Touhou Bougetsushou Tsuki No Inaba To Chijou No Inaba Art by Toshihira Arata and Story by ZUN

Chose another bad one this year. Easter was also quite rainy. Lots of Wikipedia links in this review.

Touhou Bougetsushou Tsuki No Inaba To Chijou No Inaba Art by Toshihira Arata and Story by ZUN

Art and story (c) ZUN

Genre: 4-koma, Gag
Length: 2 Volumes – 30 Chapters



           The art is efficient, but not much beyond that. It's cute and the characters look the
same through out, but there is no real style to it, and it doesn't show any personality, either. Typically the poses and faces are repeated over and over, and some of that is the gag nature of the manga its self, but I don't believe that excuses it. The simplistic details are also on track for a 4-koma, as well, but they just come off plain rather than silly. The eyes lack any sort of life and the clothing is kind of odd looking at times because it doesn't flow naturally. The nature of the universe this is set in leads to a lot of mix-n-match for the clothing and scenarios, and while that inherently isn't a bad thing, when given nothing to reference it to, it comes off really disjointed.
          The adventures of two rabbits in the fictional land of Gensokyo where humans and monsters live together. Reisen Udongein Inaba is a rabbit from the Moon who fled to the Earth and Tewi Inaba is an Earth rabbit that lived so long she became a yokai, who live together with two other escapees from the Moon. The two of them are just about opposite in every way so, along with a strange cast of visitors, the days are never dull in their home of Eientei.
           I sat a long time after I finished this manga wondering how I was going to review it. I almost didn't, but since I already wasted my time reading it all the way through I decided to just go for it. I'll start with a little explanation, because as soon as I stared reading Tsuki No Inaba To Chijou No Inaba I knew it was based off of something and, sure enough, when I looked it up there is a whole prolific franchise that this belongs to. Touhou Project is a set of video games made by one

person, ZUN, that has had over twenty installations with the most recent being announced on April 20, 2017, which was only days ago as of this review, as well as a myriad of light novels, manga, and even music CDs. Not to count all the doujinshi comics and games along with other fan made material. Meaning, that when this comic came out in 2007, there was already a glut of other ways to jump in on the Touhou Project universe and all it's many side stories, and I think that this is probably one of the worst ways to do so. Mainly because this manga was boring. The gags didn't even make me give a sympathetic 'oh, that’s cute' or even an ironic lifting of one side of my mouth. It was a slog from beginning to end, full of characters I was already supposed to know as well as being full of lukewarm jokes and gags I've seen before. Maybe if I liked these characters (which, as far as I can tell, are boss characters from the connected game named Imperishable Night) and wanted to know more about them I'd actually care enough to go through two volumes in which the Moon rabbit is abused and side characters show up to just to cameo, but as I stood, there was no redeeming feature to it. It definitely doesn't make me want to look up the source materials for it, or even bother to read more than I have to in a Wikipedia article. If the pattern follows I should enjoy the next 4-koma I pick up, though.




1/5 Probably only worth reading for die-hard fans of the original source materials. 

Nice Monty Python reference, tho.