It is midnight. I am full of caffeine because I just woke up. And I've been obsessing over this damned doujin hell for the past couple of weeks so why not just make a Touhou thread as a whole. WHAT IS TOUHOU YOU MAY ASK? Touhou is...many things. At its barest basics and origin point it's a series of danmaku shumps made by a single man who we know as ZUN. The art of the girls is of questionable quality, the musical compositions are beautiful but plagued by synthesized trumpets that rival the Hoenn trumpets for sheer 'why god why' levels of quality, and they have paper thin plots that you wouldn't think would spawn a bunch of fanwork. but that is exactly what they've done So even if you cannot stand danmaku Touhou may well have something for you. Whether it's comics, fanfiction, music, or cosplay Touhou may well have something for you. Because at this point Touhou is just kind of everything.
Let's start this thread off right with that absolute banger that is Bad Apple!!, aka the one Touhou thing that a non-Touhou may be aware of: (the other thing you might be aware of even if you've never really touhou'd is U.N. Owen Was Her? by way of the ronald mcdonald insanity meme song)
And let's also have us a motherfucking jojo's reference in the form of sharing art of one of my favorite 2hus Izayoi Sakuya:
Touhou's even got you covered if you're a fighting game sort. They're fairly weird fighters too. If you really like spacing games in fighters then the Touhou fighters might be worth a look as most of the cast does a lot with spacing and projectiles:
In terms of THE LORE and characters, which will be what you'll find in the never ending well that is the fan comics and shit, focuses on the weird mostly Japanese otherworld of Gensokyo. A world where youkai and gods just walk around on a daily basis. Weird shit also happens in Gensokyo a lot. Someone is always coming around trying to take over something or disappear the moon or become the supreme god of Hell or whatever else have you and it is up to one very disgruntled shrine maiden to fix this bullshit. That and a cocky witch who proudly declares herself the second strongest human in all Gensokyo. together reimu and marisa defeat a cast of colorful characters that consist of walt disney as a japanese fertility goddess, literally america, a narcoleptic kung-fu action gate guard, The Only Woman To Wears Pants In All Of Gensokyo, an alcoholic oni, and princess kaguya and her army of america hating rabbits. So you'll find ghosts and vampires and oni and half ghosts and zombies and jiangshi and god knows what else. All of these things will be getting into strange disputes with each other, solved by way of lasers and lots of drinking. and then you will find lots and lots of shipping that goes nowhere because darnit we are charmed by these girls and their silly hats
A PERFECTLY VALID WAY TO TOUHOU. It is the only way many people do Touhou, honestly. And given the compositions ZUN comes up with and what people do with them I can't blame them. You have what is basically an endless well of music in every possible genre you could think of.
So playing one of the mainline games in literal years was interesting. I went with Imperishable Night, the 8th game, because it was always my favorite solely for reasons of 'I can play as my ships'. Which is a bad reason to make decisions because my ships sadly get you stuck fighting the Reimu boss fight and I have never hated that broke bitch more than when having to fight her. God. Fuck. Reimu. Anyway. Was interesting having to relearn mechanics that I still don't entirely understand. Like there's a nice balance between focused vs. non-focused gameplay in it. Some of the projectiles you can only hit and make disappear when you're not focused and playing as the human character. This can result in Less Shit To Juggle, but can result in things going slower. So in some patterns I just settled on focusing not because it makes me move slower per se, but more because it lets me fire through the walls of bullshit that are firing even more walls of bullshit at me. also i like how yukari's attack appears to be THROW RAN AT IT
A day does not pass that I don't sing snippets of Bad Apple!! to myself at some point. That song has been in my brain for probably at least 5 years now.
my icon is a (very minor) touhou! i've never actually managed to find any of the games to play, i have to get all my bullet hell fix from stuff like Gundemonium and QP Shooting Dangerous. which also have good music! but yes, sooo much good touhou musics! U N Owen Was Her, and Broken Moon, and motherfucking PRIMORDIAL BEAT. Lonesome Werewolf, and Sunny Rutile Flection/Can't Sleep Because It's Nighttime/Like The Brilliance of Fairies, and Beloved Tomboyish Girl.... so much good musics!
A minor Touhou is still a girl with a ridiculous headpiece! So a Touhou! At least the 16th game is available on Steam I know. And 15 is available on the PS4 store. The others are still a bitch to find legally, but those two I at least know can be gotten through digital platforms outside Japan. also tfw you find good remisaku fic. like REALLY GOOD remisaku fic. that gets not just the appeal of vampires but also like the appeal of the dynamics of the characters involved. BUT THEN IT IS OVER AND YOU'RE LIKE FUCK I am most biased in favor of shit like Marisa Stole the Precious Thing in terms of music because I am from that time of the internet. Though like in terms of individual compositions my favorites are the ones for the Moriyas or the SDM crew, and also Alice. You get like two guesses on who my favorite characters in the entire series are.
Septette for the Dead Princess has one of my favorite remixes: Another Septette take I'm especially fond of: Septette's gotten some of my favorite takes in terms of style.
Tried out the demo for th16. Was pretty fun. You can play up to the third stage of the game, so half way through the main game. Got a choice between Reimu, Marisa, Cirno, and Aya which is a good cast. They all have unique and interesting looking shots. Can't stand Cirno's though because hers seems to require you to facetank to melt through shit. Reimu is defensive homing as always and Marisa is GIANT LASER FROM BOTTOM OF SCREEN as is her wont. Aya's I don't have many opinions about so far. Music's good and I do like how the game looks. Touhou games have finally gotten to a nice looking state. Like they weren't bad before but like there's a sort of cleanness to the more recent releases compared to like the PC-98 games or the first couple of windows games which were...all over the place in terms of what basic shit like health bars even looked like. There's a good feeling difficulty curve I think and easy does start to pick up around the third stage. It is a bit...too easy on stage one but that's fine I guess? You got to get people who've never even played a shmup some time to adjust to the controls and the really important thing is that it curves nicely. Normal's a good mix of stuff. Not too hard until you start to get towards the middle of the game and it's not a slouch so you won't be bored out of your mind. Hard seems like it'll be in a good spot? I wasn't able to get past the first stage boss on it on a single credit so I didn't go further in it. Lunatic is, of course, lunatic. Almost reached the first boss. Did not get there. I will say in a way that playing on hard and lunatic was very...helpful. Even if I got fucking wrecked both times. They require you to understand your hitbox more and be more comfortable with grazing, so even if you can't get far on them I feel like they're handy to try out occasionally and put a sincere effort into. It'll help teach you to be a better Touhou player by not allowing you outs. Normal you can make lots of fucks up in generally because if you get trapped you can bomb your way out. Due to the frequency of when those sorts of patterns come at you though you can generally have enough bombs to make it through shit while playing sloppily. If you want to learn to 1cc no bomb though you got to learn to actually graze and you got to learn to lead bullet swarms. Hard and lunatic have bullets in such large quantities that you are not allowed to be a slouch. You cannot bomb your way through shit in them. Because the waves of seemingly unstoppable bullets are too frequent to enable that tactic. Like don't grind at them when you're shit. Don't force yourself to play nothing but them. But like every so often just pick up one of the harder difficulties and see how far you can get. Maybe go a few rounds at it.
the best part is that if you've died to a boss enough you'll actually be able to recognize her danmaku in 3d. in each minusT animation you should be able to see a top comment that has the name of each danmaku appearing in the video listed
they done one for IN that's the one i played the most and thus the one whose patterns i know the best
hell they even use some of the moves from the fighting games. you'll get what i mean when you watch reimu + marisa + sayuka vs. yukari + ran + chen, as soon as yukari uses it. even if you don't know what any of her fighting game moves are
