Creator of the Touhou doujin shooting game series and notorious hat fetishist ZUN has expressed his discontent at the possibility of Touhou transcending the doujin sphere and becoming a fully developed commercial franchise; he expressly enjoins doujin publishers to restrict the availability of their works and not to promote them to the general public (apparently defined as people who don’t play his games).
In fact, in laying down a long and detailed set of regulations he has issued what many interpret as strong criticism of the much anticipated unofficial anime, due at C75.
After excusing himself from actually attending C75, he leaves this lengthy postscript:
“Also, word of the Touhou anime on which a certain circle is working on has reached me. As Touhou is game without voicing, the prospect of big name seiyuu voicing the characters and this being mistaken for an official arrangement worries me.”
“Certainly, as it’s a doujin project basically you can make anything, but if you make too big a splash I think it it’s troubling to me and the other circles. I’m especially concerned about the prospect of fans who are mainly into the anime becoming a class of Touhou fans who do not play the games, as it seems highly likely this will result in it being mistaken as official.”
“The same goes for other Touhou doujin works:
Make sure everyone who comes into possession of them realises they are fan made.
Don’t overstep the mark in promoting your works (especially by promoting to people who aren’t already familiar with Touhou).
Restrict distribution of your works.
If you heed these points, I believe we can avoid any confusion. I would like you to continue creating in that vein.”
These don’t apply to him appearing on TV, it would appear.
He also issues a long and onerous set of regulations over how he would like to see Touhou products handled; a few points stand out:
“All distribution must be limited … to only venues which distribute our games.”
“Also, even for circles which are not commercial operations, distribution and promotion of products in a fashion which exceeds the extent of doujinshi (for example selling the products in a normal book or game shop) should not be undertaken.”
“Resistance to commercialising these works is lessening… there are still no clear guidelines as to what is acceptable.”
“… but should you wish to distribute a doujin product in a commercial fashion, that is basically something we cannot allow.”
All this has caused quite a stormily mixed reaction, especially since it practically singles out the anime as an undesirable (or very nearly so) project; many fans actually agree, seeing it as an assault on ZUN’s authority and a gateway to (full as opposed to small scale) commercialisation.
A wide variety of opinions seem to be in evidence, but most notable are those who decry the upstarts who ignore ZUN’s wishes, and who spread confusion about the nature of Touhou, and those who view his statements as little more than diktat; these more sceptical voices tend to be less than appreciative of what they see as the pompous and arrogant way the orders have been handed down.
One of the more convincing arguments on offer is that this is indeed a case of ZUN starting to get delusions of grandeur, or possibly simply becoming upset that his games, and thus his influence, have been eclipsed.
Touhou in this view is seen less as stemming from a single author (who it must be remembered only created a series of shooting games with minimally elaborated characters and mediocre production values; the great bulk of the works are elaborated on by fans), than as being a collaborative project with thousands of participants.
Since it does indeed seem that without such vibrant fan participation ZUN’s shooting games would have been consigned to obscurity, this explanation seems to carry no small weight.
Whatever the case, it seems Touhou is at a crossroads, where it can either transform into a fully realised pseudo-commercial franchise, with pro-seiyuu already staking their claims, whilst still being intimately tied to the doujin world, or attempt to curtail the growth in its popularity by consolidating the fanbase around ZUN’s shooting games, which are of limited appeal to many who otherwise express interest in the world of Touhou.
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Those who think ZUN make Touhou for money and pirate his games should STFU *agrr*
ZUN reminds me a lot of Bill Watterson, the author of Calvin and Hobbes. He did not want to merchandize his cartoon characters, much like how ZUN doesn't want to commercialize his characters.
ahhhhh Watterson. He didn't want C&H syndicated, and for his characters to only be represented as they are in his comic.
So its not really the same, but i can see the comparison.
nice blogpost
I have to admit, that of all possible DORAMA sources in the animusphere, I never thought a blog post about ZUN would be the center of the next fandom scrap.
Oh, well. I guess it'll calm down sometime?
Still, you have to deal with commercialization, legalisation and what's not. If not handled properly, can be a serious problem. (One example is , getting a Odex-style letter from maikaze)
And then there's the ignorant masses, the "new generation of fans", whom only follow suit with mainstream (Narutard , Bleah ) stuff and shun everything else.
Plus the style of the animation isn't THAT mainstream.. probably.
Touhou is serious business.
For once I totally feel attuned to ZUN. Not everything has to be become totally business (damn you all pirates and capitalists), as long as its for doujin-dom, its all fine and dandy, but to see one's creation being 'mutated' into ways that are beyond recognizable even by the creator(s) does bring do bring alot of pain.
And too, its the shame that many whiners (yes, whiners) do not really understand anything about Touhou.
Everyone talks as if ZUN actually disapproves the anime, he doesn't. He encourages doujin circles to make their own anime in a past interview, and assumes that the Maikaze crew doesn't want unexpected trouble too. (Well, he didn't explicitly point out which circle doesn't want the trouble...) It is reasonable that he doesn't want the new anime to eclipse the existing fandom, and he asks the relevant people not to over-promote it for that reason.
Sure, he might be missing out on a huge potential market by limiting the anime, but who said ZUN was out for profit? He's got a decent job at Taito and he's only making Touhou for fun. I'd wager he'd like to keep it that way.
"only created a series of shooting games with minimally elaborated characters and mediocre production values"
That's a bit harsh.
http://zepy.momotato.com/2008/12/15/zun-on-touhou-and-derivative-works/
This article is really twisting the truth. You guys owe it to yourself to actually figure out what you're talking about before jumping to conclusions.
I know exactly what I'm talking about, but many will disagree with what I am saying.
The link you posted, aside from being a tremendously amusing anti-Complex site, gives a translation which is practically the same as the one I gave here - both are perfectly adequate. As I said, the difference is in the interpretation.
Critically interpreting ZUN's actions is not "twisting the truth", no matter how upsetting rabid ZUN fans may find it.
It is pretty clear from reading your article that your personal opinion is completely one-sided with the fandom and pays little respect to the original creator. The rhetoric and arguments mainly take aim at ZUN and his supporters rather than provide an unbiased translation of the original post. At least, this is how your critical interpretation comes across to me. Its fine to hold your position, but many fans read these articles simply to get an idea of what is going on. Yes, many people on 2chan have expressed similar views, but many others interpret it differently as well. At least take up both positions in the article so that fans are able to decide more clearly for themselves instead of just raising the pitch forks and calling for blood.
Looking at all this and the problem itself you can see two flows of this streaming river. First, ZUN doesn't like a fan-for-fans creation to become comercial and to forget it's beginning, what it's really acceptable and understandable; second one, being a doujin creation, this is really out of word because, this world, Touhou world, was from the start for people to like it... in this maybe i got wrong, but, it is only my point of view.
This is a story for people. If the people look more for other than the roots (the game i really like and enjoy) it's the choice of the fans. Lots of people don't know that Touhou it's a Curtain Shooting game and take it settled like something some other people made and enjoys with it.
As i see this, you like more the game you'll be on ZUN's side, you like the world of touhou and don't like or don't know of the game, you maybe on the other side. It's only a matter of you like this or you don't. You can take any side and it'll be right.
And from what i see, ZUN does not want the adaptation because it could become on something bigger that may eclipse the game and it's basis of doujin creation.
The only way to settle this is the same old way that really end with wars(Yeah, right XD), sitting in and discussing it until it's done for.
PD: Sorry if I commit mistakes in the writting, i don¡t speak english so it was hard for me ^-^u
LiveJournal Article:
http://tyrenol.livejournal.com/140243.html
I don't understand the controversy. Doujinshi isn't, and never has been, a copyleft free-for-all. Its existence depends on mutual understanding and respect between creators and creator-fans, and avoiding overt-commercialism is the most crucial (and tenuous, at present) tenent of doujinshi. There's nothing particularly out of the ordinary about ZUN's requests, only that he is put in a position to do so.
Why doesn't Zun just demand that there be (non-obvious) advertisments of his game within every episode and be done with it?
ZUN...is just scared of what his anime will become. He doesn't want it to get out of control like some anime out there (Pokemon, and someone said). You have to understand, put yourself in his shoes. Although i do understand that he may be going overboard, he's just being protective of something he loves and possibly we all love.
While he is rather overprotective of it, I still see where he comes from. But I also see where people opposing him come from.
Either way, I don't want Touhou to get out of control. YEs there's a chance it won't be that way, but I don't deal in chance. And I don't think ZUN does either.
if anything, it'll divide the fandom. take pokemon, for example. some people play only the games and will talk about ebs and natures and stuff. some fans play only the tcg, some only watch the anime and movies, and some are a mix.
if he wants touhou to be a pure danmaku franchise, then he should just say so without having to bash other fan-made things. if it's a copyright issue then ZUN by all means sue.
in any case, he makes money, right? i for one don't think he should be complaining, but he is right for stressing the fact that the anime isn't official. he should get at least royalties for it.
Although I only kind of skimmed the article so feel free to troll away but I feel it's his creation so he should be able to do whatever he feels like.
But many fans just want a high quality TOUHOU anime, even if non-canon. It can be a totally new Touhou that has no canon relations to the current Windows games much like how the current Windows Games have no canon ties to the classic PC-98 games.
I believe there is an answer to all your worries. All the worries are separating ZUN from Others. If ZUN collaborates and has, lets say a bigger share in a project like Anime. Then that Touhou would become another branch of him, it will also celebrate his original and ZUN will still have control over it. Taken he does everything properly. In this case the question lies, would the peoples who he wants to work in a project with give him the control that he wants to over Touhou in and over that project like he has in his original Touhou~? ^^
You know, one of the problems of ZUN is that he doesn't know how to make stories well. Most of the time he just makes a plot for the game to give reasons for the old and new characters to mess around but doesn't take the story too seriously and lacking characterizations. Of course that will cause the fans to make their own stories to fill up the absence of the character's stories. I'm aware that he made stories on doujin comics or mangas out of Touhou but it doesn't seem to be enough. Just take the example of Silent Sinner in Blue which he officially made. Honestly, it's not that good and this is not merely the artist's fault which ZUN asked to draw and some fans seem to blame but it's his fault as well. If he's not going to fill up the gap of the flaws of Touhou, then he shouldn't be mad if some people are trying to make their own version of Touhou.
Of Course, it's a shooting game. But he does expand on the characters in his Touhou books and the Cage in Lunatic project
"my interpretation of Zun’s.
Anime attracts newbfags.
Newbfags think they know everything, just because they watched the anime, which happened to be a fan work.
Newbfags suck. Big time.
Touhou becomes overloaded with newbfags.
Touhou sucks."
I agree with the above.
I don't get the part when he says,
"Don’t overstep the mark in promoting your works (especially by promoting to people who aren’t already familiar with Touhou)."
What does that mean?
If were you to draw touhou doujins, I don't understand the boundary around that and with promoting your works part.
Don't promote your doujins to people who haven't experienced the real thing. Why would you indulge yourself in a fanbased franchise instead of the actual thing. ZUN wants people to play his game. He's afraid new people will believe the fanmade anime is/should be the original. If you created a game and a fanbase was formed around something that someone else BASED on your game and looked down upon the original source, how would you feel? I think that's how ZUN is feeling with maikaze's anime. By the way, I've been wondering how the helllll did he manage to get professional seiyuu?!
my interpretation of Zun's.
Anime attracts newbfags.
Newbfags think they know everything, just because they watched the anime, which happened to be a fan work.
Newbfags suck. Big time.
Touhou becomes overloaded with newbfags.
Touhou sucks.
I dont.....really get it. What's happening here?
Hmm. How did I come upon Touhou... I believe I saw a flash from the nico nico douga kumikyoku. The flashes have voices. Why isn't ZUN cracking down on those? Yet I believe he right to act like this. Up to a certain extent. Creating rules is almost crossing the line of influential creator to Overlord.
Must be saying: "Give credit to where credit's due, bitch."
And indeed it surely is due. Maybe he should go the Pixel route and team up with Nicalis to release remakes of the PC-98 Touhou games (MAYbe Windows ones later on).
I've just recently discovered the touhou project and I must say, I'm completely blown away by it. How I came about it was through a search for a good shmup. As a gamer, I can understand ZUN's sentiments in this matter. Even as an artist, I understand where he's coming from - and from what I've failed to see in these post is that this man is an artist. Let's not forget this man single-handely created the touhou series; in art, music and game. I feel this is what he had originally intended for his work. Of course, ZUN should feel blessed, honored even, that his hard work has generated a community of devoted fans - fans that have, obviously, shown much love. I understand he doesn't want those not familiar with touhou to see this anime' and believe this it's "official". I don't know, this situation just feels like a spell-card being casted on us: beautiful, but deadly at the same time.
I somewhat know what ZUN means. The perfect example and probably what he has on his mind is Pokemon. As we all know, Pokemon was once known as a great gaming trend, but the anime, with its childish antics, turned alot of people off to pokemon, and I think ZUN is afraid of this as well. But this series needs more depth than it has. ZUN has created a monster, he made something he thought was a "college project" but also made a great plot and characters and a simple shooting game never covered much of what fans wanted to know. This caused some fan-fiction that became both popular and indirect. A perfect example is the infamous Flandre. She is know for her difficulty and boss theme, but other than being described as "Nuts", not much has been explained. This has spawned some stupid yet somewhat realistic fan-fic., like some I have seen show a total monster of Flandre, wanting to destroy everything, and calling her sister a "bitch" constantly, yet others I have seen her afraid of her own powers and wanting to protect others from her power, hell, I have even seen one where Remilia has sex with a woman, and it wasn't hentai either. ZUN let us taste the cake, but not have it too. My advice to ZUN is to work with the company and make OVAs', but not full blown anime like Bleach or naruto. He should also put on the front of every episode, "based on the Touhou shooting games" because we aren't ignorant, as many here have said, we can all google and research and it won't be hard to stumble onto the games, and love them. In closing, I see this as a window to the games, something to extend the hand of Touhou, not put a glove over it.
Why skip the marketing and profit opportunities? xD
Look at Higurashi and Umineko now...
I've never played the Touhou games before (Judging from the Wiki pics, they ain't up to my tastes. Little floating bubbles being shot across the screen? Give me Halo 3 anyday), but I don't see why its creator has to make such an ass out of himself. Why can't he just demand royalty funds, allow the anime to become official/commercial, and be happy with his money? I mean, isn't that what the creators of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (a doujin game that has a pretty famous anime) did?
ZUN really enjoys making his games. He makes them because he couldn't find a fun game for himself, so he was like: I'll make my own game, and it'll be awesome!! The only thing he needs the money for is for beer.
ZUN will be making his games untill he dies of alcohol poisoning.
We all know that almost every game that started small but went commercial went down the drain (Sonic games, for example), because they needed to please their so-called new "fanbase". They changed things in the games to please this new fanbase.
But because they didn't pay attention to the original fanbase, the original fanbase gets smaller and smaller.
And everyone knows that people in the "new fanbase" will never be a fan of the same game for longer than 2 months, and thus, the fanbase just got even smaller.
(I can't really explain what I think, my english ain't great. :(
Imperishable Night is better than Halo 3.
ZUN is slightly full of BS considering I just ordered quite a few official things outside of comiket.
I don't remember but wasn't also the latest Touhou game released on the 'street?'
Anyway, I agree with him that trying to profit off the franchise is a bad thing, espcially if the aim is to get by without his licensing approval.
On the other hand, bad mouthing my precious Suigintou deserves a severe severe punishment. If she wants to make a Touhou video, then there will be a Touhou video made.
I like his thinking, I like it a lot.
The problem is that knowing the internet, some people WILL think the anime IS official, just look at animeDB, they didn't bother to put it as a "doujin anime" and it looked like official. I talked to some people over various site about Touhou and IOSYS takes spotlight and their flash vids, now what if an anime sprouted, people will think Maikaze did it etc.
"Touhou anime will attrack weaboos." about sums up ZUN's line of thoughts.
Certainly, I understand that part but not allowing the games themselves to expand really boggles my mind.
Is there anything in the bottom shock-quote that's actually new? In particular, direct sales limited to event and specialty retail has been in ZUN's comment on derivative works for years.
I'm sure his mind could be changed.
If an enterprising studio got him drunk enough to sign a contract.
With all due respect, I think the tone of this piece is pretty off. Without retranslating all of ZUN's comments (I don't want this post to get too long - but I think, generally, http://cardcaptor.moekaku.com/2008/12/13/maikazes-touhou-anime-and-zuns-comment/ has done the tone of the translation way more accurately), his new rules are, I think, best summed up as:
* You can make pretty much whatever you want, but don't try to sell derivatives of my work in Book Off; if you limit it to things like doujin shops, doujin events, and mail order - or, roughly, the same way I sell stuff - it should all work out.
* Even commercial works are generally okay if you give me some advance warning, provide proper attribution, and limit distribution as mentioned above.
* Try to refrain from excessive mass publicity; especially marketing to people who don't know who Touhou is.
Just to insert some of what I think ZUN's perspective would be, this is a guy who has said he doesn't like participating too much in the online community or speaking publicly too much, since anything he says will cause a big fuss online. (Pretty prescient there ... well, to be fair, pretty fucking obvious, it's the Internet.) He's also said he doesn't want to go too much into official commercial spinoffs of Touhou because it will make the copyright issues surrounding the series needlessly complex. (Both of these comments were made at the gaming event he spoke at last year.) I seriously doubt he's trying to be a killjoy or steal all the attention for himself; rather, he's probably just trying to keep the general atmosphere the current Touhou phenomenon has. (Whether or not this is a good way of doing that is certainly up for debate, though.) The rules he's given here really aren't any more "onerous" than any of the guidelines he's given for doing Touhou stuff in the past, and it's all in line with the "private works" copyright loophole anyway.
ZUN is not going to take his ball and go home. He's going to keep doing Touhou as long as it's fun to do, and I think he's just trying to keep it fun for as many people as possible (again, it's certainly up for debate whether this is a good way of doing it). Besides, eventually he's going to die of alcohol poisoning or give up game development and open a bar, so it's probably best we enjoy this all while it lasts.
I kind of sympathize with ZUN's wish to see Touhou remain a phenomenon where most people are also fans of the original games (it's nice to see doujin artists' impressions of the games in afterwords and such, and I like stupid references so I like comics where the punchline is related to the gameplay like Tako has done a few times), but I also think it's probably futile for the most part, especially now that he's been doing Bougetsushou. But, I don't think that the fandom is going to implode either way.
The translation you link to admits he can't even understand parts of the original. Additionally, the tone of the original is austere and fairly formal, more a set of directives than some suggestions.
I don't believe for a second the copyright issue is anything but a smokescreen. His latest comments don't even mention it.
Surely, he's just attempting to maintain control over the direction of the franchise he "created".
For someone who created a popular blog largely on the hard work of other artists, I'm not at all surprised by your dismissive comment.
BAAAAAAAAAAW
The message in the end stays the same regardless of the tone. Unless you're able to translate the comments yourself and make your own conclusions based on that, then no matter what, you aren't going to get the facts straight. The majority of the people who read this site can't read Japanese at all so they're left to the translations of others in turn creating their opinions off what someone else felt was the best way to interpret it.
Miha, nobody cares about your tired whining about copyright, or your inferiority complex, so you may as well give up on the snide comments.
Go and direct your wretched complaints against Nico, YouTube or even 4chan, and see how much notice they take of you, or better yet, have you considered doing something productive with yourself?
A friend of mine also takes to creating RPG games on our off time. We have always done so with the intention on keeping a low profile, and having the games for the games' sake. For something we enjoy.
For that to become commercialized would take away what out original intentions were. It's not to make a quick buck. Selling it just increases it's worth in the eyes of the public, and allows more people to see it. He, like us, creates because he enjoys it.
For us, we wish to tell a story - to invoke a certain feeling from you.
For Zun, he wants to give you a bullet hell game. The story for him is probably something neat he thought up to tack onto it (which I believe was the case as outlined in one of his interviews). And while he might be alright with the expansion of it and the enjoyment his fans feel from his characters, he doesn't want it to go beyond what he envisioned for the series.
After all, the commercialization if nothing else would bring him more money, so there's no loss there. He just doesn't want the image of his creations to be skewed in a way he did not intend. Which is why he's not putting down the doujinshi in general, but the commercialization of his series which it's starting to bring forth.
I can sort of understand ZUN's feelings. He wants to support the doujin scene for obvious reasons, but the bigger Touhou becomes, the more he loses control of it. The series is in a weird situation.
Maybe he just wants a large slice of the pie...
If I had to choose I'd take ZUN's works over fan created stuff based on his works anyday.
Although I'm hardly a hard-core fans, I do enjoy the games, but have at times found myself lost and confused about the world. The information you get in the games is rather sparce and a lot of the doujin work is out of reach for someone who's only vaguely capable in japanese... or too lazy to look for translations.
But I have to place myself somewhat critical of this; I believe instead that a lot of people who begin their exposure to Touhou through an anime will likely research the subject and come upon the games. If he's worried that fans will base their belief on canon after the anime, he's most likely aware of the pretty lacking plot in the games. And I'm pretty sure whatever happens in the anime will follow what has been made doujin way, considering there's quite a lot of ZUN-accepted fan-stuff to base it on.
And he's making a helluva lot of money without having to pay taxes, or at least so I've heard (and concluded considering rough estimates of how many games he sell counter to production "costs")
He was actually explaining that he just had to move into a new apartment because the previous one became "saturated" with stuff...
I like canon personalities and plot. From where did you hear about ZUN's profits by the way?
It's not really a reliable source, but I'm attending some classes in studies of anime & manga, and one of the people holding it has been to a couple of Comiket and have spoken with ZUN a couple of times.
I'm fully aware this sounds like horseshit, so I'm not going to support it any more than say that the japanese taxation department completely ignores the going-ons at the Comiket, and if he sells just short of 10,000 issues of his game (not impossible, considering the literal millions of people that visit the Comiket every year), he'll be making a... I dunno, say he sells his game at 1000 yen (pulled out of my ass), that's 10 million yen. Even if he has to pay for the reproduction of the master disk as well as transportation to and from Comiket, that's an awful lot of money for something he's doing on his free time.
...again, I'm making a pretty baseless guess here. Also, of course there's even more money in circulation considering the countless circles doing doujin-stuff on ZUNs OC, but yeah.
And anyone with proper data is quite welcome to correct me. ^^;
Otaku Markets 2007: Over $4 billion:
Doujinshi: ¥55 billion (and this appears to be just through recorded channels)
Doujinshi is big business whatever ZUN and company say.
I don't understand what he is being so uppity about. I'm interested in the Touhou world and characters, I've never been a huge fan of bullet hell type games, and by extension, the Touhou games sit on my external HD. Why exactly do I have to play a game I don't particularly enjoy to get to the story I DO enjoy? Seems he's a bit low on booze funds and is angry other circles are cashing in on his success.
That's the point ZUN is trying to make. Touhou is mainly about the gameplay, not the millions of doujin works spawned by fans. For example, what if millions of Type Moon fans were only into their products due to doujin works without even playing the visual novels or watching the animes? That sounds a bit ridiculous and that is what ZUN is all uppity about.
It just proves that the doujins are more interesting than the original product then, which means he needs to make an effort to bridge the gap between these two types of fans.
Some of the diehard Touhou fans that can name all the characters are yet to play the games.
i have played a couple of games, and i cannot name all the characters..
Well then he take charge of his own franchise.
And Damn he should ZUN owns Touhou we loves Touhou.
Play by his rules and continue like Touhou instead of making him stop making the awesome games and the awesome music.
Awesome games...?
I know some diehard Touhou fans that can name 90+% of all the characters, love the music and character designs but are yet to play the games.
And those fans make up a large amount of Touhou's fanbase.
The problem is simple, really: ZUN wants Touhou to be defined primarily by his pet project games.
In this, his desires conflict with those of his fans, who want more exposure to the universe than ZUN is willing to produce. Fandom is only an imperfect compromise, dissatisfying to fans because of it's limited scope and dissatisfying to ZUN when it begins to redefine Touhou.
As the creator of the franchise, ZUN is faced with a choice:
Serve the fans, let the franchise grow into more than you intended.
Serve your vision, copyright everything and drop the hammer on projects that alter the creative direction of your franchise in public perception.
Or waffle, do a little of both, and everybody stays malcontent.
It looks like he's made his choice.
>serve the fans
by "fans" you mean "masses"
and by "serve" you mean "sell out to"
The second option translates to serve the loyal fans and protect touhou from becoming popular with the hetalia naruto and bleach fanbases simultaniously and keep the franchise from being whored out to dirty capitilists.
Do you really want to be having a conversation about touhou with someone, ask "whats your favorite game?" and get "there are touhou games???" as a response
>to get to the story
... e.e
To be honest i can see his point. I mean from his point of view he has created something and put effort into improving it. And then someone has taken his original concept and adapted it to another media which could draw attention away from its origins. Im not saying he is completely right since if i were him i would basicly go up to the creaters of the film and get on board and get my cut and that way it becomes offical content again instead of a spinoff basicly.
I'm alittle confused aswell.
Imean the bit about him not wanting Touhou becoming commercial is understandable.
But downplaying the anime is kind of harsh. I mean Touhou has been put into drawn format many times over, so the anime doesn't really make a difference.
of course maybe I'm misinterpreting this, and he isn't downplaying the anime at all.
This part also confuses me:
"seiyuu voicing the characters and this being mistaken for an official arrangement worries me.”
Why would he assume we see it as that? I mean what even defines "official arrangement" ?
Ergh...I don't like how this changes my perception og things.
I guess that creating a fan-created anime will take the franchise up to a higher level, that's quite lethal for the normal game series itself. The border of unofficial and official is getting a bit crushed, and could cause a lot of mistakes and problems, if the scale goes from fans to general public.
Well I think with the seiyuus, I think he basically means this:
The Touhou franchise doesn't have any voicing in it. As this is the first Touhou anime to be released, many people will think that the voices in the anime are the ones that are "original". Which isn't true, because there never have been voices to begin with.
People who never experienced the Touhou series before and watch that anime, will get the impression that the games will lack the voices from the anime, for example.
I think that what pisses this guy off is that his original work has picked up momentum thanks to people that are not him. Especially now that professional voice actresses have actually worked on it.
I can sort of understand that. Being the creator of something and apparently very zealous about his work could cause him to react like that.
Still, why does he think people wouldn't be curious about the original work, in light of a semi-professional looking thing like this?
I discovered Tsukihime and its rather interesting (Nasu)verse thanks to Melty Blood ReACT...
But to each their own, I guess.
So he is forced to make actualy notable games to begin with...If he now creates a touhou game with voice acting, he could just hire the voice actors from the anime (wich makes sense and dosn't cost as much as someone, who actual doing voiceacting as a job)
The creator could now react spontaniously and work with the anime creator team together to create a game wich could be a really good indeed.
I would buy it. <:3
any touhou fan loose on the internet will have listened to Kero Destiny and Perfect Math Class, both of which have voices. these are not fanmade either!=, they're from Touhou Project!
more likely, i think he thinks that the fandom is taking touhou where he does not want it to go..
And here I thought KyoAni was the world's only company that was afraid of money an success for their continued delay of Haruhi 2, but it seems ZUN also is afraid of his wallet exploding.
Seriously, what could we want more than MORE Touhou?
he's not going to make any money on this, someone else is producing it.... Even using the excuse of advertising has its limits.
More Touhou always sounds good doesn't it? But the issue here, and what ZUN is afraid of, is what Touhou will become. I've ZUN gets shunted out of the picture by a third party influence that eclipses the projects origins, is that still really Touhou?
A single anime may not seem that much of a threat, but as said above, it could act as a gateway. Things can get out of hand faster than you might imagine.
Though very different in subject, all of this reminds me of the story of 4Chan. Moot creates 4Chan, its a massive success, it starts to out grow Moots original vision, then it seriously out grows it, Moot gets nervous about the state of his little website, the hordes of the anonymous take control, many lulz are had but ultimately 4Chan destroys itself, Moot is now completely irrelevant and has lost all control. 4Chan is now a mystical place that "newfags" discover later on, and no one really knows what is going on. The ones that remember the "good old days" attempt to forge new homes such as 7Chan, but ultimately to no avail. It all becomes a misunderstood passing phase, now mutated into something terrible.
That may be a slightly bizarre comparison, but that's kinda how I see it. ZUN is worried about a future Touhou being snagged by giant corporations finding a loophole and taking it from him. Where the loyal Touhou fans of today will be the minority in a sea of fake touhou, and forced to find a new home.
Am I being overly paranoid? Probably. Take it easy.
Zun is just mad that his art is shit. At least he is a good programmer.
His art is on the same level as his taste in hats...
Which means his art is awesome!
But yeah, I think he's somewhat elitist in this aspect - that normal people don't "deserve" to experience his games, or something, perhaps because by going mainstream, Touhou becomes impure in a way.
Ain't been a truer thing said.
While commercialism has heavy drawbacks and the wanting to keep the ZUNinverse free and open for the masses of fans to have absolute creativity and free from all the commercial restrictive bullshit and a work of love, I've never understood the appeal of obscurity.
While I enjoy the games, I wouldn't know about them at all if it weren't for them being meme.
And also, restricting doujin works will only help to keep them to a spot where they're more likely to disappear off of the face of the earth. Only release 500 copies? That means one Earthquake can take the entire existence of the doujin from the face of the earth.
And we should be happy that important Seiyuus have graced this project, a doujin project, with their use.
Basically, an unoffical anime is still an anime. And using official voices just means the doujin community has been graced. So if I were ZUN, I wouldn't flip out, since the lifeblood of Touhou is that it's a non-commercial community of fan and creators with absolute non-commercial freedom. And I can only hope this anime does well and doesn't suffer from ZUN's words.
Basically, I share a bit of feeling behind ZUN's words, but I'm scared of him saying them as well. Restrict Touhou too much, and make fan creators too scared, and you'll make your own great creative force implode. I don't want any fanmaker to be discouraged from fanmaking.
Obscurity lets ZUN maintain the "soft control" over his characters he's exerted all these years- he's never had to tell someone "you can't do that with those characters" and shut down a work of love. A big project, however, could force his hand.
For example, what if the anime killed off a character? You could just shrug and say "it's a doujin", but it rings a bit hollow with an big-name cast and years of effort. People getting into the scene from the anime would have a slanted view of the series, which (in significant numbers) would create pressure on ZUN to accept the anime as canon. If the anime is successful- and it probably will be- what if people start talking about a series? Things could get ugly fast.
In short, this could force ZUN to start approving and disapproving of how characters are used- something he's never done before and probably never wants to do. By saying this now, he's trying to maintain the status quo- but Touhou's rising popularity is probably going to change things sooner or later.
In the end though, we have to realize that as much as we love the Touhou series, it will die. Maybe later rather than sooner, but it certainly will die out in it's popularity. As will vocaloids, as will Nagi obsession, all of it.
For me it's hard to imagine what the internet and my escapist lifestyle would be like without it, but I can accept it. And I can accept Zun's feelings for protecting the envisioned outcome of his creation.
Ideally Touhou dies when ZUN dies or when he stops making games. Hopefully by that time we'll be much older. But with the recent ruckus and reaction from some fans, they might just end up killing "the goose who lays the golden egg" a bit earlier than we thought.
The way I see it, it really shouldn't be a big deal at all because the official games and fan works go hand in hand. I started off with the games which eventually lead me to the fanon which in turn keeps me interested in new games and so on.
If someone new is introduced to Touhou through the Maikaze anime and ends up enjoying it, then they would most likely look on the internet to learn more about it. After all, it isn't exactly hard to use Wiki or Google.
I don't see how restricting doujin works could possibly do anything but increase attention towards the Touhou series and by extension the game series. If anything limiting exposure would stunt growth and earn fan criticism.
Agreed. Speaking as someone outside of the Touhou fandom, it seems to be a pretty exclusive community - that is, it seems like it would be difficult to learn all the ins and outs of Touhou on one's own. A move like this makes it seem like the community is becoming even more ingrown, and people outside the fandom but with interest in it, like myself, will have even less hope of ever understanding the Touhou phenomenon.
The larger a franchise Touhou evolves into, the lesser control ZUN will have over the the serial. Evidently this is a situation he is wanting to avoid, as he seems a huge control freak. However, it may be that he doesn't quite grasp the whole situation of his Touhou phenomena - I don't know how many others followed this trend but I only heard of Touhou through exposure of its fan base, namely its huge tidal waves of impressive art galleries on countless sites. It was about a month before I figured out all this fan structure originated from simple doujin games, and have only played some of the games do to my already existing interest driven by the colourful fan base. In this way it is can be argued that the Touhou fan base does indeed exceed the actual Products and therefore it is a bit silly to downplay the distribution means or methods of the franchise as he's not going to find many new people playing his games unless they hear about them first, and direct advertisement of the hard-as-heck Danmaku shooters may be rather intimidating. Along the same line, how many people would of been interested in playing Strike Witches games before getting into the anime series? Mainstream exposure will not necessarily diminish the doujin appeal - if anything it could possibly expand it. Either way, ZUN is reminding me greatly of Bill Waterson who absolutely refused to commercialize his Calvin and Hobbes comics aside from publishing collections of the strips as he had decided doing so would invalidate the themes and opinions of many of his strips and of course his own opinions. So on an ethical ground I can agree with why one would refuse "mainstream" commercialization (is this series becoming something not so much about the love of the product as just making money?) but when his argument strays onto the grounds of keeping the series only for the fans of the games, I think he might of already lost that battle a while ago, and is also really an almost conceited and either way not a particularly practical objective.
No offense but labeling ZUN as a control freak is a bit excessive. As stated in his lectures, his reason for making Touhou is because he wanted a game that could challenge himself. ZUN has never made much with any of his Touhou games. The reason he makes them is for fun, and he'll keep making them even if he "loses all his fans in the process." The guy is aware of the extent of the Touhou fanbase. He enjoys the doujin works that come from the fans like the rest of us. His concerns with commercialization in my view is more like a concern for the doujin community and what Touhou stands for. If big companies get a hold of the Touhou franchise there will be a lot of change, like setting the personality of characters in stone. Good or bad I don't know, but I'm leaning towards the latter.
I'd like to echo this idea about the whole Doujin thing. Like I said to one of my friends once, I love the whole thing that Touhou is that it belongs to the whole fanbase instead of a company shooting out some facts and end it there.
I think he wants to try and keep this kind of environment, and not attract people who don't understand this kind of thing. Way I see it, he's trying to stop Touhou from becoming what Naruto is in the states.
Touche, rereading my post I would agree I sound much more excessive than I intended, so as an after thought keep in mind I don't necessarily consider being a control freak a morally bad thing - a lot of authors who allow terrible movies based on their novel series need much more of that sentiment - just a type of behavior one feels inclined too. In all honesty, hypothetically placed in a similar situation I hardly would feel trusting of anyone to even publish anything I would make in fear of them screwing up my intentions, so the idea of basically handing over a franchise title to strangers would be quite mortifying. Perhaps, we need a bit more of this mind set on a much larger based scale of economics.
So basically...ZUN's concerned/being protective of a child he bred and raise and seems about ready to leave the nest?
After skimming the comments (I do apologize if my comments may sem off...Way too many comments to read and sort through, so I just skimmed), maybe he's just being something of an overly protective parent?
I know I might get a bit possessive if something I made got turned into something bigger and possibly something I never intended it to be. Even more so if someone starts passing it off as their own. (Or as seeming in this case, gets mistaken as a creation of someone else's labor, with regards to the Doujin anime.)
I think he's just trying to make sure the roots of the franchise don't get lost in commercialization. Perhaps making sure it keeps focus and on-track. There're many instances of a franchise getting out of hand and the quantity starts exceeding the quality...Or the original point of it gets lost and the subsequent works barely have anything to do with the original theme/idea/focus.
But, as it can also be interpreted, he's just pissed about people infringing on his Intellectual Property without him having any input on it.
Who knows, it can be either when read in just text without accompanying audio to truly judge his tone and intent.
Let's just hope Touhou's future is a bright one. Last thing we want is for another fun/good franchise to go down the hole...(Minami-ke Okawari and Nanoha StrikerS, in comparision to their respective previous season(s) at least.)
From what i perceive, ZUN is having some delusions of grandeur and sees that doujins based on his work are getting more fame and eclipsing his.
Why not him join in to the touhou anime project and "cash-in"?
Zun only wants the money and the glory.
His art certainly is a shit and the only ones who have maintained a level of acceptable quality are the fans.
Zun is clearly afraid that their creation shines more like an anime that the game.
That's what I thought too. ZUN hates foreigners playing his games, is a major control freak, only wants to keep his fanbase of hardcore bullet-dodgers, and his art sucks.
Has he seriously ever considered that some of his fans couldn't possibly finish the games no matter how hard they tried, and thus, wouldn't be able to grasp more of the story for themselves, even when they desperately want to?
I say he's an elitist dick.
What's he trying to prevent is a wave of "WHAT? TOUHOU IS A GAME? OH WELL." fans (God knows how many of those exist right now anyways) or is worried that after pretty much all this near unlimited freedom that he gave the circles to work with regarding his characters that once the anime sweeps in, then people will start thinking that is how they are supposed to be and it will ruin their ability to accept the characters to be presented as anything else, especially when it comes to the actual canon material.
Hell, the very reason why I decided to stop being a lazy bastard and put forth the effort to create the Touhou panel I plan to do at Sakura-con was because of http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/3255/122592686455nq1.png 's "Wait. Touhou is a game?" line.
I love this series, and have seen plenty of series ruined or taken a blow at least as a result of their transition to an anime from their original source material because too many people assume that the anime is the original source material and don't do anything to correct their misconceptions thus they in turn say that the series sucks for something that was the result of the anime and not the series itself.
Guys, the article changed the tone of his voice, what he was saying was if you guys want to distribute this anime, please tell them it's fanmade for those people who had never finished them.
http://cardcaptor.moekaku.com/2008/12/13/maikazes-touhou-anime-and-zuns-comment/
There are as many translations as there are translators, there is no problem with finding others.
What I do not agree with is stating "this other one is the 'real' translation" - you may as well say (technical errors aside) that "this opinion is wrong, this is the real opinion".
Especially where somebody is just selecting a translation to get at what they want to hear...
I don't see a problem if the guy and other people want to find alternative translations. Articles here usually have a sensationalist bent, and if that puts them off somewhat, they may prefer a way to find a middle ground from what they read up on, which in the end would be their choice.
Even I got a different tone when I translated the content of the blog post for a friend.
People who can actually read Japanese, like you or Solamarle, can decide how accurate these translations are and which one is better. Your rhetorics are useless.
Useless, because I can actually decide based on direct reading and experience, rather than second hand opinion?
As I said before, interpretations (by Japanese) fall into two basic camps, those worshipful and those sceptical, which is the same cleft you see in the English comments here. Some fall strongly into one camp and thus seek out an interpretation and translation which supports them.
You can tout that link all you like, he admits he can't even work out what he's saying, so how accurate do you think his translation is?