Touhou Project


The Touhou Project, often referred to simply as Touhou, is a bullet hell shoot 'em up video game series created by one-man Japanese dōjin soft developer Team Shanghai Alice. Since 1995, Jun'ya "ZUN" Ōta has independently developed programming, graphics, writing, and music for the series, self-publishing 22 main titles as of 2019. In addition to the bullet hell games, Team Shanghai Alice has produced various related print works and music albums, and collaborated with developer Twilight Frontier on six official spin-off fighting games.
The setting of the Touhou Project is Gensokyo, a "fantasy land" sealed from the outside world and primarily inhabited by humans and yōkai, legendary creatures from Japanese folklore. Reimu Hakurei, the main character of the series and the miko of the Hakurei Shrine, is often tasked with resolving supernatural "incidents" caused by other Gensokyo residents. The first five titles were developed for the Japanese NEC PC-9800 computer series, with the first, Highly Responsive to Prayers, released in August 1997; danmaku mechanics were introduced in the second game, Story of Eastern Wonderland. The release of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil in August 2002 marked a shift to Microsoft Windows, bringing the series to a wider audience. Numerous sequels followed, including several spin-offs that departed from the traditional bullet hell format.
The Touhou Project has become notable as a prominent source of Japanese dōjin content, with the series spawning a vast body of fan-made works including artwork, music, print works, video games, anime, and Internet memes. The popularity of the series and its derivative works has been attributed in part to the few restrictions placed by ZUN on the use of his characters and settings. Unofficial works are frequently sold at fan conventions, including Comiket, where the franchise has frequently held the record for circle participation, and the official convention Reitaisai, where trial versions of the official games are typically distributed prior to release.

Games

PC-98 games

The first five games in the series were developed by Jun'ya Ōta, an amateur Japanese developer working under the name "ZUN Soft". Ōta, then a 17-year-old mathematics student at Tokyo Denki University, independently developed the titles for the NEC PC-9800 personal computer series, utilizing the platform's 16-bit color graphics and six-channel FM synthesis audio. The titles were officially published by Amusement Makers, a student video game development club that he was a member of.
;Highly Responsive to Prayers
;Story of Eastern Wonderland
;Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream
;Lotus Land Story
;Mystic Square

Windows games

After the release of Mystic Square, ZUN graduated from university and the series became inactive for four years. During this time, he worked at Taito Corporation as a game developer and also composed music for various games created by members of Amusement Makers. He left the group in 2001 to focus on game development for Microsoft Windows, forming the one-man dōjin circle Team Shanghai Alice and self-publishing all subsequent titles. According to ZUN, the Windows games represent a "clean slate" for the series canon, albeit with many carry-overs and references from the PC-98 era. Games numbered with decimals are spin-offs from the main series that vary in genre.
;Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
;Perfect Cherry Blossom
;Immaterial and Missing Power
;Imperishable Night'
;Phantasmagoria of Flower View
;Shoot the Bullet
;Mountain of Faith
;Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
;Subterranean Animism
;Undefined Fantastic Object
;Touhou Hisoutensoku
;Double Spoiler
;Fairy Wars
;Ten Desires
;Hopeless Masquerade
;Double Dealing Character
;Impossible Spell Card
;Urban Legend in Limbo
;Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom
;Antinomy of Common Flowers
;Hidden Star in Four Seasons
;Violet Detector
;Wily Beast and Weakest Creature
;Touhou Gouyoku Ibun''

Other media

Music CDs

Between 2002 and 2016, ten music CDs were released as part of "ZUN's Music Collection". They are numbered from Volume 1 to 9 by release date, with Unknown Flower, Mesmerizing Journey being numbered as 5.5 due to its small size. Each album contains arrangements of music from the games as well as new compositions:
Each album includes a booklet written by ZUN documenting the activities of the "Secret Sealing Club", a self-described "club of necromancers" in Kyoto, Japan. In the loose collection of stories, club members Renko Usami and Maribel Hearn research and discuss various topics related to Gensokyo and the paranormal; Dolls in Pseudo Paradise includes an unrelated story about the fate of eight thieves spirited away to Gensokyo.
In 2006 and 2007, ZUN released Akyu's Untouched Score, a five-volume collection of PC-98 soundtracks that includes several unused themes. The albums respectively cover Lotus Land Story, Mystic Square, Story of Eastern Wonderland, Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream, and Highly Responsive to Prayers. Each track in the collection was enhanced with the addition of a sixth FM synthesis channel, which was originally reserved for sound effects in the games:
Original soundtracks for the six official fighting games have also been released. The albums primarily consist of arrangements by U2 Akiyama of Twilight Frontier, with several arrangements and/or new compositions by ZUN:
ZUN's Music Collection, Akyu's Untouched Score, and the fighting game soundtracks have been released for digital download on Google Play and the iTunes Store. Several music CDs have accompanied copies of official print works; these are listed below.

Print media

;Curiosities of Lotus Asia
;Touhou Sangetsusei
;Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red
;Seasonal Dream Vision
;Perfect Memento in Strict Sense
;Touhou Bougetsushou
;The Grimoire of Marisa
;Wild and Horned Hermit
;Symposium of Post-mysticism
;Forbidden Scrollery
;Strange Creators of Outer World
;Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia
;The Grimoire of Usami
;Cheating Detective Satori
;Lotus Eaters

Gameplay

In the shooting games, the player's bullet power increases on a linear scale as the player collects power-ups dropped by enemies, and eventually maxes out. The player can also collect "point" icons to earn extra lives; the amount needed grows exponentially as the player's score rises. The player can enter "focus mode" by holding the shift key by default, which slows down the player's movement, makes the collision box visible, and generally focuses the player's attack to make it more powerful. The graze counter, missing from Mountain of Faith and Story of Eastern Wonderland, tracks how many bullets entered the character sprite but avoided the collision box, and rewards the player with a score bonus for living on the edge.
The player can use a "bomb" or "spell card", similar to the "bomb" in many other shooting games. Although the player has a limited number at any given time, losing a life replenishes the current number of bombs up to a certain amount. With some exceptions, use of a bomb will make the user temporarily invulnerable, clear many of the bullets, and cause heavy damage to any enemies on screen. The overall effect the bomb has varies by character and by game. The player can use one during a short period after being hit by a bullet to avoid loss of a life. The amount of time the player has available to deathbomb is usually around 0.3 seconds. Bosses also have spell cards, but with bosses the term applies to a prolonged pattern of movements and shots that last until the player depletes the boss' health by a certain amount or the time runs out.
Each individual game of the main series from Perfect Cherry Blossom to Wily Beast and Weakest Creature has additional items that affect some aspect of gameplay, such as scoring or gaining extra lives/bombs. For example, Perfect Cherry Blossom has "cherry points", which are used mostly in scoring, but can grant temporary invulnerability ; Imperishable Night has "time points", which are essential for advancing to later stages, and also determine if the player gets to challenge a boss's 'final spell' on normal or higher difficulties; Mountain of Faith has "faith" points, which boost the score the player receives upon gathering point items and bonuses for clearing spell cards without dying or using a spell card.
Each main Touhou game has four difficulty levels—easy, normal, hard, and lunatic—with each one being harder than the previous one. Regardless of difficulty choice, there are six stages in each game that become progressively difficult. The only exceptions to this are Story of Eastern Wonderland and Embodiment of Scarlet Devil on easy difficulty, both of which only have five stages.
In addition to the four main difficulties, there is an extra stage which is a long and difficult stage in which players must play through hordes of enemies, and an especially long boss fight. In order to reach the extra stage, one must beat the game on normal difficulty or higher without the use of a continue. The only games that allow players to reach the extra stage by completing the easy difficulty are Story of Eastern Wonderland, Mystic Square, Perfect Cherry Blossom, Imperishable Night, Fairy Wars, Double Dealing Character, Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, Hidden Star in Four Seasons, and Wily Beast and Weakest Creature. In terms of difficulty, the extra stage is around normal difficulty or above. In Perfect Cherry Blossom, there is a phantasm extra stage where the difficulty is increased even further. Although the phantasm stage is aimed for the most experienced players, the difficulty is somewhere in between hard and lunatic. The phantasm stage is accessed by beating the extra stage and capturing at least 60 spells with any of the characters and weapon types combined.

Plot

Background

The plots of the Touhou Project revolve around the strange phenomena that occur in the fictional realm of Gensokyo, which ZUN designed with a human village in some remote mountain recesses in Japan. Originally, it was simply called "a remote separated land of a human village in an eastern country." Long before Touhou Project's story begins, many non-humans like yōkai lived with some humans in the area. After a few humans disappeared into Gensokyo, many humans became afraid of approaching this area, while others settled there to exterminate yōkai. However, as time went on, humans developed civilization and multiplied in number, and thus yōkai worried about how the balance between humans and yōkai would be affected. 500 years before Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, the yōkai sage Yukari Yakumo developed the "boundary of phantasm and substance," which was favored by the yōkai and protected the balance. This was called the "Yōkai Expansion Project" and made Gensokyo a phantasmal world that automatically called out to the weakened yōkai of the outside world. Other things that disappear from the outside world, like extinct animals, lost tools, and architecture, appear in Gensokyo. Since Gensokyo was a plot of land in Japan that is separated by a barrier, it is Japan that is immediately outside of this barrier.
As a result of the seal, Gensokyo became inaccessible from the outside world, and similarly, those in Gensokyo were unable to leave. Gensokyo's existence could not be confirmed from the outside world, nor could the outside world be confirmed within Gensokyo. As a result, the isolated community developed its own civilization, separate from the outside world. Although separated by a barrier, it is a bordering world to its outside, as opposed to being in a parallel universe. There are no seas in Gensokyo, since it is landlocked. In Gensokyo, there are few humans, and various kinds of yōkai. Some species include magicians, beasts, therianthropes, vampires, bōrei, tengu, mermaids, kappa, and yōkai. There are others species that could be yōkai depending on definition, like fairies, spirits, yūrei, onryō, poltergeists, hermits, oni, and gods which are all portrayed in human female form.
In present Gensokyo, presented in all Touhou Project games since EoSD, magical and spiritual qualities prevail compared to the outside world where unscientific phenomena were dismissed as "superstition" around the time of the Meiji era. The only known gateway from the outside world into Gensokyo is the Hakurei Shrine on the border of Gensokyo. The spell card rules were also established to keep up the relationship between humans and yōkai in a mock style, which was necessary for the preservation of the balance of Gensokyo. The "Great Hakurei Barrier," managed by past Hakurei miko, was constructed several decades before EoSD, which is described as a "barrier of common sense," and is thus a strong logical barrier that not even yōkai can pass through. The yōkai opposed its construction at first before understanding its usefulness.

In-game events

In Gensokyo, events called "incidents" occur once in a while. An incident is an event that affects all of Gensokyo and is of unknown cause at the time it occurs. Touhou Project mainly focuses on incidents that affects the entirety of Gensokyo in its stories, but there are also works like Mountain of Faith that are centered on lesser-scale events.
Frequently, incidents are due to a yōkai's whim or curiosity, and usually Reimu Hakurei would go to investigate it and find and chastise the perpetrator. Usually, the shrine maiden of the Hakurei Shrine resolves incidents, but there are cases where Marisa Kirisame and other characters would resolve them. When a major incident occurs, the spirits and fairies are affected by the incident and experience an increase in power for the duration incident. It has additionally been stated that people of the village also go out to resolve incidents.

Characters

With its focus on bishōjo characters, the Touhou series possesses a large cast compared to other shooting games. While they are not developed nearly to the standards of a story-based game, many players love them. One example is Hong Meiling, affectionately called Chūgoku, the stage 3 boss of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, who won a popularity contest in Japan out of all Touhou characters. Among the vast array of characters, only six named characters are male. One is a turtle, one is a cat, two are only mentioned in passing, one who is a merchant is only featured in the serialized novel, and the last is a cloud-like entity. There is also one before all these, but this character has three forms of different genders, so this character may not exactly be male.
Though each game features a collection of different characters, the main protagonist of the series is always Reimu Hakurei, joined by Marisa Kirisame after the second game. Exceptions to this include Shoot the Bullet and Double Spoiler, Fairy Wars, Impossible Spell Card, and Violet Detector.

Development

The Touhou Project is a one-man project by Jun'ya Ōta, who does all the graphics, music, and programming alone for the bullet hell games, with the exceptions of the portrait art in Fairy Wars by Makoto Hirasaka, and the fighting games, Immaterial and Missing Power, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, Touhou Hisōtensoku, Hopeless Masquerade, and Urban Legend in Limbo, which were dual efforts with Twilight Frontier.
The idea of Touhou first came to ZUN during his high school years, when shrine maiden-themed games were in the minority. "It would be nice to make shrine maiden games," he thought, and often imagined the music that would go with such games. He went to college, hoping to compose music for fighting games, since they were popular at the time due to Street Fighter II. However, he decided that in order to put his music into games, it would be easier to make his own game to go with it, which led to the first Touhou game, Highly Responsive to Prayers, being released in 1996. The first game was originally intended as a practice in programming. Touhou only became a shooting game series from the second game onwards, because the popularity of shooting games had revived due to RayForce and ZUN had long been a fan of such games. ZUN remarked how the general theme and direction of Touhou only started coming together in the sixth game, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.
ZUN develops his games with Visual Studio, Adobe Photoshop, and Cubase, according to his interview in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red.

Reception and fanworks


Dōjin circles registered under the Touhou Project genre since Comiket 76, the first time Touhou is counted as its own genre apart from the main "dōjin soft" category, to Comiket 91

Many derivative works based on Touhou have been created since the release of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, including dōjinshi, dōjin music, dōjin anime, and dōjin games. The vast scope of Touhou derivatives prompted commentary, noting that Touhou Project became an unmissable aspect of Japanese consumer generated media. These dōjin activities are mostly responsible for adding original attributes to characters that ZUN may not have intended. ZUN, for the most part, had acknowledged, appreciated, and even encouraged these derivative works by imposing very few restrictions on the use of his works. The major restrictions are on unauthorized commercial distribution and the spoiling of endings; proper attribution to Team Shanghai Alice is a recommendation. ZUN stated himself that he did not want the Touhou Project game series to be officially commercialized. The first recent publication of Touhou derivative doujinshi occurred during December 2003, following the release of Perfect Cherry Blossom; seven circles sold Touhou derivative works at Comiket 65 in December 2003. At Comiket 74 in August 2008, a total of 885 circles had Touhou derivative works on display or for sale, out of a total of 35,000 circles participating at Comiket. At Comiket 77, 2,372 circles were dedicated to Touhou, breaking the previous record held by The Prince of Tennis at Comiket 66, which had 2,130 circles. At Comiket 85, Touhou was still in the lead, with 2,272 participating circles selling Touhou derivatives, far outpacing those of other franchises.
The dōjin games based on Touhou include adaptations of other game series' mechanics with Touhou characters, such as Kōmajō Densetsu: Scarlet Symphony, Age of Ethanols, and Touhou Puppet Dance Performance. The music of Touhou is also very popular and many arrangement CDs can be found for sale at Comiket and other Japanese conventions.
At Tokyo Game Show 2014, ZUN announced a collaborative project with PlayStation bringing unofficial, fan-made Touhou Project dōjin games to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita platforms.
Among the most popular derivatives are the series of Flash videos created by the dōjin music circle IOSYS. Many of them, like "Marisa Stole the Precious Thing", are popular on otaku internet forums and Nico Nico Douga.
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Yukkuri Reimu and Yukkuri Marisa
A short derivative animated project, Anime Tenchou x Touhou Project was produced by Ufotable to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Japanese goods chain Animate as a promotional video for the store combining Touhou with Animate's mascot, Meito Anizawa. Several fanmade anime have also been made for Touhou. A dōjin anime project by the dōjin circle Maikaze, titled A Summer Day's Dream, is a fan-made anime adaptation with an original plot featuring Touhou characters, with four episodes released from 2008 to 2016, and the 2.5th episode released in 2014; the last episode will be released in 2020. Albeit created by an amateur studio, the project featured professional voice actors. Another dōjin anime by the circle Manpuku Jinja, titled Fantasy Kaleidoscope ~ The Memories of Phantasm, was released at Comiket 80 in 2011, with one episode released based on the storyline of Perfect Cherry Blossom. There are 14 episodes as of 2019.
Kyoto Fantasy Troupe, a Chinese dōjin circle, made a dōjin anime titled Hifuu Club Activity Record ~ The Sealed Esoteric History. The first episode was released at Comiket 89 in late 2015 and Chengdu TouhouOnly05 in early 2016. It also featured professional Japanese voice actors when it was re-released later. The second episode was released in 2017. Another Chinese dōjin circle, Perpetual Motion Niche, is also making a dōjin anime titled Secluded Magic Instrument~ Meteors of Triple Dimension, which is about the story of the collision of three worlds—the forgotten Eastern Country, Gensokyo and the outside world; the first episode was released in Q3 2017.
The Touhou Project was nominated for the 11th annual Media Arts Awards held by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, under the Entertainment category, where Touhou Project eventually lost to Nintendo's Wii Sports for the Grand Prize award. The series was inducted into the Guinness World Records in October 2010 as the "most prolific fan-made shooter series".
Yuyuko Saigyouji and Reimu Hakurei also make cameo character appearances in Square Enix's game Lord of Vermilion Re:2.

Internet memes

A major Internet meme based on Touhou is "Yukkuri shite itte ne!!!", which centers around the disembodied, deformed heads of Touhou characters, often referred to as "yukkuris". This meme originated from a disfigured attempt to draw the main characters Reimu and Marisa with Shift JIS art. Yukkuris became so popular that the phrase "Yukkuri shite itte ne!!!" won bronze for 2008's "Net Slang of the Year" in Japan. Yukkuris also appear in Internet advertisements, the anime Natsu no Arashi! and Pani Poni Dash!, and most notably, the front page of 2channel, the largest Internet forum in the world.

Reitaisai

The Hakurei Shrine Reitaisai is the largest of the many dōjin conventions hosting only Touhou content. Although the coordinator of this convention has nothing to do with Team Shanghai Alice officially, the name "Hakurei Shrine Reitaisai" was given by ZUN himself. It first started in 2004 as a way for Team Shanghai Alice to publicly distribute the trial version for their upcoming games to the fans well in advance of releasing them on the internet; in addition, the 2004 Reitaisai featured a total of 114 participating circles. Since then, many Touhou derivative works are gathered and sold there. Commencing every year in April or May, the convention has been hosted in Ōta, Tokyo, in 2004; Naka-ku, Yokohama, in 2005; Sunshine City, Tokyo, in 2006 and 2007; and the Tokyo Big Sight from 2008 onwards. In 2010 Reitaisai SP, an additional Reitaisai to be held every autumn due to increasing popularity, was started, but it was cancelled after 2011. The 2011 Reitaisai was originally cancelled due to safety concerns after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and the release of Ten Desires was also postponed. It was later rescheduled and held on May 8, 2011, with approximately 4,940 participating circles. In addition to events in Japan, there is another Reitaisai held in Taiwan that started in 2015. The 17th Reitaisai in 2020, which was originally going to run on March 22 before being postponed to May 17, was ultimately cancelled due to safety concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, making it the first Reitaisai to be cancelled.