Reimu
Chance: 0.1%
Want: 1%
I've been dreading this day, precisely because I knew I was going to come and be the dissenting voice. So here is an essay on why I think Reimu has a practically impossible chance of being in Smash:
The Games have Never Been Officially Localised Outside of Japan:
Point the first, and the biggy. It doesn't matter how big and huge the game is in Japan, the franchise has only very recently been made available on Steam, and even then is only available in Japanese. Zun has been very hesitant to have the games translated in any official capacity, and so therefore relied on fan translations, which is all well and good. However it does create a barrier. The vast majority of any sales that Touhou has gotten in the west before the appearance on Steam will have been pirated copies, and now the series is on Steam, it requires an additional patch to be playable, which I'm sure is easy, but certainly doesn't make it appealing to try out the series.
This feels like people have swung too far the other way on a "western character is inevitable". I do think Western companies are harder for Nintendo to deal with, but I also think the Western market is too valuable to do something as reckless as throw in a character with no official releases. Sales data for the Switch show that Japan is the second biggest single market, but 2/3 of all Switches have been sold out of Japan. And no Touhou isn't like Dragon Quest and Fatal Fury/King of Fighters. Both of those games have been repeatedly made available in the west, and their impact on their respective genres is undeniable.
Secondly, Sakurai has voiced regret at putting Lucas in Smash once he found out that Mother 3 wasn't going to be localised outside of Japan. And since then, we haven't had any playable characters in Smash that have come from games that haven't been localised outside of Japan.
No Official Touhou Game has ever appeared on a Nintendo console:
Obviously Antimony of Common Flowers is coming at some point, but when the future pass content was decided on, there were no official Touhou games on Switch. Yes there have been fanmade Touhou games on Switch, such as Lunar Nights, but even then sales have only passed about 100,000 copies, which pales in comparison to a lot of the indie characters that have appeared. With games like Undertale and Shovel Knight being million sellers on Nintendo platforms.
Even Final Fantasy and Persona had appeared on Nintendo consoles before, even if their playable characters hadn't had prominent roles.
And I know that Touhou music has appeared in some games on Nintendo consoles, but that's still very different when your main franchise still has not graced the platform in any official capacity.
Touhou hasn't had that gaming crossover hit:
This is another one I think is quite vital. Touhou has had huge cultural impact in certain areas. The music is hugely popular, it's a poster child of Dōjin culture and hell, I saw the McRoll video back in 2008 (probably my only exposure to Touhou outside of Smash speculation before now (shout at me later)). But it lacks a tangible foothold in the mainstream gaming consciousness. Many other people have said that Touhou has been embraced by it's own community, the anime community because of its general aesthetic and the dōjin community just based off the seriously impressive amounts of fan content that have been made. It doesn't have that huge seller. Hell as far as I can tell, Zun only prints ~10,000 copies of the games when they sell them at comiket, and the rest of the sales are obviously impossible to track because they're PC downloads, but very basic Steam data shows that no single official game has sold over 100,000 copies there, with most of them only having about 20,000 copies sold. Obviously the games could have sold a lot more elsewhere, it would still have to be a market increase of 50 to reach the ~5 million sales that Undertale have on Steam. Not impossible, but based on just how omnipresent Undertale was, I very much am sceptical.
If I thought Touhou had it's moment in the mainstream, outside of memes and music, I'd change my tune on this, but none of the games have the penetration that Shovel Knight or Undertale have had.
And call me old fashioned, but I do think overall imprint on the gaming community far outweighs Touhou's collective importance to dōjin and the anime communities. Even if neither can be completely ignored.
Bullet Hell is a *very* niche genre, even in Japan:
We talk a lot about representing different genres, and this one feels really sketchy to me. Out of all the genres not in Smash currently, from FPS to moba to RTS and visual novel, do we really think bullet hell is next? Yes Sakurai joined HAL because of playing a shoot 'em up they made, but Touhou isn't the clear choice here. Contra and Metal Slug exist, Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun, Sin and Punishment, Gunstar Heroes (god how good were Treasure?). I know they don't all fill the exact same niche as Touhou, but if we're using Gall Force as why Touhou should be in Smash, then I see no issue in reaching back to shoot 'em ups for companies like Konami, SNK and Treasure who all already have content in Smash Ultimate. And all arguably have more mainstream cache world wide.
Other (arguably) bigger indie characters haven't managed to make it playable:
People frequently say "well Sans is a costume and Undertale heavily draws from Touhou, so Reimu must be able to make the jump!". Which I think fundamentally denies the fact that Undertale is bigger than Touhou in almost every regard. And I know I might get some push back on that, but if Shantae, Shovel Knight and Sans can't be playable, I do not think there any other indie characters that will make the jump. Maybe we'll see a Hollow Knight or Celeste costumes. Hell, Sans opens the door for a Reimu costume including music. But I think, particularly, Shovel Knight and Sans and their impact on the indie gaming community is far larger and more immediately felt on a worldwide level, that it makes Reimu's chances feel far far lesser.
As for want, the music would be cool? But I judge my Smash wants on a three pronged basis, Nintendo importance, gaming importance and world wide impact (which does crossover with my chance scores significantly), and I don't think Touhou ticks any of those boxes frankly. Whilst some Touhou music is cool, I see absolutely no reason why Reimu should make it in before franchises like Resident Evil, Tales, Tekken, Ninja Gaiden, Ace Attorney, Professor Layton, Overwatch, Crash, Doom or many, many others.
