ACE_DEUCE

I'd say Remilia is quite pretty when she's drawn with the intent to appear elegant. The same would probably apply to Flandre but Flandre's the exact opposite of elegant so I doubt we'll get any official art of her similar to the picture below.

While there's no need to reupload the whole thing here (it's available for free on delthas's website) I agree that it would be good to include a link to it. Many old fighting games have fanmade patches to improve netcode, and you can use a tool called autopunch to remove a lot of the hassles that come with peer-to-peer connections, but hosting a dedicated server for one to let people find matches more conveniently and reduce latency is pretty nutty. As far as I know, the guys who do this don't even take donations or anything so it's purely for the sake of improving the experience of playing the game.

Well, it clearly seems to be working? Most youkai we see depicted in non-humanoid form happen to be pretty low-ranking ones such as Mamizou's goons or some of the Komakusa patrons. The only notable exceptions are dragons and divine beasts, if I recall correctly (though neither of those are youkai). Maybe there's a bell curve of sorts present?

He isn't a super important figure or anything, he's just a skilled shmup player who mostly posts Touhou content such as 1ccs, difficult spell clears and other challenges on YouTube, often providing detailed descriptions of his strategies and opinions regarding what he plays (and generally seems pretty chill overall). The reason I was puzzled when I saw his name on here was because: He described Touhou 16 as "really interesting" and noted that he enjoyed the season gimmick He said Touhou 17 was "easy but really fun" Said Momoyo was a "really epic boss" and was one of his favorites Granted, these quotes are from a year or two ago, so maybe his opinions have changed since? It just seemed like a bit of a weird and extreme shift to me.

The part where it says barefoot Marisa is what caused HBM to be well-received among the more casual audience has me convinced that this is an elaborate shitpost of some kind. There's no way anyone who's actually a hardcore Touhou fan doesn't know about the meme where you put dumb shit into Steam reviews of Touhou games like just "it's touhou" with a positive score, someone copy-pasting Clownpiece's entire wiki article as a review for LoLK, or various internet copypastas remixed to revolve around Touhou characters. The fact that the author doesn't seem to be named anywhere in the document (I couldn't find their name at a glance anyway, didn't read the entire thing in detail), leads me to believe the Reddit post is probably staged as the OP also just kept saying it was "someone". I'd also be surprised that SsjacsS willingly and genuinely put his name on something like this, as I'm pretty sure he enjoys the newer mainline games quite a bit, despite considering them to be very easy. In any case, I'll humor the ideas as genuine for a bit and say that personally I always thought Touhou was super-casual compared to most mainstream shoot-em-ups. I'm no pro player, but the idea that Touhou games have to be hardcore at some base level is weird to me, as they never really were, and skilled people have been doing NMNB, unfocused, no vertical and other assorted arbitrary challenges for years and years when they felt like enjoying the game at their own pace. The document is mostly correct in saying that HM/ULiL/AoCF are a significant downgrade from Soku, but blaming Tasofro exclusively is misguided as the trend of streamlining within fighting games has been going on for some time. I can reluctantly admit that it's a matter of preference - there's nothing stopping people from still playing Soku with fanmade patches for matchmaking and some bugfixes, and I'm sure AoCF will see a spike in playerbase once fanmade rollback comes out in like 300 years. Also, regarding the "shady" delays of 17.5, Tasofro only has one lead programmer (Nonotarou) and one assistant programmer. It was my understanding that Nonotarou fell very very ill for a prolonged period during the game's development, leaving a lot of the work to be done by the less skilled and less experienced assistant which inevitably caused delays and a somewhat buggy and unpolished release. Overall if my assumption that this is bait is correct, good work to however wrote it, made me chuckle a bit.

While CDS is a huge mess, Flandre actually acted rather appropriately given the situation in my opinion. All she saw was the malice and killing intent emanating from the possessed Meiling which led her to launch a preemptive strike. The reason she did it so gleefully was that she considered Meiling an enemy at that point, and her enjoyment of battle is fairly consistent with her canon personality. As for the Reisen thing, I think that's been a meme for a while. I don't remember where it comes from, but I do remember it being a running gag in the Inaba manga. The joke in CDS about the "punishment room" in the Lunar Capital is somewhat ambiguous because it's not clear whether Reisen was the one receiving or dishing out the punishment (given the context of the joke).

The whole "Flandre is completely insane" thing is mostly a remnant from a time where a good chunk of the western fanbase thought that it was actually just how she acted. Someone not deeply familiar with Touhou or how the doujin scene works in general would see: Old Japanese fan songs like Who killed U.N.Owen, End of Blooming Insanity, and that one Nanahira song which greatly accentuate her eccentricities in different ways All the edgy fanart Her original character profile which describes her as "a little nutty" And just call it a day. Honestly can't even blame them much for it, but I am glad that her recent appearance in 17.5 helped cement that while she's certainly very energetic and mischievous, she isn't mindlessly violent.

To be fair, all of the storylines in Hisoutensoku are fairly lighthearted. Handling Meiling's story in this way makes sense cause it'd be hard to come up with a reason for her to leave her post, and having her fight a bunch of people who she has no reason to refuse entry to normally would just be confusing. I didn't really see that one as a moment of particular incompetence. Tewi had intentionally forged invitations for a huge number of rabbits, which would probably overwhelm most people. She most likely just didn't want to risk getting scolded by Sakuya/Remilia for turning away guests. (Although, it is just a gag manga with no direct writing involvement by ZUN so I don't think it makes for a very important character moment) Not only that, but it was also revealed that she often just straight up forgets to lock the gate and wouldn't notice somebody sneaking through, completely contradicting her PMiSS entry! If you told me that Mizuchi is possessing ZUN IRL and is writing these dumbfounding plot points in to feed on the resulting negative energy of Touhou fans or something, I honestly wouldn't be very skeptical.

None of the humans in the village typically want to or need to combat the youkai because the Human Village is a dedicated safe area as designated by the Sages. Most youkai that go into the village don't act violently while over there because they really don't want that kind of beef. Unless there's been a very recent development in one of the new manga I haven't read, I personally don't know of any grand conspiracy to export village humans as youkai food, nor is any such information available on the wiki. As long as they remain inside the village, they're off-limits. The fortune teller was killed by Reimu because she's racist she considers that a human who has willingly become a youkai has committed an unforgivable crime.

If you don't mind me asking, which battle with Yukari are you talking about? The Phantasm Stage in PCB doesn't offer any continues. Are you maybe thinking of extra lives?

Souls that cross over the Sanzu River will arrive in Higan to await their judgement. Depending on the Yama's verdict, they may indeed be reincarnated. It is implied that a soul can be taken out of the reincarnation cycle entirely by certain means, such as when Kasen uses her right arm to crush a vengeful spirit, but I don't believe it's explained whether this works on any type of soul, as even Komachi was a bit confused at what exactly had happened.

To be fair to the Lunarians on this one: Presuming that Moon Girl is the one that came up with the Moonlight Descent Ceremony (based on her monologue), it's possible that it had something to do with wiping out whatever remnants of human mysticism still existed (though I'd be willing to bet that they still enjoyed doing it quite a bit). The problem is that the entire procedure is still somewhat shrouded in mystery, and we don't know if Moon Girl was even aware of Gensokyo at all, or if the Lunarians were just covering all their bases.

I believe 30 years is just the time the Lunarians spent physically being on Earth and running their bizzaro one-world government thing or whatever. I went back and checked and indeed Tsukuyomi says that the "fateful reunion" they'd been waiting for was in the works since the Earth had initially formed (i.e. the Giant Impact in KKHTA). This also implies that creationism is true in KKHTA because the humans ("closed eyes") had to have formed along with (or very chronologically close to) the Earth otherwise Moon Girl wouldn't have seen them overpopulating when she woke up, and further implies (albeit somewhat vaguely through the dialogue in 3/9) that the Lunarians were created by her and had the idea of the Moonlight Descent Ceremony implanted into them by her as well. I won't dwell too much more on this because it just creates more and more complex chains of implied events and facts that aren't too necessary for the plot and also are not worth anyone wracking their brain over them. In any case, it's safe to say that the Lunarians had this whole thing cooking for at least a few million years (Tsukuyomi's implied lifespan in the canon, though I have no clue how old he'd have to be for the KKHTA timeline to make even a lick of sense), much more than the 100-something years that the SDM had existed in Gensokyo.

In my honest opinion, I found KKHTA to be really, really bad. I recognize the importance it holds in the context of the history of Touhou fan content, but looked at as a piece of creative fiction in a vacuum, there's really nothing in there for me to like. Now, let me preface this by saying that gratuitous gore, cruelty and body horror are far from enough to turn me away from something. For example, I'm a fan of Saya no Uta and I even begrudgingly tolerate Elfen Lied. But all edge and no substance makes for a poor narrative experience. Also, it's been quite a while since I've last watched KKHTA so forgive me if I don't recall some details exactly. Loose internal reasoning regarding the source material setting: Certain established rules of the Touhou universe being changed in fan works is fine if the story calls for and is significantly improved by doing so. KKHTA falls flat on its face in both regards. The first thing that comes to mind is the Lunarians having a battleship capable of effortlessly killing the Dragon God. This could've not only been handled in many different ways (What was stopping Yorihime from just using her powers to find a natural counter during an actually intense fight?), but then they also just never use that thing as a weapon again? Not to mention it retroactively eliminates any tension regarding the incident cause the Lunarians just had this invincible superweapon the whole time that they were able to deploy inside Gensokyo (before the barrier had even fully collapsed??) whenever they wanted to. Another thing might be the physical hole getting punched through the Hakurei Barrier, but that's not really a big deal. (as I believe the canon status of how that works is sort of inconsistent) Koakuma: This entire plotline, more than the rest, is some Looney Tunes stuff. While I assume that the author opted to make it so that Koakuma is not Patchouli's familiar but rather just her assistant, and thus is not bound by her commands, everything else about it makes little to no sense. It's never explained how and why the Lunarians were employing an impure being (or how they even met her?) to do their bidding, why they would wait so long to send her in as a sleeper agent if Tsukuyomi and Toyohime had this grand master plan for who knows how long (given when the SDM actually appeared in Gensokyo), and most importantly why Patchouli and the rest of the characters present decided to shed 60 IQ points when Satori, who had no ostensible reason to lie in the situation that she was in, told them that Koakuma was suspicious, because assuming that she wasn't Patchouli's familiar (otherwise it makes even less sense) would mean that she really was just a random demon that just kind of showed up one day and the SDM crew really should've put their guards up at least a little bit going forward. Was the reasoning behind all this going to be exposition-dumped in the very last part? Maybe, but that would've ended up as a whole different disaster because the viewer never gets enough information to piece any of it together by themselves, at least as far as I can remember. Not really captivating in other ways either: While the art does get substantially better as the series goes on, the change is only from "horrible" to "serviceable". The action scenes are always just brutally mediocre - not animated enough to enjoy any fluid movement and good camera work, and not well-drawn enough to appreciate the detail present in individual shots. The music is good, but as far as I know none of it's original, so there's not much to be said. This leaves me wondering what the appeal might even be. If any passionate KKHTA fans are reading, I would be grateful if you could disclose in detail (so "I don't know, there's just something" doesn't really count) what about the series actually attracts you. Is it just anime girls mutilating each other? I doubt it, there's plenty other anime-style media (with better art) that's arguably just as if not more grotesque. So am I missing something? I'd like to discuss this.

I agree with this sentiment. It's a popularity poll, so I'm always quite puzzled that people are disappointed or angry or whatever when the popular thing inevitably wins. EoSD might not be my favorite shooter and U. N. Owen might not be my favorite song, but regardless of whether you consider them "overrated" or whatever the ultimate outcome is the same: "I think they're overrated" - Why be disappointed with the results then? If the number of people that like it exceeds what you expect then it placing high should be no surprise (as being disappointed entails that you had different expectations). "I don't think they're overrated, but (less popular thing) is better so it should've won/placed higher/etc." - That's not the point. Fans of a medium aren't automatically experienced critics, and most people won't use high placements on a popularity poll to discover new works/songs/whatever anyways because if it placed high on a popularity poll there's a pretty good chance they already know about it. Is this just the innate human underdog effect where they desperately want to root for the less likely candidate even in this scenario where the premise of the contest is to gauge the exact opposite? Who knows. (Also, as a side note, I believe most people like Internet Survivor for the high effort and passionately-made PV more so than the song itself.) And now that the civilized part of the post is over, ahem

I do really like the quality of the drawing itself and the inclusion of some of the new locations. However, as the OP notes, there are a few inaccuracies in this map which I do hope get fixed going forward. Off the top of my head: I believe the Hill of the Nameless is actually behind Eientei, but the description is pretty vague so it could go either way really I don't think Mayohiga is nearly as far away from the Hakurei Shrine A few other placements which are debatable like Muenzuka and Kasen's house (though these are generally hard to pinpoint) A few missing things like the Old Fairy House and the entrance to Makai And the obvious, Youkai Mountain and the Misty Lake are both probably a lot bigger than that Though it's still easy to appreciate the raw amount of effort that's been put into this, major props to the artist. Also no drawing of Yukari's house in one of those side margins? 0/10 actually terrible map

10-12 years ago isn't quite the right time frame. A lot of their break-out hits are actually from before that (e.g. Marisa Stole the Precious Thing is from 2006), but Scarlet Police on Ghetto Patrol which is their most popular song by a landslide was actually released around 2014 or 2015 if I recall correctly. As for their activity, it's true that they haven't come out with a new album for about a year (longer if you're only looking for vocal albums). Not sure of the exact reasons, but maybe they just have something big in the works? Nowadays they mostly pass the time by hosting their podcast. (which has actually been going on much longer than I thought) As for MV production, I'm pretty sure that they never had a dedicated MV creator in their circle to begin with (though I might be wrong). No MVs coming out means that they either didn't consider any singles notable enough to collaborate with anyone, or the available labor for MV production these days isn't as plentiful as it once was.

This game is actually not called "Gensou Sato Dokasuka Wars". Evidently from the game's cover, it's actually called "Gensokyo Dokasuka Wars", and I can't say I'm sure where this misconception comes from. In any case, this game was created by a doujin circle called "Kouryokutei" (roughly meaning "red-green pavilion"). There's a website which is laughably difficult to navigate, but you should be able to find the game by doing a CTRL+F for "C76". I believe it's a one-man circle run by a person that goes by Combat Wakamoto (surprisingly still quite active on social media!) No clue who "Fryotei" is though, sorry. Perhaps it's the person who originally ripped the game and posted it to whatever website you got it from.

I see, that is an entirely reasonable position to take. I agree that there's no definitive way to gauge what exactly goes on in people's heads, and I am glad you are able to approach this logically even if our opinions may differ a little bit. Well, doing some math, it would probably be the kids born somewhere between 2006-2008. Web 2.0 had existed since roughly 2004, but it wasn't until a later that the online services which parents would use to distract kids (such as video streaming) became widely used. Just give the sucker an iPad and you're good to go for several hours. And mind you, these guys were probably already in their middle developmental stages when they were given unmonitored internet access (I shudder to think what might become of the children today who are growing up with Youtube Kids, but that's an entirely different discussion). I believe one study concluded that in many western countries, the average first exposure to pornography for modern generations happened around the age of eleven, mostly on the internet. I'm no psychologist, but I also don't believe I need to be one to surmise that such a thing has the potential to warp someone's sexual development.

This specifically, in my opinion, could just be a consequence of kids raised with completely unrestricted internet access (in the time of web 2.0) hitting puberty. I'm certainly no expert, but the laissez fare attitude of millennial parents might be catching up to them through their kids' social (and in this case sexual) proclivities that have sprung up as a result of complete engrossment in digital media from a young age; the effects of which on a developing brain psychologists are still working to understand completely. I believe it's possible to disagree on something civilly. I apologize if any comment I've made had come off as passive-aggressive, as I have no intention to be hostile whatsoever.

Going on the basis that laws are created based on the cultural and moral framework of a certain group, and (as I've hopefully demonstrated with my original point) that there's no reason to believe that Japan has more pedophiles than anywhere else nor that they consider acts against children to be any less immoral somehow (to imply the latter could even be construed as somewhat offensive), taking your post at face value would then mean you agree with me that it's just a cultural difference relating to what is a viable means of artistic expression? But the post seems to be written in a disagreeing tone, so I don't believe that's the case. On the other hand, if you are denying my original point in it's entirety (even though you don't seem to be doing that either, and in any case I hope you aren't because saying that pedophilia is somehow intrinsically tied to the culture of an entire nation is a bad faith argument), it would mean that Japanese people, despite being conscientious about real child sexual abuse, still distinguish loli content as a separate moral category. Does this mean you are of the position that loli content is primarily by and for pedophiles who also fantasize about real children, but that being a pedophile isn't an issue as long as you don't actually harm any of those real children? If so, that is an opinion I can reasonably wrap my head around, but not one I entirely agree with. On the other hand if your position is that they are wrong to do so and that there is no difference in the morality of reading an issue of Comics-LO and viewing explicit material involving real-life underage individuals, then I'd have to say that such a view lacks nuance and consideration.

Eternity Larva is a bit difficult to rank but I'd say she's probably not quite on Cirno's level? At the very least, she isn't as skilled in spell card battles. Cirno on her own is at the level of a Stage 2 boss while Eternity, even in her powered-up state in HSiFS is merely a Stage 1 boss. Okina also says she might not even be a fairy, if I recall correctly.

Yes, my response there was addressed to "your compadre" i.e. the person you were talking to. In any case, while the national minimum is 13 in Japan, I don't believe there's a single prefecture which actually uses that as the de-facto age of consent. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there's no prefecture which has it set lower than 16, but the exact data for each one is difficult to find so maybe there are a few that do. And in any case, I don't know of a legal precedent set where an adult can have relations with a minor who is 13 or 14 and not be convicted for statutory rape (i.e. how the law is applied matters just as much as much as how it's written). I believe you did misread the quote I provided. It says "about 14" meaning "around the age of 14". According to that survey, attractiveness starts to go up very fast at the age of 12, peaks at 14, and then very slowly starts to drop off (it only went up to 30 I believe so it probably drops off faster later). But anyways, the point I was trying to make by quoting that study is that it's strange to frame the existence of loli characters as "closeted pedophiles expressing themselves" because then we should be seeing it everywhere as Japan doesn't seem to be an outlier in that regard. It's a bit of a silly discussion to have in any case; most people, be they in Japan or otherwise are healthy and functioning members of society who know how to act rationally and set boundaries, which is why I called your friend out on their armchair psychoanalysis - they were trying to create a profile based on entirely surface level knowledge without much substance. Well yes, it's as I expressed, anime is just the more popular export. I'd imagine the reverse holds true as well, a Japanese person is much more likely to recognize blockbuster cinema as western rather than, say, a modernist painting or prose. There are probably tons of things that contribute to this. For one, many people in Europe and America were first introduced to anime because a local television station decided to buy broadcasting rights to certain shows in order to save on original productions. On the other hand, it's probably not nearly as easy to get traditional Japanese artists to fly over to another continent to attend an exhibition, and even if you did it's hard to say whether there would be any sort of market for it. Another thing is that importing anime from Japan was significantly easier than with any other art form. It was typically copyable (either recorded on tape or a CD) and available for personal use. Since anime with a target audience of teenagers tends not to utilize overly complex language, one would think it's also easier to translate which then leads to an even wider appeal thanks to fan-subbing groups. And lastly it's probably just easier to get into, all things considered. Especially with the rise and spread of geek culture, it wasn't difficult to integrate it with the rest of what was popular at the time.

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?"

Might you be thinking of DynaMarisa?