Needs Help: Characters.Touhou

As a subjective argument it's fine. It's just that people are trying to use it as an objective argument for why one image is better than another.

I agree, an individual might prefer one or the other for some reason, but neither is objectively superior.

There are a couple of advantages to following such a rule. The big one is that the newest art of a character tends to best represent their current portrayal in the setting, something AlaAlba brought up regarding Miko's hamminess being more accurately captured by her ULiL art than her HM portrait. Accompanying Nitori's profile with some hypothetical art based on her shy, friendly MoF characterization would feel weird if that profile goes into detail about how she's acted in later games, while her picture from ULiL doesn't have that problem.

Second is that following this somewhat arbitrary rule saves time when it comes to arguments over whether Remilia Scarlet's character is better captured by her SWR portrait or her IaMP portrait (the latter is totally better, by the way). This isn't to say that I'm necessarily opposed to voting on which art to use for character pics, but it would be adding more debate and argument to an already contentious issue.

The first is only an advantage if you're of the subjective opinion that recent is better than older portrayals, and the second is true for any such arbitrary rule.

Okay. But if you're of the subjective opinion that Reimu and Marisa's PC-98 depictions are superior to any recent material featuring them, does that make it any less inaccurate to present them as a purple-haired girl in a traditional miko costume and a redhead in a purple dress on their profile page?

I will argue that using a character's most recent depiction, whether in official non-ZUN art, ZUN art, or fanart, is indeed the result of an opinion that fresh art does a better job of representing them than older depictions, but it's a decision that is less likely to result in confusion among Touhou newcomers than deciding to use art based on the characters' first canonical appearances, and a decision easier to come to than attempting to determine which of Reimu's many portraits best captures her Reimu-ness.

I'll actually play Devil's Advocate here for a moment (though I fully agree with you on everything else!): Reimu and Marisa used to have an additional pic each, showing their longtime PC-98 selves. I loved this, and I don't remember at all when and why those were removed (I really hope it wasn't me accidentally when I moved them to their own new page!?) Because of all the chars, those two underwent the biggest cosmetic changes and would deserve an extra pic each. Is there a rule against that? If there is... hmm. (EDIT: Just remembered: Keine, Mokou and Mamizou still have their extra pics, so...?)

edited 9th Jul '15 10:57:07 PM by FellDeedsAwake

I am just gonna say this regarding the opinion to use non ZUN art. Why is it that Touhou official art is considered so ugly that those viewing it can't stand it when works such as Homestuck, Ib and OFF are allowed to have theirs without anyone questioning it?

@Matteste Consensus is that Touhou's art is terrible. Consensus is that Homestuck, Ib, and OFF don't have terrible art (or at least, speaking from an outsider's perspective). If enough people believe something, then often it becomes true. There's your logic.

Not saying that you're not right (in fact, with how much Zun's art has improved as of late, sticking to the most recent official art might eliminate that problem, if it exists), but, you know.

Consensus in this case means loud minority. Which may or may not have a majority backing. However, it's still not an argument for using it, because that's what's actually used in the games. If consensus says that the art in the game is crappy, wouldn't it make sense to use crappy art to represent the games?

edited 10th Jul '15 6:01:13 AM by AnotherDuck

I'm not really familiar with these works, but I will notice that none of their pages feature the Off-Model trope. The fact is that ZUN just hits a lot of the no-no's of art, as I understand them: hidden hands, club feet, off proportions, blobby faces, and then there are specific incidents like Minoriko's feet and Reimu's MoF skintone. Those other works' simplistic art is arguably a stylistic choice by their creators or the result of the limitations of their engines - Touhou's is mainly the result of its creator's limitations as an artist.

I also don't know whether the creators of those works have ever hired illustrators to do the art for any of their spin-off media. ZUN seems to have a thing about doing all the work on Touhou's "main" games by himself, but doesn't feel like trying to draw a manga. From this I conclude that he doesn't particularly mind when another artist represents his characters, at least outside of a proper bullet hell shooter. And even then there's the profile art for Great Fairy Wars.

I'm not saying the past is irrelevant - I'm one of those fans who tries to treat the PC-98 stuff as canon, after all - I'm saying that the characters have advanced and developed since then. I'm saying that depicting Alice as a little girl and Yuuka in her pajamas would not be accurately representing who those characters are now. I'm saying that using only a picture of purple-haired turtle-riding Reimu from 1996 would be downright bizarre if she's been a brown-haired girl in a nontraditional miko dress for the past thirteen years. I'm saying that even in the case of the characters whose designs haven't changed much, if we do decide that the only good art is ZUN art, then we'd be doing him a bit of a disservice if we used his earliest attempts at depicting them than his recent stuff that sucks less.

An advantage of a consistent art style (pro-alphes) is that the character designs can become clearer. With the original Zun art, for instance, one might assume Satori was intended to have stubby short arms. Maybe she is. More likely, that's a symptom of Zunart (what with her having normal arms in her other canon appearances). Offhand, another example with a different result is Patchouli's robes, which originally weren't striped, but the zunart sure made it look like it... but then she appears with the stripes in her other canon appearances as well because it was such a common misconception that it became real.

The Alphes fanart is still clearly the character from canon, perhaps even more clearly than official artwork. Downside of course being that some mistakes might not be clearly such (Is Minoriko supposed to have 2 left feet? Maybe.)

Personally, I would also be alright with debut artwork (With Marisa/Reimu also getting their most recent/best artwork for comparison). Pictureless folk from the games get their sprites, (possibly color manga appearances if possible).

Kasen/Kosuzu/Rinnosuke/3 fairies I'd take from their respective side works (GFW for the 3 fairies, probably.)

Basically, I want to avoid black and white as much as possible. Other than that, I'd be alright with Alphes (for consistency; it makes the differences between characters more easily visible than when different artstyles confound the design) or with debut images (Which show how Zun's art has progressed, as well as showing the initial impression the fandom got of said character.)

Awful lot of words to be like "don't really care, as long as it isn't black and white", I guess. There are solid arguments on both sides. Which is of course why it's been a recurring issue.

Also, regarding the PC-98ers, I'm of the opinion PC-98 versions should have separate entries from their windows selves (In marisa/Reimu's case, basically splitting their entries into tropes for PC-98 and tropes for Windows). Both in design and characterization, most of them change drastically. I mean, I'm still not convinced Alice of PC-98 is Alice Margatroid, nor that Yuuka of PC-98 is Yuuka Kazami. They're more like a Captain Ersatz of their PC-98 namesakes than anything else, I feel.

edited 12th Jul '15 8:31:18 PM by Antimatter625

Clock is set.

My opinion still stands that we should do it the way TPPR10 first suggested.

The only thing I am still unsure of is whether we should stick to the 250 x 250 format or go for full image.

edited 5th Aug '15 5:56:46 AM by matteste

Yes.

I'm fine with that.

I'm fine with using full artwork.

Though I should mention that I am now indifferent on "No Alphes/Fighting Game Art".

edited 5th Aug '15 6:22:56 AM by TPPR10

So... it appears as if the discussion of "Alphes-Style (like it is currently) vs. Zunart", which seemed to be the Main Thing that started all this and which was going quite well for a while, has sadly stopped with every Alphes-Style-Supporter gone, and now it's just details of how to do Zunart.

...I may have made my peace with this, actually. The Zunart-Supporters here did give me good arguments to think about, mainly that a char page having only fanart is really unusual for TVT, and that "this isn't an art gallery". And it is fair to vote in favor of one party if the opposing party doesn't show up to plead their case anymore :/ So, I'll go along with the last few posts and comment on the details proposed

...why? I am massively against both, actually. The pic is really freakin' great, and it being outdated doesn't matter. Its purpose is not to accurately portray every single Touhou char that exists at the moment, but to give newcomers a taste of the vast number of chars that this franchise has And it still does that, even if now a couple of dozen new chars have popped up; the difference is minor in the grand scheme of things. And the format is so great! It fits so nicely vertically along the char lists! Space-efficient! Removing it without a replacement would make the page really empty and dull. Touhou chars aren't dull!

On updating it: well, I don't have a group shot of every char up to the most current games at hand... if someone does, we could have a discussion about that, no problem But I would say: how often does it have to be updated? For example, do the three new chars from the current demo have to be on it? Sumi from ULIL? And then we'd need a new picture for when the full version of LOLKAT comes out? And then every demo and game after it? What a hassle. Also, the new pic might be more difficult to format and not be as space-efficient.

So no, I'd say updating isn't necessary at all. What does the same job, but much simpler, would be to change the text of the group pic to something like "Since this pic came out, 50 new chars have sprung up!". Gets across the message.

(very pained noise) ....ohhhh. See, this is where the Consistency Thing comes to bite us in the ass. I actually (contrary to what maybe some believe, since I'm an Alphes-Stlye-Supporter) genuinely like Zun's Char Art for the Windows Games! Marisa in EOSD was, I think, the first Zunart I ever saw, and I really liked her! I still do! And his most recent work in DDC and LOLKAT is freakin' great!

...but PC 98! ...noooooo... That just can't be defended. Whether the PC-98 chars get the artwork or the sprite treatment, that just would really be a blight on the char page as a whole and make the PC-98 chars look like second-class Touhou chars, especially to newcomers who look through the pages in order. Which I did when I first discovered Touhou; I began to love the chars from their pretty pics on the char page! Like Rika◊ for example; she has one of the few good Rika pics on the Internet, and looks cute. The thought that she could be officially replaced by this◊ or this◊ really hurts me

As stated above, this I don't mind. Be prepared, however, that there might be follow-up-discussions on which game to take the official pic from. Might be complicated.

...wait, what? What does that mean?

No Alphes-Style-Art? Well yeah, that's what this is about.

No art from HM? Yeah, I agree. HM was sadly the end of Alphes' dominance and disappointed many, including me. Every single aspect of it was defeated and rendered obsolete by the perfection that is ULIL's art, though So all those chars are covered.

No Fighting Game Art? ...wow, really? No, I strongly disagree. The SWR and ULIL Char portaits are so beautiful and detailed, showing the essence of every one of those chars! If we had Harukawa-art for every single other Touhou char, would you still advocate having Zunart instead? Don't think so. So we have to take what we can, which is all the ULIL Art for all those chars, and SWR Art for everyone from there.

That seems to unfortunately be the only way to go if we go this Zunart route, and it hurts me just like the PC-98 does Losing good pics of Koa, Momiji... gah ...well, I was about to type "We sadly can't use fanart for those, since it would then be inconsistent with the rest of the pics"... but really: small, chopped-out, badly scanned black-and-white pieces from official mangas and artbooks are just as bad in terms of inconsistency Worse, actually. But apparently, no sacrifice is too great on the altar of Official-Art-Only-ness.

Also: the Tree used to have a picture◊, since it is seen in the actual game, as Yuyuko's background. I have zero idea why it was removed, as it looks creepy and good, and it's official. What's the problem there? (EDIT: Scratch that, it's been back for a while Good.)

edited 7th Aug '15 3:21:58 PM by FellDeedsAwake

So can we conclude a decision has been reached?

Jag förstår inte... Not that I wanna drag this thread out for like a couple more weeks... but I'm not sure if two-and-a-half pages are enough to qualify as a "fair discussion" which could lead to a "clear consensus" :/ Soooo few people participated, sadly. I advertised this thread in the Official Touhou Thread, but nobody from either side was interested

I mean, if we DO need to reach a consensus quickly, then I would concede that the pro-Zunart faction had more people and arguments in here. How much that represents the wishes of the entirety of TV Tropes, especially all future newcomers to Touhou who get their first looks at the characters in here (always my first priority) is really unclear.

Also: if Zunart is implemented, this thread should still be used to discuss (hope we get more than just the two of us :/ ) all the many problems and questions that WILL come up. Like those I addressed in my post above, especially PC-98, Midbosses and Fighting Game Art. Those WILL cause additional controversy.

Since this could take a while to completely sort out, moving this thread to the Short-Term Projects forum sounds like a good idea. Yea/nay?

I wonder if that will make it more or less likely for people to jump in and at least offer an opinion. Normally I would suggest a crowner, but I'm not confident the options are sufficiently ironed out for that, and changing the details of the options mid-crowner is a bad idea. Especially since this is a problem that has existed for a long time, surfacing once in a while.

On the other hand, a short-term project thread would allow for more time to discuss each individual image if necessary, so it's probably the better option.

Sure! I dunno what any of these different types of threads mean, but I'll trust your judgement on that

So if I understood that right, it seems the discussion stalled Again. My worry with it being moved elsewhere is that people might post there once or twice after which they will just forget it existed and get nowhere.

While I had hoped it would get somewhere this time, I find it almost startling how quickly it cooled down after I did the change back to the old pictures. I wonder if people would have felt more obligated to discuss this if I had just left it as it was.

I might come across as an ass and obnoxious for saying this but I find absolutely no logical reason as to why we should even need to have a discussion like this in the first place. What I mean is why we even have this problem to begin with. It seems almost as some think ZUN's art is so abysmally bad that is impossible to show and that Touhou is some grand exception to the rule. To me it just seems the whole problem stems from one single user starting the trend way back when out of personal preference and now seems to have become ingrained into a sort desire to maintain the status quo.

edited 10th Aug '15 12:03:02 PM by matteste

Status quo is Gensokyo's way anyway.

Okay, joking aside, I will say what I think of the entire matter. In a way to better represent the character in those sheets, good picture is required. But ZUNart is lacking in quality and example of some of the portraitless characters, why some of the side materials also have their issues in term of quality. As I had said, Aya Azuma is very good, but her arts in Gensokyo Chronicle have inherently terrible visibility because of the shading.

That's why we got fanarts on these; Touhou's entire enterprise is in doujin work. If we want to talk about 'use official ZUN pics only', then both ZUN's Ruukoto and Mimi-chan pics are technically fanart anyway. ZUN has admit that drawing isn't really his thing (music is), and the reason why there are those people drawing thing for him is because he believes people can do it better than him. Ikeda and Azuma are old names in the fandom, while the very reason why Harukawa got the billing is specifically because she draws well. We got fanart in the character sheet is because that's the entire point of Touhou.

Or at least that's how I think it is.

I didn't know the reason why Alphes-parody is in place, but if it gives clear representation of the character in manner like any other character profile artworks out there, then I don't have any opposition.