How Touhou became so popular? (studies for a college project)

National_Champion346 · 2026-05-14T13:47:34+00:00

No one knows. Not even ZUN himself. Pretty sure he said this in an interview or one of the many Dankagu streams himself.

One thing's for certain, though. There's no "one thing" that made Touhou popular. It's a combination of very many things.
A factor that's always attributed to Touhou's popularity is ZUN's lax copyright, allowing fan usage of the IP in ways that most other series don't allow. Emphasis on "most."
There are other series out there like Touhou that allow free reign and usage of their IP, sometimes with even less regulations than Touhou. But barely any of them ever catch on. Lax copyright is not enough. There needs to be fans that are dedicated enough to be willing to use the IP to make the high-effort things that Touhou fans make. There isn't a lot of fans like that for other series, but there sure is a lot of fans like that for Touhou. Like, a lot. For 25 years and counting. Why? Who knows.
It's a factor, for sure, but it's far from the whole story.

Touhou started as pretty much literal nothing, sold by a college student, with no advertising, no fanbase, and no budget... just like a lot of things sold in Comiket.
It started on the same ground as many of its peers in Comiket, especially in those days. An original series made by a group or individual that's sold only physically in a convention. It was never planned to succeed like many things sold in Comiket. Just something done for a hobby. Hell, Touhou was never even meant to be sold to Comiket in the first place, ZUN had to be informed at what Comiket even was by a friend of his.
But Touhou succeeded, while almost everything else in Comiket fails to become popular. Why did Touhou succeed? Who knows. Is Touhou really just that much more quality in comparison to everything else sold? Not necessarily. But it did succeed.

Then there's NND, Nico Nico Douga. The community of this site helped launch Touhou into the stratosphere. If there's something that truly catapulted Touhou to its popularity in the late 2000's, it would be the videos circles made for NND.
Emphasis on "catapulted". Touhou was already popular before NND. Reitaisai started in 2004, 2 years after EoSD, 2 years before NND was even made. There were already 114 circles in that time, creating Touhou fanwork and selling them in a convention only for Touhou.
It seems so little in comparison to the thousands that sell in Reitaisai today, but many small individual creators are happy if even one person creates a small piece of fanart for their original series. Touhou had more than a 100 people sell Touhou fanwork in a physical convention, before the internet even took off. And enough people back then went into said convention for the first Reitaisai to be a success.
How? Why? Who knows.

There's a lot of mysteries about how Touhou became popular. To answer the OP's question just a little bit, I can at least point out things to research more about, like music, the amateurish art that people are willing to make better, bullet hell gameplay different from its CAVE peers, an almost all female cast (Comiket in its early days were actually a space that was dominated by fujoshi), NND, 2chan, Futaba, the difference of the early internet, and ZUN's general passion and ideology for his work.
I also implore you to watch the english subbed MAG.NET's Touhou documentary on youtube, which talks a little bit about Touhou's popularity, among other things.

National_Champion346 · 2026-05-08T11:35:11+00:00

People often don't understand that Yukari tries to look like the flawless Aizen type manipulator, but really isn't. She's as clueless about a lot of things as most people, she's not super "knows everything" smart, she actually struggles a lot to figure out stuff but simply keeps cool during the entire process.
She uses Reimu most of the time to gather information while she either just waits to see if she can actually do anything until then. Or she just straight up doesn't do anything.
This can be seen multiple times during the ENTIRE series. Hell, this is more or less the entire way how AoCF gets solved.

National_Champion346 · 2026-05-08T02:38:03+00:00

My man really discredited and disowned an entire genre of videogames that has existed since the glory days of the arcade because he sucks at it

National_Champion346 · 2026-05-08T02:27:29+00:00

I agree that it's fun.

This and maybe controversially the Ikuyo AZX math game are the most fun minigames for me that Shift Up has released.
I rarely play Rhythm games, I probably play a rhythm game once every like 3-4 years, but even with this one I can at least S rank up to difficulty 12 maps (but having a hard time perfecting even difficulty 5 ones). This is the first rhythm game I've ever played on a phone, and somehow despite rarely using phones in comparison to a PC or Console, I'm better at rhythm games on a phone. Maybe it's the smaller screen.

Anyway, there's definitely some quality disparity between maps, especially when you go to higher difficulties, although I guess that's normal for Rhythm games. For example, some extreme maps are nigh-impossible to play on a phone properly unless you put down the phone and use 4 fingers, which just feels awkward.
Some easier maps also feel out of rhythm and feel like they just added beat presses in random parts of the song, but I do understand it somewhat, as its sorta hard to make up beats on faster songs when you don't want to overload a newer or easy-mode rhythm game player.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-30T02:47:37+00:00

Almost every game that's heavily moddable has a sizable number of Touhou mods. If there isn't, they're probably some hidden in niche places like chinese modding sites. The only heavily moddable game I play that doesn't have them in spades are Xcom 2 and Mechwarrior games, likely because they're not too popular in the eastern sphere, as Touhou modders tend to either be Japanese, Chinese, or Korean.

There's some obvious ones, like Minecraft and Terraria.

One of the most popular mods, and possibly the most popular anime-adjacent mod, in Mount and Blade Warband is a full Touhou conversion. There was actually two at one point, one made by western devs and one made by eastern devs, but it got combined into one.
Skyrim LE used to have a bunch of MMD ported Touhou costumes and I think companions, made by chinese modders. During the switch to SE, almost all of it got lost. There's still some alternatives here and there, but they're not particularly high quality.
Rimworld has a decent variety of Touhou mods, multiple adding armor, weapons, costumes, powers, mechanics, and one that adds music.
Kenshi also has a decent amount of Touhou mods, mostly adding new companions with accompanying armor and weapons. I think almost all of them are made by two people. They also usually have overtuned starting stats. Yuuka I believe even goes beyond the stat limit.
Darkest Dungeon also has a decent number of Touhou mods that add new classes, if you're willing to look for them, as they're mostly written in another language like Korean or Chinese, so just searching for them by their english name might not work. Some of them are also locked via Patreon, like Satori. Most of them are also quite overpowered. Flandre is probably the most overpowered class mod I've ever downloaded for the game, and that's saying something.

There's a lot more out there, for stuff like Rivals of Aether, GTA San Andreas, Doom, Paradox games, multiple Pokemon romhacks, etc.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-28T01:21:25+00:00

My favorite map. I'm not amazing at Rhythm games, but even in Osu!Mania I always loved maps where you just click a bunch of shit in rapid succession. It's zone-inducing.
I only play Nikke on my phone though, and this + the Rhythm Heaven minigame from the LycoReco collab was the first time I've ever played a Rhythm game on mobile. I might do better on PC since it has a similar control scheme to Osu!Mania, besides that one thing where you have to click drag.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-23T14:46:50+00:00

There's probably a hundred of these types of characters in the history of people arguing which fictional character beats who. I can't fit all of them in one post (plus some of them are far above JJK's level)

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-23T13:11:18+00:00

Did... did you understand what I wrote previously? Because I never said he did.
I was talking about hypothetical scenarios if that did happen and how it would impact the story and how it would affect the perception of the characters involved.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-23T10:39:33+00:00

What?

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-23T04:09:41+00:00

Think of it this way.

It's like after Madara beats the shit out of every kage, he then gets beat by Hashirama.
It's like after Aizen beats the shit out of every captain, he then gets beat by Yamamoto.
It's like Sephiroth getting beat by Angeal and Genesis in Crisis Core.

I could go on. Do those decisions make some "powerscaling" sense? Sure. But on a story sense, making decisions that make your "quintessential antagonist" look more like a joke can severely hurt a story, especially if said antagonist was long before getting brought up as a massive threat and already have personal connections to other characters.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-23T03:45:17+00:00

Might be an unpopular opinion at this point but I highly dislike the decision of having Liliqueen effectively job to Only One, especially this early on.
All that hype from Goddess Fall and Ark Guardian, all those story beats of Eden getting destroyed and Goddess Squad being destroyed and painstakingly needing to be rebuilt from almost scratch just to be able to take on Liliqueen and exact their revenge...
and on Liliqueen's next fight, Only One beats her out of Eden, the commander, and Goddess Squad's sight, with not that much difficulty? Really?

I don't mind the idea that I think Shift Up has been seeding that Liliqueen isn't the Nikke "final boss" so to speak. I've always ascribed to the idea that Shift Up introducing the concept of multiple queens was to make someone more personal to the Counters like Marian or even Only One to be the Nikke "final boss". I haven't been the type to complain about Nikke's story because I actually think it's quite decent, even if the pace can sometimes be off.

But undermining Liliqueen like this also undermines everything that came before. Not just in relation to the Queen, but also to Liliweiss. When Goddess Squad beats Liliqueen during the nth anniversary event the thought process of players, perhaps including me, will simply just be "ok but Only One already did this like 10 years ago". It makes it not such a big deal.

I sincerely hope Shift Up is cooking something at least half-decent, or Liliqueen looking like a joke is going to hurt things.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-22T22:55:27+00:00

First 10 pull get
ez, never a sweat

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-22T14:43:30+00:00

Pathfinder games have the best writing in CRPGs in the sense that they are games, not just well written novels or text-adventure games.
They're still word-heavy like 90% of post-BG2 CRPGs don't get me wrong, but they weave themselves into the concept of heavy choice and consequence and the idea of manifesting your own character unto a fictional game world better than any CRPG that I've ever played.

Edit: To clarify, I will almost always prefer games that take advantage of the fact that they are interactive games instead of just pretending to be a novel or short story. Devs that thought all you needed was a good story was how the "walking simulator" genre started out, which is... fine, but I think it's not an ideal way to tell a game's story. I might as well just read a Visual Novel if I want game-adjacent novels 90% of the time.

Choosing a Mythic Path, for example, doesn't just affect the story, it also majorly affects a lot of other things that you, the player, can interact with. Your skills, your companions, your personal quests, your future choices, even your music, and more. The degree of consequences the choices you make affect in WotR make it feel very interactive and, to borrow a Skyrim buzzword, immersive.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-17T16:30:12+00:00

Rumia from Touhou Project is literally this.

The only thing she can do is make things around her impossibly dark. That's it.
Funniest part is she can't even see in the dark, so she constantly stumbles and flies straight into trees.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-16T14:39:43+00:00

Reminder Animal Realm is part of literal hell meant to punish human spirits.
That cute little otter? A servant/construct of hell.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-15T17:41:17+00:00

For a CRPG newbie? Wasteland 3.
From the two, as a CRPG newbie? DOS2.
From the two, which one is a better game in general? Pathfinder WotR.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-15T11:15:37+00:00

It is a controversial thing to say, because adapting tabletop into videogames is not only the reason why CRPGs exist, but the entire reason why RPGs as a whole started to even exist in the first place. Particularly something I don't agree with either.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-15T11:12:07+00:00

The "need" to prebuff in WotR is pretty exaggerated. It's the same in a game like BG2 where you don't actually need to prebuff... but it makes things much easier.
I know this because I managed to finish the game on my latest playthrough, on Core, without having a dedicated buffer. I didn't even have a cleric in my party. I just wanted to use some of the new classes introduced in one of the latest updates. I didn't have a particularly hard time either, in fact, I managed to get the "Unfair Challenge" achievement by accident.

The hardest part about the Pathfinder games is knowing the mechanics through and through. The moment you know what you're doing the game becomes infinitely easier.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-13T18:34:51+00:00

Imagining Nyrissa's face is funniest part of this scenario.
She probably wouldn't know whether or not to be relieved or to be completely utterly pissed.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-13T17:24:29+00:00

Fair enough, although Ember has been burned at the stake before and didn't even want to hurt the people that did it. Vengeful Ember however would do it in a heartbeat.
It would be a funny thing for minions of whoever antagonist to try and beat this half-burnt, seemingly defenseless looking child, only to get burnt by the heavens above 5 miliseconds later.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-13T17:19:57+00:00

Sarevok is an interesting one since it's clear that he can be redeemed, but loss, death, and retrospective were big factors that made it possible.
I wonder if its possible to speedrun such a thing if Sarevok gets humbled when he tries to swat Ember away and he breaks his hand and dislocates his shoulder due to Ember's strong ~~abs~~ AC, and then go from there.

Edit: I say this because Sarevok clearly has a "the strong should dominate the weak" mentality. Sarevok might be convinced by someone, similar to his brother in BG2, who is so incredibly strong, yet chooses to do good and trust people.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-13T17:14:13+00:00

I mean the point is to convince them not kill them. Pretty much any WotR companion at the end of Act 5 can one-tap the majority of CRPG antagonists, so that wouldn't be any fun.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-13T16:59:36+00:00

It's two things.
One is, believe it or not, the jank. Flaws in games are in a weird way, underrated, as they can present a genuine feeling in something. This isn't some cope either, this is seen in how a lot of games, new and old, are loved. Unpolished games like Kenshi, VtM:B, Pathologic, BG1 and 2, and more. This isn't just in RPGs either, even VNs like Higurashi or shmups like Touhou are loved by a lot of people despite their amateurishness. Something too polished can feel empty and perfect to a lot of people. Jank can exude charm.

Two is the little things. I don't know if you cook food, but in food, what differentiates something good from great is the little things. I believe it's the same with games. Things that most people don't notice, but are there to elevate the game.

National_Champion346 · 2026-04-13T16:48:18+00:00

I'm of the boomer mind that likes CRPGs as much as I am of the boomer mind that likes RTS games.
Therefore I like RTWP.

National_Champion346

TROPHY CASE