MOON SAGA 7/15
I attended the first MOON SAGA show on Saturday and here’s a little recap/review of it.
It’s definitely a play I will need to see again, purely for the sheer scope of it. I admit that I came out of the play completely confused over what I actually thought of it, but now that I’ve had some time to digest it and think about it I think I can safely say that I enjoyed it!
Only the story explanation (the middle section of this) will have spoilers. The list of characters doesn’t spoil anything that isn’t in the pamphlet or already known.
If people want to discuss things from the spoiler section in the comments then you can! But, maybe using spoiler cuts would be a good idea.
Mononofu - half human, half spirits (mononoke)
Let’s start with Yoshitsune’s band of seven friends…
Minamoto Yoshitsune - Our protagonist and seemingly related to everyone...
Minamoto Yoshinaka - Yoshitsune’s cousin and in a relationship with Tomoe. A fierce fighter and adept with swords.
Tomoe Gozen - Yoshitsune’s childhood friend and object of his affections. She is a strong fighter with a staff.
Musashibou Benkei - Bridges the gap with the audience (like his Nemuri character) and sometimes puts Yoshitsune back in his place XD
Isashi Burou - Can use his powers to bring people back to life
(Creepy photo is creepy)
Satou Gunobu - The elder brother of Tadanobu
Satou Tadanobu - The younger brother of Gunobu. The Satou brothers are a real comedy double act, finishing each other’s sentences and sharing sake.
Also...
Minamoto Yoritomo - Yoshitsune’s half brother.
Houjyou Masako - Yoritomo’s wife. She does not like or trust Yoshitsune.
Mononoke
Kage - Yoshitsune helped Kage in the past, and Kage gives advice to Yoshitsune and his friends.
Hiyori - A child mononoke (she was adorable!)
En (閻)
An unknown, but special mononoke. A shadow that fought in the past…
There are more characters, but that’s the main cast that have photos (well, En probably isn’t the main cast and doesn’t have a photo but I thought he/she/it was important). Yes, there’s a lot!
The story - SPOILERS
This isn’t going to be too in depth because I couldn’t catch everything in one performance. It’ll concentrate mainly on Yoshitsune too, because his parts are what stick out in my mind more (I wonder why…) There are things I think I caught, but I’m not 100% on so I won’t mention those until the second viewing as I don’t want to mislead people on things.
The play begins by quickly establishing the seven mononofu and their friendship and camaraderie. Yoshitsune is, for lack of a better phrase, the slightly immature and brattish member of the group. The others embrace and showcase their skills and abilities throughout the course of the play, but Yoshitsune doesn’t even draw his daggers (daggers? Short swords? What’s the proper term for those anyway?).
Early on there is an incident where a village is destroyed by apparently a mononoke. The mononofu are called to help and Yoshitsune has to be forcibly dragged there by the others as he doesn’t believe the story. When there, the other six are tending to the dead and wounded and Yoshitsune is just chilling and ignoring everything. Burou shows his special ability of being able to bring people back to life.
Yoshitsune wanders off into the forest and encounters Kage, Hiyori and several other mononoke (who are doing some awesome acrobatics from the ceiling. One of them is on the stage and gets to be poked and prodded in the face by GACKT. Aw, Yoshitsune is so cute sometimes). Yoshitsune does not want to acknowledge the mononoke side of him or the power he has inside and heatedly tells Kage that he isn’t a monster when Kage tries to make him face up to who and what he really is.
Tomoe, Yoshinaka and Burou come across a group of wolf skin wearing enemies but they are of no concern for them. Then, Yoritomo and his henchmen (well, women actually) show up and there is a really clever scene where the henchmen transform underneath a blanket on stage into something that the mononoke should definitely be concerned about. Tomoe takes on all of them by herself (I have no idea where Yoshinaka and Burou ran off to) and shows herself to be a fierce fighter, but there are too many and they overpower her. Eventually she is rescued by Yoshinaka and Burou.
Yoshitsune arrives to the fight after it’s finished and meets with Tomoe in private. She was wounded in the fight, and Yoshitsune blames Yoshinaka. Yoshinaka arrives and tries to take Tomoe away, but she doesn’t want to leave yet and Yoshitsune jumps to her aid. Yoshinaka and Yoshitsune begin arguing and a fight breaks out, but Yoshitsune refuses to fight back properly and basically gets his ass handed to him all over the stage. Eventually Yoshinaka completely overpowers him and almost chops Yoshitsune’s head off, causing Yoshitsune to scream in terror, crawl away and try and curl up into a shaking and trembling ball.
(And yes, just to make sure everyone is clear on this, that’s GACKT trembling in fear on stage and being a wuss.)
The rest of the mononofu arrive and poor Yoshitsune is the target of all of their jokes because of his scared reaction and they joke that he wet himself. I don’t think he did… but who knows?
Yoshinaka is sent to take care of a battle, and somewhere along the way Yoshitsune meets with Yoritomo. I didn’t fully understand the content of this conversation, but I think Yoshitsune was helping Yoritomo, much to Masako’s distrust. Bad boy. (I actually think that this was a really important and pivotal scene that actually explains a lot, but I'm not 100% sure on anything so I won't even begin to hypothesise about it.)
While Yoshinaka is fighting his battles, Tomoe is cornered in a battle of her own and is killed. Yoshinaka instantly lays the blame on Yoshitsune and wants revenge, but Kage tries to talk him out of it. Yoshinaka is still intent on fighting Yoshitsune and runs off to find him, leaving Kage onstage alone.
In what is probably the best scene of the play, Kage steps to the front of the stage, in front of the screen and is attacked by a creepy black demonic entity that flies around the screen. Kage effortlessly deflects the attacks with his fan but the attacks get fiercer and more determined and eventually, Kage is killed.
Yoshinaka finds Yoshitsune, but Yoshitsune still doesn’t want to fight him and wants to be his friend. Yoshinaka is too far gone for that and draws his sword, again beating Yoshitsune around the stage with his blade and fists. Yoshitsune does fight back as much as he can with his hands, but he’s no match for Yoshinaka’s anger. Yoshinaka has Yoshitsune on the floor, but Yoshitsune springs up and leaps all of the way across the stage.
Yoshitsune’s true nature has been awoken and the monster, the demon, inside him has taken control. His voice changes and takes on a demonic tone and he joins the fight properly, literally flying across the stage and attacking Yoshinaka with his daggers. Yoshitsune temporarily comes back to himself and asks Yoshinaka to run, but the demon soon comes back and fatally stabs Yoshinaka.
(And the winner for the most obvious wires on stage goes to... And, way to spoil things photographer!!!)
With the fight over, Yoshitsune collapses and when he rouses a few seconds later, he is fully himself again. He takes Yoshinaka into his arms, pleads with him not to die and calls for Burou to arrive and heal Yoshinaka. Yoshitsune is absolutely crying his eyes out as Yoshinaka dies in his arms (and at least two women sat behind me were also crying at this part. Hearing them snivel stopped me from getting too involved with it, unfortunately).
And... that’s it.
To be continued.
The cast come out for their curtain call, and there is a repeat of an earlier scene where the mononofu, Kage and Hiyori are relaxing together and drinking sake. It starts the same, but ends differently. Yoshinaka utters the immortal “we are…. FAMILY” line (seriously, if there was any doubt GACKT wrote this then that single 「俺たちは。。。家族です」 line uttered in the exact same way as GACKT did it during the YFCz MCs just dispelled that doubt) and Benkei changes the scenery so that they are surrounded by sakura. Sakura petals begin to drop as Setsugekka plays.
(Pretty)
Impressions - No spoilers!
[+] I enjoyed the play and thought there was a lot to keep the interest going throughout. It was a really quick two hours, but I think it could have benefited from an editor to go through the script. I think there were too many unnecessary characters - there did not need to be seven mononofu in Yoshitsune’s band of friends, for starters. The play could have easily survived with four or five. But, the play was never boring and I think that for someone’s first play (or second if you count his re-writing of Nemuri Kyoshiro) it was an amazing achievement.
[+] The love triangle between Yoshinaka, Tomoe and Yoshitsune was kinda bubbling away underneath the surface but never came to the forefront enough. I think that doing so really could have helped some of the scenes flow better and given more reason to certain things.
[+] The lack of an interval really threw me. As did the “to be continued” aspect. It feels like the first chapter in a story as there is still so much more story to tell, particularly around Yoshitsune, so when it finished my initial reaction was “was that IT??”
[+] The costumers were amazing and beautiful, especially Kage’s. The scenery was displayed on a video wall at the back and was mainly CGI animated and it worked very well with the play. The play seems to have quite the budget behind it.
[+] The play jumped ahead in the timeline a little and each skip was explained by an animated video explaining the situation of the war that was happening at the time. This was really stylish and well done.
[+] Saotome Taichi was amazing on stage - he played his role perfectly and it was impossible to take your eyes off him.
[+] The soundtrack was written by CHACHA, YOU and TAKUMI and it was very Nemuri Kyoshiro-esque. I remember loving one track in particular… I think it was during the final fight scene.
[+] Speaking of fight scenes, there weren’t as many as I was expecting and they weren’t as epic as I thought they might be. Certainly nothing on the same scale as Nemuri Kyoshiro vs. fifty green ninjas.
[+] I feared a little that MOON SAGA would be another opportunity for GACKT to display how awesome he is (I love Nemuri Kyoshiro to pieces, but at times it felt like it existed purely for that reason) but that certainly wasn’t the case. Yoshitsune may have the best fight scene, but he didn’t get the most and for most of the play was completely beaten in the bad ass stakes by, well, pretty much everyone else. Saotome Taichi (Kage), Yamata Yuuka (Tomoe) and Maekawa Yasuyuke (Yoshinaka) in particular were given plenty of time to shine.
[+] And GACKT. Well, he actually acted in this one, which was a plus, hahaha. No, I thought he did a really good job with Yoshitsune. He’s a character that is completely out of type for GACKT and it was strange, but good, to see him acting so differently. His whole manner on stage was different and most of his lines were delivered in a higher, less commanding voice than he usually uses. At times he was smiley and playful, at others he was angry and crying. I think he showed more emotions in this one play than he has in all of his previous acting roles added together. Yoshitsune was a little bit Sho, a little bit Kei, and a little bit completely different. I said this on Twitter, but I spent most of the play wanting to hug him, ruffle his hair and tell him that everything would be okay. There were definitely plenty of things to squee in fangirlish glee over (and not just because of his first proper scene where he spent most of it pulling his top more open)
In short MOON SAGA is a brave and interesting project from GACKT. His hard work definitely paid off and I was both impressed and proud that it came off so well. A DVD is a must.
I will see it again on July 27th (yay! Seventh row!) and again on September 29th (don't know my seat yet!). Must convince myself not to buy any more tickets.... hahahaha.
It’s definitely a play I will need to see again, purely for the sheer scope of it. I admit that I came out of the play completely confused over what I actually thought of it, but now that I’ve had some time to digest it and think about it I think I can safely say that I enjoyed it!
Only the story explanation (the middle section of this) will have spoilers. The list of characters doesn’t spoil anything that isn’t in the pamphlet or already known.
If people want to discuss things from the spoiler section in the comments then you can! But, maybe using spoiler cuts would be a good idea.
Mononofu - half human, half spirits (mononoke)
Let’s start with Yoshitsune’s band of seven friends…
Minamoto Yoshitsune - Our protagonist and seemingly related to everyone...
Minamoto Yoshinaka - Yoshitsune’s cousin and in a relationship with Tomoe. A fierce fighter and adept with swords.
Tomoe Gozen - Yoshitsune’s childhood friend and object of his affections. She is a strong fighter with a staff.
Musashibou Benkei - Bridges the gap with the audience (like his Nemuri character) and sometimes puts Yoshitsune back in his place XD
Isashi Burou - Can use his powers to bring people back to life
(Creepy photo is creepy)
Satou Gunobu - The elder brother of Tadanobu
Satou Tadanobu - The younger brother of Gunobu. The Satou brothers are a real comedy double act, finishing each other’s sentences and sharing sake.
Also...
Minamoto Yoritomo - Yoshitsune’s half brother.
Houjyou Masako - Yoritomo’s wife. She does not like or trust Yoshitsune.
Mononoke
Kage - Yoshitsune helped Kage in the past, and Kage gives advice to Yoshitsune and his friends.
Hiyori - A child mononoke (she was adorable!)
En (閻)
An unknown, but special mononoke. A shadow that fought in the past…
There are more characters, but that’s the main cast that have photos (well, En probably isn’t the main cast and doesn’t have a photo but I thought he/she/it was important). Yes, there’s a lot!
The story - SPOILERS
This isn’t going to be too in depth because I couldn’t catch everything in one performance. It’ll concentrate mainly on Yoshitsune too, because his parts are what stick out in my mind more (I wonder why…) There are things I think I caught, but I’m not 100% on so I won’t mention those until the second viewing as I don’t want to mislead people on things.
The play begins by quickly establishing the seven mononofu and their friendship and camaraderie. Yoshitsune is, for lack of a better phrase, the slightly immature and brattish member of the group. The others embrace and showcase their skills and abilities throughout the course of the play, but Yoshitsune doesn’t even draw his daggers (daggers? Short swords? What’s the proper term for those anyway?).
Early on there is an incident where a village is destroyed by apparently a mononoke. The mononofu are called to help and Yoshitsune has to be forcibly dragged there by the others as he doesn’t believe the story. When there, the other six are tending to the dead and wounded and Yoshitsune is just chilling and ignoring everything. Burou shows his special ability of being able to bring people back to life.
Yoshitsune wanders off into the forest and encounters Kage, Hiyori and several other mononoke (who are doing some awesome acrobatics from the ceiling. One of them is on the stage and gets to be poked and prodded in the face by GACKT. Aw, Yoshitsune is so cute sometimes). Yoshitsune does not want to acknowledge the mononoke side of him or the power he has inside and heatedly tells Kage that he isn’t a monster when Kage tries to make him face up to who and what he really is.
Tomoe, Yoshinaka and Burou come across a group of wolf skin wearing enemies but they are of no concern for them. Then, Yoritomo and his henchmen (well, women actually) show up and there is a really clever scene where the henchmen transform underneath a blanket on stage into something that the mononoke should definitely be concerned about. Tomoe takes on all of them by herself (I have no idea where Yoshinaka and Burou ran off to) and shows herself to be a fierce fighter, but there are too many and they overpower her. Eventually she is rescued by Yoshinaka and Burou.
Yoshitsune arrives to the fight after it’s finished and meets with Tomoe in private. She was wounded in the fight, and Yoshitsune blames Yoshinaka. Yoshinaka arrives and tries to take Tomoe away, but she doesn’t want to leave yet and Yoshitsune jumps to her aid. Yoshinaka and Yoshitsune begin arguing and a fight breaks out, but Yoshitsune refuses to fight back properly and basically gets his ass handed to him all over the stage. Eventually Yoshinaka completely overpowers him and almost chops Yoshitsune’s head off, causing Yoshitsune to scream in terror, crawl away and try and curl up into a shaking and trembling ball.
(And yes, just to make sure everyone is clear on this, that’s GACKT trembling in fear on stage and being a wuss.)
The rest of the mononofu arrive and poor Yoshitsune is the target of all of their jokes because of his scared reaction and they joke that he wet himself. I don’t think he did… but who knows?
Yoshinaka is sent to take care of a battle, and somewhere along the way Yoshitsune meets with Yoritomo. I didn’t fully understand the content of this conversation, but I think Yoshitsune was helping Yoritomo, much to Masako’s distrust. Bad boy. (I actually think that this was a really important and pivotal scene that actually explains a lot, but I'm not 100% sure on anything so I won't even begin to hypothesise about it.)
While Yoshinaka is fighting his battles, Tomoe is cornered in a battle of her own and is killed. Yoshinaka instantly lays the blame on Yoshitsune and wants revenge, but Kage tries to talk him out of it. Yoshinaka is still intent on fighting Yoshitsune and runs off to find him, leaving Kage onstage alone.
In what is probably the best scene of the play, Kage steps to the front of the stage, in front of the screen and is attacked by a creepy black demonic entity that flies around the screen. Kage effortlessly deflects the attacks with his fan but the attacks get fiercer and more determined and eventually, Kage is killed.
Yoshinaka finds Yoshitsune, but Yoshitsune still doesn’t want to fight him and wants to be his friend. Yoshinaka is too far gone for that and draws his sword, again beating Yoshitsune around the stage with his blade and fists. Yoshitsune does fight back as much as he can with his hands, but he’s no match for Yoshinaka’s anger. Yoshinaka has Yoshitsune on the floor, but Yoshitsune springs up and leaps all of the way across the stage.
Yoshitsune’s true nature has been awoken and the monster, the demon, inside him has taken control. His voice changes and takes on a demonic tone and he joins the fight properly, literally flying across the stage and attacking Yoshinaka with his daggers. Yoshitsune temporarily comes back to himself and asks Yoshinaka to run, but the demon soon comes back and fatally stabs Yoshinaka.
(And the winner for the most obvious wires on stage goes to... And, way to spoil things photographer!!!)
With the fight over, Yoshitsune collapses and when he rouses a few seconds later, he is fully himself again. He takes Yoshinaka into his arms, pleads with him not to die and calls for Burou to arrive and heal Yoshinaka. Yoshitsune is absolutely crying his eyes out as Yoshinaka dies in his arms (and at least two women sat behind me were also crying at this part. Hearing them snivel stopped me from getting too involved with it, unfortunately).
And... that’s it.
To be continued.
The cast come out for their curtain call, and there is a repeat of an earlier scene where the mononofu, Kage and Hiyori are relaxing together and drinking sake. It starts the same, but ends differently. Yoshinaka utters the immortal “we are…. FAMILY” line (seriously, if there was any doubt GACKT wrote this then that single 「俺たちは。。。家族です」 line uttered in the exact same way as GACKT did it during the YFCz MCs just dispelled that doubt) and Benkei changes the scenery so that they are surrounded by sakura. Sakura petals begin to drop as Setsugekka plays.
(Pretty)
Impressions - No spoilers!
[+] I enjoyed the play and thought there was a lot to keep the interest going throughout. It was a really quick two hours, but I think it could have benefited from an editor to go through the script. I think there were too many unnecessary characters - there did not need to be seven mononofu in Yoshitsune’s band of friends, for starters. The play could have easily survived with four or five. But, the play was never boring and I think that for someone’s first play (or second if you count his re-writing of Nemuri Kyoshiro) it was an amazing achievement.
[+] The love triangle between Yoshinaka, Tomoe and Yoshitsune was kinda bubbling away underneath the surface but never came to the forefront enough. I think that doing so really could have helped some of the scenes flow better and given more reason to certain things.
[+] The lack of an interval really threw me. As did the “to be continued” aspect. It feels like the first chapter in a story as there is still so much more story to tell, particularly around Yoshitsune, so when it finished my initial reaction was “was that IT??”
[+] The costumers were amazing and beautiful, especially Kage’s. The scenery was displayed on a video wall at the back and was mainly CGI animated and it worked very well with the play. The play seems to have quite the budget behind it.
[+] The play jumped ahead in the timeline a little and each skip was explained by an animated video explaining the situation of the war that was happening at the time. This was really stylish and well done.
[+] Saotome Taichi was amazing on stage - he played his role perfectly and it was impossible to take your eyes off him.
[+] The soundtrack was written by CHACHA, YOU and TAKUMI and it was very Nemuri Kyoshiro-esque. I remember loving one track in particular… I think it was during the final fight scene.
[+] Speaking of fight scenes, there weren’t as many as I was expecting and they weren’t as epic as I thought they might be. Certainly nothing on the same scale as Nemuri Kyoshiro vs. fifty green ninjas.
[+] I feared a little that MOON SAGA would be another opportunity for GACKT to display how awesome he is (I love Nemuri Kyoshiro to pieces, but at times it felt like it existed purely for that reason) but that certainly wasn’t the case. Yoshitsune may have the best fight scene, but he didn’t get the most and for most of the play was completely beaten in the bad ass stakes by, well, pretty much everyone else. Saotome Taichi (Kage), Yamata Yuuka (Tomoe) and Maekawa Yasuyuke (Yoshinaka) in particular were given plenty of time to shine.
[+] And GACKT. Well, he actually acted in this one, which was a plus, hahaha. No, I thought he did a really good job with Yoshitsune. He’s a character that is completely out of type for GACKT and it was strange, but good, to see him acting so differently. His whole manner on stage was different and most of his lines were delivered in a higher, less commanding voice than he usually uses. At times he was smiley and playful, at others he was angry and crying. I think he showed more emotions in this one play than he has in all of his previous acting roles added together. Yoshitsune was a little bit Sho, a little bit Kei, and a little bit completely different. I said this on Twitter, but I spent most of the play wanting to hug him, ruffle his hair and tell him that everything would be okay. There were definitely plenty of things to squee in fangirlish glee over (and not just because of his first proper scene where he spent most of it pulling his top more open)
In short MOON SAGA is a brave and interesting project from GACKT. His hard work definitely paid off and I was both impressed and proud that it came off so well. A DVD is a must.
I will see it again on July 27th (yay! Seventh row!) and again on September 29th (don't know my seat yet!). Must convince myself not to buy any more tickets.... hahahaha.