Hello, Finland Touhou Fans. 你们好！！

[MarisaKirisame]

Hi, Finland Touhou fans, sorry for bothering you.

I am writing articles about the development of Touhou in different contries, and now is the Finnish term !! I have covered the Touhou info in Russia, Japan, China and Singapore. And I am glad to make an exchange for Finland Touhou info！

I would like to know the history of Touhou in Finland, how and when it came to Finland and became popular. How you share information, how many touhou fans exist in Finland............I WANT TO KNOW THEM ALL!!

This is a comprehensive process, I will have a lot questions about your touhou cosplay, anime convention, manga, music...... all aspects of Touhou. I wish to record the history of touhou in the real world like Hieda no Akyuu. The history should never be forgotten！ This is not a easy path, but I would like to take the reponsibility and do it.

And I feel sorry that I don't know Finnish, and I cannot reply with Finnish. But you can reply with any language you want, I can take care of it.

[Vee]

It's dead and been so for a long time.

I will have a lot questions about your touhou cosplay, anime convention, manga, music.....

So everything but the games themselves?

I only know of one Finnish OC doujinshi (a Touhou and MGS crossover iirc), it was made back in 2012 and marketed in a convention or something. I know of at least two people who used to make actual theme arranges (LENK64 and Tenebrae), but I think one of them just makes music of her own these days, while the other one just quit. There's a plenty of conventions here, and I'd imagine people still do cosplay there, but as usual they're filled with posers who don't actually care about the games and just want to dress up as characters they find neat looking, conventions are disgusting.

Edit: I don't know that much about the history, but I think people generally heard of it through the internet, and then it began to spread in the local weeb circles. I saw some of the characters on online imageboards and stuff without thinking much of them, until a friend introduced me to the games during the height of the east-Asian boom around these parts a decade ago. I played the games for a few years until it got boring. The fanbase (which was never more than just a couple handfuls of people) has mostly died out at this point, to the extent that former online fansites such as this one are completely abandoned. There's a Finnish (touhou) discord channel originating from this forum, but I don't think they really talk or care about the series.

[tsalop]

And here I am trying to write something to the blog showcasing new games (both fanmade and Zuns originals)... E.g. This week I am writing about the Hollow Song of Birds.

[MarisaKirisame]

It's dead and been so for a long time.

I will have a lot questions about your touhou cosplay, anime convention, manga, music.....

So everything but the games themselves?

I only know of one Finnish OC doujinshi (a Touhou and MGS crossover iirc), it was made back in 2012 and marketed in a convention or something. I know of at least two people who used to make actual theme arranges (LENK64 and Tenebrae), but I think one of them just makes music of her own these days, while the other one just quit. There's a plenty of conventions here, and I'd imagine people still do cosplay there, but as usual they're filled with posers who don't actually care about the games and just want to dress up as characters they find neat looking, conventions are disgusting.

Edit: I don't know that much about the history, but I think people generally heard of it through the internet, and then it began to spread in the local weeb circles. I saw some of the characters on online imageboards and stuff without thinking much of them, until a friend introduced me to the games during the height of the east-Asian boom around these parts a decade ago. I played the games for a few years until it got boring. The fanbase (which was never more than just a couple handfuls of people) has mostly died out at this point, to the extent that former online fansites such as this one are completely abandoned. There's a Finnish (touhou) discord channel originating from this forum, but I don't think they really talk or care about the series.

Cool! That's good to know.

Because I met a Finnish touhou writer several days ago, and he told me that the touhou doujin makers are pretty scarce in Finland, especially in game and animation. But he also told me that you have an artist called "Setz", who is a pretty famous touhou fan in Finland. Have you ever heard of him?

[tsalop]

And here I am trying to write something to the blog showcasing new games (both fanmade and Zuns originals)... E.g. This week I am writing about the Hollow Song of Birds.


Edit: I am not either the right person to answer this either as I mostly spend my time lurking on MoTK, but let me tell you about my perspective.

I found Touhou by accident after seeing some gameplay videos of PCB of it and though I wanted to try them myself... I think this was around the release of Mountain of Faith as I remember playing EoSD, PCB an IN a lot before going to army (beginning of 2008). During army I got from the games to the fanmaterial (e.g. my old ipod still has a lot of Touhou remixes that I used to listen back then mostly from Iosys, Cool&Create, ALiCE's EMOTiON and Silver Forest) and also actively started searching places where I could sharing my own views of the series leading to joining the MoTK forums.

This forum I joined bit later in the end of 2011. Just like the game series I think I found this forum by accident by searching for Touhou Suomi and in the beginning I used to be really active... I even got several fangames done (Voile Invaders, Voile Invaders II, Perfect Youmu and Perfect Youmu II -demo and several others started (Winterheart, Imperishable Odyssey and Great Gensou Card Tournament) that were never finished.

Heh, as a sidenote there was also a Touhou inspired smup made by this forum on the works know as the Pohjoinen projekti but unfortunately that never got done (maybe one day).

However due to real life interfering I stopped being active at the forums though I did keep playing each official Touhou game that was released and at least trying as many of the fangames I could get my hands on (and I still do so). Music and other derivative works like manga I also kept and still keep consuming. Then at the end of 2016 I came back to the forums and as they were searching for people to keep the mostly dead Touhou blog alive I decided to give it a shot and contribute. Now for the past two years I have been trying to write every other week about Touhou games and other things Touhou related (Blog can be found here, list of my articles can be found from this post).

Also I am still planning on finishing couple of fangames (like Wakasagis adventure) that I have designed.

As for the Touhou Discord, it has some Touhou related images and music shared but mostly it is just a hangout place for the members. As for the Touhou material shared there that was not posted to this forum, there has been a small project about creating an interface that would allow dumping it to this forum so it would be in easily accessible format (e.g. so that you don't need to go through 100 pages of daily comic -thread and try to find among the comments that one series you really wanted to read). However that is still at design phase and slowly coming along (again, one day).


As for con scene, there are several cons here like Desucon, Hypecon, Kibecon, Mimicon, Ropecon, Tampere Kuplii, Yukicon and several other local cons. I personally have been attending only to Desucon so I can only tell you about that but based on my observations every year there are several Touhou cosplayers but also Touhou merchantice sold.

 

[tsalop]

  But he also told me that you have an artist called "Setz", who is a pretty famous touhou fan in Finland. Have you ever heard of him?

Yeah, Setz or Setzeri used to draw Touhou 4komas (danbooru link). Originally he posted his work apokalauta (if I remember right) where somebody spotted his work and uploaded to Danbooru. Nowadays he focuses on drawing his Lotta Svärd -series but also draws some Touhou pictures now and then.

I suggest you contact him directly via his twitter I linked.

[MarisaKirisame]

  But he also told me that you have an artist called "Setz", who is a pretty famous touhou fan in Finland. Have you ever heard of him?

Yeah, Setz or Setzeri used to draw Touhou 4komas (danbooru link). Originally he posted his work apokalauta (if I remember right) where somebody spotted his work and uploaded to Danbooru. Nowadays he focuses on drawing his Lotta Svärd -series but also draws some Touhou pictures now and then.

I suggest you contact him directly via his twitter I linked.

Appreciate  the info!

[tsalop]

As for Lenk64 (known as Miki Hiroyuki in some cases), she has done a lot of Touhou arrangements that she uploaded to YouTube but now they have been taken down due to copyright claims (most of them are still available on her discord) aside from that she has also drawn a lot of fanart (e.g. this Reimu).

However she mostly focuses on her own original projects like Nansei that has actually become quite famous too