YMMV / Koishi Komeiji's Heart-Throbbing Adventure

• Alternative Character Interpretation: One piece of art by Sentaku-sen, the author of the fan video series, shows Yorihime and Koishi having a relaxed and fun time together raises some questions: Does Yorihime truly care for Koishi, and is only proceeding with the Moonlight Descent Ceremony plan (which involves turning Koishi into an Ax-Crazy so she can be easier to control) since she cannot refuse direct orders from Lord Tsukuyomi? Is it just one of Yorihime's schemes merely to gain Koishi's trust so she can complete her mission? Or is the plan because she wants Koishi to feel accepted in a new world where everyone has Third Eyes, regardless of the casualties that ensue?
• Angst Aversion: The series has a reputation for being absolutely horrifying and heartwrenching, with beloved characters from the Touhou series getting tortured and traumatized, which turns many people off.
• Awesome Music: The series is able work some really good songs into its narrative.
  • In part 3 of the finale there's "A Moon Rabbit Responding to Selene" by Tutti sound, the theme that plays while Gensokyo's residents are being transformed into kaiju and set loose in the Outside World.
  • The orchestral remix of both Maiden's Capriccio and Love Coloured Master Spark that plays during Reimu and Marisa's fight against Yorihime in the finale, adding greatly to the emotional weight of the scene.
• Base-Breaking Character: The Big Bad Watatsuki no Toyohime. Many audiences despise her as a cliché Invincible Villain and Karma Houdini, at least as far as Episode 19 8/9 goes. Meanwhile, the others think of her as a powerful Evil Is Cool villainess whom they Love to Hate. Then there are some parts of the audiences that still dislike her but are at least glad that she is a Big Bad instead of a "scrappy side character".
• Canon Defilement: In the series' approach to turning Gensokyo into a Crapsaccharine World of the highest order, certain aspects aren't very true to canon. The series was even given its own Characters page to cover canon characters for this reason. To name a few:
  • Byakuren is an Evil Overlord. Granted, she was driven insane by the Lunarians, but still.
  • Koishi herself is a violent lunatic who attacks people over slight provocations.
  • While Flandre's personality is surprisingly in line with her canon self, there's fans who find her getting assaulted and mutilated by Koishi in episode 3 to be a very mean-spirited thing to put her through, especially with how sympathetically she's played.
  • We don't know much about Koakuma in canon, but nothing suggests that she's the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing shown here.
  • Reisen II is a psychotic and extremely efficient killer, in stark contrast to her canon shy and inexperienced self.
  • The Watatsuki sisters are psychotic masterminds, the elder Toyohime bearing a perpetual Cheshire Cat Grin and the younger Yorihime being The Voiceless.
• Common Knowledge: That the entire conflict in the series happened because Koishi went searching for a fishing rod. Sure, that's what sets off the chain of events that leads to Yukari targeting Koishi and falling into Reisen II's trap, but the Moonlight Descent Ceremony was already in motion even before that occurred and had Koishi not attacked the Scarlet Devil Mansion Koakuma and the Lunarians would have likely just found another way to make Koishi seem like the culprit.
• Complete Monster: While a lot of characters get Adaptational Villainy, these are the worst:
  • Watatsuki no Toyohime is the Lunarian princess in charge of the Moonlight Descent Ceremony and the one who manipulated the rays of the moon to make Gensokyo's residents become murderously crazy. Experimenting on the fairies of Gensokyo, Toyohime drives them to slaughter each other and has the survivors executed by Reisen II. Toyohime's plan culminates in Gensokyo's people being transformed into near-mindless kaiju monsters at the same time she has the Great Hakurei Barrier destroyed, forcing them out into the real world to rampage and terrorize human cities. Toyohime then leads the Lunarians in hunting the kaiju-fied Gensokyoans down so they'll appear as heroes to the humans and have their faith focused on them, allowing them to proceed with the final step of the Moonlight Descent Plan and transform Earth's population into satori creatures. Unlike her younger sister Yorihime, Toyohime is motivated by a simple disgust for humanity, and is heartless to the point where she doesn't even care when she learns of her sister's death.
  • Watatsuki no Yorihime is her older sister's co-conspirator in carrying out the Moonlight Descent Plan, and a deranged fanatic seeking to purge the Earth of impurity. While Toyohime manipulates a large wave of madness to head to Gensokyo, Yorihime personally travels there to stop Reimu from destroying the Great Hakurei Border, ensuring the madness passes through it and transforms Gensokyo's inhabitants into kaiju. When Reisen tries to reason her, Yorihime coldly kills her former pet. Once Gensokyo is destroyed and the kaiju are all forced into the real world, Yorihime spearheads the hunt for the kaiju, even murdering a defenseless and severely injured Flandre. When the preparations for the Moonlight Descent Ceremony are almost complete, Yorihime's only regret is that her "fun" was over too quickly.
  • Koakuma is the one carrying out the early stages of the Moonlight Descent Plan, having made a deal with the Watatsuki sisters to get Patchouli to herself in exchange for helping them. As part of the plan, Koakuma takes part in the Lunarian experiments that drive the fairies into slaughtering each other and uses her powers to cancel out their ability to respawn. She later preys on Flandre's insecurities to manipulate her into destroying the Great Hakurei Barrier, so the kaiju-fied Gensokyo residents will be forced out into the outside world where the Lunarians can hunt them. Kidnapping Patchouli, Koakuma rapes her and gleefully proclaims that Patchouli is all hers now that everyone else in Gensokyo is dead.
  • Reisen II is the Watatsuki sisters' ruthless assassin and enforcer. When Toyohime finishes her cruel experiments on the fairies of Misty Lake, Reisen II slaughters the fairies who survived as well as the good-intentioned Earth rabbits she and Toyohime tricked into helping them. Assigned to assassinate Yukari Yakumo, Reisen II kidnaps both her shikigami and cuts open and sows bombs inside their bodies while they're both still alive, before forcing them both to suicide bomb Yukari.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Horrific and scary as the series may be, it's still entertaining to see an interpretation of Gensokyo that is just so utterly different (Darker and Edgier as well as Bloodier and Gorier taken up to eleven) and still see how cheerful Koishi is about everything.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: The death of Yorihime, one of the most powerful characters in the franchise, at the hands of Kaiju!Reimu and Kaiju!Marisa. Doubled with Tear Jerker, since the battle ended with Suicide Attack.
• Fandom Heresy: Bringing up KKHTA in discussions about canon Touhou is a good way to earn the ire of the Touhou fanbase.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: While the final part has yet to come out, there's been quite a few fan-made final episodes that usually involve Okina Matara or some other powerful character introduced in one of the post-LoLK games coming in and fixing everything.
• Foe Yay Shipping: There's quite a few people who like to pair Koishi and Flandre from this series, even though their first encounter with each other involves the former violently assaulting the latter. Ironically, actual Flandre/Koishi shippers loathe this series for how it portrays them both.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • If Suwako succeeds in not just bringing back Sanae from the Sanzu River but also the others who recently died, then the Big Bad, Koakuma, will lose her powers.
  • The title story itself, Koishi Komeiji's Heart-Throbbing Adventure. Named as such for this story will make your heart throb, either in fear, grief or even both.
  • The reason one of Lunar Capital's Vijoka gets destroyed by Kaiju!Reimu's Duplex Danmaku Bounded Field spell is because Reimu did not use any Duplex Barrier spell in either Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil or Silent Sinner In Blue. The Lunar Defense Corps (and Koakuma) have never known that anyone other than Toyohime and Yukari could do something remotely similar to said ability, therefore they do not have sufficient data about how to counter and are unable to do anything when said Vijoka gets hit.
    • Yorihime seems to have recognized it, though. She is the one who carries the Kill Tally device, after all. She knows who the two remaining Gensokyo Kaijus are and she can make a guess. Since there is no twinkling stars or bright lasers, it's obviously Reimu's spell.
  • Of all the cast members driven insane by the Moonlight Descension Ceremony, Sakuya and Youmu seem to be just fine. This makes a lot more sense when you recall that the moon already drove them mad back in Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night during the fight with Kaguya. They shrugged it off because they were already suffering from the effects.
• Fridge Horror: When we see Byakuren post-Moonlight Descent Ceremony, she's giant-sized and on top of the no longer floating Palanquin Ship, seemingly awaiting the Lunarians to kill her and with none of her army in sight. What if she's sad due to the fact that MOST of her army died under her now kaiju-sized weight?
• Growing the Beard: Episodes 3 and 4 marks the point where the story starts its shift into a much deeper overarching plot, with the effects of Koishi's rampage being played seriously and various future plot elements being set up.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Moon and the Earth used to be lovers in the very distant past. However, Earth was corrupted by humanity and the two were separated as a result. Now the Moon, with the aid of the Lunarians, plans to purify the Earth so she and the Earth can be together again. How? By erasing the concept of war and transferring it to Gensokyo, morphing its inhabitants into monsters so they could be killed by the Lunarians, and transforming the humans from the Outside World into open-eyed satoris. Sounds a lot like the "Lunar Capital Transfer Plan" in Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, doesn't it?
  • In Eastern and Little Nature Deity, Luna Child told Sunny Milk and Star Sapphire that she wants to "turn Gensokyo into a miniature version of the Moon". She clearly did not know the true meaning of her words back then, right?
    • Than again, she did not survive long enough to see it come into fruition.
• Heartwarming Moments: You wouldn't expect it from how the series starts out, but it has some really poignant moments. One of the most notable being Kaiju Marisa swooping in to save Kaiju Reimu as she's about to be killed by Yorihime. She could have easily taken the opportunity to take out Yorihime instead, but even in a semi-feral kaiju state she prioritized saving her friend and joins her performing a Suicide Attack that finally kills Yorihime. Doubles as a Moment of Awesome and a Tear Jerker at the same time.
• Jerkass Woobie: Flandre Scarlet, despite being crazy, is shown to care for Meiling and the rest of the Scarlet Devil Mansion staff, and has some deep insecurities about herself due to being locked in a basement and emotionally neglected by her sister for so long. She gets horribly mutilated in her fight with Koishi, and Koakuma later plays on her insecurities in order to manipulate her into destroying the Great Hakurei Barrier, after which she's forcibly mutated into a kaiju along with the rest of the Gensokyo residents for the Lunarians to fight, and spends her last moments calling out for her sister before she's coldly finished off.
• Love to Hate: The Watatsuki sisters are much nastier here than they are in the official games and spin-offs, but because they're played as outright villains as opposed to xenophobic, pretentious Hero Antagonists like they are in canon, they're at the very least enjoyable to hate.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • It's become a bit of a meme to recreate the Episode 6 intro using characters from other fictional works, such as this OMORI version, or this Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location one. Beware of spoilers, however.
  • In fact, the aforementioned intro is so infamous that completely unrelated uploads of the original song will inevitably get spammed with KKHTA-related comments.
  • Mentioning fishing rods or pointing out how everything started because of one, to the point where it's the page quote for the main page!
  • The quote "My hat is my friend and it helps me relax" is also quite popular.
• Moral Event Horizon: Plenty of those from many characters.
  • Mokou sets the entire human village Keine was protecting on fire, betraying the closest friend she had.
  • Koakuma allying with the Lunarians' plan to destroy Gensokyo just because she wanted to have Patchouli all to herself was bad, but what really sets her over the edge is kidnapping Patchouli and exploiting her catatonic state to rape her.
  • Reisen II crosses it by kidnapping Chen and Ran, sowing explosives in their bodies and then forcing them to suicide bomb Yukari.
  • Watatsuki no Yorihime crosses when she kills Reisen Udongein Inaba, her own former pet, when she simply tries to reach out to her.
  • As for Toyohime, the entire Moonlight Descent Ceremony counts as one for her. Driving the Gensokyo residents into slaughtering each other, then forcing the survivors to become feral kaiju and setting them loose kill millions of humans, all while hunting them down and portraying herself and the Lunarians as the heroes?
  • Lord Tsukuyomi also deserves a special place for his method of breaking MEH since he came up with the Moonlight Descent Ceremony in the first place.
• Narm: "My arm of justice!" It undercuts an otherwise grisly scene where a police officer has his arm cut off by Koishi.
• Only the Author Can Save Them Now: By the penultimate part of the final episode, Gensokyo has been destroyed, the Lunarians have taken over the world and completely succeeded in their evil plan, and the only Gensokyo residents left alive are Koakuma (who is on the side of the Lunarians), Patchouli (who is Koakuma's prisoner) and Yukari and Koishi (who aren't in a position to do much of anything). The final part is going to need to have something big happen to resolve all of this.
• Signature Scene: Probably the most well-known moment from the series is the moment where Koishi mutilates Hong Meiling, with the intro for Episode 6 following close behind. Reimu and Marisa's combined Suicide Attack against Yorihime in part 7 of the finale is another rather popular moment for how somber and serious it's played.
• Squick: Stuff like Hong Meiling having her throat ripped away down to the spine is really damn gruesome to look at, even with the rather simple art style.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Tewi Inaba, being The White Rabbit of Good Fortune whose able to bring fortune to anyone, including herself, should be able to at least resist the effects of Moonlight Descent Ceremony. Instead, she fell victim to madness like many other characters.
  • Luna Child's abilities (as her name suggests) are amplified at night when the Moon is in the sky. If anything, Moonlight Descent Ceremony would've make her much stronger while allowing her to keep her sanity and cause a lot of trouble for the Big Bad, had she not been killed by Star Sapphire offscreen.
• The Woobie:
  • Daiyousei is the nicest character in this story, having no selfish ambitions or murderous tendencies. That does not mean Big Bad would spare her, though.
  • All of the Gensokyo residents basically become this in episode 19, where they're forced to become kaiju by the Lunarians for them to destroy. Special mention though goes to Suika, who was one of the youkai who genuinely liked humans, yet she ends up having humanity cheer on for her death against the Lunarians. She's able to regain some semblance of sanity before she dies, and spends her final moments thinking of the time she spent in Gensokyo.
  • Yukari was one of the few Gensokyo residents to escape becoming a kaiju but she ended up little better, as she has severe Survivor's Guilt and trauma over the fact that all her friends and almost everyone she knew is now dead, with her only companion being Koishi.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: A lot of viewers stopped caring at around part 8 of the finale, after pretty much every major character from the original series was killed by faceless Lunarian Mooks and the Lunarians completely succeed in their plan (and as of a 7 year Time Skip, their victory has stuck). The only ones left alive are who aren't villains are Patchouli (who is completely incapacitated) and Yukari (who is severely traumatized). Even if Yukari wants to do something, she'll have to fight her way through a super-powered Koakuma, Toyohime, Lord Tsukuyomi and his Moon Rabbit army, and quite possibly the Moon itself.
• Woolseyism: The various insults used in the series are rather creatively adapted, but the clearest use is when Rumia introduces herself with "Yo homies, where da smokes at?" in the English subs.

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