Fighting evil by moonlight / Winning love by daylight / Never running from a real fight / She is the one named Sailor Moon
If you hummed along as you read those lyrics, this story is for you.
On Thursday, March 27, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live is taking the stage at Spokane's First Interstate Center for the Arts. The musical experience exemplifies the very essence of Japanese pop culture, from its beloved source material to its unique production.
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon has been around since the early 1990s and is what's known as a magical girl anime. The wildly popular Japanese series follows main character Usagi Tsukino, aka Sailor Moon, and her sailor guardian friends as they fight other celestial beings hellbent on some type of galactic takeover.
"Everybody has grown up seeing Sailor Moon as a Japanese animation or a comic, so this coming to life in this way, being still portrayed by a Japanese actor, is something that I feel like is resonating with people," musical producer Makoto Matsuda says via a translator. "We are excited to be leading the way so others can follow our footsteps, but we take this responsibility with excitement and honor."
"...there's a lot of fighting and action, but it is about how important it is to protect the precious peace of the world."
The live shows have all the makings of a traditional musical, but Matsuda says the over-the-top choreography and high-tech visuals warrant the subtitle "Super Live." And unlike traditional musicals, he says the audience leans much younger and is more excited for an exciting production. The show is also known as a 2.5D musical, a type of live production that's become popular in Japan based on an original anime and manga.
"[A 2.5D musical] is based on the idea of bringing the two-dimensional world of manga and animation, or even gaming, to life onstage. It's an in-between world of expressing the 2D in the best way of 3D," Matsuda says. "This is the first time a Japanese production [of Sailor Moon] has made a 21-city U.S. tour, so we're kind of a pioneer on its own for being able to do this."
There's lots of action in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, but at its core the story is about how friendship can change the world.
"The action and the fighting is about friendship. It's about love and trust and the building of the human connection between those characters," Matsuda says. "This is a message about peace and how there's a lot of fighting and action, but it is about how important it is to protect the precious peace of the world."
Bringing that vibe to life can be hard, but the show's choreographer Satomi Toma has been choreographing live shows like this one for a decade. Her job is to create a production that wows live audiences with new, exciting choreography while also remaining faithful to the spirit of the show.
Part of that means choreographing complicated fight scenes where the protagonists are wearing high heels and their beautiful, yet uncomfortable, sailor uniforms. She also needs to maneuver each character around the musical's many moving parts.
"I care about the links between how it appears with the projection and other elements that are visually happening around as well, and to add a little bit of the sense of joyfulness," Toma says via translator. "To bring it all together with all these in-between lines of making it a realistic fight and something that is attractive to be shown on stage is something that I care about."
She also works to incorporate the sense of wonder and beauty that she's come to love about the world of Sailor Moon into her choreography.
"Once I got involved in this production, I had the opportunity to reread the original comics and original manga, and I was so moved and impressed by this elegant line of beauty," Toma says. "It's how her hair moves, or how her skirt flitters, and like that sense of awe is something that I really want to keep in the production as well."
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon began and finished airing before Riko Tanaka was born. Though she missed the opportunity to watch it live, she remembers renting episodes of the show in her early childhood.
"I was 3 or 4 years old when I first came across Sailor Moon, and I think I saw it in animation first," Tanaka says via translator. "It was at that age when you kind of played the character with your friends."
Twenty years ago her favorite character to play was the green sailor guardian who possessed superhuman strength, Sailor Jupiter. Today, Tanaka is a professional actress playing Sailor Moon in the North American tour of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live.
Still early in her career, the 22-year-old says portraying the show's beloved main character is a labor of love that may well spell her rise to fame. Matsuda, the show's producer, says in Japan it's every young actress' dream to play Sailor Moon.
"This is a role that has been very important even within this industry, so my fellow actors who understand the significance of the role have been so encouraging, and they have been celebrating with me of this as my achievement as well," Tanaka says. "Now that I'm portraying the character, I feel so much love from throughout the entire world, everybody loves Sailor Moon, and I feel that so much playing that character myself."♦
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live • Thu, March 27 at 7:30 pm • $30-$85 • First Interstate Center for the Arts • 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • firstinterstatecenter.org
