Q: Fake leak? So this is indeed fake?

A: Yes. All the tracks “leaked” this time are fanmade Touhou-style music. ZUN himself has nothing to do with these works. This collaborative project was done after news about Touhou 19 was released.

Q: What was the making process like? Can you provide a little context?

A: The project started out as a simple idea of members wanting to make new songs after seeing the Touhou 19 announcement. With everyone's active participation, it turned into predicting the demo's songs before it came out. Given the large number of people participating in the project, we also added a new original character and her own theme.

Within three or four days, half the songs were complete, and received praise from members of our group. As we were working on the music, we had the idea to make a mock-up of the game and its music room, to make the presentation nicer, just as many fanmade albums do. Seeing the "game" in front of our eyes, simply a video mockup of the title screen at that point, felt surreal and exciting, and so we gradually had ideas on how to make it seem even more real: someone booting up the game to the resolution menu, Japanese music comments, and so on.

Eventually, we figured it'd be fun to record it off a screen at a shoddy angle, and present it as a leak, to add to the hype. We somewhat figured that most fans would assume the leak is fake, since Touhou is essentially unleakable by nature. In fact, if you look closely, the copyright on the title screen actually says ΣUN instead of ZUN (see twitter image) —though as the video quality got worse and worse through repeated exports and subsequent compression, it became harder to tell.

It was a rather successful group effort, and a lot of people provided assistance we needed. It's certainly hard to imagine that this can be made in just one week, especially if it was only one person.

You know the rest of the story. The leak went public quickly and incited a lot of heated discussion in a short period of time.

Q: Why did you do such a controversial thing?

A: Just as many composers and content creators have been having their fun with predictions for the game, we did the same, but got carried away a little bit. We're all looking forward to the release of the game, so this was our way of contributing something to the community. Admittedly, it's also been really exciting seeing people's reactions to our work, and all the ensuing speculation. In any case, we just want to clearly state that we didn't have any bad intentions. If we caused anyone any trouble, we apologize here.

Q: What are your thoughts on the response from the fans?

A: First of all, all our participating members would like to thank you for your appreciation and support. Some comments complimented the quality of our songs given the short period of time, even knowing the leak was fake, which is always nice to hear. We're equally grateful for the negative comments, as this was a rare opportunity to get people's unfiltered opinions on the songs. What particularly stood out to us was seeing brilliant arrangements of our work, and so quickly too! It was quite a surprise. If you make or find any similar tribute to our work, don't be shy to let us know, it's always flattering to hear!

Q: Will there be similar plans in the future?

A: No. We have no plans to do so. We figure that, after this fake leak, similar content in the future will likely come off as more suspicious to people. Short of coding an entire playable game from scratch, we doubt anything else could truly convince people. Therefore, if another leak event similar to this one comes out in the future, please take this as a disclaimer that we are not responsible for it.

Of course, although there will be no more fake leaks, that doesn't mean we won't make any more music predictions for new Touhou games, nor stop making Touhou-style albums. We simply will be presenting them as fanmade. Stay tuned!