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I "discovered" Touhou around March 2021 through a friend's recommendation of the Bad Apple shadow art video. 6 months before that, I had opened my mind up to anime, which I had an irrational hate against. My (ex)-friend told me that it was, I kid you not, "the national anthem for weebs" (that friend ended up not being the nicest person, to say the least). Anyway, about a month after I discovered the video, so April 2021, Megapig's Bad Apple history and analysis video appeared in my recommended, and I decided to watch it. That's how I ended up discovering Touhou, and right before UM came out too. I don't remember exactly when Utsuho became my favorite character. After looking at my introduction post on the MotK forum, I can determine that it was at least before September 2021. I don't know exactly what it is about her, but I just love her so much, both her fanon and canon sides. I actually have been making a fanwork, a written work about Yukari. I'm in the process of writing Chapter 6, but I haven't really touched it in a while. Writer's block will do that to you. I've actually made a post here on Moriya, I'll link it below: Otherwise, here is the current publication of my story: 東方偽現実 〜 Cruelty of Verisimilar Existence In the past, I updated the public document with each Chapter release, but now I plan on releasing multiple chapters at once according to their "act". Chapter 5 was an exception though, I just wanted to give a little gift in conjunction with Christmas and the New Year. Please continue to ask questions, I'll be happy to answer them!

Forgot to post this one here whoops. Checking out some of the games from the Touhou Fan Game Jam 10 that happened recently, it was a really fun one!

I'm back!! ^^

Wish I had seen this topic earlier. Shinra-Bansho for me is one of, if not my favourite group. (actually no since Halozy exists) I still, to this day, am to find a song that vibes as hard as netaminity. I don't know what it is or what it does to me, but holy crap do I like that song. I like it enough to have a playlist with 77 songs just from shinran lol all in all, they make some pretty good songs yeah that's about it it's 3AM and I'm too lazy to write anything else

I've been keeping quiet on this topic for a while, mainly because I could never quite get my thoughts in order on it. Hell, I'm not even convinced I have them in order now. The main issue I have with trying to answer this kind of question is: "Yeah, obviously there are people exhibit bad behavior who are also big fans of anime, but how much of that bad behavior is anime's 'fault?' And if it's not anime's fault, than whose is it? The viewer? The community? Something else entirely? Or all of the above?" I wish I had a conclusion for that, but I don't, so in no particular order, here are my thoughts relevant to the thread. So, I think we can all agree that imitating media is generally not a smart idea. Media is filtered and polished and crafted to form and support a narrative, and reality just isn't like that. That's not to say that media doesn't portray reality, but it's never a perfect reflection and it never will be. And as such, mimicking any piece of media and expecting the results to turn up like that media had is astronomically stupid. And the thing is, this isn't exclusive to anime. One of my favorite examples of my friend-and-flatmate being just the dumbest thing alive happened a couple of years back. I wasn't present for this, so I have to go off of recounting. He was in a group call with a bunch of friends, and as a gesture of camaraderie, he told one of his lady-friends in the group that "she's his bitch." He was absolutely dumbfounded why the entire group call turned on him and collectively agreed that that wasn't cool. And when I asked him what could possibly convince him to say something so fantastically stupid, the answer exceeded even my expectations. See, in chick-flick films, it's not uncommon to have a group of women get together and call each other "bitchezzz" in their stereotypical valley-girl accent as light jabs to affirm their tight friendship, and he believed he could do the same and expected to receive a glorious Yas Queen! reception, completely oblivious of just how different the two scenarios are. My brain couldn't fathom the thought process needed to get to that point. Sure, the incident didn't leave a negative impact on their friendship. She understood that he didn't mean any offense by it, but still had to dress him down and tell him he can't just do that. It highlights my point: dude watches movies, thinks that what he watches indicates how he can behave, and reality steps in and says "No, it doesn't go down like that." One of the things about anime that really sucks is how people perceive it. Specifically, this really dumb narrative that anime is this "more mature" alternative to watching cartoons. And on a surface level, there's some truth to that. Anime is no stranger to showing gratuitous amounts of violent and sexual material that would never get greenlit for production here in the States. Most anime, just by nature of what they decide to put onscreen, would heavily straddle the line between PG-13 and R ratings. But all of that violence and blood and sex don't actually make anime a more mature story; it has basically no impact on how the story or characters are written. Most anime are pretty simple stories once you've broken them down; they just have a lot of flair given to them that you don't see as much of in other animation. Some people look up to anime for being more "mature" when it really isn't. This one's personal, but I absolutely h a t e how much anime treats its own viewers like complete losers. Seriously, how did get to a point in society where everyone can collectively pan HBO's Velma for cynically insulting its own audience, but anime can frequently write the most unpleasant, grotesque depictions of anime fans and their culture and people are like "omg it me frfr"? And this goes both ways. Anime fans should not be celebrating being depicted as human waste. Not only is it not a good look for them to people outside of anime, but I'd wager it paints a picture for those anime fans on what being an anime fan should be like, and that's awful. The Isekai genre is particularly nasty about this, as its very premise tells the audience, "Hey, see this absolute fuckin' waste of life who does nothing but play video games, watch anime, and buy merchandise that definitely isn't you? Wouldn't it be cool if, instead of expanding and improving their current life, they were instead given a new one where their decisions or lack thereof actually put them at the top of the food chain?" One of my favorite manga and anime, Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku completely does away with this and has all of its main characters be stable, working adults leading fulfilling, albeit eccentric, lives. It was genuinely moving to have an anime tell me that I can still enjoy the things I love and be passionate about them, and also be a functioning adult. And it still gets to be funny and poke fun at the less appealing aspects of otaku culture without coming across as completely dismissing it. This one's a personal pet theory of mine, but I'm convinced that "anime" and "the internet" are a match made in hell. Anime is centered heavily around melodrama; emotions are presented at fever-pitch to really hit viewers with raw feelings right where it hurts. And I love it for it. It's fun to watch. But if anyone's every actually talked to someone who tries to get melodramatic like an anime would, you know they're some of the most insufferable people to ever exist. And where can you go to find people who get tons of attention and clout for being loud, hyperreactive, and overly emotional? Yeah. I wanna be harder on the kids and teens who treat anime like it's some perfect representation of Japan for being stupid, because it is genuinely stupid to think any piece of media is wholely representative of where it came from. But it's hard to really be upset about it from the outside because that kind of half-heartedness is pretty universal. The Dunning-Kruger Effect wouldn't be a thing if there was only one notable example of it. I get it. You watch anime, and you pick up little bits and pieces of info about Japanese culture and language from it, and you start thinking you're some sort of expert because you technically know more than nothing. It's obnoxious to be sure, but that's nothing unique to anime, and anyone with half a functioning brain and/or access to Google can very quickly dismantle any drivel they decide to pass off as fact. I do wanna close out my thoughts on a hopeful note, though. See, anime's gotten exponentially more popular and widespread through the last decade or so. It may be bold to say so, but I think that if it hasn't already become so, anime is only a few degrees off from being mainstream. And anime fans will likely disagree with that sentiment, since otaku and weebs have gotten pretty comfortable with this stigma that they're perpetually ostracized, but we're getting close to the point where saying you watch anime will be as innocuous as saying you go out to the movies. More importantly, adults who watch anime will be having children who watch anime. Anime will stop being this weird generational gap where fans insist that all these old people just don't understand, because they will. And parents will actually be in a good position to talk to their kids about anime, and their respective good and bad takeaways. Hopefully a lot of that bad behavior we see from anime fans will die down as everyone collectively gets more informed about it. Maybe that's being too optimistic, but I'd like to imagine a coming generation where anime is as normalized a hobby as, say, being a comic book fan post-Marvel's MCU.

Sorry in advance, I’m replying to you really really late and I’m writing this message on my phone so it’s not really convenient ^-^ So thank you very much for all the information you’ve bring me (I’ve never heard of Paul Cabanes before), I was thinking about the topic and kinda came to the conclusion that, it’s not the culture itself which have a negative impact but the value or moral teens learn with it. Anime sometimes revolve around sexualizing normal and innocent stuff (like school uniforms lol) and pretend that there’s nothing wrong about it, also I often see some kids acting like psycho just because they think it’s cool and normal :/ So, it’s not specific to Japanese culture I guess because I’ve seen recently that some Japanese girl who like French culture (the fake one) dress up like princess because they think it’s the way we dress up in France. Here, the impact of French culture is also negative on those girls because they tea live far away from the reality and it’s kinda ridiculous ^^