Artist: Various Artists
Album/Single: CLAMP IN WONDERLAND 1&2 Collection – PRECIOUS SONGS
Release Date: October 24, 2007

1. action! / 坂本真綾 (Sakamoto Maaya)
Initially, I disliked this song because I felt it was much too cutesy for Sakamoto, especially after some of her more recent, mature works. In the end, this song completely grew on me, and now I find it adorable and fun to listen to. Some parts of the accompaniment are awkward and random, but I love the treble synthesizers that play the melody and countermelody. The verses are the main source of the cutesy atmosphere, but choruses are nice to listen to. Even though this doesn’t showcase Sakamoto’s vocals well, I think she captured the mood well which ended up with a fairly good result.

2. Oh! Yeah!! / ROUND TABLE featuring Nino
I remember liking the song this band did for Chobits way back when, but this doesn’t seem to have the same charm of their older CLAMP theme song. ROUND TABLE is fairly loud with a prominent guitar part, but Nino doesn’t seem able to keep up with the rest of the song. She sounds drowned out and overshadowed by the rest of the participants of this song. The song as a whole just seems to be rather lacking in every aspect, so while it isn’t bad in any way, it just doesn’t seem to stand out either.

3. あなただけのWONDERLAND / 広谷順子 (anata dake no WONDERLAND / Hirotani Junko)
This song has a very 90′s feel to it, which makes sense since it was the theme for the first CLAMP IN WONDERLAND series. Hirotani has a very lovely voice, but she seems kind of overpowered by the dance-like stylings of this song. Everything about this song is very typical of 90′s anime theme songs, but I half wished that they had chosen another vocalist. Hirotani’s voice seems better suited for easy listening type of songs.

4. 「あなた」が「しあわせ」であるように / 広谷順子 (anata ga shiawase de aru youni / Hirotani Junko)
Another very typical 90′s sounding song. This ending is much slower than it’s opening counterpart, and already you can hear how Hirotani is more comfortable here. I still think the programming isn’t complimenting her voice well, and she probably would do quite well with less electronic programming, and more acoustic sounds. While Hirotani is a lovely vocalist, she has a soft, gentle quality about her singing that would be highlighted in songs that aren’t completely arranged with synthesizers.

5. action! (without maaya)

6. Oh! Yeah!! (without Nino)

Overall -
Favourite Track: action!
I found this mini-album to be rather weak, but it’s a nice collection of the openings and endings to both CLAMP IN WONDERLAND series. The songs themselves aren’t too amazing, but they can be fun to listen to. I kind of wished they did more remastering to the first opening and ending to give it a more updated sound. The sound quality for the songs aren’t as good as their successors. It also might have given some CLAMP fans more of an incentive to actually buy it. Sadly though, the collection was a tad disappointing.