vanyk

Great findings, added to the list. Added. I see. Alright, I removed this from the list. Your videos about lost media are good. Thank you for your findings.

As in many cases we don't know which companies use such "service" to pay circles and whether there are some "terms" we don't know about, it is hard to say how common these practices nowadays (but they are much more common than before). The problem with gachas is that they can keep players using gambling- or gacha-addiction, and use moe-, otaku- or "cute and funny"-baits + give new content regularly. Their only competitors now are other gachas. Gachas are very profitable in mobile gaming, and PC gaming is not very popular in Japan, so gachas are widely spread. Also the reason why popular gachas are popular is that those gachas have many characteristics which interest doujin circles (at first Kancolle did that, later other gachas). Such gachas just need to bring first interest and circles will remain with them (at least for some time). So their popularity is not that "artificial" and may remain for some time. What really may be "artificial" is the way to raise that popularity and as we can see now they may use money to boost it. I am not a big fan of BA (it is gacha and their theme is not my thing). About them I can say that I have only seen only one direct proof that they collaborate with or help some circles (but I haven't seen any direct proofs about giving money yet, but I have heard a lot of rumors about that). BA for now is not very big in doujin scene outside Comiket. The biggest BA-only event I have seen had around 400 circles (if I do remember correctly for Kancolle fans it took around 1-2 years since the beginning of its bubble period to arrange an event with >1000 circles). + I made a small research several months ago about number of events (arranged this year (January-early September) + planned): Data by ketto.com (they collect data themselves tracking event announcements on Twitter): 7 arranged; 11 planned. Data by PwiPla (people add events there themselves (and that can be any kind of event, online or offline)): 57 arranged; 24 planned. (just to compare there are 42 planned Uma Musume events) Data by shimeken.com (idk how they track events that they only found 32 planned Touhou events, but at the same time there are 64 planned Touken Ranbu events, but as I understood they mostly track events which are popular among females): 9 arranged; 9 planned. Now their activities are somewhat reaching Uma Musume level, but they are still far from Idol Master, Kancolle and Touhou. So for now it is hard say how long this popularity would rise/remain.

Thank you for the info. Added to the post.

Hello. Here we will discuss recent changes in doujin sphere which happened in 2010s-early 2020s. Before we will start I will say some important notes. Here I won't discuss the popularity of series on doujin events. This post is based mostly on observations and comments by doujin circles which make critical doujinshi about doujin and things I noticed researching this topic. This post is not perfect, because I could miss something and there is nearly no statistics. If you find some mistakes in this post, please, write about them. It is important to understand what is doujin. Most common definitions you can find are something like: Doujin - a group of people who have the same purpose and hobbies. Doujin circle - a group which is formed to produce doujin works and goods. Doujin sales event - a flea market where independent products are exhibited, sold (distributed). And all of these is made to get fun; and all these activities are considered non-profit. I think you have heard something like this many times. This may sound similar to indie culture, but there are differences. Modern Japanese doujin culture is a Japanese subculture, so there are cultural differences with Western indie. As there are formally nearly no restrictions in these activities (don't do illegal actions, don't do something that can cause inconvenience to somebody else, follow the theme of the event and guidelines (if you make derivative works)), unspoken rules (loose doujin rules) formed to regulate them: That is from cultural side, but what about legal side (when we talk about derivative works). Many companies don't sue most doujin works as they are considered non-commercial (they are not competitors of companies, companies don't lose money; companies can get even more money, because they bring attention to the original works), but they can sue you and there were talks about that in government (some of them pre 2015 here), and in April 2016 Prime Minister Abe stated: "I believe that derivative activities such as doujinshi at Comic Market are not a non-prosecution offense because they generally do not use copyrighted works as they are, do not compete with the original works in the market, and do not unduly harm the interests of the rights holders". So you don't have to worry about copyrights on doujin events, but Copyright Act accompanying the TPP11 Agreement (2018) made the status of doujin works which are sold outside doujin events as non-prosecution crimes. ''Non-prosecution'' is a legal system that allowed prosecutors to prosecute acts that violated copyright law without the right holder's complaint. If that will be fully applied for whole doujin sphere were may be a lot of problems because of that. But still most companies don't do strikes on doujin (we will see why later). In summary, we see that doujin works on doujin events are in the grey zone, while doujin works outside doujin events are even less legal. As indie games aren't distributed on doujin events they can face all consequence of copyright acts. But we can also look at this from economical side. There is a doujin circle (五花八門 / Circle Goka) which develops Doujin Economics Theory, which researches doujin from economical side. Here is the summary: We see that doujin circles and indie studios have some common things, like making "products" being the primal goal. But we can also see the differences between them. Many indie creators have "profit-seeking" behavior and "production-seeking" behavior at the same time (if they lose "production-seeking" behavior (care only about money) in most cases their projects would be unsuccessful) and many indie creators don't limit themselves with self-funds and sales, they can also get donations, make crowdfunding campaigns, etc. It is important to note that this book was written in 2014. And we will see that situation changed later. After we pointed out features of doujin, we can go to main part. Before 2000s there were a lot of family circles and circles of friends, but lately the number of personal circles (one-man circles) began to rise greatly, and as C81 report showed most male and most female circles were personal (and looking at modern doujin events most circles nowadays are personal). Money exchanges has become so large in some places that the line between "hobby" and "main job" has become blurred. "Professional doujin artists" became more common thing; they are criticized a lot, because it is considered that their main source of income is doujinshi activities. But because the number of people per circle is decreasing and the number of personal circles is increasing, the financial burden per person is increasing and total expenditure that circles spend on one work has also increased as the number of copies distributed increased too. So nowadays, if the leader of circle has to bear all the financial burden of production, it would be extremely difficult to maintain circle activities in the long term, and there would not be many circles that could consider it a "hobby". Individualization increased, so circles begin to see doujin events more as a form of interaction (as some interviews showed, doujin events are a good place to meet people you already know, but it is difficult to make new friends there). As it became more harder to maintain doujin activities from financial side, circles began to be somewhat oriented toward earning money. They have to increase the production to earn more money to cover loses. But what about prices. Well, there is a thing like doujin "market prices". Circles set the unit price according to the content and volume of the work, but in the doujin market, it is extremely difficult to set a price that deviates from the "market price". In the doujin market, a wide, but not strict, agreement is formed that a certain type of doujin work should be priced at some level, and most work prices are guided to be determined within the range of external market prices (while aiming to cover the actual production costs). Those "market prices" are fixed, so this can lead to situation in which circles are forced to lower their distribution prices more than necessary. The economical situation in Japan is not very good, printing cost and travel cost is increasing, but "market prices" are decreasing: As financial burden for circles becomes more serious, doujin activities becomes less about fun and more about money. This and individualization may lead to different social problems and conflics (for example fighting over opinions on social media (which is not very otaku thing) as was pointed out by circle "国立大学同人　秋葉原大学" in their latest critical doujinshi "オタ寓話" (+ they covered argues about the state of Comiket in "秋葉原大学時局評論集　萌集C103号")). Despite that doujin activities still remain *mostly* as fan activities. But this was from the side of doujin circles, but there is another side: companies. Some companies in 1990s realized that they can collaborate with doujinshi creators and sell their works. Doujin creators got a way to actually earn money (if the shops would like to sell your works). Printing companies also began to provide their services to doujin creators, which can be profitable (sometimes much more profitable than for doujinshi creators). Companies realized that supporting these activities may profitable, so (aside increasing the amount of publishing and printing services) in 2010s they began to fund projects related to doujin. There were not a lot of them and they were related to services. Here are some of business projects: "日本の同人誌などのオタクマンガを翻訳し電子書籍として世界中に発信", "ＢｔｏＢからＢｔｏＣへ同人誌受注事業参入でのＥＣサイトの構築", "同人誌市場の深耕と海外需要の先取り対応に向けた新たな挑戦" Also, in the second half of 2010s 同人税金.com appeared. It is a service which helps with financial problems of doujin circles. But COVID changed everything. Doujin scene realized that self-funds were not enough and they needed a way to survive. I pointed out some changes here, but actually there are more of them and they are more serious. Before we will continue I will introduce another researcher of doujin: Hanara (花羅), the leader of STRIKE HOLE circle. He has been researching doujin since 2000s, visited a lot of different events of different genres, wrote critical doujinshi about that. He made a book about his activities. But he is also a "small and medium-sized business consultant who is familiar with subsidies for doujinshi artists" and he: ・Started full-scale work as "SME management consultant who is knowledgeable about subsidies for doujin artists" due to COVID-19 ・Meeting with politicians who are passionate about supporting doujin artists What he actually did? He helped a lot with different subsidies from government and business during COVID (you can read about some of them here). Circles applied for these programs to get help. Such programs helped circles during COVID a lot, because they needed a way to survive. But there was also a side effect. Circles realized that they can rely not only on their self-funds and sales, they can also get money from subsidies. And business saw that they can give money to doujin circles. Here you can see some business programs since 2020 (many of them intervene into doujin activities more directly (one of the listed below directly intervene into a doujin event)): "３密回避！オンライン同人誌イベント会場の開発", "同人誌製作のデジタル印刷へのシフトで顧客ニーズへの対応と生産性向上を図る", "印刷・加工技術の高度化による「同人誌」市場への参入と収益構造の再構築", "女性向同人専門フリマサイト「ＭＩＫＥＭＩＫＥ」の広告出稿", "デジタル印刷導入により同人誌の高精度化及び最新データ形式対応", "箔押し加工の生産能力強化による同人誌関連のニーズの獲得" We can see that companies realized that they can get profit from doujin. They began to invest money into it more actively. And this is only publicly available information. And in my opinion this is a problem, because this moves doujin from hobby activities to money-making activities even more. Now any company may try to boost popularity of their products by paying some doujin circles, their works would bring attention to companies' original works, so they would get not expensive advertisement. For some circles it may be a good thing, but is there fun in such activities? We can see that doujin scene has changed a lot lately from inside and outside. Some if those changes made doujin less hobby-like and more money-oriented. Commercial world became more interested in doujin. For many circles doujin activities remain mostly hobby like activities. We can only hope that doujin scene would remain mostly hobby as long as possible.

Hello. Thank you for your reply. That may be a good idea (but I have heard that so many times, so the question is how to do it). Those archives are useful for fans who want to get more content (TLMC is so useful) and it would be much better if different parts of fandom would know more about each other. They don't attract many fans themselves, but they help the ones who want to get into Touhou. (from what I read on Chinese pages THBWiki helped some people to get into Touhou and get a lot of info about it). Agree (and it is sad to see new "Touhou Introduction" videos at least once a few months). Youtube may help a few videos to get >100000 views, but yes, most of them don't get a lot of views. Agree (not a fan of Western Touhou Twitter). But it would be great to see more translations for fangames (it is great to see that some people translate ASL now) and books. It is a good idea (I have an idea about one fangame). Such media can bring a lot of attention, but the question is what newcomers will do next? It is obvious that there are people who play those games and like them but at the same time not wanting to make a further step into Touhou. But what about people who want to do the next step? Everything you said before may be somewhat useful for them. But there are things that may push them off (things like original Touhou games being shmups, strange gatekeeping strategies on Western sites, etc.). It may be a good idea to make those things more appealing. I wish you luck with your projects. (I think Mystia's Izakaya's strategy about anime is a good one) Crowdfunding is a complicated thing, because still it is not very welcome, so asking for allowance may be not easy. Still Touhou for me is a hobby, irl stuff is more important. I understand that I cannot spend all my time on Touhou, so it may be not very effective. (but the problem is: why people who may have much more time than me don't do it) (something related to the stuff I do now: one of the major Touhou researchers circles (which has a lot of good material) is somewhat known in Japanese Touhou fandom (+ there are some people not from Touhou community who know about them) is nearly unknown outside of Japan: there is a few people from China and Korea who know about them and nearly noone in the West, which is sad). Yes, I don't like gachas, game services, loot boxes and other such things; modern games shouldn't have them. And you don't need a company to do merch, fans can do it themselves (and sell it). Understandable. But from what I see their situation is somewhat better than in the rest of Western fandom. But yes, Chisese fandom is a big one.

Added I heard about ZUN's level. I have seen some archives of downloaded levels (to play them using emulator). Maybe one of them has his level (but I am not sure). Added to the list.

That is awesome! This game is so old and obscure I thought it was completely lost. Added to the list.

Hi. Good to hear about that. I hope you will get an answer soon. Thank you for info. Added.

Thank you for your reply. I am sorry for lumping you in the rest of "the Touhou hater circle". I respect everything you made for Western Touhou fandom. I wish good luck with your ReC98 project. I agree with some of their points, too. But only some of their points are strong, but some of their points (as you showed later) are quite strange. I don't really like the way how they convey information (but this may be only my problem). Many regular fans don't notice problems or they think that they are insignificant, that is why their points are weak. The points of "the Touhou hater circle" are stronger because they know that there are problems, but the problem is what to do next with this information. That is another reason why I don't fully agree with them, because I prefer to find a way how to use information. If you can improve their culture of discussion then I am with you. For me Touhou is not only about official works but main part of Touhou are also derivative works. Each new official work just fuels Touhou fan scene give more material for it, brings interest back. One of the reasons why lore and story is very far from perfect and really vague is to give more material for different interpretations which leads to more ideas for fanworks. Touhou could not exist as we know if there were not a lot of fanworks. I know that for Western fans guidelines may be not that good (I read spaztron64's post), but for Japanese fans they are still good. I research Touhou and doujin because I want to understand the background behind all of these to see what lessons we can learn from all of these. + I get fun from this, really. That is what I do in my free time (if I have some). I still like Touhou, I wouldn't do it if I didn't like it. I understand I see. For me Touhou is still more about hobby and I don't think about getting money for my activities. We see this problem from different points. About lunatic players for example this... wait they deleted it. About lore fans there is a lore den in local community in my country which acts like this. If we will take what Westerners call anime then yes, "Touhou is anime". About doujin somewhat agree. Because even for the ones who participate in this activities it is hard to give strict definition for it (but I have seen doujin books, which tried to give a definition) About points in definition you gave: 1. No (especially nowadays), because there were doujin(-like) events in Korea, China and Taiwan even in 2000s. 2-6. Agree. 7. Somewhat agree, but doesn't it happen with any other subculture (even with Western game and movie industries)? And yes, piracy greatly helped Touhou to get popularity outside Japan. And why are you so obsessed with piracy? Only because we are on a piracy site? 8. Physical stores are a way for circles to actually earn money if they want. They existed at least since 1990s. 9. It is a strange point because there have been paid Touhou items on digital stores at least since the beginning of 2010 (there may be earlier items, I didn't do a deep dive). About person-to-person nature agree. About "doujin spirit" (which is much more vague than doujin), from your side a big part of doujin scene (I am not talking about Touhou) don't have "doujin spirit" because a lot of doujin circles sell their items on physical or digital stores. We might stop use the term doujin and say that doujin and indie are the same thing, but there are still a lot of differences. Cultural differences are obvious, what is not obvious: doujin circles and indie studios are different entities from economical side and legal side (still there is no strict legal definition for doujin) (from legal side parody doujin works don't violate copyrights while parody indie works do (actually it is more complicated), that is why Japanese people say that Nintendo is kind to doujin (again actually it is more complicated), to indie... I think you know yourself). It would be great to reduce differences between doujin and indie, but it is hard to do it. Somewhat agree, but the border between them is vague. For now I will just say that a *thing* that is unacceptable for most of doujin scene (remember drama around Comiket at the beginning of September this year) and the *thing* Cannonball is criticized for (I am not about gacha here) actually happened in 2007 on Reitaisai (and happened many times later). Before that there were some contracts which led to this *thing*. And ZUN allowed that to happen. Anyway, I will cover this in more details later. About core series, it is hard to change it directly (even though you even said one of ways how to do it because even people not from Japan (not only Toby Fox) do it to influence ZUN's opinion. Why not to use this information?). + many (not all) recent commercial things are organised and made by semi-officials and some doujin event organisers, they got licenses which allow them to do it and ZUN just allows this to happen. About fanworks it is complicated. From one side I like old formula "any Touhou work can be sold", but at the same time I don't really like aggressive commercialization like gacha fangames. No he didn't say anything about it on interviews (but there were some ZUN's tweets about this topic), but we can see actual consequences of this. He was against the *thing* during an incident which happened in 2018 (a hint: THBWiki has info about the beginning of this incident), but ZUN allowed that *thing* to happen with limitations. But after 3 years (2021) fans organised another similar *thing* without those limitations and ZUN had no problems with that (+ he had no problems when semi-officials did something similar in 2020). + It is interesting who actually organised that collab (they are somewhat related to the story I mentioned above). I see. This discussion was really interesting, thank you for your replies.

That mostly happens on Touhou Reddit and Touhou Wiki because of DMCA drama when ZUN's legal team began to DMCA pirated official Touhou content. When it was revealed that it was by ZUN's legal team, Touhou Reddit and Touhou Wiki began to support this decision. It is hard to say who is responsible for DMCA: ZUN or Ruw (but knowing how ZUN acts with legal stuff and how Copyright Crusaders work, I think it was Ruw). Also Touhou Reddit is against pirating PC-98 Touhou games (that is funny, because even Japanese fans use emulators to play PC-98 games) It is slowly changing now, because doujin creators realized that they need to somehow survive during COVID. So this unspoken rule is changing slowly (I wrote about unspoken rules here). Now crowdfunding is not that big no-no. It was big no-no before because for many Japanese people such fan activities were just a hobby. And when you bought doujin/fan-made works it was viewed not as payment but as donation and showing your support. The primary goal of these activities was mostly getting fun, money is the secondary goal. So trying to actually get money from such activities was viewed as something weird and was not really supported. It began to slowly change since mid 2010s and COVID had some impact too, so crowdfunding is not a big no-no now. Somewhat yes, that is what some fangames do. But if you want to actually earn money or you have a very big fangame that may be not enough. Funny thing there was a Touhou mobile before Cannonball fangame by fans which had gacha elements.

I already began to think they would never find my post. aggresive2hu and Nmlgc have found this thread. So I will discuss this topic again and I will reveal what I am doing now. First of all, that post will be fully reworked. Why? Firstly, there are many mistakes and I conveyed some information badly. Secondly, this post is mostly just the combination of facts, what happened, but it doesn't show why and how it happened in most cases. Before making that post, I mostly researched Western Touhou fandom and mostly how it looked like in mid 2010s-now. But sometimes I dived into earlier periods and into Chinese and Japanese fandoms. Back then I began to notice something. But after some time while I was searching using Nitter I found posts from your circle. And I began to understand what I noticed. I made a small dive into this and that is how that post appeared (the part about franchise was heavily based on tweets from your circle, other parts are mostly my thoughts). After that I continued to read your posts, but after some time I stopped, because there was no new info for me in your tweets (hearing every time that water is wet and doom-posting became boring for me + I didn't have a lot of free time). When free time appeared I started to research Chinese and Japanese fandoms more. But later one research (I will reveal all my sources in the remade post) inspired me to dig into this topic again, and much more deeper than you did (some your replies showed me that you don't know about a lot of things). I have read a lot of discussions (by Japanese and Chinese fans) and researches (with data and statistics) about doujin and Touhou (Touhou has been researched since its Golden Age). And a lot of progress on these directions has been made by doujin circles themselves. Now I know much more about this. I know much more questionable things related to ZUN and Touhou (for example many kinds of commercialization appeared before and during the first half of the Golden Age, but what is more interesting, why it happened) (+ since 2000s, ZUN and Touhou has been very different from the rest of doujin sphere). But I will not just criticize him (or hate him, because it will not change anything), but will also analyze why and how that happened, which will be much more useful. I can thank you all because your tweets led to all of these, although now I do not agree with more your points than before and with the way how you convey information. You sometimes act like other Western Twitter guys. But okay, most Western Touhou activities don't happen on Twitter, and I am not fully from Western World... So, my current plan about this topic is to gather more information, make a post about some changes in doujin scene, make another post (I will not spoiler it) and with fully prepared setup I will remake this post. The replies by Nmlgc are interesting, so I will answer to them. That is all for now. Some facts I mentioned here are intentionally phrased in a way it would be hard to find info about them if you don't know about them. I am curious how many of these facts the circle know about. Most these facts mean nearly nothing if they are viewed separately. Anyway, in the remade post I will put them together and cover them in more details (+ give sources to them).

Everything is added

Everything added to the list. Although KoishiSubterranean can be found in TLMC, I added it to the list too.

Everything sounds interesting. I will add them to the list if you upload them here.

Sounds interesting.

Added. Thank you for your suggestions. Is the formatting better now? Good to hear. Did I understand that correctly that the disc has not only this game?

Yes, but Nitter should not be that noticeable not to get Twitter's devs attention (so they would not try to break it again) Great idea. I changed some formatting. Do you have suggestions how to make it better? I meant that Mega link to non-paid version is lost. If you think that such media shouldn't be added to lost media, I can remove it.

Great research! Links are added. It is really interesting that Touhou Station mentioned them. Yes, Nitter is really useful, I use it a lot.

Thank you very much for the books and for this information. Everything is added.

Added

Hello. The fanworks you have imported are great and rare. Feel free to upload any fanwork you want on Moriya Shrine. I will add the books to the list when you upload them.

The original animation is Sakuya Izayoi Rampage. Looks like those videos are fake, because I have found no mentions of Touhou on Nicktoons on sites from 2010 (the claimed year of publication) to 2014. But I added it anyway. Never thought about adding such stuff, I know there is a lot of lost media like this. I am not sure about adding this one, but if you insist I will add it. (funny thing, I think I heard about this before... And I saw similar content in ZUN-style, yeah...)