A Lazy Holiday With Your Otaku Best Friend

That otaku girl has finally shown up on DLsite. When it comes to Crescendo, the standard has always been works where maids or ear-cleaning shop girls heal you in a professional, service-provider kind of way. Amid that, a promising new star suddenly appeared: the otaku girl. She calls the listener "partner" and cleans your ears on her lap like some stress-relief smartphone game — I bet quite a few of you have been captivated by this new kind of relationship we've never had before. Naturally, I'm one of them too. Being a Crescendo work, the ASMR sound design is, as always, reliably high quality. This time too it's ear-cleaning-focused, packed with three hours of volume, with plenty of variety — nothing to complain about. Personally, I'd recommend Track 05. It mainly features ear massage and finger ear-cleaning, where the otaku girl, who's already close in distance, kneads your ears and pokes her fingers in. The otaku girl, voiced by Kumohachi Kumohachi (Unpachi), has a laid-back friend vibe, but in contrast she's very touchy-feely, and not just with the ear cleaning — every kind of physical distance is close with her. She comes into the room as if it's only natural to be together, pulls out a new ear pick, and invites the listener onto her thighs — whether she's unaware of it or not, it really makes you think about what friendship between a man and a woman actually is. Also, as you can tell from the wonderful cover art drawn by Fujika, the otaku girl's outfit is hot pants with thigh-high socks. Can't handle it.

This is a little over three hours of audio work in which an otaku girl cleans your ears and so on. The voice actress is Kumohachi (Unpachi). It doesn't seem like she appears in all-ages audio works all that often, but she seems to have appeared in quite a lot of works with different ratings, and her performance here had no issues. There were four types of ear cleaning: a rough scraping ear pick (Track 2), a spring-type ear pick (Track 3), finger ear-cleaning (Track 5), and cleaning with domestic cotton swabs (Track 6), and each let you enjoy different sound effects. Even outside of the ear cleaning, there were a lot of noteworthy lines in the conversation with the otaku girl, and the sound effects outside of ear cleaning were solid too, so it was an enjoyable work overall. Crescendo's audio works have never been a miss so far, and this one too was solidly done. Recommended!

For this laid-back day-off audio with the otaku girl, you don't need to brace yourself for anything at all. There's a comfort in having the otaku girl by your side as you repeat a calm, lazy, unremarkable day over and over. This is the first time I've naturally gone back to Track 1 right after finishing listening to a work. It would be fine to spend 24 hours straight just lazing around with the otaku girl. That's the kind of time this is. The otaku girl is a friend. And yet the sense of distance is already ridiculously close — she feels like a childhood friend, or a little sister, or even family. With her relaxed, laid-back way of talking and the atmosphere around her, there's a comfort in how natural it feels for her to just be there. What creates this comfort is, first of all, her voice. Kumohachi's cute voice, with its loose, laid-back tempo and that soft "nihee" quality, is so addictive that you wouldn't get tired of it even after 24 hours of listening. The way she talks is also really great. The mix of thoroughly otaku-ish phrases like "desu zo—" with dialect-like expressions like "iinke—?" is also just right. And then there's the ear-cleaning ASMR. The otaku girl is really into ear cleaning, so that's the main focus. Strong-pressure rough scraping ear cleaning, spiral ear cleaning, finger ear-cleaning, massage — the whole menu as advertised, delivered with outstanding sound expression. And on top of that, the otaku girl's cheerful voice and ear-blowing are added in. Very comforting. And even without the ASMR, there's a warmth in how naturally the otaku girl comes over and settles into being at your place. Bringing in mandarins and getting under the kotatsu together, buying fried chicken and munching on it together, cracking open a cola together, watching over her as she gets absorbed in a game, and so on. It's the best how carefully it lets you enjoy this distinctive sense of closeness unique to this otaku girl. What I especially love is being invited onto her lap for a lap pillow every single time. Somehow that part makes me feel her girlishness so strongly. With its laid-back charm, cuteness, and ASMR, this is a healing audio work that's great to fall asleep to, and also great to just zone out and listen to. You won't regret buying it, zo—??