√Happy+Sugar=Darlin vol4. Sora – Impressions

Company: Rejet

Release Date: 28th January 2015

Voice Actor: Kaji Yuki( 梶裕貴 )

Official Site

This is the 4th instalment of rejet’s √Happy+Sugar=Darlin series, this time featuring the flirty Sora.

Track Listing

1. オレのものになって
2. 真っ先に思い浮かぶのは……
3. 超一途なんですけど？
4. 海辺で誓う愛
5. スペシャルはオマエだけ

The CD’s total runtime is 56 minutes and since this is a slight older rejet release, there is no cast commentary.

Sora is billed as a “Host-Type” young man who works at the cafe Happy+Sugar alongside our other characters. His special talent at the cafe is the creation and mixing of new drinks (basically mocktails). He’s apparently incredibly popular at his school – to the extent where he even has a sizeable fan club. However, he only has eyes for the protagonist and the first track features the usual confession. Subsequent tracks focus on the newly-formed relationship between the two, featuring their first date when the pair go out for a ride on Sora’s motorbike. There’s also a sub-plot of the protagonist trying to think up ideas for a new menu at the cafe.

This probably sounds really stupid but the reason that I’ve been slightly hesitant to listen to this CD before was the fact that Sora and Tamaki do not like each other (well, Sora likes teasing Tamaki and the latter just gets really annoyed). I figured that if Tamaki didn’t like him then I probably wouldn’t either, especially given that I despise your usual super flirty/host-type guys.

However, I couldn’t be more wrong. Sora is actually just adorable. He gets suitably flustered at points and speaks in just that right amount of slang (I don’t really know how to describe it haha – kind of the way “delinquent” characters always speak in games/anime) that it made me happy. My absolute favourite point of any romantic media is the “confession scene” and the one featured in this CD is really good and super sweet! I also very much appreciated that his host-type nature was only shown for a few minutes and then he cleared up any misunderstandings with the protagonist so I can forgive him.

Not even going to lie, I generally really love Kaji Yuki’s voice acting work but sometimes his really deep voice can sound a little “forced” to me and as such I prefer his higher-pitched voice so I was a bit worried about this CD but he actually portrayed Sora really well and I just really enjoyed listening to his voice. Isn’t it weird that as soon as you listen to a CD with no cast commentary, you really start to miss them?

Final Thoughts

My Score: 8/10

And yet another strong showing for the Happy+Sugar series, I feel that I just waffle on about how great all of these CDs are but seriously, if you’re looking for pure fluff then I doubt you’ll find much better. It’s one of the few series that features a confession scene so early in the CD (although I suppose that some people may see this as a bad thing) and jumps straight to the icha icha scenes. This time there’s literally no drama and the sub-plot was actually mildly interesting to listen to. One thing that I really like about this series is that it actually mentions and makes reference to the other characters. This may sound like such a small thing but just these small mentions can reveal bits and pieces about all of the guys and adds a little bit of depth to the (albeit small and simple) setting. It’s not something that I personally have seen done all that regularly so I felt that it was worth mentioning.

I feel as though this whole series is probably pretty good for beginners because as long as you can understand terms of endearment/school life/cafe terms (which are all pretty basic to be honest) then you’re going to find this CD very easy to understand.

I sadly don’t have any bonus CDs for this one but it might be time to scour some auctions for them now ^_^ I also need to get my hands on his sequel CD soon~

Basically, if you’re after a CD where an adorable 2D guy continuously tells you how much he adores you then get this, haha.

Next week’s post is going to be a review of the PS Vita game Beast & Princess so until then I’m just going to stare lovingly at my copy of the Taisho Alice visual book that arrived this week. Honestly, Melo’s artwork is just too good!

Thanks for reading as always~