Touhou's Appeal
Despite being an anime fan, I have a really strong aversion to harem type animes selling cutesy appeal. Because of this, I sometimes get questions on why I like the Touhou game series. After all, if you only look at the characters, it looks just like all of those franchises trying to sell as many cute female characters as possible.
I've always struggled to give a good answer when I hear that question. Touhou has a very specific appeal to my that's very difficult to articulate on the spot. For my sanity though, I'll attempt to answer it here.
To start out with some background, it's important to know that Touhou is a video game series. The game series started in 1997 and has a total of 24 official game entries that builds on the same world. As the series grew popular, Touhou branched into official light novels, comics, and CDs. However, the amount of official work pales in comparison to fan works (5,000+ CDs and 30,000+ comics). Most people hear about Touhou through fanworks, which can make things confusing. The original game looks something like this:
The games take place is a fictional village named Gensokyo. The world “Touhou” literally translates to “Eastern”, and true to its name populated by characters inspired by Japanese religion, culture, and folklore.
“Touhou” is really an apt name for the series, as I blieve the primary strength of the franchise is that it recreates the appeal of traditional Japanese culture much more successfully than any other media franchise.
Creating new works from historical source material is the modus operanti of creators worldwide. Take the magician:
The magician architype has been successfully utilized in some of the biggest media franchises today. But the magicians in pop media today look nothing like the tartot card depictions from the 15th centry. The card's art held some appeal for the people 600 years ago, but needs to be reinvented to have the same level of appeal to the audience today:
In the very same way, Touhou digs into historical Japan to find source material to inspire its games. Unlike the wizard architype that has always enjoyed some level of popularity, Touhou looks at source material that have lost the majority of their relevance to people today, finds their unique appeal, and reinvent them in a way that preserves their innate appeal.
In such a way, Touhou 7 rediscovered the appeal of the Saigyō Hōshi, Records of the Ancient Matters, Records of the Great Peace, Motojirō Kajii, and Tales of Tono. Touhou 14 rediscovered the appeal of Rokurokubi, Tsukumogami, Amanojaku, Inchlings, the concept of peasant rebellions. The list continues on.
Japan has no shortage of shows that reinvigorates its ancient culture. The Twelve Kingdoms, Natsume's Book of Friends, Mushishi, and The Eccentric Family are all great examples. But to my knowledge, few works have as much willingness to find beauty in old and dusty history as Touhou does, and no work compares with Touhou in its scale and accessibility of discovery.
That means that every time I visit a new Touhou game, I can expect to find something beautiful about a fascinating culture that most likely no other media has shown me before. That's among the best thing you can ask for from any piece of media.
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