The latest guidelines on what the Touhou Project “officially” considers acceptable includes a ban on the creation of ero-doujinshi, anime, sexy dakimakura, works which are “inappropriate” and even an explicit admonition not to sell Touhou products to foreigners.
The new guidelines, which in summary “restrict” creation of works featuring highly sexual content and provide even more draconian limitations on how Touhou-related works can be distributed and sold – no doubt with an eye to preventing any more Touhou anime, killing off any non danmaku games and stopping foreign barbarians from getting anything else banned:
These are the 2011 revisions to the Touhou Project guidelines.
[…]
Additionally, we will basically not permit the commercial circulation of doujin works.
[…]
Permission must be sought for the commercial sale of Touhou-related goods.
[…]
Also, please refrain from producing any commercial goods of a sexual nature (erotic dakimakura, etc.).
Restrictions on derivative works.
Please ensure you restrain yourself from producing any of the following:
Any work mainly constituting animation and produced on a non-volunteer basis, excluding 3D animation.
Selling Xbox 360 indie games.
Selling anything by way of AppStore or Android Marketplace (companies please enquire).
Anything not distributed in the same manner as the original works (general doujin sales channels [i.e. Reitaisai and Akihabara doujin shops]) – for example, selling downloads aimed at overseas buyers.
Anything else which is overly sexual, defamatory towards people, groups or races, or would generally be considered as socially unacceptable.
With this, the rather bizarre copyright situation surrounding Touhou seems to have become even more murky.
Despite the vast majority of the creative work in the Touhou universe being produced independently of the original creators, they nonetheless still try to control derivative works whilst desperately trying to prevent “commercialisation” for reasons nobody seems to understand.
Simultaneously, they attempt to squeeze royalties out of creators for the use of characters whose popularity is almost entirely based on derivative works – ethically and legally speaking, somewhat precarious behaviour at best.
Now it seems they are intent on taking a leaf out of Ishihara’s book by banning material not to their tastes, whilst clamping down on any games or anime which look likely to eclipse the (rather limited) popularity of the original games, attitudes unlikely to endear them to the wider Touhou community to say the least.
What? This has ZUN’s seal of approval? Why would he want to destroy his own fandom?
Don’t you mean CNN (Cirno News Network) there?
Well this is ZUN we’re speaking of here. It’s just that he doesn’t want to see this thing get into the comercial spotlight. So with that in mind the H-doujins are safe still. It’s just that things in the comercial limelight has to go though him first.
Besides he sees himself as an artist and not a businessman here. So he is trying to keep his work under control the best he can.
Also, the online sites he’s talking about is mostly the things that are posted on either DLsite or Steam that can be consdiered harmful to his creations. That’s what he’s worrying over.
Finally, he’s even trying to ensure that his stuff doesn’t leave the PC realm it seems with why he’s against the distrobution on XBox Live, PSN, and on iWhatevers. Overall he still wants this to stay in the doujin realm and not get comercial at all. At least that’s what gensokyo.org put it with this item.
So in the end he’s just covering his work to make sure that it doesn’t cause a horrible incident in a sense.
It’s about damn time. I’m sick of seeing Touhou doujins all over the internet.
Angry Birds > Touhou
Just face it, the guy already ammassed more money then Touhou in like under 1year…
And he didn’t even have to make more then 10 characters as detailed as Touhou.
That alone makes me sad, and I have yet seen any Perverted pictures of Angry Birds anywhere…
I.E. Better for Gamers at all Ages.