/jp/ - Otaku Culture

"What are you waiting for, anon?"

>>44121446
It's literally unknown to anyone, even ZUN himself, as to how Touhou got this big in the first place, and is one of its greatest mysteries. Now, one could answer "NND" and be partially correct, it is what propelled Touhou to greater heights. However, Reitaisai existed before NND even existed, and there needed to be dedicated fans to make those NND videos in the first place. There's something that gripped people that played it to an extreme degree that circles and an entire convention were made for this little doujin game shortly after it's release on Windows, and nobody can really be sure why.
It's easy to say it's because of ZUN's lax copyright and loose writing style, but that can't be be all there is... simply because a great number of original doujin work is like that as well, even before Touhou. This factor isn't even just with Doujins, but is seen on small amateur work in general. You can make your work as open-source and as vague as you want, but very unlikely that it gets a thirtieth of the attention Touhou gets.
Is it just because Touhou does its vagueness better than everyone else did or still does? That's possible, but I think it unlikely to be that aspect.
Touhou does not have advertising. Touhou does not have corporate backing. Touhou did not have digital media distribution for a very long time. Touhou was made almost exclusively by one guy. Touhou has limited reach. Touhou has amateur art. ZUN likes wordplay so much that it should alienate non-Japanese.
Touhou had a lot of things going against it, but it thrived to an extreme degree that it dwarfed everything on Comiket for a decade, and nothing else has still reached its heights on the convention.

It really is a mystery as to how Touhou got to the way it is now. It does almost everything that's expected for something to get popular, and it gets popular.
There is however, one thing I neglected to mention. If you played Touhou 6 first, do you remember the first time you booted the game? Seeing Reimu sitting, and... the music playing. I still vividly remember that moment, and how oddly special it felt, and I've played hundreds upon hundreds of games before Touhou. I could never really accurately describe how it felt, but it was immediately clear to me I've never played a game like this before.
For me and for the end of this long-winded /jp/sie wall of text, the music is the deciding factor of Touhou. The music brought the character to the vague people and the vague setting. You could hear it and already feel like there's something special about it, even if you couldn't pinpoint what it was. This might be considered blasphemous to some (so this is on-topic) , but while I love talking about the lore and the plot and the characters, the music is where Touhou's heart is.