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kozachenko · 14 days

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Ok the WIP I posted a little while ago is no loner a WIP yipeeeeeee I am so tired of looking at this drawing.

Artist's Notes:

THIS DRAWING IS FINALLY DONE YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

Ok so this drawing was a WIP that I had had sitting around for a while, and so because I wanted to do a test run with the new face style I'm trying out, I decided to pick it back up again. Now you may notice that compared to the other version of the WIP, the shading is different, and that's because I had to change all of it to match the light source of the moon, which was.... not exactly fun (especially cuz I stayed up late at night to finish this which was tiring), but it was worth it because I am a lot happier with the shading now. Also, when I initially redid the shading on the white trim of her outfit, I ended up making them look like indiscreet white blobs that just looked... bad, so I had to fix that and I think it looks a lot better.

My favourite parts of this drawing have to be the face and the hair, though I'm not surprised about how much I like the hair since hair is my favourite thing to draw. Also the wolf, I really like how the wolf turned out, since I also love drawing animals from time to time. I also like how the background turned out.

Also, Enoko's design was a hit hard to get right, and I decided to add the white trim separating her shirt and skirt mainly because I didn't like how abruptly it changed in the original design. Also, for some reason her dress makes me think of 1800s-y southern/western clothes, which has given me the headcanon that Saki gave her these clothes when they first met. Makes me wanna draw the two of them together in very western styled clothes, I think it would be cute. I also changed up some of the colours on her original design to fit in more with the palette that I was going for with this piece. Also, I like how her tails turned out, mainly because when I was working on some of the sketch for this I tried to make them smaller, but they didn't look right so I just went "fuck it" and made them big and poofy. Also drawing her wolf ears was fun, I like drawing simplified wolf ears like that. Overall, I'd say I did a good job incorporating elements (like the bear trap hands, the tails, the gem) in a way that didn't feel like they were out of place in the piece (something I was concerned about with Enoko's design).

All in all, I wouldn't call this my best work, but I do like a lot of aspects of it. I've also noticed that I'm kinda getting a bit frustrated with certain parts of my style like the lighting (mainly the lighting), so I think I wanna try and branch back into that more painterly style that I started out with when I first started posting here while still mixing in some elements of my lineless style. Also, I need to get better with my colour values, mainly just for clarity since I kinda think that's where this drawing falls flat a little.

#touhou project #art #fanart #touhou fanart #touhou 19 #enoko mitsugashira #東方project #東方

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kozachenko · 17 days

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MAGNIFICENT, WONDERFUL, A TRUE MAGNUM OPUS, THE APEX OF ALL HUMAN CREATION, STEP ASIDE 42, THIS IS THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING, BEHOLD THIS MAGCARGO IN ALL OF IT'S LOW POLY GLORY!

#asks

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kozachenko · 19 days

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I'm finally drawing digitally again so her is a WIP of Enoko and a wolf while also applying the new style I've been developing for faces, also took a break from the BG because I have been having some trouble with that part lol

No artist notes as I am saving that for the finished piece (also someone tell me if there is something wrong with the knees, it feels like something is wrong with them and I need to know if I'm seeing something wrong or if it's late at night and I'm tired of looking at it)

#touhou project #art wip #enoko mitsugashira

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kozachenko · 23 days

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So I've been thinking about Touhou 19's title recently and I've thought of two reasons as to why it's called "Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghosts." Option 1 is the more obvious one, and option 2 is my favourite one, as it connects to Zanmu (yaaaaaay more Zanmu-posting (kinda) because she's awesome).

For context, Touhou 17 kinda left off on a note of, "The Beast spirits are going to be back again, even though their problem with Keiki has been solved." Once the beast spirits learned about Gensokyo, it's very likely that they saw an opportunity to claim it as quickly as possible to gain more power and influence. So since they kinda couldn't accomplish that by the end of Touhou 17, it would probably explain the "unfinished dream" part pretty well. As for the "all living ghost" part, the actual phrase is a bit of an oxymoron, but it could have something to do with the way of life in the Animal Realm. Even though they're technically dead, they're way of life (or way of death if you wanna be nitpicky) is all about "survival of the fittest" and "strong eating the weak." IDK how much sense that makes, but it's the best reason I could come up with.

The second interpretation though, makes the whole "all living ghost" part make more sense. So Zanmu's ability is basically just making someone's motivation and desires go away, and so looking at the title with that in mind, a lot of things start to make more sense. First of all, the "unfinished dream" part becomes a literal term for all the dreams and desires the characters Zanmu manipulated had that are now forever left "unfinished" because they lost the motivation to want to achieve them. As for the "all living ghost" part, this then goes from a confusing oxymoron, to a metaphor for the people who lost all their motivations and desires. They become husks of themselves, hell, we even see in Zanmu's interaction with Yachie in her scenario that Yachie lost a lot of the energy she had before meeting her. So the whole title of, "Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost" can become an allegory for the entire game's plot.

On a side note relating to Zanmu (that I wanna put here just so I don't have to make another post later) in a previous reblog I mentioned how because of Zanmu's power she can get away with basically anything. This "ability" of hers probably isn't supernatural, and most likely just describes how she uses words to manipulate people. Maybe the whole, "ability to manipulate nothingness" thing came from other denizens of Hell, much like how people in history would often attribute a person's achievements to them being connected to the gods, or having supernatural abilities.

So yeah, that's just a little thing I have been thinking about for a while. Touhou titles are really cool, because they sound like a bunch of random fancy words mashed together at first glance, but when you really think about it, it starts to make sense and connects a lot with the games themes and story, which is really what a good title should do.

#touhou project #zanmu nippaku #touhou 19 #unfinished dream of all living ghost #touhou udoalg

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kozachenko · 27 days

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Haven't posted any art in a while, so here are some digital sketches (plus some traditional ones under the tag) I've done recently that are sort of the test runs for how I might want to stylize my faces in the future.

Artist's Notes:

So recently I've been in a bit of a rut with my art, more specifically the way I draw faces, so one day I got kind of bored and decided to do a study of Yoshitaka Amano's art style in my sketchbook and then I kinda got obsessed with the way he draws faces (The bottom two are probably the most reminiscent to his art style outside of colouring and the hair). I also got these really cool mini statue busts of some roman statues which has also helped me a lot when it comes to facial proportions. With these sketches I really wanted to try and focus on how to apply what I learned from my style studies while also branching off and adding that to my own style (the sketches of which I put below). I also wanted to experiment with different skin colours and how they relate to the rest of the character's colour palette. I also didn't go too crazy on the lighting and rendering for majority of them, except for the earrings and the hair on the third one, as well as the blush underneath the eye on the second one, as I just wanted to play around with some ideas I had.

While I do try and draw outside of my comfort zone in my sketchbook, I haven't really done it as much in my digital art, so I used this as my opportunity to rectify that. Also, if any of you guys have advice or feedback for drawing POC please tell me, I have been drawing curly hair the same ever since I was 5 so advice on how to draw curly hair better would also be helpful, I am also not the most experienced with rendering it as I have only really drawn that type of hair traditionally in my sketchbooks.

Also, I have gotten oddly attached to these sets of faces, I might make them into some new OCs later. If I do draw them again, I'll probably change the jawline shapes of a few of them because I kept defaulting to the same round shape for half of them and I wanna kick that habit lol.

Also, here are some pics from my sketchbook of my style studies, where I really focused on trying to get a feel for how Amano draws faces. The pictures are in order of attempts btw (i.e. top left is the first one and bottom right is the most recent one).

Overall I think I did a good job, but some of them deviate a lot more from the references I used than others lol.

#art #sketch #sketches #potentially new OCs????#style studies #digital sketch #traditional sketch #not touhou

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kozachenko · 1 month

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Finished reading Forbidden Scrollery! As I mentioned in my little post about it before, I would make a full review on it once I finished it, so here we are now!

(Also, sorry I haven't been posting as much art recently, life's gotten busy for me and I haven't really had the time to work on anything big, but I hope to get back into drawing soon)

And honestly? Best Touhou manga I have read so far. Full review under the keep reading tag. Also, spoilers if you want to read it.

The writing first of all, was really good, the pacing is perfect (only helped by the actual paneling and layouts being top notch), the character writing was my favourite part of the manga, and the actual story was actually pretty smart.

So, something I love about this manga is that it all revolves around a core idea, that being, the relationship between Humans and Youkai. While each chapter is episodic in nature, it still feels like those little episodes actually have a purpose, it isn't just filler. There's not one major problem they have to resolve like in CDS, but at the same time the events aren't disjointed from one another like in Lotus Eaters. The way that we see Kosuzu slowly get more and more involved with the Youkai of the human village. I also really like how we learn more about the human village and how it operates, as well as learning more about how the Youkai play a part in it. In each chapter we see a different way that this core theme is expressed, like in chapters 20 and 21 where we see how outsiders like the residents of Eientei contribute to the human village, and in chapters 30 and 31 where we see how humans help Youkai out via their fear of the unknown. And of course, you have the infamous chapter 25, where the most memorable moment from there also happens to be the most flanderized (I'll get to that in my paragraph about Reimu, because her character writing in this manga is the best that I've seen in the Touhou mangas so far). The best chapters that demonstrate this theme are probably all in volumes 6 and 7, where things start to get more intense.

Now onto the writing, and boy while this may be whiplash from reading CDS, the writing in this manga was amazing. Each character has their own unique voice, which ends up making the events in chapter 38 even funnier. Since Mamizou has a very distinct way of speaking, it makes it even funnier watching her be disguised as Reimu and accidentally slipping into her own way of talking.

Of course, this scene is visually aided by Moe Harukawa giving "Reimu" the little cat mouth she gives Mamizou, and also the very obvious signifier of the leaf, but establishing Mamizou's way of speaking early on in the manga helps emphasize the comedy of this scene (that being, a sassy old woman trying to impersonate someone in their early 20s with a very different personality to them).

What's even funnier about this scene is that as soon as Mamizou gets what she wants, she just gives up on trying to speak like Reimu and dips (which is the punchline to the setup of Mamizou almost calling Kosuszu "Little Missy" and then correcting herself)

Also, credit to the English translators for finding words and phrases like, "The real Mccoy" and "Reckon," with how different the Japanese and English languages are (and how tricky it can be to translate between the two) they ended up hitting the nail on the head with the localization and translation.

The actual narrative itself is really well paced, with all the events actually feeling like they happen consecutively to one another, only helped by the little bits in the dialogue where the characters mention previous events in the story. For a manga in a series where upholding status quo is the norm, a lot of changes happen in this manga, like Akyuu starting to write novels under a penname, Kosuzu starting to attract the attention of more and more important people in Gensokyo, and Kosuzu eventually being added into Reimu's friend group. The manga also does an excellent job of tying the events of the games at the time into the story, like we're seeing the behind the scenes or aftermath of a particular incident, especially so with the Urban Legend Incident, where we see Reimu and Marisa get more and more concerned about rumors like "The Story of the Bull Head" and the end of the world speading too far before they can do actual damage. I also like the tone that this manga has, it's inviting at first with how cute and lighthearted it is, but it slowly gets more and more serious we begin to see the truth of the human village, and by proxy, Gensokyo as a whole. Also, the set up and payoff with the parade scroll was really well excecuted, with it acting as like a ticking time bomb in the background as the series goes on. I also really like how each chapter feels different from each other in terms of plot beats, it's not really formulaic like Lotus Eaters was, which helps make the manga a lot more exciting to read, despite it not having a grandiose overarching plot.

Now onto the character writing. As you can probably see, I am turning into a bit of a Mamizou fan. She's one of the most well written characters in the manga and perfectly strikes the balance of being hilarious, yet intimidating at the same time. She's a pretty smart character despite her goofiness, and she's always such a joy to watch (or.. well... read, but that doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely (well actually fingers since I'm typing this, but again, doesn't roll off the fingers as nicely (yipeeee I used a phrase correctly). Also, I really like seeing her relationship with Nue as that of a grandma and her grandaughter who's a chaotic scene kid, but despite these differences they get along perfectly. Aya is also one of my favourite characters to read about in the manga, and I was so excited to see her again. She's always such a delight to see, and also captures that sense of goofiness + coolness. In a way, it's kinda the embodiment of Youkai in Touhou itself. Fun and charming yet supernatural and menacing at the same time. In your usual manga/anime series, it's more likely that characters will lean one way or the other (and anytime they step out of their ascribed personality, it's for a gag and is considered an oddity, wheras with Touhou it's commonplace), so it's a really unique writing thing in Touhou that I don't really see other things, which is really cool. Marisa is also written really well in this, she's really funny and plays off of Reimu really well. Kosuzu herself is also fun to read about, as her childlike view of Gensokyo slowly begins to crack as more and more influential youkai begin to interact with her. I also like how the manga doesn't tell you in the beginning that she's a young, naive kid, instead, it shows you little details like her having a curfew, her parents calling her for dinner, her general outlook on life in general. All of that is contrasted with Akyuu, who, while bit pretentious, was also very fun to read. She plays off of Akyuu's naivete well with her wisdom from her past lives and her knowledge on Gensokyo. She acts like how you would expect a teenager with memories of their past lives to act, with maybe a slight dash of maturity in there.

And now for Reimu, who I think is at her best in this manga. There were times when I legit went, "HOLY SHIT REIMU'S SO FUCKING COOL OH MY GOD-" instead of just going, "Ha ha, Reimu's such a dork." Like, she actually knows her shit in this manga, and it explores the "shrine maiden" side of her character in far more detail than we have ever really seen it before (except in arguably Silent Sinner in Blue, which I still need to re-read, yes I will also be making a full review for that as well once I do get around to it). I use this panel from chapter 27 as my example because she genuinely looks so cool here.

Reimu very frequently uses her skills as a shrine maiden to get to find the answers she needs, and she's not afraid to get her job done. As seen in the now iconic panel of Chapter 25...

This is probably what the manga is most well known for, and when I mentioned how this moment is flanderized, I'm more so talking about how people tend to look at this moment in isolation, and to be honest, Reimu isn't helping herself by saying this a moment before she does this guy in.

Which is then sort of contradicted when Reimu says this after she does the guy in.

So if she has a legit reason for why she did this, why the heck did she call it needless then? I feel like the best way of answering this would be that yes, she didn't need to do it, but from her perspective she had to. It's her job to do so, as she says so herself. Another thing to mention that contradicts the initial reading of that earlier line is just how seriously she takes this whole ordeal. During the pages leading up to this moment, we see Reimu as being uncharacteristically serious about this,

And when she finally arrives at Suzunaan, we get this really good reaction shot of her eyes, and it really says a lot about her mental state at the moment,

and she also gets very serious during her initial confrontation with this fortune teller guy.

Another thing that contradicts the "needless killing" part is how she handeled that one rich guy becoming a Youkai in chapter 37

Reimu is just ruthless when she needs to get her job done in general. Sure, she didn't need to kill the rich guy, she could have just let him go and not do anything about it, but she it's not about what she needs, it's what Gensokyo needs.

In the same chapter where she kills the fortune teller, we get this bit of narration.

Honestly, I feel like this is a kind of "Reimu knows more about Gensokyo than she lets on" kind of situation, because we never really learn exactly how having a human become a Youkai would screw up Gensokyo, but I have heard theories where if a human-who-became-a-youkai were to still try to be human, then it would be cause for concern because then it's like putting a radioactive rock in the middle of a small elevator with a lot of people (ok I know that doesn't make any sense whatsoever but I can't think of another way to put it). .

Putting that can of worms aside, I really like this manga's version of Reimu. Sure she has her dorky moments, but that's not the entirety of who she is, and I really like that. I really like it when characters have vastly contradicting sides to their personality, it makes them more interesting and also more fun to think about. There is so much more that I can say about Reimu in this manga, but I'll just end off this segment by saying that Reimu is now one of my favourite Touhou characters now and she is in my top 5 list of favourite Touhou characters.

Ok now it's time to finally talk about the artstyle and OH MY GOD THE ART FOR THIS MANGA IS GORGEOUS I WANNA EAT IT SHKGAGSLHSKGSAKJDGHKSLDJGHLAHDGLJH;SLGHKDJAH;GKGHDJK;HFGKADHG;J-

Seriously though, I really want to do a style study for this manga because I love it so much. It's expressive, the cross-hatching gives it this really nice and tactile feeling, and the designs the artist came up with for each character are really good. My only critique would be to maybe give Mamizou more wrinkles, or something more to communicate her age, (and I still like the way Mamizou is drawn in this manga). In my previous post on FS I brought up how good the layouts are, and that still holds up to when I finished this manga. Good manga paneling takes advantage of the fact that it's a manga, and uses that medium to it's fullest. I won't go into any more detail here as I have already talked about how good it's paneling is in a previous post, so go read that if you're interested. I feel like we all know what makes Moe Harukawa's art so good, so I'll just leave this segment at that.

Now, I would normally end this segment here, but really, there's one surprise I haven't talked about

One character who steals the show in this manga

A character so good, I had to write an entirely new segment on him

That's right, it's a dude, and it isn't Rinnosuke.

I'M TALKING ABOUT THE MAN,

THE MYTH,

AND MOST OF ALL, THE LEGEND.

ANXIOUS

MUSTACHED

VILLAGER!

THIS MAN, RIGHT HERE, THE GOAT OF ALL MANGA AND ANIME! BEST CHARACTER IN ALL OF EXISTENCE! ABSOLUTELY INSPIRING STORY THAT DROVE ME TO TEARS! BEST CHARACTER ARC IN THE ENTIRE MANGA! GET THIS MAN TO NUMBER ONE IN THE 2024 TOUHOU POPULARITY POLL LIKE HE DESERVES!

Ok in all seriousness, this manga is amazing, (I mean, it has anxious mustached villager in it) I see why people regard it so highly in relation to the other Touhou mangas. It was a blast to read, and it's my favourite Touhou manga now, and is also one of my new favourite mangas in general.

Ok I'm gonna end the post here now, bye byeeeeeee.

#touhou project #anxious mustached villager #reimu hakurei #I tag her mainly because I talk about her so much in this review #forbidden scrollery #forbidden scrollery spoilers #touhou spoilers

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kozachenko · 1 month

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Ok so I just started reading Forbidden Scrollery, and I just wanted to talk about something that this manga does really well, and that is, the page layouts.

Take chapter 7 page three in volume 2 for example, we start off establishing what it is Sakuya is describing (the lost pet she's looking for), and for the next three panels, we see Sakuya's descriptions match up with the pictures on the page. The three panel's borders are each drawn in a looser way than how the panels are normally drawn, so when your eyes move to the bottom of the page, it turns out that those same three panels were Reimu imagining what this creature looks like.

The manga does this in other places as well and I love it. It's a creative way of showing a character thinking about something and still keeping it engaging. It also helps to preserve the flow and pacing of the manga, which does a lot in making it enjoyable to read.

For me, if a manga's story is bad and the paneling is bad, then I'm not gonna enjoy it as much. I mentioned in my CDS review that once the art style changed I ended up enjoying the manga more, and this is a factor that contributes to the enjoyment of a manga for me.

Also, I'm gonna do a proper review of this manga when I eventually finish it, so I won't touch on the writing just yet, but I will say, Reimu and Marisa are a lot smarter in this manga than in CDS and LE, and while I didn't really mind it that much in LE, but in CDS it got really frustrating.

Also Mamizou is back in this manga and I love her, I love seeing Mamizou in more Touhou stuff, more Mamizou please.

#touhou project #forbidden scrollery

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kozachenko · 1 month

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A compilation of questions and thoughts I have about Touhou's Hell, and the Hell adjacent places in Touhou (mainly just new hell and the animal realm)

This is very long so I'll put a little keep reading link down here

Maybe I just need to catch myself up on the lore, but I've been thinking about the whole "Former Hell-New Hell" thing because like, how did the selection for Gensokyo's Hell work? Was Former Hell still the main Hell before Gensokyo was made? Or did it change before Gensokyo was made and Zanmu was just looking for a new place for Hell to be located in, saw what Hecatia made and just went "ah yes, this is the spot" and just picked that specific place. Like, even the wiki states that the exact time of Hell's location change is unknown. Also, it's stated in Zanmu's profile that she rules over Hell, but then that brings Hecatia's importance in Hell into question. How important is Hecatia to Gensokyo's Hell really? It also says on the Touhou wiki page for Hell that before Touhou 17 there was some internal conflict going on there and that that's what the Animal spirits used to cause a distraction so they could accomplish their plans?

Also, how long have the animal spirits been dealing with Keiki for? Because for a god that is relatively obscure and who was (supposedly) only just summoned, she seems pretty powerful, almost completely taking over the Animal realm (had it not been for our protagonists). Also, with the way Yachie refers to Keiki as an "old enemy" (which I am STILL thinking about), how long have the two known each other? They're familiar enough to talk to each other while fighting, and the beast spirits know her name. Which would be another weird detail if she was very recently summoned? Keiki isn't really the type to show off that she's a god (heck, she even tries to convince the protagonists that she's a human), and Keiki herself is familiar with how the beast spirits operate, with her lines on how "beasts will be beasts" and her comments on the different beast gangs in the Animal realm showing that dealing with beast spirits clearly isn't a new thing to her. Overall, there seems to be this sense of vitriolic familiarity (for lack of a better term) between everyone in the Animal realm. Also, with the technological state of the Animal realm in Touhou 17, there are clearly a lot of modern buildings approaching the Primate Garden. So either A) The beasts built those themselves and it was always like that or B) Keiki built those when she was summoned. Now I don't know about you, but I don't think anyone, god or not, would be able to complete an entire city in just a day or two. Especially one like the one in Touhou 17. I feel like with all of this information, it's safe to say that Keiki has been a problem for a while.

Also, how did the Animal Realm even get created in the first place? Like, was it always there when Hecatia made Hell, or did Zanmu just kind of make the realm it's own thing, because from what I've gathered, it's implied that Yachie, Yuuma, and Saki all came from Old Hell to the New Hell when Zanmu changed locations (also, a bit unrelated, but I have the headcanon that Yachie started using, or developed her ability to be more like Zanmu's since she looks up to her a lot).

A thing that's kind of unrelated, but makes me laugh whenever I think about is how Zanmu is basically just what would happen if a DnD player rolled a Nat 20 on every single charisma check and ended up becoming the King of Hell. Like, if you were to make her a DnD character you'd have to make her a neutral evil Monk who has a really high charisma bonus stat lmao

I've also kind of developed this little story idea for a Touhou fic, where the events of Touhou 15 inadvertently set up Touhou 17, where Hecatia's involvement in Junko's revenge plans end up being a sort of "last straw" for the rest of Hell. People are beginning to question why Hecatia is getting so involved with this one vengeful spirit and why she's so Hell bent (get it?) on picking a fight with one of the most powerful, and technologically advanced civilizations in the world (The Lunar Capital) when doing so would do nothing for Hell? Of course, I have a feeling that Zanmu would probably be manipulating Hell's population against Hecatia, since a part of this idea is that Zanmu wants Hecatia out of Hell so she can take complete control of it herself (since I really like the idea of the two of them having this sort of power struggle where they both want the other one gone). Then as the political strife in Hell gets more and more intense, the beast spirits see this distraction as an opportunity to set their plan to get rid of Keiki in motion. They discover Gensokyo, find our protagonists, yadda yadda yadda Touhou 17 happens, you know the rest.

Also, as my own way of connecting Touhou 17 to Touhou 18, during the incident of 17.5, the Tengu probably got involved in the selling of oil, and once it was over, Megumu was looking for new buisness opportunities and came across Chimata, Touhou 18 happens, this leads into Touhou 19 (I really really really want a new fighting game for 19.5 that expands on whatever happened to Keiki because, oh yeah, WHERE IS SHE ZUN, IS SHE WITH MIMA OR SOMETHING, PLEASE, I NEED ANSWERS-).

So yeah those are my ramblings about Touhou's Hell, like, it's such an interesting location and I really want more Touhou media to take place there since there's so much you could do with the setting.

#touhou project #ramblings #I mention these characters briefly #zanmu nippaku #hecatia lapislazuli #keiki haniyasushin #Touhou 19 #touhou 17

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kozachenko · 1 month

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On a serious note, this is kind of a freaky concept for a villain. Someone who is so obvious and upfront about exactly what they're planning to do, but they still get away with it because no one is able to stop them. It doesn't matter if you know about what they're about to do, you knowing has already been factored into the plan, so why bother fighting back?

discussions about antagonistic 2hus are so funny bc you’ll see people describing them as plotting and conniving. a Sneaky Schemer ……………. and they say stuff like this

“Yet”

#zanmu nippaku #More reasons as to why she's one of my favourite 2hus #Another reason as to why 2hu characters are fun in general #they are this perfect mix between being funny and intimidating at the same time and that's what makes them so unique

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kozachenko · 1 month

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So I just wanted to try and workshop how I would draw Mayumi in my artstyle, so I did a little Mayumi doodle just to get an idea of how I want her armor to look as well as her silhouette, then just for fun I drew a Keiki for scale and then this happened

I think the main thing that really made me fall in love with this ship is how it reminds of Link and Zelda in ToTK, and since I love that ship it very much influenced how I see this ship. I love imagining Keiki just rambling to Mayumi about something art related and Mayumi enjoys listening to her. Also, Mayumi has to make sure Keiki actually drinks real water and not paint water. Yes is has happened enough times to the point where it would be a problem.

#touhou project #doodle #keiki haniyasushin #mayumi joutougu #mayukeiki

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kozachenko · 2 months

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[Click image for better quality]

I FIGURED OUT A WAY TO FUCKING MAKE THE IMAGE SMALLER FOR POSTING ON TUMBLR WITHOUT SACRIFICING THE ACTUAL QUALITY OF THE IMAGE OH MY GOD

Ok so, what I did is go into the clip studio paint file, make a new file, copy and paste the group in the original file, merge everything, get rid of the extra stuff outside of the canvas, and then make the flattened image smaller and crop the canvas. Once you have that, export it and you're done. This helps maintain the actual quality of the image and also helps shrink the file size down to something actually postable (if anyone has a better way of doing this please tell me)

[Edit]: Ok I guess posting something to Tumblr just naturally compresses the image a bit more somehow because I'm looking at it now and zooming in too much makes it a bit blurry so I'm still gonna have to futz around with image quality for future pieces oof

Artist's Note:

I'm so glad I figured out a way to do this because I like working on a big canvas so I can get as much detail in as I possibly can. Only problems are how laggy it gets while drawing lol.

I had an idea for a drawing with Reimu and Zanmu because I really like thinking about their potential dynamic a lot. I also wanted an excuse to draw Zanmu again but in my normal rendering style because last time I drew her she was in my more sketchy style with generally flat colours so I wanted to draw her again. Speaking of, looking at the sketch for this is a jumpscare that I never enjoy seeing, like, man am I glad I didn't use those for my final piece.

Also about her spear. I was originally gonna make it like the ones she had in game, but it kinda threw off the whole piece. It was too big, too blue, and too flat, so I just went "fuck it" and gave her a different one instead. My headcanon justifying this is that the ones she uses in game are for danmaku battles whereas in any other fight she just uses a proper yari, or she still uses the yari and just makes it all glowy to power it up, maybe both lol. I pulled as much inspiration as I could from Sengoku era spears, and even put in some blue into the decorative part of the spear and also added a little skull to pay tribute to the original spear. Also, in my research I saw some art of izanami and izanagi making japan and saw that the yari izanagi has had a little decorative tassley thingy on it so I took some inspo from that and just made it one of Zanmu's tassles (Idk when that art was from or if the spear was still accurate to Sengoku period Japan but hey, probably the same reasons Eirin puts little bow ties on her arrows, it's just for personalization purposes).

I love rendering hair and clothes so much omg, while I like the super curly hair Zanmu, the longer, wavier hair suits her better for this drawing (I imagine it only does that like how Ghibli characters hair moves when they feel angry lol). I love making Zanmu's hair all messy and crazy, as well as giving her grey hairs, this woman has aged like a fine wine. Also, if the hem on the ends of her sleeves, top of her shirt, and her pants look like gold to you, that's because it is! It's fairly light so she's not collapsing under the weight, but it's gold! (I don't care how impractical it is, it's just cool). Not the undershirt though, it's made of a gold fabric. I had a cute idea with Reimu's hair to make it have a red shine to it. I also changed up Reimu's outfit so it isn't just a blob of red. I like it a lot when Reimu's skirt and outfit is segmented into different layers, so I wanted to incorporate that.

I tried to draw their hands differently as well, but IDK how noticeable that is. Also, I am super happy with how the side profiles for the two of them turned out, I used to struggle a lot with how to make the side profile of a character actually look like the character, so I'm really happy that they actually look like themselves.

Also added in the tree and rocks in the background as an homage to Zanmu's character art in Touhou 19, just because I was getting kinda stumped on what to do with the background lol.

In terms of a story idea with Reimu and Zanmu, idk why but the potential plotline of Zanmu wanting to ascend to godhood is so fascinating to me. Like, it is very possible that if she just convinced everyone she was a god (which would be very easy for her to do), she would become one in a heartbeat. Also, if she were to become a god, with her ability to return stuff to nothing, could she hypothetically get similar abilities to (Jojo Part 5 spoiler btw) GER? Like, idk about the death timeloop stuff, but the concept has been haunting me every night as I have been trying to find loopholes in GER's ability for a while now ( for no reason in particular). Back to the main topic, I imagine that she would probably tell Reimu that if she were to become a god she would take over the Hakurei shrine since the god there might as well be dead, and Reimu just says to her, "Over my dead body bitch." Like, I have no idea how to summarize their dynamic but like, it's the type of hero-villain dynamic where the phrase "We're not so different, you and I" would definitely be a phrase said during a fight. I think that if another IN style game were to release, Reimu and Zanmu would be in a team together. They could also have an interesting mentor and pupil kind of dynamic. Can you tell that Zanmu has been charging my mind rent these part few months? Like, instead of living in my head rent free, she kinda just uno reversed the whole situation and now she's the one charging me rent. What happens if I get evicted from my own brain? Actually, scratch that, I don't think I wanna know.

#touhou project #art #fanart #touhou fanart #touhou 19 #touhou #東方project #zanmu nippaku #unfinished dream of all living ghost #reimu hakurei #東方

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kozachenko · 2 months

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I think an underrepresented part of Keiki's personality is the fact that she tends to hold people to their decisions and values decisiveness a lot. The best way I can descibe it is like the saying, "You've made your bed and now you'll lie in it." Like, in Youmu's scenarios, Keiki consistently gets fed up with Youmu's indecisiveness and is willing to ruin her life for it.

Not only that, but in all scenarios the things that annoys her the most is the fact that in the end, the beast spirits and the protagonists all run away from her after putting together this whole plan to confront her (again, using Youmu scenario because the dialogue is right there).

Keiki herself is also a very decisive character. I keep thinking about why the hell Yachie never used her ability on Keiki to just get her to go away, and I feel like the reason why is because of Keiki's personality just being very hard for Yachie to manipulate (and also maybe because like Haniwa, Keiki could maybe have an immunity to attacks on the spirit but that's getting into headcanon territory now so ehhhh). Hell, even in this dialogue she decides very quickly that the protagonist is going to become another one of her idols. She really only changes her mind on this after she's defeated.

I feel like more people need to play around with this idea for more morally grey Keiki because I really like the idea of a morally grey Keiki, I love morally grey characters because they're so fun to think about. I also think that this trait of hers could also play into her relationship with the human spirits. The human spirits prayed for someone, anyone, to give them protection, and Keiki did just that. She's only done exactly what the human spirits have asked her to do, she's given them every single thing they've asked for. They never asked for an escape, nor did they ever ask for their freedom back, so why should she give that to them? They're doing just fine with her in charge, so they're better off that way.

They prayed for a god to save them, and that's exactly what they got.

#touhou project #keiki haniyasushin #long post

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kozachenko · 2 months

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Do you feel Gensokyo would indeed be better off if Reimu WAS more thorough in youkai extermination (i.e. actually successfully punishing Mamizou at all)? It's part of her real job, sure, but it's also a point against Gensokyo. Basically, do you think Mizuchi is right that humans and youkai should be as far away from each other as possible and constant enemies?

I think it all depends on the severity of a Youkai's actions, like, if a Youkai were to just walk around disguised in the human village and they're just kind of chilling and not causing problems then that probably isn't worth an extermination, on the contrary if a Youkai were to try and kill a bunch of humans in the village and/or threaten Gensokyo, then yeah, that's probably worth at least a beatdown from Reimu. In regards to the most recent Lotus Eaters chapter, I think that Reimu should probably punish Mamizou with more than just a slap on the wrist and expose what she did to the human village, but at the same time, the tanuki have to eat too. They can't normally just go and buy food from the human village because that would be too obvious. But still, if Reimu were to expose Mamizou's plotting, then that would probably help them in the long run if humans were more scared of them, and it's not like Reimu just exposing them would stop them from doing what they want anyway. Besides, worst case scenario, if Reimu does exterminate Mamizou, then there will just be a new tanuki who takes her place as leader. Again, it all depends on how necessary it will be for Reimu to exterminate them, and what doing so will actually accomplish.

I also don't agree with Mizuchi's statement that humans and Youkai should be as far away as possible, mainly because we've seen examples of humans and Youkai getting along peacefully together throughout the series. Some examples I can think of right now are. Alice and Marisa, Miyoi in Geidontei, Nitori just coming to the human village mainly to sell things, Aya schilling for her own newspaper to the human villagers, heck, all of Myouren temple seems to be in pretty good relations with the human village and a lot of the people who live there are Youkai, and Byrakuren's whole thing is wanting for humans and Youkai to live in peace. However, since Youkai run on fear to fuel their existence, I think there is some validity to what Mizuchi is saying. I'm not saying that the Youkai should be all buddy buddy with the human villagers, but I'm not saying that they should be enemies either. To use Miyoi as an example again, since she's a Zashiki Warashiki, she's only bringing good luck to the buisness she watches over. Her existence isn't as reliant on fear, like a lot of other Youkai.

Again, it's not a simple black and white thing, it's more so a spectrum of how badly a Youkai being near humans will fuck things up. Even if you take a look at the "balance of Gensokyo," constantly punishing Youkai for just chilling in the human village and not actually doing anything bad is only going to lead to more problems in the long run. Resentment will build overtime towards humans, and more drastic problems will start presenting themselves, which only leads to a constant cycle of Reimu having to fight even more dangerous and powerful Youkai that try to attack the human village, eventually leaving Gensokyo in a constant state of unrest, and while yes the spellcard system exists for that whole reason, there are going to be Youkai who don't give two shits about it and just do whatever they want anyway. For the safety of the human villagers in Gensokyo, not holding as big a fear of Youkai would probably help keep relations peaceful for a longer period of time, as well as keeping Youkai from becoming so powerful that it's basically impossible to keep them in check without having to exterminate them.

#touhou project #also I have only recently caught up on both of the ongoing mangas so if there's anything I'm missing please let me know

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kozachenko · 2 months

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Ok managed to catch up on Cheating Detective Satori... surprisingly quickly! Was it as bad as I thought?

....I mean, not really but it's still not... the best. Full review under the keep reading tag. Huge spoilers for the manga, of course.

Ok so, for the first bit before Mizuchi's reveal was... honestly kinda bad, like, Satori could've just... solved the case at the mansion quicker if she just read Sakuya's mind and went "ah yes she had no motive but did it anyway she was possessed" because like, if Mizuchi had been pulling shit like that before in former Hell, shouldn't she have said something? That's kind of a problem in this manga, the characters who should be telling us something are just so "vaguey no explainey". And also, why the fuck wasn't she at the scene more often? Like, why wasn't she the one who interviewed Sakuya? Why Orin? Why does Satori barely show up in a manga called Cheating Detective Satori? I mean, I don't mind it as a narrative choice but with the title it just feels like false advertising at this point.

Overall, the first portion of the manga with the endless "but who's being possessed next?" is honesly kinda frustrating. Also, Reimu, you are literally a shrine maiden and you have experience with ghosts and the like, what's stopping you from using some kind of spiritual techniques to try and track Mizuchi down? Like, why?

And now for the somewhat controversial reveal of Mizuchi...and honestly? I'm fine with it not being Mima. Like, it would have contradicted with her character from the PC-98 games anyways, and also because MORE MIZUCHI PLEASE HOLY FUCKING SHIT HAVE I BEEN CONVERTED TO THE MIZUCHI ENJOYERS CLUB OH MY FUCKING GOD-

Yeah so Mizuchi is my diamond in the rough that is Cheating Detective Satori. I like her character a lot and the parts where she's in it are some of my favourite parts in the manga. However, I think her sudden escalations in power are... well a bit much to say the least? Like, in the Eientei arc they mention how "we don't really know how the jailbreak king posses people" and my first reaction was, "REIMU YOU HAVE SEEN NOT ONE, NOT TWO, BUT 4 PEOPLE GET PASS OUT AFTER DRINKING SOMETHING, MAYBE YOU COULD INFER THAT THIS JAILBREAK KING CAN ONLY GET TO YOU IF YOU DRINK SOMETHING AND SO YOU MAKE SURE NO ONE DRINKS ANYTHING EVEN IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE EXACT CAUSE OF IT-" which, I guess it was never really properly established but fine, it leads to a cool moment where Mokou gets possesed and all but still. Mizuchi doesn't really have any weaknesses and kinda gets more and more powerful as the manga goes on.

However, if ZUN plays his cards right this could turn into a good thing JUST HEAR ME OUT, PLEASE-

Ok so, before I read the manga I saw the idea that Okina had something to do with Mizuchi getting loose and I fucking love that idea. Mizuchi's rampage in Gensokyo being enabled by Okina (albeit unknowingly) could also help explain the sudden power ups she gets.

[EDIT]: Ok as I was still organizing my thoughts on the manga after this, I realized that the limitation of Mizuchi only being able to posses people who have a grudge on the Hakurei shrine is pretty smart and could be used for some good character conflicts. But I think this is something that's kind of underutilized in the actual manga, despite the fact that it maybe limits who Mizuchi can posses in Gensokyo.

Anyways, the manga is kind of just wallowing with the story, like, why did the protagonists just let Mizuchi get away into former Hell when they could've just... exterminated her then and there. Like, if you still wanted Mizuchi to get away somehow, you could just extend the fight to where Mizuchi swaps from body to body as she makes everyone fight each other for her, so that by the end, everyone is too exhausted to go after her. Other than that, I actually liked the Myouren Temple arc a lot. Like, it isn't perfect per say but I liked it the most. I also liked how in the most recent chapter, we (kind of) learn what Mizuchi's deal is, mainly that something about Gensokyo's creation royally screwed her over. I also think that the twist with her being a member of a family that served the Hakurei shrine was really cool too. I have always liked the idea of there being something darker going on behind Gensokyo's creation. I honest to god don't know how the fuck ZUN is gonna end the manga though. Like, I just wanna know how the hell things are gonna go now, especially with the sealing off of former Hell. Which, side note, but I love how pissed off Yuugi is in the most recent chapter, like, this is the second time now that someone who was meant to take care of the place just ended up ditching it. Of course she's gonna be mad. I'm not against the idea of Former Hell needing to be sealed up, it's just how it gets there that's kind of messy. Like, it's such a drastic decision that just feels to rash for Satori to make, especially considering the fact that Mizuchi was RIGHT FUCKING THERE I'M STILL PISSED OFF THAT THEY JUST LET HER GET AWAY LIKE THAT LIKE WHY?! I feel like that's where a lot of problems with this manga lie, a lot of really interesting plot points and events that are very messily connected.

[EDIT]: Ok so about that last point I missed something with the latest chapter and yeah, Satori planning on getting Reimu to confront Mizuchi personally is a good way narratively to recover from what would normally be something out of character for Satori (This whole post was made in a bit of a hurry after I finished the most recent chapter so the information still needs to set in my brain a little).

Now for my thoughts on the artstyle. I'll be honest, the early artstyle for the manga was really pretty, but didn't really work for a manga style story. It's really nice looking for illustrations, but other than that it's just kinda eh. The page layouts were kind of boring and I think that's what made the earlier chapters feel boring. It also somehow fucked up the way each character talked if that makes any sense??? Like, since there wasn't really much expression in the character's faces, they all kind of started to blend together, even with the dialogue they all felt like they thought and reacted in the exact same way. Not to mention Sakuya's STUPID RINKY DINK LITTLE MAID CROWN WHY IS IT VERTICAL- sorry had to go off on that tangent there, that's always bothered me.

However, the manga's new style is so much better oh my god. Like, everyone translated pretty well into the style, even if it is a teensy bit inconsistent. The page layouts were also really creative and made things a lot easier to read. It only got better as the manga went on too. Can I talk about how beautiful Yuugi looks? Ok so Yuugi looks fucking gorgeous in this manga, like, the artist clearly liked her the most because she just looks *muah* chef's kiss. Also, the fights in this manga are so well done, like, this is EXACTLY what I was missing in Lotus Eaters. Like, all the hits feel weighty and impactful, and not to mention how expressive the characters are. The newer style isn't afraid to give us some really fucking unhinged expressions and I LOVE THAT. It helped make the manga more tolerable.

I said in my review of Lotus Eaters that I would compare the two mangas in terms of writing styles so I'm gonna do that. Lotus Eaters represents a lot of ZUN's strengths in writing, i.e. shorter more character driven stories that wrap themselves up nicely in the end. I think this is probably because ZUN is more experienced with this style of writing, since from what I've gathered, a lot of the other mangas and literary works follow this similar principal. I feel like ZUN doesn't have trouble with writing good characters, but instead struggles with finding ways to make them act consistently throughout a longer narrative. Like, I feel like that's the best way to put it. I feel like a good way to rectify this issue for ZUN is if he tried writing more longer printed works (mainly just to get experience with the format) take what he learned from CDS and apply that.

IDK if I gave Lotus Eaters a rating but I'll do so for CDS. I'd say it's a 4.5/10 if we're being generous. It frustrated me to no end because of how many missed opportunities it had, and it had so much potential to be amazing, even though it has some good qualities that made the experience a bit less painful than what I was expecting. I mean, it's still ongoing so it could get better, but now I'm just more curious to see how it sticks the landing. My math question comparison that I made in my Lotus Eaters review still holds up tho lol.

I remember a post on here saying that JoJo Part 4 is basically just CDS but good. And honestly, now that I've actually read the manga I see what that person meant now lol.

#touhou project #cheating detective satori

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