Flesh & Blood Drama CD-series listening club ⛵ 🎧

Japanese Language Listening
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Welcome to the Flesh & Blood Drama CD-series listening club :headphones:

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This listening club is an offshoot to the ongoing Flesh & Blood-book club. :books: This popular light novel-series by Natsuki Matsuoka has been adapted into one of the longest BLCD-series ever made. :astonished: And we’re attempting to listen to it all! ^>^

What is Flesh & Blood? :sailboat:

Flesh & Blood is a historical drama that mostly takes place in 16th Century Europe, focusing on the war between Spain and England. Main character Kaito Togo ends up in the middle of the events.

Cast:
Kaito Togo: Jun Fukuyama
Jeoffrey Rockford: Junichi Suwabe
Nigel Graham: Katsuyuki Konishi
Vincente de Santillana: Tooru Ookawa
Kazuya Norisaki: Daisuke Kishio
Christopher “Kit” Marlowe: Shinichiro Miki
Leonard Barreta: Kouki Miyata
Rufus: Masami Iwasaki
Cyril: Motoki Takagi
also featuring Kenyuu Horiuchi, Jouji Nakata, Koji Yusa, Takashi Kondou and many more.

Content warning: 18+
This is an 18+ series aimed at adults, so be advised that this series might not be suitable for all listeners. It’s also a BL (Boy’s Love) series.

Where to find the BLCDs?

To participate in this listening club you’ll have to buy the CDs, be it from Amazon or some other international seller. The CDs can be found by searching “Flesh & Blood BLCD” to distinguish them from the light novel series.

Link to the Japanese BLCD Wiki info on Flesh & Blood

Discussion Threads

Extras: Flesh & Blood Listening Club ~ Free Talk Specials Discussion Thread ⛵ 🎧

CD Scripts

Need a script? Check here!

General listening tips

Use headphones! :headphones: Turn down the lights and turn the volume up. It helps to just focus on listening and nothing else going on around you. Find your quiet and calm space! :relaxed:

Got stuck on strange historical or nautical terminology? Fret not! Check out the extensive Nautical Terminology (found in the Book Club Main Thread). Also, check out the respective book club discussion threads for help with recognizing historical people, places and events that get name dropped in this series. They can be found in the OP post of each respective Book Club Discussion thread.

Check out the Book Club Home Thread!

Interest poll

Are you intending on listening with us? :high_touch:

  • Yay, let’s go! :high_touch:
  • I’m interested, but can’t promise anything
  • Sorry, this isn’t my thing

0 voters

Discussion Guidelines

Discuss anything you want, be it language questions, about the plot and characters or what you think about this series. As always, be mindful of the forum rules in general. :slight_smile:

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BLCDs listened to

  • I’ve finished BLCD 1
  • I’ve finished BLCD 2
  • I’ve finished BLCD 3
  • I’ve finished BLCD 4
  • I’ve finished BLCD 5
  • I’ve finished BLCD 6
  • I’ve finished BLCD 7
  • I’ve finished BLCD 8
  • I’ve finished BLCD 9
  • I’ve finished BLCD 10

0 voters

Another poll will get added

OLD COMMENT

So, first question: when do we want to start this thing? ^^’ Let’s just have some open discussion and later on I can make a poll to let people vote on their preferred dates. :slight_smile:

Also, tagging some of the people that have already expressed some interest in this idea: @pyororon @eefara @Sensei @NicoleIsEnough <3

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Ooooh, I love it ekg! Especially the art book cover up there; gotta reel them in with the lovely art! :kissing_closed_eyes: Everyone, the covers for the drama CDs are flat-out gorgeous! Tagging @sycamore as well since they were reading the books with us.

One small note: you should probably remove “visual” from your second sentence:

That’s crazy to me; how long are BLCD series typically? What’s the longest one?

We’re getting real close to the holidays/end-of-year craziness, so I think I’d prefer starting January or so. Plus there’s not much of a precedent for a drama CD club, so we’ll probably want time to iron out details anyhow.

With how weak my listening skills are, I’d also definitely appreciate more of a formal schedule than we usually roll with over at the F&B book club; something simple like a certain number of tracks per week, maybe? Guess the number would depend on how comfortable everyone is with their listening; I personally plan on listening to each track several times at least to try to maximize how much my ears catch.

If we are interested in having a more formal schedule, I can list out track stats for the each CD as needed; here’s CD 1 to give us a taste of what we might be looking at:

Track # Time
Prologue 4:08
Scene 1 16:46
Scene 2 12:02
Scene 3 13:49
Scene 4 11:03
Scene 5 15:44
Scene 6 12:47
Scene 7 15:19
Scene 8 5:55
Scene 9 18:26
Scene 10 11:56
Scene 11 4:40
Epilogue 3:27
Total Time 2:26:02
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Thanks for the spot! It should say “light novel”-series. I sometimes mix them up! :crazy_face:

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Well, longest BLCD ever made is maybe a not totally accurate description for F&B, but I also don’t know any series that is longer than this one, with its 20+ BLCD-releases + the extra audio dramas to go with it. (they’re completely outside of the normal action, and so, I think we should focus on the main plot and series for the time being).

When I think of longish BLCD-series out there, I tend to think of <6 BLCD-releases.

To be fair, a lot of BLCD adaptions may be from a single manga volume, so there is only 1 CD-release. I think serialization isn’t that common for BL-manga (there’s a lot of one-shot/one-chapter stories out there), though there are series for sure. Therefore, it follows that the BLCD-adaptions seldom are longer series. :eyes:

I’m pretty new when it come so light novel series, but they’re defo longer due to the format of publishing. But, I still think there’s a lot of single-volume stories out there that later get an audio drama adaption, so again, just 1 volume/CD-release. :thinking:

This sounds like a sound schedule. No need to rush things. Lots of time for people to start buying the CDs and not having to pay for it in quick succession either. And time to discuss how we should go about this.

I think it’s worth noting that listening to a story is VERY different from reading a story. And by that I mean, that it’s so much faster in story-progression. This is because, audio is just more compact time-wise. But, also, as much as there are set tracks here, they don’t necessarily function like “chapters” imo. Instead, the plot itself becomes the more natural way to find breaks and pauses in the flow of what you’re listening to.

I think it will feel very unnatural to stop at pre-decided tracks. I have never listened in such a way to Drama CDs myself, but rather I have just kept listening until I feel too tired or too unfocused to be able to continue. I’d then paused for the time being, only to continue some other day. (and most likely, relistening to part of the end of my last listening session). :thinking:

Well, i’m going to sleep on the practical side of this club and we can discuss more later on. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for tagging me! I’d be very interested….if there was any way for me to buy these digitally :disappointed: It’s not a definite no, as I’ve been known to impulse buy Japanese stuff before when I shouldn’t but when I’d looked before it seemed very pricy to get the physical CDs imported :cry:

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Obtaining them is likely going to be the biggest pain point. :thinking: We should add that to our list of talking points for sure. Are you the same sycamore as on Natively?

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Yeah, this is definitely the hardest part of this listening club, and it will be the most difficult part of any Drama CD-series listening club. Because they are almost exclusively sold in a physical CD format.

Which means there’s a growing number of sites that are starting to sell digital downloads today, but yeah, it’s a pretty recent development. And for the bigger, already published stuff, they’re not going to move over to digital as far as I can tell.

Giving ample time for people to acquire the CDs seems to be a good starting point. Both because it takes time to order and ship at the lowest cost possible for shipping. But, also to allow people to spread out the costs over a longer period of time.

But, for a possibly pretty long-running listening club like this, that also means you don’t have to buy the whole thing at once.

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Right, and I think we might wanna think about pacing here. How long are we going to take on F&B 1? :thinking:

Thanks to @eefara we know this release has a total time of 2:26:02.

Which can we listened to in one sitting, though I doubt I wanna do that this time round. It’s not conductive to discussing the story with others. And it’s pretty exhausting, though I personally find that once you’ve gotten used to the listening experience, it’s nice to just sink into it for an extended amount of time. Especially with an engaging story like this, that literally sucks you right in. ^>^

I’m thinking of maybe allowing people to listen at their own pace, since we’re probably at different levels of listening proficiency.

We can use spoiler tags and hide details while being clear about which CD and which track(s) we’re talking about during discussions.

It’s worked pretty well in the F&B-book club, so should work for this as well. :thinking:

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Yep, that’s also me!

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Except when looking at Amazon.jp and shipping to Norway prices are like 2500-3500 ¥ per CD + 3000-5000 ¥ in shipping costs so buying 20+ CDs one by one I’d be paying ~80000 ¥ just in shipping, versus far less if I bought in bulk… I’m curious about the drama CD format but very apprehensive about the prices :sweat_smile:

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For sure. I wasn’t suggesting to buy them one by one. But most people can’t just cough up 80 000 yen either. That’s what I’m saying.

For me the price is fair. Then again, living in Sweden, music CDs are easily 200-300 SEK. And bigger collections even more.

Here you get between 1-2 CDs of content. But, as with longer series, that will build up to being a lot of money. No getting around that.

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I’ll be pretty busy with finals in December so starting around January sounds perfect. Hearing so much about it over in the book club has always made me curious (and that’s quite the cast of seiyuu :eyes:) so I can’t wait!

I was looking around at places to buy it, is this the right CD?
https://www.animate.shop/products/30042874?_pos=3&_sid=70eb0b475&_ss=r

Lengthwise I’m not super familiar with drama CDs so I’m not really sure how long it’d take me. I definitely have less endurance when it comes to listening so I think I’ll probably need time to listen to each part more than once.

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Yeah, I got that. The one-by-one example was for rhetorical effect:p Also because I was considering buying just one cd to try it out but balking at paying like 650kr:/

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I think this is a good approach in general. And we should make sure people have time to relisten as much as they prefer. :slight_smile:

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I’ve been buying them one by one, but as part of buying other stuff to get up to that point where I don’t get hit by additional import taxes. I’d do the same if it was just CDs, but yeah, it’s stupid hard to calculate these things. T_T

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Forgot to answer, but YES! ^>^ That’s the one.

The first 3? Drama CD-releases have art by the same artist that makes the book cover and story art in the light novel-series. After that they change to Aya’s amazing stuff. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Hmm, well, I’m not planning to buy anything else from Japan in 2022 so I probably won’t be joining you from January, but if it’s a long-running thing then I might buy a few CDs in early 2023 along with whatever else and catch up with the club if I feel like listening along:)

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Oh nice! I wasn’t sure since looking at the wiki it seems like there’s a lot of extras

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Yeah, we can basically ignore the extras for now. They’re basically either pure free talk CDs with the cast chatting about random stuff (which is a lot of fun and I love, but yeah, it’s not necessary for the story), OR they’re extra-stories that takes place outside of the normal line of events. Again, not necessary to follow along the main story. They’re fan service so to speak. :slight_smile: Also, I forgot, there’s OST tracks from the series on the free talk CDs as well.

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