Today, my Love Live merch arrived. It was a pretty good day! It took about three weeks for the package to arrive, which isn't that bad considering it's SAL unregistered. So yea, I guess I'll talk a bit about what I bought, and post a few photos.

First, the mini wall scroll. Despite what the photo looks like, the print quality is actually really good, and the colours are quite saturated (my room has bad lighting). It definitely looks much better than your average bootleg wall scroll, although at 1000 yen it's actually quite expensive for its prize. It's called a mini wall scroll for a reason, you know! But seriously, it's actually really really small. It's about the size and width of an average keyboard. So it might look much better if you hang up a whole row of them because it won't look good just by itself. Honestly, I wouldn't have bought this if CDJapan didn't tell me that any purchase beyond 5k yen gets me some bonus shopping points. Such is life.

All right, now let's get on to the important stuff: the two CDs. I bought two solo albums by Honoka Kousaka (or Emi Nitta, depending on which dimension you live in) from Love Live. The first is called ほんのり穂乃果色 , which I guess is best translated as 'The Color of Honoka' or something like that. CDJapan classifies it as a character song album, although in reality it's mostly solo versions of well-known songs by μ's. There are only three tracks that are original to this album: two character songs and a track called ～Date with 穂乃果～, where you listen to the voice of Honoka set to a gentle background BGM as she goes on a date with you, eat picnic with you, and says a bunch of sugois, ureshiis and desus so you can pretend you went out with your waifu.

So by this point, anyone can figure out that this album is designed specifically for the most devoted Honoka fans. Or to put it more bluntly: squeezing out the last drop of milk from the Honoka cash cow. The two character songs are quite bland, and putting a 'Honoka Mix' at the end of every Love Live song doesn't make them any 'better', since μ's honestly sounds much better as a group. Not to mention that Honoka, in my opinion, doesn't have the most exciting voice of the group. As a leader, she hits most of the midrange notes quite well, but her voice isn't exactly dynamic. My overall impression is that you have to be really, really, really into Honoka to like this album, because most of it is just recycled material with one girl singing.

The second album, titled 'orange cheers!' is basically the same as the previous. Except that this time, there are no original songs, since every track is just a Honoka version of the season 2 songs. As much as I like Honoka, I really think her voice fits much, much better in a group. 愛してるばんざーい! , for example, is Maki's signature song and only Maki can do it justice. Which is not to say that Honoka's version isn't good -- it just isn't very exciting. Even Kotori might do a better job of it, since her voice is very cutesy and stands very well just by itself. 

Like what I said previously, there's really no reason to buy those albums unless you absolutely love Honoka. Personally, I found Honoka's personality and enthusiasm far more attractive than her voice. Which I suppose is enough to justify those purchases, but I suppose that Honoka fans should really look to spend the money on something like a figure instead. If there are plans in the future to release more solo albums/character songs, they should really produce more original material instead of remixing the same old songs over and over. Then again, knowing how fanatic the Love Live fanbase is, I'm pretty sure the otaku in Japan will buy just about anything with LL stamped on it.

I probably going to order one more batch of stuff from Japan before Christmas rolls around. Probably a figure, but I'm not really sure since I'm not really interested in any particular merch at the moment. Let's see how things go.