I was lucky enough to get to see the Takarazuka Castlevania show and it rules!
I’m remembering some stuff out of order, and this is my first Takarazuka, so I may state the obvious if you’re more familiar with it. Details for anybody who might be interested in what if Symphony of the Night was a musical acted entirely by women, colored with my vague recollections of playing a couple of the games like 20 years ago:
It does indeed start with the famous “Die, monster! You don’t belong in this world!” intro, except with no wine glass toss, and Maria is there.
For the fight scenes, screens come down and play CGI magic effects.
Maria generally gets a lot more to do than appear for 14 seconds like she does in the game.
When somebody dies, they sink down through a trapdoor. The stage in general is super cool, with a ton of different backdrops, a huge revolving table, and nice use of the whole thing from front to back.
There are backup dancers all in black with capes they swoosh around so they look like bats and I love them so much.
French Revolution time! We’ve got dancing revolutionaries and Robespierre, who I was absolutely not expecting in this play about Dracula. Shaft the wizard is there.
We get a flashback of Dracula going on his business trip. While he’s gone, Lisa tells Alucard that in her research she’s found a cure for vampirism that she’ll give Vlad as soon as he comes back. But then, she gets burnt as she calls out to Alucard that her last wish is for him not to hate humans and for him to keep Dracula from taking revenge. We see little!Alucard here, and he uses chichiue and hahaue to his parents.
Robespierre gets betrayed by Shaft and the revolutionaries turn on him, killing him, which Shaft uses to revive Dracula. If anybody ever asks you about Robespierre’s downfall, tell them it was for wizard reasons.
Annette gets kidnapped as bait to bring Richter to the castle. Richter gets a song to the tune of Bloody Tears, which rules. Then he gets brainwashed by Shaft.
Present Alucard travels through a village where they’re having a festival and singing a catchy song about how this once a year, on the night of the full moon, lost loved ones come back to visit. Alucard meets Maria here, who remembers that he saved her from vampires years ago when she was little. She remembers she asked him his name and he said, “One such as me has no name,” which she thought was badass. They go their separate ways.
I forget if it’s around here, but at some point they learn about Dracula being back, and Maria says that if Alucard won’t come with her, she’ll go to the castle alone.
Alucard finds a little girl in the woods, who says her papa was taken by the Revolution. He takes her to some nuns and an abbot, where he runs into Maria again. Some monsters, who are dancers in cool layered flowing red, attack. Maria and Alucard fight them off, but the abbot is freaked out, declares anybody who can fight those monsters must not be human, and throws them out.
Alucard and Maria get attacked by a lackey vampire, who they defeat, but not before he bites Maria and vampirizes her.
Alucard takes her back to his sweet bachelor pad, which has a drawing of Lisa on the wall. When Maria wakes up they talk about Lisa, and Alucard remembers the vampirism cure that must be somewhere in her laboratory.
They fly there, as shown on the screens. Maria falls once and Alucard catches her romantically.
The laboratory music is Dance of Gold, which is cool. They find Lisa’s journal, but not the cure. They conclude Dracula must keep it close.
Maria’s vampirism takes over and she does a kickass evil laugh before attacking Alucard with her four beasts, which are represented through the screens at first, then by dancers in white. Alucard fights them off and she returns to normal. She gives him the holy glasses, which are opera glasses he gazes at the audience through until she tells him that just having them works.
Alucard runs into a robed and hooded figure who shows him the world of the dead, which has angelic dancing figures with candles. Robespierre is there and gets a speech about how he was trying to save France. Hi Robespierre.
Then we see Lisa at the stake, but she urges Alucard to kill all the humans. Yep, the figure was the succubus. He sees through it and fights her.
There’s a fight with Richter, where the mind control is represented as a green orb floating on the screens. Richter gets Alucard on his knees and wraps his whip around his neck, which, hot. Alucard breaks free and destroys the mind control orb, bringing Richter to his senses.
Alucard confronts Dracula and they fight, Alucard insisting that Lisa wouldn’t want him to wreak revenge on humanity. Alucard wins, but can’t bring himself to kill his father, and throws his sword away. Shaft takes the opportunity to attack Alucard, and Dracula defends his son and kills the wizard. Dracula gives Alucard the vampirism cure.
Then Dracula asks Alucard to finish him off and send him to be with Lisa, which he does, in a scene that was sad but also charming because of Dracula dying very carefully so that he’d land on the trapdoor.
Maria gets unvampired.
There’s the scene from the end of Symphony of the Night where all the good guys part, except with the addition of Alucard telling Richter to go to Paris to rescue that little girl’s father, so I guess Richter gets a stint as the Scarlet Pimpernel. Alucard goes off and Maria runs after him.
But then we get one more scene! Maria finds Alucard at a grave he’s made for Dracula, where she prays. We see Dracula and Lisa looking on. Then there’s a romantic bit where Alucard wraps his cape around Maria, which is sweet, and they go off together.
All in all it was great, the music was great, the costumes were great, I loved it. I wish I could see it again immediately. I’m definitely gonna see more Takarazuka if I get the chance.
(pic1) "The new character is cute, right? 🐰By the way, when we tried to come up with a name as a band, we all went, Hmm 🧠 and froze up entirely. So, we decided to leave it to you guys instead. 🙏 I'm sure, you'll come up with a great name. 🤝"
Ruki: (pic2) "As a side note, this little guy’s name was decided in about 10 seconds thanks to you guys and a certain P***chu. 🐭I’m already feeling more attached to him."
Ruki: (pic3) "For this little one, we went with a name combining “RAD” and “Rabbit” from a suggestion in the Instagram comments. We all thought, “That’s nice, I like it,” and managed to decide in just over 20 minutes. 🐇"
Ruki: "For more details, see the newsletter 📨 #HERESY"
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
blakekathryn
kaledo-art
dailybridgerton
