ZUN speaks

I'm sure by now most people are aware of the announce by ZUN on his blog about new guidelines for derived Touhou work (or, if you can't read moonrunes, you might have read it from here)


EDIT: After reading more comments on the issue, I am further in agreement that the western fanbase can be quite terrible at times (or would you say most of the time?). I'll be honest guys, sometimes the fans do get on my nerves...

Based on what I'm hearing from a few people that I know, they are making a fuss about the possibility that the commercial works (e.g. plushies, figures) would be completely restricted - and not mentioning about the other details of the new guidelines - but is that really the case? Because the closest that I could find mentioning on those are:

　企業でグッズを販売する場合は、許可が必要です。
You need my permission to sell commercial goods.

　東方の二次創作や二次使用についての問い合わせについては、
　現在友人に受付窓口を協力してもらっています。
A friend of mine has graciously offered to serve as the point of
contact for inquiries about works derived from Touhou.

and

　＊また、企業グッズで性的表現（性的表現のある抱き枕など）のあるものはご遠慮ください。
In addition, please refrain from making commercial goods of a sexualized
nature (such as dakimakura covers with sexual imagery).

It seems to me that in the announcement, ZUN is focusing more on the restriction for the animation and adult doujins. If my assumption is correct, I'd say the issues that concerns ZUN would be:

-Touhou becoming a commercial anime series
-The series come to be known as some lewd series with a lot of questionable contents

About the second point - I don't think it has reached to that point here, but I know of a western Touhou fan who wasn't too happy on how some people thought Touhou is a series full of lolicons and perverts. Heck, even she thought it was that way before she was actually into the series!

(those who frequent Danbooru know too well of the point being mentioned above... eh, guys?)

Of course, you could say that she is exaggerating things... but knowing the masses, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the fans actually view Touhou as nothing more than that. Who knows? Not me, that's for sure.

Regardless of the reasoning, I don't think the effects of the new guidelines would be as disastrous as some have made it to be. Maybe it'd be slightly harder for the oversea fans to get the doujins, but I don't know for sure since I'm not too familiar with how the doujin channels work. But I'd say that ol' ZUN still wish for Touhou to remain as doujin works, rather than being transformed into a commercial product.

I'll just end this short rambling with one guy's comment on this announcement:

"If Touhou were to become commercialized, all those conformists would just come in and ruin it. Look at what happened to games and anime that become mainstream."


Take it easy, Touhou dudes and dudettes~