Touhou Gumonshiki: Memorizable Gensokyo

nathandouglasdavis May 23, 2022

2

My first impression was that I'm definitely missing some vital context about the world and the characters--context which would probably be known to fans of the franchise itself. As such, I can say that this story sorta struggles as a standalone story and perhaps should only be read by those familiar with the broader context. My second impression was that the premise of a local area's historian being reincarnated throughout that area's history and experiencing slow cultural shifts first hand is pretty cool, but that the implementation of that premise was underwhelming. Like, actually showing us readers some of the different time periods and their differences would probably be the bare minimum. I do also like the fact that the youkai who live in the area have also lived through these various time periods, and as such are able to judge this history book's accuracy in relaying what things were like, and I think I would've appreciated more explicit critiques and disagreements over the historian's portrayal of events. I was also unclear as to what the nature of this series of books actually was. Is it closer to an encyclopedia, with separate entries describing the various people, or to a chronological annal?