Thanks to a heads-up by Michael G., I learned that the DearStage idol group “YoRHa” who sang the boss battles in DOD3 will be performing a musical for five days early next month, each with an afternoon and evening show.
YoRHa will be joined a cast of members from various idol groups such as Nittelegenic, LinQ, ALICEINALICE, Hime-carat, Shingidan Mumei Classics, TAKENOKO, Vampire KISS, Märchen Magic, Stereo Tokyo, Spicy Sisters, MarvelYell, BWH, and Mousou Calibration. I believe the majority of these groups are also affiliated with DearStage in Akihabara, which may also be affiliated with MONACA, the wonderful team of musicians and composers who gave us the soundtrack from DOD3 and Nier.
I just learned about this event this afternoon, so there is still very little information about what it actually is besides the tweet by Yoko Taro:
まともに話すと長くなるので超短く説明しますが、２年前くらいに考えたアイドルの設定が舞台になりました。＞【ヨルハ】2014年10月1日（水）～ 5日（日）：シアターKASSAI http://t.co/OXX7O6BCQQ
— yokotaro (@yokotaro) September 5, 2014
He says that the premise and backstory he had about two years ago for an idol group will make its debut on the stage; however, it is unclear whether this will be merely a play or a musical. Given the fact that so many members of the cast are from DearStage, I am pretty confident it will be a musical in the very sense of the term: a play + music/songs.
This production will be held at Kassai Theater in Ikebukuro, which holds 110 seats and and looks like this:
Tickets went on sale today, September 5th, at noon. What’s interesting about this production is that it will rotate two completely separate casts every other day. One set of cast members are grouped under the title “EARTH” whereas the other is called “HEAVEN”. Together this creates a very common phrase or term in Japanese: Tenchi. I’m sure you’ve heard of the anime “Tenchi Muyo”, right? It basically means “Heaven and Earth”.
I will further edit this post to include the complete names of the cast later, but it appears that only 2 of the original 3 YoRHa members will attend this event. No11 (Aino Eri) and No12 (Yuna) will perform without No13 (Sakurai Tamaki).
But by the time I learned of this venue, it was already well after noon–maybe close to 1:30pm, and by that time, all of the first row seats (dubbed “S Seats”) were sold out. Each row only consists of 10 seats, which means, there are only 11 rows total in this theater. All other seats are called “A Seats”, where your seat is determined by a “first come, first served” basis.
The company handling the ticket sales were through Confetti, which allowed people to reserve up to 4 tickets at a time. Since I am a lonely nobody, I managed to purchase one ticket on Friday night for the EARTH cast and another on Saturday night for the HEAVEN cast. I will go directly to the venue after work on Friday and hope the crowd isn’t too bad by the time I get there.
**All shows have now been sold out except for a few for the afternoon show on Friday.**
I cannot express more how excited I am to be able to attend this venue. I have been rather sad that YoRHa hasn’t had a performance since 2013—— STRIKE THAT! Apparently, they had an event performing the “Second Act” this past January at Koenji HIGH that I knew nothing about! I soooo would have been there! Who is the publicist for this group!? Seriously!! Get it together, whoever you are!!
Anyway, perhaps this is a two act musical after all! They performed ACT 1 at DearStage in Akihabara back in May of 2012 and then ACT 2 this past January. I’m starting to think that Yoko Taro first wrote a scenario/play script for this project. As an English Major in Creative Writing, I will always be intrigued by masters of the art such as he. <3
Links included in this post and more!