Who's Yumemi? ~ 3/19/2023
So, I'm a big fan of Touhou Project. (Can you tell?) And here is the space where I'd explain what that is, ordinarily.
I could just say, "Touhou is a series of arcade-style top-down shooter games featuring original characters, stories and music," but that's not what Touhou is, not really, not entirely. The problem, is it's so difficult to say what Touhou really is, because nothing truly like it has existed before or since. A bunch of other, smarter people have tackled this subject, and I don't think it's much worth getting into here. Anyone reading this has their own mental picture of what Touhou is. You (probably) already know the games, the characters, the music, the fan fiction, the doujin comics, the doujin music albums, the fan videos, etc etc. Touhou is Touhou. There's no other way to put it, because there's nothing else like it.
To think it begins with one person. One absurdly talented person produces one game, and then a few more. A million more talented people come along, draw from that vision, that game, draw its pretty character designs even prettier, mix its great music into something even greater. From there, there arise remixes of remixes, parodies of parodies; it’s so intricately interwoven and every fan has all that original material plus each other’s material to work with, and its indie purity makes it one of the most unique franchises out there.
My favorite characters are the very first outside-world humans to be introduced: Chiyuri Kitashirakawa and Professor Yumemi Okazaki, the antagonists of the third Touhou game, Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream (PoDD). They're a pair of young geniuses from a futuristic Kyoto university. They’re a bit weird, but they set the stage for tons of fascinating themes of “magic-meets-science.” And their slapstick interaction with each other is very entertaining! The dramatically cynical professor Yumemi, with her chuunibyou poeticism and flair for the spectacular contrasts wonderfully with her laid-back assistant, who is airheaded and scatterbrained despite her own genius mind.
So, why pick old and depreciated characters from the third game instead of picking someone more relevant? Many fans consider the PC-98 ecosystem to be old or obsolete, and most disregard the games entirely as an awkward growing-up phase for the series. And I don't think that's fair! There is an undeniable charm, I think, in the Gensokyo that's presented in the first five Touhou titles. Because the world itself was mostly undefined, Gensokyo felt much more mysterious to me. In contrast to the lighter tongue-in-cheek tone of the character dialogue in those early titles, the darker, less defined backgrounds made the world itself have this vague dreamlike quality to it. Everything about Gensokyo felt a little more ominous... maybe even threatening? I think the word would be "liminal" — the plots of the PC-98 games followed a kind of dream logic unique to them.
Naturally, PoDD is my favorite Touhou game. I love the "versus" gameplay, just as I love the gameplay in its spiritual successor, Phantasmagoria of Flower View. The spread of characters overall is really interesting, but I generally feel like most of the cast doesnt show off enough character, so they seemed kinda lacking. It's mostly because the versus dialogue is so sparse that I barely got to feel the vibe of any of the cast except for Chiyuri and Yumemi; since every character's route ends in the two of them, it's easy to piece together a very complete picture of their personalities! I feel like PoDD's plot is the most unique and distinguished of the PC-98 titles. I appreciate its important theme of magic vs. science (fantasy vs. reality), and it deserves credit for introducing those recurring themes into the series.
I will say, however, that I see the PC-98 games as its own little version of Gensokyo, seperate from the "mainline" titles from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil onwards. As much fondness as I have for these characters, I don't find it particularly necessary for the canons to be merged or for old characters to return. The creative direction of the series has changed to the point where these characters don't really have a place of belonging anymore. When ZUN brought Yuuka and Alice into the Windows era, they basically became completely new characters. Yuuka now has an association with flowers that she didn't have before, and Elly (and the rest of Mugenkan!) is nowhere to be seen. Alice no longer has anything to do with Wonderland, and is no longer a Makai demon in the shape of a girl, she's a magician obsessed with dolls now. This discrepancy kind of gives a level of lore that I don’t enjoy...? It’s hard to explain.
While I personally think of the PC-98 games as something of a rough draft of the Windows series, that doesn't have to be a bad thing; it can be fun to look back and see similarities and ideas in mid-development, and it’s something to be grateful for. There was this experimental-ness to that era that I sometimes feel is missing from modern games. I think PoDD is the perfect example of that, with its weird indirect battle gameplay style, cameo characters from non-Touhou works, and insane story. It's great! I love it.
So, yeah! That's why the site is decorated by those two anime girls you may or may not have ever seen before.