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Alright then, we'll see how far I get with this before I run out of time for today. Touhou 1 ~ Highly Responsive to Prayers This is my favorite entry of the PC-98 era, musically speaking. It's notably different from proceeding material (particularly if you're listening to the original), but it's still composed of quality motifs and progression structures. Swordsman of a Distant Star (one of a few different titles for the track) is my particular favorite from the album; second place is more difficult to pick out, but I think I'll go with Eternal Shrine Maiden. Touhou 2 ~ Story of Eastern Wonderland This is where ZUN's definitive style was established, particularly with the distinction between stage themes and boss themes. Complete Darkness and Himorogi, Burn in Violet are my picks for this one, but with the corollary of ZUN's later SC-88Pro arrangement of the latter being the preferred version, both for instrumentation and slight arrangement distinction. Honorable mention to Hakurei ~ Oriental Wind. Touhou 3 ~ Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream As my second favorite PC-98 entry, this one is more difficult to decide on. Nearly every track has noteworthy merit, and picking one or two immediately brings to mind the ones left behind. Nonetheless, I believe I'll settle on Eastern Mystical Love Consultation and Maple Dream..., with the former favoured toward the Untouched Scores version. Honorable mention to Strawberry Crisis!!, theme of my favorite character. Touhou 4 ~ Lotus Land Story While there's plenty of good pieces here, I have far less trouble deciding my favorites for this one. Sleeping Terror and Faint Dream ~ Inanimate Dream are far and away the best tracks in this era as a whole, and the latter remains one of my favorites in the entire series. Touhou 5 ~ Mystic Square All of the Alice-associated themes deserve recommendation, with Romantic Children and Grimoire of Alice particularly standing out to me. Additionally, I want to give honorable mention to Wondrous Romance ~ Mystic Square as an underrated menu theme. Touhou 5 Music Room A total of twelve bonus tracks were released with the final entry of this era, and I see no reason why not to consider this its own release. Anyway, it gives me an excuse to highlight Magic Shop of Raspberry and Phantasmagoria ~ Hardworking Day After Dark, as well as just generally draw attention to these oft overlooked tracks. Alight, I'm out of time; be back later.

A strange question, but a question I became suddenly curious about. A lot of times with other large fandoms I see large video essays dedicated to examining parts of their fandom consistently, yet in touhou fandom in the west, that area seems to be lacking. I don't believe I am entirely qualified to fill that role, and it could always be because we simply lack fans in the west, but as far as I know there are as many as around 100k-200k. I was reading a study on why people struggle to write essays in general, and it stated that one of the bigger reasons is that people read actual books less nowadays. We lack finding things to give us strong opinions, and have difficulty with sentence structure. This leads back to my question, as I'm curious to see if it holds any water. How many here read books? (not counting manga or comics)

I approve of da book. However, I also find I have many other things I want to do with my time. But when I do finally set aside the time for it, I can become very invested in da book, and I have in the past had many a good experience with da book.

I usually read for about 30 minutes before bed. I used to read a decent amount when I was a kid, but then I stopped for a period of time only to pick the habit up again. As for the study on how people who read less have trouble writing, I might just be an outlier. I've always struggled when it comes to writing and I constantly rewrite sections of text, even with simple posts like this.

Since I have recently become a university student, I don't have so much time on my hands now, but I'll still make an effort to be active on here, and hopefully after a while things will get more settled and I'll have a bit more time to spend here. Anyways, I certainly have the familiarity with the game music. I might rank the CD music too sometime, but since I can't remember and compare all the tracks mentally it would be much more time consuming, so I'll leave it for now. As for things like Print Work OSTs, sure there are some nice tracks but it seems a little pointless to rank them unless you do them all together. Also disclaimer this list doesn't have PC-98; I do listen to the PC-98 music and there are plenty of quality tracks but my opinions on them aren't as strong so I just can't easily pick out favourites from each entry like I can with the windows games. This list also exludes 100th Black Market, Impossible Spellcard and Violet Detector. Alright now with that out of the way let's get started.

my personal list touhou hrtp- eternal shrine maiden. im not too fond of the pc98 games, but zun definitly had his magic touch back then as there are still some excellent tracks in these touhou soew- complete darkness. i dont know of many tracks specifically from this game (asides from theme of eastern story) but mimas theme in this feels intense, and very well made. honorable mention is love colored magic touhou podd- reincarnation. speaking of mimas theme, another classic pc98 track. im not too familiar with podd ost, but reincarnation is probably the pc98 track i come back to the most. touhou lls- sleeping terror. honestly a really hard pick, this one has a lot of really good tracks, but i decided on sleeping terror. its the track i think of first when i think of yuuka, and this game as well. feels like a final boss them despite not, zun probably made both this and inanimate dream and wanted to use both. touhou ms- legendary illusion~infinite being. man, who couldve seen this coming lol. another hard pick, as this ost also has a lot of really good tracks, but i have a bit of a bias towards this one. it was one of the track that introduced me to touhou, and is one of the only other pc98 tracks i keep going back to. it feels almost like some of the later final boss themes in the series, going for a more cinematic and climactic approaches. honorable mention to romantic children. i will come back tomorrow and tackle the next few games.