Touhou Project for Beginners

Part 1 "The Beginning": What is Touhou Project?

Introduction:

Welcome to my series of blogs simply called "Touhou Project for Beginners" When I first got into the series, I was utterly confused as the series is not friendly to first timers. I was bombarded with information, new characters, and plots that don't seem to make sense. This is meant to help those who are new and to help myself as I am still shaky on the lore itself. So if there are any corrections to be made due to my stupidity, please do not hesitate to correct me.

The Actual Introduction: 

There is an awesome video by a YouTuber called Illogical Pine; he pretty much will summarize this entire part of the blog, I will post it here in case you want to watch: (Also: Warning on language if you are against stuff like that)

To put it simply 東方Project or Touhou Project (pronounced to̞ːho̞ is a series of (currently as of this post) 25 PC games which are (almost) solely made by Ohta Jun'ya, and that will be the last time you will see that name here as fans know him as "Zun". The series itself is mostly comprised of  "Danmaku" also known as bullet hell shooters and a few fighting titles. The series has a massive following in both Japan and the United States (and other parts of the world too),  for its gameplay, music, characters, art sprite work, and plot. (Wow, that's pretty much everything, isn't it?) The series itself is well known for being one of the hardest game series of its type. The series is steeped in Japanese mythology, which can make a few westerners like myself confused for their first time.

Now that the boring introduction is out of the way, let's get to the meat of it!

Bullet hell? "Danmaku"? What?

Danmaku pretty much means "Bullet Curtain" or "Curtain Fire" but in google translate it calls it "Barrage" (which I feel it is adequately named) But in English, it's known as Bullet Hell. 

Bullet hells are a subcategory of a game type called side scrolling shooters which are pretty much this:

Hey! It's Galaga! Everyone has heard of Galaga, right?

But Bullet Hells are special as they take the number of enemies and bullets on the screen and they crank it up to eleven. 

See the girl right above this text? That's you. And all those bullets? Instant-death.

It's hell. With bullets. And Touhou Project is known to be one of the hardest in the genre. The above image is actually from one of the games, Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom.

Touhou usually involves this formula: 

1. Fight a bunch of mooks, which shoot many bullets at you. 
2. Fight a mini boss which is significantly harder than the mooks.
3. Fight more mooks which now shoot more bullets at you
4. Fight the Boss which is harder than the mini-boss x5
5. Next Stage! It is now much harder.
6. Rinse and repeat 6 times

And between each boss, there is a lot of sass and banter.

It's Popular? I only just heard about it now? or I never hear about it much.

Have you heard of a webcomic called Homestuck? No? well, there goes that analogy. Touhou Project is a lot like Homestuck, it is massively popular and has a large fanbase but you never hear about it unless you are looking directly at it.

I like to compare it as a deep well vs a pond. The pond gets a lot of attention as it is large and hard to miss and depending on the pond it could be shallow or deep. A well, however, is small and really deep. You can easily miss it, and it holds a lot of water. Touhou and Homestuck are like a well, its fanbase is massive but they are in a way that you cannot see it unless you are looking for it or you happen to glance at its direction.

Of course, that's in the west out here in the States. In Japan it's more noticeable, while most do not know the game, quite a few know a few characters by name and such. 

Odds are you have probably seen a character or heard a song somewhere in your life (if you are an anime fan) but sometimes it leaks out into mainstream media.

Here is a popular video called "Bad Apple!!" being featured on CNN 

sadly almost all of the information they gave is wrong.

Link to actual video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lNZ_Rnr7Jc

This is ESPN using an image of Suika Ibuki when they were criticizing  a controversial boxing match
Link to original artist here: http://daemoniken.deviantart.com/art/Touhou-Technical-Difficulties-411866730

There is quite a bit more, but I think you get my point.

Setting and Plot

This is probably the simplest I can make it, if I'm incorrect please let me know!

Let's start off with the setting, shall we?

Setting

Touhou Project takes place in Modern Japan, the Yatsugatake Mountains (west of Tokyo). but in a sealed off valley which is called "Gensokyo". It is a place where Youkai "Monsters" live. Gensokyo was sealed off from the world in the late 1800's to protect the humans from the youkai terrorizing the country. Inside Gensokyo it resembles a lot like feudal Japan, however, there are some modern technologies that are present in Gensokyo, but they are few.

The Yatsugatake Mountains. (can't find what Yatsugatake means sorry)

(General) Plot

More or less, the plot usually involves an "incident" or an unusual phenomenon that occurs across all of Gensokyo, and then the game begins with you beating up girls in your wake to find and beat up the one causing the incident. 

Future Posts

My future posts will be about the lore, guides, and characters about specific games. Warning there will be spoilers and I will mark them as such. For this, I would normally recommend beating the game first, but since I'm assuming you are new, doing this would be a difficult task (especially with Touhou 6, 10, 11, and 14). So to my understanding ZUN wants those to play the game first before knowing the endings and such, but I won't can't stop you from reading, and that there probably will need explanations on the endings so I will make sure to properly mark spoilers. I will probably make them their own separate post.

Sorry that this seems a bit generic, but I will get into certain subjects in a little more detail. My next post will be about 2 of the main heroines in the story (as in characters that are consistently the ones you choose to play as) Reimu Hakurei, and Marisa Kirisame, and about Gensokyo itself.

Marisa the Human Magician (yes there is a reason
why I specified human)

Reimu the Shrine Maiden (Shinto Priestess)

Gensokyo image from Touhou 10.5 Scarlet Weather Rhapsody