makkun said: That trailer is pretty much official.
No it's not. Don't be fooled by Ufotable's one-sided claim that it's official story of Touhou. ZUN demanded changes to be made, which was used by Ufotable to claim that ZUN collaborated with them. ZUN denied the canon and official status of the anime, to no avail. ZUN went to watch the crossover anime and didn't even bother to comment on it in his twitter. Soon after, ZUN came up with a guideline for doujin works which included the specification that video products are not to be made by formal animating groups like Ufotable.
Unless the words of Ufotable is to be considered more official than ZUN himself, the anime has absolutely no canon value in it.
makkun said: Really? So will there be an anime of Touhou from Ufotable?
To answer my question by reading your comment: Maybe there will, but then Ufotable won't be able to make this anime broadcast commercially...
Ufotable already made it and showed it to a limited audience. It wasn't broadcasted and won't be. But they may make DVDs or such.
As for the issue of an official Touhou animation, ZUN in fact isn't so negative about the idea of an official anime in the Touhou series. But I find it hard to come true for several reasons: mainly because he wants Touhou to remain a doujin work, a hobby, no matter what. And I mean a hobby to himself, much like all other doujin artists. Should he try to make an official animation with a formal producer, what he does will no longer be a hobby. It will be business. All ZUN wanted was to make an imaginary world and develop games on it for fun. Once that turns into a large-scale business, Touhou will turn into a tool for making money for the anime producer, with ZUN forced to make Touhou what people will buy. In the worst-case scenario, he'll lose Touhou Project completely. That's why he never ever approves of "Touhou Project Animated".
Another speculation is that, even if some company miraculously pledges to make animations exactly as ZUN wishes, a high-quality animation is produced make fans to want more. They'll want more quality, and ZUN's original games will be overshadowed. Signs of it has already been surfacing, in fact. Many fans prefer the fighting games by Twilight Frontier over ZUN's shooting games. You may have heard countless complaints that "the shooting games are difficult and the artworks suck". Doujin has grown so much that it's very rare to find fans that play official games before seeing derivative works. It's actually miraculous that ZUN is still in control of Touhou. But there's absolutely no sense taking more risks. So I strongly doubt an official Touhou animation being produced.
Lick_King said: Ufotable already made it and showed it to a limited audience. It wasn't broadcasted and won't be. But they may make DVDs or such.
As for the issue of an official Touhou animation, ZUN in fact isn't so negative about the idea of an official anime in the Touhou series. But I find it hard to come true for several reasons: mainly because he wants Touhou to remain a doujin work, a hobby, no matter what. And I mean a hobby to himself, much like all other doujin artists. Should he try to make an official animation with a formal producer, what he does will no longer be a hobby. It will be business. All ZUN wanted was to make an imaginary world and develop games on it for fun. Once that turns into a large-scale business, Touhou will turn into a tool for making money for the anime producer, with ZUN forced to make Touhou what people will buy. In the worst-case scenario, he'll lose Touhou Project completely. That's why he never ever approves of "Touhou Project Animated".
Another speculation is that, even if some company miraculously pledges to make animations exactly as ZUN wishes, a high-quality animation is produced make fans to want more. They'll want more quality, and ZUN's original games will be overshadowed. Signs of it has already been surfacing, in fact. Many fans prefer the fighting games by Twilight Frontier over ZUN's shooting games. You may have heard countless complaints that "the shooting games are difficult and the artworks suck". Doujin has grown so much that it's very rare to find fans that play official games before seeing derivative works. It's actually miraculous that ZUN is still in control of Touhou. But there's absolutely no sense taking more risks. So I strongly doubt an official Touhou animation being produced.
Sorry for the ridiculously long comment.
Qft.
I'm proud of you, buddy. Clearing such a thing for the community are important. Poor ZUN if peoples start thinking of fanmades as official stuffs.
This. A nice example is the PC-98 games and how they're practically unknown to anyone just getting into the fandom. And the thing about licensing and him losing Touhou could also be true. Look at Mima... we'll never see her in official works no matter how much anyone wants to speculate for Th13. She's owned half and half by ZUN and the company that helped him produced the PC-98 series. He can't use her.
NeoDarkKnight said: This. A nice example is the PC-98 games and how they're practically unknown to anyone just getting into the fandom. And the thing about licensing and him losing Touhou could also be true. Look at Mima... we'll never see her in official works no matter how much anyone wants to speculate for Th13. She's owned half and half by ZUN and the company that helped him produced the PC-98 series. He can't use her.
Sudden brainstorm: all Touhou fans set up a fund to help ZUN buy up Mima completely.
I don't really buy copyright reasons for why he won't use much of PC-98. It's just speculation by fans who struggle to understand why he won't bring anyone back.
First, the company that published the games wasn't even a company. Just a student game development club at his college. It's the equivalent of a mere doujin circle with everyone that was there during ZUN's time having long since moved on. I truly don't think they would give a shit or have much claim today to anything PC-98. Especially considering that even then it was very much a one man project, if you go by game credits, aside from being published under the Amusement Makers name.
The relationship between ZUN and Amusement Makers was also such that ZUN helped on the first two Seihou games during those years when Touhou was inactive. Presumably, this was after he would have already graduated and was during or just before EoSD's development, when you'd think copyright issues would first rear its head. ZUN also used some of AM's resources when making EoSD.
Furthermore, Mima is already on the cover of one of ZUN's albums. Chances are he wouldn't have been able to do that without having the rights to her.
I think it's much more likely that ZUN just isn't interested in taking such a step back. He wants to continually create new characters and games without having to worry about how characters from so long ago would fit and trying to work them in now or what the fans want. It's also possible that he's looked back on those games, wasn't happy with his work there or sees how dated it is, and thinks he can do better now as another reason for why he'd rather move on. He's basically said as much that this, more than any other reason is why he's rarely brought anyone back after their time was done, let alone most from the PC-98 era. And without other information, it's all that we can go on.
UnderneathTheWaves said: I think it's much more likely that ZUN just isn't interested in taking such a step back.
A very plausible reason. According to ZUN, he intends Touhou to be a semi-series: a series of continuous games with fixed protagonists but without strongly connected plots. He also makes it clear that there will be new characters for each game (with the exception of Fairy Wars, though you may consider the three fairies as new characters into games).
I strongly doubt any copyright issue is the problem with the return of Mima. It doesn't explain how Reimu, Marisa, Alice and Yuuka were brought back. In fact Yuuka was brought back once only because there was heavy requests from fandom. ZUN is very mixed about the reappearance of Mima. He sometimes makes it clear that Mima will never be appearing in the near future ("You're joking, right?" was his answer to a question as to whether Mima will be appearing in the next installment), while he also stated that he'd very much like to reintroduce her but can't because he's having a hard time thinking about what she's been doing and how to bring her back to the story. And even if she comes back, ZUN will have to completely redesign her, both her appearance and her character. (For example, the PC-98 Reimu in fact resembled Marisa more in terms of personality.) ZUN is too busy for that.
In fact, ZUN specifically stated that, while Reimu, Marisa, Alice and Yuuka are the same people as in PC-98 series, they are to be considered as separate entities. That pretty much sums up the entire thing: PC-98 games and the Windows games are two different game series under the same collective title.
NeoDarkKnight said: A nice example is the PC-98 games and how they're practically unknown to anyone just getting into the fandom.
The thing about the PC-98 games is that they're on a format that's been dead for a long time. Yes, I know it's not like finding them on the internet isn't that hard in the first place, but there's a very low chance nowadays of anybody finding out about the PC-98 games first before the Windows games.
KaitoDies said: The thing about the PC-98 games is that they're on a format that's been dead for a long time. Yes, I know it's not like finding them on the internet isn't that hard in the first place, but there's a very low chance nowadays of anybody finding out about the PC-98 games first before the Windows games.
True, most of the fans in Touhou believes that EosD is actually a form of reboot and consider touhou 6 as the true first touhou game totally ignoring the previous ones but as I can see Zun is OK with this because I believe he likes to produce new characters and new stories for his games to me he is a guy who always likes to see the future and not care too much about the past.
