Touhou Project
The , also known simply as , is a bullet hell shoot 'em up video game series created by one-man independent Japanese "doujin" soft developer Team Shanghai Alice. Since 1995, the team's member, Jun'ya "ZUN" Ōta, has independently developed programming, graphics, writing, and music for the series, self-publishing 18 mainline games and five spin-offs . ZUN has also produced related print works and music albums, and collaborated with developer Twilight Frontier on seven official "Touhou" spin-offs, most being fighting games. The "Touhou Project" is set in a land sealed from the outside world and primarily inhabited  by humans and "yōkai", legendary creatures from Japanese folklore that are personified in "Touhou" as "bishōjo" in an anthropomorphic "moe" style. Reimu Hakurei, the "miko" of the Hakurei Shrine and the main character of the series, is often tasked with resolving supernatural "incidents" caused in and around Gensokyo. The first five games were developed for the Japanese NEC PC-9800 computer series, with the first, "Highly Responsive to Prayers", released in August 1997; the series' signature "danmaku" (弾幕, 'bullet curtain') mechanics were introduced in the second game, "Story of Eastern Wonderland" (also 1997). The release of "Embodiment of Scarlet Devil" in  August 2002 marked a shift to Microsoft Windows. Numerous sequels followed, including several spin-offs departing from the traditional bullet hell format. "Touhou Project" has become particularly notable as a prominent source of Japanese "dōjin" content, with the series spawning a vast body of fan-made works such as artwork, music, print works, video games, and Internet memes. Because of this, it has gained somewhat of a cult following outside of Japan. 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 content. 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. Jun'ya Ōta, who was then a mathematics student at Tokyo Denki University working under the name "ZUN Soft", developed the first five "Touhou" games for NEC PC-9800 personal computers, utilizing the platform's 16-bit color graphics and 6-channel FM synthesis audio. The games were published by Amusement Makers, a student game development club that Ōta was a  member of. 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 games. 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. 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 (except "Dolls in Pseudo Paradise," "Unknown Flower, Mesmerizing Journey," and "Rainbow-Colored Septentrion") includes a booklet written by ZUN documenting the activities of  the , 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 , 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 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 (Japan, US). Several music CDs have accompanied copies of official print works; these are listed below. 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 their hitbox visible (from "Perfect Cherry Blossom" onwards), 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 hitbox, rewarding the player with a score bonus for taking risks. 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 (called a "deathbomb") to avoid loss of a life. The amount of time the player has available to deathbomb is usually around 0.3 seconds (8 frames). Bosses have attack phases, which are also referred to as 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 (known as the "supernatural border"); "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. 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, unlocked after completing the game without using any continues. The extra stage is considerably more difficult than the regular game, and contains an especially  long boss fight (usually with ten spell cards). Bosses in extra stages are usually immune to bombs. 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", "Wily Beast and Weakest Creature", and "Unconnected Marketeers". In "Perfect Cherry Blossom", there is a phantasm extra stage where the difficulty is increased even further. 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 , 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" (EoSD), 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" (a kind of miscellaneous group). 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" whim or curiosity, and usually Reimu Hakurei would go to investigate it and find and chastise the perpetrator. While Reimu is usually the  one to resolve incidents, 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. 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 (China), 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 (Genjii) is a turtle, one is a cat (Sokrates), two (Youki Konpaku and Myouren Hijiri) are only mentioned in passing, one (Rinnosuke Morichika) who is a merchant is only featured in the serialized novel, and the last (Unzan) is a cloud-like entity. There is also one before all these (Shingyoku), 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" (Aya Shameimaru is playable on both, and Hatate Himekaidou can become playable in "Double Spoiler"), "Fairy Wars" (which has Cirno as the sole playable character), "Impossible Spell Card" and "Gold Rush" (where only Seija Kijin is playable), and "Violet Detector" (where only Sumireko Usami is playable). Development. The "Touhou Project" is a one-man project by Jun'ya Ōta (usually under the pseudonym ZUN), who does all the graphics, music, and programming alone for the bullet  hell games, with the exceptions of the portrait art in "Fairy Wars," which was done by Makoto Hirasaka. The fighting games, "Immaterial and Missing Power", "Scarlet Weather Rhapsody", "Touhou Hisōtensoku", "Hopeless Masquerade", "Urban Legend in Limbo", and "Antinomy of Common Flowers", were dual efforts with Twilight Frontier, in which ZUN wrote the music and story, and Twilight Frontier created the art and gameplay. ZUN's first interest in developing video games came during his high school years. While most shoot 'em up games utilise a military or science fiction theme, ZUN wanted a game with a miko main character, and  a Shinto aesthetic. ZUN was part of his school's orchestra club, and originally wanted to create music for video games. He went to college, hoping to compose music for fighting games, since they were popular at the time due to "Street Fighter II". As he did not know anybody else who was making games that he could put his music in, he made his own games for this purpose, 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. Many derivative works based on "Touhou" have been created since the release of "Embodiment of Scarlet Devil", including dōjinshi, dōjin music (many of the songs  had been made remixing the original games' music), dōjin anime, and dōjin games (even though the "Touhou" games themselves are dōjin games). The vast scope of "Touhou Project" 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 (as opposed to dōjin) and  the spoiling of endings; proper attribution to Team Shanghai Alice is a requirement. ZUN stated himself that he did not want the "Touhou Project" game series to be officially commercialized. The first 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 (December 2009), 2,372 circles were dedicated to  Touhou, breaking the previous record held by "The Prince of Tennis" at Comiket 66 (August 2004), which had 2,130 circles. At Comiket 85 (December 2013), "Touhou" was still in the lead, with 2,272 participating circles selling "Touhou" derivatives, compared to "Kuroko's Basketball", the second most popular franchise at that year's Comiket, which had 1,462 circles. Throughout the mid 2010s, "Touhou" popularity at Comiket began to diminish. From 2015-2017, "Kantai Collection" was consistently the most popular series at Comiket. By 2019, "Touhou" was the fourth most popular series at Comiket, with less than half the circles at Comiket  than the "Fate" series. The dōjin games based on "Touhou" include adaptations of other game series' mechanics with "Touhou" characters, such as "" (a parody of the "Castlevania" games with the title being a play on the Japanese game of the series, "Akumajō Dracula"), "Age of Ethanols" (based on the "Age of Empires" series), and "Touhou Puppet Dance Performance" (based on the "Pokémon" games). At Tokyo Game Show 2014, ZUN announced a collaborative project with PlayStation bringing unofficial, fan-made "Touhou Project" dōjin games to the PlayStation 4 (PS4) and PlayStation Vita platforms. Yuyuko Saigyouji and Reimu Hakurei also made cameo  character appearances in Square Enix's game "Lord of Vermilion Re:2". The music of "Touhou" has been a particular source of interest, and many arrangement CDs are sold at Comiket and other Japanese conventions. Among the most popular derivatives are the series of Flash music videos created by the dōjin music circle IOSYS, which are often shared on otaku internet forums and Nico Nico Douga. One such song, "Marisa Stole the Precious Thing", was parodied in derivative anime music videos. "Marisa Stole the Precious Thing", alongside "Cirno's Perfect Math Class", "Night of Nights", and "Bad Apple" were included in  the dōjin game "Touhou Spell Bubble." Toby Fox, the creator of "Undertale", cited "Touhou" as one of his musical influences. Several fanmade anime have been made for "Touhou". Albeit created by amateur studios, the projects have sometimes included appearance by professional voice actors, such as Rie Tanaka. Dōjin anime of note include by the circle Manpuku Jinja in 2011, by the dōjin circle Maikaze, and "Hifuu Club Activity Record ~ The Sealed Esoteric History" () by the Chinese dōjin circle Kyoto Fantasy Troupe. A derivative anime from a commercial anime studio came in the form of 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. 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". Internet memes. A major Internet meme based on "Touhou" is , 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 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, "Imperishable Night" and "Immaterial and Missing Power". 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, and later brought back and rebranded as Autumn Reitaisai from 2014 onwards. 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.