Couple things to mention here. 5:13 the two books marked by an asterisk aren't written entirely by ZUN himself. One contains a short story written by ZUN (Top) and the other credits ZUN but his actual involvement in it is pretty loose, making it questionably Canon as a whole (Middle.) The other is that you CAN see the Good Ending if you beat the game on Easy Mode (except Touhou 6.) I don't know if the Extra Stage can be unlocked, but at the time of recording I didn't know this was the case on Endings. EDIT I put the clover on the wrong game OOPS. Violet Detector isn't the latest Twilight Frontier collab, it's two to the left, Antinomy of Common Flowers. I can't believe I didn't notice that Other than that, I hope you enjoyed it.
5:08 Violet Detector is only from ZUN though. Regarding Easy, I think it's only from touhou 14 onwards that 1ccing on this mode can unlock the extra. For pre touhou 10 games, I didn't start from a blank scorefile, so I dunno.
I edited it now, but I put the indicator on the wrong game and didn't even realize it. Appreciate the heads up on it but damn that is a bit embarrassing
lmao if you happen to want to try out a touhou game, i'd suggest Touhou 8 Imperishable Night, its one of the more easier games. do not try to even attempt Touhou 11 Subterranean Animism or you will summon satan
@@JadeJuno difficulties vary. i can rank the ones IVE played. *hardest* Touhou 15 LoLK Touhou 11 SA Touhou 6 EoSD Touhou 12 UFO Touhou 10 MoF and the least hardest, Touhou 8. The only trouble i had about th8 was the 4th stage and the final bosses. touhou 11 is hellfire and touhou 15 is 50x harder than touhou 11 (imo) eosd is easy, but since u can’t see your hit box, it’s hard to make out where you’re dodging shit. sorry if i’m kinda going around ur question- but. touhou is very difficult for sure. but after u get used to it, it’s easy. until you start playing on hard or normal mode lol
“Although Touhou is regarded as an easier game in the genre-“ Me, as I’ve spent a good portion of the video jaw dropped at the screen how people even do that: WHAT
From what I remember, undertale is considered as a bullet hell. Undertale is easy. I don't think we can say that TouHou is low on that tier list, of course there are bullet hell's that are easier than this
@@slavishentity6705 bruh UT is not a bullet hell whatsoever. the closest thing to BH type genre was the omega flowey fight. toby fox was inspired by ZUN but its more of a RPG with a gameboy vibe (imo at least) if UT was a straight up BH that'd be cool asf :o
Finally an actual good SERIOUS and not cringey introduction video to touhou, an actual useful summary of what the series is about. Thank you very much, and the rest of your vids are real good as well!
Touhou have been spread across the internet so much that the references and remixes I accidentally encountered is the reason why I'm here in the fandom.
At this rate, touhou become more like a culture itself. Yup, touhou reference can be found almost anywhere lol. As goes with a famous comment that says, if anything exist there will be a touhou parody of it, and the presence of touhou hijack memes
@@catchy9665 th fans will welcome and be helpful to any UT fans playing touhou atm. War ended 2 years ago, th fans are at least pretty matured now. UT fandom on the other hand is still childish but I appreciate the good changes.
@@minhnguyenhoang7828 Just don't mention what even or game is canon or who's your favorite character or ask the age of any of the characters when talking to a Touhou fan.
@@weirdoscreation There is a good side and bad side You have probably looked at the bad side so far, now go look at all the artist and creators who actually pay attention to the cannon lore
The thing I don't understand is why the fandom is so large and dedicated. I see so much well-made Touhou art almost daily. I am not complaining! I simply want to know what about it has people so invested. For as long as I can remember I have seen countless Touhou fan videos on RU-vid as well.
Well the fandom used to be even bigger in the 2006-2012 range but it's since declined. Don't let that mean that there isn't still quality fan works being put out because there are
It’s where most fan art producers begin, since there are already so much fandoms you’ll never be blamed for doing it bad. So creating fandom for Touhou is great for practice. If you check the artists in Japan, many of their early released arts were Touhou based.
Zun is credited as the "creator of touhou" but the popularity of the series doesn't come from him alone, with an incredibly large portion of the fanbase never having even PLAYED any of Zun's actual original Touhou games. Touhou isn't just a game series made by an indie developer, it's a doujin phenomena that spans decades and millions of people expressing themselves through it. At this point Touhou is "a video game series" as much as maybe something like Marvel is a "comic book series"
@@nepdisc3722 the things I knew about touhou before watching this video could be counted on one hand, so hearing that its fandom is mostly compromised of "I'm a huge touhou fan, can't wait to play the games one day" people unironically is indeed new information to me.
"Is that from a anime", ah I remember actually hearing that question when I was in my Utsuho-crossplay on a convention. Broke down laughing and could only answer after a minute.
He doesnt exactly like it, but he doesn't exactly stop them either which leads to it having a *lot* of doujins H and not. One of my favorite doujins is miko miko suika where suika becomes a shrine maiden with reimu. And then there's osana reimu...
I love the difference between him and Yoko Taro. Yoko made the Neir series and his response when fans asked him about hentai based on his characters was "How despicable! Send me all of it immediately and I'll review it personally,"
For me Touhou has always been about the music. Been playing some of their games but bullet hell games arent really my thing. Enjoy the fighting games though. But the one thing that transcended the games is the Music, as it has a very distinct yet very recognisable sound, once you listened to Touhou music long enough you can easily identify a touhou song even if you never heard it before.
Yeah. Same here. I discovered Touhou when I heard a remix of Okuu's boss theme some years ago. I got curious about it and found it was a bullet hell game. And it showed me more music and lots of characters. Then, I looked for playthroughs and fan content, and all of it got my interest. I once tried Touhou 6 (The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil) on Normal but I always lost to Patchouli... :'(
Same. It comes as no surprise that zun created touhou as a vessel for his music. All the characters and games are made to fit the songs, not the other way around. Zun really hits it out of the park as a music creator
Just started learning about this franchise about a week ago by watching your streams and I'm interested in learning more about it! Keep up the good work!
Well, if you're new to Touhou, would you mind terribly if I dropped you into the deep end of the pool by recommending the very impressive animations by minusT? I highly recommend you to either play through the games or check gameplay featuring the games/bosses featured in his animations, as well as possibly some combo exhibition clips from the fighting games, in order to get a full appreciation for the amount of work minusT has put into his animations. (In case you want a recommendation guide for minusT's stuff: Watch the Final Boss and Extra Boss fights from _Touhou 6: EoSC_ + a combo movie or two featuring Remilia before you check his "Reimu vs Remilia" and "Marisa vs Flandre" animations; watch someone play through the final stage of _Touhou 7: PCB_ before checking his "Reimu vs Yuyuko" animation, and someone going up against _PCB's_ Phantasm Boss + a Yukari combo movie before checking the "Humans vs Yukari" animation; check a full playthrough of _Touhou 11: SA_ for his "Subterranean Stars" and "Brambly Boundaries" animations and then watch a playthrough of _Touhou 8: IN_ for an idea of his upcoming project.)
@@EMDYFC fate is basically like one of those mobile gacha games, a lot of people know what gacha are but don't have the time or mental strength to dive in
Finally googling "What is Touhou" after seeing characters and songs from it online for years and then subsequently finding a RU-vidr I used to watch a lot when I was big into Pokémon on a smurf Touhou account describing the series was quite the surprise. "A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one."
When I first started playing touhou, I couldn't shake an extremly strong feeling of deja vu. Turns out i had heard almost all of the ESoD soundtrack without having ever known it lol.
theres a theory that theres a "canon" explaination for the pc 98 to windows shift which i think is really cool. basically at the final pc 98 game alice uses a super powerful magic spell (a grimoire) to undo an incident which causes a world reset. idk its kinda cool and meta but also funny since its so convenient and zun can just rewrite everything now that hes graduated and been employed at the time. its also why some characters from the first games dont usually appear anymore (like mima)
Touhou in a real nutshell: "Welcome Hell" you must have: real good eyes to see through all those bullets and a really good memory [yes, patterns are specific to each characters, and if you can rember these, you then can steamroll. You will get: -girls, loads..and loads of girls [and armpits, never forget these] -certainly what could be considered as one of the best soundtrack there is [sweet me...how many bottles of beers do I need to reach 800+ music tracks?] -loads of fan stuff..and that's no joke [rember the 800+ soundtrack? multiply it by 1 000] -and...pichu~uns....loads and loads of Pichu~uns due to a bullet
@@kellyscorner1319 I know. It works both ways. If someone were explaining what cuphead was, they could say “basically it’s American Touhou with a larger hitbox”
@@Re-2005 all I know is that the touhou 10 ex boss looks like a kid but is over 5000 years old and actually has kids. So there was a degenerate who did it with her. I forgot her name tho
Just wanted to say this was a really well put together summarization that feels like a really good entry point to getting a sense of everything as someone who just started looking into all of this. Just wanted ta say thanks!
I remember my very first exposure to Touhou being the Bad Apple music video, and I didn't even know that it was entirely based on Touhou let alone knowing that the song itself is based on an actual song from one of the games. I believe it was like 12 years ago when I heard it for the very first time since my sister used to listen to it a lot and I was just 6 years old, to this day even she doesn't know it was Touhou-related. And I learnt that fact just from listening to random SiIvaGunner rips that happened to have the song slapped onto it. It was only 4 months ago that I started to take in how much of an impact that Touhou has on internet culture. Years of stumbling across remixes and memes of UN Owen, Lunar Clock/Flowering Night, and Beloved Tomboyish Girl, as well as hundreds of recreations of Bad Apple, have lead me to this moment where I finally gave in and step into the world of Gensokyo. It's still insane and mind-boggling to me how self-sustaining this community is, and it's all thanks to ZUN as well for being so supportive of fanmade content. To quote a RU-vid comment that I found recently, Touhou is a series that has always been watching over internet culture since its early stages, and will always continue to do so, even if ZUN considers retiring any time soon, it can always sustain itself through countless fan works out there.
This was pretty interesting. I’ve only known Touhou from the music and a handful of characters. I’ve always wanted to play the games but didn’t know where to start. Thank you!
People generally start with Embodiment Of The Scarlet Devil as the preceding ones are all on the PC-98 and need to be emulated. Also they were made before team Shanghai Alice became just Zun and weren't solely our lord and saviors full artistic vision. Jokes aside the only PC-98 game I had any fun with was Highly Responsive to Prayers, just because the gameplay is so weird. Basically, instead of flying on the ying yang orb and shooting magic at your enemies you... hit the orb with a stick, and aim it right so it hits the enemies. Also if the orb, your own projectile, hits you without you swinging the Gohei it fucking kills you, and bullet hell is still happening around you during all of this... yeah I remember now, it actually was not fun. It was the opposite.
I just saw 7 minutes length and thought "he can never put enough information into 7 minutes". I stand corrected. Well done sir. Hmm, I personally try to avoid to consume too many fan works except music circles. In the last one and a half year since I am aware and obsessing about Touhou I already collected a huge amount of doujin CDs for my shelf I'm pretty proud of. But back to what I was wanting to write. The reason I avoid fanworks is because I don't want to bloat my mind with information that is not canon. That also applies to fangames to a certain extend. I stick to mainly playing the official games and printworks and have not enough time otherwise to play fangames. Whatever fangames you going to throw at us. I am ready to learn and embrace them together with you on this channel! ♥
Man, watching gameplay of Touhou makes it look genuinely WAY more difficult than it actually is. The games do a fairly good job at slowly building up to the insane encounters used as background footage in this video, by the time you actually REACH those crazy fights you'll actually be able to do fairly well in them
That was a great overview of the series. It really explained a lot to me, someone who knew almost nothing about it before hand. Thanks a bunch and good luck with your series!
Well, if you're planning on giving Touhou a spin, would you mind terribly if I tried to throw you into the deep end of the pool by recommending the very impressive fanimations made by minusT? I highly recommend you to either play through the games or check some gameplay featuring the games/bosses featured in his animations, as well as possibly some combo exhibition clips from the fighting games, before you check his stuff out though... y'know, so you'll get a fuller appreciation for the amount of work he's put into his fanimations and stuff. (In case you want a recommendation guide for minusT's stuff: Either play through or watch the Final Boss and Extra Boss fights from _Touhou 6: EoSC_ + a combo movie or two featuring Remilia before you check his "Reimu vs Remilia" and "Marisa vs Flandre" animations; watch someone play through the final stage of _Touhou 7: PCB_ before checking his "Reimu vs Yuyuko" animation and someone going up against _PCB's_ Phantasm Boss + a Yukari combo movie before checking the "Humans vs Yukari" animation; check a full playthrough of _Touhou 11: SA_ for his "Subterranean Stars" and "Brambly Boundaries" animations and then watch a playthrough of _Touhou 8: IN_ for an idea of his upcoming project.)
"Speaking of fans..." >cuts to Aya Crafty bastard aren't ya? This one is a good intro to Touhou video, and I've seen a good few of them over the past decade. If you want a "no frills minimalist" short video to explain Touhou then this is the one! Good work!
Good stuff, I have no complaints. I am excited to see more videos from this channel on Touhou fangames! ~ I appreciate you spreading Touhou to others. Your enthusiastic view on Touhou from your streams was what influenced me to look at the series. From there on, I fell in love with the vast amount of characters, music, literature, and fanworks. I'm glad to have discovered the existence of ZUN, Touhou Project, the Touhou fandom, and Dylan Asprey.
I knew you were a fellow Canadian as soon as you said about Seriously though great content! Im glad I found this channel :) You deserve wayyy more subs
I have been away from the Touhou fandom since shortly after LoLK came out and I've spent the last few weeks trying to get back into the fandom. However so much has changed and so many songs are gone. Things have felt off trying to get back in, but this helped to lift my spirits. I feel like I'm finding my way back into the fandom. Wish me fortune upon my adventure.
I really look forward to your next videos! I started following your vods ~3 months ago, and, thanks to you, I started to understand much, much more the world of touhou and its characters! Now with these videos, I hope me and many others will be interested to get more and more into this series!
My first pseudo introduction was that one Ronald McDonald video all the way back in 2012 (although I still wouldn't know about the series existence until 2021)
I learned about Touhou from my favorite game Shanghai Genso Network which was a Touhou world based Megaman Battle Network game essentially that got taken down presumably by Capcom sadly as it was nearing completion for commercial sale at the end of December 2018
Thanks for this amazing video. Good clips, informative, and simple to understand; those are good qualities for a good introduction to a series, and your video is very welcome as a part of this. I hope you keep posting quality videos like this and that you keep improving over time!
here in 2023 this video is still very helpful! And I'm really excited to get into this series. What sparked my intrest was the taisei project which I found in the switch homebrew store! I look forward to your other videos and thank you for this info!
I just finished Touhou Luna Nights and loved it so much that I wanted to give the series a shot. Thanks for the great vid I have a much better understanding now!
Yes! I know a few people who were introduced to touhou project via luna nights too and im so happy about it because i absolutely love luna nights the fan-game. Please do give the series a shot, *your “shot”*
This was very informative on Touhou and had minimal fluff. It was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks. If I had one slight complaint, it's that some of the voice clips were edited together poorly but 99% of the audience won't notice or care about that.
Half of my music playlist consist of Touhou and it was like that even before I knew what Touhou was. That goes to show how wide spread it actually is AND how good it is.
Surprising that people still plays touhou even today! It feels like 2010 again when i see random people using Marisa profile appearing in all sorts of internet forums
That was a really nice introduction video about Touhou^^ I was already familiar with this series but you can always learn something when you watch introduction videos like yours. This time I've learned the the window games are more canon than the PC-98 games. Didn't know that before^^ I am also a big fan of the Touhou fangames as well so I am looking forward to more content from you^^ You earned a new sub :D
I swear I commented on this video when it went live. Oh well. Anyway - congrats! When I first heard you are working on non-stream video I was sure it is going to be Touhou! And fan-games are great and uncommon topic to cover, so I can't wait to see your take on them! Anyway - great start and can't wait for more!
I already knew this from being a Touhou fan since I was 9 years old, but since I recently joined the fandom again I decided to watch anyway as a refresher since I want to make fanwork of it that takes place in a different timeline from the official games. Thank you.
Bro I remember being obsessed with touhou back in when I was 11, kinda forgot about it till now. I listened to the nights of nights remix and remembered about it
As moving from a shooter (master difficulties dominated during past years) and now discovering touhou as a beginner of bullet hell... I can say the game is really fun and challenging, it's indeed a masterpiece to try, but Lunatic difficulties really seem to be far on other level that I used to know from shooters, this game deserves to be known by more people
I have to admit I first came to your channel because I am a fan of your brother's content but your videos made me really curious about Touhou and everything accompanying it. So thanks for this neat introduction video and keep up the good work! Can't wait to learn more about this interesting franchise
My first exposure to Touhou was probably the mcowen video, but the first time I recognized anything Touhou as Touhou was back in 2014 via a let's play of a metroidvania fangame (Bouhou Youyoumu, I believe it was called). After that, having a listen to music (both from the games and fan-arrangements) hooked me onto the series.
I just wanna know why there's so many h doujin of this damn franchise. It's mind boggling. And i never knew it was a game and has banger soundtrack? I thought it was a novel