Thread by @raikamudapon

Since Touken Ranbu is releasing in English, let's talk about some of the social phenomenon the fans of this game have caused.
In this thread I'll be covering various topics from donation drives to Never Buying From Scalpers that show how Saniwa changed history.
#toukenranbu

First I want to mention that the anticipation for the game was so high when it came out on 1/14/2015, the initial 2 servers filled up almost immediately.
There would be subsequent servers added, but even 2 months later, 3/10, interest was so high that the 2 servers released

Filled up completely in 15 hours.
Because of this, tkrb accounts were posted on auction sites for ¥5000~1800. This would mark the start of the long battle of Saniwa vs Scalpers, although no one knew this at the time.

The first sign that Saniwa were going to be an economic

force outside of anime and game merch was the book "Nihontou Ayashii Miryoku ni Hamaru hon." This book on Japanese swords was orginially aimed at men in their 50s, and printed 10,000 units.
When they noticed that Saniwa were purchasing this book, they made a special obi (a strip

of paper that goes around jp books) for Saniwa, and ended up having to print 95,000 units!
You can see in this tweet here that some of the most popular swords like mikazuki and kashuu are named, and the Kanji for saniwa 審神者 is extremely prominent.

https://twitter.com/Kawade_shobo/status/560653119378309120?s=20

The same publishing company had a nother book they had published in 2002, "Meitouden" that they then introduced on sns. It also sold like hot cakes, and 13 years after its release it was up for a reprint! They even had to tell people please don't buy this book at premium prices,

because we are reprinting it.
The industry realized that if they printed sword books, saniwa would buy them.
The special magazine "Bessatsu Takarajima Nihontou" pt1 and 2 ended up selling 460,000 units in 6 months because they featured many sword in tkrb.

So why were Saniwa

buying these books so voraciously? It came down to this.
The characters in tkrb were highly appealing, but there was very little information regarding the characters in game. Tkrb had no story mode per se, and the only info the game gave you was snippets of character lines and a

little bit of information about the plot.
However, while the images and personalities of the swords created was original, each sword had its own rich history and lineage of former owners, and schools that they were made in.
The game is accurate to history, so what you read about

your sword in history would be true for your sword in tkrb
The saniwa absorbed this information about their swords, many who had tragic backgrounds
One of the game mechanics in tkrb is that sword breakage is permanent character death. There is no way to bring back a broken sword.

You can find or forge another one of the same type, but it will never be the same sword you had before.
This severe game mechanic, along with the tragedy the swords were involved in was also an element of its popularity.
Many saniwa who started the game for the hot boys became

increasingly protective of many of the swords as their children, especially the smaller tantou.
While the game had many otome game influences, the game offered no clear romantic routes, and many saniwa started to think of their entire citadels as more of an army they were leading

rather then a possible dating pool.
So saniwa were voracious to learn more about their swords, but it didn't mean they accepted anything published.
A book published in April of that year has so many errors and misspellings that it enraged the tkrb community, and the company that

published it ended up publishing an official apology on their website.

Not only were Saniwa were buying books, they were buying items that reminded them of their favorite sords because at the time, official merch was produced very slowly and usually was only the 1 official image

of the swords in their battle gear.
Tkrb was notorious for having very little plot and art, so the saniwa took it upon themselves and produced doujinshi in quantities that became legendary.
In 5/5/2015, the first tkrb only doujin event happened.
For a jp doujin events, usually

several different genres will rent out one large hall and share the space. You're considered a fairly popular genre if you have several hundred participants.
Tkrb had 4,276 circles at this event.
Participants were thought to number over 20, 000 people, and netizins joked that

this was the heisei era battle of one hazama.
Little did they know that next year on 5/4/2016, this record would be overwritten by 5,200 circles participating in a tkrb event.
Tkrb was remarkable in that its fans not only put their economic power to buying goods and materials

that were related to their favorite swords, but in putting money towards crowdfunding historical restoration.
Museums had already seen the benefits of Saniwa, as many of them greatly increased the attendance of the places that housed their swords, and many made small donations

on site so that better equipment that would allow swords to be displayed in the best conditions to be purchased.
But in 11/1/2015, a project was started to recreate the ootachi Hotarumaru.
This sword was a small but strong character in game, and was extremely popular. However,

the sword had been lost for years, rumored to have been taken in the sword hunting efforts post war.
A swordsmith had set up this project to recreate hotarumaru from the information and specs they had on hand.
Hotarumaru is one of the swords that has particularly tragic lines if

they are broken, and saniwa rushed in at the opportunity to help.
They filled the goal of ¥5,500,000 in 5 hours, and the project would ultimately raise 820% of its goal for a total of ¥450,000,000.
But it wasn't just saniwa to donated to this, the creator of tkrb and president of

nitroplus Dejitarou also donated, and made the biggest single donation.
In February of 2016 the first ceremony of the sword being created was performed at the Aso shrine in Kumamoto. However, a scant 2 months later the region was struck by earthquakes, and the shrine suffered

major damages.
It looked like hotarumaru would not be able to return to his home, but many people once more donated, and along with part of the money raised to create him the shrine was repaired. After 70 years the sword was returned to the shrine.
There was only one problem

with this scenario, and it was that the saniwa realized that they could bring their lost swords back with crowdfunding.
This would lead to events such as the saniwa who researched historical documents to find information on the popular sword Shokudaikiri and tracking a lead down

to the Mito Tokugawa museum, where they found out that although he was burned badly in a natural disaster, he could be one of 200 swords that were stored in their burned state.
The saniwa emailing the museum broke the museums server, but this did lead to efforts to identify and

recover shokudaikiri.
Although the sword was in a terrible state, he had a limited viewing event, that eventually became permanent.
With this event, the community realized that museums have difficulty in raising money for sword care and display, and so started donating to take

care of shokudaikiri.
It had been only 6 months from the release of the game, but they had raised enough money and awareness that the museum was able to hire professionals to take care of this sword.
But the museum didn't stop there. They created a fundraising project to create

an utsushi, or complete copy of the sword.
The saniwa rushed to help, and with their efforts two years later both the burned shokudaikiri and the completed utsushi were able to be displayed at the Tokugawa museum.
Without the interest and efforts of the saniwa, this sword would

still be lost and rotting in the storage of the museum.
Saniwa continued to fund sword restoration and recreation projects of Shishiou, Souza Samonji, Yagen Toushirou, Tsurumaru Kuninaga, etc. But many didn't stop there, and began funding efforts for swords not in the game.
The

shrine that houses Sohayanotsuruki was in desperate need of funds to repair 10 unrelated spears. Although these spears were not in the game, they set up fundraising site, and the goal was reached in around 6 hours. They would end up with ¥29,410,000, almost 6 times their initial

ask.
These kinds of funds raising efforts would lead to many shrines and temples that normally did not collaborate with anime and games doing special collaborations, including a large amount of places in historic Kyoto.
One of thse collaborations would end up being the Kyoto

museum. The Kyou no Kanata event was so large no other artworks were displayed, and every shelf and space they had was filled with swords, including audio guides that featured the VAs from tkrb.
I havent even started to cover the Yamambagiri Kunihiro display event that was

thought to bring the city of Ashikaga ¥4,000,000,000 in economic activity or the tkrb blue-ray that came with a tantou, but this thread has gotten pretty long so I will cover more in pt 2.

I promise I will cover some more amazing Saniwa phenomenon but in the meantime please look at my son Nakigitsune and love him.
He will be in the EN game! Please take care of him and give his fox buddy lots of snacks! They are good boys!

ONE HAZMA
omg im struggling with the autocorrect, I meant Oke Hazama...