Uta no Prince-sama - Maji Love 2000% - Idol Song Cecil Aijima CD review

Title: Uta no Prince-sama Maji Love 2000% Idol Song Cecil Aijima
Artists: Cecil Aijima (Toriumi Kousuke)
Release date: 5 June 2013
Version: n/a

Packaging: Until I figured out the "trick" with the covers this cover bothered me with the fact that you could clearly see Cecil's face on the book he was holding up. Of course like the rest of the series it is meant to be an image with a crown that looks to be continuous from the character and once realizing that I have come to like it as much as the rest. Still love the style they chose for the covers for this single series and the muted greens work well. Outside of that it is basically the same packaging as the rest of the series and it rather standard.

Track listing:

1. 星のファンタジア (Hoshi no Fantasia)
A nice slow paced pop song that features the flute, Cecil’s character instrument, quite a bit. Toriumi's voice suits this kind of light and breezy song style well so it never gets to the point of sounding whiny. I love the instruments that weave in and out of the song, while the flute is one of the major ones there are also strings and a saxophone that come and go until the instrumental break that marks the move towards to the end of the song. Their flourish there feels like a natural cumulation and the perfect way to bring the song to its peak.

2. HAPPINESS
This song for me is rather skippable. Unlike the other track this one does not suit Toriumi’s voice at all, so it sounds off and does not have the force a song like this needs for it to really work. And I know they were probably going for cool with the spoken lines but it sounds more creepy than anything to me. There are other characters this song would have been a better fit for. So while the idea of having something different for Cecil was nice it probably needed to go in a different direction than where they went with this song.

3. 星のファンタジア (Hoshi no Fantasia) (instrumental)
4. HAPPINESS (instrumental)

Overall: This ended up being a mixed bag with the first song being a hit but the second a miss. It does make me wonder what the process is in selecting songs for characters as some of them in this single series do not seem to be good matches with them, with HAPPINESS being just one example of this.

Thankfully though Hoshi no Fantasia makes up for the weakness of the second song for being a solid song for Cecil.