“Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon” The Super Live, the new performance show based on Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon manga, performed at Playstation Theatre March 29th at 8 p.m. and on March 30th at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. to a very appreciative audience.
The performance mixed singing, dancing, and video footage. Dancer Takahiro Ueno (Madonna’s Sticky and Sweet Tour) directed and choreographed the production and it was well done. Akiko Kodama is penning the script, which follows the manga. Hyadain (Ken’ichi Maeyamada) composed the music, which was again based on the anime.
The show is a high energy entertaining experience, which mixes the story and plot of the series. The performance and theatricals of the Sailor Moon musical is surprisingly done extremely well.
Queen Beryl (Makoto Aikawa), Kunzite (Reo Sanada) and the Dark Kingdom come on stage first, with a combination of projection effects, lights, and dancing to communicate their story line. If you do not know the Sailor Moon manga, you will be semi lost. Though there is some dialogue, it doesn’t arrive until the entrance of Sailor Moon (Tomomi Kasai) and even then it is minimal.
The plot-line is a retelling of the first arc of the manga focusing on the girls and their relationships with each other. This show has some really wonderful messages, but it also stresses on being a ‘lovely young lady”.
The Takeshita Dori (Takeshita Street) is one of the hottest places for teenage culture and the symbolic place in Harajuku. In the “Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon” The Super Live, Usagi and other guardians visit this place and get trapped in a video game.
The highlight of the show is Tuxedo Mask (Riona Tatemichi) and the Dark Kingdom monsters (Atsumi Matsubayashi, Izumi Niihashi, Ayumi Higashikawa, Moeko Koizumi, Hinako Aikawa) who are exquisite dancers and acrobats defying gravity and bones with their moves.
The best singer of the group was Momoko Kaech as Sailor Mercury. This became evident in the concert section.
Fans of the Sailor Moon musicals swooned at the love scenes, as the anime and manga came to life.
The show more than made money with a light stick going for $30 and most of the audience owning 2. They could have sold more if they weren’t sold out, which really upset some of the fans. These fans have spent more than 5 billion in merchandise.
The costumes and lighting is to be commended and I would name them, but was not given a program.
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live is the first 2.5D musical to be performed in the U.S. 2.5D musicals, which began around 2000, are based on popular contemporary Japanese culture: manga comics, anime, and video games. Manga and animation are in 2D, while live theatre is in 3D. So, they call performances based on manga and animations 2.5D.
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