[report] MOON SAGA Extra Chapter - Yoshitsune Nekketsu Gakuen Monogatari
On January 8th, there were two performances of a MOON SAGA side story that was a parody of MOON SAGA-Yoshitsune Hiden- Chapter Two.
I attended the evening show, so here's a little report on what happened and what it was.
The parody was billed as taking the story of Yoshitsune Hiden Chapter Two and putting it into a modern setting, and that's basically exactly what it was. It was almost scene for scene the same, only without the historical background or any of the 'super' powers the characters had as they were all just regular students.
It was set in 1996, and was about the battles between Genji High School (Yoshitsune's school) and Heike Technical High School. They're both yankee schools so they're very rough, with graffiti in Japanese and mis-spelt English all over the classrooms and all of the boys like to fight. All of the cast wore gakuran style school uniforms and they didn't have the MOON SAGA wigs. GACKT had his own hair, so no Yoshitsune wig, although he'd shaved patterns into the side again.
As for the story... I apologise for the length of this!
To summarise, there were lots of fat jokes and dick jokes, some genuinely funny and cute scenes, Yoshitsune sang some MALICE MIZER and he also loves idol bands.
The play started with a video to recap what happened at the end of MOON SAGA I with the deaths of Yoshinaka and Tomoe. The video was done in a cartoon style, with crude drawings of the characters and photos of the actors for the heads. Yoshinaka and Tomoe were taken from MOON SAGA, but Yoshitsune's heads were done just for this and saw GACKT doing some of the stupidest (and funniest) faces I've ever seen him do...
As with MOON SAGA II, it started with Yoshitsune on his own, thinking about Yoshinaka and Tomoe leaving. He was skimming stones across the water, but threw one too hard and smashed some windows. He received a phone call from Kage, but when he started questioning Kage too much, Kage hung up on him. Dennai appeared and kept getting Yoshitsune's name wrong (a running joke from the kiss scenes at Gakuen). Nori and some others from Heike High arrived and after a tense stare down Yoshitsune left.
A short video played to introduce the actors and their characters. When the video screen rose, the main cast were on stage with Yoshitsune in the center. Then the new Hiyori, who probably weighed twice as much as GACKT does, stood directly in front of Yoshitsune, blocking him from the audience. He was annoyed that his spotlight was being stolen and tried to move around her (there were many jokes along this theme with Hiyori, sadly).
There was a few scenes of introducing the characters and setting. Hiyori ate many chips, very noisily, and ignored everyone.
The two schools met for a fight at the bowling alley and a few small skirmishes broke out between the two sides. Gin tried to use his power to control others on Yoshitsune to stop him from attacking, but of course Gin doesn't have that power in Yoshitsune Gakuen. The other Genji students told Yoshitsune to play along anyway so Yoshitsune gets on all fours, like he's being controlled, only to get kicked in the ribs by the Heike. It's about to get out of control when Hiyori runs on stage, knocking over Tomomori, and then they started huffing air out of plastic bags instead (they're yankee kids, drugs and booze are what they do).
Everyone passed out other than Yoshitsune and Tomomori. The two of them discovered that they had something in common - they were both big fans of the idol group Wink! Tomomori sang a few lines from their song “Samishii Nettaigyo” and did the arm movements that went with it (skip to 1:04 in this YouTube video) and a cautious Yoshitsune joined in. They decided to join the Wink fanclub together, and the two schools became friends.
Unfortunately, they didn't get chance to join the fanclub as Wink broke up shortly after.
Kagetoki wasn't happy at the truce and went to see Nori at Heike high school. Nori was having a nightmare and identified himself as a visual kei fan (hmm, a visual kei fan in 1996. I wonder what band was popular back then...). Nori was sleeping with a big Duffy bear, and during the scene with Kagetoki was acting everything out with the bear. It was very cute!
Kiku agreed to take Kagetoki back to Genji High School. In MOON SAGA II, Kiku is obsessed with killing people. Killing people is a little too much for high schoolers, so instead Kiku was obsessed with smashing men's balls (seriously).
Now that Wink have split up, Yoshitsune has transferred his idol love to Ryoko Shinohara and wants to apply to her fanclub. He asked Tsugunobu to deliver his fanclub membership application for him, and Tsugunobu runs into Kagetoki and Kiku. Kagetoki is trying to hide his identity by wearing the head of GACKT's orange neko outfit, but falls over and reveals his identity. Tsugunobu asks him roughly what he is doing, and Kiku mistakes this for bullying and attacks Tsugunobu, eventually managing to smash his balls (no, seriously).
In the next scene, Yoshitsune and his gang are in the hospital with Tsugunobu. Tomomori, Nori and Kiku and the rest of the Heike arrive to apologise. Kiku and Nori aren't very apologetic, Dennai apologises a lot, Tadanobu tries to fight everyone and Yoshitsune tells them all to be quiet because they're in a hospital. Hiyori runs off, Benkei punches Nori and Nori and Kiku leave.
Dennai goes after Nori and finds him distressed as his CD player doesn't work. Later, Nori pushes Tomomori off the roof of the school instead of stabbing him and letting him fall off a boat, like in MOON SAGA II. Gin tries to attack Nori, but instead Kiku smashes his balls and he falls off the roof too.
Gin is found by the students at Genji High School and they try to save him. Kiku and some of the other Genji students arrive and Kiku decides he wants to try and get Yoshitsune's balls. Yoshitsune isn't thrilled at this, and side steps around Kiku in order to find Nori. Kiku lets him go, and the fights starts between Kiku, and Benkei, Sabiro, Dennai and Tadanobu.
The story of the fight is that Kiku can withstand the blows from his opponents due to wearing a safety helmet (in MOON SAGA II he does so because that's his special power) and he is constantly trying to ball grab. Tadanobu would occasionally make a grand leap for Kiku, only to miss and go skidding across the stage until he purposely, nearly fell in the front row. Then Tadanobu twisted his ankle and sat most of the fight out (which I think may have been a rib on GACKT and his bad leg). Kiku grabs hold of everyone bar Tadanobu, but no smashing happens.
They clear the stage and Yoshitsune has been cornered by about ten Heike students. In MOON SAGA II, this is the first scene where Yoshitsune flew. In Yoshitsune Gakuen, Yoshitsune... doesn't fly. He just thinks he does. Yoshitsune simply stood there making noises like he was flying while staring up to the ceiling and flapping his hand around like he was twirling in the air (it was cute). He 'landed' and was surprised that his opponents weren't defeated and on the floor after his marvellous air attack.
It turns into a fist fight instead and Yoshitsune manages to fight them all off, even doing the old smash two people's heads together trick. It's down to him and one other, and Yoshitsune screamed at his opponent, giving him a heart attack from the sudden shout. Yoshitsune was a little sorry that he caused the heart attack, but took the victory and ran off after Nori.
It was then back to Kiku and his fight. He's still winning, so Dennai decides to sacrifice himself and grabs Kiku, keeping a tight hold of him. Tadanobu has a taser, and Dennai begs Tadanobu to use it, even though he knows the current will go through him too. Tadanobu does so, by tasering Dennai in the butt (no, seriously) and the charge also goes through Kiku. It's not enough to stop Kiku, but one more taser blast manages it.
Yoshitsune catches up with Nori on the school roof and they both have sticks to fight with. As the fight begins, they talk to each other about their music choices - Nori's visual kei love and Yoshitsune and his idols. Nori gets the better of the fight and has Yoshitsune down and out on the floor. Then Hiyori arrives with a yoyo in her hand. She can't throw the yoyo, but charges up the stage towards Nori... and runs right past Nori and jumps off the roof.
Even Yoshitsune and Nori are confused at how pointless Hiyori's appearance and death was. During the fight, Yoshitsune's Ryoko CD fell onto the floor and Nori picks it up. Nori rips up the booklet and crushes the CD under his foot, right in front of Yoshitsune's face as Yoshitsune is still lying on the floor. Yoshitsune shouts and screams in agony for a long, long time over his favorite idol CD being smashed, and it's this trauma that sends him demon. Yoshitsune gets the better of the fight, and the demon comes out in Nori.
Now, it's LED suit fight time (so this part isn't GACKT and Yuumi Hiro, it's the dancers in suits that light up either blue or red). The fight was rougher than the MOON SAGA II one, and there was a lot of putting sticks up each others assess. Also, it was easy to tell which color was supposed to be Yoshitsune by the number of Comanechi gestures he did. Nori has the fight won when he makes a direct hit on Yoshitsune's crotch. But Yoshitsune isn't defeated, the light at his crotch begins to flash and he comes back to life. Yoshitsune defeats Nori with a blow to his crotch instead.
Now we're back to the actors, and Nori is injured and lying in Yoshitsune's arms. They talk about going to a live together, and Yoshitsune begs Nori to leave with him. Nori refuses and sirens can be heard in the background. Yoshitsune runs away and Nori gets arrested.
After the actors came out for their applause and thank yous, there was a bonus scene. It started with Nori, and he was soon joined by Yoshitsune. They talked about music again and wanting to go to a live, and they talked about singing a song. After a pause, Yoshitsune sang everyone's favorite 1996 visual kei band, by singing a few lines from MALICE MIZER's Au Revoir. The rest of the main characters came out, everyone was happy, and it finished as Sakura, Chiru played.
Thoughts
The play did have some genuinely funny parts. Yoshitsune pretending to fly, his horror at his idol CD being smashed (in fact everything about the idol groups) and some of Hiyori's bits stick out the most.
Yuumi Hiro was again fantastic. When she walked out on stage there was a gasp from the audience because she looked amazing.
They changed the casting slightly as Yuki Kimisawa didn't play Gin, as he did in MOON SAGA II, and was instead Tadanobu (Taya's role). That gave him more stage time and a bigger role so that was perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned ♥♥♥
The backgrounds were all in the style of the backgrounds used for the Gakuen videos - crude crayon drawings. It worked very well! The graffiti in the schools said such nice things as “die” and “idiot” in Japanese (and someone had tagged every school setting with “Kaicho”, hahaha) and “die”, “fuck,” and “kill yuo” (spelling mistake intentional) in English.
They did a good job with keeping some aspects of the characters and their powers, despite them not actually having powers. Sabero still healed people, only it was with antiseptic and bandages and Kiku was still strong against pain, but that was due to him wearing a safety helmet. Tomomori didn't have the power to read people's hearts by touching them, but instead could read palms.
There was waaaaay too much attention and time spent on Kiku grabbing at and smashing guy's balls. At one point he was grabbing at and massaging Dennai for at least 30 seconds. You can only go so far with that joke when the crowd is 95% female...
Hiyori. The actress who played her was fantastic and had great comic timing. I like that her death was completely pointless and was purposely pointless, because one of the main gripes of MOON SAGA II was how pointless a character she was and that her death meant nothing. It seems that, to a degree, GACKT realised that himself. However, she was there mainly just for over eating and fat jokes.
And Kiku and Gin... In MOON SAGA II they're mononofu, so they're these magical beings, like Kage and Hiyori, and the fact that they are very childlike, innocent and simple characters that jump around the stage like monkeys and can't speak in full sentences doesn't matter. However, when they're regular high school students doing that, it becomes very awkward as the impression that comes across is that they're special needs students. It isn't the intention, as they're just playing the same characters as in MOON SAGA II, but without the context of being mononofu, it just doesn't work right and gets a little uncomfortable, to be honest...
And by the time the final extra scene happened, it was January 1997. Au Revoir wasn't released until December 1997. Um, can Yoshitsune time travel now??
Overall, it was funny and an imaginitive retelling of the MOON SAGA II story. There were enough funny parts and cuteness to make me buy the DVD when it comes out. However, it did have some problems and, maybe, errors in judgement is the best way to put it...
Many of the cast members have posted photos from the show, so here's a selection.
From rehearsals
The MOON SAGA boys showing off the results of GACKT's training regime.
Dress rehersal the day before inside the venue.
Nori and his Duffy bear.
Tomomori
The new Hiyori
(l-r) Kiku, Tsugunobu, Gin, Dennai
The black gakuran is the Genji uniform (Yoshitsune wore one of these too)
The grey gakuran uniform is the Heike uniform.
You can find more photos in the OGYD Yoshitsune Gakuen photo album.
Image sources - Abeko blog / EGA blog / Mayo Kawasaki blog 1 / Mayo Kawasaki blog 2 / Mayo Kawasaki blog 3 / TAKASHI blog / TOMOCLUB blog / Yasuhiro Date blog
I attended the evening show, so here's a little report on what happened and what it was.
The parody was billed as taking the story of Yoshitsune Hiden Chapter Two and putting it into a modern setting, and that's basically exactly what it was. It was almost scene for scene the same, only without the historical background or any of the 'super' powers the characters had as they were all just regular students.
It was set in 1996, and was about the battles between Genji High School (Yoshitsune's school) and Heike Technical High School. They're both yankee schools so they're very rough, with graffiti in Japanese and mis-spelt English all over the classrooms and all of the boys like to fight. All of the cast wore gakuran style school uniforms and they didn't have the MOON SAGA wigs. GACKT had his own hair, so no Yoshitsune wig, although he'd shaved patterns into the side again.
As for the story... I apologise for the length of this!
To summarise, there were lots of fat jokes and dick jokes, some genuinely funny and cute scenes, Yoshitsune sang some MALICE MIZER and he also loves idol bands.
The play started with a video to recap what happened at the end of MOON SAGA I with the deaths of Yoshinaka and Tomoe. The video was done in a cartoon style, with crude drawings of the characters and photos of the actors for the heads. Yoshinaka and Tomoe were taken from MOON SAGA, but Yoshitsune's heads were done just for this and saw GACKT doing some of the stupidest (and funniest) faces I've ever seen him do...
As with MOON SAGA II, it started with Yoshitsune on his own, thinking about Yoshinaka and Tomoe leaving. He was skimming stones across the water, but threw one too hard and smashed some windows. He received a phone call from Kage, but when he started questioning Kage too much, Kage hung up on him. Dennai appeared and kept getting Yoshitsune's name wrong (a running joke from the kiss scenes at Gakuen). Nori and some others from Heike High arrived and after a tense stare down Yoshitsune left.
A short video played to introduce the actors and their characters. When the video screen rose, the main cast were on stage with Yoshitsune in the center. Then the new Hiyori, who probably weighed twice as much as GACKT does, stood directly in front of Yoshitsune, blocking him from the audience. He was annoyed that his spotlight was being stolen and tried to move around her (there were many jokes along this theme with Hiyori, sadly).
There was a few scenes of introducing the characters and setting. Hiyori ate many chips, very noisily, and ignored everyone.
The two schools met for a fight at the bowling alley and a few small skirmishes broke out between the two sides. Gin tried to use his power to control others on Yoshitsune to stop him from attacking, but of course Gin doesn't have that power in Yoshitsune Gakuen. The other Genji students told Yoshitsune to play along anyway so Yoshitsune gets on all fours, like he's being controlled, only to get kicked in the ribs by the Heike. It's about to get out of control when Hiyori runs on stage, knocking over Tomomori, and then they started huffing air out of plastic bags instead (they're yankee kids, drugs and booze are what they do).
Everyone passed out other than Yoshitsune and Tomomori. The two of them discovered that they had something in common - they were both big fans of the idol group Wink! Tomomori sang a few lines from their song “Samishii Nettaigyo” and did the arm movements that went with it (skip to 1:04 in this YouTube video) and a cautious Yoshitsune joined in. They decided to join the Wink fanclub together, and the two schools became friends.
Unfortunately, they didn't get chance to join the fanclub as Wink broke up shortly after.
Kagetoki wasn't happy at the truce and went to see Nori at Heike high school. Nori was having a nightmare and identified himself as a visual kei fan (hmm, a visual kei fan in 1996. I wonder what band was popular back then...). Nori was sleeping with a big Duffy bear, and during the scene with Kagetoki was acting everything out with the bear. It was very cute!
Kiku agreed to take Kagetoki back to Genji High School. In MOON SAGA II, Kiku is obsessed with killing people. Killing people is a little too much for high schoolers, so instead Kiku was obsessed with smashing men's balls (seriously).
Now that Wink have split up, Yoshitsune has transferred his idol love to Ryoko Shinohara and wants to apply to her fanclub. He asked Tsugunobu to deliver his fanclub membership application for him, and Tsugunobu runs into Kagetoki and Kiku. Kagetoki is trying to hide his identity by wearing the head of GACKT's orange neko outfit, but falls over and reveals his identity. Tsugunobu asks him roughly what he is doing, and Kiku mistakes this for bullying and attacks Tsugunobu, eventually managing to smash his balls (no, seriously).
In the next scene, Yoshitsune and his gang are in the hospital with Tsugunobu. Tomomori, Nori and Kiku and the rest of the Heike arrive to apologise. Kiku and Nori aren't very apologetic, Dennai apologises a lot, Tadanobu tries to fight everyone and Yoshitsune tells them all to be quiet because they're in a hospital. Hiyori runs off, Benkei punches Nori and Nori and Kiku leave.
Dennai goes after Nori and finds him distressed as his CD player doesn't work. Later, Nori pushes Tomomori off the roof of the school instead of stabbing him and letting him fall off a boat, like in MOON SAGA II. Gin tries to attack Nori, but instead Kiku smashes his balls and he falls off the roof too.
Gin is found by the students at Genji High School and they try to save him. Kiku and some of the other Genji students arrive and Kiku decides he wants to try and get Yoshitsune's balls. Yoshitsune isn't thrilled at this, and side steps around Kiku in order to find Nori. Kiku lets him go, and the fights starts between Kiku, and Benkei, Sabiro, Dennai and Tadanobu.
The story of the fight is that Kiku can withstand the blows from his opponents due to wearing a safety helmet (in MOON SAGA II he does so because that's his special power) and he is constantly trying to ball grab. Tadanobu would occasionally make a grand leap for Kiku, only to miss and go skidding across the stage until he purposely, nearly fell in the front row. Then Tadanobu twisted his ankle and sat most of the fight out (which I think may have been a rib on GACKT and his bad leg). Kiku grabs hold of everyone bar Tadanobu, but no smashing happens.
They clear the stage and Yoshitsune has been cornered by about ten Heike students. In MOON SAGA II, this is the first scene where Yoshitsune flew. In Yoshitsune Gakuen, Yoshitsune... doesn't fly. He just thinks he does. Yoshitsune simply stood there making noises like he was flying while staring up to the ceiling and flapping his hand around like he was twirling in the air (it was cute). He 'landed' and was surprised that his opponents weren't defeated and on the floor after his marvellous air attack.
It turns into a fist fight instead and Yoshitsune manages to fight them all off, even doing the old smash two people's heads together trick. It's down to him and one other, and Yoshitsune screamed at his opponent, giving him a heart attack from the sudden shout. Yoshitsune was a little sorry that he caused the heart attack, but took the victory and ran off after Nori.
It was then back to Kiku and his fight. He's still winning, so Dennai decides to sacrifice himself and grabs Kiku, keeping a tight hold of him. Tadanobu has a taser, and Dennai begs Tadanobu to use it, even though he knows the current will go through him too. Tadanobu does so, by tasering Dennai in the butt (no, seriously) and the charge also goes through Kiku. It's not enough to stop Kiku, but one more taser blast manages it.
Yoshitsune catches up with Nori on the school roof and they both have sticks to fight with. As the fight begins, they talk to each other about their music choices - Nori's visual kei love and Yoshitsune and his idols. Nori gets the better of the fight and has Yoshitsune down and out on the floor. Then Hiyori arrives with a yoyo in her hand. She can't throw the yoyo, but charges up the stage towards Nori... and runs right past Nori and jumps off the roof.
Even Yoshitsune and Nori are confused at how pointless Hiyori's appearance and death was. During the fight, Yoshitsune's Ryoko CD fell onto the floor and Nori picks it up. Nori rips up the booklet and crushes the CD under his foot, right in front of Yoshitsune's face as Yoshitsune is still lying on the floor. Yoshitsune shouts and screams in agony for a long, long time over his favorite idol CD being smashed, and it's this trauma that sends him demon. Yoshitsune gets the better of the fight, and the demon comes out in Nori.
Now, it's LED suit fight time (so this part isn't GACKT and Yuumi Hiro, it's the dancers in suits that light up either blue or red). The fight was rougher than the MOON SAGA II one, and there was a lot of putting sticks up each others assess. Also, it was easy to tell which color was supposed to be Yoshitsune by the number of Comanechi gestures he did. Nori has the fight won when he makes a direct hit on Yoshitsune's crotch. But Yoshitsune isn't defeated, the light at his crotch begins to flash and he comes back to life. Yoshitsune defeats Nori with a blow to his crotch instead.
Now we're back to the actors, and Nori is injured and lying in Yoshitsune's arms. They talk about going to a live together, and Yoshitsune begs Nori to leave with him. Nori refuses and sirens can be heard in the background. Yoshitsune runs away and Nori gets arrested.
After the actors came out for their applause and thank yous, there was a bonus scene. It started with Nori, and he was soon joined by Yoshitsune. They talked about music again and wanting to go to a live, and they talked about singing a song. After a pause, Yoshitsune sang everyone's favorite 1996 visual kei band, by singing a few lines from MALICE MIZER's Au Revoir. The rest of the main characters came out, everyone was happy, and it finished as Sakura, Chiru played.
Thoughts
The play did have some genuinely funny parts. Yoshitsune pretending to fly, his horror at his idol CD being smashed (in fact everything about the idol groups) and some of Hiyori's bits stick out the most.
Yuumi Hiro was again fantastic. When she walked out on stage there was a gasp from the audience because she looked amazing.
They changed the casting slightly as Yuki Kimisawa didn't play Gin, as he did in MOON SAGA II, and was instead Tadanobu (Taya's role). That gave him more stage time and a bigger role so that was perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned ♥♥♥
The backgrounds were all in the style of the backgrounds used for the Gakuen videos - crude crayon drawings. It worked very well! The graffiti in the schools said such nice things as “die” and “idiot” in Japanese (and someone had tagged every school setting with “Kaicho”, hahaha) and “die”, “fuck,” and “kill yuo” (spelling mistake intentional) in English.
They did a good job with keeping some aspects of the characters and their powers, despite them not actually having powers. Sabero still healed people, only it was with antiseptic and bandages and Kiku was still strong against pain, but that was due to him wearing a safety helmet. Tomomori didn't have the power to read people's hearts by touching them, but instead could read palms.
There was waaaaay too much attention and time spent on Kiku grabbing at and smashing guy's balls. At one point he was grabbing at and massaging Dennai for at least 30 seconds. You can only go so far with that joke when the crowd is 95% female...
Hiyori. The actress who played her was fantastic and had great comic timing. I like that her death was completely pointless and was purposely pointless, because one of the main gripes of MOON SAGA II was how pointless a character she was and that her death meant nothing. It seems that, to a degree, GACKT realised that himself. However, she was there mainly just for over eating and fat jokes.
And Kiku and Gin... In MOON SAGA II they're mononofu, so they're these magical beings, like Kage and Hiyori, and the fact that they are very childlike, innocent and simple characters that jump around the stage like monkeys and can't speak in full sentences doesn't matter. However, when they're regular high school students doing that, it becomes very awkward as the impression that comes across is that they're special needs students. It isn't the intention, as they're just playing the same characters as in MOON SAGA II, but without the context of being mononofu, it just doesn't work right and gets a little uncomfortable, to be honest...
And by the time the final extra scene happened, it was January 1997. Au Revoir wasn't released until December 1997. Um, can Yoshitsune time travel now??
Overall, it was funny and an imaginitive retelling of the MOON SAGA II story. There were enough funny parts and cuteness to make me buy the DVD when it comes out. However, it did have some problems and, maybe, errors in judgement is the best way to put it...
Many of the cast members have posted photos from the show, so here's a selection.
From rehearsals
The MOON SAGA boys showing off the results of GACKT's training regime.
Dress rehersal the day before inside the venue.
Nori and his Duffy bear.
Tomomori
The new Hiyori
(l-r) Kiku, Tsugunobu, Gin, Dennai
The black gakuran is the Genji uniform (Yoshitsune wore one of these too)
The grey gakuran uniform is the Heike uniform.
You can find more photos in the OGYD Yoshitsune Gakuen photo album.
Image sources - Abeko blog / EGA blog / Mayo Kawasaki blog 1 / Mayo Kawasaki blog 2 / Mayo Kawasaki blog 3 / TAKASHI blog / TOMOCLUB blog / Yasuhiro Date blog