One of the most fun things with Touhou songs is that you can do pretty much anything you want with the same theme, and have fun doing different things with each one of ZUN (and Uni Akiyama)’s compositions. And over the years, BUTAOTOME managed to make arrangements of 90% of the Touhou themes. There are some themes the Pig never touched, while there are some others they arranged multiple times. Sometimes these themes were arranged in their typical pop-rock style, sometimes they got something completely different.

In this new series of posts, we’ll dig down in the entire BUTAOTOME track catalog. We’ll analyze each track that shares an original theme, and ask questions. How do they differ with each other? How the theme was arranged? Things like that. And we’ll find the answers. There are times we got vastly different songs (and not because song A is by Comp and song B is by Paprika, or song A is a regular vocal track and song B is a PapComp one). But there are other times when we get the same song with just different titles and lyrics. Vocal and instrumental arrangements will be treated separately.

The first part will be out when I want it to be out (it won’t be before the Shoujo Rengoku 5 review at least), and it will cover the first Windows trilogy: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Perfect Cherry Blossom, and Imperishable Night. Whether I will include Phantasmagoria of Flower View or not, it will be decided during the writing and while preparing the second part.