Touhou

I like them; not their fault Yukari keeps invading their ass.

For all that Marisa is portrayed as a ladykiller, there's actually a fairly limited number of characters that're seriously shipped with her

I want to start a petition to get people to stop referring to the Watatsukis as "Moonbitches". They never did anything wrong, they just defended their home territory against invaders. And they won fairly. And so what if Toyohime is a bit stuck-up. If anything, it's odd and unfair that Sagume is free from this prejudice despite being complicit in a more heinous act.

Yorihime and Toyohime are still complicit in allegiance with their genocidal race. Regardless of them being in the "right" defending their home, or the fact that they're not as bad as the rest of their race...Well, you get the point.

Also, Sagume probably doesn't get much ire because most fans don't seem to take stock into dialogue and backstory stuff. They just see "new character" and are like "I'M SHIPPING THAT WITH (X) TOUHOU!" Regardless of how wicked they actually are.

Ok, let me be a little more fair on that. Sagume's in a game, the Moonbitches are in a manga, and that was made when Touhou wasn't as "big" as it is now. And anyone who would recommend Touhou to another would be SILLY to make Silent Sinner in Blue the first Touhou related material, as it really doesn't show the best parts of the series off.

Silent Sinner in Blue was my first direct contact with the series. Except maybe the Bad Apple! video.

That last one is probably everyone's first though.

...Actually, Silent Sinner in Blue was my first experience with Touhou as well. Which is why I can say what I can, cause MAN everything after that felt so much different from that story.

My first (conscious) taste was with a remix of Byakuren's theme (though I did find Bad Apple later, and I probably had some knowledge of the UN Owen remixes beforehand)

I was lurking the thread recently regarding the developments regarding Little Suzy (Kosuzu)

edited 29th Mar '17 12:02:49 AM by MorningStar1337

My first experience to Touhou was the Concealed to Conclusion mix of Blue Sea in 53 Minutes. Didn't get to Bad Apple until much much later. Also I wanna add that TV Tropes is surprisingly the best and most active English Touhou forum I've ever been too. Almost everything else pales in comparision, including Mo TK.

Also, I don't remember anything about the Lunarians being particularly genocidal. Except maybe Lo LK but that was an act of desperation which did not come to pass.

edited 29th Mar '17 1:52:17 AM by Zansnae793

Sagume feels like a tragic character; Yorihime and Toyohime feel like overpowered smug princesses. That may be it.

edited 29th Mar '17 1:09:36 AM by ninryu

Uh oh, is it LUUNNNAAARIAAAANNSSS!!!!!!!-time in the thread again? Let's all try to stay civil and not bring Real-Life genocide and slavery debates into it again, ok? (And I actually sympathize how difficult/tempting that can be. I just had to keep myself from typing a few arguments after realizing I was about to break my own advice there...)

I certainly am absolutely on board with that; I never called them, or any other people, real or fictional, that word, for rudeness reasons. I call them "Moonsisters"; just as descriptive, but without judgement or offensiveness.

In terms of just SSIB, I fully agree with that.

They absolutely are all three of those things, and I say that as someone who kinda likes them.

Ahh, a classic, good topic I've probably already posted this several times over these years, but here we go again:

My first tastes of Touhou I got from raocow's LPs. He mentioned some things about it from time to time, but the big moment came when he LPd Super Marisa World. Now, for someone like me who had never seen anything of Touhou, this was a weeeiiird first contact , since every Touhou char in that game apart from Marisa herself is a funny mix/parody of/with a Mario Boss/char.

After that, I may have very occasionally browsed a bit through our very own TVT Touhou Wiki, while finding Trope examples of it in various articles, reading this and that about some char or another, but never understanding much of what the frick it actually was.

I finally broke and began to be really interested in actually finding out what the ballz this whole thing was about when I came upon the Thing that was indeed mentioned above as the Ultimate Greeter to Touhou Fandom: Bad Apple!! After falling in love with that utterly, it was back to the TVT Touhou Page for in-depth study, and then to this very thread to read it from beginning to end, and here we are

Sagume's special ability is also more interesting/amusing than the rather, frankly speaking, boring near-mary-sue-ish powers of the moonsisters as listed by the Touhou Wiki.

I also have a theory regarding why moonsisters are considered OP:

Consider that Sagume's first impression is by being a boss fight in a game instead of beating the main heroines in a manga. The Watatsuki sister fight in Silent Sinner happens in manga form, which might as well be considered a cutscene. Instead of giving the impression that the moonsisters are powerful, it gives off feelings of Cutscene Incompetence. Hence why the moonsisters are considered overpowered despite the existence of various other powerful beings in or out of Gensokyo, since those other beings can prove their power to the player via a trillion bullets flying in your general direction without needing the help of plot.

Overpowered and smug are the best combination, tbh. I would argue that the reasons people hate the Watatsukis tend to be the exact same reasons people like Yukari. My impression is that it's mostly tribalism: in SSiB the readers naturally identify with Team Gensokyo. If people had read it alongside CiLR as you were supposed to, you would've at least gotten that Toyohime perspective chapter in the middle.

edited 29th Mar '17 1:59:16 AM by Clarste

Rather than feeling like a cutscene ,the problem is that in the games the heroines can defeat the enemy no matter how powerful they are with their skills, since danmaku is a game of skill and elegance, but the fight against the Watatsuki sisters felt too one sided and easy, like the heroines had no chance at winning at all. That considering they beat Hecatia, Yukari, and multiple gods. You see the problem?

edited 29th Mar '17 2:05:29 AM by ninryu

None of the heroes beat Sagume either. She has a "defeated" portrait that is never shown in the game. She's all "okay, you passed my test, move along." Same deal with Yuugi and a few other characters in the games.

And, well, the Watatsukis are almost explicitly supposed to be stronger than Yukari, so citing her there is kind of weird. And sort of my point: people want Yukari to be omnipotent even though she's pretty much the same person as the Watasukis.

edited 29th Mar '17 2:09:44 AM by Clarste

Is SSIB like one of few times in the manga where we actually have had actual battles? I really haven't read some of the older mangas/chapters, so I don't really know,

It was an experiment by ZUN, one which by all accounts didn't turn out very well.

The dislike of Yorihime is definitely down to her beating down the characters the fans actually like, and doing it in a unsatisfying, vaguely-cheating way. I personally don't mind her that much, but that fight was ass and I can see how it'd colour perceptions

Toyohime's big moment of plot-relevance has her being a smug bigot, which I find somewhat harder to overlook

Sagume, though, is a fairly sympathetic character, even if she's complicit in some horrible actions, and ends up helping the PC

Well, as I mentioned, if more people had read CiLR alongside SSiB as you were supposed to, Toyohime would seem a lot less one-dimensional. If anything, it kind of comes across as her putting on airs to try to intimidate Yukari. Since she, more than anyone, knows just how questionable the Lunarian claim to superiority really is.

I do think it's reasonable to call that a flaw with the format though.

SSIB had danmaku battles, actually. They talked Yorihime into agreeing to them... well, they weren't entirely proper danmaku battles, but there wasn't any real violence, at any rate.

Personally, I really loved SSIB, but I know I'm in something of a minority in that regard. I don't really understand why people hate it so much, to be honest. It was fun and twisty and pretty tightly plotted in my opinion, and I loved the Watatsukis. I guess it's a matter of opinion, but it's a little bit of a bummer that so much of the fandom is so negative about it.

I'm not fond of how effortlessly Team Gensokyo got wrecked in their fights, but beyond that I didn't hate anything about it.

Incidentally, I loved Yorihime's inclusion as a Hopeless Boss Fight in Fantasy Maiden Wars.

All these moonsister talks made me actually curious about the Bougetsushoustuff stories, which I just realized is the only major story I've never read. I'm going to go ahead and start reading them now.

After reading a bunch of people defending the concept of Genosha, I have even less tolerance for the Moon as a concept

That is where I stand and that is the sole comment I shall be making.

Reading through Silent Sinner in Blue. Halfway through so far.

The art by Aki Eda is nowhere as good as Sangetsusei, Forbidden Scrollery, and recent Wa HH. But better than early Wa HH and Ea LND. With determination, the art becomes passable. It gets better overtime.

Observations on the Gensokyans:

• It's actually pretty amusing witnessing the Gensokyans trying to build a rocket. There are less oceans than buses in Gensokyo, but the concept of sailing apparently exists. The Sumiyoshi gods must be surprised getting a client from Gensokyo.
• Marisa hasclothes beam!?
• I'm going to take the mass cameo scene with a truckload of salt, since the fairies are bigger than the youkai here.
• I'm increasingly seeing Remilia as Laharl while reading.

Observations on the Lunaliens:

• Reisen 2.0's backstory is unfortunately hidden in Cage in Lunatic Runagate. Her characteristics aren't too memorable in the manga. You know, Bunnies being punished by Lunaliens for fleeing to earth might make Ringo the Dangomaster's story interesting.
• Sounds like the moon bunnies are like Helots in there and that they have no idea what earth actually looks like.
• Apparently the Lunaliens has unpronouncable names. Eirin and Chang'E is the name usable by humans. Attempting to say their moon names will simply result in XX here. That's something I've never heard of before.
• The lunalien city looks like such an utopia that it probably would have been destroyed in other stories. a la Zeal from Chrono Trigger or The High Entia from Xenoblade.