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If you frequent the Kiwi Farms, then you are familiar with Touhou animation and artwork. Many of our users use it for their profile images and their usernames. While people will use Touhou as the theme for their profile, most people are not familiar with what Touhou actually is or the community around it. This original posting will give a brief background on Touhou as a simple primer in spoiler, with discussion of the actual community the focus of this posting.
Touhou Project is based on a fictional land named Gensokyo in a cut off area of Japan that has been sealed off from civilization. The multiple main characters in the Touhou Project series are based on Bishojo (young attractive females) and the series has a very engaged male fanbase. Side-scrolling 2D video games are the primary form of media in the series, however there is animation, music, fan fiction and novels which are cannon in the Touhou Project universe. While the games do not directly sexualize characters in the activity in the games, peripheral media will actively sexualize the characters. Much of the media in the series goes beyond the scope of the fighting in the core gaming series and there are many fan works which do not acknowledge the focus of the series as a shooter series.
So while Touhou is still, at its core, about ZUN’s arcade shooters, it’s also morphed into something of a shared, communal world that has spurred further creations from fans and developers. The games already have a decently sized Western following thanks to the efforts of passionate fans in translating and disseminating the series lore, but the official release of the original games in English has the potential to expose a whole new audience to the realm of Gensokyo. Whether or not Touhou will take off like it did in Japan remains to be seen, but it’s still very exciting to see one of the most interesting recent game dev success stories finally broaden its horizons.
Source: http://www.pcgamer.com/an-introduction-to-touhou-project-japans-biggest-indie-series/
Source: http://www.pcgamer.com/an-introduction-to-touhou-project-japans-biggest-indie-series/
The Touhou community is a community where essentially anything goes. Romantic relationships between school-aged characters is normally encouraged. There is a significant focus on artwork, with there being a greater than normal amount of Rule 34 in the Touhou community, especially for characters who are supposed to be 12-16.
http://artemisumi.deviantart.com/art/Touhou-Scarlet-Devil-Onsen-522061671
The FanFic Community is quite robust as well. Here are a few samples...
There are many forums where Touhou is discussed and fan fiction is traded or discussed.
https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/
http://thpp.supersanctuary.net/forum/
http://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/touhou-wavebank.27492/
So this is the Touhou community. A children's shooter game that has been turned into a phenomenon where a significant and most engaged element of the community is based around sexualized drawings of young girl characters.
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