Welcome back to the usual review corner! This time with a different twist.

I know my review of Shoujo Rengoku 4 Ayakashi Yokochou was supposed to be the main focus of this post… but I decided to not publish it. I hoped it was just the XFD, but this album disappointed me. I’m sorry.

Nekokenban 15
This time Paprika abandoned the trend of the last Nekokenbans and decided to emphatize the “Touhou” part of the series’ name with spell cards!
I don’t think the music would nicely fit a danmaku gameplay, but perhaps Paprika’s actual intention was trying to invoke the feelings of the various featured characters… or just doing whatever she wanted to do with their themes, without following a specific music setting. After all, spell cards can be considered as a form of art and expression for the Gensokyo girls. The piano manages to shine even more in this album, I can see why Paprika feels very proud of it! There are some crazy plays in various tracks (notable: Koishi, Clownpiece and others), the Sekibanki, Kogasa and Meiling tracks remind me of older albums, Yukari, Marisa and Parsee are pure piano pieces (with Starlight Typhoon being my favourite of the album). To end this part, a little trivia: with its 33:50 minutes overall and most of the track being about 2 minutes short, this is the shortest Nekokenban.

And now… time to talk about guest stuff. I’ve pretty much listened to every track except for the new PapComp song, so I won’t talk about that one. To represent them, there is my old MP3 player in the picture! It’s hilarious that its official name is “Papu-chan”, but I always called it Rosetta. ANYWAY.

Bad Apple cover
…

Marubatsu Beat
It’s just your typical Comp and some parts are reminescent of Yumehanabi. But I think this is the best Comp song with non-Ranko vocalists: a Ranko version would still improve it a lot (sorry, I’m a purist), but even with Mario and Amane’s vocals is not bad and it’s already better than tracks like Karisome or Konpeitou.

Te no Naka no Aozora
A song that, representing January, starts the year in high spirits! There are some siren sounds that remind of the Wind God Girl vocal arranges and (as Jor pointed out) Meguri Meguru, which are veeeeeeeeeeeeery old songs. I guess it’s the sound of MoF/the Youkai Mountain? Anyway, it’s a great song! If you are already familiar with Hajime no Ippo, BUTAOTOME’s previous arrange of MoF’s extra, the comparisions are kinda inevitable (but it’s typical for the majority of arranges of the same theme).

Koe
And at last, my favourite song from this Comiket. Since the XFD, I thought it was “the true ending of Trauma Recorder”, and the full version confirmed it. It’s just a thing in my mind, nothing official! But I honestly think the track fits TraReco so much, so I suggest to give it a listen if you already love the album (or also if you are fans of the original works).

And that’s all for this post!