Jul 05 2009
~Touhou Anime Project: Musō Kakyō~
Touhou Anime Project: Musō Kakyō
Original Creator: ZUN
Director: ZUN(?)
Production Group: Studio Maikaze
Summary: Hakurei Reimu’s (miko) offering box went missing and she is determined to find it before the summer festival. Joining with her fellow aquentences, Aya Shameimaru (tengu) and Marisa Kirisame (witch) they go with Reimu to help search for her offering box. Reimu suspects that someone from the Koumakan (Scarlet mansion) has taken it, so they charge in and cause some trouble.
For those who is not familiar with Touhou Project. Touhou was created single handed by the a person who goes by the name ZUN. Touhou project started off as an 2d/3d verticle shooting game (like raiden) which futured cute and unique characters, beautifually designed by ZUN himself. As Touhou grew to become more popular with fans, ZUN allowed people to start drawing Doujin-shi (non commercial comic/manga works) of his characters. Now in which Touhou is getting more popular, 1/4 of the summer Comic market in Japan is filled with Touhou Doujin circles, which is pretty amazing. Now they are getting more of their own merchandises and more fans are just popping out like wild dandelions. There are over 40 characters all with unique personality’s and abilities and has their own background histories. This official anime project was directed and scripted by ZUN himself and with the help of the production group Maikaze he was able to release his first official animation. ZUN himself would like to make more official animations of Touho, but he does not want anybody else directing and scripting, only he can express things that can only be shown in animation, also theirs the reason of not having time to do so as well.
Production group, Studio Maikaze is one of the many(thousands) doujin group that draws touhou doujins, officially chosen by ZUN to help create the Touhou Anime project a success. Although the animation itself is only 15 min long, they did a phenomenal job on creating ZUN’s first touhou animation. The thing that struck me most was the beautifully portrayed illlustrations of the environments; the Shrine, the clouds, sky, mountain, trees, etc etc. The great use of the strong colors that really brings out the environment to a top notch quality. The animation itself was definetly original and unique, but you can tell that it wasnt made by kyoto or bones animation studio, the quality level was great for a fan group working on an animation. Very simplistic, yet a very fun drawing that may interest the veiwers or lose them, its like a double edged sword. Unfortunetly the only down part about this episode(?) is that it has a cliff hanger ending, we still do not know if ZUN is going to continue with this or not, but the ending was not all that well.
Studio Maikaze also provides the opening theme song, which i would say is one of the best opening songs out there in any of the anime i’ve watched. the opening animation isnt all that exciting, but the music itself give you the shiver of excitement. I believe Tokine provides the Ending song “Meguri Meguru”, although not as exciting as the opening the music this time really matches with the ending animation, which is basically a wallscrolling of each of the characters that appeared in the episode.
I myself, became a fan of touhou from their musics, then getting more into the characters, i started drawing many fanarts of them. I also attempted to play some of their 2d shooter games, but i completely failed(lol) it is definetly a fun game, but you would need a lot of time and patience if you want to ever get to the last boss.
I would definetly suggest everyone to at least get to know touhou alittle, either from their music video’s on youtube, or playing their 2d games or even reading Touhou Doujins. Either way i would believe that you wont get dissapointed. So give it a try.
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Ratings:
Story: C+
Animation: B+
Art: A+
Music: A+
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Youtube video of the OP/ED will be posted, so please go and watch them if you are interested.
Thanks again for reading and if there are any suggestion/comments/questions, please feel free to ask.
Jya~ne see ya later
~O-tak-U
