Ai no Poem tsuki Kotoba-seme CD

Going back to the first CD in the series~

愛のポエム付き言葉攻めCD

Company: Lantis
Based on: Original
Released: 2008.12.25


The Ai no Poem tsuki Kotoba-seme series is pretty much what it says on the tin: A CD that 'attacks' you with words, which also happens to have a poem about love included. And by attacking I mean aiming directly at your heart and making you go dokidoki in a lot of ways. The first CD is voiced by Midorikawa Hikaru and Miyata Kouki.

The main scenario in Midorikawa-san his part is that you come back home and your boyfriend has just finished cooking dinner for you. You are greeted with the oh so cliché but always entertaining "welcome home. Would like a bath, or dinner, or me" and a pretty deep kiss. Your boyfriend acts all cute but he says some pretty direct things.

After dinner you apparently fall asleep and you have a couple of dreams. One about a Magic Knight, which is with ease the most direct character in this entire CD. One about a prince who finds you being lost in the forest, this one is mostly sweet. And one where you are still in school and end up always eating lunch with the tsundere student council president (this later turns out to be how you and your boyfriend met). After you wake up again you get some more sweet words from your boyfriend.

I can't say much about the poem. It does seem the fit with the things said in the track before it. But Midorikawa-san his slightly broken "I'm your man" (in English) caused a me to skip the track as a whole the first time, until I discovered that his freetalk was recorded on the same track. Apparently Midorikawa-san did this recording while he had a cold (you can hear it in the free talk, even though he didn't sound like that at all in the rest of the CD).

The second part of the CD is voiced by Miyata Kouki, who appears as "kotobaseme kamen (the masked kotobaseme)" right after you were dumped by your boyfriend. He offers to date you and you accept, partly because you already know who he is: the president of the drama club at school (still, you were dumped only hours -possibly minutes- before. Talk about a fast recovery).

Of course being in the drama club (you also join after you start dating) you have to pick a play to perform at the school festival. You end up with a play about a knight who is betrayed by his older brother and is chased from the castle, only to return years later in disguise during a masked ball. And of course he falls in love with his brother's fiancée etc etc etc. The wording was a bit to theatrical, so forgive me for not being able to take it very serious.

The poem this time is titled "I no longer need a mask", so I suppose it fits? I didn't like Miyata-san his part that much. His characters were either to genki or too theatrical for my taste.

In terms of kotobaseme; the first two tracks by Midorikawa-san are the most 'attacking' ones. After that they get sweeter and sweeter. Nothing wrong with that, but in a CD with a title like this you'd expect the wording to be a bit bolder.


Conclusion:
The poems felt less random in this CD, but I can still do without them. I like the first two tracks the most, the rest was OK but nothing special.

PS: so far this is the oldest situation CD I've listened to, I think.

Koi Sentai LOVE&PEACE Vol.1

恋戦隊LOVE＆PEACE ドラマCD1

Company: Broccoli
Based on: Mobile game
Released: 2010.12.22
Official site: http://www.broccoli.co.jp/cd/sp/loveandpeace/


Koi Sentai LOVE&PEACE is based of the mobile game of the same name. In the game you become the pink Heart Ranger, and have to choose one of the four guys that make up the rest of the team as your instructor. Obviously, that is also the character you will fall in love with. A PSP port of the game will be released later this year.

They kept the concept of you being the pink ranger for the CD, so this becomes a mix of a sentai drama and a situation CD, which works surprisingly well actually. In the first CD Akagi Fuuta (CV: Hoshi Souichirou) is your instructor, so the CD is partly focused on him.

The CD begins however with the henchmen of the evil organisation "Menos" stealing people their wallets at lunchtime. Of course this kind of evil can not go unpunished, so the Heart Rangers show up to beat them. The narrator (CV: Kawahara Yoshihisa) introduces all of the characters: The leader Akagi Fuuma / Heart Red, the cool glasses character Aoyama Reiji / Heart Blue (CV: Toriumi Kousuke), the always smiling gentleman Sarutobi Kouhei / Heart Yellow (CV: Miyata Kouki), and the un-hero like Kuromine Tsuguru / Heart Black (CV: Nakai Kazuya). There is some interaction between the narration and the characters as well (he is thanked for introducing everyone for example) which is something I like.

After beating the bad guys everyone retreats to the base, where you works on some image training by practicing yelling your attacks. Meanwhile, the narrator introduces the three main bad guys: Dark (CV: Madono Mitsuaki) who has a gun incorporated into one of his arms and speaks Kansai-ben, the vampire Juteemu (or Je t'aime probably, CV: Maeno Tomoaki), and the wolf-man... Wolf (CV: Shimowada Hiroki) who's ears are first described as cat-ears. Just like there is a 'main hero' for each CD, there is also a main nemesis for each CD, and this time it is Dark. So he gets a little bit more 'screentime' than the other two bad guys. But not that much more. Understandably irritated by the fact that they are always beaten, the evil trio comes up with a strategy to deprive Heart Red of his power.

Which they put into action the next day. They start destroying the city so of course the Heart Rangers show up, minus Kuromine because he made up an excuse. We are first treated to a pretty hilarious transformation scene, and than the battle begins. The bad guys taunt Heart Red to use his full power, and then use their secret weapon (some sort of device that suppresses his power, which comes from his voice) to beat him. You try to cover for him but are too weak. Luckily Kuromine decides to show up after all, and manages to distract the bad guys long enough for you to escape.

Back at the base Aoyama performs a medical check on Akagi, but according to the results he should be fine. They conclude that there must have been some sort of device sealing his powers, and decide to train on fighting without yelling out. They don't get much time though, because the next day Menos is already creating havoc again. Another fight starts (in which the Heart Rangers talk very soft) but the rangers are almost beaten again. Until you are in trouble and Akagi mysteriously finds the power to fight them off.

The rest of the CD is is Akagi realising what gave him so much power, and some moments together with you. In the final track he wants to practice whispering, so he whispers all sorts of random things (really random things) until he finally whispers some sweet words. And then starts to blush like an idiot.

I love the fact that there is an actual opening song and transformation scenes. The opening song is quite catchy too. The interaction with the narrator is a nice touch as well. Not to mention his constant "let me explain!" before he explains something. And Dark his Kansai-ben. It has been a while since I heard a Kansai-ben character!

The mix between sentai drama and situation CD works surprisingly well. During the drama your actions are explained by the narrator or sound effects, or self evident from what the other characters say. When you are alone with a character it CD feel more like a situation CD, where they talk directly to you. The last track was pure fan service in that sense.


Conclusion:
I didn't know this was based of a mobile game at first, but the CD itself explains everything clear enough to understand and enjoy it without knowing the game. The other CDs put one of the other rangers in charge of your training, so you get a chance to be alone with everyone. I'm actually getting interested in the PSP game thanks to this.

刻の男組(ときのスーパーヒーロー)」第1弾「イケメン☆桃太郎」

 Toki no Superhero) Vol. 1 Ikemen Momotaro

This is the story of Momotarou (well known Japanese folklore), but in a ridiculous way. It could have been Toki no superhero (warai) series, or anything alike. Basically that is what it is, and at least as brilliant. It starts with 'long long ago, an old couple happily lived together', after which said old couple is heard screaming at each other in some sort of argument.

For a while the story goes against what the storyteller (CV: Suwabe Junichi) says, but after a while he is slowly forgotten, to make a comeback later on. The story mostly follows the original folktale, except that the motives of most characters can be highly doubted. That, and the monkey smokes, the rooster uses a laptop to gather information, and more stuff like that.

Momotarou (CV: pretends to not want to leave the elderly couple, but once away screams that he is finally free. The monkey (CV: Miyata Kouki) pretends to be cute but that is actually just a fake personality, his actual personality is one of the worst you've ever seen. The rooster (CV: Ishida Akira) is revered as the smartest animal in the woods, but is in fact simply owns a laptop. The dog (CV: Sakurai Takahiro) has an ore-sama personality. Even though they go to oni island to save a village, they decide to sacrifice the village for their master plan to defeat the oni. Also, they seem to have crossed the ocean on a motorboat...

The music is also brilliantly out of place, all kinds of well known and/or stereotypical tunes are played in both fitting and completely unfitting situations.

The final track is a cast talk/radio announcement by Suwabe Junichi and Miyata Kouki. They start with talking about that they have no idea what to talk about. After that they simply decide to ask everyone how they felt about the recording. Puns and randomness all over the place. Also, I didn't even notice that myself, but Suwabe-san talks about the fact that all heroes in the series are named -tarou. Which ends with him listing all of them; "Momotarou, Urajima Tarou, Kintarou, Itou Kentarou..." xD


Conclusion:
It didn't make me laugh out loud like the warai series managed to do, but it was definitely fun to listen to. The over the top music is part of the fun. I would have liked for the narrator to be present in more of the story, but Momotarou his remark saying that the demon his voice sounded familiar partly made up for that.


Trivia:
Sue me, but I COMPLETELY missed that Sakurai Takahiro was the dog orz. Thus I was listening to his talk in the cast comment in compleet shock. Maybe I should pay more attention to the entire cast listing after all... *sigh* Of course, as I listened to the drama again I started to wonder how I could miss it in the first place... orz.