March 8th, 2010, 8:00PM by nat | 2 comments
Touhou Souka is a collection of illustrations of Touhou girls pictured with flowers that match their looks and personalities by the circle Lunade Luna. I hadn't purchased anything by the circle before, but I did look up Nabeshima Tetsuhiro's vast array of Touhou art work before hand, so I was pretty clear on what to expect.
The cover art and the inside art of Reimu Hakurei are actually two different illustrations. I thought that was promising, when most artists tend to re-use their cover art inside at least once. Touhou Souka reminds me a lot of Aka Ringo's 0 [LOVE] release from Comiket 75. Basically, next to each character portrait page is a breakdown of the elements in the illustration---the flowers and the characters---along with info on each. You can see what I mean in the photo above of Yukari Yakumo and the adjacent page.
Though I think the character choices are a bit typical for Touhou, I like the style as it reminds me more of Korean artists like Tako Ashin and Nyanya especially in the eyes with the tiny dot pupils in a pool of color. Nabeshima Tetsuhiro also makes the effort to really match (or complement) the girls especially in coloring with their flowers, so it makes for quite a lovely style of portrait.
This 32-page (including covers) staple-bound collection contains 13 separate illustrations on thick, cardstock pages. I'm also keen on the anime-esque style that I don't see too many published artists do with Touhou. Another I remember buying for that exact reason was Canaria Mint Illustrations by Kona, so it's just a personal interest of mine ^^
Looking through some of the other works from Lunade Luna, I can see that this isn't the most creative Touhou approach that's been taken by the artist, but it's a lot more polished than his other pieces. The upcoming release for Reitaisai 7 from Nabeshima Tetsuhiro looks like a slightly less finished assortment of Touhou illustrations, but it may still be worth getting, judging by this one.
- Title: Touhou Souka
- タイトル: 東方想華
- Release Date: 12/31/2009
- Pages: 32 (including covers)
- Buy: Yahoo Japan
14 years, 11 months ago
Way too many flowers, get out of the way of the pretty girls XD
14 years, 11 months ago
Looks pretty amateur