I’ve never been able to get JP to accept my credit card, sadly.
Ah, thank you; I’ll check that!
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Ahhh I see. In case it helps: the way I managed it was to sign up in-app on Android (I think this works with iPhone too). I don’t think it does extra verification past that, since it’s the App/Play store handling the billing. Probably had to use a VPN initially, idrc that part.
(I did have to add a JP address afterwards tho to get past Kadokawa’s region locking. They’re the only publisher that it’s been an issue for)
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It worked for a couple months for me then they banned me, so do take that into account if someone’s trying it, and also use a non-important amazon account.
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Ahh yeah, I definitely did it with a separate Amazon account. Signed up for that with a JP Gmail address iirc. Not sure if that makes a difference.
Sry to hear about them banning you 
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- 声優ラジオのウラオモテ 1 | L28 very solid, and I really wish they had audiobooks for the whole series (but also I’m happy not to give dwango money, ugh). The narrator is also the voice actor for the 2nd lead (Yugure Yuuhi) in the anime… which is great, but kind of weird since the novels are all from the perspective of the 1st lead (Utatane Yasumi)
Anyway, she did a great job with both leads and all the support characters - 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 | L32 - I’ve listened to 1.5 volumes so far. I’d say they’re pretty good, but the narrator doesn’t quite rise to the challenge of differentiating all of the characters (and the inner-monologue vs dialogue) so well, as the cast grows larger. While they’re very enjoyable without text, I’d definitely recommend having text for book 2 at least, or you’ll probably occasionally mix people up/wonder who’s speaking. Very enjoyable though
- ソードアート・オンライン | L34 - these are done quite well! Despite the very large cast and supporting characters, you can always tell who’s speaking, what’s narration vs speech, etc. It’s clear the narrator really studied for this, and a lot of it sounds damn close to the anime’s speech styles (but unique enough to have its own value). The only shortcoming I’ve noticed so far was the lack of vocal processing for Death Gun’s voice, but it’s not such a huge deal. Also there’s times when their choice of kanji vs furigana for proper nouns/fantasy stuff is the opposite of what it should be. So that might be a minor issue for people unfamiliar with the content, but it’s not super frequent
- 明日の世界で星は煌めく | L27 - Excellent! 3 narrators, 1 for each lead, and a third for the very occasional male characters (it’s a zombie apocalypse, so there aren’t a lot of characters in the first place). If you’re a fan of ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！ | L27 青山吉能 voices the 2nd lead. I think it would work equally well with & without text. All 3 vols have audiobooks, but I’ve only gotten through vol 1 so far
- 神様たちのお伊勢参り | L27 - I didn’t get too far in, but this one’s excellent - very easy to tell people apart, and really captures the MC well. Could easily list without text. Also besides the prologue (which has a lot of fancy shrine-related vocab), it’s probably easier than the L27 suggests
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I succumbed to the 99円 for 3 months offer on Audible.co.jp. Now I only need to figure out what to listen to…
Given the amazing 声優 talent available in Japan, I’m first and foremost interested in productions with a real cast. I tried to browse previous recommendations but it’s unclear ahead of time which are just read by one person and which have “radio drama” type of casting.
What is the best “full production” type of audiobook you’ve listened to?
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Audible doesn’t really have a lot of those - if any… I am trying to remember if I have ever come across one. audiobook.jp often has multiple voice actors but the kind of full cast radio drama that you get in the UK, for example, is rare (or I just have never come across any). Drama CDs have that but they are not audiobooks.
It’s very common to have 1 actor doing multiple character voices, though.
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They definitely exist. In my collection I have オリエント急行の殺人 and the 夢探偵フロイト series are both audio drama style if memory serves. They’re less common for sure, though.
I don’t own these off Audible (rather audiobook.co.jp) but 世界から猫が消えたなら and かがみの孤城 were also audio drama style. They might also be on Audible JP, they’re popular.
I’m struggling to think of more because honestly I don’t really distinguish between multi cast or not in my evaluation of books I really only remember if either it’s a total stand out production like かがみの孤城 or if the voice acting was really bad (I’ll decline calling anyone out here).
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I see, thanks. And thanks @cat for the recs, I’ll be sure to try.
I somehow thought these were more common in Japan, perhaps because I bought two radio dramas on CDs ~20 years ago and remember how awesome and new to me it was that different characters got different voices. (Way too difficult back then, though.)
Perhaps some productions still have two or three different readers rather than a full cast?
I ask for this because I’ve tried listening to “normal” audiobooks and unless I’m also reading the text at the same time I lose… err, sight? sense? of who is talking too easily. Some readers pull off multiple same gender characters well, but having even two readers can widen the range considerably.
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It’s not unusual to come across books with chapters written from multiple POVs and each POV has its own voice actor. The difference here from an audio drama is if Tanaka speaks in Mizumoto’s chapter, Mizumoto’s voice actor speaks for him.
Overall much more common is one voice actor doing multiple voices, and your mileage may vary there. I recently had what you described where I was like “wait, this old lady and this man’s 20 something daughter sound the same 
” But others are talented enough that each character sounds quite distinct
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While this doesn’t help you on Audible, I remember at some point getting into オーディオドラマ, which (at least the ones I found) seem to be casts of aspiring voice actors doing serialized audio plays. I never found one that I could follow and kept my interest, but something you may want to look into if you’re into that type of content.
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I listen to audio dramas on YouTube, I love them 
I prefer one shots, though.
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Oh interesting. The ones I found tended to be podcasts (but it’s literally been over 10 years since I last looked). Maybe I’ll poke around YouTube a bit. I feel like I’d have more stamina for a one shot…
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I like this channel (and enjoyed this drama as well):
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It’s probably completely obvious, but when you browse on audible directly you can already on hover see if it has multiple narrators (check the ナレーター section):
So at least you can quickly determine when browsing if something has multiple narrators! Or do you also mean sound effects, etc? That’s harder to see in advance, of course.
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Oh, I did spot that, now I just need recommendations of good ones. 
Seems like 負けヒロインが多すぎる! | L30 has exactly what I’m looking for, including その他 as a narrator so there are probably many voices. I’ll give it a try!
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