Pinky Cat
Suzunaan Reader
Introduction to Touhou Printwork Bonuses
In Japan, physical manga can come with bonus physical items as an extra incentive to buy the physical version soon after its release. Touhou printworks are no exception to including bonus items with their releases. In fact, the release of the first printwork, Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, came with bonuses in the form of postcards and notepads featuring art of the book’s cover. Since then, every single printwork has included bonuses in some form.
Given the reason why bonuses are given out, when it comes to serial printworks, they get a lot more bonuses to account for each of their physical releases. To demonstrate, here is a table of all the bonuses for Forbidden Scrollery.
The "colorful" top half of the table is dedicated toward bonuses given out for buying the Tankōbon volumes with the bonuses varying depending on the retailer selling the book. For your information, here are the English names of the retailers listed on the table’s header.
- Melonbooks (メロンブックス)
- Toranoana (とらのあな)
- Animate (アニメイト)
- Gamers (ゲーマーズ)
- WonderGoo
- Sanyodo Bookstore (三洋堂書店)
Anyway, this table demonstrates the multitudes of bonuses the serial printworks can have. Plus, many of the bonuses illustrate unique depictions not included in the manga itself. With all that said, how can one gather these bonuses?
Searching for Bonuses
“Bonus” in Japanese is referred to as 特典.This is the search term that will be used often to gather information on what bonuses exist for a given printwork and how they can be obtained. One of the more accessible info sources are a printwork’s bonus summary, which can usually be found on the social media of the printwork’s artist or the printwork’s publishing company.
For example, here are the steps needed to find info about Lotus Eaters’ Volume 8 bonuses. Go to the artist’s Twitter, @mizutaki, and type in 特典. There should be a list of posts for bonuses for each Lotus Eaters Tankōbon volume. One of the posts should feature an image describing the bonuses for Volume 8.
But let’s say Twitter becomes inaccessible, what now? In that case, I would suggest using a Touhou 2ch thread archive called 東方おねえちゃんまとめ. For this source, let’s try to find the bonuses for Visionary Fairies Volume 2. Find the search bar on the sidebar and type in 特典 with the Japanese kanji for Visionary Fairies. Scroll through the posts until a title about Visionary Fairies Volume 2 appears.
It should be noted that there are Japanese Touhou fans dedicated to collecting bonuses of Touhou printworks. I myself have found a lot of them on Twitter, with their photos of the bonuses serving as invaluable sources of information. I should also mention that @onasu_1341 created a Touhou goods Discord server as a way to share information about Touhou goods. This is another worthwhile source of information as a way to discuss about bonuses in addition to the rest of the physical goods of Touhou.
Buying the Bonuses
If one is grabbing a bonus firsthand from the store/serial work in question, it will involve importing from Japan. While this guide will not go over the process importing of Japanese goods, there are other guides that detail the process. I recommend Beyond the Boundary: Underground Touhou Doujin Music and its supplementary doc as an excellent resource about the Japanese import process.It should be noted that these bonuses are limited in availability, usually only being available close to release due to time or supply. This may cause difficulty in finding a good deal for a specific bonus on the secondhand market. That is why I encourage researching the bonuses of recent Touhou printworks ahead of time to be able to judge if the bonus is worth paying at the present moment.
Closing Thoughts
As a reminder, every Touhou printwork has its bonus. I like to also mention that a lot of info about these bonuses online is quite scattered. As a result, it is rather hard to figure out the extent of bonuses each printwork has, especially for the serial printworks. While it is understandable that info about bonuses is lacking due to their limited availability and low relevancy most bonuses have to the main printwork, it is a bit concerning the lack of information makes bonuses feel like they don’t exist. Plus, some bonuses are rather unique, so it would be nice to have systematized info about every printwork bonus to at least see what these bonuses are all about.As a note about my upcoming movements, my next “major” post will be about the bonus dust jackets of Forbidden Scrollery. It is still in progress as I currently need to find time to organize my photos of them. Until then, here is a sneak peek with a bonus of Volume 4 Melonbooks.
Forbidden Scrollery Volume 4 Melonbooks Bonus Jacket
I do wonder about the origin on those transparent sleeves worn around the arms of Kosuzu and Akyuu. The only hint I have is that this piece of clothing only appears during Forbidden Scrollery chapters that take place during the summer, so it is supposed to be a way to cool down from the summer heat. If anyone likes to take a shot at figuring out what this clothing item is supposed and what it is called, feel free to comment about it.
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