No one asked for this but just going to vent a little.
Am I excited for the new HakuMyu Live? Yes. Will I be looking forward to it? Yes. Are you okay with still more cast changes? Yes. Then what’s the problem? The problem is that Marvelous and/or whoever is in charge of producing the Hakuouki musicals continue to basicaly just… not get it.
Ever since they blindsided us with the cast change last March I have and will always continue to support any new cast members that are brought in. The actors should never be the focus of anyone’s frustrations as they had no hand in any of the decision making. But I’m annoyed that they continue to pretend they can just completely start over without ever acknowledging what came before.
I don’t like making comparisons but given the recent cast change in the Sailor Moon musicals, I feel like it’s relevant. When the last Sailor Moon musical started doing their promos they knew ahead of time that they wouldn’t not be carrying over into any musicals that followed with the main five inner senshi. So what did they do? They made it known. The girls were given a send off that was reminiscent to me of how they used to handle cast changes in the older Sailor Moon musicals. You always knew when someone in the main cast was moving on. Either before they left or after, if it was sudden. The reasons were always shared with the fans.
Now, unlike HakuMyu, the Sailor Moon musicals can get away with the newer musicals being different. The original run of musicals ended roughly 10 years ago and were handled by a completely different production company. So it’s not surprising that if they were going to revive the musicals that they would be something new and different. It’s not a bad thing. Not to mention the original run of Sailor Moon musicals managed to get through each season at least twice over and then some.
HakuMyu on the other hand? Has none of these things. It’s still being directed, produced, scored, and choreographed by the same people. And it’s still under Marvelous’ umbrella of musical productions. To this day we still have no idea why they felt the need to completely change the cast. Actors like Junya, Maasa, and Shuuto, while over it now, seemed rather hurt by it at the time and were very vague but definitely made it seem like this was not because they themselves were moving on to other projects. Now some of the actors like Daisuke were moving on, but clearly they still brought back Shougo, Yuusuke and Naoya for the demons so… cast conflicts doesn’t seem to be the reason. It seems like they really just wanted to pump in new faces before they even bothered to finish out all six of the main routes. They only had Sano-hen left, so what was the deal? I will always remain frustrated that they’ve kept secretive.
Were the two new musicals bad? No. I wasn’t really thrilled with Reimeiroku, but the first musical with a new cast is always the roughest, but they managed to make improvements with Shinsengumi Kitan, even somewhat pulling from older songs.
Now here we sit. I always hoped they’d do another Live show but the charm of the Live was getting to see EVERYONE. Including all the Chizuru actresses. Am I excited to finally get some Ibuki/Chizuru interactions? Hell yes, but not at the expense of Marvelous and the powers that be ignore Kazama-hen and Heisuke-hen. I don’t even mind that they had to change Heisuke and Shinpachi because we all know how busy Renren and Hiroki are now, and Sannan won’t be there either because I’m sure Teruma is plenty busy as well. But the question remains, is this to buy time? Are they going to try to end the musical series with this? They’ve basically discontinued the Hakuouki musical blog. It’s certainly not as active as it used to be.
So, while I’m grateful for more musicals some kind of insight on what they plan for the future would be nice instead of constantly feeling like we’re being left hanging. Prince of Stride announced four damn stage plays at once so… what’s the deal Marvelous? Hakuouki continues to prove to be a money maker and yet it’s kind of scarce at the same time? You’d think with the new game Marvelous might be excited to have not only the six main routes to work with but six new ones as well? There’s so much content that they could work with and that fans would love to see so I just hope they get it together and go back to doing the different routes starting with Sano-hen because in English and Japanese that’s the biggest complaint I’ve seen. The stream for Shinsengumi Kitan was filled with comments wondering when we would be getting Sano’s musical so Marvelous, get with the times and LISTEN to the fans. There is plenty of money to be made if only they would listen.