Touhou Souka Illustration Collection

Title: Touhou Souka
タイトル: 東方想華
Release Date: 12/31/2009
Pages: 32 (including covers)

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Touhou Souka is a collection of illustrations of Touhou girls with flowers that match their looks and personalities by the circle Lunade Luna. It’s my first purchase from the circle, but I looked up Nabeshima Tetsuhiro’s 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 is a breakdown of 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.

Although I think the character choices are a bit typical for Touhou, I like the style. It reminds me of Korean artists like Tako Ashin and Nyanya, especially in the eyes. Nabeshima Tetsuhiro also makes the effort to match the girls with their flowers, so it makes for a lovely portrait.

This 32 page, staple-bound collection contains 13 separate illustrations on thick, card-stock pages. I’m also keen on the anime-esque style that I don’t see too many published artists do with Touhou.

Looking through some of the other works from Lunade Luna, I can see this isn’t the most creative Touhou approach. But, it has a lot more polish than his other pieces.