Pun-colle voice actresses’ legendary punk songs collection
So when I first got wind of this news, I was more than just baffled; I pulled a lengthy Kagamin-like “jiiiii~” after looking at the track list, recognizing about half the songs. I then realized that having these female seiyuu cover these old rock songs would be really weird, but at the same time, the ridiculousness intrigued me to a huge extent. Ergo, this was a must-listen. Expectations were all but present in my mind. I somewhat assumed they would change all of these to better fit the seiyuu. Once I started listening to the album, I wasn’t beginning to expect this…
Below is the tracklist which includes the song titles, the original artists, and the seiyuu covering the songs. Those of you that are interested, here’s a little preview you can hear on YouTube here.
Tracklist:
01. Sex and Violence – The Exploited (Mamoi Halko)
02. Basket Case – Green Day (Ikezawa Haruna)
03. White Riot – The Clash (Shimizu Kaori)
04. Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) – The Offspring (Kadowaki Mai)
05. Anarchy in the U.K. – Sex Pistols (Tanaka Rie)
06. London’s Burning – The Clash (Gotou Yuuko)
07. Call Me – Blondie (Mamoi Halko)
08. God Save the Queen – Sex Pistols (Ikezawa Haruna)
09. Blitzkrieg Bop – The Ramones (Shimizu Kaori)
10. Search and Destroy – Iggy and the Stooges (Kadowaki Mai)
11. Ruby Soho – Rancid (Tanaka Rie)
12. Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana (Gotou Yuuko)
Interesting choice of songs, though it kinda irks me that this is called a punk songs collection when most of these aren’t really punk. With that said, let’s see what I think of each song…
Sex and Violence
To start things off, we get this song about sex and violence. The only words in this song are “sex and violence” repeated over and over. It’s not the first time songs have had repeated lyrics before, but you know what, it actually sounds a little catchy despite the redundancy. In this version, Mamoi repeats the words, but there are some bits of chitter-chatter in-between so as to not sound repetitive, I’m guessing. At the same time, it sounds really cute, even though I’m well aware it sounds like a little girl singing about sex and violence. Quite amusing to listen to this, but I don’t think this has very strong influence if you know what I mean.
Score: 7.5/10.0
Basket Case
I’ll admit, I never actually listened to Green Day much, and that includes this song. Nevertheless, Haruna does a decent job with the Engrish, so it’s not too bad. I think the only problem I have is that her voice doesn’t actually stand out at times.
Score: 7.0/10.0
White Riot
The Clash is yet another old group I never heard of, but their song being covered by Kaori isn’t actually bad at all. Kaori uses her Hiyorin voice from Lucky Star and it sounds just as good as her character song. I can’t say it’s something I’d listen to often, unfortunately. Also, the song is a little less than two minutes so that also disappointed me.
Score: 6.5/10.0
Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)
Single-handedly the best song on this album. This was actually the biggest reason I wanted to listen to the album so bad. Having listened to Offspring in the past, I thought their songs were quite humorous, yet awesome. So now I’m listening to Kadowaki Mai’s rendition, and I just laughed so much and facepalm’d because I couldn’t contain myself from the sheer greatness. Sheer greatness. During my listening, I was wondering if Mai even knew what she was saying. Offspring’s songs have a lot of explicit words in there, so it’s funny hearing Mai say them. Let’s see, she says “homie as he pass,” and “kick his lily ass” among others. Now that I think about it, when I first heard the beginning part with the gibberish (throwing me off guard in the process), it reminded me of our lovely gaijin, Patricia Martin. Perhaps the best thing is how she says “give it to me, baby.”
Score: 10.0/10.0
Anarchy in the U.K.
Tanaka Rie’s voice is as lovely as her looks, so when I learned that she was part of this collection, I was thrilled. I’ve listened to this song a few times before on Guitar Hero and on Rock Band, but the usual fast tempo song is now very slow paced and a bit more soothing. Overall, it’s a great cover from Tanaka Rie. It was a little hard to hear her despite having much better English than anyone else. Still, I at least would say this is worth listening to. I was a bit scared at the end when she says “I get pissed. Destroy.” I don’t ever recall that in the actual song, but I guess I should find out.
Score: 8.0/10.0
London’s Burning
Okay, what’s with all the anti-Europe? Yeah, I get they’re from English bands but… lol, whatever. I had no idea the song would actually start off with Yuuko’s moe Mikuru voice going “London’s burning!” As cheerful as it is, it’s almost freaky. Again, did the seiyuu know what they were saying? I guess that doesn’t really matter so I should stop concerning myself over it. I can’t figure out what Gotouza-sama is actually saying most of the time aside from “London’s burning.” If I can describe it in one word… pyromaniacal.
Score: 6.0/10.0
Call Me
After the six seiyuu get their swing, it’s back to Halko and this time she takes on Blondie’s famous Call Me song. I know the song pretty well, actually, so hearing the song was amazing, as it didn’t have to transform into a more denpa style song. Finally, I get to hear her say more than just the same three words over and over again and that’s satisfying. Now that I can tell Halko can sing Engrish, I was able to enjoy it more.
Score: 7.5/10.0
God Save the Queen
Hate to say it, but I’m just not really feeling Haruna. Not saying she’s doing a bad job, but it’s not actually something superb either, even though I do enjoy listening to her sing. Like I said though, it just doesn’t really stand out to me. Maybe it was just her songs? I mean, hey, if she got a Metallica song or something, then I’d be catching on.
Score: 6.0/10.0
Blitzkrieg Bop
Hey, ho! Let’s go! Hey, ho! Let’s go! Finally, a tune that’s fun and bubbly! Well, the Ramones’ song wasn’t really bubbly, but it was something to light up too with it’s melody and rhythm. Again, Kaori makes this song sound so good, almost like it suited her. Well, it did, so there’s really no surprise there.
Score: 9.0/10.0
Search and Destroy
We’re back at Kadowaki Mai again, and she pulls another excellent cover. I’ve only heard Search and Destroy from Guitar Hero II, but I liked it a lot, so this was another song I was looking forward to. The song actually doesn’t sound that moe but with Mai on the vocals, it sounds both daringly cute and awesome as the original. The instruments are perfect and Mai does a job well done with her Engrish, particularly when she gets to “somebody gotta save my soul!” Now that I think about it, she almost reminds me of Misao from LS, just not as wacky in the voice.
Score: 9.5/10.0
Ruby Soho
Looks like Tanaka Rie can’t help but sound good every time, and that’s fine with me because she deserves it. This was my first time listening to Ruby Soho. Frankly, it’s a great song and with Rie, she makes it all the greater. Like before, her voice is really clear and it has a sort of strong presence. The chorus is quite catchy that sometimes I wanna sing along. This is my second favorite track on the album.
Score: 10.0/10.0
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Wow, the final song is a Nirvana cover. I think they should’ve done more of them, but oh well. Anyway, Gotouza-sama is on the mic again, thankfully not singing about London burning down. Her version of this song sounds slightly melancholy and also calm for some reason. I think her voice makes it so, but that’s just me. Not a bad one at all, I’d say; although, it is a little unnerving that this is the last song of the album.
Score: 8.0/10.0
Final Thoughts:
What looked like it was gonna be massive idiocy (okay, not really) turned out to be the funnest Engrish-infested denpa-like album ever, and with seiyuu, no less! Whoever was responsible for coming up with this deserves a medal because it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and because I had lower expectations, I liked it more in the end. It might sound cringing, but once you do give it a listen, it really isn’t that bad. Some songs are better than others, of course, but overall, the album is not something to pass up, especially since you know what they’re singing.
Total Score: 8.3/10.0
Verdict: They have to have a second album. Like, seriously.
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I’ll guess I’ll finish listening to the rest of the songs later in the weekend.
IIRC, Haruna, ’sides Japanese’, can speak French and English fluently (though it does sound Engrish from what I’ve heard of her). Still, she might know what she’s singing about.
Gotou Yuuko would know what she’s singing about. I’ve heard her speak English sentences before, and she sounds like she’s fluent with the language. Just not the pronunciation. It still sounds like Engrish most of the time but it’s understandable. She didn’t get an Eiken Grade 1 and TOEIC for nothing.
Still, when it comes to seiyuu singing English songs, Sakamoto Maaya still wins hands down for me, but I’ll give credit to the wonderful Tanaka Rie for doing an outstanding job in this album and her past English songs as well.
Mamoi’s “Call Me” was my favorite of the lot.
Kadowaki’s “Pretty Fly” scared me.
And Rie’s “Anarchy in the UK” was hawt.
“Anarchy in the UK” was interesting as a slow song – but the ‘moe’ version of “Smells like Teen Spirit” and “Sex and Violence” were rather awful, IMO. This CD didn’t use Yuko Goto very well at all, not with that voice she was singing with.
@Haesslich: Yeah, her songs aren’t as good as Rie’s. I don’t think her voice was the problem, but perhaps the song selection.
The album was great !