The Answer

Well, the highly anticipated Comiket 75 finally arrived a few days ago and I managed to get my hands on the also highly anticipated Touhou non-official anime's first episode, entitled: A Summer Day's Dream. Much discussion formed in the pre-release period, concerning the (judging from the two previews leaked on the web) questionable animation quality and the ridiculous list of voice actors hired for the project, but I'll explain in detail later on.

Before I continue, for those of you who don't know what Touhou is, it's a series of games, developed by a one-man team, going by the name of ZUN. Most of the series' games fall into the category of bullet-hell vertical scrolling shooter. In the game, you must defeat the enemy all the while dodging a ridiculous amount of different bullets. The series has gained an immense amount of fans and has been subject to countless fan works.


By the way, catch Moonrise beating Imperishable Night's extra stage. The game is pretty intense, haha.

Anyways, back to the main topic at hand. Skimming through the blogosphere, forums, and friends' comments, we were all expecting the animation to be a let-down. From the two previews we saw (a second link would be pretty much redundant since it has basically the same thing), you could notice that the animation and character design was kind of meh. However, for a fan project, it was pretty good, especially the background designs.

A few days before C75, the release date and list of voice actors for the adaption was revealed, and needless to say, everyone was impressed at the amazing cast they were able to round up (and of course the speculations of the veracity of the cast list ran wild). Then came the date of Comiket 75. A day or two after it started, I had "acquired" a copy of the adaptation's first episode. I sat back, grabbed a snack and watched.


Twenty minutes later, I was blown away. The animation wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and while the story started out a bit slow, it was very enjoyable and I found myself smiling the whole episode! So yeah, if you're a fan of the series, it's definitely worth checking out.

Basically, the story takes place in Gensokyo, a world alternate to ours, in which many mystical beings live. It centers around the main character, a shrine maiden named Reimu Hakurei, and an unfortunate incident that occurs when her shrine donation box is stolen. She then sets out with the help of others to find the culprit of the theft. It's a light-hearted, calm, and comical story so far.


From a fan's point of view, even though I had some trouble getting used to some of the character's voice actresses (the personalities, not the voice acting itself which was excellent), it was great nonetheless.


The music, while not something stand-out-ish, was good as well. All of it fit nicely with the mood of the moment and did its job. The intro song of the episode was nicely done, by the way.


There was a also a fight scene near the end of the episode and, surprisingly, it was very well animated. The effects were top-class and the fluidity and movements were pretty impressive for what the anime was.


All in all, it was a very enjoyable watch. I thought it was pretty amazing for a doujin animation. I expect the next episode to be better, although I am not sure as to when it will come out. It seems the possibility of another episode will depend on the sales, but I can't be too sure about this either.

2008 has been a good one. Oh yeah. (H)

Oh, by the way, apparently Patchouli has Wikipedia on her library.