I am sure many of you have seen the competent Touhou Maikaze doujin anime, A Summer Day’s Dream, just released at Comiket less than two weeks ago. Now I have gotten a chance to interview Talka, a member of the Maikaze doujin circle, on his group’s work, Touhou doujin, his thoughts on American Touhou/doujin game fandom, or just about anything relevant. I’ll be interviewing Tokine, Maikaze’s leader through Talka.
This is where you come in. I’m soliciting questions for the interview here (in my comments) and elsewhere. I’ll be taking the best questions and submitting them to Talka.
5 comments
Comments feed for this article
January 6, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Letty Whiterock
Touhou seemed to have a sudden outburst of popularity outside of its original niche circle after “Marisa Stole the Precious Thing” became widespread, and it seems that many of the new fans of the series want nothing to do with the games. Do you feel that this is, in essence, ruining Touhou?
January 7, 2009 at 3:04 am
Wyatt
| Oh my! Now THIS is quite interesting. A thousand pardons, but I’ve got a bunch that jump to mind immediately that I’ve been dying to ask to someone that’s actually established in the “scene,” as it were. Without further ado….
| Obviously the Internet is a wonderful tool for communication and dissemination of information. Of course, because of these same positive attributes, it serves as an enabler for downloading of many things. Obviously, piracy of commercial works is illegal, but doujin works often also fall outside of the scope of what is generally called “commercial.”
| As a circle that recently produced a secondary work that was widely disseminated across the internet mere hours after people first acquired their own copy, do you have any thoughts on this almost “free-for-all” consumption of doujin works? Has ZUN’s recent statements regarding the restrictions and non-restrictions on secondary works affected your opinions at all? If not across the Internet by various means, what might be an acceptable method by which many people could enjoy the few limited solid copies produced of any one work without violating the line between secondary works and commercialization?
| How much communication do you have with other circles and how do you interact (e.g. is it a friendly atmosphere, a meeting at a restaurant with a round of drinks, are things tense and businesslike, etc.)? How do new members get involved with an established circle? What do you think of your awareness of the Western fan community in relation to other circles?
| This is a very cool opportunity to get a better understanding of how doujin circles work and the sort of dynamic that allows groups to tap a body of creative talent to produce something interesting. I look forward to the results.
PS: I imagine WordPress will probably destroy my breaks and indentation. Added pipes in a feeble attempt to at least preserve the conception that there should be paragraph progression. Apologies.
January 8, 2009 at 2:15 pm
raymoo
How do they view the western fandom at all? I bet they are not happy that we’re mostly relying on people buying their stuff (or Touhou stuff in general), scanning/ripping it and putting it online so others may translate it (depending on the work – audio CDs are not really receiving translations..).
What are their thoughts on the Touhou Fandom Developement in both past and future? I remember ZUN taking longer for Mountain of Faith because he wanted the sudden attention surrounding his games to die down a bit (which it didn’t). I also see no real chance that Reitaisai’ll grow larger then Tokyo Big Site, it might happen twice a year.. but seeing how trends in Japan only last for a short time I think it’ll die down in 1, 2 years at max. …
And, of course…
How the hell did they get this top-notch Seiyuu cast?
Also big kudos to them for having KirbyM (from walfas.org) as proofreader for the english subtitles that were on the DVD.. the fact alone surprised me a lot, but also made it instanteneously enjoyable. I am really happy about this move.
And a big thank you to them and you.
February 16, 2009 at 10:03 am
Wyatt
Is this still set to happen? Has it already? Could you offer up some details, please?
May 11, 2009 at 1:46 am
kanchan
Obviously the Internet is a wonderful tool for communication and dissemination of information.