ZUN Panel - Anime Expo 2016

I've pretty much never transcribed anything before - I didn't quite get everything, and to be honest the panel wasn't great in
my opinion - pretty poor moderator, poor translator, poor overall audience, poor Q&A. Nevertheless, here's my shoddy transcription.
It was still great to see ZUN for the first time in real life!
He's a very interesting person and I don't think the panel did him justice.
Note some things might be slightly paraphrased and summarized - I'm not the fastest typer.
If anyone sees any corrections, inaccuracies, or things they could add I missed, feel free to do so.

Take everything written here with a grain of salt due to the negatives I mentioned earlier.

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(Natural History of the Childlike Duo being played before the panel starts!)

ZUN eventually comes in and the first thing he does is say "USA" and start a USA chant.

NISA guy says what ZUN drinking is just "very bitter ginger ale."

ZUN and crowd do a "kanpai!" and the talk begins.

Moderator: How were you able to accomplish and do everything and get all of us here?

ZUN: "[The fandom] isn't the reason why i do this, as a result of making games I like this happened."

*Some discussion of his history involving his college years*

M: How was your involvement with the music makers shape the way Touhou universe developed?

ZUN: "Amusement makers was a club at college that made games, I really really like games and at first I really wanted
to make game music, in order to do that the best way to make game music is to go somewhere people are making games which is
why I went into a game creation club. Even though it was a game creation club, if someone doesn't make a game I can't
make game music so ultimately I decided to make my own game."

Learned that ZUN was a mathematics major in college.

M: How did your experience as a math major influence your creation of danmaku?

ZUN: "In order to create games I think mathematics is very important not just for danmaku games. I believe that in order to
show something beautiful vs something nasty there are mathematical rules to it.
As a result of that I thought math was very important. Speaking in retrospect, I didn't plan this out, it just happened that way."

M: How did you create the balance between the two [beautiful vs nasty (I think?)] in the creation of your universe?

A: "It's not fantasy that's infinite, it's the whole world that's infinite. In order to depict that I think there
needs to be words, music, pictures, that kind of media. In order to represent the Touhou world, I need to cut out pieces of it:
represent it on a TV screen or whatever screen out there. And that's where the mathematics comes in. You guys all look
shocked, or...? *laughing*"

(Question I missed; something to do with his music influences I think?)

ZUN: "I always liked games and because of that I liked game music. I make games because I want to make game music...
I'm a little drunk right now, (in apologetic tone)"
*laughing from audience*
"Music is easy to me, when I get drunk I think of these things and I think music is the best media to represent my thoughts."

M: How many times did you guys meet in your club?

ZUN: "Club meetings happened once a week. So outside of those meetings I spent all my time creating games and during those meetings
we would just report on what we created."

M: Did anyone in the music makers influence you as a developer or challenge your ideas?

ZUN: "It was a really small club so...not really."

M: What was the first game you created and how do you feel about it now?

ZUN: "Until college I had never touched a computer. in order to make game music i bought a PC and i studied game making and the
very first game I made was Puyo Puyo-esque." (I think the translator meant to say he made a game similar to Puyo-Puyo)

M: How long did it take you to create this game?

ZUN: "It took me about 2 months."

ZUN: "[Talking about college] really takes me back!"

M: Because the internet wasn't a big thing back then how were you able to accomplish making a game in 2 months?

ZUN: "My thought process was, someone had made this game before so I thought that I could do it too. I don't remember much from that time but
I really didn't eat but I worked really hard."

M: Because of the internet itself the internet has changed a lot in the creation of video games.
What do you think of the role internet takes in video game creation, does it make it faster-*translator says STOP ADDING STUFF*
(The moderator really had way too many long-winded questions, and...)

ZUN: "Compared to back then where there was basically no internet,
I think game creation is much easier now because of the internet and all the info out there.
Therefore a lot of people make games and announce many different games.
So relatively speaking, it's really hard to make a good game nowadays."

M: When you were first creating your games what programs were you using to make things like Puyo Puyo?

ZUN: "C." (just C)

M: MS-DOS?

"MS-DOS of course. [He uses] Windows now."

M: What was the first introduction of you to windows when you started making games

ZUN: "2002 when he created Koumakyou." (EoSD)

(Missed exact question, probably was more redundancy about how Touhou got big)

ZUN: "I was just making my own game. I never had the intention of making it so big. I am really surprised!"

M: Did you ever think your games would be popular in America?

ZUN: "I believe it's due to the internet."

At this point a slide came up with the Euler equation on the projector:

e^(x)i = cos(x) + i(sin (x))

And asked ZUN to solve it.

(Sorry, I didn't really understand what the moderator was going for with this part so forgive me if this seems disjointed)

"In mathematics if you want to represent a number if you wanted to represent one you can represent any whole number the
only one you can't do that with is 0. so this is the only equation that has 1 and 0 and i and pi and e."

(I missed this question, probably yet another question about how the Touhou boom occurred?)

"This is gonna be really long. So in Japan there's a culture where people use other people's stuff without permission.
(audience laughs)
That is called doujin. So Touhou was on that doujin wave so what had to happen just happened. That's it."

At this point, a slide comes up on the projector with a bunch of the portraits of characters ZUN designed over the years.)

M: How do you come up with all these characters?

ZUN: "So there's situations where I think of the danmaku first and situations when I think of the characters first. It's case
by case."

M: Can you provide us a case?

ZUN: "So originally the reason why I put characters into the danmaku games is because I thought it would be really cool to put
a character that fits with the danmaku. When Touhou was first created the word danmaku didn't even exist!
There was the world that had a lot of bullets but I wanted to create the reason why there were a lot of bullets.
In order to do that I needed to create a setting for these bullets. And that's how we get characters for danmaku games.
The very common situation is when I want to create a specific attack I want to create a character for that specific attack.
So if there's a fast attack I make a character that looks fast.
And if it's a nasty-looking danmaku I make a character that's really nasty looking."

M: What's a nasty character?

ZUN: "...Yukarin?" (Audience roars with laughter)

M: What's your favorite character?

ZUN: "You're gonna ask me that?!? Reimu."

The audience Q&A begins here.

Q: WHEN WILL MIMA RETURN

A: You're gonna ask that?!? ...When there is an opportunity.

Q: In the latest game (LoLK) you had point device. Will you continue using it or was it one-time?

A: It's a one-time thing. (!!!)

Q: (Asked question in Japanese): Was asking ZUN when you create a title what makes you do that decision choice(??)

A: I didn't understand the Japanese too well... When I wasn't very confident the games I made would
sell well so I decided I would just make my own game and that's Touhou!

Q: So we mentioned the internet and doujin culture - how do you see it fitting into new markets and media such as steam, Android apps, mobile
store, VR, etc.

A: That one [question] huh? Only god knows what will happen. (There was more to this answer but I didn't quite get it, last part is the
main point he was trying to convey)

Q: Is the PC-98 series canon at all?

A: Yes. (CAUTION: This question was super badly translated at first - the translator didn't know how to repeat this to ZUN somehow?
So he may have given an answer to something worded completely differently. Again, take this entire panel with a grain of salt.)

Q: What is your favorite instrument that is not the trumpet? (audience laughs)

A: I have a lot of instruments that I like. No trumpet right?...Trombone!

*Someone made a Trump meme question here which wasn't answered. Envision your average wonderful AX con-goer here.*

Q: What is your favorite beer?

A: I get asked that a lot. Kirin!

Q: Do you have any sort of gaming development horror stories?

A: All my games are like that. Everyday nothing goes the way I want it to. And when that happens I just drink!

Q: There are lot of aspiring developers in this room, so what advice would you use to get them to work well on their projects?

A: I'm not in a spot to say this but ... don't drink too much! There's a proverb in Japan: it goes drink beer but don't get drunk by beer.

Q: Do you have any advice on how to become a 1 man team like you ZUN?

A: You should learn to hate working with other people.

Q: What kinds of things influenced you in creating games like Touhou?

A: Nature.

Q: Thank you so much for your beautiful work - We love the Sealing Club, are there any plans to have them appear in a game or
actually in Gensokyo? (kind of summarized this question to important part)

A: Maybe, maybe not, but... just gonna go with the flow and we'll see how things go.

Q: Does Aya officially have wings and does Momiji have wolf ears?

A: I don't know!

Q: Do you factor in the color of bullets when you make characters initially or does it happen in development?

A: It comes up during development of course but I choose what I envisioned initially.

At this point someone brings a beer they smuggled in up to ZUN as tribute, after which Q&A ends. Last part is a raffle where
three copies of Dr. Latency's Freak Report signed by ZUN are raffled away. End of panel after that.