Bhrjr

Alright, so you do have passions for Touhou and want to work on projects to better Touhou. When the time comes for my fananime project, I'll give you a heads up and see if you can help.

I never thought about companies potentially boosting their popularity at Comiket by "bribing" all the doujinshi artists. It's probably definitely going to happen, a new gacha IP that "artificially" raises its status in comiket as one of the IPs with the most circles. (Although that sort of disingenuous popularity definitely won't last long) Speaking of which, maybe you also have a bone to pick with Blue Archive, something that just had over 2k circles at Comiket? I personally really dislike it because of how it tries to pander to the most basic otaku things and nothing in it really feels original.

Regarding the decline of Touhou, why not just focus on making Touhou more popular (in the west especially)? Then there'll be more western creative making Touhou fan contents, more Touhou conventions in the US so people don't have to fly 2000 miles just to attend Touhoufest, and more Touhou fanclubs in university just like how it is in Japan. The risk of bringing in so-called "bad apples" would be far trivial to worry for. Making things like fan archives or the "English THB wiki" won't attract more fans. (It won't appeal to people outside of the fandom, and probably not to the casuals) Even being a Touhou-tuber has its limits. (Most Touhou youtubers barely get 1000 views on their video, again due to Touhou's niche presence on the west) And let's not get started on being a "translation circle". (For example, IceFairy: Sure, they do have 6k followers on Twitter, but outside of Xitter no one knows/cares about them) I used to do scanlations too, until I realized you can only get so much attention with it. For my solution? Learn how to draw/write stories/compose music/design game and make a Touhou fanwork that becomes as prominent as Mystia's Izakaya/Luna Nights. Which is what I'm doing right now; learning how to draw. (Hoping to one day make a highly commercialized (lol) fanime with a plot compelling enough to draw in the mainstream crowd. I'll probably talk more about it in your next post) And it certainly doesn't take a whole team to pull off, as KKHTA/Osana Reimu showed. Heck, if you want to go big, it shouldn't even be that hard to ask Zun for permission in crowdfunding. He's recently approved Dankagu and Hifuu Club anime for crowdfunding, and it only seems to be a matter of responsibility/competency when he refuses permission (in one of the streams he said to be worried about somone "geting more money than they're able to actually handle". Well, for me I would want to make money from being a Touhou fan, that way I would spend less time working at a job that, isn't related to Touhou. I see it in a way that if you're truly serious about wanting to change Touhou, you would want to make it your career as well. How come? Because they're gacha games? Or would be upset if Touhou became popular like Pokemon and its merch are found all across the globe? This reminds me the time when I looked at Korean Touhou forums. They've basically just become defeatists and sees China as the "big brother" that'll do all the heavy lifting.