Just how popular is Touhou?

[beaver1231]

Topic is still not dead? Amazing.

Heh... Is it bad that I introduced almost every gamer on campus to Touhou? Is it worse that they've all beaten it before I have, and one has even attempted PCB's extra while I have yet to complete stage 6? :V

Sir, I do not know how you did it, whether you are telling the truth, but man you got balls.

[untitled servent]

Over here in Osaka it seems to be fairly prevalent. You can get almost anything Touhou at Denden Town which is sorta like Osaka's Akibara. Heck they have Tohou BB guns and drinks. Out of Denden Town I know a few clothing stores have things and I've seen a few plushy in random stores. Not so much Touhou in Victoria though, nor Vancouver but you could at least find products there.

[mew77]

Over here in Osaka it seems to be fairly prevalent. You can get almost anything Touhou at Denden Town which is sorta like Osaka's Akibara. Heck they have Tohou BB guns and drinks. Out of Denden Town I know a few clothing stores have things and I've seen a few plushy in random stores. Not so much Touhou in Victoria though, nor Vancouver but you could at least find products there.

I want one of those in my are..how come taiwan doesn't have that kind of stuff?

[SONIC BHOCOLATE STRIKER]

Topic is still not dead? Amazing.

Sir, I do not know how you did it, whether you are telling the truth, but man you got balls.

I suppose part of it was showing some "gamers" that my game featuring little girls as the main characters was so much harder than LOL HALO that got a lot of their attention, but the people that stuck around and played it were mostly Anime buffs and people who weren't afraid to try something different.

[Tanongi]

My brother is into the fan stuff and my friend is all, "LOL IOSYS CIRNO DUUUUURRRPPP" but won't touch the games because they're "too hard".

Don't get me wrong, I love Cirno but sometimes it's annoying to listen to the guy.

[chrisruls00]

I haven't met anyone at my school who plays it. On of my friends who happens to visit 4chan a lot recognized the word Touhou when I told him I started playing it and he said he had heard U. N. Owen before, but other than that, nothing. This friend of mine isn't terribly interested in the games but he is very interested in the characters and story of the series. I also have another friend who tried to play the games after watching me but wasn't too great at them and hasn't had much time to practice. He is kind of interested in the characters and story though. On the other hand my best friend gets annoyed whenever I mention Touhou and seems to think it's weird. I do play the games in my computer classes though, and my classmates will sometimes watch me play. I even had the teacher of my Info Tech class walk up once and ask "Will all of those things kill you?"(referring to the bullets of course).

[orinrin]

My best friend knows exactly what Touhou is and he seems to be completely indifferent to it.  Judging by his time in Japan, I think he has seen quite a lot of Touhou merchandise too.  I guess knowing a lot about a certain subject doesn't really mean you need to like it.
I can ask anyone at my school about Touhou and the most they can bring up are the memes and videos on Youtube.  Being obscure isn't a bad thing though.

[OkashiiKisei]

Well, guys, looks like Touhou Project isn't so unknown afterall in the Netherlands. Why? Because it actaully got referenced in the popular Dutch game magazine Power Unlimited.
Indeed, in the review of the new game Sin & Punishment 2 (which got a extremely high score by the way. Must have for Wii owners) the reviewer, a hard core Nintendo fan and retro gamer, referenced to many succesful SHMUP's to describe the various wonderful mechanics of the game. He referenced games like Radiant Silvergun, Gradius, Gunstar Heroes, Space Harrier, Star Fox, Ikaruga and many more. Then, at the very end of the review, he described the 'need to learn the ability to automatically be able to dodge the bullet storms in the right direction' as akin to Touhou Project.
And apparently, he has known the serie from day one, since the date he listed at Touhou Project was 1996, the year the very first Touhou came out. And ofcourse, in the first game, there weren't much actual heavy danmaku patterns. Those only arrived in full force in the later games. He must have followed the many other games and played them! My heart jumped with joy (and gave me a slight seizure) upon discovery that one of my favorite game reviewers is a Touhou fan.

I can imagine that many readers of the magazine would search up the referenced games on internet out of sparked interest. Perhaps this opens up to more people getting to know Touhou in the Netherlands! (And Ikaruga. And Radiant Silvergun. And many more)

[Jaimers]

Well, guys, looks like Touhou Project isn't so unknown afterall in the Netherlands. Why? Because it actaully got referenced in the popular Dutch game magazine Power Unlimited.
Indeed, in the review of the new game Sin & Punishment 2 (which got a extremely high score by the way. Must have for Wii owners) the reviewer, a hard core Nintendo fan and retro gamer, referenced to many succesful SHMUP's to describe the various wonderful mechanics of the game. He referenced games like Radiant Silvergun, Gradius, Gunstar Heroes, Space Harrier, Star Fox, Ikaruga and many more. Then, at the very end of the review, he described the 'need to learn the ability to automatically be able to dodge the bullet storms in the right direction' as akin to Touhou Project.
And apparently, he has known the serie from day one, since the date he listed at Touhou Project was 1996, the year the very first Touhou came out. And ofcourse, in the first game, there weren't much actual heavy danmaku patterns. Those only arrived in full force in the later games. He must have followed the many other games and played them! My heart jumped with joy (and gave me a slight seizure) upon discovery that one of my favorite game reviewers is a Touhou fan.

I can imagine that many readers of the magazine would search up the referenced games on internet out of sparked interest. Perhaps this opens up to more people getting to know Touhou in the Netherlands! (And Ikaruga. And Radiant Silvergun. And many more)

Oh hey, that's pretty awesome. Makes me wish I was still subscribed to the magazine.  :V
Let me guess, the reviewer was Jurjen?

Anyway, a friend of mine and myself had an interesting argument whether Touhou or World of Warcraft was more popular. What do you guys think?

[OkashiiKisei]

Oh hey, that's pretty awesome. Makes me wish I was still subscribed to the magazine.  :V
Let me guess, the reviewer was Jurjen?

Anyway, a friend of mine and myself had an interesting argument whether Touhou or World of Warcraft was more popular. What do you guys think?

Indeed, Jurjen was the reviewer and made the reference. The review is in issue 194, with Dante's Inferno on the coverview. The reference to Touhou is in the last paragraph of the Sin & Punishment 2 review. Jurjen already was my favorite reviewer, but this made him just that more awesome. Maybe if the fighter games appeared on Wii Ware he'll review it? (Just speculation. There's a chance of 0.00000000003 % of that happening)

In Japan, Touhou is defiantly more popular, but I think in most other parts of the world (even most countries in Asia) are more known with WoW.

[The_Pacifist]

Touhou's an endangered species in my area.

I did try to introduce my friends to it, but they weren't interested because the series didn't feature Master Chief...

[youkai_R_US]

Touhou's an endangered species in my area.

I did try to introduce my friends to it, but they weren't interested because the series didn't feature Master Chief...

Same here :I
But my friends are total ditzs and don't care.
_sobsob

[N-Forza]

Now that you mention it, I don't think WoW has any kind of a presence in Japan at all. I really haven't seen any advertisements for it anyway.

So yeah, in the case of Japan, Touhou is more popular than WoW. Otherwise, no.

[Jinzal]

I live in Finland and at first the only thing my friends knew about Touhou was the mcrolled video.I tried to convince everyone that it's a good game serie but everyone was like "omg stupid japanese anime shit".I started playing this in our school's computer room (or whatever it is called) and little by little people started to get interested. Nowadays I know about 10 people who regularly play Touhou.It's not much but hey,atleast it's a start.

[Letty Whiterock]

My brother is into the fan stuff and my friend is all, "LOL IOSYS CIRNO DUUUUURRRPPP" but won't touch the games because they're "too hard".

Don't get me wrong, I love Cirno but sometimes it's annoying to listen to the guy.

I watched as the western Touhou fandom grew as it happened. I was introduced to Touhou some time before it through a PCB demo and a friend with IaMP, so when Marisa Stole the Precious Thing came out, I knew what it was the day it was posted on /f/ on 4chan. Then, it got posted more and more, and eventually, discussion about Touhou showed up on /a/ and /v/ (this was before there was even a /jp/), asking "What anime is this from?". As discussion increased there, I noticed that it was getting bigger and bigger everywhere else. I even contributed to this by introducing other communities to it and by making that video of myself playing MSTPT on an ITG2 machine (which ended up on IOSYS's website, which was awesome). Eventually, a snowball effect happened, and now Touhou is what it is now.

Now, we have people IMing me, trying to explain their theories on the amulet in Rumia's hair and stories of Marisa's family. I hate Touhou.

[orinrin]

Obscure no longer?  The popularity of Touhou from a couple years ago is drastically different than it's popularity now.  My first exposure to Touhou was through a video of some guy playing Lotus Land Story.

[lumber_of_the_beast]

I watched as the western Touhou fandom grew as it happened. I was introduced to Touhou some time before it through a PCB demo and a friend with IaMP, so when Marisa Stole the Precious Thing came out, I knew what it was the day it was posted on /f/ on 4chan. Then, it got posted more and more, and eventually, discussion about Touhou showed up on /a/ and /v/ (this was before there was even a /jp/), asking "What anime is this from?". As discussion increased there, I noticed that it was getting bigger and bigger everywhere else. I even contributed to this by introducing other communities to it and by making that video of myself playing MSTPT on an ITG2 machine (which ended up on IOSYS's website, which was awesome). Eventually, a snowball effect happened, and now Touhou is what it is now.

Now, we have people IMing me, trying to explain their theories on the amulet in Rumia's hair and stories of Marisa's family. I hate Touhou.

Wow, I've never seen It's Popular, Now it Sucks in action before.

[beaver1231]

Wow, I've never seen It's Popular, Now it Sucks in action before.

Erm... Halo? Naruto? Twilight? Bleach? Seriously?

[Letty Whiterock]

Erm... Halo? Naruto? Twilight? Bleach? Seriously?

Halo was always a generic FPS with decent storytelling.
Naruto was always a good ninja show with too much filler.
Twilight was always a bad book.

Those things were definitely not affected by their popularity.

[beaver1231]

Halo was always a generic FPS with decent storytelling.
Naruto was always a good ninja show with too much filler.
Twilight was always a bad book.

Those things were definitely not affected by their popularity.

Ahhh, good point. But you're forgetting the part where it is "cool" to hate on all stuff popular these days, if not all.

Edit: Sorry, wrong topic.

[stassy]

7th expansion, Type-moon...all had their It's Popular, Now it Sucks moment (I bet because of their animu versions and latest fate movie, it's so hype to say it suck when nobody outside japan has seen it...)

[Spidere]

When did Type-Moon have a too popular moment?

[flurk]

isn't it sad, sacchin? ;_;

[Otakumo]

I'll tell something that will blow your minds.
My 44 year old father who has worked night shift at Cryovac for 20 years
(after I was born he got the job so he could afford to take care of me)
loves Touhou.
Not that he's ever played it or ever will.
He likes Komachi. Especially when she's drawn with cleavage.
He likes the music. The song from the Kero Kyuu Destiny video for starters.
He watches the Touhou videos that I find.
We've even sat together and thought up ideas for AMVs.
It's been this way for about four years now.

My mother has no interest in any of it whatsoever.

Forget about people in this state knowing of or giving a shit about it.
I'll give you a hint. Atlanta is 200 miles west of here.

Guess where I live.

[Zengeku]

Necromancy...

[helvetica]

You don't have to post in the damn thread as well.  Just report it and move the fuck on.