What does it say about my grasp of Japanese that I understand *more* when the characters get weirder? In the fifth Ichigo Mashimaro (苺ましまろ) Drama CD (available from both Amazon.co.jp and Amazon.com), our characters spend a great deal of time being weird.

Early on Chika creates a kind of mental TV channel out of their sitting around playing make-believe on which shows are played out during the rest of the DCD. These range from Nobue’s creation of a drama to an epic samurai story, in which Ana plays the female samurai who protects a miserable Matsuri, to at least two bathhouse scenes that I can think of, to randomly abusing Matsuri, because she’s very easy to abuse.

Chika spends most of the CD wondering how the hell she got here, although she plays along just fine with whatever ridiculous scenario Miu or Nobue has concocted, Nobue alternately attempts to be kind of cool and pervs after Ana and sort of half abuses, half protects Matsuri and, of course, the ringmaster of 80% of the madness is Miu. Matsuri spends the entire CD whining with occasional bonus sniveling.

As I said in the opening line, the weirder it all got, the more I followed it. When they all sit around just goofing, the language was mostly beyond my ability to follow. When they suddenly decide to do a Taiga drama, oh, *then* I have no trouble following – and heaven help me, when they are in the bath it’s all plain as day. Time to stab myself in the ears.

Ratings:

Story – There was a story?
Characters – 8 for everyone, especially Ana who really stood up to Nobue as gang boss and Miu as Miu, 2 for Matsuri who was wayyyy more annoying that usual.
Yuri – 5
Service- let’s see, 4 for each bath scene, 4 for Nobue perving, and an extra 4 for anything I missed, for a total of 20

Overall – 8

Today’s review was sponsored by the always fabulous Ana M., and my sincere thanks to her and all the Okazu heros out there!