Fushigi Koubou Shoukougun vol.6

ふしぎ工房症候群 EPISODE 6 「クリスマスの出来事」

Company: Cosmic Ray
Based on: Original
Released: 2005.11.18
Official Site: http://www.cosmicray.co.jp/fks/


ふしぎ工房症候群 (fushigi koubou shoukougun) translates into something like 'mysterious workshop syndrome'. The mysterious workshop in the title is what binds all of the stories in this series together. The shop can only be found by someone who is lost and really needs it, and is run by an old man, who sells 'happiness'

Each story is told by a (high profile) voice actor who both tells the story and acts out certain characters. The story is told from the perspective of the main character, and mostly centers on that person his thoughts. In each story the main character is going through a troubled period or trauma, and the mysterious workshop becomes a turning point in their lives.

The sixth story is story is told by Miki Shinichirou, and is about someone who feel slightly lonely despite always beeing around friends or co-workers. He is always the one they come to for advise, whether work or private. And he loves giving advise, listening to people and helping them, but at some point this caused that he is no longer able to ask someone else for help. By building an image of someone who always helps, he feels he can't be the one to ask for help.

Just before Christmas he spends a day alone for a change, due to the fact that he is always around people the cold streets full of couples make him slightly lonely. Wandering aimlessly through the streets, he finds the fushigi koubou and orders what he wants most at that point: a girlfriend.

After he exits the workshop he witnesses a traffic accident where a woman is ran over. He immediately calls an ambulance for her and accompanies her to the hospital. Once there it turns out that she only sustained light injuries, but that she lost her memory due to the shock. Feeling sorry for her (and because she is very pretty) he decides to visit her as often as possible, and the two become close...

This is such a sweet story. I like how Miki portraits the feeling of 'there is nothing wrong in my life, in fact it is beautiful but there is something missing' (did that sentence even make sense?). The ending also took me by surprise. But it was a good twist. As always the voice acting and the music are fantastic, and it felt like the music was used slightly different here. Miki did a wonderful job on the voice acting, in track 8 and 9 he actually made me cry.

(Funny side note: I think I could hear his breathing a few times, while this is usually unhearable. Although that is probably more of an editing miss than anything else)


Conclusion:
This is such a sweet romance story, but don't let that scare you away if you don't like things that are labeled 'romance'. It is a really good story. It would be a shame to wait until Christmas to listen to it, but it might just give a little extra touch of Christmas feeling to it

Fushigi Koubou Shoukougun Premium 1 is actually a continuation, although I don't have listened to it yet so I couldn't say exactly how it is connected. But I know that I'm looking forward to hearing another story with Miki his voice.