beatMARIO on the connection between fan-made Touhou Project music and art

Yes, it is. I also request illustrations for the goods I hand out at Comiket and other conventions. Recently, I’ve even been getting into commissioning doujin manga.

I’m a singer and vocalist, but I’m also the founder of the doujin music group COOL&CREATE, so I’m kind of a producer too. I guess you could call it self-producing. 

Obviously, my doujin group is very important to me, so I make sure I can really see whether their art style fits with the group before I choose someone.

Actually, most of the time, I don’t. I want people to be just as surprised and excited about the illustrators as I am.

Not recently, surprisingly. If it’s something Touhou related, then I might ask someone from the community, but if it’s aimed at a more general audience, they don’t need to be that involved at all.

These days, Touhou is seen as a gateway into illustrating for a lot of people. Sometimes, when I’m looking into a new artist, I’ll scroll back and see that their first works are all Touhou characters.

So I don’t go out of my way to search for current Touhou artists, but more often than not, they end up having some kind of connection to the series.

X and pixiv are the main ones. I follow a lot of people whose art I like, even if I’m not looking to commission someone at that point in time.

Sometimes I’ll describe an idea I have to one of my friends and see if they know any artists that might fit the bill. A lot of my friends really love looking at art.

The recent “Help me, ERINNNNNN!!” revival comes to mind immediately. I don’t think it would have been anywhere near as explosive if Hitobito hadn’t illustrated and made the video for it.

2022’s “Internet Survivor” is another one.

Until “Internet Survivor,” I usually had illustrators draw the characters in their original outfits.

Touhou has a really long history as a genre, but the costumes have mostly remained the same. However, I started thinking that since I’m going so far as to arrange songs, why not change up the fashion a little too? Nicorashika is especially good at that, so I asked them for help with “Internet Survivor.”

Everyone really liked it, which gave me the confidence to experiment more, like with the “Gakuen Erin” school parody series and Hamafugu’s gyaru Sakuya in “Super Night of Nights.”

Seeing all the redesigned costumes just reminded me how amazing ZUN’s original character designs were. The characters are still completely recognizable, even when you change them up. You know who each illustration is supposed to be right away. It’s amazing.

I used to do a lot of selling things in person and live performances, but after 2020, coronavirus made that really hard to do. During the pandemic, I happened upon hololive’s Houshou Marine because she was streaming a game called Touhou Special Bubble. After that, I got really into the idea of VTubing.

My YouTube channel itself was pretty old by then, but I’d hardly uploaded anything to it. I wasn’t all that active online, to be honest. So I thought, why not give it a go! I’m really grateful to all the people who watch my streams.

In this day and age, if something isn’t on the internet, then it doesn’t really exist. I released a CD recently, but it didn’t actually feel real until I put it on subscription services and uploaded the MV to YouTube. Being active on YouTube kind of helped me realize that.

Yes, that was from 2020 onwards too. Actually, to be honest, a lot of “my” most popular videos were more like recursive derivative works in which other people took my fan songs and created their own music videos for them. 

Every Japanese otaku on the internet has probably used Nico Nico Douga at some point in their life, but recently YouTube is becoming much more popular. It’s better to have all your content on there too.

A lot of people who made those videos were friends of mine, so I asked them for permission and put them on my personal YouTube too.

I always make too many CDs and too much merch, so it just piles up in my house. Being able to sell it on BOOTH makes everything so much easier.

I don’t just use BOOTH though. I still go to in-person events and conventions and sell my merchandise there. People can come buy stuff at my table, but if they can’t, they can also buy what they want on BOOTH. Overall, it means more people can buy my merchandise easily.

There are fewer opportunities to buy things in real life now because of the coronavirus pandemic. And some people can’t attend events for other personal reasons. It’s nice to have an online space available to allow for interactions with more people and I think it’s great how sites like BOOTH allow people to continue their doujin activities. 

I’ve been an otaku for a long time, so there’s a part of me that feels a bit wistful for the way things used to be, but at the same time, I really do think it’s amazing how people can make doujin works with pride nowadays. It’s a great time to be an otaku.

The game Touhou Danmaku Kagura had collectables called “Mitama Cards” that you could print out at the convenience store.

I didn’t really expect much in terms of quality, but when I actually printed one, it was so beautiful I had to frame it. That alone made it look like a real piece of official merchandise.

I think it’s kind of similar to that. That’s why I wanted to take part.

I don’t buy posters and tapestries often, but it was nice to have a little something to display for my favorite character. It’s really convenient too, you can go print them out whenever you have the time and it only takes seconds. I understand why people love it.

A lot of my fans and Touhou fans these days are quite young too, so they don’t always have the freedom to buy merchandise in person or online. They really benefit from being able to get a print of their favorite character for a couple of hundred yen at the convenience store and I think that’s super cool.

There are quite a few Touhou related illustration competitions. Most of the entries are from young people, especially elementary and middle school students. I love seeing anything that makes it obvious that the illustrator truly loves Touhou. It gives me the same happy, satisfied feeling you get after eating a nice, warm meal.

Touhou was super popular about 20 years ago, in around 2004, but at the time most of the fans were college students in their 20s. Then, the more mainstream it became, the more fans it got, but even then those fans were mostly adults. I thought the fanbase would just keep getting older as the game did. 

Thanks to things like the Yukkuris, elementary and middle school students started finding out about Touhou. Until then, I hadn't seen many illustrations drawn by children who just really liked drawing the characters. (laughs) I love seeing illustrations like that.

I feel like we’re in the second generation of Touhou right now. Seeing younger people’s works is fun and gives me hope for the future of the genre.

Part of the fun of making things is that it doesn’t always go perfectly.

It’s nice when you pull an SSR in your favorite gacha game, but the joy of clearing a super difficult level by working hard is hundreds of times more intense than that. Creating a work is the same thing, so enjoy the time and effort the process takes.

It’s hard when you don’t get any likes or you see someone the same age as you who seems to be much more accomplished. But remember that your love for Touhou and making things is what’s really important.