ZUN is right to not make an official Touhou Anime

[Shadowlupus]

Hello, MoTK folks! Kageshirou is back with a topic Touhou fans discuss endlessly: Touhou official Anime!

As a heads up, it's a really, really long essays below.


In the past, there have been multiple discussions everwhere that Touhou should have an Anime. In most people's eyes, Anime is like a culmination of one's work, whether it originates from mangas, novels, games and other types of media.
It should be no surprise that ZUN must asked countless times by fans, interviewers, studios to make an Anime or at least give their rights to make it. So, why ZUN hasn't done anything yet? Even I was initially excited for it.

In retrospect, after having been thinking over and over again and reading a number of discussions, I concluded that maybe ZUN is right after all. Making an Anime is not easy as you may have thought. Now, I'm not an avid Anime watcher so I may be wrong in certain aspects. Some ideas that I will suggest were initially made in this site, so kudos to these people. https://pantip.com/topic/31918671 (Thai)


1. Pre-production: If Touhou were to be made an Anime, ZUN would interfere with studio's work to control the direction of the Anime (story, characters' appearances, voice actors) and the studio might be sick and tired of him because of that and abandon the project entirely. Thus, he has no power to object and change things, like when he is collaborating with Tasofro, in which some parts of the games contradict the original Touhou lores but he let it slide anyway. If he leaves everything to the studio, there is no guarantee that there will be no discrepancies  in the stories and the Anime quality doesn't suck (looking at you, Ace Attorney Anime) ZUN once said(?) he did not want it to be like that of Tsukihime fiasco in which the work is so rushed, causing even fans to deny its existence,

If he were to make it himself, ZUN's propensity to make a new thing does not help. He would have to write an entirely new story, maybe adding a new character and thus would culminate in "Which is Canon: Anime plot or Game plot" flame war on forums. Anime is a worldwide broadcasting so everything must be made with zero mistake. Otherwise, it would take a great amount of effort to correct the misunderstanding for the entire audience around the world. For another thing, since Touhou's lore is extremely complicated, and there are a number of technical jargons (Spellcards, Youkai, etc...) It would be hard for ZUN to explain those and keep audience interested, considering his mentioned proclivity.


2.Production/Plot: An episode usually takes 20-30 minutes so it would half-exposition/talk/whatever and half-fight scene is generally no surprising. However, Touhou games is known for its non-lethal and colorful arrays of bullets fired at you. You dodge them and fire at the opponent. That is the gist of Touhou gameplay. The problem is how to translate those into Anime. If we are to go by minusT's work, it does the job done but if the fight goes like this with no twist for every episode, the audience would be bored. Worse, Touhou fights are spellcard duels so there are no threats whatsoever since characters will not die anyway, regardless of who win. Also, since Touhou lores said that both sides must agree to declare an X amount of spell cards before dueling, it would be extremely awkward and anti-climactic to see, let's see, Reimu and any biggest threat to Gensokyo to basically "I declare 3" "Okay, then I declare 5" that because you know, 99% of the villians in film/Anime don't do that. It's unsatisfying.

Moreover, for now Touhou generally follows the story of slice of life mixed with villian of the week, both genre which does not do really well in today's day and age. There is not a single threat to Gensokyo. LoLK's plot is a big threat but rather unclimactic because it is over in a single game. The villians are generally too playful and not taking things seriously to be considered a threat in general audience's eyes. Look at Hecatia, instead of "Okay, I lost but what you are going to do? My rules are not your rules. Got a problem? I can erase your entire filthy world if I want to." she basically goes "I lost. I'm starting to be interested in you. I will visit you sometimes, okay?" I don't think people unfamiliar with Touhou unortodox plot will stay for long.


Even worse, since Reimu is the core of Gensokyo, if she dies, every villian in Gensokyo also dies so she can't die, which takes away all tensions in fight scenes. Yeah, you can add a mix of drama by showing a scene of humans being killed, a part of Gensokyo being attacked, political tension between humans and youkai but if there is no overarching plot about the safety of Gensokyo, the general story would be too predictable and boring. As for my opinion, I would love to see a civil war between human and youkai, causing a balance in Gensokyo to fall. It would be the most interesting story to see if ZUN implement it.


3. Post-production: Even if the Anime were to be a successful hit, what will the future of Touhou? Doujin mangas could be reduced in numbers since making an Anime equals more Canon lores revealed, narrowing any possible creativity and apparently artists cannot contradict official lores so there is less things to write about. Additionally, in one of Touhou documentary I watched, a person state that Anime helps the selling of manga when it is still going on but once it is finished, no more people buys it. I wonder if that will also be the case if Touhou official Anime was made.


4. 2 examples of Anime that fails: Kantai Collection and Memories of Phantasm

I do not mean to bash these works/series but I finds them the best example of how not to make an Anime for Touhou. Kantai is an Anime full of fanservices (sexiness, yuri, etc...), pandering to the  fanbase with no clear directions of the story and is best described as villian of the week mixed with occasional yuri love and fleeting drama. All of these cause fans and general audience to hate the Anime alike. As for Memories of Phantasm, I got some ideas from Namusan. https://www.facebook.com/THProject/posts/10152859395854020?hc_location=ufi

Memories of Phantasm is in my opinion, surprisingly just like that of Kantai: Fanservices over actual plot development, predictable story and anti-climatic fight with Reimu overpowering everyone with overly arrogance in a millisecond, which somehow makes me hate Reimu as a result, even though the work is not official. Despite its high quality artstyle, it is not the best representative of a good Touhou Anime in my opinion; I like the Chinese one better (The sealing club.)


Anyway, that is all my thought why it is a good thing Touhou is not officially made an Anime. If there are things I overlooked or I am wrong, feel free to comment.

[the old guy]

Great analysis. However there is a nitpick i have about it.

Kantai Collection

Pretty sure the REAL reason the Kantai anime sucked was because Kantai is Japanese War Crime Denial. Just had to say that.

But yeah, your right. An Touhou anime would suck.

[Jeremie]

To a small degree, from what I seen and heard, your description of Kancolle is indeed sadly close to Fantasy Kaleidoscope. Still, it looks visually really nice and compared to Kancolle, it's a fan anime so it's hard not to respect the effort they put in it especially when they surely have limitations.

However, in term of battles for an actual Touhou anime, I'd say death is irrelevant in term of making an interesting or intense battle as all sorts of stakes can be raised and making a Danmaku fight tough enough for Reimu or Marisa. Having them defeated is not impossible either seeing how one of Reimu's gimmicks is that she keeps trying until she finally wins. Furthermore, as far as I understand, Reimu's death wouldn't do anything to Gensokyo's existence. Yukari would just get someone to take over the duty and possibly train them. The real issue would most likely be Yukari somehow being destroyed and even then, I'm not sure  that would endanger Gensokyo. I'm saying this because showing Reimu going through hardships is not impossible seeing how at least a manga chapter or two sort of bring in a foundation to allow for her character to grow more without going out of the tone the series has in general.

Personally I feel any stories can be made into an anime if done properly and Touhou can be done properly if a good and solid way is taken to deliver the story and the Danmaku battles. On the other hand, the way ZUN presents his series makes it indeed hard to have an official anime. We're now on the way to Touhou 15.5 and there's still a ton of things that are left open-ended for many characters, settings and all that and I think ZUN either wants to leave a lot of that stuff open or just doesn't pay too much attention to it. It is after all one of the strong appeals of the series. If for some reason an anime did exist, I think it's fair to think ZUN would take a similar approach as he's taking with the manga books, bringing in stories about Japanese mythology and the likes while building some characters and the setting of Gensokyo without compromising too much the open-ended nature of those elements. That concept works well for the manga series but the nature of Touhou as a whole and the Danmaku battles being put into an anime would sort of clash with his storytelling method (used in the manga series) unless he went with a different approach.

[Drake]

#1 is absolutely a thing, ZUN would require an intense degree of control over the process in order to be satisfied. An anime would also very very likely revolve around an original story.

I don't agree with point #2 at all though. Using an animated medium would probably make ZUN want to utilize the format in some manner, which would probably result in something he hasn't tried before, but otherwise there's no reason for it to be any more or less than the narrative structure of the manga. I'm not sure he would even want danmaku in it but might feel pressured to do so. The duel format itself, though, has literally never been a problem in the series. The one time it's ever explicitly mentioned, i.e. SSiB, there are no logistical issues with it (and even then, I feel like that portion of the comic only exists because he felt like he had to have duels on the moon to establish the strength of the Lunarians).

Not being a large-scale, threatening, or climactic plot is also completely unimportant. It has never mattered in storytelling in general, never mind with the Touhou setting. If you can't think of a way to create tension without having death, destruction, or other extreme consequences, your imagination (and taste imo) is seriously lacking.

#3 is totally bunk and I don't know how anyone could come to that conclusion. More canon material doesn't stifle creativity at all, it straight-up gives you more material to work with. Doujinshi artists have never had a problem with "adhering to canon" and they never will. The whole premise that canon restricts artistic freedom is nonsense. On a series-spanning scale, yes some artists that made stuff in the early years may now avoid concepts that filled in the blanks at the time, but that's what creativity is. Some don't even care and just keep going anyways. We have several long-spanning series of 4-koma that have long since abandoned any relation to canon, but nobody cares, nor should they.

#4: The best thing Memories of Phantasm has going for it are their short PVs because all they want to do is have flashy action animation of series highlights anyways. The format of retelling game stories just doesn't work by itself, so they have to make stuff up in order to fill time and make it not just six fights in a row. Their episodes end up sucking because they clearly don't know how to write for that format, but they force themselves to do it anyway because they have the manpower to animate it and people are hungry for Touhou animation with decent production.

[Shadowlupus]

#3 is totally bunk and I don't know how anyone could come to that conclusion.

Yeah, me neither. Thai admin (again, no surprise) was the one bringing up that idea in the first place. Apparently he loves putting words in people's (in this case Japanese doujin artists) mouth to make him sound like a genius.

[MANoBadAssGar Jr.]

If there was an official anime considered, purely by ZUN perhaps, what audience it will be directed toward? are film without bloody fights and fan service really no good?

If not tv series, how about a spin-off movie? with new incident, just like the fighting spin-off or Double Spoiler but in cinema movie format. Perhaps with complex condition to reach climax like in HM.
Probably the lore will have to be limited as necessary, but i guess after it ends no damage will be done to the main project along with it's printworks like point #3 because the plot are new so it won't outshine the past works, and being a movie doesn't need to follow point #2 (about keeping the audiences stays interested for a myriad of episodes).
About canon, or not, well it can became canon material for future works of any form, like SSiB and Kourindo was.

The next issue then are about cooperation with the production studio, ZUN should just hire big name yakuza & hijack the whole studio and it's crew. just kidding

If it's all about appealling as anime tv series, probably competition or demands with product like Kancolle, just drop it then. Just my opinion, instead of that, with what they have, why not just get on their own stage?

[Dioxaz]

Making an official OVA or TV series would be too much complicated as a challenge indeed, IMO. Animating means appealing an even wider audience, and that audience would bore very fast if even one of the aspects mentioned by Kageshirou fails.

If an official animated work were to be done, it definitely had not to share the same codes as TV animation, and would have to be much closer to amateur works we see on Niconico. But that's my own views. With that in mind, anything could be told or done and there would be no special need to have, for instance, a danmaku battle or even voice acting (I see the cringe coming) for chemistry to take place. Indeed, I'd prefer to be also restrained to doujin distribution if something like that were ever to see the day.

Existing animated works usually fail in one or another aspect only because of their creators underestimating or misconsidering the constraints of creating long animated episodes. And this is especially flagrant in Memories of Phantasm where they try as much as they can to "fill the remaining space" (and because this is the most popular series). Funny that the review I did for ep. 7 is almost in line with what some have said here, even though I am usually more positive about it and want to be more indulgent because the series actually works by itself (in term of chemistry), is published at a (too) decent pace and is also priced decently. I think we have to give Manpuku a chance, as their episode 8 didn't look to bad to my eyes (watched it unvoiced and unsubbed only, as no English translation is available yet and I stopped watching the remaining fandubs anyway).

Some quotes of my (overly awkward) review, as a bonus (I recommend to skip some segments if reading my review entirely):

However, that episode reveals a weakness that?s been there since the beginning but only started to get obvious from here for me. The storytelling is almost non existent. I believe this is partly why this OVA gets an undeserved bad rep among some viewers. Sincerely, there have been many MMD drama attempts [and hand-drawns, might I add now] that were much more touching than this whole series. Staying true to the games stories is one thing but what this series lack is building something new and ground-breaking around them. But I guess they don?t have the time and have to be concise. Instead, the circle prefers choosing having a hundred lines of dialogue instead of taking more time in order to create something deeper. You all noticed how insanely fast those episodes are produced.

Making a short OP doesn?t have the same set of constraints that a full episode have. In order to make an episode, there?s a whole new set of things to consider like giving a tone, writing a story, decide what you will tell (what you will include or prioritize and what you?ll have to exclude or rule out), making stronger and decisive artistic decisions. With an episode, you have more things to show. They could have made sure the episodes stayed in tone to the openings but that would have required stronger storytelling elements, one of their weakest points, as I wrote earlier. They instead thought it was better to rely on high quality art and animation to compensate for that caveat. And definitely, the choices they will make in order to compensate for that caveat just can?t be unanimous. You just can?t produce what is literally an animated postcard and hope everyone will enjoy it. Hence the choice of including fanservice, memes, filler scenes and making sure our characters look like they always have something interesting to say in order to justify that ?let?s watch it for the art? orientation.

Seriously, I really wish the circle work better into the storytelling department as it is once again the true Achilles? heel of this series. Look what Kyoto Fantasy Troupe did with their episode. They should take this as an example or at least a reference. I don?t want them to abruptly change their plans and being more story-oriented all of a sudden, as that would be even more detrimental if they screw up. No, what I?d really like is that they consider one of those elements, in order to add a slightly deeper tone and minimize memes and fanservice progressively (The Sealed Esoteric History had none of these).

It's not to say other attempts are free of that. A Summer's Day Dream has insanely long production paces for a mediocre (but still somewhat enjoyable) result as best while retailing quite expensively and Kyoto Fantasy Troupe's attempt might end up a little over-ambitious if it's not that well handled over time (but it's too early to come to that conclusion). Also, whenever a fan animation attempt comes up, all it does is milking up the hype and then leave its share of disappointments because of that underestimation of said constraints.

Last thing, we all have our own tastes and expectations. So it's definitely hard to create an animated work based on Touhou that would end unanimous. I think it's delusional... unless some really talented circle proves me otherwise.