Author’s note: This article contains spoilers for the manga Forbidden Scrollery and possibly other Touhou Project media.
The only reason I’m vaguely familiar with Touhou Project and the main reason why I decided to read this manga—Forbidden Scrollery—in the first place is because my partner plays the games. And I mean plays these games A LOT—he adores these games so much, while I can hardly look at them without my eyes crossing.
Touhou Project—or simply just Touhou, as most fans call it—is a series of Japanese danmaku video games, all of which are written, designed, programmed, and set to music by Jun’ya Ōta, a Japanese composer and programmer more popularly known as ZUN. Sometimes referred to in English as “Project Shrine Maiden,” Touhou Project is not simply a series of “bullet hell” games. It is a way of life, at least according to the fans I’ve talked to. The games—of which I believe there are 25, but there may be more—contain a long list of characters, as well as an in-depth storyline centering on Japanese folklore.
According to the Guinness World Records, Touhou is the “worlds’ most prolific fan-made shooter series.” This is because not only is Touhou created by one person, but that person has also given permission to his fans to take the characters, art, music, games, story, etc. of Touhou and do whatever they want with them. There are fan-made spin-offs of the game, including fighting games, fan-made music, and light novels, and manga. The fan base, at least in Japan, is prolific, as is the original creator. Which leads us to Forbidden Scrollery.
Forbidden Scrollery is one of four official comic books to be released by ZUN in the Touhou universe. It comes after Fairy Wars and introduces a new human character, Kosuzu Motoori, a book collector running a library called Suzunaan in the Human Village. The books Kosuzu rents and sells are not just ordinary books, although she has some of those too. Many of the books Kosuzu owns, and absolutely loves to collect, contain youkai, and often of the dangerous sort. Because of this, Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame—two of the main characters in the Touhou universe and described as “The Beautiful Shaman of Paradise” and “Utterly Normal Magician” respectively in the manga—visit her library and help Kosuzu out when some of the youkai get loose.
Reimu and Marisa are beloved characters in Touhou, but I found the new character Kosuzu to be quirky and interesting. As a bookworm myself, her love of books was appealing, and given that I’m not super familiar with Touhou, the other characters weren’t necessarily my favorites already. I think her introduction to the Project made it easier for a newbie like myself to enjoy this comic book, otherwise I might have been lost by too many in jokes and references. And while the manga did contain these (I made my partner read it; he laughed at many parts where I didn’t), the basic storyline of “Kosuzu has a book, a youkai in that book gets lose, and Reimu and company have to recapture it” easy to follow.
I was especially enamored by the Japanese folklore, but also by the artwork. Apparently, Moe Harukawa is fairly new to drawing manga. From what I can tell, she’s only drawn one other manga before. But her art was what drew me to the manga in the first place, even before knowing that the volume was part of Touhou. The cover art is beautiful, depicting Kosuzu in a cute dress, with a book in hand, and smoke and magic swirling all around her. And the art inside is similarly beautiful, with lots of complex scenes and pretty pictures that remind me of the shoujo manga I love.
Forbidden Scrollery was originally published by Kadokawa in Comp Ace from October 26, 2012 to July 26, 2017. It is now available in English from Yen Press.
Story: 4 out of 5 stars
Art: 5 out of 5 stars
Overall: 4 out of 5 stars
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[coffee]
