Touhou project is a series of bullet hell games created by ZUN started in 1996 with Highly Responsive to Prayers for the PC-98, which oddly enough is a breakout type game.

The franchise continues to this day, with it's latest release being Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, released the 13th of august, 2023

Gameplay by MegamanOmega

The franchise is comprised of, at the time, 36 games, 5 being for the PC-98 and not considered canon (unless ZUN states otherwise), 14 being part of the mainline series and 13 spinoffs.

The games take place in Gensokyo, a land of fantasy separated from our own, in which creatures, concepts, and ideas forgotten by the outside world can live and thrive; however, it's far from peaceful, as every so often, one of the many Youkai that inhabit the land may cause a phenomenon that extends over the entire land, known as an incident

Whenever an incident occurs, a cast of characters goes out to solve it, either because it's their duty, job, or simply because there's a reward for it; but the two who are always on duty to solve any incident are Reimu Hakurei, the Hakurei shrine maiden and Marisa Kirisame, an ordinary magician

The incident of each game can range from a mist that covers the entire land, cards that give the powers of gensokyo residents to anyone who posseses them, or animal spirits roaming around

Gensokyo is a land of fantasy, sealed away from the rest of the world by the great hakurei barrier it's a place where everything marked off as fantasy or forgotten by the outside world can keep on living and thrive, as such, Gensokyo is habited mostly by creatures known as Yokai, figures of japanese folklore with powers as varied as themselves; although there are also common humans and animals too

The seals that separates fantasy from common sense is the Great Hakurei Barrier, which is mantained by the local shrine maiden Reimu Hakurei, an easygoing and relatively relaxed shrine maiden with the task of keeping the barrier (and therefore, Gensokyo) stable

Reimu is also the one that officialized the Spell Card rules, a set of rules put in place so that all yokai could keep on living a life of combat and dueling and everyone would have an equal chance of dealing with them

The rules are as follow (taken from Perfect Memento in Strict Sense)

• The duel will be held using spell cards, techniques named and given meaning by each individual
• Each combatant has to declare the number of spell cards they'll use in each duel
• Whoever has all their spell cards beaten first must admit defeat
• All attacks must have meaning behind them
• Even upon victory, no combatant shall kill a human

Duels using spell card rules are ritualistic in nature, as such there's a flare component to each duel, bullets that will never reach the oponent fired for the express purpose of making each attack look beautiful

As stated before, Gensokyo is habited mostly by yokai, figures that control aspects of life that were demystified by human progress in science and simple experimentation, they can range from being able to control the darkness, to manipulating the powers of nuclear fusion

There are way too many characters to talk about in this section, ranging from mind-reading lonely yokai who live at the bottom of hell, to dolls with the ability of controling poison Sometimes yokai will form societies, such as the tengu (known for their love of gossip), and the kappa (known for their technological genius); although they are quite a rarity, and most yokai work all by themselves

The only place that is entirily safe for humans is the aptly named Human Village, where yokai either don't go at all or are harmless to the people living there, aside from that every landmark in Gensokyo is known to be dangerous to humans, from a bamboo forest that's impossible to find your way around to the street of what once was hell itself

Touhou is well known for it's expansive and iconic soundtrack, it's not that uncommon to see people reacting surprisingly to the realization that a song they used to listen is directly linked to touhou, either directly or via one of the many, many remixes there are Here's a list of some of my favorite touhou songs across different eras

• Vessel of Stars ~ Casket of Stars(Lotus Land Story - Theme of Marisa)
• Sleeping Terror(Lotus Land Story - Theme of Yuuka)
• Cinderella Cage ~ Kagome Kagome(Imperishable Night - Stage 5 theme)
• Voyage 1979(Imperishable Night - Stage 6 theme)
• The Lake Reflects the Pure Moonlight(Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom - Stage 2 theme)
• Where is that Bustling Marketplace Now ~ Immemorial Marketeers(Unconnected Marketeers - Theme of Chimata)

Every game has a jukebox section where you can play the songs you've heard, and read a comentary by ZUN about his objective with the song and the character/place it represents, if you end up checking the games out, i highly reccomend you take a look at it

Here's my latest results from the Touhou sorter, a tool used to sort out touhou characters to find which one is your favorite, i might change this if i do another one and the results change, who knows