Summer 09′ will bare witness to the release of Touhou’s latest addition to its series. Behold Touhou Seirensen. As usual ZUN distributed the alpha copy to its fans during the 6th Reitaisai. Now it’s available to everyone through bittorrent.

Anyhow I won’t go deep into it. It seems like the bombing system came back, that is to say using bombs does not drain your shot. However, getting lives and bombs aren’t as easy as it was either. You’ll need to collect (4-5 i forgot lol) fragments of them to make up a whole life and bomb. Touhou Seirensen also sees Sanae Kochiya as a playable character for the first time, along with the usual heroines Reimu and Marisa. Now let’s look at the bosses.

As usual, the alpha version introduces 3 new characters with neither of them having any relation to the game’s storyline. First up, a mouse youkai called Nazrin.

Like any first bosses, fighting with her will be quick and easy. Players in normal mode would be able to dispatch her without much trouble at all. Hard and above sees a bigger gap of difficulty and requires players to execute accurate movements and good timing.

Next up, we meet a karakasa named Kogasa Tatara.

Fighting with her is still pretty much a walk in the park for normal mode, while again the usual big difficulty gap for harder modes. Her bullets mostly travel in spiral movements.

The third and final boss which we’ll face in the alpha build is Ichirin Kumoi with nyudo as her subordinate called Unzan. Somehow, I felt that Ichirin’s custome looks alot like a nun’s lol.

Referring to the screenshot above, Ichirin is on the left while that big scary cloud thing is Unzan. Ichirin maintains a barrage of bullets while throwing big cloudy fists of Unzan’s at you most of the time (hitbox of the cloud is as big as its in-game sprite), with it either leaving trails of bullets or the fists exploding with it. In normal mode, players face a few occasional fists while the number of it is almost doubled in Hard mode and beyond. Again you can pretty much see the difficulty gap. Overall she doesn’t really require much technical movements, just purely evasion from dense bullets and huge xbox sized fists.

With that being said, th12’s alpha maintains a high level difficulty of gameplay again with the questionable huge difficulty jump from normal mode to hard. It’s safe to say that easy and normal is for casual players while hard and insane is for hard core touhou players, but then it’s still in alpha stage. Anything can be altered in the final product, so let’s look forward to it this summer.

Finally after months of waiting, I have downloaded the remaining episodes from a batch torrent by SS. Of course Oinari-sama yet brings in an abundance of moe fanservice which is enough to melt the heart of those otaku throng out there. Just be warned that spoilers are aplenty. Scroll away if you do not wish to poison your eyes!

Anyhow, episode 24 starts off with Noboru and Tooru doing spring cleaning of their house. Of course Kou and Kuu are pulled into this as well. Their jobs are then segregated by Noboru with Kuu handling the hallway and the house entrance. Gyokuyou of course perceived this as Kuu being ordered around by Noboru to do menial tasks instead, which then moves in to seal Noboru and Tooru away with his Dema. Naturally, Kuu finds out it’s Gyokuyou’s doing and a squabble ensues.

After a few more eventful scenes, let’s fast forward to the next chapter where they had a hatsumode at Mubyou’s shrine, where viewers are showered with an all-star appearance to mark the ending of the anime.

Kou does her usual moe expressive dance with vigorous zeal.

While Sakura appears in a green kimono, bleh.

Miyabe appears in a glorious red kimono with faux-fur, whatever it’s called.

Of course even Mubyou shows up in her own shrine. MOE ARGH

And with grand appearance of Kuu and Kou in grandiose purple and pink kimono *nosebleed*

Gyokuyou appears in her super hiked up hakama!

Of course Oinari doesn’t stop there. Just when you think thousands of otaku have been slaughtered by this episode, the newly directed ending continues the onslaught. Many more died.

And FINALLY just when you think the ending roll is more than enough, Oinari delivers a final blow with Gyokuyou looking flustered in a bright orange kimono *dies*

MOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

ARGH THIS IS TOO MUCH. GYOKUYOU-SAMA MOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

In the end, it was Gyokuyou who took the spot light. Her flustered look shall be engraved into my mind for as long as I live.