And the hair thing can be explained with one word. Magic. Either that, or everyone just decided to style their hair every once in a while. Witches do that, right?
Reimu's brown/black hair can be explained by having very dark brown hair. Once the black looking hair is lighted enough, it is shown as brown. This happens in many asian people's seemingly black hair.
It happens to me regularly too, as a European, it just takes a few days of not thinking about washing it. Freshly washed it's near black, but dark brown on closer inspection, wet it looks completely black, but once the oils get back in there it becomes lighter and lighter. Some Conditioners alone bring it light enough to compare to some Lyricas in Fan Works, who is supposed to have light brown hair. But I think for Reimu it's more a change in mindset for her design. Black leans towards the "Yamato Nadeshiko", the perfect Japanese woman, which Reimu is in terms of natural abilities and position as Shrine Maiden; meanwhile brown emphasizes how she isn't actually like that as a person, wanting to just live a quiet life without working towards living up to such standards. It's shorthand for a personality, similar to pink hair indicating an airhead and green hair being reserved for loners, though 2hu doesn't follow that trend in the slightest, otherwise.
27:15 I recently saw that ZUN had stated that the reason Reisen's ears get all wrinkly sometimes is due to stress, which would seem to imply that they are indeed real ears.
I think that was in LoLK's ending, where some text said "Stress affects the ears". Reisen must be stressed out often if her ears look fake in some games.
@@MisterSleep1123 I was guessing more PTSD from her time on the moon and potentially stress from her work with Erin, but I know I'd be stressed if I had to deal with Tewi every day.
This entire video can be summed up with "ZUN knew this would happen and has already stated that if any contradictions occur the newer version is canon"
My favorite part a bout Yuyuko's kimono design is that she knows an incident is occurring and chooses to stitch on a new design instead of telling anyonr.
@@caseydewitt6236 If it was just the cherry blossoms and moon patterns, I'd believe it was a coincidence. The red clouds/mist is suspicious and the divine spirit pattern makes too many "coincidences" to not be a pattern. Youmu's fight with Yuyuko in TD also shows that she didn't share any information with Youmu, despite knowing there was an incident.
@@kuskus_th13 "Yuyuko, why are you stitching red clouds to your kimono?" "Don't worry about it. Now,, for no reason at all, help me earthquake-proof the house."
I'm the total opposite when it comes to Reimu's undergarament, I've always know n she has an undershirt because it's one of the things I've noticed that fanon always gets wrong. She never shows her midriff.
Yea exactly, in the manga and official fanart she always has an undershirt, since most of the clothes are based on victorian/vintage Japanese and western clothing 🤷♀️
12:03 And then, in Forbidden Scrollery, she stops time, grabs a chupacabra, and returns to her starting position. So either she's a filthy liar on how her powers work, or she was willing to subject Remi's pet to insane g-forces caused by moving at nigh-infinite speeds.
The time-stopping ability in general isn't something that is really allowed by physics - the speed of time depends on the speed of light and changing speed of light doesn't sound like something that will leave our universe intact, so the idea that she just moves fast makes more sense. It doesn't explain though why stuff that she carries survives insane accelerations and how is she able to move at all, since at very small timescales air works sort of like a thick liquid or even a near-solid. So either the world of Touhou doesn't work like ours (the most logical explanation) or Sakuya in stopped time works like a ghostly creature that can pass through air without causing sonic booms and has ability to "cut" items from one place and "paste" them into another, with the ability to change their impulses at the same time
something worth noting with okina is that her ability to stand is _not_ actually a sure sign that she does not have any form of leg disability, as there's a far wider range of those than "perfectly health legs" to "complete loss of leg use." in fact, from what i'm aware, it's actually relatively rare for someone to totally lose the use of their legs barring the obvious cases of lower body paralysis or outright loss of limb. rather, it's more of a matter of stuff like weak ligaments that can't bear the weight of being stood on for an extended amount of time, neurological issues that render the complex motions of walking unreliable or outright infeasible, or even stuff that actually has nothing to do with the legs, like severe balance issues or chronic vertigo that would lead to constant falls while upright wheelchairs ( and, well, chair-based mobility aids like okina's own magical flying chair in general ) are a versatile tool used to treat a wide variety of conditions, as being able to move without standing is just one of those things that naturally covers a _whole_ lotta bases
TBH, I think the whole thing shows that Zun doesn't know how mobility impaired people operate very well. It's probably the reason why he decided to move away from the "Okina is disabled in a wheelchair" design initially. But yeah loads of mobility impaired people can stand and walk, just not very long or it's very unsafe for them to do so.
At the same time I'm pretty sure it's stated that gods have the freedom to simply change their body and appearance whenever and however they wish, so if Okina actually has a 'real' disability, it's because she chose to and can do away with it whenever.
@mousysaint9143 That seems needlessly harsh. ZUN's stated he originally intended her to be disabled, but had second thoughts because it felt "mean-spirited" to do that to her. So she isn't, but stays sitting as if she is as a result.
@@thatcow86 I'm not even trying to say that this is a bad thing, seeing as Okina's a literal god and represents those with disabilities I think we've reached a level beyond discussions of regular people faking disabilities or whatever. Just pointing out what is likely the case based on what we've been previously told.
She isn't though she has it due to her nature as the God of Disability. Funny enough this all makes Suwa an outlier as she is the only God associated with something she isn't a deity of. That being frogs.
I love the outfit and hairstyle changes from game to game because it makes it feel like it's grounded in reality. For the same reason I hate the eye colour changes! I guess a youkai did it is the best explanation.
Some people seem to forget that the games happen months apart from each other. So it would make sense the girls would wear different clothes and try different hair styles. As for the eye colors... maybe Rinnosuke sells contact lenses? I still get a chuckle out of that time people were making a big deal out of Marisa having red eyes in 100th Black Market.
The touhou character's changing up their outfits but still keeping it recognizably similar is one of my favourite things about the series My guess would be reimu changes her chest ribbon sometimes because she treats it like a neck tie
I don't mind the eye colors, or even the shapes of objects, changing around. people often depict gensokyo as your usual clean bright anime world, but to me it's a murky, unclear place where things inexplicably transform and change and their true appearance isn't always, if ever, clear
@@TheLeadElite my headcannon is that in the 100th black market, the cards affected Marisa's eye color because she collected so many (like a magic side effect of the power the cards contain). I also have another headcannon though. Marisa's a witch so she drank a random potion she made and it turned her eyes red as a side effect.
8:47 Speaking of Cirno, she is actually called a "ice spirit" in the EoSD character profile and "youkai of ice" in the PCB character profile. She only became a fairy from PoFV onward, and it's why she doesn't follow the fairy naming convention that was established by Lily White and the three fairies. (The Touhou wiki incorrectly translates her EoSD profile as "ice fairy" though).
So..is she a Fairy or a Youkai? Like, what youkai has wings or live in snow. I mean, she could be a young Yuki-Onna, but when did Yukis ever have Wings? I'm definitely remembering her as a fairy, but "fairy" is diverse as well. Leprechauns and gnomes are called "fairies", but they look more like short old men and not funny little girls! 🤔
@@shirleymaemattthews4862 I think OP was saying that she was originally called an "ice spirit" but later re-clasified a fairy. So she is a fairy just without the fairy naming convention (i.e. just "Cirno")
@@palapapa0201 So the fairies have two names like Sunny Milk, Star Saphire, Lily White. Cirno is just Cirno so doesn't follow that pattern. Diayousei doesn't follow it either but that was because that's a fan given name
@@happyflies2434 Thanks for telling me. But it's odd that she's called a "fairy", and looks like one, (petite, short, cute, winged, etc). But the term can also refer to more nastier or less attractive things like gnomes, leprechauns, and sometimes certain types of trolls!
@@sheepcommander_ literally "Theme of Reimu", it's a remix of maiden's cappricio. If you're asking about the game, it's Touhou Puppet Dance Performance
fun fact in Cireikiden (or foul detective Satori). - Okuu's elephants foot is replaced by what looks like a 2-segmented iron harness (Subterranean Animosity [Part VI] pages 14, 16) - Her Top now has 2 brooches as to which her cape is attached too (Subterranean Animosity [Part VI] pages 11, 18) - Her Arm cannon / third leg has X shapes covering the base of it, while the fighting games have multiple different shapes (Subterranean Animosity [Part VI] page 15) -Sincerely an okuu fan
At some point, I wanna cosplay as Utsuho but gosh darn the details are complex and at times inconsistent. So, it really is just picking a preferred interpretation (just like my Reisen cosplay which has her Rabbitgun in the later games but wearing her blazer.).
the foot in FDS is quite cool and feels more practical from a battle perspective but i feel it kinda takes away from the whole nuclear motif that her original design had
Also yeah, fanartists depicting Hecatia's different "forms" as discrete individuals is actually exactly how she works. Given that she's, well, Hecate, those literally are three different bodies, and during the extra stage battle she's seemingly just flipping through them (presumably for the flair of it all).
you missed some details with Ran at 23:05 that i'd like to bring up •throughout most of the fighting games up to HM where Ran appears alongside Yukari, her hat is seen visibly as pink, this would only be part of her hat and no other part of her clothing. •Rans tabards, gem on her collar, and visible stitching on her purple cuff and collar changes between PCB and UDoaLG, also the purple is more vibrant in UDoaLG •Rans tabart also has less designs in IaMP, SWR, Hisoutensoku, and HM with HMs being different from the other fighting games before AoFC made it more accurate to PCB • Ran is seemingly less visible than the other characters in her appearance in IN, looking almost transparent
Dylan: I will make a video about weird Touhou inconsistencies and nothing will go wrong or challenge my base level assumptions. The mischievous color orange:
I like thinking of Okina as needing a wheelchair normally but being able to stand and walk through magical means with effort. A bit like how characters don't fly everywhere unless they're in a hurry. In my mind it's a nice marriage of the two depictions
Remilia's wings also tend to have a good bit of inconsistency, mainly on whether or not the back of her wings are black, and if they have fingers or not 37:45 YOU CAN'T JUST SHOVE MASSIVE SATITTIES IN MY FACE WITH NO WARNING
Amazing effort! 👏 You've been teasing the creation-, as well some of the content to expect from this for quite a while. No easy task and I'm sure a person can spend half a day simply talking about inconsistencies and discrepancies within this series. Nicely done! 👍
You forgot to mention Cirno's bow changing between blue and green being inconsistent in portrait and sprite and that Nitori's hat changed and lost the ghost squiggle in her 100th Black Market portrait-sprite and that might seem unimportant to some but even all the other Kappa have that ghost squiggle in the Manga.
I always found it interesting how ZUN has always made sure to never depict the tengu with animal features, like Aya's wings or Momiji's ears, even though almost every other official artist do depict the tengu with said features. Even more bizarre considering ZUN is capable of drawing bird wings as seen with Okuu and Saki. Also I'd love to hear a fan theory that gives an in-universe explaination as to how almost all the protags (Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya, Youmu, Reisen and Aya) having red eyes some or all of the time links them all together. (Sorry streamer, but it seems Bunbunmaru News might have mislead you about Aya's eye colour, seeing as her eyes are more brown/hazel in Double Spoiler, Who's Who and the Volume 4 cover of CDS. Funnily enough, the human ears seem to be a staple of red eyes while the pointed ears are a staple of brown eyes) Also also, I went ahead and standardised the descriptions on Touhou wiki to account for the ambiguity among ginger characters (and also fixed the egregious error of them calling Shion's hair purple).
I feel like a lot of these design inconsistencies can be explained by simply "ZUN didn't want to draw it". Chest sizes, Yuuma's teeth, eye colors that don't match hair colors...
Definitely understand how this video took so long and so much effort to make! I can't believe I never noticed that Kogasa always seems to stand on one leg, that's a really neat touch and a good catch in the video. There's a lot of neat little details in this analysis that show how well these characters can be designed, like Futo's feng shui colors, and also how weird ZUN can be about things like Patchy's outfit. This video really gave me a deeper understanding of characters I thought I knew all about. Also I think the Touhou Wiki indicates that I'm colorblind
I'm guessing that the inconsistencies between Reimu and Marisa's palletes in FS and ULiL/AoCF might be to better reflect their in game appearances, and to better match the art in HM where the palletes were defined in the first place. If Moe Harukawa was there from the start, it's possible she might have used the FS palletes for Reimu and Marisa. It's funny seeing you mention Marisa having a purple ribbon on her back sprite ever since PoFV when Reimu's back sprite hasn't had a gohei since DDC. As a VOD watcher, I appreciate the reference to Kogussy. I'm surprised you didn't mention Aunn's tail. ZUN said she had one, WaHH gives her one, but her back sprite in UDoALG doesn't have a tail.
For Kagerou, one thing that's overlooked by some fanarts is that her outfit is actually designed to look like the Hanafuda card "Pampas Grass and the Full Moon" and they instead just make it half-red and half-white. This also lead to a mini trend of fanarts of her in outfits inspired by other Hanafuda cards.
a note on Aya Azuma, they also drew other non canon Touhou work, namely one called "Sanae-san is on the run". In it, Momiji is shown with VERY defined hair turf poking out that can be interpret as wolf ears that are just drooping down. Meaning they don't hate drawing droopy ears, they just wanna take away her ears at that very chapter in WaHH.
I like Reimu's undershirt and Meling's pants. Despite being a big Otaku Zun does have some level of respect for his characters, they aren't bags of meat for the audience to droll over. they are normal(looking, I know they are all insane freaks) women who follow standard societal decency, and I fuck with that a hell of a lot more than what anime normally shows for women.
this was a legit interesting journey, learned a lot about the Touhou girls design, and now i have my own mandela effect since i never noticed Reimu'sblue tie or Marisa's purple ribbon
50:44 That is probably due to the Color Models RYB(Red Yellow Blue) and RGB(Red Green Blue), hence why Red and Blue has matching color's on the skirt, but Yellow has Green on the skirt. Or Green has Yellow hair instead of Green, either one works really.
Yay! New AspreyFM uplaod! I wanted to point out a fact you got incorrect about Ran Yakumo. You said at 23:15 that there was confusion about Ran's hat because Ran is the shikigami, not the fox. That was true but has since been expanded upon and is no longer the case due to some Charcter Commentary provided by ZUN. I think that just adds more to the inconsistencies in Touhou lol. Also to add to what you said at 23:34 from Strange Creator against when people say, "erm she is only the shikigami", ZUN has said in Creator Commentary that Ran is a "very rare nine-tailed fox". He also said in the same commentary that they Ran and Chen need to be beast youkai to be used as as shikigami which also implies "Ran" and "Chen" are the beast youkai and because they are, they can be used as shikigami. Shikigami seem to be a confusing topic in touhou because ZUN wants to draw the analogy to computers. The analogy with Ran and Chen here is software running on a computer and people want to separate the "software" from the "hardware" but Ran and Chen are more "firmware" at this point. His annalogy becomes mote confusing because shikigami can become "possessed" which has a different meaning and context to how it would typically be understood in "the west". Possesion (for shikigami here) isnt refering to possesing a body but is more in keen to being a powerup where their master sort of "gives" them power. I'd also like to point out how charcters can be made into shikigami, Ran asked Aya if she wanted to become her shikigami too. So this implies that shikigami arnt simply a seperate entity entering another being but more so like a job/possition. Its a weird concept in touhou lol. Now the "Ran not being the fox" may have been inspired by shikigami lore because some lore says that shikigami need a host in order to be a shikigami; this seems to go almost be inline with what ZUN said recently about Ran and Chen needing to be be beast Youkai to be used as shikigami and also explains why ZUN may have made the distiction beforehand. Of cource the annoying, "um technically speaking," is indeed annoying because people may not want to think that the charcter "Ran" is mutally exclusive from "the fox". Its almost like someone saying, "Erm, you are the mind/soul not the physical body." I've heard people be very confused regarding Touhou 19 questioning the implications of "Ran's fox body" knowing Totetsu and others before being a shikigami. They'd have questions like, how does Ran know charcters from teh animala kingdome if she is the shikigami and not the fox? I feel like all of these questions, confusions, and "nerd emoji" can be satisfied with a simple explanation. Ran, the charcter we all know and love, is the ninetailed fox. She is also the shikigami part as well. While this techniaclly is the opposite of what ZUN said before, ZUN has since expanded on Ran and shikigami lore since and has refered to "Ran" as the nine-tailed fox himself and, as Asprey mentioned, ZUN gave the greenlight to call Ran the nintetailed fox. For me personally, Ran is the fox that later was turned into a shikigami (Like Aya was offered). Shikigami is more of transformative roll that can allow them to be powered up or "possessed" when they listen to their masters. TL;DR: Ran is and isnt the ninetailed fox. We can techniaclly say she is not because of what ZUN said at first. We can also say she is the ninetailed fox because of what ZUN explained afterwards. "Inconsistencies" and lore changes/ clarifications happen. ZUN doesnt mind how fans interpret his charcters anyways :3c The moral of the story is Ran is fluffy!!
52:25 As a guy who started with Gouyoku Ibun, I noticed one difference I’m not surprised you missed cause it is tiny. Her red sleeve thing in both games has a pattern. But in 17.5, the pattern is bigger and is white. In 19, it’s smaller and black.
Funnily enough since the fighting games Sakuya has always had big breasts for ZUN standards, and no they are not pads, Alphes even had the audacity of drawing Sakuya with her headlights on as you can see here 11:38
One thing that could count as inconstistency(not in the lore sense), is that in Curiosities of lotus asia, in the chapter when Kusanagi no tsurugi is mentioned, the art of the sword looks like a katana, when in fact, it should look like a tsurugi( straight doble-edge sword), although we dont exactly know how it really looks like
Streamer is caught looking at 2hu girls feet again. Also the more I watch your VOD, the more I recognize you using their footages and music. The busy person series definitely my favorite.
Just a minor thing I want to say for 33:14, its arguable that Sanae's snake hair band is present in her fighting game sprite but due to how small and chibi-fied these sprites are, they were simplified into 2 small blue bands for the sake of drawing the sprites more easily. Also for Suwako, since the way her socks are drawn, its probable that they're thigh-highs but for Mountain of Faith and the Cameos, the socks were rolled up over the knee and the other appearances have her wearing the socks at their full length.
Here are some interesting inconsistencies that were not touched upon in the video: - Genjii is often drawn with tortoise legs when he is a turtle and has confirmed turtle fins as seen in all SoEW endings - in PC-98 games Marisa always has a white ribbon, except SoEW endings & PoDD portrait where she has a yellow one and a red one in PoDD endings - her white stripe near the bottom of the dress is only on the LLS charcter select image and backsprites and her ribbon-belt also appears only sometimes - the first one of Marisa's portait sprites in MS uses an unfinished version with missing black pixels on the sleeve and hat - Marisa's backsprite in LLS/MS has a blue orb on the tip of hat which was never a part of her outfit anywhere - Marisa's eyes were already kinda brownish in IN so ZUN has colored them differently before - apparently Alphes was in charge of coloring the portraits for PoFV which explains the purple ribbon on the artwork and sprites as he colored it the same as for IaMP - Yuuka's shirt went from being longsleeved in her debut in LLS, to short sleeves for MS & Seihou 2, then changed back to long sleeves in Windows along with a skirt instead of pants - also in Seihou 2 on one portrait Yuuka's eyes are green like in PC-98 but on the other they are red like in Windows - unlike her fanon design, Daiyousei doesn't have a ponytail - Sakuya always had green hair ribbons except for CoLA where she has yellow ones - outside of EoSD characters, Aya is the only one who got a complete change of imagery in her Spell Card background from her previous appearance - Kanako's wreath on the top of her head was originally just put on her hair like a ring but it is interpreted to be used for a hairbun instead like in 17.5 or WaHH (and on her original MoF portrait it's not even fully connected) - Unzan appears much smaller on Ichirin's UFO portrait than he does on his sprites in UFO and later games - the size of the fairies is inconsistent as on many panels the Sangetsusei gang was almost as tall as Marisa but on one panel in the final chapter of VFiS where the protags enter their threehouse for a feast, the fairies barely reach their knees
On the topic of PC98 Marisa, I'd like to think that purple robes were just a stand-in for the dark blue/green combo due to color limitations (the same reason reimu's hair is purple rather than black) and later, ZUN decided the robes should be black as shown in the cutscenes of LLS/MS That being said, i'd like to see official art of what the PC-98 characters woudlve looked like without the color limitations from ZUN some day. Or just more of the PC-98 art era in general
@@NovaDelta The color of Marisa's robes in-game was always dark purple (later black) and they only appeared blue-ish on the SoEW boxart. Depending on what was drawn first, either she was supposed to have this design from the boxart and it got scrapped or ZUN forgot how to draw her. And also, Reimu had black hair in the PC-98 games... but only on the HRtP player sprite, can't believe I forgot about this inconsistency. I also would like to see more PC-98 character art but so far the best we got is JynX's remakes as ZUN won't go back to those games.
Not gonna lie, I just boiled down the outfit changes to “whatever the hell they had available that day”, which would explain a couple inconsistencies surrounding PCB’s main characters’ outfits, particularly Sakuya (she had winter gear prepared).
17:23 A little addition about Lily White's eye color. In fanon she predominantly has blue eyes, but in canon all her depictions and sprites have simply drawn =D eyes or just closed eyes like in Who is who artbook. The one and only piece of art where her eye color can be seen is her HM cameo, where she has yellow eyes
Very nice detailed video about details. I don't really have anything else to add except that I like characters with orange hair and thought the part about the characters with questionably orange hair was funny.
As someone who has never played a Touhou game and knows nothing about the series, I thank you for your in depth examination. I will never use this information for anything.
Maybe you should check them out one day? Free trials of some of these games exist so you could try one of them before deciding to actually purchase the games on Steam.
I've been waiting for a video about this topic to come out from anybody for years now. It's such a fascinating aspect of the series, as much as it can arguably be rather frustrating. Personally, I enjoy character inconsistencies. I like the fact that characters' designs change sometimes, as it allows for some experimentation and more inspiration for fanwork. I was just wondering this morning about the designs Reimu and Marisa had in Subterranean Animism, and how much I like them, as much as I don't think of them as definitive. Fanworks change up character designs most of the time already, especially with things such as body types and height differences, which are hard to gauge in official works because most characters are just drawn as the same doll base of sorts(not to insult ZUN's art style of course, I actually like it as limited as it typically is). As a Touhou fanartist myself, I sometimes experiment with character designs myself; for example, a year or so ago I attempted to make a crossover comic based off of daydreams I had when I first got into Touhou as a kid and preteen, and I went with some changes I enjoyed drawing. Such as, Reisen having both a black and white suit simultaneously as split into stripes, and Reimu having a blue ribbon(to match Mega Man, again, it's a crossover) and long purple hair that was angular to being near-geometric to match the easier-to-draw-in-comic-form angular substyle I had going for it, almost making her look like a Total Drama character in a sense. Don't know when I'll return to that, since it's not cancelled but not exactly active either, but I thought it would be interesting to share. Edit after watching: As for my idea on eye color and color schemes, here is a general mindset I have, though I share this as a personal thing and not as any kind of advice for others. For character designs in my fanart of anything in general, I tend to try to even out color palettes down to their basics in or adjacent to a main/sub/highlight structure. This is why most of the times I've drawn Mega Man, I've drawn him with red eyes, instead of blue or green, because that's the color of his armor's gems(and despite my green eye bias as someone who has green eyes irl). Of course, this varies between franchise to franchise, like how I draw characters from Ed Edd n' Eddy to have their eye colors visible in my art style, matching their tongue colors. For a Touhou related example, I draw Marisa with purple ribbons, as that's a good highlight color for her, and white is already present on her in other areas. Typically for Touhou characters in particular, for characters whose eye color changes between games and aren't majorly agreed upon, I try to use colors that are already present in their color palette otherwise, but rarely the same as their hair color as to not blend together. Also, as an avid centaur and centauroid enthusiast, part of me wants to draw at least _some_ animal-based characters, like the cats or dogs, to be centauroid of that said animal instead of just being kemonomimi of them. Though, this is entirely because of my general preferences and absolutely not something most fanons or especially canon would go with, Wakasagihime/Tojiko/Mima/some-other-PC-98-characters aside. I haven't drawn one of them as that yet, but I am considering it, though I'm rather shy since I'm sure someone would interpret that as being weird fetish art or whatever since I know that's a thing people default to when they see art that's 'too weird' for them and have to rely on it being problematic or devious as a moral shield.
12:00 out of all the Dojin’s I’ve read the only one to use her Ability to control space was “The Immortal Who Saw The Death Of The Universe” so there’s at least that
About the Suwako yellow eyes, the portrait you showed for 12.3 had (what I believe) yellow eyes, even though you called them gray. That’s probably where fans got that idea.
12:56 - A detail I noticed that might explain why Marisa's back sprite hasn't been updated: Sakuya's not actually been recolored to reflect the stockings here. You can still see her original shoes and socks, there's just sort of a translucent black filter over her legs to create the effect. That makes it seem almost like a workaround to not actually being able to edit the old sprites anymore (maybe some program compatibility issue) or at least indicates ZUN won't go to the trouble unless he really thinks he has to.
There was a hard to notice one that he missed. But it's really cool, so i'll put it in here for anyone looking through comments. In Cheating Detective Satori, while Satori's tubes start out pretty complex and fair to her Zun art when Ginmokusei draws them. The moment Akimaki Yuu starts, it becomes one simple, thin hanging noose or necktie. Then, as the series goes on, it gets thinner and longer until it becomes clear It's a necktie, and she even has a scene in chapter 32 where she ties it like a necktie.
Been watching your vids for a hot minute, you're one of the first English speaking touhou youtubers i have found. I thought the video was interesting and when drawing the characters i noticed everyone either has an agreed idea how a character should look, or no two depictions are the same, the inconsistencies Could easily be chalked up to magic. But enjoying your videos and enjoying your drawings, keep at it
Kinda surprised Kasen’s long sleeve look didn’t get a mention despite how many panels it was in for other characters examples ngl, it’s one of my favorite alt looks in the series
Suwako's socks can be explained by her debut appearance having extra fabric on the ends meaning she had always been wearing thigh highs but was folded for some reason
13:50 that's more of a lore inconsisty but in the first chapters of lotus of curiosity asia, remilia gets mad because people think that she sleeps in a coffin, while she says that she sleep in a bed like everyone
Honestly, I really like the inconsistencies Touhou character has! Despite changes in small details here and there, the overall image of the design stays pretty consistent so it opens up to a whole lots of possibilities and experimentation while keeping their design stay close enough to the original one
Mystia has always been my favorite Toohoo, and since you skipped over her... While a lot of little outfit details are always up to interpretation, the most "consistent inconsistencies" I've noticed with her are that her eyes vary anywhere from red, to brown, pink, yellow, grey, and less commonly purple or blue. In fact her eye color is so inconsistent that even artists that have drawn her over a number of years have changed her eye color in their works. The other main thing is her wings, that can be interpreted as having the crescent shaped hook in the center of the top, or coming up and out more like regular bird wings. In more recent years she's gotten a chest buff, but as stated toward the end of the video, this might be a general trend. I can't really speak on all the characters as when I look for more Touhou art these days I'm really just looking for new Mystys.
53:32 as someone who knows absolutely nothing about the series I'll admit that i got lost with this part, artwork sprites and size inconsistencies was fine but THIS!!!!
Even with the inconsistencies and some wonky proportions, his characters are well designed and do look appealing. Also his art style does have charm (whatever is the old one or the current one, both art styles look appealing in my opinion).
I think ZUN needs a spreadsheet of immutable design characteristics for each character. If eye or hair color can change, then some explanation should accompany that. I can accept variability in fan art and outfit design; however, I value bodily consistency across works as well as consistency between sprites and corresponding portraits within works. I also value the non-use of mirrored sprites for asymmetric character designs.
@@kenrichgumanid9235 as an artist myself, I'd say that Zun's actually decent at drawing. The characters do look pleasant and the proportions are mostly ok (I've seen way worse art before). Of course, it might not necessarily be professional art or anything like that, but it is decent art and better than the ones most amateurs draw. Also his art and character designs do look appealing as well.
You forgot to mention that CDS included stitches over Koishi's 3rd eye while being a common fanon-ism it was not shown or implied in any canon work until then
I actually noticed a lot of eye color inconsistencies while using the official portraits as reference for some art I drew. Personally I just like to stick with the colors I think fit the character the most.
22:51 this triangle thingy in Yuyuko's head is called sankaku zukin, tenkakan, kami kakushi or hitai eboshi. It's commonly depicted on ghost attire since it is part of shizoku, the clothing worn when departing to the afterlife. As far as I know there's not only one meaning to it, different sources point different origins and meanings. Some that I heard are that it protected the deceased from curses, or that symbolizes formality/high status, since it can be viewed as a crown.
As a decent artist, I want to say that the appearance inconsistancies actually helped us a lot. It always giving us a direction on how the character should look like overall, and also give us a room for adjustments depanding on artist's preferences. By the way, the artist(including me) usually have a habit of looking for references everywhere and artists have their own preference. So inconsistancies spreads between artists. A lot of time I always prefer to draw no frills variation. Yuyuko is still the one I haven't draw yet because the frills are literally all over her clothes and it's way too difficult.
My LoLK fanboyism has arisen because I was looking forward to seeing the unique traits of of the main characters in that game. But I guess it's up to me to fill in the details. In Touhou 15: - Reimu has white hair tubes with red patterns. It is the only Touhou media where Reimu has different color hair tubes as opposed to the normal red with white patterns. (Update: Turns out I was wrong. Looks like they were white in EoSD as well, it's just really hard to see. And there's also the PC98 games, and there's also the PC98 games which I forgot about because... well... it's the PC98 era. But for the most part, they're always red with sometimes white patterns). - Marisa has a little moon clip on her vest. Also her dress is a dark blue, which interestingly comes from her previous appearance in the previous fighting games, HM and ULiL, and crosses into AoCF with it being the last we see of it. But this is also strange considering that DDC has her wearing a black dress and then returning to dark blue later on and that game takes place between the two fighting games mentioned. - While Sanae's hair was starting to get shorter and shorter every appearance, it was very subtle up until LoLK when she suddenly got a noticeable haircut, which seems to have stayed that way in TH19. Though maybe you did mention something about this. This is a pretty long video and I'll watch again to see if you did mention anything, but I just wanted to add my contribution.
Reimu regularly switches between red and white tubes, the red ones are just more common, it th19 she has white tubes. Also this is (likely) the only time she wears full on knee-high boots. Marisa also got a haircut too. Also why has nobody ever mentioned the change in Sanae’s blue? The old and new, which came in LoLK by the way, are very different, old was brighter with lighter dots and lines while the new is darker, more navy look, and has a very intricate fluorescent pattern that acts similar to Okuu and Chimata’s capes, and honestly that change is in my opinion definitely one of the best design changes ZUN has made, also her hair got darker along with being cut too, i guess all the space radiation killed the pigment in her hair
@@Hijiri_MIRACHION weirdly enough reimu’s tubes are never talked about when it comes to character design changes, and even though its a minor change even more minor changes have been brought up before so i don’t know, same thing with her skirt, it used to change between hemming and patterned then was always hemmed mof-td then always patterned ddc onwards. i personally enjoy ufo reimu the most, then in, then th19 lolk reimu’s hair frankly highlights the roundness of her head too much for me, also because i like fluffy hair reimu and ufo does that the most, though i appreciate sa reimu’s shading as a close second to in reimu.
34:26 what do you mean? They're clearly yellowish on the left so it's not pulled out of nowhere. At most pale-ish green or even brown/hazel but it's not gray. Also is ur pronunciation of Sanae's name as "snay" a joke that references snakes? It's a joke.. right...?
Every single clothing inconsistency can be headcannoned away as them just wearing different clothes.
And the hair thing can be explained with one word.
Magic.
Either that, or everyone just decided to style their hair every once in a while. Witches do that, right?
@@robertbernard7844
All women change hairstyle after a while
Also contact lenses
There's literally a page in the WaHH manga that shows off a bunch of Reimu's similar yet different outfits iirc
it's not even headcanon, it's the reasonable assumption.
Reimu's brown/black hair can be explained by having very dark brown hair. Once the black looking hair is lighted enough, it is shown as brown. This happens in many asian people's seemingly black hair.
It happens to me regularly too, as a European, it just takes a few days of not thinking about washing it.
Freshly washed it's near black, but dark brown on closer inspection, wet it looks completely black, but once the oils get back in there it becomes lighter and lighter. Some Conditioners alone bring it light enough to compare to some Lyricas in Fan Works, who is supposed to have light brown hair.
But I think for Reimu it's more a change in mindset for her design. Black leans towards the "Yamato Nadeshiko", the perfect Japanese woman, which Reimu is in terms of natural abilities and position as Shrine Maiden; meanwhile brown emphasizes how she isn't actually like that as a person, wanting to just live a quiet life without working towards living up to such standards.
It's shorthand for a personality, similar to pink hair indicating an airhead and green hair being reserved for loners, though 2hu doesn't follow that trend in the slightest, otherwise.
That's what I was thinking lol
SOMEBODY FINALLY MENTIONED REIMU IS ASIAN!
I'm half asian and yep
My hair is like that
27:15 I recently saw that ZUN had stated that the reason Reisen's ears get all wrinkly sometimes is due to stress, which would seem to imply that they are indeed real ears.
I think that was in LoLK's ending, where some text said "Stress affects the ears". Reisen must be stressed out often if her ears look fake in some games.
@@Hijiri_MIRACHIONI mean... she is
@@Hijiri_MIRACHIONWith tewi, ofc she's stressed
@@MisterSleep1123 I was guessing more PTSD from her time on the moon and potentially stress from her work with Erin, but I know I'd be stressed if I had to deal with Tewi every day.
Yeah but the other reason some say they're fake is because you can fairly often see literal buttons holding them in place
This entire video can be summed up with "ZUN knew this would happen and has already stated that if any contradictions occur the newer version is canon"
My favorite part a bout Yuyuko's kimono design is that she knows an incident is occurring and chooses to stitch on a new design instead of telling anyonr.
I always thought she was like "Oh! I have just the outfit. Hold on, Youmu."
@@caseydewitt6236 If it was just the cherry blossoms and moon patterns, I'd believe it was a coincidence. The red clouds/mist is suspicious and the divine spirit pattern makes too many "coincidences" to not be a pattern.
Youmu's fight with Yuyuko in TD also shows that she didn't share any information with Youmu, despite knowing there was an incident.
I like yuyuko
that is somehow incredibly in character for her
@@kuskus_th13 "Yuyuko, why are you stitching red clouds to your kimono?"
"Don't worry about it. Now,, for no reason at all, help me earthquake-proof the house."
I'm the total opposite when it comes to Reimu's undergarament, I've always know n she has an undershirt because it's one of the things I've noticed that fanon always gets wrong. She never shows her midriff.
Yea exactly, in the manga and official fanart she always has an undershirt, since most of the clothes are based on victorian/vintage Japanese and western clothing 🤷♀️
Compared to the fandom works where she not only almost always misses it but her red shirt is cropped.
Oh! Hello Immac
Her midriff is only visible in silent sinner in blue
Touhou fans resisting the urge to add side boob where there otherwise isn’t to the point of gaslighting the whole community
Girls' got a big wardrobe.
Marisa probably just throws them on the ground though
"The girls are now dressing"
Marisa keeps stealing dresses and diferent colored ribbons and when she gets bored of them she just throws them on the ground.
Only someone like Asprey could talk about Marisa’s eyes being red on the cover of 100th Black Market for 50+ minutes
12:03 And then, in Forbidden Scrollery, she stops time, grabs a chupacabra, and returns to her starting position. So either she's a filthy liar on how her powers work, or she was willing to subject Remi's pet to insane g-forces caused by moving at nigh-infinite speeds.
The time-stopping ability in general isn't something that is really allowed by physics - the speed of time depends on the speed of light and changing speed of light doesn't sound like something that will leave our universe intact, so the idea that she just moves fast makes more sense. It doesn't explain though why stuff that she carries survives insane accelerations and how is she able to move at all, since at very small timescales air works sort of like a thick liquid or even a near-solid. So either the world of Touhou doesn't work like ours (the most logical explanation) or Sakuya in stopped time works like a ghostly creature that can pass through air without causing sonic booms and has ability to "cut" items from one place and "paste" them into another, with the ability to change their impulses at the same time
@akeem2983 Nah, it's magic. She just stops time.
Yeah she's just lying. Or she might not know how it works.
she's definitely lying, sakuya is probably the character who lies the most
@@akeem2983I mean, she is also able to change space, which maybe include how physics works?
something worth noting with okina is that her ability to stand is _not_ actually a sure sign that she does not have any form of leg disability, as there's a far wider range of those than "perfectly health legs" to "complete loss of leg use." in fact, from what i'm aware, it's actually relatively rare for someone to totally lose the use of their legs barring the obvious cases of lower body paralysis or outright loss of limb. rather, it's more of a matter of stuff like weak ligaments that can't bear the weight of being stood on for an extended amount of time, neurological issues that render the complex motions of walking unreliable or outright infeasible, or even stuff that actually has nothing to do with the legs, like severe balance issues or chronic vertigo that would lead to constant falls while upright
wheelchairs ( and, well, chair-based mobility aids like okina's own magical flying chair in general ) are a versatile tool used to treat a wide variety of conditions, as being able to move without standing is just one of those things that naturally covers a _whole_ lotta bases
TBH, I think the whole thing shows that Zun doesn't know how mobility impaired people operate very well. It's probably the reason why he decided to move away from the "Okina is disabled in a wheelchair" design initially. But yeah loads of mobility impaired people can stand and walk, just not very long or it's very unsafe for them to do so.
At the same time I'm pretty sure it's stated that gods have the freedom to simply change their body and appearance whenever and however they wish, so if Okina actually has a 'real' disability, it's because she chose to and can do away with it whenever.
@mousysaint9143 That seems needlessly harsh. ZUN's stated he originally intended her to be disabled, but had second thoughts because it felt "mean-spirited" to do that to her. So she isn't, but stays sitting as if she is as a result.
@@thatcow86 I'm not even trying to say that this is a bad thing, seeing as Okina's a literal god and represents those with disabilities I think we've reached a level beyond discussions of regular people faking disabilities or whatever. Just pointing out what is likely the case based on what we've been previously told.
She isn't though she has it due to her nature as the God of Disability. Funny enough this all makes Suwa an outlier as she is the only God associated with something she isn't a deity of. That being frogs.
I love the outfit and hairstyle changes from game to game because it makes it feel like it's grounded in reality. For the same reason I hate the eye colour changes! I guess a youkai did it is the best explanation.
Some people seem to forget that the games happen months apart from each other. So it would make sense the girls would wear different clothes and try different hair styles.
As for the eye colors... maybe Rinnosuke sells contact lenses? I still get a chuckle out of that time people were making a big deal out of Marisa having red eyes in 100th Black Market.
The touhou character's changing up their outfits but still keeping it recognizably similar is one of my favourite things about the series
My guess would be reimu changes her chest ribbon sometimes because she treats it like a neck tie
**something happens in Gensokyo**
Everyone: Damn, youkai are at it again
I don't mind the eye colors, or even the shapes of objects, changing around. people often depict gensokyo as your usual clean bright anime world, but to me it's a murky, unclear place where things inexplicably transform and change and their true appearance isn't always, if ever, clear
@@TheLeadElite my headcannon is that in the 100th black market, the cards affected Marisa's eye color because she collected so many (like a magic side effect of the power the cards contain).
I also have another headcannon though. Marisa's a witch so she drank a random potion she made and it turned her eyes red as a side effect.
8:47 Speaking of Cirno, she is actually called a "ice spirit" in the EoSD character profile and "youkai of ice" in the PCB character profile. She only became a fairy from PoFV onward, and it's why she doesn't follow the fairy naming convention that was established by Lily White and the three fairies.
(The Touhou wiki incorrectly translates her EoSD profile as "ice fairy" though).
So..is she a Fairy or a Youkai? Like, what youkai has wings or live in snow. I mean, she could be a young Yuki-Onna, but when did Yukis ever have Wings? I'm definitely remembering her as a fairy, but "fairy" is diverse as well. Leprechauns and gnomes are called "fairies", but they look more like short old men and not funny little girls! 🤔
What convention?
@@shirleymaemattthews4862 I think OP was saying that she was originally called an "ice spirit" but later re-clasified a fairy. So she is a fairy just without the fairy naming convention (i.e. just "Cirno")
@@palapapa0201 So the fairies have two names like Sunny Milk, Star Saphire, Lily White. Cirno is just Cirno so doesn't follow that pattern.
Diayousei doesn't follow it either but that was because that's a fan given name
@@happyflies2434 Thanks for telling me. But it's odd that she's called a "fairy", and looks like one, (petite, short, cute, winged, etc). But the term can also refer to more nastier or less attractive things like gnomes, leprechauns, and sometimes certain types of trolls!
50:20 Brown is just Orange with different context, the color "Brown" doesn't exactly exist on it's own. Trippy stuff.
You mean brown is just darker orange
Orange is Neon Brown
@@biggali
Neoff orange
8:04 the reimu theme for this game is stuck in my head so hard, it subconsciously started playing when I saw this scene
what's it called?
@@sheepcommander_ literally "Theme of Reimu", it's a remix of maiden's cappricio. If you're asking about the game, it's Touhou Puppet Dance Performance
@@juncheok8579 Thank you!!
Neko miko Reimu aishiteru~
fun fact in Cireikiden (or foul detective Satori).
- Okuu's elephants foot is replaced by what looks like a 2-segmented iron harness (Subterranean Animosity [Part VI] pages 14, 16)
- Her Top now has 2 brooches as to which her cape is attached too (Subterranean Animosity [Part VI] pages 11, 18)
- Her Arm cannon / third leg has X shapes covering the base of it, while the fighting games have multiple different shapes (Subterranean Animosity [Part VI] page 15)
-Sincerely an okuu fan
someone finally mentioned her foot...
@@sn0wbit12 it has such a cool design in FDS i could not NOT mention it
At some point, I wanna cosplay as Utsuho but gosh darn the details are complex and at times inconsistent.
So, it really is just picking a preferred interpretation (just like my Reisen cosplay which has her Rabbitgun in the later games but wearing her blazer.).
the foot in FDS is quite cool and feels more practical from a battle perspective but i feel it kinda takes away from the whole nuclear motif that her original design had
Weren't Reisen's ears basically confirmed to be real, since apparently stress causes her ears to crumple?
Yes
Hi
Also yeah, fanartists depicting Hecatia's different "forms" as discrete individuals is actually exactly how she works. Given that she's, well, Hecate, those literally are three different bodies, and during the extra stage battle she's seemingly just flipping through them (presumably for the flair of it all).
16:19 "as alice is already the perfect woman" *puts onscreen EOSD for the busy person alice *
i like to think yuyuko's design changes on her kimono is just her owning a few kimono and wearing a different one that day
you missed some details with Ran at 23:05 that i'd like to bring up
•throughout most of the fighting games up to HM where Ran appears alongside Yukari, her hat is seen visibly as pink, this would only be part of her hat and no other part of her clothing.
•Rans tabards, gem on her collar, and visible stitching on her purple cuff and collar changes between PCB and UDoaLG, also the purple is more vibrant in UDoaLG
•Rans tabart also has less designs in IaMP, SWR, Hisoutensoku, and HM with HMs being different from the other fighting games before AoFC made it more accurate to PCB
• Ran is seemingly less visible than the other characters in her appearance in IN, looking almost transparent
oh really?
I think Ran being transparent is just a gameplay thing so that the bullets are easier to see and pop out more compared to your own projectiles
15:54 "when they draw her with clothes on" LMAO
Dylan: I will make a video about weird Touhou inconsistencies and nothing will go wrong or challenge my base level assumptions.
The mischievous color orange:
I like thinking of Okina as needing a wheelchair normally but being able to stand and walk through magical means with effort. A bit like how characters don't fly everywhere unless they're in a hurry. In my mind it's a nice marriage of the two depictions
Remilia's wings also tend to have a good bit of inconsistency, mainly on whether or not the back of her wings are black, and if they have fingers or not
37:45 YOU CAN'T JUST SHOVE MASSIVE SATITTIES IN MY FACE WITH NO WARNING
Amazing effort! 👏 You've been teasing the creation-, as well some of the content to expect from this for quite a while. No easy task and I'm sure a person can spend half a day simply talking about inconsistencies and discrepancies within this series.
Nicely done! 👍
You forgot to mention Cirno's bow changing between blue and green being inconsistent in portrait and sprite and that Nitori's hat changed and lost the ghost squiggle in her 100th Black Market portrait-sprite and that might seem unimportant to some but even all the other Kappa have that ghost squiggle in the Manga.
"Alice is the perfect Woman", true and based.
I honestly love the inconsistency because it makes the cosplay aspect so much more broad and exciting to do :D
I always found it interesting how ZUN has always made sure to never depict the tengu with animal features, like Aya's wings or Momiji's ears, even though almost every other official artist do depict the tengu with said features. Even more bizarre considering ZUN is capable of drawing bird wings as seen with Okuu and Saki.
Also I'd love to hear a fan theory that gives an in-universe explaination as to how almost all the protags (Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya, Youmu, Reisen and Aya) having red eyes some or all of the time links them all together. (Sorry streamer, but it seems Bunbunmaru News might have mislead you about Aya's eye colour, seeing as her eyes are more brown/hazel in Double Spoiler, Who's Who and the Volume 4 cover of CDS. Funnily enough, the human ears seem to be a staple of red eyes while the pointed ears are a staple of brown eyes)
Also also, I went ahead and standardised the descriptions on Touhou wiki to account for the ambiguity among ginger characters (and also fixed the egregious error of them calling Shion's hair purple).
yeah i never got that specually since Aya and Momiji specifically loogk eally good with wings and ears
@@ironmaster6496 tbh I dig ear-less Momiji
I feel like a lot of these design inconsistencies can be explained by simply "ZUN didn't want to draw it". Chest sizes, Yuuma's teeth, eye colors that don't match hair colors...
To be fair, bird ears are like little holes on their cheeks so that might look a little weird.
@magicyber909 but momiji is a wolf tengu, not a crow tengu
I don't think ZUN cares as much as we do, and that's okay, because Touhou has room for all our interpretations.
An "explanation" for the orange/brown inconsistency can be explained by the fact that brown is technically dark orange
Definitely understand how this video took so long and so much effort to make! I can't believe I never noticed that Kogasa always seems to stand on one leg, that's a really neat touch and a good catch in the video. There's a lot of neat little details in this analysis that show how well these characters can be designed, like Futo's feng shui colors, and also how weird ZUN can be about things like Patchy's outfit. This video really gave me a deeper understanding of characters I thought I knew all about. Also I think the Touhou Wiki indicates that I'm colorblind
I'm guessing that the inconsistencies between Reimu and Marisa's palletes in FS and ULiL/AoCF might be to better reflect their in game appearances, and to better match the art in HM where the palletes were defined in the first place. If Moe Harukawa was there from the start, it's possible she might have used the FS palletes for Reimu and Marisa.
It's funny seeing you mention Marisa having a purple ribbon on her back sprite ever since PoFV when Reimu's back sprite hasn't had a gohei since DDC.
As a VOD watcher, I appreciate the reference to Kogussy.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Aunn's tail. ZUN said she had one, WaHH gives her one, but her back sprite in UDoALG doesn't have a tail.
For Kagerou, one thing that's overlooked by some fanarts is that her outfit is actually designed to look like the Hanafuda card "Pampas Grass and the Full Moon" and they instead just make it half-red and half-white. This also lead to a mini trend of fanarts of her in outfits inspired by other Hanafuda cards.
a note on Aya Azuma, they also drew other non canon Touhou work, namely one called "Sanae-san is on the run". In it, Momiji is shown with VERY defined hair turf poking out that can be interpret as wolf ears that are just drooping down. Meaning they don't hate drawing droopy ears, they just wanna take away her ears at that very chapter in WaHH.
I like Reimu's undershirt and Meling's pants. Despite being a big Otaku Zun does have some level of respect for his characters, they aren't bags of meat for the audience to droll over. they are normal(looking, I know they are all insane freaks) women who follow standard societal decency, and I fuck with that a hell of a lot more than what anime normally shows for women.
Same
Same, i also think that the undergarment for reimu just makes a lot more sense considering she usually looks like she has a collar w a red vest on
What's wrong with their eyes, man?
Yes!!! Also the mahoako pfp makes this funnier
Your pfp makes this comment a little ironic
this was a legit interesting journey, learned a lot about the Touhou girls design, and now i have my own mandela effect since i never noticed Reimu'sblue tie or Marisa's purple ribbon
50:44 That is probably due to the Color Models RYB(Red Yellow Blue) and RGB(Red Green Blue), hence why Red and Blue has matching color's on the skirt, but Yellow has Green on the skirt. Or Green has Yellow hair instead of Green, either one works really.
Hecatia couldn't decide what the third primary color was, so she chose both. Imagine what would happen if she incorporated CMYK
Reimus' hair color changes based on how much sun she's gotten. that's my headcannon and I'm sticking with it
PC-98 Reimu just chilling out 1 inch away from the sun
Thank you for helping set the designs straight for us artists - knowing all these will help us break the rules of their design better!
Yay! New AspreyFM uplaod!
I wanted to point out a fact you got incorrect about Ran Yakumo. You said at 23:15 that there was confusion about Ran's hat because Ran is the shikigami, not the fox. That was true but has since been expanded upon and is no longer the case due to some Charcter Commentary provided by ZUN.
I think that just adds more to the inconsistencies in Touhou lol.
Also to add to what you said at 23:34 from Strange Creator against when people say, "erm she is only the shikigami", ZUN has said in Creator Commentary that Ran is a "very rare nine-tailed fox".
He also said in the same commentary that they Ran and Chen need to be beast youkai to be used as as shikigami which also implies "Ran" and "Chen" are the beast youkai and because they are, they can be used as shikigami.
Shikigami seem to be a confusing topic in touhou because ZUN wants to draw the analogy to computers. The analogy with Ran and Chen here is software running on a computer and people want to separate the "software" from the "hardware" but Ran and Chen are more "firmware" at this point.
His annalogy becomes mote confusing because shikigami can become "possessed" which has a different meaning and context to how it would typically be understood in "the west". Possesion (for shikigami here) isnt refering to possesing a body but is more in keen to being a powerup where their master sort of "gives" them power.
I'd also like to point out how charcters can be made into shikigami, Ran asked Aya if she wanted to become her shikigami too.
So this implies that shikigami arnt simply a seperate entity entering another being but more so like a job/possition.
Its a weird concept in touhou lol.
Now the "Ran not being the fox" may have been inspired by shikigami lore because some lore says that shikigami need a host in order to be a shikigami; this seems to go almost be inline with what ZUN said recently about Ran and Chen needing to be be beast Youkai to be used as shikigami and also explains why ZUN may have made the distiction beforehand.
Of cource the annoying, "um technically speaking," is indeed annoying because people may not want to think that the charcter "Ran" is mutally exclusive from "the fox". Its almost like someone saying, "Erm, you are the mind/soul not the physical body."
I've heard people be very confused regarding Touhou 19 questioning the implications of "Ran's fox body" knowing Totetsu and others before being a shikigami. They'd have questions like, how does Ran know charcters from teh animala kingdome if she is the shikigami and not the fox?
I feel like all of these questions, confusions, and "nerd emoji" can be satisfied with a simple explanation.
Ran, the charcter we all know and love, is the ninetailed fox. She is also the shikigami part as well.
While this techniaclly is the opposite of what ZUN said before, ZUN has since expanded on Ran and shikigami lore since and has refered to "Ran" as the nine-tailed fox himself and, as Asprey mentioned, ZUN gave the greenlight to call Ran the nintetailed fox.
For me personally, Ran is the fox that later was turned into a shikigami (Like Aya was offered). Shikigami is more of transformative roll that can allow them to be powered up or "possessed" when they listen to their masters.
TL;DR:
Ran is and isnt the ninetailed fox. We can techniaclly say she is not because of what ZUN said at first. We can also say she is the ninetailed fox because of what ZUN explained afterwards. "Inconsistencies" and lore changes/ clarifications happen. ZUN doesnt mind how fans interpret his charcters anyways :3c
The moral of the story is Ran is fluffy!!
Amazing how modest all touhou girls dress. The most you get is exposed shoulder. But all skirts are prope length not showing too much skin.
Which made Byakuren's "turbo granny" urban legend outfit all the more surprising where she wears a biker suit with boob window.
52:25 As a guy who started with Gouyoku Ibun, I noticed one difference I’m not surprised you missed cause it is tiny. Her red sleeve thing in both games has a pattern. But in 17.5, the pattern is bigger and is white. In 19, it’s smaller and black.
the biggest inconsistency in all of touhou is making them all big boobed
edit: so you did mention it in the video. based
Funnily enough since the fighting games Sakuya has always had big breasts for ZUN standards, and no they are not pads, Alphes even had the audacity of drawing Sakuya with her headlights on as you can see here 11:38
@@MedsieLovr fair point, i didn't even notice that lol
@@MedsieLovr what's a headlight?!?
@@yutavergil The idea of fetishizing the characters' boobs give it an unintentional incel or simp vibes to the games' fandom! 😭
@@shirleymaemattthews4862 Boobs, Nipples.
One thing that could count as inconstistency(not in the lore sense), is that in Curiosities of lotus asia, in the chapter when Kusanagi no tsurugi is mentioned, the art of the sword looks like a katana, when in fact, it should look like a tsurugi( straight doble-edge sword), although we dont exactly know how it really looks like
Streamer is caught looking at 2hu girls feet again.
Also the more I watch your VOD, the more I recognize you using their footages and music. The busy person series definitely my favorite.
See, where you're drunk you kinda forget what colors go where.
Just a minor thing I want to say for 33:14, its arguable that Sanae's snake hair band is present in her fighting game sprite but due to how small and chibi-fied these sprites are, they were simplified into 2 small blue bands for the sake of drawing the sprites more easily.
Also for Suwako, since the way her socks are drawn, its probable that they're thigh-highs but for Mountain of Faith and the Cameos, the socks were rolled up over the knee and the other appearances have her wearing the socks at their full length.
Here are some interesting inconsistencies that were not touched upon in the video:
- Genjii is often drawn with tortoise legs when he is a turtle and has confirmed turtle fins as seen in all SoEW endings
- in PC-98 games Marisa always has a white ribbon, except SoEW endings & PoDD portrait where she has a yellow one and a red one in PoDD endings
- her white stripe near the bottom of the dress is only on the LLS charcter select image and backsprites and her ribbon-belt also appears only sometimes
- the first one of Marisa's portait sprites in MS uses an unfinished version with missing black pixels on the sleeve and hat
- Marisa's backsprite in LLS/MS has a blue orb on the tip of hat which was never a part of her outfit anywhere
- Marisa's eyes were already kinda brownish in IN so ZUN has colored them differently before
- apparently Alphes was in charge of coloring the portraits for PoFV which explains the purple ribbon on the artwork and sprites as he colored it the same as for IaMP
- Yuuka's shirt went from being longsleeved in her debut in LLS, to short sleeves for MS & Seihou 2, then changed back to long sleeves in Windows along with a skirt instead of pants
- also in Seihou 2 on one portrait Yuuka's eyes are green like in PC-98 but on the other they are red like in Windows
- unlike her fanon design, Daiyousei doesn't have a ponytail
- Sakuya always had green hair ribbons except for CoLA where she has yellow ones
- outside of EoSD characters, Aya is the only one who got a complete change of imagery in her Spell Card background from her previous appearance
- Kanako's wreath on the top of her head was originally just put on her hair like a ring but it is interpreted to be used for a hairbun instead like in 17.5 or WaHH (and on her original MoF portrait it's not even fully connected)
- Unzan appears much smaller on Ichirin's UFO portrait than he does on his sprites in UFO and later games
- the size of the fairies is inconsistent as on many panels the Sangetsusei gang was almost as tall as Marisa but on one panel in the final chapter of VFiS where the protags enter their threehouse for a feast, the fairies barely reach their knees
On the topic of PC98 Marisa, I'd like to think that purple robes were just a stand-in for the dark blue/green combo due to color limitations (the same reason reimu's hair is purple rather than black) and later, ZUN decided the robes should be black as shown in the cutscenes of LLS/MS
That being said, i'd like to see official art of what the PC-98 characters woudlve looked like without the color limitations from ZUN some day. Or just more of the PC-98 art era in general
@@NovaDelta The color of Marisa's robes in-game was always dark purple (later black) and they only appeared blue-ish on the SoEW boxart. Depending on what was drawn first, either she was supposed to have this design from the boxart and it got scrapped or ZUN forgot how to draw her. And also, Reimu had black hair in the PC-98 games... but only on the HRtP player sprite, can't believe I forgot about this inconsistency.
I also would like to see more PC-98 character art but so far the best we got is JynX's remakes as ZUN won't go back to those games.
Not gonna lie, I just boiled down the outfit changes to “whatever the hell they had available that day”, which would explain a couple inconsistencies surrounding PCB’s main characters’ outfits, particularly Sakuya (she had winter gear prepared).
I got the 'rabbit hole' joke with Reisen appearing in the background!
17:23 A little addition about Lily White's eye color. In fanon she predominantly has blue eyes, but in canon all her depictions and sprites have simply drawn =D eyes or just closed eyes like in Who is who artbook. The one and only piece of art where her eye color can be seen is her HM cameo, where she has yellow eyes
Very nice detailed video about details. I don't really have anything else to add except that I like characters with orange hair and thought the part about the characters with questionably orange hair was funny.
As someone who has never played a Touhou game and knows nothing about the series, I thank you for your in depth examination. I will never use this information for anything.
Maybe you should check them out one day? Free trials of some of these games exist so you could try one of them before deciding to actually purchase the games on Steam.
Video steamer been talking about is now out!
Also, I love the thumbnail
I've been waiting for a video about this topic to come out from anybody for years now. It's such a fascinating aspect of the series, as much as it can arguably be rather frustrating.
Personally, I enjoy character inconsistencies. I like the fact that characters' designs change sometimes, as it allows for some experimentation and more inspiration for fanwork. I was just wondering this morning about the designs Reimu and Marisa had in Subterranean Animism, and how much I like them, as much as I don't think of them as definitive.
Fanworks change up character designs most of the time already, especially with things such as body types and height differences, which are hard to gauge in official works because most characters are just drawn as the same doll base of sorts(not to insult ZUN's art style of course, I actually like it as limited as it typically is). As a Touhou fanartist myself, I sometimes experiment with character designs myself; for example, a year or so ago I attempted to make a crossover comic based off of daydreams I had when I first got into Touhou as a kid and preteen, and I went with some changes I enjoyed drawing. Such as, Reisen having both a black and white suit simultaneously as split into stripes, and Reimu having a blue ribbon(to match Mega Man, again, it's a crossover) and long purple hair that was angular to being near-geometric to match the easier-to-draw-in-comic-form angular substyle I had going for it, almost making her look like a Total Drama character in a sense. Don't know when I'll return to that, since it's not cancelled but not exactly active either, but I thought it would be interesting to share.
Edit after watching: As for my idea on eye color and color schemes, here is a general mindset I have, though I share this as a personal thing and not as any kind of advice for others. For character designs in my fanart of anything in general, I tend to try to even out color palettes down to their basics in or adjacent to a main/sub/highlight structure. This is why most of the times I've drawn Mega Man, I've drawn him with red eyes, instead of blue or green, because that's the color of his armor's gems(and despite my green eye bias as someone who has green eyes irl). Of course, this varies between franchise to franchise, like how I draw characters from Ed Edd n' Eddy to have their eye colors visible in my art style, matching their tongue colors. For a Touhou related example, I draw Marisa with purple ribbons, as that's a good highlight color for her, and white is already present on her in other areas. Typically for Touhou characters in particular, for characters whose eye color changes between games and aren't majorly agreed upon, I try to use colors that are already present in their color palette otherwise, but rarely the same as their hair color as to not blend together.
Also, as an avid centaur and centauroid enthusiast, part of me wants to draw at least _some_ animal-based characters, like the cats or dogs, to be centauroid of that said animal instead of just being kemonomimi of them. Though, this is entirely because of my general preferences and absolutely not something most fanons or especially canon would go with, Wakasagihime/Tojiko/Mima/some-other-PC-98-characters aside. I haven't drawn one of them as that yet, but I am considering it, though I'm rather shy since I'm sure someone would interpret that as being weird fetish art or whatever since I know that's a thing people default to when they see art that's 'too weird' for them and have to rely on it being problematic or devious as a moral shield.
Almost an hour of touhou 🎉 thank you so much for taking the time to make these videos for us to enjoy
Goat just posted
3:46
I love how they look in this game. It has a very pleasant art style and the game is just really pretty overall.
I agree! Honestly the art style in the newer Touhou fighting games and the one in Touhou 17.5 are my favorites!
12:00 out of all the Dojin’s I’ve read the only one to use her Ability to control space was “The Immortal Who Saw The Death Of The Universe” so there’s at least that
Satori hair either being pink, purple or red in fan material/mainline games is always my favorite thing to point out.
Not to mention her hair in most fan works are straight while she has messy hair that give her a lot of personality
About the Suwako yellow eyes, the portrait you showed for 12.3 had (what I believe) yellow eyes, even though you called them gray. That’s probably where fans got that idea.
Clicked for Sanae, stayed for the genuinely great production value and sheer effort on the research.
...And Flandre.
54 minute asprey vid, truly a blessed day
12:56 - A detail I noticed that might explain why Marisa's back sprite hasn't been updated: Sakuya's not actually been recolored to reflect the stockings here. You can still see her original shoes and socks, there's just sort of a translucent black filter over her legs to create the effect. That makes it seem almost like a workaround to not actually being able to edit the old sprites anymore (maybe some program compatibility issue) or at least indicates ZUN won't go to the trouble unless he really thinks he has to.
There was a hard to notice one that he missed. But it's really cool, so i'll put it in here for anyone looking through comments.
In Cheating Detective Satori, while Satori's tubes start out pretty complex and fair to her Zun art when Ginmokusei draws them. The moment Akimaki Yuu starts, it becomes one simple, thin hanging noose or necktie. Then, as the series goes on, it gets thinner and longer until it becomes clear It's a necktie, and she even has a scene in chapter 32 where she ties it like a necktie.
Touhou does have a lot of those.
Especially in it's earlier days.
Its, not it's. Or should I say it's not it's, it's its.
I've always seen Reimu as having brown hair and red eyes. That is my bias and I'm sticking to it.
Been watching your vids for a hot minute, you're one of the first English speaking touhou youtubers i have found. I thought the video was interesting and when drawing the characters i noticed everyone either has an agreed idea how a character should look, or no two depictions are the same, the inconsistencies Could easily be chalked up to magic. But enjoying your videos and enjoying your drawings, keep at it
the goat has returned 🙏
Marisa's red dreams could either be interpreted as her generally fiery passion and nature, or her carnal desires for Reimu.
Sakuya's red eyes are a Dio reference, the other colors are simply just inconsistencies with no excuse
Kinda surprised Kasen’s long sleeve look didn’t get a mention despite how many panels it was in for other characters examples ngl, it’s one of my favorite alt looks in the series
Suwako's socks can be explained by her debut appearance having extra fabric on the ends meaning she had always been wearing thigh highs but was folded for some reason
13:50 that's more of a lore inconsisty but in the first chapters of lotus of curiosity asia, remilia gets mad because people think that she sleeps in a coffin, while she says that she sleep in a bed like everyone
19:15 i like to think that while Chen does reference Youmu, Ran is referencing Youki
Honestly, I really like the inconsistencies Touhou character has! Despite changes in small details here and there, the overall image of the design stays pretty consistent so it opens up to a whole lots of possibilities and experimentation while keeping their design stay close enough to the original one
Mystia has always been my favorite Toohoo, and since you skipped over her... While a lot of little outfit details are always up to interpretation, the most "consistent inconsistencies" I've noticed with her are that her eyes vary anywhere from red, to brown, pink, yellow, grey, and less commonly purple or blue. In fact her eye color is so inconsistent that even artists that have drawn her over a number of years have changed her eye color in their works. The other main thing is her wings, that can be interpreted as having the crescent shaped hook in the center of the top, or coming up and out more like regular bird wings. In more recent years she's gotten a chest buff, but as stated toward the end of the video, this might be a general trend. I can't really speak on all the characters as when I look for more Touhou art these days I'm really just looking for new Mystys.
The one you've been talking about the past few weeks and almost an hour!
39:44 Cursed KHB
53:32 as someone who knows absolutely nothing about the series I'll admit that i got lost with this part, artwork sprites and size inconsistencies was fine but THIS!!!!
23:29 mf this is touhou none of us understand neurotypical social cues
Great stuff!
Fantastic video idea
No matter what, the look, design, accessories, and outfits of every character makes them look amazing.
Even with the inconsistencies and some wonky proportions, his characters are well designed and do look appealing. Also his art style does have charm (whatever is the old one or the current one, both art styles look appealing in my opinion).
I think ZUN needs a spreadsheet of immutable design characteristics for each character. If eye or hair color can change, then some explanation should accompany that. I can accept variability in fan art and outfit design; however, I value bodily consistency across works as well as consistency between sprites and corresponding portraits within works. I also value the non-use of mirrored sprites for asymmetric character designs.
He sucks at drawing, ok?
@@kenrichgumanid9235 No he doesn’t
At the past, his style today become recognizable. But he's just a musican and gamedev.
@@kenrichgumanid9235 as an artist myself, I'd say that Zun's actually decent at drawing. The characters do look pleasant and the proportions are mostly ok (I've seen way worse art before). Of course, it might not necessarily be professional art or anything like that, but it is decent art and better than the ones most amateurs draw. Also his art and character designs do look appealing as well.
K
Remember, Yuyuko. During gex, the hat stays on.
“Gex: Enter the Gecko” mention?
Its tail time.
You forgot to mention that CDS included stitches over Koishi's 3rd eye while being a common fanon-ism it was not shown or implied in any canon work until then
Youmu simply stopped looking at the moon and gained acquired immunity.
Reimu gave inspiration to Hoyoverse. Look at at Lingsha, Sparkle and Hu Tao
more info to learn thank you asprey
I woulda liked to talk about height inconsistencies but it could be a video in and of itself.
I actually noticed a lot of eye color inconsistencies while using the official portraits as reference for some art I drew. Personally I just like to stick with the colors I think fit the character the most.
Suwako has yellowish eyes in Hisoutensoku in the very picture you showed.
I guess you can say the only thing this series can't dodge or avoid is it's level of inconsistency.
22:51 this triangle thingy in Yuyuko's head is called sankaku zukin, tenkakan, kami kakushi or hitai eboshi.
It's commonly depicted on ghost attire since it is part of shizoku, the clothing worn when departing to the afterlife.
As far as I know there's not only one meaning to it, different sources point different origins and meanings.
Some that I heard are that it protected the deceased from curses, or that symbolizes formality/high status, since it can be viewed as a crown.
Rest in peace for consistency in the Touhou canon.
As a decent artist, I want to say that the appearance inconsistancies actually helped us a lot. It always giving us a direction on how the character should look like overall, and also give us a room for adjustments depanding on artist's preferences.
By the way, the artist(including me) usually have a habit of looking for references everywhere and artists have their own preference.
So inconsistancies spreads between artists.
A lot of time I always prefer to draw no frills variation.
Yuyuko is still the one I haven't draw yet because the frills are literally all over her clothes and it's way too difficult.
My LoLK fanboyism has arisen because I was looking forward to seeing the unique traits of of the main characters in that game. But I guess it's up to me to fill in the details.
In Touhou 15:
- Reimu has white hair tubes with red patterns. It is the only Touhou media where Reimu has different color hair tubes as opposed to the normal red with white patterns. (Update: Turns out I was wrong. Looks like they were white in EoSD as well, it's just really hard to see. And there's also the PC98 games, and there's also the PC98 games which I forgot about because... well... it's the PC98 era. But for the most part, they're always red with sometimes white patterns).
- Marisa has a little moon clip on her vest. Also her dress is a dark blue, which interestingly comes from her previous appearance in the previous fighting games, HM and ULiL, and crosses into AoCF with it being the last we see of it. But this is also strange considering that DDC has her wearing a black dress and then returning to dark blue later on and that game takes place between the two fighting games mentioned.
- While Sanae's hair was starting to get shorter and shorter every appearance, it was very subtle up until LoLK when she suddenly got a noticeable haircut, which seems to have stayed that way in TH19.
Though maybe you did mention something about this. This is a pretty long video and I'll watch again to see if you did mention anything, but I just wanted to add my contribution.
Reimu regularly switches between red and white tubes, the red ones are just more common, it th19 she has white tubes. Also this is (likely) the only time she wears full on knee-high boots.
Marisa also got a haircut too.
Also why has nobody ever mentioned the change in Sanae’s blue? The old and new, which came in LoLK by the way, are very different, old was brighter with lighter dots and lines while the new is darker, more navy look, and has a very intricate fluorescent pattern that acts similar to Okuu and Chimata’s capes, and honestly that change is in my opinion definitely one of the best design changes ZUN has made, also her hair got darker along with being cut too, i guess all the space radiation killed the pigment in her hair
Funnily enough, UDoALG actually used the white tubes, and SA and UFO have them as well. I also like the LoLK version of Reimu.
@@Hijiri_MIRACHION weirdly enough reimu’s tubes are never talked about when it comes to character design changes, and even though its a minor change even more minor changes have been brought up before so i don’t know, same thing with her skirt, it used to change between hemming and patterned then was always hemmed mof-td then always patterned ddc onwards.
i personally enjoy ufo reimu the most, then in, then th19
lolk reimu’s hair frankly highlights the roundness of her head too much for me, also because i like fluffy hair reimu and ufo does that the most, though i appreciate sa reimu’s shading as a close second to in reimu.
i like that one time when the bow on marisas hat was made to look like cat ears, for the game mainly focusing on animals, its a cute detail
34:26 what do you mean? They're clearly yellowish on the left so it's not pulled out of nowhere. At most pale-ish green or even brown/hazel but it's not gray. Also is ur pronunciation of Sanae's name as "snay" a joke that references snakes? It's a joke.. right...?