In Spring 2018, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Shoujo Kakumei Utena franchise, a stage play musical was performed in Tokyo. Now the Shoujo Kakumei Utena ~Shirokibara no Tsubomi Musical (少女革命ウテナ ～白き薔薇のつぼみ～) is available  on DVD, Blu-ray and streaming on Amazon for folks in JP.

Now, if you have been a Utena fan for a long time, you may remember that in the early 2000s, there had been a Utena Musical stage play. And, should you remember that musical, you will remember that it was, in a word, excruciating. The word “unwatchable” also comes to mind. ^_^;

We set the memory of that earlier musical aside to watch the new musical and found that we generally enjoyed it. 

There were a few glaring weaknesses, primarily that the boys couldn’t sing. This is a pretty major problem in a musical. And, in comparison to all the female leads, especially Anthy and Utena’s actresses, Yamauchi Yuka and Nouji Ami, it was a pretty stark failing. 

But that aside, there were a number of elements that made the play move along well. In Utena”s first duel with Saionji at the climactic moment, they switch swords. It was a low-tech way to communicate a moment of intense magic. Instead of focusing on drawing the sword from Anthy’s chest, which was handled with little subtlety, the focus of this musical is the actual relationships of the characters. Time is given to everyone’s back stories. In the first act we clearly see the delusions that make up Miki’s and Juri’s pasts. And Tatemichi Riona as Juri did a convincing flinch away from B-ko when she got too close.

The second act was much tighter than the first, with a number of highlights. Yokoi Shojiro, who plays Saionji, has a brilliant moment when, defeated by Utena a second time, he creates his own Shadowgirl scenario and enters it himself. It was both a funny and profound moment. It was, my wife points out, very self-aware of the play. As one of the few wholly original moments, it worked beautifully.

The final scenes are extraordinary and moving, as Nouji does an excellent job of communicating Utena’s despair at having been defeated by Touga. Takeuchi Yume is brilliant as Wakaba, motivating Utena to take control of herself.  Nouji notches up the acting with a very emotional climax, where her need to get through to Anthy is pretty darn convincing. (My wife had stepped out of the room and returned as the play wrapped up. She noted immediately that it looked like Nouji had been crying. And she had been, fairly realistically.)

For staging, dueling concepts and acting, it was worth watching. For fans of the Utena story, this was a pretty decent re-telling of the first 13 episodes of the anime.

Ratings:

Overall – 8

 If the boys had been able to carry a tune, it would have definitely been a 9.