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13th Annual Touhou Project Popularity Contest
Colticide:
What people like is different to each person (dumb thing to even point out lol), my top favorites are all part of the top 15 in polls, but as an artist and creator I appreciate what can be possible with the lesser known characters. Then again I'm a pleb who likes all characers almost equally so my opinion is usually considered trash. ^-^
Marron:
I was thinking that Parsee would probably lost some places with the latest new characters. Of course, she just won one place since last year, but I mean since three years, she stays around at the same spot of the poll. And she's now the third highest character from SA. So yeah, I'm really suprised.
Yuuka is now 22 but she's not a character I would worry about, I'm sure she'll be higher in a future poll.
As for Clownpiece I don't find it surprising. IMO it's a character you're somewhat interested at the first sight, because of her design and her fight. But then you see characters like Sagume as more interesting and intriguing as time passes. I never liked Clownpiece anyway, not because of her fight, I just don't think the character was that interesting. Also I don't like her design at all.
ZM:
Questionnaire results: http://toho-vote.info/result_questionnaire.php
You can also view detailed results on the characters. The comments are...interesting, to say the least. http://toho-vote.info/result_list_character.php
Drake:
--- Quote from: Kilgamayan on January 22, 2017, 05:44:01 PM ---Curious what Drake, P-Man, monhan, and anyone else with their finger on the pulse of the Japanese fandom thinks of these observations, particularly as they relate to the games themselves.
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Here's a graph of the data from the past four contests (now incl. this year's) about when the voters got into Touhou:
--- Quote ---what is truly mind-boggling is how fan interest seems to simply pole vault from UFO to DDC
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This comment is kind of on-the-nose because there basically was a slump in the newcomers during that period.
Probably important is that the voterbase is composed of 50% people who found out about Touhou either through video-sharing websites and 30% by offline relations. Assuming this holds in general, those 30% would then have been introduced 50% through videos and 30% other offlines, and continuing like this you converge to about 71.4% of people getting in by influence of the video culture (note: not at all rigorous). Considering that the golden age of Touhou video culture occurred with the peak of the introduced fans, it's pretty easy to see these are highly correlated. I doubt the gameplay contents themselves have much to do with it, really.
Besides demographics, utility of characters are a big deal. I'd propose that for a character to be "successful" in the fandom they have to fit certain characteristics, themes, roles, and so on, that makes them good candidates for playing with. People talk a lot about whether a character is already fleshed out or whether they're open for a lot of interpretation (as shown in the above posts) and I think that is important to consider, but I think this is a lot more relevant in the fandom's eye. Miko, while being a character I like, is kind of missing "stuff" to be popular with the fandom, and I think that's true of most of the cast of TD despite the thought put into them. Mamizou is a character I like quite a lot primarily coming from all of her post-TD appearances, but also doesn't really have a lot of "utility" as a character to make content with. There are definitely outliers, but even Rumia has the right stuff to be quite popular despite how many people find her bland. If you're cute and have the right design and a workable personality in some fashion you're good, more or less.
Suwako Moriya:
--- Quote from: Drake on January 23, 2017, 04:31:18 PM ---This comment is kind of on-the-nose because there basically was a slump in the newcomers during that period.
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Damn, and that appears to be true in the 13th poll as well, with the August 2011 option in the questionnaire having just barely above 7%.
Poor Taoists, being literal victims of circumstances and their own inherent greatness. :(