Oct 31, 2022 12:43 AM
MY TOUHOU BLOG
Anime Relations:
Touhou Niji Sousaku Doujin Anime: Musou Kakyou, Hifuu Katsudou Kiroku: The Sealed Esoteric History, Gensou Mangekyou: The Memories of Phantasm
☯ PERSONAL THOUGHTS ☯
| Q: How did your journey with Touhou begin? |
| A: That's a rainy night in 2017 when I was browsing through the Internet. Thanks to a random YouTube recommendation, I stumbled upon some pieces of Touhou soundtrack. Then, the curiosity prompted me to search for gameplay videos. There's just something so mesmerizing and fascinating about these colorful kaleidoscope patterns in countless shapes and forms. Not even a single minute had passed when I found myself completely enamored with the beauty of it. As if my ghost whispered to me that was the path I ought to take. Shortly thereafter, I started my journey with Touhou 6, the first installation of the Windows Era. It’s the first step that counts, and indeed, things were really tough for me at the beginning. I couldn't pass stage 3 even using up all credits. It took me nearly 4 months to 1cc Normal mode and an additional 2 months to defeat Extra mode. Yet, as the saying goes, "Practice makes perfect," my Touhou cognitive skill gradually improved over time as I kept grinding it. I can read complex patterns and am capable of capturing spell cards which used to seem impossible to me. Still, honestly speaking, I always consider myself a noob compared to many pro players out there. I try to keep a balance between playing the game, reading print works, listening to music, and participating in the community. It might sound embarrassing, but I want to confidently declare that I’m a Touhou fanatic!! |
| Q: Will I enjoy Touhou? What makes this series stand out? |
| A: Even though Touhou has a firm position within the community, the series still remains a niche medium by default. This is mainly due to the fact that its core appeal doesn't align with the majority's preferences, in contrast to other famous franchises such as FGO, Genshin Impact, Azur Lane, Blue Archive, Uma Musume, etc. However, believe me, you won't regret once you fall into the rabbit hole. Touhou has awesome music with catchy melodies and memorable tunes characterized by eccentric and quirky trumpet sounds. The characters are very elegant and endearing, each with unique designs and distinctive names. The fantasy worldbuilding and lore, which are inspired by Japanese mythology and religion, feel so ethereal, so alluring. The danmaku gameplay, while hard to enjoy, is rather interesting and acts as a part of the game's ludonarrative. Not to mention, the Touhou fandom might as well be one of the best fandoms of all time. Besides, Touhou also has a significant influence on contemporary pop culture, with thousands of YouTube videos featuring Touhou music or a plethora of Internet memes and trends derived from Touhou (e.g. Bad Apple, Japanese Goblin, Fumo, Among Us Eyes). In addition, the policy surrounding the game is very generous and lenient, since the creator of this game – ZUN is known as a humble and kind person. Many people can easily profit from his works by producing derivatives like music arrangements or doujinshi without any concern regarding copyright issues. |
| Q: I want to try this game but I heard it's really difficult, is that true? |
| A: Well, yes but actually no. I mean, Touhou is quite challenging, but it isn't so extreme to the point of impossibility, contrary to what many may claim. I suppose the most likely explanation for this misconception is that people get a wrong idea about the gameplay by looking at random images that are cluttered with flashy bullets and lasers. In fact, the character's hitbox is relatively small in relation to the sprite, and the bullets themselves also have their hitboxes. Therefore, sometimes, the screen appears to be ultra-dense, but actually, there're still plenty of gaps for players to dodge. The game also features four difficulties, with each requiring a certain level of skill. Easy mode is quite friendly, allowing players to clear with minimal effort. Normal mode is designed for everyone, neither overly simple nor exceedingly tough, anyone who has played Undertale and managed to beat Sans should be able to defeat it after some practice. Hard mode targets players with advanced skill and quicker reflexes. Lastly, Lunatic mode, brutal and merciless, not only requires arduous training and practicing but also a natural aptitude for the game. If you wish to give it a try, Normal mode without a doubt will be the most suitable option. In the end, the ball's in your court. Interestingly, a fun fact is that about 50% of Touhou fans have never touched a single Touhou game. |
| Q: Touhou feels so overwhelming, I'm uncertain about where to begin, please guide me. |
| A: It just occurs to everyone that the initial impression is really important. Perhaps it would be better to adopt a general approach by indulging in the music, reading fanworks, learning the lore, or simply viewing internet memes in order to develop a steady interest in characters and other aspects. Otherwise, going straight for the game is rather the most efficient choice. Currently, there're fifteen Touhou main games ranging from 6 to 20. Other spin-off games are indicated by decimals, such as Touhou 7.5 or Touhou 9.5. For newcomers, it is recommended to begin with the main games to get the gist of Touhou concepts since they provide fundamental knowledge about characters and lores. The general story also follows a chronological order, the events in the later games take place after those from earlier ones. However, because Touhou is not primarily a narrative-focused game, while playing in numerical order helps a lot with the overall experience, that doesn't prevent you from trying recent games first. I suggest a starting point to be either 7 or 10 due to various factors such as the reputation, basic mechanics, easy patterns, and familiar soundtracks. |
☯ ESSENTIAL SITES & VIDEOS ☯
Touhou Wiki: https://en.touhouwiki.net | Touhou Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/touhou |
Touhou News: https://touhou-project.news | Touhou Content: https://moriyashrine.org |
Touhou Poll: https://toho-vote.info | Touhou Spotify: https://www.thspotify.moe |
Touhou Portal: https://maribelhearn.com | Touhou Worldcup: https://touhouworldcup.com |
| Getting Started |
Gameplay Tip |
Music Analysis |
Fan Animation |
Miscellaneous |
ZUN Interview |
☯ CHARMING GIFS ☯
☯ PHANTASM TRACKS ☯
☯ GLAMOROUS SPELL CARDS ☯
☯ TIER LISTS ☯
┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ _𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋_ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┑
┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ _𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄_ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┑
┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ _𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐂 — 𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄_ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┑
┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ _𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐘𝐏𝐄_ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┑
┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ _𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃_ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┑
┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ _𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄_ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┑
┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ _𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐂 — 𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄_ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┑
┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ _𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐘𝐏𝐄_ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┑
┍━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ _𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃_ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┑
☯ LUNATIC ACHIEVEMENTS ☯
✥ MAIN STORY
| Game | ⠀ ⠀⠀ Completion ⠀⠀⠀ | Update | Screenshot | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lunatic 1CC / Reimu B | 2022/01/09 | |||
Lunatic 1CC / Sakuya B Lunatic 1CC / Reimu A | 2022/06/15 2022/06/14 | |||
Lunatic 6A 1CC / Sakuya + Remilia Lunatic 6B 1CC / Reimu + Yukari Spell Practice Mode All Captured | 2023/02/06 2023/02/07 2023/02/08 | |||
| Lunatic 1CC / Reimu | 2022/01/22 | |||
| Lunatic 1CC / Reimu A | 2022/03/09 | |||
| Lunatic 1CC / Youmu | 2022/07/14 | |||
| Lunatic 1CC / Reimu Spring | 2024/02/17 | |||
| Lunatic 1CC / Marisa Eagle | 2024/05/30 | |||
| Lunatic 1CC / Chiyari | 2025/08/19 | |||
✥ SPIN-OFF
| Game | Completion | Update | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| | Lunatic 1CC / Patchouli | 2019/02/03 | |
| All Scenes Success | 2020/02/03 | ||
| Lunatic 1CC / Tenshi | 2019/09/05 | ||
| Lunatic 1CC / Sanae | 2022/04/24 | ||
| All Scenes Success / Aya All Scenes Success / Hatate | 2020/03/15 2025/08/17 | ||
Lunatic A1 1CC Lunatic C2 1CC | 2022/07/16 2025/10/12 | ||
| Lunatic 1CC / Koishi | 2020/05/27 | ||
| No Items 71/75 Scenes Success | 2025/10/14 | ||
| Lunatic 1CC / Reimu | 2020/08/10 | ||
| Overdrive 1CC / Joon + Shion | 2020/11/01 | ||
| All Scenes Success | 2021/01/21 | ||
Story Mode Hard 1CC / Flandre Route C Greedy Challenge Normal Clear / Flandre | 2025/08/27 2025/08/29 | ||
| All Achievements Clear | 2022/08/18 |
Posted by
kizumi91
| Oct 31, 2022 12:43 AM |
4 comments
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kizumi91 | Jul 4, 2025 10:31 AM
Thanks DevilishHeart for your kind words. I really appreciate your questions.I only played Ikaruga before Touhou, but I dropped the game only after 2 hours for several personal reasons. When I first got into Touhou, I wanted to play them in a chronological order, so as a matter of fact, Touhou 6 is the game I picked at the get-go. And you know, the mechanics of this game isn't that friendly, delay input, massive hitbox, awkward item collecting, etc. If you're so used to it, that might not be an issue, but for newbies, it's indeed a real nightmare. I made tons of panicking movements as well as constantly bumped into the fairies. Although I said it's 4 months, it's actually approx 30 hours in total. I was busy with my college study, so I could only afford 1 to 2 hours of playing during weekends. About the statistics, I took the average mean from a touhou voting website, which I also listed in the Essential Sites section on this blog. Here's the direct link to the survey, you might want to use the translation tool as it's all Japanese: https://toho-vote.info/results/20/questionnaire Yeah, I think my reading skill was quite improved by doing harder patterns, but the biggest reason might be that at some points, I kinda grasped the idea of this game. Sorry if this feels a bit confused, but it's not just Touhou but also other fields as well. There's a level you find challenging and insuperable, yet once you pass the threshold, it starts becoming tame, and you just keep getting good onwards. There're so so many spellcards, it's hard to list all of them. Hence, I guess I will only pick some notable ones. + The Flandre one where she spawns spirals of bullets with holes, so you have to make a fast spinning movement to get to the safe spot. + One of Kaguya's in Touhou 9.5 where she makes seamless lines of bullets along with randomly fast chunks of bullets pointing in all directions. I played this one like 800 times. + Most of Koishi's extra, I love the designs, aesthetics, and patterns as a whole. + The one from Shimmy where she uses her mallet to enlarge your body and hitbox. + Yacchie's final spell where she makes dozens of circle-pattern groups of bullets that rhythmically converge and spread out. The dodging method is finicky but really fun. It's always a pleasure to talk with a fellow fan. No need to feel bad asking me lol. Glad my little efforts can be someone's inspiration. Oh my shottypes ranking are based on how useful and balance they are. listed Marisa B in Touhou 10 and Sakuya A in Touhou 14 on rank D because they're so OP, so broken. |
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DevilishIdol | Jul 3, 2025 4:37 PM
Hello Kizumi! I was deciding where to put these questions, but I guess this place was more appropriate; it will be mostly about the gaming aspects.While most of your pleasant blogs cover much already, I guess I still have questions for you, Touhou Fanatic (nothing embarrassing at all). So which game did you first start that took four months to beat? Have you played any similar bullet hells beforehand? Where did you get that 50% of people have even touched the games? I thought it was just 10-5% ꉂꉂ(ᵔᗜᵔ*) (I know it’s just a meme figure). Since the making of this, have you improved more by reading even more difficult spell cards? Also, which one is the most fun one to manoeuvre around for you (╹ -╹)? My bad if too many questions. Just curious. I probably have more questions, but I’ll leave them in the comment section afterwards, so I’ll let you off these ones. Thanks in advance. Either way, once again, really cool blog. It kind of inspires me to create one as well since I do enjoy the project the same as you. I’ll credit you for it if I do one too. Sidenote: Your shot types are really accurate (>ᴗ•)! |
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Shizuna | Apr 22, 2024 1:18 PM
Very nice.
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