Welcome to the Hakurei e-Shrine!

A page about Touhou Project

Touhou Project, also known as Project Shrine Maiden is a series of bullet hell shoot'em ups, fighting games, manga and other written works, and CDs. Touhou starrs Reimu Hakurei and Kirisame Marisa as its protagonists, who solve various youkai- or kami-caused incidents happening in and around a magical region of Japan known as Gensokyo.

The series began its life in 1997, and has been mostly made by a single person known as ZUN. It's still ongoing to this day.

It would be difficult to summarize it, but it's somewhat of a monster (or rather, incident) of the week type of narrative. Although it started out as standalone incidents, the later ones are interconnected and span over arcs.

What makes Touhou special?

Touhou is famous for its colorful cast of characters, incredible music, wacky dialogue and difficult gameplay. Though, I would argue that these aren't exactly what make it so beloved.

The music is enjoyed by many, but not many describe what they like about it exactly. ZUN's music can hardly be categorized into any genre, I've heard some describe it as genreless, or its own genre. If I had to describe it, it's heavily inspired by the soundtracks of 80's high-action video games such as shoot 'em ups, but with more sophisticated midi instruments on more advanced machines.

Out of said midi instruments, the ZUNpets are the most well-known. Most of these pieces feature an iconic trumpet soundbite, which is the most recognizable unique qualities of them.

In my opinion, what makes ZUN's music good is how satisfying they are. They can seen as repetitive, but the variations used in repeated segments lend a comfortable, even empowering familiarity to the pieces.

The gameplay is labeled as "bullethell", which is a subgenre of shoot 'em ups where the point of the gameplay is to dodge hundreds if not thousands of bullets on one screen. It's an overwhelming genre that was born from small niche communities, definitely not for everyone. It's difficult by design.

Within its own genre, Touhou games are pretty easy. They're actually good entrypoints for bullethell games. You can see which games' I recommend you start with in Where to Start.

The characters are colorful indeed, and many in number. As of writing this (2025.05.18.), there are nearly 200 named Touhou characters, the vast majority of whom are all women. What makes them great, in my opinion is ZUN's ability to make them seem human, even when they aren't.

Youkai run restaurants, kami get into petty arguments, immortals get depressed, spirits grapple with their relationships with death. When a human hates their job, but forced to do it because she's the only one capable of doing it, when a youkai wants to deliver other youkai to salvation, when a kami bearing the power to decide who goes to Hell and Heaven advises not to die at all, it brings up many questions.

These questions, in my opinion, what make these characters so unique.

The dialogue is indeed wacky, self-referential and light-hearted, like most of Touhou is. It actually encapsulates really well the love for life ZUN imbued his narratives with. Oftentimes horrible things happen, but at the end of the day, everyone has something to strive for and enjoy. Life is unserious like that.

I think, the secret ingredient that makes Touhou as a whole special is simply, earnestness. ZUN admitted many times that he essentially uses these games as personal diaries, and as such, he puts much of himself into them. The nostalgia of childhood favorite games and folk stories and legends he heard growing up, his grievances with real world events, and his love for women, life, parties and a good drink.

What Touhou has is its creator's unfiltered, genuine personality, and although that can make it hit-or-miss, that's what made me fall in love with it.