Finally!  Finally I get a chance to review a JPop album.  Between the high cost of imports and the high guilt of bootlegs, there hasn't been much in the way for me to get my hands on.  Fortunately, the larger anime companies are starting to realize that the fans of anime do, in fact, listen to the soundtracks that accompany their productions and have started releasing US versions of the CDs.  God bless you, and, as Hunter S. Thompson would say, "Mahalo."

    Yuki Kajiura is best known for her work on the .hack//SIGN and Noir soundtracks, as well as founding the hugely popular See-Saw duo with vocalist Chiaki Ishikawa.  Fiction is her first solo release on either side of the Pacific.  Having totally geeked for the .hack soundtrack and kinda grooved for the Noir soundtrack, I held high hopes for Fiction after I'd heard about it.  Imagine the taste in my mouth, then, when I received my copy of Fiction only to find that over half the songs were culled from the .hack and Noir soundtracks (plus a couple from her work on the Aquarian Age anime, though I'd never heard of it before).  Grr.

    However, the good news is that the recycled songs are re-recorded/reinterpreted by Kajiura, and they tend to have less of an "anime" feel to them than their soundtrack counterparts.  "Open Your Heart," in particular, takes on a heavier feel than the version present on .hack//SIGN OST 2, and opening track "Key of the Twilight" doesn't have the multi-layered vocals of the original.  These reinterpretations will make the album much more accessible to the masses, especially if you dig new age synth pop.

    The original songs, "Vanity," "Cynical World," "Winter," and the title track are very good and fit snugly next to their anime-spawned brethren.  Overall, Fiction has a very mature sound to it, more so than the rest of Kajiura's work, though her songs have always struck me as a cut above the sugary bubblegum that proliferates in anime today.

(Needless to say, the other notable exception is Yoko Kanno, quite possibly one of the finest composers in any genre, anywhere.  But that's another story for another time.)

    For the majority of the album, Kajiura again teams up with singer extraordinaire, Emily Bindiger, whose voice matches the music exquisitely.  There is very much a fantasy feel to all of Fiction's tracks, and Bindiger just nails the appropriate mood and range.  I dunno, it's hard to describe, really.  I can't imagine Namie Amuro or Megumi Hayashibara fitting in here as well as Bindiger, even if the lyrics were written in Japanese instead of English...and Italian and Latin.

    The audio production is very clean, allowing the listener to hear everything in the songs.  Some tracks--"Fake Wings" and "Fiction" in particular--can be a little bass-heavy, but it's not that big a deal (You've got an EQ on your stereo; turn down the low-end, Chester).

    Speaking of which, while "Canta Per Me" sounds nice, the operatic "Salva Nos" (both from the Noir OST) could have been left completely off the album, and I wouldn't have minded one bit.  I've never been a fan of opera, and the arias contained therein make me want to kick puppies and put tape on kittens' feet.  The up-tempo electronic beat that backs "Salva Nos" is far too fast for the operatic vocals, leading to a very disjointed and frustrating listen.  It's also the longest track on the already-brief (total running time of 43 minutes) album, clocking in at just over seven minutes.

    Now that we've established that Fiction doesn't present much new material, why would anyone want to buy it?  Truth be told, if I was told to make an immediate choice between Fiction and, say, Darkest Hour's Hidden Hands of a Sadist Nation, I would have to go with the latter simply because I've already heard most of what's on the former.  The other way to see it would be to equate it to Linkin Park's Reanimation CD, which saw the band redo stuff from Hybrid Theory.  While the differences between LP's two albums were pretty severe, they are much more subtle between Kajiura's CDs.  So what's the bottom line here?  Is Fiction worth the price of admission, so to speak?  For me, in spite of everything, yes.  If you're a fan of Kajiura-san's work, I don't think you'll be disappointed with this album, and new listeners will get a chance to see the diversity of her songwriting.  The final verdict is: 

Rating: Old Songs, New Songs, Good Songs! out of 10