I'm... Real? I'm... Gatdamn... Alive?

An official remaster of the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil was announced today, releasing this September. The first time a Touhou game has gotten this treatment, and notably the first time EoSD is available digitally at all (I think). Featuring art and music redone by ZUN, updated gameplay, and notably, inbuilt translations for 10 languages!

I figure I should circle back around to clarify some of the things that people online seem most curious about. This is all from public sources, not any kind of insider info.

The circle "Shanghai Alice Reprise" formed for this project consists of ZUN and some of his usual collaborators like his wife Kii-san, Jyunya and Curee from AQUASTYLE, and Unabara Iruka from Twilight Frontier, plus some other staff. There is some vague hope of continuing with the remasters in the future. New Touhou games are still going to be done by Team Shanghai Alice i.e. ZUN with some help, just like before. Nothing has changed in terms of the fanwork guidelines either, he wanted to clarify, I guess because there's a new circle involved and all.

Contrary to what I kinda vaguely said, the art is done by other people like Curee (close redraws of ZUN's old art), Jyunya (enemy sprites) and Kii-san (player sprites). The coding is being handled by other people like Jyunya recreating ZUN's old game in a newer engine.

The music is all redone by ZUN himself. It has wider instrumentation and better audio quality, obviously, but I'd say it's still pretty close to the original rather than e.g. some attempt to make "2026-style versions" that'd sound like they came out of FW. I'm not a music person, though.

While the others talked ZUN into this project, it isn't just something he gave his blessing, he is closely personally involved with it. In his own words, until now he's been very busy just making all the music, but now comes the part where he needs to check other people's work and nitpick everything he wants changed (mostly joking). They've had a very tight schedule coming up on this announcement, and still a lot to do in the three months before release.

The release includes both the new version and a close recreation of the 2002 original, down to lacking quality of life features that the new version adds in. (screenshot source)

It is true that money and power enables abuse on a grand scale, but the converse is not true— having no money and no power does not make abuse less likely. I think many of us know this from experience. There is no special moral quality to being poor or being oppressed. Oppressed people abuse each other all the fucking time, in families and relationships and friendships. People of color abuse each other. Women abuse each other. Gay people and trans people abuse each other.

Cesar Chavez raped the women and girls of the labor rights movement throughout his career, using worker solidarity as a bludgeoning tool to ensure their silence.

If you say “people in my group don’t do this, it’s the powerful men that do it” then you harm yourself in several ways.

1. You signal to your social circle that you do not hold them to any standard of behavior. You have preemptively pledged loyalty, which means that if they behave objectionably, any objection on your part will mean a betrayal of your community.

2. You mark yourself as socially permissive. People in your social group know that you are, at baseline, unwilling to accept or act on allegations against them. To be frank, this makes you very easy to take advantage of, whether in service of abusing someone else or abusing you directly.

And you harm other people by telling a lie. What about all of the people who have been abused by a person within this oppressed group? They have it reiterated that their abuse cannot be spoken about, for the sake of solidarity.