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

Do-M Club ~Tensei Gakuen Housoubu~

ドM倶楽部 ～天醒学院放送部～

Company: Hobirecords
Based on: Original
Released: 2012.11.30
Official site: http://www.hobirecords.com/mclub/


The makers of the Yandere Heaven have released a CD that takes us to a whole different extreme: do-M. The basic setup of the CD is the same as in the Yandere Heaven series, you become the object of affection of two different characters who seem normal at first, but the further the story progresses the more their real personality starts to show. The CD has a separate ending for each of the two characters, as well as a 3P ending.

The story takes place at Tensei Gankuen, you are a member of the broadcasting club together with your classmate Tokiwa Tadashi (CV: Ono Yuuki). There are no other members, but the club advisor Aida Muneyuki (CV: Inoue Kazuhiko) is pretty much involved with anything you do.

Thanks to his pretty face and kind personality Tadashi is quite popular at school, to the point of having a fan club. You've known Tadashi since when you were little, and he once asked you out but you turned him down. This was the first time he was refused something, as a result of this he felt this was special and he would do anything to get you to refuse or scold him again.

Aida-sensei is a rather strict teacher. He was physically abused by his mother when he was a child, as a result of which he now associates physical pain with being loved. One day when hands you some papers he gets a paper cut, and while you put a band-aid on the cut you accidentally hurt him. As a result, he becomes obsessed with you.

The story takes place over a week time, and at the start both of them are still normal. Tadashi seems like a normal sweet guy, and Aida like a rather strict teacher. However through various incidents more and more of their do-M personality starts to show. Tadashi starts expressing his wish for you to scold him, or ask things of him that are difficult (like eating a bento with a lot of shishitou (green peppers) in it). Aida-sensei on the other hand gets increasingly vocal about wanting you to hurt him, and you discover that he has been hurting himself for a long time as well.

All of this eventually results in the two of them demanding you to choose between them. In Tadashi his ending he has been locked up in a small room at school for punching Aida-sensei. You come to visit him after class, and he is practically begging you to scold him because he "has been a bad child". You remain largely unresponsive (probably because you've figured out by now that he would enjoy it if you do get mad). Because you don't get mad at him he nearly throws himself out of the window, by which time you finally get mad, drag him back inside and scold him.

In Aida-sensei his ending he has you visiting him each day after class and he orders you to hurt him. He tells you he has been practising a certain way of binding someone with a rope, ordering you to tie the final knot and to pull it tighter. It doesn't end there though: after that he orders you to take pictures of him this way using his cellphone, and he is obviously thinking of spreading those in the school or on the net.

Throughout the entire CD you don't really actively participate in their fantasies. It is obvious that you didn't know about their do-M sides at first, and when it starts to show it is quite obvious that you are at first confused and later weirded out. Even in Aida-sensei his ending where you actually do a few things, this is only because he orders you to. All of this ends in the 3P ending though, where you are a full do-S dominatrix over both of them. I think making you normal instead of an dominatrix from the start was a good choice. This was all of your reactions are natural, and it is easier to place yourself in the heroine her shoes. That said, the 3P end was quite... interesting to listen to actually.

Overall this is less extreme then the Yandere Heaven series. Don't get me wrong, Tadashi and Aida their personalities are quite extreme actually, but because they are do-M there is less shit happening to you, and more to them. Still, I suppose this isn't for everyone. Nothing wrong with trying though, it gets progressively worse so you can always stop at a point where it gets too much.

I was really surprised when Inoue-san was announced as one of the cast members, but he did an amazing job (as to be expected from such a pro I suppose). Both of their performances were great for that matter. I just... I kind of wonder... how does it look when someone is recording something like this in the studio?

As the cast interviews on the website already indicated, Ono-san and Inoue-san did their recordings separately (altough Ono-san did get to hear some of the parts of Inoue-san his recording for when their character interacted), so obviously their cast comment separately as well. I can't help but feel like Ono-san his voice is still in do-M mode. It occasionally has the same higher pitched tone that he used for Tadashi his do-M parts, which makes me laugh.


Conclusion:
I found this an interesting change after all of the yandere and do-s we've seen lately, but I don't see this turning into a series. Just like the Yandere Heaven series this isn't going to be for everyone, but in a whole different way. Hearing characters act all do-M towards you is weird, and I guess that whether you like/can endure it entirely depends on how much tolerance you have for this kind of thing.

(that said, I would be interested if they would make a mix of the series and introduce a do-M yandere character. That would be a combination I haven't seen yet and it seems sort of interesting).

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.