When Things Go PICHUUN: Another Blatch Review Special

Blatch · April 30, 2022

It all started about a month ago, when I was looking for new Binding of Isaac mods to download. I stumbled upon one that changed Dark Esau's sprites to that of Koishi Komeiji, a character I liked very much a good number of years ago, because I saw a bit of myself in her, but also because she's cute as a button. So I downloaded it, and before I knew it I was looking up fan art of hers on Danbooru. This rekindled my love for a franchise that basically served as my introduction to deep weeb-ery, back on 2014 when I was a sophomore in high school and didn't know better. Tumblr played a big role in it, as I ended up following a few people who blogged about the series, and one of them made weird images and videos like this that probably played a role in my brain becoming increasingly broken and prone to laughing at avant-garde shitposts over the years. Now, I was only deeply invested for a few games as they came out, but I found myself coming back to the series every so often, if only for the fan works. It just wasn't until recently that it blossomed into a full-on obsession, and right as I was about to take my love for iDOLM@STER to the next level by watching the IRL lives starring the seiyuus. So much for that crap.

So what am I talking about, anyway? Oh yeah... the Touhou Project. Or as it's called in America, old hat.

Now, how can I make this involve content ratings? There's no official Touhou anime, but there is a lot of fanime in varying levels of quality. But once you sift through all the Flash-animated IOSYS music videos, recreations of the openings to various anime, and... yes, even Cookie, there are only two major series with episodes long enough to potentially air on TV: Musou Kakyou: A Summer Day's Dream, and Fantasy Kaleidoscope ~The Memories of Phantasm~ (since everything's got to have two titles). Guess I'll start there. In an alternate universe, one of these showed up on Toonami for April Fools', maybe replacing Mind Game on that one night where they aired subbed content. But since our timeline is too lame for something like that to ever happen, coming soon, you will be seeing my thoughts about this franchise rendered in the only way I know how: snark, starting with the first episode of A Summer Day's Dream, since it has an original story and professional voice actresses. If it was good enough for Squid Girl, then it should be more than enough for this plucky indie franchise.

And by the way: I've actually played the games (the ones from the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil to Phantasmagoria of Flower View, anyway). So while anyone can claim they like the franchise based on consuming anything (like porn), I figure I'll throw in a show of confidence.

Blatch · May 12, 2022

So I've found that I'm not nearly as anxious when pushing out big posts as I've been lately, and I think that's a good sign. Anyway, here we go...

Touhou Musou Kakyou: A Summer Day's Dream
Episode 1: "A Summer Day's Dream"
(natch)

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This episode begins with a brief overview of Gensokyo and what it does. For the uninitiated, here's an even shorter version: it's basically a quarantine for famous creatures and spirits (from Japanese mythology, plus other general concepts. If they are forgotten about, they get spirited away to here. And they (the creatures and spirits, not concepts) are almost exclusively cute girls of various shapes, sizes, and buxoms. After the OP, we see a mysterious figure is making a move on the Hakurei Shrine, where Reimu Hakurei (shrine maiden of paradise) lives. Her job is to enforce the Great Hakurei Barrier, which originates from the shrine and separates Gensokyo from the outside world. Then we see the contrast between Gensokyo's residents, wherein Reimu and Suika Ibuki (oni who looks young, but also drinks) are rummaging through the storehouse behind the shrine, getting ready for a big feast. Suika ends up being of little help, but there's a bigger problem neither of them can solve: the shrine's donation box is gone! Reimu hardly gets any donations, but that's not the point. No one seems to know where the offertory box, as it is alternatively called, went, and when the traditional reporter of fantasy Aya Shamemaru (crow tengu) shows up, all she's looking for is a good scoop for her newspaper. When pressed by Reimu to take further action, she quickly zips out of the area and returns with Marisa Kirisame (human magician) in tow. All Marisa does is act bitchy, but since Suika isn't going to make the impending trip to the Scarlet Devil Mansion, Reimu and Aya bring her along for added intel.

The second half of the episode moves the action to the SDM. Good thing Hong Meiling (SDM gatekeeper and chinese youkai, species unknown; if she's your favorite, you get bonus social credit) is dozing off again, so the Hakurei party waltzes right in unopposed. They head straight to Voile, the magic library, where Patchouli Knowledge (magician youkai) is getting sleepy with a good book. All the while, Remilia Scarlet (vampire) and Sakuya Izayoi (you know who she is) are waiting in the wings, wondering just what could be the matter. Aya soon gives Remi an advance copy of the next installment of her newspapes, and it claims the Hakurei Shrine's summer feast has been cancelled due to the offertory box's absence. Seems overblown, but it's also a slow news day, so you might as well juice it. However, we soon find out that the SDM's food supply has disappeared as well, on top of some but not all of Patchy's books. After Aya and Marisa get into a catfight, and Patchy is annoyed by Reimu's questioning which leads to a brief battle of bullets (in other words, danmaku; use this official translation to piss off weebs), Remi enters the library and drops a bombshell: all of this stolen property has to be connected somehow. It's, you might say... an incident. Guess it's time to find the culprit.

Okay, so not a lot happened in this one. I did enjoy it, but I think most of this episode's positive qualities are liminal. Which is to say, holy shit somebody made a Touhou fanime and we can all watch it right now! That being said, the production quality is what you would expect for a project of this vintage. It was released on a DVD, so it's in standard definition; my Blu-ray player upscales SD content nicely, but the colors aren't as vibrant. And as for the production values, the character designs could be better. The faces are too blobby, like you could go up to Meiling and pinch her cheeks while she continues to sleep. (Not like it's a bad thing, at least for her.) And the show could do a better job with transitioning from one scene to the next; there were too many fades in this episode, even separating scenes taking place at the same location! What gives? But hey, this episode is more of an extended prologue, so I can't wait to see what comes next. And neither should you, even if you're too busy wondering what the heck "Unconnected Marketeers" means.

Stray observations:

Let's talk about seiyuus! No one is sure how the doujin group that made this series managed to get A-list seiyuus... as in, A-listers for 2008, but they did. I only know a few of these names from elsewhere: the biggest one is Rie Tanaka as Sakuya. Role association? Chizuru from Squid Girl. Miyuki Sawashiro as Marisa is also a big get, but I don't know her from anything, which probably says a lot about someone who supposedly cares about Japanese actresses. We also have Aki Toyosaki as Suika; the association here is Aoi from Laid-Back Camp for my end of the bargain, and for Poke's side, Marulk from Made in Abyss. Now that I think of it, I didn't know she's been in the industry for this long.
Oh, and Kikuko Inoue is the narrator. Don't think she needs any introduction nor any featured roles. And said narrator also seems to be Yukari, who claims that she's 17 years old. God, I wish.
In other notable staff trivia, KirbyM, whom you might know was Walfie, did the proofreading for the English subs of this. You know, the mastermind behind Flash videos like this, as well as the venerable create.swf which helps you make your own. Like many other artists, he pivoted to Virtual YouTubers and ended up hitting it big again with Smol Ame. Now, I'm not really a VTuber fan... I mean, not a big one. I could write a much longer entry about this, but to pour water on the fuse: I've always followed Norio's Twitter account so I have a good grasp on what Tamaki and friends are doing, and also, Pomu's doing an officially-sanctioned stream for LostWord for its 1st anniversary and you know I'm going to tune in. Who knows what that'll lead to?
Super snobby Touhou trivia: it's interesting how this episode portrayed Aya without pointy ears, which is a trait of the crow tengu girls that I thought wasn't canon but was done by so many fans who made art of her that it's as good as official. But it turns out that Aya canonically wasn't drawn that way until Double Spoiler, which came out after this.
In a similar vein, the fact that this episode portrays Meiling as sleeping on the job is something that only could've been done seriously back in the 2000s, or at least no later than the early 2010s. Unless you're a legacy doujin series like Life of Maid, portraying this seriously nowadays will get you knifed. As for me, I guess I should change the description of my custom Bill's Hat in TF2.
Oh, and Sakuya even refers to Meiling as "China" once before correcting herself; classic fandom move.
Patchy's hat looks weird. Also, she has a book called "Wikipedia" on her shelf, which I was spoiled about thanks to the Touhou Wiki. I bet it'd be much bigger today.
I was going to do a feature on Touhou doujins I like to round out this column, but I soon realized that most of what I'm reading right now is really fucked up. As in, they've got significant guro; NSFW bordering on NSFL. So I'll try to look for family-friendly doujins (or at least cheesecake ones to share, hopefully starting up a spotlight once I get to Memories of Phantasm.
And one more thing: I never talked about the episode's music in this review. As this is one of the things Touhou is best known for, I guess you could consider this a sin. But I'm also not the kind of person who's knowledgeable about all those fan remixes, and besides, I'm looking at information about the series and its home media releases and it seems to have all original songs? So it wouldn't be a big deal to skip out. Either way, I'll take a closer look in the next review.
Rating: TV-PGDV

[spoiler: it's capitalism, apparently]

PokeNirvash · May 12, 2022

Finally, I now know what a Touhou is. Took me well over a decade to get to this point, honestly. To think it all began with a Mac/PC parody video that quickly turned into my first JoJo reference...

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You'd be hard-pressed to believe this, but Marulk isn't exactly the first character that comes to mind when I think of Aki Toyosaki roles that I experienced for myself. The top 3 in that category would be Chitose Ikeda (glasses-wearing nosebleed girl from Yuruyuri), Tomo Yamanobe (purple-haired titty monster schoolgirl from Seikon no Qwaser, you may remember her as my icon from the first two months of 2020), and Muetta (secondary female protagonist of underrated modern classic Kuromukuro). And of course there's Yui from K-ON!, but I haven't seen it (yet) so she doesn't count. But above any of them is an association so scandalous I have to put it under a nested spoiler tag.

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As for the topic of Touhou doujin works, I've hardly engaged since I have no connection to the Touhou canon, and the only one I can remember reading was a Yukkuri abuse story that I mostly did out of morbid curiosity. However, I'm well more than partial to a series of illustrations by latex/masking/sci-fi fetish artist Toni Babelony where Remilia turns a curious schoolgirl into one of her servants. Pic related was easily the peak of the whole series, as later installments made some decisions I didn't necessarily agree with (i.e. giving the schoolgirl a mohawk, her mother being a ninja because THEY'RE JAPANESE YA GET IT?, and whatever was going on with Remilia's under-mask facial design in this one). But in searching for the first linked image in question, I learned the arc had a fairly good ending, which is nice; still don't like that mohawk tho.

Blatch · May 23, 2022

On 5/12/2022 at 10:28 AM, PokeNirvash said:

Finally, I now know what a Touhou is. Took me well over a decade to get to this point, honestly. To think it all began with a Mac/PC parody video that quickly turned into my first JoJo reference...

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You'd be hard-pressed to believe this, but Marulk isn't exactly the first character that comes to mind when I think of Aki Toyosaki roles that I experienced for myself. The top 3 in that category would be Chitose Ikeda (glasses-wearing nosebleed girl from Yuruyuri), Tomo Yamanobe (purple-haired titty monster schoolgirl from Seikon no Qwaser, you may remember her as my icon from the first two months of 2020), and Muetta (secondary female protagonist of underrated modern classic Kuromukuro). And of course there's Yui from K-ON!, but I haven't seen it (yet) so she doesn't count. But above any of them is an association so scandalous I have to put it under a nested spoiler tag.

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Toyosaki is also my headcanon seiyuu choice for an OC of mine by the name of Yume Kuribayashi, who is best described as "super sweet and friendly girl who's kind to everyone she meets, but is also a huge masochist and very, very kinky to boot". She is also one of the three core characters that make up my OC "power trio", right alongside NIBAI MUGENDAI protagonist Takashi Fujishima and Kinky Kunoichi protagonist Naokuu Tanoshiba. I have used her for numerous projects, a lot of them ERPs but more recently various works-in-progress I have languishing on my main flash drive, one of which I posted linework for a tie-in illustration for this January.

And while I'm on the topic, I might as well also mention that her final visual appearance was (subconsciously) inspired by Saki from Steel Angel Kurumi - one of my main seiyuu associations for Rie Tanaka - to the point of also being headcanonically voiced in English by Monica Rial. And that is why I refuse to hold any opinion on her involvement in the ongoing #KickVic debacle.

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That video was published in 2007? Man... sometimes I forget that Touhou has been around this long. I subconsciously assume it didn't get really big until my heydey in the fandom began, which was back in 2014-15. It coincided with various games for the franchise, including the official ones, becoming legally available in America. Oh, and Suika showed up on Keith Olbermann's ESPN show. That's when you know you've made it.

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Okay, time for the next.

Touhou Musou Kakyou: A Summer Day's Dream
Episode 2: "Pre Established Harmony"

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To start this one off, more exposition. We get a brief overview of the events of Touhou games 6 though 8: Gensokyo was enveloped by a red mist, experienced an endless winter, and a fake moon popped up in the sky. No biggie. This current incident is more banal than those, but Reimu and friends still want to find out what's the matter. But we don't start out by focusing on them. Instead, it's off to Hakugyokurou, located at the border of the Netherworld, where all sorts of stray spirits sometimes come and hang out. The leader of this domain is Yuyuko Saigyouji (🎵 that I once knew, and talked to...), and her mistress is Youmu Konpaku (half-phantom, good with swords but also ostensibly a gardener; the current #1 idol in the 17th ~~Cinderella Girls~~ Gensokyo General Election). So Youmu asks Yuyuko what happened to all the food they were preparing for the upcoming Hakurei Shrine festival. Turns out she has a voracious appetite and ate it all. Whoops! Good thing neither of them realize yet that the festival is cancelled. Then Youmu goes out to a stream that runs through Hakugyokurou to... check her watermelons? Huh. Obviously no one in Gensokyo would be expected to have a refrigerator, but if you need to have something cooled down, why not call Cirno? Soon enough, the action shifts back to the SDM, where Marisa and Aya are helping clean up the library in the aftermath of that battle of bullets. Patchouli is in search of a particular book, but she can't find it... and yet Marisa can, which is weird enough that it may be related to the current incident. All the while, Reimu, Remilia and Sakuya fluff about, drink tea, and discuss the current incident further. Then Marisa senses the presence of someone, which causes her to eye a door cracked open at the edge of Patchy's study. She walks out and finds a doll, which must belong to her good friend Alice. But what's her deal, anyway? Not like she could've taken the donation box and stole the Scarlet sisters' food, because she's supposed to be heroic.

The second half of the episode continues our whirlwind scenic tour as Aya heads to Eientei, home to a colony of rabbits lead by a princess who got banished from the moon and her magic nurse. Tewi Inaba (loony bunny in a pink dress) is leading the others in pounding mochi, which is going to to be served as desert for the shrine festival, but Aya spends too much time trying to convince Tewi to make the desert recipe featured in her newspaper instead, which leads to the latter calling the former what she is: Da Newspapes. Inside the main hall of Eientei, Reisen Undongein Inaba (loony bunny in a school uniform) is talking to Kaguya Houraisan (literally Kaguya from the legends; also an immortal NEET) and Eirin Yagokoro (hello nurse; is already a hag, which gets points from me, but has allegedly been around for hundreds of millions of years) about how Tewi has suddenly left; Kaguya can barely keep from taking a nap. Turns out Tewi is going out to the river to steal Youmu's big juicy melons. Reisen soon heads to the scene, and the two rabbits team up to chase Youmu. They all go into a field of sunflowers that acts as a maze; Tewi stays behind while Reisen navigates the maze and Youmu follows her. Eventually, cornered at the side of a cliff, and with Youmu somehow multiplying, Reisen has no choice but to take drastic measures. She prepares her "Lunatic Red Eyes" spell card... and that's where the episode ends. However, it turns out that this scene is continued in the episode's opening; you would be forgiven for thinking it was stuff that was actually going to happen in this episode. Yoof!

And that's another episode down. Overall, this series remains somewhat unsatisfying, but intriguing. There wasn't as much action as the first episode, but hey: seeing girls from other games being adapted in is a treat unto itself. On the production side, the character designs have gotten better, and definitely aren't as blobby. But the flow of the series definitely needs work: still too many hard cuts, with the saving grace being one cool scene where Marisa calls her broom (since that's what magicians do, baby) and rides it as she zooms in front of the camera as it cuts. Also, the danmaku battle in the OP is pretty nice; guess they figured the episode was running long enough, so they just crammed it in to go with the original music, which is pretty good. Definitely atmospheric, with stray bells and maybe a gong here and there to go with the malaise of these mysterious spiritual girls.

Oh, and there's a post-credits scene: not much, just Reimu wondering what happened to Suika, since she was left at the shrine without being told to go anywhere. And we get a funny scene of her horns hitting the entrance to the shrine before she leaves, all drunk and shit.

Stray observations:

Maybe I was being too hard on myself with the "don't show Meiling sleeping" thing. This episode has more of the same in a different area: Yuyuko's voracious appetite. Hey, if it's good enough that she's used as a way to kill people (thanks Walfie!), it's good enough for you.
I wasn't expecting Youmu's spirit, which represents her half-phantom side, to be rather small. Most other works, including the official games, have it at least be the size of her head, and sometimes it's big enough for a person to ride on.
After everyone has left the room in Eientei, Aya pops up and starts photographing things in what is probably a reference to Shoot the Bullet, a game where you merely dodge danmaku rather than shooting people back. Cheeky of them to include a "Best!!" pop-up, even though there's no bullets nor people who wield them.
The next episode previews have turned into a running gag. This time it's Yuyuko (also a hag) being proclaimed as eternally 17. Funny how I decided to watch this episode (and write the review for it) on Nana Abe's birthday, though it's almost over on the East Coast.
Idol scouting report: We have another batch (not Blatch) of A-listers to talk about. Youmu is voiced by Aoi Yuuki, who isn't in Idolm@ster but deserves lots of praise as one of the best seiyuus in anything. Seriously, sometimes I think this world is too good for her, and I'm not just saying this because my favorite people I follow on Twitter love both Madoka Magica and Symphogear. But the real gravy comes with Kaguya, who shares a seiyuu in Natsumi Takamori with Miku from Cinderella Girls. I was disappointed she didn't talk much in this episode, but her voice is objectively pink-tinctured.
Kaguya spends a lot of time playing danmaku games. So I guess the actual games are canon within Touhou itself? Or maybe she plays stuff from the big companies like CAVE.
Oh, and tangentially related to this: Reimu breaks the fourth wall near the end of the first act, pointing out how they already figured out part of the incident. I wasn't a fan when Good Luck Girl! did it, but I guess I can let it fly here. Nice that this show is at least a little self-aware.
I took a look into the file used for the subs in this episode, and it has a lot of snarky comments, some of which are debating the translation, but others are just reacting (positively) to the episode. I had no idea you could do that.
Rating: TV-PGSV.

The next episode in this series is 2.5, which is half the usual length. I could smoosh it and Episode 3 into a single post, but that's as far as the English subs for this series go. (Fortunately, there is an Episode 4, and it came out late last year.) I'd rather try to draw things out for your reading pleasure, and besides, these posts tend to be long enough as they are.

Blatch · June 8, 2022

Touhou Musou Kakyou: A Summer Day's Dream
Episode 2.5
[where's the title?]

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This short episode begins with Marisa thinking she sees her friend Alice in the sunflower maze. She ends up going down to investigate and finds one of her dolls, which she uses to find her way out of the maze. Turns out they can find the way just by being set down and then falling over. At the same time, we get what starts as a recap of the start of the previous episode's fight between Youmu and Reisen and eventually turns into new content. The two fight a battle of bullets that doesn't really settle anything. Yuyuko's watermelon ends up flying away in the carnage and Youmu has to get it back. The battle reaches a climax just as Marisa exits the maze; she panics, thinking that Alice was involved with the danmaku and is in bad shape. An interstitial shows that Eirin is still awaiting Reisen's return, while Kaguya continues to doze off, and Tewi just stands there, menacingly.

So Youmu gets up off of Reisen and finds Yuyuko, who's just sitting there in the forest... eating watermelon. Wut? Apparently she found her melon, it was cracked open, and she decided to start eating it. But this doesn't explain why she has a full set-up parked there, including a table, umbrella, and various cooking implements. Eventually, Marisa comes by and asks Yuyuko where to find Alice. She tells her to go that way, but it better be fast. Nobody seems to know why she's suddenly gotten all brooding. After the credits, we get a scene at night, with Marisa looking on at a long path through a valley with a torii at the end, but there's an unnatural light stemming from whatever is up there. And then, for gratuitous measure, the episode finishes with a scene that's almost a minute long and is only dialogue over the "To be continued" screen, with Reimu and... (checks fansub file) Marisa, talking about how the former wasn't in this episode. How cheeky. I would've expected the peeps from the SDM to appear in sound only.

And that's it. This episode didn't do much to make me like this series any more. The art has improved, but the direction is still firmly amateur. I also don't know why they felt the need to section off this part into its own episode; it's more of an epilogue than something constructive. But hey, at least it depicted another battle of bullets in all its glory.

Stray observations:

Actually, you know what? Youmu's phantom half looks like a sperm. Don't know why I didn't catch on earlier.
This episode even uses the same opening and ending credits as the last one, only with the episode number in the former being changed to a 2.5. This means that, with the inclusion of nekkid Youmu plus danmaku scenes new and old, it also gets a TV-PGSV. How perfectly disappointing.
And that's it. Talk about light viewing. I'm going to switch gears a bit and talk about...

Random crap!

Now I'm taking a page out of Drew Magary's NFL columns. It's been a long time since I enjoyed reading both Deadspin and The A.V. Club, and both of those websites have since been lobotomized. At least we have Defector to continue in the former's glorious stead. But anyway, time to run my mouth off for a bit.
My job is in the produce section at some random grocery store. It's all about taking carts full of fruit and veggies and stocking them, making sure to rotate everything in the bins. I also bring the emptied cardboard boxes out to the compactor and mop up occasionally, and sometimes I move boxes around in the cooler. It's taxing work, but at least, you know, I haven't been forced to do this. Both my parents are still actively working, as has my sister. Building up income on my own accord so I can use it towards finishing up college and maybe getting a crack engineering job is cool. Maybe I can even be a fellow stooge for my state's DOT?
I bought Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith (title not official) on Steam a few weeks ago, and I've been playing through it. It's pretty cool, though both times I played the game, I found myself sorting through technical issues (like getting the screen to display the game in 4:3 without being stretched... oh hi there Ben!) before I could focus on the game, and as such I haven't gotten much enjoyment out of it. So far I've gotten to the Stage 4 boss (Ayayayaya!) on Normal, using as many continues as possible. I'm still a ways away from getting a 1cc on any of the traditional games, though I did manage to do so on Phantasmagoria of Flower View (which I pirated, because it wasn't available at the time), which is a 1v1 shooter.
I've also started playing the global version of Touhou LostWord, a.k.a. Baby's First Mobile RPG. It's pretty fun so far, and the commu writing is some glorious bullshit. I've particularly enjoyed the rerun of the Christmas event, wherein Eirin dressed as a sexy nun has taken up more of my attention span than the Celtics being in the NBA Finals. And the next event is about a dating sim set in school? And it's also Eientei-centric? Fantastic. Too bad I haven't gotten either Koishi or Byakuren from neither gacha rolls nor the current Forever Prayer, and there's only two days left in the latter.
Now, as a crushing reminder of how cruel the world can be, Cinderella Girls still exists, and I feel I've been neglecting it in the last few months. I really want to splurge on a ranking event featuring one of my tantous, and the game hasn't been giving them to me. And the election is starting later this month. It's in a totally new format that has caused it to be delayed, and it's going to last a lot longer than previously. It's making me feel gypped, like I didn't know what I had until it was gone, and it would've been better for me to splurge on it then. But hey, we'll see what happens. Once it gets going, my CG anime reviews will be filled with pleas for you to download that game and spend any votes you earn on the girl with the floofy hair.
One more thing that has little to do with anything else: have you been noticing I've been reading Himegoto? I blew through the first volume or so of the manga, thought it was as cruel and unfunny as everyone said it was, and now I'm itching to not only rewatch but rate the anime. I feel like I have to, as it was a crucial series in my otaku education, regardless of its status of being So Bad Its Horrible. But you probably know my rule about shows under five minutes. I'm thinking I'll do it two (or three, for the last ones) episodes at a time, but I guess I could make a special one-time exception for it. Either way, I'll keep on whacking at it with the manga. I think I originally read it up to a chapter where Tadakoro was eating something.

So anyway, two more episodes to go, but only one is subbed. And... wait a minute, hold the phone. I just got off of it with the CEO of anime, and she told me there's another Touhou series out there. And this one's made by the Chinese! They're not really people you should deal with (just ask Phil Mickelson), but I am privvy to watching just about every damn Touhou fanime ever made, so I'll take a bite out of this apple. The show is called Hifuu Club Acitivity Record ~ The Sealed Estoeric History, and it takes a decidedly different approach compared to other series by portraying the elaborate backstories of all the characters in Gensokyo, some of which is made up, but the main focus is on two nutjob humans from the outside world who tell us all about it. Sounds like fun, don't you think? So this is now schedule for after I finish this series. Yeah, I'm itching to get to Memories of Phantasm, but it's the longest of the various fanime by a big margin, and I want to go in it without any distractions, save newly subbed episodes of any series that come out.

PokeNirvash · June 9, 2022

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Ah, food retail. Not to knock ya, but I'm glad my only retail work experience was at an office supply store where snacks were the upper limit of food we sold. I was only there for a month and a half but it was a neat experience that I think was well worth it. (Bonus: it proved beneficial in my getting my current laptop for a slightly cheaper cost than were I buying it unemployed.) I appreciate you going the engineering track, and towards something transportation related too. We have so much in common, don't we. A DOT job was the internship I took in order to graduate from both of my master's-level majors, and my number one pick for full-time employment. They passed me over though, but I like my private sector draftsman job just as well, maybe even moreso.

And here I was thinking you actually liked Himegoto despite its bad rep, or even partially because of it. Mean-spirited or not, anime femdom is anime femdom through and through, and only when it veers on straight-up murder do I start having second thoughts. (Esdeath is still love and life, tho.) I don't think I've actually seen any SBIH anime as presently listed on TV Tropes since I left Psychic Wars on as background noise in my middle school days of only barely paying attention to 75% of what SyFy aired as part of their Ani-Mondays block. (Gurren Lagann and Monster got the highest attention spans, followed by Tokko, Chrono Crusade, and Is This a Zombie if we're counting Chiller failures.) There was Ki no Shirayuki's sporking of Nobunaga Teacher's Young Bride, but that was way too homogenous with the opinions of its viewer characters, not to mention a little too aggressively patronizing in its thoughts on porn-friendly terms for futanari and its equivalents to be worth a full revisit, let alone actually putting myself through the show itself. Out of everything, I'm probably gonna watch Hand Shakers so I can finally come full circle with the franchise after actively choosing to watch W'z first. Hell, I might even make Content Rating Clips out of it to really spite the haters who want nothing more to do with it! [insert maniacal laughter here]

Blatch · June 9, 2022

A few replies:

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Blatch · June 15, 2022

Touhou Musou Kakyou: A Summer Day's Dream
Episode 3: "Unraveling Déjà Vu"

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This episode is located at a certain point in reality, one where the usual conventions of storytelling don't apply. Certain events may seem distorted, producing unique results when seen from different angles. In some places, you can even see the usual narrative devices start to melt away. Others are presented normally, but in a different order than you are used to, so they might come off as brand new. There are numerous different conclusions you can take from all this, but there is one that remains a hard truth: this show could use a unique way to differentiate between scenes, like Last Period's spiral-patterened cut-in. Never thought I'd be saying that show does something better than the rest.

So anyway, at the start of this one we finally get to meet Alice Margatroid (former human magician, makes dolls, looks like a character from Black Lagoon, which I was watching on Toonami right as I was getting into the 2hus). She comes to Marisa's house, located in the Forest of Magic, and she has a few questions to ask. Most concern the Hakurei Shrine's banquet. But isn't it supposed to be cancelled? I don't know, and neither does Marisa. But what we do know is that Alice makes a lot of dolls. As in, holy shit she's got a whole pile of them! Maybe I should've mentioned earlier that there's a scene before this where Aya is looking at the Hakurei Shrine and sees the person who took the donation box, but that's not important. Who gives a shit about linear time, anyway?

Something is very much not right in Gensokyo, as the next few scenes at the SDM tell us. Apparently, today is... not today? Then what am I? Someone who should be adhering to the times and doing my reviews in a way that doesn't redundantly recap the whole episode? I mean, at least I put jokes in every so often. So does this one, when Sakuya runs into Aya in the woods and decides to go full Za Warudo on her... literally. Where ZUN is unwilling to make a casual JoJo's reference, leave it to the fans to cover. Then Reimu looks at the pictures she's been taking and finds some pictures of the shrine at night, where the donation box bandit is ready to strike! Finally. Back at the SDM, Remilia and Patchouli are keeping the house safe. But isn't Meiling still supposed to be guarding it? And even then, if things get really bad they can always release Flandre from the basement. The doorbell rings, and while Remi wants to answer it, Patchy has a bad feeling about it. Just yesterday, Sakuya opened the door and was knocked to her feet by something. But she was perfectly fine afterward. And then a strange mist started to envelop the shrine, and the weather got really dark. But isn't the weather always supposed to be good today? After all, it's the day of the Hakurei Shrine's banquet, and...

...

You son of a bitch. I was starting to figure as much, but yes, this is very much a time loop.

The episode ends with Marisa going to what she thinks is the Hakurei Shrine, ostensibly acting as a continuation of the last episode's cliffhanger. Reimu comes along behind her, and instead of the shrine, they come across a massive network of villages connected by pathways with torii gates at the end of them. It's quite a scene! Definitely the closest this chronically-interesting series has come to actually wowing me. And then we get a scene where Alice is in some place with lots of boxes. Looks like backstage at a yakitori festival stand. And then Suika manifests behind her and talks about "the change". Looks like this incident has just taken a weirder turn.

And that's Episode 3. Overall, I felt much more connected to this episode than the previous ones. It has a woozy, w00ky feel to it, where you're trying to piece together what is going on and see if you can beat the show to its narrative punch. It's like a cosmic horror story where the residents of Gensokyo are being psychologically messed with (maybe even gaslit), and only now are they starting to discover the truth. The truth that someone is fucking with the flow of time, but also altering it to suit the wishes of each individual youkai, human, or god beyond the border. And who could it be? Well, there's a blue version of Reimu in the OP. Maybe it's her?

Stray observations:

New OP and ED this time. The former plays the events of the last episode and a half backwards, which is the only relevance the Hakugyokurou/Eientei casts have in the episode, though Yuyuko's watermelon-eating set-up is seen in a cryptic cold open.
Actually, the character designs remind me of... Nichijou? Squint hard enough, and I guess the clean art style with flat colors and simple, distinctive eyes could resemble it.
Aya is treated like a punching bag in this episode, and I'm fine with that. Love me some slapstick in my animus and mangos. And the way she's beaten up by Sakuya in that scene is cool, too. She then suffers an offscreen beatdown and is tied up. So Musou Kakyou now has this going for it: it's got as much actual bondage as Sweet Punishment.
Also, Aya's character design still lacks her pointy ears. Legacy work alert!
Her photos include cameos from Meiling and Flandre, Remi's younger sis, which is the only time the latter has appeared in the series.
Sakuya has actual boobs, and they're big enough I'm certain she hasn't padded them. Always nice to see a truther around these parts.
The MKV file for this episode separates slices of the episode (in other words, the parts with hard fades) into chapters, which I guess is better than ~~DeMarco-ing~~ demarcating it into halves. For that matter, there's no eyecatch here to divide it in two.
Outside the franchise, something I've been meaning to mention is that Danbooru altered their ratings system! Instead of a blanket "Safe" rating, they now have "General", which encompasses everything that would be rated G (and Y7FV), as well as "Sensitive", which is for anything that's more PG than PG-13 or worse: fetishistic outfits, sexually-colored shots that don't show skin, raunchy dialogue... basically, what they now use is closer to the TV ratings system. And apparently their standards now include pointers for rating guro works, whereas before they were all rated "Safe" unless they also contained sexual content. Sounds good to me.
And because I almost forgot before I added that and subsequently remembered (or is it "rembered"?), this episode is rated TV-14S.
The preview teases that the next episode could be the last one. Yukari, you goddamn troll. And she also throws in a Cirno impression, because why not?

I'm glad the show pulled this one out like Seiran out of a hat, because after two and a half episodes where the main draw was... well, the fact that it exists, I'm glad it's taken on a unique flavor: slice of life with an unsettling cerebral edge. On to Episode 4!

But wait a minute, didn't I say earlier it wasn't subbed yet? Turns out it is, and has been since I started this project. I just wasn't looking hard enough. 🙃

Blatch · July 5, 2022

Touhou Musou Kakyou: A Summer Day's Dream
Episode 4: "The Beginning of Summer"
[title not appearing in the episode; neither did Episode 3's]

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Marisa is in the alternate world w/ all the torii gates, and she blasts them down with lasers. Then she sees a signpost for the Sanzu River, which should be located in the underworld, and the local shinigami who drives the boat across it is floating on by. And Alice is on the boat, too. What gives? Then Reimu meets Marisa somewhere in this strange land, and she recounts the night before the time loop started. She had lots of donations, which is very unusual for her, so she moved it out back, but then it was stolen from the storage shed. So that's half of our problem solved. As time starts to slide around sideways, she confronts Suika about the donation box, but Suika... isn't herself. On the plus side, Reimu ends up correctly deducing that whoever this is caused the incident.

After the OP we get a flashback to the pivotal night before. Marisa comes in with a box that she can't open. Eventually, Suika is able to pry it open, only for nothing to be inside. Then she focuses on a strange mirror within the storehouse, and a version of herself with blue hair emerges. She asks the regular Suika if she'd like it to be summer already, and for it to be eternal. She agrees with this plan, after which she hops into a tree and the blue Suika changes her hair and outfit to be like the regular version. And thus begins the great incident of the summer day's dream! (Title drop not included in the show.) After this, things go proper sideways, with Marisa confronting a drunk Alice, then getting confronted by Yuyuko, Youmu, and the Eientei crew, who are busy enjoying the eternal summer festival that is eternal. But all that really matters is that Reimu is able to find the culprit behind the incident, which she does. Except then the blue Suika turns into the fabled blue Reimu, because she is the one that actually wished for the summer to go on forever. A danmaku battle follows, which is glorious, but the blue Reimu has the upper hand over the genuine article. She pins the real Reimu to the ground and prepares a Fantasy Seal, which kills her.

Yup. End of series. That was fun, wasn't it? At least until it turns out Yuyuko and Marisa are playing a video game, and the only option is to restart. In the second attempt, Marisa comes by with her miniature hakkero (which shoots lasers) and hits the blue Reimu with judicious force. It's all about the aim, baby. And then the episode just ends, without Yukari giving us another preview. Okay... but I'm assuming there's going to be more. I mean, we still have to destroy the evil blue Reimu/Suika/whomever she'll shapeshift into next and find out what her deal is. Only then will the incident up and truly be over and things can go back to relative normal.

I thought this was another good episode, all things considered. For starters, it's the first of the series to be in HD, and I think that makes a huge difference. The character designs have been honed to an attractive-looking point, the animation looks professional, and there are a few cool scenes, one of which I thought used CG at first (it seems to be simple manipulation of layers w/ blur effects, which is a surprising flex). There are also some miscellaneous computer-generated effects that are a little distracting, as if they slapped on some GIFs in the editing software. But hey, at this point I'm satisfied. The episode's got one decent action scene on top of some fun tender moments with the characters; seeing cameos of several of them (except Yuyuko, who gets numerous lines in) is a fun exercise in itself. So, for the foreseeable future, it's time to put this series on hold. I assume the next episode will come out in, what, 2025? It's been a four-year gap each time, except for this episode which probably got shafted due to the pandemic.

Special seiyuu talk corner:

So let's talk about voice actresses (and actors, in Rinnosuke's case). This show seemingly started the idea that Touhou characters could not only be voiced, but voiced by A-list talent. I guess that practice didn't start in earnest until the second installment of Koumajou Densetsu (often called Touhouvania), but... yeah. And some seiyuus have even managed to voice multiple characters in different works. Take Aki Toyosaki, the voice of Suika here whom I've already talked about. I found out she also voiced Koishi, my all-time favorite Touhou character, in a now-defunct mobile game called Touhou Cannonball. Pretty sweet, honestly, but since it's defunct I'll have to scour teh internets for proof of her role if I ever wanna wet my whistle.
Touhou LostWord, on the other hand, has three seiyuus for each character... and there's no way to tell who voices each one. The best proof we have is this tweet listing many of the talented VAs who've contributed to the game. This is weird, but it's even weirder than usual because, I mean, three seiyuu? There's not a lot of voiced content to go around for each of them (at least compared to something like iM@S), but that's probably why it's feasible. Between these two mobile games, another one called Danmaku Kagura (which is a rhythm game; the doctor said "I already got that") and a game w/ voices on the Switch that's a ~~Faerie Bubbles~~ Puzzle Bobble clone (even made by Taito themselves! And on top of that, ZUN started in game development there before striking out with indie games), Koishi has at least six different voices. And I only know who half of 'em are. What other fanbase has this problem?
In general, with its massive array of doujin works, many of which are officially available, I think Touhou offers the kind of decentralized platform for making cool stuff that NFTs wish they were. Not bad for a weird guy from Nagano who's just riding the coattails of Japanese mythology and folklore. We autistic sons and daughters wish we could be like him.
By the way, Eriko Matsui (Nao's seiyuu, whom you probably vigorously hate as Izusu in Log Horizon) voiced Mokou, a character I haven't talked about yet, in Cannonball. And here I thought she was yet to voice someone in any Touhou game, not even showing up in the massive LostWord cast. At least now when I read a fucked-up R-18 doujin between her and Kaguya, I can... uh, is that a good thing?

Other stray observations:

The OP from this episode is just the one from Episodes 2-3, only in HD. I would complain, but man, these scenes actually look good now. And this also means the return of Youmoobs. Say, could they not get Aoi Yuuki back for this one? I hope there was a good reason for that.
That's Komachi preparing to take Alice to the nightmare shitzone, where she'll be judged by the yama for her sins. We'll be getting to those characters in a good while.
Love the Youmu-shaped mask Yuyuko has. Also, Reisen is represented at the festival via a cut-out with a hole for your face. Now you can be a useless little bunny, only good for your sex appeal.
Getting back to Touhou Cannonball, briefly: it was basically a party game w/ gacha mechanics. Weird mix, on top of at least one person who played it saving it was too much of a time sink, and that's probably why it failed, even if almost everything related to Touhou is worth its weight in gold.
BTW LostWord also has a blue Reimu and you can roll for her right now, assuming you download the game from your non-Japanese app store of choice. She's able to summon gods, which is on a different level than the more humble Bluemu of this series. But when are we going to get Greymu?
Yeah, I've been changing my avatar every so often to feature different 2hus in bondage. And I plan to keep going for a while. This time it's the green murder lady, who somehow managed to be tamed by Marisa. I guess she ended up returning the favor in a future fighting game.
Before I go, here. Have a whole album filled with good faces. =D
Rated TV-PGV.

On to Hifuu Club.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Blatch
Bottom text was in black, because I took it out of the spoiler.

Blatch · August 10, 2022

And today marks 20 years since the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil ("the" is part of the title) came out... in Japan. But I'm not waiting until tomorrow my time to celebrate.

Touhou Hifuu Club ~The Sealed Esoteric History~
Episode 1: "Moon"

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Welcome to round two, which is going to be a quick and brutal slugfest even compared to Musou Kakyou, before we get into the epic, slog-it-out marathon that is Memories of Phantasm. But I'd rather not get ahead of myself, nor dwell on the past for too long, so let's go.

Right from the cold opening, you know this series is cut from a different cloth, as it features Yukari Yakumo (most powerful youkai in Gensokyo, and a dirty hag) looking out over an ocean. Then the OP features Touhou's full cast duking it out in various fights, and yet danmaku doesn't seem to be involved. And just when you've been lulled into submission for long enough to think that this is going to be a completely normal fanime, the action suddenly shifts to the real world, with the focus going to two girls named Maribel Hearn and Renko Usami (two humans with unique abilities, like being able to pinpoint their exact location from anywhere, as well as see supernatural borders) and their conversation about possibly going to the moon, which is about to open for scenic tours. To give you a good idea of the timespace this show takes place in, they're already planning a manned mission to Mars. Also, they order snacks at a cafe using a touch screen, and then a robot comes by to give them some cake.

Because it would be boring if they just talked about the moon for the next twenty-five minutes, the conversation shifts to talking about the moon's hidden history. Turns out people live there, you can breathe in the atmosphere and everything, and there's also political drama. Here's where we meet some characters who have appeared in this thread before: Eirin was ordered to create the special elixir of immortality by Kaguya, who is showing the initiative here (as opposed to slacking and playing danmaku games), which she then drank, thus becoming freed from the concepts of life and death. (It actually frees a person from the concept of having a soul, but that's more of a nerdy anecdote I'd use to show off. Also, you need to drink it thrice to become immortal.) So the other Lunarians are pissed and they end up exiling Kaguya from the Lunar Capital. Eirin gets a lighter punishment, but she eventually decides to leave along with Kaguya. By the way, a lot of the Lunarians are... gulp, men! And they have pointy chins. One of them looks like that dude from Symphogear. There's another guy who looks like a gender-swapped Eirin, and he looks pretty handsome.

With the punishment of the impure having been dealt with, the Watatsuki sisters (not to be confused with that guy) come in to report of an imminent invasion of Earth youkai to the lunar surface. What's their deal, exactly? It's lead by Yukari, along with Yuyuko (having just eaten a particularly large meal, I assume) and Suika (fresh off viral fame from that one meme video; it's basically the new "Step!"). Accompanying them are dozens of youkai who, inexplicably, are also male, and most are unvarnished freaks like oni, goblins, dragons, and chunks of Play-Doh in various shapes. The battle is hard fought by both sides, and Suika manages an awesome fight with the Symphogear dude, using her power to turn into a giant before he disables it, but it's the Watatsukis who get the upper hand by planting a trap in the barrier Yukari created to help the youkai get to the moon. They wind up being trapped on the moon because of it, although we don't see how the fight resolved. I assume Watatsuki no Yorihime beat them all up with her sword, while Toyohime came in afterward to give them a strongly-worded lecture.

The sisters then have a conversation amongst themselves ten years later, when all is well in the Lunar Capital once again. Then we get a scene with Kaguya and Eirin settled into their home at Eientei, where many youkai rabbits live. But we don't see any. Instead, Kaguya is all sleepy and doesn't want to go to to the festival. As for the other major plotline of the episode, Maribel and Renko are unable to go to on the moon tour because they don't have enough money. But then Merry finds a portal within a fountain they just happened to be sitting next two and voila! It's moon time! There's no cheese up there, but there are peach trees, the fruit of which is a lunar delicacy. (Toyohime especially likes them.) Maribel eats one and it replenishes her vitality or something; I'd love to stock those at the store, but right now, the best we have are pluots (as opposed to Saturn Peaches, which was true when I wrote this). After the ED, there's a stinger with Merry and Renko sleeping on the bench, wondering if it was all a dream. Somehow, that's not the end of the episode. There's a second ED after that featuring a girl documenting Gensokyo's history and chilling to some FM synthesis music, and then Reimu and Marisa continue the apparent tradition of Touhou fanime by talking about how they were barely in the episode. And the next episode is about the Scarlet sisters? Maybe. So much to take in here.

This episode was kino. Finally, a Touhou fanime that does something cool and original. It looks great, too... even if it has maybe too many scenes that transition by fading to black or white. At least this is when I know the show is transitioning between our world and the magical realm.

Special Touhou news section:

There's a lot going on with this series right now, so here's a brief rundown of everything for you non-fans.

Pour one out for Danmaku Kagura, the mobile rhythm game I mentioned last column, which is ending service in October. Apparently, this one failed because it was too expensive to make, owing to getting big-name seiyuus as well as licensing all sorts of fan remixes.
On the other hand, we have a new Touhou mobile title that's out called Arcadia Record. This one's actually a shooting game, and it's caused a bit of controversy. But if you're allergic to watching YT videos by people who might be juicing up the controversy (even if this one doesn't look like one of them), just know this: it's published (not developed; the developer's the one with a checkered past) by KLab, the company whose Love Live! School idol festival game shot me out of a cannon into this rabbit hole to start with. That can't be good.
There's also an arcade game that's come out whose title reminds me of an episode of SpongeBob, but I don't know jack about it, other than that it too features A-listers.
For those of you who enjoy the main Touhou series (heresy, I know), we have a new mainline title coming out called 100th Black Market (Steam page!), officially numbered 18.5, which celebrates the 100th edition of Comiket by continuing the story of the previous game. If anyone wants, I can explain this further.
Regarding Hifuu Club itself, the first part (of two) of the third episode of this series has been subbed into English. I am waiting for it to be uploaded to Nyaa before I watch it, so I can use the best source possible for content ratings. I'd ask the person who subbed it about that, but I feel like that's too close to piracy, and most Touhou discussion spaces don't want that. So we'll wait and see.

Stray observations:

Seiyuu talk: This episode came out without voices at first, but then a voiced version was released with the talent used being based on the results of a fan survey the doujin group held. As you would expect, the cast is pretty stacked, but their biggest get is actually a hold-over from Memories of Phantasm: Kikuko Inoue as Yukari. For real, or at least outside of next-episode previews. Hell yes.
I don't recognize nearly as many of the names here compared to last time, but other notable actresses include: Kana Hanazawa as Merry (huge talent, had iM@S as an early major role, though I guess she peddles NFTs now), Eri Kitamura as Renko (~~car crash~~ sixth layer decompression victim), Haruka Tomatsu as Toyohime (though I'm not sure if I've ever seen SAO subbed... maybe once back when S1 aired on Toonami and I didn't know how to catch up on the dub), and then, in a major bruh moment, Ms. Chihaya Kisaragi herself, Asami Imai as Reimu for not even thirty seconds. And don't worry, because there are more big willies to come in future episodes.
This episode's soundtrack features actual Touhou tracks remixed, though there are original pieces as well. In particular, the OP goes hard.
You can tell this show didn't portray the future in a realistic way because the robot that serves to Merry and Renko in the beginning doesn't look like something from Boston Dynamics.
By the way, this show's subs are kinda lacking. I mean that because they're a bit iffy and have weird grammar choices, but the normal white text in a basic font doesn't help things either. Especially not after the OP got fancy cursive subs in both languages. And Merry's name is always spelled "Mary", which is an incorrect but admirable choice.
In a nice segue, Touhou fandom tends to pain the Watatsukis as Mary Sues, because they're really powerful, beat up everyone they come across and don't have the charisma to excuse it. I don't really mind them, but then again, I haven't read Silent Sinner in Blue, where they apparently give the SDM residents a bad time.
Rated TV-PGLV.

Blatch · October 25, 2022

Touhou Hifuu Club ~The Sealed Esoteric History~
Episode 2: "Wish"

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This time, the episode is double-length! But don't expect that to equal a higher word count.

So this episode is about Sanae Kochiya, the girl who lived a real-life fantasy and was spirited away to Gensokyo to work as the wind priestess of the Moriya Shrine. I have mixed feelings about her, mostly regarding her transfer between worlds. Was it consensual? Did she have IRL friends she loved and didn't want to part with? Or maybe she did so to get away from a world that wasn't so kind to her. I figured a story focusing on Sanae's past would use one of these two angles; this piece of fan art suggests the former. This episode goes with... neither of them. Because it's not really about Sanae but a sister of hers the show made up called Yayoi. She is unable to see the gods as her older sister can, but at least she's not poor.

So most of this episode consists of a long conversation between Yayoi, Maribel and Renko, both of whom go on a road trip to find the legendary Moriya Shrine. They go deep into the country and find a humble shrine with a house next to it. Only Yayoi lives there now. She's seemingly the only one who still remembers her sister, as when she was spirited away, all records of her were erased from the human realm... except for the book Merry and Renkers happen to have, but she doesn't know that until later. Yayoi's inability to so much as hear the gods, whereas Sanae could interact with them and do anything else, led to her feeling jealous toward her family. She ended up leaving to go to university in Yokohama, not even attending her grandfather's funeral. And by the time she returned home, Sanae was gone. So she decided to impersonate her, which explains the cold opening featuring lots of people fawning over a Sanae that looks awkward and shouldn't be here.

This episode also goes into the finer points of the history surrounding the shrine's two gods: Suwako Moriya, the original subject, and Kanako Yasaka, the purple-haired hag bitch who overthrew her and became the shrine's main god, although she didn't force Suwako out. When these gods ended up moving to Gensokyo, records related to them became lost too, and the only proof of their existence is in the Hifuu Club's magic book. But that's not too important. Not unless you're a hardcore like me, anyway. But even I don't have much use for matters like the snake-like god Suwako was able to tame (it's the Mishaguji) or anything about the village she had founded and was looking after when Kanako attacked. What does matter is that Yayoi hated her family, particularly her grandfather, for no reason other than because she wasn't special like her sister. But then she found a card her grandfather sent her with the two of them plus Sanae posing together, all happy and such. This gave her the impetus to stop posing as Sanae, upon which people started to notice Yayoi again, and then things returned to normal. But Yayoi is now mad at herself for not making up with her family, which precluded her from seeing Sanae one more time before she moved to Gensokyo, ostensibly on Kanako's orders. See, all she wanted to do was to gather more faith for the shrine. To continue the story, please buy Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith on Steam, and don't be afraid to play on Easy difficulty if you need to.

There was a nice story at the heart of this episode, but it sure took its time getting there. It challenged my attention span, which is cool (usually), and makes for quite the juxtaposition between the first one's action-packed plot. The fact that the doujin group behind this series managed to take a step back is puzzling, but I guess it can't be helped. Maybe they didn't want to repeat themselves? So anyway, at least Renko and Merry had their minds expanded. After a fruitful day of research and discovering the hidden mysteries of this world, in all their beauty and cruelty, they watch the fireworks over Suwa Lake. And then Reimu complains about not being in the actual episode again. Y U so meta?

Random thoughts:

Seiyuu corner: Sanae is voiced by Nao Toyama, a.k.a. Ms. Suzunoki, a.a.k.a. oh my GOD this is an A+ casting. Too bad she doesn't have too much screentime, but it's more than Suwako and Kanako get; they only talk briefly in two scenes! Kind of a rip. And I'm not familiar with Yayoi's seiyuu.
Sweet references in a scene early on: this show's version of Dr. Pepper is Dr. Latency (referencing one of the music CDs that provides canon storylines for the Hifuu Club) and Cirno-branded milk.
Hopefully that screenshot shows that this series' subs continue to be lacking. This episode feels like it got it even worse, but I attribute that to its extended length, which was probably more trouble for the subber and lead to some phrases that are borderline word salad. Hopefully the first half of the third episode is better. It might be from someone different; I think that person announced it in one of the Touhou Discord servers I'm in, so that seems like a vote of confidence.
Suwako has the power to wield... iron rings. But Kanako's ability to create thorns, complimented by the oddly satisfying sight of them emerging from her sleeve plus squishy sound effects, is able to overpower them with moisture and that's how she wins control of the shrine. Ho hum.
Rated TV-PG.
I mean, this episode did give us lots of loli Sanae in a traditional miko outfit. I got the hots for those, if you know what I mean.
This post is coming out late. There are a few things that have conspired since I started it (mostly the release of a Switch port of one of the official games, and new Fumo announcements) I'm opting not to talk about here. Look forward to seeing those in the next one of these reviews, which, Byakuren willing, should come out in early November. Gotta get a CG review post in beforehand.
Glad I didn't opt for another special day to tie one of these big posts in, be it about my favorite Japanese franchises or jam bands or whatever else.
Hey, didn't last episode tease that this show would be doing backstories for the residents of the SDM? And this episode didn't have any sort of tease as to what's coming next. I mean...

Edited October 26, 2022 by Blatch
Very minor edits: removing an extra blank space and a weird OCD-tinged wording change. And then I fixed the text.

PokeNirvash · October 25, 2022

You may also wanna color your spoiler text black, that way I can actually read it.

Blatch · October 26, 2022

On 10/25/2022 at 9:18 PM, PokeNirvash said:

You may also wanna color your spoiler text black, that way I can actually read it.

Expand

Oh wow, thanks for catching that. It's weird for me to not do it, even considering that I'm often caught up in fine-tuning certain parts of my posts and might miss some big errors.

Blatch · January 1, 2023

Touhou Project Side Story: Memory of Stars

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To start off this post, I have a huge announcement. Something that will shake this very forum to its core and send shockwaves rippling across the Internet, ensuring that nothing is the same. And I can't say I have much shame in reporting it. So without further ado, here it goes...

I want to go kigging. Preferably as Kogasa.

There we go. Not that it feels good to get off my chest, because I've already been retweeting cosplayers of the animegao variety (when are we going to have that conversation?) on my Twitter TL for a couple months. But hey, just want to admit that I want to buy a mask, hopefully at some point before Halloween of next year. Also hopefully, I don't run into any problems with family members about it and get labeled a weirdo. Now, onto the episode...

A transmission is being sent from the moon that gets intercepted by Reisen. Turns out it's from a fellow moon rabbit, and it suggests the moon is in trouble. Soon enough, forces from the moon invade Gensokyo, taking advantage of a lapse in strength of the Hakurei Barrier, and it turns out they want Kaguya to further some sort of plan. While Tewi is briefly able to repel the forces with a Spell Card, the only thing that's going to stop the invasion is if Kaguya is given to the Lunar forces. So Sakuya, who is a Lunarian herself, has to persuade her to come along. Surprise!

Speaking of surprises... where are Merry and Renko? Is this even an episode of Hifuu Club? Hopefully you didn't gloss over the title, because this is actually the very first Touhou fanime made in earnest, coming a whole year before the first episode of Musou Kakyou. It's called... bad fanfiction. Which is being recapped in the form of paragraphs that are shorter than they need to be. I'm sorry, I'm trying to remove it.

In order to make sure Gensokyo doesn't suffer any collateral damage, Eirin, Reisen, and Sakuya all decide to go up with Kaguya. They soon leave via teleportation and make it to the lunar ship. There, they are soon informed by the other moon rabbit named Kinako that their mission is to create the Hourai Elixir so she can drink it and replenish the "Mana" of the moon, which is in danger of dying. Also, Kaguya's father named Marius, the king of lunar society, offers her the throne, but all she wants to do is make the Elixir (using her special power to make the flower of Hourai bloom, as it's needed for the elixir but hardly ever does so otherwise) and then yeet herself back to Gensokyo. So what are these people's deal, anyway? This seems too good to be true. It almost feels like the four Gensokyo expats don't need to go back home, and it's not like the Lunarians have any bad intentions, right? Turns out they do, because we wouldn't have a show otherwise: they want to use the Elixir to instigate the destruction of all life on Earth. Turns out the Lunarians created humanity and used Earth as a... big testing site (trying not to use the wiki's terms here), only to eventually realize that they fucked up and now they want to start over, which is where the big planet-resetting weapon called Elysion comes in.

The four adventurers become trapped in crystals, with Sakuya being the first one smooshed inside, as Kinako gives the Hourai Elixir to Marius to further his evil plan. See, he wants to become more powerful than gods! He already drank the Elixir once, giving him immortality, and now a second dose will give him unlimited power... at the cost of making all his cells explode. Also, Mokou arrives out of nowhere and uses a Spell Card to break the four out of their makeshift prisons. Durr. Sakuya and Reisen try to kill Marius using Spell Cards, but it's his own undoing of drinking the Elixir twice that causes his face to start cracking up, and then he dies, then he dies.

A few other things happen, and Kinako, who is actually the punished form of a moon rabbit named Sakura who helped Eirin's mom invent the Hourai Elixir, decides to have Elysion fire on Earth. One problem: Marius wants to use the Hourai Elixir to increase Elysion to full power so the purification of Earth will actually work, but it's not potent enough for that. A Lunarian commander named Sphere Sieben (awesome name), who has been hanging out on the side all episode, decides she's had enough of her superiors and orders the Lunarian fleet to destroy the planet-purifying superweapon. But then, Kinako/Sakura throws herself into the path of the superweapon, causing it to redirect to the moon, purifying it to a time before the Lunarians came along. Eirin seems to get caught in the blast and sorta dies, witnessing her mother Omoikane talk about the Hourai Elixir and whether Eirin should join her in the world of the immortals. But then she wakes up, the other four girls (Reisen, Kaguya, and Sakuya plus Mokou) imploring her to get off the surface of the moon and get back to Gensokyo, which is now in no danger of getting fucked over by the Lunarians. They do just that, while Reimu and Marisa wax lyrical about how the moon is now shining brighter than before. And while the lunar surface may have been purified, Reisen hears a message that supposes at least one moon rabbit has survived...

So ends this detour into this bizarre fanime I doubt even many Touhou fans have heard of. I first heard about it on a Discord server, can't remember which because there are a few for this franchise I'm active on, but it was a wild ride. Life, death, the cosmos, returning to monke, breaking the cycle of violence... it's all here, and it's rendered with unconvincing animation and lots of Windows Movie Maker-tier effects. This OVA is insane, but in the best possible way, and worth the trip if you're as obsessed with this franchise as I am.

iBlewupthemoon: A special report on canonicity, bulleted for your convenience

Lunarian society: If you've seen Hifuu Club E1, you know that the Lunar Capital is kinda like Eientei, but on the moooooooon! (How do you like that, Mr. Beast?) But actually, that was over a thousand years ago. Today, the Capital is like a city on Earth, only with more modern technology. And yet it doesn't seem to be a smoke-metal metropolis with spaceships like what the Lunarians in this OVA have. Even if the canon ones do, they would probably be more in line with the design of everything else in Touhou, having more Japanese architecture as opposed to drab corridors and command centers.
Lunarians themselves: They are not a race of aliens. They were originally earthlings who wanted to become pure, so they moved to the Moon, a pure land without the concepts of life or death.
Marius: Is a fan creation. Interestingly, his name alludes to the Marius Hills lava tube on the Moon, which plays a role in a Hifuu Club storyline in the Touhou LostWord game. Yeah, I couldn't wait to drop to that one on you. They even nicknamed its skylight "the rabbit hole", though I suppose that could've been coined somewhere else.
Omoikane: Eirin herself actually takes ideas from her.
The Lunarian ships invading Earth: Travel between Gensokyo and the Moon isn't that hard. You just need to wait for a full moon, wherein it becomes possible due to a quirk in the Hakurei Barrier acting like a mirror. Yukari's explanation that the ships are getting through due to a brief fluctuation in the barrier seems like an ass pull, but it's also unnecessary to begin with.
The Hourai Elixir: In canon, you need to drink it three times to become immortal. The first dose stops you from aging and the second stops you from becoming sick. No idea what a fourth dose does, but given the connections between that number and death in Japanese culture, maybe it's for the best we don't find out.
Sakuya is a Lunarian: A famous fan theory that LostWord has also cribbed. Her past is shrouded in mystery and probably always will be. The only hint we have is from Imperishable Night, where Eirin's profile says she wasn't expecting to see Sakuya again. Then there's the issue of her changing eye colors, which sometimes turn red when she activates a Spell Card. It's a neat idea, though I wonder if it has to do with ZUN's near-omnipresent drunkenness.
Kinako might've inspired a future moon rabbit boss's design: Nope, not seeing it. Proof that even non-Fandom wikis will take an L sometimes.
All in all, Memory of Stars actually could've fit well with canon had the designs not been cribbed from a show like Outlaw Star. It helps that the Lunarians' desire in this show to purify Earth aren't that far off from their canon personality.

Other random thoughts:

I was thinking about waiting until I finished (what's available for) Hifuu Club to start this, but I realized it would be more fair to preempt two shows as opposed to one. In other words, you're not special just because you try to act all dignified.
Tewi hardly plays a role in this OVA (granted, she's not a moon rabbit), and on top of that she just looks sad, her ears even droopier than normal.
Tour of the seiyuuspheres: Kinako, who gets top billing in this OVA, is voiced by Kana Ueda, who has a dizzying list of credits on ANN but nothing I know of. Reisen, meanwhile, is voiced by Hitomi Harada... a.k.a., this one. No other names I know of throughout the cast, and some of them even have multiple roles: Hitomi also voices Marisa, who only appears briefly and basically acts as a framing device for the main story, so it's understandable. Nana Takahashi, a longtime vocalist (thought I had a vid for this of a remix for Yuuma's theme where she sings, but I can't find it) for SOUND HOLIC (the circle that commissioned this work), also cameos as Sphere Sieben and the Lunarian ship's computer.
Guess what? More clunky subs! This time they border on shambolic, as not only is there clunky wording but also lots of typos. Funnily enough, I do think these are more readable than what Hifuu Club #2 has.
Rated TV-PGV.

And I do believe we are at the end of the year. Hope you had a good 2022; I felt like I got better as the world got worse. See you all for Touhou 19, let alone all of this fanime.

PokeNirvash · January 1, 2023

On 1/1/2023 at 4:32 AM, Blatch said:

Hope you had a good 2022; I felt like I got better as the world got worse.

Expand

I know I did, to the point where I thought the world was overreacting.

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Edited January 1, 2023 by PokeNirvash

Blatch · January 8, 2023

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Touhou Hifuu Club ~The Sealed Esoteric History~
Episode 3 [part one]: "Wish"

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Someone who looks a lot like Maribel is in a dark library and grabs a book with the name "Yakumo" on it. Turns out this is a dream Merry's having, though it might be more of a nightmare. One splash of cold water later, she's lucid again. So she has to air out her grievances with Renko, and they go to some kind of bar to set the scene. Maybe it's Old Adam? The dreams Merry has been having involve some sort of character named "The Raven" who was born in Greece, just like Merry, and it seems she's a girl trying to pass as a boy. A tuft of hair covers her other eye, which is a a different color. Total Wonder Egg rip-off. In these dreams, all of these dreams, the Raven is trying to get to the United States from Greece for an unknown reason, though she wants to go through elsewhere in eastern Europe first. After another installment of the dream, Merry decides to take more drastic measures and gets Renko to travel into the dream with her. She'll be playing her own character, but Renko should be able to interact with the setting in some way. So off they go, as Merry and Renko sleep together, the latter having her eyes covered.

The next installment of the dream involves a person with silver hair and pigtails that the Raven interacts with, because the bartender isn't doing nothing except misgendering her. This other girl makes one thing very clear: do not go into the inconspicuous mansion in town, because if you do, you probably won't live to tell anyone about it. And then, in case you didn't realize that this person might be an analogue for Sakuya, she stops time, then flicks a coin with such force it knocks a guy down. I also neglected to mention that she talked to a guy earlier who's a European gentleman analogue for Rinnosuke, though he goes by Kourin here. Nevertheless, the Raven heads to the mansion, where two all-too-familiar vampires are stationed inside. Flandre is mad she doesn't have her doll made by Mary, while Remilia just wants to feed her. They're in the dungeon of the mansion, and Renko has been spawned into a different part of it. Eep. The Raven heads into the mansion, and then Remi attacks, pinning her down and starting to suffocate her. Ending the episode are two seemingly-unrelated scenes involving Merry: one where she visits the Scarlet Devil Mansion and has tea with Remi and Sakuya, plus Meiling is there, and another after the first of the two EDs where she talks to Renko about alternate universes.

Lot to unpack from this one despite my nicely-paced synopsis. So, we have a new character who's an alternate persona of Merry, as well as three of the SDM's residents being depicted before being spirited away to Gensokyo. This episode really brought it; after the doldrums of the last one, we're back to telling a compelling story with a fair amount of action in a shorter runtime, even though this is only the first part of two. I'm not totally convinced regarding the Raven, but I want to see what the deal is with this alternate non-maid Skukuy. You also have nice production touches, like some cool surreal scenes (Merry turning to dust while being pulled underwater, followed by a brief shot of eyes from a gap, and the scene w/ Sakuya's timestop) and letterboxing for scenes set in the dreamworld. So when's the second part coming out?

Random thoughts:

Oh boy: This time, the stream I used was YouTube, where it's only available in 360p with subs machine-translated from Spanish. It's rough, mostly because of how it obfuscates the Raven's true gender, with lots of people being referred to as "he" even though this is Touhou, damnit. And there were typos, though not as many as Memory of Stars, an OVA I'm still thinkin' about, though I hadn't today (Jan. 2) until I typed this out. On the other hand, the shitty video quality is not only a wonderful throwback to the mid-2000s, it's mildly psychedelic, giving the OP a different feel and adding a fuzzy garnish to the Raven's exploits across the verdant fields of Greece and maybe elsewhere.
Seiyuugeddon: Sakuya is voiced by Yui Ishikawa. No credits from what I know, but she does voice Mikasa in Attack on Titan. Remilia is played by Sumire Uesaka, and uses a voice that I'm surprised wasn't her typical Russian timbre, and Flandre is Rina Hidaka, a.k.a. the seiyuu typecast as every loli in every show you've ever seen. And she's the reigning champion at this; Misaki Kuno was coming for her title only to abruptly bang a U-turn and diversify her career starting with Faputa. And Rinnosuke, because we need a big-name male VA too, is voiced by Jun Fukuyama.
Maribel maybe being related to Yukari is another famous fan theory, although it's more of a wink and a nudge on ZUN's part given how their names connect to Lafcadio Hearn, a.k.a. the original weeaboo. And he was born in Greece too, fancy that.
I would've made a snide joke if this alternate timeline took place in the modern day, or really at any point in the last... hundred years? Because who wants to willingly move to America nowadays? But I trust that the Raven has a good reason for it at whatever point this show takes place.
Nice that this show didn't make a joke about Meiling being lazy and sleeping all the time! Let's save that for my TF2 backpack.
LostWord moment: the Hifuu storyline in that game involves Merry and Renko traveling through dreams along with the player character, the latter of which is able to see visions of alternate-universe characters. But none of them do this willingly. Furthermore, none of them play characters in these universes or timelines or whatever you want to call them. It would be cool if they did do it like this series; I would roll for the Raven as a UFes.
How come it's been almost 14 years since the UFO trial came out and Kogasa's the only canon character with heterochromia, and yet ZUN went on to create two characters with droopy earlobes that appear in consecutive mainline games?
Honestly not digging how Reimu and Marisa are confined to the post-credit sequences, which have gotten more meta than ever this time. At least they're animated, with fun chibi cut-outs. Rinnosuke in his usual form gets involved too.
Rated TV-PGDV.

And that does it for this one for a while. I'd rather not explain myself, but I think you know what's next.

PokeNirvash · January 8, 2023

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Edited January 8, 2023 by PokeNirvash

Blatch · January 8, 2023

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Edited January 9, 2023 by Blatch
Minor edits. I originally posted this on mobile and had to remove extra lines, but then I fine-tuned other parts.

Blatch · May 20, 2023

It's now been more than a year since I started this project... and more than a month since I first wrote this post, which itself came a month after I saw the episode. Sorry for the delays, but now it's finally ready: the final piece of the puzzle.

Touhou Fantasy Kaleidoscope: The Memories of Phantasm
Episode 1: "The Spring Snow Incident" a.k.a. "The Ordinary Magician or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Kotarsu [sic]"

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So how am I going to play this, anyway?

...

There's a terrible incident going on in Gensokyo! Everything's covered in snow even though it's spring, and it's still snowing. Marisa arrives at Hakurei Shrine to find Cirno out loitering. The latter is pushed aside, sees 9s in her eyes, and suddenly we're off to the races. After the real title of the episode is shown (which is a gratuitous Dr. Strangelove reference), Marisa vaguely approximates the plot of the 7th Touhou game, which is called Perfect Cherry Blossom (sadly not available on Steam), making quick work of the local yukki-ona youkai, investigating a house with bizarre architecture while the shikigami of the shikigami of the gap youkai chases her around, visits her dollmaker magician youkai girlfriend (who does not return the favor), makes a stop-over at the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and then races on into the sky to get to the netherworld, chasing after the fairy of spring and being serenaded by the phantom ensemble. Then she hits her head on the ceiling, which is also the ground, and finds herself at the base of the long, loooong staircase leading to Hakugyokurou. And Youmu is there, and she challenges Marisa to a fight. This is where the show gets serious, portraying danmaku battles in all their glory while acting closer to the canon of the games.

Granted, this just based off the first episode, but it feels misaimed to call Memories of Phantasm even a loose adaptation of the games; I think it's more generous to say this series is inspired by them. Then again, it matches the tone of the series quite well: all of the characters speak in bits of small talk and weird metaphors, most of which are only tangentially related to the life-or-death struggle going on. And Marisa's antics are contrasted with a scene of Reimu in her shrine, seemingly sitting out this incident, as Sakuya comes in and asks her if she wants to "let the youkai do whatever they please". Granted, Yuyuko is a ghost and Youmu a half-phantom. So Reimu soon mans up and decides to accompany Marisa, who's in over her head fighting Yuyuko, that pink-haired bitch. She's collecting spring in order to make the Saigyou Ayakashi, the big cherry tree at the center of the netherworld, bloom. Too bad there's a dead body underneath it, its soul sealed by a lack of spring, and that soul is Yuyuko herself. It's a long story and you probably don't need to know any of it. But hey, Reimu's ofuda can be shot into a pattern of pretty lines. And in this case, said lines trap the ghost bitch while her half-phantom gardener with her based green-and-white color scheme is unconscious. So that's how the Endless Winter incident gets resolved; the last scene features a ton of characters having a party amidst the spring, some of whom don't get introduced for three more games. Technically five if you count the spin-offs. Oh, and Aya is here. How cromulent.

That description might be selling my enthusiasm short, so I want to tell you up front: this episode was fantastic. Finally, a Touhou fanime with guts. Watching this episode, I can easily see both why this series is so good, and why certain other dedicated fans might not like it. The animation and art are solid from the opening flourish to the chibi comics that play over the ED, the soundtrack (which includes vocal remixes of a few Touhou songs) is excellent, the reinterpretation of the plot is fun and nevertheless faithful to the series' lore, and the whole thing is of high-enough quality that makes its status as the most well-known Tohuou fanime completely warranted. Looking forward to finally digging into the rest of this show.

Random thoughts:

This series was coming out before I made my current Twitter account, my big hobby in those days making pithy comments about the Penn State sex scandal on ESPN, back when they actually had a comment section rather than relying on Facebook. Good times, even if that's practically prehistory by my standards.
By the way: the animation director for this series is actually a professional in the anime industry. Don't know if I would've figured it out otherwise, but it goes a ways in helping make this show feel like an official Touhou work.
The best part of this episode is Marisa's rude awakening in Hakugyokurou; not only is it an novel approach (as despite having played PCB, I never really pictured it being above Gensokyo) the shot of the camera rotating and panning upwards makes this location feel alien, a reminder that Gensokyo is supposed to be a literal land of fantasy. I'll admit, I'd forgotten about that too.
This show has really cute eyecatch cards, which have the title, the loading screen-esque phrase "Now Resting...", and a chibi character on them. For the first time around, it's Youmu getting aggressive hugging her phantom half. Also, wow, I don't have to do any work for the eyecatches! It's about time.
Reimu gets credit for having solved the incident at the end, which then becomes the subject of fighting between her and Marisa. Aww.
As much as I've scoffed at the idea of these fanime having stingers at the end that have nothing to do with the preceding content, after this episode ended I really wanted to see something with Renko and Merry waxing lyrical about whatever it is the Hifuu Club does, which would include a tangential observation related to the episode.
Speaking of which, this episode does have a spoiler, and it introduces Sanae, another Touhou character who doesn't appear in canon until the 10th game. Only this time, she's in Hakugyokurou w/ Yuyuko, Youmu, and Yukari and her shikigami Ran. Talk about a blatant crime against canon.
From the "things I just learned about tonight" department: I heard rumors that this series was going to be ending, but I not anything concrete, so I didn't believe it and figured it was just on hiatus... until I found out that it is continuing, but its 18th episode will be its last. Damnit. At least this is a nice run for the longest-running Touhou fanime, and hey, it's not like the other series I've covered are going away anytime soon. Plus, the final episode has an original plot. Let's see how long it takes for us to get there.
For that matter, I still haven't decided whether I'm going to do this series one episode at a time or based on arcs. I'll watch the second episode (as opposed to the full cut of the arc) and see how much material I get out of it.
We've made it to the promised land, so now it's time for Touhou memes: And this time it's a video! This might as well be yet another retelling of PCB.
Also, what's the rating again? Hmm... oh, right, TV-14.

Edited May 20, 2023 by Blatch
Spacing issue. Glad I'm getting *this* in before midnight too.

Blatch · August 25, 2023

Touhou Fantasy Kaleidoscope: The Memories of Phantasm
Episode 2: "The Scarlet Mist Incident" [part one] a.k.a. "Interview Without the Vampire"

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So... so.

There's a new Touhou game. And ZUN announced it back in April right in the middle of when Phish was playing a 43-minute version of "Tweezer". So how is it? It's aight. Like, in terms of plot, characters, and overall production values, it's the best official Touhou game ever. But too bad about the gameplay, because it's very unbalanced and a little functionally jank. Who knows how much of it will be fixed w/ patches. So yeah, I'll talk about it more as time goes on. I had a bunch of other crazy shit I wanted to talk about, but I'll dispense with that also. Onto the main review.

Continuing from last episode's invocation of messing with the natural timeline of the games, the cold opening jumps straight into Mountain of Faith, as Sanae and Suwako are doing menial work around the Moriya Shrine. A party is taking place inside, and basically everybody is invited! See how many characters you recognize from this shot. Even the OP doesn't help with how indecisive the show is, as it features the moon turning red along with a credit stating that it's adapting the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, but the events in it primarily deal with Subterranean Animism. I mean, I have no problem with it, but it does feel like something I should mention. So Marisa notices the "Scarlet Devil cast", and then Aya gets involved as some characters notice an old edition of Bunbunmaru. This provides the framing device for the arc, and presumably future ones: Sanae, who's a little physically spent, wants to learn about past incidents in Gensokyo. Reimu opts not to join in, though, enjoying a quiet moment with Yukari behind the shrine. So here it goes with the EoSD reimagining, where Marisa is the central character.

Cirno and Daiyousei (the green fairy) are playing in the Misty Lake and Marisa accompanies them, taking advantage of their antics to get free cooling. Aya's there too. The Scarlet Devil Mansion, which in this show looks the size of a city block (complete with freestanding clocktower!) is nearby, and at this point nobody's managed to get beyond the main gate. Aya has tried, looking to get a scoop, but every time she attempts it she either gets teleported back SM64-endless-staircase-style or enters a window and teleports back outside. Marisa, on the other hand, manages to ride her broomstick to the outer wall and gets in with no resistance. She didn't even have to bother with Meiling, the perpetually-tired-but-still-trying-her-best gatekeeper. After traveling through dark halls, she comes across a bedroom... with no one in it. Is she supposed to be here? Nope. Flandre jumpscare.

Lest you think that this will be a fanwork that dispenses with common tropes, Flandre tries to act nice regarding the fact that no one ever plays with her, but she eventually goes psycho. She also turns into four versions of herself, which is one of her Spell Cards. At the same time, Remilia introduces herself to Gensokyo and starts to carry out her plan, which causes other unintroduced-in-canon characters to take notice. After a brief intermission, Marisa and Flandre take their fight into the SDM's great library and suddenly it's A Summer Day's Dream Episode 1 all over again. Then Patchouli enters the fray as a means to neutralize Flandre, and Koakuma comes in behind her, acting like an unapologetic fangirl. But this isn't meant as a means to help Marisa. Maybe the latter could've gotten off scot-free if she hadn't told off a natural-born youkai magician as opposed to a human that only dabbles a little in magic and doesn't intend on using her powers to become a youkai. Patchouli readies a big spell card, and Marisa can only watch as the colors go away. End part one of three.

So that was... definitely something all right. Feels more like an actual introduction to this series rather than "Baby's First Touhou Fan Work". So many scenes have been turned into GIFs I've seen on various Discord servers, and some of them have been shared as videos, so I recognize the voices. Still weird that this series doesn't have A-list voice talent, but what are you gonna do? I don't have any problem with the plot being remixed and off-kilter, because I feel like this is something ZUN would do himself. Besides, to have anything like this back in the early 2010s was presumably a dream come true for hardcore Touhou fans. And I do like how Marisa is the focus of this one, as well as Cirno and Dai getting their yuks in plus the sheer amount of cameos in the present-day scenes.

Random thoughts:

Rated TV-14L.
The framing device alone has a lot of gems, like a Prismrivers performance with animation recycled from just last episode, a shot w/ SA characters where the difference between Parsee and Koishi couldn't be more obvious, and Nitori playing with a newspaper papercraft battleship and covering Hina's face for no good reason. Also, a cute scene with Suika walking on by, definitely at least tipsy, dragging Aya and nearly choking her.
I really could do without these movie title parodies preceding the meat of each episode. But then again, referencing western works has been Touhou's forte just as much as anything Asian.
From the "things you don't notice until thumbing through the episode much later" department: Cirno and Dai-chan both have pointy ears, whereas even most fan works tend to portray them with round ones. Aya has them too, but while canon has gone back and forth with that, tengu ears are usually pointy in fan art.
This arc's chibi eyecatch: Flandre holding a teddy bear, maybe the same one she destroyed.
I really like how the subs for this show are colored to match every character that speaks. It would be cool if Crunchyroll did this, but I would at least like them to do so whenever multiple characters are speaking at once. Of all the shows I've watched from them, one show I know has this is The Eccentric Family, though the subs for that show are also smaller for reasons unknown.
Lotta weird names in the credits for this one, which includes one Michael J. Dog. Maybe he's the one dropping all these references to American films? Either that or he's just macking cheese in his wave.
BTW, something I did want to mention that was going to be in here originally: Memories of Phantasm is in fact over. The final episode dropped at the recent spring Reitaisai, and in contrast to the rest of the show, it tells an original story. So we'll get to that eventually.
Meme: Speaking of a Biten Blast...

Blatch · October 13, 2023

New avatar just dropped. I feel like Kogasa and Eiki are tied for my favorite by now.

Touhou Fantasy Kaleidoscope: The Memories of Phantasm
Episode 3: "The Scarlet Mist Incident" [part two] a.k.a. "Interview Without the Vampire"

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Icebreaker (because I need a section for general Touhou goings-on):

Hey, what's going on with Hifuu Club? I thought I found a work-in-progress clip of it somewhere, but asking for the link on Discord proved fruitless. So after rummaging through the doujin group's Twitter, here's... a single rough drawing:

Machine translation: why is Patchouli coughing? Soon, we will know. And hopefully it isn't immediately followed by an announcement that this show is going on an indefinite hiatus.

Main review:

After a recap of last episode, we pick up where the ED left off, kind of, as the geyser that opened up at the end of Subterranean Animism's incident is gushing, and Yukari and her underlings are lounging in a hot spring near it. Turns out this incident was similar to that of the red mist, and as a result, they'll have to keep an eye on the Moriya clan to make sure they don't get into trouble. If they do, or if anyone else gets into trouble, Yukari's shikigami Ran will be the one to deal with any intruders (glances at you in Touhou 19). Meanwhile, Yukari uses her gaps to steal vases from the Moriya Shrine's party, and Ran's own shikgiami Chen plays in the water. All throughout, all three of them are naked except for their hats. Insert obvious joke here.

So now that we've gotten our fanservice quota done with, it's time to get back to the shrine and have Marisa continue her story of the time she fucked shit up at the SDM, except we start with Reimu's POV this time: amidst the red mist, she quickly leaves the shrine and totally passes Rumia by. Guess even in a larger arc, we're gonna have to take some artistic liberties. She arrives at the gate, comes face-to-face with Meiling... and manages to take down her with no real effort. Boy, talk about having your priorities straight. Juxtaposed with scenes of Patchouli and Marisa's conflict, she goes mano-a-mano with Sakuya, and is bested by her time-stopping powers only to find a way to eventually subvert them. It's good stuff, even if most of the action involves knives being thrown. Reimu uses her ofuda to similar effect, and she eventually makes it to the main room of the mansion where Remilia is waiting.

Back in the library, Flandre's trapped in a bubble of water, where she flashes back to all the times Remilia forced her to stay cooped up in her room. All she wanted to do was go fight somebody and help out her sister one time, but she couldn't do it due to her inherent danger. Moping in the flashback, she destroys another teddy, this time a panda. Flandre is soon freed from the bubble, but only because Patchouli lost her battle due to her anemia, though Marisa presumably dealt the finishing blow. And oh man, Koakuma is crushed about this. Having made a new friend, Marisa heads to the... atrium? Flandre meets her sister once more, and she only has one desire: to fight her one-on-one.

Next time, the EoSD arc concludes. For the time being, we will continue to take this one episode at a time. =)

Random thoughts:

Meme: Mukyuu.
Hoo boy, this was a debauched viewing experience if there ever was one. I noticed when getting the episode set up in Handbrake that the audio was in four channels, which was weird, but I didn't question it. Turns out it's also a few seconds behind. So you have the music playing in the rear channels and the dialogue up front, which is pretty disorienting on top of everything not being synced. At least the next episode returns to sweet sweet stereophonic audio, but the audio is off-sync again. What's really weird is that, when you put the video into editing software, it plays normally, so at least my clips have turned out fine. I know there's some sort of built-in delay going on here, but after further Handbrake experiments, I wasn't able to subvert it. At least I shouldn't have to deal with this again following the EoSD arc.
Cameogeddon: Mokou is the unfortunate victim of Yukari's trolling. Meanwhile, Kisume (the bucket youkai, for lack of a non-Japanese term) is having an alcohol bath at the expense of Yamame and Parsee, the latter of whom looks less jealous than usual. And they're both blushing, so they're probably plastered. Also, poor Momiji, who has become the victim of a playful Yuugi.
While I do really like Meiling (in fact, there was a period where she might've been my favorite), I just wish they hadn't skimped on her role in the story. Come on, this episode is only sixteen minutes and forty-two seconds (including the OP, etc.)! You can take a little longer next time... if I had said this when the episode came out.
They definitely splurged on the JoJo references in regards to Sakuya's battle. Not only does she say "Muda", but I feel like the way it ends parallels that of Stardust Crusaders: even when you think you've got the best ability in the story, there's always someone better, and it usually ends up being the hero. Although I guess Reimu could've figured things out without having to stop time herself.
Rated TV-14S. This time, the sexy isn't massive, but it's got... uh, replay value.
And one more thing: I really like the remix of "U.N. Owen was Her?" used after Flandre is released from the bubble. The flute is like something out of that Neopets game for the PS2.

Blatch · October 14, 2023

And we repeat.

Touhou Fantasy Kaleidoscope: The Memories of Phantasm
Episode 4: "The Scarlet Mist Incident" [part three] a.k.a. "Interview Without the Vampire"

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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:

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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.

Blatch · November 1, 2023

Need another treat for Halloween? Did your kids not get any full-size candy bars this year? I've got you covered, though I wasn't intending to do it this way.

Touhou Fantasy Kaleidoscope: The Memories of Phantasm
Episodes 5 and 6: "The Flower Incident" a.k.a. "Judgment Day"

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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.

PokeNirvash · November 1, 2023

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Blatch · November 29, 2023

Happy Giving Tuesday. By contractual obligation, I have to give something to you, if only because I didn't over the Thanksgiving holiday. It's gonna be really good.

Touhou Fantasy Kaleidoscope: The Memories of Phantasm
Episode 7: "Legend of the Giant Youkai" a.k.a. "Daidarabocchi, King of the Monsters!"

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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!".

[stiiiiiill waiting... for another CG review]

Blatch · December 4, 2023

Touhou Fantasy Kaleidoscope: The Memories of Phantasm
Episode 8: "The Eternal Night Incident" [part one] a.k.a. "The Night the Earth Stood Still"

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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.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Blatch
Edited the icebreaker. The original intro was from an earlier version of the post.

Blatch · December 18, 2023

Two weeks? Sounds good. Would be nice if I can keep this schedule, though weekly posts would be even better.

Touhou Fantasy Kaleidoscope: The Memories of Phantasm
Episodes 9 and 10: "The Eternal Night Incident" [part two and ending: part one] a.k.a. "The Night the Earth Stood Still"

Reveal hidden contents

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!

Edited February 17, 2024 by Blatch
Further redid the title to match the series' official description of Episode 10. Previously, I deleted a space after it.

Blatch · December 31, 2023

So I wanted to finish the current arc of Memories of Phantasm before the end of the year, but then I realized that, for the second year in a row, I could cover a weird one-off Touhou fanime as little a treat. So here it is:

『Touhou Flash Animation』Highly Responsive to Prayers

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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!

[keep on exterminatin' in 2024]

Blatch · February 17, 2024

Touhou Fantasy Kaleidoscope: The Memories of Phantasm
Episode 11: "The Eternal Night Incident" [ending: part two] a.k.a. "The Night the Earth Stood Still"
and Episodes 12 and 13: "The Courage Test Incident" a.k.a. "The Only NEET Thing to Do"

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Icebreaker:

Eh, I don't really have anything. So just some quick updates: the new non-mobile version of Danmaku Kagura came out, but I guess people don't think the game is that fun anymore. Makes sense, given that it's being held to a higher standard now. And there are still lots of Fumos coming out, including the first-ever Fumo of a dude, him being Rinnosuke. I have that made-to-order preorder on lock.

Main review:

Now that that PC-98 intrusion is over with, we're going three wide on this one. But don't worry, because this won't be too convoluted.

The fake moon incident has been resolved, but its perpetrator has been in relative seclusion this whole time. So Kaguya comes out to play, and for the rest of the imperishable night it's her versus everyone else in a battle of bullets. The sun eventually rises once more, and things get back to normal. After the eyecatch, Yukari takes Sanae to the top of Youkai Mountain (pay no attention to the injured wolf tengu) and terraforms it with a gap, finally bringing Moriya Shrine into Gensokyo. Then, in a stinger, Tewi visits the residents of Gensokyo to give out invitations to a festival at Eientei. It'll feature a test of courage, a typical rite of passage among Japanese youth.

Turns out there are actually two tests, or Trials of Guts as Reisen puts it. The first one merely involves the residents of Gensokyo traveling into the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, placing a talisman on an old wooden shack, and then running out. But beware, because not only is the Bamboo Forest filled with youkai, its unique layout means you might never escape! And Reimu might exterminate you, which she finds embarrassing. So the second test of courage is to defeat the Ancient Undead Youkai, after which you will be able to obtain immortality by taking its guts. Remilia really wants this, though it's more for Sakuya's sake. Marisa also goes into the Bamboo Forest, but it's more in the interest of a fight rather than immortality. (This is a sore spot for her throughout the series; she has no interest in using her magic to at least become a youkai.)

After making her way through the forest, Remilia finds Mokou, the immortal phoenix non-youkai we last saw in Memory of Stars. The two then fight each other in a vicious battle of final boss vs. EX boss. Marisa is further back on the trail, and she soon runs into Keine by the wooden shack. Since it's a full moon, her were-hakutaku powers activate: her hair turns green and she grows a tail and horns. Sadly, not much comes from this. In the midst of Remilia and Mokou's fight, Sakuya barges in and tells Remilia that Kaguya's promise of immortality was a lie. Turns out this was all a way for Kaguya to bait Mokou into fighting her; as Mokou is a fellow immortal, they have some angst to take out on each other. But we don't really see this part, as it is instead represented through fireworks everyone else at the festival watches, which Flandre thinks is particularly cool. Also, Yuyuko ate a lot and has a balloon belly again.

Another MoP arc endeth, although this was technically two of them, with the latter two episodes being based on Imperishable Night's extra stage. Weird how this part got its own arc name, even though it feels more like a finale than the previous two do. Episode 11 is the least-consequential of the series so far, but even this one is still a decent excuse to hang out with a bunch of cool girls. I like how the next two re-imagined IN's extra stage—to the point where I wondered if it was more anime-original than an adaptation at first—with a more celebratory festival environment, even if it's more of the same when it comes to cameos. Mokou and Remilia's sort-of fight scene was cool, although it is a cop-out when Sakuya stops time right as they make contact with each other. The aftermath is at least unique for including a shot of Mokou's immortality-based healing powers.

Random thoughts:

Meme: Dipping back into Hifuu Club for this one. All the fanime combine... they melt into a midsummer day's dream.
Cameogeddon II: The Prismrivers show up again and their animation isn't recycled, though granted, they're being shown from much farther away. Rumia's T-posin', Eirin's doctorin' (I mean, she has a speaking role, but..., and Komachi shows up but Eiki is nowhere to be found. I guess they thought repeating the gag of her scolding her shinigami would be ripping off their cameo in Episode 2, but then again, this show does have a tendency to repeat things.
Merely eating the flash of someone who drank the Hourai Elixir isn't enough to gain immortality, but you can achieve it if you remove the suspect's liver, as the elixir is stored there rather than being digested. Tasty!
This week in subtitle jank: Okay, maybe jank is being too harsh, but Episode 11's subs are... weird. It's clear English is not Dioxaz's first language. A lot of stuff is legible, but there are some A+ moments of Engrish, my favorite being when Yukari says "Let's somehow next time" before leaving in a gap. The other really egregious example is when Kaguya tells Eirin, "Compared to eternity our lives, Even a thousand years ago doesn't go into comparison." The next two episodes return to the usual standard of translation, which is smoother.
So that scene with Mokou carrying Cirno on her shoulders is in an actual episode. Neat.
I did enjoy the cameos in this one, particularly of Komachi, but one thing I was thinking about at work today is that, by this point in the series, this sort of thing is a little overdone. Does every incident this show covers have to feature a big party at the end, or start with a big party where the characters remember the preceding incident? The reason I bring this up is because it couldn't have been good for the series' budget, something I'll get into detail about and cover blow-by-blow during the next arc of the series. If nothing else, A Summer Day's Dream proves that you can make a good Touhou fanime without jingling a bunch of shiny objects in the audience's faces.
The EDs for this show are really good, man. It's just panning over static objects to go with the music, but the music and visuals are different in each episode and I love the woodblock-esque art they use. Bonus points for #11 using the Watatsuki sisters to go with all the characters actually appearing in this show.
For the next arc, I also plan on giving this show's complete soundtrack a good luck. Because, after all, that's the official way to enjoy it.
I actually didn't know what the alternate title of the Trial of Guts arc was referencing until I looked it up. Turns out it's a sci-fi short story called The Only Neat Thing to Do, and Wikipedia claims it's a popular reference in anime. Go figure.
Episode 11: TV-14S. Episode 12: TV-PGV. Episode 13: TV-14L.
Bonus meme (to make up for the Trial of Guts arc not getting its own post):

Edited February 17, 2024 by Blatch
Added something I want to get at to the random section, plus I... might've fixed the embed, assuming it needed it.

Blatch · May 14, 2024

Touhou Fantasy Kaleidoscope: The Memories of Phantasm
Episodes 14 and 15: "The Youkai Mountain Battle Incident" [parts one and two] a.k.a. "The Battle of Youkai Mountain", heh

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Damnit, another long gap. Makes the groove I was getting into with these reviews late last year all the more surprising. We're gonna roll right into things this time, not that I had anything planned.

And so we arrive at the arc adapting the tenth Touhou game, Mountain of Faith, a game that I not only bought but have actually beaten... albeit on Easy, w/ the glitched version of Marisa, and with continues. Tsk tsk. And there's not much filler here, as the action immediately starts with Sanae barging into Reimu's shrine and telling her to give up her gig as the primary miko of Gensokyo. At least she's nice enough not to try and beat her right away, although she does use a Spell Card as a warning shot. She gives Reimu three days to put up or shut up, but Reimu decides to get this done right here and now, and flies off to the newly-rechristened Youkai Mountain w/ Moriya Shrine on top. Cue the usual "OP, then Reimu defeats the bosses of the first two stages with no effort". Poor Aki sisters, and Hina goes down without a fight either, in spite of them all being gods.

The tengu take notice of Reimu's arrival at the mountain, at which point Aya decides to cook up a plan. Marisa is chilling inside her home in the hollowed-out mountain, and she actually doesn't have ill motives this time: she's on a sightseeing tour in exchange for a scoop for Bunbunmaru. But she can't stay on her best behavior for long, as Aya soon leaves to take on Reimu, leaving an open door she can't help but use to escape. Marisa then gets tangled up with Nitori, the kappa who has long been sociable with humans. They do some science together, and it's really cute... until their rocket's exhaust causes a tidal wave that nearly drowns Marisa. She doesn't want to be part of the kappa's "human experiments", so she runs off. This is quite a change of scenery compared to the rest of the show, which is even more stark when considering the cold reality that Memories of Phantasm never made a profit in its 12 years in production. Seemingly none of the Touhou fanime have, in fact. And you know what? It looks good to me, though it is lacking polish that distinguished this show's first few episodes.

Another new locale is Yukari's gap dimension, which she uses to spy on Reimu as she makes her way up the mountain. And she gets a front-row seat to her "battle" with Aya, which is unceremoniously thrown because Reimu is no match for her, and she knows it. Besides, either the members of Moriya Shrine or the tengu high brass were gonna get her for something eventually. A Fantasy Seal makes quick work of the fuckin' bird that Reimu hates, and then it's off to the summit where both Kanako and Sanae are waiting. A 2-on-1 battle? That's not fair for Reimu, but she still engages in battle. And Yukari happily looks on, feeling satisfied that her plan to destroy Reimu is finally taking shape. Wait, wasn't the purpose of moving Moriya Shrine to Gensokyo to gain more faith? Not in this show. It's an interesting twist, one that seems just a little out of character for Yukari, though at least one thing we all know her for is being a professional troll. Oh, and the true native god of Moriya Shrine is camping out in the basement, getting drunk, and eagerly waiting to make her move.

The end is within sight, folks. And with two more episodes in the books that were engaging and action-packed, it makes me with that wasn't the case. Here's to Memories of Phantasm, a show that is often mocked in memes as having child porn.

Random thoughts:

Meme: From the recent installment of Touhoufest:

I had another meme that I wanted to post that was meant to go up in the last post (I forgor), but now I've decided it's not up to my standards. Doesn't hurt that it's not abusable... although technically this one isn't either, which means I haven't really been posting actual memes in here. Oh well. Next time I do a review series with a feature like this, I'll have to try harder.

Another thing that distinguishes this arc from previous ones is the (relatively) smaller cast. No deluge of cameos in the intro, only a tired Suika. But how'd she get on the roof?
I enjoy the austere background of Aya's leaf storm Spell card during her confrontation with Reimu, although for all I know this was a practical move to save budget.
We're back again to the original OP for this arc, which is my second-favorite in the show. My personal power rankings are: PoFV (6/7) > MoF (1, 8, 14-?) > IN (9-13) > EoSD (2-5). Next time around, I'll start to really delve into the background music of this series, which I think is long overdue. I probably could've done it here, but I want to finally get the post in.
The ED drawings for this arc are very cute. The first one is about Reimu, Marisa and the Aki sisters, while the second is about Sanae and shows her daily life. Sadly, I can't find the artist responsible for them. Do any of you know who "パン山ホにきい" is?
This arc's eyecatch animation is a chibi Sanae praying. Once we get to the end, I'll upload a montage of all of them, since I have the power to do so.
Subtitle update: mild jank. They're a bit long-winded, but not as much as Episode 11's subs. I imagine the MoP experience is what people watching some unlicensed shows this season (but hopefully not Shiny Colors) are going through. Oh, and the preview for Ep. 15 isn't subbed.
By the way, happy Koishi Day.
Oh shit, I also forgor the ratings. TV-PGV for #14, and TV-14 for #15.

[ten thousand creatures, none the same]

Edited May 14, 2024 by Blatch
As advertised.

Blatch · August 20, 2024

Touhou Fantasy Kaleidoscope: The Memories of Phantasm
Episodes 16 and 17: "The Youkai Mountain Battle Incident" [ending: parts one and two] a.k.a. "The Battle of Youkai Mountain"

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Before we start this one, a Hifuu Clubdate: so it's been a while since the first part of that show's third episode was released. I had heard something about how the show was being bankrolled by a big Chinese Touhou fan who was also a millionaire, but then they abruptly went missing, presumably throwing plans for the series in jeopardy. Well, if that was the case, it's not anymore, because a crowdfunding campaign to complete the third episode launched and recently ended. The result? More than enough!

Of course, talk is cheap. But you know what's even more expensive than money? Action! Here's a PV:

Lots of good stuff here, including the Scarlet sisters with a nun, The Raven getting another good look at Sakuya, and even Renko as a maid. Do be advised that, although the crowdfund promises the second half of the episode, it'll be released in two parts, the first releasing by the end of the year, the other coming out in the next. Also, a fourth episode is currently in the planning stages. So yeah, it's nice to know that, even after Memories of Phantasm ends, we'll still have more cool Touhou fanime to watch.

Review:

And now, finally, the battle has begun: Reimu vs. Sanae and Kanako. But much of Episode 16 is dedicated to other characters. We see Suwako being lazy, getting drunk, and watching the climactic battle, and then cut to Aya and Hatate trying to get a good scoop regarding the fight. Then a few trees in the woods are brought down by a kappa tank. Marisa is inside, curiosity having gotten the best of her, and then she quickly cranks into battle and effortlessly dodges Sanae's spell card, who gets brought down surprisingly quickly thanks to a Master Spark. Maybe she should've used something more complicated than a generic ring of rainbow bullets (tee-hee)? Reimu is actually smitten by Marisa's good work, which leads to an ad-hoc team-up. But now Suwako has seen enough, and so she decides to join the fight with the upstart mountain god who defeated her many years ago. All the while, Yukari and Ran continue to watch on.

Suwako ends the episode by manifesting a giant rock fist out of the natural retaining wall surrounding the shrine, and it's headed straight for Marisa! Cue the next episode: even though a second one soon breaks out and tries to crush her with the first (like Master and Crazy Hand), she tanks the attack thanks to Reimu casting a shield spell on her. This alone is the reason why Yukari's plan to have Moriya Shrine be the new top shrine in Gensokyo has failed: she didn't account for Marisa helping her. Except... didn't she make them try to fight each other in the Imperishable Night arc? Huh. The two quickly combine their forces to make quick work of Kanako and Suwako; the former gets a Master Spark, and the latter a Fantasy Seal. Bombs sure do seem to solve everything, don't you think? Talk about boiling down to the essentials of battles of bullets.

The rest of the episode features the usual allotment of lore: Kanako had to move the shrine to Gensokyo to gain more faith, and Sanae was going to get it for her. Well, she still can, but Moriya Shrine will be Gensokyo's secondary faith-based hang-out. But then we quickly hop to the more popular one, as Sanae is greeted by Cirno and Daiyousei. The rest of the Mountain of Faith cast is there, and it was here that I wondered if this was the same party from the the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil arc, with the rest of the characters off-screen. Turns out they haven't actually arrived yet; after copious amounts of alcohol are enjoyed by the current partygoers (the Aki sisters are already plastered), they do, introduced one by one. In the midst of all that, Yukari and Reimu have a moment, with the former basically admitting she was just trying to challenge the latter. Humans can't come to overpower youkai, you know. Gotta be perfectly balanced, as all fanime should be... which is why the arc ends with Reimu and Marisa fighting and then the latter gropes the former. Aww.

Good arc? Kind of. I want to watch the complete version of this one at some point, because there's not a lot of meat on this one's bones. Stupid recaps taking up a good chunk of time in what are already shorter episodes. The combined edit of it is only thirty-four minutes long! But I did enjoy this episode. I'm starting to think this show is at its best when it's doing anything except portraying danmaku battles, because the Hakurei vs. Moriya fight in this one was pretty simple. If this show had an actual budget, it'd be able to portray more elaborate spell cards, but instead we get the same radiating circular patterns. I also would've liked to see Reimu and Marisa use more creative strategies to win, although the use of teamwork in this one was appreciated. At the same time, I think the things people have criticized this series for (except for the fanservice) have more to do with the simplistic nature of the Touhou games' plots. I mean, come on, just about every game after the PC-98 era features a linear plot progression where the player always fights the mastermind of the incident. And the Stage 5 boss always ends up being their lackey. If you've been watching this series and think it's just not very creative, well, take it up with ZUN. There's always time for him to innovate.

To finish off the episode, another stinger, this time featuring the blue-haired wild child Tenshi descending from her heavens, looking for a fight. Who knows if she'll get one.

Random thoughts:

Go ahead, meme me!: I'll do another one from Twitxr this time to make it easier to share.

This week in subtitle jank: Pretty janky. Funnily enough, I looked on Kyoto Fantasy Troupe's YouTube channel, and they have the second and third (part one) episodes of Hifuu Club with the subs in much better quality than what I watched. Guess I'll have to watch these episodes the way Senri intended.
- My favorite jank (from the Ep. 16 preview): "What is the fate of being in trouble!?"
These are some great episodes if you're big on smaller character moments. Nitori's dazed eyes and wheel-o-feet as she scurries away from the tank are a nice combination. There are also a few scenes with Reimu that feel like callbacks to earlier in the series, like when she's in awe of Marisa's surprise attack, and then at the end she looks at Marisa in a similar way to the first episode, only she's not nearly as positive.
On the other hand, a shot of Momiji near the end of Ep. 17 is the first time this series has looked legitimately off-model to me, but it's followed up by a great shot of Kanako making her chug sake.
Seems like Hina was the only member of the MoF cast not to drink at the party; the grilled lamphrey in her mouth suggests she's trying to avoid a contact high. Those Suika particles are very powerful, you know.
Eiki already having a menacing look in her eyes is powerful. I'd change my avatar to that if I hadn't already done so to King Gizzard recently.
Speaking of which, groups for the party: Suika by herself; SDM residents; Alice (w/ Hourai and Shangai Dolls), Yuyuko and Youmu; Kaguya, Eirin, and the two bnuuys; Keine (w/ a box of bamboo) and Mokou, Komachi and Eiki, and Mystia; Wriggle, Rumia, Lily, the Prismrivers, Letty, Yuuka and Medicine.
Both of these episodes get TV-14s. Not very exciting, but this is going better than most of the Idolm@ster anime. Hey, anyone know how Shiny Colors is going? I've been neglecting to watch thanks to its non-simulcasting status.

Musics of Phantasm: And now, a brief digression...

This is to make up for the fact that I haven't really gone into depth about this series from the perspective of its actual audio. A few more stray observations:

There's a lot of wind-based music here. I particularly like the use of that flute, maybe a wooden one, which I've found nostalgic at times.
There are some occasions where the show remixes different themes in different styles. The PoFV arc has a particularly effective moment with Eiki, where the scene where she lectures people at the izakaya features her theme in a low-key electronic style, and then later on the next movement of it is performed by orchestral brass.
There are sound effects mixed in with the music, which I feel would be distracting if you were watching the episodes that way. (Man, sounds trippy. I should consider doing this at some point.) There are even a few voices here and there, though they're all indistinct (like Eiki's Donald Duck talk and stray visitors at the festival in Episode 7).
Some scenes have what sounds like cartoon music. I'm getting "Pizzicato Playtime" vibes from when Tewi meets Reimu and Marisa during the IN arc. And right after that, a nice drop to a faster electronic version of "Voyage 1969" (see? I know my song titles) as Eientei drops out into space.
- Speaking of this arc, Eirin's speech in one scene is to some extent synced to the vocals. Wonder if that was intentional.
- And on top of that, another insert song or two throughout the show would've been nice.

Part 2 of this short series will come next time. Believe it or not, there is a partial English dub of this series, available on this YouTube channel and nowhere else. Three episodes came out before the pandemic, which then derailed it and the project has been on hold ever since. Just for the hell of it, I'll watch the episodes, comment on the music based on that, and inject a little mini-review of it for the Memories of Phantasm grand finale. Thankfully it won't be the finale for this series as a whole.

Say, speaking of voice acting, I think it'd be cool if Manpaku Jinja were to get an actual seiyuu cast for this series. Maybe they could do a crowdfund of their own for it? I mean, if anything a crowdfund for more episodes would be preferred. I want my Unidentified Fantastic Object arc, damnit! Either that, or Kyoto Fantasy Troupe finally pays off on that OP tease and we get to see the sealed esoteric history of Byakuren...

Blatch · October 11, 2024

And so we've finally reached the end of this long, strange famine trip... for now.

Touhou Fantasy Kaleidoscope: The Memories of Phantasm
Episode 18: "The Reimu Assassination Plot" a.k.a. "Reimu Only Lives Twice"

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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!

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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!

[at least the zoloft is working]

Blatch · January 1

Touhou Hifuu Club ~The Sealed Esoteric History~
Rewatch discussion

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Late breaking news:

We have our first bit of animation from the Mystia's Izakaya fanime, still set for a 2025 release. Gaze upon thee:

Interestingly, while there is voice acting, they won't be using professional talent for this one, which gives it a leg up on the dialogue-less (well, initially) Memories of Phantasm. Also, there are hard subs and they seem competent, which his a win for people like me. Let's hope this summer is a good one, with an episode of this show plus a new Hifuu Club-isode for us to enjoy. Viva la Chinese!

Main review:

For the third straight year, I figured I'd wrap it up with another one-off post. But sadly, I don't have an extra-obscure and weird Touhou fanime to cover, so instead, I'll embellish on this series, which I rewatched in its entirety back in October. I didn't even intend it this way; an abortive attempt to write this as a distraction from the election failed, and then when I got this thing done it was held up for a few weeks for no good reason. Now then, let's dive in...

Episode 1: "Moon"

A good deal of fun, but also frustrating. I didn't know the canonical event this episode was based on until after the rewatch, or even that there was one. Turns out, before the second invasion of the Lunar Capital that was the basis of Silent Sinner in Blue (an official manga), Yukari did one hundreds of years in the past. She'd recently met Yuyuko, though Suika's status at the time is unknown. Funnily enough, the latter gets the best scene in the episode, as her fight with Lord Sasarae, and includes a bit of viscerality not really seen in the rest of the fanime. (Now that I think of it, I would say the end of Summer Day's Dream #4 is in a similar zone.) But alas, the Lunarians won in the past, so they win again here. They kind of won the rematch, too, but the Gensokyo crew claimed victory on a technicality. So if canon wasn't an obstacle, I think it would've been better for Yukari to get one up on the Lunarians, which would not only act as blatant wish fulfillment nice catharsis for anti-Moonie fans, it solves the problem of the Watatsukis being poorly-written invincible bastards. Imagine Yorihime in the present talking about how this is her only loss evar! And thus it's something she keeps with her every time she and her sister head into battle.

This episode was only released on DVD, and as a result the YT upload is in 480p resolution, something that also dogged the downloaded copy I watched two long years ago. I thought that wasn't the case. I assume they did produce the episode in HD, given later episodes are in progressively higher resolutions and the OP appears as-is each time. (E3P1 even has a "1080p Premium" option, which I took advantage of. How chic. I subscribed because I figured it'd be good for Secret Base videos.) But hey, even if a torrent source is better, it's fun being able to watch this on your TV this way.

Episode 2: "Wish"
[named "Priestess" here]

Actually did more for me the second time around, which is cool, but even though it held my attention I still think it could be shorter. This time, I wouldn't try to cut anything involving Sanae and Yayoi. Clearly there's gotta be a more efficient way to tell the past of Moriya Shrine, right? Some of the nerdier stuff (the Mishaguji, etc.) feels like padding out the runtime with stuff only the diehards (and Japanese mythology buffs) would appreciate. Also, the scene giving a glimpse into Kanako and Suwako's fight for the shrine feels like a tease. Really wish they'd hung on it some more.

Oh, what's this? It's what could have been!

I think this is the first Touhou fanime episode to feature a seiyuu who's passed away, sadly. Atsuko Tanaka, who voiced Kanako, died back in August. She was also the voice of the corrupt idol executive in that other show I was doing reviews for. I should get back to it.

Episode 3 [part one]: "Fate"
[lol I fucked up the title when I first posted that]

All three episodes benefit from punched-up subs, which are even color-coded using YT's advanced settings, but this one having that plus being in HD really makes it a treat to (re)watch. The subs are even buffed up further with a different font, though funnily enough this makes it harder to determine which character is saying it.

This episode slaps, my goodness. A great synthesis of things from the first two episodes, coupled with questy direction and some nice artistic choices, and there's even some fanservice for the haters to enjoy! Granted, it's tamer than Four Horrifying Minutes of Child Porn (or so they say) from Memories of Phantasm, but I think Renko and Merry sleeping together does more for me than the stuff in the other shows I like. Remember, A Summer Day's Dream features a naked Youmu in one of the OPs, plus a Patchy bathtub scene. I like The Raven more as a character now, and the scene where Merry is depicted as being inside her got me good. So the next episode is coming out at ~~Winter Comiket~~ Spring Reitaisai, right? Come on, I need this shit as a coping mechanism!

Some other stuff:

The rest of Kyoto Fantasy Troupe's YT channel is worth looking at, and includes some fanime shorts that aren't part of this series plus behind-the-scenes videos. One unfinished video I originally thought was a promo for Episode 4, simply because it had the number 4 in the name, but it's actually a music video for a doujin group. So no, it's not confirmed the next sealed esoteric tale will be about Seija and Shinmyoumaru. On the plus side, this means my personal Myouren dream is still alive. Let's do it! Or maybe they could do an episode on the tsukumogami, or Hell becoming Former Hell, or something about the PC-98 characters, or...
Narrative tropes I wish I hadn't used in my previous reviews include assuming that everyone's familiar with the source material as well as being overly self-deprecative about it. Next time, I'll be sure to downplay the smarm in favor of neutrality, m'kay?
I mean, Episode 1's subs didn't need that much of a redo, but I did notice one interesting change: it lacks profanity. Maybe I'll do a clip of the revised version w/ a PGV rating? Of course, I need to get the logistics figured out for my next post first... or even if I want to keep doing them in the current style.
Some great credit sequences here. Episode 2's has some color, but the others are sketched out like MoP's EDs. They look beautiful either way, adding some additional flair and worldbuilding to each episode. Episode 1's ED has a character that looks like Sagume, while E3P1's gives us a taste of what's to come with Remilia, Flandre, and their persecution for being vampires.
I like that the Watatsukis' hair colors match with these two. If somebody hasn't drawn a crossover with these characters yet, they need to, especially because Roco is my favorite Million Live girl.
And before we go, in lieu of a meme, here's another kig post:

I like this mask better than scarlet0rabbit's. This person also has a Kogasa mask, one of numerous I have seen, but it has the eyes made of mesh with stickers slapped on. That's how I want my mask to be like.

BTW, the first pic is unironically the dream for me: kigging as a booth girl at a convention and hawking somebody's doujin work. Maybe I wouldn't be locked to the table, though. And what's up with the Renko cosplayer? I don't think that's a mask, but they remind me of a super-realistic one.

Edited January 6 by Blatch
(Initial:) Oh right, coloring the second half of the title. Pssh.

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