What does Veeky Forums think of Touhou as a Series?

so uninterested in it that I didn't even bother watching a single episode

The hell is a tertiary?

Ask /jp/

Yes, and it's been shown that sometimes the powers are more limited than you'd expect.

Mokou had a moment where she set the Bamboo forest on fire because while she can create fire all she wants, she's not especially good at controlling fire.

I was into bullet hells, which got me into them, but to be honest, what kept me was the music. ZUN's a decent programmer and tends more towards the art side of bullet hells, and he's a middling artist, but as a composer he's top notch.

I think that's more of an issue of the spell card rules and ZUN not trying to go full DBZ with the series. I mean, if you're ever show cased a character's powers in a game, it's expected to be in a way that's beatable, same with a spell card battle. Until there's a moment where the character has to actually you know, use their ability in a life or death situation, as in "fuck the rules shit's bad" (aka: Probably never), we'll never be able to actually gauge their proper power levels and can only theorize.

It's been a long time, but it has to do with how close the fans are to the series.

Primaries are people who've actually played the games, secondaries are people who've played the official fangames or something like that, tertiaries are people who've only ever been exposed to the series through fan works, which is often hilariously distorted from the "official" canon. Not that touhou has much of a story anyways.

That might not be entirely accurate because I never gave a shit, but to give an example none of the main games are ever very dark(though I haven't played since Mountain of Faith so who knows anymore), and generally just consist of random girls fighting each other over some silly event until the MC figures out who caused it and then beating them up and then everyone has tea and becomes friends afterwards.

Such events include "Blocking the sun with mist so a vampire can go outside during the day" "Making people have parties constantly" "Hiding the moon" and "Stealing spring."

And while the stories can have some dark elements to these stories, they have happy resolutions.

>Gensekyo
>Paradise for humans

Only in the H-doujins

Sure, but powers vary wildly and are often not explainted.

Shinki, for example, has a power that could be insanely powerful or could be totally worthless in an actual fight.

And when Yukari suggests that her, Youmu, and Reimu even working together couldn't beat her, does she mean in a fight, or in an argument?

If you work with official material so much of it is incredibly vague, and that's because so much of it never comes up. ZUN just gives them a random ass power without really considering the strength of said power, because he never intends for it to come up.

Pretty much, ZUN is certainly not thinking the consequences through very much when it comes to how things come together, because like you said, it's never intended to come up in any situation but a spellcard battle in which your omega super power means next to nothing.

There's a lot more story in the print works, obviously because of the medium, and is arguably darker. Like a fortune teller guy becoming a youkai because he clearly shows discontent with how the balance between youkai and humans is essentially a teetering scale, before Reimu executes him on the spot claiming that becoming a youkai is the worst sin a person can fall victim to. But otherwise it's still overall light hearted. Any grimdark things are just thought fuel for the consequences of any given incident.

>Gensokyo
>paradise for humans and youkai
I dunno, humans essentially being forced to live in a single village and being able to go to maybe a handful of areas or being a victim to any number of far stronger, voracious fantastical creatures that live outside of it doesn't sound like a paradise to me. Especially since Yukari put the barrier up for the sake of youkai in the first place.

It's deliberately left wide-open and inconsistent for two reasons: to let every player find the hole which was made for them, and because literally every named character is a demigod or higher.

This isn't a bad thing.

It can be run as anything from /comfy/ (this is, I'll note, where ZUN keeps it), to an early D&D style of "mostly our folklore but also a few aliens and foreign imports", to straight-up moe Ravenloft.

I'd say that's honestly the best way to think of it. As is, there's honestly a fuck ton of holes, but you have the bits and pieces (or at least think you do) to fill them in, and you just fill it in how you please. It's a genius way to get as many people roped in as possible.

To be fair, the girls aren't *supposed* to be flat chested lolis. ZUN just can't and refuses to draw busty women.

Whatvis he? Gay

no clue, I think he just doesn't want to sexualize the characters and keep things whimsical, it's why Reimu and Marisa still look young despite techincally being around 20 years old. I mean, most of the older looking girls in hisoutensoku are pretty flat, because ZUN apparently told the artist "please don't give them big tits"

Poor Naive fool.

He doesn't care if the fans do it, he's literally said "Do whatever you want with the characters." he just wants to do things his way.

Then you better leave.

Don't listen to the secondaries in this thread, please.

Touhou isn't grimdark and it's not underage panty quest, either. There's some fucked up shit in the setting, but most people, both human and youkai, are satisfied with their day to day lives and activities. Reimu is not a murderous youkai exterminator, she's the dutiful yet lazy "balancer" of Gensokyo. The cast is also exclusively girls because that's just what ZUN's comfortable with. Males show up in the manga plenty, but ZUN just enjoys creating girl characters. He even strays away from any romance or sexuality between the characters because he prefers it to be completely innocent. He didn't even start drawing breasts on the characters until 2013, which is 17 years after he started the series.

It's an incredible and original setting. If you think that it's boring or uninspired, I implore you to play the games, read the manga, etc. Even the CDs have stories to them, and they're all incredibly charming. If you can't get over the mostly-female main cast, then that's your loss.

>20
nigga they were like 10 back in the late 90s, they should be fruitcakes by now

time just goes by in strange ways in Gensokyo I guess

Well, all this works on the assumption that they were ten in EoSD. But yeah, they should be very much women by now.

Powerlevels don't matter if rules are enforced in a way in which normal human with some magic flying in a broom can defeat all of the reality hax powers.
You are either inherently OP, or you git gud, or you get rekt, both in lore and regarding the games. That's the canon of the series.
Also, it's a series about cute girls in dresses where 90% of the dialogue is shit talking eachother, it's not meant to be that deep. The powers are just an excuse to name and have thematically fitting the bullet patterns

I dunno man, I'd say has it best, the setting is pretty open to interpretation, not enough thing are set in stone. I mean, Reimu herself has said she will show no mercy to youkai if they fuck around. Youkai themselves state they are far from perfectly innocent and humans generally are at the very least uncomfortable around youkai which shows they're not always nice.

The setting is pretty whimsical and charming but it can be just as easily taken the other direction without much stretching.

>not meant to be that deep
Read the manga, they really build on the setting

That would mean they need heirs

Well, I mean. Reimu and Marisa are a bit above "normal humans" themselves. But yes, the spellcard rules do help prevent living nuclear weapons, bullshit vague powers and instant-death from being dominant.

Reimu doesn't fuck around when it comes to serious incidents, but it's not like she has a lust for youkai blood. She does what she has to in order to maintain the balance of Gensokyo. They don't call her the "youkai shrine maiden" because she exterminates them.

That's actually true, no joke. Reimu at least definitely needs a successor to be the hakurei miko, unless she ends up living forever. Marisa can get away with it, though she could end up having her own child and passing down her magic to them.

>Only 1 doesn't have a silly headpiece

What does that mean

Cam you honestly imagine Reimu taking care of a kid?

Her stance is a bit odd, since she'll kill anyone from the human village turning into a youkai without mercy, or at least says she will when she did just that. But yes, she does generally let youkai do their thing if they're not fucking with people.

Might not be the best mother, but it's gonna be necessary unless she becomes immortal somehow.

>Human breaks the rules
>"I don't mind mindless killing lmao gg scrub"
>Youkai breaks the rules
>"Quit that shit and come drink at the shrine, gurl, we have parties and shiet"

A traitor to humanity I tell you what

Yeah, didn't the guy pretty much only do it so he wouldn't die anyways? Didn't he say he had no intentions of fucking with people as well?

2hus die if they lose their hats. the one without a hat doesn't have one because she's immortal.

He went mad with the revelation that he was nothing more than cattle for the youkai and tried nto eacape. Good thing Reimu was there or else we would have a Humanity fuck yeah moment

The balance in gensokyo is dangerously delicate, it's a good thing the Hakurei miko was around to prevent that actually.
>Humans vastly outnumber youkai/become as powerful as them
Youkai genocide happens, rip gensokyo
>Youkai outnumber humans and rules are unable to be upheld
Human genocide happens, rip gensokyo

Not quite. She killed the fortune teller for several reasons. It wasn't just because he was a human that became a youkai. He MIGHT have been able to control himself and leave the human village. However, young youkai, especially formerly human youkai, often underestimate their power and are unable to control it. The biggest reason that she killed him was because he would be an example to the rest of the humans if they found out what he did. If they knew what happened to him, other humans would want to turn into youkai too, which would upset the balance even further. Youkai require human faith to live. If a big group of humans followed the fortune teller's path, the balance would be disrupted and threaten the existence of all youkai.

There's a symbiotic relationship between the two groups. The youkai protect the village from natural disasters, and the youkai feast off of human faith. If one party is imbalanced or if rules are broken, everything gets fucked.

Reimu isn't some moody shrine maiden that kills things depending on how she feels. She does what's right for Gensokyo as a whole.

Yeah, I knew it was just to set an example, even if he did at the very least prove he could handle his power at the spur of the moment, it would've been bad to let things keep going like that. Though I think youkai have a habit of feasting on more than human faith, considering they're pretty aggressive towards humans at times and there's a long standing fear of them.

If a youkai does something unallowed, it might cause harm, even some deaths. If human's figure out its much better to become youkai than cattle the whole system collapses. Not that I'm siding with Reichmu, but it was sort of logical to exterminate him.

Youkai often do enjoy killing or feasting on humans, most of them understand the importance of humans and don't break the "don't fuck with the human village" rule. The ones that do break that rule get their asses fucked by Reimu's gohei.

Well, that depends more on the youkai actually. I mean plenty of them who break the rules can easily end up deleting all life in Gensokyo. Okuu is a good example. But yeah, tipping things towards the human side of the balance would upset the unity and probably lead to a huge youkai witch hunt.

The example thing is big. Most religions consider apostates or heretics to be far worse than complete unbelievers.

To clarify for non-weeb Veeky Forums, Reimu is essentially the high priestess of an elder god who maintains the planar stability of the entire setting, and Marisa is a mage in an extremely high-magic setting who also carries around a major artifact of space battleship cannon blasts at will. They're "low-power" in that they're playing among gods, aliens, and legendary monsters.

I mean, even then, Reimu herself is pretty up there and could probably beat most of the youkai in a serious fight, what with being able "float away from reality" and blast away with impunity, that and calling upon the powers of gods themselves. If she actually bothered to empower the Hakurei god instead of ignoring it she'd probably break everything.

>paradise by both humans and youkai
From a certain way of speaking, yes. The printworks and CDs both imply that the Outside World, the Moon included is on the verge of apocalyptic ecological collapse. The Lunarians are already heavily considering going Avatar on Gensokyo as a new home now that the Moon is no longer sufficiently pure, while Gensokyo also contains a material that could function as an unlimited power source (hihiirokane, the thing Marisa's cannon-thing is made of) that an energy-starved humanity desperately needs as it shovels its remaining forests into the furnace.

The reason that the barrier exists is not to protect the Outside World from Youkai, but to protect the Youkai from the Oustide World, be they magical or scientific.

I think touhou works best tonewise when its sorta fairy tale aesthetic- there's some dark stuff happening, but it's not a dark setting- everything wors out for the best, and the vast majority of people are good-hearted and you can get along with them, no matter if they're human or youkai. It's not perfect, it's not the best way the system could work, but it's still fairly optimistic.- There is cooexistence between humans and youkai. There are rare and accepted ways where a human can become more if they've got the brass balls to go through with it, and n matter what happens things will usually work out.

...

Can a lorefag explain to me why if everybody has bullshit OP powers they attain to the rules even if they're do not care about Gensokyo at all?

Byakuren was fought in Makai after a 1200 year slumber. She didn't had a way to know about Gensokyo or about danmaku rules, yet she fought by the rules
The subterranean youkai were exiled from Gensokyo yet they fought by the rules too.
Sagume, Junko and Clown were all fought in the Moon and none of them cared about Gensokyo at all and they fought by the rules too.

I don't get it at all

Reimu and Yukari want to keep the rules in place, as they're both very much interested in keeping the balance and will gladly punish someone who breaks them. Both of them are roughly equally OP if they had to fight seriously. I think the girls also explain the rules (and the consequences of not following them) before battles anyways.

Junko and the moonbitches were so powerful they had to resort to doping to beat them.

They could have just said "fuck your shit, I ain't playing by those rules" considering how confident some enemies are, I'm surprised no one has tried yet

Well technically, in LoLK, they could choose not to drug up, which activates the classic mode. But moonbitches in general are OP. Though apparently the girls can beat up Junko and even a Lunarian god, so once again the power levels are as high as they need to be for the game or story. Though why Junko and the others say "eat dicks" and just blast them, I'm not entirely sure.

Junko wanted the Bunny's cunny

Notably, the one girl that managed to beat Reimu was defeated by a mundane pit trap a few issues later, so there's more nuance to characters in Gensokyo than straight power level: some of them sport enough firepower to destroy a whole city but could likewise be killed by a well-thrown rock or something equally mundane, and that's one reason why the rules exist in the first place as offense greatly outstrips defense in Gensokyo and resorting to fighting in ways other than danmaku could get ugly really quickly

Well cunning and tactics are very good things to have in a battle, but generally yes that's correct. A lot of the girls could literally vaporize each other if they went all out. Spellcard rules are the best way to prevent people from killing each other, unless they very much feel like it.

Is no one going to talk about the Human-Lunarian war of 1969?

Well no one's brought up the situation between moon rabbits and Lunarians either, nor did they bring up how Eirin murdered a group of people either.

Reimu pulls them aside before the fight and informs them that if they don't play by spellcard rules, she's going to murder the shit out of them.

fug meant for

source?