/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I first got exposed to it through Youtube recommendations back in 2007/2008 or so, and it was secondary material like IOSYS. The craze surrounding it at the time got me curious, but the actual material left me a little confused in that I couldn't see how a bunch of bullet hell games could sprout into the cultural phenomena it did. This gave me a weird love/hate relationship with it as a teenager, because I'd been raised to believe things were only worth liking based on a textbook notion of merit, but that conflicted with the part of me that couldn't help but want to learn more about how a series like Touhou could be so free to be itself yet so popular at the same time.

Ended up having a life-changing experience specifically because of Touhou, I ended up head over heels for pic related, and of course, even before all that, I came around to the series itself as I learned to mellow out over time. I haven't spent that much time with fan material (at least, I don't think so compared to others I knew), but I still had a lot of good times worth remembering.

Part of me misses the TH6-12.3 era, maybe more up to 14 I suppose, where the content was more dreamlike in its lack of focus on permanent changes to the overall status quo. I also think that was probably the most "pure" era in which the fan content was booming, but I'm glad many of its doujin circles are still around and just as passionate. I don't really keep up with the western part of Touhou's following, but I am planning to go to Touhoufest this April. Plus it's my dream to visit Reitaisai one day.