Just got home last night, this was super fun! I'm going to make another long post here like I did last year, stay tuned.

Youmu:

> "So what was that?"

> "Probably Alice fixing up Aya if I had to guess." Marisa answers, as Aya returns to the main room in her body.
>_

> Resume eating as well.

[A very interesting analysis of the possible culture, industry and "government" of the Human Village from which a conclusion of a Human's life in Gensokyo is like is derived.]

That's a very good analysis! To the point where I'm probably going to take some notes about this. Depicting the Human Village's life was something I was always slightly shaky on for some reason despite reading nearly every book that relates to them.

I have to admit, I personally wouldn't mind seeing Touhou have a bit more commercialisation. Yes it might "ruin" the doujin spirit in some way but it would mean more accessibility of Touhou content to the West. We got Touhou on Steam, maybe just maybe we could even have officially translated Touhou manga being sold outside of Japan or even just more Touhou merch overall but at this point I pretty much sound like a hopeless romantic.

We kinda do have localisation for Forbidden Scrollery with Yen Press and some "official" english translation for Lotus Eaters, but somehow there is this really weird thing going on where the publisher just DON'T put "Touhou" in the manga titles (as in, simply having "Forbidden Scrollery" and "the Lotus Eaters") : probably reasonable since they're not mentioning the Japanese title which has Touhou in it (Touhou Suzunaan or Touhou Suichouka), but that just make it less obvious that the manga are part of a specific series called Touhou project.

And there is also the kind of translation that is correct in technical aspect but not necessarily what we want / are familiar with : besides the odd Hiedanos and Hatanos, we have demons instead of onis, and *cringe alert* ghoul instead of youkai. The Lotus Eaters even have a freaking among us reference, so localizers are probably not the most reliable people around. Heck, even outside of manga, Touhou 14.5's "official" english translation has a bunch (if I'm being generous) of questionable choices for the translations (look em up if you dare).

Localisation efforts are definitely helpful in helping everyone to have easier access to whatever is being localized (else people who don't understand japanese would otherwise ignore these), but man, the fact that the localizers ain't necessarily some of "our guys" can result in some suspicious translations for the audience. I'm only comfortable with localisation efforts cuz they help the series get around + allow the fans to support ZUN & friends ; but also because there's still the old fashioned fan-translations, which put great effort in keeping the translation in line with the terminology we're familiar with.

... I just think similar efforts could probably be done for non official fanworks. There are some fantastic ones out there that I'd just love to see receive the attention and recognition they deserve

As for the games's side, both official and unofficial, Steam is just so helpful that I don't think the question of localisation necessarily need to be considered (a surprising amount of touhou fangames on Steam support english anyway) ; furthermore, the fact there are some success stories that didn't necessarily need to rely on some random company in order to be successful (Luna Night and Mystia's Izakaya especially) still keep me optimistic about the future of fangames. Going from the usual physical goods that are distributed in doujin events to digital ones that are distributed in interwebz platforms definitely presents a shift for the doujin culture, but as long as the creators get to do their thing independently (with little to no concern on the legal side), and as long as ZUN keeps the IP for himself (no sell out pls) and does not alter his guidelines in a way that prevent the average touhou enjoyer from making stuff the way they used to, the culture of the community and the doujin spirit shouldn't really be damaged.

So I'm also somewhat okay with seeing a tiny bit more commercialization (in the sense of working with professional, non-doujin companies), cuz not only will we *still* have people who do their own touhou thing, BUT we'll also have additional 2hu content that's backed by the expertise and ressources of more established businesses : we've received Spell Bubble, Touhou Spell Carnival is coming in a short while ... who knows what the future will bring ? So yeah, the increasingly commercial aspect is not so scary and can be a bit of a bonus since it won't affect the way things go normally.



And on 2hu being more commercial ... since we've already got gacha 2hu, despite all the concerns and worry, honestly I think it's not completely outside of the realm of possibility anymore that ZUN'll seriously consider allowing a proper Touhou anime at some point. Seems like a pretty  logical conclusion to me if he wants to get more attention to Touhou by going somewhat mainstream