Let’s begin with introducing yourselves to the readers.

Q : What is your name? And what is your role in the Touhou World Cup Committee?

Gastari : Well hello there, I’m Gastari, I am a committee member. I help organize the event through decision making about anything related to TWC, with the other members of the committee, as well as reviewing important documentations.

I’m also a crew coordinator for commentators. I work with Yatsuzume on every matter related to the English commentary of TWC. In addition, I myself take part as a  commentator for the English stream

Lastly, I’m a crew coordinator for artists. Together with creepingbarrett (from the Japanese committee) I’m in charge of planning and making decisions related to the various illustrations you get to see throughout the event.

TSG : My role tends to be dynamic; I just take small tasks here and there if I can. If I notice that something is getting messy or if I notice that something is falling between the cracks, I generally try to step in. Otherwise, I just commentate on a lot of matches.

32th : 32th System, mainly the main developer of thprac, but I’m also in charge of the infrastructure for tech checks. (a thing we do to make sure players and commentators have a working setup BEFORE we figure out that oops, their setup doesn’t work during the match itself)

Yatsuzume : I’m Yatsuzume, my current role is to organize commentators as well as some administrative & managerial roles. In prior years I’ve taken on more of a lead role for the western committee and helped build the foundation of the event.

Crested : I’m Crested. I was the sole broadcaster of the central feed for TWC from 2020 to 2022, and am currently global production lead from TWC2023 onwards. I’ve been on the TWC Committee since TWC2021 and regularly coordinate discussions between the different languages and regions.

George : Online I go by George (display/call name) or fGeorjje (username). my real name is Paul Schwandes and good luck pronouncing that. I self-credit as the broadcast engineer for TWC – I prep the backend technical systems, distribute OBS scenes / packages, and am overall responsible for making sure world feed and regional streams can happen.

Q : How were you introduced to Touhou? What particular aspect of the series do you like?

Gastari : I got introduced to Touhou in 2015 by a friend in High School. During breaks we were allowed to use the school’s computers at our leisure. I noticed an unusual icon on my friend’s desktop and inquired about it, this is how he got me to try EoSD. It looked interesting enough and I decided to get the game too.

Fast forward a few weeks later, I was browsing my games out of boredom desperately looking for something to play. I stumbled upon the icon for EoSD and thought to myself “hey, I guess this will at least keep me busy for an hour”. And from then, I never stopped being into Touhou.

My primary source of interest in Touhou has been playing the games, it is just so incredibly satisfying to play those. Although lately I have been enjoying commentating and encouraging people with their achievements more than playing. I, of course, do love every single aspect of Touhou, but these are what resonates with me the most.

TSG : YouTube. I accidentally stumbled upon gameplay in 2009 and thought it looked fun. I have been at least a casual fan of the series since then, although I didn’t start playing the games actively until 2016. My favourite aspect of the series is simply discovering what the games themselves have to offer, especially the process of figuring out the mechanics of each game and how each pattern works.

32th : YouTube mainly. I also played an SMW hack called Touhou Mario and got into the official games to pass the time waiting for Touhou Mario 2. Boy am I passing the time here. Anyways, my favourite aspect is the fandom.

Yatsuzume : My introduction to Touhou was this gameplay video by flanp0p of the touhou 10 ultra patch about 14 years ago. I remember specifically looking for games with really flashy gameplay, so I fell in love instantly with the danmaku genre.

What I adore about Touhou – and what made me stick around – is its proud doujin/indie nature. ZUN has worked confidently on the series for decades by just following his vision and using his own talents, which makes Touhou feel like a very genuine work of art. At the same time, his laxness around his IP has cultivated an incredible diversity of spinoff games, high-quality fanart and colorful subcommunities.

The flashy gameplay and fascinating Japanese influences might be what pulls you in at first, but ZUN’s dedication to creative freedom is what turns Touhou from a flavour-of-the-month oddity to a staying digital cultural icon.

Crested : Some friends of mine were halfway through LoLK Normal Stage 3 on Pointdevice and I attempted it for a bit, then got interested in the games. The unique design of danmaku patterns is the most interesting part of the series for me, specifically the design of bullet patterns that restricts itself to not only look visually impressive but also to be (generally) consistent and playable.

George : EoSD lunatic 1cc when I was like 15, then the obligatory “I played it in 201x and then took a 10 year break”. Re-discovered Touhou through a flame fatales run by FreyasSpirit, discovered the TRS server soon after, then started playing EoSD again.

 

Q : Who are your favourite characters? What makes them your favourite?

Gastari : Flandre Scarlet has been my all time favourite character since day 1. I randomly stumbled upon her when looking up characters from the franchise. After that fateful encounter, my goal was to defeat her. This is essentially what really got me started into trying to get better at Touhou games since I did not even have the Extra stage unlocked when I made that decision.

Overall I love her design, especially the wings, and really enjoy her fight. 

TSG : Orin because I like catgirls. Yuyuko because she is pretty and has a very interesting backstory + she is the final boss in my favourite game and there are many many interesting strats in her boss fight.

32th : The ones that are not humanoid, like Unzan or Orin when she’s in the cat form, or Nue in ball form.

Yatsuzume : Mystia latched onto me immediately, even before most of her character development happened later in the franchise. I was a very introverted kid, so her abilities and attitude really spoke to my love of roaming around in the dark, when you can go outside without constantly being observed or having to interact with other people.

Recently, Komachi and Reimu herself have grown on me more too. Both of them can be slackers, but never sacrifice on their true values and convictions. I respect people like that, they know what truly matters to themselves and they allow themselves to be lazy when it comes to the trivial things of the world. Self-care queens.

Crested : No particular favourites, but Okina’s role spanning multiple works makes her quite an interesting character.

George : 1v1 me EoSD ReimuB LNB

Oh you meant actual characters not shottypes. Don’t really have a favorite there, I don’t care too much about characters/lore.

Q : Why did you join the Touhou World Cup Committee?

Gastari : As someone who’s really involved with the Touhou community, as a player and owner of Touhou Replay Showcase, when TWC 2020 started I immediately wanted to help with this community effort. As a whole I love to share my passion for the things I enjoy so naturally I offered to participate as a commentator and eventually found my way into the committee.

TSG : I was invited to it in 2021. My main role back then was helping to come up with good match lengths for each game.

32th : Joining the committee is merely a formality. By the time you’re on it, you were already here.

Yatsuzume : Before 2020, a lot of Touhou players were stuck in their own micro-communities, separated by differences in language and community culture. I personally felt “homeless” about my love for the Touhou games, as larger communities focus more on other material rather than the official danmaku games.

When TWC began, I considered it to be an incredible opportunity to bring danmaku players together and give the mainline games the loud and proud celebration that they deserve to have.
In essence, I joined to build up the community and find a way to show my love for Touhou beyond just livestreaming the games.

Crested : TWC2020 was organized by some Chinese Touhou players who I happened to know from some previous international events. I was asked about two weeks before the event began to help organize I believe an English regional broadcast, but after realizing they didn’t really have plans for how to coordinate things, settled into the role of handling the global feed which would rebroadcast all player streams side by side, along with tracking some information on the players’ runs.

While I was almost completely uninvolved with the organization side of things that year, I think the importance of the “world feed” broadcaster position got me invited to the following year’s committee.

George : I saw and heard that the TWC layouts/tech system was running on a lot of hopes, dreams and strings and offered my help in 2023, which turned into me slowly taking more and more responsibility for the tech system. idk, i never really joined with the idea of becoming the TWC “broadcast engineer” but my skillset just worked out that way.

Q : What is your favourite part of your role in organizing the Touhou World Cup? What makes it your favourite?

Gastari : My favourite part of my role is being able to help shape the event by debating and making suggestions, as well as seeing all the community come together with one common goal.

I just find it magical despite difference in language or interests in the franchise we all gather and work to make something that’s dear to us.

TSG : I simply enjoy helping out when needed, and it is super satisfying to get the ball rolling. The best part about organizing it in general is seeing all the players from both the english, japanese, chinese and spanish speaking communities come together and interact so actively, despite the language barrier.

32th : Making some kind of tool/mod for the players.

Yatsuzume : I really like the overarching organisational elements. It’s very satisfying to bring all these people from around the world together and learn from each other’s talents to create one large event with web devs, game modders, translators, broadcasting pros and of course our super skilled players. I also just enjoy optimizing systems, so I happily take on template work and want to make sure that overall operations can be done in a way that saves everybody time.

Crested : As someone who sees through the global organization for most of the event, seeing everything come together from the efforts of the committee and the community is always immensely satisfying. Seeing players new and old say that their motivation to play the games gets revitalized by TWC also makes the effort worthwhile.

George : Solving extremely complicated problems by transforming them into a data problem. I am very data and coding driven and I’ve modernized many systems that were previously just done with vibes and “just message this person” into a fully data driven approach. For example, even though it’s not my exact area of expertise, I was able to transform the match scheduling process into something that’s incredibly data-driven which has led to TWC schedules being posted much earlier.

I love stringing together various systems that no one thought were possible to interconnect. When someone comes to me with a problem I’ve learned to just say “yeah I can probably do that” even though at the time I actually have zero idea how to do that. I just figure it out.

 

Q : What is the most difficult part of your role in organizing the Touhou World Cup? What makes it your favourite?

Gastari : The most difficult part, for me, has to be my free time nowadays. As someone who recently starting working full time I do not always have the energy or time to involve myself as much as I want to / used to.

TSG : I occasionally feel like everyone else is so productive that there aren’t any tasks left for me.

32th : Making the mod work for all games. It’s not exactly hard, but it’s very repetitive, except for those exceptional cases where it isn’t, which leads to mistakes that are only caught in beta testing.

Yatsuzume : Making sure everybody’s on one line can be hard at times. Unsurprisingly, a community like this draws in a lot of very colorful individuals, from very different communities and with different expectations/communication styles. Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions and not everybody can be satisfied at all times. Keeping your head cool and steering everybody back into the right direction when these things happen can therefore be a real challenge.

Crested : There are almost always things going wrong somewhere in the organizing/broadcasting process. When a stream is live, troubleshooting things going wrong quickly and making corrections is always quite stressful.

George : When a data-driven component of TWC gets messed up. The issue is always a human. When that human isn’t me, that’s frustrating. When that human is me, oh boy.

Live, when stuff breaks and it turns into a situation of say, if i do not fix this the match broadcast gets cancelled or at least severely impacted. example of this: the primary server hosting our graphics/stream management software (NodeCG) goes down, i have to deploy the backup system – that hasn’t been updated for 3 weeks oops – to live, while also dealing with my personal PC having troubles with the english stream package. That was a stressful day.

I assume the last part was meant to be “what makes it the most difficult”. It’s the stress factor. Being a hobbyist “online broadcast engineer” isn’t learning how to set up the systems and code the bundles – I think anyone can learn that pretty quickly. It’s knowing how to fix stuff when it breaks and keeping a cool knowing I’m on the clock and if I don’t get this done stuff goes very VERY south. oftentimes no one on the viewership sees the close calls, and there have been plenty.

Q : What do you think is the best or most absurd thing that has happened during a Touhou World Cup?

Gastari : TWC has so many moments, it’s hard to choose one honestly. I love the hype of someone getting an LNN or a WR live, but I also deeply adore when I jinx players into getting hit on very silly patterns.

TSG : The most iconic moment in the world cup must have been the 2020 th7 survival match. This was before anyone knew how well the world cup would go or how good of a performance the players could put on in such a format. Western player Mino managed to do a perfect run, with the most difficult shottype, on his very first credit. It was impossible to improve his standing, and the best thing the other players could theoretically do was to tie Mino. He then started a credit on the Phantasm stage for fun, and nearly got a perfect run on his first attempt there as well.

32th : Moments where a player gets the maximum possible score for their category before time runs out, and is able to spend the rest of the match doing whatever they want.

Yatsuzume : It’s hard to choose! The 2024 Touhou 11 Survival match had a legendary ending. Ryokumin and Kiricat both had to fight until the very end of their final run. And even though Ryokumin got a perfect run as ReimuC, Kiricat managed to barely edge it out at the very end by getting a 2-death run with the notoriously bad MarisaC shot.

My own first two participations as a player also caused some interesting moments. In 2020 I was a last-minute fall-in for a different player in the final match of the tournament (th17 Survival), and I played just well enough to secure our team’s rank in the battle for overall second place. And in the 2021 th14 survival match, I was part of the only three-way tie that TWC has ever had. But Kiricat’s victory yoink in 2024 has really stuck to me as an amazing TWC moment.

Crested : To be frank, my gameplay skill is not on the same level as the players and some of the other English committee members. Watching highly skilled players accomplishing feats within such a short timeframe and under such pressure is always incredible.

George : two things come to mind:
– kpnyan’s first credit HSiFS MarisaSpring LNNN during TWC 2023.
– TD LNB in 2024. bonkers match. Just watch it, or look at the final results.

Q : What are you looking forward to the most for this year’s Touhou world cup?

Gastari : Most likely whether we will get some of the remaining LNNs down.

TSG : I am excited to see the matches in Touhou 20. For NoBomb, this game is much more difficult than previous installments and there is a lot of interesting routing in it. 

32th : Technical difficulties.

Yatsuzume : I’ve finally decided to participate myself again, for Touhou 20 survival, the starting match of the event. Touhou 20 immediately made its mark as potentially the most difficult game for competitive survival. It’s so difficult that we as committee decided to allow runs with more than 5 hits, to make sure the weaker shots have a chance to be played at all. It’s going to be very interesting to see Touhou 20 finally in a setting like this.

Also, a shoutout to Touhou 6 survival, the game recently had a surprising amount of exploration for survival gameplay and I wonder if the players this year will make use of any of these not-yet-popular strategies.

Crested : There is an explosively difficult new game this time… Best of luck to the players. (Also praying we don’t get hit by the patch right before/halfway through the tournament…)

George : the last 2 weekends. The schedule is incredibly late packed with 6 epic survival matches in 2 weeks.

 

Q : If the Touhou World Cup were to inspire change, what sort of change in the fanbase would you like to see?

Gastari : My hope with TWC is that it inspires people to try out the games more.

The games are nowhere near as impossible as common memes or most people may think.

Within the shmup genre, Touhou is quite approachable, each game giving plenty of tools to defend yourself. With practice anyone can do it. 

When I started playing Touhou I got a game over on EoSD stage 1 on Easy mode. We all start somewhere, it’s ok to not get an LNN after 1 day of playing. If you keep playing and have fun you will achieve anything you want.

Besides that, I’d love it if TWC could help the Touhou community as a whole to be more united. We all share interest in this incredible franchise with lots of sides to it and I think it’s a shame different interests can result in divides within the community.

TSG : The gameplay community tends to isolate itself from the rest of the Touhou fandom a lot and not make itself very visible. My hope is that Touhou World Cup can help bridge the divide between the gameplay community and the rest of the general fandom a little bit. I also hope it showcases at least some of the many things that you can do in these games, and that it inspires people to try and push themselves in the games. Finally, it is simply a great showcase of what the best players in the world are capable of. At the end of the day, we are all part of the same fandom. 

32th : TWC already inspired people to want to become better at Touhou games themselves. We had a player join a TWC because they watched last year’s TWC and practiced to be good enough to join in time for their next one. That’s already what I like to see, and it is already happening.

Yatsuzume : I really hope more people will be interested in scoring the Touhou games. I think TWC has severely increased the amount of players since its conception, but the far majority of those players have gone to survival. Whilst I myself have also always put the focus on survival, I know that the scoring categories are also deeply fascinating yet at the same time have plenty room for further optimisation. Therefore, I hope some players will feel a twinkle in their eye after seeing how fast you can make those numbers go up.

Crested : I know that for some, watching these incredible plays live might reinforce the notion that the Touhou main games are insanely difficult and it can feel like you shouldn’t even bother trying them, but I assure you that is not the case.

We have multiple players actively participating in TWC nowadays that never even touched a bullet hell just a few years ago, and started from scratch just like everyone. Their passion for the series (and to be fair, some amount of talent) led to incredibly fast growth and eventually to them being accepted as players.

Touhou is generally considered to be on the lower end of the difficulty spectrum for bullet hell games, and there’s very little barrier to entry to get into the lower difficulties. If the gameplay interests you, I would genuinely recommend giving the games a try before writing them off as out of reach.

George : I wish that the fanbase saw TWC not as a small community event but as the premier tournament for our sphere. It’s a bit wild to me that the biggest competitive touhou event – a game series that has tens of thousands of active players and an equally strong fanbase – gets 100 average viewers on the english stream.

The size of the community implies to me that there’s 100x more potential here. 100x more potential would mean the kind of resources where this no longer is an online event. 

Q :  How is TWCscore calculated?

TSG : The TWCScore is given to a player at the end of their credit, and it is based on MATH. For survival, each shot type has a base value, and it is halved every time the player dies. For scoring, it’s an exponential function with the in-game final score as an input.

32th : The nature of this question is so technical that for those curious, I recommend looking at the actual code we use to calculate it.

https://github.com/touhouworldcup/touhouworldcup.com/blob/master/js/twcscore.js

You can find the links to the rubric tables right on the official calculator.

https://touhouworldcup.com/twcscore

Crested : You can refer to the TWC Handbook for the exact formulas and the website for the values we use, but in terms of how the rubrics are created/adjusted, it is very much an ongoing process that involves the playerbase.

Considering the high-level nature of the event, we usually reach out to some of the top players in their respective categories for their advice on how to set/tweak the rubrics for each game.

Do keep in mind that TWCScore is not meant to be compared across categories or games, and should only be used as a metric within their respective categories.

 

Q : Any plans to do more to advertise the event to the broader Touhou fanbase, and to high-level gaming enthusiasts from outside the fanbase?

Gastari : I’d love to if TWC could reach the Touhou community globally in hope it would get even more united and maybe help some discover sides of the community they’ve never thought of

I do also believe TWC has the potential to appeal to a broader non Touhou audience as the stakes and hype of every match is highly enjoyable. I personally watch high level events of games I do not play and still find it very entertaining.

TSG : I want to. It is something that I definitely want to try to look more into, primarily to bring us all closer together. I want to try to involve myself in more Touhou community spaces such as discord servers or conventions, if people are down to discuss it.

32th : TWC is currently being advertised to a bunch of Big Places that we are aware of (the first match gets announced with an @everyone ping in the biggest western Touhou Discord server, for example) but there are definitely more places for us to make ourselves known.

Yatsuzume : This is not my strong suit, personally. I prefer just building a high-quality and high-integrity event, and let people discover us through their own interest. I was a little more involved in advertising in the past, but nowadays I’d rather leave that roadmap to other members.

Crested : We’re really thankful to beatMARIO for the chance to advertise at his offline Touhou event. Community outreach is difficult for a niche genre against the very wide scope of the Touhou fanbase, but we’re very grateful to everyone who spreads the word.

George : See Q9 earlier. I don’t think we can advertise further – we need the community to take initiative here. Tell your friends, tell your family, and connect us to the people that can help. 

Q : Do you have any closing statements for the readers?

Gastari : Flandre best Touhou.

Jokes aside, I just hope people enjoy watching TWC and will keep showing their support for the event. It is a lot of work from everyone involved, it does require you to sometimes plan your irl around it, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The fun I get by taking part in this adventure every year makes it worth every single minute I spend working on it.

Ultimately, my goal by doing anything online is to have fun and enjoy myself. If I can help sharing some enjoyment with people through TWC, I couldn’t be happier.

TSG : I want to encourage people to try the games out. It is a learning curve, but I believe that anyone has the ability to beat the games if they put their mind to it. The first rule is to not be discouraged.

32th : Deltarune chapters 3 and 4 released right when TWC 2025 was happening, and it looks like chapter 5 will release during TWC 2026. Will 6 and 7 follow the same pattern?

Yatsuzume : The Touhou community is really one of its kind. It is so full of diverse talents and subcultures, and ZUN gives us the room to use that diversity to explore the world he has created in whichever ways we want, without worrying too much about IP lawsuits or other strange legal restrictions. I hope the community will cherish this freedom and diversity, and leverage it to build more beautiful things in the future. 

Crested : Just like any other high skill ceiling game, watching top players pull off insane achievements is truly a spectacle that deserves to be seen. I hope you’ll come watch us celebrate the Touhou games, the player community, and their endless dedication in pursuit of self-improvement.

George : @TESM play solo Youmu.

The Touhou World Cup can be viewed on the following link : 

https://www.twitch.tv/touhou_replay_showcase

You can also check out the match schedule through the link below!

https://touhouworldcup.com/schedule