Blatch

I actually meant to include this in the last omnibus, but I was in such a mad dash to post it on time that I neglected it. I hadn't even formally rated it at the time. So yeah, it's time to finally include a non-anime rating in one of these, and this won't even be the last one in this post. Funnily enough, I think it's a good thing that I waited, because I've since negotiated this pilot down a few subratings.

Anyway, if this show were to actually air on a network, they wouldn't have to worry about bleeping anything, because built-in curse censorship is a part of the Digital Circus, as Pomni soon learns. (Nevertheless, there is a close call: Zooble almost calls Kinger a motherfucker.) Before choosing her new name, Caine, the ringleader of the circus, tells her that it can't contain any "sexually explicit materials", which is a weird shaped-like-itself PG set. And there's a decent amount of Y7-level fantasy violence, the worst being when Ragatha gets bounced across a hallway by the abstracted Kaufmo and becomes glitched herself afterward.

#18: Two uses of "bitch".

#19: More soapy stuff, this time involving Coach Amuro (ostensibly named after the Gundam character, yes), who has a medical condition that will kill him if he becomes too stressed.

#20: Gets the Golden Hot Dog Award as the last episode of anime I watched last year. (Helps that this was during set break of Phish's NYE concert; glad I didn't miss the start of Gamehendge!) This one was unreasonably tame, and even flirted with a G until the stinger, which features the bombshell reveal that someone else has been trained to use Eve's rainbow bullets, and has her calling out her Blue Bullet by name.

Oh hey, speaking of those guys... or at least that guy. Two uses of "shit" and twenty-one F-bombs, more than half of which occur in the credits scene where the members of Phish rehearse a song for their upcoming Halloween performance. And given that I found another one I wasn't sure about as I was checking something earlier today, there might be more of them I missed. Thanks, closed captioning. To give you an idea, the rest of the film would probably pass w/ a PG, though I'm not sure how to rate the photo of Fishman wearing only a thong and top hat. The other most notable heavy content involves Trey's friend battling cancer.

(FWIW, I use the MPAA standards for uncensored ratings, which means you get one free F-bomb under a 14L; small wonder Barbie ended up censoring its use of the word. Consider that hidden F-bomb, which Trey drops during the scene w/ Fishman where they're talking about the Rolling Stone cover, as the one that flies free.)

And we finish with what is actually the tamest batch of episodes, w/ only scant mentions of sexual harassment and perversity (well, maybe not given how short these episodes are). Nevertheless, Hiro gets glomped by Oda in Episode 10, we see Hime, Kaguya and Oda's bulges in Ep. 11, and the final two feature some fellow Shimoshina High School students confronting Hime, undeterred by him being a trap, and on one case they strip his clothes and start licking him mostly off-screen.

Also, while this doesn't have to do w/ the ratings, I do want to give a shout-out to Episode 11 for being really chill, albeit in a calm-before-the-storm kind of way. Not much fetishistic humiliation here, just a SOL jaunt inside Oda's huge house. Would be interesting to peer into an alternate universe where more of the show was like this, and as a result it was more palatable to normies but maybe not as appealing to myself.

I wanted to do raw ratings totals for each episode, regardless of if they count on my part, but sadly, I didn't get them for every episode. Maybe next time, dependent on when my next watch of this is. I might splurge on it one more time if Crunchyroll removes it from their platform, which I feel could happen given that it's been almost 10(!) years since this one premiered. But now I'm starting to ramble, so let's leave it at that. Himegoto: it's an unholy miracle of a show.

Yup, the full monde monty. PG with all the subratings is the rarest rating in my book, with I believe only Squid Girl S1E9 having attained it as of now. Let's dig in.

SUGGESTIVE DIALOGUE: Even in this ONA, you can't escape the horny: Mima calls Reimu flat-chested, and then she retorts by saying she doesn't care how heavy hers are, w/ a mention of the "big breast evil spirit" on top.

INFREQUENT COARSE LANGUAGE: One "pissed" from Reimu.

SEXUAL SITUATIONS: The three main characters' tops get ripped off as their big fight progresses. For Reimers and 'Risa, the top of their breasts show, but Mima's clothing damage pertains to her underboob. There's also a shot where Mima's breasts get knocked around with force, the kind of thing that might neccessitate a higher rating if, you know, it were actually animated.

MODERATE VIOLENCE: There are two big fights in this one: the first is Reimu and Marisa vs. the two SinGyokus, which involves the shrine their fighting in getting heavily damaged, characters flying through walls and what not, plus a bit of one-on-one fighting; the second is the former team vs. Mima., which features physicality aplenty and some magic attacks here and there. Also, explosions!

As this episode is long enough to fit a 45-minute timeslot, I made three screenshots for it. The first is from the opening, where Marisa gets stomped out by Mima. The second features Reimu and Marisa walking around after capturing the two SinGyokus, and the last one is from a flashback where Marisa is younger and has orange hair, another crucial PC-98 detail.

#11: One use of "sexiness".

#12: And that's it.

Ratings splits: TV-G (1, 3, 5/6, 9, 12), TV-PG (2, 4, 7/8, 10/11)

Damn, look at that: two ratings w/ the same number of episodes. And all but one of the PG's had to do with uses of the word "sexy" and derivatives. Even Cinderella Girls 2015 has more ratings variety, and I'm not even done with it! But hey, I had no real expectations for this one, and even after knowing the final result, I'm not gonna poo-poo it. Besides, this was a solid if unspectacular idol anime.

#7: The episode starts w/ Chi and Yuu trying not to fall of a big pipe they're walking atop, which has some peril involved, but what earned the episode this ratings is when Chi has running on a conveyor belt to escape a big food grinder.

For these screenshots: Chi keeps her balance, and we get a shot of where they come out of the pipe.

#8: This time around, Chi and Yuu drive quickly to escape a collapsing pathway on the outside of a tower. Also, a big girder falls down inside the titular spiral tower they're going up, and the final segment features some casual drinking by characters that look underage.

Three of 'em this time:  Chi opening a storage compartment, a wide shot of the tall tower, and a lurvely title card.

#9: How fitting is it that the heaviest episode of the show in terms of content and tone is also the skeevist. Yuu swims around naked in a big decommissioned aquarium tank, while Chi does the same but in lingerie.

Closing out this big stack of PNGs: more architecture, and then the moment you've all been waiting for. Yup, this show's got bare feet too!

Why not?

Funnily enough, this episode was apparently rated TV-MA before it aired, though I don't think it ever showed up that way on the schedule.

Review:

So this feels like a bit of a reach, as we're talking about a Touhou fanime that's only ever been available on the Internet. Furthermore, I did some digging, and it turns out the person who made this also created some animated... voice dramas. You know, the ones that predominantly star Marisa and Alice? I think it's only fitting that Cookie☆ gets involved in this thread somehow, even though I previously decided I wouldn't be covering any of that. Those dramas inhabit a world where the stars don't shine, but we can at least open the door a crack so some light gets in.

Anyway, this is the first released Touhou fanime to cover the dark ages of the franchise: the PC-98 years, where ZUN was a wide-eyed college kid who wanted to make games however he could, regardless of if they were any good. I think I played Highly Responsive to Prayers, the first Touhou game evar, very briefly on an emulator back in the day. It's basically a fusion of a shooting game and Breakout, but you wouldn't know it from watching this fanime, because it turns out this is even less of a straight adaptation of the game than the average MoP arc is! Let's dive in.

The main backstory for this fanime is that Mima, the green-haired vengeful spirit who recurs throughout the PC-98 games, is Marisa's... foster parent? That's what the translated spiel for the NicoNico upload says. In the cold open, she beats up her magician kid. Needing to figure out why Mima's suddenly turned on her, Marisa goes to Reimu's shrine; even in this era, she's broke as shit. But even in this apparent past, Reimu is someone who can resolve incidents, so Marisa offers a down payment to have Reimu come along and beat the sense back into Mima. Realizing she needs reinforcements, Mima then summons two... other evil spirits? Both of them are named SinGyoku, referring to how the boss in HRtP cycles through forms of different genders, the first of which is a genderless corrupted yin-yang orb. The spirits then attack a local shrine and Reimu and Marisa subsequently engage. The fight takes a lot out of them, but after much damage to the shrine, Reimu manages to trap them inside a force field, which the two then drag along to their next location.

After this, a bit of fluff: Reimu talks about how she was ostracized by everyone else in the village after they saw her exterminate youkai in public. Also, Marisa offers the female SinGyoku some dango, which she accepts. What a cutie. So everyone continues walking the path, hoping to find Mima, but then she reveals herself to the traveling party. She sucks the two SinGyokus into her wand, increasing her power, and then engages with Reimu and Marisa. This is where things ramp up; there's even fanservice, w/ clothes damage that goes well beyond anything in the official games, and every character showing off some sideboob, or underboob in Mima's case. Yeah, I know, it's gratuitous, but be thankful it's not the whole cast naked in a hot spring. And there are some really cool action scenes here, as the ONA works around its extremely-limited animation by showing off some cool fight choreography. My favorite part is the scene where Mima and Marisa play hot potato with an energy beam, deflecting it with mirrors and magic blasts until it finally nails Marisa and punts her into a tree.

So Mima enters the Hakurei Shrine and tries to destroy it, using an artifact the Hakurei family has that controls the Hakurei Barrier. Then we get a flashback to when Marisa was Mima's student and had red hair. With Reimu literally tied up, Mima reveals her master plan: she wants to grow the Hakurei Barrier to encompass the whole earth and use the yin-yang orbs in conjunction with to kill the weak, so that she can become a god who rules over a powerful army. That's right: she basically has the same motivation as our friend Luna Marius. After more fighting between Marisa and Mima, the former gets knocked around a lot and is seriously weakened, but this happens just in time for Reimu to free herself from Mima's bond. Either it wore off or she conjured up enough strength to break it on her own. Then Marisa gets the idea to destroy the "ignition device" Mima is using, but Reimu tells her this won't be of any use. So they're going to have to beat her the old-fashioned way: with sheer fisticuffs and maybe a spell card or two. Then Marisa's staff, which is alive, recognizes her and unlocks a new power. It's not very sophisticated, but it gets the job done, and Mima is down for the count afterward, most of her top having ripped off.

The reason Mima started having evil thoughts is because she picked up a mirror called the Yata no Kagami and it corrupted her. The previous Hakurei miko, Reima, kept it well hidden to make sure nobody abused it. Also, the two SinGyokus are back. Funnily enough, Mima says she does have a desire to take over the human world, because that's what evil spirits do, but she wants to raise her beloved daughter to adulthood first. D'aww. And then there's a really gratuitous scene about Reimu and Marisa getting their modern and more well-known outfits, which seems tacked on only to ensure this fanime remains a one-off. At least Marisa's feels more natural because she didn't change her hair color. Come on Reimu, purple hair is awesome! A lot of Touhous have it. And so ends the tale of this most delectable Flash animation, which has some really cool moments but also suffers from not feeling that attatched to the PC-98 era. If nothing else, it's something different. But man, imagine what a doujin studio with an actual budget could do with this stuff.

Random thoughts:

• There is no meme. Instead, have a Mimir.

• To give you an idea, the actual plot of HRtP is that Reimu's shrine is damaged, and then she travels to either Hell or Makai (a similarly hellish realm) to find the culprit. SinGyoku is fought on both routes, while Mima appears as a boss in Hell.
• I love the idea of the two SinGyokus as a Team Rocket-esque failson squad who goes around to foil Reimu and Marisa's plans. One of numerous reasons why I wish they'd turned this into a series. The female SinGyoku is really cute, too, with exaggerated Chiyari-esque elf ears.
• Actually, Marisa appears to have pointy ears, but it varies based on the scene.
• I think this fanime has even less actual animation than Memory of Stars. The only things that stand out in motion are the explosions.
• Mima tying up Reimu with those inky black restraints means this ONA has about as much bondage as Sweet Punishment. Not like I'm bitter about that, but it's funny when it happens.
• One demerit I have for this fanime is that there's no actual Touhou music featured. Much of the soundtrack consists of Casio bloopscapes with some 90s MIDI SFX mixed in, while the action scenes feature a horn section akin to classic shonen anime. There's also a song from Hunter × Hunter used (the 90s anime?), and the ending doesn't sound like a Touhou cover. Too bad "KARMANATIONS" didn't come out until afterward.
• This version of PC-98 Reimu's outfit does go hard. I like the classic miko look, and she also has only one sleeve for some reason.
• There's an eyecatch in this ONA that features Reimu and Marisa recording their lines, giving the impression that this is an in-universe production. Cute, though I hope they consented to having their partially-bare breasts shown for all the world to see.
• This week in subtitle jank: Yup, there's no escaping it. And yet this ONA's subs, which are hardcorded onto the YouTube video, are actually average, with only a few instances of clunky dialogue here and there.
• Rating: TV-PGDLSV. Clutch!

#7: Another technobabble gag from Tanaka, this time saying he's interested in eroticism. Later on, his sister Rino is pissed (at Ohta).

#8: Two small moments of violence involving Echizen: one where she slaps Tanaka in the face and gives him a big raised welt, and another where one of her fellow delinquents appears to punch her in the face, but in reality she's just giving her some yen. If there'd been any blood in the case of the former, that would've added a V.

#9: One use of "sucks" from Rino.

#10: While Miyano's talking about how good Shiraishi's boobs look while dressed in a yukata, her eyes are filled with gyrating ones.

#11: One "sucks" from Ohta. Also, this doesn't really have to do with the episode, but Tanaka-kun looks really good in the ghost outfit. This is crossdressing, right?

#12: Amidst all the girl talk and that of relationships in this episode, a caption boasts Shiraishi's sex appeal as she tries to woo Tanaka.

Ratings splits: PG (1/2, 5, 8/9, 11/12), PGL (3, 6), PGD (4), PGDL (7), PGDS (10)
Practical blanket: PGDLS (Sentai's is PG with no subratings)

All in all, a pleasingly mellow series. I mean, I knew what to expect this time. Go give it a watch on HIDIVE if you'd like. Technically, I'm not done with it yet, but the shorts that are included on the BD aren't going to count towards the overall ratings.

It's back! It's been too long, but now I'm ready to roll with high-octane girl-on-girl action... and there's golf, too.

#14: Two quick shots of Eve naked, one as she gets ready to fire her Blue Bullet right before the ED (which comes early, starting about 17 minutes in) and again after, when she shoots her Orange Bullet. Both cases involve guns being fired, and the latter has her holding a sniper rifle as if she's in the trenches. Ooh la la.

#15: Two uses of "damn".

#16: After all the soapy drama in this episode, which entails baby mama papa drama and deaths aboard cruise ships, Eve and Ichina enjoy some time in a hot spring. Compared to an example I'll get into further down, it's more tasteful, with most shots coming from the back and only a little sideboob, plus this scene is interspersed with another, more dramatic one involving Aoi.

#17: There's a mention of cheating and Eve calls an old man horny.

Bulges, mentions of "thing"s, etc., and in one case Hime's slips out, but it's censored with the logo of one of the magazines the series ran in. No coarse language this time.

#7: As mentioned in my review, the ending credits feature Cirno in the hot spring, getting naked with everyone else.

Note for consistency: Since Poke is doing it, I'm going to be adding subratings to episodes for content in the OPs and EDs now, as opposed to just setting the blanket. Episode 2 is now 14LS, Episode 4 is 14S, and Sakura Trick now has a 14S minimum unless there's no OP.

This time around, I've included the entire opening scene as well as a look at the entrance to the Youkai Mountain generator, both of which feature Cirno.

#8: At the climax of a danmaku battle, Marisa's Love-Colored Master Spark burns up a long strip of the Bamboo Forest of the Lost.

As a rule of thumb, I try to keep my clips in the range of 60-90 seconds, but these next couple offerings are a bit long. At least I was able to include the full pre-OP scene again, along with another scene w/ the Eientei crew that transitions to a Reimu vs. Marisa battle of bullets.

#9: Had to think about this one. In what is seemingly a flashback given by Tewi, although it could be exposition over a scene happening in the present, Kaguya gets naked in the bath. The scene doesn't feel PG-worthy, but it's also reined in a little compared to other MoP efforts, with her hands cupping her breast and her long hair obscuring much of her back, but not her buttcrack. Ultimately, I'm opting for another intermediate rating.

For this next batch, I had to go really long on the first clip to find a suitable spot to leave off where the audio didn't cut off. To accommodate this, I didn't go as long as I wanted on the second clip, which shows the aftermath of Youmu slashing Reisen. You'll have to watch the episode yourself to see that, which isn't a bad thing.

#10: General danmaku violence, which is featured in all of these episodes. This time it was Eirin who took a beating.

And finally: Another gratuitous recap followed by the incident's aftermath, which includes Reisen and Tewi having been roughed up.

#5: Nuthin'.

#6: Nothing here either.

#7: One use each of "sexy" and "sexier", plus a peril set when Karen (yes, there are several of those) falling into the ocean when the rope she's ziplining on breaks.

#8: One use of "sexiness" and three of "sexy", plus an on-screen use of the latter to embellish Konomi, the Sexy Detective.

#9: A reprieve. But as a side-note, Crunchyroll briefly misspelled this episode's title as "The Other Batoni", which is rare for them but also funny. Certainly less egregious than other things they've done.

#10: This time around, it's about a few idols putting on a show at a church for families that have lost loved ones.

Icebreaker:

Rather than coming up with something to talk about, not like I'm out of ideas, I'll defer to a YouTuber who recently posted a lengthy video about what I've been reviewing! Pretty cool, huh?

Do note that the video goes into parts of MoP I haven't covered yet, but it doesn't go over a fanime I'm planning to cover after it; check the included playlist for that one.

I've only skimmed through this vid, and I invite you to do the same, but it seems like an enthralling full watch. For starters, it made me feel like I was too harsh on A Summer Day's Dream when I saw it last year. It even goes into Touhou fanime, albeit either cancelled or on indefinite hold, I had no idea about. Just about the only strike against it is that it doesn't mention Memory of Stars, which is too bad, but at least now I can become the Touhou community's chief culprit in inflicting that OVA upon people.

Main review:

I figured this would be a good time to bundle two episodes together, even though they're not a complete arc; they both fairly short and feature two fights. First, the B-team of Alice and Yukari vs. the lunatic rabbit Reisen. She uses her powers of lunacy to confuse Alice and Yukari, managing to get the jump on an extremely powerful youkai in the process. They imagine that a dark, soupy void is opening at their feet, which then expands to encompass the whole room. And then Reisen appears to clone herself, with the clones rapidly moving around. At the same time, Reimu and Marisa are doing some exploring inside Eientei. They walk through a hallway that appears to be out in space, with great views of the Earth and the Moon on the sides. They encounter Tewi, the earth rabbit, who briefly talks about the backstory of Princess Kaguya atop a scene of her in the bath. This ruse ends up being a distaction, as after she's done the hallway starts to crumble and our two protagonists run for their lives. They fall out into space, where the great and honorable Eirin awaits.

From here until about halfway through the next episode it's straight-ahead action: Reisen ends up being too much for Yukarin to handle and she has to call in a... erm, trump card (LOL, Akame ga Kill! kind of ruined that phrase for me): Youmu and Yuyuko suddenly emerge from a gap, and having to face four danmaku users instead of two is too much for Reisen; the former then comes in for the killing blow. Meanwhile, Eirin and Reimu/Marisa take part in the most involved battle of bullets in the show to date, which involves several spell cards such as Eirin's badass-looking "God Sign -Genealogy of the Sky-Born-", a big-ass laser tree. They don't fare too well, mostly because of Eirin's shielding capabilities. Her God Sign lets loose some lasers that come right at Marisa, but right as she's about to take a fatal hit, time suddenly stops. Turns out this is Sakuya stopping time; getting the Scarlet Devil team involved is another trump card of Yukari's. In this case, it's Reimu and Marisa who strike the killing blow, using their bombs (Fantasy Seal for the former, Master Spark for the latter) simultaneously to take down the nurse.

Following this is another flashback from before Kaguya was exiled to Earth for drinkin' that Hourai Elixir. Eirin offers to drink it too and go with her, implying (though this isn't totally canon) that she is also immortal. Probably doesn't matter given that she's probably been around for eons. How sweet. Back in Gensokyo, with the moon having returned to its usual yellow self, the youkai rabbits are beat, while Eirin just looks tired, and there's a brief explanation about the Hakurei Barrier. So, incident resolved, right? Yes, but Kaguya has yet to make an appearance in this arc, so why not have Reimu and Marisa fight her?

Two pretty hype episodes, IMO. I think they're the ones that best represent Memories of Phantasm as a whole: they're reasonably accurate to canon, feature faithful danmaku battles, and (no, you're the one sighing) have some fanservice smeared around the edges. At least our humble documentary director didn't poo-poo this show for that.

Random thoughts:

• Meme: Run.

• This week in subtitle jank: The ninth episode's subs feel like a small step up from what I've been watching, but they're still jank, mostly in lacking punctuation. On the other hand, the tenth episode, while it isn't perfect, is much closer to what I expect. And to think five different people/organizations worked on it. Though, funnily enough, it too accidentally a few periods.
• When Reimu and Marisa opened the door inside Eientei, I thought the latter was going to do her silly classically-Japanese recapping again.
• After the boss battle with Eirin starts, Tewi... just stays there, just floating in space, seemingly forgotten until the battle resolves. I'm assuming she got clipped a few times along the way.
• Sanae pops out of the Netherworld Team's gap too, just to let you know she's still here.
• There's no blood in this series, so the stylistic flourish (pun not intended) of rose petals flying out of Reisen is used instead. And personally? I think that's peak.
• For no particular reason, Episode 10 proper starts with a loli Marisa being taught Japanese history (or is it literature?) by Keine. Aww.
• Episode 10 also has a rare insert song, which is of Remilia's theme. It's a bit basic, being a vocal cover with faster and slightly more aggressive instrumentation, but I like it that way.
• Episode 9 nearly got a rare TV-PGLSV, but after checking over the Kaguya bath scene, I'm upping it to a 14 straight. Episode 10, meanwhile, gets another PGV. Berigoo!