Anime on Stage

My mom signed me up for an online class on Outschool.com The class was called Anime on Stage. My mom saw the Naruto characters in the ad and thought I'd like this class. (But I think she wanted to listen to the class too. :-) ) I had never heard of anime being done as live action stage plays so thought this would be fun.

The class was done through Zoom. Outschool requires you to have your camera on so I was kinda scared. I don't like being in front of the camera or talking. But everyone was nice and the topic was really interesting so I felt ok with speaking up.

The class had four other girls in it. I think some of them said they were from Texas and Alaska. We all had to introduce ourselves and say what anime we just finished watching.

Ms. Yoo first talked about how manga started in the Edo period between 1603 and 1867. Kabuki theater would sometimes do manga stories. I didn't think there would be a connection from such a long time ago.

She talked about how Kabuki theaters were set up. She said they have elevator platforms, rotating stages and something called a hanamichi which is a stage that goes out into the audience. She said the elevators and rotating stage aren't new. They had them from a long time ago but back then they had people pushing and pulling ropes to make them work. Now they can just push a button.

(Found this image on this website. We weren't supposed to copy stuff from the class.)

Ms. Yoo then talked about early anime. She talked about an artist named Osamu Tezuka who made Astro Boy in the 1960s. People call him the Walt Disney of anime. She said he was influenced by something called the Takarazuka Revue. It is musical theater performed by all women.

Takarazuka did a musical version of a manga called The Rose of Versailles in 1974 and it was really popular.

She then talked about something called 2.5 Dimensional Theatre. It's plays based on manga, anime and video games. It started in the 1990s and it was mostly for elementary school girls. They did theater versions of Sailor Moon.

We then watched clips of anime and talked about how it might be hard to make that scene on a stage. We first watched a scene from Naruto. Yay!!! It was a fight scene between Sasuke and Naruto. I didn't think the magical parts and how they walk on the walls would work. We then watched the exact scene done by Kabuki actors.

I thought it was interesting. I liked the costumes and how it kinda felt like the anime. But there were things that didn't feel right. Like how they used weapons. In the anime, they don't use weapons that often and use magic. And one of the characters really looked off. But I think they were trying to make some of it feel like Kabuki.

Ms. Yoo mentioned that this Kabuki version of Naruto did the entire Naruto story. The Kabuki play was three hours long. It took me two months to watch the entire anime series.

We then talked about Death Note. Someone in the class said that Death Note might be easier to make into a play because it mostly takes place in real life except for the Death God. It doesn't have as much fantasy. We watched the clip and I was surprised. They made it into a musical.

It felt kinda weird. The anime is pretty serious. The music made it feel less serious in my opinion.

I did like how they used video in the background to show things like news reports.

Ms. Yoo said the composer was actually from Broadway. He married a lady who was a Takarazuka performer.

The last one we talked about was Haikyu!! I couldn't see how they would make this into a live action play. How could they control the volleyball scenes? To my surprise, they also made this into a musical.

There were too many things about this one that I didn't like. One of the main characters, Shoyo, is supposed to look and sound like a little kid. The actor didn't look or sound like that.

The main part of what I like about Haikyu!! is the volleyball action. This was more of a dance than watching an exciting volleyball match.

I learned that you can't really take the action you see in anime and make it look the same on stage. When they do things on stage they are sometimes using techniques from older Japanese styles. Sometimes the way they do it on stage can be really interesting but it won't feel the same as the anime.