#kamichama

Karin from Kamichama Karin 👑

A few months ago, I read a book of Kamichama Karin Chu from my library, and I didn't like it at all. For me, it was basically a ripoff of Twilight and Sailor Moon. Karin Hanazono was a HUGE Mary Sue, the rest of her group was THREE boys, and they would ALWAYS say things like, "I will protect my beautiful princess Karin!". Also, Karin had her future child with her, and she and one of the boys from her group GOT MARRIED in the future at the end! Do these seem Twilight-ish or SM-ish?

On the positive side, I think overall he sounds much, much better than he did on Louis. There were a couple of songs where I thought his voice was straying back to how it had sounded, but most of the songs, especially the first few tracks, he sounded fantastic. As always, the music was beautiful and powerful. I'll never not say that Kamijo is a genius at composition, and I'll never not say that he would do fantastic as a music designer/composer on his own (like Revo or Yoshiki). Also, Dying-Table was a good venture into a different sort of sound than I've come to expect of Kamijo. It wasn't my favourite track, but I thought it was well-done as a sort of "first" for that style.

On the minus side, I still don't feel like he sounded as good as he has in the past, and I can't quite put my finger on why. Something about his voice is different and it grates on me just a bit, because I'd like to identify what it is. And on another, I don't feel like he stretched himself enough, composition-wise. A couple of songs sounded a little too similar to Versailles songs, and not in the "of course, he was a member of Versailles, his music will sound like theirs because of the influence", but in the "it sounds like he lifted whole runs out of Versailles pieces and just transposed them and used new lyrics". I'd really like to see him try something else - not necessarily as out there as Dying-Table, but something that does not feel exactly like Versailles and the only reason you can't say it is, is that it's his "solo project" and he's using Anzi to record the guitar.

Overall it was very good and I did really enjoy it. But I'm still waiting for Kamijo to try to develop his style and not recycle sounds, and I'm waiting for his voice to get back to the golden era - assuming something hasn't happened and it can achieve that again.