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Danmaku

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Danmaku (弾幕, "barrage", lit. "bullet curtain") refers to a style of shoot-'em-up video game featuring complex patterns of dozens to hundreds of enemy bullets. The Touhou Project games are a prime example of the subgenre.

The term is also sometimes used more literally in reference to the barrages of bullets themselves. For consistency with the transnumerality of the Japanese usage, this article will treat this sense of danmaku as a mass noun.

For a bit of general advice on playing this type of game, see General Strategy.

Genre Overview

In traditional shooters, bullets fly swiftly toward the player, but are few in number. In danmaku shooters, patterns of many bullets fill the screen, controlling space and limiting the player's movement as they bloom into intricate shapes of deadly beauty. Commonly called bullet hell in English, the subgenre is notorious for its difficulty.

A related term is manic shooter—this is sometimes used synonymously with bullet hell, but some shoot-'em-up enthusiasts draw a distinction: bullet hell simply denotes a high density of enemy fire, which doesn't necessarily require quick movement or reactions to avoid, while manic shooter communicates a frantic, fast-paced game that does demand quick reactions, regardless of the number of bullets onscreen.

Non-manic bullet hell shooters typically emphasize calm precision in navigating complex mazes of predictable, slow-moving projectiles. Touhou Project is such a game series, other examples being Mushihime-sama, Espgaluda, and DeathSmiles by Cave. Manic shooters instead tend to feature fast-moving bullets in chaotic patterns that must be dodged on reaction. Examples of non-bullet-hell manic shooters include the Raiden Fighters series by Seibu Kaihatsu, Dangun Feveron by Cave, and Battle Garegga by Raizing. Many games do of course fully adopt both approaches, such as DoDonPachi DaiOuJou, again by Cave, while others may favor one style but selectively incorporate elements from the other for particular sections: the extra stages in Touhou Project, for example, are often a good deal more manic than the main modes of their respective games.

Game Mechanics

Danmaku shooters usually feature the following game mechanics. They are described here with specific reference to Touhou Project, but are typical of the genre.

The hitbox

In any shoot-'em-up, a projectile is considered to have hit the player if and only if its area intersects with a region of the screen called the hitbox, which rests on top of the sprite representing the player character. In danmaku shooters, the hitbox is typically much smaller than the sprite itself, sometimes as small as a single pixel. This undersized hitbox allows bullets to seemingly pass right through the character without causing harm. This is called a graze, and many games, including those in Touhou Project, award points for it.

Lives

In most Japanese shoot-'em-ups, players begin play with anywhere from one to five lives, each representing one hit the player may sustain from enemy fire. There are no hit points or health bar: each hit received deducts exactly one life, regardless of whether it was from a tiny fairy's equally tiny orb of energy or from the EX boss's gigantic red laser. When a life is lost, the player character vanishes and reappears at the bottom of the screen, and is given a few moments of invulnerability to get into position before the dodging must begin again. Confusingly enough, Japanese usage refers to getting hit and losing a life as a miss.

In many games, lives may be restored by collecting items dropped by certain enemies—often bosses—and sometimes also by scoring points. This is called an extend.

When all lives are depleted, the player is offered the option to quit playing or to continue immediately from where the player was defeated, with as many lives as the player started the game with. The latter option may only be taken a number of times limited in the arcades by money or game tokens and limited arbitrarily or not at all on home computers and game consoles. When all continues have been exhausted, the player is forced to accept game over. Touhou games let you continue three times, but do not grant you access to the game's final level or allow you to save replays if you have continued.

Bombs

In 'many other shoot-'em-ups, the player has a primary weapon with unlimited ammunition and a few powerful bombs, used at will by pressing a button to the right of the "shoot" button. This damages every enemy and destroys every enemy bullet on the screen, and usually makes the player briefly invulnerable as well. Their basic use is as an emergency escape tool, but skilled players may put them to other uses as well.

Similarly to lives, bombs may often be replenished by collecting an item called a bomb extend.

Danmaku in Touhou Project

A generic Moon Rabbit firing danmaku against a generic Fairy Maid in Silent Sinner in Blue chapter 13.

Touhou's treatment of danmaku is unique not in its implementation of the gameplay mechanics, but in the way that danmaku is incorporated into the setting itself, where it is essentially a supernatural martial art practiced by the inhabitants of Gensokyo. The word danmaku appears in the games' dialogue. Under the spell card rules, danmaku duels are not to the death, but are ritualized and aestheticized sparring matches with agreed-upon conditions for winning and losing.[1][2][3] This evidenced by the beautiful patterns of many useless bullets: if enemies really wanted to kill the player, a 10:1 ratio of bullets wouldn't be necessary.

Danmaku battles occur outside of the games, mostly in the manga, where it works mostly the same way, although some things do happen in the manga's danmaku battles that are not seen in the games. In Silent Sinner in Blue, Watatsuki no Yorihime threw a barrage of danmaku so dense that Sakuya was unable to avoid it even by stopping time, as there was no opening in the danmaku large enough for her to pass through. No game to date has featured such undodgeable danmaku, but it is not against the letter of the spell card rules.

Reimu with torn clothes

It is shown in various games that danmaku battles tend to damage the character's clothes. In Reimu's case, they are usually repaired by Rinnosuke.

Danmaku in Seihou Project

Danmaku also plays a big role in the Seihou Project. Unlike in Touhou, there tends not be as much danmaku on the screen, the speed of the danmaku is faster. There is no spell card system. Grazing on bullets is more important to scoring than in Touhou, and is termed evading instead.[Ref. Needed]

In Seihou, danmaku is fought with lethal weapons, though fatalities are not guaranteed, and don't occur at all in the competitive two-player shoot-'em-up Kioh Gyoku. Supernatural danmaku as seen in Touhou also exists, used by characters like Hirano Sakurasaki, who wields spiritual powers similar to those of Reimu Hakurei.

Danmaku in Project Blank

Attention: This section is a stub and it needs expanding with more information related to the section's topic. If you can add to it in any way, please do so.

Danmaku again plays a major role in the Project Blank series. Bullets are swift and many, making the games manic bullet hell shooters. There is no spell card system.

As in Seihou, danmaku battles in Project Blank are fought with lethal weapons.

References