I’m not going to talk about Ultimate Diamond…..
Instead this is a review of Kagamine Ren/Lin cover album by Shimoda Asami – because as I’ve said when the news about the release of this CD came out, I’m more excited by this CD than Ultimate Diamond from the get-go. I know Nana-chan had broken records etc etc, and even with both albums on hand I find myself coming back to this a whole lot more. Plus many others had already reviewed Ultimate Diamond, so I don’t feel the need to preach to the choir either.
I must first confess though, I actually haven’t heard any of the original Vocaloid versions of the songs before the announcement of the CD. Even at that, I’ve only listened to the ones that I’ve linked to on this blog and maybe one or two others at most. So I’m going into the songs with a fairly clean slate.
The album overall has some pretty good variety in its music – and anyone who’s read my CD impressions should know that I LOVE variety from my seiyuu singers CDs. There’s a couple of ballads, a few cute songs, anisong, normal j-pop and electronic. Asapon also didn’t pull any punches when it comes to showing off her voice abilities – throughout the entire CD she employs different tones and vocal range depending on the style of the songs, whether it is a slightly more mature tone rarely heard from her thus far (頑張ろうよ, Soundless voice, ジェミニ), her signature child-like playful one (おてんば姫の歌♪,イタズラムスメ), mimicking the surreal and robotic Vocaloid voice (ココロ, 炉心融解) and even employing two completely different tones within the same song (リンリンシグナル, South North Story). Some of these songs were obviously not composed with the limit of a human pop song singer in mind and contains some pretty crazy sections where the notes just keeps climbing higher and higher, such as in 頑張ろうよ (Ganbarouyo) and 炉心融解 (Roshinyoukai). Asapon manages to pull off those notes though, the result is eerily good that one can’t help to think that if it’s really her or they just employed the help from the Vocaloid software.
On the flip side though, the major failing of the album is that it’s hard to get a feel of a particular music style for Asapon – the album is a cover of songs not belonging to her and it shows. Asapon did a great job covering the Vocaloid songs and she plays into the different characters and stlye of the songs with ease, but none of the songs felt truly representative of her own singing style. As stated by the album this is Kagamine Rin/Len featuring Shimoda Asami, so I suppose we are to treated this as a character image album, rather than a personal album. It doesn’t pose much of a problem for a first release as the priority now is just to get her name out there in the most effective manner possible (and I do firmly believe that using the Vocaloid name here is an effective marketing strategy), but if Asapon is serious about getting a personal singing career she would need to find her own image later.
Overall the album is very solid. Fans of Asapon has no excuse in not picking this one up. Others thinking of dipping their toes in should find comfort in that the singing is good and there’s enough music variety in there and you are bound to find something you like.
Top picks of the album in no particular order:
頑張ろうよ, イタズラムスメ, リンリンシグナル, Soundless voice, 炉心融解, South North Story
June 11th, 2009 at 02:26
mmmm I liked her in this album. Did you catch the Nico Nama just now ? She was up for a Hr doing some PR work for the Album.
As you said its more like a Character single than Her single. I think she leans more towards hotblooded songs judging from her weekly Cho Raji shows on monday. I love her vocal range.