Touhou 14.5: 東方深秘録 ~ Urban Legend in Limbo. is HM sequel, demo at Comiket 87

[BATMANDANCEPARTY]

*inb4 kogasa shats on everyones expectations and she's the character you have to love now*

Hate to keep beating a dead horse but I REALLY hope Nue would be the penult' boss
I can just envision how fun her attacks would be if they were implemented in a fighter
Not to mention that mean lookin' pitchfork she has, I want to see that in action

[Romantique Tp]

The way Alphes colors looks like a photoshop accident turned into an "artstyle"... Super gimmicky. Then he went way overboard with that odd shadowing of his in 13.5 which just looks silly and forced. Futo's portrait in particular looks like a mess.
The way he draws isn't very different from generic anime if you ignore the coloring.

I hate it when people use the art of his imitators in danmakufu scrips. These are drawn worse and look even more boring. Most of them make the characters look like they're made of plastic bags too.

[Maiden Synnae ミ☆]

I hate it when people use the art of his imitators in danmakufu scrips. These are drawn worse and look even more boring. Most of them make the characters look like they're made of plastic bags too.

some artist called Kaoru drew a crapload of those portraits, and they all look awful. It's like they're not even trying anymore.

[Fumi]

The way Alphes colors looks like a photoshop accident turned into an "artstyle"... Super gimmicky. Then he went way overboard with that odd shadowing of his in 13.5 which just looks silly and forced. Futo's portrait in particular looks like a mess.
The way he draws isn't very different from generic anime if you ignore the coloring.

I hate it when people use the art of his imitators in danmakufu scrips. These are drawn worse and look even more boring. Most of them make the characters look like they're made of plastic bags too.

I hate it too, I do Danmakufu and I preffer more ZUN's official art, although sometimes you get lucky enough to find artists that mimic ZUN's style. That way I found a Kokoro to use in a script <3

[FLASH]

Moe Harukawa's art is much superior. I'd say she is clearly the best official artist so far.

whoever drew Silent Sinner in blue i liked the best.
he/she's kinda generic i guess, but keeping it simple works very well with touhou i feel and resonates well with the ZUNart (simple in trait and apearance, and not overly stylized, but great attention to details if you look carefuly).


Moe i generally like a lot, but some characters just randomly look wrong to me in her style for some reason (example: ultra-slim malnutrition Mokou... or Marisa and her big single fringe of hair on her forhead gets me OCD, i just want to grab a scissor and cut that off! lol  :derp: )
sometimes too i find she can go a bit overboard with the Massive, round, sparkling eyes (even by manga art standards i mean).

as long as it's not Alphes though :p gonna agree with everyone here; never liked this style much, never understood why anyone liked it.

[Maiden Synnae ミ☆]

That's true. Moe Harukawa is by no means perfect, but I still prefer her over the other official artists.

Spoiler:

they should just hire banpai akira to do the portraits (lolno)

Spoiler:

:V

[Sagus]

ultra-slim malnutrition Mokou

She's a hobo who literally and regularly starves herself to death because she can't be assed to eat

I think Moe's depiction of her is one of the most accurate portrayal of the character ever, tbqh

[Drake]

It pleases me greatly that we now actually have a visual of Mokou straight-up incinerating herself.

[Kilgamayan]

I hate it when people use the art of his imitators in danmakufu scrips. These are drawn worse and look even more boring. Most of them make the characters look like they're made of plastic bags too.

Does anyone use Dairi's art? I actually like their alphes imitation style.

[Validon98]

I've seen it used very rarely, but I've personally always preferred it to kaoru and other Alphes-style artworks. The fact that dairi has been also making a lot of "battle-style" artworks and "defeated" artworks makes it fairly usable for Danmakufu scripts.

[Ps]

whoever drew Silent Sinner in blue i liked the best.

That would be Aki Eda.

[cuc]

The sprite artist Chabo tweeted: Mamizou's capsule-throwing animation shown in her official site screenshot is an unused asset from HM.

By the way, Mamizou's alien capsules are modeled after gashapon capsules. The pokeballs were probably inspired by the gashapon balls, not the other way around.

Dobu Usagi (dBu music) mentioned that while he was greatly humbled by the honor of contributing to an official game, it's interesting that the other guest musicians all have some connections to the Flowering Night live concert, an experience he never had. (Needless to say, that's partially because dBu only makes instrumental arranges, although oiko and ziki_7's music has also been featured at Flowering Night.)

The "document" I mentioned about IaMP Meiling being heavily non-canon turns out to be an old Tasofro diary entry.

[Koog]

*inb4 kogasa shats on everyones expectations and she's the character you have to love now*

Yes plz.

[cuc]

IMO Aki Eda's weakness is that she cannot draw adequate expressions for anything less than kindness and sincerity, not even to mention the darker aspects of the emotional spectrum, which account for a significant part of SSiB.

On the other hand, if nothing else, Alphes certainly was good at drawing mischievous and smug faces. Until HM, that is.

[Drake]

Aki Eda's only method of conveying any dark expression is just to shade the top half of everyone's faces

[cuc]

ultra-slim malnutrition Mokou

According to an image from the magazine version of CiLR, Mokou was born lanky, and her frame has stayed the same over the thousand years.

We should also note that Harukawa was not a Touhou fan before becoming an official artist. She had no preconception of what the characters look like, and must design them based on consultations with ZUN, a task she seems to take very seriously. As a result, her designs have a better chance of being accurate to ZUN's vision than some other artists. She also drew Udonge taller than normal villagers, as it should be.

[FearNagae]

I sort of liked Alphes' but the HM portraits is just disaster to me, sort of glad Harukawa took the place haha.

[Valar]

Penultimate boss will almost certainly be veteran. First, one more arrange for this game which will proably be her theme, and second, including Kasen, there are already two newcomers.

List of prime suspects imo: Nue, Yukari, Yuugi, Reisen, Kaguya. First two are obvious, third - may be the last boss is the fourth Deva or something like that and last two - from the line about spoilers in LoLK.

[Formless God]

alphes is only good when he's doing album covers; as for Moe every time I look at her art some other artist's name pop up in my head. Shit's generic in a very uncanny way. Not that I mind playing as Nepgear in a 2whos fighting game or anything.

The only good official artists are ZUN, Hirasaka and Matsukura.

The way he draws isn't very different from generic anime if you ignore what makes it different from generic anime.

no shit

[Clarste]

Nue's not really a Buddhist, though. She just lives there. Same with Koishi being a laywoman of the temple and Mamizou being there. They don't actually represent the religion like Byakuren or Ichirin do. They just sort of live there.

I don't think Mamizou even lives at the temple. Ichirin doesn't recognize her in HM, and even goes so far as the say that no one at the temples uses techniques like Mamizou's. It's unclear if Byakuren recognizes her or not. And whenever Mamizu shows up in later works she's always off doing her own thing.

The simplest explanation is just that she never accepted Nue's invitation.

[Starxsword]

List of prime suspects imo: Nue, Yukari, Yuugi, Reisen, Kaguya. First two are obvious, third - may be the last boss is the fourth Deva or something like that and last two - from the line about spoilers in LoLK.

Kind of an odd list... Nue and Kaguya seem okay, but I don't think Reisen, Yuugi, or Yukari make sense.
I will throw in Tewi as a guess, since she seems like another possible candidate.

[BATMANDANCEPARTY]

Thinking about it now, it'd be pretty cool to see yuugi duke it out
Her title is "The So-Called Unexplainable Phenomenon" and her power is to wield unexplainable phenomena (whatever that means) so I won't put her out of speculation completely
Thats a char I'd definitely love to see actualized

[monhan]

I don't think Mamizou even lives at the temple. Ichirin doesn't recognize her in HM, and even goes so far as the say that no one at the temples uses techniques like Mamizou's. It's unclear if Byakuren recognizes her or not. And whenever Mamizu shows up in later works she's always off doing her own thing.

The simplest explanation is just that she never accepted Nue's invitation.

Prologue of TD Extra and Youmu's Extra story shows that Mamizou took an interest in the temple at least, and even rested there a few times.
About that part with Ichirin, she honestly thought FakeMami was Byakuren untill it is made clear from the technique she used(but she didn't know she was Mamizou, till she undo her transformation). However, this doesn't mean that Ichirin doesn't know Mamizou, since right after that Ichirin got mad at Mamizou for faking herself as Byakuren. So, she knew about Mamizou and her abilities, but haven't exactly experienced it first hand. She also knows that Mami is a friend of Nue from her VS win quotes. However, this probably means the she's not close to her.

As for Byakuren, she recognized her real identity right after they fight, even before Mamizou undo her transformation. This pretty much means she knows her quite well, although never fought each other before since Byakuren compliments Mamizou's transformation abilities. Seeing how they interact with each other, I get the feeling of them being "allies". Not seeing each other as enemies, but not so close to say they're in the same group.

So Mamizou doesn't exactly practices Buddhism, nor represents them, but I imagine she stays around there from time to time.
Nue however, seems to be taking the disciplines.  Just a guess since she's really getting along well with everyone in that second time the Myouren Temple crew got a spotlight in Forbidden Scrollery.

[Clarste]

I don't think it's clear whether Byakuren recognized Mamizou in particular, or just recognized a tanuki transformation in general. It's not like Mamizou is the only tanuki in Gensokyo.

[HalfGrand]

alphes is only good when he's doing album covers; as for Moe every time I look at her art some other artist's name pop up in my head. Shit's generic in a very uncanny way. Not that I mind playing as Nepgear in a 2whos fighting game or anything.

... But I like Alphes art!  :ohdear:

The only complaint that I had about his artwork in HM was that it took a little getting used to when he drew character eyelashes as the same color as their hair. Apart from that, all good in my opinion.

Let us not forget one of the prime aspects of why Touhou is as popular as it is... artistic interpretation. Thousands of artists from around the world give their own artistic spin and style to what the characters look like in their own works. That is the beauty of Touhou art, nobody is more right or wrong in how the characters look. All you need to do is include the character costume in the art and boom!... that's Koishi, thats Byakuren, that's Reimu etc.

Alphes art is not more "inferior" than Moe Harukawa's, Aya Azuma, Nemu Matsukura, Aki Eda etc. The variety of different art styles is what makes Touhou such a fantastic place for artists of all different types to come together and make something unique but still undeniably Touhou in the eyes of everyone else. This is what has fostered 450,000 Touhou artworks on Danbooru, lack of set structures and allowance of artistic liberties.

Still, with a lack of set structure on character design that Touhou has comes one small downside. Alot of you might disagree with me on this and that's a good, healthy thing to do as this is my own opinion. Touhou characters are defined by what they wear, not by their physical appearance. For example, in artwork when Yuuka Kazami has no clothes on or in an alternate costume... I can bearly tell that that's her. She needs to wear that trademark plaid dress for her to be identified as Yuuka. View any artwork where the characters are gender swapped to see what I mean. Manrisa anyone?

[Kaizaki]

It wouldn't be too surprising if the penultimate character is Kaguya. In most of Mokou's relevant (non-cameo and speaking) canon appearances, the other is either mentioned or present, e.g., IN, HM, her official profile, BAiJR interview, CiLR chapter. (Do their Soku non-appearance count? And the reverse isn't true.) They seem to go together as a pair.

Edit: I contradicted myself with HM (cameo, non-speaking), but my point stands.

[monhan]

I don't think it's clear whether Byakuren recognized Mamizou in particular, or just recognized a tanuki transformation in general. It's not like Mamizou is the only tanuki in Gensokyo.

Well, that's just how I feel when I see their conversation in here.
Byakuren's calmness and way of talking, coupled with how she didn't seem surprised at all that it was Mamizou. She was only surprised of how good her transformation capability is.

[Clarste]

Well, that's just how I feel when I see their conversation in here.
Byakuren's calmness and way of talking, coupled with how she didn't seem surprised at all that it was Mamizou. She was only surprised of how good her transformation capability is.

Well, I don't think it shows she doesn't recognize, I just don't think it's clear evidence one way or another. She never says "Oh, it's you, Mamizou" or anything like that.

[monhan]

Well, I don't think it shows she doesn't recognize, I just don't think it's clear evidence one way or another. She never says "Oh, it's you, Mamizou" or anything like that.

That's the point.
Precisely because she didn't do or say anything along that line, it gave me the impression that she deduced Mamizou's identity after the fight.
It's not a clear evidence, but I think that helps making people lean towards her recognizing Mamizou, rather than not.

Anyway, all these don't certainly mean she's a member of the Myouren Temple, but she's probably a regular visitor.

As for the addition of Nue, I think being Buddhist or not doesn't really matter, since it's not the main focus now.
But if you meant it as the "group", then I also certainly won't mind if a certain blue hermit joins the party. Both for the excitement of seeing how she'll play in this incident, and the joy of beating her up.

[mauve]

The "document" I mentioned about IaMP Meiling being heavily non-canon turns out to be an old Tasofro diary entry.

There's some interesting stuff on that old diary in general, not including them spending way too much money on MtG cards. Some of the 2007/2008 entries are about the design of SWR and their approach to the decisions they made. More or less confirmed that they had felt players would sit around doing nothing too often, so weather was added as a way of forcing the situation. Apparently it originally had no aspect of luck or randomness associated with it.