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infinitymake-work · 6 days ago

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I feel bad for not really posting any actual drawings for a while, so here is a big sketch dump of a bunch of Zanmu drawings I did a month or two ago. I made these before the demo for Touhou 20 came out for anyone who wants a general idea of how long ago these were made. I also will use this as my opportunity to talk about Zanmu excessively because this woman lives in my head rent free and I don't know how I'm supposed to get her out. (click on the photos for better quality)

Artist's Notes and Headcanons;

Ok side note, how the fuck do you spell headcannon? I keep bouncing between headcanon (as in the camera company) and headcannon (like the thing on a pirate ship) and it legit just depends on my mood that day so someone please help me with this...Ok now onto Zanmu, I am SO normal about her that I will EXPLODE if I don't talk about her-

Edit: THANK YOU TO THE PERSON IN THE REBLOGS WHO TOLD ME THE CORRECT SPELLING OF HEADCANON OMG I HOPE BOTH SIDES OF YOUR PILLOW ARE ALWAYS COOL AT NIGHT, I HOPE THE SHOWER IS ALWAYS AT THE PERFECT TEMPERATURE FOR YOU, I HOPE YOUR FAVOURITE SNACK/DRINK IS ALWAYS IN THE FRIDGE/CUPPBOARD FOR YOU THANK YOOOOOOUUUUU!!!!

I love Zanmu so much. She's such a cool character to think about and I can't seem to get her out of my head. I think she's just really fun to draw. For a little while before these sketches, I remember feeling kinda lost on how to draw her in my lineless style, so I decided "fuck it" and tried drawing her as a weird abstract shadow thing to get some new ideas going. I find simplifying characters like this helps me out a lot. I used red in the back of the hair to try and define some shapes like her face, and also I've seen some designs of her that give her Buddhist prayer beads and omg I am in love with that design idea. I love adding ornate details when I'm doing my own designs of other characters, and I've always wanted to give Zanmu something around her neck but never figured out what kind of jewelry would work best. I liked the idea of making them red as well, for the sake of making the colour palette of the drawing more cohesive, plus it looked cool. For the hair of the shadow variant, I took some inspiration from Calamity Ganon's design in BoTW and had it kinda straggle out at the tips. I think even for when I draw Zanmu normally I want to do this, since her hair in her canon design gets these split ends and I really want to incorperate that. The only thing that I didn't really like was the lack of grey hairs. I love giving Zanmu these little gray hairs so much, and when I realized I couldn't fit it into the shadow design I was kinda sad.

I then got inspired by the side profile and made a version where I defined the side of the face more, to which I then immediately got some more inspiration (yeah the values are kinda bad and mush together and I did edit this but I don't have that version on me rn, so when I do get a hold of it I'll just fix it later). For whatever reason, I have an easier time drawing Zanmu from the side, mainly her eyes. For me I often go insane trying to get eyes right as they can help make a character really unique in a simplified style. So taking some notes from character design techniques and using guidelines to keep proportions and placement consistent, I actually managed to get some features I actually really liked! In my drawings of her, I always tried to include some eyebags/shadows under her eyes and kept her actual pupils small. I also added some makeup under her eye and even added some near her eyebrows because of some inspiration I got off of Pinterest. I gave the eyebrows a little more shape as well to make them look more dynamic, and I gave her the scars I usually like to give her (I don't care about lore here, I just think they look cool).

Whenever I draw Zanmu, I always try to give her an androgenous leaning physique, so I tried making the torso and shoulders proportionally larger than her head (how clearly that reads, if it reads at all IDK). I also was able to give her grey hairs again, which I always love to include, and made her horns super narrow and tall (mainly because I really like those kind of shapes and it allows me to really go nuts on the detailing). The rest was just standard fair for drawing Zanmu, same kinds of details, I once again place the little black dashes on the front piece of the shirt on top of it instead of below (tbh I kinda like drawing it that way more) and did a version with very dramatic lighting because I wanted to get some practice with it.

I went into a lot of detail on my Zan/Hisa headcanons in a previous post, but I wanted to add some here for funsies. I think Zanmu saw herself breaking mentally and losing hope at ever escaping the cycle of rebirth as her form of enlightenment. In terms of fighting styles, when she is in a fight, she fights like she has absolutely nothing to lose, because in her mind she legit doesn't. She's still calculating during it, but is incredibly unrelenting and incredibly brutal. She probably doesn't care if she loses, she just wants to prove how futile it is to fight against her. How it accomplishes nothing.

Important thing to note in canon is that she felt disconnected from that pacifist lifestyle and made up a nicer sounding term for essentially doing the same thing to spirits. Keep in mind, this is an example of her so called "self righteousness" disguising her actual intentions. Sure, she says she's "saving these spirits from their misery" but in reality she's just killing them the same way someone would kill an actual physical person. But by now, she doesn't really care if the majority of people hate her or love her. Remember, she's the one who told Reimu that peoples perceptions of Youkai can change their actual natures in that fortune book. There's a reason it was her who said that and not, say, Yukari, who'd actually have more of a reason to give a shit about Gensokyo. Zanmu's bluffing may not be an act of insecurity or trying to hide a weaker part of herself, but literally using the perception of the Oni to make her stronger by nature of how faith and belief works in this universe all the while doing fuck all to actually prove it, playing the system. It doesn't matter if people fear her, loathe her, or idolize her, she's just gonna keep getting stronger and stronger by nature of her title alone and her strategic nature.

She is also 100% nihilistic, jaded, and cynical. Not in the "emo, misunderstood angsty" kinda way, but more in the absurdist "haha nothing matters and it's funny how people still care" kind of way. She probably also enjoys seeing someone have a rude awakening about (what she believes is) the true nature of the world and breaking. Hell, she'd probably enjoy delivering that rude awakening herself, as she'd be guaranteed to get a front row seat to their break down. She wants to drag other people down into this cynical, empty abyss with her, and finds it amusing when she sees someone who is so full of willpower and determination just-fall apart. She'd probably even convince them that she's helping them find inner peace. Leaving their unattainable and unrealistic dreams behind.

The scene would go something like this, she'd probably kneel down to this individual, collapsed and broken on the ground. Lifting up their chin to look in their eyes, she'd stare into their empty eyes, now resembling the same darkness hers have. Then, placing a hand on the chest feeling their lethargic heartbeat, she'd say, "Do you feel the gaping hole in your heart? Does your body feel hollow, no longer weighed by your pointless, unattainable desires? That emptiness you feel is enlightenment my dear, freedom from the shackles of Samsara. For at long last you have attained Nirvana, and I am the one who graciously gifted it to you...."

Also, if a new religious war themed fighting game for Touhou came out and Zanmu needed a motivation, she'd 100% start a doomsday cult dedicated to making her a god so she can end all of existence and bring everyone peace in her own way. She'd refer to the world as "a sick, dying animal that needs to be humanely put out of its misery" and would be one the number one threats to deal with because for some reason she keeps rolling Nat 20's on every single charisma check she gets and waaaay too many people are joining her and if she actually achieves her goal then there is a certain risk of THE FUCKING WORLD ENDING. (this is an idea I have been noodling with in my brain for too long, and all of that isn't accounting for how the Oni of Hell would probably speed up this process, making it even more dire lmao)

#zanmu nippaku #touhou

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infinitymake-work · 6 days ago

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10 years of Touhou Memories

12 July 2025 marks the 10 year anniversary of this blog. As a fun fact, the anniversary should have been few days earlier if I hadn't deleted the first blog. How did that happen? Well, the blog was quite fresh and I was playing around with the custom theme editor and when returning to the dashboard it was all broken, so thinking I might have accidentally done something to cause this and not seeing how I would be able to fix it, I just deleted the whole account and made a new one (this current one). But later I learnt that it was just how Tumblr was sometimes, breaking suddenly just to return to normal few hours later.

What made me create this blog? I am a Touhou fan since late 2011, but I wasn't really active in the community before to contribute with anything or interact with anybody. One day in 2015, somebody on Facebook shared these two posts from @magnoliaarch: /post/110590556326/ and /post/118484290686/, which are a compilation of Reimu's and Marisa's appearances throughout the games. I thought it would be a really cool thing to have a place where you could see all the appearances of all characters from the games and I looked up if such place existed, but wasn't able to find anything like that so I decided I will do that then. That's why in the early days of this blog all you could find were collages with the characters.

Why this particular name? The name was inspired by Trainman1405's blog clubpenguinmemories.com, which I was a big fan of during my teenage years.

Why Tumblr? It just felt like the most suitable place to post things about a game, the style of the platform and the format of the posts were exactly what I was looking for. I'm still on Tumblr, even though I use a custom domain these days. Being on Tumblr sure comes with some limitations than if I were to buy some hosting space and build a website from scratch there, but the community is what keeps me here. I always enjoyed reading the tags people leave when reblogging my posts and at the same time browsing through a dashboard that's not necessarily consisting of touhou.

Some stats? The 10 year anniversary catches me at around 4200+ posts. There were actually more posts 2 months ago, but I deleted a big chunk of the audio tracks due to the recent troubles with Touhou OSTs. As for the number of followers, they're somewhere around 7500, but many of the people who followed back years ago are now inactive. I block obvious bots, so the number shouldn't be artificially inflated.

Having started this blog while I was still 19, I look back now as I am approaching 30 and see how much it evolved, like my life had. Nowadays I don't have as much free time as I used to, as real life responsibilities take a big chunk of my time (family, work, home). But I still love Touhou after all these years and I will continue with this blog as much as I can. I do answer touhou-related asks, some privately, some are published if the answer would be relevant to a bigger number of people. So feel free to send me asks or DMs, but please keep it touhou related.

Some closing remarks? I would like to thank you all for your nice messages and encouragement throughout the years, you have brought me joy and motivated me to continue with this blog. Sorry for those who wanted to get to know me better that I didn't engage too much with messaging, but I am not looking to make friends online, I hope you can understand. And for those who blocked me throughout the years, be it because I was posting too much and you felt like I was spamming your dash, or were just not vibing with my character/personality, I hope that you were able to make your tumblr experience better as the years passed. Thank you for those who offered constructive criticism, as that helped me not only make my blog better, but also helped me grow as a person.

10 years is a lot, many things have changed. I hope to be able to run this blog many years from now on and continue posting touhou trivia and helpful references. Thank you all again for being here!

#thank you <3

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infinitymake-work · 6 days ago

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