Jinrou -Chaotic Time-

人狼 -chaotic time-

Company: Koepota
Based on: Werewolf (the game)
Released: 2012.09.26

Official site: http://www.koepota.jp/wearwolf/

Jinrou - chaotic time- is based on the Werewolf party game. In the game, everyone is dealt a card which specifies whether they are human or a wolf. The wolves know each other, but the humans only know the number of wolves. During the night phase the wolves 'kill' on of the humans, and during the day everyone debates who should be eliminated in an attempt to kill the wolves. There are several special roles, such as the hunter (who can protect someone), or the fortune teller (who can determine whether someone is a wolf or a human). The goal of game is for each team to try an 'kill' the other team.

This CD uses the rules of the game, but everything is played out like it is a real scenario. The CD is partly narrated by Yuuki (CV: Ono Yuuki), one of the villagers, who tells what happened during the night and gives some background information. The discussions during the day time are like a normal drama. At the end of each day a narrator voice announces the votes for that day.

Right before a large festival, when most of the villagers have left, the remaining villagers are attacked by 3 werewolves who have found their way into their midst. Due to a heavy rainstorm that lasts several days they can't get any help from outside, and so they eventually decide to choose one person to execute each day by majority vote, in the hope that they manage to kill the wolves that way.

This strategy seems like a good plan, until two characters claim that they are the fortune teller, which means that one of them is an imposter. This causes the villagers to distrust each other more and more, and each day the discussions on who to execute grow more fierce.

To summarize the entire situation:

• There are 14 people at the start of the story: Yuuki, Morison, Layle, Arona, Mei, Ani, Sofia, Sasha, Stacy, Fan, Makandel, Irene, Eris, and Kurt.
• The village is attacked by three werewolves, who kill one person each night.
• To eliminate the wolves the villagers decide to sacrifice the person they think is most suspicious during the day. This is done by voting, and the person chosen is killed with a poison.
• There are several special roles: two associates (two villagers who know one another and that they are innocent), one maniac (who is human but assists the wolves), one fortune teller (who can tell whether a person is a wolf or human, although only one person each day. If the person chosen is the Youko, he or she dies), one psychic (who can tell whether the person executed the previous day was human or a wolf), and one hunter (who can protect someone from being killed), and one Youko (fox spirit), who wins when still alive at the end of the game)

When I started listening I was surprised that the CD started with the second day; you'll have to read the events of the first day one the official site. This means that you are introduced to a lot of characters at once, and at times it was a bit hard to keep track of all of them. Mainly because 14 people is a lot, and also because some characters hardly speak in the beginning.

The bulk of this drama is mainly the discussions between the different characters. The discussions are understandably emotional at times, and I found myself thinking with everyone on who should be trusted or not.

The solution is finally revealed during the cast call, where all the seiyuu state their character name and role. This makes the cast call the most important track in the entire CD, and I'm pretty sure I've never listened to one this attentively. It also made me flail in despair when I discovered some characters where something different from what I thought.

The CD comes with a code that can be used to log in to the official site, so that you can listen to the 'night part' in which the three wolves discuss who they will attack that night. It is obviously best to listen to this after you have heard the main drama, otherwise most of the suspense will be gone. While the night part was certainly interesting because it shows that the wolves also value each other, the writing was nowhere near as good as that of the main drama.


Conclusion:
I've never played werewolf myself, but at least in drama CD for it was very interesting to listen to. You do need to pay a lot of attention while listening though, or you miss things and with that the understanding of why the characters act in a certain way. I know of at least one other drama CD which uses werewolf as a motif: Doubt (which is based on the manga of the same name). Although that series is a lot more bloody (and creepy thanks to some very disturbing rabbit masks) and I am curious how that CD is.


PS: because trying to fit their names in the review made it completely unreadable, here is the cast list:

Yuuki: Ono Yuuki
Morison: Eguchi Takuya
Layle: Okamoto Nobuhiko
Arona: Kayano Ai
Mei: Mimori Suzuko
Ani: Tamiyasu Tomoe
Sofia: Komatsu Mikako
Sasha: Toyama Nao
Fan: Kobayashi Naoto
Makandel / Kurt: Asashina Junpei
Irene: Sakura Yuki
Eris: Nakamura Asami

Kuroko no Basuke: Drama Theater 1st Games

黒子のバスケDRAMATHEATER 1st GAMES

Company: Lantis
Based on: Manga --> Anime
Released: 2012.07.04


Kuroko no Basuke is a basketball manga serialized in the Weekly Shounen Jump, and follows Kuroko Tetsuya and his team mates at Seirin High. During middle school Kuroko was part of the "generation of miracles", 6 extremely talented regulars on the Teito Gakuen basketball team. All of these players went to different high schools, and of course Seirin will have to face them one by one. This summer an anime adaption started airing, and this drama CD is officially based on the anime, even though it features a completely original story.

In fact, the story has little to do with basketball this time. Seirin was supposed to have a practice match, but thanks to a miss by the other school the gym is already in use by the mama-san volleyball team (volleyball for  middle aged women). Everyone concludes that there is no way they can win the gym from them, so they decide to give up on the match. But since they've already traveled all the way there, they decide to go to the nearby amusement park.

Once there everyone wants to do something different, and they split up. Kuroko (CV: Ono Kensho) and Kagami (CV: Ono Yuuki) end up going to the food court, where they run into Kise Ryouta (CV: Kimura Ryouhei) who just finished a modeling job there. They decide to hang out together a bit, and Kagami has just won a stuffed toy from a crane machine when they run into Midorima Shintarou (CV: Ono Daisuke) who is there looking for his lucky item of the day. As luck will have it the stuffed toy Kagami just won is what he is searching for, and thus they decide to have a match to decide who gets the toy.

All of the matches they hold have nothing to do with basketball though. The first one is a match to see who can make the best puns, Riko (CV: Saitou Chiwa), Hyuuga (CV: Hosoya Yoshimasa) and Itsuki (CV: Nojima Hirofumi) are the ones that come up with this. The second match is telling scary stories, Koganei (CV: Eguchi Takuya), Tsuchida (CV: Inoue Gou) and Mitobe (who doesn't talk -ever- and isn't voiced by anyone) are the ones who thought of that. the first year members Furihata (CV: Mizutani Naoki), Kawahara (CV: Yoshimoto Yasuhiro) and Fukuda (CV: Sasaki Hiroo) miss their chance because they are in the ferris wheel and no one notices them. The final match is a sumo event that is held at the theme park, and eventually all four of them need to work together to beat an actual sumo wrestler.

First thing about this CD: if you don't know the series (manga or anime) it isn't going to be much fun to listen to. The CD assumes you know everyone and doesn't introduce anyone, and continues a couple of running jokes (Itsuki his puns, Mitobe not speaking, Kuroko being invisible, etc). If you do know the series though, this CD is pretty much gold. Only the characters introduced in the anime at the time of release are featured, but on the other hand it also uses the same background music, which makes certain scenes hilarious.

Midorima and Kise are two of my favourite characters, so this was gold for me to begin with. But the rest of the characters also get their funny moments. Two scenes with the other characters that I loved were the first years lamenting that no one knows who they are, and Koganei imagining everyone as hero's, which is followed by a short sentai parody.

Something else I loved is how they used a 'surround sound' effect. When the characters are talking in a group you can hear that they are standing in different positions, as if you are really there standing among them. I don't have an actual surround sound system to test whether this is actually surround sound or just very clever use of stereo sound, but it is interesting none the less.

In the free talk everyone is definitely having a lot of fun. Apparently they turned Kuroko his name into a verb ("kuroko-ru") with the meaning "to disappear", and Ono Kensho was very good at doing that during the recording. Kimura Ryouhei never mentions his name but simply does his freetalk as Kise, and Ono Daisuke uses a lot of the stock phrases for Midorima in his part. The rest switch between making semi-serious comments and absolute chaos, especially near the end (when they are running out of time) some of them stop in the middle of their talk and make way for the next person xD


Conclusion:
If you know the anime this is definitely worth a listen. It doesn't deal with basketball, but the story is pretty fun and uses all of the lovable quirks of the cast. I hope they'll release more of these when more members of the generation of miracles are introduced, and although a serious drama CD might be interesting too, this is a perfect way to have some fun with the characters.

Shoukoujo Sarah Monogatari

 

小公女物語

Company: Momo&Grapes
Based on: A Little Princess
Released: 2012.01.26


Shokoujo Sarah Monogatari is based on the novel "a Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It is a fairly well known story, and I think most of us will have heard of it in one way or another, whether someone told it or through the anime or one of it's film adaptions. This is part of Momo&Grapes their Men's Only series, meaning that all character are voiced by male seiyuu.

Sarah Crewe (CV: Okamoto Nobohiko) has crown up in India as the daughter of a wealthy English soldier stationed there. Wishing to give her a proper education, her father (CV: Yamauchi Kenji) sends her to a school in England. To make sure that she will be short of nothing he gives her lots of new clothes and things, and she gets one of the largest bedrooms in the entire school (at the time schools were often boarding schools at the time).

Sarah is well mannered and thanks to her kind attitude and wits quickly makes friends within the school, among them a classmate named Ermengarde (CV: Suganuma Hisayoshi) and the servant girl Becky (CV: Takeuchi Ken). On the other hand, the previous star of the school, Lavenia (CV: Kishio Daisuke) grow jealous of her, and the school principal Miss Minchin (CV: Miki Shinichirou) dislikes her from the start.

But Sarah her fun school days soon end: on her 16th birthday Miss Minchin informs her that her father has died from illness, and because he invested his entire fortune in a mine without profit Sarah is now penniless. Miss Minchin keeps her as a servant, and Sarah is moved from her luxurious room to a small and dark room in the attic.

Lavenia immediately grabs her chance to bully Sarah, but Sarah tries to remains positive. Seeing Sarah try so much Lavenia decides to frame her: she hides a broach she owns in Sarah her room and claims she stole it. Everyone in the school thinks Sarah really did steal it and starts to avoid her.

It is around this time that Sarah meets Ramdas (CV: Yoshino Hiroyuki) a servant from the house next to the school. He owns a little monkey that escaped and found it's way into Sarah her room, and climbs after it to catch it, and the two become friends.

However the school board decides that Sarah must leave the school, and she is thrown out on the street. With no money, and no one to help her find a job Sarah has a hard time. When she finally obtains some money to buy herself some bread, she sees another hungry girl and gives her most of her bread. By coincidence Lamdas sees this and decides to help her....

As always MomoGre their adaption is very faithful to the original. The amount of male seiyuu acting out believable girls in CD is also amazing. Maybe it is partly because they also got to do some really girly talk, but it took me almost no time at all to get used to. Okamoto is usually cute, so the jump to a believable girl isn't too hard. Takeuchi Ken his Becky is so girly it is almost scary though.

Kishio Daisuke his Lavenia also makes my skin crawl. It makes you wonder where he learned to act like an evil bitch like that. Lavenia her tsundere moment in the ending is priceless though. Yoshino Hiroyuki surprised me in an entirely different way. I'm used to his type voice ranging from flirty to gyaruo to host, but not as a 100% perfect butler. I wish he did this more often.

The cast talk isn't too special. It is interesting to hear all those seiyuu that were convincing girls just a few seconds ago talk normally again though. Okamoto saying that it was hard to do the "kyaa!" because it is just to girly was cute though.

Conclusion:
Sarah her life takes a 180% turn in this as she falls from school princess to servant, but luckily she remains positive or this might have become really annoying. Luckily they avoid all of that and it is a cute and (voice technically) amazing story to listing to. Momogre their works are usually good, and this is no exception.