雨枕 01.昴
Company: Hituzigumo
Based on: Original
Released: 2011.12.14
Official Site: http://hituzigumo.com/amemakura/
Amemakura literally translates into "rain pillow", it is a series in which your boyfriend talks you to sleep, while on the background you hear the soft sound of the rain outside. I can't give a better summary. It's better than it sounds.
Your boyfriend for this CD is Subaru (CV: Tachibana Shinnosuke), who was born and raised in America (born in New York, raised in California), but recently came to Japan as the result of a fight with his father. Not that you hear any of this in the CD. He has quite an ego and is used to getting everything he wants.
The story starts with you and Subaru in his room, after you had a date. It is Christmas Eve, and coincidently also his birthday. You've just made camomile tea before going to sleep, which is apparently a habit of Subaru. He asks you to lie down with him, and talks a bit about the day you spend together.
In track two the actual talking-you-to-sleep begins, although the first track is already relaxing. Just like the first Kannou Jikan CD, there are a few moments in which he tells you to breath deeply, and tense and relax your muscles (which btw, really helps to relax). The soft rain sounds also help, although they are not present all the time.
He gives you a head massage in the third track. I think. Every time I listened to this I kept drifting off and falling asleep, so this is part is really hazy. He first talks about how your body is really soft and warm (pervert xD). And then he suddenly switches to massaging your head and neck. Hmmm, ok.
After that we switch to a rather original way of counting sheep. When he was a little kid his parents were almost always away. Even though they would always phone to wish him goodnight, he sometimes felt lonely and couldn't sleep. One of his sisters (apparently he has 12 siblings?!) would tell him a bedtime story about little sheep, which he now tells you. It is really cute, every sheep gets it's own little story.
When you've finally fallen asleep, Subaru notices the rain has changed into snow. He thinks about waking you up, but decides not to. Instead he looks forward to your excited face in the morning.
What puzzles me about this CD is that you are both supposed to be in high school, but Subaru talks about you living together. Exactly what kind of life are you living?? He doesn't really sound like someone in high school either, but oh well.
The way Tachibana-san speaks in unnaturally slow and calm. It is still enjoyable, and definitely relaxing, but unnatural if you think about it. I also noticed that there are some unusually long pauses between what he says. This was in no way distracting, though it did occasionally make me wonder whether I had fallen asleep again or there really was nothing being said at certain points. Don't get me wrong, though, neither of these points are really distracting.
Despite the CD being called amemakura, the rain bgm is not always there. At the beginning of a few tracks you can hear it, but it soon fades out. The rest then simply has no background music at all. I somehow expected it to be there for most of the CD, but that is not the case.
Because it is made by Hituzigumo (who also did Kannou Jikan) I was afraid this was going to be just as ero, but luckily that isn't the case. While Subaru still has some questionable moments, there is no ero in this. He even mentions that he'll just let you sleep for today.
Tachibana-san starts his freetalk whispering, but soon switches to a louder (normal) voice. He seems to have had fun recording this, although he does mentions that he probably never spoke this slow before. If you've got this on an mp3 or something, I really recommend not listening to this after the rest, it'll definitely wake you up.
Conclusion
Well, to fall asleep with this was definitely a great success. I couldn't stay awake even if I wanted too. With Shuukan Soine I always had the emergency solution of listening to it on the middle of the day, but even that failed with this CD. It was nice to listen too, though personally I think they could have done more with the rain thing.
