Dancemania EX × Trance Paradise

Exit Trance presents Speed Anime Trance Best 22
Release Date: 10/1/14
Price: 2000 yen

Final list and cover art are out for the 22nd release in the SATB series. Only 17 tracks, but I guess that’s better than the pathetic 15 that SATB 21 had. Plus, at least they’re using up the whole CD this time. The total length of the album is a little under 80 minutes.

It’s a pretty balanced album, as Hommarju, Booing Day, Dizzi Mystica and plazma get 3 tracks each. MK gets 2, while Flash back dominant gets a single track. One of the big surprises here is the return of the Mars alias, last seen only on SATB 14. Also surprising is the return of Ryu*, who hasn’t been on an SATB album since SATB 15. Icon gets left out completely for the first time since SATB 11.

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We’re so Happy
Artist: Ryu*
Release Date: 9/17/14
Price: 2000 yen

Ryu*’s 6th album drops this September with more extended versions of his Bemani productions plus new tracks. 15 tracks are planned. Bonus items include a cell phone strap and sticker. Retailer-exclusive bonuses include remix CDs or an alternative jacket art. Meanwhile, Konamistyle have a deluxe set featuring a can badge, muffler towel, and special bonus CD. Visit the official website for more info.

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Hime Trance 4
Release Date: 1/27/10
Price: 1886 yen

Well, here we are at the end of an era. After the release of Anime*Mix in January of ’09, all was quiet on the Hime Trance front until EMI’s surprise decision to finally release Hime Trance 4 in 2010. Keep in mind that Hime Trance 3 had been released in 2007. Was the wait worth it?

In a word, hell yeah. Okay, that was two words, but one wouldn’t have been able to describe my love for the album. Most of it came down to Delaction, who produced 4 new incredible songs for the album, but there’s a lot of awesomeness to be found overall, which you can read about in my review.

This marked the end of Trance Paradise, unfortunately, but at least it went out with a bang. I hope you guys had a fun time going down memory lane. If there’s any interest in a similar series on Mega Trance or Super Best Trance, let me know.

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Sense Fukoku
Artist: YM feat. Gumi
Release Date: 9/17/14
Price: 2000 yen

Second album from YM. Bonus items includes a rubber band(?!) and poster. Retailer-exclusive bonuses include can badges, clear files, and utatte mita CDs. Visit the official website for more info.

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Hime Trance Anime*Mix
Release Date: 1/21/09
Price: 2171 yen

After three relatively disappointing releases in a row, the Hime Trance series finally got back on track with Anime*Mix. EMI finally stopped being cheap and commissioned a lot of new songs, and it made all the difference. The album was fresh, fun, and varied, with nary a bad track in sight. I did a full review a few years ago, and I still consider it a favorite. Sadly, as with Hime Trance Speed, it would never end up getting a sequel.

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Mafia’s Blood ~Sousakan Jail no Futatsu no Houyou~ Vol. 05
Artist: Kaito Ishikawa
Release Date: 9/17/14
Price: 2000 yen

Second release in the second trilogy of “Mafia’s Blood” drama CDs. The featured voice actor on this volume will be Kaito Ishikawa. Check out the official site for more info. If you collect all three releases, you can get a special cardboard case.

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Hime Trance Tsukasa Mix
Release Date: 11/12/08
Price: 1886 yen

After a Best release and a Speed off-shoot, it was certainly time for a proper Hime Trance 4, right? Whelp, we got another spinoff instead. Tsukasa was often labeled as the “queen of Hime Trance,” so she got a mixed album featuring pretty much all of her songs up to that point. It’s not a bad selection, but the nonstop mix is only 40 minutes, and there are only 3 or so new tracks. That said, it was worth it for an epic rendition of “Eternal Blaze,” which would end up shaping Delaction’s sound for the next few albums.

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Exit Trance presents Actors 2
Release Date: 9/17/14
Price: 2500 yen

Seconds release in the Actors series, which features popular voice actors singing Vocaloid songs. This one is a two-disc set, with disc 1 featuring Vocaloid covers while disc 2 is a drama CD. Featured actors include Ryouta Oosaka, Kenn, Kenshou Ono, Kousuke Toriumi, Tetsuya Kakihara, Hikaru Midorikawa, Shou Hayami, and Shintarou Asanuma. Visit the official website for more info.

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Hime Trance Speed
Release Date: 7/30/08
Price: 1886 yen

I was so excited when this was first announced, thinking that it would bring about a resurgence of the Dancemania Speed series. Well, it brought back repeats from the series, at least. Most of the songs still held up well, but “Butterfly” was in desperate need of an updated remix and “Willy…” still has the outro from “Smile” for some reason. The only new Dancemania remix was “Girlfriend,” which I thought was fantastic. It’s a shame they never identified the remixer, though it sounds almost as if Saifam remixed the DJ Ten remix.

The album also includes a few new J-core remixes of Hime Trance tracks. “Paya Paya” and “Doubt” ended up great, but the DJ 92 tracks sound oddly hollow.

Unfortunately, EMI never moved forward with more Hime Trance Speed releases. The album just serves as a painful reminder that we never got a Jenny Rom trance remix.

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Hime Trance Best
Release Date: 5/14/08
Price: 2171 yen

Okay, so after Trance Paradise Best, EMI were surely out of repeats, right? Nope, instead of giving us the long-awaited Hime Trance 4, they decided to do a best-of album for Hime Trance instead. And, since they had already used the best tracks (the EMI remixes) on Trance Paradise Best, they went with another angle and collected only the Japanese-language tracks.

It’s a decent collection of songs, with about 7-8 new tracks thrown in, but the reliance on repeats was getting ridiculously tiresome. I will say, however, that it has my favorite “Zankoku” trance remix ever.

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Trance Paradise – The Best 1999~2008
Release Date: 2/14/08
Price: 2838 yen

The beginning of 2008 should have seen the release of Hime Trance 4 or Trance Paradise 6, so naturally EMI just released another excuse for repeats instead. The title is a bit misleading as well, since the Trance Paradise series at that point was less than 4 years old. Instead, the title refers to the beginning of the trance boom in 1999. As such, the first disc spans a decade of trance, with songs from the Trancemania days all the way to Trance Paradise 5. The final 3 tracks on disc 1 are also brand new.

Disc 2 focuses almost exclusively on the various EMI remixes that had appeared over the course of the series. It also has 3 new tracks, the best of which being Delaction’s remix of “Neraiuchi,” though I was hoping they’d add the vocals.

TP Best wasn’t a bad release overall, but at this point I was getting really tired of the endless repeats…

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Hime Trance 3
Release Date: 8/22/07
Price: 1886 yen

Had EMI stuck to the original schedule, Hime Trance 3 should have been released in January of 2007. Instead, it was 7 months late thanks to Hostrance distractions. And unfortunately, the repeats that so heavily dominated Hostrance started to infect Hime Trance as well. There was only one new EMI remix here, a Shohei Matsumoto remix of “Natsu Monogatari.” All of the other EMI songs were just repeats from Trance Paradise 5. But what really pissed me off was the inclusion of the original version of “Dam Dariram.” I couldn’t believe the balls they had to pretend it was anywhere close to trance.

And that’s the big problem with Hime Trance 3: it wasn’t all trance. For some bizarre reason there’s a whole section of non-trance songs that just sound weirdly out of place. The worst offender (aside from the aforementioned “Dam Dariram”) was the DJ Kaya dance remix of “Wake Up,” which was really odd since there as already and incredible DJ Kaya trance remix of the song.

The album wasn’t all doom and gloom, however. The new tracks from Japanese producers were fantastic, including the Middle-Eastern flavored “MAGICA” and the DJ Kousuke-produced “Friends.” Sadly, “Friends” would be the last track he produced for Trance Paradise, and I think it was one of the last tracks he produced, period.

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Hostrance 2
Release Date: 6/27/07
Price: 2381 yen

I didn’t think it could get any worse than the first Hostrance, but its sequel proved me wrong. Hostrance 2 is pretty much all repeats, and once again the few new tracks were ruined by hosts talking over them. The first Hostrance at least had “That’s the Way” as a saving grace, but there’s not a single new EMI remix here.

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Trance Paradise 5
Release Date: 5/23/07
Price: 1886 yen

Now this is more like it! Trance Paradise 5 was about 8 months late, but it was a return to form after two awful releases (Cover Trance and Hostrance). EMI commissioned a lot of new songs for the release, including no less than 6 Dancemania remixes. My personal favorites were the Delaction remix of “Dub-I-Dub” (which made up for the ho-hum Dank-One remix on Hime Trance) and the amazingly epic Nasca Joker remix of “Beautiful Man.” The resurgence of “Beautiful Man” was a truly perplexing thing. It had appeared once on Dancemania in 1999, and I remember always loving the song, so I was ecstatic when it reappeared on Dancemania Treasure, and even more excited when it got a brand new trance remix.

“Up,” “Hung Up,” “You Raise Me Up,” (notice a trend?) and “Sky High” round out the new remixes. “Up” suffered from a lack of verses, but DJ Kaya and DJ Joker managed to infuse “Sky High” with more energy than the original DJ Kaya mix.

There were also 5 new Japanese originals from various DJs like Oriental Space and Heavens Wire. “Day Break” is the best of the bunch, somehow being both mellow and high-energy at the same time.

I do think that overall Trance Paradise 4 ended up being a more solid album, if only because TP5 had some unfortunate song choices when it came to licensed tracks. I was never a huge Handz Up fan, so the Cascada song was useless to me. And “Carlito (Cannon Cracker Remix)” is pretty lousy compared to Delaction’s superior version.

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Hostrance
Release Date: 1/31/07
Price: 2381 yen

Imagine you’re EMI and you’ve just come off a year with two hit albums in the form of Hime Trance 1 and 2. On the 1-year anniversary of the release of Hime Trance you’d obviously release Hime Trance 3 in order to capitalize on the success of the series, right? If you said, “yes,” then you’re not stupid enough to be EMI.

Theoretically, Hostrance should have been a companion series to Hime Trance featuring songs with male vocals (Captain Jack, anyone?). Instead, we got repeats from Hime Trance and random talking. Technically, there was one new remix in the form of “That’s the Way,” which ended up really good. There were also 4 new tracks from Heavens Wire, DJ Kaya, and Oriental Space, but they were mostly ruined by “host calls.” This was truly an awful release that really showed how cheap and lazy EMI could get.

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