Gensokyo

A basic guide to the world of Gensokyo. Pulled from http://wakaba.c3.cx/w/gensokyo.

The Illusory Land of Gensokyo

Gensokyo (幻想郷), meaning “Land of Illusion” or perhaps “Home of Illusion”, is the fictional setting for the Touhou Project series of games, created nearly single-handedly by ZUN of Team Shanghai Alice. These games have been experiencing a huge surge of popularity among Japanese otaku for a period of several years at the time of this article’s writing (at the border of the years 2009 and 2010), as well as in the west.

The reason for their popularity is two-fold. The games themselves are a series of 2D shoot-em-up games, with extremely skill-based gameplay and intricate design that appeals strongly to fans of the genre. However, this does not account for the immense popularity, as such games are a small niche at best. The real mass appeal of the games are their setting and characters, as well as their music, which have brought them a fan scene larger than has ever been seen for a single anime or game series.

As a result, there are immense amounts of fan-produced material surround the core series of games - manga, arrangements of the music, spin-off games, and even animated works. However, due to the huge amount of characters the games have introduced, and the lack of an easily accessible core work to gain familiarity with the world - many would find it quite impossible to actually complete any of the games to read the story they present, and even if they could the translations that exist for the games are not of very high quality - it is easy to find it all too bewildering to know where to start.

This article is an attempt to write some kind of summary of the setting and characters of the land of Gensokyo, to serve as a base for further exploration. It can not claim to be in any way comprehensive, as the world is just too large and fragmented, but it should hopefully be enough to get one started.

It should also be noted that this text will make no attempt whatsoever to avoid story spoilers. It is better to approach the world of Gensokyo without worrying about such trivial matters, and just to discover things as you find them. Plots and storylines are not very important in this world, characters and interactions are. It is also better to not dwell too deeply on such mysteries as why almost every single character in Gensokyo is a cute girl.

Also, this text mostly only deals with the later series of games, on the Windows platform, and not the earlier five games on the PC-98 platform. Their story and setting are not quite consistent with the later games, and is largely ignored in the later storylines.

All names are given in western order. Many other places on the net may give them in the opposite, Japanese, order. “Reimu Hakurei” is the western order, while the Japanese order would be “Hakurei Reimu”. For