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Sunday, July 3, 2016

Touhou Project Corner

Under the name of Touhou Project (東方Project, lit. 'Eastern Project') lies a collection of games that mainly consist of danmaku (弾幕, lit. 'bullet hell/curtain fire') shoot-em-up titles. With the exception of the spin-off collaborations, all of the Touhou Project games are entirely made by the doujin circle Team Shanghai Alice (上海アリス幻樂団), which actually only consists of series creator Jun'ya 'ZUN' Ōta (太田順也). Started between the years 1995/1998 with five games for NEC's PC-98 computer series, this gaming series is still alive and strong with many sequels for Microsoft Windows computers.

All the games' stories take place in the fictional realm of Gensokyo (幻想郷, 'Illusion/Fantasy Village'), a village within the mountain recesses of Japan where humans and non-human creatures from traditional folklore -collectively referred to as youkai- lived peacefully and separated from the rest of the world. Many centuries before the Touhou Project storyline, the land was sealed away with a barrier as part of a"boundary of phantasm and substance" project by youkai sage Yukari Yakumo, in order to preserve balance between the human and youkai realms. Magical and spiritual abilities are common in Gensokyo, and the only way to access it is through the Hakurei Shrine at the boundary, guarded by shrine maiden Reimu Hakurei. Once in a while, particular events addressed as 'incidents' affect all of Gensokyo and often break the balance between the worlds; in the games, the investigation and resolution of the incident is up to Reimu and in the later games, other imitators and human characters like Marisa Kirisame.

As with many popular media, the Touhou Project has gathered a cold following of fans and hobby-oriented circles dedicated to homages for ZUN's prolific series in form of different kinds of media, one of the most prolific and popular being songs remixes of the games' original scores. This peculiar trend has taken a bigger connotation in the 2000s' beginning that lead to the rise of many doujin circles dedicated to Touhou music arrange production and later on to the most popular tracks bounding into rhythm games territory. The Taiko no Tatsujin series has been one of the later supporters of the Gensokyo-inspired musical craze, but since its inception it has hosted a number of collaboration events with the Touhou brand, up to become one of the recurring guests to the yearly Hakurei Shrine Reitasai festival.

This Jumbo Brand corner divides all the Touhou Project arrangements songs featured in Taiko gaming into the games/media in which the original song/s that has/have been used for the actual Touhou games, distinguishing the main-line entries from the spin-offs and other media. If a song arrangement features parts of tracks from more than one Touhou Project videogame, it will be listed in all the related games' pages. The songs inside each of the single pages will be ordered by their Taiko no Tatsujin release.

Main Series Titles
Story of Eastern Wonderland
Lotus Land Story
the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
Perfect Cherry Blossom
Impherishable Night
Phantasmagoria of Flower View
Mountain of Faith
Subterranean Animism
Undefined Fantastic Object
Double Dealing Character
Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom

Spin-Off Titles
Immaterial and Missing Power
Shoot the Bullet
Fairy Wars

Miscellaneous Origins Songs

Back to Song Series Showcase page