Watanabe Sarasa is a young woman with a dream. She is entering the Kouka School, in hopes of becoming a Kouka Musical Revue Top Star. Exceptionally tall and outgoing, Sarasa will make allies and enemies in her next two years.
Based on the manga of the same name, which is put out by Seven Seas, Kageki Shojo!! is…well, it’s really quite fantastic. I read and reviewed the earlier manga, Kageki Shoujo!! The Curtain Rises, in 2020 and so knew about some of the distressing events in the beginning of the anime.. Trigger warning for sexual abuse, and body dysmorphia/eating disorders in the first few episodes.
After that story has been told, we move on to the events of the manga after it moved publishers in Japan. It progresses into changing the lives of Sarasa, Ai and the rest of the 100th class at Kouka Academy. When Sarasa encounters her own limitations, and we get background as to why, specifically, she sight reads other people’s performances, the story deepens. As the students in her class get a chance to perform, the entire story takes off in flight. The last few episodes are sublime and triumphant and worth every second they take to watch, even if like me, you are watching Funimation for free and getting the same ad 28 times per episode. ^_^
Most readers here on Okazu are probably familiar with the Takarazuka Revue and it’s school, on which the Kouka Revue here is based. You may wonder about the bullying we see in the story. Sadly, Takarazuka had a long-standing tradition of exactly the kinds of bullying you see here. In previous years, first-years were assigned a specific area to clean and, if a second-year was particularly nasty, could make them clean and re-clean over and over, or force them to do extra homework, even so far as losing sleep. Of course, I feel that this kind of hazing should have been grounds for removing the second-years, but you know adults. They look they other way and don’t see what is right in front of them. In 2020, the school changed some of the written and unwritten rules, in an attempt to curb this kind of bullying and to modernize the school. Students are no longer assigned to cleaning just one spot for the year, and things like natural hair color is allowed.
We’re only getting a taste of the story in this anime series, but it was a great watch and has a manga that continues the story, so it’s something I can whole-heartedly recommend.
Ratings:
Art – 7 It’s good when it has to be
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Service – Not really
Yuri – 0
Overall – 8
I’m interested to see if the story gets as far as choosing otokoyaku/musumeyaku roles, which in this early part of the story seems more or less personal inclination. I’ve read that in Takarazuka, the defining characteristic is pretty much just height.
