CountVonNumenor

Randomly, I have heard about this convention that took place in the US in 2014 and 2015. Apparently it proved to be a bit of a fail, and was never held afterwards. Since I did not know too much about it beforehand, I will just leave a link to a video about it. And just to leave here one more bit of thing, not so related to the Touhoucon, but more about the community as expressed by people who watched this video: Huh, for the longest time I struggled to see Touhou in any bad light (hence I gave it the title of the most "purest" Fandom (at least compared to MHA and more mainstream stuff)) but this one could be the first stain I see in this community. Granted it is not THAT big of a stain, but a stain non of the less. Thanks for sharing this news. I still hold the opinion that Touhou still has THE most purest Fandom compared to other franchises but no one is immune to mistakes. Here's for the hope that the next Touhou con is a good one! EDIT - ok so a lot are saying things back at my statement so let me expand. When I say pure I dont mean free from R34 or hentai and stuff. that is 100% normal in any Japanese media. What I meant pure is in modern western anime terms. Like the MHA or Danganronpa fandom, I can never skip a day where I don't see someone in the fandom getting cancelled or trying to push a political thing or having backlash from creator to fan and etc. If anything I say the Kinda low profile of the Touhou community is a good thing as at least we mostly behave online. I rarely seen Touhou fans fuck up on that department. I use pure as I don't know any other word or phrase so if you all got better ideas, let me know. And in reply to that first comment: The Touhou community hides the smartest people. The percentage mathematicians / physicists, philosopher and musicians I found in the TH groups I join far exceeds any other community I have seen. I wouldn't call any community pure, because it's made up of human and as a creature, we are doomed to be flawed. I haven't played Lost Words, but I have played Danmaku Kagura (I was hyped about it cuz I haven't played a rhythm game like this for over 7 years). I played for 5 days and I quit, not because the game or the community is bad, but it just doesn't feel Touhou-like. Seeing all the fast-paced gaming experience just like other gacha / rhythm games I was... I can't say disappointed, but I doubt this is the core idea of Touhou. ZUN's personal / original goal of making Touhou is to use it as a medium for music, which is also the original reason I joined this fandom. However as I dug deeper I found things that sparked my interests: programming, philosophy and even mathematics. The beauty of all this is not their individual complexity, but rather how they come in at the right place and play their parts. As for conventions, I don't really give many shit now because the Japanese government is oppressing the holding of conventions for their potency in spreading Covid. This is still fine, but the way that they banish published materials for illegitimated reasons is what drive me and part of the fanbase off. That's why we have conventions held on the dark web (Onionket, search it up if you are interested), because the fanbase isn't the whole of the issue, but also the bullshit politics. On this point, with the amount of R-18 and even R-18G tags I have seen on pixiv and booru is enough to put TH community high on the guillotine list of "feminism" and "child pornography". There's much more that I can go into with the horrible abduction of "freedom" and "justice" with an innocent community, but I think you get the picture. In the end, I do indeed hope that Touhou remains a huge yet behind-the-curtain community. Because the little amount of lore present in the original game, the space for creativity has definitely made it one of the most fascinating community ever. I don't wish things from this community make world headlines or become blockbusters, but when people comes around the corner and picked a piece of story up down at the space, I hope it could change their day a little. I have drifted too far away from the original topic, so sorry for wasting your 6 min of reading time, have a good day :D.

Wait, you say that that mods and admin team for LW Global is more active than for any other gacha game that was brought from Japan? Also yeah, many times JP creators seem to only care about their local community, although I do feel like I have this pinions about most of the Touhou fan stuff created in Japan, and not just games like Lost Word. Also, by "big freebies" you mean how generous the game has been recently? I think I have already expressed my opinion on the matter, and why I think this whole attitude of the game seems a bit fishy and questionable to me.

I might have yet another question. Where did many (or most) of the characters spend their time before their first game appearance? Were they just chilling somewhere, still doing their regular activities somewhere far in the background, or simply did not exist/were "born" just before their featuring game/manga?

Alright, so for a bit more of news roundup: there seems to be a massive controversy among fans and in discussion groups about the release of Blue Reimu. Problems range from lazy design and animations to the insanely poor rate to gein her, the whole new Epic FES tier, the fact Blue Reimu needs a completely new kind of paper doll from the norm and Divine types (apparently, JP players received at least 1 of those new papers), and the fact this banner does not contain the Pity mechanic there has been a bit of discussion about the whole problem of powercreep among the newly introduced characters ZUN seems to have been invited for the 2 years anniversary of JP server Besides the Mayumi and Yachie banner, there seems to be nothing else important coming in the following week in Global Here are 3 discussions on some of the ongoing controversies I will report again with a status update when something new or interesting will be discussed at the community level

Looks like we are actually gonna get Mayumi starting from today, 5th of May, together with Yachie in a banner. Guess there will be some maintenance beforehand?

Yes, that one really is not too bad. It is still something I would mark with a spoiler or place in a restricted/NSFW channel though simply for the nudity. If you cover exactly that 0.001% (exaggerating the size proportion right now obviously) of it, it will become perfectly safe. Ever if the underwear is skin-tight, molds in a way that you can see the very shape of everything or it is just wet, it will still somehow be safe ( or tagged as questionable in the worse case scenario). Truly some weird conditions and standards... Also a few more Touhou examples of "somehow this is still rated safe for work" https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/18068189 https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/67123124 Indeed, this is the interesting, yet also at the same time weird part in all of the affair. To be honest, if we talk about tags, I'm gonna get back a bit to Danbooru. At what sort of stuff appears daily in the Touhou feed, I feel like at least two more tags should be used. Sorry for my blunt language right now, but the two additional tags would be "fetish" and "CP" (you know, as in in child... "corn"). Just due to the extremely questionable side of some of the works accepted there on a daily basis. I find it ironic though that that image that sparked the most hate on that platform, at least for Touhou content, has not been one of those "spicy" works, but a different skin color version of Eiki (I did mention this in the "Art Fixing" thread, but actually gonna link it now since the whole thing is worth staying aside and eat some popcorn while they are arguing). The whole mess, and a comment that gets a very interesting connection to the regular spiciness (spoilers). Keep in mind, this is apparently the most negatively rated image in the history of Danbooru. Oh, what am I not doing in the name of research... I tend to keep Pixiv on safe setting just because I have no reason for doing otherwise. Initially, for searching Touhou images I was only using Safebooru. But after a weird episode (I did not know I had to search the names of the characters in Japanese name order), I ended up on Danbooru, and was initially shocked. It was for the first time I was seeing NSFW images of the series (despite already knowing about its reputation when it comes to H-art and doujins), and also that on one of my favorite girls, Iku (so the shock was both metaphorically, and literally). With time though, I grew more and more accustomed to Danbooru, especially since it had much more art than its safe counterpart. And so I developed a bit of an immunity, I guess. Also, am I the only one who has a weird feeling when you have an artist you like, watch their stuff on Pixiv, Twitter or whatever, and form the impression they are drawing just safe for work stuff? And then, after a visit to Danbooru and seeing ALL their work, you just cannot believe how much lewd they are actually drawing, all the safe works being merely a façade and result of a simple tag being active in your settings? It is almost unreal. Or at least just weird. Please, do not try to understand me as some sort of crusader trying to combat everything that is not safe. That would be a fool's errand, and just make me look cringe. And also quite a bit of a hypocrite, because I do have the guilt of not hating all of it, me mentioning the conditions in which I find it absolutely fine just a couple pages ago in this thread. But anyway, I need to keep my train of thought still relevant on Touhou and examples of fanservice...

Speaking of relevance. Now I really do not know hw Pixiv works, but even with the "keep everything safe for work" ON, the systems to be having some hiccups. Like how I was saying that for some reason, a pair of bare boobs become safe and something everyone can watch if you cover the nipples. But I guess this kind of shock on my side is to be expected when coming from a society where everything of that nature is heavily censored, at least during daytime (except for those weird times when even the national television decided to take an interview on the beach to a topless woman and forget to censor it - AT PRIME TIME of the day) Anyway, now I really am curious how works like this ended up being considered "safe", but I just might be too prude (of course, gacha related stuff). https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/62498501 https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/61274765 (and for a bit of Touhou, even if slightly more covered) https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/49539407 I find it funny how Pixiv decided it is a good idea to have tags in the kind of "[Touhou character]'s boobs", just to make the search more clear. "We are dong this for science, I swear!" Anyway, nothing new under the sun

I see there is quite a lot of diversified tastes in here. Glad to see that

What do you mean by skin tone being moisture? There are still some terminologies I am not very used to. Also thank you. I like drawing hair that looks fluffy, or at least would to draw it as such. Wait, you drew this for Dream of Arcadia? It looks very good! I like it. Have you done anything more on that matter?

We have seen them already in the main story so please, for the love of ZUN, someone add them in the game. At least Kogasa and Mayumi. Unless they tie the appearance of normal 2hus in the game with the event they are featured in, and the only characters coming together with the story as banner are the SFES ones. It really is a shame we longer get the free costumes. I think they stopped doing it after the half a year anniversary, and was just one of the many controversies sparked at the time. Until now, I really did not play too much of it. I need to beat Floor 15, and just cannot get to do it without wasting a lot of resources. Which is even more ironic, since I have two fully upgraded SFES units (Lunar War Toyohime and Reimu Shaman). I did not manage to beat any of the EX stages either yet, despite the very strong units owned, since most of the times I try playing turn into an unorganized mess of a combat.

I can see this being a problem with the sprites from 13.5. I wonder how it would work though with those from the early fighter gamer (IaMP, SWR and Hisoutensoku), since supposedly all the character sprites are on the same level. Even if those are still quite stylized, we can at least see how the artist for the (battle) sprites interpreted it. Yeah, I really like the style of Iganashi. The characters look cute drawn that way

Honestly, I do not know either what the history of that song is. But I would really like to find out

I have called the Paranoia situation a "trainwreck" due to how messy it is in terms of who created the song and all the matter (I usually use "traniwreck" in order to refer to a mess)

Eiki has her banner right now, and that one will last for 9 more days until the 11th. As for Hina, I think she is a general pool unit, so you should be able to get her eventually. But I guess both of us are still waiting for Raiko. I do not think we should worry. At least in the case of Fantasy Rebirth, even weaker, less "meta" units got it until now like Alice, Patchouli, Seiran and Ringo, the fairies and so on. I guess everyone will get that new outfit eventually, at least among the "general" units. Never too late to the party. Anyone can join whenever they please. Also about Yuuma. She has. funnily enough, been mentioned by Saki in some of her lines. Her victory line refers to both Yachie and Toutetsu:

Oh, sorry. I misread the title of the thread. This is what happens when you write late in the night instead of sleeping. Should I just delete the reply?

I honestly have not checked if this song has already been mentioned in here, but I discovered this recently thanks to one of Asprey's livestreams. I think I did listen to it for like a hour when he played Spell Bubble as the challenge level was hard to get over during that livestream, then I decided to search the song for myself. I was not disappointed. So anyway, ladies and gentlemen, here is Flame of Fate from THE OTHER FLOWER Also this cool metal cover from YaboiMatoi for Immemorial Marketeers (bonus Mike GyateGyate)

For me, probably Medieval 2 Total War. I grew up with that game, and I really love its mods (Third Age, Stainless Steel, Tsardoms Total War etc)

Just as I was writing a reply in the Shinra-Bansho thread, and was making a bit of research into Help me, ERINNNNNN!!, my little birdbrain remembered something from almost a year ago. There is a Stack cover of that song, and it sounds just as good as I thought. How could I forget about that song?! Here it is:

I really wonder if Marisa Stole the Precious Thing got some inspiration from that short story with the idea of Alice and her straw dolls. I mean Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red appeared in 2005, and the IOSYS song came out in 2006 (at least the oldest CD I could find it on is from that year, Touhou Maidens' Orchestra). I am not sure when the PV was done, but I am sure it is not impossible to bear some influence from that imagery. Reimu really looks nice in that outfit. I wonder if there is fanart of this specific one. But at how big the art gallery is, there sure has to be something... Oh, so they were involved with Sporadically Margaret? That is quite a nice song. Honestly, now that we got into IOSYS, I have a different question. In the original post, I was asking about how did Shinra-Bansho get to interpret some of the more famous songs created by other circles. Among those, Marisa Stole the Precious Thing (Shinra-Bansho ver.), Help me Erin! and that one Nitori song that sounded extremely depressive (I forgot its name). For the latter two, I first found them through Shinra-Bansho, and thought they were the original creators of those songs until finding out they are actually from Cool and Create/ beatMARIO. I know these songs came to be most likely out of collabs and the "I Tried Singing Touhou" and "Shinra Museum" albums, but a thing makes me feel weird. At the end of Help me Erin! (Shinra-Bansho ver), the song ends with the singer literally mentioning the name of the band multiple times after also mentioning a few times the names of the singers (Ayaponzu and Ayo). Where does this come from? That part does not appear in the official lyrics as seen on the wiki, but if you listen to the song, they are there. I am not even gonna ask about the whole mess with the song Paranoia and who created it, because there are like a million versions, each of them sung by a different music group (though in the Shinra version, they again did insert the name of their band among the lyrics like a dog trying to mark its territory).

test drawing

Another reason for which we cannot really rely on sprites, at least those from Hopeless Masquerade can be seen here I have put some of the sprites together, and oh dear how weird the proportions are. I guess this is really explained by the fact each of them are at different distances. As for inconsistencies in general with the official art, check this out: That moment when even official art messes up perspective and proportions (image from Silent Sinner in Blue, notes added by a Reddit user - I have lost trace of the thread in which this was discussed)

Damn it, you got the video posted quicker than I could. I saw the post about 10 minutes after you did added it, and was about to comment back then. At least I got my revenge by being the first to post it on the big Touhou discord community. As for the new album, I really wonder what will it contain. But I do not think we will wait to wait too long, since apparently the Reitasai will come soon, so I expect the release to be there (like they did with Venten last year). Quite a nice PV indeed. We need to thank Harano for yet another set of stunning and cute visuals. For me, Yuuma got my curiosity since I first listened to her music theme(s) (like really, she has two of them, and the Akatsuki Records song seems to be based on the first theme), and I would say the music and interesting design (hey, we got a goat 2hu) caught my attention quicker than the "comically oversized spoon" / "Spork" joke. For reference, the theme I was talking about It seems to be happening more and more recently, at least from as long as I am familiar with Akatsuki Records. First it happened in July, when we got two PVs in one week (HELLOHELL and Reverse Trigger), then again in December (Consultant! and DIG IT DIG OUT). In both instances, the PVs represented the first two songs of the releasing albums. The fact we got two PVs at a distance of a couple of days might change things a little. This time, it is interesting. Blood-Stained Dancing Party Night ~Kyuu and Boom!♥ was an already existent song song that came in a single album back in 2018, but was now revisited and given a PV (similar story as with Black Mirror on the Wall - the song that got a PV in October 2021 is a remastered version of another song that was released on the God’s Stories -INNOCENT- -to the beginning 06- album back in 2016, this time as a limited single). I do not know yet if the Flandre song will be part of a limited single or anything, or if the new big album actually starts with the Yuuma song (would be the second album in less than year focusing on songs from the most recent games if that is to be). But I think we will fin out more in the next few weeks at most. It would be funny if we got yet another PV in a week from new, because that will either confirm or completely bust my theory.

We did not get Raiko yet in Global, but I really wanna get her. She, Mayumi and Tenkyuu are the last 2hus I need for completing my top 10 list. Also, do you say she fell in rank? Like she was good, and then got a nerf? Or there was no modification, just that her, being a general pool unit, will be weak no matter what? I still cannot help but laugh how Eika, Mayumi, Wriggle and Eternity are General Pool units, and all of them are in the S and S+ tier, and share room with some of the FES and SFES units.

While doing a bit more research for the Lost Word thread, I got over some discussion I have saved in regards to a more or less controversial story card art regarding Eirin in her Christmas outfit. The source will be provided at the end of the reply. The image in question (potential spoiler): And here is the relevant part of the discussion (I will generically call each of the speakers from 1-5): Speaker 1: I don't know if it's the reason in this particular case but I've seen a lot of people on Twitter who genuinely hate over-sexualisation of Touhou characters, which is really weird to me considering that a massive proportion of fanworks do over-sexualise the characters and that's a pretty big part of why the series is as big as it is (which is ironic considering the art ZUN draws). This game literally wouldn't exist if hordes of degenerates didn't draw mountains of Touhou porn over the last 20 years, increasing attention to the series, and I applaud their service. Speaker 2 (reply): It’s not that hard to understand why a large portion of fans would hate over-sexualization when you consider that almost all the cannon material is void of sexualization. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that promotional Yuugi art by Alphes. Speaker 3 (reply to Speaker 1): This is quite an overstatement, imo. How many of those people who stumbled across porn as their exclusive first experience of touhou actually ended up supporting the game monetarily? How many people exist that actually had the porn as their first experience in the first place? How many people go spend money on non-porn content due to seeing porn online in general? Considering how many people have seen Bad Apple/U.N. Owen was her and other Touhou related music/video content (especially being featured in a lot of Nico Nico Douga videos), I sincerely find it hard to believe that a majority of consumers came from porn and not the variety of other content on many other websites nor do I believe the porn is high on the list of defining features that contribute towards purchase decisions that result in money that goes towards the game's development (I doubt ZUN sees any of the money from doujin/porn producers and people aren't buying the game for ZUN's attractive art). All of that is to say that the game series has far more qualities to it that far outweigh the porn aspect as far as its success. Saying the touhou series wouldn't exist without porn is like saying that every game and anime wouldn't exist without porn. It's absurdity. Speaker 4 (reply to Speaker 3): I am personally a degenerate so I whole-heartedly welcome the lewding, but I could see how somebody could dislike the over-sexualization. While l00ds have definitely helped the community grow, I wouldn't go so far as to say that they are a crucial part of the fandom. The mainline games as well as the SFW creative freedom that ZUN promotes is what has shaped the community by and large, and I think those alone could have definitely kept the fandom alive and well, if smaller. Somebody who loves the mainline games and/or characters might not like the franchise getting 'degraded' into just sexy anime women. Speaker 5 (reply): This, for the most part. It seems to happen with basically every gacha game because the majority of the playerbase is, to put it bluntly, desperately horny. It stands out more here because unlike, say, Fate (which has characters like Nero) and Fire Emblem (ditto Tharja), Touhou has never been a "sexy" series. Hell, it's never even lived in the same town. I have a sex drive as functional as anyone else's and I enjoy a nice rack, but I also realize that I can find more porn on the internet, for free, than I could ever consume in my lifetime, so it doesn't need to be part of my gaming as well. Nobody likes a coomer who can't enjoy anything they can't get off to, and I have a lot of respect for ZUN keeping lewd content decisively out of his games. Seeing it here just feels crass. Like I said, here is the source of the discussion https://www.reddit.com/r/touhou_lostword/comments/rrln95/ugly/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3