Touhou Project: General feats, lore, and discussion thread

[AcidSoup]

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Touhou Project (東方Project), also 東方プロジェクト (Touhou Purojekuto) or Project Shrine Maiden is a is a Japanese doujin game series by Team Shanghai Alice, which consists of one man, ZUN, or his real name, Jun'ya Ōta. At the time of this post, the series consists of 34 games, with various print works and music CD's that contain their own stories as well. The series first game "The Highly Responsive to Prayers" was first released fully to the public in August 15th, 1997. The latest game, "Fossilized Wonders" is the 20th mainline installment of the series, with its full release yet to come out. Pictured at the top of the thread is the cover for The Highly Responsive to Prayers, featuring the protagonist of the game and most of the series, Reimu Hakurei.​

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The story of Touhou Project works primarily follow Reimu Hakurei, the shrine maiden of the Hakurei shrine. Normally, Reimu attends to simple duties such as maintenance of the shrine. But, when an event known as an incident occurs, it is Reimu's duty to resolve an incident, and she rushes to doing so when they begin. The series deuteragonist, Marisa Kirisame, from the second game (Story of Eastern Wonderland) onwards takes part as a reoccurring character too, going on to resolve incidents of her own will. Occasionally, the two work together, or with other characters such as Reimu with Yukari Yakumo and Marisa with Alice Margatroid in Imperishable Night, the 8th main installment in the series, and many more in other appearances. ​

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The setting of Touhou Project is primarily in Gensokyo, a sealed off land as a result of the Great Hakurei Barrier, created by Yukari Yakumo and maintained by Hakurei shrine maidens. Gensokyo exists as a preservation for yokai and gods, as the rise of science began to cause faith to dwindle, consequently affecting yokai and gods due to their reliance on faith and belief. Beyond Gensokyo, other parts of the setting include various otherworld's, the moon with the Lunar Capital, and the outside world, which is essentially our own real world, all among others and more specific locations. ​

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This thread will be used to contain and document various feats, statements pieces of lore, and go over them, while doing other related things such as explaining canon and non canon works, laying out a timeline of events, and clarifying what certain things in the series truly are, such as purity, names, the spell card system, and various real world things made use of in the series, among many more. Certain characters will be given separate respect threads in the future to document their own feats and such if they have enough showings and appearances to warrant a separate post, typically for notably reoccurring characters (Primarily in mind at the moment being; Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, Cirno, Sakuya Izayoi, Remilia Scarlet, Flandre Scarlet, Youmu Konpaku, Yukari Yakumo, Reisen Udongein Inaba, Aya Shameimaru, Sanae Kochiya. List subject to change.). A following reply will be used as the primary archive of topics as more and more are addressed. As a final opening note, all translations will be derived from the English translations by the Touhou community, as there is a lack of official releases in English for the series, making fan translations what will be used. ​

 

[AcidSoup]

Placeholder for later

 

[AcidSoup]

First time doing one of these anywhere so I have no idea what to do beyond post generally applicable stuff and go over lore things and statements and such that matter. I will be going back over every piece of material for the series from the ground up and posting per work, such as rereading every bit of dialogue and commentary and txt files for EOSD, then moving to PCB, (Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and Perfect Cherry Blossom, 6th and 7th mainline games respectively) so on and so forth until games are done then moving to print works and more until everything is gone back over entirely. Been a long while since I read and watched every little bit of the series stuff anyways

 

[Paxton]

"I wish someone would make a project"

Touhou:

 

[AcidSoup]

Touhou 1: The Highly Responsive to Prayers

The first game of the series, and vastly different, even compared to the rest of the PC 98 era. Very little from this game really matters for both this thread and the rest of the series. There are about 2 notable things here. In the bad endings, the yin yang orb explodes, causing a big explosion that Reimu survives, telling the player "Try to no continue!!", as you only get a good ending in the games if you do not use continues (commonly referred to as a "1cc run", which I suck at). The yin yang orb and other objects such as Marisa's mini hakkero or Sagume's occult ball will get topic sections later





Since these are from bad endings, and it should be said right now; All endings matter, but only certain ones are "true endings". In other words, all endings have weight, but only one is the actual continuity. Such as in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (10.5th game, a fighting game spin off), everything is brought up later. However, in other moments, such as in Undefined Fantastic Object (12th game, mainline), Marisa B route was directly called the "real ending" by ZUN himself. For the purpose of simplicity, instead of a complicated mess, this thread will take into account all endings, good and bad, whether it involves who truly resolved an incident or who did not finish the job. The full topic of canon as a whole will be gotten around to eventually, but part of it needs to be brought up now



The last Highly Responsive to Prayers image will be the background and Reimu's introduction. This is from the .txt manual the game has. The games all have .txt manuals and other .txt files. Notably, character profiles all come from txt files. There's other stuff such as Reimu can manually hit the yin yang orb at targets, but this and other features are more properly seen in the fighting games, or even have better stuff to them, so those will be left for later. Plenty also changed over the years too, but as a side thing (also canon related), PC 98 events are canon still, with one of the most recent words about this being in Yuuka Kazami's Strange Creators of Outer World article (a print work that will be gotten around to later)

 

[AcidSoup]

Touhou 2: Story of Eastern Wonderland

The second game of the series, where it became the vertical scrolling shoot-em-up / shmup / bullet hell whatever term you want to say that it is known for when it comes to being a game series. This game has not a lot to cover. First to cover is that in the Omake.txt, canonically it is Marisa who is telling you everything. That's the 2nd 4th wall break after Reimu telling you to do a no continue run. At the bottom of the screenshot, laser is a term used. There are many lasers throughout the series, and they contain properties too such as Marisa's coming from a device that has to do with heat, so there isn't much justification on that word being literal or not required. For bullet, the bullets used are all heavily varied, and can be dumbed down into a way to say projectile in the games. From sword slashes, to light orbs, to the concentrated power of a sun god, to many, many more. These will all be addressed later, mainly regarding the spell card system, a major part of both gameplay and lore (From the 6th game onwards, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil)



After this, you now have Reimu telling you about how to best go about getting a high score. This too comes from the Omake.txt


There is a minor stage 2 dialogue for Meira pointing out Reimu making an old reference. There's plentiful fourth wall breaks throughout the series, but I think it deserves some amount of showing since it's varied in who does it. Fourth wall stuff generally does not add to much, but there are instances of it mattering, so these are here for the sake of showings and justification and such. As said a few times now, such things will be addressed later. There's also Reimu calling the enemies not hard (stage ones). There's also an entire conversation between Reimu and Marisa directly after stage 3 if you are playing the trial version that can be summarized as them saying you need to play the full version to go further. This is a reoccurring fourth wall break in the games where you either play the full version or get told to play the full version








Moving on, we go to the full version of Story of Eastern Wonderland. First and last comes Reimu sensing evil, and realizing who it is. Sensing stuff is another reoccurring thing for more than one person. There is only one more SOEW feat that might be considerable as generally applicable (sufficiently strong vengeful spirits escaping sealing, Mima in specific doing the feat), but it only matters for one total other person (Mizuchi Miyadeguchi), and I did not read Cheating Detective Satori fully yet, which a full read from the bottom up will be done when the print works are gotten around to. Nothing else from this game is generally applicable

 

[AcidSoup]

Touhou 3: Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream

The third game of the series, and where Marisa starts getting separate routes. First multiplayer one, but nothing really matters for the purpose of this thread. Read every translation, watched videos of scenes and gameplay, and read the music comments (been doing this for each game so far), but there's nothing that really matters (or if it does there's something else better left to be brought up). There's some stuff like Chiyuri Kitashirakawa's attack names like "time cutter" and "dimension wall cutter" but there isn't much defined here (although the spell card rules did not exist before Touhou 6 in universe, during the first 5 games, there was nothing in place to prevent an outright murder during a fight nor restrict characters from unleashing some crazy power on the other, but again, not much is defined here, unlike with the spell card system, where everything is defined to a degree). Due to how little Touhou 3 has for the thread, Touhou 4 will get a post in the same reply for a minimization of excess


Touhou 4: Lotus Land Story

The fourth game of the series, and the first to use the word "Gensokyo". First and last thing is a few more fourth wall breaks. Blame a certain few characters from the Windows era (6th game onwards) for why just a few fourth wall breaks need a bunch of images. Will not be posting something if it's essentially the same thing but in another characters route, as that is just repetitive excess (as such a thing becomes prevalent from here onwards).





(Game walkthrough in the Omake.txt canonically being done by Reimu)

 

[AcidSoup]

Took a lot of time overthinking on if to do 3 and 4 together or separately but decided to merge them. Touhou 5 has more just a few things (half done reading through and watching stuff from it), but it has hellish backwards stuff going on later in the series. Consequence of Makai being called infinite in size

 

[AcidSoup]

Touhou 5: Mystic Square

The fifth game of the series. Not a lot to cover here, however, an incredibly backwards feat happens to be here (applicable to top tiers as a whole essentially). First off, just a simple fourth wall break, and then another with Yuuka blaming you for her failure in Yuuka's bad ending. However, we move on to stage stage 5 and 6. Here, Reimu (and the other playable characters, specifically being Marisa, Mima, and Yuuka) face Shinki, the creator of Makai. Originally, it was called a world, had stars, a constellation, and a galaxy arm. All of these, you can question if they really are what they look like. Yet the constellation shapes make it a little less "is it really" and more of looking to be what it seems like. However, much later down the line, Makai got called infinite in size by Minamitsu Murasa in Touhou 12: Undefined Fantastic Object. Of course since this is much, much later in the series (over a decade after Mystic Square was released), it is left to argued if it should matter for characters from far in the past that don't get to see the light of day again (unless you are Yuuka and Alice. Bring back Mima). Regardless, it still deserves to be here. This will also be fully gone into detail when the Touhou Project cosmology is gotten around to as its own topic / subject

 

[Paxton]

5 games down and 30 or so left to go

 

[AcidSoup]

5 games down and 30 or so left to go

I haven't at least began the print works and I am already ready to be shot looking at the first few windows games before Mountain of Faith (beginning of windows generation 2 for the series. Referred as that due to using a new engine. 3rd gen because of more game engine stuff and moving on from the focus of the Moriya Shrine plotline)

 

[AcidSoup]

Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

The sixth game in the series, and where it entirely changes in many ways, including moving to Windows and introducing the spell card system, a major part of both gameplay and lore. There is some more here than everything previous, but it gets backwards when other works that make reference to EOSD are brought up, but those will be saved for when those works have their coverage (it will be specified if something has a tie back to a previous work for clarity). First thing is the scarlet mist itself of the "Scarlet Mist Incident". This mist was made by Remilia Scarlet, main antagonist of the game and a reoccurring character down the line. As seen here, the mist will kill a normal human in a half hour, and if you are simply less ordinary, also a half hour. Anyone who is not a human should be just fine from this (and you can argue Reimu and Marisa too), especially including fairies and yokai, as Cirno was unphased by the mist (a fairy) and three people who live with Remilia are yokai (Meiling, Patchouli, Flandre). It should be specified that this only applies to the center point of the mist, or where it is most strong (and it says it right there). After the mist, and lastly, there's a few more fourth wall breaks (again).