Author Topic: Why doesn't ZUN make Team Shanghai Alice from a doujin circle into a company?  (Read 4205 times)

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SeroVich

  • ✟ Youkai Hunter Maniac ✟
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I had this thought while I was in school. Why doesn't ZUN make his circle into a company like what TYPE-MOON did, who went into a full-on company. What is stopping him?
« Last Edit: October 15, 2024, 06:23:13 AM by SeroVich »

Quite simply, nothing is stopping him - he just doesn't want to. ZUN has always valued the importance of the doujin community and doesn't want to incorporate in ways that would risk him losing creative control over his creation. During the peak of Touhou's popularity he could easily have turned Touhou into a mega-franchise on the same level as Fate, but he definitely wouldn't have been able to keep making games the way he has up to now. Touhou has always been small-time, and ZUN seems intent on keeping it that way until the end. Personally I enjoy how much the series has influenced the landscape of anime and games while always staying just outside the mainstream.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2024, 09:56:36 PM by nintendonut888 »

I think that he simply doesn't have the incentive to do it. Groups like Tasofro and Type Moon consist of a handful of employees so it would be better for them to found a company in order to get benefits like liability protection, lower taxation and all that stuff for their employees. But ZUN is just one guy, he does sometimes rely on others for his extra works but they aren't employees. If he wanted he could expand Shanghai Alice and probably become a pretty sizeable company but as nintendonut said, he simply doesn't want to. Touhou is a pretty big inspiration for many because it has had such a monumental influence on the anime/gaming scene in Japan and it's just a game series produced by a single guy. It's not a bad idea, there's a lot of positives that could come from this such as: faster game releases, more closely knitted relations between the illustration artists and ZUN, and a lot more Touhou content overall. But there would be a point were ZUN himself might lose creative control over his work in order to favour the sales of the company.