Musicals are tokusatsu too: a thread
 

I should lay out from the off-set how I believe that these musicals and stage-plays, their original sources often games and cartoons, are just as much tokusatsu as anything in the Toei or Toho or Tsuburaya canons. Granted the very definition of tokusatsu implies special effects in film and television, but considering the genres of these shows and the overlapping material of such performances as the Sailor Moon musicals or YoRHa/YoRHa Boys, for the purposes of from now until forever, I'm going to include musicals and plays as part of my definition whenever I talk about tokusatsu, and update this thread with commentary of such whilst watching them.

Sakura Wars was a big deal for Sega when it arrived on the Saturn in 1996. It spawned three sequels on both the Saturn and the Dreamcast, a successive Playstation 2 game, and a reboot in 2019, as well as countless spin off games, spiritual successors in the shape of Valkyria Chronicles, cartoons, and, of course, musicals. My first exposure to playing these games was on the Dreamcast, and then the later cartoons, which I used as a guide for sort of trying to intuit what was happening in the game as I understood no Japanese at the time. When I first heard hearsay of the musicals it was from those typical people who always feel the need to act as if they're too cool for anything, usually they were comments like, "Hey, did you know, in Japan, they make musicals out of video games? Isn't that weird?" But it wasn't weird, at least not to me, I thought it was [I]amazing[I]. Don't get me wrong, I'm not really a musicals girl, at least I wasn't as a child, but I was awkward, and I was in love with cartoons and games, and the idea of a game being brought to life on a stage with real actors and real music made me giddy with excitement. Lovingly translated by Taisho Fansubs in the summer of last year, the fifth Sakura Wars musical, Kaijin Besso from 2001, was certainly worth the wait.

Eschewing the more combat orientated moments in the game, and wisely focusing on the characters of the Hanagumi Revue during a long summer, the play is divided into two sections, the former discussing familial relationships and found family, delicately addressing the impact of loss and what it means to carry on in the absence of loved ones whilst still honouring their memories, whilst the latter is an in-universe adaptation of author Izumi Kyoka's 1913 shorty story, Kaijin Besso, a dreamlike story that tells of a young girl's sacrifice, transformation, and romance with a god of the sea in his palace beneath the waves. It is both comical and moving, beautiful and complex, and seeing this performance from 2001, the voice actors from the game reprising their roles here as they had done for each of the previous four plays, I was struck by the tenderness and care with which the material was adapted. Seeing glimpses of the actors after the performance, it is clear that they loved what they were doing, and seeing that audience from 20 years ago in their excitement, it is likewise clear that they were as dedicated to these stories as the cast were. I wonder where the people in attendance of this performance are now, I wonder if they played 2019's reboot of the franchise; I wonder what their opinions were.

If I have one criticism of the play, it is that it does so much, and by the time the adaptation of Izumi's work takes place, it feels that the performance should really have been its own separate thing. I say this as someone watching the play at night on television, a cat on her lap, but if I had been in the theatre at the time, I can imagine that I would never have wanted it to end.

Watching Sakura Wars all this time later is such a wonderful and exciting feeling, and it almost makes me a little sad because it is also a reminder of how poorly these stories have been treated by Sega, and how niche they remain even with the Western release of the 2019 reboot. More than anything, I just want to hold onto these tender little stories, these stories that aren't always about blowing things up in the most spectacular fashion or grim and dark betrayal and angst, but sometimes can be about the relationship between a father and a daughter, the friends we make in life, and the call to sometimes pilot giant steam-powered iron plated robots in combat. These little character focused stories, like so much of Sakura Wars is, these stories that do not eschew the excitement and drama of the action we see in more traditional tokusatsu, but also present a gentler, calmer side, I really think there is a place for these things, and I really want to share them with you.

So would you count the Death Note musical as a Toku? Because I legit love that one.

I would absolutely. Despite not knowing anything about Death Note, I would defend the right of these musicals to be considered toku until my dying breath, lol.

I haven't watched them myself, but I did get some good exposure to the YoRHa stage shows when I did my deep dive into Nier lore a couple years ago. The Boys one didn't interest me much, but as a big A2 fan I really liked learning about the play that fleshed out her backstory.

Should I mention I’ve seen clips of a Decade stage show that was a musical?

I've seen that one, it's beautiful! :p I guess I'm broadly including the Rider plays/musicals in all this, because sometimes I will watch those for Heisei shows that I haven't even seen an episode of the source material, so I'm definitely using them to prop up my argument.

I prefer YoRHa to Boys, but only as the former has Tanaka Reina, once of Morning Musume, in it. The whole thing is subbed on youtube, if I recall, I absolutely encourage you to watch it fully. I say this as someone who has never played a Nier game but has read the books and is in love with the varied stage productions, lol.

I see I’m not to only one on this forum who has a chaotic-evil mindset when it comes to what counts as tokusatsu! ;)

I really like theatrical plays and musicals, I would probably count them too. After all, the stage acting roots of tokusatsu are still very strong.

I love you just for the way you phrased this, haha.

Also: agreed, there's a lot of carry-over, just as there is with anime, so I really want to highlight this and the work that dedicated fansub groups like Taisho and Sea of Serenity do bringing these plays to a wider audience.

I assume we're talking like, Sailor Moon musicals type thing rather than for example High School Musical or something everyone knows about like that?

I actually have thought before that things like the Sarah Jane Adventures or Wizards vs Aliens could also be in the area of tokusatsu although obviously not the henshin hero subgenre but at least closer to older Doctor Who of which the format is slightly more to my taste than the new ones which are more just casual viewing for me!

Much as I liked High School Musical, I did mention Sailor Moon specifically in my opening as an example of the kind of production I was talking about. :p

For clarity's sake though, I am talking about musicals and stage-plays that have a common theme to the more familiar special effects driven TV shows/movies often discussed.

The fact that LILIUM escaped me for so long, the fact that the whole TRUMP series escaped me for so long is somewhat criminal.

Taking place in the year 2500, LILIUM is a 2014 stage play written by Suemitsu Kenichi as part of his ongoing series of stories about a number of ancient and eternal vampires, primarily Krauss, and later Sophie, often referred to as TRUMP, an abbreviation of "True of Vampire." Broadly, the series is a snap-shot of events unfolding on a lengthy timeline of thousands of years, in which Sophie and Krauss and several other immortals, mourn the curse of their longevity, yet also try to initiate others into their eternal sorrow. By the time LILIUM begins, the idea of a vampire that can live forever is treated almost as a myth by both humans and vamps—the series' preferred term—alike, and this particular story takes place within a sanitarium far from the human world, where a number of fledging vamps have been gathered so that the symptoms of their pubescent chrysalis phase can be monitored and alleviated in the hope that they will not grow into creatures who seek to antagonise humans and rain down chaos upon them, like many of their vampiric forebears.

When first I heard mention of LILIUM, I knew nothing of the broader series or of Suemitsu's body of work, all I really cared about was the fact that it was a musical performed by members of Hello! Project, primarily girls from Morning Musume '14 and S/mileage, and that it was about vampires. You may have noticed that I have a soft spot for vampires. The night-walkers of LILIUM, however, are a far cry from the Nosferatu and Fangire, from familiar brat princes and dark counts. Focusing primarily on the relationship between Lily (Sayashi Riho) and Snow (Wada Ayaka), the vamps of this work are trapped in a world that does not understand them, a world in which they cannot find their place within. As with Kamen Rider Kiva, LILIUM treats its vampires as a species adjacent to humanity, human enough to be empathetic, and yet monstrous enough to excite dissonance during points of the story. The world in which the girls of the sanitarium, Clan, exist is vivid and richly depicted, and as their story unfolds and we begin to learn more and more of their relationships with one another, and why both Lily and Snow can remember events that seemingly never happened, the more and more the play hammers home—no pun intended—its homages to gothic literature and the later Romanticism that followed the advent of that famed storytelling contest at the Villa Diodati between Byron, Polidori, and Percy and Mary Shelley.

Much like the work from which it draws influence, LILIUM is haunting and rich, full of melancholy and tragedy, its vampires so close to being children, so close to being monsters. As the audience learns more of the characters, it becomes haunting to see their sorrows and tragedies examined so starkly; from the misfortune of the half-human dhampir, Marigold (Tamura Meimi), to the absence of Sylvatica (Oda Sakura), and the weakness of False (Kudo Haruka), each character we are introduced to could be the lead of their own story, and the real sadness is that whilst TRUMP spans many plays and books, this particular moment in its timeline is evidenced solely by this play and a successive prequel in 2015, Nirinzaki.

Perhaps my opinion here is biased though, as really LILIUM is one of the few works in the series translated into English by merit of the dedication of Hello! Project fans, and thus it is the only corner of this world I have really come into contact with, not being confident in my Japanese to really consider the possibility of searching out and watching recordings of the other productions without translation.

I know that I am often the first to complain when vampires exhibit too much humanity, and yet I found that the characters here spoke so readily to concerns that we all have, that it was infinitely easier to connect with them, to relate to them than, say, our aforementioned brat prince.

In tone, LILIUM is complex and rewarding, close to the Nier: Automata play, YorHa—starring Morning Musume alumnus, Tanaka Reina—and the way in which it handles the relationships of its characters is genuinely moving. I'm not sure if me enthusing about it will be enough to stir your interest, but if it does, I promise that if you set aside your doubts, the story will not disappoint.

I've heard of these stage plays and musicals Japan likes to do with things like: My Hero Academia, Fate/Grand Order, and Gundam, though I've never actually seen one. I have seen clips of Kamen Rider and Ultraman stage shows, which reminds me of those shows they did at Sea World or Disneyland, which I actually do have an interest in. I may not be a real Broadway fan when it comes to musicals, but I do find charm and enjoyment of old musicals (Heck, I like old movies in general) like: Hello Dolly and White Christmas, so these sound pretty interesting.

They're wonderful, I promise. I mean, not all of them, I can't vouch for everything, but a lot of these productions are super heartfelt and moving. Lately, even if I skipped the Rider shows they are associated with, I always make a point of watching their stage plays because they are always so well made.

Gosh, I have so much love for these productions and the unique ways in which they bring these stories to life!

In a flash of strong and elegant good fortune, I discovered F2's translation of TRUMP, and I am absolutely taken aback by the beauty and tragedy of the story it so masterfully tells. This play evokes the kind of feeling we sometimes mistakenly associate with the work of Anne Rice, and it is my genuine opinion that, whilst clearly building on the shoulders of what Rice has contributed to vampire mythos, TRUMP is an encapsulation of those themes of loneliness and distance from others so beautiful in its construction that I haven't been able to stop thinking of it.

Set 3000 years before the main events of LILIUM, the story takes place within the similarly titled Clan, a vast school for young vamps going through the chrysalis. When I was trying to make sense of the later play, I thought that it was set in the year 2500, but it turns out that the events simply begin 2500 years after this one. The Clan here is likewise echoed in the title and objectives of the sanatarium in the latter play, and you could be forgiven for thinking that during the first 30 minutes of so, the one play is simply a retelling of events from the other with different actors and characters expressing the same sentiments. It's not though, and it makes sense as to why Sophie would arrange the events of LILIUM as he does by the time we reach the end of TRUMP.

Our main characters are, once more, Sophie Anderson (Nishii Yukito), and his friend, Ul de Rico (Mitsuya Ryou). Both boys are dhampirs, though, with Sophie the truth is out in the open, yet for Ul, being of a noble family, the secret of such is closely guarded. Through them we are introduced to the world of the play, the teachers who guide the vamps through their chrysalis, the students that roam the halls, competing to be the best at the forthcoming Blood Festival. Amongst the teachers, is the absentminded Krauss (Jinnai Sho), a stumbling and harmless elder vampire constantly losing track of his wayward charge, Allen (Yamada Yuuki). As the story progresses, we learn that the scenes we have been witness to are events that take place 100 years apart; the Allen for which Krauss searches in the present is revealed to be his cat, named after his pupil, Allen, who lost his life in a siege by human villagers of the Clan when it was discovered that he has begun a relationship with a human woman of their village, Maribelle. At the last, as Allen is dying, Krauss reveals himself to be TRUMP, True of Vamp, the first, and now last, of the immortal vampires, the one from whom all others are descended. He tries to make Allen accept eternal life, but the boy refuses and dies in his arms. Learning that Maribelle is pregnant with Allen's child, Krauss promises that he will watch over his bloodline forever.

Thus it is that when Sophie, a direct descendant of Allen and Maribelle, finds himself mortally wounded by the arrogant and irredeemable Angelico Fra (Shison Jun), a member of an elite family that has a historical rivalry with the de Rico family, Sophie is thus rescued by Ga Banli (Tsuchiya Shion), a mysterious transfer student who is later revealed to be a human sent by the Blood Parliament of elder vampires to deal with the potential of a very dangerous situation—a situation that manifests itself as Krauss reveals his identity and destroys those who have harmed Sophie. Desperate to extend his life, to escape the short-lived fate of all dhampir, Ul tries to bargain with the mad Krauss and fails, falling like so many others, as Krauss is fixated solely on Sophie. Against Sophie's wishes, Krauss bestows on him the gift of eternal life.

This moment is tragic and poignant and saddening, and it made think of how a similar situation was handled in The Tale of the Body-Thief by Anne Rice, and it is hard-hitting in its weight and severity, striking the viewer as a moment of genuine sorrow and tragedy in a way that Rice absolutely failed to convey 21 years earlier. The play ends with Sophie talking directly to us, the audience, as he tells us that he has not seen Krauss since the events of those days, and that he will continue to search the world for that other elder vampire, and will one day find a way to convince him to end his life, all of which makes the path he goes down during LILIUM even more tragic and sorrowful.

Staged by the collective, D2, who in turn are a part of the broader D-BOYS group managed by Watanabe Entertainment, TRUMP is quite possibly one of the best vampire stories I've encountered in recent years. You should probably all know by now that I'm quite picky about vampire stories, so I guess this stands as my recommendation by itself, but in case that's not enough, and you need me to tell your directly, then I absolutely believe you should watch this play and I'm sad that you've read through this post and spoiled yourself, but whatever the case, TRUMP is an amazing story and we should all be singing writer and director Suemitsu Kenichi's praises more than we actually do.