It's great that they asked for ZUN's blessing on North American Reitaisai-like event for Anime Boston. My concern is, do we have enough North American artists to fill the booth? I have yet to see a realistic amount of number of people willing to prepare for a convention by spending their money for their own creation of artbooks, doujins, music CD, derivative games, or any of that sort, and carry them to the convention for sale like how these Touhou-only events should be.
I find it much more realistic for American Touhou communities to grow by having an online convention, like Air Reitaisai. However, ZUN's policy forbids selling of doujin activities through online means, as they are meant to be sold in a convention, printed in a physical form. The conventional distribution of doujin can happen in Japan because the land is small and population is dense. America is not Japan. It's a big country spreading from coast to coast, and such vastness is a limiting factor towards growth Western doujin community. The right question that should have been asked to ZUN is, "after now realizing the big fandom in North American community, will you condone Western Touhou doujin activities to grow and mature, perhaps starting by encouraging online Touhou doujin distribution for Western community, as this is unfortunately necessary for how vast and sparse the communities are spread apart from each other?"
However, this whole AWA is an incident of unprecedented scale, and was nothing short of a miracle. I have my hopes up on people being inspired for our Western Touhou communities to grow and mature in our Western derivative works, and create another miracle.
