 | "Touhou fanimation by MAIKAZE" by Totaku
(2009-01-06) |
Greetings everyone,
Yes, it me Totaku once again back after hearing word from Konstantin and another friend of mine that Akira Hasegawa has returned even if it was only brief. And I though that since Akira deicded to bring up a fanmade doujin animation I would go ahead and give you a review of mine.
As you may know, just around the end of the year, Comiket opened up for three days in Japan, and it's known as one of the leading conventions where all the doujin artist get together to sell thier fanmade works to fans and those that are interested. And I thought I'd write up my view on a recent fanmade animation that came out recently from comiket. (I bet you all know what I'm about to talk about.
Recently I saw an fanimation done by a doujin group called Maikaze. Who is a small group of mostly college students who's released small trailers and soundtracks up on Touhou releated matieral up until recently. Just at around the time of Comiket, Maikaze announced about thier animation they have been working on for roughly two years known now as the Touhou fan animation project, "A Midsummer's Day Dream"
Being an attendant of the Shirnemaiden forum, I've also learned that one of Maikaze's staff members actually attends our board and speak very good English so we actually had some good in depth info about the animation.
Being a Touhou fan, I know I was quite excited about this and now I would like to give you all some info regarding about it....
First off, what really grabbed my eye about this was the fact that these college students somehow managed to round up a pretty good "All-star Seiyuu" cast which is a rare thing to see happen in a doujin animation. I'll list them below for you:
Mai Nakahara as Reimu Hakurei
Miyuki Sawashiro as Marisa Kirisame
Ayumi Fujimura as Aya Shameimaru
Mikako Takahashi as Patchouli Knowledge
Rei Tanaka as Sakuya Izayoi
Ayumi Tsuji as Remilia Scarlet
Aki Toyosaki as Suika Ibuki
??? as Hong Meiling (And no this is not a joke.....the Seiyuu is not revealed. :P
Kikuko Inoue as the Narroator
This brought the attention of several anime communities despite the fact that it was a doujin piece, and cause sort of a hype around certain areas. This of course also caused ZUN (the creator of the Touhou series) to make a stand to remind everyone not to think of this animation as offical and stated that he want to make sure that the people who become fans of Touhou play his game and not just for the fanimation. He also layed down some rules for future Touhou fanmade material as well. But I'm not going to cover all that, cause it's a whole other story....
Despite it's somewhat controversial hype, it would manage to come out. And from what I heard from the stories, the fanimation sold out by the first hour. And won't be avaliable for purchase till it's out at doujin stores.
However, Maikaze did manage to also post it up on Nicovideo(yes, they actually posted thier piece there) to be viewed at there for a limited period of time. But that's not all....
I managed with some help from a friend of mine get ahold of the fanimation and have to say one thing from seeing it....I am astonished with effort these guys did with this animation. It far exceeds thier trailers they posted up along time ago and for only a 17 minute piece, it's worth it's time as a Touhou fan.
If your not familar or into Touhou though, you might not exactly enjoy it to the fullest extent unless you like odd story plots and simple laid back atmospheres.....
But of your are a fan, you'll have quite a laugh with it and probably enjoy the refferences and effect and the effort these guys have done.
Without spoiling too much, the plot is sort of simple, Reimu is busy preparing for a festival at her shrine one day with Suika's help when she finds out that her donation box has gone missing. So in a panic, she was not sure what to do, until Aya shows up and questions her on the events that happen and then zooms off to get Marisa and start an investigation to find out where the donation box was taken, and using Aya's leads, they head to the Scarlet Devil Mansion.
While the animation isn't exactly pro level, it is still very good for a doujin animation and is very well done as it comes very close to matching animation company levels. The backgrounds are beautifully done, and the charaters designs while simple, work with the atmosphere, and have this ZUNish appeal to them making it nice for the animation. The small amount of action we get while short, was actually very sweet and well exectued. There is not alot of music in it, so it's difficult to judge in that feild. However, the one major issue I had was one seiyuu, I felt Miyuki didn't quite capture, Marisa's typical brash behavior and made her sound too laid back. Other than that, the rest are nicely done.
Overall, for a doujin animation, it's very nice, and far better than I expected. Course I could only recommend it to fans that play Touhou. Anyone one else, might not like it as much, but there is still a possibility you might, so feel free to dig in! And if you like it, I highly reccomend buying this animation, I mean, to my view, these college students deserve it, especially if you want them to keep using those seiyuu's for future episodes.
I'll end it here for now....I hope you have a good new year, and here's hoping to you Akira you have time to work on the comics!
- Totaku
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This web program creates a weapon from name. 'Akira', for example, creates a sword with attack level of 15... 'Hasegawa' sword looks cooler, but it only has attack level of 4... It is quite cool.
