BLCD Review: Cosmetic Playlover
Title: Cosmetic Playlover (コスメティック・プレイラバー)
Author/Artist: Narashima Sachi
Release Date: 2022/11/26
Cast:
Itou Kento x Kobayashi Chiaki
Takatsuka Tomohito
Oono Tomohiro
Synopsis: Trash
“No or stop, you unexpectedly say cute things.”
The beautiful assistant, Natsume, is forced to do pair sales with his junior Sahashi. Sahashi, who doesn’t take Natsume or his work seriously, overtook him in sales and annoys Natsume as he’s trying to act as a good superior… Once his act gets discovered, he’s threatened into becoming his sex friend?! Plus, he carelessly flipped Sahashi’s switch on!
“Is it all right if I get serious?”
This is a story set behind the cosmetic shop counter, with feelings of love appearing as Natsume finds his heart beating fast, although it irritates him.
Review Proper
When I was a wee young lass of years six, my grandmother called us out from our seaside exile to come live with her in the main house after my father’s death. I was a child of the sea, so adjusting to life in the city was difficult. The main house was just rows upon rows of hallways and rooms, and it was always deathly cold—concrete. Even at that tender age, I knew that the house was shrouded in mystery, but it probably was just a reflection of our equally mysterious family. Every morning on my way to school, I would pass a small, oddly framed family picture along the hallway which showed my grandparents sitting on a red velvet couch while my father, uncle, and my aunt stood behind them. By the time I became a freshman in highschool, everyone in that picture had already passed...except for my aunt who had her face scratched out of it. She had been missing even before anyone from our generation was born, so no one knew where she was or how she’s doing. She was our family’s biggest mystery and, quite possibly, the answer to every other mystery. She was the only one who knows our family’s history, after all. More years pass, and we’ve lost the house along the way, completely eradicating any chance our questions had of ever being answered. Now, we have all learned as a family to leave our curiosities to rest and focus on the present.
But who would’ve thought that at age twenty-five, another big mystery would find itself in my hands?
The mystery of how Cosmetic Playlover ever got green-lit for a BLCD adaptation and multiple manga sequels, that is.
I mean, I knew it was gonna be bad from the Sakura Riko-looking art alone, but I didn’t know that it was gonna be that bad. I’m not even comfortable branding it as something that came out in the 2000′s ‘cause that would be an insult to some of them. Oh, I know. This is FUCKING SHOUJO SMUT PLOT BUT WITH TWO DICKS.
Specifically:
THIS FUCKING THING. NO WONDER I WAS SO PISSED OFF.
“Omg, Chesk. You’re overreacting.” No, I am not. Cause they have sex like 15 pages into the first chapter and right after Sahashi unzips Natsume-san’s pants, he gives it a squish squelch with a finger then puts his dick in it??? HOW WAS HIS ASSHOLE ALREADY WET??? EITHER HE HAD A PUSSY OR HE HAD DIARRHEA. See, I could forgive things being rushed in the manga ‘cause pages, ya know? But I expected the BLCD to give them more time, BUT NOOOOOO. THEY WANTED TO MOMOSE AN THE SHIT.
Anyway, I won’t talk too much about the plot here. It’s really just your run-of-the-mill shoujo smut with a rapist, black-mailing, edgelord top and a simp for a bottom. 👍 Their climax wasn’t even worth noting. Natsume-san was getting wrongly accused by stealing this one guy’s customers, so he keeps harassing him and Sahashi finds Natsume-san’s notebook with all his customers’ info on them and says the notebook was persuasive evidence that he wasn’t stealing the customers. EXCUSE ME??? WHERE ARE YOU TAKING THIS CASE??? AUDIT???
Moving on to the technicalities of things, I actually listened to this mainly because this would be Chiaki’s debut (Sugar Drug’s was actually released the same day, but I’m not too keen on Takuma being on top). Oddly enough, I think I have almost all of the CDs he’s been cast as a supporting role, so I was looking forward to him leading this time. How did he do, you ask?
Wow.
That was
Bad.
Ngl, this was even worse than Horie Shun’s debut. I’m not sure what happened here ‘cause he acts pretty decently in his other CDs, but he even struggled with stuff outside the bedroom. He never got his surprises right, for one thing. Both the timing and the sounds he made were so unnatural. But the most unnatural bit of it all were his moans in bed. He goes to deep but also uses vowels too big at every given chancee, it just—HE REALLY JUST “AHHAHUHUH” THE WHOLE TIME IT WAS SO FUNNY I KEPT LAUGHING THROUGHOUT THE BEDDINGS I’M SO SORRY. I can see that he’s trying to emulate the Tachi of maybe 2013, but he really doesn’t know how to do it properly. I would’ve preferred it if he just went the quieter route, if that’s how it was just gonna end up as. 😬 His moaning drowned Itou Kento out a bit that sometimes I just forgot that he was there lmao. Hopefully, he did better in Sugar Drug ‘cause Taku’s not that uhh great as a top, so if they both underperformed, that CD’s doomed lmaooo
Itou Kento did well here even though I kinda didn’t like how he started. This is a higher tone than what he usually uses, and I could just visualize what kind of shape his mouth was making that it just bothered me. Thankfully, grew on me after a while. His topping style here was a little reminiscent of Nakajiki’s usual, and I found that endearing. My man learned topping from his top. *wipes tear
The rest of the supporting cast did great too. I found it so funny that Takatomo was acting as a man much older than the two leads when he’s literally the same age as their actors lmao. Our other Tomo’s also showing potential. I’ve seen his name pop up quite a lot recently, and it’s just a matter of time before he gets a lead role. Hope he learns from this.
Yea, so this was bad overall. If you’re a fan of this series, why? I wouldn’t recommend it because of the acting. It unfortunately sticks out like a sore thumb. I’m not sure if Mari—MARINE?! NO FUCKING WONDER! Yea, this’ll probably have sequels since the manga has 7 volumes and is still ongoing, and Marine loves that weird shit, so... Do I have any other recommendations? I don’t think I’ve ever listened to another BLCD that revolved around cosmetics. That was actually a good concept, ngl. But did this expound on the cosmetics? No lmao.