Explain the appeal of Touhou to me

[Anonymous No.]

I am not a Touhou fan. Far from it actually. I am not even a weaboo or otaku and I have harsh words about Japan and the people who idolize it. I despise anime on an artistic standpoint and when I see the kind of posts people on 4chan and other places do to said little girls, it just makes me think that Touhou is yet another cheap pedo-bait sexualization and nothing else.
But my best friend (an asexual girl) is obsessed with it, and she seems pretty distraught when I mention anything about 'the creepy vibes' I get from Touhou. So I would like to know why or how. What is there in Touhou? Isn't this just a bullet hell with little girls added in for no reason other than to be eye-candy?
Fumo memes are pretty amusing, tho.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
Your friend is a pedo.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
Too many words.
Tenshi in the OP so this is now a Tenshi thread.
Post blue celestials with long hair.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38795767
I think you have enough Tenshi threads, dude...

[Anonymous No.]

>>38795808
I agree. Unfortunately.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
The thing with the Touhou community is that it is extremely fragmented. You do have the pedo fan artists, but there is also plenty of wholesome art. Here are some of the groups:

- Main series gameplay enjoyers,
- Main series tryhards,
- Spin-off game players,
- Character Enjoyers,
- Fan game makers and consumers,
- Lore lovers,
- Manga readers,
- People who love the setting of Gensokyo,
- Touhou music creators/enjoyers,
- Memers,
- Fan Art Makers and Consumers (Wholesome),
- Fan Art Makers and Consumers (NSFW),
- Fumo Lovers,
- People who think Yukkuri's are funny...
Most fans are a mix of all these groups, but most fans aren't in all of the above groups.

You can be a Touhou fan if you just really like it's music and it's many remixes, or if you only like Touhou fan games and none of the official works. You can merely enjoy the memes and so long as you view them regularly and maybe contribute a bit, you could possibly be considered a Touhou fan.

At the end of the day, if you don't like the anime artstyle, Touhou probably isn't for you. But I believe that saying it's just "another cheap pedo-bait sexualization and nothing else." is a bit unfair.
Though you are right in saying that there are some creepy stuff, or at least some observably creepy stuff, to write the whole thing off as that is wrong in my opinion. The main base content of Touhou has either little, or no sexualization and its the community that adds that aspect in. That however is one section of the community that, in my experience, most people aren't a part of (4chan is filled with pedos though). There is so much more to Touhou that, though it might not be for you, isn't just loli bait retard shit.

>Isn't this just a bullet hell with little girls added in for no reason other than to be eye-candy?

Honestly no idea what the intention was. Many people say it gives better characterization to who you are playing as and making them humanoids allows for a fantasy setting unique compared to the normal sci-fi/military setting you see in most bullet hell games. To justify why there are (almost) only girls people point to the creator's quote saying that he likes to draw pretty, frilly dresses way more than male clothes, though I don't know if that is exactly a good excuse.

Think what you want. It might be eye-candy, it might not be, but I doubt that ZUN is a pedo based on the type of art he creates and the road he has set Touhou down for the last 27 years.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38795871
>27 years
I keep forgetting how old this series is.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38795871
None of zun's character designs had any sort of sexualization. He probably only draws giris because, as he says, he likes it (and is better at drawing girls than boys). Think, boys have just a few outfits they don't look silly in but here we have shrine maidens wearing detached sleeves. People seem to dislike the original sprites but i love them. Zun's art is innocent. And the people who don't look at touhou hentai are not particularly lewd either.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
I just like the games. But people just get attached to the characters, games and/or music, be official or fan-made.
Being honest, I feel you would ask that question to your friend, she herself may give you a good decisive answer if you didn't ask her before.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38795984
I have asked her this same question, and she was just like "what".

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
There are more remixes of a single girl's theme than there ever will be of your favorite song.
There's likely more touhou remixes than your favorite genre has songs total.
There is an insurmountable mountain of fan content for a single game than any other game period.

I will die having not even experienced a quarter of it most likely.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
Quit being anti social and talk to your friend about it instead of internet strangers. Sounds like a pretty shitty friendship if they're not eager to tell you or you're not eager to learn

Also pedos are just the loudest around here. I'd say the majority of 2hu characters aren't pedobait

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
>I am not even a weaboo or otaku and I have harsh words about Japan
>makes thread on a website that worships japanese culture on a board surrounding otaku culture
ironic weeb

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
Anon you really shouldn't have posted this here of all places, this board is filled to the brim with people are exactly the pedophiles who ruin touhou and make you think that. the fairies and a few others are the only ones to be called children in touhou because the majority of the cast neither looks like a child or acts like one. it's just zun's art incomptence but even lately he has been drawing boobs and more mature bodies. Don't lose hope anon.

For getting into touhou however, you can play the games ( try, atleast ) or jam out to the music and funny decades old internet memes. There are alot of fun content for Touhou made by iosys and other circles that are light hearted fun and a banger to watch and get into touhou and know all the characters, touhou YouTube is amazing except the occasional coomer content but that's to be expected. Have fun Anon, and welcome.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38799794
Dumb take:
1. There's a huge hair to split between not having favoritism for Japanese media without hating it, being ironically disapproving of it to avoid being shamed as a weeb, preferring types of Japanese media for grounded reasons of personal taste, and having rose-tinted glasses towards most aspects of Japan because of media preferences. I know people from all those categories, and you see it all on /jp/.

2. 4chan has a split between boards that implicitly idolize Japanese otaku culture and those that are indifferent to it as a whole (fans and haters alike). This is actually the most appropriate board to ask this question on topicality alone even if you don't care for their tone.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
reddit

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
The girls really aren't eye candy and are in no way scantily clad, far from it they are always in funny dresses. The appeal is cute girls shoot bullet, interesting world made from real life myth and religion, and the girls being fun characters. All wrapped up in absolute bangers of osts

[Anonymous No.]

>>38799196
>I'd say the majority of 2hu characters aren't pedobait
Most retarded post of the thread award.
Every single game is majority young girls with maybe 1 or 2 titcows depending on how the fandom arbitrarily latches onto their few lines of dialogue and backstory.
Every girl drawn by ZUN is distinctly a young girl and flat barring some of his newest ones.

>EoSD
Fandom latched onto Hong as being a large big sisterly type.
Weird divide between flat anemic Patchouli and fat hairy neet.
The rest are young girls
>PCB
Arguably the most hag-infested group with how the fandom hit Yuyuko, probably due to lardassery memes.
Even Yukari in meme status pretends to be 17 years old.
>IN
Entirely young girls until you hit Eirin and Keine who got coopted into titcow status. One because of literal cow memes.
I could go on but you should get the idea by now.

In short, it's a fucking crapshoot what the wider community decides on a character, but if they are lazy, fat, or backstory goes into more detail than "is 8000 year old" then they get hag'd.
Even the rare canon appearances by guest artists tend to fight over character depictions. See: Patchouli
Whether you end up sexualizing them or not is another can of worms, abused even more heavily by the people slapping gigantic tits on them for paizuri doujinshi

[Anonymous No.]

>>38807401
Anon they are young-ish girls to young adult for two reasons: anime artstyle and zun no draw, are you retarded? This doesn't really make them pedbait, they are just bishonen you monkey.

[Anonymous No.]

It's a labor of love by one guy who's been making the games since the DOS era of computing. He made the original, official games, continues making them to this day, but unlike 99% of creators said "yeah fans are free to make whatever they want with a few restrictions, go nuts, make money off it, I don't care" back when literally every single Japanese anything was willing to kill your family for even drawing a copyrighted character

There's an enormous community of secondaries who don't even play the games, and they're really the source of most of the grabage you might be seeing. The actual, official games by ZUN are the most asexual, "I hand-drew some cute girls because I can't draw men" things ever.

Nothing officially endorsed by ZUN even comes close to anything resembling sexualization. The art is just too ugly for it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38808163
It was a labor of love.
It isn't anymore, sadly.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
>Isn't this just a bullet hell with little girls added in for no reason other than to be eye-candy?
It is and it should've just stayed like that

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
>my best friend (an asexual girl)
shitting and pissing myself with laughter right now
if this isn't bait, she's only "asexual" towards you, OP, you little soi turd

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
While the lore, cute art, gameplay, and music all appeal to me, I'm more in it for the discovery aspect.

The fact that there's such a wealth of official and fan content makes it interesting to go down rabbit to try to find out as much as I can about the characters as well as about the fan community and the weird creatures that inhabit it. Reading the content is interesting as almost all of it references other works or ties back to it heavily (this has the effect of making it hard to get into without a good knowledge of the characters, though). It's also fun to make theories and come up with explanations for things that don't quite add up in canon.

If you're not prone to becoming autistically obsessed with things, though, this part might not be appealing to you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38808163
Based japan and baser ZUN

[Anonymous No.]

A lot of people have said very important things here, but regarding your hate on anime artstyle, that's how I got into Touhou too. I used to hate anime artstyle, but one day for some reason Touhou got my attention and I became a fan. It felt pretty weird getting into something so "anime", and to this day I'm still not really sure what about it caught my attenton, but eventually I got used to it and I'm glad I discovered Touhou.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38808517
I've met girls with zero sexuality.
It's not outside of the realm of impossibility. For reference, it's probably closer to the career woman meme. No time for anything other than work.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
I really like the lore and setting in Touhou! It's the perfect setting for a great adavture story and it's very diverse when it comes to forms of story telling.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
I enjoy the overall worldbuilding that Touhou has created thus far and in particular its references to oriental mythology and culture, as well as the overarching themes of focusing on things which are forgotten as well as antiquity and traditionalism. This has lead me to learn more about these topics in detail which in turn results in an elevated degree of appreciation for Touhou itself.
The games are challenging and, dare I say, fun, even when I feel like games aren't really fun anymore. The satisfaction of successfully weaving through a series of hard spell cards is always nice. Besides this, I think in terms of mechanics and game design Touhou has a unique charm to it that renders it more than just a generic shmup. Compared to arcade classics it places a lot more emphasis on certain types of shots and expects the player to move in a completely different way in order to beat the game.
The third feature of attraction is the staying power of the persistent and huge community. Touhou itself is a cultural monolith that's already embedded itself deep within internet culture to various degrees in various internet circles, and people create massive amounts of fan content that elaborate upon zun's original content from fan games and music arrangements to literature or drawings.
The cute girls are a surrogate relief for lonely people too,

[Anonymous No.]

Really good music

Like Hartman's Youkai, Grenwich In the Sky, and some others

[Anonymous No.]

Do you really want to know?

>At a lonely crossroads somewhere near Shinjuku, a then 18 year old ZUN, lacking funds to buy alcohol, was getting desperate. That's when he received inspiration from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.
>ZUN decided dark magic was the answer. Following the instructions of a 2000 yen occult book he shoplifted out of the used bookstore, ZUN attempted to summon a demon.
>He was answered by none other than Azazel (aka the fallen angel Sariel) himself. After roughly an hour of negotiations, the two came to a Faustian bargain.
>ZUN would go on to create a series of games, and the Devil would use his evil influence to cause that series to be popular. As added bonus, ZUN would create a legion of waifus to serve in Sariel's harem.

So the answer is simple. Touhou is popular due to the influence of a Faustian bargain.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38807401
is everything that contains little girls as most characters pedobait? the original designs for the girls are as non-sexualised as it gets, the artstyle isnt very anatomically accurate or realistic and they all wear pretty big dresses revealing nothing. Their dialogues are also very normal and elegant. Obviously the fans of anything will make lewd art, but that changes nothing. I do personally find them cute and comforting at best but i never would want to fuck a 2hu and would find it very disrespectful honestly. The characters being little girls gives the game more sovl than if it was spaceships or some shit

[Anonymous No.]

>>38820766
>Whether you end up sexualizing them or not is another can of worms
Honestly its better to reinforce the fact that they're all little girls to keep the normalfags at arms length.
I don't know why everybody is so eager to try and convince OP otherwise. Is the fanbase that desperate for new blood that they're willing to throw it all out for broader appeal?

[Anonymous No.]

>>38820836
Im bothered by misrepresentation of twowho I dont care nor want more people to be into it if they are not gonna make good fan content of 2009-like memes and such.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38820766
>I do personally find them cute and comforting at best but i never would want to fuck a 2hu and would find it very disrespectful honestly.
You would probably be one out of perhaps two whole people on this board who think that way. Not that I disagree, most of the sexual comments are just people repeating the same tired fantasy over and over again, nothing but ego-centric monopolization and blind wish-fulfilment that often seems like it's trying to get rid of the character herself. The genuine but stereotypical waifufags are not exempt from this either, they're often the biggest perpetrators. If that's the way they want to look at things then so be it, trying to convince anyone would be pointless. It's just a bit of a shame.

[Anonymous No.]

>>38794888
The appeal of touhou:
Games, Music, spell cards, characters, Mythology and Gensokyo ambientation.

[Anonymous No.]

Mukyu~

[Anonymous No.]

>>38825199
Anon's not alone in this though and I think a lot of people who are more invested into the characters at least feela little like this.