Touhou

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"This game is Curtain Fire Shooting Game.
Girls do their best now and are preparing. Please watch warmly until it is ready.
The border land was wrapped in Scarlet Magic. Girls believe that you solve this mystery."

– Touhou Koumakyou ~ The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil loading screen
Touhou is usually seen in character optimization threads because the majority of the Touhou fanbase are min-maxers.

The Touhou Project is a series of Japanese "danmaku" ("bullet hell") vertical shooter games made by a skinny Japanese man known as ZUN. Only four things are known about ZUN: He is married, his favorite character (Aya), what he looks like, and that he loves beer. The more you learn about Touhou the more you will realize how much ZUN drinks. (That's how it was anyway. As Touhou got more popular and ZUN started cashing in, online detectives found his secret identity: Jun'ya Ota, a former sound programmer for Taito.) The series is known for its almost entirely female cast of characters, and the plethora of fanart they have inspired. In fact, there is so much Touhou fanart that it is commonly held that no matter what the situation, there is at least one Touhou picture that is appropriate. Whence came the Touhou Power Cards for 4e Dungeons & Dragons. It's also known for its kickass music and ZUN's very liberal policy toward fanworks; as long as you aren't trying to turn a profit (or at least ask permission and make sure he gets a cut) anything goes.

Once upon a time fellow referred to as Touhoufag used to be seen in D&D threads, particularly ones involving character optimization. Fa/tg/uys generally didn't mind Touhou, as long as it was kept from taking over the thread, but instead used to further it or spice it up, or just as eye candy while the discussion continued. Sadly, he got on the janitor's bad side and was permabanned for trumped-up charges of spamming and ban evasion.

For Touhou-centric posts not related to traditional games, we recommend visiting /jp/, considering the now-infamous Touhou Hijack was used as an out to create the board in the first place.

Setting[edit | edit source]

Despite being largely an excuse to compose music and draw frilly dresses, Touhou has developed a surprisingly deep setting over time through ZUN's developer notes and eventually a long series of officially-licensed mangos.

Long ago, youkai and other mythical creatures ruled the land. As science advanced, people eventually stopped believing in them, and a youkai nobody believes in quickly disappears. The most powerful of the remaining youkai got together and formed a pact with some humans to seal themselves away in a pocket universe where they could escape from consensus reality and survive as they always had. This is Gensokyo, the Land of Illusion where the Touhou games take place.

We actually have a rough idea of where Gensokyo "is" in relation to the real world: Lake Suwa and Mount Yatsugatake (from before it was torn apart by a pissed-off goddess) are both confirmed to be inside the barrier. Occasionally things and people will fall through the barrier and appear in Gensokyo temporarily, and anything that's been abandoned or forgotten by the outside world tends to wind up there sooner or later.

And so it goes. The series follows the trials of incredibly lazy yet broken shrine maiden Reimu Hakurei and her definitely not ordinary best friend, the thieving magician Marisa Kirisame as they solve "incidents" via superior magical firepower in order to protect their carefree life in Gensokyo.

Notable places outside of Gensokyo are the Netherworld (where ghosts waiting for reincarnation reside), Heaven (which has closed its doors to outsiders supposedly due to being at capacity, but really its because Celestials are selfish fucks), Hell (which doesn't really torture sinners due to lack of budget and now mainly sells souvenirs) , Former Hell (Now inhabited by Youkai too nasty for Gensokyo after all the sinners and Department of Right and Wrong employees moved out), the Moon (inhabited by racist cunts nobody likes but are too overpowered for anybody to do anything about), and the Animal Realm (which is divided between Yakuza gang wars with animal spirits and a cyberpunk dystopia where human spirits are controlled by Haniwa robots).

Why Gensokyo is a terrible place[edit | edit source]

Youkai aren't allowed to kill humans living in Gensokyo, under penalty of blam, but their nature as youkai means they have to threaten humans or risk fading away and there aren't very many humans to go around. But if the humans ever managed to purge the youkai menace the Gensokyo barrier would disappear and they would be trapped in the modern world, since the barrier was created with youkai energy. Enter the Spell Card system, the in-universe explanation for why conflicts are resolved through ridiculous bullet spam rather than actual fights where the many retired gods and archdemons would just /win. Duels of beauty in battle, of styles over substance. Youkai and humans (who can pack quite a spiritual punch here) can duel on more or less equal terms, and the loser follows the winner.

"But wait!" I hear you say, "aren't there tons of cryptids that eat people?" You would be right, and the answer to that is they eat people from the outside world. The Powers that Be in Gensokyo create small tears in the barrier and pull people through (generally the suicidal and other people who won't be missed, giving the "brb gensokyo" meme a new and terrifying meaning) to be hunted down and killed by whatever youkai stumble across them. If this happens to you your only chance is to make the hellrun to the human village, where you will be given two choices: go back to the normal world where all of this will feel like a bad dream, or stay in Gensokyo with your PvP flag disabled as a villager. This gets downplayed a lot in spin-off material, but it's always there in the background.

Characters[edit | edit source]

Touhou characters are often referred to as Toehoes (a pun on how the Japanese word is properly pronounced), 2hous or 2hus. There are a lot of characters - according to the Touhou wiki, over a hundred of them. A quick rundown of a few of the more prominent 2hus follows.

If you're already at least a little familiar with the franchise, you'll notice that the set of 2hus people actually care about are all concentrated towards the beginning of the Windows series; with a few notable exceptions the fandom's regard drops off sharply around Undefined Fantastic Object. The reason is as depressing as it is common: after quitting his job to work on Touhou full-time, getting married and starting a family ZUN made a series of questionable decisions seemingly aimed at making more money. These include, but are not limited to: his memetically bad character art getting even lazier with each installment, authorizing an assplosion of commercial spinoff media so he could collect royalties, releasing past and present Touhou games on online stores when they had been the crown jewel of the doujin market for decades, commenting on American politics, trying to monetize the western fandom with official English translations of various games and comics, and perhaps most heinously sending a DMCA takedown to Moriya Shrine, the largest English-language Touhou fansite. Combined with the sheer fatigue of making the same game over and over for more than twenty years and the Touhou fandom is stuck in a bubble of revisiting memes and characters from the same five-year period because nearly everything ZUN has come up with since just feels like scraping the bottom of the barrel. Most newer content creators have moved on to other franchises at this point, most infamously gacha games. Does this sound familiar to you?

  • Reimu Hakurei is THE CRIMSON SLASHER a red-white miko a wonderful shrine maiden of paradise. She is one of the two main characters of the series. Her good points are her armpits. Her signature ability is floating, which sounds lame until you find out she can float away from reality making her totally invincible. This means that if she decided to fight seriously, Reimu could go hand to hand with the C'tan, the Emperor and the Chaos Gods all together and win by default, because like a bad DM she can just NOPE out of anything she doesn't want to deal with... assuming she remembers to use that power. This video shows her in a totally canonical way, we wish we were making this up. Her other skills include Musou Tensei, killing everyone (including herself) with balls, and general main character privilege. This is all balanced by the fact that she's a lazy ass who doesn't want to take things seriously. She can barely take care of herself, is always broke, and despite being a shrine maiden she doesn't even know who her God is. Still, even her usual power level is good enough to dominate most fights, and afterwards she goes back to sipping tea at the shrine. Also she's the living keystone for the barrier that holds Gensokyo up, so if she ever died for reals (without leaving a kid to be her successor) it's Exterminatus time for everyone.
Typical drunken brawl in Gensokyo
  • Alice Margatroid, when not hopelessly lusting over Marisa, spends all her time stuck in her house crafting and playing with dolls, much like certain fa/tg/uys. One of the few PC-98 era characters to make the transition to the Windows engine.
  • Cirno the ice fairy is an intellectually-challenged child with an ego problem the STORNGEST and SMARTEST of all the Touhoes. Commoner level weak a commoner can't launch a machine-gun's worth of icicles at your position and fly! Nobody knows how to pronounce her name. Associated with the number ⑨ (thought to be her average test score) and often grouped together with the other low-level idiots as "Team ⑨". Suddenly powerful enough to be a playable character in Hidden Star in Four Seasons, and all she had to do was get a tan.
  • Note that's not a suntan. Her power is currently cooking her inside out.
    Note that's not a suntan. Her power is currently cooking her inside out.
  • Type nine-ball will lead to Armored Core or Cirno
    Type nine-ball will lead to Armored Core or Cirno
  • Patchouli Knowledge is a pajama-wearing, century-old, Vancian wizzart who spends all her time in a library reading books. Constitution was her dump stat, and her magical experiments involve handling chemicals like arsenic and mercury, hence she is asthmatic, anemic, and generally sickly like Raistlin Majere, despite being an ageless immortal. Changes her prepared spells list depending on the day of the week.
  • Sakuya Izayoi is a maid with a known fondness of Time Stop, Haste spells, and just around five billion knives. Official material insists she's human but her real race, origin, and how she got that many 9th level slots are all unknown, though common theories include being a fallen vampire hunter, Jack the Ripper (notably one of her spell cards), a former Lunarian, or a combination of all three. Spinoff material confirms the Scarlet Devil Mansion is bigger on the inside because of her power, so we can add Gallifreyan to the list too. May or may not be a female Dio Brando in an alternate universe. Notable for being the hero of the first commercial 2hu game made with no involvement from ZUN, Touhou Luna Nights. Sakuya gains Time Stop as an At-Will ability in 4.0. Honorary member of the Ordo Chronos, or what is left of it.
  • Remilia Scarlet is a 500+ year old vampire loli (loli compared to other 2hus, and that's saying something) who may or may not have the power to manipulate fate. Lives in a giant mansion and is the final boss of the first Windows game. Likes to play the classy noblewoman in cliche vampire fashion, until the facade inevitably breaks and she starts acting like a child. Actually responsible for the spell card system being created in the first place; she moved her entire fucking mansion through the barrier from somewhere in Europe, thought she could build an empire of blood and darkness and was quickly informed that this is not a thing that you do in Gensokyo. Would be a Von Carstein if she lived in the Warhammer universe.
  • Flandre Scarlet Remilia's younger sister who was locked in a basement for 495 years due to being kind of crazy and not able to control her omgwtfhax levels of power. Likes to eat cute pastries that are all made of people. Has multicolored crystal wings and the power to reach out and destroy "eyes" in things to make them explode, but this isn't the win button you would think because of her lack of focus and it mostly just hurts like hell when used on other 2hus. Rumored to be seeking a sponsorship deal with McDonald's.
  • Meteors have eyes
    Meteors have eyes
  • Youmu Konpaku is the gardener of the underworld, and the things that her masterwork bastard sword cannot cut are next to none. Also happens to be half-ghost. No, we have no idea how that happens, but her ghost side is very soft, so basically how a Damned Legionnaire would have looked in a moe anime universe. Canonically afraid of ghost stories, even though she works for one. Gullible, half-baked, incredibly prone to being dumped on, and a member of the underpowered-melee-fighter club alongside Meiling.
  • Yuyuko Saigyouji is the princess of the underworld, and is able to kill anybody, save literal immortals, by thinking at them. Always hungry. Youmu is her vessel, thinks her ghost half looks fluffy and delicious. Literally stole the season of spring from the mortal world in order to try and make her backyard tree bloom so she could regain her lost memories, unaware that she actually killed herself in order to seal away the great evil inside it.
  • Suika Ibuki is a high-tension Japanese goblin former chief of the oni, introduced in the fighting game spinoff Immaterial and Missing Power. While oni women in Japanese media are usually big and busty, Suika's body is smooth and flat. Her hobbies involve drinking and fighting, usually both at once. Knows lots of crazy oni magic but her unique power is to manipulate density, including compressing air into explosions, growing to kaiju size and turning into a mist form. Hasn't been sober in over 300 years; fanon says she drinks to dull the pain of being forgotten and replaced in human history by some ugly giant. Despite this she's still got the closest thing to common sense going in Gensokyo. So drunk that just coming in contact with her mist form gives people a contact buzz and makes them partyhard.gif.
She's been to Heaven, Hell and everything in Between
  • Yuugi Hoshiguma is Gensokyo's resident Muscle Wizard. She can best be described as Kord/Cayden Cailean reimagined as a female Oni with huge boobs. Some MANLY Depictions of her also incorporate big muscles. Total bros with Suika Ibuki. Also the current 'chief' of the underground Oni.
  • Kasen Ibaraki is a mysterious girl who possesses an arm made of shadow. Said arm can completely disintegrate evil spirits, removing them from the cycle of reincarnation. Currently looking for her original arm while disguised as a Hermit. Most likely An Oni and confirmed to be a sage of Gensokyo. Most often seen eating. Probably raised by Suika. Oh and she owns a lot of animals.
  • Matara Okina is a hidden god of Gensokyo specializing in minmaxing and bards (or the boss of bard gods anyway). She is the "opposite" to the tengu and is a goddess capable of "promoting and demoting" creatures and even objects into higher stages of being. Her main power is the manipulation of the back door, and we mean every back door.
High Lords of Gensokyo
  • Reisen Udongein Inaba is a moon rabbit who deserted her frontline military position and went AWOL as Primarch Neil Armstrong and his SPEHSS MAHREENS were purging xenos filth in the Lunar Capital in the name of the God-President of America. If you look into her red eyes and fail your Will save, you will go batshit insane. May or may not be completely useless except for her sex appeal. Gun-porn of her can be found all over the /a/ parts of /k/, and none of the /k/omrades know who she is or why. Kicked a Lunar god's ass, Junko likes her.
  • Tewi Inaba is a very, very fucking old earth rabbit of good luck who has achieved quantum immortality through being obscenely lucky. Her alignment is Chaotic Shenanigans, of which Reisen is the most frequent victim.


  • Eirin Yagokoro deals in shady drugs of questionable origins and experiments on poor Reisen. She created the Hourai Elixir which caused so much suffering and butthurt in what can only be described as a woman moment, then threw away her life on the Moon to keep Kaguya company out of remorse in another woman moment. For some reason she's a much harder boss in Imperishable Night then the actual final boss, so the fans think Kaguya can't get anything done without E-rin's help. Actually millions of years old because of how time (doesn't) work in the Lunar Capital and helped build the place with Lord Tsukuyomi. Deep lore and comments from ZUN hint at her true identity: Omoikane, god of wisdom and among the first beings to exist in Shinto mythology.
  • Fujiwara no Mokou is an ordinary health nut who runs a yakitori stand the "Figure of the Person of Hourai", an ancient noble girl whose family was ruined by Kaguya's shenanigans. So she stole the spare elixir Kaguya gave to the Emperor of Japan out of spite and then drank it for the lulz. Now she's a fire-wielding immortal who looks out for the little guy. If you piss her off the only thing that can really stop her is killing her until she taps out from from the pain. Hates the shit out of Kaugya and they kill each other every damn day, but they're also the only people in the universe who can really understand each other. The fandom calls this phenomenon "killove". Wears the pants in Gensokyo.
  • You can imagine how graphic a "friendly" daily Deathmatch can be between two immortals.
    You can imagine how graphic a "friendly" daily Deathmatch can be between two immortals.
  • Aya Shameimaru Superfast crow tengu, border patrol for Youkai Mountain and the youkai of fake news. Has covered wars. She is so strong she sometimes accidentally beats people up. Before 2hu mangos became a thing the no.1 source of supplemental material about the setting was a couple sourcebooks containing articles from her tabloid newspaper.
  • Momiji Inubashiri The most minor character in the entire series, initially literally nothing but a throwaway stage 4 miniboss with just a little bit of in-game lore that said she was a white wolf tengu. However, since Touhou Project at the time lacked a dog girl, the fandom absolutely ate her up, gaining probably the biggest fanon-to-canon ratio of the entire series. ZUN eventually gave her a couple winks by showing her in cameos on the spinoff mangas, commissioning an official art of her for an artbook (which removes her long-established dog ears, but nobody cared) and describing her in a little more detail in official spinoff print works. /pol/ adopted her with a MAGA hat as one of their resident memes. AWOOOOOOOOOOO.
  • Satori Komeiji is the spotlight character of Subterranean Animism, though she isn't the final boss. In folklore a satori is a three-eyed monkey who reads your mind and then blurts out anything you think, yes even that thing you sick fuck. This isn't a very popular party trick so she was forced to squat in the former Hell where she keeps the place in repair as a hobby. Even in the fandom she's not very popular; her sister gets more exposure and she's arguably a side character in her own spinoff manga. In her boss fight she copies spell cards seen in previous games.
  • Koishi Komeiji is Satori's sister. She couldn't handle the bants and tried to turn off her telepathy by closing her third eye, which accidentally turned off her mind as well. Most people can't remember her or even see her, but she's effectively a philosophical zombie that operates purely on instinct. Known to wield BUT WHO WAS PHONE to devastating effect. Her and her sister are probably based on the famous self-portrait(s) "The Two Fridas".
  • Eiki Shiki Yamaxanadu is the judge of the dead. Sees reality in clear, absolute black and white perception (both inside and outside morality), which is why even Yukari doesn't bother going against her (since her hax powers rely on vagueness). To do her job properly she can see all the sins a person's committed in life. She uses this to lecture people like a Lawful Stupid paladin so she doesn't have to send them to Hell when they die. It doesn't work. Gensokyo's resident rules lawyer and commissioner of the fun police.
  • Sanae Kochiya: The Luigi to Reimu's Mario, the Shrine Maiden of the rival Moriya Shrine. Is actually a human from the outside world who immigrated to Gensokyo. Eccentric even by Gensokyo's standards, claiming that "common sense isn't needed in Gensokyo", which naturally leads the fandom to portray her as either a ditzy slut or a psychotic murderer.
  • Kanako Yasaka: The goddess of the Moriya Shrine and Sanae's boss. Having lived most of her life in the Outside World, she seeks to modernize Gensokyo, often leading to accidentally causing incidents (like feeding a dead sun god to a raven in order to power a fusion reactor, not realizing she just literally gave a nuke to a retard).
  • Chiquita Dragonforce Tenshi Hinanawi is a dragon celestial gish with a perpetually rotating rock that floats, peaches on her hat that vaguely resemble butts, powers over the earth overlapping with another character's abilities, and a prismatic Holy Avenger with the ability to shoot multilasers. Literally started the plot of Scarlet Weather Rhapsody because she was bored and wanted people to come beat her up.
  • Utsuho "Okuu" Reiuji a crow who used to stoke the fires of hell, before there was an argument and a subsequent change of management. Despite the fact that she holds dominion over both nuclear fusion and nuclear fission, and has a right arm that is made of nukes and lasers, she somehow is on-par with most of the other Touhoes. No critical thinking skills whatsoever, there is a cool video of her fight with Reimu, in 3D!
  • Clownpiece 'murican fairy from hell who invaded (Read:Played Around, Lunarians make Eldar look welcoming) the Moon (no oil or WMDs involved). Wears the Amercian flag as a dress solely to troll and trigger the Lunarians PTSD of PRIMARCH NEIL ARMSTRONG and his SPESS MEHREENS who dirtied the purity of the Moon by planting a flag on it. Honouring the American practice of overwhelming firepower and driving people insane, she eats your continues like they were delicious cookies while unleashing dakka equivalent to a sector battlefleet, lately she decided was ordered to move to Gensokyo, discussions between Cirno and Clownpiece fans attempting to define who is the strongest still rage across the web.
  • No art, no elegance, she just really wants you dead
    No art, no elegance, she just really wants you dead
  • Hecatia Lapislazuli THE Goddess(es?) of hell, crossroads, dogs, ghosts, planets, trivia, sorcery, magic, /x/ and death metal. She's Eiki Shiki's boss. In addition to her designation as a goddess and rank in hell, she has unfair, extremely vague, redundant, god powers. Most importantly however she's Junko's friend and Clownpiece's mom boss. While usually a good sport, she does not take insulting her clothing lightly.
  • Yorigami Jo'on and Yorigami Shion are the self-proclaimed "Most Despicable and Disastrous Sisters", a pair of deities who act as con artists. Shion has the power to make people poor, resulting in her being poor too (naturally, this means she did briefly live with Reimu). Jo'on has the ability to force people to spend their wealth (or she just beats the shit out of them with her bare hands while Shion collects all the gold that drops out of them), which she uses to scam people out of money only to immediately spend it all herself. After being defeated, Shion ends up joining up with Tenshi because she's the only person immune to her bad luck powers, while Jo'on briefly reforms as a member of Myouren Temple and vows to live a honest life before quickly getting bored and turning back to her criminal ways.
  • MANnosuke Rinnosuke is the only male major character in the series. Thus he is usually depicted in fanworks as either a harem anime protagonist or a disgusting sex pervert. In truth, his character is more of a pretentious pseudointellectual, owning a store which is constantly failing due to his refusal to sell anything actually valuable he owns. He is a half-human half-youkai with the ability to determine an items function, which given the vague descriptions he gets and him being not as smart as he thinks he is often results in dramatic misinterpretations (for instance, thinking a Game Boy was a superweapon capable of creating and destroying universes due to his ability not telling him the worlds it creates aren't real).

ZUN's bizarre fondness for drawing silly hats on his lolis leads to persistent rumours that Touhoes may die if their headwear of choice is removed, though certain bare-headed exceptions such as Kaguya Houraisan, Yuka Kazami, or Byakuren Hijiri cast doubt on this theory. It is also of note that since Zun's official artwork in the games and manuals depicts most of the cast as chubby little girls, doujin artists, some ZUN-approved printed media and the official Tasofro fighting games have generally felt free to decide on their own exactly what physiques the characters have, leading to many conflicting versions of the same character.

See Also[edit | edit source]

External Links[edit | edit source]

Gallery[edit | edit source]

Please, note that if we were to post just the high-end fanart people have made of Touhou we would probably collapse 1d4chan servers:

  • Gensokyo, the setting of Touhou, does not actually look like this Yukkuri head version of Discworld, but it would be awesome if it did.
    Gensokyo, the setting of Touhou, does not actually look like this Yukkuri head version of Discworld, but it would be awesome if it did.
  • The 40k drawfags do Touhou work on rare occasions.
    The 40k drawfags do Touhou work on rare occasions.
  • There is a Touhou pic for nearly every situation. Even situations that will never ever be brought up otherwise.
    There is a Touhou pic for nearly every situation. Even situations that will never ever be brought up otherwise.
  • Take it easy.
    Take it easy.
  • Touhou is made of girls and lasers.
    Touhou is made of girls and lasers.
  • Bet you'd never see this again, huh?
    Bet you'd never see this again, huh?
  • The pseudo-official order in which you (you!) should play and read Touhou-related works, as of 2016.
    The pseudo-official order in which you (you!) should play and read Touhou-related works, as of 2016.
  • Corpse Emperor Loving Cat
    Corpse Emperor Loving Cat
  • this is why we fight
    this is why we fight
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