東方幻存神簽 ~ Whispered Oracle of Hakurei Shrine Announced

[williewillus]

Mods: Move to News? Idk if it belongs

But anyways, ZUN had been hinting last year at a new print book releasing this year, and that it'd be fortune telling related. More news about it came out in the past day or so from information appearing on the publisher's site.

The name's "東方幻存神簽 ~ Whispered Oracle of Hakurei Shrine." In the materials, "Hakurei" is misspelled as "Hakueri", hopefully ZUN catches that one before it goes to the press lol.

"神簽" refers to the fortune-telling sticks/lots common in East Asia, known in Japan as O-mikuji. ZUN actually did a little activity in Reitaisai 15 in 2018 where people drew fortune strips and whoever had the "Great Fortune" one would get an autograph. The photos are archived on the Chinese wiki here.

The release date is going to be April 1, 2025. Speculatively, it's likely set between the end of Cheating Detective Satori and the story for the new game that will be demoed at Reitaisai in May. The length is 160 pages and it's said to cover most if not all of the characters in the series.

The plot is, "Reimu was commissioned to create a set of O-mikuji and sell them at the shrine, in order to put a certain incident to rest. They record the youkai of Gensokyo and the fortune each will bring."

Personally, it seems like ZUN will be using this work to kind of end off another arc in the series' past ten years (certainly, an end to the story from WBaWC until UDoALG), wrapping things up and getting off to a refreshed start for Touhou 20.

I got this info from a Chinese post: https://www.bilibili.com/opus/1033717814058287120, if anyone knows of any inaccuracies please point them out!

[Suspicious person]

Considering how our last databook was from 2019 (GoU) and was more about spellcards rather than the characters, this one is definitely overdue. GoU introduced spellcards cross reviews section, and while it was pretty fresh initially, I kinda feel that as a gimmick it kinda got overplayed in SCoOW as it went on. While a bit excessive, my hope is that if we are to have omikujis for our various 2hus in this new release, it's gonna be done in this book in one go, for all of them.

Additionally, if we assume that ZUN's gonna give a demo for Touhou 20 this Reitaisai, then the planned release date of April 1st is rather unfortunate as that would mean the TH20 newhus are gonna get excluded from this book, so a highly unfortunate timing considering the time gap between the releases of date books.

The plot is, "Reimu was commissioned to create a set of O-mikuji and sell them at the shrine, in order to put a certain incident to rest. They record the youkai of Gensokyo and the fortune each will bring."

I'm kinda curious to see whether that "certain incident" in question refers to past ones (like from TH18, 19, or even 14.5) OR is a brand new one for TH20, in which case next month's Lotus Eaters could probably preface it.

Personally, it seems like ZUN will be using this work to kind of end off another arc in the series' past ten years (certainly, an end to the story from WBaWC until UDoALG), wrapping things up and getting off to a refreshed start for Touhou 20.

Personally I feel like we can get more mileage out of this one as we still haven't seen the suspicious 4th gang yet, there's still the unrest in Hell brought up before WBaWC's release (never came back to it), nor had a proper adventure in the Animal Realm featuring Keiki and Mayumi, also Zanmu and Hell's gang ; but yes, two mainline games related to the same group of people is a bit much. Hopefully it gets revisited in a decimal game somewhere down the line.

[williewillus]

we still haven't seen the suspicious 4th gang yet

Was the 4th gang actually a thing? I seem to remember that that part might have been a mistranslation, but I don't know if I'm remembering properly.

[Suspicious person]

It was referred to in Miss Kicchou Yachie's omake text

Although the talks of translation issues is one I'm not familiar with

[mmzero]

According to DeepL, this is the part of the omake that mentions this 4th gang

罠や毒、寄生、擬態、あらゆる卑怯な手段を得意とする動物霊達による正体不明の組織、等など。

According to a quick translation through DeepL, it would go as: "An unidentified organization of animal spirits that specialize in traps, poisons, parasitism, mimicry, and all manner of cowardly means, and so on."

Of course I am aware that DeepL is not perfect either, but I think it wouldn't be unrealistic to believe that there is a 4th gang out there who has this as a particular gimmick. Of course I am also of the opinion that the stuff that ZUN writes in his omakes doesn't always remain either relevant, consistent or, well, remembered by ZUN himself. I wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to do a quick do-over and start with a new chain of incidents for the next game but we'll have to see once the thing is, well, out.

[nintendonut888]

As someone who can read Japanese to an extent that passage is pretty unambiguously referring to a specific fourth group, but if there is a mistranslation, it's that the "and so on" is actually meant to an "etc.," meaning that that group that uses underhanded means is but one of many groups that operate beyond the main three. Further down Yachie's profile it does say there are "four big groups," implying this fourth group is still fairly prominent, but they are not the only four groups in operation.