vanyk

I am sorry for not being active for a while. I have had some IRL work to do. But I hope I will be able to finish it soon.

Alright, this is mostly speculation, but do you think ZUN gets "that much" royalties from all the commercial collabs like cafes and etc? It seems ZUN operates in a "permission-based" mindset for most of them, and doesn't really care about profits or whether they give royalties. Would Ruw really be approving each and every single official collabs himself, like this Chinese lawson collab, and ensuring that they give royalties? Might it mean that for Touhou commercial collabs, they might not have to pay as much royalties as other otaku anime series?

Alright, as of now, there should be 3 2hu events confirmed for 2026 in Korea, which are 미래세기로의 초대장 in January, 환상몽원도 in February, and 환상일주 in July. 온 동네가 환상향 had their first in Oct 2024 (first announced in April 2024 and their second in Nov 2025 (announced in August 2025), so they should be all but making their announcement for the third one in mid 2026. Seeing as 온동환 currently has the most presence out of these 4 at 626 followers, you could say it's currently the flagship touhou convention in Korea for now.
Ps. 겐소아토 should also be making an announcements for their 2nd event next spring, since they announced their first one at March 2025.
(hopefully you didn't research all of this already)

I think it is about time to forget about previous dramas, because the current problem is much more serious.
Western Touhou fancontent creators should unite their actions if they want the current problem to be noticed and solved. The bad thing now is that a lot of fanmade content is in danger because of using Touhou assets. The worst thing to do now is giving up. If we want to change the situation we should stand strong and united.
Japanese fans should know that because of current actions by Ruw fancontent on Youtube is in danger.
We must prepare for Ruw's next actions.

If you have any more evidences of fanmade content which was hit (like fanmade ost, MMD, etc.), please send it in this thread (if you don't want to post them here for any reasons, you can DM me here or on MotK). Thank you.

東方幻存神籤 Whispered Oracle of Hakurei Shrine is out.
By the way, nearly all pages are already published online (it is not April 1 joke). Have fun.

Hello. I am somewhat back. I am preparing an article about one very interesting incident in 2018 and its consequences. Not many Western fans know about it, but I think this incident was really important for Touhou. I hope I will finish it soon.

Hello. I want to make an announce.
The article about the history of Touhou Doujin will be published this weekend and this article is quite big. This article relies on statistics, research papers and conferences. This article will cover changes in Touhou Doujin that happened during these two decades and the problems it faced.
I hope you will enjoy reading it.

Hello. I am sorry I wasn't active for around two weeks, I had to do a lot of work to do IRL and related to the database of Touhou events (it took much more time than I expected).

But now I can make an announcement: the database is fully finished. It combines a lot of info collected by TESC, THBWiki and information from other places. I want to thank TESC, THBWiki and other people who tracked Touhou events because it helped a lot.

This project helped me to know much more about different events. Now I can say that a lot of things Touhou researchers say about this is mostly true, but some data is outdated or has mistakes. For example looking at the data now I can say that processes during 2014-2019 were more complex than it was described in previous researches (because some data was missed)

So now I will cover info which we can get by statistics and info from previous researches. So we can know what  happened in Touhou Doujin (major part of Japanese Touhou community) for two decades and its current state.

For now I can say say that Touhou-only events in Japan are mostly about offline activities (COVID and Post-COVID times prove this). I will cover mostly sales events, but there are a lot of kinds of Touhou-only events and combinations of them (for example there is an event which combines sales, concert, cosplay and dancing).

And now I will publish some teasers:

Hello. I want to make a small announce.

Lately, I have been preparing a post about evolution of Touhou Doujin. It is based on works by researchers of Touhou Doujin and statistical data from doujin sales events. And there is a problem why I have not finished it yet.

There are two big databases which can be used for getting macro indicators of Touhou Doujin: TESC (mostly used by Japanese) and THBWiki (mostly used by Chinese). Both of them have serious problems: THBWiki counts only the number of taken places (and doesn't count the number of circles) and the data is mostly unfilled for events past 2019-2021 (like here); TESC doesn't add a lot of events (for example in 2018 they didn't add at least 8 events, in 2019 - 9 events, in 2020 - 26 events (most of them are canceled though, but TESC include info about canceled events)). But from the side of getting macro indicators TESC's data is better, but it is not enough.

So all this time I have been collecting data about different Touhou Doujin events and making the database (based on TESC's database, data by THBWiki and a lot of data from other places) for researching the evolution of Touhou Doujin. Because I don't want to make conclusions which are based on nothing, so I cannot continue without that data.

That is why I was not very active lately and why I haven't finished the post yet. I hope I will finish filling data and will finish the post this month.

Only recently I realized HOW difficult it is to research doujin. This might be useful for anyone who will try to research doujin.

I wanted to find participation fees for Comiket during latest 10 years (well, I needed info about it). I checked their website (it had only info about fees for C102 and C103 and about fees for renting changing rooms), checked circle.ms (it seems like pages about Comikets before around C89 have been removed), checked both sites using web archive (Comiket's site said to check circle.ms, but pages for old Comikets were not saved). Only randomly googling I found some old news articles which had info about it...
And this is a major doujin event, there are more than 3000 organizers. And the only actual info we have about it is statistics they published for C81, statistics about foreign participants for C96, statistics they publish about number of circles for each category, number of visitors, several small surveys, list of circles (good luck checking all >20000 circles) and that is all.
If there are such problems with Comiket, what about other events? (for example I have seen some medium sized events for all genres, where to find the number of participated circles is a problem)
The problem is that nearly each Touhou Doujin event (big, medium and small ones) have much more info (+ to check fees you just need to open a site and find page for circles), there are convenient databases by THBWiki and TESC about all events.

There is another problem which researchers of Touhou noticed (in around 2016): major Touhou Doujin events are not representative enough, they do not show the state of whole Touhou Doujin scene.
Some circles which research doujin scene in different regions of Japan noticed that in different regions (and different cities) different series may be popular and there may be different trends. And it is not often when one genre/series is spread among doujin circles and events in most regions of Japan.

So just researching Touhou Doujin and seeing some example in Doujin we can make a conclusion: major Doujin events are not representative enough to show the state of WHOLE Doujin scene. But there are around 1000 events yearly, some (or many, because it is hard to check) of them do not have good statistics, some of them may be missed. And we don't have a database of ALL doujin events. Why? Because nearly everyone who tries to research doujin mostly pays attention only to Comiket or some other big events or series they like (and in many cases those are popular series) or Touhou.
Touhou is very convenient to research, there are not THAT many events, they are arranged all over the country, there is good statistics. But Touhou Doujin is not the whole Doujin, it cannot show the whole situation, and Touhou Doujin is somewhat different.
It is nearly impossible to check the state of WHOLE doujin now. We have to rely on info we have and reports and notices by non-indifferent circles.
[Do not take the next thing very serious] Looking at Comiket I have a theory that it entered a period which Touhou Doujin had 11-12 years ago. But it is hard (and too early) to say if this theory is correct and if it covers the whole Doujin scene. (but I have seen a doujinshi which covered discussions about this topic)
 

I think I will cover info I found about Doujin and Touhou Doujin in different posts. One of books I read lately really motivated me to split them. I will try to make a post about Doujin next week when it is ready.

TheCritical / TheBlindingHeadache / Oriental Demon / My_Bones_Are_Losing_Calcium (yes, he changed his nickname a lot of times) hid all his videos again.
Web Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20240124130145/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgMqLRD2nYBf2yhffNdlMxQ/videos
Please, come back.

Danmakufu wiki ( https://danmakufu.wiki.fc2.com/ ) is down.
Web archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20230119091754/https://danmakufu.wiki.fc2.com/wiki/ステージ (一覧)

Another thing that many fans do not see is that except official works there are also officially approved works. Official works is everything made by ZUN himself what is considered to be official. Officially approved works are the works that were officially allowed by ZUN to be made (for example works by companies, otherwise they are violating the guideline) and got official licence. The key point here here is that approval is required according to the rules.

Everything else, what is not official or officially approved, are derivative works. They can be made as long they are within the rules. The only complicated part here are official works in which some parts were not made by ZUN (for example art in official manga). These works are official, the parts not by ZUN are also official (if they are considered official (for example most manga in BAiJR is unofficial, but BAiJR is official work)), but as ZUN gives a fair amount of freedom (with some supervision) for creators, the parts which were not specified by ZUN (for example characters' designs and their height) may be considered as officially allowed (so most calculations about heights of characters (and sizes of objects) in manga does not make much sense, I am sorry Lotus Eaters translators).

What are actual difference between officially approved and derivative works? If we will ignore things like financial resources and requirement of approval and we will not place officially approved works higher or lower than derivative works then there are no difference between them. Officially approved works have more resources (because they are made by companies) and they require approval by ZUN, while derivative works do not need this. All officially approved works have licence by ZUN, while derivative works don't need it, but some of them may get licence too (for example if they are published in official magazines).
Official works are separated from officially approved and derivative works.

So not everything that has licence is official, and officially approved ≠ official.

Some Japanese discussion about that (Google translated):

Hello. I want to share some thoughts I have after observing Japanese Touhou community for some time. I see that a lot of non-Japanese fans do not see some things the same way as Japanese fans see it. So, I think it is important to share such notices to reduce the amount of misunderstandings.

It is important to understand that a lot of Japanese people (and ZUN) understand Copyright and respect not in the same way Western people see it, and there are a lot of misunderstandings because of that (and there may be problems because of that). That leads to a big number of unspoken rules (except official guideline) which most Japanese fans understand, but Western fans do not know about them. Examples:
1. Raising money before work's release (for example crowdfunding) is still a no-no in doujin sphere even now. It somewhat changed after COVID (because some doujin circles and even doujin events realized that they need to find a way to survive), so it is not that big no-no now. What about Touhou? In 2014 and 2015 there were 2 attempts to make fan content with crowdfunding. What important to note that many Japanese fans weren't supporting them (especially after ZUN's interview in 2014 (after first attempt) and Ruw's comments in 2015 (during the second one)). For a long time nobody attempted to do it again but after COVID some big circles contacted ZUN directly and he allowed them to do the crowdfunding campaigns. After that ZUN changed this unspoken rule to actual rule: crowdfunding is not very welcome, but if you really want to do it, you need to get ZUN's allowance.
2. If you want to make a new strong, solid or big (and the border of this is very vague) fanwork based on another (fan)work (for example fan album), you cannot steal art and music from the original work (examples: a lot of unreleased scripts (a few examples) (a lot of them were unreleased because of that), TCL, RE: TLC)
3. Most unofficial uploads of official Touhou music and arranges (and doujinshi and paid fan games download links) on Youtube or other sites are considered as piracy (you should ask for allowance from doujin circles, or they may DMCA you (a lot of content from Youtube disappeared because of that (some of them, they uploaded vocal arranges of Touhou songs))) (Also, Japanese fans were surprised when ZUN said that he listened to them to refresh his memory of some his old works (first of all they were surprised that ZUN cannot remember everything, next they were surprised that ZUN listen to pirate uploads of his music)).

Also about AI. There is no strict unspoken rule about that. I have covered that before, TL;DR: ZUN don't like AI, but you can use it in your fanworks (even for doujin events). But a lot of Japanese fans don't really like AI.

Also there may be some more unspoken rules I don't know or I have forgot about.

For a lot of Western fans such unspoken rules are strange and weird, they are not in the guideline, but for many Japanese fans such rules are natural. There are also some other strange official limitations (thanks to Ruw, and maybe ZUN), but they are well-known for fan content creators because they are in guideline.

Touhou Vote Questionnaire statistics:



Popularity of characters from UDoALG:
Enoko - 111
Biten - 110
Chiyari - 97
Zanmu - 87
Hisami - 81

Popularity of OST from Taboo Japan Disentanglement:
Dawn Breaks on Tanabatazaka - 214
Tinkerbell of Inequality - 163
Mugen Noh ~ Taboo Marionette - 200
The Lonely Road of Hitachi - 250
Ghosts Exist Even When It's Not Night - 149

 Boost of Akyuu's popularity is already a meme:

Touhou Mystia's Izakaya anime was announced.

View attachment 5033

Official announcement:

View attachment 5034

(bad) Translation:

The visual publicity map of the animation of the Mystia's Izakaya mentioned earlier was announced.
Preparations have begun in all aspects, let's see if we can prepare more things before the big festival. Doujin animation, not commercial animation;
An episode may be about 15 minutes, excluding OP and ED;
Slice of life style, relaxed and funny atmosphere;
I will prepare daily matching (there are good daily matching partners), and I don't have a particularly good idea for the middle matching, so I will take a look at the situation for the time being;
Do one episode first, and then do the next episode according to the income situation. If the situation is good, I will continue to do it. If the current episode loses more harm, that's it.
To be honest, please lower your expectations first to have a better experience.

Other recent announcements:
https://www.bilibili.com/opus/965841731502211081
https://tieba.baidu.com/p/9131987565

Reaction: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1gLeueWEZg

Old announcements:
https://www.bilibili.com/opus/927252910636531721?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0 (+ concept arts)

I am a Slowpoke, but what has happened to Roka Enzaki? She deleted all her Touhou styled music and deleted her Twitter account.

Dude, I got to commend you for your information, I didnt know anything about the DDOS attack and how bad it is

I do not understand the slang. Is it good or bad, and if it is bad, why it is?
View attachment 4874