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Ive turned them into marketable plushies

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my god moon halo is such a reimu song

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Since danmaku is effectively the characters playing a game against eachother, this means that Gensokyo has all of its problems resolved through GAMING, and Reimu Hakurei is the GREATEST GAMER OF ALL.

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for years i didnt know mlm ships were genrally more popular because i'd spent a signifigant portion of my teenage years consuming media like touhou and love live where there just. straight up arent any men that matter (rinnosuke does NOT count). so finding out a lot of other fandoms hated women was a culture shock like wdym...... i've been sheltered in my beautiful yuri paradise......

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it's interesting that marisa has used water based/ice based spells very infrequently over the series, in MoF with her own magic, in SA eith patchi's help, and in HSiFS with Okina's help.

it's funny cuz her last name is "drizzle" adjacent and "maris" is latin for of the sea. you'd think she should have a water magic affinity or something. something something hard work beats talent. hell if i really wanna reach i could say that her interest in light and heat magic is a way to make herself feel like an individual and break away from her family, since kirisame is her family name that has a water affinity, and a massive fuck you heat/light spell is just about the direct opposite thing.

also it is the coolest shit in the world that extra stage theme of GFW is "Loose Rain". anytime Marisa gets an unsubtle reference to misty rain or drizzle I am so fucking happy you have no idea. i want drizzle to follow marisa like the smell of gunpowder and shrooms

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hat on hat

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Marisa do you need a hug

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"oh yeah lol i'll rewatch kurobi for shits and giggles because basara appeared in my dreams"

a week later:

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grimoire of usami in a nutshell

reimu: omg so cute i love rainbows!!! also boring as shit 6/10 marisa: the square is an excellent geometric shape. 9/10 sumi: idk how this works but i saw something similar at walmart once 8/10

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sakumari toxic yuri is going crazy rn in my brain

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Shortly after that Zanmu drawing, I went on an art spree and made small little drawings of a majority of the current playable characters in Touhou (I've been procrastinating on drawing Aya and Ran) and finally gave myself refernce points for how to draw all these characters going forward! Also, don't mind the change in background colour, that's just me changing the background so the values are actually visible lol.

Artist's Notes;

So the first one I started with was Reimu, and the inspiration for her pose came from this pose reference on Pinterest of a girl doing ribbon dancing, and I thought "Damn, that's very Reimu-coded" and did a quick little Reimu drawing from that.

This was also the drawing where I finally learned what makes a Reimu drawing feel like Reimu. It's the shirt, it's literally just the shirt. I decided to try making Reimu's shirt have a stronger square shape and oh my god it's like I discovered some kind of secret sauce because it just feels so much more like Reimu. I also gave Reimu a tabard and loose pants because I felt like that also fit her very well and also tied in some element's of Yukari's design into hers. I also made her bow look more like a very geometric butterfly as a bit of a tie in to "Diochromatic Lotus Butterfly" and also because I think butterfly symbolism fits her a lot. I also left the hands unfinished because they are not the focus of this piece, Reimu is, I don't wanna cry over how I can't get the hands right and then never get to the actually fun parts of the drawing. Previously, I did some design experimentation with Reimu where I added a little ornament on her obi that was inspired by Yuna's design from Final Fantasy 10 (I can't remember if I ever posted that one lol, also FFX is so good you guys I love it so much) and I like it, I think it adds some fun assymetry to her design that I think makes it look neat. I also gave her some more traditional Japanese shoes (I don't know the name of them so please correct me if you know) since I've seen other artists doing it and I love that look so I added that to this drawing as well.

I also really like how Marisa turned out, I experimented a bit with her body type and outfit, though I didn't really go too off-model with her compared to Reimu. I liked the longer sleeves on her and I gave her a big bow on the back of her apron since I thought it looked cute. I couldn't find a spot for the bow on her hat that looked good so sadly that isn't present in this version of her :( I do like how her face turned out though, since I've also been experimenting with how differently stylized I can make faces in my art. I will always love mangas like Hunter X Hunter that can put two extremely differently stylized characters on the same panel and make it look cohesive, it's why I love the style so much.

I think the crulest irony is not being able to draw your favourite character well while you're hyperfixating on them, but then only being able to draw them how you picture them once they're no longer your favourite, and that happened with Sakuya here. I was initially gonna give her the flashiest eyeshadow known to man but when I removed the layer wih the eyeshadow rendering on it I ended up liking it more without it, so now she's just got some nice bottom lashes. I tried giving her more of an hourglass shape for her body type, mainly to differentiate her more from Reimu and Marisa, and I focused on making as many points in her drawing as sharp as I can. I also gave her some white gloves because I like the idea of Sakuya having fancy gloves, it fits her. To me, Sakuya has always been the most high femme of the main Touhou characters. Maybe this is just because she was my gay awakening, maybe it's just influence from the fandom, but it just kind of makes sense to me. Much like Marisa, I also emphasized the bow ribbons for extra oomph with the silhouette and when I added the red bows and looked at the overall design, I fixed the lack of red anywhere else by just... covering her in blood... I mean she does work for two vampires and she's exactly the sanest person in Gensokyo so please pardon my indulgence in edginess it couldn't be helped.

Youmu was really fun to do but also kinda challenging. In my mind I wanted to make her feel different compared to everyone else I've drawn so far, short enough to be somewhat accurate to canon, but not too childish looking since she never really acts all that childish in cannon and it wouldn't make sense for her to look like a child. I also had to make her look fast and speedy without her looking like Sakuya and potentially avoiding same body syndrome with Aya, who's whole gimmick is speed. In the end, I think her drawing is my favourite, mainly because of the shapes and silhouette. I also really like how I golden-ratioed myon. I also took a few liberties with her outfit and decided to give it some layers to add visual interest. I also like how the cuts in the clothing add more triangles, which adds to the shape language. For her face, I was wondering what to do with her eyes until I decided to just go for the simple, glowing, circular eyes she has in the final product. I was also listening to a bunch of Gorrilaz albums while drawing these (Demon Days is my favourite album btw, idk how basic of a take that is though) and my brain 100% was subconsciously influenced by some elements of the art style (it's so good omg). I also like the shade of green I gave her, though I am a certified green lover so I am 100% biased.

Reisen is where I let myself get a little weird with it, because as you can see, I turned her into an anthropomorphic bunny because she is a weird moon rabbit god dammit, why should she look normal? I was more excited about drawing her IN design than her modern design so that's why she's dressed like that, but I do have a sketch of her in my sketchbook of her modern design. I also had fun rendering her velvet suit jacket. This also helped me tie in some of the reds in her eye and ear, which is also a nice bonus. I also gave her pure white fur to create more visual contrast. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how she turned out, though I wish I didn't shade the legs too much because it's kinda blending with the skirt colour....welp, ya win some ya lose some I guess.

Sanae is also relatively on-model compared to everyone else here, though I did try to make some changes to her outfit to make her feel different from Reimu. First of all, I made her big sleeves (IDK the proper Japanese term for them, if there is one, so again if you know please correct me on this) more open than Reimu's, as well as making them more pointy to give her a different silhouette. I also tried out a new rendering style on her eyes that I also applied to Cirno (we'll get to her in a moment) to also make her face feel different from Reimu's. I'll be honest, I didn't really know what to do with her body type so she just kinda got the "basic slim girl" look in her drawing. I'm not too big a fan of the frills I added to her skirt though, I don't really think she needs them. I'm glad I gave Reimu pants and a tabard instead of a normal skirt because that does help to make the two of them feel different. I also kept her little frog hair clip the same shade of blue as her dress, mainly to economize my colour usage and limit the palette into something a little more tight-nit. I do like how her little hair snake looks though, it's cute lol.

And finally, we have Cirno. I have been a firm believer of "long sleeve Cirno is best Cirno" ever since I saw the art of her in PMiSS because she's an ice fairy, I think it would make sense for her to want to keep herself warm, same reason she has little socks too. Now that I look at it more, her colours are pretty similar to her design in Great Fairy Wars, and honestly I like that, I think keeping her colour palette simple is a good idea so I'm happy about that. I mainly wanted to focus on rendering her wings though, mainly because rendering ice and crystals is fun even though I have done zero studies of them! I also wanted to experiment with rendering her eyes in a similar way to Sanae's, and I like how they turned out! I don't know if I'll continue with this style in the future but it will probably stick around because to me, any stylistically different way of doing eyes is another facial feature I can use to bend the rules of same face syndrome.

While I'm on the topic, I want to mention that the reason Hunter X Hunter's art works so well is because everything is kinda rendered the same. It showed me that if you do everything else consistently in your style (i.e. rendering, lineart, shading), stylizing each character's faces differently will be a lot easier, at least that's how I see it. IDK if I'm ever gonna do drawings of Aya and Ran in this style since I gotta think about them more as well as stop procrastinating lol.

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god knows my brain is rotting bc looking at the dragon b shots line up rn, im thinking "..... has anyone put them on that one weezer album cover yet"

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I love it. Reimu made all these fortune telling slips because she didn't want the youkai of Gensokyo to change, let alone vanish from existence. And she has extended this kindness as far out as forgettable beings like Daiyosei and Koakuma, to beings as horrible as Yachie, Jo'on, or Seija, to even beings actively harming Gensokyo with their very existence like Mizuchi and Chimata.

And Zanmu has so much respect for Reimu that she calls her the Ruler of Gensokyo. While the fanon idea of Gensokyo destroying itself upon Reimu's death is inaccurate, it can truly be said that Gensokyo would fall into chaos and despair without Reimu being the person she is.

Not an all-destroying malice, but an all-accepting kindness. That is what Reimu is. Gensokyo accepts everything because Reimu accepts everything.

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“oooh i need junji ito to write me an essay” okay so youre a little baby so youre a little baby waby who needs mommys help