Posted in: Anime, Pop Culture, TV | Tagged: sailor moon

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live Team Talk NA Tour

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live's Satomi Toma, Riko Tanaka, and Makoto Matsuda discuss the current North American tour.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live is not an ordinary musical: it features elements not found in original musicals or stage shows like live subtitles, concert elements, and the incorporation of 2D anime and effects, prompting the "2.5D" designation. Satomi Toma (choreographer), Riko Tanaka (Sailor Moon), and Makoto Matsuda (lead producer) sat down with the press to discuss the upcoming North American tour of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live and the global impact of Sailor Moon. Here's a look at some of the key highlights:

Riko, what's it like playing such a beloved character?

RT: It's really exciting. I've always loved Sailor Moon since I was a small kid. I'm a little too young to [have been] experiencing it live, but I was of the era where I would rent Sailor Moon at a video rental shop and watch it  – that's how much I loved Sailor Moon. 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.

What exactly is a 2.5D musical? What does "Super Live" mean?

MM: It's based on the idea of bringing the two-dimensional world of manga and animation or even gaming [to life] in that way. The characters that are portrayed in 2d are brought to life in a 3d living human actor; it's an in-between world of expressing the 2d in the best way of 3d. You'll know what "super live" means when you see it! It has the regular song, music, dance, technology, visuals, projections – so much more than a normal conventional musical. We wanted to honor the situation by naming it and giving it a new category name, it's almost like a manifesto to call it a new thing, and that is our intention of calling it not a musical but the "super live.

"Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon" is known for its dynamic action sequences. How do you approach translating the essence of these sequences into live choreography that captures the source material while also creating a fresh, exciting theatrical experience?

ST: What I do is realistically, the actors are all young females, and they're not only limited by not only physically how hard they can move, they're wearing the outfits, costume, it's very different – it's not protective gear, they have a lot of exposed parts of their body. You want to be safe; they're also wearing high heels doing this, which is crazy when you think about it. There's a limitation to what they can do, but what I care about is not only doing something difficult but doing something that would appear beautifully and elegantly as a movement, so not just making it into a strong fight scene, but to make it visually look attractive by doing so. I care about the lengths between how it appears with the projection and other elements that are visually happening around as well. And to add a sense of joyfulness that comes to it as well. Keeping the feel of the movement in sync to what can realistically be done – we have a lot of great professional actresses; it's a super crucial element 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 I care about.

Can you speak to the universality of the story and characters and its global impact?

MM: The fact that this is a story that's set in Japan and the character, Tsukino Usagi, is a Japanese girl – that being portrayed and played by a Japanese actress is something that's really interesting and exciting, and we're very proud about being able to bring this musical and beloved story throughout the world by being played by jp actresses is something that's very special to us and we're very proud to see. Also, because everybody has grown up seeing "Sailor Moon" as a Japanese anime and manga, they're used to that familiarity, so this coming to life in this way and being still portrayed by Japanese is something that resonates with people, the audience as well, so we're very excited about that too. During the VIP preview in Pittsburgh, after the show, when the cast comes around for high fives, someone exclaimed, 'She's the real one!' so that left an impression on me.

What do you hope audiences take away from "Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live?"

RT: "At [the VIP preview in] Pittsburgh, it was so amazing, the audience was so incredible. I felt the love from them so much – I came from Japan doing this, my first time doing this outside Japan, and I felt how America is so loving of this production, and I'm very honored. I want to make sure that this beloved character of Sailor Moon and how people look up to love her can be portrayed in the best way. All 21 cities going through America, we're really excited to bring that sense to everybody."

ST: When we were in Pittsburgh, we saw so many amazing audiences -they were all prepared and ready, wearing costumes, and they're ready to enjoy Sailor Moon, so it was really exciting and amazing. We understand that we are very honored to be portraying that amazement and attraction that a Sailor Moon project has – we are ready to do more than what is expected, and we will go beyond that expectation. We are ready to show that. I hope people expect something really exciting coming to Sailor Moon, not thinking they're just going to see something they know, but get beyond what they are expecting is something we hope to bring to you.

MM: There's three things I want people to take home: the first message is…peace and how there's a lot of fighting and action, but it's about how that is a sad thing and how important it is, how precious peace is and that's something we want to say. The second thing is a message of love. Sailor Moon is loved by generations of people – we see people who come, mother and daughter, who come together and enjoy it, different generations that come together and they are very happy about it. We want people, after seeing it, to feel a sense of that love. That doesn't have to be certain partners, it could be, "I want to call my mom and say hello," that kind of love as well. A message of love is something that's important, compassion and love. And this is probably the most important thing, I want people to feel energized. We get energized from the feedback from the audience; the love we receive is something that's so contagious and we hope the audience feels that love and excitement and feels refreshed and energized from our production as well. Those are the three things I hope the audience feels from Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live opens March 15 in Austin, TX, and continues throughout the states before ending in NYC the last weekend of April. The full tour schedule can be found on the official website.

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