why do you like touhou?

[kanedafanatic]

Coming late to the thread but whatever. I wonder myself too.

In a other thread, I explained that I was exposed to Touhou by the Bad Apple!! resurgence in the middle of the COVID pandemic. What really made go be into that series in particular is when I saw a tutorial to git gud, saw the gameplay and thought "I'll give it a try." That's how I discovered the Moriya Shrine forums too.

As to what makes it special enough for me to still care and interact with it... I assume it fills a special place where many interests or tastes don't. Now admittedly, unsurprisingly, I have ASD (late-diagnosed too, ouch.) So the way I perceive Touhou is different than the average joe (as a special interest.) I canˋt put my words onto it yet, I became more fixated on the world of Gensokyo and it's characters; who they are and what are they when I was playing around during my "isolation." Actually making and seeing characters evolve into something else. Putting friction in the system and stress-test it. Making so characters that are usually stuck in the same place every time gets to actually change. While itˋs abstract, you could say that itˋs the potential behind Touhou that makes me fascinated by it.

It just happens that they wear frilly dresses and shit; not my kind of aesthetic but you get used to it. That aesthetic is part of what makes Touhou so recognizable. While I don't show it to my entourage that I'm into this "franchise" (why would they care?), I would be lying that Touhou didn't shape who I am nowadays. It holds a place I cannot formulate yet, and I believe that's what makes it genuine.

 

[Angelulu004]

I pretty much already explained it in a previous post. But I'll do it again in a more complete form as I don't think I'll ever have other oportunity for this.

I believe the reasons I like Touhou are pretty unique and almost nobody shares it. I have the feeling a big part of the fandom and even casuals mostly engage with technical aspects of the gameplay and music, with most fan creations surrounding those two, while the figure of the characters helps with the recognition a lot for “outside the bubble” matters.

I believe what caught my attention though, and what has been making me enjoy the series a lot, is the world and story ZUN built.

Talking about me for some context. I'm someone who feels detached from normal life. I either usually find myself uncomfortable with or uninterested by the regular daily human mind and matters, relations and materialism. To escape from absolute boredom (and potentially also negativity and depression) I tend to find myself hugely interested and very comfortable in researching and learning about topics that go beyond the typical aspects of the world and life, that means big mysteries, the unexplained, the supernatural, high strangeness in general. I always had this since my childhood, but as I got older it only got stronger and stronger to the point I just see reality in a completely different way nowadays.

Giving this background was important as I feel that I transferred this feeling to fictional works as well (likely making me more petty with them)
My tastes have become quite restrictive when it comes to liking them.
Giving close examples in the video games territory, I tend to dislike games such as Biohazard, Dino Crisis, which follow a more materialist and scientific approach.
But I tend to really like games such as Silent Hill (1 & 3), Siren, which have a more supernatural approach.

While I do really enjoy the gameplay part, music and cute appeal, I feel that what truly caught my attention to Touhou and convinced me to stay is the approach of its world and story. The way it draws upon all its artistic facets to interact with legends, mythologies, and religions, not only from Japan but also from the rest of the world. The theological side that, in my view, ZUN also executed masterfully.
The characters and Gensokyo are weird as hell in very smart ways while wearing a silly shmup mask and I love that, and everything, from the characters and their designs, what they represent, some of their dialogue, the locations, the visuals, the music, the titles, everything helps compose this mystical feeling the series has in my view, what's surreal, what's weird, what's sacred I find in this series.

Of course everything is fictional, but I genuinely think you can learn a bunch about Japan and some other countries’ culture through this series when compared to other average media. Which just reinforces a belief I have in regards to works of fiction with this kind of approach, which is that I think they are the modern mythologies.
We live in the technological era, huge advances in science.
A lot of what Touhou's world tries to explore became a thing of the past in our real world, or have been adapted, such as the old tales of Werevolves, Spirits, Angels and Demons, who are now Extraterrestrials nowadays because of changes in culture and people treating the space program as a big representative of technological advances.
Alongside that evolution, everything new that explores the old ideas of the occult and esoterism nowadays is purely fiction.

So for me, works like Touhou are the modern equivalent to those old stories, those old myths. It's fictional, but there's a lot of truth behind it, a lot of what the characters show represent genuine legends and ZUN surely studied a lot to make it real.

The stories may not have the level of complexity or characters can be very bland, but for me it's just the way the series (or ZUN) specifically works with these ideas, and it adds a lot to its charm in my opinion as it can be accessible for everyone.

I'm still learning about it, and I don't know if I'll really become a huge fan in the future, and I might forever feel like an outsider to the community, which is okay, but that doesn't mean I don't have my own way of perspective of the community.
I can technically describe the fandom as folklore. Actually any series with a community surrounding it could be described as folklore, but with Touhou it's very different due to its roots in dojin nature.

Fans treat fan works with almost the same or equal relevancy to the official works, which is something unusual, at least for me, and it surely helps with the environment of the community's culture, the shared content and creations leading to a large endless history that has been evolving for 3 decades, contributing to and also respecting what ZUN created.

It's something fascinating and even if I end up not being part of it, i'm sure it will still be very interesting for me to study more about it alongside the actual series itself, which I already know what I should look for after I finish checking all the games thanks to some members of this forum helping in giving me a direction.

Anyway I already wrote a lot. Just wanted to say, It's a very powerful kind, and I'll pray for it to continue doing good for many many eras, regardless of the many many things that can make me react with “wtf is this”, it's just part of the traditions. 2huism is real.

 

[StarryusRage]

As someone who HEAVILY prefers Lore > Gameplay for a media I want to get into or for a media that I am already into, Touhou's lore is unironically so fascinating and vast, and that's what I like about Touhou.

With Touhou, the things that are adressed in the series that ties into the lore of one thing, another thing, or multiple things always gets my head running ABSOLUTELY wild with answers of my own regarding these things.

- Are there other Animal Spirits in the Animal Realm that also have major groups of their own besides the Wolves, Otters, and Eagles?
- Does Makai still have other settlements like in the PC-98 era besides Hokkai in the Windows era?
- Just in which world do Yumemi and Chiyuri originate from since it's implied they don't live in the PC-98 canon's Outside World?
- It is explicitly mentioned in WaHH that the Hofgoblins are, quote, "some of the few youkai who still lived in the outside world during the modern era". HEAVY emphasis on "few", which means there might be other youkai that still exist in the Outside World. So which youkai's still exist in the Outside World?
- Just what is up with Sakuya? Is she a Lunarian? What is her real name? If she is not from Gensokyo, then she might be from the Outside World, so where was she from in the Outside World?

Things like this just keeps me invested in the series as a whole, and I hope ZUN adresses some of these things in the future.