I was just curious, what makes a doujin semi-official? I know that this and that one about the human village girls are considered semi-official, but not why
I wouldn't bother with the "semi-official" label myself, since it just muddles things for no reason.
When people use it, they generally mean that it's one of the monthly manga published through Strange Creators of Outer World, the Touhou magazine that mostly just refers to these online manga these days. It's certainly some mark of quality to be selected/have one's comic greenlit for it and given all that visibility (plus money), but when people extend this to imply whatever kind of personal approval by ZUN (he doesn't run the magazine but has some involvement with it), it's mostly just a fun thing to think about but doesn't really mean anything.
They're also by definition not doujinshi, since they're published (even as print editions) by KADOKAWA, one of the largest publishers in Japan. It's like continuing to call an indie artist indie even when they're drawing for Disney. But the term "doujin" is just really deeply ingrained in the fandom to refer to non-canon stuff.
There's a full list of the SCoOW manga here:
https://chireikiden.tumblr.com/about
last edited at Sep 9, 2025 5:46PM