What's with touhou lore?

[ThrillingHuman]

Irc touhou is just a series of japanese games where you avoid some things on screen shooting at you.
Then how come it has so many fanfics? Putting aside the ridiculous number of hentai dedicated to the characters, there are even legit manga about it.
I just came across one called "the magician who loved a fake" and apparantelly there was another one by the same author "genjo-something of humans".
Question is, does touhou actually have lore? And what is up with all the fanfics?

 

[Ararara]

Play a game if you want to find out. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil is the most popular ones for new players. There's a story similar to visual novels, where the "anime" girls talk with each other, banter, insult each other etc. It either happens at the start of a chapter or just before a boss fight. And each game has a plot about how you have do defeat X and Y because she did A and B in order to save 3 and 4 from W and Z, etc.

The lore itself is also really sparse, kind of like in Dark Souls games, you mostly only gets bits and snippets and the rest is up to you to connect. But the games got such a huge fandom that people made wikis and compiled it all into "canon" information. It's like a mystery / puzzle that needs solving.

And to present day there has to be 20 or 30 Touhou games, it's a really old series, so there's A LOT of it.

 

[Askun]

there's is so called Canon lore and Fanon lore. Cannon lore is established by the game story, while Fanon created by fans. The Fanon lore is what blow up and become popular. There's even people dedicated making game, fan art, comic, and amazing music.

There's even a official gacha game with assets created by the fans. It can be said that what make the game popular is the fans it self, there no fans more dedicated than Touhou fans. That's as far as I am aware of.

 

[CarburetorThompson]

something like this

 

[Tsuru]

Easy to explain.
BECAUSE LACK OF GOOD GAMES.
Also only females work.
So easy to make fanfics of.
And otakus lacked unity, slow internet.
So Touhou kinda fitted lot of criteria to its popularity.
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Also yes the lore is very decent.
Simply follow the chronology of the games. And the novels/mangas are basically kinda standalone / sideplots.

PS : i like Alice x Marisa couple
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Edit :

Btw. In a easy to explain way : Imagine era with modems, era with mmo like WoW, no smartphone and only flip-phones, and games mostly PS2 or gameboy advance or maybe DS starting.
Tadah, you have Touhou appearing in the drought.

And to be honest, Touhou existed even earlier as there was Touhou 1, 2, 3, etc before 6th that was worked on Windows98
The 6th (the one i started with) is the one adapted for WINDOWS XP.
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Funny fact.
Touhou stopped it's "popularity supremacy" when Kancolle appeared. Then it was Azur lane. Today is Uma musume.
I recommend the sfw doujin from Aki Eda : "Before You Become Memories"
SHE did doujins until ZUN creator picked her to do one official sidemanga.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

It's origins are lost to the mists of time.

Early in the Rhojuini period, a wood block carving was made that was uncovered by an archeologist in 1979 on the same day the RFK was shot in a soup kitchen by Raja Moon, who was triggered by reading The Catcher In The Rye.

It is said Raja spent most of his time in prison playing touhou on a heavily modified Atarii 2600. What did the wood block carving have to do with it?

Absolutely nothing.

Which is the strange thing, because everything is six degrees from Kevin Bacon. Yet, this wood block carving cannot be connected to Kevin Bacon by any means. So that wood block is the first thing ever to avoid everything, touhou style.

After that, we get into the Era of Pacman, but that is a tale for another day.

 

[Kouneko]

Irc touhou is just a series of japanese games where you avoid some things on screen shooting at you.
Then how come it has so many fanfics? Putting aside the ridiculous number of hentai dedicated to the characters, there are even legit manga about it.
I just came across one called "the magician who loved a fake" and apparantelly there was another one by the same author "genjo-something of humans".
Question is, does touhou actually have lore? And what is up with all the fanfics?

Main touhou lore come from in game dialogue, side games, oficial manga and sometimes zun says something about.
Then come the fandom content and etc.
If you want to know the lore is recommended read the wiki or some lore video on YouTube

 

[CupcakeNinja]

Play a game if you want to find out. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil is the most popular ones for new players. There's a story similar to visual novels, where the "anime" girls talk with each other, banter, insult each other etc. It either happens at the start of a chapter or just before a boss fight. And each game has a plot about how you have do defeat X and Y because she did A and B in order to save 3 and 4 from W and Z, etc.

The lore itself is also really sparse, kind of like in Dark Souls games, you mostly only gets bits and snippets and the rest is up to you to connect. But the games got such a huge fandom that people made wikis and compiled it all into "canon" information. It's like a mystery / puzzle that needs solving.

And to present day there has to be 20 or 30 Touhou games, it's a really old series, so there's A LOT of it.

Lol ive never understood a single thing about Touhou, Fate series, or Kingdom Hearts and i aint about to start now. Im sure there's some kind Youtuber our there who already made a video explaining that series, tho, so if anyone is interested i suggest looking there

 

[AliceShiki]

Irc touhou is just a series of japanese games where you avoid some things on screen shooting at you.
Then how come it has so many fanfics? Putting aside the ridiculous number of hentai dedicated to the characters, there are even legit manga about it.
I just came across one called "the magician who loved a fake" and apparantelly there was another one by the same author "genjo-something of humans".
Question is, does touhou actually have lore? And what is up with all the fanfics?

Tbh, it was probably mostly a coincidence that Touhou's fandom became s big as it is.

The games are shmps, which are a fairly niche genre of game.

The in-game dialogue is also really small, and there isn't much character development in any of the games. The manuals that come with the game give you some more background lore on things though.

That said, the character's have fun personalities and cute designs, so it's easy to grow fond of them.

Then there are also official mangas that further develop the lore and the characters, which adds a nice charm to the series.

And of course... The soundtrack. Touhou's soundtrack is nothing short of amazing, and basically everyone that listens to it tends to love it.

And well... The fans just liked it? For one reason or another, Touhou is an insanely popular fandom. Lots and lots of doujinshis for it exist, and then there are also fan-made animes, games, fanart, and... music remixes. Lots and lots of remixes. AFAIK, most people from the west that learned about Touhou, learned about it from hearing remixes without even knowing that Touhou was a thing.

Touhou's fandom is big. I really think it was probably more luck than anything else, but there are certainly plenty of factors that contributed to Touhou becoming popular.

Oh, and if you wanna try getting into the fandom, I recommend the doujinshis from Satou Kibi (and since someone will ask. No, they aren't lewd). They're my favorite doujinshi author~

 

[Ararara]

Oh yeah, the music being amazing and the fabulous character designs definitely helped push it into the mainstream! Turned Touhou into somewhat of a viral meme

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Oh yeah, the music being amazing and the fabulous character designs definitely helped push it into the mainstream! Turned Touhou into somewhat of a viral meme

You wrote it in a rhyme, or so it seems. Kinda neat, I guess, and unforseen?

 

[georgelee5786]

It does have lore. It just gets buried by all the fanfic

 

[gaylolis]

according to the touhou group i'm in, everything in this world is touhou related.

so yea.

also

 

[Nhatduongg]

Irc touhou is just a series of japanese games where you avoid some things on screen shooting at you.
Then how come it has so many fanfics? Putting aside the ridiculous number of hentai dedicated to the characters, there are even legit manga about it.
I just came across one called "the magician who loved a fake" and apparantelly there was another one by the same author "genjo-something of humans".
Question is, does touhou actually have lore? And what is up with all the fanfics?

Mhm, Touhou has extensive lore if one day you decide to dig just a little bit further.

I think much of the lore about specific characters are fan impressions, especially those who don't appear very often or appeared once. All in all just like many other famous series large amount of fans birth a large amount of fanwork, plus ZUN literally places no restrictions on fanwork so those boomed even bigger.

Also, Scribble Hub doesn't have many Touhou fanfictions (sad). Aside from mine, there are only 9 others, and like 5 of them are from the same author.