#you fell right into my trap
so. hello. i usually write up my butai thoughts as, um, 100+ tweet threads in the immediate wake of whatever i just saw, but this time around i thought i’d work them out into a proper report, of a sort. if you, too, have seen this show already and want to talk about it… please. any time. always.
about reviewing: this is my very favorite 2.5D franchise, ever. but this is also a review, not a cheerleading exercise, so not every single thing i have to say is unrelentingly positive. having said that, i respect kinoshita, wada, suga-zachou, and the staff at large more than just about any creative team in this corner of japanese theater fandom so like. i’m not here to drag, lol.
about spoilers: i talk about the plot elements covered but try to avoid spoiling any of the fun production surprises. :) happy to do a more spoilery play-by-play later if folks are curious.
about length: i just checked and it’s 2400 words im so sorry.
without further ado…
I made the mistake of rereading this before reblogging and now I’m crying over Kazuma all over again.
Also this whole review is very well written but “still can’t yell and enunciate at the same time” is the best thing I’ve read in days and is also so true.
And I would LOVE to hear your intensive theories on how Kazuma ended up in this role, but maybe that’s just me!
so, fun story, tumblr mobile did not… include… these comments when i got the reblog notif. so i just saw them now. THANKS TUMBLR.
(also: thank you/poor kage-chan. but this was literally the first thing i noticed @ shinka no natsu, that like… he seems to be clenching his teeth whenever he yells? in an effort to enunciate, i assume? the effect of which is that he always sounds thisclose to tumbling all over his lines. it’s a shame because he definitely has lots of potential in this role, but kageyama-the-character yells a lot, and this hurdle makes it hard for him to fully deliver on some big scenes. esp when his partner is kenta, who by now has yelling while enunciating down to a fine art. XD)
ANYWAY why yes i WOULD love to talk EVEN MORE about my new favorite topic, kazuma. i would love to talk about this so much that i just had to come back to this paragraph and add a read more cut. cries. why am i like this.
so when i wrote that i had not yet heard kazuma’s curtain call story, so i was speculating that maybe he auditioned because of kinoshita’s involvement, kinoshita being a respected Serious Theater director and all. kazuma hadn’t done any 2.5D stuff at all since tenimyu eight years earlier, so having this veteran show up in a minor role in an as-yet unproven sports anime play was a bit unexpected. and as it turned out, i was half right! he did in fact audition because he wanted to work with someone in the production, it’s just that that person was suga kenta. XD
but do i think he auditioned for ennoshita? literally the smallest role on the entire karasuno team? (and lbr, most of aoba jousai?) uh, i certainly do not. my guess is that he auditioned for sugawara.* the converse of this is my other guess, that the role of ennoshita was not necessarily in nakayashiki’s original script.
* tho who knows. maybe he auditioned for oikawa. take a moment to imagine that.
i mean, this is purely conjecture based on, like… looking at the first play as staged, lol. and the shoen curtain call comments about creating the stage role from scratch. and the fact that hq didn’t script/cast roles beyond the essentials for some time, cf. how damn long it took to bring kiyoko-san on stage, hayashi tsuyoshi-san’s ongoing struggle to play two generations of ukais, kenta’s fight to include ikejiri-kun, the continuing absence of narita and kinoshita, etc. those are all sensible decisions – my point here is how unusual it is that a character like ennoshita was around from the very beginning, especially when there was no guarantee there would ever be more than one production, much less six.
(and i do believe that while nelke was probably hoping from the beginning for the birth of a successful franchise, no one especially kinoshita actually signed on for more than one show until… what happened, happened. check kinoshita’s generally fascinating interview here, which can be summed up as “yeah, before i was asked to direct this i didn’t even go here.”)
so basically what i’m saying is that my secret theory is that ennoshita was added to the shoen script because they wanted kazuma and didn’t have a role for him. XD
because i mean, kinoshita loooooves kazuma. this recent production being proof, ofc, but also 1) the speed with which kazuma was included in other kinoshita productions – honganji returns, in 2016, and, especially 2) W3, last winter. kazuma was the only cast member from 2.5D-land; the rest were actors/dancers from more… conventional? respected? strains of theater. most importantly, the entire play was completely dialogue-free. that asks a lot of your actors; you don’t cast people in that kind of show unless you really trust their ability to deliver well beyond, like, speaking lines convincingly.
(it was really amazing, incidentally. pretty much cemented my attitude of “if worry-san’s involved, sign me up.” i’d always liked kazuma a lot, of course, and admired his diverse skillset, but that was the turning point from “fond of” to “intense love and respect for” haha.)
ha, i just went and checked the haikyuu exhibition guide from last spring and kazuma straight up says that he was really conscious of how important it was for him to make stage ennoshita important to stage karasuno, or the character could very well be cut from any subsequent productions because he wasn’t necessary. “it was like the audition just kept going.” jfc.
ANYWAY, that is my theory, it is only a theory but! maybe someday we’ll hear more, i’m really hoping for some more in-depth interviews about the history of the show this fall.
