Blatch

The size and scope of Touhou fandom can be hard to fathom. Like, seriously, we're everywhere, and we've only gotten bigger within the past decade, as becoming a Touhou fan has become less dependent on being a weeb. There's compelling original games, lots of cool fan works (games, etc.), and a whole nexus of music remixes to enjoy. Oh, and the memes. So many memes. With all this in mind, you might be wondering: are there really only three Touhou fanime out there? Eh, it just seems low. Are there any other series in development I should know about?

Yes.

I appreciate that an account with such clout was able to report on this, but the description is selling this short. The Mystia's Izakaya fanime will be the first based on a doujin game, and a pretty beloved one at that. I haven't played it (I mean, I haven't even dialed up any of the Sigyaad Team games), but I know other people know it's good, w/ compelling restaurant sim gameplay (it might be like Diner Dash! Remember that one?), adorable pixel art, and lots of "fanservice" that doesn't rely on "fanservice", if you know what I mean.

I was already going to be decently fed, but this out-of-nowhere announcement makes the future of this thread even better. This is timing on par with when Sentai picked up Squid Girl right as I was finishing up my reviews of that show's original run. (Ahh, license rescues. If only companies other than Discotek did that nowadays.)

Anyway, onto the review!

After seventeen episodes spent going blow-by-blow with the classic Touhou games, the big Memories of Phantasm blowout dives fearlessly into the unknown, and it's not afraid to kill off some characters... or so it looks. We start this one off with Marisa inside the SDM, looking at Reimu in a seeming pool of blood and Remilia right next to her. I hope you like this scene, because it's repeated verbatim two more times over the course of the episode. We then flash back to when Marisa noticed Reimu was missing, and she consequently makes the rounds in Gensokyo trying to find her. She visits Heaven (the oarfish palace messenger is of no use here), Chireiden (even the local satori can't find her), and Myouren Temple (they're only interested in religion, you see). She then flies off to the mansion, where things seem weirdly quiet. Even the gatekeeper isn't there!

After the second time we witness Reimu's death, a flashback: turns out she decided to blow off some steam with Remilia and over did it on the red wine. They were drinking for three days? Zamn. But before Marisa can actually learn the truth, she decides to attack Remilia. It takes Sakuya coming back from an errand to sort things out, and Aya gets caught in the crossfire. And then Reimers and Rissa decide to be kind and responsible lesbians and participate in the big hot springs orgy!

Okay, so it's not that explicit, but yeah: even after a few other naked scenes here and there, the most decadent and depraved Touhou fanime ends with everyone in a hot spring, building directly off the OP for the EoSD arc and even recycling some of its scenes. And you know what? It's... kind of lame, but I mean that more in the sense that the show didn't earn it. This was a wet fart of a finale, w/ a cool plot that could've been a lot better if this was, I don't know, twice as long? And it's weird, because this episode doesn't actually look bad. Even as the budget was stretched to its absolute breaking point, this show always managed to look solid. But the fact that one scene gets used three times seems like proof in the pudding that something bad was rotten on behind the scenes. Then there's the curious case of the cameos: I don't know if the staff actually intended to adapt Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and Unidentified Fantastic Object into the anime or if this was an attempt to troll us, but either way, I am objectively disappointed. Maybe I wouldn't be if Kogasa had already gotten a cameo in this series; either way, thank fuck they gave us this mini-kino:

I feel like I could figure it out if I trowled through Lunamoon55's Twittxr feed, but anyway, I'm just happy that this show remained watchable (except for the janky subs) and interesting up until the bitter end. It goes to show that Memories of Phantasm is solid when you don't have someone in your ear telling you that it sucks, much like that guy who soured me on Attack on Titan when the first season aired on Toonami a whole damn decade ago!

A few more stray observations:

• Rewatching that OP for this episode (and the EoSD arc) does make feel further disappointment about this show's danmaku fights. Imagine if we got one that featured outright fisticuffs like w/ Reimu vs. Okuu here!
• Speaking of which, Satori's pets just floating around down there is cute. And so is Nue hanging from the ceiling.
• Okay, well, there is one part that feels lacking in the art department: right after a scene with en fuego shading in Chireiden, Byakuren looks weirdly flat.
• This week in subtitle jank: Satori is a minds reader, Aya thinks it's a pity that we were left without a sensation, and this episode's subs might actually be above average. When's the retranslation of the full series coming again? Actually, maybe we should wait until somebody finally finishes the Cinderella Girls Theater subs?
• A few points in the hot springs scene's favor: Eiki and Koishi right next to each other, a very happy Kisume (green hair special!), and Nitori doing some snorkeling down there.
• The ED for this episode is a clip show of all the juiciest moments from the previous arcs, ending on the shot at the end of #17 when Marisa accidentally gropes Reimu.
• By the way: Happy birthday, Tsubakura. This is one thing Len'en will always have over this series, even if only a few characters have them.
• And the rating: TV-14S. How anticlimactic.

Partial MoP fandub mini-review:

It's... well, it's an amateur fandub alright, but irrespective of anything else, some of the performances manage to shrine through the digital murk. My favorite performance, maybe not surprisingly, is Marisa, whose actress understood the assignment and gave her a lot of pep, maybe even too much pep for the average Touhou fan. She's technically not a tomboy, folks; if anything Reimu is the boyish one. I also really liked Flandre's voice, which sounds like it could actually be from a professional anime dub. On the other hand, some of the performances aren't too convincing, and the most damning one of all comes from Touhou's MC. Reimu just lacks pep, no buts about it. Her actress didn't light me up in the first episode, and when it came time for the second, I wondered how she would read her opening line, delivered drunk and acerbic at the Moriya Shrine party. Turns out it was as bad as I expected, and a stark contrast to the Japanese fandub.

Other performances have problems in a different sense: Patchouli's lines in Episode 2 sound really low-quality, as if they're being delivered through a landline. It seems her actress upgraded her equipment or got a loaner for the next episode, which sounds much better, but now Ran sounds like she's coming through a transistor radio. Yet other performances are notable in their absence: the JP fandub added wordless voices to the fairies (and Rumia) in Episode 2, but there's nothing in the English versions, and a few yells from various characters are absent, which I wish wasn't the case. On the other hand, the dub script is fine, with basically no jank whatsoever. Speaking of which, I wonder if the scriptwriter retranslated the text from scratch or applied liberties to the existing subs wherever possible. I do wish they'd used a better quality copy for the footage for the episode, and there's additional weirdness in the form of the first episode using a clean OP but hard JP subtitles for the actual footage.

Want to judge this thing for yourself? Here's the first episode:

So that's basically it. I could finish off this series of MoP reviews with a grandoise statement of What It All Means™ and how it relates to the Touhou franchise as a whole, but right now, I don't feel qualified to do that, given that there's still a hell of a lot of Touhou media out there, official and not, that I need to take in. But I will say this: I think that, in a perfect world where an anime studio approached ZUN with briefcases full of money and complete creative control over a Touhou series... I don't think it would be too far off from this. Who is to doubt the man who does this shit all because he thinks it's fun? It doesn't hurt that some Touhou media, a notable case being the very first Windows-era game, is about subverting the audiences' expectations. Why else have the final boss be a vampire that's a bratty child, rather than noble and cunning, or a manga spin-off dedicated to droll slice-of-life plotlines and abstract philosophical quandries? If you're the kind of person who wishes MoP had been a straighter adaptation of the games and/or a more elegant production, well, maybe you should drop that mindset? Because it's not just a ZUN thing: Touhou is whatever the person making it wants it to be. I wish every fandom could have this liberating degree of creative freedom... but, you know, capitalism.

And now, with this thread going into hibernation for a while, I think it's time to leave you all with what you really came to see: hardcore kigurumi!

I haven't made any progress on preparing my own kigurumi yet, but that partially has to do with figuring out which character I want to do. Ideally, it would be a totally unique character, but given how popular Touhou is, that doesn't seem too easy. Just look here and see how many characters have multiple masks! So I'd settle for a character nobody in America is doing right now, which sadly takes out Kogasa (who at least made a cute appearance at Touhoufest). Right now I'm thinking it'll be Yuuka; I really like her (heck, I got her Fumo not long ago), I could have a mask for her with a nice and evil expression, and if I want to go that route, her outfit doesn't seem like it'd be too hard to make at home. Just find some nice plaid fabric and sew it onto a generic white dress! Of course, I know it's never that simple, and neither is this franchise.

Oh, right... not that I forgot, but I figured this would work better at the end: one more meme for the road!

This is hands down my favorite anime movie featuring an AU Tsubakura as one of the mains. I didn't even mind much that it was shorter than usual. The only real nitpick I have is that I would've liked to see more scenes of the MCs' manga in motion. That first comic from Fujino felt like AC-bu guest-directing a segment of Eizouken, and it got a some good laughs in the theater. If nothing else, I feel like we were owed at least 10 seconds of Shark Kick.