vanyk

Somewhat off-topic post about TJD. I just want to share some thoughts about the album and situation around it.

Hello. MotK has found this post and they posted a lot of good criticism there. So now I will reply to each post. Before we start I just want to explain one thing which I think I explained badly. Touhou isn't dying now, but (in my opinion) has some serious problems (which might lead to this state). Reply to williewillus. Reply to Suspicious person (their post is really big and it would be better to read it yourself before reading my reply, I will just discuss key points) There was also not serious post about #CancelZUN (if it was serious, well, you cannot solve problems in the series if you would cancel its creator and developer) Where was a question about gensokyo.org drama. Shortly, there was a drama when they wanted to sue everyone who used materials from their translations in other places (yes, you could get sued for "pirating" from a pirate translation (because for translation you have to modify .dat file (sprites and dialogs) and .exe file (hardcoded strings), the 2 main files +config (only remains music data file))). That was one of reasons (not the main one but still) why thcrap was created. Reply to Felis-Licht Reply to the second Suspicious person's post (again a big one, so read it yourself first) Reply to degradingwindow Reply to the third Suspicious person's post (again it is better to read it yourself before reading my reply) In conclusion, I want to notice that most posters from MotK discussed the parts about fandom and gachas and commercialization. They gave really good points why everything is not that bad now and that problems are not that harsh now (but in my opinion it is better to solve them until it is too late) or give points that some problems aren't problems. Most of posters skipped the part about the franchise problems or just got triggered by seeing Len'en (and didn't connect the paragraph about Len'en with what had been written in several paragraphs before (all of this was written under the same topic, so I thought it was obvious that those paragraphs were connected, but maybe I should redo this part to make it more clear)). Because there were some offers which are prohibited by ZUN or Ruw, or there were some thoughts which contradict with this part. But aside that the criticism was actually good. I wanted to show that everything is not lost NOW, but there are problems which can become much more serious if we won't solve them now (how Suspicious person noticed it is a worrypost not a doompost). But reading the replies helped me to understand that I failed. There were a lot of examples that showed that everything is not bad now (and this is great). My goal was to show that beside that there are some problems which aren't that noticeable now, but may become unsolvable later. Most posters noticed that the whole game industry has the problems which are similar to Touhou ones, with which I can only agree. But I hoped that Touhou is agile enough not to be part of those problems. Alas, Touhou has the same problems now and I wrote about that in original post. I have seen some people who say that Touhou is part of the problem, while "true" doujin scene is not, well, I showed in the post that those problems affect everything. (But there is still a hope that Touhou and doujin scene would climb out of the hole). Thank you all for your replies this discussion was really interesting.

Thank you for your reply, your post have a lot of good points. About the state of current game industry, totally agree. About shifting from PC to phones, somewhat agree, but it could be easily solved if most people would use ExaGear or Winlator or Mobox (if you have a potato phone like me you can play most PC games from 90s and early 00s without problems, if you have a good phone, well you can try to play Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 in 20-30 fps. And yes even this potato phone can run mainline Touhou games from 7 to 12 in 40-60 fps, from 13 to 15 in 30-50 fps, from 16 in 25-50 (I believe in ECL supremacy)). But the problem of those emulators that they are not too convenient (and not stable with some games). Totally agree. Especially with that finding things is harder now, if you don't know about them. So that is the reason why I began making a list. I don't agree with Dead Internet Theory, because if you don't use Twitter or Reddit you won't notice these problems (except TikTok-like algorithms). I somewhat agree that there are some places each you couldn't reach using search engines (I think Discord developers wanted to make Discord servers more private than for example Facebook groups). About mature content, it is not a big problem of Touhou (in table you gave there is a mistake, in Touhou line it should be 8,29% of R18, still it is more than the previous time) because R18 is a big part of doujin scene (the biggest doujin archive I know (>400TB) mostly consists of such stuff, also a big number of games for PC98 are NSFW). It maybe shouldn't be that accessible. What I think is bad that Touhou fandom has one of youngest audience (in average 25 years old). I don't consider Memories of Phantasm as a big problem because it was made for fans (if don't like it you don't have to watch it) not for newcomers. The problem is that most fans and newcomers don't understand that, so fans recommend newcomers to watch MoP, and you know the consequences. The only somewhat good alternative is Summer day's dream (if you forget about the scene with Patchouli). With LW and Reddit agree. About Twitter, it is a problem of its design. open-source alternatives also have this problem, for example misskey.io . I could say "don't use Twitter", but the problem that a lot of Touhou content creators make announces there. About Pixiv and boorus somewhat agree (but what have you expected from them?) Agree. About recent games quality, agree. I could say that if he needs 3 years to make a game we can wait, but HBM and UDoALG look like they were made in less than half a year. About TJD not really agree it surpassed my expectations (I expected nearly nothing from it). From what I know even the haters say this album is the best thing ZUN made since 2017. I can only agree about the story. About the gameplay mostly agree (in UDoALG card system isn't abused. Borders, Charge 2 and Charge 3 are). About Touhou 6-8 ZUN says that he cannot place them on Steam because he lost source code (keeping in mind that he doesn't update Steam games it is hard to say it is main reason) (also imagine installing Steam version of Touhou 6 and not be able to launch it because of locale and Windows 10/11). About your plan, I agree with "General Touhou Supervisor" thing but I don't agree with even more commercialization, I don't want Touhou to lose the remaining "doujiness" it has. About "new multi-platform bullet hell engine" you are too optimistic about ZUN, he wasn't able to implement replay system in HBM and UDoALG while you are talking about other platforms (which for example don't have DirectX support, which means ZUN would have to learn how to use OpenGL/Vulkan and write a new graphic system from scratch). "finality to the Hifuu Club story-line" would mean the final for Hifuu Club, which means ZUN has to make another story or there would be no more albums with stories. I think ZUN more prefer not ending stories, so I think we won't see the final soon. My idea is turning Touhou into folklore (I think SCP is a good example of internet folklore). (I described my vision in PS). I don't know about Pokemon, but for me it isn't hard to avoid such content, because I rarely visit places where I can find it. The only problem that monsters don't avoid child content now. Aside that it is a good example. Agree. As I wrote I also work on the list like that (it has more than 14500 links now). If you have something to share too, please DM me, so we can try to merge our lists and combine our efforts (I hope together we can do much more). But if we manage to gather a lot of people and attention we may hope for "The Place" be a thing.

Thank you for your opinion. I am grad to see criticism of my post. I understand that we may not to care about the state of Touhou and just watch what will happen next. I understand that internet and fandoms are just part (a small one) of our real lives. I understand that if something bad happens to franchise we can move to next one. I understand that this site is not that big and not many people visit forums here. But for some reason Touhou became something important for me. And it would be sad for me if this series would die. I am a little guy, and literally noname outside of this forum. I cannot do anything big alone, but I thought that doing a small step for changing the situation for better is better than doing nothing at lot. I hope that this discussion won't just stay in this "little circle" and would go upper (but for now it is just hope). Yes, I understand that I cannot change the situation alone greatly. I made some purposes which aren't too realistic, the others are somewhat more achievable. What is it? I still cannot describe it. Maybe a hope that after this little step there would be more bigger steps. Maybe stupidity. Maybe I am just overthinking everything. Who knows? And again, thank you for your reply, I really appreciate it.

Thank you for your reply. Mostly agree with you. I understand that each series has its rises and falls, and that we probably will never have the second golden age (still hoping for seeing the silver age). Touhou is far from death now, but the problem that Touhou is slowly losing its main Japanese fanbase. I wonder if there are a lot of successors? I can only name Len'en, Undertale and BA. I thought about comparing Touhou and Doom community. From what I know, there are still new records in old games, hardcore fans still are trying to beat the impossible challenges, Classic Doom community creates around 30 WADs a week, while Chinese LusSTG community creates around 15 scripts a week. But the problem here is that John Romero and other developers don't impose new strange restrictions, while ZUN and Ruw do. Thank you for your interesting thoughts.

Thank you for your reply. I am grad you liked this post and and I would be grad for your analysis. I have read most of your threads before I created an account here. You really made great analysis there. Thank you for your reply. I agree that uniting all the fans nearly impossible now. So I purposed a little more realistic solutuon (only unite creators). I didn't thought about a language factor, a really good point (but from what I know that is not that big problem in other fandoms. Mostly agree. I hope correctly understood the second part. I don't think the age is not a serious problem I think, because if the series is really good there would be fans even after 50 years. But yes, newer Touhou games are very different from older ones (not everyone likes it, but for me it is okey if they are made well). Also kind of ironic that ZUN wanted to create a shmup for PC98 which had way more bullets than Caves shmups. Agree with everything. Agree with everything. Yes, it is a big problem. That is one of the main reasons why fans leave the fandom. Yes, you are right. He also knows about Chinese community, because he visited China and met Touhou fans there. (Am I the only one who has strange feelings about this video? Agree with all. And that is a problem that they are that used to gachas. I thought that was obvious: mostly thwiki.cc Comiket: https://thwiki.cc/Comic_Market Reitaisai: https://thwiki.cc/Reitaisai Kouroumu: https://thwiki.cc/东方红楼梦 Meikasai: https://thwiki.cc/东方名华祭 Autumn Reitaisai: https://thwiki.cc/博丽神社秋季例大祭 Hakudenkai 2022: https://extra.hakudenkai.games Hakudenkai 2023: https://hakudenkai.games/ Again, thank you for your interesting thoughts.

Thank you for your reply. Yes, Touhou fandom has not fallen yet, and the more people will be aware of those problems the more chances we have to make Touhou fandom blooming again. Sadly, yes. Because this is a pirate site, and after DMCA /r/touhou and Touhou Wiki decided to support Ruw's decision. There is even a group who wrote doujin circles to help them with DMCA. They even created hakureishrine.org (it is just redirect to Steam, and yes they still pay for this domain just for joke). Thank you too, for your reply. You understood it correctly. Just one more detail, there were dramas between main Touhou websites even between main websites. Not only that but also some strange limitations from ZUN and Ruw. You understood it correctly. Somewhat yes. The first solution also include forgetting about dramas at least between creators, so they could work together. Those are just my proposals and they maybe not ideal. I want to bring up this topic for discussion to find the best solution from realistic ones. Thank you for your reply. I also think that persuading ZUN now is nearly impossible. Touhou is mostly made for Japanese fans and ZUN mostly listen only to them, so without their help it would be impossible to do it. I understand it, but I don't have better solutions for now, I am sorry.

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.

Thank you very much! Already added.

Hello. Thank you very much for this finding. I have already updated information about it. This thread is somewhat alive, but I haven't had a lot of free time lately, so I rarely search for the lost media.

This sounds interesting. Some circles often send DMCAs, so I can only offer to reupload them here or on a mirror account, but I'm not sure it will 100% help. We can only hope that all the arranges are in TLMC.

A small but intersting update (which I somehow missed) The Comiket trial version of RMI was recently found and you can download it using this link: https://mega.nz/file/VFBSGAoa#xkdKRcaswJ0RXEaX2Q-lDX8FmzDpCYYl1O2r7h-kuzc There is also a full playthrough by Nightmare Taxation: