From the International Touhou Garakuta-soushi Team, we present the first International Touhou News Collection! This article is a collection of Touhou-related news from various English-speaking fan circles from across the world. 

The international side of the Touhou Project fandom has been more quiet than its neighboring sisters. However, it is by no means dormant. Through this article, we would like to show the readers a glimpse of what international fans have been up to.

First of all, we have news from Paradise of Boundaries, a Spanish music circle.

Otherworldly Paradox: An Original Album Drama Inspired by ZUN’s Music CDs (Paradise of Boundaries)

Paradise of Boundaries is glad to share some details of our first original album: Otherworldly Paradox, originally released on September 26th 2020, is currently available in Spanish and English, and soon will be in Japanese.

Paradise of Boundaries is a Hispanic Touhou community with a focus on creativity founded by Orphen Nightford. At the heart of the community lies its creative circle, responsible for the work behind several projects like the fan-magazine Bunbunmaru Extra, multiple musical arrangements, and Spanish translations for the official games.

Otherworldly Paradox is the first original album created by Paradise of Boundaries, inspired by ZUN’s Hifuu Club CDs. It contains six original tunes and six arrangements of Touhou themes, and tells the story of one Seiko Ayano, a middle-school student from the outside world, who had a very dull and boring life before she discovered the truth about Gensokyo.

The catalyst for this transformation is Ayano’s discovery of social media posts depicting a strange land where forgotten creatures and mystic powers are commonplace. These posts are by one Sumireko Usami, a high-school student who travels to Gensokyo in her dreams, who is a well-known and significant member of Touhou’s canonical cast. 

From that day forward, Ayano became an avid follower of Sumireko and hoped she could one day visit this fabled land too. One night, thanks to her curiosity and enthusiasm, she was magically transported to Gensokyo.

Aside from being set in Gensokyo, our project borrows a few characters from the series as well. As mentioned earlier, Sumireko herself makes an appearance in the story. We also included another character from the Touhou universe; however, we will not name her here in order to avoid spoilers. Oh, you want to know who this unknown character is? Well, you can find out by watching the album release on our YouTube channel.

This project took us approximately four months to complete. This includes the creation and writing of the story, the protagonist’s concept and design, the music composing and the creation of assets and editing for the video release.

Most of the work was made by four people: Orphen Nightford, who also acted as the leader for this project, Roka Enzaki, JerryStuff (Ro) and Kurenai. We also received help from Recycle Bin and Williatico who revised the story, as well as Wolfytonio who provided 3D assets for the video.

As fans of the Touhou Project series and ZUN’s works, Otherworldly Paradox was made purely for fun and as a tribute to our favorite shmup games. Please think of our work as a new fanmade universe for Touhou, and Seiko as the entrance to said universe.

If you want to know more about Otherworldly Paradox and our other projects, you can follow us on YouTube and on various social media platforms. You can also join our Discord server where we have a channel dedicated to logging all of our works.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paradiseofboundaries

Twitter: https://twitter.com/POfBoundaries

Discord: https://discord.gg/vV2ksgYART

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7v2DfwaQrEWt7WXzDgcLew

Otherworldly Paradox release: https://youtu.be/c_wcAQEfx4w?t=1297

Contributor: Aja

@Aja_Chan1

東方潮聖書 ～ Sapphire Panlogism: An Upcoming STG Fangame Aiming to Provide the Danmaku Experience (Team Urban Mimzie)

Hello, readers! This is Team Urban Mimzie, with a special blurb for our upcoming STG fangame, 東方潮聖書 ～ Sapphire Panlogism.

Recently, it’s been raining a lot in Gensokyo—more importantly, it’s been raining saltwater. That doesn’t sound so good for the agricultural sector! Clearly, an incident has arisen, and  it’s up to Reimu and the others (including Shou and Hecatia) to get to the bottom of this very wet mystery. 

Rumors say that sheep may be involved…

This project has been in development for over three and a half years, if you can believe it. Over this time period, there’s been rampant procrastination many ups and downs, but we’ve managed to make it out relatively unscathed. Some faces have come and gone, but the spirit of Urban Mimzie lives on.

The game aims to go somewhere that Touhou hasn’t gone before, while still staying  faithful to the ways ZUN creates his works. There’s a lot in the world of Touhou that isn’t explored. What happened to the gods of ancient religions? Are there other places like Gensokyo? If there are, then what are they for? Those kinds of questions. 

During the creation process, we drew inspiration from various mythologies around the world. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there that most people never hear about, so we’ve tried to include some of that in Sapphire Panlogism, whilst bringing our own unique spin on Gensokyo’s lore. Our top priority, however, is (and always has been) to make a shmup that’s fun to play. Whether or not we’ve managed to accomplish that, however, remains to be decided.

Unfortunately, we still can’t give a hard release date on the game. Rest assured, though—it’ll be released sometime from late April to early May. Some things to look forward to:

• A full-featured game with six main stages and an Extra stage;
• Reworked mechanics for gathering resources and scoring;
• A set of Last Word spell cards for those that want an extra challenge;
• A colorful cast of original characters, which we think we’ll really enjoy; 
• No, seriously, what’s going on with all this talk about sheep?

Future updates, including the eventual release announcement, will be posted over at our team leader’s Twitter account. Who knows, there might be something new really soon!

Until next time,

Team Urban Mimzie

Contributor: Badz

@BadzDevice

Touhou World Cup 2021 Starts on March 20th!

We are proud to present the Touhou World Cup 2021! Following its initial success, the competition returns for its second year!

 

What is the Touhou World Cup?

The Touhou World Cup is an annual event which showcases the highest levels of Touhou Project gameplay from all over the world.

Three regions—China, Japan, and the West—form a team of their best players to compete in Windows Touhou games across different categories and gain points for their team. 

 

Touhou World Cup 2021 Schedule and Players

The first match took place on the 20th of March at 15:00 GMT+8. The full schedule and player roster is on our Twitter.

https://twitter.com/touhouworldcup/status/1371216029251215373 

We also have a website which converts the schedule to your timezone. https://maribelhearn.com/twc#schedule

 

What do the categories mean?

There are three main categories being played across the games this year.

• Lunatic No Bomb – The players must try to clear the game on Lunatic difficulty while dying as little as possible. Bombs and other tools (such as trances in Touhou 13) are not allowed, so players must rely solely on their bullet reading and dodging ability.
• Lunatic Score Attack – The players must try to beat the game on Lunatic while scoring as many points as possible. Each game has unique systems and strategies for increasing score; the players in this category are extremely dedicated, talented, and amazing to watch.
• Extra Score Attack – A new category for this year, this is the same as Lunatic Score Attack except the Extra Stage is played instead. These stages can be very different from the main game and have their own unique tricks.

The winner of each match gains two points for their team while second place gets one point.

A full breakdown of the rules is listed here. https://maribelhearn.com/twc#rules

 

Where can I watch TWC2021?

Touhou World Cup 2021 is officially broadcasted in four different languages—English, Japanese, Chinese and Russian. Each stream will have match commentary from members of their respective community and they are full of great personalities!

English: https://www.twitch.tv/touhou_replay_showcase

Japanese: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfF3O4wo0YxppTZGmtTGDwg

Chinese: https://live.bilibili.com/22478102, https://live.bilibili.com/14315174 

Russian: https://www.twitch.tv/touhou_russian_kolkhoz

 

Where else can I follow TWC?

For the latest news, follow the TWC Twitter to get all of our official announcements. https://twitter.com/touhouworldcup

All the videos from last year’s English restream are available to watch on our YouTube.

The whole Touhou gameplay community has been working hard since November to make TWC a reality. We hope to showcase the skills of the very best Touhou players while making the event accessible to as many people as possible. We believe the games are one of the core parts of Touhou and we hope TWC inspires more people to join in on the fun. We hope you will enjoy it!

Contributor: yeashie
@yeashie_christg

東方嘘偽話 ～ Anthology of Forgotten: A Touhou-style Album of Original Composition that Creates a Fangame-esque Story (Consonances and Dissonances)

Hello, there! This is Consonances and Dissonances. Today we’re going to share some details about our first Touhou Style Original Composition collaboration album “東方嘘偽話 ～ Anthology of Forgotten”, which was released on April 10th, 2021. We also have the Japanese version which was released on May 2nd, and a Chinese version in the works.

Similar to other “fake fangame” albums (such as Treasure Castle Labyrinth and Heavenly Gathering of Clouds), this album contains everything that would be appear in a theoretical Touhou game, including a story that spans 6 + 1 stages (with a boss character at the end of each stage).

Intrigued by the recent legends spreading in the Human Village, the player characters (Keine, Kosuzu, and Akyuu) attempt to investigate, causing them to be sucked into a world inside of a scroll. The story follows the trio as they journey through a fantastical world, encountering unexpected foes, all while trying to escape back into the real world. 

The music was collected over a period of a month, while the art and story were done over 2 weeks. A grand total of 23 individuals, made up of composers, remixers, artists, story-writers, and editors, participated in this album. 

Since it’s our first major collaboration album, we ran into a lot of surprises (both fun and not-so-fun) during the creation process. Figuring out how to actually complete an album as a team has been a really good experience overall.

If you would like to listen to this album, check out our YouTube channel or our Bandcamp by using the links below.

Anthology of Forgotten Fables Full Release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_94W_QHWEg

Twitter:https://twitter.com/CnD_Shenanigans

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUEwFg6V9X_HkRLB6QIKlCA

Bandcamp: https://consonancesdissonances.bandcamp.com/album/anthology-of-forgotten-fables

Contributor: Oborochi

@Oborochi1

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The International Touhou Garakuta-soushi Team is also looking for new subjects for other articles to publish. If there are any Touhou fan projects that wish to be covered by us, please contact us here. English emails are accepted!

Email: en.garakuta.soushi@gmail.com
Twitter: @Garakuta_EN

Author of Post: Oborochi

Editor: Lux