刻の男組(ときのスーパーヒーロー)」第1弾「イケメン☆桃太郎」

 Toki no Superhero) Vol. 1 Ikemen Momotaro

This is the story of Momotarou (well known Japanese folklore), but in a ridiculous way. It could have been Toki no superhero (warai) series, or anything alike. Basically that is what it is, and at least as brilliant. It starts with 'long long ago, an old couple happily lived together', after which said old couple is heard screaming at each other in some sort of argument.

For a while the story goes against what the storyteller (CV: Suwabe Junichi) says, but after a while he is slowly forgotten, to make a comeback later on. The story mostly follows the original folktale, except that the motives of most characters can be highly doubted. That, and the monkey smokes, the rooster uses a laptop to gather information, and more stuff like that.

Momotarou (CV: pretends to not want to leave the elderly couple, but once away screams that he is finally free. The monkey (CV: Miyata Kouki) pretends to be cute but that is actually just a fake personality, his actual personality is one of the worst you've ever seen. The rooster (CV: Ishida Akira) is revered as the smartest animal in the woods, but is in fact simply owns a laptop. The dog (CV: Sakurai Takahiro) has an ore-sama personality. Even though they go to oni island to save a village, they decide to sacrifice the village for their master plan to defeat the oni. Also, they seem to have crossed the ocean on a motorboat...

The music is also brilliantly out of place, all kinds of well known and/or stereotypical tunes are played in both fitting and completely unfitting situations.

The final track is a cast talk/radio announcement by Suwabe Junichi and Miyata Kouki. They start with talking about that they have no idea what to talk about. After that they simply decide to ask everyone how they felt about the recording. Puns and randomness all over the place. Also, I didn't even notice that myself, but Suwabe-san talks about the fact that all heroes in the series are named -tarou. Which ends with him listing all of them; "Momotarou, Urajima Tarou, Kintarou, Itou Kentarou..." xD


Conclusion:
It didn't make me laugh out loud like the warai series managed to do, but it was definitely fun to listen to. The over the top music is part of the fun. I would have liked for the narrator to be present in more of the story, but Momotarou his remark saying that the demon his voice sounded familiar partly made up for that.


Trivia:
Sue me, but I COMPLETELY missed that Sakurai Takahiro was the dog orz. Thus I was listening to his talk in the cast comment in compleet shock. Maybe I should pay more attention to the entire cast listing after all... *sigh* Of course, as I listened to the drama again I started to wonder how I could miss it in the first place... orz.