The other day was Occult Day, so Ane reposted most of her Sumireko arts.
Comiket 99’s cancellation/postponement
The other day, the Comiket staff announced that the event planned for the end of the year has been canceled. There are plans to move the event on Golden Week 2021 (April/May), and further details will be announced this Fall.
Japanese print shops make a lot of money thanks to the doujin market, and with Comiket’s cancellation, they might not be able to survive. You might recall something about that in Ranko no Ane’s surprise comment on the Shoujo Rengoku 5 pre-release review.
It’s currently unknown if BUTAOTOME will still release something at the end of the year, for an “Air Comiket” replacement web-event, but we’ll see!
Comiket website | Twitter thread about print shops
New song for Touhou Cannonball
Iku Nagae has been added on Touhou Cannonball, and her vocal track is yet another new BUTAOTOME song! It’s an arrangement of Legendary Fish, named “Hikari no Fune” (光の舟). Iku is currently only available in a limited pre-release gacha where you have a low chance to get her, but you can still wait until she will be properly added into the game and available in all the gachas.
…assuming she will be added. I’m still waiting for Shou to be out from the pre-release hell. Prepare your Flower-type upgrade material anyway.
With Hikari no Fune being their fourth vocal game in the game, BUTAOTOME is still strongly defending their title of “group with the major number of contributions in Touhou Cannonball (excluding IOSYS)”. So, I’ve made a new subpage for the songs usage page, with all their songs + artworks!
Touhou no Uta
There was a Touhou no Uta livestream last weekend, with your usual Comp and MiniComp (note: the actual name of the plushie is “Comp-kun”, but the bear used “MiniComp” when he introduced it for the first time, and I honestly prefer this name). This time’s guest was Marcia, Yuuhei Satellite’s new vocalist. You can rewatch the livestream here.
Next Touhou no Uta will be on the July 26th, and it will be a special episode sponsored by the Chinese event Michiteki Gensou Kayoukai. Featuring COOL&CREATE, DiGiTAL WiNG, Kisida Kyodan, Sekkenya and (of course) BUTAOTOME.
GITADORA Matixx & EXCHAIN Original Soundtrack
These two OSTs have been finally released today! They both feature two BUTAOTOME songs written for the guitar/drums/bass-based rhythm game: Deguchi Iriguchi and Toumei Justice. The bundle with the two OSTs is currently sold out on Konami Style, but you can still buy separately on Amazon JP. The OSTs are also available in Japanese download shops (mora, etc.) but at the moment of writing, only EXCHAIN is on iTunes JP
Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for the good soul who can send me the booklet pages with the lyrics.
Touhou Garakuta Soushi’s user reviews
The website Touhou Garakuta Soushi asked their readers to write short reviews about the Touhou arrangements of their heart, and they have been publishing them in a multi-part series of articles. Today they published the final part. This time someone (Nashigata) reviewed a BUTAOTOME track, and it’s one of the reviews with most thought put into it, so I decided to translate it!
Hakanaki Mono Ningen (Shoujo Rengoku) (BUTABEST 2) (Guerrilla 2) / BUTAOTOME
Among all of BUTAOTOME’s songs who sings with various emotions that fill the gap between joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure, I personally recommend Hakanaki Mono Ningen in particular.
A human society suffocated by the sloppiness of life and the mutual monitoring of it, the absurdness of people always blaming someone else for any misfortune; the lyrics are written from the point of view of a youkai (Sekibanki) who lives in the human village, always in a remote viewpoint and the song is sung with a fierce melody that makes excited.
My personal favorite quote is “humans are such transient beings”. From the point of view of a youkai, a human’s life is transient, which is the very definition of the worldview of Gensoukyou. It’s related to other Touhou songs by BUTAOTOME: “‘Humans are such transient beings. If you don’t care about watching/being watched, why don’t you just do what you want and get hated for it?”. I feel like I’ve been taught how to live life well.
Furthermore, BUTAOTOME also released a re-arranged version (Guerrilla 2). The lyrics are the same here, but the song has an atmosphere of Sekibanki slipping out of the human village late at night when the humans are asleep, and she is playing it.
And that’s all for this week!