Blatch

If nothing else, Masaki turned out alright. He may still be a societal outcast, but at least he's got Atomsk. Hopefully he uses his new pet's presumable timeline-hopping powers for good.

#10: One "bullshit" from Fushi. Expect to see a few of these in this omnibus.

#11: Fushi meets up with three great warriors whom Baron Spring Roll (a.k.a. the new identity of Bon) wants Fushi to absorb in order to become stronger. One of them, Kai Renald Rawle, was beaten as a child, shown my his dad merely punching him in the back. (Ironically, they don't even make contact in the scene shown.) Then his house collapses as a result of the Nokkers; he falls through the stairs, then wakes up with a bloody face. A lot of swords around Kai's house give the scene additional peril, but none of them hit anybody. They do come close to Kai's father as he saves his grandmother, though. No profanity, which I don't mind.

#19: One use of "shitheads" from Anya, plus a schoolboy talking about how he's going to be kidnapped and trafficked to Westalis (which I'm taking as a 14 set here) where he'll have to live like a slave, thanks to a misunderstanding.

And here come the images. Just the one for this episode, which features Anya being all cute:

#20: After being approached by Anya for a job shadowing assignment, Yor has an imagine spot where she does her thing as an assassin, which includes daring parkour moves plus a whole lot of stabbing. So why the lack of a subrating? Because the show goes hard on self-censorship, showing no impacts, coloring the blood pink, and even pixelating the target's guts as they come flying out. Considering Anya was involved here and in the scene where Bond bites her, which also utilized pink blood, it must be for her sake.

Here's where we start getting artsy. First off, a transition shot during an overall recap of the show, mostly restating the premise. Then, a shot of Fiona Frost, a character I'll embellish very soon.

#21: Fiona, a.k.a. Nightfall, a fellow spy of Loid's organization, has an imagine spot of her own regarding Anya, whom she literally whips into shape to become a better kid. There are no impacts this time either, and the whole thing is clearly meant as slapstick.

For the next two, we have Handler mostly obscured by her hat, and Fiona remembering all of the past personas Loid has played as a spy.

#22: Forget the Skibidi Banban of Toilets, how about the Birdie Wing of Tennis? Because that's the focus of this episode, where Loid and Fiona go undercover, enter an illicit tennis tourney, and face off against lethally-roided hulks and snooty teenagers with custom-built rackets. But all of that is for naught when it comes to the content ratings, because the offending content here amounts to four uses of "piss", one "chickenshit" and one "bitch".

Here we have an artsy opening shot featuring Fiona looking from afar, and then a dopey-looking Yor in a scene involving Anya and Bond playing tennis, layered on top of Loid and Fiona's exploits in the Campbelldon.

#23: Carrol and Kim Campbell, two children of the mastermind behind the illicit tennis tournament, go to great lengths to try and rig it in their favor, even hiring a sniper to attack their opponents. He only uses rubber bullets, but Loid still has to take one for the team and push Fiona out of the way, blocking it with his bulletproof vest. They subsequently win the match by mindfucking their opponents with absurd drunken-master and sakuga-rich tennis moves. Later on, a non-disguised Fiona is so determined to become Loid's new wife that she destroys a tennis racket trying to return Yor's super-hard serve, with all the sakuga that entails. All this plus a comedic use of domestic violence (by the wife, mind you) that wraps up the plot of this low-key two-parter.

And here's the last one, featuring Loid and Fiona in a car that's headed straight for us! Ahh, don't crash!

This is one of those anime that's fallen by the wayside, only referenced in today's anime communities thanks to that short girl who jumps up and down and is often used as a Discord emote. It's an enjoyable anime comedy, albeit... very low energy. Just sit back, relax, and space out.

#1: Tanaka bites his lip while eating lunch and bleeds a tiny bit, and then he talks about being a shonen protagonist who gets involved in a murder incident. Plus, one use each of "hell" and "freaking" during a spirited badminton sequence that also involves one character claiming Tanaka is trying to kill him with a thrown racket.

#2: More PG sets! Miyano, the aforementioned meme girl (and the one who wants to be Tanaka's apprentice), mentions becoming more deathly lethargic. Also, religious references, as the episode is bookended by Tanaka praying at a shrine.

#3: The titular delinquint helps push this series to subratings for the first time, calling Tanaka a bastard before the OP, and then calls him "a damn pitiful fool" and gets pissed off because he expelled Miyano as his apprentice.

#4: And now for some raunchiness: Tanaka is able to discern this episode's title character, even in her alternate easygoing and opaque-lensed form (heck, she looks a bit like Chiaki), thanks to her big breasts. This comes right at the episode's end, too.

#5: One "sucks" from Shiraishi.

And now we go from the sublime to the ridiculous. I had to include this show in one of these things at some point, simply because it partially shaped my tastes when it comes to consuming anime, and also because I've been following Norio since well before she was a VTuber, so it's also a little out of obligation. Even if Tamaki's plugging metaverse shit nowadays, and my fetishes have dovetailed into something more complex and a lot weirder, I'll always find my way back to forced feminization.

#1 to #3: But even a series this special still falls under my rule of "If it's less than 5 minutes, you can't rate it", though I did consider making an exception this time. And really, most of the episodes feature similar plot beats: Hime gets embarrassed somehow, and we get a glimpse at his penis inside blue-and-white striped panties (available IRL with the Blu-ray set!), plus it gets referred to as a "thing". There are also pervert mentions throughout.

#4 to #6: So what sets this batch apart? Episode 4 features Albertina, maybe sorta a Norio self-insert (even though she actually appears, voicing herself, later in the anime), whose weird plushie Magyorbo-san calls Hime a "perverted crossdressing bastard", which is later repeated by 18+. Funnily enough, Hime's bulge isn't even in that one.

#2: One "shit" from Marisa.

For the clip, we have a shot of Youkai Mountain followed by the party inside Moriya Shrine, and then Marisa and Flandre's fight inside the library.

#3: A bit of nudity early in the episode involving Yukari, Ran and Chen. As usual (but maybe not), no nips. At this point, I'll note that the current OP features scenes similar to this of pretty much all of Gensokyo getting nakers. Taking this show and Sakura Trick into account, I've come up with a new standard: the OP can set the blanket rating for a show, but it can't apply any subratings. Those will depend on content in the episodes proper.

This clip contains surround audio, so hopefully you have a proper system to really enjoy it. Sadly, a lot of these clips are going to have recaps given the nature of the show. The section of the recap I chose this time merely covers everything up until Marisa started telling her story. Then it focuses on her again, this time after showing Flandre in the bubble. Poor Patchy...

#4: By default, arguably the two sweetest words in the English language.

One more clip this time: an extra-long slice of recap followed by a scene before the final battle between the humans and the vampires.

Nothing? Nothing. Typical for iM@S. Closest thing to offending content here is Mirai bonking her head on a pole.

It's funny how little space this show has taken up in my mind. The only times I've really thought about it were due to its unannounced delays.

Icebreaker: So there's this person on Twitter who has been making life-sized dolls of Touhou characters. They have metal skeletons for easy posing, soft-ish skin, and decals for the face you can change out. Most of their dolls are of the EoSD cast, though there are a few other characters, including Eiki. Here are some choice bits:

At first, I thought "eh, I'd rather have a person in a costume", but these dolls (which, by the way, are absolutely not sex dolls, and their creator doesn't want you to tell it) would be fun to have around. Maybe at some point Mr. Hituzi will be able to start shipping them overseas. Would you buy in?

Main review:

It's time for the climactic final battle between Flandre and Remilia to begin! Flandre makes an emotional case as to why it was wrong for Remilia to keep her locked in the basement for 495 years. Nobody played with her, and in fact, everybody came by to visit her but there was no interaction. After imagining even Remilia doing this, she cracks, and she attacks her sister using the might of her squishy sword (often thought of as Lævateinn), which causes the SDM's interior to crack, and Marisa soon escapes. She groups up with Reimu outside and they watch the ensuing danmaku battle, but things soon take a turn when Flan confronts Remi, and the latter gets the opportunity to tell her her real feelings. Turns out she just did so because she wanted to protect Flan, even though a dedicated fan could probably predict this easily. After all, Flan's ability is literally to destroy anything. So with the two sisters quickly reconciled, and two bystanders having nothing else to do, it's time for the real final battle to begin. Winner gets Gensokyo, although if the humans win, they'll pass responsibility onto its existing leaders.

What follows is a faithful representation of a danmaku battle, w/ Reimu effortlessly floating through the bullet hoards and meeting Flan face-on. It's at this point that the vampire uses her trump card: an ability to create three clones of herself, which she previously used against Marisa. Fortunately, a Spell Card from Reimu takes care of this easily by targeting the clones specifically, and then she cues up a giant yin-yang orb that comes crashing down on the SDM like a meteor. After all of Marisa's hard work (I mean, Patchouli was no slouch!), it's the Hakurei Miko's turn to save the day, and just like w/ the endless winter incident, the Scarlet Mist Incident ends with both of the humans victorious.

So that was a great story, wasn't it? Sadly, few at the Moriya Shrine were still lucid by the end of it. Its biggest effects on Gensokyo were the residents of the SDM mingling with the other youkai, and now Marisa has a big fancy library to steal books from. But it's still wrong, and out of nowhere, Koakuma arrives at the shrine to let Marisa know this. Meiling and *gasp* Flandre also appear, the former claiming that the incident led Remilia to whip her into shape. And then Flandre and Remilia have a fight because the latter ate the Gorgeous Celebrity Pudding the former was saving. Should've given her more time, ojou-sama. Presumably a sleeping Kanako was among the casualties of this, but we don't know. Suwako was unharmed, though, and watches the carnage from a distance. Aaaaaaand then everybody gets drunk, assuming they aren't already. Talk about ravishing.

Good arc? Good arc. I felt like it reformulated EoSD in ways that were cool. One nitpick I had is that the Reimu/Sakuya fight could've been longer. As is, it amounts to a serious of trick plays that don't even involve many bullets. Also, Meiling got her ass kicked, which is disheartening for me to see even given her fanon-assumed status of a punching bag. Also, Flandre deciding to forgive Remilia for her harsh treatment seems too abrupt. Sure, she'll get to frollick all over Gensokyo to her heart's content if they win, but how does that absolve the previous 495 years? Unless it's not that big a deal. Sure hope it doesn't take me 495 years to get through the rest of this show, or even to post my next content ratings omnibus.

Random thoughts:

• Meme: Can you escape Flandoll's maze?
• The casualties from Moriya Shrine's party include: Hatate, Momiji, the EoSD fairies/darkness youkai, Yuyuko (who's comically fat, just like the doujin group's vanity card), Youmu, Satori (who's being carred in her pet cat Orin's wheelbarrow), and possibly Kanako. On the other hand, the oni are still awake and going for even more booze, Aya is trying to tell Yuugi to stop, Hina is awake but might be boozed out, and Yukari and her shikigamis are drunk but are pestering Reimu for a good time. Alice, who's munching down on a lamphrey, might be the only other character who's still sober, though Mokou and Keine look fine and the rest of the Chereiden girls left under their own accord. And who knows what happened to everyone else. I bet Eiki drank herself silly, unless she wanted apple juice in this case.
• At least Meiling woke up for the climax of the humans/Scarlet sisters fight.
• The stinger for this episode features Nitori walking through the forest and coming across Nazrin and Shou, who are about to start their plan to free Byakuren. I knew it was coming, but it hurt to see regardless because the show technically never followed up on this. At least the UFO crew does appear in the finale.
• Not too keen on having these recaps to start each episode of an arc past the first. If the thumbnails on my video files are any indication, they're going to be keeping up.
• Somebody updated the Memories of Phantasm page on the Touhou wiki, and it was there that I learned all of the voices in this fandub are actually being done by one person, like woah! And this was already a big contrast from the other fanime.
• I don't have many strong feelings about the music in this show. I mean, the OPs and EDs have been fine so far, but the real highlight of this episode was another U.N. Owen remix, this time in a polka style, which is delightful. I'll have to do a dedicated section for reviewing the tunes a la my Cinderella Girls reviews; the next one of those is scheduled for... I mean, god, I haven't even finished U149. And now there's another show to tide me over? And the Shiny Colors anime drops next year? Man...
  • But anyway, the ED for this episode, which is a remix of EoSD Stage 3, is pretty good. There have also been unique EDs for each episode that I haven't covered. They haven't varied much, mostly featuring the EoSD cast in various stylized black-and-white designs. This time around, everyone forms a circle, with Remi and Flan being in the middle, holding hands while looking at each other upside-down.