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ON THE TOUHOU QUESTION
Before covering the #BestVidyaGirlContest Quarterfinals, I thought this would be a good time to talk about the Touhou Project franchise, seeing how Touhou girls were not only the most dominant force in this tournament (3 out of 4 quarterfinals featured Touhou reps), but the most controversial, with lots of very loud haters. The crazy thing is, Touhou could actually have ended up A LOT more dominant than it already was in this tournament – Marisa not getting nominated is genuinely bizarre, because she might have been second only to Samus in terms of contest strength. Meanwhile, an absolute powerhouse like Remilia got screwed by the bracket and ran into Samus as early as round 2. And Sanae was *extremely* close to qualifying through the Qualifier Poll.
But WHY is Touhou so popular in the first place? Isn’t it just a series of not particularly remarkable Bullet Hell games? Well, for starters Touhou is full of cute anime girls, which always helps. But it also has a ridiculously active fan community constantly churning out art, comics, games and anime adaptations, helped further by series creator ZUN actually allowing fans to monetize their Touhou fan works. Speaking of ZUN, he’s a essentially a composer making games, not a game designer composing music, so Touhou is full of genuine banger songs who keep going viral, further increasing the franchise’s popularity.
Of course, this gets to the heart of one of the major problems many people here have with Touhou, at least in a Vidya Girl Contest – so much of the popularity and strength that these girls enjoy come from non-video game sources, to the point where they may only technically qualify as vidya girls. And of course, lots of Touhou fans don’t really play the Touhou games, at least the main bullet hell titles.
Moreover, due to the main Touhou games only featuring primitive character art and limited dialogue, there’s also the argument that the Touhou girls are largely blank slates that fans project their own likes and preferences onto. Whether a girl like Patchouli Knowledge is sweet or haughty, whether she’s a petite Loli, a busty hag or even a chubby girl (if you’re a subhuman with shit taste) is arguably up to the player, not an objective fact. By contrast, a girl like Pyra boasts a detailed 3D model in both Xenoblade 2 and Smash Bros. Ultimate, as well as deep characterization over the course of a 100+ hour JRPG, meaning that we can be sure of what Pyra looks like down to her exact cup size, and have a detailed overview of her personality, relationships, likes and dislikes.
Again, plenty of people supporting core video game girls over the Touhou girls are less than impressed that the latter rely so much on fan works to fill in the blanks – hell, one request I heard during the tournament was for fan art to be *banned*, which while unenforceable and something of an anti-fun measure, does make a fair bit of sense, since it rewards girls for actually being hot and desirable in-game (or in official art, when it comes to truly retro girls), rather than simply being Carried by fan artists. At the same time, it kinda seems like Touhou girls owing so much to fan works makes a lot of people love them MORE, since the girls partially come across as creations of the fandom itself, rather than simply being wholly created and owned by big corporations. All the non-gaming Touhou fan content in a way makes the whole franchise one big collaborative effort, and the sheer wealth of content means that you’re free to focus on the stuff showcasing *your* favorite characters. So if you’re a Momiji fan, it’s not really a problem that she in the games simply appears once as a mini-boss, because there’s so much fan content out there paying ample attention to wolf girl. And of course, given the sheer amount of Touhou girls out there, you’re pretty much guaranteed to find SOME girls from there that appeal to you, regardless of your tastes.
In the end, while I’m still not really a Touhou fan myself, I do appreciate how organizing this tournament caused me to learn a lot more about the franchise and some of its important characters. It’s remarkable just how much of internet meme culture has been shaped by Touhou in some way, and I kinda feel that every internet veteran should at least be somewhat familiar with Touhou, for the same reason even atheists ought to be familiar with the Bible and Christianity – it has just had such a huge impact on our culture, and we do owe it at least some respect and recognition for that reason.
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@ChristiJunior Wife mentioned!
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@ChristiJunior The games are religious, that’s their main feature, and that’s what makes them so attractive in addition to the music, art, dialogue, gameplay, etc. Its a game about Japanese religion and there’s no analog in the West. There’s no explicitly religious Western game that’s as deep and by itself soulful.
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@ChristiJunior The richness of the fandom surpasses what anyone could do on their own. It gives it a life that couldn’t be bought. Imo the tourney was partly defined by an enviousness on the part of other factions, because a character like Remilia doesn’t just have her own game she has her own EDM, rock, and metal music, let alone memes and art to share.
The tourney being about the girls and not the games is all a part of the tournament and that’s the strength of Touhou. Even if the games aren’t the best mechanically, it isn’t a tourney of which game is the best or most fun to play. It’s about the girls, and every one brought something to the tourney.
If anything, the girls had a disadvantage due to being old and their games less known with the younger generation, and not being as much a western phenomenon when they came out. Many people have played EoSD, not many played when it came out.
It’s a bastion of internet culture and defined the era of explosive growth the internet itself saw in the early 2000’s. For that reason it’s bedrock even though it’s slightly obscure in the West.
Christi Junior
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