Title CD [ENG]: Handsome Rakugo Vol.2 ~Yoi Gatari
Publisher : TEAM Entertainment
Age Rating: Universal
Release Date: 2015/08/26
Series: ハンサム落語
Character/CV:
Kakihara Tetsuya (柿原徹也) as Yutsuki (佑月)
Shimono Hiro (下野紘) as Sayou (佐夜)
From the CD's title we could guess that it would be about good stories, yoi gatari. Just like previous volume, this CD is still about rakugo artist and their daily life. Other than vol.1, this volume highlighting more about take moral lesson and positive attitude from stories the rakugo artist told and their offstage life story.
This CD begins with Yutsuki who trying to get Sayou for training annoyed with his messy room, the man in question was still sleeping peacefully, ignoring his surrounding. He forced Sayou to clean up the room, and you're nicely offering them to help. In the middle of cleaning, Sayou got called out by one of his kohai. Later the same kohai ran to him, he had a love letter from someone to delivered to Sayou. Sayou playfully asking you to write one for him but later change his mind after hearing Yutsuki wondering did rakugo artist really receive love letter, in his mindset. Instead for him, Sayou said you'd better write it for Yutsuki.
First story told by Sayou, "akegarasu" it's about a hard worker man who had been told to loose a bit in Inari matsuri, I won't couldn't write the detail since I didn't enjoy this story, and no matter how many times I replay it I couldn't focus, my mind always drifted away. 御免なさい。
This time, the interlude is there's a rumor had spread around the theater complex about another rokugo artist, Okami-san decided the theater to take a break from performing rakugo until situation got calm. Yutsuki couldn't accept that, he went to confront the man who created the ruckus only get caught in discussion with his acquaintance about moving to his theater. The man think that because Yutsuki's handsome face and his father's name, he would make the theater and his name famous in no time. Sayou immediately came to the rescue,
The second story is about the couple fight between husband and wife, the husband is played by Sayou and Yutsuki played the wife. I really had good laugh listening to this story since the beginning, and I learnt a bit about couple fight and marriage from this story. This is a story about a woman name Osaki (played by Yutsuki) and her doubt about her plan to separate with her husband (played by Sayou) or not, she went to see Akiyoshi (also played by Sayou) to ask his advice. After listening to Akiyoshi's story she ends up having a great idea about testing her husband's love. I hope you don't mind with spoiler here.
Yutsuki's role is Osaki-san, the wife who appears to be seven years older than her husband (played by Sayou), she went to her acquaintance, an old man name Akiyoshi no Danna (also played by Sayou) to ask his advice. Anyway, he's the man who arranged their marriage. Kind of like matchmaker and marriage consultant because Osaki seemed to visit him regularly to talk rambling about her marriage life. Osaki had enough with her husband's attitude, apparently the husband is not working and spending his days ごろごろat home while she was out for work. Even though the husband didn't do anything, he kept complaining about his wife, they're always ends up fighting. Their fight was quite funny, telling each other with name started from kusobaba, abura (oil) until ika (squid) and kabocha tempura (it's japanesse pumpkin tempura). When Osaki asking Akiyoshi's opinion, that old man commented that he like ebi tempura better. Anyway, the old man Akiyoshi actually was a wise man, he said that couple fight is hard to judge whose right and wrong. This part made me remembered a quote from Nico Lang that marriage life is about saying sorry all the time, don't ask me why my mind wander to that.
Back to Akiyoshi and Osaki, he understands her situation and telling her to stay at his place to cool down her heads. But Osaki had enough, she decided to divorce from her husband and telling Akiyoshi no to stop her. Maa...the old man calmly said that he won't stop her, instead he supported her decision. He saw Osaki-san and her husband better to separated, because other than the husband's action at home that he saw by himself, he actually saw since their engagement that they're seem couldn't work together. In his view, it's not how the man and woman get along well enough to be a husband and wife, but it's something that you can or can't do. In his eye, this two simply couldn't work together. He let this two married because Osaki whined that she's getting old and afraid to couldn't be a bride any sooner, so she practically begged to him to introduce her to a potential man, she didn't really care what kind of man he was, even though he's like a rotten tangerine. She actually said kusatta mikkan, literary translate as rotten tangerine is strange though.
Osaki actually afraid that if they're divorce, his husband will easily find another woman unlike her who already aged. Remember she's seven years older than her husband, and keep aging. Not only that, she actually grateful to him because he promised to always at home to protecting her. After hearing Akiyoshi's comment that he actually meant it in different way, once again Osaki-san got angry. Kakihara-san's wailing voice kind of hurting my ears here, it's so high pitched. Then Akiyoshi gave advice to testing out the husband's love inspired from other couple's story who similar with Osaki's situation. He told Osaki to try to hurt herself by breaking a cup or plate, if the husband didn't worried about her, she's free to divorce. Because it means the husband didn't even think about her, but if he worried that she got hurt, even though only one finger, it means he still care about her.
Yes, she did as she told. She went home and found out that somehow her husband was waiting for her not even drinking sake or eat. But that didn't satisfy her, because once again they fought. This time Osaki tried to break a plate, the plate somehow very valuable for her husband, and Osaki-san wasn't that bad to break her husband's precious item. When she put the plate back, she tripped and almost fell down with hands still holding the plate. The husband yelled out his worry and that made her perplexed. She asked which one he worry about, the plate or her. His answer was of course he worried about her, that made Osaki touched and crying. However, the husband said of course he worried, because if she got hurt he wouldn't be able to lazying around at home anymore. Darn it Shimono-san Osaki-san's husband.
Sayou is the sempai of Yutsuki, despite his easygoing personality he actually a really talented rakugo artist and care a lot of his kohai. Instead of asking the heroine a love letter for himself, he prefer you to write it for Yutsuki. He also told you to keep an eye for Yutsuki because he worried about him, and he also come to save Yutsuki from being tricked by a man from other theater, what a nice sempai he is. From his calm and mature behavior, it's seems like he's the oldest of all rakugo artist in that theater. Yutsuki is actually the son of a infamous rakugo artist and he considered as really handsome guy, that made him to work really hard to overcome his father since he always live under his father's shadow. He is very strict person, he also used to cleaning up since he was a kid from helping out his mother, so he didn't like a messed room like Sayou's. Even though he's strict he quite pure and naïve, like in the ending of CD his answer about you had made the other guy mistaken you as his girlfriend. Leaving him to questioning why he acted like that because he only answer his question as it is. Despite their interesting sempai-kohai relationship, Yutsuki actually adore Sayou both as a rakugo artist and man.
My Thought
Unlike the first CD, Hana Gatari, I didn't really enjoy the opening of this CD. It less comical than the later but thanks to the second story, it's only lose half star than last volume. What is it with this CDs and their second story? TEAM Entertainment really know how to save the best for last, it's not that the first story is bad but I just don't enjoy it, maybe because I don't get the gist of it. Second story was really hilarious that made my stomach hurt for too much laughing. Surprisingly, Kakihara-san is really good acting as a woman although his voice is too loud when he wails, and Shimono-san's old man voice is interesting to hear. In this CD we could learn more about each characters background stories than the last CD. The general idea of this CD is to learn a lesson from your life, like how Yutsuki learn from being tricked by a man who want to take advantages of his ambition, or the moral lesson from second story; "no matter how bad people are there will always something good in them".
Conclusion
Compared to last CD, this CD not really got my interest. Especially in the first tracks. I don't really get why, somehow this CD feels flat to me. However I still able to finish this drama till the end, forcing myself to re-listen it again few times trying to get the gist of it and more sources to write, of course it's giving me more time to find proper English words for a lot of sentences. I spend longer time to edit this review than last time, at this rate I think my notes slowly turned out to be Japanese-English thesaurus. However, I'm glad that I did not giving up because the second story is actually really funny. This story is funnier compare to the first one, I like both the story and how the casts depicts it. Well, there are some parts that I don't enjoy but I still recommend this CD though, I hope the next volume is interesting too. Can't wait for it because one of the CVs is my favorite seiyu, Suzuki Tatsuhisa-san!
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