The cast list is now up. Lo and behold.

Sakuya: Sawashiro Miyuki — Shinku (Rozen Maiden), Ginko (Mushishi), Tsugumi (Kannagi), Mint (Galaxy Angel), Canaan (Canaan)
Remilia: Kitamura Eri — Yui (Angel Beats!), Kawashima Ami (Toradora!), Sakihata Rimi (ChäoS;HEAd), Hamyuts Meseta (Tatakau Shisho: The Book of Bantorra)
Flandre: Kanemoto Hisako — Ika Musume (Shinryaku! Ika Musume), Kanata (SoRaNoWoTo)
Patche: Rikimaru Noriko — Kukuri (11eyes), Mashiro (Tayutama), Manaka (To Heart 2)
Meiling: Satou Satomi — Tainaka Ritsu (K-ON!), Aine (Asura Cryin’), Manami (Oreimo)
Reimu: Satou Rina — Misaka (To Aru Kagaku no Choudenjihou), Kaoru (Amagami SS), Punie (Dai Mahou Touge), Haruka (Minami-ke)
Marisa and Chen: Shintani Ryouko — Milfeuille (Galaxy Angel), Sae (Hidamari Sketch)
Alice and Komachi: Tomatsu Haruka — Kannagi Nagi (Kannagi), Corticarte Apa Lagranges (Shinkyoku Soukai Polyphonica), Rouge (Basquash!), Minakami Misao (Asura Cryin’), Yumiko (Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou)
Yukari: Endou Aya — Miyuki (Lucky Star), Filicia (SoRaNoWoTo), Liu Mei Fang (Blassreiter)
Ran: Kobayashi Yuu — Mariya (MariaHolic), Nice Holystone (Baccano!), Sakurazaki Setsuna (Negima), Yumi (-saki-), Kanon (Umineko no Naku Koro ni)
Yuyuko: Shiina Hekiru — Shindou Hikaru (Magic Knight Rayearth), Fam (Ruin Explorers), Alpha (Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou)
Youmu: Hirohashi Ryou — Shiraishi Nagomi (Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka), Fujibayashi Kyou (CLANNAD), Alice (ARIA the Animation), Chane Laforet (Baccano!), Kawazoe Tamaki (Bamboo Blade), Rakka (Haibane Renmei), Naegino Sora (Kaleidostar), Yamada (Working!!)

First one (by the catalog no.) is yet another disc in “feat. 709sec.” series. All tracks in this release are arranged by him; there are also four tracks with exclusively his vocals (which is really, really great for a fan like me). Note: track 3 features Nomiya Ayumi (ref.: ALiCE’S EMOTiON’s TAILWINDS album). I guess the genre can be defined as “rock”.

The second disc, 星 -HOSHI-, continues the old title tradition, and as usual, different tracks fall into different genres. All tracks come from TH12 Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object. I personally recommend track 4 (vocals by Nomiya Ayumi).

Comiket 78 is drawing near, and as the fateful first day approaches, we are presented with more and more samples of what is to come. This time, SOUND HOLIC presents a DVD with five different PVs, and the animation quality is on par with Kinemakan’s “Fragments”. Here’s the demo video.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9MfdAkvHbE

About the PVD rip: I spent at least 3 hours trying various settings and whatnot. Alas, there’s no way to get rid of the tearing and jagging automatically, and I guess I’ll be diving into the hell of blazing yatta tomorrow to do a proper encode afterwards.

1. Letty Whiterock You! – vocals by miko (Alternative Ending); クリスタライズシルバー
2. キャプテン・ムラサのケツアンカー (Captain Murasa’s Ass Anchor) – vocals by 山本 椛 (monotone); キャプテン・ムラサ & 幽霊客船の時空を越えた旅
3. 断罪ヤマザナドゥ！(Danzai Yamaxanadu!) – vocals by 岩杉 夏; 六十年目の東方裁判　～ Fate of Sixty Years
4. てんこの恋愛下克上！エクスクラクラ☆ラメーション！(Tenko’s Love Domination from Below! Excla-lala☆love-me-tion!) – vocals by miko (Alternative Ending); 有頂天変　～ Wonderful Heaven
5. 水橋ジェラシックパーク  (Mizuhashi Jealoussic Park) – vocals by miko (Alternative Ending); 緑眼のジェラシー; appeared first on Chaos Flare by ALiCE’S EMOTiON
6. ひなりんのヤクい関係 (Hinarin’s Revelation of Misfortune) – vocals by 一ノ瀬 月琉 (monotone); 厄神様の通り道 ～ Dark Road & 運命のダークサイド; appeared first on Cradle2 by sound sepher
7. キャプテン・ARMのケツアンカー (Captain ARM’s Ass Anchor) – vocals by ARM; キャプテン・ムラサ

Therefore, I convert the cuesheets into unicode, leaving the TrueAudio-encoded files intact – I’m sure that it’ll save me quite a bit of bandwidth when a new version of that said collection comes out by placing the .tta files in their respectable subdirectories. I doubt rwx (the guy who posts the collection torrent) would re-encode something into something, when there are TrueAudio encodes available in Japanese P2P networks.

If there is nothing up there (after the first sentence), you’re using a browser which doesn’t support h.264 video and AAC audio playback.

I’m a fan of dBu music because of their awesome instrumental arrangements of various Touhou soundtracks, mostly because they only do instrumental stuff. I also love Silver Forest, Alstroemeria Records and IOSYS for both their instrumental and vocal tracks. However, there’s a really awesome thing about IOSYS, Silver Forest, Yellow Zebra, and a few others – the CD drama stuff.

Picture is, however, unrelated.

The aforementioned circles do a really good job voicing the drama tracks. I’d say it’s quite as good as commercial stuff. Sometimes I just loop a CD that includes a few drama tracks for hours – and I don’t get bored at all.

“Wriggle-chan, a~so~bou~?”

But I find it really strange that I could get through the entire Arcade mode on Lunatic difficulty.

Something is wrong with the AI, I presume. I could easily break any spell card used by the AI; and only three times my spell cards didn’t connect. However I lack experience and combo knowledge, and a real – human – player can beat me in – probably – less than 30 seconds into the game (I mean getting the KO).

I need stronger AI to play against and learn as it’s really, really hard to find people to play online against.

Then I browsed a bit around the CDs, and found out that the arrangement albums by Team Shanghai Alice (ZUN himself) are pretty nice as well; and I’ve also picked a few more circles. Some of them produce awesome drama CDs, by the way (Yellow Zebra’s M-1 Grand Prix serves as a nice sample).

The main problem with music is… time. I’ve got so many albums that it’d take approximately a month or two just to listen through all the tracks.

• TH12, 東方星蓮船〜 Undefined Fantastic Object
• TH12.3, 東方非想天則〜 超弩級ギニョルの謎を追え (Unthinkable Natural Law: Chase the Enigma of the Superdreadnought Guignol)
• 紅魔城伝説 スカーレット・シンフォニー (Legend of the Crimson Devil Castle: Scarlet Symphony)

The first one is the official 12th (pun not intended) game in the series, by Team Shanghai Alice. And Sanae is a playable character now! (Yes, I’m a fan of Sanae. Not as much as of Remilia or Ran, though.)

Scarlet Weather Rhapsody’s expansion, Touhou Unthinkable Natural Law, also features Sanae as a playable character (along with Cirno the Strongest) and is produced by Tasogare Frontier in association with Team Shanghai Alice. It’s a fighting game, just as SWR was.

Finally, Scarlet Symphony is, basically, Castlevania with Reimu as the main character.

I’m kind of busy playing the games now…

P.S. Some art related to Scarlet Symphony follows.