Hunting the Elusive

Himorogi, by Yasuyuki, was released during Comic Market 77. It is a Touhou fanbook which is 32 pages long (though you will find the page count differs in the release, due to the elimination of a number of blank space pages). In this case, the very gorgeous cover art is an indication of what can be found within the book, which is pretty much made up of double page spreads of various Touhou characters, with great character designs and some gorgeous backgrounds. As you will see after the jump, especially critical to my reception of this book is the style of the artist, which has always been important in doujin art appreciation, but has taken on a new dimension of priority in this genre. [Release][PNG]

These are the front and back covers for Himorogi. Yes, I bought the book based on the cover, and the premise that it was going to be full colour.

On the subject of Touhou, there is very little to be said about these fanbooks anymore, just on the subject matter. Until someone comes along and radically reinvents the foundations, I think we’re just going to keep seeing the same tropes over and over. The Torii gate, for example, is all too easily associated with Reimu.

The cover art is repeated on the landing page of Himorogi, but without the text. I have this in the archive, but have skipped it here for conciseness. As you can see, the stock leaves something to be desired, and the printer has not assured consistent colouring across the spread, which is a bit of a disappointment. Then again, you can’t expect too much from standard doujins.

Back to the problem of the over-saturation of Touhou, I know at least one person (you know who you are) who is now pretty much boycotting anything Touhou due to the sheer amount of material out there. While I agree Touhou is overdone, I stand by my position that my aesthetic judgment is not all too affected by the subject matter.

Of course, the whole relationship between aesthetics and subject/message is a philosophical debate to which too many words on too many pages have been dedicated, but let’s just say Touhou as a subject is not really on the same ethical level as, for example, Nazi propaganda.

So yes, Touhou is overdone, but that only means that the standards for the art are elevated. In order for me to classify an artwork with the Touhou subject matter as outstanding, something needs to “pop” out at me, be it style, texturing, pathos, etc.

I would say, for Himorogi, around 50% of the artworks actually elicit some kind of response from me. Yes, I like the character design, but it’s “normal” to me. I think they would look really good in a hypothetical anime, but it’s not really especially distinguishing.

That said, I really like the photographic quality of some of the light used in the illustrations, which confers a kind of luminance to them.

Note the prodigious use of evenings in the images. Truly, if you were illustrating, you would have unlimited use of the “golden hours” so valued by photographers!

While I personally love autumn, I have always had a love-hate relationship with the evening, possibly because of the school/work cycle. Where school or work represents a source of stress, late afternoon, the return to home, is a more relaxing time. Evenfall is the wistful end of this short period, heralding darkness, the incoherence of sleep, and the traumatic return to school and work.

While this emotional response has been somewhat nullified over the years, and converted somewhat into the nostalgia with which I view autumn, this pathos remains in vague form, colouring my perspective of these images. Yes, it is somewhat obvious for 11, above, but 08, with its great use of landscape space, perfectly embodies, for me, the cessation of activity that evening denotes.

Simple backgrounding is also in Yasuyuki’s oeuvre, and I also like the use of plant silhouettes on the borders.

Perhaps a more unusual composition for Yasuyuki in this last full-scale artwork for this book, a Cirno portrait, with an emphasis on textures, recalling Huke somewhat.

Yes, I might have my own little criticism about character styles earlier on, but Himorogi  is actually one of the better Touhou fanbooks out there, and Yasuyuki’s character designs are pretty attractive in their own right. This is an artist to watch.