LilithSlave said:
Alright, my bad. It's Rule 34 and not 38, my guess is I mentally held onto the articles related to the 38 Studios debacle and unconsciously switched the numbers around. It's nothing that's worth getting worked up about, just your basic, general Freudian slip.
What I and a few others are saying is that Touhou Project's overall aesthetics just aren't doing it for us. I look at the character designs and all I see is weird Moe stuff that's wrapped up in a gameplay package that clearly does not require the sprites to be kawaii little girls to be played. There's something I'd call a thematic disconnection between the aesthetics and the gameplay, and that's what's holding me back, personally.
I'll agree that as Rule 34 states, everything in this great big world can be sexualized. Shit, there's even joke 34s on Paheal involving fridges with Photoshopped dicks plastered on. These things are sexualized by people outside of the games' production cycle, yes, and it's abundantly clear that ZUN himself isn't focused on putting these characters in degrading situations.
On the flipside, what *is* disturbing as all Hell to me (and yes, I realize this is nothing but a personal opinion) is how unilaterally cutesy everything is. It goes to the point where these characters transcend the notion of being cute for the sake of being cute, and I start wondering if there isn't some sort of insidious undercurrent. I mean, why is there only one or two guys? Does ZUN has something against masculine characters? Something in the back of my head is just utterly revulsed by all that whimsy, to the point where I'm comically tempted to run for Daystar and his Duke Nukem pics.
So obviously, when someone tells me in a tongue-in-cheek fashion that Touhou is the Best Thing Ever, I... typically want to back away slowly. Why not Ikaruga? Why not Gradius? Why not any other game from the shovelful of freeware PC games that flood Japanese download portals each year? I can't look at Touhou and *not* think that beyond the Nyon videos and the schmaltzy character designs, there's something that's just plain fucking creepy lurking underneath. That's just me, and only me.
But honestly? It's clear as day that this franchise matters to you, Lilith. That's great! My guess is I could compare it to the way I could harp on about how tragic the downfall of the adventure game genre is. The thing is, past a certain point of insistence, it stops to feel like your friendly self kindly informing us fellow gamers about a facet of the culture we might not know about, and it starts to feel like you intensely want us to like something - which *is* more than a tad annoying.
IamShmgeggy said:
Wait.... what? Bullet hell? No, there is only one good bullet hell game, ever
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j94vB5hf28w
Ikaruga is the penultimate bullet hell shooter. Please don't be trying to stuff Touhou down our throats. Once you have played Ikaruga, you will need nothing else. Anything else is pure heresy!!!
I tend to agree with that statement, apart from the "Penultimate Shooter" bit. It's an incorrectly used term, for one, but I can get behind the expressed preference. Ikaruga requires a tad more strategy than just finding the one incredibly small safe spot in a barrage of colorful rays of utter annihilation.
