Following my visit to Gallery AaMo for the Forest of Lycoris exhibit was a weekend trip into Tokyo for the JOKER TRAP stage play! It was extra fun since this time I spent my weekend with a friend instead of going by myself.
The other two plans I had before the play was a visit to a cafe owned by Sweets Paradise (called the Concept Cafe), and the Broccoli Girls Shop across the street. Both of them were in department stores owned by Marui. I thought they would be busy because it was Saturday, so my friend and I arrived pretty early to make sure we could get in. However there was no one there yet!
The cafe was at a branch of Marui called "MODI." I don't recall this building looking so chic the last time I was in Shibuya, but I never had much reason to visit so maybe I just forgot. The cafe was collaborating with two other series, but I had a feeling that many of the customers were there for UtaPri. Fortunately for my wallet, the UtaPri menu items were limited, unlike last year when I was at the Maji Love Legend Star Animate Cafe, which had so many choices! So we simply ordered the lunch item (BLT and fries) and sweets item (Pancakes with whipped cream and fruit). We skipped the iced vanilla latte and the iced cocoa, which would've been sugar overload if we ordered them. (You can see the menu here.)
The BLT was quite good! The bacon slices were pretty thick and the fries on the side were delicious, even without condiments. The pancakes were also pretty delicious, although there was more whipped cream than I preferred to have.
After lunch, we headed across the street to the other Marui department store to get goods. It was pretty empty there as well, so getting goods was no problem! I had requests from overseas fans to pick up items being sold there (they were previously sold at Anime Japan earlier this year) so it worked out pretty well. I also bought an IC Card sticker which apparently lights up when the card is read. I tried it out with one of my cards that I use for grocery shopping and it looks really cool! Also, around the back of the pop-up shop were large character displays that you could take pictures of.
After resting and shopping for a bit, we headed to Tennozu Isle, which is where the theater for JOKER TRAP is located. From what I've heard about the other two stage plays, it seems that they had changed the system for buying merchandise at the venue, so most items were limited to one per person. This was a relief to hear because I was worried they would sell out of the bears that I wanted! It looks like Movic is trying hard to make sure that there's enough merchandise for everyone attending UtaPri events, as they also set the same "1 per person" limit for the Starish Fan Meeting Event.
After getting my bears, I immediately took them out of their cases and put them in the Ranmaru backpack I had found at Mandarake in Shibuya. Perfect fit!
Finally, showtime! To be honest, I cared more about merchandise than I did about the play, haha. I had an 'A' seat, which was furthest and highest up from the stage. The theater was quite small so there was no need for binoculars or anything.
If you're familiar with the original audio dramas, often times they include a "silent" protagonist, so listeners can imagine that they themselves are in the story. The written scripts have the protagonist's lines in them so you know what's being said in the silent parts.
In order to avoid including a female protagonist altogether, the stories for the dramas were changed when converted to live action form. The rewritten story is still centered around the characters played by the idols, but some original characters are also included (all played by male actors). I imagine this was probably a concern to some UtaPri fans--not only are some fans very attached to the idols and their voice actors, and unable to imagine live actors playing these parts, but adding in characters that weren't even in the original drama might make it even harder to accept the live action plays as "true" UtaPri productions.
The important thing to remember about these plays is that the actors on stage are NOT portraying the idols; they're portraying the characters that the idols had portrayed in the original production. So it wasn't Tokiya, Ren, Ranmaru and Camus in the story, it was "Perfect Diamond," "Tricky Heart," "Spiky Club," and "Majestic Spade."
I was never against the idea of live action shows for UtaPri, but I did have my doubts in the beginning about how much I would enjoy the play without being able to hear the voices I loved so much. In the end, I liked it! Granted, the show I saw wasn't perfect and there were a few things I could've gone without, so I'll outline what I enjoyed and didn't enjoy:
The good:
The cafe was at a branch of Marui called "MODI." I don't recall this building looking so chic the last time I was in Shibuya, but I never had much reason to visit so maybe I just forgot. The cafe was collaborating with two other series, but I had a feeling that many of the customers were there for UtaPri. Fortunately for my wallet, the UtaPri menu items were limited, unlike last year when I was at the Maji Love Legend Star Animate Cafe, which had so many choices! So we simply ordered the lunch item (BLT and fries) and sweets item (Pancakes with whipped cream and fruit). We skipped the iced vanilla latte and the iced cocoa, which would've been sugar overload if we ordered them. (You can see the menu here.)
The BLT was quite good! The bacon slices were pretty thick and the fries on the side were delicious, even without condiments. The pancakes were also pretty delicious, although there was more whipped cream than I preferred to have.
After lunch, we headed across the street to the other Marui department store to get goods. It was pretty empty there as well, so getting goods was no problem! I had requests from overseas fans to pick up items being sold there (they were previously sold at Anime Japan earlier this year) so it worked out pretty well. I also bought an IC Card sticker which apparently lights up when the card is read. I tried it out with one of my cards that I use for grocery shopping and it looks really cool! Also, around the back of the pop-up shop were large character displays that you could take pictures of.
After resting and shopping for a bit, we headed to Tennozu Isle, which is where the theater for JOKER TRAP is located. From what I've heard about the other two stage plays, it seems that they had changed the system for buying merchandise at the venue, so most items were limited to one per person. This was a relief to hear because I was worried they would sell out of the bears that I wanted! It looks like Movic is trying hard to make sure that there's enough merchandise for everyone attending UtaPri events, as they also set the same "1 per person" limit for the Starish Fan Meeting Event.
After getting my bears, I immediately took them out of their cases and put them in the Ranmaru backpack I had found at Mandarake in Shibuya. Perfect fit!
Finally, showtime! To be honest, I cared more about merchandise than I did about the play, haha. I had an 'A' seat, which was furthest and highest up from the stage. The theater was quite small so there was no need for binoculars or anything.
If you're familiar with the original audio dramas, often times they include a "silent" protagonist, so listeners can imagine that they themselves are in the story. The written scripts have the protagonist's lines in them so you know what's being said in the silent parts.
In order to avoid including a female protagonist altogether, the stories for the dramas were changed when converted to live action form. The rewritten story is still centered around the characters played by the idols, but some original characters are also included (all played by male actors). I imagine this was probably a concern to some UtaPri fans--not only are some fans very attached to the idols and their voice actors, and unable to imagine live actors playing these parts, but adding in characters that weren't even in the original drama might make it even harder to accept the live action plays as "true" UtaPri productions.
The important thing to remember about these plays is that the actors on stage are NOT portraying the idols; they're portraying the characters that the idols had portrayed in the original production. So it wasn't Tokiya, Ren, Ranmaru and Camus in the story, it was "Perfect Diamond," "Tricky Heart," "Spiky Club," and "Majestic Spade."
I was never against the idea of live action shows for UtaPri, but I did have my doubts in the beginning about how much I would enjoy the play without being able to hear the voices I loved so much. In the end, I liked it! Granted, the show I saw wasn't perfect and there were a few things I could've gone without, so I'll outline what I enjoyed and didn't enjoy:
The good:
- The main costumes were pretty nice. Since of course they were based off of the only illustration of the JOKER TRAP group that existed at the time, I was very intrigued by the choice of fabrics they used for each character.
- The story itself was quite entertaining and kept me alert. The original drama didn't really have much of a story and was very much centered around the protagonist, so a lot had to be rewritten for the live action. I feel like they did a pretty good job, as the characters were still very much true to the original. I was quite surprised by the exaggerated personality for Toki, but later I found out the reason for that and was thoroughly impressed. Spiky Club Ran was by far my favorite; Allen Kohatsu did a spectacular job portraying him!
- While I did have to watch and listen in a language that isn't my native language, I was still able to understand what was going on. My Japanese reading skills are better than my listening skills, so I really liked that there were some background visuals included, such as messages written by the "JOKER" as well as Toki's and Ren's back stories.
The not-so-great:
- I felt like there were a lot..I mean a LOT...of action sequences, specifically gun pointing. The first few times it was pretty cool, but after a while there was so much gun pointing that I was almost waiting for someone to get shot.
- It was inevitably difficult to accept some actors as the characters they were supposed to portray, specifically Ren's. But this may have been because there were no women involved in the story, so we didn't get a chance to see Tricky Heart really work his charm.
- The music performance at the end...I feel bad for saying this but I really wish they had either restricted it to the beginning of the show or left it out entirely, haha. There were some original tunes written for the live action play which I didn't care much for, a few dance sequences, and then a performance of the JOKER TRAP song by the lead actors (I minded this one the least, as I thought it was pretty cute for them to do this). It was apparent that this was probably the least practiced part of the show, as synchronization was pretty lackluster and singing while dancing (or maybe just singing in general) was evidently not some of the actors' strongest points. But I've heard from my friend who has seen the play three times now (!!!) that they've been improving with every show, so that's good! But nonetheless, for such a serious, action-packed production about a group of spies/assassins, the cheesy singing and dancing really put a damper on that "cool" factor. But as I've seen Takarazuka shows and am also familiar with the Sailor Moon musicals, I've accepted that this type of closing just comes as part of the package.
Overall the performance was worth the money! Although having an 'A' seat at the theater caused me to not be able to see the entire projection screen at the back of the stage, it wasn't really required for me to understand the story. I imagine the premium seats provided an amazing experience!
JOKER TRAP's Tokyo run came to a close in on April 30th, but they will be starting up in Osaka next week for four days, from May 10th to May 13th at the Umeda Arts Theater (梅田芸術劇場シアター・ドラマシティ)。Tickets are still available via ePlus if you're in Osaka during that time!
The DVD and Blu-Ray of the performance is available for pre-order now on Movic and Animate. If you need a proxy service to help you order from overseas, check out my Proxy Shopping Guide!
