fanfeline replied to your post “I’m still bitter that Toho, in its infinite wisdom, didn’t sell hand...”
Is there context?? or just a longing for hand puppets
So, the Toho and Takarazuka productions both restructured the musical rather drastically at certain points, adding and subtracting various songs as they saw fit, altering character roles, etc. (Not the least of which was making Artois the main villain instead of Ramard.)
And, in both productions, they dropped “Pour un Nouveau Monde” in as a song that is put in to do a blow by blow description of what’s going on at the meeting of the Estates General. (Instead of the Huge Ass Throne and Flying Deputies from the French production.) And, in the Toho, they made it into a song that Ramard and the Secret Police sing while holding...
And then that backdrop falls away and you have the ACTUAL CAST performing it, with the Secret Police moving them around like they’re puppets. It’s a little hard to explain and probably looks a little fakey with just screenshots, but I give full props to the entire cast on stage for selling the illusion that the actors playing the Secret Police are really manipulating their movements.
So, personally, I think (1) The hand-puppets are a little adorable, albeit still slightly creepy, and (2) This would have been a fantastic, fantastic merchandise opportunity, since the designs are already THERE. And merchandising is, if I’m not mistaken, one of the major ways that Toho and the actors make money, so...
And most of the 1789 merchandise that I saw on the merchandising page was, like...macarons, keychains, and cast photos and those are obviously lovely but I want (1) A Teddy Bear Version of Ronan because Teppei Koike already has the face for it and (2) Handpuppets so I can act out fanfic ideas without having to order custom funko pops instead.
