Fanfic / Touhou: The Iron of Yin and Yang

It is both a miracle of science and abomination against all that is right. Now if they could just do something about that watermark.

Aka Touhou Onmyoutetsu, a fan made 46 episode video series by hiro on Nico Video (which you may view using this tool here). English speaking Touhou fans mostly know it through Mr. Pavlov's fan comic, while those who don't are left wondering why an Elvaan keeps being paired with Gensokyo denizens in Fan Art.

The latest disturbance in Gensokyo has connected it to another fantasy gaming world, Vana'diel. Buront, a brash Elvaan paladin and unusual 2ch celebrity, is literally tossed into the thick of things. Landing at the Hakurei Shrine and unable to go back, he joins iRenmu Reimu in her job to quell the new monster-related problems. And general shenanigans with Touhou's large cast.

Things don't stay simple for long as the darker forces of both worlds begin to play off each other. Hostilities resurface across Gensokyo combined with outside threats from Vana'diel. As the new outbreak causes old tensions to resurface and the heroes band together to face them, they find themselves reexamining their ties, as well as the full consequences of solving the problem.

The videos are a parody playthrough of a game with no plans for release. Made with RPG Maker, the sprites and music are taken from many sources. Featured most prominently are the main characters' spell animations using Tasogare Frontier's fighting game sprites.

The series is currently untranslated and may have to stay that way.

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Contains examples of:

• Adaptation Distillation: Most of the boss battles in fan comic I turned Iron of Yin and Yang into a comic because I felt like it are considerably shortened due to the originals being over 10 turns (50+ actions) long on average and featuring many hard-to-draw bullet clouds. Some are even skipped, such as the first Dirty Ninja fight and Patchouli.
• A Day in the Limelight: Keine, LS Team Boomerang, and A Very Unlikely Man, as a team. The artist of the comic made a side story of the SDM arc with Meiling and Naitou.

• Angrish: Some conditions make people type(?) worse.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Most other Final Fantasy XI adventurers are memetic personifications of their jobs. Usually loonies with wrong approaches to their class, like Naitou (Knight) the Paladin who does not tank, Tsuufuu (Theuf) the Thief too busy stealing to be useful, and Usuhime the White Mage who clubs enemies on the front line. Several of them are known for their misadventures in the LS Team Boomerang.
• Ascended Extra: Various pieces of the Buront meme play a bigger role. Most notably The Gluttony Sword has become an inverted Sword of Plot Advancement.
• Censor Box: Used on the Ninja's face as a joke, it disappears when he's not being dirty. The comic uses other things.
• Conflict Ball: Just because the party learns the value of working together does not mean they have outgrown habits like starting fights at the drop of a ZUN hat.
• Continuity Nod:
  • It takes place before Undefined Fantastic Object and when it comes time, interrupts it offscreen and blows it off.
  • Buront and company become the reason for Sanae's memetic mean streak.
• Crossover: Touhou Project crossed with tourrette syndrome and just a touch of Final Fantasy XI.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Buront. He might be mostly talk and his talk ridiculous. But when it mattered, truly the Paladin was in a class of his own...(serious)
• Dark Is Evil: If a paladin holds dark power things light and darkness come together and look unstoppable. If a DRK holds it its the opposite and they go crazy and die.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Nor a horrible job class under Komachi. Here she's as mature and dependable as she is laid back. Until someone mentions the trope.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: A side effect of coming into contact with a Gluttony Shard, making the holder lose restraint and become The Unfettered. Which is bad news considering Gensokyo is held together by its inhabitants knowing when to hold back. Things become worse if the host has the right power and motivation to resonate with something from Vana.
  • The Fallen Italian Doll just wants to leave a stronger impression on her creator. Even if it means hurting her or being destroyed in the process.
  • Sick of the Fandom's adorable interpretations of her, Remilia breaks the Vampire Contract and resumes her predatory conquest. Anyone not useful to this purpose is now disposable.
  • Yuyuko's living memories revive, and with them her desire to end her own existence. The Saigyouji Ayakashi can go back to being everyone else's problem.
  • Just when Mystia is getting along with humans, her singing falls back into being a Brown Note, only amplified and unable to stop. She's not strong enough to survive under the shard's influence for long, but what's one more negligible youkai?
  • A place to belong to can be fleeting, and even Gensokyo is not immune to change. Especially from the perspective of an eternal being. Guaranteed stability would require drastic measures, and unfortunately one of the most formidable Lunarians has gained that option. The odds are quickly stacked against Gensokyo having a future.
  • Away from the main story, a group of "Stop Having Fun" Guys gains a shard. Sometimes the climb to the top of an MMORPG gets ugly.
• Doppelgänger: The characters point out there's something similar about Buront and Rinnosuke.
  • Later, Final Tatsuya arrives in Gensokyo. He uses the same Elvaan paladin character model.
• Fan Vid: Aside from the standalone videos, it really says something when a fan vid series spawns other entire fan vid series. The RPG Maker Gaiden Games modeled closely after TIYY are especially impressive.
  • Most popular is the one focusing on Nitori, Touhou Kawasoubi, aka River-Equipped [job class]. It is basically an ongoing series of side stories, often featuring the characters who did not get the spotlight in TIYY.
  • Buront x Touhou Crossovers in general fall under the category of Touhou Uchouten (Touhou Ecstasy), often featuring the other troll from the sky. The Iron of Yin and Yang was among the first and most popular. There are currently almost 2000 such videos on Nico.
• Fanservice: The comic's designs of the Touhou. While not excessive or NSFW, they are quite eye catching. Best examples are Reimu and Aya thus far.

• Genre Savvy: Buront and Reimu are well acquainted with their respective genres. So the experience lives (admiration)
• Genre Shift: A Bullet Hell SHMUP and MMORPG have merged into a traditional JRPG. It's even key to the story, as the Touhou characters must approach problems differently.
• Historical Domain Character: Buront and his speech come from the posts of a real life individual. His frequent praising of the Gluttony Sword and hate of Ninjas boosts their importance, to the point of turning them into plot elements.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: Patchouli and Suika have attacks they can get caught in. Cutely.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Subverted. It's Gensokyo, and given the RPG format even the familiar abilities are not immediately available. But as things escalate...
• Just Ignore It: The characters' attitude to any obvious in-game flaws or plot holes.
  • If you're seeing problems your eyes are pointless want me to poke them from the back?
• Lost in Translation: Burontisms are a strange beast to translate. They are Japanese slang and figures of speech gone wrong, chat speak, gaming terms, and especially butchered English filtered through Japanese typos. Combined with references and memes that never caught on here, the series skirts Widget territory.
  • Mostly averted in the comic which also tones down the Burontism. It still takes a lot of Woolseyism.
• McGuffin: The shards of the Gluttony Sword. Which actively attempt to affect more of the setting, and whose effects can spread beyond the holder.
• Min-Maxing: Averted in the playthrough. Trying to show off all the features and not kill bosses too quickly can become grating at parts, however.
• Munchkin: The Dirty Ninja, always ready to take a hostage or otherwise put his opponent at a disadvantage. In his own game he's presented as more of a Broken Ace.
• Nuns Are Mikos: Or rather mikos are White Mages. The various Touhou main characters get associated with the closest FFXI class over, using their equipment and filling their roles in the party.
  • Making Marisa a Black Mage sub THF.
  • Being a magician foremost, Alice is a Red Mage sub PUP. Which leaves the door open for Nitori to fill the full Puppetmaster class in her own series.
  • Nitori takes this a step further. Rather than maneuvers based on classes, her machine simulates other Touhou characters and their Spell Cards. Animated character sprites included.
• Only Sane Man: Alice is the only one focused enough to remember objectives. Or notice they have formed a horrible party.
• Opposites Attract: One theory introduced for the current incident. Gensokyo is a world with serious stakes, but with everything reduced to fun and games. Vana'diel is supposed to be fun and games but forgot how to do that.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Dirty Ninja forms his own, overly literal Ragtag Bunch of Misfits enlisting Parsee, Medicine, and Hina to repeatedly challenge the party. How well they function as a party is up to debate.
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: Delivered mostly in dialogue and in-battle text, where every other line is a gag and zooms by quickly. Most Random Encounter enemies, their attacks, and what they cause are also jokes or references to something. Hope you can read fast.
  • Luckily they are snappy exchanges rather than Walls of Text, unless Buront is rambling.
• Rule of Funny: The series runs on Refuge in Audacity and Crazy Enough to Work. Though it also sneaks in dramatic moments and the warm and fuzzies, it's mostly about crossing lines.
  • Some attack animations get into Super Robot Wars territory, but since the engine has its limits, an intentionally conspicuous stock character must take the beating instead.
• Running Gag: Suwako's Zun Hats. Courtesy of a bizarre 4koma series.
  • All Burontisms. Occasions when they become relevant can catch you off guard.
  • That's Mr. Buront to you, punk!
    • Alice trying to sneak past it.
  • Megaton Punch!
  • Characters ending up with somebody else's meme whether they like it or not. Infections include Final Tatsuya -> Sakuya -> Buront -> Meiling.
  • Weekly Buront. It has since become real, except for the release dates.
• Schedule Slip: The comic series has recently entered this with its future unclear. The original video series isn't so clear as Video 46 ends with a message from Hiro suggesting to watch the side videos and no signs of later videos. He even made the original Nico Mylist private (with someone making a new one to replace it, which has replaced to the pervious link on this page). The possible final video has been added to it.
• Shout-Out: It might be easier listing parts that aren't references. The series has its own wiki for a reason.
  • Other Touhou fan works, fanon, and memes are naturally referenced everywhere. Namely, Letty and her battle is one big reference to Touhou Soccer.
  • A Very Dirty Man from Art of Fighting, in homage to the MUGEN original where he represented dirty ninjas with the broken Strider Hiryu.
  • The monster sprites come from many different games.
  • Buront's exploits as a Sol player fending off against a shameless Ky player.
  • G Gundam
  • Shounen mangas old and new.
• Shown Their Work: Never mind the overwhelming supply of material used to make a surprisngly believable game, it's hiro's ability to convincingly emulate the speech patterns of the vast cast that gives the dialogue-driven series its charm. I admire that it is a great job but there is nothing wrong with that. However, when you realize that this is one of the oldest fanmade works, many of the character's speech patterns in many later fanworks derive from here.
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: Blatantly polygonal FF11 characters in an otherwise sprite-drawn world. They find something that fits worse later.
• Strange-Syntax Speaker: Buront speaks in run-ons with typos and generally mangled phrases. It starts to spread to the others as well. Examples of Burontism include (but may be translated differently from)
  • "What you talking to me for all of a sudden?"
  • "A knight forged from a golden ingot of iron would never fall behind a leather-equipped job class"
  • "I'm a Delinquent so I'm good at fights and even ride a motorcycle without wearing a helmet"
  • "If you keep it up you'll regret it irl eating hospital food in a hospital"
  • "See that I totally reversed it with a splendid counter that's what you get for being cocky"
  • "I'm a first class burnout and you're weak casuals who can't hold a candle to me. Because of casuals talking high and mighty to a first class burnout like me my rage has hit rapture and shall know no peace for a while"
  • "You should apologize immediately otherwise you will quietly close curtains in the seedy underworld"
  • "A cheap LS is an LS that doesn't deserve to have a paladin in the party paladins shouldn't bother with cheap LSs either it lowers your personal rank
  Luxury HNMLS → equipment is perfect → heart swells so great personality → gets a girlfriend
  Cheap LS → equipment is small fry → heart narrows and shows on face → never heard from again"
• Status Quo Is God: Invoked. The cast is aware that solving the incident ultimately means dissolving any new bonds made as they resume old roles. The possible final video shows this has been adverted to a degree.
• Take That!: That Game Over screen must have been chosen by a ninja... Dirty ninjas always playing dirty I hate ninjas now.
• The One Guy: Aside from Ryu-san, Buront ends up heading an all-girl party that only keeps growing.
• The Chew Toy: Letty, Meiling, Sanae, and Ryu-san. If you came to see them get good parts your melancholy will hulk out. Youmu starts as one but gets better. Naitou becomes one later on.
  • To make up for their lack of highlights, River-Equiped features a party with Letty, Meiling, and Sanae.
• Theme Song: Shinku by Shimatani Hitomi. Used for the title screen.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: In Japan our hero is so thoroughly referred to as Buront-san that anything else prompts a reflexive AKIRA quote, usually from Marisa. In other words, "That's Mr. Buront to you, punk!"
• They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste: How a lot of the touching drama is diffused.
  • Any time Burontism invades a serious moment. Which is always.
• Troubled, but Cute: Troubled but Pretty. At one point a fight indirectly breaks out over Reimu between two handsome knights in shining armor. It would be a flattering situation if they weren't so... yeah.
• Tsundere: Mainly Alice, though Reisen and Reimu have their moments.
• Verbal Tic: Final Tatsuya, transfered to Final Sakuya.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Players who think they're still playing an MMORPG in Vana'diel just don't care what damage they wreak.
• W.A.F.F.: "I'll be here when you need me."

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