万葉恋歌 ～桜の章～

Manyourenka ~Sakura no Shou~

Company: Honey Bee
Based on: Manyoushuu
Released: 2009.02.14
Official Site: http://www.honeybee-cd.com/manyou_top.html

万葉恋歌 (Manyou Renka, "Manyou Love Poem") is a series by Honey Bee that is based on the Manyoushuu. Written in ancient Japanese most of these poems are hard to understand, but this series explains the poems and turns them into a comprehensible story.

This is the first volume and is voiced by Kamiya Hiroshi. Story-wise, our main character accidentally bumps into a girl on his way home. The encounter ends with each of them apologizing to the other, but he can't get her out of his mind. After a long while of simply being happy sometimes seeing her on the way home he finally finds the courage to ask her out.

What is interesting in this case is not the story, which is sweet and enjoyable on it's own, but how they managed to link different poems from the Manyoushuu to it. Each track ends with a poem and it's explanation. So each track is effectively a modern situation interpretation of a poem.

Classical Japanese never has and never will be my forte, but I don't think I would ever manage to grasp the meaning of these poems without someone explaining them to me. Interesting enough, they've managed to combine these poems that are not related at all into a single story. Writing a scenario to one poem must be tricky enough, but combining several poems into one story is truly an achievement if you ask me.

As a bonus (I suppose?) all of the poems are included as separate tracks after the main drama.


Conclusion:
Maybe partly because it is based on classical poems, or maybe it is the soundtrack that uses classical Japanese instruments, but the entire atmosphere is very calm. The story is really sweet and it interesting to hear the interpretations that they've made to these poems. Recommended for a day on which you feel like listening to something calm and a bit heartwarming.