Introduction

Created by the doujin circle Sanbondo in 2010, Fantasy Maiden Wars E (or Gensou Shoujo Wars Kou if you hate English) is the first of a four-part series of games that attempts to tie together the stories of the various Windows Touhou games in a SRW fashion. Only two of the games have been released (and only this one translated) so far, but they're both very fun and, if you happen to be interested in the Touhou Project, are an excellent introduction to the series.

Touhou? SRW? What the heck are those?

The Touhou Project is a fairly long-running series of self-published bullet hell games that, for a variety of reasons that people still wonder about, has captured a tremendous audience worldwide. At the same time though, many of the people in that audience have possibly never played an actual Touhou game! One of the most impressive features of the Touhou series is the simply extraordinary amount of fanwork. I could go on for pages describing just how many fields of art Touhou has breached, or how many things there are Touhou versions of, but it's probably enough to say that if something exists, it is guaranteed that there is either is or will be a Touhou parody of it. Naturally, videogames are not an exception; from classic titles like Mario or Fire Emblem to lesser-known games like Nobunaga's Ambition, the sheer variety of Touhou fangames means you could probably restrict yourself to them alone and stil end up playing every genre of game ever.

Super Robot Wars is another famous (in Japan at least), long-running series of turn-based Strategy RPGs that takes various robot animes and fuses them all together into a single world with a single plot. Its appeal lies in the strength of its writing (believe it or not it's hard to mix together entirely different genres into something reasonable!), the fairly simple interface, the catchy music, the numerous references to scenes from the original shows, and the flashy attack animations. Another nice thing is that while there are always robots and characters who are just flat out better than anyone else, if you really want to you can use whatever characters and robots you want and still beat the game. The replay potential of SRW titles is immense, which is a good thing since you usually have to replay the game if you want to see absolutely everything in the story. If you're interested, Caphi is currently doing a LP of one of the more recent SRW titles, Super Robot Wars Z2: Destruction.

Is there anything I need to know about the base games?

There are two things you should know about Touhou! First, almost everyone is a girl (initially because

, now out of tradition). Second, Youkai is a catch-all term that refers to a very, very wide scope of mythological creatures, from fairies to dragons. You can basically parse it as "not human".

Aside from those, Fantasy Maiden Wars does a very good job of introducing/explaining the world of Touhou and the bits from SRW are mostly restricted to gameplay, quotes, and music homages.

What Touhou games does FMW1 cover?

As the first game in the series, FMW1 naturally covers the first Windows Touhou game.

Touhou 6, the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (that's what the E in the title stands for) is pretty much the main plot, but the game also features characters and plot elements from Touhou 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10 (and arguably 12). I should note, though, that the actual Touhou games are pretty loosely connected (the plot of most of them can be summed up with "weird thing has happened, go do something") so FMW isn't nearly as much of a crossover mash-up as actual SRW titles. For the most part, it's one game happens, then the next, then the next, with characters from other games showing up to set-up for when their plots happen.

How is this LP going to work?

This will be a hybrid LP. The bulk of the LP will be screenshots, but I'll be linking to videos of the attacks. Each chapter of the game will be split into two, with the first part covering the initial dialogue and actual gameplay and the second covering the ending dialogue and anything I do in between chapters. For non-route specific chapters, there will be a third part too covering how it went in the other save. I also intend to try and explain all of the references to SRW and Touhou, so if I miss any feel free to tell me. I'd like for anyone reading this LP to come out with a better knowledge of Touhou too, so if I'm speaking too much jargon please warn me.

Are you going to transcribe the dialogue?

Yes. Don't worry, FMW1 is a fairly short game (only 15 chapters, not counting route splits), as once again it's intended to be part of a four game series, so there's a very low chance of me burning out on transcription.

What's the policy on spoilers?

Touhou doesn't have a plot to spoil. Feel free to talk however much you want about how Reimu and Marisa will smash Rumia, Cirno, Meiling, Patchouli, Sakuya, Remilia, and Flandre's faces in, but don't reveal what FMW 1 adds to the base EoSD formula.

What will the update schedule be like?

I intend to have an update up every week, but I fully expect that schedule to fail horribly. Expect at least two updates a month though.

I'm interested in Touhou/SRW, are there any other LPs?

On the Touhou side, Zorak and Rising Grandpa have LPed all of the main games up to Touhou 9 (you'll need archives to see the latter), Golden Battler has recently finished LPing Touhouvania 2, and Volt Catfish was slowly LPing a variety of Touhou fangames. As for SRW, Tobias Grant LPed Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden, Brunom1 is LPing Super Robot Wars W, and once again Caphi is LPing of one of the most recent titles, Super Robot Wars Z2: Destruction.

EDIT: Tsym is carrying the Touhou LP torch now. Go check it out!

Bonus

Namtab is also going to be posting transcriptions from the game's Options menu, which is kind of the game's database. It's entirely supplemental since the game does a great job of introducing everyone, but if you're interested in the characters and want to know more you can check them out. _{Beware of Namtab's shitty opinions.}

Characters

Music

There's also the Sound Room comments which are... um... well, I respect cobu and Ibiza's musical talents but I'm not sure if I'd actually want to know them.

Glossary

Finally, the Glossary gives a more in-depth look at a couple things of various importance. If it's actually really important I'll tell you all you really need to know to understand the game in the actual updates.

FMW2 Game Mechanics

As fun as FMW1 is, FMW2 introduced a ton of stuff that made the game much better. I went over three of these in detail.

The Let's Play Archive

Fantasy Maiden Wars E

by BlitzBlast

Introduction

Table of Contents

Bonus