Hello! Thank you for all your work with your blog, it's amazing! I was wondering, how was Kazuma (or Ennoshita) in the play? I know he had a serious/important role this time around O__O
I’m going to be a teeny bit obnoxious and not put this answer under a Read More because I NEED as many people as possible to appreciate Kazuma’s Ennoshita with me. Especially after seeing tonight’s show.
And I’m gonna build up to it from the first show, because for me, Engeki has built up to this moment for Ennoshita in a way that the anime/manga never could. Stage shows have the ability to make sure someone is always there, always visible, always around, no matter how minor the character. In anime and manga, camera views get shifted to give focus to speaking characters; if you don’t get lines, you’re simply not seen as often. We don’t see as much of Ennoshita in the anime/manga the way we see him on-stage as a constant presence from day one, even if he was the butt of a lot of jokes and always comic relief, slapped around.
To me, because we didn’t see much of Ennoshita in the anime/manga prior to the moment where he gets swapped in for Daichi, I didn’t have much of an impression of him. It was easier for me to transplant the idea of “future captain” onto someone who was a little more of a blank slate. But stage Ennoshita has always had a lot more going on, so it’s a much bigger shift to see him go from sidelined minor character (visible, but aside) to center stage, and it’s a much more poignant change. In the anime/manga medium, there have been Nekoma and Seijoh characters who’ve gotten more screen-time than Ennoshita, so I think it’s a little bit harder to remember that he’s always been there, putting in the work in the sidelines. Kazuma we’ve always seen, always felt, starting from three years ago going now into his SIXTH show as this character, and the build-up to his shining moments give them so much more weight.
Now I saw tonight’s show, the evening performance of June 16th. Not the last show, that’s tomorrow, but Kenta and Kage-chan have always pulled out an extra person to give a little curtain call message for these shows (with full cast curtain call messages reserved for the final show). Tonight, they pulled out Kazuma. And Kazuma shared with us a very personal story, and started by saying that he thinks everyone can relate with Ennoshita. Maybe at one point you’ve quit something, maybe you’ve felt like quitting something because it was too hard, maybe you’ve regretted it.
Around four years ago, Kazuma seriously considered quitting acting. It was hard, he wasn’t sure about it anymore, and he was on the verge of leaving it behind him. This was around the time that they were holding auditions for Engeki Haikyuu, and he decided, why not give it a shot? And obviously, he got the part, and has continued acting, Engeki has kept him in it. At the very beginning, nobody is ever sure if the show would become a success and whether they’d be able to keep doing more shows. He’d had no idea if he’d be able to continue playing Ennoshita long enough so that he could act out this part of his story. But three years and six shows later, here he is, and it’s so important to him, and he’s so grateful that he could make it this far with this character in these productions, and he cried as he shared this story (most of the audience cried too).
Engeki Haikyuu doesn’t have the characters Kinoshita and Narita. They’ve never even alluded to them in the way that they alluded to Kiyoko in earlier shows before they actually cast her. Meaning: Ennoshita’s character is the ONLY member to have quit the team at any time, which makes his shame and regret all the more intense in the stage version.
They highlight this heavily in Ennoshita’s doubts and concerns, and it hits hard.
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