薬師るり - Arigatou

Ruri Yakushi (薬師るり) is a singer I was kind of curious about.

First off, her singing is actually solid — at least on CD it is, and without much obvious pitch-correction smeared over it. She switches styles freely too: she can sing just about anything. No-holds-barred stuff, hentai anime stuff, totally shameless stuff, tear-jerking stuff, plain love songs, denpa songs — she covers basically everything.

From what I read, she still works as a pharmacist on the side, which is why she took the stage name “Yakushi Ruri” (yakushi being the word for pharmacist).

Anyway, the music’s good, so I picked up the new album.

Apparently first-press orders came with a signed copy — except I can’t read a damn thing on this signature besides “ありがとう”…

The tracklist is generous: a single CD packs in most of the songs she’s done for games in recent years, plus a few covers — in some cases the original was an ED sung by the voice actress of a nukige, and Yakushi Ruri sang it again herself…

Gave it a listen. Several of the slow songs are really good, but I haven’t played that game? I looked it up and it’s another nukige, so as a pure, upstanding person I probably won’t touch it.

Games I have played: the ED for Sekai Senkyo, and the OP for Onikisu. The full version of the Onikisu OP is actually pretty good — apart from the intro, which is a bit dumb…

I’ve noticed Yakushi Ruri always seems to be working with someone named Katsunori Nemoto, right down to sharing the same music organization. What’s the relationship between those two??