Love Sweets Vol.3

 
ラブ★スイーツ Vol.3

Company: Livret
Based on: Cooking/baking
Released:　2010.12.29


Love Sweets is a series in which you cook / bake sweets together with your boyfriend. Each CD has two guys, and you make something different with each of them. The third CD has Inoue Kazuhiko and Midorikawa Hikaru. Surprisingly, the series really is more about telling you how to cook a recipe than acting all lovey-dovey.

First we have the owner of a cake shop or cafe voiced by Inoue Kazuhiko. A big difference with the previous instalments is that this time you are officially dating. The theme seems to be 'age difference' and Inoue-san clearly plays the part of an older boyfriend. You make a Swiss Roll together. It doesn't sound to difficult but I don't think I will be making it soon. During the baking you get teased a lot. Not to mention the obvious hinting at certain things it is agreed that you are staying over.

The second character is a high school student that is voiced by Midorikawa Hikaru (the setting is actually that you are his teacher...). You are making tiramisu together. What surprised me the most here is that you are using the oven. Apparently you made a sponge cake for the layering of the tiramisu (I usually use a certain type of cookies...). Just like in the first part the amount of lovey-dovey and teasing is way higher than before. Although this character also has a cute side.

The big difference with the previous instalments is of course that you are officially dating this time. As a result the amount of lovey-dovey has also tripled. It might be a bit overdone actually, as some of the things they say are so cliché it just makes me laugh.

Just like on the second CD there is a free talk done by both seiyuu. It starts with Inoue-san accidentally mispronouncing Midorikawa-san his name. After that they talk a bit about sweets, and after that about dating someone younger/older. Which is where the discussion gets pretty weird. Or am I the only one who thinks that Midorikawa-san saying that he could probably make it work even is the girl was in high school is slightly disturbing? Although I get the impression that the conversation somehow switches to being just friends at some point. After that they get side tracked by a discussion about games which is brilliant again.


Conclusion:
The amount of lovey-dovey has seriously tripled with this CD, making it far too sweet for my tastes. It does have some funny moments though. And putting a certain weird statement aside, the free talk is really funny as well. I'll stick to my own recipe for tiramisu though.

Love Sweets Vol.2

ラブ★スイーツ Vol.2

Company: Livret
Based on: Cooking/baking
Released:　2010.08.13


Love Sweets is a series in which you cook / bake sweets together with your boyfriend. It isn't explicitly stated that you are dating but it is kind of obvious. Each CD has two guys, and you make something different with each of them. The second CD has Miyano Mamoru and Hino Satoshi. Surprisingly, the series really is more about telling you how to cook a recipe than acting all lovey-dovey.

The first character to help you make something is your butler (CV: Miyano Mamoru). You don't feel like getting out of bed unless he makes you some sweets, and when he promises to do so you want to help. Thus you show up in the kitchen a few minutes later to make an almond Florentine. This side is so incredibly sweet it almost hurts. As you can guess your butler is head over heels in love with you and he worries about everything you do. When you've finally finished making the Florentine you ask him to sit with you to eat it he completely freaks out because there is no way that is allowed. Yet he does kiss you slightly after that, hmmmm.

In the second scenario the roles are reversed and you are now a maid, trying to wake up the young master (CV: Hino Satoshi). This time he doesn't want to get up until you promise to make him something, but he also offers to help. Just like in the first CD you are the one that knows the recipe in the second story. It is obvious that he likes you though, even having small conversations with himself on how to make your time together last longer.

Thanks to Miyano-san his extremely sweet butler story this CD is probably even sweeter than the first one, bordering on the too sweet line. The first character feels a little overdone though, so I didn't enjoy that one too much. In terms of recipes; I'd like to try and make the second one some time.

Whether this is a positive remark or not, I think I liked the free talk best. While they did their recordings separately Miyano-san and Hino-san recorded the free talk together. It begins very cryptically with Miyano-san saying thanks for something that happened a little while ago, but we never get to now what it was about. They talk a bit about their roles (partly explaining them to each other) and Hino-san says that he found his role (which he describes as "tsun-tsun dere-dere chu-chu") slightly embarrassing to do.

They continue to talk about sweets for a while, and amongst other things they about an Aomori prefecture speciality called サバップル (sabappuru) which is apparently an apple pie with mackarel in it (I kid you not, go and google it). Either way, they are obviously having a lot of fun in the free talk.


Conclusion
This was even sweeter than the first CD, and a bit too much for my taste. Even though it is still mostly about actually making the sweets and almost no lovey-dovey.

Love Sweets Vol.01

ラブ★スイーツ Vol.1

Company: Livret
Based on: Cooking/baking
Released:　2010.01.16

Love Sweets is a series in which you cook / bake sweets together with your boyfriend. It isn't explicitly stated that you are dating but it is kind of obvious. Each CD has two guys, and you make something different with each of them. The first CD has Ishida Akira and Hoshi Souichirou. Surprisingly, the series really is more about telling you how to cook a recipe than acting all lovey-dovey.

You make a gateau chocolat (chocolate cake) together with Ishida-san (his character doesn't seem to have a name...). You call him because you want him to help you make a chocolate cake, so the next day he comes over to help you. He mostly just explains what you need to do though (but he does help you with beating the egg whites). It is sweet but for the most part a full walkthrough on how to make a chocolate cake. You do get a kiss at the end though.

Hoshi Souichirou his character more or less invites himself over to make ichigo daifuku (strawberry daifuku). This time you are the one that knows how to make them, which is slightly odd because he still need to explain how you are making them for the CD to work. His character is a lot more genki. I never thought of daifuku as something you could make yourself, but it doesn't sound to hard (providing that you can get all the ingredients...)

Like I said, the CD is more about the cooking instructions than acting lovey dovey, although the second character is a bit more boyfriend-ish. In the bonus tracks they do act a bit more lovey-dovey though, but only a bit. The ingredients are written in the booklet, so you can try to listen to this a few times (maybe write down what to do) and actually try to make it.


Conclusion:
This was cute, but more than anything it made me want to try and actually make the things they describe. I don't think I'll be able to get all the ingredients for the ichigo daifuku while I'm back in the netherlands, but the first one should definitely be possible. Hmmmm...

PS: Livret, the company publishing this series, was a daughter company of Melonbooks that made stuff aimed at women. Unfortunately it has been closed down.