Touhou: Worldbuilding with J. R. R. Tolkien | Video Essay
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- Опубліковано 6 сер 2024
- The Touhou Project is known for its extensive world that has been built over the course of many years. In this video, I explain how the series follows in the steps of J. R. R. Tolkien, the man best known for publications such as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.
Songs Used
Outer Wilds Main Theme - Andrew Prahlow
Clair de Lune - DeBUSSY
The Shire - Howard Shore
RAiNY STARS - Hatsunetsumiko's
Surface Star - Hatsunetsumiko's
0:00 - What is Worldbuilding?
3:00 - How Touhou Simulates Depth
6:19 - On Fairy Stories
8:38 - Secondary Belief
10:18 - The Bottom Line
11:39 - Extra
►Twitter: / gensouchronicle - Фільми й анімація
![On Writing: hard magic systems in fantasy [ Avatar l Fullmetal Alchemist l Mistborn ]](/img/n.gif)
Couple of things to note!
A lot of sources put fiction as starting in the 12th century, but there's arguments for much earlier. Hence I said 'likely' the 12th century.
'Worldbuilding' as a term in this specific context was coined around this time, however worldbuilding to this degree was done some centuries earlier. It is still relatively new.
Neither of these modifications should impact the video's message or intentions in the slightest.
The script for this video was finished maybe a year or so ago? Aside from modifications I made upon actually planning to use it.
I think the one error I made was actually the quote from 'Fairy Stories'. I used the word 'potential', but it was actually 'potency'. Of all the words to get wrong in the script, I messed up a quote. Of course. In any case, hope you all enjoyed. If you have any friends that enjoy video essays, worldbuilding discussion, (or just like Touhou) consider sharing this video with them. I'll definitely be more inclined to do the next two parts sooner if this video does especially well.
Japanese translator here, can I add a Japanese sub or make a Japanese translation somewhere on the video?
With the rise of isekai/transported-to-another-world situation genre in Japan, there were many arguments and confusions (most of which are answered by Tolkien himself already) like what defines fantasy or viewers doubting the logic of constructed worlds through real life logic. I'd like to provide accessible sources on that and make people realize the connection between Touhou, abundant in Japanese nerd culture and considered grounded because of the doujin background, and Tolkien, which most of our people subconsciously considers it as a high, sophisticated literature due to its old and foreign nature.
@@mslabo102s2 We'll continue to conversation on twitter. Thanks.
do the World Building of Super Robot Wars
Great video.
And now all I can think of is Gandalf Head bopping meme with touhou music instead
@@mslabo102s2 Oi. you. YES, YOU. BLoody YOU. YOU. Are a bloody chad. Good bloody luck.
Tolkien: I created this cool language, now I only need to write several novels about a fantasy world to use it.
ZUN: I created some cool music, now I only need to make a series of game about a sealed off fantasy land to use it.
Same energy.
It's funny how accurate that is.
Every Touhou game is an ZUN album with a free game
@@renren47618
Just like Guilty Gear is a new album by Daisuke Ishiwatari with a free game.
Also Tolkien: MAN i love this lil guy Tom, i better create a whole universe for this dude
Alicesoft: We created some cool porn, now we only need to make a series of games for 30 years where main character rapes half of the continent
All it takes is one cup of beer and a archaic home console.
The biggest of beers.
@@GensouChronicle the MegaPint
Miyoi’s sake gourd.
And a keg stand
And trumpets, don't forget the trumpets!
This was... honestly very interesting. I was expecting something like "going into detail about the lore of gensokyo or something" but this was a whole ass essay about the writing of a fictional world
And this is only part one. Next few parts will go a bit deeper!
In pulling from real world mythologies Touhou itself has become a sort of mythology. There is a concept of a Reimu, a Marisa, a Yukari etc that all persist outside of a tightly defined narrative like there would be for characters from LotR or Game of Thrones. When we see fanart of Reimu sweeping the porch at Hakurei Shrine or slacking off no one wonders when in the chronology of Touhou works is this happening -- it's an essentialized ideal the way Hephaestus is always at his forge or Artemis is always on the hunt. EoSD has become something like a foundational story within the mythology. Most people who know little to nothing about Touhou outside of the imagery probably have some conception of Reimu and Marisa venturing out to do battle with Remilia and the Scarlet Devil Mansion as "Touhou" even though at this point in the canon Reimu has been friends with Remilia for far longer than they were enemies.
I think this is why ZUN's decision to have the series work in 'Simpsons time' is a fine one. The happenings of Gensokyo become 'timeless' in a sense.
@@GensouChronicle Also, most of them are either mystical beings or immortal anyway, so the concept of aging can be applied very loosely anyway (plus something something about common sense and aging is common sense, hence no aging.)
Three of my favorite things in one video: Tolkien, Touhou, and Tworldbuilding.
Insert "man of culture" meme here.
power of touhou, man, you can somehow find it in the most unlikely of literature and media imaginable
And don't forget Tgensoutchronichle!
In Touhou you can make a story without including the main character or even mentioning it at all makes it amazing especially in the world building part
It's great.
My favorite story is that one time Cirno searched for the meaning of life
For real
You can literally put some of the more unpopular character as the main character, like say, Lily White, and you can build a story of her. Maybe a story of her love with Spring and such that
In A great world, anyone can be a main protagonist
This video represents the two reasons why I find the Touhou project so fascinating: world building and a talented community. Nice video
Thanks so much. Personally, I think that's one of it's greatest aspects. A lot of talented people got their starts in Touhou, or at the very least, grew their audience with it. And even after hitting it big and moving onto other things, they always tend to go back and speak about the series fondly.
This is one of my favorite takes of the world of Gensokyo.
Each character is unique, they have their own quirks, stories behind, references to mystologies or history from real world.. and they are all set in the same world.
This gives the opportunity to create a lot of stories within Gensokyo, as can already be seen in the hundreds of existing fanworks.
Great vid as always!
an Open World RPG Touhou fangame when?
Glad you liked it as always. Yeah... personally, I've always been someone who read a lot of the written fanworks. I probably have hundreds of doujin works saved away and can probably recognize a lot of the circles. So I think that's influenced what I appreciate the most out of everything the series offers. That being all of the stories that people manage to create with these characters, as you said.
"ah so you must be the Shrine Maiden's infamous acquaintance, seems like she's busy with my servant"
"Now then, I'll be the one dealing with you, xXCaptain_BallsXx!"
@@mr.intruder1536 "My name is Klien."
Character/./ai has "Touhou RPG" which is like an open world Gensokyo, if you want to check that out. However, it's text only by itself(akin to some old computer games or, obviously, the rest of ChatGPT-based applications), and it sometimes gets things wrong.
I think it gets the job done, though.
Something must be remembered, is that very fact of Gensokyo reacting to _our_ world. There's two characters made specifically to understand Gensokyo from "our" eyes (Maribel and Renko, who are two of the most underrated main characters in Touhou, and that i think they deserve a whole series of videos), and that even a whole game explains how the Second World War directly affected Gensokyo in the form of a dead people's souls overflow.
There's definitely some cool stuff to explore with those two, yeah. I think I want to save them for later though until I improve my craft a bit.
This, I feel, is the most underrated aspect of Touhou - on one hand, the outside world will still progress and find ways to "leak" into Gensokyo, but on the other all the things that make fantasy real - beliefs and superstition - will never leave the outside world, no matter how much progress happens
I’m excited that you brought up Tolkien’s essays on Fairy-stories in this! I feel like that’s a crucial fact about Touhou that I feel a lot of its Western fanbase struggles to understand - Gensokyo is a world “where fairy-stories *happen.”* I’ve seen so many fans struggle with some of the darker implications of the setting (“Gensokyo is a human meat farm” is my least favorite take on the lore, period) and wonder why ZUN isn’t so concerned with “canon”, or throws crazy wild ideas while drunk like the fact that the Moon Landing was thwarted by bunnies with guns, or a god literally reinventing herself to be hailed as a scion of science. From a worldbuilding standpoint, Touhou may not appear internally consistent or addressing the typical worldbuilding questions (imagine GRRMartin trying to ask “what is Reimu’s tax policy?”), but it really doesn’t need to.
A lot of people seem to demand worldbuilding consistency or “canon” of Touhou like “bigger” works like Game of Thrones or LOTR, while forgetting that Tolkien himself loved fairy stories because they were a fundamental part of the human experience. The silly myths and stories we tell children are ways in which our real world is understood and conveyed, through symbols and magic. Gensokyo, in a genius way, is so fantastical *because* it’s derivative, *because* it’s a collection of our fairy stories and how we understand them. In fact, even though Touhou focuses on a world rather than a protagonist, I’d dare say it has a lot more in common with a Ghibli film than the traditional fantasy “epics” we see.
Very well put. Thanks for this!
yea been struggelin with that with the Gensokyo is a human meat farm lore part good that its very rare and more of a implication
@@m.m6990 If you haven't already, check out Touhou Forbidden Scrollery. It best explains the role of Gensokyo's humans in relation to why Gensokyo was made in the first place. More or less, it's not a meat farm. I don't believe this is explained in the manga specifically but if you want to know about 'the meat':
It's implied Yukari gets it from 'un alived individuals'(avoiding certain words for automated deletion) and the dying. The village isn't there for meat at all, but the answer is still pretty interesting.
As much as they are influential and beloved settings, ASOIAF and LotR can't ever really be compared fairly to Touhou, as they are both very well-defined settings.
Meanwhile, as you said earlier, Gensokyo is heavily interpretive. The moment I knew I loved this silly bullet hell series was when a certain character in LoLK spoke about the nature of names and how removing that name returned something to its primordial state.
It's a silly thing to get all sentimental over, but it reminded me of every time I made up a story in my head to explain why something was happening that I was too young at the time to fully comprehend. It's that evoked nostalgia for something unexplainable that really makes the setting something special.
I like to imagine that Touhou is the modern equivalent of the myths of the Round Table.
Both are evolving universes through time, have many stories written by different authors (doujin fanworks in the case of Touhou), they are not just about the "main" character (King Arthur/Reimu), both have roots/common history with in the real world and feature mythical beings
That's a pretty good comparison.
Man the Music is what got me into Touhou, but the world building and all the myths and characters are what kept me into it. Now im even attempting the games while enjoying the story, and am interested in all the culture surrounding it hah.
I think that's really what has kept the community alive for all these years. The constant circulation fans into different aspects of the series.
What I really like about the world of Gensokyo is it's currently in the past and present at the same time, that's why old and modern concepts or events that occur feels natural and not out of place. This is such a Genius because there's a lot of freedom and creativity the whole fandom and even ZUN bring out when it comes to story or narratives. Gensokyo is a spring of creativity, it's a well established world filled with a huge cast of characters but at the same time it's not constricted by itself... Man, I love Touhou...
Honestly amazing how a touhou channel with only 4 videos is shaping up to be one of my favorites. Thanks for the good work!
Man, just wait til I have 5 videos then. That'll be crazy. Glad you love the content.
@@GensouChronicle Oh God, what will happen when you get 6 videos?!?!
Really interesting take, haven't thought of touhou as arguably not being a story before and that explains a bunch of things. Also that ending lol.
Yeah, I think it helps to think of it like that when reading things like Sangetsusei, which will be a major topic in the next part.
The "mundane" part just clicks to me on a deep level, so much "basic" but beautiful backgrounds from artists. Rinnosuke's shop is calm like a normal shop, and showing all thoses obsolete objects of the "other" world...feels so nostalgic/eerie, it reinforce the mystery of the External World.
The radio antenna or others artists with part of trains or buses, or the rail network underground in th18, reinforce the fact that "modern human" are a mystery. Technology as a whole is a mystery for Gensokyo's people. But there is Kappas like they understand everything about tech, but they probably retro-engineering everything they find.
Glad you liked that part, I made a deliberate effort to word that part as best I could, and 'mundane' just felt to be the best fit.
It's the allure of the familiar. The world of Gensokyo is basically reverse low fantasy: a highly fantastic world where the real world slowly intrudes upon. When you're consuming a Touhou media and become lost in the world of Gensokyo, encountering familiar things from the real world is like that breath of fresh air you get when you finally found another english-speaking person after getting lost somewhere in an utterly foreign country. It's something you know how it works, how it's used, you know... _familiar._ And with more familiar things you encounter, you can sort of lose yourself in the memories of these old things you'd never expect to be of use anymore, the wonders of finding such an advanced piece of tech after a dry traditionalistic spell. It's like you're discovering the joys of technology once more.
The campfire lits, and Outer Wilds' theme starts, and this just, immediately, feels right.
That's the exact vibe I wanted out of it. Lol
@@GensouChronicle It's perfect 🔥
it's hard to imagine what our world would be like WITHOUT Tolkien
worldbuilding of me dodging droplets of water in the shower (epic touhou reference)
For me, I feel like most fantasy I read is kinda sitting in the shadow of LOTR. People copy many of it's ideas, and now we have a generic European fantasy genre, and fantasy defined by how it's NOT the lord of the rings (I like Brandon Sanderson's books, but it's a feeling I get a lot from reading them). The Touhou project feels completely different, so it's interesting seeing someone make comparisons. I feel like a lot of Tolkein-inspired fantasy is obsessed with explaining everything, which can create a world that feels distinctly less fantastical. The Touhou project avoids this brilliantly by not explaining anything and just expecting the fans to figure it out, which as a former star wars fan, I appreciate.
All of modern fiction is going to be derived from past fiction in some way. It's all a matter of how it's done. There's a really good quote that relates to this topic, and ironically, it's from Steve Jobs talking about developing products.
“Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal” - Steve Jobs
You can use what works in Lord of the Rings without just being 'european fantasy with elves, dwarves, etc.' That's just copying. Stealing, is when you look at what's behind it all and see what makes it so intriguing to many people, and doing it in your own special setting.
@@GensouChronicle Yeah, realizing this, in part because of my dad teaching it to me, is why I'm an artist and a game developer. If I wanted to make something truly original, I would have given up long ago.
Touhou is inspired by Alice in Wonderland more than LOTR. If you feel European fantasy has become generic, maybe you could try some literary nonsense genre or sword-and-magic genre
I find that last joke a nice touch as a fan of both the Nasuverse and Touhou. Sometimes I like imagining what kind of Servants/Masters the cast could be or even how they'd relate to already present Servants (Eg. Suika, Kasen, her arm and the Ibarakis).
I quite like it as well. And yeah, it's always fun seeing myths that end up in both like that. Same with SMT. I have a rather ambitious video planned that talks about the Nasuverse. It won't be for a while though.
There's a fanmade 4-koma series about this. Reimu with EMIYA (because money), Yuyuko with Saber Artoria (because they both have a black hole for a stomach), Flandre with Apocrypha Vlad III, etc.
@@IllusionistsBane name?
@@jvts8916 I think the author is alex (alexandoria).
There is a massive video series on that by a guy named TouhouSniper98 who does FGO content and made stuff for characters from Touhou and make kits and such for FGO.
Woah. So many Nemunos.
Not enough. We need more.
@@GensouChronicle OH NO, NEMUNO INVASION.
Didn't you know? It's NemuNovember!
as a touhou and lord of the rings lover this is my favourite video ever
If Touhou becomes public domain and the Fate series still exists at that time, it's possible that Reimu could enter the world of the Fate series.
Or ZUN.
Isn't it technically public domain already?
Touhou is still owned by ZUN, he's just laxed with copyright
Huh, this is the first time i ever saw someone comparing the world of Gensokyo with Middle-Earth, it's interesting so far!
Thanks. Tolkien is a really interesting guy, and I wanted to do something nobody had really done before with this video.
Babe wake up, new high quality Touhou channel just dropped
ZUN: **drinks beer** "Yeah, what he said!"
Jokes aside, nice video. I hope you'll do similar types of videos for other topics soon. A deep dive into Ultraman would be cool, maybe it's affects on pop culture as a whole or simply any part of the story. Of course, this is your channel so you can talk about whatever you want.
First video watched on your channel and this presentation is brilliant. Also Tolkien is so influential to modern fiction that everything has his mark in it.
Yeah. I know some people found the comparison of Tolkien and Touhou to be out of nowhere, but if you dig a little, it only makes sense.
I think this video explains why I like Touhou so much. Reading about all the characters and their histories and what inspired Zun to create them really stood out to me. I love how you can pick anybody to be the Main Character and you'd still have a story. Thank you for making this video. 💜
Glad you enjoyed it. I'll be going over more of those things in specific in the sequel video.
An incredibly underrated video. You have accurately described exactly what makes me so enamored with the land of Gensokyo, and everything that takes place in it, both officially and unofficially. Literally put it into words that I have struggled to describe to other people before. Very well done!
Thank you. This is actually my most watched video by a fair margin, so to hear it called 'underrated' really is something nice to hear.
As a long time Tolkien fan who's just starting to get into Touhou through listening to the songs and having my buddy help explain the lore to me, I loved this video. Seems like I'm getting into the right story to learn about. Never was a huge anime fan myself, but if the man who made the music and games by himself is masterful, I don't doubt his stories are as well.
The 'stories' are quite unique in how they present themselves. If you're any bit familiar with Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo, some of the more recent manga series (Wild and Horned Hermit and Forbidden Scrollery in particular) follow that format. An overarching plot that is in the background 99% of the time, and only ever makes progress in short bursts up until the conclusion. In between it all, there are episodic incidents. Very fun reads.
Thank you for making this. It was superb in idea and presentation. The quotes from J.R.R. Tolkien himself felt so profound in the context you gave.
Thank you. I think this video encapsulates the most important bits of what I want to portray about the series.
A big part of touhous world building is character lore, in traditional stories we mostly hear about the mc but in touhou every character gets depth so when all the character feels real it helps the world their in feel real too
Yup! Exactly.
Something I find interesting about Touhou is how character dependend it appears
There's a few things I mean by that but the best example to me is how much dialogue ZUN writes
I haven't gotten into every work of ZUN yet but I am pretty certain most of ZUNs writing is character dialogue
I think that started as a necessity of how the games are structured in stages and how there can't be much description from a 3rd point of view (in contrast to Dark Souls games that have a major part of their worldbuilding neatly hidden in descriptions, or kirby which has ALL of its lore neatly hidden in descriptions and dev interviews)
And ZUN got really good at it to a point where I just love reading the dialogues of characters, they are fun and have this amazing atmosphere that appears to put the world into a casual setting
Dialogue is genuinely one of the things I look to forward the most about any of the games and even manga
And that leads to 2 things (and probably more but eh):
1. There's a lot of references to lore throughout of dialogue, it is rare to have something be in the world but no character ever talked about it
2. The worldbuilding seems to be primatily driven by character-additions.
When there's a new character in a game, they are likely to bring with them all their surrounding mythology.
Hmmm... No clue how to end this short rambling
Me like ZUNs style of writing dialogue
You are correct. Even the 'lore focused' books are mostly written from a character perspective. And with it, it is heavily implied that the writing is biased from the writer in-world. So there are biases in Akyuu's writing within Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, and Aya with her Bunka works.
Honestly this video is basically perfect, i love seeing touhou content thats generally serious nd informative. Keep up the good work!
Perfect? I'm beyond flattered. Well, I can't promise they'll all be serious, but I can promise that it'll be my main focus on this channel.
Yooooo Saber at the end
This captures how I feel about touhou perfectly, thank you for making this it made my day. :)
Glad I could brighten your day a bit.
Really well put together video! Really replicates why I love Touhou so much.
this video was very interesting!
I have a request for a video. can you make a video going over various tidbits that are lost in translation in Touhou? (like Reimu's 夢想 and Yukari's 幻想 which are both translated as fantasy, and at least in my opinion, show their "two sides of a coin" dynamic).
I think it'll be interesting and something not many others have covered.
Are you referring to the Last Word spell cards in Touhou 8 (and in Reimu's case, her signature ability)? This is an interesting idea. I'll write it down. I think it'll mostly be a matter of finding translation tidbits that don't fall under translation categories that I already have planned, but I can definitely do it. Thanks for the suggestion.
@@GensouChronicle I'm not talking about the Last Words, I'm talking in general(I don't think Yukari has something with 幻想 in Touhou 8)
thank you for agreeing to do it!
P.S. I forgot, but just so you'll know(without having to search for it) in the fighting games 夢想 is usually translated as "dream" I believe and "幻想" as phantasm for some reason.
Based on the context ,
Musou usually got translated as 'dream' fantasy
whereas Gensou got translated as 'illusion' fantasy
Like the land of Gensoukyo, to outsiders it may only be an illusion. But there is an invisible barrier that cuts the connection between Gensoukyo and the 'Real World'
@@crabapple. Yes, either as Fantastic Dreams or as Fantastic Illusions. I'm under the impression that dreams are things one fantasises unconsciously and just occurs without much input, while illusions are the things you fantasise deliberately like you were actively building up a fake scenery. The latter seems pretty relevant for Yukari as she was one of the sages who built Gensokyo.
On the thought of mythology fantasy interacting with aspects of the modern world, it's actually that similarity with Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series that intrigued me into Touhou lore. I find it fascinating how differently the actual interactions play out due to Gensoukyou isolating itself and finding modern technology and moments in history fascinating and alien, as opposed to the Greek and Roman gods/demigods/monsters leading double lives in the North America, allowing modernity to become a part of them and fuse with their personas as a result―two awesome displays of long-term cause and effect.
This is a really good comparison. I think this sort of scenario has gained a bit of traction in the past few decades.
A beautiful essay. I hold both ZUN and Tolkien in deep respect, both respective masters of their craft.
They're both awesome. There's a couple more videos involving Tolkien I'll be doing in the near future.
Lmao ending made me spit out my drink. I remember discovering Fate series while I was an obsessed Touhou fan and it opened my eyes to another great writing approach. Still a fan of both fandom but in a less intense way haha.
Love all of your Touhou videos so far AND I would love to see videos about Fate writing if you decide to make any. 👏👏👏
I have a video essay planned involving Fate, but it'll be a ways off. Glad you enjoyed it!
what an interesting and well written video, good job man
Thanks!
What a fantastic comparison between two of my favorite worldbuilding examples. I've always had a fascination for worldbuilding and creating "sandbox-like" worlds which can completely stand on their own, which is what lead me to start my own. No matter who you throw in it, or who the main character is, it will always be an interesting story to behold. Thank you for showcasing this point.
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed.
To me Gensokyo was like an unfinished painting or a sketch at the time when I first dove into it. You had some world, some rules of that world, some characters and their very basic archetypal descriptions and some very limited interactions between them (in games or the few printed works available at the time). Many of the characters lacked any backstory, many appeared once and never again and they all felt rather shallow. It was this kind of void that made me want to fill the rest of the picture in so I too speculated and fantasized about what could be and how it could be. I started looking up fanworks and was amazed by how much people could play around with just that magical world alone and fill the missing pieces of the mosaic. It even spurred me to start writing a fanfic. (which is now just sitting unfinished and gathering dust, but that's besides the point)
Very good videos, one thing that I always interested more in fantasy world is writing and wondering how the world works. The mundane lives of the citizen in the era, their daily struggle and how the main character's action/event affect them is what makes me really compelled with the story. Maybe it's more because of me liking slice-of-life stories. Subscribed and will watch your other content! Great video.
Thanks! Touhou is very much a 'low stakes' sort of series with not only everything working out in the end, but a happy ending for pretty much everyone. It's a big part of its charm. The second part to this topic in specific will come out early next year since I'll be in Japan over New Years for filming.
Great essay,you put m toughts on why i love gensokyo so much into words
I spent a lot of time thinking about it. Lots of revisions, edits, and then eventually splitting into three videos. lol
This is one of the most best Touhou videos in a while. Seriously good shit man.
Glad you liked it. I'm hoping to continue to improve my craft.
The most interesting and unique part of 2hu's world building is that it is basically a piece of "urban fiction" and "magical other world" trope turned onto its head. Where the magical things and worlds are normal and where the outside world, the normal world is the weird and alien world. And yes I completely agree that 2hu's world can stand next to Tolkien's work and not be over shadowed by it (mostly thanks to 2hu's relation to real world myths). Though sadly in my opinion 2hu also mirrors the mythos of Middle Earth in that both have been declining drastically in quality when it comes to the recent additions to both of the series. (2hus 17 and 18 and the Rings of Power series, even if it isn't Tolkien's original work Amazon had to force it into canon) Nevertheless, a great vid again!
Yeah. I've seen a lot of great analysis on the series by a bunch of different people. The cool thing is, they all make really good comparisons and explanations despite touching on completely different parts. There's just so much to analyze. It's great.
I'd recommend giving Touhou 17 and Touhou 18 another go from the angle of what ZUN is trying to convey with the characters in 17 and 18.
I think the newer games on the surface seem kinda nonsensical, but touhou 17 gives a solid view into how ZUN views society by using the conflict between Keiki's pov vs the Animal Spirit Yakuza leaders for how the human animal spirits should be governed.
In Japan, the word for a corporate drone/workaholic is 社畜 -- "Corporate Livestock" -- learning that changed how I viewed the game dramatically.
Touhou 18 is a giant commentary on commerce systems, in particular the rise of e-platforms that have moved people away from local marketplaces and local event markets (the game's release being the first digital release, forced to due to COVID) -- it is a pretty dark statement for ZUN to have the _god of the marketplace_ enter gensokyo, given the implications. The cards themselves become an analogue for _paper currency_, something else that has entered the realm of fantasy (or at least, is starting to, given how little money is 'real' with the rise of FIAT currency).
The older games are more focused on mysticism and worldbuilding, but the newer games tend to be a bit more focused on certain issues, which was a big shift for me coming back into the series a few years ago.
@@AeroReborn that's exactly the thing, I don't play nor am I interested in Touhou for its real life commentary. Touhou used to draw me in with its dream like world filled folk tales, uncertainty and mystery. It reminded me of folktales from where I come. I feel that Touhou of today is so detached from its roots that it's almost a whole different franchise
I also think it has a lot to do with what interests ZUN as a whole at this point. Hidden Star in Four Seasons was like, a giant story just about ZUN's exploration on Matarajin and how vague/hidden the actual aspects of the god are.
He also knows how much power he has in Japanese internet culture, it only makes sense that ZUN would want to write stories where he could throw his opinion into -- if you're the sole leader of one of the largest indie creations ever, it's hard to want to write worldbuilding when you think the world is going to shit and wanna do something about it (which the newer games definitely imply)
Already commented before but i gotta say ive shown this video to non touhou fans and they definitely view the way they write original characters and world building way differently. Beautiful way of explaining how this writing style works, the art and writing community missing out on some good
Glad to hear it, thank you!
I was not expecting Touhou and Middle-Earth to be compared of all things, but it makes so much sense when it's together. As a long-time fan of Touhou lore, maybe it was a pipeline for me to Dungeons & Dragons.
Amazing content! Looking forward to more from you!
Thank you! New video soon.
Such a good video man. I love Touhou and how ZUN has expanded it from just games to music CDs and print works to give it more life. Going from playing the games to reading the extra stuff is really fun because of how you can imagine Gensokyo and see how things fit in within the world outside of the usual danmaku with the games.
Yeah, it's a lot of fun, especially going through it all in order of release date. You can definitely notice the change in how everything is presented.
Finally, a video essay about touhou without a crappy mic. Good job👍
Thanks!
You are right, and this video is wonderful, your channel is one of my most favorites already, also the Nemunos are around the campfire :)
They deserve to be warm and comfy.
Great video and channel. Looking forward too see this channel grow
Thanks!
*500 page essay on why we should nuke the Moon*
Step 1. Make sure you get the correct moon. Theres a white one and theres a red one.
Reason 1: Why NOT nuke the moon?
I bet the essay will leads up to the conclusion that all race supremacists (like Lunarians) shouldn't exist
We need the land for Colonies.
Very good take on the world of Gensokyo, great vid my guy, very well made and written, i don't have a lot to say, great vid.
Thanks a bunch! Your kind words are more than enough.
beautifully put!
Appreciated. Trying to improve my written prose, so this was a great exercise for it.
Excellent short video-essay. I'm mainly interested in the series for the music but it's always amazed me just how rich of a world ZUN's created from a series that has incredibly little exposition and incredibly few lines.
Tolkien and Lewis maybe the most important western founders of modern worldbuilding, but it would be also interesting to look at some of their own inspirations; particularly in classic literature. You mentioned that fiction itself really started in the 12th century but I'd go so far to say that worldbuilding was alive much earlier. My mind goes immediately to one of Lewis' biggest inspirations Dante Alighieri who himself created a world based off political and religious realities of his day, and himself inspired the fairy-tales that Lewis, Tolkein, and now Jun'ya Ota draw from.
Yeah, several people have mentioned a lot of really good earlier worldbuilding examples! It's only the term 'worldbuilding' which seems to have been coined quite recently (within past few centuries). I'm definitely hoping to look into some of them before I start working on the second part.
*gasp* A Touhou video Essay Channel O_O! finally!
I have a jacket that I really like that I've had for about two decades now.
In fact, I like it so much, that back when I originally got it and thought I'd lost it, I bought a second one. Then I found the first, and I've had both jackets for the majority of my life. I've loved those jackets, just cause I think they're cool. I call them the Twins. I can leave one at the house and one in my car, and I'll know that no matter where I am I'll probably have one of them.
Except... I accidentally left one in my old car when it finally broke down, and it got picked up and taken to the junkyard. One of my jackets is gone now, forever. It's been years since then- there's no way I'm getting it back. One of my two jackets is gone.
Sometimes I think about Gensokyo, and I wonder if my jacket is there. It's obviously not, and this is just personifying an inanimate object. But sometimes it makes me sad to think that one of the brothers is missing, so it helps put me at ease that there's a place where forgotten and lost items can go and maybe live a happy second life.
The unique power to take a world and link it with our real one is... meaningful. There's nothing else in fiction that can replace reality, but Gensokyo is the closest one I've found to actually embellishing it, because I've used it personally to do just that. It's not Star Wars where you think about how cool it would be to be a Jedi, it's not Harry Potter where so intricately linked and therefore easy to disprove. Gensokyo is just out of reach enough, but just PERSONAL enough that it's the perfect distance. Like if I just live long enough and reach out enough, maybe my second jacket will just fall back into my hands, and they'll finally be reunited.
Touhou fans even more dedicated then any other fandom
never forget there are no buss rides to gensokyo
Why need bus or any vehicle at all if almost all people in there can fly lol
HELL YEAH. SOMEONE ELSE WHO HAS PLAYED OUTER WILDS!
One of the best games of the past 10 years, hands down.
Impressive vid mate, I will follow ur career with great enthusiasm.
Much appreciated!
It is thanks to Touhou and it's world that I got interested in eastern religions and mythologies, and I've learned so much from them, more than I ever would otherwise. Great video
Thanks!
Superb essay!
Thanks a bunch!
one of my favorite Touhou video essay. thanks for making!
Woah Furudo Erika. Actual hero.
@@GensouChronicle woah, didn't know you're into Umineko too
@@cryofantasia Yeah, Touhou just happens to be the thing I make videos about, but I enjoy quite a few different series. WTC is awesome, but I'm holding off on reading Ciconia for now.
As an outside of both verse, I think it was the time and thinking that influenced them the most. Both creators began making their creations as extention of another craft. They both made their own fantasies through the crafts, they could already express.And when it came the time to expanded that world, they did radically different yet similary influenced. Lord of The Rings was made as fantasy of the old western world, a fantasy quickly losing itself in reality because of the rapid changes of the age it was made in. While Touhou is meant represents our age and the age beyond it, by deriving from it any sense which is within the creators and communities collective fantasies. In short they are both reactionary, Touhou is just broader.
In summary, Lord of The Rings was a fantasy meant to be passed on own through lineage and be inspiration, while Touhou is meant grow,thrive and mostly importantly infleunce by a community. That is my opinion on on Touhou and Lord of The Ring in this topic.
This my opinion as an outside and should no means be seen as anything else. I thank you for making me wish to learn more of both verses.
I'm writing an essay of my own about 2hu, its nature as a unique canon/fanon entity, and the nature of the subculture. Will be interested in showing you when I'm done!
By all means, send it to me when you do.
That Nasuverse cameo at the end is brilliant because I think the topic you discuss applies to Type Moon even better
never thought id ever see a Touhou video essay, much less one that connects it with JRR Tolkien
well done
I was looking for someone to do this video thanks.
Haha. You were looking for a video comparing Tolkien and Touhou? Or just a video contextualizing Touhou's worldbuilding?
@@GensouChronicle More the worldbuilding thing, just was always a neat thought in my mind how Touhou is technically cannon in the real world considering it's just old wives tales and myths. It's an amazing framework for slapping anything into the world and making it still internally consistent even with how stupid it sounds on paper.
It has it's own internal logic so you don't need to suspend any disbelief to enjoy Touhou because it doesn't follow any real-world rules.
This is... all done unironically and quite well written essay Well done.
Splendid video
Thanks!
As someone who has been trying really hard to draw from Japanese myth for my own embellishment of the characters and relationships in Touhou, I really started appreciating how little the world focused on Reimu. Being able to completely ignore Reimu and the Hakurei Shrine because they're irrelevant to a story was surprisingly easy.
This is why we get some many great fan stories written about pretty much any character.
@@GensouChronicle Personal Color especially is really good at it. I'd recommend you read their stuff if you haven't yet.
I have! They are one of my favorite circles.
Excellent video. Hadn’t really considered the world building of Touhou up until this point like I would have for something like Lord of the Rings.
I think that's because there's always been this strange notion that there isn't really any depth to the series. At the very least, it was something I'd see a lot on UA-cam. But, that's just one reason I have this channel.
awesome video
Glad you enjoyed it!
Subscribed for using an outer wilds song
Eyyy.
I regret haven't watched that video sooner. It was really rich in informations yet synthetic and put the base to consolidate the more general informations and them dive in the great pool if I dare to say so. Which is pretty normal when I think about it, It's an Essay after all. Anyway it was a very pleasant and unexpected comparison.
Also I may put it here even if it's not that related and I have no Idea why this video made me think of that but it made me think if in the universe of Touhou Project if it were possible that some kinds of "other Gensokyo" existed in India, the Middle East, Europe, the Maghreb or East Africa for exemple.
Anyway very good video as Always, very enjoyable. Keep it up !
This is the high quality stuff i subscribed for
Glad you liked this one as well.
Really interesting video!!! i wish i could convey my thoughts better but just know i really liked this one!!! worldbuilding is cool!!!
It sure is! Thanks for watching.
Oh wow, what a unique and niche combination. Well written too.
Thanks!
somehow i never expected touhou and j.r.r tolkien in the same sentence but this video actually told me something! good work!!!!
Thanks!
The whole video had me thinking of fate/type moon. That ending floored me lol, thanks
I really enjoy the video, it was very interesting
Glad you liked it!
This was an interesting view of the world of touhou and thought this vid was gonna go into the lore of touhou but either way this was such a unique and enjoyable watch!
I like to subvert expectations a bit.
goodness this is so well made!
Thanks. It was quite a bit of research.
As a big fan of both Touhou and Tolkien (I haven't read that much of his stuff, but I really admire the Professor as a person and love reading about his life, outlook on storytelling, etc) I find this quite illuminating. And useful, as I'm currently working on a game heavily inspired by Touhou and I'm thinking a lot about how to make the setting more interesting and compelling while maintaining some internal logic and not blatantly copying ZUN. Your video has put some things I like about Gensokyo into a wider context, so now I can use the more general concepts behind them, not the surface level stuff. And it was enjoyable as well, great job!
Thanks for watching, and glad to be of some help!
I was seriously coming into this video expecting an analysis at the level of grungy skim ontop of a shallow lukewarm backwash of stale bacteria-infected water. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by an interesting essay with some added visuals. I swear half the video essays on this website aren't anything close to an essay, let alone a topic worth discussing. Well done, I loved this.
Glad you enjoyed it. More to come soonish.
send this to someone who doesn't know touhou or doesn't know touhou lore
Mind blown? Or just completely confused.
@@GensouChronicle yes
トールキンみたいに自分だけで何もないところから世界を作るのはとんでもない時間と労力が必要で難しいから既に出来上がってたくさんの人が認知してる物語(または世界観)と自分が作った物語を繋げることで作品の中に世界を作るっていうのはかなり賢明だよな
I know literally nothing about Touhou, except this Mount and Blade mod that has wars between different factions.
And Touhou big big battle.
I actually did a bit of anonymous work on one of the older Mount and Blade mods. I don't work with the team behind the newest one being done for Bannerlord, but I'm excited to see what they end up making.
cool video :P
Wafu. Glad you enjoyed it.
As someone who's been working on a video about Gensokyo's World, how its built, and the way it operates as a society, etc, I was worried someone had just beat me to the punch, but honestly, this video goes into a completely different direction and instead discusses the act of building a fictional world itself, and comparing and contrasting to other monoliths of worldbuilding in literature for what's an incredible fascinating video.
Bravo, this video is an incredible analysis.
One of the things I'll be trying to do with my channel, since these videos take me a while is to cover the things people normally wouldn't think to. Thanks for the comment. Send me your video when you complete it. I'm interested in watching it.
@@GensouChronicle That's a very interesting way to go about videos. I'm excited to see what you cover going forwards honestly.
It'll like-wise be a little while before I get that video out myself. I've got a few others I want to finish first myself (an analysis about Marisa's relationship with her humanity is a big one, alongside a lost media search for some 2hu fangames takes priority), but whenever I finally get it up, I'll definitely send it over to you.
That was a very interesting essay and you worded beautifully what I love about Touhou. The absurd yet mundane events, relying on both reality and fiction, are what make this world feel so special. That's why I think the Gensokyo Chronicle and Bunbunmaru issues are among the best Touhou works. I love learning about a character's business plan or about Gensokyo's surprisingly compex musical/idol scene.
The vague, open world also lends itself extremely well to fangames. Diverse stories can pull 10 characters from all sort of sources and still fit in canon as a some kind of filler episode, which is great for someone too attached to canon like me.
At this point, I'm rooting for Zun to add more male characters to make the world feel more real, but I'm probably just a psychopath or something.
So, a few points I can't help but fundamentally disagree with/that are just straight up wrong. I will write out what I understood to be your argument so please correct me if there was an error in my understanding.
1) World-Build as we know it today (creating a whole new world detached from ours) starts in the 20th century with things like Tolkien and Louis.
This argument fails on two levels for me. For one, there was plenty of world building reasonably detached from our world done before that. While yes, The World Tree connects the nine realms with each other, I do think that Asgard as a world is distinct enough to count under our modern understanding of world building. The same applies for underwolrds all around the globe or the four privious worlds of Aztec myth ( ua-cam.com/video/dfupAlon_8k/v-deo.html ) One might also draw on Plato's Atlantis but I feel like that's reasonably Urban Fantasy.
Additionally, both Tolkien and Louis clearly attached Narnia and Middle Earth to our world. The latter just straight up being our world ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth ) and the former being at least in the same space of creation because Jesus' Fursona Aslan is present everywhere. So I don't see how an Asgard is fundamentally different. You may argue, that it's written by a people and not an individual, which I don't have an argument against except for the question as for how much that's a meaningful distinction when it comes to the nature of the world.
2) Traditional Fiction started in the 12th Century
Arguably, yes-ish. If one means that traditional fiction has to be prose and not poetic. I'm sure I could find examples that date back earlier but that's not the point I am trying to make. I think, there's not a meaningful enough of a difference in the medium (prose or poetic) to draw a line for fiction as a whole. The Gilgamesh Epos, one of the oldest written stories we still have is as much a story/fiction as the Prose Edda written roughly in the 12th century. It's a metaphore for Mankind taming the wilderness, and living morally ( ua-cam.com/video/34kDS3ItAtQ/v-deo.html ). And of course, it's basically all made up. I'm not sure how you define fiction, but I am pretty sure that Gilgamesh fits the bill on pretty much every accord.
3) There is no explicit reference to our real life world within the writing.
Now, I'm not a Tolkien scholar. Nor have I read most of Tolkien's work, but again, it has been confirmed that Arda, the world middle earth is set in, *is* our earth. Tolkien liked to pretend he had just found this old manuscript written by Bilbo and he had translated it for modern audiences. His goal was to construct a mythology for the Anglo-saxons because we have barely anything on that. That is also why there is so much influence from Celtic and Norse myth, because those were the two cultures the Anglosaxons, a German tribe in a still majority Celtic place, would have been influenced by. Now, this point can be easily explained by saying that "text" is just the main book. And that might be true, I won't argue against it for I have no proof. But it was certainly confirmed in the larger body of text built up by letters, notes and so on, which I would consider part of Middle Earth's world building.
4) Touhou's world can claim the advantage that the basis of its fantastical element can be found in reality, which none of the previously mentioned worlds can. Additionally, the drawn upon inspirations are altered to make it fit the world better.
Well - again, yesn't. That is certainly true for things like the shared history with the real world. Middle Earth doesn't have that because it happens long before the real world happens. But just as Touhou draws on existing myth, so did Tolkien, and down to the names. There's several dwarven names ripped straight from the Edda. Elves and their language are based heavily in Welsh myth while the dwarves are based in Norse. Even the name "Middle Earth" is derived from "Middengard" from Norse mythology. So many of the fantastical elements of Tolkien's work are drawn straight from the cultures in our world. Yet, they are also not taken without change. As far as I am aware, at least. I'm also not a Mythology scholar, although I do study (mostly German) literature.
Additionally, the Lord of the Rings tells about the threat of industrialisation. Which- yes, is outdated today as we are long past the point Tolkien was warning about, but not when he wrote. When Sam sees great industrial chimneys in the Shire through Galadriel's mirror, that is technology taken straight from our world and from Tolkien's fears (that came true, btw).
Overall, a very interesting video to watch though
I'll go over your points. 1 and 2 were addressed within my pinned comment, but I'll go over them again here. The main thing with those two is author intent and audience interpretation.
1) This would actually be 'creating a whole new world detached from ours' WITH the intent that it is purely fictional. Earlier examples of this would be Utopia(1516). 'Worldbuilding' as a term used for this purpose was only coined around the 19th century though.
2) Firstly, keep in mind that I said 'likely' here. I did that purposely because it's VERY hard to tell with fiction. But again, it has to do with 2 things: author's intent, and audience interpretation. Did the people 'of that time period' believe the stories to be true, or did they know them to be fiction? I believe they thought them as true. Again, hard to say, but that is considered part of the definition I am using for 'traditional fiction. I know you might think I'm splitting hairs on these two points... but I was going off of several other sources who go by these parameters, and specifically cite the Legends of King Arthur as the 'first work of traditional fiction' which may or may not have a significant western bias.
I only had these two bits (1 and 2) as a segue into the actual topic, and even with my research, they turned out to be way more trouble than necessary. I definitely need to be extra careful with my research going forward.
3) This is actually really interesting. I didn't know this. I did some digging and that seems to have been Tolkien's intent.
4) So, I see where you're going with this, but I still believe this is different. Both ZUN and Tolkien pulled from inspirations, much like any other writer- on this I think we agree. But when Tolkien is explaining 'Elves' for instance, he explains them as if completely fresh. He doesn't introduce them as 'elves from Germanic myth' or 'Dwarves from Norse myth'. Whereas with ZUN, the basis of races are introduced with the intent that they are THE 'elves from Germanic myth' (of course, replacing elves and Germanic)
Basically, even if it uses inspiration, Tolkien still explains his races from the ground up. ZUN does not, and lets their sources BE the 'ground up'.
Interesting bit about industrialization though!
Thanks for watching! I always enjoy learning new things about literature/history. If you have following comments/answers to any of that feel free to reply.
@@GensouChronicle Regarding the pinned comment, I think it might not actually be pinned anymore? Maybe a mistake made by UA-cam? Or some UI change I misinterpreted.
1) Ah, I see. I think Plato was pretty well known for creating civilisations as thought experiments, then again it's just one civilisation within the "real" world which I think doesn't count as the definition you set for the video.
2) No worries there. And yes, making statements on when something as broad and non specific as "fiction" started out is very tricky and will probably always be subject of furious nerd debates called "Academia". Maybe noting that this is just one definition out of many and that it is still very much an ongoing debate might be a good idea for future videos, even if it's just a disclaimer text that pops up for half a second. As attempted advice who clearly knows less about video production as a whole that is!
3) Taking this point to thank you for the research your doing to begin with as it isn't a given!
4) All right, I fear this is when my fundamental lack of knowledge about Touhou (a friend sent me this video and probably instantly regretted it when I started writing a 750 word comment about things mentioned in passing). I can see where you differ in your definition. Tolkien of course couldn't have been using elves and dwarves as they were in their respective myths because his setting is meant to be one that's original and before all other things that happen on the world. I mean Arda is even flat in the early days! It only becomes round with the fall of Numenor.
It also has a cousin, "The Railway Series". A secondary world, a fantasy world that is fleshed out, and a key rule is shared, it is what is forgotten on the outside, or has been cast off lives on. Also open for some fan interpretation, and adjusted by the authors in this case. Not the what has become of the TV adaptations.