Months after the first Corpse Party Whisper of the Nightmare drama/vocal album Scorpion was released, 5pb published the girl-side counterpart Tarantula. Like its predecessor, Tarantula gave equal share to the primary cast and the secondary cast. Most players will remember Naomi, Ayumi, and Mayu. But do you remember Ran Kobayashi? I’ll admit, huge fan that I am, even I had to dig up a wikia article to remember Ran’s role in the story. And yet, tracks 6 and 7 are 100% Ran material.
The three vocal tracks, which are the ones I tend to listen to most (since drama isn’t interesting for unenlightened monolingual Gaijin like myself), are performed by the voice actors of the following characters: Naomi and Ayumi for track 2, Mayu for track 5, and Ran for track 7. Of the three tracks, I honestly found them all slightly less enjoyable than their male counterparts. And, among character vocal albums, I have to say that such a preference is extremely rare for my own tastes. I think it had more to do with the work of the composers and arrangers than the vocalists, however. Tracks 5 and 7 were both composed and arranged by Yoshihiro Suda, and I simply wasn’t impressed by these original songs. I’d rather dig through the drama tracks to hear how the producers mixed Mao Hamamoto’s stellar OST work into the action of the drama sequences.
I’ll give the same caveat here that I gave with Scorpion: if you’re going to pursue these obscure albums, I say go all or nothing and get both. If you’re so inclined, the best way to get these is through secondhand market. They are, as of the time of this review’s writing, easy to find across Japanese bookstores and online sellers. If, however, a couple of decent vocal tracks isn’t worth the effort here, it won’t be worth the effort for Scorpion either.
