Blatch

Icebreaker:

I'd like to give a shout-out to the latest Touhou gacha game, which is called Fantasy Eclipse. It's made by CAVE, that company who you might be familiar with if you're a hardcore shmup fan because they made the ultra-difficult DonPachi games. Thing is, they're apparently a shell of what they used to be, with the last real game in that series having released a decade ago. Since then, they've tried all sorts of things to stay afloat, up to and including NFTs. You... don't like to see it. I haven't seen much interest in the game, but for all I know it could be making mucho daneiro. It's got a complex gameplay loop for a gacha, if nothing else.

Meanwhile, I am currently inactive in any gacha games other than my two Idolm@sters I've been playing for years. Haven't signed up for the Shiny Colors one, but maybe I will at some point. In case you're wondering about LostWord, I actually deleted my account in that one (which the game actually lets you do) after I found out Good Smile Company, who runs it, was funding 4chan for several years. I mean, I think I overreacted on that one, but I'm glad I was able to detach from it before the brainrot it was giving me became terminal. I mean, the idea of a Touhou gacha game feels antithetical to the franchise's founding tenets, at least to me. I want to play other Touhou games and read manga official and not before diving back in. Nevertheless, I feel like I'll return to LostWord at some point. Just looking at new content for the game is compelling to me.

Main review:

It's time to return to Eientei, as Kaguya and Eirin are getting ready to carry out Imperishable Night's namesake incident. The latter prepares her crossbow and fires it at the moon, shrouding it and then replacing it with a green one possibly made out of moldy cheese. And there you go! It feels weird that this incident hasn't happened yet, but it's in line with most everything else that's happened in the show.

Suddenly everyone is chomping at the bit to solve the mystery of the green moon, which has brought along with it a night that won't end... even though that's not entirely what happened in the game; the resolvers were the ones who imposed the eternal night. First to respond are most of the SDM; Patchouli's just sipping on tea as the Scarlets come to tell Sakuya about what's happened. Then Yukari shows up at Hakurei Shrine and offers her advances to Reimu. Somehow, the latter thinks she wants to be exterminated. Youmu and Yuyuko set off to resolve the incident, except Sanae is with them for some reason. And then we see that Marisa and Alice have already gotten a head start; Alice is concerned Marisa will die without the help of another human, even though she's a youkai magician and shouldn't have any problem saving her if need be.

What follows is Wriggle and Mystia being taken down off-screen, Keine giving a stern lecture of her own to Marisa and Alice, some weird and possibly out-of-character talk about youkai extermination (where's the slutty miko when you need her?), and then Yukari claiming she's behind the incident as a way of manipulating Marisa into fighting Reimu while she takes on Alice. Moderate violence ensues, and it climaxes with Marisa using her Master Spark on a long strip of the Bamboo Forest of the Lost that goes up right to the front door of Eientei. When she finds out that Reimu dodged her attack, she's Marisad, leading to probably the most well-known scene in the entire show, one that's been featured in memes and had meme redraws aplenty. You love to see that! At least now they can actually get to Eientei the easy way; the Bamboo Forest is infamous for being impossible to traverse, unless you're lucky enough to get the aid of the immortal phoenix. Once the fire dies down just a little, there's Reisen standing at the gates, flashing her lunatic red eyes.

Good clean fun from Memories of Phantasm. Just wish these episodes were longer. Let's keep this up.

Random thoughts:

• The most common version of Marisad uses a different fandub from the version I have. Marisa definitely sounds more peppy in it; so do numerous other voices, especially Alice, who sounds too deep in this one-woman show I've been listening to, assuming Yukari didn't change things when I wasn't looking...
• Funnily enough, I recently learned there's an English fandub of MoP. Sadly, only three episodes were released because COVID put a stop to it. I don't know about you, but I actually don't mind hearing 2hus in English, which has been something of a tradition dating back to that video Poke posted early in the thread. Heck, I wouldn't even mind if Touhou got a professional English dub with all those talents weebs don't like. Suck it, guys... not that I totally disagree with you.
• This week in subtitle jank: "It appears that one of the enemy is very wise one" is the first line out of the eyecatch. Ouch. Other than that, the only wonky parts of this episode's subs are Sanae's scene, which include Youmu talking about how the guards (the ones on Youkai Mountain?) are short on hands, and Keine's scene, which has the improper plural "youkais" and a double-misspelled "pupetteers".
• One thing I do think is cool, even if it contributes to how ramshackle the subs can get, is that this episode uses !s and ?s whenever the characters do wordless vocalizations.
• Nice facial expressions in the scene where Reimu and Yukari meet Marisa and Alice. In spite of the budget problems this series had throughout most of its existence, apparently, it's always looked good, and it doesn't look that bad in motion either.
• Another solid OP this time, even though I'm not as familiar with the song. It's got a cool last-chorus slowdown. Sadly, I only like it better than the EoSD arc's OP. More varied thoughts on this show's music coming... soon.
• Wait, I forgor to include the rating! It's TV-PGV.

Icebreaker:

Lately I've been getting invested in this series inspired by Touhou called the Len'en Project. It's a series of shooting games and occasionally other things starring a bunch of kooky characters, only this time, nobody has a confirmed gender. Granted, some characters are coded as masculine, or at least a lot more masculine than in Touhou (Mokou could never), but it allows for more varied designs. Take a look at its version of an umbrella-themed character: their name is Jun, a rain youkai, and while they probably have fewer mental illnesses than Kogasa, they do have a spiffy umbrella hair ornament and polka-dot cape.

This franchise is weird. The games are sometimes even harder than Touhou, there are nowhere near as many fan works, the creator keeps a low profile and their gender is also unknown, although they did start streaming as a VTuber this year called Kanae Tabinoki, following the sacred path that Norio helped blaze, and they do sound masculine. Although, do you actually count as a VTuber if you're not going to collab with everyone? And every year, on November 11, we have the Len'en anniversaries, which are treated as a super big deal in the fandom even though the first two games didn't come out simultaneously until a week later. This is because that's the date JynX finished the games. If you didn't know better, you'd think celebrating anniversaries was the only thing this fandom was ever good for, much like jam band fans.

This series just hit 10 years old, which JnyX has decided to celebrate with an entire year's worth of anniversary fun! There have already been numerous announcements, like... a new game. Which was first teased in 2016, but that doesn't matter. Here's a trailer:

I look forward to discovering the backstory of this fellow named Tsubakura, who is neurodivergent (but not as much as the other protagonists) and eats ink for a living. And thank God I've already played Super Meat Boy. In conclusion, Len'en: I like it mostly because I feel it is everything Touhou isn't. Come join with me? As far as I know, nobody's ever kigged as one of its characters. Maybe you could be Yabusame?

Main review:

Looking for someone? I guess Cirno's doing that, wandering around the forest, and then she sees a mysterious, hulking figure... it has to be Daidarabocchi, the legendary giant robot that was forgotten by humans! Or at least that's what Sanae thinks. After a chance encounter, Cirno really wants to get a handle on this robot, so she goes around asking various denizens of Gensokyo where to go. Also, she practices her danmaku skills... which are good for little except accidentally freezing Daiyousei. What a lovable idiot she is, just like the average Len'en character. Feeling sick of this shit, Daiyousei eventually flies away, thinking Cirno's not her friend anymore. She soon regroups by visiting Alice, while Cirno heads to the Hakurei Shrine, where Reimu, Marisa, Sanae, and a sleep-drunk Suika are staying. The solution to the Giant Robot Incident? Go to the foot of Youkai Mountain, where there's a festival going on and one of the local youkai species might know something. You might run into the shinigami, or see the big advertising balloon they have on display that's powered by the big underground sun.

...wait, what? That's where Cirno is headed: to the big pipe that leads to the giant sun powering Youkai Mountain. Blame Kanako for that. Utusho, the hell raven who ate a god and then got drunk with power, maintains the sun inside a specially-built chamber. Sadly, Cirno, an ice fairy, is not built for this kind of battle, and she soon starts sweating profusely, which means she's melting. But then, Daiyousei arrives to help out! They decide to do a Perfect Freeze together... but it fails again. Cirno ends up getting bailed out by Suwako, who throws her hat at Okuu to distract her. And... that's it. At least this proved the worth of Cirno to Daiyousei and the two quickly became best friends again. Also, it turns out Daidarabocchi, canonical name Hisoutensoku, is the advertisement balloon, which is one of those twists I feel like was telegraphed and I really should've figured out beforehand. (BTW, I just found out this is canon.) But it's alright, because this was another satisfying episode of anime. It's the shortest stand-alone arc in the show, clocking in at a little under twelve minutes including the OP and ED, but at least it features an actual battle of bullets this time. Plus, Cirno is cute, but everybody knows that, right?

Next time, we go long with a four-episodes-plus-two arc that'll put us well past the halfway point. Strap yourselves in, because this show's best material may well be ahead of us.

Random thoughts:

• Meme: This one's a rarity in that you might've seen it on your feed by now, or at least something like it.

And yes, there are versions that make them even bigger.

• We're back to the first OP for this episode. I like it, but more because I enjoy the song it's a remix of: Mountain of Faith's Stage 3 theme. As far as the OPs in general are concerned, I would rank this one ahead of the one for the EoSD arc, which is good but uninspiring, and behind the PoFV arc's song, which is a whole mood.
• This week in torrent wackiness: My source got the labels for this episode and the last one reversed. As for the subs, I thought they were better, but still wonky. This time it was mostly not using plurals when it mattered.
• Lotsa cameos at the Futuristic's Water Youkai Bazaar, including all three Myouren characters who were teased at the end of #4, which means Byakuren has already been rescued and the Unidentified Fantastic Object incident resolved by this point. Shou buys her beloved pagoda off of Nitori; either the genuine article is being sold back to her or this is a new version of her perpetually-lost treasure.
• I don't know if the shot of Cirno heading into the Geyser Center from her perspective is CG or not, but it does look pretty cool.
• There's a brief cut-in of Satori and Koishi talking about their pet as she does battle with Cirno, which is funny, even though it also acts as an ad-hoc tease of the unadapted Subterranean Animism which will probably never be shown outside of the EoSD arc's OP at this point. Why do you gotta do me like that?
• The ED shows every scene featuring Cirno from the previous six episodes... which also includes the hot spring scene from the EoSD arc's OP. Damnit. This episode was tracking toward a PG, maybe with an SV, but now I have no choice but to give it a 14S. At least I just checked and the next arc's ED doesn't feature any nudity.
• I'm glad I've added the icebreaker section for these reviews, because it means if the episode itself is short, I can just pad it out instead of having to talk about random things. I mean, I'd still like to do that every so often. Maybe next time...
• If this episode came out in 2023, hopefully it'd be called "Daidarabocchi the Rock!".

#2: Just Tsubasa saying that her Producer's methods of scouting her felt like she was being hit on. I'm not even sure if this counts, but given that, so far, this show has been all small-potatoes PG sets much like its fairy tale-themed sibling, I might as well count it.

#3: Nuthin'. Only a shot of Roco falling off a ladder in the next-episode preview gets close to a PG set.

#4: So about that preview... at first I wondered if this episode might get a PG set for peril, but ultimately, I didn't have to decide whether or not it counted because the end of this one features who I believe to be Rio talking about making sexy poses at the Million Stars' concert in the middle of a field.

#5: With no nudity in the OP, this show drops to what will very likely be its lowest rating. Here we have PG sets for inferred violence, such as Tewi making Reisen gulp down poison and Aya getting ambushed by Sakuya's time-stopping skills and subsequent knife barrage.

For this episode's clips, I opted to include the entire pre-OP segment, which features Eiki in Gensokyo looking at all the flowers and remarking how someone definitely needs to be lectured for it. Then, Aya makes her move to make news at the SDM.

#6: Three words: Komachi projectile boobage. Also, one use each of "damn" and "ass" from Suika, because a perpetual drunk might as well be a potty mouth.

This time around, you get to see this episode's... lacking subs, plus a bit of weirdly-framed exposition involving Yukari and Sanae.

Note for consistency: I didn't give this episode a V for its climactic scene of Marisa running into, and accidentally punching, Eiki, a la Anya punching Damien in SpyFam, because it was downplayed by a freeze-frame. I'm going to go back and remove the V from S1E17 of that show because the violence it contains is either the same as in this episode or, in the case of that scene with Yuri getting swatted away by Yor, too slapstick to count.

Icebreaker:

There's a Touhou puzzle game out there called Spell Bubble, an outcropping of the Bubble/Puzzle Bobble series created by Taito, whom once upon a time was ZUN's former employer. I'm guessing he made a special deal with them to do whatever they wanted except for a gacha game. Thing is, this game has a shitload of DLC, since it's also a rhythm game and has lots of songs to buy, as well as new characters. And they recently-ish announced their latest new character for the game: Eiki, one of my favorite 2hus, and she's voiced (since professional VAs voicing these characters has been a thing since time immemorial) by... Hisako Kanemoto?! Well that's kind of awkward.

Maybe if you've been invested in anime as long as I have, you know about a certain... seiyuu bullying scandal. I do want to say that I don't harbor that much ill will against Hisako, though the fact that she apparently joked that a fellow talent got what was coming to him when he was electrocuted as part of the prank is pretty suspect. Here's what I know for sure:

• Auditiongate was more than a decade ago, so maybe everyone involved with that has actually learned and do things better now.
• If there's anyone who really enjoyed giving that poor seiyuu the stiff arm, it's Takuma Terashima. He knows what he did, and I actually kinda like him for that.
• It was all the producer's idea. I mean, obviously.
• We're talking about the JP voice of Squid Girl here! Surely, we should cut her some slack for that. Granted, if this game was to be dubbed into English and Christine Marie Cabanos was chosen for Eiki, I would be over the moon about that and I'd be praising her with my full chest.

Anyway, this two-part episode is also about Eiki. Let's get on with the show.

Main review:

The episode starts with another incident taking place in Gensokyo: flowers of all seasons are in bloom. Thing is, nobody treats it as such. I mean, everything looks so pretty! But Aya, our resident roving reporter, isn't buying this, and she sets out to make her own incident if nothing else. She travels all throughout Gensokyo, and this section is pure slice-of-life, the first among the Touhou fanime since A Summer Day's Dream. She travels to the Garden of the Sun, where Yuuka, the dangerous flower youkai, has an encounter with Cirno, only it ends in a much better way than anyone could've expected. Doesn't Cirno look so pretty with a flower in her hair? Then Aya visits Eientei, only to find nothing interesting save Tewi feeding Reisen a lethal dose of poison, but she always does that. Finally, she hits up the Scarlet Devil Mansion, where Flandre pulls a mandrake out of the ground and causes havoc. At the end of the day, the only incident Aya's getting involved with is one in the hospital, because Sakuya fukced with tiem and buttrushed her with flying knives. The action then shifts to a traveling food stand owned by the night sparrow, where a few of Gensokyo's colorful characters are having lunch, including the shinigami assistant to the Yama; the latter, looking on, decides to make her move...

Youmu is eating yakitori served by Mystia, and Komachi is accompanying her. But then Eiki charges in and scolds her assistant for taking time off the job. How does Komachi reciprocate? With projectile boobage. It wouldn't have worked had this show not portrayed Eiki as short. Komachi then escapes, and because Eiki needs someone to punish for this evil deed, she takes her anger out on Youmu. And Aya, who flew to the lamphrey stand in a last-ditch effort to get a good story for Bunbunmaru, ends up as collateral damage. Eiki lectures the both of them in her awesomely terrible way, and it doesn't end until after the sun comes up. Amidst the time-lapse montage, Komachi even returns to take in some of the lecturing. Now the yama is on a rampage, looking to lecture every last person in Gensokyo about how they're going to HELL, even though they can nevertheless avoid it by changing their habits. There's also a weird scene that doesn't have much to do with the rest of the plot, centering on Yukari's fanime-unique relationship with Sanae and including a fuller explanation of the incident from the game this arc adapts: basically, lots of people died in World War II, and sixty years later all of their spirits are investing Gensokyo and making the flowers bloom. There's really nothing any of the characters need to do, because Komachi will ferry the overload of spirits to Higan, where they will be eventually judged by Eiki, but nobody told that to the latter!

The arc ends with Reimu and Marisa having chilled out at the shrine, and Suika comes to warn them of Eiki's impending arrival. Reimu wants her and Marisa to atone for their sins, even though Suika already has, but then Marisa runs away from the armpit miko holding her down... and accidentally punches Eiki. And that's it. No danmaku battles here.

This is a weird one to talk about because, in terms of pure entertainment, this was the best arc yet. But it also felt weirdly unsatisfying, because it's even less of an adaptation of its respective game than the one-off PCB episode was. The SoL stuff is cute and funny, at least, and the izakaya scene has a high meme-to-depth ratio, with a shot I've already linked to and several more I'll talk about soon. At least I'm not as down on the fanon depictions of the characters here, because they're pretty rote: Komachi is tall and luscious, Eiki is a Napoleon wannabe, and Yuuka is a real magnificent bastard. And I suppose there's actual good direction here, something I had forgot about w/r/t A Summer Day's Dream until I looked up one of my old recaps for it. I wrote those close to a year ago, but nowadays that might as well be a decade. We're talking before Elon closed his deal to buy Twitter, folks.

The next-episode preview for this one implies the next arc will adapt Mountain of Faith, but hold that thought. This anime being on the anarchic side is definitely another strike against it. But hey, we're only a third of the way through it, and either way, I'm still having fun. Are you?

Random thoughts:

• You know what this is: How do you like your izakaya scene? Subbed, or... actually, this one is subbed too, but it's also dubbed.
• Episode 5 had that problem where the audio is off-sync again. Episode 6's were fine, but what I can't fix no matter what is that the subs are a huge step down from what I've been using. They're not inaccurate, but there's a lot of super-awkward grammar that suggests whoever did this doesn't count English as their first language. The content ratings clips that are to come will show this in all their twisted glory. At least these subs tell you who's doing them; having looked over the next episode, it's done by the same two fansubbers, but the subs don't seem as deplorable this time. I mean, c'est la vie: there's still some Idolm@ster anime shorts that haven't been subbed three years later.
• Good gravy, the OP for this arc is some drippy, vibey shit. Love how it shines a light on all the characters, too, even the ones who don't feature in this arc. Easily my favorite in the show.
• It isn't said if the location featured in the OP (where Eiki is at the end of it) is Higan, but regardless of what it is, it looks really cool: a lush, hilly area with willow trees and lots of sparkles. And I dig how it's inside a large rocky formation w/ holes in the top.
• Gotta give a shout-out to Medicine, the poisonous doll youkai, who's just chilling at Eirin's place and eating snacks as part of her internship.
• The next-episode preview for the fifth one isn't subbed, so I'll be taking points off for that one. At least the subs themselves were basically immaculate.
• I still don't dig the decision to have the true episode titles reference American movies, but while "Judgment Day" is obviously referencing Terminator 2, at least in this case it's a plausible neutral title for an episode.
• Episode 5 is rated TV-PG, while Episode 6 is TV-PGS. Can't forget about these.