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Aye, now first all of this kind of thing is inevitable for every series and Touhou just appears to be just the perfect one. I myself haven't witness the "incident' of the people joining it from questionable material alone but not most of them I say since they are many work to be exposed to. Most of what I've seen known it from the fanworks, and maybe 50? 60% from said material. That's my point of view anyways. I believe it's somewhat in balance so, back to your topic, Horny Fans... Yeah, seems about right with a cast this big you'd be foolish to think there aren't any said fans. So far, after reading how japan handle things in earlier posts, I got some points from it: Japan doesn't really care how much horny material there it and it's a hit to have those. It's vastly different from the west and have a different view opposed to it. Their very origin are quite... Erotic indeed so, the more the merrier just like those wired period when everyone joins in the boat and does.... stuff. To top it off *Religion* So, that slides? Well, to brought a point of my own I bring you the perspective of me, a Burmese. (I don't know how this will relate) We've never really cared about those thing but later it was all shot down to ground and the freedom of speech vanished into thin air. Odd, but seems like it's in the middle. Aye, I'll save a history lesson for a thread. Aye, but I do have a question why does the more 'exposed' clothed character ie. Kanako is not too lewd but the reverse happen for the tightly ones, it appears to have the same effect. (It might already mentioned in earlier thread like months ago)

Well, to be fair, CVN, like I said last night, I think most people undoubtedly get into Touhou through the music and the fangames - I certainly did with Wandering Souls, which was an extremely impressive combination of the two for sure. Granted, some people will come in because of the artwork, and yes, even material of an adult nature, but I highly doubt it's as high as 99%, probably not even a fraction of that. (^_^) I mean, 'Bousou-Get!' may have been the very first real Touhou inspired work I ever came in contact with, yet truth be told, beyond knowing it features Reisen & Eirin, I couldn't tell you much else about it since I've never actually read it. No, it was over 5 years after that before Estheone's game turned my head enough to get me into the series, so it just goes to show you how little influence H material really had on me back then. (^u^) Hmm, and that thread you cite regarding the Nature of Gensokyo looks like pretty heavy going too, but I'll check it out when I have a moment. (^_~)

Huh, so that is more than just a joke? In a way I feel impressed, but at the same time a little bit disappointed. But nothing to really bother me so much. Everyone has their own reasons for enjoying this series. Yes, I am familiar with at least a part of the cast and the original beasts of mythology that inspired them. And, if you took a look into the Nature of Gensokyo thread, I was having quite a bit of fun together with @Gou the frog in regards to mythical and cultural origins of some of the characters, while thinking of possible theories on how we ended with cute girls instead of the scary beasts of old from a lore point of view as well as what would happen if other pantheons somehow made their way to Gensokyo.

Heh, ScarletScythe's not wrong there, you know, as I did freely admit when I initially joined this forum that my first real exposure to Touhou Project was indeed a Reisen dojinshi called Bousou-Get! (^w^) Anyway, you make some very interesting points, CVN, which I'll address in the newer thread now. For this one here, I'll just say that, at the end of the day, I don't believe this is something you are ever going to reason out, not until you experience it yourself. I mean, I had a counsellor in the past who tried to apply his fancy college-course logic to me and my whacky interests and we went in utter circles for almost 9 months in total... and it was only supposed to be for 6. I ultimately cancelled the sessons because we simply weren't getting anywhere. (-_-) It's the old iceberg phenomenon basically, as in only seeing 1/8 of what Japanese culture is really all about. Helen McCarthy went over this when asked about H material and she said what I always do: it's a cultural thing and you are not going to understand it. The Japanese themselves struggle with comprehending how people can be hikikomori, or marry characters like Nene and Miku, or walk around in public with an anime dakimakura instead of a real girlfriend. Nijicon really is inexplicable to the average person, making me recall what Angelica once said in Rugrats, "If you have to ask, you'll never know." I don't think there's much else I can say on the subject really. (^_^) -------------------- Now come on guys, I was kidding about Eiki as well - "Danzai!" and all that. For sure, we all understand these characters were horrific abominations originally in common fokelore, with her being akin to the Three Fates of Greek mythology. I mean, have you seen what a monstrosity a rokurokubi really is and would you say Sekibanki is in any way representative of that? Only the Japanese could turn something so unpalatable and frightening into, as Stevo the Human rightly pointed out, a game where lolis shoot each other in the face with lasers. (=^_^=)

Interesting thought. However, what is the proof for it? I mean I have personally seen it too in more or less ironic tones being said, but I never really took it seriously. It is basically this situation (cue to An Incorrect Summary of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance) My_source_is_that_I_made_it_the_F_up.mp4 Still, interesting point. Alo, despite this coming from Reddit (and a 9 years old thread to add to it), what this person said is not to be ignored: (original thread: Help me understand ZUN's philosophy https://www.reddit.com/r/touhou/comments/1rhif8/help_me_to_understand_zuns_philosophy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Back in the days when pirate websites like Moriya Shrine were still seen as justified, ZUN was not even planning to port his games to Steam yet as he was not caring about anything outside Japan, and the first fan-made anime were getting into a bit of trouble with the use of professional voice acting Meanwhile, there is also this opinion, much more recent, coming from Danbooru (as I was talking about that website in a recent discussion), in the context of a Touhou image that sparked much controversy: Then, there is this discussion based on a story card from Touhou LostWord which for some reason caught up on Twitter, then was discussed again on Reddit (sometimes, I really need to use any source if it is for research and studying human behaviour): Alright, now with the actual opinions expressed about the card itself, art and reception: User 1: I don't know if it's the reason in this particular case but I've seen a lot of people on Twitter who genuinely hate over-sexualisation of Touhou characters, which is really weird to me considering that a massive proportion of fanworks do over-sexualise the characters and that's a pretty big part of why the series is as big as it is (which is ironic considering the art ZUN draws). This game literally wouldn't exist if hordes of degenerates didn't draw mountains of Touhou porn over the last 20 years, increasing attention to the series, and I applaud their service. User 2 (reply): It’s not that hard to understand why a large portion of fans would hate over-sexualization when you consider that almost all the cannon material is void of sexualization. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that promotional Yuugi art by Alphes. User 3 (reply to User 1): This is quite an overstatement, imo. How many of those people who stumbled across porn as their exclusive first experience of touhou actually ended up supporting the game monetarily? How many people exist that actually had the porn as their first experience in the first place? How many people go spend money on non-porn content due to seeing porn online in general? Considering how many people have seen Bad Apple/U.N. Owen was her and other Touhou related music/video content (especially being featured in a lot of Nico Nico Douga videos), I sincerely find it hard to believe that a majority of consumers came from porn and not the variety of other content on many other websites nor do I believe the porn is high on the list of defining features that contribute towards purchase decisions that result in money that goes towards the game's development (I doubt ZUN sees any of the money from doujin/porn producers and people aren't buying the game for ZUN's attractive art). All of that is to say that the game series has far more qualities to it that far outweigh the porn aspect as far as its success. Saying the touhou series wouldn't exist without porn is like saying that every game and anime wouldn't exist without porn. It's absurdity. User 4 (reply to User 3): I am personally a degenerate so I whole-heartedly welcome the lewding, but I could see how somebody could dislike the over-sexualization. While l00ds have definitely helped the community grow, I wouldn't go so far as to say that they are a crucial part of the fandom. The mainline games as well as the SFW creative freedom that ZUN promotes is what has shaped the community by and large, and I think those alone could have definitely kept the fandom alive and well, if smaller. Somebody who loves the mainline games and/or characters might not like the franchise getting 'degraded' into just sexy anime women. User 5 (reply): This, for the most part. It seems to happen with basically every gacha game because the majority of the playerbase is, to put it bluntly, desperately horny. It stands out more here because unlike, say, Fate (which has characters like Nero) and Fire Emblem (ditto Tharja), Touhou has never been a "sexy" series. Hell, it's never even lived in the same town. I have a sex drive as functional as anyone else's and I enjoy a nice rack, but I also realize that I can find more porn on the internet, for free, than I could ever consume in my lifetime, so it doesn't need to be part of my gaming as well. Nobody likes a coomer who can't enjoy anything they can't get off to, and I have a lot of respect for ZUN keeping lewd content decisively out of his games. Seeing it here just feels crass. At least for now, I am not here to express my opinion on the matter. The materials presented are offered for starting a discussion, and anyone can take whatever they want out of it (after all, we have the right to expressing our opinion). Just let the info sink in...

Regarding the argument over lolis in this thread: Getting back on topic, other than the obvious sentiment most people in this thread have agreed with regarding freedom of derivative content, there's a few more factors that I personally believe have played into this. First of all, the data regarding NSFW Touhou art in general (as the OP only breaks it down by character) is roughly as follows: 4% of galleries submitted to e-hentai have at least some art featuring Touhou characters (not a very good representation as a gallery will count here even if there's only one or two images with Touhou characters in them) 3% of all images with an explicit rating submitted to Gelbooru are tagged with "touhou" 1.4% of all images submitted to Rule34 are tagged with "touhou" While the data on this isn't quite clear, compared to the total number of Pixiv submissions, Touhou accounts for 2.4% and Touhou works rated R18 account for 0.2%; do keep in mind that this also takes into account non-NSFW art as there's no data on how many works submitted to Pixiv are rated R18 These are still pretty big numbers when looking at it comparatively, but maybe not as big as someone might think so I thought it would be good to express this data here. But anyways, the fact is that the Japanese cultural framework around sex and sexual expression is so radically different not just from most western countries, but from most countries period. I'm sure many people here have seen the "It's called hentai, and it's art" meme at some point, but the thing about that is that from a Japanese point of view, there's a lot of truth to that statement. Now, obviously, being a sex pest should be enough to get you ostracized from just about any social circle, but merely creating pornographic depictions of fictional characters is (at the very least within otaku circles, where Touhou is most prominent) typically not seen as any different to just creating regular derivative work. Sadly I'm not nearly educated enough to accurately explain the social and historical factors that contribute this, so this surface level analysis will have to do. Another thing is that the number of male Comiket attendees (no data for Reitaisai but intuition leads me to believe that this should be the case there as well if it already wasn't before) has been steadily increasing since the dawn of the century, with men potentially even making up the majority as of a few years ago (or at the very least it being somewhat even compared to the previous overwhelming female majority). And the thing about Touhou is that it has at least one female character that appeals to any kind of moe you can think of. This then encourages doujin artists who focus on making doujins for men (i.e. mostly other men, and those doujins mostly focus on the female characters so as to allow the male reader to self-insert) to enter the Touhou space because not only does it provide you with already finished characters that appeal to whatever archetype you want, thus sparing you the need to come up with an original setting or plot, but is also very immediately recognizable. This also means you'll likely make more money, as you don't have to worry about competition too much due to most people sticking exclusively to hentai works featuring only a few select characters that they like (though that's a secondary factor I'd assume since doujin culture is never about the money first). And all of this not even considering the guys who already like Touhou and are making doujins of it right out of the gate. Though all in all I personally see no issue regarding any of this, if anyone's actually upset by the mere fact that NSFW fan content exists (which is like, come on man you're on the internet) they can always just, y'know, not look at it. I will say one thing though, and that's that some of the most entertaining and thought-provoking media I've experienced falls into this category, be it erotic doujin manga or visual novels with sex scenes or anything in between, so it's definitely not worth avoiding something just because of "oh no sex".

No, no, no!!! Not this damn crap again!! (T_T) How it is in Japan is exactly the way it bloody should be. People who obsess over the rights of fictional characters have lost their grip on reality and I for one am not going to get drawn into that argument again because it always devolves to hysterics. Lolis aren't people, they don't suffer abuse - stop listening to feminist lies and dogma! As for H material in general, we all go through an ambivalent phase: that's part of growing up and experiencing new things. Even I did with Sailor Moon when I was younger, deleting everything and not looking at a single image for around 3 months until I realised just how ridiculous it was. The Japanese don't care what Westerners think because they don't see adult material in quite the same way we do. It's merely okazu to them, masturbatory material... and yes, there's just as much of it for women as well, take it from me, so this is not entirely a male-centric thing either. (>_<) Christianity has taught us to view everything as a sin, yet Buddhism & Shintoism teaches one to embrace life's pleasures (you do know what shrine maidens like Reimu were originally for, I take it?). The Japanese also utterly embrace the philosophy of keeping public and private life totally separate, something Westerners seem to have no end of trouble doing, especially nowadays. Wear a suit & tie during the day and toil at the office; spend your off hours drinking lots of sake and banging young women in an image club who dress up as anime characters for you. It's a totally different world, that's all I can say. The way I see it, CVN, you have two choices: follow your own advice and chill out where this material is concerned, ignoring what you don't like and enjoying what you do, or run for office and attempt, no doubt unsuccessfully, to get it all banned. Personally, I'd recommend the former because the latter will deaden your soul, like it does with every prodnose who believes their life is the yardstick by which everyone else should be judged. Even Eiki wouldn't ban porn, you know, even if it was of her. (-_-) ETA: Oh, and I actually bought that game incidentally; it's by the same circle as Youmu Konpaku & Dungeon Of Lewd Creatures. Whatever you may personally think about the content of those titles, I've actually talked to the creator and he comes across as a decent, hardworking individual who sincerely cares about his productions. No-one is forcing you to buy or play them - you are as free to dislike them as I am to enjoy them. Let's just leave it at that, shall we.

This is hilarious. Meanwhile check out the penal code of the United States and Romania as a stark contrast: As you can see, drawing is included. There, if going by penal code, a good chunk of what e define as hentai is basically banned by law, even if Japanese legislation calls it "cultural and artistic activities" which are protected by freedom of expression." Here is also the Romanian Penal Code, Article 372 (might need to study the Penal Code more as a Political Science student myself) To translate for anyone not knowing Romanian: The Romanian Penal Code does not go in as much detail about all the media through which such content is created or spread, but has a different, interesting part - the "despite not depicting a real person".

Most of said content is made by the Japanese. From Wikipedia: "Fictional child pornography such as Lolicon, and Shotacon are excluded from the law. These fall under "cultural and artistic activities" which are protected by freedom of expression."

More explosions and flames and action

OOH ME personally i like the forum chat not to be discord since you need to log in to discord anyway to send messages that's it

Continuing this thread in parallel with the newly one about modern Japanese art style and artistic choices.