Today we’re looking at a lovely little Drama CD I picked up at Comitia last February. I’ve mentioned a number of times that the Yuri section was pretty large as compared with years past, and this last one, was especially sprawling. As we moved out of た into ち blocks, we came across a number of folks selling really unique items. Among those were circle doyondo (どよんど) who were selling an original Drama CD called @Around Kabukichou Shinjuku 0:00AM ~ Ena Saitou (＠新宿区歌舞伎町近辺午前0時)~ 齋藤恵那 by Taiyaki, Kokoro and Kudo Asa. Kudo-san voiced the main and only character, Ena…and she did a really decent job of it. It could not have been easy with no one to work off of.

The story begins with Ena, a high school girl, finding us, “oneesan” an older woman (maybe early twenties?) on the ground in the Kabukichou in Shinjuku at midnight. She asks if we are all right, but we are crying and Ena, who is a kind girl, says that we’ll make her cry. She picks us up, takes us to a hotel, because she can hardly bring us home and we tell her that we’ve had a bad break up with our girlfriend. Ena handles that with gentleness.

Each scenario is given a time and a place as a title: Shinjuku Kabukichou at a Hotel 2 AM; In front of the College Gates 6PM. As the scenarios develop we learn that Ena and we have kept in touch by text. Ena asks us for advice which she does not take because she doesn’t want to leave us. Eventually Ena tracks us down to tell us she likes us, can we go out? We say yes.

But as time passes, we’re being distant and Ena finds us, once again drunk in Kabukichou (I am not loving us right now….but I think we were just bumming because we were trying to “protect” her,) Ena tells us that she loves us and asks if we can make it more serious. Thankfully we say yes! We take Ena home and settle down together. For the last track “At Home The Future,” We make out a little and Ena asks us very cutely if she can call us by our given name.* This was an incredibly good and bad scene simultaneously, as poor Kudo-san had to make the kissing sound real by herself. She did better than I wanted to hear. ^_^; Honestly, I find listening to people kissing a little repulsive anyway. I skip those bit in movies a lot of the time.

For the cast talk, Kudo-san was joined by one of the writers, Taiyaki-san. They chatted about the creation of the story, and the manga of it, and how they’d like to turn it into an anime, of course! You can read the opening scene on Yuri Navi as part of their online Web Yuri Anthology Yuri “Toile” (WEB百合アンソロジー「トワール」 ).

You can also listen to the opening tack with Japanese subtitles on Youtube. Thanks redfish for the heads up that it’s also downloadable (at least within Japan) from booth.pm.

This was a delightful, well-acted story that was charming and engaging in a short time. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to hear more of circle doyondo’s work!

Ratings:

Story – 8
Character – 9
Voice acting – 9
Service – 4 that one make out scene sounds like exactly what its supposed to be
Yuri – 9

Overall – 9

*As I mentioned yesterday in my reviews of Kyuusei End Contents Positive: Encount (九彩エンドコンテンツ), this was a repeated theme I’ve seen a few times recently. Is this…a new trope? /insert meme here/

So. Drunk onee-san are rapidly being set up to become the Yuri:2020 version of the cool upperclassman. It’s not going to make Yuri a queerer genre, but I’m finding it hard to complain. Get back to me in 8 years. ^_^

I’ve linked to the Toranoana e-shop to get this. If you are outside Japan, you probably will need a buying service.
This is unrelated, but I found it remarkable, so I will remark on it – Toranoana has an otaku wedding planning service. I think I like that.