New characters are definitely well-designed by ZUN standards. I'll give him props for that.
The new music . . . uh . . . well, I know ZUN can still write music, because I loved the tracks for Great Fairy Wars, but most of the music in Ten Desires . . . I'm just not feeling it. I found it even more disappointing than UFO's score. Well, here's hoping the remixes can make up for that.
But for Comiket . . . I was expecting more fanvids. Well, still, it's not Reitaisai; Comiket is for everything, not just Touhou. Still, there were two new vids I liked.
One with the SDM looking like Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt (as in very Americanized), yet . . . so . . . stylish.
Oh, but that's not what you want me to ramble on about. I know what you really want me to talk about. The next Touhou Kinema Kan.
Holy crap. This is the greatest fanvid for anything I have ever seen. Most of the character designs are great (though I think Yuyuko and Yukari are too boobtastic for my liking), background art's pretty good, and the animation is as fluid as most modern anime tv series. But the music! Oh my god, the music! It's just like the music of the cartoons I watched as a child; beautiful, and fits every scene perfectly! And it's all Touhou remixes, naturally. I need the MP3s for this! Sound effects are good, too.
The only thing that's missing is audible voices. There is dialog, and lip flaps, but it's all subtitled . . . in Japanese. Okay, how long you wanna wait until another group fan dubs this thing? In fact, you could even dub it in more than just Japanese, also . . .
But, there's something curious I observed. First, look at this image I extracted.
This came out just a couple of days ago. In early 2010, (I think), I published A Touhou Fanfiction About Nothing Part 3.1. Note the following descriptions:
"[Remilia] was short and petite; indeed, she looked like a 12 year old human girl . . . [Flandre] was shorter and smaller than Remilia, looking like a 7 year old girl . . . [Patchouli] is slightly taller than Remilia, but only slightly . . . [Sakuya] is somewhat taller than the Scarlets and Patchouli, and is much taller than the fairies . . . [Meiling was] a tall woman . . ." Do you know what this means?
[Imitates Chester A. Bum] THAT'S RIGHT! TOUHOU KINEMA KAN STOLED MY FANON! They must've been like 'We need to decide the height of the SDM. I know! Let's read a fanfic in a language we can't read without Google-ma-Translate!' Or, (gasps) OH MY GAWD! THEY HACKED MY COMPUTAMATOR AND READ MY (as yet unpublished) TOUHOU CHARACTER SHEET, WHICH LISTS THE EXACT HEIGHT OF THE TOUHOU WIMMINS, AMONG OTHER THINGS! like sanity. I'm Sure they were like, 'But this is written in American metrics! How do we convert!?' 'Just take the inches and multiply by 2.55!'"
[Back to normal voice] Okay, I'm just being paranoid now. But it's weird that they caught how I think Meiling is taller than Sakuya, even though I didn't specify that in my fics. (Meiling = 5'8'', Sakuya = 5'6''. This is a conspiracy, Satou!)
But one last I like about this short is, much like my own writings, it's not longer or shorter than it needs to be. It's not set to the arbitrary length of 22 minutes like a tv episode; it's just what needed to be shown. No filler, no padding, just Touhou in all of its glory. I now want more.
Oh, and the next Touhou Omake is coming along swimmingly. When it's published, you'll find out why.
