After everything settles down in his life, granted I don't see his story ending in actual death due to the nature of his existence, Niwa wouldn't be able to commit himself to anywhere else but Tatarasuna. It's his home and where he owes everything to ; once he's no longer subject to finding the one who ruined it any longer, he'd begin to clear it out and rebuild it, removing that damned furnace forever and going back to the way innovation used to be all those four hundred years ago.

The climb back to his former glory won't happen in his generation ; however, his hopes remain clear that he'll revive the Isshin Arts and restore the village and mines to create jobs, a warm and inviting atmosphere, and to, once again, begin teaching others the artform his family cultivated.

Arch of Triumph / Gato Bonito!! ~ Snow Troupe 2018

I feel a bit weird writing this up after only day 2 of the run, because I’m sure the troupe is still very much warming up... but this is when I happened to be here. Yukigumi fan life has not been ideal for me since Chigi’s retirement and this was BALM FOR THE WOUNDS in unexpected ways. Beware of spoilers.

Arch of Triumph

I happen to really like the original version of this show (from back when Tom was Yukigumi’s actual top star), but despite that the primary emotion I felt re: this show choice, as a Daimon fan who has to travel 7000 miles to see her, was saltiness at the stolen lead. I anticipated suffering through this and prayed that Fujii-sensei would carry the experience for me entirely, so I was truly taken aback by how much I loved Gaisenmon. 

There is a pretty long summary on the Takawiki page, and the original is also available from TIP with subtitles.

Just objectively as a show, it’s so beautiful, and it’s beautiful in ways that I didn’t know about at all because you can’t see them on the recording. It’s a dark story and the set is kept fairly dark as well, so all the meticulously colored lights and gobos and gorgeous rain effects dissolve into unintelligible black fuzz on an 18-year-old Sky Stage video. From the second floor you can also appreciate the incredible fluidity of the set rotations and scene changes along with the amazing choreography, of which there is A LOT. It’s a really impressive feat of direction; I am (despite my Takarazuka-related fervor) not a well-versed technical theater person at all and the artistry of it still struck me as something really special. The music is also gorgeous; it’s a very moving show, but I don’t like the main characters as people enough to cry from the culmination of the story... however, the reprise of main song, delivered in beautiful powerful troupe harmony as the curtain fell, murdered me, and I burst into tears on shonichi.

My main worry, especially considering that we have a guest lead and I adore Yukigumi as a whole with all my heart, was that it’s a very top-heavy show. Yesterday I was SO pleasantly surprised at how well-balanced it felt compared to my expectations; today, unfortunately, I felt the same from my vantage point but also realized it will probably feel just as top-heavy as the original on DVD. A sizable portion of the other main players’ stage time comes from beautiful but wordless dance scenes. But despite the light usage of most of the troupe I actually felt better than I did watching Robespierre. Everyone may be on stage less, but I felt like their characters were more lovingly crafted and very distinct from each other even with the simplest backstories. 

My two biggest gripes about Tom swooping in are 1) they often like to pretend she is still 25 which she is distinctly not and 2) in what I’ve seen recently I felt like she and the troupe she’s borrowed were acting separately from each other. I think a big reason why Gaisenmon worked for me is neither of those things applied. While there were a few insertions to balance the stage time a little better, the show is largely the same as the original, yet there is nothing in it that suggests Ravic—a surgeon who escaped Germany as the Nazis came into power—is any specific age, and he works at any age... specifically, even a large age difference between Ravic and Joan is totally reasonable and believable. Against the chaotic backdrop of refugee-laden pre-war Paris, an older doctor and a younger aspiring actress could absolutely meet and fall in love. Tom also meshed with the troupe a lot better than I expected. There’s no way to sugarcoat how shot her singing voice is, but damn the woman can act, and her otokoyaku mannerisms (stage kisses in particular) definitely show her long years of practice. 

Kiichan slayed, I thought she was even better than Tsukikage Hitomi. Joan is a REALLY HARD role; she’s practical out of necessity but a bit frivolous at heart, and she’s in love but also struggles to differentiate between actual love and the fear of being alone in an increasingly dangerous world. It doesn’t sound like it in writing but in execution it’s really easy for her to come off as weak, clingy, and annoying, when she’s actually a very nuanced character. Kiichan hit all the right notes, she didn’t appear intimidated at all by Tom, and even their romance seemed totally natural for the aforementioned reasons. Her sudden lovesickness could have been so one-note but I felt the tinge of anxiety behind it throughout the whole show, and I was so impressed by that. There is a scene of misunderstanding between Joan and Ravic at a cafe that in a way triggers the unfortunate events that occur thereafter, and it’s gut-wrenching, especially on a second viewing when you can watch it unfold with the knowledge of what’s coming. Her death scene is also extremely intense.

Salty as I am, I LOVE the role of Boris for Daimon. I’ve been feeling like I’ll explode if I have to see her do another sad French play, but after watching this somehow it wound up exempt. The story is heavy and all of the characters are struggling, but amidst the turmoil Boris is a calming presence, refreshingly level-headed and quite positive in a lot of ways (EDIT: in chatting in the comments the words I wanted but couldn’t find at 3am came out: he’s definitely got a cynical edge to him as well, but it was kind of like his cynical view of the world freed him up emotionally to be quietly supportive of the other characters’ problems... I think that’s what I mean by positive). And I can’t even express HOW LOVELY it was to see Daimon play THAT CHARACTER for a change, how fulfilling not to just watch her suffer for an hour and a half. Boris is in the story himself but also the narrator. In the story bits, he’s cool and reliable and there’s a really heartwarming sense of purity in the way he freely shows his emotions. Daimon seems to enjoy over the top acting just fine, but it’s her roles that rely on subtle facial expressions and body language that absolutely kill me—this was the latter. In the narration bits, she weaves an intricate tapestry with her voice. As I said every detail of the direction is intentional and beautiful, but so much of the mood also comes from the emotion in Daimon’s singing, not only in the actual songs (one of which she sang in probably incorrectly but nonetheless tantalizingly pronounced French, ugh ♥), but also particularly when she hums background tunes as other bits of action are taking place. She barely moves and her voice is so soft and yet STILL it reverberates throughout the entire theater somehow, like it flutters into every corner. And she was so beautiful, she worked the hell out of some costumes that definitely wouldn’t be flattering on everyone. I’m TEARING UP right now, my heart is so full. 

Here’s where things get bit eh for some people and downright unfortunate for others. Saki and Shou barely had anything to do, although I understand why they were relegated to those roles versus the Aasa, Hitoko, Kari group which although comprised of very distinct characters still felt like a single unit in a way. After a bit of prologue choreography Saki doesn’t show up until past the halfway point. She’s Henri, the handsome but creepy and possessive movie producer who lands Joan some acting jobs and then also shoots her in a fit of jealousy. She really only has two notable short scenes toward the end, when Henri first tries to coerce Joan into staying with him and then comes to Ravic pleading for her life after shooting her. Shou is a sexy doctor who talks on the phone sometimes. 

The Aasa/Hitoko/Kari group, however—and, tangentially, Asu, Manaharu, Michiru, Kiwa, and Agata Sen—shone more than I expected remembering the original group (our legendary Yukigumi 3兄弟 Touko/Komu/Naruse Kouki). While they also only had a few scenes to themselves, those scenes were some of my favorites, and they’re the ones who got to decorate the outskirts of the other scenes’ action with beautiful dancing. Aasa is the only one whose role I’d call a step back from Robespierre, but only because she was my Robespierre MVP, and she was still wonderful as the more subdued Jaime. I felt distinct forward momentum from everyone else. Hitoko was absolutely adorable and injected way more into Rosenfeld than Komu did (which I can say even with the ultimate bias on my side), and Kari was truly outstanding, I could melt just looking at her and I’m so glad she landed a role with that kind of prominence. The whole Hotel International group just had so much humanity. 

Final shout outs go to Niwa who I love unconditionally in every role she plays but particularly here for a) A+ slimy awful Gestapo officer and b) the novelty of Kouju Tatsuki squeeing OMG YOU WERE KEN-2 IN THE ORIGINAL AND NOW YOU’RE SCHNEIDER?! in the talk show; and Miho Keiko who I was SURE they stuffed into Gaisenmon because Fujii-sensei demanded her presence in his show as usual, leaving me quite dumbfounded when she wasn’t in Gato Bonito at all. It wasn’t a role that one of our many boss beautiful perfect upperclassmen musumeyaku couldn’t have done, but nonetheless her presence leant some more gravitas to the show in addition to balancing out Tom a bit.

Gato Bonito!! had the opposite effect on me initially. I expected to dislike Gaisenmon and it wowed me, and then it wowed me twice over because that feeling of your expectations being so far exceeded is wonderful. Meanwhile I’ve been laying in bed at night screaming DAISUKEEEEEEEE into the darkness for months, praying he’d deliver me a perfect trilogy of HOT EYES!!, Santé!!, and now THIS!! (boy he loves double exclamation points doesn’t he). 

Well, it sure wasn’t HOT EYES. But in retrospect, that’s a damn high bar. After watching Gato Bonito today with my expectations in a reasonable place, I liked it more... especially when I think about how SUPER VOYAGER was everything I never want to see in a revue ever again tied up in one neat package, and this, in contrast, was a lot of things I want to see very much.

From the start I liked or loved all of the scenes individually, but something about the show as a whole didn’t come together for me, and after two viewings I think I have some idea of why. The sets and backdrops were off for me, in a way that I did not think could have such a large effect on the show’s overall vibe. Most revues will have a big eye-popping scene, then they’ll close the curtain and have people dance in front of it for a short transition, then open it again to another eye-popping scene. There’s a nice rise-climax-break-repeat flow. But there were so many scenes in Gato Bonito where they’d drop a curtain down, have a dance in front of it, then drop A DIFFERENT THING down and have a dance in front of that, and I just felt like I was being constantly led toward a climax that never came. When they did open up the whole stage I found the sets really spread out and airy, such that it felt as if no matter how hard they tried they couldn’t fill the stage with enough people. They were also FLAT, like literally flat on the floor, not enough gradated pieces with people standing atop them to fill the back as well as the ground. I might feel differently when I watch it from the first floor, but for now I think some pretty small adjustments could have given it overall more impact.

Also, WAAAAAYYYY too many LITERAL CATS for my taste.

THAT SAID, boy this was SO MUCH of what I love to see out of Daimon. It was hot and extra and the music was amazing and she got to stand there making these burning faces and do TRULY UNFATHOMABLY STUPID THINGS WITH HER VOICE and flamenco and tango and all that jazz. Everyone was melting pile of orange goo no thanks to the weather and the insufficient air conditioning, but other than that there were even enough good costumes to balance out those ruffle abominations (you know the ones) that of course showed up a bit. Saki was ON FIRE, I know I said I was tired of riding the Saki coaster but oops here we go up another hill. They made up for shafting her in Gaisenmon with a loooooot of juicy revue time. She’s gotten so good at emoting through her dance, she was just dynamic and sexy and 150% energy from start to finish. Kiichan has a little ways to go to catch up with everyone in her Latin dancing but there was already a really noticeable improvement between shonichi and today. 

Highlights:

Argentine tango to Yo Soy Maria ft. Daimon singing in Spanish, guessing by the lack of bedazzling on the suits that that was the ANJU-sensei scene. When the curtain opened on all the otokoyaku just mingling in the dark smoky background it PHYSICALLY HURT (it also began with all our boss beautiful perfect upperclassmen musumeyaku in slinky dresses)

There’s a scene with Saki, Shou, Aasa, and Hitoko taking turns grinding on Daimon in the world’s tackiest bodysuits, but there was something so inexplicably hot about the drag + otokoyaku hair despite the melting orange goo and poor Saki and Aasa absolutely drowning in their own sweat

The chuuzume starts with a conga line across the ginkyou, and EVERY PERSON IN THE TROUPE comes out in single file in rank order, it was A LOT for my Yukigumi-loving heart

Kiichan gets to do stuff, Daisuke is aware we have a top musumeyaku which is apparently a challenge for some people

Daimon enters from the back of the first floor singing Kuroneko no Tango at one point and when she reaches the stage there’s a daily “ad lib” (in quotes because I’m sure she’s already written them all down and rehearsed them ad nauseam), but her ad libs are so dumb I love her

ASU GOT A WHOLE SONG

I forgot to pay close enough attention through the applause today to grab the exact words, but I’m like 90% sure the final lyrics as Daimon is descending the stairs in the parade are something she also referenced in her +act interview right when she became top (I don’t have the magazine on me but I translated it as “we can live through today for the sake of tomorrow and for the sake of living tomorrow we can stand firmly right here today”). She was talking about the “soul of flamenco” and that being something that turned her whole outlook around during Don Juan, so I thought it was REALLY SWEET they threw that in as a nod to her continuing to grow. Haha nope, after 4 viewings I'm sure I was wrong, but I like my idea better Hankyu pls hire me

Did I mention her dumb stupid voice? I know Robespierre was literally written for her by a Broadway composer but for me there was no comparison; in both acts it danced and changed and filled the theater in ways that don’t seem like they should be physically possible. Like this is the ????th time I’ve seen Daimon live and I was still just absolutely slain by all the heretofore unheard things her voice can apparently do. 

I’m whole and healed and so surprised and delighted I didn’t have to wait till 2019 for that to happen.