/jp/ - Otaku Culture

[Anonymous No.]

When will we return to the era where Touhou is kinda dark, or dare I say, grim?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432708
Convince ZUN to hire Zounose for the next manga

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432708
When you'll accept that CuteSokyo and LewdSokyo are also canon.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432776
No problem, as long as the story's kept internally consistent. That's the biggest problem with Zounose's works, really.
>>47432852
Wait. LewdSokyo isn't canon?!

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432708
Slutty gaze.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432852
>CuteSokyo
I hate that buzzword.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432708
>return
How do you "return" to something that has been the status quo for the last 15 years?
If anything, we need to return even further.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432708
For Gensokyo to be "grim", it needs to be relatable to the "grimness" in our world. For it to be relatable in this way, Gensokyo must be relatable to our world in general. In other words, it must have an element of realism in order to give perspective to the "grim" elements. This, if not entirely antithetical to the point of Gensokyo, would require a deal of worldbuilding to iron out the wrinkles that have been left vague, something which ZUN might not be willing/able to do.

[Anonymous No.]

2hu already reflects his anxieties as an aging, high functioning alcoholic family man enough. Why do you think he has been so obsessed with hell ever since WBaWC?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432776
What if you made a deal with a Youkai so that you let it eat one of your body parts, and in exchange, it helps you live a long, healthy life, after which it gets to eat your entire body?
Or what if you just ate the Youkai instead?
What if you fed a Youkai to another Youkai?
Are gods edible?
Can you feast of fairy wings?
Do hermits regenerate their limbs? Asking for no particular reason.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47436569
This.

Touhou has been dystopian longer than it has been utopian. At this point you need to accept reality that the Gensokyo of PMISS and the PCB prologue is gone.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432708
>Girl who deals with how shitty and evil youkai are all the time
>Somehow taken aback that a youkai does something shitty
Also why does she even care, bitch ended the fortune teller with a smile on her face, she’s now gonna feel bad about ending some dude.

Just be like Marisa and not give a fuck.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47437644
Marisa's so cool!

[Anonymous No.]

>>47437755
That’s probably the nicest thing she’s ever done, especially since she doesn’t even like the villagers.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47438407
>especially since she doesn’t even like the villagers.
She says she doesn't but it's Marisa. She doesn't like letting people know when she cares about things, like when she conceals how hard she actually works.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47436613
It isn't unheard of for youkai to be eaten. I think it was in Lotus Eaters, a youkai boar was prepared for a party.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47438407
she says that, but she also says that she's a big name in the village and could help Reimu get some new needles, and I don't think she could do that if she actively disliked them all

[Anonymous No.]

>>47436613
>What if you fed a Youkai to another Youkai?
>Are gods edible?
Okuu

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432708
>When will we return to the era where Touhou is kinda dark, or dare I say, grim?
Grimfags exposing themselves as secondaries again. The edgyfication of touhou is a relatively recent thing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47439767
>The edgyfication of touhou is a relatively recent thing
2012 was 12 years ago.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432882
It is.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47439767
>>47439925
>The edgyfication of touhou is a relatively recent thing.
And by recent you mean the Prologue of the second windows game

[Anonymous No.]

>>47436569
This, everyone keeps talking about canon but touhou is very obviously a reflection of himself and his philosophy/political views.
Its only been grim because he's no longer the naive college boy he was when he first started, he grew and so did the setting. The interesting thing is that he still considers it paradise, and clearly in the games and manga we do see its really not that bad of a place to live. For every step into grim he also makes strides to point out how fun and interesting it is as well. He still has a sense of wonder it seems.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47440233
Retconned by WaHH, with Yukari making it a point in her conversation with Kasen that she has no idea what goes on in the outside world until the little house spirits started traveling to the cities for work experience. She implied she stole 'bad' people during that time and that during those migrations was when she actually kidnapped people actively.
Normally its just people getting to close to the barrier and getting absorbed, Gensokyo is presumably next to a large human settlement if the art in the fairy manga had any weight, the scene where she's watching a city through a window made by her game through the barrier

[Anonymous No.]

>>47440495
It being retconned doesn’t change the fact that grim shit has been apart of this franchise since day 2.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47440946
That wasn't my argument?
Ah, to specify i was not one of the two anon you linked to earlier

[Anonymous No.]

>>47440962
Well that was my whole argument, Grimsokyo always canon, GenSOYko never was.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47441034
Canon wasn't always boring garbage, PMiSS and BAiJR exist.
Also:
>Grimsokyo always canon
Why are all grimshitters without exception illiterate?

[Anonymous No.]

SpongeBob is grim because chum is made of fish aka the flesh of the common man, and is being sold as food. And instead of it being met with horror, it’s merely met with ridicule or ignorance by the common people.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47441318
Grim-sama... sugoi....

[Anonymous No.]

>>47441318
I mean, Mr Krabs once sold Soongebobs soul for 26 cents, Squidward got sent to a hell dimension for 30 minutes, and literally every single SpongeBob season after 4 is living proof of the anti christ so yeah… pretty grim,

[Anonymous No.]

>>47441318
Spongebob is better than Touhou though because it's actually funny.

[Anonymous No.]

What about Fatsokyo?

[Anonymous No.]

When will we get a timeskip in Gensokyo where Reimu and Marisa stop being literal childs.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47441752
Thankfully never, now fuck off faggot

[Anonymous No.]

>>47440426
>The interesting thing is that he still considers it paradise
Hasn't he called it a false paradise?

>and clearly in the games and manga we do see its really not that bad of a place to live.
Living standards are on par with Rural North Korea.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47441752
If you take away the polis, you take away 99% of the fat Asian men that make up this series

[Anonymous No.]

>>47441752
Never ever, even in the year 2050 Reimu and Marisa will still be children, like in western 'toons.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47440426
Cynicism comes with age, especially in this time where every bad happening or event in the world is forcefed to you 24/7, it's difficult to separate yourself from the world's ills. Corrupt politicians, declining birthrates, plummeting happiness, pollution, destruction of nature, sprawling urbanization, etc. It's why the future in Hifuu is as bleak as it is, it's what ZUN thinks the future is going to be like. Changeability of Strange Dream has Maribel mention that if she could turn those nightmares (chased by Youkai) into good dreams, she'd prefer them to the present reality. Retrospective 53 minutes goes over how fake everything in their world is despite it trying to look pretty, it's a distraction from reality. Magical Astronomy interprets all that awaits the world devoid of mystery is nihilism, as well as global population control. Neo-traditionalism of Japan shows their society cannot fathom the unexplainable, society isn't receptive to strange people, and further pushes the theme with elaborating on the death of mystery and imagination.
>He still has a sense of wonder it seems.
He signs himself with it in Dr. Latency's Freak Report ZUN (really enjoyable things can't be found with Google).

Despite all it's flaws, Gensokyo is still a place one can take a break and enjoy the little things, you have more freedom in your tiny little pseudo-paradise than all the rest of the world. You can have fun, stay up and drink late into the night, and more or less do as you please without worrying something you said or did years ago will ruin your life. Gensokyo forgives and forgets, it's why it seems like every incident ends with a get together to drink under blooming cherries. It's why "Lotus Eaters" is such an effective name for a Touhou work.
There's so many mysteries, questions, and contradictions around that evokes imagination in Touhou. Mysteries are what ZUN lives for and you see this reflected in his works, he might not be great at it, but it evokes that feeling anyway. When our world is like this, it's no wonder why Gensokyo looks so appealing.

>>47442703
A false paradise, but a paradise nonetheless. Gensokyo is the land of fantasy, it's all illusory. It's a false paradise because its inhabitants have nowhere else to go, it's the only place they CAN go. Real paradise will never be attainable as both Humans and Youkai are trapped.
>North Korea
I fail to see the poor quality of life to reflect that. Villagers aren't malnourished peasants three days away from starvation and are quite tall, whereas North Koreans are dwarfs by Asian standards because their caloric intake is so low. We see quite often that the Village has a massive variety of food (ignoring the whole "how" debate), with enough in plenty to have regular festivals and feasts. NK isn't even a baseline to consider.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47442703
>North Korea
Oh, it's you again, don't you have a Korean message board to be using?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47440223
Notice how Yukari does not take her clothes off in the hot spring, and merely dips her feet into the water, when even Chen, whose shikigami nature is canonically negated by water, makes an effort to actually wash herself.

This proves Stinksokyo is canon.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47443269
>A false paradise, but a paradise nonetheless.
For the human villagers, it's a shitty dystopia. They can go to the outside world, they want to go to the outside world, they would be happier in the outside world. the only thing stopping them are the objectively evil monsters that should be wiped out. That is not a paradise, that's a dystopian novel.

>Real paradise will never be attainable as both Humans and Youkai are trapped.
Correct. So the Youkai should be wiped out and the Humans should be free to actually find paradise in the outside world.

>Villagers aren't malnourished peasants three days away from starvation
Neither are more most North Koreans. Their diet however is significantly worse than your average modern Japanese citizen. Same is true for the Human Villagers.

>and are quite tall
Compared to Marisa, which isn't saying anything.

>We see quite often that the Village has a massive variety of food (ignoring the whole "how" debate), with enough in plenty to have regular festivals and feasts.
Same is true for North Korea. Or, for that matter, actual medieval villages.

The best argument you can make for the human village is that at least it MOST LIKELY doesn't have actual problems associated with like large scale child mortality or floods. In every other regard it's most likely a worse place to live than actual Edo era Japan by every measure.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47443741
The only other example that really works is being a prole in 1984.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47445050
It’s important to note that the youkai do go out of there way to stop humans from getting hurt or dying SOLELY to save the human buffet from ending. You can live relatively (like, slightly better than an early Meiji peasant) comfortably as long as you never question your position or try to leave or try to achieve enlightenment or save your soul in anyway. Then you’re giga-fucked.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47445058
Honestly it’s a bit worse than that, despite the never ending horror of that world, at least for the average person you have the escape of death and decay to look forward too. In Touhou, Death is just a gateway to even worse, Yama sends you to hell, you get trapped by a youkai and forced into an endless abyss for all eternity etc. Hell, even if you do everything right and achieve enlightenment, you’re still fucked because nirvana is restricted, so you literally can’t even escape Samsara if you tried. Eternally fucked.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47445050
Okay so, you're telling me that the village is comparable to North Korea despite having a school, a culinary culture to the extent that restaurants operate as businesses competing with each other, a culture of avid enough readers such that a mystery novelist can become popular, health care provided by Eintei, and an elderly population?
I just don't see it as a dystopia.
>>47446548
>It’s important to note that the youkai do go out of there way to stop humans from getting hurt or dying SOLELY to save the human buffet from ending. You can live relatively (like, slightly better than an early Meiji peasant) comfortably as long as you never question your position or try to leave or try to achieve enlightenment or save your soul in anyway
I think it's more of a matter of keeping the human population at a healthy critical mass.
They probably give a bunch of people like Marisa a pass since the number of those dissidents would be small and letting them outside the village would be like a political release valve so they don't influence too many others.
It becomes a problem, like mentioned in that page, if a 'Leader' appears, because then that might spoil a large portion of humans. So long as set yourself apart in some way, most Youkai probably won't care.
There's also the matter of many Youkai having different opinions. The Tengu are authoritarian(for lack of a better term), but the Oni, despite living underground, might come take issue with their hands-on approach.

Ultimately, everyone in Touhou just wants to get drunk, eat good food, and party. Youkai are too spoiled to really take the reigns of power.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47446548
Yes. Like I said, North Korea or "Only Proles and animals" are free.

>>47449489
>you're telling me that the village is comparable to North Korea despite having a school,
North Korea has schools. Most of them better than anything in the Human Village.

>a culinary culture to the extent that restaurants operate as businesses competing with each other
It's probably mostly slop compared to North Korea, let alone actual Japan.

>a culture of avid enough readers such that a mystery novelist can become popular
“No word in the B vocabulary was ideologically neutral. A great many were euphemisms. Such words, for instance, as JOYCAMP (forced-labour camp) or MINIPAX Minis-try of Peace, i.e. Ministry of War) meant almost the exact opposite of what they appeared to mean. Some words, on the other hand, displayed a frank and contemptuous understanding of the real nature of Oceanic society. An example was PROLEFEED, meaning the rubbishy enter-tainment and spurious news which the Party handed out to the masses.”
Am I saying that Akyuu is writing Prolefeed? Well, yes. But even outside of that, if the peak of your entertainment is a fucking pulpy mystery novel then you are a culturally bereft society.

>health care provided by Eintei,
Most likely not affordable for most poor people.

>and an elderly population?
Japan during the Sengoku Jidai had old people. Oceania had old people. The Imperium of Man has old people.

>I just don't see it as a dystopia.
I can't dispute that. What I will dispute is the idea that it's a paradise. Every single human villager would be better off if Gensokyo was destroyed and every Youkai wiped out. Every, single, one.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449359
You're mixing up your cosmologies. Buddhist hells aren't endless, that's the Christian hell which is eternal damnation. Under the Buddhist cosmology—which the metaphysics of Touhou is based on—if you sinned you go to the hell most fitting to your sins until you've balanced your karma and then you're off to your next incarnation. Otherwise if you haven't sinned enough to go to any of the Narakas, you mill around in the netherworld until you reincarnate and live another life. As Heaven is closed off (which there are multiple in Buddhism, though the Heaven the Celestials come from is the only one so far) you're denied Nirvana and are put into the Netherworld to mill around. It's not "even worse" unless you sinned, it's more of the same.
As Buddhists place a lot of value onto karma should one achieve a karma positive enough to reach Nirvana, but cannot due to afterlife politics, it's not like this karma goes unrewarded. The actual cycle of a soul is still pretty vague in Touhou, and not all of the Buddhist realms are shown yet. The only one we've seen is the Animal Realm, which is where animal abusers go.

Going to any of the hells is a result of what I call "no shit" sins: Murderers, pathological liars, sadists, adulterers (NTRfags), and drug addicts. And sins exclusive to Buddhist thought: people trying to cheat going to heaven, those who reject the concepts of karma and good/evil, those who sexually defile religion (seducing nuns/monks/virtuous). Stepping on a butterfly or killing an animal for their meat doesn't make you go to hell.
The worst is Avici where you go if you commit one of the Five Sins: killing your parents, killing an enlightened being (arhat), killing or harming a Buddha, genocide, and causing damage to Buddhism as a whole. These sins cannot be done accidentally, they must be done with intention and full awareness of the sin. Avici is the only hell you can consider eternal, only because the technical end is after the heat death of the universe.

>>47449489
>So long as set yourself apart in some way, most Youkai probably won't care.
Monks, exterminators, hermits, those secret history tards, etc. They don't care what you do outside of the village, you can go practice magic, hermetic arts, and become a youkai, just not as a villager (living in the village); just be aware that you're on your own. Being a retard can get you yooked, such as going to pick a fight with youkai in their territory and setting up a temple in Tengu territory.
>Youkai are too spoiled to really take the reigns of power.
Youkai are more concerned about their petty squabbles between each other that control of the village is just one big game to them. From the same FS chapter posted above: "No matter who rules the village, it wont affect any affect on the daily lives of the humans. It's simply a battle for influence among Youkai."

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449579
>Youkai are more concerned about their petty squabbles between each other that control of the village is just one big game to them.
It's amazing how unlikeable Youkai are in canon. ZUN went out of his way to write a species where genocide is somehow 100% acceptable as a solution to their existence.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449579
>that's the Christian hell which is eternal damnation
Under some schools of thought. Annihilationists & conditionalists take the refusal of eternal life literally and suggest that eternal death means just that: burned into nonexistence by the unending fire. Universalists say that eventually all will be reconciled. Catholics and a couple others leave it open to souls theoretically being able to leave Hell, they simply won't which is a fine but very important detail.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449579
>killing your parents,
Even if your parents, are like, Hitler?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449634
Filial piety is a big thing in Asian culture. You are not necessarily supposed to hold grudges and avenge them if they did something to really, really deserve it (though the outwards appearance of such is likely to be looked upon favourably). Outright killing them? Very transgressive.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449641
It's weird though considering figures like Shingen Takeda are still viewed favorably.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449634
Words Words Words below.

It's one of those types of questions that have caused much controversy and conflict in Buddhist theological discussion. In Buddhism, karma only can be generated when an action is accompanied by some sort of intent, this separates it from Jainism where accidental harm is bad.

According to the Mahayana Arya-Bodhisattva-gocara-upayavisaya-vikurvana-nirdesa sutra: If a king was prepared to the best of his ability and exhausted all his means to avoid conflict, he has no moral faults or bad karma even if he kills opposing troops. It is because the action was joined with good intentions of compassion for his country and refusal to abandon them. In the act of sacrificing himself and his worldly possessions to protect the life of his family and country there is great merit despite taking many lives.
Similarly when in punishment of unrepentant criminals, the king must try love and compassion without resorting to torture or murder; warning, scolding, rebuking, a good ass beating, confiscation of worldly possessions, exile, and imprisonment should all be attempted. Even so, if the criminal is deserving of death, then he should be put to death. The king does not cause the execution, it is the criminals own karma that does so and the king just brings it to fruition.

On patricide: parents are those who nurture and raise you, while not perfect they do their best to set you up to be the best you can be in life. The child has a great debt owed to the parent for they worked selflessly and sacrificed much to raise you. Repaying this debt with their murder rooted in hatred is what brings about Ānantarya Karma and is a ticket to the Avici.

To your question: Hitler (debatably) committed his own Ānantarya Sin of genocide and his actions brought much strife and chaos. If you acted upon the good within yourself and your patricide was out of justice for the greater good, and in doing so possibly prevent much more blood from being shed, then it is just. An unforgivable sin to be sure, but one that can be judged as a necessary evil. However, killing should be a last resort. Following the sutra, you need to have tried your best to exhaust all possible options. Only then, when everything has failed, is it permissible as a necessary action. If you spent the rest of your life living virtuously—which practicing Buddhism is designed to help you do—you can accumulate enough good karma through good deeds to offset the negative karma wrought from the just patricide.

Understand that karma is driven by intent.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449746
Thank you for the in-depth explanation. Karma is a pretty tricky subject as I understand it.
And, completely unrelated, but I'm kind of attracted to Eiki on an emotional level. I think it's because she's stern, but also focused and committed to doing her job to the best of her ability. The kind of woman who you'd want around to keep you in line and has the temperance not to become resentful while doing it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449746
ok, Nuking two cities was karma aproved i suppose, whats with the avoiding of death by the millions in a land invasion. in other question. Can the yama, a Mahayana agent, judge you if you are Theravada? Hindu? Muslim? Christian? should not their souls have a different jurisdiction upon harvesting?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449579
>You're mixing up your cosmologies. Buddhist hells aren't endless
Not talking about exclusively Buddhist hell when I said eternal damnation, I'm talking about youkai dragging your ass into the furnace in the old hell and letting you burn up forever.

Also yeah, Buddhist hells aren't eternal, they're just like 100 Trillion Years because you farted on a butterfly once, or literally 34 Quintillion Years if you're rude to your parents. SO much better.

>Going to any of the hells is a result of what I call "no shit" sins:
Yeah the absolutely deserved sins in Japanese Buddhism, like the one where women go when they do the unholy act of... menstruating. Or children who are sent the edge of the Sanzu river to suffer and burn while Oni torture them for the sin of... dying in childbirth. Such a wonderful and fair religion.

>Stepping on a butterfly or killing an animal for their meat doesn't make you go to hell.
Also yeah buddy, you do go to hell for killing shit like insects or butterflies, the Reviving Hell is very explicit that if you don't repent for literally every single microorganism you kill (directly or not) you are sentenced to suffer for an ungodly amount of time. Its literally just misery porn for weirdos.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449997
>Can the yama, a Mahayana agent, judge you if you are Theravada? Hindu? Muslim? Christian?
I'm assuming no, but it's mostly just speculation. The fact that Apollo exists, and therefore presumably also Hades, is the biggest clue to different afterlives being a thing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449997
I should clarify that karma "immunity" only applies to defensive wars and only enough to expel invaders. Nuking two cities is still a shitload of bad karma, just not as much as wholesale slaughter on the mainland. America would've still been the aggressor in either case. Keeping to Buddhist philosophy would entail stopping the pursuit after Pearl Harbor and only liberating islands that fell in de jure America. Of course, Buddhism kinda falls apart on a global war scale like this since it just wasn't an idea anyone 2000 years ago conceived of outside literal Armageddon and the end times. Buddhism is also an ideal, not something that can be maintained most of the time, Buddhist kings did some heinous shit back in the day: "It's okay to have killed all those people in pogroms, they were just stupid Jains!"
Eiki would still send them to hell.

In your second point, no. Because by these religions it assumes the afterlife is exclusively theirs, and going further presses the question of "which religion is the 'right' one?" because there's only one (you) and numerous religions with their own interpretations of what happens to your soul upon death.
Muslims who die don't get judged by whatever afterlife that is native to the soil they made their crater in, they get judged by Allah. Christians die and are judged by God no matter where so long as they themselves are Christians.
Touhou "answers" this question by localizing the afterlife to Gensokyo as a physical location, Eiki is just one of many Yama and Gensokyo happens to take the Shinto-Buddhist approach as the rest of contemporary Japan did. Dying in Gensokyo would send you across the Sanzu, into Higan, and to the Ministry of Right and Wrong to be judged by yours truly.
Hecatia—a Greek Goddess—has jurisdictions over many hells, which one can assume means different methods of processing souls into an afterlife. Touhou disconnects afterlifes to religions and links them to locations, this is made further evident by sub locations like the Underground Reactor being the absolute WORST place to die since you turn into a vengeful spirit. A Muslim dying in Gensokyo would get judged by the Yama, no 72 virgins for you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47450123
>A Muslim dying in Gensokyo would get judged by the Yama, no 72 virgins for you.
The problem with that idea is that Allah could literally swath all of Gensokyo away like a fly going by power levels. So, presumably, if a Muslim did die in gensokyo the Yama would hand them over to whoever runs the Arab part or else face horrible retribution beyond compare.

I also tend to assume Yukari just doesn't touch Muslims, Christians, Hindus, etc for that very reason. Would explain why all outsiders seem to be Japanese.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47450123
>I should clarify that karma "immunity" only applies to defensive wars and only enough to expel invaders
I mean... Americans actions against Japan could've definitely been seen as defensive, if not just for the US then its territories like the Philippines and Guam, which the Japanese not only took from the US but brutally raped and tortured the people that lived there. Like, Pearl Harbor was just stage one of the attacks, they took a lot more in the intervening year.

Not even getting in the atrocities committed in China and Korea, which were still going on almost til the end of the War and were countries the US was actively assisting against the Japanese at the time. (Also, Ironically one of the big pushers of the Imperialism and Brutality that Japan committed against most of the Pacific was helped along by Zen Buddhists at the time)

[Anonymous No.]

>>47450141
There was a discussion some time back about that. Allah, YHWH, God, etc. cant do anything because they are incompatible with eastern religious concepts, at least the way they are in Touhou. They are too distant and wont do anything. If they truly cared and were hands on about their Kingdoms then no other religions but theirs would exist, Japan would be 100% Christian instead of 1%. They DO NOT act in the same way that Touhou's gods do who are all very personable and tangible, directly intervening in matters and sticking their noses where they probably shouldn't (Kanako). In Christianity's case, it's doctrinally not in the books: it's up to the faithful to bring the Gospel of Christendom to the four corners of the world.

I present this rhetoric: The world won't miss Gensokyo, the humans there aren't remotely related to any of their religions, and it's full of monsters that can post a threat to Humanity as a whole and did so in the past (sins run deep), so why isn't it done away with like Sodom and Gomorrah? Allah *could* swath all of Gensokyo away, but why doesn't he? It stands against everything Islam stands for. Are they not Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent?
Consider that China has been doing injustices against Muslims on Chinese soil, China doesn't have the protections of an opposing Big G God as 95% them are Taoists, Buddhists, pagan, or simple godless atheists. Beijing should be reduced to rubble, but it stands, why?

The answer is they wont as doing so is intervention on the natural order. Were God/Allah/YHWH intervene, they would be breaking the lawful order of the universe they themselves created.

Yukari's spiriting away may be just Japanese yes, but Japanese Christians exist. We'd have to get into the competency of her character in vetting people to ensure not a single one is Christian or harbors Christian faith for this to fit your assumption. While loose in terms of being canon, with Jacketko's overt western appearance and crucifix I'd wager Christians can enter Gensokyo same as any other as Dolls in Pseudo Paradise (released alongside EoSD for those unaware) shows her there along with the "honest" men in the story.

>>47450190
It's defensive to a point. Counter-offensives on land/water you don't own isn't defensive, it's just turning the war around in your favor as you go for a conquest victory. The point is that the American's actions left the bounds of Buddhist teachings (if we can call them following them in the first place which is a big fat no lol) when they began pushing on the Empire of Japan's holdings.
The king uses his arms to defend his kingdom and people and only use as much force as needed to expel invaders. After that the king must not pursue and seek punishment of the invaders and instead should sue for peace to end the war. In the first place alliances and pacts should have been made so that an aggressive king (emperor) should think twice before attacking in the first place. What Japan did to other countries are unrelated to America. America is not in the place nor does it have authority to pass judgment on Japan's actions.
Not saying who should've done what, I'm only describing how things are in terms of Buddhist doctrine.

[Anonymous No.]

Grim dark 2hu
they switch to lethal grade Psikyo bullets for danmkau.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47450688
I wish 2hu plays like psikyo

[Anonymous No.]

>>47450446
It's a interesting theory, but I would mostly disagree with it. Actual Christian and Islamic theologians have ways of explaining why the world is not 100% Christian that would still apply to Gensokyo just fine. More importantly however, I tend to assume the reason why it's NOT done away with is because nobody cares and Yukari is smart enough not to touch any followers of major religions. Gensokyo, at the end of the day is such a irrelevant place to the world at large that as long as the Youkai inhabiting it don't harm anybody that matter to a major deity there is no reason for them to wipe it out.

>Beijing should be reduced to rubble, but it stands, why?
Because it's a place that is protected of Gods with their own power and believes. Again, Hecate is leagues above everybody in gensokyo and she's a virtual unknown in the outside world. The power levels between Gensokyo and the few remaining deities in the outside world are so vast to be functionally incomparable.

>We'd have to get into the competency of her character in vetting people to ensure not a single one is Christian or harbors Christian faith for this to fit your assumption.
Youkai seem to pretty much be capable of recognizing certain types of people by smell alone. I also think anybody who is a faithful Christian would react very differently to Yukari's presence. There's also the fact that most genuinly faithful Christians or Muslims WOULD most likely be able to solo Gensokyo. "The power of christ compels you" would almost certainly work on pretty much any Youkai if delivered by a sufficiently faithful person. The moment such a person would reach the Human village and try to spread Christianity, Gensokyo is basically finished overnight. In general you kind of have to assume her vetting is consistent considering she could just as easily abduct, say, a scientist or potential leader who could dangerously revolutionize Gensokyo.

[Anonymous No.]

Touhou 20 will reveal that the hakurei shrine was a christian temple that got really confused after a few decades
Reimu wears a nun outfit now.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47452718
Lewd!

[Anonymous No.]

Warning: Even More Words (from a different anon).

>>47449576 >>47449594
I'll be the first to admit my potential biases when it comes to the Youkai side of Grimsokyo discussions so I'll try not to play Devil's Advocate here too hard overall. It's not like I expect or necessarily want to change too many attitudes in a thread like this, especially yours, more so would just like to hear more from you or others on the matter.
>Every single human villager would be better off if Gensokyo was destroyed and every Youkai wiped out. Every, single, one.
>ZUN went out of his way to write a species where genocide is somehow 100% acceptable as a solution to their existence.
Setting aside the number of Youkai (man-eating or otherwise) we've seen that are given their own various (debatably subjective sure) redeeming qualities in spite of any inherently potentially-wicked nature of theirs, even when the full extent of anyone's truly heinous past transgressions can only be assumed/associated via history of the species in question, total genocide is the sole ideal for you here? A complete destabilization of what tenuous balance over this curated fantasy landscape does exist, simply because its centralized human population ought to "be free to actually find paradise in the outside world"?
What, like what we're all clearly successfully doing on a widespread scale out here by comparison? Presumably free of such direct spiritual meddling & pesky wicked influences in the first place I might add.
In my opinion, this underlying attitude that the villagers should have all just moved on from things long ago for their own sake & fully turned their backs on negotiating with Youkai in any capacity misses the point of why Gensokyo even exists in the first place. Maybe not completely, but still. Frankly it also just seems like a great way for some Grimshitters to feed into themselves more than they do already but that's neither here nor there.
I'm assuming you're also of the notion that faith is something the villagers can all collectively move on from, at least with how they understand it currently?
That interpersonal relations to Gensokyo's local deities alone would be better left to survive in modernity without that relatively-safe-haven?
That even generally benevolent Youkai like Miyoi or Mike also deserve to be swept away to the chambers?
I've never been one to subscribe to the notion that the place was ever some idyllic utopia on all accounts either and the QOL improvements we have that can be argued over should be obvious enough, but do you really think they'd fare much better out here given the current state of things? Gensokyo exists because most locals already did start normalizing giving Youkai & Kami the colder shoulder by the time the barrier was fully established, when they weren't already feeling pressured to heavily reconsider those beliefs all-together anyways due to the Restoration. It's the last domicile of refuge for otherwise forgotten or substantially-faithless entities in a spiritually-oblique world that already has wholly killed much of what it previously understood as "Belief."
You're already living in your own Youkai-free cleansed haven as far as you're aware. Shame you can't do anything to help those poor, pitiable villagers in their little bubble of sheer ignorance from where you're standing I guess. Ah well!
Without even mentioning how long the collective adjustment period may take if they were to suddenly "break free" one day, I'd imagine a technologically-antiquated population descended from fanatical Youkai hunters would have a hard time not feeling estranged in a place like modern Japan for multiple reasons. Those humans may still be inherently preyed upon but only by virtue of Youkai's necessity to draw from human potential, whether that be through the flesh or various forms of belief (adjustments can be made for many, precautions for others).
The humans are still the ones defining how things must be influenced in the end through their individual choices, consciously or otherwise, and in-turn shaping the Youkai & their own decisions as well even when they are squabbling amongst themselves. If any one villager seriously poses that much of a threat towards upsetting that balance through their actions then measures can be taken beyond just elimination as a consequence (explained by >>47449489). Do what you want with yourself outside the village if you truly desire, but don't be a hero for simple people decently getting by when they may not even collectively want one as you understand it or feel like they need any more help. Plenty of others already have their own interests in keeping rambunctious Youkai in-line as they see fit/need to, even if they aren't always selfless or consistent with it.
But again, I don't expect or really even want to change much here. You've been fairly adamant about all this regardless so I'd at least like to assume your stance is clear.
Pardon the wall of rambles.

[Anonymous No.]

Aside from all that, ideas in >>47452284, >>47450123, >>47449579 and >>47449746 have me legitimately questioning a few things related to the full extent of Youkai Judgement itself under the Yama. Eiki specifically told Yuuka to cool it a bit with her overextended existence of terrorizing others in PoFV, but would she say the same to a Youkai more specially-tailored towards human suffering per the exaggerated start to >>47406740? Would malevolent Youkai be reprimanded for even considering changing their ways in any capacity? Considering how closely related the souls of the divine are to the spirit of any Youkai (slightly redundant I know), could one be passed from judgement somehow if they were properly enshrined & worshipped as a Kami in the end?
Does the intent of any one Youkai's actions hold the same amount of Karmic Weight as anyone else doing the same? Or, is there some fundamental aspect to each separate Youkai that must be judged by the Yama on a more individualistic basis? Both are technically possible given the capabilities of the Yama I suppose but I'm curious to know what you all may think.
It could also very well be the case that most Youkai simply fade back into an underlying collective ether at the end of their ropes or without enough belief of any sort, somewhat judgement-free, only going on to recontextualize themselves throughout society & life later if human perceptions fuel such desires once more. I figured I should try and rope these thoughts into the general discussion a little better than that however, plus this leaves more room open for deliberation.
These are pretty generalist questions that certainly can't be answered through ZUN-related sources alone but it'd be interesting to see what precedence may exist for such ideas. Although, I am aware that plenty of other anons before me have had lots of similar inquiries. I can't blame anyone for not wanting to rehash potentially well-trodden grounds or some of these thoughts simply being too "out there" given the circumstances.
Really I'd just like to know how exactly Eiki deals with non-humans on a broader scale and where those beings would typically end up if that's available information, could maybe help to give some other greater Grim-based notions potential context as well.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47454051
>If any one villager seriously poses that much of a threat towards upsetting that balance through their actions then measures can be taken beyond just elimination as a consequence
The precedent is already set in how Youkai are forbidden from killing and eating the Villagers. Attacking, scaring, kidnapping, etc. is all on the table because they are fairly nonlethal means to evoke fear. Youkai are encouraged to do these things. A prospective leader may find himself in one of these attacks and either become too afraid to push his idea further, or forget about the idea altogether as memory manipulation is something that can be done. Just look at the regular in LE, he got yooked and came back with no real memory of the event.
Pretending that there's absolutely nothing else that can be done but to kill them is grimshitting for the sake of it.

>>47454086
It's easier to look at it from the stance that Eiki is a proponent for preserving and upholding natural law, its why living too long is a sin.
Humans should be Humans, Youkai should be Youkai, all are subject to the rights and wrongs of their disciplines and should live their lives virtuously. Youkai NEED to prey on Humans as a matter of survival, just as Humans need to eat. Starving yourself isn't helping anything. Eiki would not judge the Lion a sinner for eating a lamb, she's not a retarded Jainist. We're all on this Earth together, Gods, Humans, Youkai, Animals; it wouldn't make sense to judge everything in Human terms.
A Youkai killing for funsies or a God being a spiteful shithead blowing up towns would get judged as such, cruelty is cruelty no matter how you slice it and violence for the sake of itself is sinful and without purpose. War without reason is good for nobody.

Youkai are subject to sins as everyone else is, being a Youkai doesn't give you a free pass to do whatever you please and it certainly doesn't waive you from obtaining karma. Aya gets lectured for publishing rags and not following the spirit of journalism, Tewi gets shit for being a pathological liar and dirty trickster without remorse, Mystia gets scolded for singing her songs willy nilly without understanding the harmful effects they cause, and Cirno gets told she's a retard with too much strength. As for where they'd end up, Eiki says she will judge those Youkai 2hus after their deaths so I imagine the same rules apply to them. Tewi for example would go to the tongue pulling chamber of hell because that's where little shits like her would go if she keeps lying like she does.

Yuuka is actually a great case example as she's been on both sides of the spectrum between "genocide is just a game" to mellowed out and passive. Both are not good for a Youkai, they need to balance themselves with what is necessary. Eiki's view on Yuuka is that she should 1) act like a Youkai (vs quote) and 2) do it with purpose (story). Yuuka got ragged on because she's lived for so long and doesn't have much purpose, attacking Humans and Youkai alike because she likes teasing them is not a good reason. Nothing good will come from living like that. "Terrorize Humans more" doesn't mean rape murder destroy, it means give them a good scare so your existence as a Youkai has purpose.

If Eiki truly favored Youkai then she wouldn't tell Reimu to "Exterminate Youkai" as a good deed she can take.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47454390
>Starving yourself isn't helping anything
>it wouldn't make sense to judge everything in Human terms
>certainly doesn't waive you from obtaining karma.
>they need to balance themselves with what is necessary
Pretty reasonable stuff to consider, I may have even saved myself the trouble of asking if I thought a little harder about PoFV scenarios beyond Yuuka & Mystia in the moment but that does provide the clarity I was hoping for on these matters. Thank you.
The Yama represents an absolute & comprehensive judgement over ones given tenure in life, of course there'd still be judgement within reason as you collect that karma throughout your existence no matter what side of the coin you do fall on. Like a lot of fundamentals we're dancing around here, it all comes down to that sense of balance through exerted influence. If we do go "fully Grim" with how Youkai would need to structure their relationships with humans and take all village-related interactions to that extreme (i.e. "rape murder destroy") then that's when we start having problems with balance on the other end of the equation (settling aside how more fatally-ravenous Youkai have been largely satiated this whole time (the spiriting away of otherwise hopeless individuals)).
I'm sure there are plenty of Youkai who's great sins of the past will one day catch up with them eventually, but it's not like each & every one sees a villager as strictly food Or memetic cattle. That sense of "honor" some Youkai are said to uphold for example would certainly be an easy way to move beyond such preconceptions as a start, if the Youkai individual in-question even really cares about such fundamentals that is (someone like Rumia, classic poster-Youkai for the incompetent lazy man-eater, would surely be comparable to how Mystia was treated in her scenario for instance). Some could easily take things to farther extremes than others and maybe even have before but, like you said, such continued or prolonged extreme behaviors that are inherently unnecessary will eventually land them in hotter waters.
Sometimes very literally. It's no wonder Eiki sets most Youkai and plenty of others on-edge, "PREPARING THYSELF" is just about one of the few things they could do for themselves in the face of an inevitable Yama Lecture and potential sentencing. Such is the way.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449594
Anon...youkai simply are to humans what humans are to rest of the planet. You look at the mirror and do not recognize what you hate in the reflection.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47455470
I'm not expecting good faith posts from that anon. What it is, is contempt for the setting.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47455527
Bait or no bait, there are many who do not realize that. It's neither easy nor pleasant to see yourself with other's eyes.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47455470
>Anon...youkai simply are to humans what humans are to rest of the planet.
The rest of the planet is not sapient, anon. This isn't final fantasy 7. I doubt dogs view humans the same way I view Youkai. If you want to make some kind of point about man's cruelty to man, that would be one thing. But Youkai are in that aspect still unique insofar that they embody the worst aspects of humanity without any of the good. They are sapient memes, and memes have a way of getting people killed.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47454051
Long post, and while I mostly disagree I do like that you put in the effort so I'm going to send a long post back.

>total genocide is the sole ideal for you here?
As opposed to what? Reform? Youkai have shown, time and time again, that they reject any attempt at reform. They don't want reform and the very concept of Youkai reforming is played up mostly as a joke.

>What, like what we're all clearly successfully doing on a widespread scale out here by comparison?
Modern Japan, and we are talking about modern Japan since they aren't moving to Somalia if the Hakurei barrier went away, is by all measures a paradise compared to 99% of Japanese history. It's very hard to compare the difference between living in poverty and not living in poverty unless you actually experienced it. And I'm talking real "Rice farmer earning 1$ a day" poverty. But it really can't be overstated how much more freeing it is to live a life in the outside world than it would be to be poor, or even middle class, in the human village. Life is simply better outside Gensokyo for everybody expect maybe the elite of the human village.

>In my opinion, this underlying attitude that the villagers should have all just moved on from things long ago for their own sake & fully turned their backs on negotiating with Youkai in any capacity misses the point of why Gensokyo even exists in the first place.
The reason why gensokyo exists is as a refuge for Youkai. The problem is that Youkai do not deserve to exist. They are, by every measure, evil monsters that do nothing but cause suffering wherever they go. They had a chance for a blank slate, to actually change their way, and all they did was continue to torment people and murder innocent humans. I have no sympathy for them, nor will I ever, ZUN went too far for that to still be possible.

Meanwhile, the human villagers, by all accounts, are literally the descendants of people that risked their life to protect people from monsters. While we don't know why exactly the reason was they stayed in Gensokyo when it was sealed off. They do not deserve to have their children and grandchildren grow up as little more than cattle for evil monsters that still regularly go around murdering outsiders. There is no negotiation in that situation, it's good natured people being put in a ironic hell by their former enemies.

>That interpersonal relations to Gensokyo's local deities alone would be better left to survive in modernity without that relatively-safe-haven?
The problem there is that, again, ZUN buried the lead too deep. The human villagers not really giving a fuck about spirituality or having any kind of close connection to deities has been a pretty consistent piece of characterization since Mountain of Faith. They don't have any kind of deep connection to local deities that would justify them picking Gensokyo over modern japan. At best, their connection seems largely identical to the connection actual Japanese people have to Gods. If not worse considering Kanako and Suwako are basically running a protection rocket.

>That even generally benevolent Youkai like Miyoi or Mike also deserve to be swept away to the chambers?
Most Youkai have been around for hundreds of years. They had their time. If the few supposed good eggs were truely generally benevolent, they would understand that. Hell, the one Youkai that we literally know canonically had all of her evil sucked out DOES seemingly understand that.

>but do you really think they'd fare much better out here given the current state of things?
Yes. They're not refugees traveling on boats to Italy. Japan is a fairly rich well off country and, even if they don't believe in magic, I doubt a entire village of people appearing out of nowhere

>Gensokyo exists because most locals already did start normalizing giving Youkai & Kami the colder shoulder by the time the barrier was fully established
They weren't giving Youkai the cold shoulder, they were sealing them away because they were MONSTERS. They killed people, most likely people they knew. The Kami were generally nicer, but, well, and feel free to disagree with me here but I don't see Japan as a country with a particularly harsh relationship with their past culture. They aren't China doing the great cultural revolution, even during the actual Meijin restoration.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47454051
>It's the last domicile of refuge for otherwise forgotten or substantially-faithless entities in a spiritually-oblique world that already has wholly killed much of what it previously understood as "Belief."
The problem is that the result of what they believed in was EVIL. There is no reason to preserve that as anything other than funny stories or inspiration for anime and video games. That's not even getting into the believes themselves. Europeans used to belief that Autistic children were fairy changelings and that it was okay to burn them alive to try and get their actual child back. Is that worth preserving as well? It's all very easy to have this cute and idealistic view of folklore looking at it from the position of enlightened modern day people. But the actual implications of those believes were, more often that not, disturbing and unpleasant.

>Without even mentioning how long the collective adjustment period may take if they were to suddenly "break free" one day, I'd imagine a technologically-antiquated population descended from fanatical Youkai hunters would have a hard time not feeling estranged in a place like modern Japan for multiple reasons
Once more, ZUN buried the lead too deep. The human villagers are generally too pleasant, well meaning, and well adjusted to imagine that would genuinly be a problem. This isn't a person returning from war being unable to function in modern society. These are good people in a mostly peaceful society that has no reason to mistreat them. I don't see how any discomfort would be worse than trying to explain my Grandmother how a Smartphone works.

>The humans are still the ones defining how things must be influenced in the end through their individual choices, consciously or otherwise, and in-turn shaping the Youkai & their own decisions as well even when they are squabbling amongst themselves.
That's victim blaming, anon. The human villagers aren't given the chance to think about their situation. Even if you assume they aren't straight up being murdered for upsetting the balance, they would still be punished.

> but don't be a hero for simple people decently getting by when they may not even collectively want one as you understand it or feel like they need any more help.
You know what, let's assume I agree with you for a moment. Let's say that, despite the overwhelming evidence that the Human Villagers would do just fine in modern japan, their actual established canon interest in the outside world, the lack of any positive human X youkai or even Human x Kami relationship, the secret anti youkai organization that still technically exists in canon, or even the total lack of any evidence indicating that they want to stay in Gensokyo at all. Why, as a outsider, would I want Gensokyo to exist? The place murders people, regularly. Even if you somehow hyper delude yourself into thinking that, despite the mountains of evidence, no outsiders that end up in Gensokyo are actually murdered in Youkai, there is still no positive quality to Gensokyo existing. Even a single person dying a preventable death to being transported to Gensokyo by Yukari, be it because of Youkai, exposure, or even just falling down a ravine on Youkai mountain is enough of a reason to wipe Gensokyo off the map. It's a total waste of space preserving believes that are bad for the sake of creatures whose average personality and morality starts off at the level of "Porky Minch" and more often than not goes down from there. And that is frankly the best case scenario because it's assuming the human villagers are not actively miserable and worse off or that outsiders are being regularly and deliberately murdered.

>Plenty of others already have their own interests in keeping rambunctious Youkai in-line as they see fit/need to
What? The Hakurei Shrine Maidens that sell out the other humans in Gensokyo to maintain their power? They deserve to go to hell as well, literally not one hair better than the Youkai they protect."

[Anonymous No.]

>>47454390
>It's easier to look at it from the stance that Eiki is a proponent for preserving and upholding natural law,
The problem is that Buddhism fundamentally does not work that way. Even outside of that, Youkai are inherently unnatural existence. Even ignoring the fact they are literally just sapient memes, they are essentially created by the Lunarians to trouble humans. Trying to apply natural law to them is foolish, and encouraging them to harm people is just wrong. At absolute best, you should not judge a Youkai for doing what it's nature tells it to do. It is a living bioweapon, functionally no different from a virus being used to harm a population center. Anything above that however is simply psychotic, there is no net positive to Youkai existing. If anything, Touhou has gone out of it's way, time and time again, to show that Youkai existing is a active detriment to everybody.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47456082
Lunarians are the original Yaoyorozu no Kami. Lord Tsukiyomi (founder of the Lunar Capital), Susanoo, and Amaterasu were born from Izanagi and Izanami who created the land of Japan. Izanagi and Izanami themselves are the seventh generation of the Kamiyonanayo, the original deities of creation from the birth of the universe. The genealogy is there, also a fun fact: the Dragon God (Watatsumi/Ryoujin) is a fragment of Kagutsuchi who was born from Izanami, making him Tsukiyomi's nephew, and his daughters are the moon bitches Yukari jobbed to. In this context, Youkai are divine tools made to regulate Kegare. As Humans were born from these same Kami (the imperial family are descended from the Gods Izanagi birthed) they can be considered siblings, and like Humans they can become Kami and ascend. Some Youkai like Kitsune have this in their mythology and can ascend to Heaven upon becoming a Tenko and act as divine messengers for Inari who herself is a descendant of Susanoo. Contamination and purity are core concepts to Shinto, regulating filth is something that is necessary and something the Lunarians (Gods) deemed a big enough issue they needed to regulate it further with Youkai.

If it was really that big of an issue, Bishamonten, a Buddhist God, would've killed Byakuren on the spot for proposing a Youkai become his avatar.
Like it or not, Youkai are very intertwined with the Gods.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47456510
While I understand what you are trying to say, part of the issue is that the nature of gods is also fairly unnatural. Considering they too are born from sapient memes. And, again, the whole situation is made more complex by the fact that Eiki is supposed to be a Buddhist deity. Not a shinto or Taoist one.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47460077
But the Gods predate humanity.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47460739
Well, that is the paradox.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47456510
Honestly from this retelling, Youkai AND Gods are an abject threat to humanity. This isn’t even a “nature prevails” sort of thing, this is the Gods allowing child raping and genocodal monsters to exist to torture humanity for the very crime of existing, with the only true way to be saved is to literally strip yourself of your humanity and either become a child raping monster or to become a indifferent emotionless God who revels in the torture of innocent beings because they don’t live up to your impossible standards of purity. No fucking wonder Japs are turbo atheists nowadays, their religions fucking suck.

[Anonymous No.]

just play lost word

[Anonymous No.]

[Anonymous No.]

This wouldn't have been the first time I've seriously interacted with bait-adjacent posts before, but I'd still at least like to give my regards to >>47455998 for taking the time to seriously break down the things I had to say on the matter.
I'm not about to return the same once again, this doesn't need to be a back-and-forth and I believe I've gained the information I've needed on these matters. This will, hopefully, be my last post in this thread.
Still, if anything, I do also believe I truly better understand where perspectives such as yours are coming from now. If I am to give you any more credit here that is. Grimsokyo may hold an amount of truth, but we certainly wouldn't see eye-to-eye when it comes to the matter of influence & application through that truth. I'll gladly step down from my demonic soap box from here.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47443269
>Magical Astronomy interprets all that awaits the world devoid of mystery is nihilism, as well as global population control. Neo-traditionalism of Japan shows their society cannot fathom the unexplainable, society isn't receptive to strange people, and further pushes the theme with elaborating on the death of mystery and imagination.
So basically in a world of Youkai and Gods, you’re a spec of dust that will get brutally killed or subjugated by forces that are not only out of your control, but actively prey upon and relish in your misery and pain all culminating in your afterlife either being subjected to endless cycle of rebirth or frying in the trillion year torture pit run by demons who get to indulge in their sadism with no consequences and no hope for escape because the Celestials closed off nirvana/heaven.

Or

A world without youkai in which humans are also specs of dust in an uncaring universe ruled over by fascist and imperialist regimes that subjugate all forms of imagination and mystery while enacting a forced population control and desecration of the natural world leading to humans become soulless husks of what they were, merely existing until they face total inevitable oblivion… meanwhile the actual gods/lunarians get to live on with no regrets or inconveniences, laughing at how mankind is totally lost without their brutal hand to give their live any meaning

But yeah… Grimsokyo is totally headcanon.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47463808
Unironically this. Grimfags would all be significantly happier instead of writing
giant
overextended
walls
of
text
like they always do, if they simply just played Lost Word. It's what they deserve.

[Anonymous No.]

>moe
>grim
Just bring Ken Akamatsu and turn it into ecchi romcom.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47449594
Only some of them are shitheads. I doubt Wakasagihime or Kagerou cares about taking over the village.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432708
Pure Grimsokyo was never canon.
Gensokyo is a place where daily, casual life happens with occasional more convoluted events and the "grim and dark" things while exist, are neatly hidden behind the corner.
"B-But muh Yukeys eating da hoomanz and my Raymoo nuking dude that turned into yuukay!" - these are either daily events that nobody gives a shit about or events that literally nobody besides involved parties even know about.
It's like country ruled by authoritarian regime - shit's bad but even if someone notices that their neighbor disappeared after militia raided his house they can't do jack fucking shit so they just live their daily life.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47466656
Also, important to note is that eating humans is just part of natural balance of Gensokyo.
Youkai eat humans and humans have specialized people (Shrine Maidens etc) that exterminate youkais. Give more power to one of them and the entire Gensokyo will just collapse.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47466656
>>47466674
So it's not grim because grimshit happening is normal and/or hidden? What kind of retarded, self-contradicting logic is that?
No, seriously, how is
>shit's bad but even if someone notices that their neighbor disappeared after militia raided his house they can't do jack fucking shit so they just live their daily life.
not grim as hell? Are you high?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47466656
Gensokyo would be the first authoritarian regime with opposition to the state built in as a core tenant. A youkai exterminator is within his/her full right to fight youkai causing trouble. It's just part of the balance of things. If they don't get in over their head and get themselves killed, they can retire in the village and live in peace, so long as they don't push it and get kidnapped while too drunk to fight back.
Trying that in north korea would get you killed, your family vanished, and your little village expunged because there could be more dissidents like you there.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47450141
>The problem with that idea is that Allah could literally swath all of Gensokyo away like a fly going by power levels
He/She/They wouldn't do nothing, did you forget we live in a politheistic setting? Allah isn't close to being as powerful as their holy book claims them to be, a 'new' god like Suwako that successfully reached majorhood status. Could them one-shot Gensokyo? Probably, but the dire consequences that would come after are too many and costly to try. Also, the Yama aren't exactly pushovers: they are deities as well that probably predate humanity since they don't need their faith to exist, making them more powerful than touhou's Allah by a wide margin

[Anonymous No.]

>>47463779
>>47464928
DESU, I think most of this is just ZUN writing what is basically SMT fanfiction rather than genuine commentary on religion. I think his actual opinion on religion is probably fairly close to Kanako's opinion in Symposium. Though, If nothing else, I do genuinly suspect he has a very low opinion of Buddhism.

Either way, SMT is fairly grimdark(Persona aside) so, yeah.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47465687
>Only some of them are shitheads.
Most of them are, and that's not even getting into the mobs.

>Wakasagihime or Kagerou
The Grassroot movement is largely the exception proving the rule. Even then, all of them still only think of themselves.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47465098
>>47463808
Lost Word doesn't really do it for me. It feels very toothless. With that said though, the actual Touhou gacha I want to play does exist, it's called "Lostbelt 6 in FGO". It's basically everything I always wanted from Touhou. Up to and including Gensokyo going up in flames due to a apocalypse entirely due to their making.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47466656
You can literally make this exact same case for every dystopian story.

>>47467320
>Gensokyo would be the first authoritarian regime with opposition to the state built in as a core tenant.
What opposition? Youkai Exterminators in gensokyo literally consist out of "Reimu and her friends". There is zero evidence outside of some very debatable old canon that any other Youkai exterminator even exists. And calling Reimu "Opposition" is like calling the CIA opposition because they sometimes clash with the FBI.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47467802
>Allah isn't close to being as powerful as their holy book claims them to be
To be sure, but he could still swat Gensokyo aside even assuming the Shia/Sunni split weakens his power.

>Probably, but the dire consequences that would come after are too many and costly to try.
What consequences? Nobody cares about Gensokyo cosmically. The only group that regularly interacts with them are the Animal Hell and Lunarians.

> they are deities as well that probably predate humanity
Based on what? The one Yama we have explicitly NOT predating humanity.

[Anonymous No.]

TL;DR your points boil down to contempt and hatred for the setting and related topics e.g. eastern religion, extreme pessimism, and furious masturbation over how good everything would be if it was all destroyed.

Such valuable insights. Keep on preaching.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47468460
Is telling the truth about a fictional setting hating it?
Can you truly like a setting if you don't acknowledge it for what it is?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47468460
>your points boil down to contempt and hatred for the setting
The fuck you smoking? Why do you need to like a place to consider it a good setting? I'm a huge fan of Warhammer 40K, that's not a fun place to be.

>eastern religion
I like it just fine. If anything, my biggest complaint about his treatment of Buddhism is that ZUN doesn't really seem to like Buddhism. He has a fairly cynical view of religion overall, going by the way he portrays characters like Kanako and Chimata.

>extreme pessimism
That's Touhou in general. It IS a very pessimistic setting even IF you assume that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Gensokyo is a paradise.

>and furious masturbation over how good everything would be if it was all destroyed.
My point is ultimately that Gensokyo being destroyed would be a net positive to humanity because it has no redeeming values.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47468523
There's no arguing with the typical "It's not THAT bad" moderate. They have it in their minds that holidays existing makes getting eaten alive worth it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47468333
>What consequences?
The Sky Dragon, for starters. The big ol' scaly boi seems to be a very tough cookie to break if we go by the little information we have of him (being freely able to travel almost every world we know of except Makai uninvited is not something many can pull off), and has taken a liking to Gensokyo for some reason. Also, a major new god directly intervining on something, let alone wiping out a land from Earth's face just like that? Somebody is going to get really angry no matter what
>The only group that regularly interacts with them are the Animal Hell and Lunarians.
that we know of
>Based on what?
Eiki herself maybe not, but her superiors are pretty much based on concept of virtue, morality, and law. Ever wondered why Eiki's judgements are so alien to us sometimes? Human morality =! The Idea of Morality

[Anonymous No.]

>>47467320
>Opposition
LOL, What opposition?

Reimu is literally on the youkai payroll and exist explicitly to uphold their values no questions asked, she never actually holds any of the youkai responsible for any of the bad shit they do, she just bonks the mean ones on the head if they screw up her peace.

Youmu, Reisen, Sanae, and Sakuya either are youkai/gods, or work for them directly. And those youkai/gods are universally not big friends of humanity or actively caused incidents that threatened humans before

And Marisa straight up doesn’t care about the villagers well being at all, and probably wants to become a youkai to achieve more power. None of these bitches are in opposition of anything, in fact they either are the system, work for the system, or want to become the system.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47468460
I mean, the setting is depressing if you look into in literally any depth, all religions inherently suck, ZUN is clearly really pessimistic about not only religion but the future of mankind, and objectively the gods/youkai are so shitty to people at all times you wonder if humans wouldn’t be happier without them.

These are all valid viewpoints of the series, not even ZUN himself calls Gensokyo a false paradise and his Hifuu books highlight how bad things are gonna get in his eyes. It’s just the way shit is

[Anonymous No.]

>>47468601
>Sky Dragon
He's mentioned so rarely I honestly wonder if he is still even canon. Either way, since we're assuming Hecatia is stronger than him(Zun said so) I doubt he's actually hot shit cosmically.

>let alone wiping out a land from Earth's face just like that?
Well, the thing is it's not "From earth's face". It's a minor pocket dimension creatured by creatures who, frankly, nobody really cares about. I don't see Shiva or YHVH making much of a fuss because some glorified zoo filled with evil demons got razed.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47469285
DESU, I want to give Marisa the benefit of the doubt and assume she does actually care more than she claims. But I know I'm only fooling myself and trying to stick to the vague hope that Marisa is actually sympathetic.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47470178
She doesn’t as shown here >>47437644

[Anonymous No.]

>>47470178
Marisa is just a race traitor, although she's not as bad as Sanae.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47471362
thats a weird way to say Sakuya...

[Anonymous No.]

>>47470172
>Either way, since we're assuming Hecatia is stronger than him(Zun said so) I doubt he's actually hot shit cosmically
Give him a break, because by that metric, nobody is hot shit cosmically
>It's a minor pocket dimension creatured by creatures who, frankly, nobody really cares about.
It's still a direct action, and if we go by the Myouren crew's existence, buddhist deities seem to 'have plans' for the youkai who are willing to leave their nature behind, so there are entities out there interested in youkai existence (for better or worse)

[Anonymous No.]

>>47471504
Sanae is the biggest race traitor of the three since she's an outside world human who abandoned humanity in order for more power.
Her theme, "faith is for the transient people" reflects this, faith is not for her or the gods, yet she demands it from others.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47469285
It's very important to keep in mind that many characters in Touhou would have no problem lying on-screen, especially too look good or jack themselves up.
Also, Yukari smells.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47471561
> nobody is hot shit cosmically
No? She's the strongest in Gensokyo, not the world.

>buddhist deities seem to 'have plans' for the youkai who are willing to leave their nature behind,
Yeah, it's called reaching nirvana. If they all got flooded I doubt they would care. Reincarnation will still follow.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47471504
Sakuya was barely ever human to begin with if you go by the lore.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47475886
>No? She's the strongest in Gensokyo, not the world.
What? Hecatia is in no way related to Gensokyo, and if she's really the goddess Hecate, she's much older than humanity itself, making her an old god that doesn't require human faith to exist. Not only that, she stayed on the grind and managed to become Hell's overlord (all of them), making her even more powerful than default

She almost managed to genocide the Moon (they kinda had it coming) for her friend Junko, a place where powerful gods and elite celestials reside, and she only stopped because Junko asked her to do so. She also didn't face no repercussions from her fellow old gods, so Welcome Hell girl is someone to be very afraid of, and the Sky Dragon just cannot hold a candle to that

But at least she's a benevolent deity that lets humanity (the lunarian type gets the rope, however) in peace, which it's more than can be said about "give me faith or i'll curse you up to four generations" gods like Suwako, Zeus, or you know who
>If they all got flooded I doubt they would care
who knows, the gods work in mysterious ways, you know?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47476779
>She also didn't face no repercussions from her fellow old gods, so Welcome Hell girl is someone to be very afraid of
I think it's more likely that they were all in support of the Moonies eating shit.
Zeus was probably laughing his ass off over them panicking over Heca-tan's little game, and would've been more disappointed than anything that she didn't get more of a revenge for Apollo.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47476779
You have to also consider that despite coming from a nominaly "dead" pantheon Hecate is one of the most popular deities among the various neopagans. Whether ZUN was aware of this or not when making Heccy I don't know.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47477179
I have to believe he is because otherwise I don't get what the joke is supposed to be about her fashion sense.

>>47476779
>and if she's really the goddess Hecate, she's much older than humanity itself
Headcanon. By the logic of Touhou no god can be older than humanity.

>Not only that, she stayed on the grind and managed to become Hell's overlord (all of them), making her even more powerful than default
We don't know that. It's not implausible she's stronger than she was in her golden days, but that's basically just guesswork.

>She also didn't face no repercussions from her fellow old god
Who? Like the other anon said, most of her fellow "Old" gods are probably laughing their ass off at the whole incident.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47477386
>By the logic of Touhou no god can be older than humanity.
NTA, just chiming in, but faith dependency is only a thing for native gods.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47477060
>I think it's more likely that they were all in support of the Moonies eating shit.
Her pantheon probably, but the japanese and hindu ones might have raised their hands a little at her intentions
>Zeus was probably laughing his ass off over them panicking over Heca-tan's little game
Absolutely, he does have a sense of humour, as twisted as it might be for us
>and would've been more disappointed than anything that she didn't get more of a revenge for Apollo.
Heca was there for Junko, if Zeus or Apollo want to resolve a grudge with the moonies, then they should go up there themselves
>>47477179
>Hecate is one of the most popular deities among the various neopagans
calling oneself 'pagan' is kind of self defeatist in a way, since thats the derogatory term christians/muslims/jews used for anyone outside their religion. but yes, she's popular among the new politheists
>Whether ZUN was aware of this or not when making Heccy I don't know
Maybe, he's a quite knowledgeable guy all things considered

[Anonymous No.]

>>47477386
>By the logic of Touhou no god can be older than humanity.
In Reisen's SWR ending, Eirin states that when the Celestials pulled out the keystone that would go on to form Heaven, all life on Earth was wiped out by the ensuing cataclysm, which also happened before the Lunarians fled to the moon.
They at least have to be older than the current humanity.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47477506
>Her pantheon probably, but the japanese and hindu ones might have raised their hands a little at her intentions
They don't seem to be all that hot shit, honestly. Plus, they're earthly gods, so I doubt they really care about the cowardly and arrogant mooncunts getting what they deserve.
>Heca was there for Junko, if Zeus or Apollo want to resolve a grudge with the moonies, then they should go up there themselves
Hecatia's profile in LoLK explicitly brings up her own grudge against Hou Yi over him shooting down Apollo, so while it wasn't really a major concern to her, getting a bit of her own revenge in was obviously a bonus, and the Olympians would've been all for it.

[Anonymous No.]

I don't care how grim canon Touhou is, I still want to kiss and worship Seija's fat asshole.

[Anonymous No.]

Several years have passed since the introduction of Hecatia and people still do not realize the difference between "God" and "god", cultures in Asia usually do not have that distinction, hence why "gods" require Belief.

Hecatia for example: if she needs belief, how do you explain that a goddess who has only 800,000 adherents in Burgerland alone is more powerful than the entire Mahayana bureaucracy? Or she, like the few "primordials" are in fact what Monotheists recognize as Angels (normal or Fallen, I will be generous and not declare them purely evil) Dominions, thrones, Cherubim etc.

by the way, you never specified what you mean by "all the hells". mahayana buddhism has 8 major hells plus 16 minor hells. it makes sense then, within the Taoist-Mahayana-shinto syncretised context of gensokyo. that she administers "all the hells".

my headcannon is that atheistic retards like Sakuya and Remilia are spiritual outlaws, so like the outlaws of the old days they can be hunted down and harvested by any local divine agent.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432708
Touhou was never really dark, except for a few "official" manga of dubious quality, it's always have been a very silly world.

>>47432776
>Convince ZUN to hire Zounose
Oh God help us all.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47477684
>They don't seem to be all that hot shit, honestly. Plus, they're earthly gods, so I doubt they really care about the cowardly and arrogant mooncunts getting what they deserve.
Certainly
>Hecatia's profile in LoLK explicitly brings up her own grudge against Hou Yi over him shooting down Apollo
Maybe Apollo went 'not worth the effort' and told her and the rest to leave it off,

[Anonymous No.]

>>47478011
>Touhou was never really dark
Again, the second ever Windows Touhou game literally states that people in the outside world get abducted into Gensokyo to be hunted for sport to feed the local youkai. The spell card rules literally exist because the youkai are so murder happy that they literally have to make special rules so that don’t nuke their food supply out of existence. It’s never been Narnia

[Anonymous No.]

A bunch of convicts, be they truly guilty or not, stand in line to be guillotined. A crowd comes to gawk.
Some come thinking that everyone has gathered here for a fair, and leave the moment the first head rolls.
Some are trying to convince everyone else that this is but a line to the barber, and that the viscera on the ground is just because the barber is slightly tipsy.
Some become crazed at the sight of death, and gather around the guillotine to drink the blood right out of the tap, trampling each other and laughing mad at everyone around them.
Some try to copulate with other onlookers, the executioners, the convcts, their corpses, and each other.
Repeat ad nauseam.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47468523
>He has a fairly cynical view of religion overall, going by the way he portrays characters like Kanako and Chimata.
TBF Buddhism has done a lot more inherent damage to Japanese society than silly old Shinto ever did. Japanese Buddhism especially is basically European Catholicism in how money grubby, power seeking, and it’s straight domineering it is over Japanese culture.

We’re talking child molestation, misogyny so bad it makes a Muslim blush, extortion of innocent people, political uprising, genocides etc. Like someone once pointed out that one of the things Japanese Buddhists had an issue with Christians (besides taking their racket) was that were TOO nice to the Koreans.

Plus, it’s not like he treats the Shinto gods that nicely, Kanako is literally responsible for like 4 incidents and regularly rips people off (along with making a ropeway so shitty even Kasen was shocked how scammy it was.) and the other native gods are often shown to be shitty assholes or outright smug about their superiority to people.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47479929
>image
Reimu is just jealous she doesn't have the charisma to scam people too.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47478585
>Some come thinking that everyone has gathered here for a fair, and leave the moment the first head rolls.
Memes only
>Some are trying to convince everyone else that this is but a line to the barber, and that the viscera on the ground is just because the barber is slightly tipsy.
Cutesokyo
>Some become crazed at the sight of death, and gather around the guillotine to drink the blood right out of the tap, trampling each other and laughing mad at everyone around them.
Grimsokyo
>Some try to copulate with other onlookers, the executioners, the convcts, their corpses, and each other.
Lewdsokyo
Is that correct?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47479929
Very Nobunaga mentality, I guess. Can't really judge it personally but I don't fault him for disliking Buddhism.

>Like someone once pointed out that one of the things Japanese Buddhists had an issue with Christians (besides taking their racket) was that were TOO nice to the Koreans.
I don't want to excuse that, because It's mostly inexcusable, but there are genuinly weird connections between Korea, Japanese Christians, and groups like the Cia or organized crime. The whole thing is a very messy triangle that your average Japanese person is not fond of, not entirely due to xenophobia(Though that doesn't help).

>Plus, it’s not like he treats the Shinto gods that nicely,
Agree. The only religion he kind of MABYE seems to respect is Taoism. Even if Miko is still pretty sketchy as well.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47480929
Really can’t blame Nobunaga at times, t the Buddhists were kinda nuts. Which is funny because most other Buddhist sects aren’t even remotely as corrupt or bloodthirsty and probably look at the Jap side like we look at Mormons.

>The only religion he kind of MABYE seems to respect is Taoism.
Yeah even then, Miko is a confirmed power hungry dictator, who admits blatantly she only ever used religion for power, Seiga is a corpse fucking Bond villain, Futo is a immoral pyromaniac who is totally down for control and power at any expense, Soga exists I guess, and Kasen barely even knows anything about Taoism and just became a hermit because it looked cool (and even she thinks it’s corrupt bullshit)

I think ZUN’s just a Reddit atheist

[Anonymous No.]

>>47481652
>I think ZUN’s just a Reddit atheist
Not really. He's obviously fascinated at various mythological and spiritual ideas, but seems to strongly dislike (and for a good reason) a lot of established religion. A Reddit atheist wouldn't bother to study themes surrounding religions, or write about how fascinating it was to visit some Buddhist temple. His thoughts on the matter have also most likely changed quite a lot over time. The way the Myoren temple people are portrayed in UFO and in later works is a particularly striking example.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47481701
I mean I’ve seen giga tier Reddit Atheists be surprisingly knowledgeable about religion and even find theology fascinating and still be quick to point of how shit they think it it is.

You’d be surprised how hatred/annoyancr can fuel curiosity and knowledge about the subject. And yeah if anything he seems to be way less tolerable on Buddhism and the Myouren guys… like FS has Akyuu outright roll her eyes at a Buddhist story, Symposium has Byakuren be the punching bag of everyone else and Miko outright admit she thinks Buddhism is stupid and only good in that it made her richer, and the fighting games outright make Byakuren corrupt at best and psycho at worst.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47480074
Find it interesting some fandom presents Sanae as like a shittier and naive Reimu, but pound for pound she almost always one ups her in the print works when it comes to being an actual Shrine Maiden.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47484286
Sanae does have the upper hand since she knows the gods of her shrine, hell she's related to one of them.
Reimu doesn't know the name of her god, it hasn't manifested in years if not decades since I assume Reimu hasn't just forgotten herself, he's been forgotten for a while, so she can't even tell if it's even here, and she only has the ying yangs to even know she has a god (though meeting Misumaru recently probably helps even less since she made the orbs herself)

[Anonymous No.]

>>47480103
The first one is cutefags, 'memes only' didn't come at all.
Second ones are the "it's not THAT bad" moderates.
Would you call these
>>47454051
>>47443269
>>47449489
>>47466656
>>47466674
>>47468460
anons cutefags? Because I disagree, they acknowledge how bad it is, they just downplay it to a ridiculous degree.

[Anonymous No.]

the grim reality is that reimu's efforts to promote the shrine is never allowed to work because it's part of the joke that she's poor.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47486591
I thought it was more that Reimu is an idiot and an asshole who self destructs any good intentions she has over and over again. The joke compliments the fact the girl would literally decay into dust if you she didn’t have someone baby her.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47486591
Reimu isn't poor even ignoring the fact there is literally nobody in Gensokyo other than Yukari and Okina who could actually stop her if she wanted something for free.

If she walked into the human village and demanded a free meal. Who the fuck is going to tell her no? Imagine if the local sheriff was also the entire CIA and the warden of the death camp you call home.

>>47487220
>The joke compliments the fact the girl would literally decay into dust if you she didn’t have someone baby her.
It's weird Reimu fans seem so desperate to be dommed by her because she sounds like a peak tradwaifu. Basically just a child you can fuck.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47488203
>Basically just a child you can fuck.
That wording is gonna make some anons very excited...

[Anonymous No.]

>>47481652
I agree. Especially considering a lot of warrior monks kept allying with his enemies. That's not even getting into the Ikko Ikki.

The thing that makes Miko better to me is that she's at least self aware and mostly doesn't make excuses. She even admits she can't actually judge Byakuren for her actions because she's also a hypocrite, which is way more self awareness than 99% of Touhou characters.

He hovers somewhere in-between a reddit atheist and those weird Christians I've spoken to that argue it's all bullshit but people should still believe anyway because otherwise society will collapse.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47488224
Yes, because they never had children.

Children are cruel and stupid. Reimu wouldn't be a partner you can rely on, she's a burden to take care of.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47488324
Most anon who want a lolimu, or even a fullmu, are in it for the daughterwife/caretaker experience. We all know well become her husband, even if we take the colors and help in minor youkai incidents, at the end of the day you'll be massaging the 'mu's shoulders and fixing her tea

[Anonymous No.]

>>47488968
>We all know we'll become her house husband

[Anonymous No.]

>>47488968
Most anons who want a Touhou girlfriend would fucking hate having a actual Touhou girlfriend because they are all peak 3dpd mindset.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47488968
Reimu not only would t take care of you, she couldn’t take care of herself. You’d be taking care of a lazy abrasive jerk who would end your life if you annoyed her enough without remorse.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47489796
it must be so nice being a grimfag and not having to think about anything, just take it all at face value
must be so relaxing

[Anonymous No.]

>>47489019
Nah not me, you see I'm aware of mental illness actually looks like. I know very well what I'd get into, but if its a yook or a mu I'd be fine. Just gotta make sure you choose them well

[Anonymous No.]

>>47489796
Anon i literally get off to abusive mu. You cannot phase me

[Anonymous No.]

>>47488203
Reimu almost died after eating a moldy ass food, soul in Sanzu River and all
Killing her is pretty easy if you're not straight up confronting her

[Anonymous No.]

>>47489979
With how important Reimu is and how only Hakurei's can use the ying-yang orbs, Gensokyo will be up shit creek if she actually just drops dead without an heir.

The only Youkai Exterminators are Reimu and Marisa; the village is fucked, there is no hope. What's stopping them from collapsing? Remember, the villagers are ignorant retards since to them there's nobody else who can stop Youkai from just killing everyone. The outcast of a witch that hates the villagers won't do shit.

Sanae just comes to preach, the Buddhists are Youkai sympathizers, and the rest are irrelevant since none is on Reimu's level.
So what's stopping them from acting like their world is about to end and either kill themselves or eachother before the Youkai can?
Gensokyo really is only one bad day from complete destruction, just from sheer incompetence alone. And it would be the better end of things for the villagers since they won't have to live in a shithole, until they go to boil in hell for a billion years.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47489817
>Taking everything at face value
>Posts a panel where she literally admits to not caring about killing people/youkai if they break the rules and doing so with a demented smile on her face.
Yeah chief I don’t think there’s a lot to unpack there, she’s a psycho like everyone else in Gensokyo.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47489796
Reimu is so cute when she confronts the filthy youkai scum who dared to glance at her husband for no less than three seconds.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47490571
They’re not psychos they’re my friends

[Anonymous No.]

>>47489817
>just take it all at face value
Okay. Explain to me how Reimu isn't speaking the truth here.

[Anonymous No.]

I understand people saying Touhou is grim or miserable. But it seems more like some just have contempt for the setting. I do not see fans of Warhammer 40k, Berserk, Madoka, Scp, and other dark media constantly shitting on the characters, setting, themes, and stories because it’s “hopeless”.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491137
But it's the objective, undeniable truth that it's a grim setting. There is no alternative. You're both delusional and "not a real fan" if you think otherwise.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491137
>Warhammer 40k
>Scp
To be fair, these two IPs are famous for the sheer hate the fans have to the people creating it and constantly fighting over inconsistent lore & worldbuilding & retcons...

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491137
The lot of them are ex-waifufags who read the print works and became bitter.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491137
While I mostly agree. Warhammer 40K fans love bitching so by default they are going to whine about this subject.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491187
I read the printworks and became bitter. Not because of some retarded leap of logic, but because they did my 2wife dirty and downgraded what I believed was a heug fucking brain to a floppy disk. at least she was drawn with some fantastic tits and ass, a chef's kiss to those heavenly proportions

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491137
Grimfags are just extremely pessimistic people who will jump at the worst conclusion possible whenever a grim thing is hinted at. A lot of grtimfags ignore that humans are not at any risk of death, have everything they need provided for (it's the whole point of the zoo analogy, they barely have to work for their food), seemingly have modern conveniences as with the ice cream.
We've yet to read about a single human even hinting at a desire to leave Gensokyo. You couldn't even say they're brainwashed by propaganda like the Chronicles since it's stated multiple times humans don't care about educating themselves. Even FT just wanted to be autobalanced to the youkai team (but they're full so he got moved to spectator.) That's the only scenario where you're bound to have an unatural death, that and being spirited in and meeting a youkai on team kill outsiders, but then you'd be an outsider.
The grimness comes from the fact they are indeed stuck in Gensokyo and couldn't leave even if they wanted to, don't have access to all modern conveniences and the youkai have some goals in mind with humans (but it's been stated that humans won't be affected whatsoever by youkai taking over the village)
If anything, older lore was grimer because humans actually had to fight for their lives and had to develop skills for it. New lore essentially just removed friendly youkai/human villager contact from the setting and made it so humans seemingly don't know about the kayfabe in the new lore (even though that knowledge is readily available).

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491259
Ranfag?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491405
>who will jump at the worst conclusion possible whenever a grim thing is hinted at.
No? They are simply people that can accurately judge a dystopian setting.

>A lot of grtimfags ignore that humans are not at any risk of death
Most people are not at direct risk of death in 1984 either. Point being?

>have everything they need provided for
They still have poverty and work. So much for having shit provided for them.

>seemingly have modern conveniences as with the ice cream.
Very questionable. They don't seem to have electricity.

>We've yet to read about a single human even hinting at a desire to leave Gensokyo
Because they can't?

>That's the only scenario where you're bound to have an unatural death, that and being spirited in and meeting a youkai on team kill outsiders, but then you'd be an outsider.
That by default means Gensokyo is bad and should be totally eradicated.

>since it's stated multiple times humans don't care about educating themselves.
Except the outside world. They love learning about that. Almost like they want to be there, not Gensokyo.

>Even FT just wanted to be autobalanced to the youkai team
Because it's easier than leaving.

>The grimness comes from the fact they are indeed stuck in Gensokyo and couldn't leave even if they wanted to, don't have access to all modern conveniences and the youkai have some goals in mind with humans (but it's been stated that humans won't be affected whatsoever by youkai taking over the village)
Also the mass murder, dystopian secret police looking for traitors, and having their lives played with by malevolent Youkai basically just for laughs.

>If anything, older lore was grimer because humans actually had to fight for their lives and had to develop skills for it.
That was OLLLLLLDDDD lore. Literally just PCB prologue. PMISS Gensokyo was already a very different place.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491187
Reading the fairies' manga made me a waifufag. And made me realize the beauty of polygamy.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491405
>We've yet to read about a single human even hinting at a desire to leave Gensokyo
They have an interest in the outside, but it's the same kind of interest most people had for China through history. They like their stuff and exotic culture which comes and goes in fads.
>older lore was grimer
Before PCB there was Dolls in Pseudo Paradise which came at the same time as EoSD. The intentions were set with outsiders dying one after the other in this aptly named pseudo paradise, and this was literally on day one of the windows canon.
PCB also stated that the village was founded by Youkai Exterminators drawn to the infested area that would become Gensokyo. They had no problems killing Youkai and it's how Humans were strong enough to build a village there in the first place. Another anon said in another thread that Reimu cant be everywhere and protect the village 24/7, same can be applied to the Hakurei of the time before. The Humans can protect themselves, but even so they're a minority and cant hope to exterminate them all.
The issue came when actually strong Youkai from the outside (Vampires) showed up and Gensokyo's Youkai became too weak. Spell Card rules exist to keep Youkai and Humans in shape through mock duels so Gensokyo isn't obliterated when an actually nightmarish Youkai/whatever passes into fantasy. These rules against killing natives, the Vampire's Pact, and Spell Cards are very recent additions.

Gensokyo isn't some utopia, it has faults; but, it's not a nightmarish hellscape where people are killed off for so much as speaking out or asking "why hasn't youkai killed everyone yet?" It's not wh40k where grimdark is the focus. The dark elements of Touhou are there if you look into it, but it just is not the focus of the setting. I mean go play the games and actually reread the manga. Notice that the instances that are dark isn't every single page, hell it's not even every chapter and certainly not every printwork. The majority of it is pretty light. WBaWC stands out because it's actually dark.
Compared to the Hifuu future which is nothing but bread and circus, there is clear merits to staying in the past. Hifuu is a deliberate contrast to Gensokyo where some would take their chances with man eating monsters over soul death in modernity.

In respect to the OP, I agree to an extent. Touhou should return to its roots PC98 where the world was a dangerous and ruthless place, but at the same time appeared to be moving in a better direction. Go ahead, train yourself to fight Youkai, but know in doing so you paint a target on your back, not because of some balance or that you're an existential threat for "knowing too much" but because eating you means a power boost for whatever podunk Youkai looking for a higher spot on the totem pole. PMiSS painted that depiction of Gensokyo, Youkai are selfish infighting bastards who are only polite under threat of annihilation.

Grimdark is the absence of hope where nothing will ever improve or get better, only stagnation or worse: that isn't Touhou.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491467
ʸᵉᵃʰ

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491620
I have already argued with you in the past and you refuse to learn or take anything away. I took an extreme cutesokyo stance because I was split on the subject, and having an argument forced me to look into things and lead me to my conclusions.
You think Gensokyo can only be miserable because you are a miserable person. Argue in circles forever.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491160
I think you need to calm down, it’s not that deep. Even the Touhou mangas don’t get too intense other than some scenes in Detective satori. This could just be a me thing, however, since when got into Touhou when I was a kid I liked it because it wasn’t as dark or miserable as the other stuff I was into back then. It kinda felt like a breath of fresh air.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491649
No, they like it in the same way you like something you want to do where you imitate every aspect of it's culture the moment you can. Gensokyo has no culture, it has no art, it has nothing. The outside world is pretty much all they have, the only local novel of any worth is literally pulpy slock, so it can never be a fad.

>PCB also stated that the village was founded by Youkai Exterminators drawn to the infested area that would become Gensokyo.
Which is at least kind of cool and adventurous. It's hard to really call it "Fighting for your life" when you and everybody you know can kill Youkai. A far cry from the modern grimdark Gensokyo where you are totally at the mercy of always evil monsters.

>Another anon said in another thread that Reimu cant be everywhere and protect the village 24/7, same can be applied to the Hakurei of the time before.
I agree. Too bad canon disagrees and Reimu really does just 100% solve every problem.

>Spell Card rules exist
When? When do we see a single human villager use spellcard rules? We had a entire manga following a human villager and at no point did she even hint at the ability to use spellcards.

Perfect Memento in Sixth Sense is almost over two decades old. We are further away from it than it was from Highly responsive to Prayers coming out. Any lore in it is going to be suspect at this point unless reinforced, which spellcards are not.

>but, it's not a nightmarish hellscape where people are killed off for so much as speaking out or asking "why hasn't youkai killed everyone yet?"
It's basically just Oceania for Proles. And like a prole the moment you get ideas above your station you are most likely killed.


>The dark elements of Touhou are there if you look into it, but it just is not the focus of the setting
It is the focus of the setting. Not the story, mind you, but that is because ZUN mostly just writers bad black comedy where everybody is kind of a unpleasant.

>Compared to the Hifuu future which is nothing but bread and circus,
It's better in every measure compared to Gensokyo.

>Hifuu is a deliberate contrast to Gensokyo where some would take their chances with man eating monsters over soul death in modernity.
You mean the girl that is most likely going to turn into a literal child murdering sociopath and then spend her times alternating between being disrespected by the very same creatures she's trying to protect or harming innocent people? Literally the one person we see that makes that choice is the absolute bottom of both morality and self-satisfaction.

>Grimdark is the absence of hope where nothing will ever improve or get better, only stagnation or worse: that isn't Touhou.
Again, PMISS was over two decades ago. It's been over a decade since Synopsium. At this point, Touhou IS about stagnation and decline because Gensokyo is never going to get better. And, frankly, as I said earlier ZUN has buried the lead too deep. Youkai are totally unlikeable. Gods are totally unlikeable. Reimu is totally unlikeable. Basically the only people that are remotely sympathetic are the human villagers and maybe Mokou on a good day.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491699
>I have already argued with you in the past and you refuse to learn or take anything away.
I don't know when I did, but assuming it was in this very thread the reason why I "Refused to take anything away" is because you really seemed to struggle with the simple reality that Youkai are monsters. They are evil by every measure.

>You think Gensokyo can only be miserable because you are a miserable person.
Only? No place can only be miserable. It's that attitude that I have such a issue with. Claiming that Gensokyo isn't such a bad place because people are not actively being massacred, ignoring the fact they actually are, and they have parties every now and then is genuinly insane.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491754
> it’s not that deep
Yes. But not in the way you think. Gensokyo is bad and Youkai are bad. That is the obvious first read you would most likely have and it's also the correct one.

>This could just be a me thing, however, since when got into Touhou when I was a kid I liked it because it wasn’t as dark or miserable as the other stuff I was into back then.
That is how it was for most people. The problem is that was a false read born mostly out of fandom. Even PMISS, when the setting could arguably be called not Grimdark, still featured plenty of dark content. Since then it's only gotten more nihilistic.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491841
>They are evil by every measure.
It was several months ago now, and this just proves you're that same exact faggot.
Here's a warning to everyone that it's not worth arguing with this guy, unless you wish to push yourself to research further. This is him also >>47491831

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491854
I very well could have been.

>Here's a warning to everyone that it's not worth arguing with this guy, unless you wish to push yourself to research further
Yes, please, research further.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491697
???
!!!
Huh?!?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491854
>This is him also
Dude, I don't think a monkey needs it pointed out. His catchwords and style of laboriously debating every point line by line is excruciatingly obvious.
>>47491873
Bwuh?!?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491897
Some people might get tempted, a nice argument where every line has an easy way to argue back leading to a nothing argument.
Now you two, GET OVER HERE!

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491897
Remember that time he posted a green cap from that Korean 2hu forum he visits?
Honestly south Koreans are beyond belief with how mind broken they are.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491941
>Remember that time he posted a green cap from that Korean 2hu forum he visits?
Wait, I did that?

>>47491911
Yeah, yeah. Look, if you actually have a valid point to make I wouldn't need to keep breaking them down in the exact same way.

>Having festivals does not make your setting non dystopian.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491853
Mind you I got into it in early 2013, so that’s when stuff like Forbidden scrollery was around, which is a series some people say made the franchise seem more “grimdark”. It wasn’t a false read. By day 1 I knew youkai consume or scare people and that’s how a lot of them can nourish themselves. Touhou even now doesn’t feel nihilistic to me. It’s a fun series I enjoy. Me not thinking it’s “grimdark miseryporn” isn’t tangentially related to being a fake fan, so you didn’t need to try to claim I was prior. I still acknowledge Gensokyo isn’t sunshine and rainbows. Cutesokyo is ridiculous too. Don’t get me wrong. If there was no stakes or conflicts and just characters being “cute” it would just be a slice of life anime or a sitcom. I still like the characters I liked back then a lot, even if since then Nitori’s been shown to be very greedy and mean spirited, Reimu’s become a bit bitchier, and Alice Margatroid just flat out stopped existing. I still think it’s a fun series.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491941
>Korean 2hu forum
Why korean? It would've made sense if it was a Japanese forum, but I don't see how koreans have anything to do with lore discussion.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491985
How do english forums have anything to do with lore discussion?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491973
I'm not going to argue against your opinion for the most part, to each their own and if you do find the black comedy that is most of the manga funny enough to overlook the everything else that is up to you. However:
>Touhou even now doesn’t feel nihilistic to me

Is the one line that I genuinly do question. How? How is it not nihilistic? You don't need to be grimdark or not lighthearted to be nihilistic. Fawlty Tower is arguably nihilistic and nobody is going to claim that is grimdark. Literally the best opinion ZUN Seems to be able to muster regarding religion is "Yeah, it's all bullshit but I guess it's better if dumb people believe it's real".

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491994
Why are you bringing up english forums?
And to answer your question, they don't. If you were to quote a reddit post here it'd be just as nonsensical.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491985

[Anonymous No.]

>>47492011
There’s a difference between critiquing religion and being nihilistic. Touhou feels more like a critique than an outright nihilistic commentary. Touhou stuff is more like calling out corrupt organized religion and the zeitgeist that surrounds it. I think Nihilism however critiques the religions as a whole, faiths and the ideals/memes or implants in people itself which is viewed as slavery.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47445050
>>47449576
>>47450097
>>47455998
>>47456063
>>47468312
>>47468333
>>47468523
>>47470172
>>47475886
>>47477386
>>47491160
>>47491620
>>47491831
>>47491841
>>47491853
>>47491863
>>47491952
>>/jp/?task=search&ghost=false&search_text=north+korea+gensokyo
The fucking North Korea autist is back again, Jesus Christ.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491649
>Gensokyo isn't some utopia, it has faults; but, it's not a nightmarish hellscape where people are killed off for so much as speaking out or asking "why hasn't youkai killed everyone yet?"
I mean… it kinda is.

>Grimdark is the absence of hope where nothing will ever improve or get better, only stagnation or worse: that isn't Touhou.
Literally all the Hifuu stuff is that. Like Uber Doomer shit about the future.

[Anonymous No.]

DiPP/PCB-sokyo =\= PMiSS-sokyo =\= WaHH/SoPM/FS-sokyo

[Anonymous No.]

>>47492075
What do you even mean when you say Nihilistic?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47493103
No, anon, you misunderstand, they are actively spying on the human villagers for any dissident but they aren't murdering people. They just politely ask them to stop.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47493010
5 billion threads, and the North Korea fag is still not proven wrong.
If that's not an exercise in futility, I don't know what is.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47494745
I’m saying nihilism views ALL of religion as bad as a whole. Zun’s ideals don’t seem nihilistic to me at all regarding religion.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47496860
His ideals seem to be somewhere inbetween a reddit atheist and a 4chan trad atheist who doesn't actually believe but thinks the sheep still need to be herded. How is that not nihilistic? Hell, "God is dead and we have killed him" is pretty fundamental to Touhou.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47497327
NTA but he's not really that either. If you read the Hifuu stuff it's pretty clear he mourns and resents the death of "enchantment" in life. Neither flavor of atheist gives a shit about that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47497374
In that sense, Touhou is his way of keeping the spirit of fantasy and imagination alive. It's a setting built to be fantasized about, and it's trying to cling onto the nostalgia for his childhood which he goes into detail and is passionate about. Shrines, temples, festivals, folk traditions, Halley's Comet, all that was very influential for him and all things that inspired wonder. Whether he's just old or it is the times changing for the worse he clearly prefers the past.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47495003
Anon, it's not about proof he doesn't care, all he cares about is North Korea.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47498536
And yet he's still 100% right about Gensokyo, and all of the moderates are constantly proven wrong by him.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47497374
I think part of that is just getting old and Touhou was his way of coping.

>>47497672
The funny thing is that Touhou HAS genuinly gotten more Grimdark as time went on. Which leads me to believe he mostly soured on actual religion and reactionary movements as he got older.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47498536
>All he cares about is North Korea
No, I'm just using North Korea as a easy shorthand. Same reason why I tended to talk about 1984, the Gaza, 40K, and Shirekai Yori.

Touhou is fairly unique as far as dystopia's go insofar that it's very inhuman. The major actors involved in it are literally supernatural, which isn't really the case for basically the entire genre. Shinsekai Yori is close but ultimately the major actors keeping everything shit there are unmistakably human and the actual fault is human nature. The party in 1984 can seem faceless and all powerful, but the explicit point is they are not. Their actual motives are, arguably, incredibly childish. 40K is it's own can of worms, but the one thing it does have in common is that the reason why the Dystopia came to pass is both supernatural AND explicitly a part of human nature. Chaos is a real thing sending actual demons to kill people, and they are proof of the deeper underlying faults in the human spirits. Youkai are similar, representing both a literal monster and being indicative of something deeper wrong with the human spirit. If it wasn't for that, I probably wouldn't even bring it up in any conversation involving Touhou.

Otherwise, the other thing of note about Touhou as a grimdark setting is that's it's largely not misanthropic or even all that critical of humanity as it exists. Yes, the future of Hifuu but as I said earlier there is a aspect of unreliable narrator in the form of Maribel. If you assume she does become Yukari, she is a fundamentally bad person who is going to do horrible inhuman things. Even outside of that, it's also doesn't really speak to a larger failing in humanity. Fear of the unknown, arguably. But there is no real assumption that a acceptance of the unknown would somehow fix the future. In fact, there isn't much of a assumption that anything can be done to fix it. The story seems to threat it as largely inevitable, no different from a child growing up. In that respect it's actually very nihilistic (as in the actual works of Friedrich Nietzsche) but also very grounded for a story about magic. Not helped by the fact that the Youkai, while being somewhat of a reconstruction of "Always chaotic evil", are ultimately kind of closer to petulant manchildren than murderous dictators. It's why, despite using them as shorthand, I don't think North Korea, Gaza, or whatever other real world dystopian is really applicable. Maybe Nazi Germany, but that country was simply too aggressive and mired in ideas about warfare and honor to be applicable. Gensokyo is closer to something like what Switzerland would have looked like as a nazi state.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47497327
More so, Gods aren’t what they’re all cracked up to be. Most aren’t malicious though. And they aren’t dead either, in a literal or spiritual sense like let’s say, Berserk. That’s an actual nihilist view on religions. I do respect your views on Touhou, its themes, its tone, and its character, even if I do not agree fully. At least we can all agree that Mamizou is an annoying A-hole.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47499045
>Most aren’t malicious though. And they aren’t dead either, in a literal or spiritual sense like let’s say, Berserk
Spiritually the gods in Touhou are ABSOLUTLY dead.

>At least we can all agree that Mamizou is an annoying A-hole.
I actually kind of like her as a antagonist. Wish ZUN would use her less though.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47499065
>Spiritually the gods in Touhou are ABSOLUTLY dead
But they're alive and do things in the prints a lot, like ssib.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47498788
>I think part of that is just getting old and Touhou was his way of coping.
It very well might be, but there are certainly people in this world who lament such from a bit less personal point of view.
>he mostly soured on actual religion and reactionary movements as he got older.
He probably has. I think he has probably soured on Touhou itself too. The "they all stink" thing was very interesting. The Japanese genuinely think really bad of nasty body odors (which conversely also manifests in fetish art around the subject). It feels like he is really hard trying to make people like Touhou and the characters less lol
>>47498971
>indicative of something deeper wrong with the human spirit
A lot of the bad things that the supernatural entities do in Touhou is ultimately bad things humans do to each other or to other forms of life IRL. Even things like Yukari spying on people might be just commentary on mass surveilance that happens IRL in the guise of "helpful" innovations.

When you start digging into it, it's stuff humans do, especially in Japan, all the way down. The whole let's go behind a barrier because the world is changing thing is probably a reflection of Japanese isolationism. I would love to know to which extent Gensokyo just mirrors municipal politics in Japan.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the youkai eating humans thing is commentary on factory farming or the Japanese habit of eating cetaceans (which has thankfully largely passed into history).
>aspect of unreliable narrator in the form of Maribel
Maribel isn't the only narrator though. Things seem to have gone to shit for real.
>acceptance of the unknown would somehow fix the future
Ah, but it's not acceptance of the unknown.

While I do not magicaly know what ZUN thinks, I think the kind of "loss of enchantment" is partially loss of the sense that the world is alive, souled. While comparatively few Japanese self-identify as religious, ideas from Shinto and Buddhism manifest in there being certain "holy" thing in the world, including certain areas of nature. If one thinks of a forest as holy, souled or alive, then it's substantially harder to just cut it all down. If one thinks of the whole world as being alive or souled, then it's harder to just perform a total ecocide so that the graph can go up for one more year.

The world of Hifuu isn't shit because they don't accept the unknown, it's shit because they thought everything of just matter to be consumed for "growth" and "development".

Of course the Japanese have also done much to destroy their environment, but that's why ZUN doesn't point the fingers at other countries or cultures either. It's simply an extrapolation of what could happen if the world is no longer seen as souled.
>real world dystopian is really applicable
The closes to a real world dystopian that is comparable to Gensokyo is right here, right now. You too are in the risk of "getting eaten by youkai" if you act too much out of line. You too live in a pseudo paradise. You too have an aristocracy of petulant manchildren ruling over you. You too have a "god" of technological progress providing seemingly useful things for the sake of reinforcing it's own power base. You too live in a land of illusions. You too live in a world where common sense has to abandoned to make sense of it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47499255
Yes, that's why I said spiritually.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47499405
>A lot of the bad things that the supernatural entities do in Touhou is ultimately bad things humans do to each other or to other forms of life IRL.
The problem is that humanity as a whole has outgrown Youkai. It's hard to argue Youkai are indicative of something wrong with humanity when most of humanity isn't like Youkai and don't have to deal with them.

>Maribel isn't the only narrator though. Things seem to have gone to shit for real.
Outside of Maribel's dislike it seems mostly fine.

>The world of Hifuu isn't shit because they don't accept the unknown, it's shit because they thought everything of just matter to be consumed for "growth" and "development".
Is it? That's not entirely how I read it. Though, for what it's worth, I don't think that's a bad approach. Regardless, the issue seems to more be that they view the entire world in purely materialistic. Which, I think is mostly correct. Yeah, you can lie and tell yourself the entire world is alive and souled but it's also... not. That is the mentality I get from Touhou.

>The closes to a real world dystopian that is comparable to Gensokyo is right here, right now.
What? The Netherlands?

>You too are in the risk of "getting eaten by youkai" if you act too much out of line.
Come the fuck on, anon. That is the most whiny first world attitude established. There is a difference between getting arrested because you are, say, a mass murderer and getting arrested because you compared the president to winnie the pooh.

>You too have an aristocracy of petulant manchildren ruling over you.
No, that's mostly nonsense. If anything the scary thing about the world is how little control individuals have. There is no actual captain at the helm.

>You too have a "god" of technological progress providing seemingly useful things for the sake of reinforcing it's own power base
That's just a shit comparison. Technology is not a person, it's not even a meme, it's literally a method used to discover evidence.

>You too live in a world where common sense has to abandoned to make sense of it.
Define common sense.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47499723
Maribel saw the world for how it actually is. Just because the proles and animals think it's great doesn't mean it is so. It's all bread and circuses in the world. The fake scenery of Mt Fuji viewed from underground in a train is there to distract you from the real sad state of things.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47499723
>Outside of Maribel's dislike it seems mostly fine
You're a fucking retard.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47499723
>Outside of Maribel's dislike it seems mostly fine.
Having destroyed ecosystems to the point where even bamboo shoots have to be synthetic isn't "fine" by any metric.
>That's not entirely how I read it
>you can lie and tell yourself the entire world is alive and souled but it's also... not
Not to be rude, it's precisely because you can not entertain this notion that you can not read the subtext either.
>What? The Netherlands?
One of the nicest corners of our human village, but yes.
>That is the most whiny first world attitude established.
I assure you, you would get "eaten" even in your country via extrajudicial means if you started, for example, investigating the tax evasion habits of your petulant aristocracy vigorously enough.
>If anything the scary thing about the world is how little control individuals have.
It's almost as if there are small influential cliques and then they have occasional "incidents" and in the end everyone boozes together.
>it's literally a method used to discover evidence.
That would be science. Technology is something else. Maybe the metaphor wasn't the best, but our "god of technological progress" is of course the people over at Silicon Valley and other similar clusters of petulant aristocrats and their sycophants. Some of these are very literal petulant manchildren too! For every single thing that arguably increases the quality of life we get ten things that are nothing but waste of resources that produce short-lived fads that don't take off. So much of what we do is at this point just attempts at undoing damage we have done. Electric vehicles are an (insanely resource intensive) attempt at undoing the damage we have done with fossil fuels. Better cancer treatments are in such dire demand because due to pollution we have seen a 79% global increase in cancers. It's an ouroboros eating it's tail, and after every cycle there is less of the tail to chew and the only ones benefiting are our very own youkai manchildren.
>Define common sense.
Not grossly living over the capacity of this planet to sustain life and not spewing the ecosystem full of pollutants that can never be removed from there would be a start. Just yesterday we had a news article here that was basicaly "we have pumped the ecosystems so full of PFAS and endocrine disruptors that humanity will likely go extinct" and nobody gave a shit.

Not surrendering our power to cliques of our very own youkai would also fit within common sense, I think, and there is much more, but this post is getting a bit long as is.
>>47499842
Basicaly this, and we have our own fake Mt. Fuji's right here, right now.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47499842
>Maribel saw the world for how it actually is
Again, she turns into a child murdering psychopath later on. I'm not denying future is bad, it could be. But I don't trust Maribel's opinion on the matter.

>>47500131
>Having destroyed ecosystems to the point where even bamboo shoots have to be synthetic isn't "fine" by any metric.
It's better than Gensokyo by every measure.

>Not to be rude, it's precisely because you can not entertain this notion that you can not read the subtext either.
It's because I CAN entertain this notion while being able to dismiss it on the basis of it not being true is why I can make a honest judgement. If there is a point to ZUN and Touhou it's that the enchantment that was lost was never actually real. It was born from ignorance and the literal evil moon people trying to keep humanity down. The only real thing that changed from PMISS to now in that regard is that it went from presenting Gensokyo as somewhat of a Hegelian solution to a even worse dystopia.

> investigating the tax evasion habits of your petulant aristocracy vigorously enough.
No? Why would they? Most tax evasion is done legally. There is no need to kill anybody when the law is on their side.

>It's almost as if there are small influential cliques and then they have occasional "incidents" and in the end everyone boozes together.
Well, the thing that has become increasingly more obvious the longer time has gone on is that everybody does NOT booze together at the end. They didn't during the cold war, they aren't doing it now, and they are becoming increasingly unable to do do it even within countries. In some regards that is equally terrifying, but it is different.

>Technology is something else
It's not. But, look, I get what you are saying about technocrats and silicon valley. Yes, the old star trek idealism of "Technology will cure everything" is mostly dead and, frankly, good riddance. However, at the same time, in the context of Gensokyo that's also not a thing and, for what little it's worth, science literally DOES seem capable of solving anything. Humanity IS not extinct in the future nor is it even at risk of dying out. The problem is more that we had to sacrifice so much to reach that state and that it's left people overly paranoid of what few secrets do remain.

>Not grossly living over the capacity of this planet to sustain life and not spewing the ecosystem full of pollutants that can never be removed from there would be a start. Just yesterday we had a news article here that was basicaly "we have pumped the ecosystems so full of PFAS and endocrine disruptors that humanity will likely go extinct" and nobody gave a shit.
Well, the problem is that's not common sense. Common sense is at best stupidly mundane shit, basically stating the obvious, or at worst actively not solving the problem, like people in a sinking ship praying to god to save them rather than actually throwing water overboard.

>Not surrendering our power to cliques of our very own youkai would also fit within common sense,
What power? You mean the power that we are uniquely gifted with in all of human history? Do you think your average person in Gensokyo has even 1/20th of the power we do? We literally have more power right now than 99,9% of humanity did, certainly more so than every single human not named Hakurei Reimu.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500131
So more or less this post? >>47443269
When you look at the ills of the world, and I mean ours, being chased by a Youkai is preferable to this slowly boiling a frog alive shit every government and corporation is doing. At least you can fight back or run from Youkai, and they don't pretend to be your "representative" for your best interests. Here you can't even run, it's the same or worse everywhere else. God forbid you have a contrary opinion in your area, the government doesn't need to lift a finger when all their fanatics do the thought policing for them.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500430
>At least you can fight back or run from Youkai,
No, you fucking can't. That's the whole point of Gensokyo. You can do more in the real world, WAY more.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500384
>child murdering psychopath
Source?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500556
She's literally responsible for abducting people to Gensokyo. She brags about to Sakuya, she mentions it to Kasen, it's said in PMISS, and her title is basically "GIRL ABDUCTING CHILDREN".

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500571
Yeah no shit she spirits away people, where is the GIRL ABDUCTING CHILDREN part?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500586
First up, look up what spirited away means. Second of all, she explicitly mentions children towards Sakuya. Third of all, Sumireko was a child when she originally ended up in Gensokyo and this was not mentioned as being special. Fourth, there is no reason to assume Yukari WOULDN'T abduct children as well. Runaway kids might as well be walking meals to her and other Youkai.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500556
>Source?
Made it up.
His argument is founded on a popular theory and assumptions about Yukari's character and actions. It's headcanon.
Discrediting any opinion based on what someone might become is also retarded and a cope to support his own argument, because you can't be proven wrong if you just deny everything contrary to your point.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500633
Awesome, provide the context for the "she explicitly mentions children towards Sakuya" part.
>this was not mentioned as being special
It ain't special in comparison to some random esper turning up.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500633
>Fourth, there is no reason to assume Yukari WOULDN'T abduct children as well. Runaway kids might as well be walking meals to her and other Youkai.
So headcanon. We can talk about what ifs and assumptions all day, like how there's no reason to assume you WOULDN'T be a retard.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500661
Read her dialogue in PCB.

>>47500665
Three other reasons mentioned, dumbass.

Like, what, you are willing to admit she was abducting people, she openly bragged about abducting children, there are examples of children being abducted. But, her doing it? Just... impossible.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500689
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Perfect_Cherry_Blossom/Story/Sakuya%27s_Extra
>Like human children. Or adults.
Wew, trash talk in a series infamous for trash talking.
>there are examples of children being abducted
Like?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47499065
And at the end of the day regardless of our prior confrontation, I honestly think Cutesokyo is more ridiculous and unfounded than Grimsokyo.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500722
somewhere in there is (supposedly) the missing link between trash talk and "child murdering psychpath"

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500722
>It's trash talk
Headcanon.

>Like
Sumireko.

>>47500742
Amen to that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500748
Yeah, it's called her bragging about murdering children.

>Well that doesn't mean she doesn't do it?
Based on what? Her doing a scouts honor?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500758
My main issue with cutesokyo mainly stems from the fact it like, doesn’t feel fun. Part of the fact I like the characters in the series is because they’re imperfect. Reimu might be cute, but she’s also not all there seemingly, she is shoot first and ask questions later (if she feels like it). Kawashiro Nitori might be friendly albeit quite shy, and has even helped out spirits that escape the animal real and kept them safe from harm. But on the flip side she’s also greedy, stingy too, and you can’t forget the fact the kappa can be very dangerous youkai in mythology.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500758
>>47500765
>Headcanon.
Lmao autists where a mistake
>Sumireko.
And how did she enter again?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500829
Yes.

We don't know.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500571
>She's literally responsible for abducting people to Gensokyo. She brags about to Sakuya
In the PCB dialogue, she says that people end up at her home. She doesn't say that she kidnapped them.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500824
NTA. It's the other way around to me and I don't know how to deal with it. Grimsokyo is just too depressing and cynical to be fun, the characters are not just imperfect but lack positive traits comepletly to the point where even hating them is draining, and worst of all, like you've said here >>47500742 it's the only way anything in the setting makes any goddamn sense.
I can't even cope. I've tried writing fanfiction, so that the setting I imagined Touhou to be originally would exist in some form, but I just can't do it. The only thing left is screaming into the void about how I hate modern Touhou printworks for daring to show that the things that I liked about it were lies, illusions, if you may.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500919
Maybe it's time for you to let go

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500824
My big problem is just that it feels... weird. Cutesokyo to me is like the Darkstalkers or Rambo cartoon. It's not entirely unwatchable on it's own merits, but there is something just kind of off about taking a story that, for good or bad, is this distinctive and turning it into stock Otaku cute girls doing cute things franchise 9456#.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500930
NTA, but my plan is to finish my novel, play LB6, and then probably either leave /jp/ forever or occasionally come here to hear people bitch about how my novel totally ripped off Touhou.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500934
That's the other issue. For me, Grimsokyo is yet another 'cute thing but EVIL' #3245, except it was never cute.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500947
That's fair, I guess. Like I said, it's pretty unique as far as Dystopia goes, but I understand the sentiment.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500919
>lack positive traits comepletly
I beg to differ. You’re merely looking at it the wrong way. If don’t think you were meant to find the characters loathsome, I’d doubt we’d get so much official merchandise of them if that was the case. The characters are multifaceted. Heck, most incidents end with the heroines and the villains usually becoming cordial with one another and I think that is done because Zun wants to show how killing doesn’t necessarily solve all conflicts. This isn’t “Always sunny in Philadelphia” where everyone is a jerk. At the time I got into Touhou as a kid, I was subsequently into shit like horror games and God Of War (around the time ascension dropped so it wasn’t the new, tamer ones) so even back then I was consuming media where everyone was an irredeemable prick. So the stuff in Touhou didn’t phase me much back then. Still doesn’t now. Yeah the characters are dicks at times, but whatever. That’s life. The only thing in Touhou that really does unnerve me is the fact that heaven is closed off because of celestials being A-holes. Also I hope your fanfictions are going well.
>>47500934
Yeah. I mean you have a setting where the characters have superpowers and magic and stuff and you only wanna focus on them being “cute”? Nothing else about them? It just seems so toothless.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501029
>I’d doubt we’d get so much official merchandise of them if that was the case.
Most fans don't like the actual characters.

Otherwise, I would argue it is in fact exactly like Always sunny in Philadelphia, or Seinfeld, or Fawlty Tower. It's black comedy where most of the cast are assholes. Yeah, it's not God of War but at the same time God of War has more genuine attempts at pathos. Touhou really doesn't.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501064
>Most fans don't like the actual characters.
Source?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501072
This very website. Take any random character focused thread, and point me where anything they like is actually based on canon.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501029
I still don't get where's this coming from, because the more official material I've read the less complex the characters seem. They're all one-dimentional jerks, and are only "cordial" to each other out of selfish, pleasure-seeking whim: most characters only have the worst things to say about Reimu untill the nxt shrine party comes about.
>So the stuff in Touhou didn’t phase me much back then. Still doesn’t now.
The weirdest part about this is that I only feel this way about Touhou. I'm into stuff where characters are way worse, yet I don't feel the same way about them. I guess this self-inflicted rugpull has something to do with it.
>Also I hope your fanfictions are going well.
It's not. Having the setting be actually nice to live in is a lot harder than PMiSS made me think looks like. Also writing from a perspective of a character who thinks the world is as bad as canon is very limiting. Can't show too much.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501075
Anon this board is full of insane schizos that mindlessly repeat their shibboleth; a stone throw away from joining the vtuber generals.
I would not take anything on this entire forum as normal.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501119
Yes, yes. I'm aware. However, I don't remember many other places being all that different. The one place I actually somewhat fondly remember is the western touhou fanfic community. They seem to at least make a attempt to stick to canon.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501075
There are a few posts on the Yukari thread talking about how she stinks.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501124
Fair enough.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501119
>>47501123
To add onto what I just said the topics here remind of /utg/, like what the fuck how can you find this fun.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501134
If you think that's bad. You should see me on /tv/.

The only place I go where I see more violence and senseless slaughter is gurochan.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47498971
>North Korea
>Gaza
>Nazi Germany
Wow, real original, gonna get some new materiel anytime soon?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501162
You seen any good dystopian movies recently?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501091
I think we just have different outlooks on life in general. But I hope you have fun writing your stories. Writers block can be a bitch sometimes.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47491137
>But it seems more like some just have contempt for the setting.
No more than ZUN himself, I reckon. It never feels like he really wants to commit to any part of his own setting, and he wants it to be too many things at the same time.
Gensokyo is simultaneously a world in which youkai terrorize simple human villagers, who live in constant fear of what lies beyond their borders; a world where inhuman entities cause countless incidents that threaten their world and are only stopped by the ceaseless efforts of the Hakurei shrine maiden; a world where youkai do as they please and the humans are oppressed; a world where humans remain ignorant with little interest in studies, working mostly as subsistence farmers; and a world where the humans live pretty leisurely lives, with a high level of literacy and wide access to luxuries such as ice cream.

The worldbuilding is just all over the place, and it doesn't feel like it's actually sincere, and we're left with works like Mizuchi's Spontaneously Naptime Hour, where the story *wants* us to view her as a serious threat to Gensokyo and its people, but there's no actual consequences to anything nor anything serious happening, so it all feels toothless in the end. Lotus Eaters also has an issue with setting up tension towards ostensibly real problems only to immediately deflate all of it in the following chapter by revealing it as a non-issue. Nobody is ever serious about there schemes, and anything that looks like a genuine conflict brought on by the characters is erased almost immediately so that everyone can sit around and drink sake together.
Unconnected Marketeers is a good example of it, since its story sets up towards a conflict between Chimata and the tengu, who were both just trying to use each other, and the protagonist is merely caught in the middle of it, but then comes Lotus Eaters where they're suddenly friends now, without even bothering to explain where the change of heart came from.

ZUN can't seem to decide what his world is supposed to be, so it's alternatively grim, happy, or just devoid of anything serious ever happening, and Touhou ultimately hurts for it. He needs to at least commit to something, or just stick to making more fairy manga, since those at least fully commit to the slice-of-life aspect and are the best of the manga as a result.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47500824
>>47500934
Arguing for cutesokyo in any serious manner is silly because it's blatantly contradicted by any source material, Grimsokyo is likewise. There's a reason they are both extremes because they are not the norm, they cannot exist without ignoring some things or twisting them beyond plausibility.
This isn't to say you cant enjoy them, cutesokyo is fun like watching slice of life cute girls doing cute things anime, but it's going to wear out fast unless you're a diehard fan of such things. The Memories of Phantasm anime is a good example of a cute outlook on Touhou, it's a fun watch for that itch, but you're not supposed to take it seriously and nobody in good faith argues it is the only correct depiction, in fact many argue the contrary because it's too far into fanon. Grimsokyo can also be entertaining in a macabre way, KKHTA, Igyoukou, and naturally Zounose works are examples of this depiction and get your mind spinning on what if scenarios.
My belief is that canon hits a sweet spot, and it's by design. It's a nice middle ground and there's enough slack and questionable areas that you can take it however way you like, tweaking it in ways that fit the story you have in mind and still fit within the realm of plausibility.
>>47500919
Firstly the trick is to stop listening to anyone posing their one 'truth' as gospel like the grimfag autist. He just wants you to be sad, disillusioned, and hate Touhou as much as he does. Don't let faggots >>47500930 (you) run you off of something you like either.
Secondly there's simply too much uncertainty in canon works and you'd be a retard like he is to conclude a single absolute truth or view. The words of characters are difficult to take at face value given how much contradicts one another and it's questionable how much is layered under banter, though you certainly can if you believe they speak the truth. Maybe Marisa actually hates the villagers and is speaking the truth, maybe she doesn't and is just saying that to look cool. Both are possible rational conclusions, and this dynamic is likewise everywhere; why else would there be such heated debates about what is and isn't? In any other setting, be it grimdark or light and fluffy, there isn't this much of a divide. I mean fuck, ZUN loves his changing point of views. How many different versions of Reimu's personality do we have? (picrel) How can we really say if Yukari's competency is genuine, planned, or just random bullshit coincidence? What is anyone's motivation at any given time? The tonal differences between the games, three fairies, and forbidden scrollery are like night and day. These alone are enough to make you question and doubt the information shown at face value.
As I said above, there's enough slack in there to see things in different angles, and that's what I think is the best strength of Touhou as a Doujinshi series. There's so many stories you can write, all of them contradicting but exploring different topics and still seem like it all just works. Just an example off the cuff: you can write fanfics that depict Yukari as both an incompetent jobber carried through by luck and fanfics where she's a masterful schemer playing everyone to her benefit, and both are completely in character.

I won't tell you how to think of Touhou or what you should adopt, if any, I'm just rambling my philosophy on it as an eternal fence sitter. The only thing I would tell you to do is open yourself to the 'alternative facts in this eastern utopia' and determine the answers yourself. Alternative angles can let you enjoy the setting in more ways then you thought. The fantasy never left, you just gotta have faith.

[Anonymous No.]

This thread is surprisingly civil and thoughtful for a thread with the word grimdark on the OP.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501523
It comes and goes, the more recent stuff is pretty irate. Most of that you see is in between the endless walls of text from those who realized there's no point to replying thoughtfully to certain posts. If you're casually scrolling you aren't going to notice it. The early parts of the thread were definitely better, but there was good discussion, sometimes.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501556
Well the convo I had with >>47491160 that went on for a while was actually pretty respectful. I can’t say the same about other parts of the thread though.

[Anonymous No.]

All this talk about lore and hope vs despair makes me realize I prefer when people just focus on making the characters look/seem cool without going so much into tangents.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501382
Who could possibly be behind that post?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501302
You put a lot of effort into your reply to me so I’ll just give you a (you). I agree that the worldbuilding is very inconsistent. But I think Mizuchi is what Touhou needed. She’s far more menacing and threatening. It only seems like she isn’t a threat because most discussion of the manga gets drowned out by shitposts.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501382
>Grimsokyo can also be entertaining in a macabre way, KKHTA, Igyoukou, and naturally Zounose works are examples of this depiction and get your mind spinning on what if scenarios.
I think it’s funny people lump in Zounose with the overly edgy Grimdark stuff because if anything his stories are a lot more hopeful and personal than a lot of the other edgy stuff and even some of ZUN’s work

Like the Sanae manga actively has characters be saddened by the loss of some kid to the gods and it even has the gods be somewhat respectful to the kid for the sacrifice, when in canon I don’t think Sanae would be that emotional or even really care about some kid dying nor is she really someone of high moral standing to begin with. If anything his writing of Reimu and Marisa genuinely not caring either way about the kid is pretty spot on to their characterization in the mangas. Like his stuff is dark not in overly edgy way most the time, but mostly in how mundane the cruelty and exploitation of everything is. Which is way more in line with actual Touhou lore.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47502935
>Zounose is more hopeful than canon.
This again? You really need better material.

[Anonymous No.]

>I think it’s funny people lump in Zounose with the overly edgy Grimdark stuff
It's a mystery…

[Anonymous No.]

>>47503146
It is a mystery. Sure it's darker than what most people are used to from Touhou doujin, but it's hardly "grimdark". At least, not the textbook definition of it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501382
Look, I get that you're trying to help, but nothing you say is new to me.
There Is NO "sweet spot" anymore, no middle ground, and I don't get why do you people claim there is one. We're reading the same stories, right?
There USED to be ambiguity in how everything in Gensokyo is portrayed. Why do you think I go on and on about PMiSS all the time? Because it's portrayal was ambiguous and unreliable. You could argue the same for WaHH, SoPM, and FS (The Trifecta of Shit™), but no, to re-interpret a lot of points there would require the kind of mental gymnastics that land one in a padded room. I think I've made a thread about it once a year or so ago, about how modern printworks are destroying what little ambiguity that was left about what kind of setting Touhou is, and it's grating that the only one who can apparently see it is some schizo rambling about North Korea. So no, I got disillusioned and I "hate" Touhou on my own terms.
A sensible picture of the world is already formed by the attempts to see through the characters lies and half-truths, and it's never a kind one. The only reason any debate exists is because people don't understand what they're reading. Like, you've mentioned tonal differences between Sangetsusei and FS. Of course they're going to be different. And no, this doesn't suddenly make the setting multifaceted, it shows them from perspectives so unrelated they might as well take place in separate worlds. It changes nothing. Neither does Reimu being a schizo, that's just bad writing.
It took me two rereads of all the printworks to get to this conclusion, I don't expect anyone to do the same and read shit in context, instead of cherrypicking lines they can vaguely remember. I'm just as guilty of it as everyone else is in these threads, and I doubt I'll improve - I swore off official Touhou media, and havent read or re-read any of it since, like, chapter 4 of CDS? If it and Lotus Eaters are about as bad as FS, and from what I've read and heard through osmosis, they likely are, why should I care about any of it? Canon might as well be to me on the same level of importance and value as Cookie.
Sorry for blogposting, but I needed to ramble. In context of Touhou, the only thing I hate more than the Trifecta of Shit are fans that claim that it's still 2008 and there's an actual discussion to be had, when the topic is as simple as a stick with "everything sucks" scratched on it. Probably because I used to be like that. Now I know better - the guillotine is not a barbershop.
> Alternative angles can let you enjoy the setting in more ways then you thought.
I wouldn't call "Getting rid of all lore past 2008 and then some" an alternative angle, it's an AU. And at this point it's the only way for me to write anything Touhou.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47502935
People lump Zounose in with those others because his logic leaps and departures from canon are just as far-fetched. Hell, he'll even shit on his own established setting for an excuse to draw some gore.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47501382
>My belief is that canon hits a sweet spot, and it's by design.
Honestly, my problem with canon is mostly just that, outside the games, it's not that funny. Anytime something serious happens I also run into the problem that I just don't care what happens to these people. It makes it hard for me to give a fuck about the print works nowadays.

>>47503146
>>47502935
Zounose is very weird because, yes, I do actually think his characters care more. However, he also fundamentally misunderstands Youkai (Wow, a Touhou fan misunderstanding Youkai? What else is new), and he often tries to make the human village worse when their near saint like status is probably their most important quality in canon.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47504224
I'm glad you're finally coming out and just saying you hate touhou and the setting. I hope you find what you like in the next franchise you decide to invest yourself into.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47504504
The only ones who hate Touhou here are the grimshitters. They cheer on as the setting is mixed with mud.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47504540
I hope you find what you like in the next franchise you decide to invest yourself into. I hope your 0 view fanfiction.net story comes out soon!

[Anonymous No.]

>>47504547
Why do you hate Touhou that much? Did ZUN kill your dog or something?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47504540
I mean, I'm the North Korean "Grimshitter" and I don't actually hate the setting or Touhou as a whole. Again, a setting being bad doesn't mean it's a bad setting.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47505196
>North Korean
Don't you have batter materiel already?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47505196
Which is unfortunately not the case with Touhou. Ever since it strted leaning more into grimshit it became more and more boring and all-over-the-place. You yourself said so much >>47501302.
Never really took you for a grimfag from your posts, by the way, just someone who sees the setting as it is without actively reveling in it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47504547
Hey just because you don’t like grimsokyo doesn’t mean you need to be an asshole about it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47506179
Evergreen

[Anonymous No.]

>>47503146
I always think about this doujin when people claim that Zounose is canon.
They must live in an alternate dimension where the games are quite different.

[Anonymous No.]

I don't get it. What's the conclusion of all this?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47506756

[Anonymous No.]

>>47506756
Touhou is grim, not really grimdark though. The nihilism present is mostly cause real life religion kinda sucks sick and both the mythological figures and people who exploit the religion are all assholes who care little about the people they exploit, but because of how foundational belief is for the human experience, ditching all the magic and wonder of the world will lead to humanity becoming stagnant and emotionless. Existential crisis of faith and god a Japanese man feels filtered through a bunch of anime girls with fat tits.

Also Korea gay

[Anonymous No.]

>>47506756
The conclusion is no matter what points you bring or argument you make, you cannot convince someone that lacks an imagination.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47506396
The games are just a B-Grade Puyo Puyo ripoff. But there is no Schezo and therefore no female fanbase.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47506756
When you write always chaotic evil creature, just make them cute girls and the audience will literally forgive everything they do.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47507857
This is my favorite take, literally showing why humans evolved such fine senses for sniffing out mimicks. The strategy is too overpowered.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47507852
Shush you autistic jew

[Anonymous No.]

>>47508015
Touhou needs it's own Schezo.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47507852
You sound just like a secondary.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47508147
Parodies fantasy/mythology? Check.
Everyone's a snarky jerk? Check.
No serious or meaningful conflict? Check.
Weird replacement for lethal conflict that's sometimes enjoyed as a sport? Check.
Conclusion - Touhou is just edgy Puyo Puyo.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47508195
You know, I'll give you points for being a bit creatiive instead of claiming it's a Kikikaikai ripofff like the rest of the secondaries.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47508334
What I don't get is how does comparing Touhou to something to anything makes one a secondary.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47508195
I’m pretty sure it’s more less edgy SMT

Or more edgy Flight of Dragons

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432708
mamizou has such fuck me eyes

[Anonymous No.]

What exactly is stopping Reimu from just ignoring being dead? if she dies?
she can just fly back home as a ghost after the funny boat ride
it's not like anyone can stop her and she's been there before and knows the way back.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47509987
Idk but I hope when she does die she has a happy afterlife with the previous shrine maidens and the rest of her family. She’s earned it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47510016
She's literally worse than Hitler and even babies go to hell so she will end up in the North Korea of hell.
Obviously.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47510213
No she’s not and also stop being mean to North Korea they gave us Gangnam style

[Anonymous No.]

>>47510250
That was a joke Anon.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47508754
>Edgy SMT
It's probably less edgy than SMT.

Either way, I do think a lot of the lore is based on SMT(Also Mystic Square exists). The actual story however is way closer to Puyo Puyo. Especially the general character interactions.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47511732
Yeah… that’s what I said, less edgy SMT.

Can… can you read?

[Anonymous No.]

>>47516443
>more less edgy SMT
It looks like you meant "more or less edgy SMT" and just forgot to put the or there.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47516546
Nah, it was meant as “it’s more like” less edgy SMT in comparison to Puyo Puyo

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432776
No fuck off

[Anonymous No.]

>>47432708
Only the lorefags or the canonfags care whether or not touhou is cute or thoroughly anti-Christian and demonic. I feel that most of us who knew touhou before pandemic are left with a construction of a taste made in such a way.
Some of us liked or like to just see our waifus being in compromising, stupid, funny situations, smoking some weed or having funny falls, we just looked at the meme side of touhou as well as sometimes the art which for the most part was completely standard before pandemic where I think it all went darker when many normalfags met autistic shit pulled from different sites. Before touhou was simply seen as a game of memes, anime stuff, high difficulty and a mysteriously active community despite its longevity. After the pandemic many began to see touhou as "le porno" or as some kind of extension of lovecraft's stories, ignoring the mangafags who have known for years that gensokyo is insane. In most games youkais are never killed by reimu despite her immeasurable power no girl gets hurt and that causes many to take her as a waifu for common activities represented in art and shit. That simply because current standards tend to favor things that are dark is simply a bastardization of what once had a soul, that's why many are unhappy with thinking gensokyo is dark just because faggots who met touhou after a certain year only think it's crazy porn and death and destruction. What is unsatisfactory is that the essence of something already established has been changed just for the sake of newfags aka koishi fans

[Anonymous No.]

>>47519102
This is the most secondary post I've seen in my life. Get the fuck out of /jp/.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47519102
I mean… pretty much no one mentioned it being anti-Christian. If anything that’s kind of a giving since it’s based on… y’know… Japanese mythology

[Anonymous No.]

Die already.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47530177
lol no

[Anonymous No.]

>>47531372
yeah, watch this

[Anonymous No.]

Crashing this thread... with no survivors.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47497374
This reminds me of Lovecraft. Not whatever 'lovecratian' became this days ib pop-culture, but the man's outlook on spirituality; "Azatoth" and " The Silver Key" especially come to mind.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47532584
ZUN is, in so many ways, like Lovecraft who had a good end.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47533151
I wonder if Lovecraft would have been adjusted if he had gotten a hot Asian wife.

[Anonymous No.]

>>47534168
No, he had deeper problems. Dad went insane, mom forced him to crossdress. ZUN probably had a healthier childhood. The wife probably does help though.