What's It About?

In the mysterious realm of Gensokyo, strange happenings are not uncommon. But few people look for them to come from books – that is, until visitors to Kosuzu's bookshop start to notice that things aren't quite as they seem. Kosuzu specializes in books that aren't only rare, but may also be supernatural, with a focus on “yokai books.” These might be books about yokai or texts that actually are yokai, and when they escape or evade her notice, they cause troubles for people in the town. Reimu and Marisa do their best to help, but when a tanuki gets involved, it may turn out to be a problem that only a bibliophile can solve!

Forbidden Scrollery is a spin-off of the Touhou Project, which has a number of games and other media associated with it. It will be released by Yen Press in November.







Is It Worth Reading?

Amy McNulty



Rating: 2

Forbidden Scrollery volume 1 deposits the reader right in the midst of this world where young women with paranormal abilities deal with supernatural occurrences mostly originating from the tomes or scrolls at a book rental shop called the Suzunaan. Perhaps devotees of the Touhou Project franchise need no introduction to this world and these characters, but the uninitiated certainly do. As a result, the story seems convoluted and overwhelming, throwing one character after another at the page, in one supernatural circumstance after another. Though Suzunaan owner Kosuzu makes her passion for the tsukumo books—the books that are essentially yokai themselves— apparent, what's not as clear is how she has the powers to decipher them and what everyone else's objectives are, other than averting supernatural disasters, one supposes. Though Kosuzu is the most rounded character, even she's limited to her singular passion, and the result is an enchanting world that nonetheless falls flat due to the lack of development put into the characters and their circumstances.

Harukawa's art shines in this volume and is easily worth a point or so on its own. Forbidden Scrollery conveys mysticism and magic via its beautiful aesthetics alone. Though the faces are somewhat similar, the character designs are still distinct and multi-layered. The clothing in particular pops off the page; the detail put into each layer of a kimono and the way the cloth flows, for example, are done brilliantly, almost like a miniature painting. The background is largely confined to the interior of the Suzunaan, but it's an attractive location for most of the action with its shelves and stacks of books and its eclectic trinkets. About half the time, Harukawa relies on screentones and blank spaces for backgrounds instead of the fantastical locales, but it's not so overdone as to prove bothersome.

Touhou Project fans are better equipped to judge the success of Forbidden Scrollery volume 1, but from a more objective storytelling standpoint, it leaves much to be desired. Aesthetically, the volume is well worth a look, but there must be a better introduction to the Touhou franchise than this series.

Rating:

Forbidden Scrollery might first seem impenetrable because it's one more installment in the labyrinthine Tohou continuum, but the reality is that even veterans of the franchise might be baffled by certain glaring flaws in its presentation. From the characters' relationships and their motivations to the page layouts and panel transitions, everything about this particular project feels disjointed.

It's not for lack of trying. Author Zun spares no expense to clarify or reiterate even the least essential minutiae. One footnote helpfully reminds readers that a rare books “is a book that's hard to find due to scarcity or other such reasons.” Another explains that the writing on the cover of a book Kosuzu is holding up matches the title she pronounces. The very first chapter ends with four boxes of narration recapping what artist Moe Harukawa has just spent the last twenty-eight pages presumably showcasing.

What he is decidedly less fond of is demonstrating things, particularly those elements of the story that need to connect. For all the time that is spent explaining the various kinds of books that exists in this universe, nothing about these characters' relationships or their world is detailed at all. And in a series about confronting and containing obscure youkai it hardly makes sense to delay a confrontation with the first one until the midpoint of the third chapter. It makes even less sense to rush through that encounter in a montage that permits the climax of chapters' worth of build to a mere gloss.

But then that's how Zun treats the climax of every story in this collection. No event is worth lingering on; everything must fizzle in a nonevent composed entirely of dry dialogue. This isn't a matter of intent, though, a reflection of what life in this sleepy town must feel like. Like everything else in the story it seems the result of nothing more than poor form: the first two chapters are nothing but page after page of world building that is so unmoored from further context that it only raises more questions. The second chapter begins with a pair of young girls dancing in the woods who aren't mentioned or seen again for the rest of the volume; snippets are seen of a woman floating in the air who never features in the plot; at some point the “maid to a vampire” appears to no end. If these are supposed to be cameos, they are so brief and insubstantial it would be difficult to qualify them as such even to familiar fans. Like every other element of this work their appearances feel so unessential. So arbitrary.

The blame doesn't fall on Zun alone; Harukawa's art is a busy mess, a profusion of elaborate costumes, over-designed backgrounds, overlapping panels and a million gradients of shading that leave each paging looking like a swirl of forms never quite separate into distinguishable elements. She rarely seems to know what items need to be centered, which in turn often makes the sequence of events difficult to follow. Characters and scenes both jump from one location and one subject to the next without any regard for direction or speed or pacing or what is appropriate. It's difficult to imagine an introductory volume less friendly to the new reader and less enticing to anybody curious but unfamiliar with the larger Tohou universe.

Rating:

If I were just basing this on story, it would be more like a 2.5, but artist Moe Harukawa's adorable art with its wispy yokai details definitely helps to make the volume. Forbidden Scrollery is one of the many stories to come out of the Touhou Project, a franchise that began with games and has since expanded. This is my first experience with the franchise, and while there were definitely places where I felt lost – it's very obvious that we're supposed to know who most of these characters are when they're introduced – there's still something charming about the book.

The author's note in the back mentions that bookshop owner Kosuzu is a character created for this specific series, which may be explain why this is relatively easy to get into. Kosuzu actually runs a book rental shop, which is sort of like the old pay library system that was largely replaced by free libraries, at least in North America – you pay to borrow a book rather than to buy one. This relatively old-fashioned set up works with the Taisho-era feel of the story and art, something that the art really captures nicely. Particularly well done are the tendrils of mist and the painted look of many of the yokai who appear in the story, as if Harukawa drew them with a brush rather than a pen. While other aspects of the artwork are somewhat fussy – like the girls' outfits – they do fit with the story's world.

The plot feels a bit thin, although that could be unfamiliarity with the franchise talking. Occasionally books and their not-so-sealed supernatural creatures escape from Kosuzu's establishment, and the witch Marisa and priestess Reimu have to run around trying to figure out how to stop them…or the tanuki Mamizou, who pops up now and again to cause trouble. That Kosuzu is largely oblivious to what's going on feels like set up for a bigger reveal later in the story, because she really seems to be much more in the know than anyone is giving her credit for; in fact, until it was specifically said that she was unaware of the supernatural beings around her, I assumed she was running the show. That's a major story flaw, and I can't say that it gives me a whole lot of hope for future volumes in terms of how the plot is going to play out. But on the lighter side of supernatural stories, Forbidden Scrollery does have its promise and attractions – even moreso, I suspect, if you're already initiated into the franchise.