Hello again, readers and welcome back. Today I will begin publishing my translation of the tenth volume of Asakihara Shinobu's こちら秘封探偵事務所 or 'This is the Hifuu Detective Agency.' This story, along with all of the books that make up the main series, are available to read at longnovel dot com /touhou, where they are presented along with with a series of illustrations, stories by other authors, merchandise, promotional materials and the like. I encourage you to check it out.
This volume is a lightweight, silly little story, without any of the heavy themes or complexity of some of the other works, though it does still of course include a mystery for Renko to solve as only she could. There's no objectionable material to speak of here, but there are a lot of references to various mecha anime that was released between 1980-2010. Most of it is just name-dropping, but you will see a lot of references to The Big O in particular. Having seen that series (or any mecha anime) is not necessary to appreciate this story, but you'll get more out of it if you have.
There are a few details in this story that might be a little questionable as far as timelines and canon compliance, but if you've been reading the previous casefiles, then it's already been established that the Gensokyo seen in this series is just a little bit different than the one you may be familiar with. You won't find anything here that's a glaring contradiction of canon, just a few nitpicks here and there along with typical fanon interpretations of how things might work.
With those comments out of the way, I will now step back and leave the rest of the storytelling up to our narrator. I hope that you enjoy the tale to come.
