♪Py-pyun pyun py-py-py-py-pyun♪
The Touhou M-1 Grand Prix 『東方M-1ぐらんぷり』 is a series of manzai comedy fan vids featuring Touhou Project characters, it has been released at various Reitaisai & Comiket conventions by R-note (formerly Yellow Zebra). The first two competitions had fan-made videos for the original audio plays, while the third and later competitions were animated by the artist tondex
『沌x』, and later two remakes of the first two competitions.
In-Universe the event was founded by Eiki Shiki, and is run by Rinnosuke Morichika plus different special guests. Four to six pairs of challengers compete, whose skits are then judged by a guest panel, with two finalists who face off to determine the winner. Being a comedy series, this doesn't always happen.
A complete list of English subtitled videos is available is here and here
Touhou M-1 Grand Prix provides examples of:
- Actually a Doombot: The Marisa that acts as Alice's partner in the third Grand Prix (as the team Witch Doll) turns out to be a doll-puppet created by her. Which is revealed near the end of their skit. Becomes a Brick Joke in 14 with Witch Doll's return - Rinnosuke attacks Marisa as a "Doll Test" to make sure she's the real deal.
- Affectionate Parody: Aside from the obvious, it's also one of the Autobacs M-1 Grand Prix.
- Art Evolution: The first two contests were fan-animated. From the third contest on, the art was done by 『沌x』, starting with traditional then moving to flash animation.
- Ass Pull: Done in Amanojaku's sketch from the 9th contest, twice. Not only was the whole skit a ploy to catch Seija (which worked), Nue revealed herself as Mamizou for no reason at all.
- Audience Participation: Whether they like it or not, when a performance gets out of hand.
- A Wild Rapper Appears!: Parodied in Bakusen Niang Niang's act, where Seiga adds a sudden rap verse to her song to try and appeal to a younger audience.
- Bait-and-Switch: The finals of the 4th grand prix is supposed to be between Satori Okyuun (Satori and Utsuho) and Cat Stone (Koishi and Orin). Then, right as the finals begin, the teams swap teammates and become Tokamak Club (Orin and Utsuho) and Komeiji Sisters (Koishi and Satori)
- Bias Steamroller: Despite the judges being introduced as "fair and square", some of them are biased:
- The members of the Yakumo family (Yukari, Ran and Chen) are biased in favor of each other. If one member is in a skit and another is a judge, expect a perfect score.
- In the 4th entry, Kaguya gave the WerePhoenix team a score of minus 100 just because it had her rival Mokou in it.
- In the 9th entry, Futo is a judge and makes no attempt to hide the fact that she wants Miko's team to win. It made it to the finals, but lost to Choujuu Gigaku with Futo being the only one to vote for Miko to win.
- Biting-the-Hand Humor: Contestants occasionally crack jokes at the expense of the current judges.
- Boke & Tsukkomi Routine: The series revolves around Touhou characters doing these routines.
- Bland-Name Product: Binary Drop's sketch in the 12th entry has Eiki decide to get a tattoo to make people respect her. The designs she's considering turn out to be logos for stores like "7-Elevem".
- Blatant Lies: The presenters keep claiming that the contest was entered by thousands of teams, which is unlikely when Gensokyo is a Small, Secluded World and all the finalists happen to be among the dozens of characters who appear in the Touhou series. The high entry numbers do allow for more Goroawase Number jokes though. Quote from the 3rd Grand Prix:
- Broke the Rating Scale: The judges are supposed to rate the sketches on a scale from 0 to 100, but not everyone does that:
- Eiki never votes according to the scale. Typically she goes with black or white, but in later seasons her verdict becomes a Running Gag in itself, leading to judge scores like "236 points + Russia['s flag]".
- In the 10th entry, Sagume rates the teams based on impurity rather than giving traditional scores. This does end up mattering, as it's later decided that a higher impurity score is a good thing, which breaks a tie in favour of MikoMiko Spark and later gets them the overall win.
- In the 4th entry, Kaguya gave the WerePhoenix team a score of minus 100 just because it had her rival Mokou in it.
- Byakuren's scoring was already generous in her first appearance, but when she returned to the 12th entry, she tried to give the first team an absurd number of points. Rinnosuke decides he's had enough of weird scores and demands that from now on everyone has to stick to the scale. Byakuren went on to give everyone perfect scores.
- Caustic Critic:
- While most of the judges are fairly mild in their commentary, Yuuka does not refrain from complaining about the lame jokes in Kourin Spark's performance.
- Inverted with Byakuren, whose scoring is very generous. In the 12th entry, she tried to give the first team an absurd number of points before Rinnosuke forced her to stick to the scale.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Downplayed. While the sketches themselves remain comedic, the contest surrounding them is taken more seriously later in the series. Earlier installments had a lot of shenanigans like Flandre attacking the audience, judges who don't do their job, blatantly biased judges and wacky scorings. Later tournaments largely do away with this. The only major exception is that the 15th tournament has two versions where the audience could vote on which one to make canon, and even then the gimmick was more for the sake of audience participation than the in-universe narrative.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Many of those playing the boke.
- Competition Freak: Several competitors tend to take the competition very seriously, often to the point of absurdity..
- Comically Missing the Point: The bokes do this very frequently, typically to get a rise of their respective partners.
- Darker and Edgier: The later instalments feature some sketches with edgier comedy, such as one revolving around a Comedic Lolicon.
- Dark Horse Victory: The winner of 9th M1 Grand Prix is Choujuu Gigaku, who are not only in for their first time participation, their position as small-time youkai is noted several times as the reason why they're under the audience's radar. But from their first skit, it's clear the audience, the judges, and the MCs are blown away by the quality of their performance.
- Failed Attempt at Drama:
- When Kogasa repeatedly tries to come up with a horror story. The scary moment always turns out to be funny.
- Meiling's "JAOOOOOOOOO" causes Patchouli to collapse with laughter.
- Four-Point Scale: Every performance tends to receive scores in the 80-100 range. Subverted in the 9th Grand Prix, where Sukuna and Raiko can be very harsh in scoring.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: YuuTen (Yuuka and Tenshi) during the 9th devote half the skit to discussing Yuri and invoking a
Crack Pairing to see whether the guys in the crowd actually get excited and are willing to prove it at a show of hands. In the end, it doesn't work... The (all-girl) judge panel seems to think so, though.note - Glamour Failure: Whenever Nue shapeshifts, she retains her eye color, so anytime she transform into any characters without red eyes turns into this.
- Goroawase Number: Sometimes, a team's entry number will have a reading that related to it in some way, such as Lunar Dango♪'s (the team of Seiran and Ringo) being read as "Seiran".
- Gratuitous English: "Judgey" every time judging starts. Plus at various times in the skits.
- Limited Animation: The third and fourth competitions feature traditionally animated characters with little to no movement, while from the fifth and onwards the animation is made using motion tweens, with the amount of tweening increasing as time goes on.
- Lost in Translation: Many of the puns have an accompanying Wall of Text from requiring a thorough explanation.
- Ma'am Shock: A skit between Kanako and her partner-goddess Suwako Moriya plays this up, with Suwako calling Kanako "baa-baa" ("grandma" or "old hag") several times during the routine. Kanako initially requests to be called onee-san, but eventually resorts to pointing out that she's younger than Suwako is.
- Marshmallow Hell: Ran gives one to Chen during the 6th Grand Prix and Utsuho gives one to Rin also during the 6th.
- Musical Episode: A constantly interrupted example from Binary Drop in the 6th contest, though there is an edited version.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Mercilessly parodied in Gekidan Miko. Tojiko apparently was a master swordman by holding and spinning two swords on her feet, while Futo gets so overly distracted trying to explain her power that she becomes her own straight man!
- Odd Couple: Some of the sketches feature improbable duos:
- Bakusen Niang Niang consists of the wicked and manipulative hermit Seiga and the kind and polite hermit Kasen.
- Jealousy Star consists of Parsee and Yuugi, who have little in common other than appearing in the same game.
- Drunken Shrine Maiden-kiss!☆ consists of a shrine maiden (Reimu) and an oni who loves drinking and fighting (Suika).
- Yew Can Do It consists of the aggressive Nemuno and the mild-mannered Narumi.
- Okina is a secret god and one of the creators of Gensokyo. For the 13th contest, she teamed up with the Fortune-teller, a random nobody from two chapters of the Forbidden Scrollery manga, to form Oki☆Sha☆.
- Hourai Girls consists of long-time enemies Kaguya and Mokou.
- Animal Alliance features Saki and her rival yakuza boss Yachie.
- Takane: Like a Dragon consists of the aforementioned Takane alongside the gambling den owner Sannyo, the pair having no connections outside of being in the same game.
- Only Six Faces: Starting from the seventh competition, all the female characters have identical facial features and expressions.
- Paper Fan of Doom: Used often for comedic effect.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Lunar Dango♪'s second sketch in the 10th entry features Seiran wanting to make a movie about Gensokyo, but Ringo tells her that she can't just use Sailor Moon. She then tweaks it to Sweater Moon.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Tewi does a meta-version of this in one skit
- Rule of Funny: The entire purpose of the series.
- Running Gag: The people that are supposed to the run the "Loser Resurrection Competitions" (losers' brackets) are always caught doing something weird that they weren't supposed to be doing, like having concerts (Wakasagihime), proselytizing (Sanae and Kyouko), leading a weird chant about Chen (Ran), or outright attacking the audience (Eirin and Keine). When Aunn actually stays on task for the 14th contest, Rinnosuke is genuinely surprised.
- Running Gagged: When Byakuren tries to give ludicrously high scores in the 12th contest, Rinnosuke puts his foot down and demands all scores be normal numbers between 0 and 100, ending the gag scores that were prominent in the previous eleven entries in the series.
- Say My Name: Courtesy of Ran, "CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNN!!!!!"
- Shipper on Deck: The Patchu Meilin sketch is all about Meiling trying to get Patchouli to confess her feelings for Marisa out loud.
- Spanner in the Works: During Hourai Teruyo's (Kaguya and Erin) skit for the finals, Mokou barges in and forces them to improvise her in.
- Spooky Photographs: Parodied in the Were Phoenix skit of the 4th M-1 Grand Prix, where Keine teaches Mokou how to act in a funeral parlor. Mokou suddenly decides to take a picture of the recently deceased, but when she looks at the photo she took, she sees a picture of Mima!
- The Remake: For Comiket 84 (August 2013), R-note released a remake of the first contest, done by the same artist who had drawn everything from the third one on. Comiket 86 (August 2014) saw a remake of the second contest, by the same artist as well.
- Translation Convention: Lampshaded in one skit where Shou and Nazrin try to teach the audience basic Gensokyan.
- Turn Coat: in the 4th competition; Utsuho, Orin, Satori & Koishi trade partners.
- Vocal Dissonance: In the 4th Grand Prix, Remilia, who is typically portrayed and shown as rather young, is given a deeper voice which sounds like that of a young woman almost out of her teens. This is in stark contrast to her appearance in the first Grand Prix, where her VA attempts to sound like the little girl she resembles (which Flandre's VA does a better job of).
- Because of Kokoro's lack of facial expressions, many fans expect her to have a Creepy Monotone, but here she is sound as emotional as anyone else, even reaching Large Ham levels near the end.note
- Because of Kokoro's lack of facial expressions, many fans expect her to have a Creepy Monotone, but here she is sound as emotional as anyone else,
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: During Moriya Kero's skit, Suwako claims to have developed the ability to correctly guess any birthday. Later, when it's revealed that she's just making all of them up, she exclaims she learned the ability to make up any birthday. Either way, Kanako doesn't buy it.
- Yet Another Baby Panda: Parodied in the "Wind Girl" entry of the 3rd M-1 Grand Prix.
