[Drama CD] Corpse†Heart 2nd Night Valerie – Summary & Impressions

Again, this CD was really short so I’ve done a proper summary, for once~

*****SPOILERS AHEAD****
If you don’t want spoiled then either click the following link or manually scroll down to the “Final Thoughts”  section.

Label: Rejet
Release Date: 23rd August 2017
Voice Actor: Masuda Toshiki (増田 俊樹)
Official Site

This is the second CD in rejet’s Corpse Heart series, this time featuring the eccentric mummy Valerie, whom is the protagonist’s classmate.

Track Listing

1. Black Tragedy
2. Candy Hearts
3. 秘密基地
4. 待ち望んだ復活祭
5. 家族
6. キャストフリートーク

The first two tracks are songs & the CD’s total runtime is 39 minutes.

The CD begins with the heroine speaking to Valerie after class one day and he invites her to a local café since he heard that the cakes are really good. But she reluctantly refuses because she needs to study for a magic ability test the following week. Being especially talented at summoning and telekinesis-type magic, Valerie offers to help them study and proves his prowess by summoning a hair ribbon for her. She takes him up on his offer and Valerie takes her to his secret base within the school grounds to study. They end up having to walk through the dark to get there so Valerie holds her hand and promises to keep her safe from anything scary lurking in the night.

His base is filled with books and kind of messy so he admits that he’s nervous since this is the first time anyone has been there as he has no friends. His classmates tend to avoid him and think he’s scary because he wears a mask due to the fact that he hurt his face a few years back during a black magic spell gone wrong. He’s happy to have met the heroine though and values her as a precious friend. He tells the heroine that she’s free to look around for a book to help with their studies but then suddenly hugs her from behind, saying that he somehow feels as though he doesn’t want to part with them just yet which makes the heroine blush bright red and Valerie laughs, saying that they’re so adorable that he can’t help teasing them~ He quickly apologises and then gets back to the task at hand but says that there’s no point in studying as the Easter festival starts tomorrow so just to forget about the test. He instead tells her to just hang out with him (but promises not to do anything strange) and is pleased that she’s wearing the ribbon he got for her, as it makes it seem as though she’s “his”. He then leans in and kisses her, startling the heroine but he asks her not to run away from him, apologises and promises not to go any further. He then asks if she would stay in his base with him for the night so they could go to school together in the morning and says that if she doesn’t answer him soon then he might just get carried away~ Since she never answers, he says that that confirms that she’s “his” and kisses her again…

The next day, and they’re both in class  listening to the teacher explain the festival for ages, leading Valerie to say that he’s exhausted by it and just wants the whole thing to start. The fireworks that go off afterwards signify the beginning of the festival and Valerie remarks that he’s surprised everyone is taking the festival so seriously straight out of the blocks and rushing towards the heroine. But he refuses to let everyone have her, grabs her hand and takes her to the secret base; promising to explain everything afterwards. On the way there, Valerie gets tired so the pair stop for a quick rest and he explains that everyone is after her life force – the Jewel Heart, which will allow them to come back to life. The heroine finally realises the danger she’s in which makes him laugh and tell her that he’s glad she finally noticed that every student in their school is a member of the undead, including himself. So he pins her against the ground and says that he too would like to kill her and take her jewel heart for himself (while doing this really evil laugh). He then explains that the kindness he has shown her over the past 6 months a lie and was all for the sake of this moment so he could be sure she would be with him on the day of the festival. He admits that he doesn’t really want to return to being a normal, living human and has a different goal in mind – revenge. As it turns out, the heroine’s family killed his parents back in the day and his facial injury was caused in the struggle so he wants to kill her to get justice for his parents. He pulls out a knife and steps towards her, she tries to back away but there’s nowhere for her to run. Valerie pins her down again and remarks that her heartbeat is super fast and is she that pleased for him to be touching her? He laughs to himself and says that he knows the she’s totally fallen for him, especially since they’ve kissed since he could hear her heartbeat but reiterates that it was all a lie and he feels nothing for her. After all this faffing, he remarks that he’s afraid they’re out of time and he needs to kill her before any other students find them. He tells her goodbye and that it was fun knowing her…But, after working himself up to do it, Valerie finds that he no longer feels the need to kill her since he’ll be all alone once he kills her. He explains this to the protagonist but realises that she’s unconscious so picks her up and takes her to his base.

When the heroine wakes up, Valerie is really pleased and was worried that she had died of fright. He has her tied up so she can’t run away and end up being captured by the other students. He explains to her that he’s finally realised she’s his first friend and the only person outside of his family that he’s grown to care about. He’s sad that he’ll never see his parents again and thought that killing her would bring him happiness but at the final moment he decides that her company would be acceptable in place of his parents and asks her to promise to never leave his side again. He’s confused as to why she won’t answer him and tells her that if she won’t agree to his demands then he may as well kill her right now. He tightens his hands around her neck and asks if she really does want to die. He gives her his final choice: be with him forever or die here and tells her that he’s being serious; if she really wants to die by his hand then he’s willing to oblige. After a short while, she obviously agrees to his demands, leading to Valerie being really happy and kissing them, promising to keep them locked up in his house for eternity, so no one can lay eyes on her. He explains that he doesn’t want anyone to steal his precious things away from him any more and that she should be happy with this conclusion, since she picked him over death, right? He announces that from today onwards they can start their new “family” so she’d better love and treasure him as much as his mother and father did.

The CD ends with a knock on a door and Valerie entering the heroine’s room, commenting on how pretty she looks again today. She tries to push past him and escape, but he holds her back telling her that since she loves him, she shouldn’t leave since they’re “family”, family don’t leave each other alone and reminds her that they’ll be family forever before closing the door and locking her in the room again…The End~

Well, thank you for that Valerie, that was just *so* sweet (not~). I was totally expecting the betrayal, because that seems to be a common thing in this series, but it never hurt/shocked me that much due to the lack of build-up and development in the CD (I guess it is only like 25 minutes long). It would’ve been much better if the CD had cut out some of the repetitive melodrama and instead featured their first meeting/early friendship, making me actually give a damn about the characters! I feel as though we’re missing a lot of backstory too, like why did the heroine’s parents kill Valerie’s parents? And how did Valerie manage to survive, or alternatively, is that how he became a mummy? If this was explained a little, it would give more depth to both characters  although I guess we may find out about the heroine’s family in the final cd in the series…

I mean, as a character, Valerie isn’t that bad; at least he has a concrete reason for pursuing the heroine and could be quite interesting if they’d bothered to flesh him out. I know that Masuda Toshiki explains that Valerie is kind of unhinged and isn’t the type to act “reasonably” so that explains some of his behaviour but I’m just disappointed in his sudden change of heart with pretty weak reasoning. He also has this really bad tendency to repeat himself which is just a waste of CD runtime to be honest…

The two music tracks are great, as expected, although they do kinda spoil the “story” so I’d recommend listening to them after the main CD. Masuda Toshiki’s voice acting was so good on this CD though, it was definitely one of the highlights~ I really liked the almost theatrical quality of the songs and voice acting. The cast commentary was also pretty fun at the end, although there were some weird BGM choices, haha.

Final Thoughts

My Score: 5/10

While this CD was still kinda underwhelming, it *was* an improvement on the first volume so that’s a positive. If you don’t mind a lot of violence then this CD isn’t so bad but I just wish that they’d put more effort into the actual character development. I’m kind of annoyed because the first track was really cute 😦

Would I recommend this CD? That’s a difficult question as it’s debatable wether or not this series is “worth” full price when there are cheaper music CDs and better drama CDs out there. Fans of Masuda Toshiki would probably enjoy this but to be honest, if you’re looking for  an “undead” character voiced by him then I can immediately think of a better option, haha. 😛

This was also my first proper summary so please let me know your thoughts! I apologise if I’ve made any mistakes and will endeavour to fix them ASAP. I don’t know if I’ll do this for every series even though I enjoyed writing it since it took ages to write for a short CD like this but I plan to do summaries for the rest of this series at the very least~

Since I’m on a roll with this series and Kuu’s volume arrived earlier in the week, I’ll have a post up on that soon. I feel as though I’ve come so far with the series that I may as well finish it for the CD+display box bonuses for buying the whole set, haha.

Thanks for reading~