Hey all,
I hope all of you had a good Easter. I really didn't do anything; just stayed at home and slept. I was sooo tired, due to certain events this weekend! I'll tell you about them.
Remember, you can click on the pictures to make them bigger.
Ok so! Let's start at the beginning. Haley was able to write directions to Nishinomiya (near Kobe, but not Kobe itself) by using the Hankyu train line. I printed out directions as to how to get to the temple in Kobe as well as the theater of the Bleach musical. I hurried and left school at around 2:15. By following the directions, I made really good time and reached Kobe around 4 PM. I figured I had enough time to try and find the Jewish temple, so I got off at Sannomiya and followed those directions.
I got off in a place that reminded me of Harajuku in its busy bustleness. There were many many shops, fashionable clothes stores, high-end restaurants, and lots of people. There was this place called "Ikuta Road" which I remembered from our previous visit to Kobe, when we visited Ikuta Shrine. Here's a pic:
For some reason, Japanese people like to mark off their popular roads by putting big signs over them (plus, in English! What's up with that?). But of course, the normal roads are not marked at all (most are not even named). Heh, well I can't complain, because due to the sign I was able to find my way to the temple so easily. It involved walking up one such delineated shopping road all the way to its end, and then some twists and turns.
Finally I found the temple, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. It looked foreboding rather than welcoming, barred by iron gates. I didn't know if I was allowed to go in. I gathered up some courage and turned the handle, and it turned out to be unlocked. I poked my head in. There was a large room, and two guys in the corner, who looked at me strangely. I felt like I was trespassing! Fortunately, one of the guys turned out to be from New York. Pretty sure the other one was Russian or something. When I told them I just wanted to visit, they relaxed. I talked to the New York Jew, apparently they're not too friendly towards Jewish people around there. Perhaps that's why it was all scary-like. I saw the synagogue and met the rabbi. He again, did not speak English. Heh, thank god the New Yorker was there. Anyways, I ended up buying some matzah there to show my family. Then I left, and was secretly glad to be gone. The atmosphere in there was stifling. You'd think it would be a more structured place for being the "Jewish Center of the Kansai Area". I had read so much about it and the website sounded friendly, but real life is different. Oh well.
The outside of the temple.
The inside of the temple. This is probably the room where they had Passover.
I backtracked to the Sannomiya station. I still had plenty of time till the concert and wanted to explore that area, but I was nervous about maybe not finding the theater right away. I took the train back the way I came to the Nishinomiya station, and got off. Lucky me, the train station was actually connected by a walkway to the theater! No searching needed. Since I still had plenty of time, I ate dinner at a cafe. At the table right next to me, a man was trying to teach a Japanese woman some English. It was clear that this guy taught at Nova, the biggest "learn English" school in Japan. But the poor woman, she couldn't understand half of what he was saying and he didn't speak any Japanese. I felt like jumping in and helping, but of course i couldn't do that. He was teaching her things like, "I have nothing to declare" so I think she was getting ready to travel to America. It's funny that Japanese people have to become proficient before they go but Americans just go anywhere without caring to learn that country's language. It's pretty bad.
So finally, I got in the line at the theater! This theater looked big and professional - after all, it was the Hyogo Performing Arts Theater (the whole prefecture's art center). I mean, there were several concerts going on at the same time. There was no hint at all that the line I was in was for the Bleach musical. So, using my best Japanese, I asked the two girls ahead of me in line if it was indeed the Bleach musical line. They answered in the affirmative. Then they began to talk to me! We had a good conversation about Bleach, and which characters were our favorites, etc., etc. Then the line started to move and I lost them. But it didn't matter, because when I got inside the staging area, I knew I was in the right place.
First impression: sooo many girls! Once again, I was wrong. Even though Bleach is indeed a show for young boys, the real fans are the teenage girls who follow it avidly. I think there were maybe, three boys in the whole joint. And all the merchandise was CLEARLY targeted at girls. I'd say the most represented group was 16 - 20 aged girls. Plus, there were *gasp* overweight girls and not stunningly gorgeous girls too! This show brought them all out of the woodwork - all the otaku girls, the real fangirls, the more normal looking people that you never see walking down the street. I almost felt like I was back in America. I didn't have time to muse on this, however, because the line to get in funnelled you right into the merchandising booth. Every girl was buying this one package set, so I figured I'd do the whole experience and get it too. The package was the full color Bleach Musical brochure with bios on all the actors, plus a photo of the actor of your choice. After paying an arm and leg for that, I moved away from the line to try and organize my stuff.
Many girls reading the Bleach pamphlets they just bought. Just like me!
THE MERCHANDISE. The DVD and CD combo of the musical would have set me back more than $100 ;_;
(By the way, for the individual actor picture, I just quickly chose my favorite character from the anime, and didn't have a chance to see what the real actor looks like. Guess what, he's actually the most famous out of all the bunch. The packet i received had three notices for his fanclub. Guess I'm a pretty good chooser)
Then, amazingly enough, I managed to run into the same girls I had been talking in line with again. This time ,we talked some more and they even took a picture of us together with their cell phones. They really thought it was great that a foreigner would come to something like this. I was happy to make friends, however temporarily. And it was temporary, because in the next few minutes they opened the theater to seating. It turns out that my seat, since I had gotten the ticket at the last minute, was way up on the 2nd floor balcony, while theirs was on the first floor. Good thing that okaasan had given me her "opera glasses"(weird plastic box with little lenses and limited focusing). But still, I was here and it didn't matter.
Next to me sat omg, a large Japanese girl wearing Goth black! I almost expected her to speak English, so American did she look. But she didn't. ;_;
Then, onto the show! I tried to be a responsive audience member - alternating between looking through the opera glasses to looking without to get the whole picture, gasping at the right moments, laughing at the right moments, swaying my arms during the last song with the actors on stage. I think I annoyed people because I was craning my head this way and that trying see past this one tall person's head. i even managed to snap a few pics during the performance, even though you weren't supposed to. I was so scared that I would get caught that my hand shook and the pictures were blurry. But they may give you some idea of what the stage looked like:
Yes I know it's blurry. You can see how far I was away from the stage here. There were two main set pieces with a lot of stairways that they kept rotating.
Let me address all the points of concern I raised in my last post:
Firstly, the costumes. They were all supremely wonderful. This is cosplay on a professional level, people. About three of the characters had what you might call "typical anime hair" - that is, hair that appears to defy all the normal laws of nature. They not only pulled off this hair, they pulled it off with style!
Here's some comparison pics I have pulled together:
Renji. Notice the spiky ponytail, which didn't even bounce around that much even though he was running around the stage and swinging his sword (which was also well made).
Hitsugaya Toushiro. My favorite character in the anime and the most popular male actor in the cast. His hair, as you can see, is nearly impossible to pull off. Yet they did it and managed to make it look natural. And of course it stayed stable during the entire thing, no matter how much he ran back and forth or bobbed up and down in his horse stance (Because his character is supposed to be short, he always bends his knees doing the karate horse stance at all times in order to make himself look shorter. It worked most of the time, except when it...didn't)
Firstly, the action scenes. Bleach is about fighting; even in a musical, you can't change that. Fortunately, even though there is alot of "energy" attacks, all the fights are still basically sword-on-sword. And, it IS possible to choreograph cool sword fights on stage. But there was still alot of imagination required. Especially when many of the dramatic moments come from a character using a "powered up" sword attack, or their bankai. They actually tried with Byakuya's bankai - his sword is supposed to split into a billion small metal shards and attack his enemy. Since these shards catch the light, they look like falling flower petals (hence the name of the attack is "A thousand petals"). On stage, they dropped some flower petals from ceiling to simulate the attack. But no matter how much the actor prances and flails his sword about to avoid them, there's no way you can make flower petals look dangerous, I'm sorry.
For others, they didn't even try; for example, Toshiro's bankai. In the anime, its really cool - his sword becomes a giant pair of ice wings that he uses to fly around and attack his enemy with ice shards. On stage, he just swung his prop sword around a bit, woohoo~ not impressive at all.
On the other hand, there was a well done special effect at the end - the bad guys were supposed to ascend into the sky, and they accomplished this by using strings and it looked really cool. Yay! Soi Fong's Suzumebachi was also done very well.
As for the other point, about breaking into song - yes it was weird, but it was well done. The only problem was that most of the actors COULDN'T SING~ and it was a MUSICAL~ Especially, the main character was horrible. Yucky - I guess they really did pick the actors based on likeness to the character, rather than singing or acting ability. All the women were passable, though. Toushiro's voice was really good ^_^
As for the plot - basic rehashing of the SS arc. They alternated very dramatic moments with funny, pointless ones to liven up the atmosphere. Some of the funny moments were not in the original Bleach plot, and could be seen as "in-jokes" to people who had seen the previous musicals. I had not, so I didn't get them all. But since I have seen all of Bleach, I was able to understand most everything, which I consider a great accomplishment.
After the ending of the story, I expected the show to be over, of course. But even after the end, the actors went on to do like, 5 more songs! Very surprising - it appears that they needed to fill up more time or something. These songs were probably ones that wouldn't fit into the story logically, so they saved them all to the end. Things like a song with the entire cast, a song with just the good guys, a song with just the bad guys. In fact, these songs were probably the most enjoyable ones. I especially liked the one with the bad guys because they started break dancing! Totally out of character, but awesome.
So of course, since everything was so amazing, I found myself cheering and clapping at the end. Only problem is, Japanese girls don't cheer. I felt like an idiot, hooting and hollering. Apparently that's not how you cheer here, you just clap harder. I couldn't help myself though! To me, it seems that clapping isn't enough to express appreciation. If i thought something was good, well then I'm going to cheer my heart out. So I did, even though it was awkward.
Then I filed out of the auditorium, and guess what? I miraculously met up with those girls again. We walked out of the theater together, sharing our thoughts and opinions on the musical. They even wanted to get some pizza with me! But I was worried about the trains stopping running, since it was 10 PM already. So, we went home part of the way together on the train. We were all very excited from seeing the musical and it was alot of fun talking to them. It turns out they were both 18 and recently graduated from high school. One went to college, and the other - get this- was going to school to become a voice actor! For anime!! How cool is that! That's like, my dream job. So of course then I asked her who her favorite voice actors were, and I knew who they were and rattled off some of their more famous roles. They were happy that i knew such things, and so we talked about that. Then, unfortunately, came our parting. I knew, and they knew, that we would never meet again. But still, they said things like, "See you later!" and thanked me for talking to them.
This was probably the best night in Japan for me so far. There was one simple reason: I felt like I belonged there. Even at the Anime Fair and the doujin convention I still felt like somewhat of an outsider, probably because I didn't understand everything that was going on. But here, at this performance, I was just another fan. The Japanese girls and I all shared something in common; our love of Bleach and our understanding of it. It was a common language I could speak and share with them. We all clapped and laughed at the same moments onstage. We all sighed over the same hot guys. We all displayed avid consumerism and fangirly moments. I didn't have to defend myself and explain why I like anime guys, Bleach or anime in general to anybody. They instictively understood because they have the same feelings themselves. It was so relaxing and so much fun, to have that understanding. I felt like I belonged here more than anywhere else. It was like coming home.
Well, that's all I have to say about that. I will cover Saturday's events in my next post. As always, leave comments/tags! Ja ne~
