic Square reference.) IT'S TIME! Announcing the eighth Moriya Shrine Remix Tournament! I think my previous explanation was pretty good, so I'm just going adjust it slighty: Enrollment will be open for approximately one week. Each participant shall submit three musical arrangements/remixes via Messages. The tournament itself shall consist of rounds of three remixes each, with each participant reviewing entries in their preferred manner of numbering system and commentary; rating of participant's own submissions is not discouraged, but will not affect the final score. Once all submissions have been featured and reviewed, the ratings shall be tallied to determine the "winner." Anyone and everyone is invited! If there are any questions, feel free to inquire! Referencing previous tournaments may be helpful for clarification, though they should not be taken as "standards;" the goal is to have fun and appreciate music. [Currently] Enrolled Participants: @buskerdog @Tenkko @Shionne Imeris @Drunken_Flower @Gou the frog @SasaMisa @CountVonNumenor

This is probably one of the least educated takes I've seen on this specific matter thus far. The main problem is that the reason that this type of character is prevalent is somehow framed as some Japan-exclusive psychological thing regarding femininity and underlying "dodgy pedophilia" (????) that's being manifested. If some underlying real-life attraction towards "cutesy and childlike" is what this is based on, then I'm afraid we'd be seeing it worldwide: (Even girls as young as 12 outclassed women above the age of 21) I don't mean to insult your compadre but I'd advise that they cool it with the armchair anthropology and psychoanalysis. Sexual attraction specifically is not at the root of every human interaction and creation. Probably for the same reasons western art went from this to this. Art doesn't evolve in a linear manner, and a variety of factors (ranging from different cultural inputs to even possibly very minor genetic structure differences) will influence said evolution. There's still art being made in Japan by Japanese people that isn't in the "anime style" and while I don't live in Japan I'd say it's a safe bet to assume it's just as well received among the general public, but just might not be as popular an export. It just sort of fits the medium, doesn't it? Simpler shapes, overly expressive faces, proportions that allow for very loose and dynamic movement etc. etc. Let's also not forget that one of the first popular serialized manga series (as well as among the first televised anime series) was Astro Boy. It began publishing not too long after the nuclear attacks on Japan during WW2, meant to (among other things) show the brilliant potential of positively harnessed nuclear power as well as mankind's need to be responsible with it. One would think that making Atom a sincere, innocent and cutesy character would make the readers more easily fond of him thus making it easier to interface with the story despite the tough subject matter. (There's probably a lot more things that play into this too and I'd hate to wrongly deliver information based on my surface level analysis, I'm no expert and I suggest anyone interested do their own research) Assuming we're talking exclusively about character designs intentionally made to be moe (and thus exlucing manga series like Lupin, Kaiji, HnK etc. etc. though moe is a very broad term and can even be applied to characters within those, just not in the way you might think), it's just that physical characteristics which humans find cute (if you look at Konrad Lorenz's categorization of cuteness in living things, you'll find that a lot of the attributes described there match up with what you're talking about) are the easiest ways to invoke affection. And having your readers/viewers/whatever feel affection towards your characters is the easiest way to proliferate any work of fiction, be it for monetary gain or otherwise (there are actually interesting studies on the commercialization of moe in Japan specifically). As for people hating it, give 'em another decade or two. Perhaps in a different time on an old message board there was a thread titled "Why the general hate for video games?"

Because cute girls cute

ask yourself do you like touhou? just answer yes or no that's all, it's not that deep