The time has come: CountVonNumenor is talking about KKHTA...

[CountVonNumenor]

"It's like that feeling when you see a jetbike crash and there are broken bodies and blood flying everywhere and you just can't look away even though you want to" ~ "Little Kitten", Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes, If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device (January 2017/41st millennium)

 

(this discussion I am about to open may contain spoilers; advance a own risk)

 

The time has come. After almost 2 years, I feel as if a thunder struck me tonight. While watching through the latest videos of Suwawako, I ended up finding his quick video about KKHTA released for Halloween. Despite the fact I knew myself as not liking, if not outright despising that series, I still decided to give the video a shot. After it ended, I went through the comments to see what people think of that infamous animated series. and from there, I ended up watching an entire 1 hour long breakdown for each episode. And here is the shocking part: it actually hooked me. I know this is a very divisive series, with a wide variety of opinions thrown to it. And to be honest, for a long time I have been in the camp of blindly hating it without actually giving the animation a try. But now, maybe things have changed...

 

Now, for a little bit of history...

Back in my early weeks of being a Touhou fan, on the 31st December 2020 I heard for the first time the infamous words: "Koishi Komeiji's Heart-Throbbing Adventure". As I was still new into the series and not very familiar with the fan-works, I decided to go read a bit what the series was about as at the time I was on TVtropes. What was my first sight? The people for characters and how they are portrayed was nothing short of reading an obituary. My first reaction was that of an unreasonable scare, as if I touched cursed lands I did not want to get into. That evening, trying to brush off what I just read, I asked a colleague on Discord if this is what Gensokyo is actually like (again, I was still new into trying to understand what Touhou is). To my at the time disappointment, this friend told me KKHTA is, unironically, an accurate depiction of Gensokyo and how its inhabitants would normally react.

That left with with a bitter taste at the time, as my main image about Touhou and inhabitants of Gensokyo came from watching some cute animated and meme videos on YouTube, as well as enjoying cute fanart of the series. The impression I developed about Touhou back then was that it is a land where "cute girls do cute stuff", that they are magical (completely disregarding the fact most of them are actually youkai inspired from scary mythological beings), and just indulging on the moe aspect of fanon. 

Spoiler

Slight tangent here, going into possibly one of the more honest reasons I got into Touhou. Like someone who might be possibly denying the fact they are slowly and unwillingly turning into a "nijikon", I may have been attracted into Touhou like a honey-trap after seeing cute girls. Maybe it is an unwilling coping mechanism, developed from past failure and pretty much ending to taking the "low-hanging fruit" with all this waifu shit.

I am going to quote here an old paragraph from a previous thread:

"[Intermission - how 2020, the pandemic and 2 months of lockdown have messed my mind]
- in the late autumn of 2019, I got my first graphic novel
- I really liked the story, but the main attraction for me was the protagonist - a Russian immigrant girl called Anya
- I though she looks cute (really liked the design), then after a while I started asking myself in disgust if I got my first fictional crush (apparently, this is a thing in the United States, and t happens to kids when watching cartoons?)
- ever since, I also got such a feeling while in the quarantine that was early 2020 related to a character called Tari from the web series Meta Runner
- combined with the loneliness and lack of proper contact with others until the lockdown was over, I start to think whether any serious change took place in my mind at the time (it was also that I recently turned 18, merely a few days after lockdown started)
- in the end, I found Touhou towards the end of 2020, and ever since I am stuck into this rabbit whole of a series filled with cute or badass designs and tons of awesome fan-art"

So yeah, besides awesome music and cool fanart, I guess I may not be much better than the mas of people who got into Touhou because it can act as "waifu-bait". I feel it is still happening now, two years after I got into all this, especially when looking to the way of picking my favorites. How Youmu ended up in 2 weeks from "who is this" to "she looks cute" to "she is my favorite character", and I guess why I ended up in a poor mood for days after listening to Junjo Arumeria for the first time - "it is not enough that I get rejected in real life, I end up getting rejected even by something that does not exist" (a bitter reminder of the first time I started having feelings for someone in real life). And to make it a little more cringe (lol), it felt uncanny to me how much the guy character in that MV looked like me (or at east could put myself in his shoes) - weird things, hard to explain. Oh, and just don't get me started on learning for the first time about Akyuu's short life span and that she is supposed to die in about 2 year from now - that was another kind of crisis I felt going through, just soon after I admitted she ended up becoming my favorite 2hu...

 

But back to KKHTA

 
Back then, I found it very weird, if not uncanny, to even think about the characters being able to be that aggressive as they were described as in this series. It was pretty much that kind of "pissed off my waifu was killed brutally", especially if you go through and realize how some of the girls died. I thought the series was brutal, bloody and edgy for the sake of being edgy, with the whole Lunarian plot thing being only just the cherry on top. 

 

Fast forward almost 2 years...

Now, after that one video from Suwawako and the whole breakdown, I feel something has changed. I am gonna repeat myself a little bit. I think I may be slowly descending to madness. The recent video about KKHTA gave me a morbid curiosity of actually finding out what is going on in that series. So I spent an entire hour listening to a video breakdown of all episodes. What I'm shocked about is that the thing is not half bad. Yes, it is edgy, gory, and at times cruel just for the sale of being cruel. It also got me with more questions than I started with, especially once the Lunarians join the game. Yes, it definitely got me some hate for that universe's version of Koakuma (guess it's the "love to hate" kind of character). But it definitely got me hooked, even if ever so slightly. Even if I'm just trying to understand what's going on. It has...some sort of unique charm? 

As I was going through the summary, I felt confused in a lot of moments. Here are at least the things I managed to understand or remember out of the whole thing: ( I may not actually watch the thing, or at least not feel fully prepared for it yet):

• why everyone went into a murderous rampage against each other
• confused why do we have all of a sudden Byakuren preaching about the killing of humans and UFOs coming out of nowhere (the way it was described in the summary reminded me of, if anyone is familiar with the series, of Hellsing Ultimate Abridged and the whole monologue of the Major before the Nazi ghouls invaded London - hell, I think adding the song War by Edwin Starr over the invasion of the UFOs would have had the same energy as the scene from that series)
• about all those backstory bits - particularly those for the Komeiji sisters, the Moon and so on - timeline at parts seems to be going all over the place from one episode to another
• confused about the entire Lunarian plan (I still do not have it clear in mind what was their plan besides the annihilation of Gensokyo and opening 2 eyes - the one of the Moon and the one of the Earth)
• I do remember it was explained at some point that apparently the outside world was too peaceful, and had been as such for decades - I think that was due to Lunarian manipulation? and all the madness in Gensokyo triggered apparently after one full moon thing induced by the Lunarians?
• their whole intermingling with the outside world is quite weird
• just like the backstory given to the Komeiji sisters in KKHTA
• Satori was also a bit weird through the whole thing
• I am still having a lot more questions about the Komeiji sisters sisters when it comes to the thing with the eyes, the possessed animals, the couple and their baby, the whole thing in front of the public and how the Lunarians broadcasted it apparently to everyone in the world through their TVs
• I did not know Merry and Renko got featured though, in one of the present day (I guess) Outside World segments, before everything went to shit; they are attending a course where it is explained there has been no war or any form of violence between humans for the past 30 years if I am not wrong, and the two see it as being weird/not making any sense
• and how on God's green earth did all the world's governments simply accept the Lunarians to establish their embassy things on Earth? was their 3 decade indoctrination so good they brainwashed everyone to accept the Lunarians with open arms? (and as some shots imply, they even had time for such things as mixed human/Moon rabbit families to exist by the time of the kaiju outbreak)
• now that the story is (not so) over, what are we to do? the final part will probably never come, but I heard there is a good continuation fan-faction on r/touhou that I kept stumbling upon, and I even heard it is actually very good - perhaps I should give it a try

 

Now I am more curious than ever to actually get some answers in regards to this series. I may need to get some time in the future to actually watch it, but I doubt I may either get through the first episodes when the madness ensues, or find an answer to my questions. Overall, I just think this series has gone from something I absolutely despise to something I despise less, but which made me curious about what it hides. A macabre curiosity perhaps, but curiosity nonetheless. But what do you think about this series? I hope we could start a talk here, just to have another big thread keep me busy instead of just updating not-Fusu-posting or LostWord every time. Strong points, weak points, theories, debates and discussions, here is the place for everything to be put together (I hope this thread will work...)

PS: for anyone interested, this is the video in question I was talking about 

1 hour recap of every episode published

Edited November 2, 2022 by CountVonNumenor

[Sci]

This is my favorite fan-series. The fanimes are good and all, but this was something else.

9/9 when :(

[CountVonNumenor]

11 minutes ago, Sci said:

9/9 when :(

Unfortunately, I do not think we will ever get Part 9/9. It seems like the author has apparently not been active since 2019, and they may have even made a post saying they can't really continue it anymore.got bored of the project.

[SoundOfRayne]

I wanna get in and out of the thread quickly, since I'm bogged down with school and work, but I do want to come back later in the week to give my full thoughts.

Just like CountVonNumenor, I also saw Suwawako's Halloween video on KKHTA. And also just like him, it resparked my curiosity into a piece of the fanculture I had been content to bury and leave behind.

First, some quick context: despite always having access to the internet growing up, I didn't actually become internet-literate until the early-mid 2010's and by then, I was in the latter half of high school. Most of the booming flash-animated, edgy, Newgrounds era of the web completely passed me by. But I do distinctly remember seeing one of those ever-so iconic images of Koishi floating around amidst other bloody cartoon characters. I was not remotely interested in checking out the source.

Fast forward to early 2022. I'm now "officially" a Touhou fan, and I've spent several months engorging myself in metric tons of Touhou content. So of course, it didn't take much time to find everyone's favorite yellow, black, and green clad eldritch horror and how her story fucked everyone up as kids. And me, having no deeper a thought than "consume content," decided to give in and check it out:

 

 

I hated it.
Just straight-up, did not enjoy it. Despite the darker undertones about the mechanics of Touhou's world, a vast majority of its portrayal is happy-go-lucky, cute, and approachable, and that's how I liked it. That's still how I like it.
But it was a specific moment that turned me away. Couldn't tell which episode it was, but it was the torture scene between an insane Sanae and her captive Kogasa. Mind, I had no sense of attachment to either of these characters. I didn't like Sanae and I had basically no idea who Kogasa even was, but something about the way that scene played out made me deeply uncomfortable. Even up until that point, the show had been extra bloody, gory, kinda creepy, but it never really left that strong an impression on me. It was like seeing a kid trying to imitate what they see as "mature;" it's like it was trying so hard to be edgy, it was kinda charming in its own right. But this unfettered sadism made me feel practically sick to my stomach. It was deeply unpleasant to watch. I dropped the series on the spot and never looked back. I remember it being fairly early on in the series, and I was not about to see if it would get any worse. "Why should I? It's just some stupid edgy fanfiction from a bygone era of the internet."

And then Suwawako releases is video on it, and it got me questioning if I was being too hard on it. So, I decided I'd give it another shot, eventually. Now we've got a thread about it, so "eventually"'s gonna come sooner than I hoped planned. But, again, lots of assignments. Lot of reading. Rewatching the series is gonna have to wait until the weekend, but I do wanna come back to the thread when I've done so and give a fresh perspective as someone who initially didn't like it.

Until then, treat your hats (and your friends) with love and care.

[CountVonNumenor]

52 minutes ago, SoundOfRayne said:

But it was a specific moment that turned me away. Couldn't tell which episode it was, but it was the torture scene between an insane Sanae and her captive Kogasa. Mind, I had no sense of attachment to either of these characters. I didn't like Sanae and I had basically no idea who Kogasa even was, but something about the way that scene played out made me deeply uncomfortable.

As far as I remember, that scene is quite early in the series. I knew about the scene itself for quite a while, but never exactly how it went on. Probably in the first episodes, during the madness killing spree in Gensokyo. You are lucky though to have stopped there. Were you to go just a little more, you would have gotten into the backstory of Sanae, back in the days of living in the Outside World. Man, this series really loves giving you gut-wreching moments one after another. And in between those, edge. I will not got into detail regarding to what happened to Sanae back then, but the story is quite messed up. Everyone has a messed up, sad and deplorable backstory in this animated series. And now, I may probably end up thinking for the rest of the night (currently 3 AM) on that backstory, and some implications mentioned in the breakdown.

Again, if you want to get through the whole series, but avoid having to watch the actual episodes, I believe that 11 hour video summary might have you covered. Unless you want to fully live the experience, which I guess is just as fine. 

[adzi]

...what will you cover next? Spaztique's Diamond in the Rough?

[ACE_DEUCE]

In my honest opinion, I found KKHTA to be really, really bad. I recognize the importance it holds in the context of the history of Touhou fan content, but looked at as a piece of creative fiction in a vacuum, there's really nothing in there for me to like.

Now, let me preface this by saying that gratuitous gore, cruelty and body horror are far from enough to turn me away from something. For example, I'm a fan of Saya no Uta and I even begrudgingly tolerate Elfen Lied. But all edge and no substance makes for a poor narrative experience. Also, it's been quite a while since I've last watched KKHTA so forgive me if I don't recall some details exactly.

• Loose internal reasoning regarding the source material setting: Certain established rules of the Touhou universe being changed in fan works is fine if the story calls for and is significantly improved by doing so. KKHTA falls flat on its face in both regards. The first thing that comes to mind is the Lunarians having a battleship capable of effortlessly killing the Dragon God. This could've not only been handled in many different ways (What was stopping Yorihime from just using her powers to find a natural counter during an actually intense fight?), but then they also just never use that thing as a weapon again? Not to mention it retroactively eliminates any tension regarding the incident cause the Lunarians just had this invincible superweapon the whole time that they were able to deploy inside Gensokyo (before the barrier had even fully collapsed??) whenever they wanted to. Another thing might be the physical hole getting punched through the Hakurei Barrier, but that's not really a big deal. (as I believe the canon status of how that works is sort of inconsistent)
• Koakuma: This entire plotline, more than the rest, is some Looney Tunes stuff. While I assume that the author opted to make it so that Koakuma is not Patchouli's familiar but rather just her assistant, and thus is not bound by her commands, everything else about it makes little to no sense. It's never explained how and why the Lunarians were employing an impure being (or how they even met her?) to do their bidding, why they would wait so long to send her in as a sleeper agent if Tsukuyomi and Toyohime had this grand master plan for who knows how long (given when the SDM actually appeared in Gensokyo), and most importantly why Patchouli and the rest of the characters present decided to shed 60 IQ points when Satori, who had no ostensible reason to lie in the situation that she was in, told them that Koakuma was suspicious, because assuming that she wasn't Patchouli's familiar (otherwise it makes even less sense) would mean that she really was just a random demon that just kind of showed up one day and the SDM crew really should've put their guards up at least a little bit going forward. Was the reasoning behind all this going to be exposition-dumped in the very last part? Maybe, but that would've ended up as a whole different disaster because the viewer never gets enough information to piece any of it together by themselves, at least as far as I can remember.
• Not really captivating in other ways either: While the art does get substantially better as the series goes on, the change is only from "horrible" to "serviceable". The action scenes are always just brutally mediocre - not animated enough to enjoy any fluid movement and good camera work, and not well-drawn enough to appreciate the detail present in individual shots. The music is good, but as far as I know none of it's original, so there's not much to be said.

This leaves me wondering what the appeal might even be. If any passionate KKHTA fans are reading, I would be grateful if you could disclose in detail (so "I don't know, there's just something" doesn't really count) what about the series actually attracts you. Is it just anime girls mutilating each other? I doubt it, there's plenty other anime-style media (with better art) that's arguably just as if not more grotesque. So am I missing something? I'd like to discuss this.

[CountVonNumenor]

5 hours ago, adzi said:

...what will you cover next? Spaztique's Diamond in the Rough?

I was thinking about covering that series at one point. I have not personally watched it, but my best friend did, and told me a little bit what it is about long ago. The series I would have gone into next was rather going to be Memories of Phantasm. I have foreshadowed a summary + review for each episode since back in May when I wrote the multi-thread collection, yet still have to go through it. I have watched the first 7 episodes in the winter break at the end of 2020, yet never went further. Perhaps with the review, I may be able to finish the series and refresh on what I have already watched.

 

4 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

Now, let me preface this by saying that gratuitous gore, cruelty and body horror are far from enough to turn me away from something.

I would say that was exactly what kept me away from even wanting to know what is going on in KKHTA. My first contact with it created a very poor taste, something I wanted to stay far from as much as I could. However, a morbid curiosity for the whole thing came to be in recent days. Not particularly that I switched to liking KKHTA, but more in the way of finally wanting to put yourself at rest and try to understand why some people are so passionate about that series. Besides, watching the breakdown was enough of a taste from the heart-throbbing adventure (and already a source of infinite questions like I pointed out in that list at the opening).

 

4 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

Loose internal reasoning regarding the source material setting: Certain established rules of the Touhou universe being changed in fan works is fine if the story calls for and is significantly improved by doing so. KKHTA falls flat on its face in both regards. The first thing that comes to mind is the Lunarians having a battleship capable of effortlessly killing the Dragon God. This could've not only been handled in many different ways (What was stopping Yorihime from just using her powers to find a natural counter during an actually intense fight?), but then they also just never use that thing as a weapon again? Not to mention it retroactively eliminates any tension regarding the incident cause the Lunarians just had this invincible superweapon the whole time that they were able to deploy inside Gensokyo (before the barrier had even fully collapsed??) whenever they wanted to. Another thing might be the physical hole getting punched through the Hakurei Barrier, but that's not really a big deal. (as I believe the canon status of how that works is sort of inconsistent)

These are very good questions. For me, while watching the breakdown, I was very confused about the dragon thing (I did not even know about a dragon entity in Gensokyo), but which for some reason get conveniently killed by the even more convenient Lunarian battleship. Where was that super-weapon for the rest of the story? Good question. It is not though that the Lunarians were lacking super-weapons though...

 

4 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

Koakuma: This entire plotline, more than the rest, is some Looney Tunes stuff. While I assume that the author opted to make it so that Koakuma is not Patchouli's familiar but rather just her assistant, and thus is not bound by her commands, everything else about it makes little to no sense. It's never explained how and why the Lunarians were employing an impure being (or how they even met her?) to do their bidding, why they would wait so long to send her in as a sleeper agent if Tsukuyomi and Toyohime had this grand master plan for who knows how long (given when the SDM actually appeared in Gensokyo)

Hmmm... from what I understood, the Lunarians had their weird plans for Earth for like... 30 years before the events of the series? (I am still very confused from all those backstory parts, trust me). And through these 30 years, was the SDM already in Gensokyo? Actually, when did the SDM and its inhabitants come to Gensokyo canonically? As for how did Koakuma end up becoming a seeping agent for the Moon, that one sure remains unexplained like you said.

 

4 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

Not really captivating in other ways either: While the art does get substantially better as the series goes on, the change is only from "horrible" to "serviceable".

Interesting enough, I have seen a lot of people saying the crude animation style was exactly what gave the series its charm and appeal. Some even came up with interpretations as in the style fitting thematically and just expressing the way out protagonist, Koishi, sees the world. (Although Third Eye also exists, and that on really is an interesting take on the very same idea I was talking about)

 

4 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

The action scenes are always just brutally mediocre - not animated enough to enjoy any fluid movement and good camera work, and not well-drawn enough to appreciate the detail present in individual shots.

I am not very sure about this one. Would you have found it more bearable to watch the girls fighting and killing each other in a better animation style? To me, it would ave felt even weirder, or just harder to watch as they would have looked cuter. And that bring me a lot of unhappy flashbacks to the day I accidentally discovered Happy Tree Friends when i was still way too young to comprehend what was going on (and funny enough, ended up not touching the family computer for a few years afterwards due to me believing it was cursed). This is weird for me to say, given I have already watched Hellsing last year (yeah, maybe there was a difference as I was already 19 at the time) and that one featured a lot of blood and killing - yet for some reason, it was much easier to digest; maybe it was since I was watching the Abridged version, which balanced very well the cruel and funny moments (and sometimes making the cruel scenes entertaining or satisfying to watch). Overall, I just do not like the idea of a grimdark Gensokyo, even though I am personally a fan of the very father of grimdark, Warhammer 40,000. 

 

4 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

This leaves me wondering what the appeal might even be. If any passionate KKHTA fans are reading, I would be grateful if you could disclose in detail (so "I don't know, there's just something" doesn't really count) what about the series actually attracts you. Is it just anime girls mutilating each other? I doubt it, there's plenty other anime-style media (with better art) that's arguably just as if not more grotesque. So am I missing something? I'd like to discuss this.

The girls mutilating each other was definitely one of the things that put me down from even trying to watch KKHTA. And funny enough, I think this series served as even more fuel in the hate for the Lunarians. The Watatsuki sisters were already heavily disliked by the fans given their introduction in Silent Sinner in Blue and how they easily beat the protagonists. Now imagine having KKHTA coming not long afterwards, and having the Lunarians conduct an entire extermination plan for Gensokyo. You can imagine people went mad, and the already low popularity of Yorihime and Toyohime might have gone even lower than it already was. Now I wonder if people still hate the Lunarians as much as they did back in the day. Some may sill do, others have calmed down and moved to something else to hate on. From external discussions, I was aware of the Lunarian massacre and the characters going berserk on each other. The one that probably was a surprise for me however was Byakuren and how she decided to pull a Millennium on the Human Village with the UFOs.

 

Also one thing I can't help but keep pointing out: HOLY SHIT THAT SANAE BACKSTORY. Finding out what she went through in the real world really felt...unsettling to say the least. From the school stuff (both that actually happened and what was implied to happen had some circumstances not saved her), to the outside world family... No wonder she ended up the was she did during the madness

Edited November 3, 2022 by CountVonNumenor

[ACE_DEUCE]

14 hours ago, CountVonNumenor said:

Hmmm... from what I understood, the Lunarians had their weird plans for Earth for like... 30 years before the events of the series? (I am still very confused from all those backstory parts, trust me). And through these 30 years, was the SDM already in Gensokyo? Actually, when did the SDM and its inhabitants come to Gensokyo canonically? As for how did Koakuma end up becoming a seeping agent for the Moon, that one sure remains unexplained like you said.

I believe 30 years is just the time the Lunarians spent physically being on Earth and running their bizzaro one-world government thing or whatever. I went back and checked and indeed Tsukuyomi says that the "fateful reunion" they'd been waiting for was in the works since the Earth had initially formed (i.e. the Giant Impact in KKHTA). This also implies that creationism is true in KKHTA because the humans ("closed eyes") had to have formed along with (or very chronologically close to) the Earth otherwise Moon Girl wouldn't have seen them overpopulating when she woke up, and further implies (albeit somewhat vaguely through the dialogue in 3/9) that the Lunarians were created by her and had the idea of the Moonlight Descent Ceremony implanted into them by her as well. I won't dwell too much more on this because it just creates more and more complex chains of implied events and facts that aren't too necessary for the plot and also are not worth anyone wracking their brain over them.

In any case, it's safe to say that the Lunarians had this whole thing cooking for at least a few million years (Tsukuyomi's implied lifespan in the canon, though I have no clue how old he'd have to be for the KKHTA timeline to make even a lick of sense), much more than the 100-something years that the SDM had existed in Gensokyo.

[CountVonNumenor]

10 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

much more than the 100-something years that the SDM had existed in Gensokyo.

Huh, I don't know why, but I felt the SDM had always been a rather recent addition to the landscape of Gensokyo. But I guess at least one century might be just as plausible. 

[CountVonNumenor]

Why did I bring up this series? It look like there has been a sudden resurge in popularity for it in the past months. The amount of KKHTA related fanart has increased, and some have even gone as far as to reanimate the intro for the series:

(some even want to go as far to reanimate the whole series - wow, so Touhou snuff in actual fluid animation and not just a slideshow? probably not my cup of tea)

Is there really a resurge in popularity as I was saying, or it is purely coincidental? Recent opinions regarding the quality of the show are as mixed as usual, yet with a slight tendency towards people being fond of it from what I have seen. Even the previous discussion this forum has had on the series (not that long ago, mind you) showed that people here are rather fond to the animation. Which just makes it a little weird when the current discussion seems to be going the other way around. 

[SoundOfRayne]

It took a bit longer to get through than I initially planned, but as of now I have watched all of Koishi Komeiji's Heart Throbbing Adventure, and

Holy shit.

I was prepped up to come in here and open up with a speech talking about how I used to hate this series and was going in to see if it could redeem itself in my eyes, and cap it off with a "gotcha!" and say that even after watching the whole series, my feelings on it didn't change. And that would have been the case, until today. My feelings on this series got a lot more complex.

In the interest of getting my final thoughts out of the way, I will say this. I cannot call myself a fan of KKHTA as a whole, but goddamn, I loved Part 19.

...Let's talk about it.

I guess I'll start with the things I liked about the series.

• In all of the fanworks I've ever seen about Touhou, I can safely say that nothing has ever had the stakes and scale that KKHTA has. Touhou stories, canon and otherwise, frequently have a pretty inconsequential conflict. "The status quo of Gensokyo is under attack, but it's okay, because the protagonists will always bonk the villain on the head and make them stop being evil I guess." There's never a sense that anything bad could ever or will ever happen to anyone. KKHTA, nah. Nobody's safe, and all your favorite characters (and Sanae) can and will not just be killed, but mercilessly axed off. It's a really foreign feeling coming from a property that has always been so happy-go-lucky.
• I dunno if the artist intended to shitpost with this series, but some of these decisions made in KKHTA were absolutely hilarious. Koishi locked in her chamber with a shoe on her head, Byakuren's Hitler-speech getting "Kung-Fu Fighting" as the background music, this running joke of Yuyuko constantly eating her Youmu snack, GIANT IMPACT, a gruff military officer standing next to a lunar rabbit with her stupid 3-mouth, most of the art (especially at the beginning) fails at properly being scary and comes off funny. OH YEAH AND ONE SOLDIER HAD A PICTURE OF HIS LUNAR RABBIT WIFE AND KID. LIKE, FURRIES ARE A CANONICAL PART OF WORLD PEACE. HOW DO YOU NOT LAUGH AT THAT?
  I get it; it takes away from the tension, but moments like these just made me bust out laughing, intentional or otherwise. It made my journey through this a lot more enjoyable.

And uhhh... That's kinda about it. So, about the stuff I didn't like...

• Y'know, when it's part 19, and all those juicy stakes are as high as can be, all that graphic brutality really adds to the experience. The crazed Gensokyo-ians squaring off against the Lunarian anti-bullshit-mechs and getting the floor wiped with them was, I think, enhanced by the fact that they don't get to be taken out cleanly. Now, when the stakes aren't so high... Yeah, the graphic nature of this series is gratuitous and tasteless; gory and edgy for the sake of it. Sanae torturing Kogasa, Star turning Sunny and Luna into itty-bitty-fairy-bits, Shou and Nazrin getting decapitated, Tewi shattering Reisen's legs, EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED TO RAN AND CHEN. These didn't enhance the narrative. They were just there to shock viewers and make them uncomfortable, and boy-howdy, mission accomplished. I loathed this part of the series going in, and loathed it coming out.
• I wanna give props where props are due; the quality of the art in KKHTA improved significantly over its course. However... that doesn't mean the art is good, because it isn't. As I said before, most of the artwork fails at getting the proper tone across and unintentionally becomes funny. Action scenes in the earlier half of the series lack proper flow and feel more like snapshots of stills during the fight. Good art should allow viewers to fill in the gaps between point A and point B, and KKHTA just didn't. Facial expressions either goofily dopey or over-the-top. Now, most of this changes as we get to the final parts, but upgrading from a 4 to a 6, while certainly an improvement, doesn't mean the final result is good.
• @CountVonNumenor I'm sorry I gotta do this to ya, but Sanae's backstory is my least favorite part of this story. It has basically no bearing on the overall story. The only time it's ever given any weight is for Suwako to visit the dried Sanzu River to try and find her spirit, which is also dropped since she becomes one of the yokai-kaiju that gets killed off. But more importantly, this backstory is centered around one of the most rancid tropes that I have ever seen, and gets repeated in a lot of very edgy manga and anime. See, these bullies aren't actual bullies. They are cartoonish embodiments of pure evil. It'd be one thing is Sanae was simply ostracized for talking to her "imaginary friends." (no other reason is given as to why she would be bullied, so that's what we're going with) But these bullies go above and beyond the call of duty, getting up to cheeky, rambunctious acts like assault, rape, and arson. Y'know, classic teenage tomfoolery, and all for the purpose of letting Sanae get some trauma and do a little murderizing. This has gotta stop. I'm so sick of seeing middle and high school "bullies" going around committing actual felonies just because the writer needs something to give us a dark MC. I don't care if KKHTA predates this as a trope. It's awful now, and it was awful then too.
• Speaking of being awful, can we talk about the actual story here? I might be invested in it, but that doesn't mean it's not rock-stupid. So first, congrats to KKHTA to successfully making me hate pretty much everyone in the Touhou universe. Reimu, Remilia, Suwako, and Yukari might be the only characters to get any meaningful amount of screentime and still be likeable. Everyone else is either dead, or a warped, unpleasant version of themselves, that then becomes dead. The Lunarians, Satori, and Koakuma have it worst in this. They're basically mustache-twirling villains the whole series, and the only reason someone could have any sympathy for Satori is because Toyohime and Yorihime betrayed her. Actually, wait a second... Satori had already accepted herself as the scapegoat for the Lunarian's plan, so she knew about it. So why the hell did she try to rat Koakuma out? Did the Lunarians just forget to tell her about that? If Patchouli decided to grow a few brain cells and take Koakuma out then and there because, you know, Satori can literally read minds and everyone know it, that's it. Plan's cancelled. No one's gonna be able to convince Flan to break the Hakurei barrier, or Yukari to let everyone stroll into the Outside World. Actually, why'd they need everyone in Gensokyo to go out into the Outside World anyways? I get they needed to give world peace to the outside to open up the big moon eye so the earth and the moon can bang again, but what did killing all the Gensokyo-ians have to with that? Were they petty? I bet they were petty. Wait a second, how the hell did Yukari never notice that the Lunarians were occupying Earth for 40 years? Not just Yukari, what about Sumireko? Kasen? WAIT, MAMIZOU SAID SHE WENT TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD! WHAT, DID SHE JUST NOT FEEL LIKE TELLING ANYONE WHAT WAS HAPPENING?! (actually, that would check out, considering the entire premise behind Touhou is based on characters never communicating anything...) Oh my god, this story is so stupid... Everyone turns into a drooling idiot just so the Lunarians can look super-omegiga-brained with this plan...

Okay, I need to stop. I'm driving myself insane with this. Like, I knew the KKHTA story was dumb and kinda contrived, but I'm just going down a giant rabbit hole thinking about it, and I want out. Okay, final thoughts:

Yeah, there were a lot more things about Koishi Komeiji's Heart Throbbing Adventure that I didn't like compared to what I did. But the stuff that was good is gonna stick with me. There really isn't any other (well-known) entry to the Touhou brand that gives that same sort of feeling that KKHTA does. For better or worse, it sure is a unique part of Touhou history. Not just that, but it also keeping viewers in a perpetual cliffhanger. KKHTA didn't cut off early on, or somewhere in the middle. It's right at the climax. Right before Koishi can grab her fishing pole and hook her some bitches. It doesn't even matter if the story's good or bad; people want to get closure on this, and now I'm one of them. That might not ever end up happening, and KKHTA is gonna live rent-free in my head until I can wrap it up and call it quits.

 

1 hour ago, CountVonNumenor said:

It look like there has been a sudden resurge in popularity for it in the past months.

The Lunarian occupation of Earth started in 1982, and lasted 40 years before the start of KKHTA's story on October 4th.
You couldn't convince me that a resurgence in popularity over the last couple months is just a coincidence.

[CountVonNumenor]

Just as I finished reading the reply above, and thank you so much! I'd love to write a long answer to it, but it's well past 4 AM already and I should go to sleep. But I will get back to that through the day. See you then

[ACE_DEUCE]

14 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

Actually, why'd they need everyone in Gensokyo to go out into the Outside World anyways? I get they needed to give world peace to the outside to open up the big moon eye so the earth and the moon can bang again, but what did killing all the Gensokyo-ians have to with that? Were they petty? I bet they were petty.

To be fair to the Lunarians on this one: Presuming that Moon Girl is the one that came up with the Moonlight Descent Ceremony (based on her monologue), it's possible that it had something to do with wiping out whatever remnants of human mysticism still existed (though I'd be willing to bet that they still enjoyed doing it quite a bit). The problem is that the entire procedure is still somewhat shrouded in mystery, and we don't know if Moon Girl was even aware of Gensokyo at all, or if the Lunarians were just covering all their bases.

[SoundOfRayne]

2 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

The problem is that the entire procedure is still somewhat shrouded in mystery

Oh man, it would sure suck if the series only had 1 more part left to actually explain everything and give a satisfying conclusion to the whole ordeal, huh?
That's even if we get it, which doesn't look very likely.

[CountVonNumenor]

19 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

It took a bit longer to get through than I initially planned, but as of now I have watched all of Koishi Komeiji's Heart Throbbing Adventure, and

Holy shit.

Hello! First of all, thank you for writing the reply, and I love the fact I actually had to read something consistent. I know, I am that weird kind of person who enjoys reading walls of text is they offer a better insight into a specific topic. Now, let's see what we have here...
 

19 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

In all of the fanworks I've ever seen about Touhou, I can safely say that nothing has ever had the stakes and scale that KKHTA has. Touhou stories, canon and otherwise, frequently have a pretty inconsequential conflict. "The status quo of Gensokyo is under attack, but it's okay, because the protagonists will always bonk the villain on the head and make them stop being evil I guess." There's never a sense that anything bad could ever or will ever happen to anyone. KKHTA, nah. Nobody's safe, and all your favorite characters (and Sanae) can and will not just be killed, but mercilessly axed off. It's a really foreign feeling coming from a property that has always been so happy-go-lucky.

Indeed, I was always left from the official Touhou games with the feeling that there are no stakes, and everything just comes back to normal. Incident happens, protagonists go solve it, they bonk the one who caused it, then have tea with said incident creator after the status quo is restored. KKHTA though? Forget everything you knew from canon, now we are getting into the territory of "be prepared to face your imminent death". Like I was pointing out early in the thread, it is a very weird feeling I have only felt before in regards to the "Happy Tree Friends" animated series. The name and animation and art style would not tell you anything about what it actually is about, but watching the actual things reveals that you are basically watching animated cruelty of the highest level (sometimes I really wonder if it went into even worse levels of gore and violence than KKHTA, which is only made worse by the cute art style used). Ironically, the series was very popular just a few years ago here in Romania, in a sort of resurgence wave after the original release (which again, I have talked about and how I received it with my young 5 year old dumb brain back then). 
 

19 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

Byakuren's Hitler-speech getting "Kung-Fu Fighting" as the background music

    That one was pretty much one of the weirdest things I have seen, even if I just watched the video summary on the series. 
 

19 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

OH YEAH AND ONE SOLDIER HAD A PICTURE OF HIS LUNAR RABBIT WIFE AND KID. LIKE, FURRIES ARE A CANONICAL PART OF WORLD PEACE. HOW DO YOU NOT LAUGH AT THAT?

Oh yeah, I actually did point out that part in the opening text of this thread. So I guess in these few decades since the Lunarians started their indoctrination process on Earth, they even had the time for integrating the Moon Rabbits into Earth's population. I would not really call them "furries", as they are just humans with rabbit ears and funny school suits. In Warhammer 40,000 language (I know, quite a bit of a random mention), they would at worst fit in the "Abhumans" category, therefore still accepted into the Imperium of Man (not that there also exists an Abhuman species known as Felinids, who despite not having any official art until today, people still like to imagine them as basically cat-boys/cat-girls). But yeah, I guess it was not only enough time, but also Humanity was willing enough to establish such close bonds with another basically humanoid race. 
 

19 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

Yeah, the graphic nature of this series is gratuitous and tasteless; gory and edgy for the sake of it. Sanae torturing Kogasa, Star turning Sunny and Luna into itty-bitty-fairy-bits, Shou and Nazrin getting decapitated, Tewi shattering Reisen's legs, EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED TO RAN AND CHEN. These didn't enhance the narrative. They were just there to shock viewers and make them uncomfortable, and boy-howdy, mission accomplished. I loathed this part of the series going in, and loathed it coming out.

This is pretty much one of the main things that put me off from ever even trying to watch KKHTA. Looking at the way it ended, you really do feel these deaths have been for nothing. Also we don't talk about what happened to Ran and Chen. I might just be one of those "I don't like it because they killed my waifu" guys (Youmu deserved better - Yuyuko eating her or her ghost half is a rather stale joke; also I have no idea what happened to Akyuu through the series), but now that I am a little bit more aware about how the show went... yeah, they really could have gone over that. Hell, the idea of a "Heart-Throbbing Adventure" could have been executed in so many different ways (I will mention again the fangame Third Eye, that one really has a cool idea and fitting art style), yet the artist has decided to go the edgy teenager route and turned it into a slaughter-fest. It's just uncomfortable. While watching that summary of the series, I was very shocked by the sheer random factor of Satori deciding to kill Orin. I was like "But why? That's so out of nowhere"...
 

19 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

@CountVonNumenor I'm sorry I gotta do this to ya, but Sanae's backstory is my least favorite part of this story. It has basically no bearing on the overall story. The only time it's ever given any weight is for Suwako to visit the dried Sanzu River to try and find her spirit, which is also dropped since she becomes one of the yokai-kaiju that gets killed off. But more importantly, this backstory is centered around one of the most rancid tropes that I have ever seen, and gets repeated in a lot of very edgy manga and anime. See, these bullies aren't actual bullies. They are cartoonish embodiments of pure evil. It'd be one thing is Sanae was simply ostracized for talking to her "imaginary friends." (no other reason is given as to why she would be bullied, so that's what we're going with) But these bullies go above and beyond the call of duty, getting up to cheeky, rambunctious acts like assault, rape, and arson. Y'know, classic teenage tomfoolery, and all for the purpose of letting Sanae get some trauma and do a little murderizing. This has gotta stop. I'm so sick of seeing middle and high school "bullies" going around committing actual felonies just because the writer needs something to give us a dark MC. I don't care if KKHTA predates this as a trope. It's awful now, and it was awful then too.

Speaking of uncomfortable, Honestly, when I kept talking about Sanae's backstory, I did not do that due to it being good. I talked about the topic mostly due to the sheer shock value the creator has gone for with it. As someone who suffered from getting bullied for 12 years of his life in school and high school just for being different, all I can say is that the topic is not very comfortable to go through. To be fair, I did not get it as bad as whatever they tried to go for here in the Sanae story. I have never really been properly assaulted in school, but I still ended up with two pairs of broken glasses and a few fights, most violent being outside school and getting assaulted by two guys I never met before on the street. I have never been raped, probably the worst that happened to me was getting my pants dragged off in front of the girl I had a crush for at the time. (Also the whole idea of someone getting raped in general is something that creates discomfort for me. Even if they are fictional, the Touhou characters do have a special place in my heart, and would never really like to see them going through such brutal and humiliating situations. Guess it is just the natural instinct on our side that we have to protect?). And also luckily, I was never the target of arson - I have witnessed what could be counted as such via an improvised flamethrower made out of a match and spray can, yet was never pointed towards me. 

As for the whole trope you pointed out, it is an outraging one. It is hard to believe someone would get so easily with the kind of acts you have described, and would still like to believe humanity has not gone so low that to actually commit vile acts like that since such a young age. I still want to believe humans can't just be at that level of cartoonish evil (even if sometimes they may seems to have proven otherwise through history). But I guess you just need grimderp "bullies" if you want to write your edgy character's edgy background and give them the reason to be dark. But yeah, the Sanae story, while not bringing very much to the table, was just one of these very uncomfortable moments to even think of. 
 

20 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

Wait a second, how the hell did Yukari never notice that the Lunarians were occupying Earth for 40 years? Not just Yukari, what about Sumireko? Kasen? WAIT, MAMIZOU SAID SHE WENT TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD! WHAT, DID SHE JUST NOT FEEL LIKE TELLING ANYONE WHAT WAS HAPPENING?! (actually, that would check out, considering the entire premise behind Touhou is based on characters never communicating anything...) Oh my god, this story is so stupid... Everyone turns into a drooling idiot just so the Lunarians can look super-omegiga-brained with this plan...

Holy shit you are right on that one. There really have been Touhou characters that either came late to Gensokyo from the outside world or still keep contact with it. I was wondering - does KKHTA predate the existence of both Mamizou and Sumireko? At least up until the point where those two would have been relevant in regards to the outside world. Also I guess Maribel and Renko are now part of the current world timeline instead of the "near future"? Does it mean the series actually takes place in that "near future", or it is taking place nowadays. but Sumireko was completely skipped? If there was no Sumireko, then how did we get Renko (assuming the two are related and there is not just a name coincidence)? Damn, it, just like you said, the more you start descending down the questions rabbit hole, the more you end up getting more insane. 
 

20 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

The Lunarian occupation of Earth started in 1982, and lasted 40 years before the start of KKHTA's story on October 4th.
You couldn't convince me that a resurgence in popularity over the last couple months is just a coincidence.

I guess this explains why there have been so many jokes before the beginning of October saying that the "Hakurei Border will be broken on the 4th October". I did not know that is the date when the events take place in KKHTA. People actually knew something, or maybe there is something more suspicious going on behind the scenes.

"I don't say it was Lunarians, but it was Lunarians."

 

 

Also as an unrelated side-note: I absolutely love that signature. Shanghai's expressions sells it perfectly. 

[Sci]

On 11/2/2022 at 8:24 PM, SoundOfRayne said:

But it was a specific moment that turned me away.

That scene made me so light-headed I almost fainted.

[CountVonNumenor]

On 11/11/2022 at 8:45 PM, Sci said:

That scene made me so light-headed I almost fainted.

Again, which was that scene in the show?

[SoundOfRayne]

21 minutes ago, CountVonNumenor said:

On 11/11/2022 at 1:45 PM, Sci said:

That scene made me so light-headed I almost fainted.

Again, which was that scene in the show?

Part 6, the torture scene between Sanae and Kogasa. I'd say it's the first genuine "I'm out" moment the show has to offer.

I hope for Sci's sake that they didn't go any further after that point. I was definitely uncomfortable and squeamish during Part 6, but not to the point of lightheadedness or nearly fainting. I'd hate to imagine how they'd have reacted to KKHTA's later attempts to one-up itself.

[Paracausality]

Toyohime's pose there was actually Bad@ss and truly Iconic if not downright perfect. You can sh*t on the actual series all you want but Toyohime was pure fire there imo. That's all I'm here to say.

Edited December 4, 2022 by Cardinal_

[CountVonNumenor]

14 hours ago, Cardinal_ said:

Toyohime's pose there was actually Bad@ss and truly Iconic if not downright perfect. You can sh*t on the actual series all you want but Toyohime was pure fire there imo. That's all I'm here to say.

May I know a little more about that moment? I really do not remember seeing it in the summary, so the image is lacking from my head. But I will take your word for it. If it is good, then I guess it really is good. 

[Gou the frog]

Dojayaaaa~ (Catchphrase by Funny Valentine From JoJo Part 8) I got this chart from reddit showing everyone status post KKHTA. I hope it will help although I'm not sure how accurate it will be. Original Thread:

Here is the chart Characters in KKHTA - Google Sheets

[CountVonNumenor]

7 hours ago, Gou the frog said:

Dojayaaaa~ (Catchphrase by Funny Valentine From JoJo Part 8) I got this chart from reddit showing everyone status post KKHTA. I hope it will help although I'm not sure how accurate it will be. Original Thread:

Here is the chart Characters in KKHTA - Google Sheets

Welcome back, Gou. I am so glad you have returned with some very interesting information. Just as I read through the list, and it sure caught my interest or made some things a little more clear. But now, just like how some threads pointed out, I really wonder what happened to the rest of the cast, especially the newer characters that did not exist at the time KKHTA was developed. But I guess most, if not all of them go into either "Presumably Dead" or "Deceased".

[Sci]

On 12/2/2022 at 12:00 PM, SoundOfRayne said:

I hope for Sci's sake that they didn't go any further after that point.

Of course I finished watching everything regardless. Don't regret it, the series is a real work of art.

[Gou the frog]

14 hours ago, CountVonNumenor said:

especially the newer characters that did not exist at the time KKHTA was developed. But I guess most, if not all of them go into either "Presumably Dead" or "Deceased".

Don't really know about this. Maybe some will survive. Although unlikely since most of them will be nerfed in the grand scheme of things. Still, where is the cast of Pc98?

Thanks for the welcome lad.