Touhou Game Logo Analysis

[Pinky Cat]

Touhou games logos are the visual element that describes a game’s title with 東方 (Touhou), some Japanese characters, and finally an English subtitle to finish the logo. What interesting is how Touhou games over the years have went though various design trends in not only visual design, but also in logo usage. As such, I be conducting analysis on each Touhou game on their logos, commenting on the design, and describing the game’s logo usage, to identify the trends on Touhou game logos.

By the way, the images used in this analysis were sourced from THB Wiki, Touhou Memories, and my own personal screenshots. Huge thanks to THB Wiki and Touhou Memories for cataloguing their images in an accessible format.

Part 1: PC-98 Games​

CD covers of PC-98 games​

In this era, how advanced a logo could be would have been limited, either by the PC-98’s technical limitations or by ZUN’s limited design experience. As a result, these upcoming logos are more or less basic, though their logo usage differs much from later Windows games. For instance, a common trend for this era is that all CD covers logos share the same style: a black inky style. It’s very basic for a logo, appearing to act more as supporting visual elements that gives the PC-98 covers an old scroll vibe to them. More importantly, these inky logos are dissimilar to the logos used ingame, a trend that would be changed in later eras. For now, let’s take a look at their digital logos.

Highly Responsive to Players​

Title Screen​

This is a basic Touhou logo, with white text composing of the Japanese Characters, 東方+ 靈異伝, leaving the English subtitle right below. The only unique flourish HRtP offers is the red swirl, whose curved path edges just around 方 and 異, giving off a geometric vibe. Though, the swirl centered on the bottom half of the Japanese rather than centering on the logo makes the swirl feel it was not intended to be part of the logo. Still, it is a basic logo that carries a unique visual that can be related back to the game.

As for what the red swirl means, it’s bit too abstract from the game to say an objective statement about it. But as a personal thought of mine, the red swirl is the path of the Yin-Yang orb traveling across from the edge of the screen to the center, where a boss is usually place. Of course, don’t let my thoughts be the final say about a logo’s expressions.

Story of Eastern Wonderland​

Title Screen | Stage Transition​

The first Touhou game to feature multiple instances of a logo by its inclusion in gameplay, extending a logo’s marketing. Except, the logo used between the title screen and the gameplay screen would differ in design hampering the memorability of a logo. This is a pattern that would continue for many Touhou games afterwards.

Title Screen​

It may have be bold and large, but it’s still a basic logo design. Aside from the fact SoEW is the only Touhou game to not include an English subtitle on the title screen, it doesn’t have the unique visuals to separate this logo from regular text. It’s not bad to look at, but the design doesn’t inspire any ideas about the game aside from stating the title directly. Bit of a shame that the logo with “story” in its title can’t really have a story about its design.

Stage Loading Screen​

Unlike the title screen, this logo feels dangerous thanks to its dark color selection, along side the Japanese being slanted compared to the English. Not to mention, the English subtitle having “HUMA”, without any clear indicator about what it means. Perhaps these changes are to depict the darkness Reimu would travel and face head on against Mima. Regardless, for all of these mysterious visual changes, there are no visual flourishes added on, leaving this logo still quite a basic design.

Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream​

Title Screen | Cutscenes/Installation | Ending & Credits​

The first Phantasmagoria game has logo usage increase a lot with the logos making their appearances in the ending. Additionally, those stage transition screens now include character dialogue and even full cutscene visuals, leaving more screen time for the logo. Though, leaving the logo on screen where there is dialogue already, feels a bit tacky.

Title Screen​

The Japanese is similar to SoEW, except the third character (夢) is colored differently from the rest, allowing for a visual distinction between 東方 and the rest of the Japanese character unique to that game’s title. Anyway, the English subtitle is back in red stroke, and a red moon character... Those extra characters existing make the English subtitle feel more like text, rather than as a part of the logo itself, despite the Japanese formatted to leave room for the English subtitle. For all these changes, my opinion on this logo is similar to SoEW with the lack of any strong visual elements to relate the logo to the game.

Cutscenes/Installation & Ending​

In my opinion, the logo’s basic layout of Japanese, combined with the English subtitles matching the color of the Japanese, and the addition of a background visual element, make for a better logo. Still, no distinctive visual element makes for a basic logo.

With all that said, the repeated usage of the moon character and the ellipses in the English subtitle shows they should be part of the logo. Except, online images that features PoDD logo leave off these extra characters, presumably because they don’t make up the game’s actual title.

Credits​

Funnily enough, with how basic the PC-98 logos are, the credits scene can be considered another usage of the logo. This won’t apply to the Windows games as their logo design become more developed, while the credits text remained simple. Though, in PoDD’s case, its lack of a English subtitle compared to any other credits scene of the Touhou games makes it appear as a title moreso than a logo.

Lotus Land Story​

Title Screen | Stage Transition (Left to Right, Up to Down in order of difficulty) & Installation | Ending & Credits​

In terms of logo usage, LSS takes a lot from PoDD, with the only addition that the color of the logo in the stage transition screen changes based off of difficulty. As cool as this is, LLS remains as the only Touhou game to do so, with this effect not even being brought over to the next & final PC-98 game, MS.

Title Screen​

A basic design with dark green text that is all in italics. Italics gives depth to the logo, but without a unique visual element, there is not much to expand upon.

Stage Transition Screens & Installation​

See all the visual elements added? The logo certainly a carries a lot more weight with the text having a drop shadow. Though, the triangle cutting though the text makes it harder to read the text, which is not ideal when memorizing a logo with its title. While These additions are neat, they lack a clear connection to the game itself. Without a good reason why the logo has these elements, it makes it harder to connect the logo to the game itself. That is perhaps why, when people use a ingame logo, it is the title screen logo for it sheer simplicity.

Credits​

The credits, provides evidence of how basic the PC-98 logos are, with the credits only differing from the title screen logo in terms of color.

Mystic Square​

Title Screen | Stage Transition & Installation​

For the final PC-98 game, nothing was added to increase logo usage, and with exception of difficulty colors, nothing was lost as well.

Title Screen & Installation​

Finally, the title screen logo features visual elements in the form of a curvy mist and some glowing circles to enchant the text. To me, that gives the logo a night sky vibe, or it could perhaps be the paths of spirits. Though it seems the visual has little baring on the events that occurred ingame, it’s nice to see the final game of PC-98 close off with a little visual stinger.

 

[Nitorium]

He's quite talented for a drunkard.

Hope he stops the bottle one of these days.

 

[Pinky Cat]

He's quite talented for a drunkard.

Hope he stops the bottle one of these days.

Aye, working on the analysis for the rest of the Windows games, it has become clear that logo design is one of the talents of ZUN that has improved over time.

As for the bottle, I don’t think he will ever stop with the drinking as that is basically part of his identity now. When ZUN has worked on a game where drinking is major motif, wrote Lotus Eaters where the main character is a bartender, and even having released his own brand of drink, it’s hard to imagine a ZUN without the drinking.

 

[Pinky Cat]

Part 2: 1st Generation of Windows Games​

With the jump from PC-98 to Windows, logo design of Touhou games underwent a revolution as many of the technical limitations of the PC-98 were now gone on the new Windows platform. Plus, with the physical medium switching from floppy disks to CDs, there became a lot more packaging to place a logo on. Additionally, the logos featured on the game’s physical covers and the ingame logos begin to be more similar to each other. It’s quite a lot of changes to tackle, so let’s get into the games of this era.

Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (EoSD)​

As the first Windows game, it introduced major feature: a logo is permanently affixed on the player UI. On other news, EoSD has a lot of different appearances across its logos, yet they agree on a common theme, scarlet coloring.

Title Screen Logo​

When I look at how the Japanese is written in the title screen logo, it looks a bit hand-drawn with all its bumps and weird curvatures. Of course, that just the font being used, but it looks like an attempt by ZUN to make the title screen logo be more similar to the logos of the PC-98 packaging. Anyway, this logo has the English subtitle go over the Japanese, with the intersected Japanese slanted in gradient red. Personally, I find the placement of the subtitle to be silly as it covers part of it own title in an obtuse fashion. Plus, it doesn’t help the subtitle starts with lowercase “the”, which feels like improper design. I will give it that having the third Japanese character colored scarlet helps contrast the game’s unique Japanese title (紅魔郷) from Touhou (東方).

CD Cover, Disc​

The Japanese characters are bubbly looking and the English subtitle featuring white stroke around its text make the logo feel playful. On the other hand, the disc makes the logo look like it came out from a Resident Evil game, with the Japanese characters completely filled with scarlet. Not to mention, the subtitle’s font makes it look like it was taken from the pages of a diary. Personally, I like the stark contrast between the CD cover and disc in conveying tone, and like how “hand-drawn” they look like.

Player UI​

I appreciate reusing the design element of coloring the third Japanese character to inform its layout, but I have to wonder how is this logo meant to be read? Can the last two characters (魔郷) be read on their own? Is the third character (紅) meant to be independent? Can Touhou (東方) be read with the third character? It has a confusing design to read, which I have to add demerits for. Also, “The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil” text within the red circle looks like a low quality texture with how stretched across the circle it is. It’s not good looking even if “English looks cool!”. Honesty, this circle could be removed from the logo, place the subtitle on a normal position, and that would make for a fine logo.

Stage Transition​

Due to how hard it is to see the logo on these screen, it’s seems like the logo is meant more as a visual image rather than being a contrast element. I won’t further comments for future stage transition screens, but I will note that the Japanese title (東方紅魔郷) is written in a different font from the rest of the game.

Perfect Cherry Blossom (PCB)​

As transient snowstorm takes over Gensokyo, logos gain one more spot in the Touhou games. The ending screen, in this case the bottom right corner of said screen. Otherwise, all other positions of logos are carried over from the previous game.

Title Screen Logo​

The logo looks like it is fading away from its repeated distorted shadows of itself, as if the long winter is bringing an slow end to life. Or perhaps it is referring to the ephemeral of cherry blossoms? Either way, it is an improvement over Mystic Square’s logo, as PCB’s makes its shadows more of transient white that acts as a backdrop to the logo. It makes for a good design, though as a logo it is rather messy. Especially with the fourth Japanese character (々) throwing off the balance of the logo, which also applies to the rest of the logos in PCB.

CD Cover​

This bold logo chooses to look professional, removing the distorted storm for a faint gradient across its lettering. Said gradient gives the character weight, with shadows on the bottom characters, while the subtitle has hints of a cherry blossom. Not to much to say, outside of being of an excellent logo to use on the physical packaging in place of the visually-messy Title Screen logo.

Player UI​

For the first time ever, the logo is going in a completely vertical fashion for its layout. Though, I find logo’s colors of green and purple to contrast with each other poorly in this case. Also, why green? The design of the pervious PCB logos were focused on the snow incident and hints of cherry blossoms. Those logo based their design on the environment, where as the Player UI logo seems to pick the color green for Youmu? As a result the background element looks ghastly, but not in a good sense. Overall, layout works, but is hampered by poor color choices that aren’t even highly supported by the game’s setting.

Immaterial and Missing Power (IaMP)​

Welcome to the first Touhou game to be created with Twilight Frontier, and thus a major question has to be answered. Who made the logo for IaMP? Thankfully, IaMP’s credits the person for its logo design under “Label Design”, which is ZUN. That won’t always be true with future Twilight Frontier games, however. For now, the only addition in terms of logo placement with Twilight Frontier games is that the game’s credits features the game’s logo. This is unlike ZUN’s games, where the credits don’t feature the game’s logo.

Title Screen, CD Cover, Disc, Start of Credits​

For the first time ever, a Touhou game uses a consistent logo design across the entire game. Great news for remembering a logo. Despite that, I don’t think IaMP’s logo is memorable due to its design. There nothing wrong with having the logo use a basic professional design; I’m glad I can easily read the logo from centering the subtitle with the logo. It’s just that I can’t read anything thematic about the logo that relates to the game’s themes, outside of the fact that the Japanese characters are colored blue and red, like a red oni and a blue oni paired together. Though, Suika doesn’t really embody that archetype of onis in her design.

Trial Title Screen, Trial CD Cover​

This is one of the few public instances of a logo receiving an update over the development of the game. That’s good as this version of the IaMP logo has a lot of design flaws. The Japanese characters are somehow too bright and too dark at the same time. The embossed Japanese characters are tacky on the game’s packaging. And lastly, the gradients look like a mess as if the colors were chosen randomly. Thankfully, it’s just a trial logo, so the final version improved the logo to give a much more reasonable logo to look at.

Imperishable Night (IN)​

For this entry of the Touhou series, vertical logos are its style. Nothing else to note as the game’s logo location are all brought over from Perfect Cherry Blossom.

Title Screen Logo​

It has the same issue of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil by overlaying the subtitle over the Japanese characters. Plus, unlike Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, there doesn’t appear to be a reason on the subtitle’s positioning. Ignoring this transgression against logo design, a gradient it used from top to bottom, perhaps symbolizing the movements of the moon. Lovely imagery, but the gradient is too stark, meaning the logo will find parts of itself too dark or too bright compared to its surroundings. There a reason gradients in logo design are rarely used, as it makes the logo more inflexible to use.

CD Logo​

Once again the CD cover uses a more professional design, removing the gradient the Japanese characters, and adding purple colors to the subtitle. It’s has less colors, but it is also less messy at the same time. Still, I can’t ever say that overlaying the subtitle over the Japanese character is a good design element.

Player UI​

The Japanese character trade their gradient to the crescent moon in exchange for a texture quality. Meanwhile, the subtitle is decidedly too bright, with the low resolution of the image making the subtitle hard to read. Outside of that, it’s simple logo that decided to stagger its Japanese character to hang the moon off of.

By the way, the ghastly green spirit from Perfect Cherry Blossom’s Player UI logo returns with this logo. With how faint it is, it doesn’t add much to the logo.

Phantasmagoria of Flower View (PoFV)​

As the first phantasmagoria game of the Windows era, there suddenly became a lot less space for logos. Stage transitions no longer exist and the Player UI logo has to be removed to leave room for another player.

Title Screen​

For a logo meant to stand out from its surroundings, it has a thin font. Combined with its colors of green and blue, I wonder if this logo is meant to be more at peace with nature. That would be thematically fitting with the flowers and the dead, but it does mean the logo is not going to stand out.

CD Cover​

To contrast with the Title Screen logo, the font of the Japanese characters are bold and traditional looking. Plus, there is a faint gradient to give depth from top to bottom. Perhaps this design is for the advent of the Yama, but the subtitle’s use of sans-serif font clashes with the logo’s overall design.

Shoot the Bullet (StB)​

The first photography game has arrived, with the amount of logo location reduced to the bare essentials. After all, the player should be focusing on creating new pictures, not glazing on old pictures.

Title Screen Logo​

It’s a basic professional-looking logo, but I like it. The logo’s style fits with the journalist themes, looking like a title that could printed on the newspaper. Plus, the thematic elements gives a reason for the subtitle’s font to be serif style, as the ideal font for reading physically. The only issue with the logo is how small it is. It’s a well-packaged logo, but it is not the most noticeable logo when the logo is not taking over a quarter of the screen.

CD Cover​

The Japanese characters are clearly separated from the subtitle by being placed in a box. I get that this is suppose to represent how a real Japanese newspaper would present its titles, but that divides the logo into two parts. For that matter, why does the box have rounded corners? Shouldn’t it be straight corners to fully emulate newspaper designs? Thankfully, the subtitle’s serif font is strong enough to visually standout even without the Japanese characters. Still, this logo is weaken by how it looks like two logo rather than one conceive whole.

Disc​

This is a Touhou disc designs that I like due to its heavy use of contrast. In this case, the logo has no idea of “subtitles”, and instead places the Japanese titles and the English titles in opposition to each other. Plus, the limited colors of a disc are used to their potential by contrasting the titles in different colors. Bravo to ZUN for making a good design despite how limited discs are from a production standpoint!