Toumyu fans, how are we today?
Toumyu is sure full of surprises lately, making sure to keep its fandom fed with various news and announcements. They’re in Paris, then they’re playing baseball, and performing on Japanese national TV with Songs of Tokyo and Shibuya Note. In between, they’re releasing their Blu-rays and CD’s.
Then this happens today...
Toumyu 3, Mihotose no Komoriuta is getting a re-run early 2019. It’s not too surprising that Toumyu is doing a re-run of one of its plays. We’ve come to expect it ever since Atsukashiyama had its re-run this past summer. What is surprising is that they’re skipping Bakumatsu Tenrouden, the 2nd play in the franchise.
With team BakuTen’s recent and brief reunion on Songs of Tokyo, reformed with Horikawa 2.0, it seemed to be a perfect set-up to an imminent announcement of a BakuTen re-run. So today’s news, while exciting, is also confusing. As for the reasoning behind this out-of-order announcement, we can only speculate. The main explanation is actor scheduling conflicts. Sato Ryuuji seems to be anywhere and everywhere all at once. When he’s not sewn into his Kashuu outfit, the kid is either promoting a film, preparing for another play, or releasing an album and going on tour with his band. It also appears that our Kane-san, Arisawa Shoutarou, will be busy early 2019 with another play. So we have at least a few reasons as to why BakuTen is being skipped over for Mihotose.
Now, for the other bombshell. Looking closely at the new Mihotose visual, all the familiar characters are there, but wait, that steely cold glare seems different...That’s not Zaiki Takuma. Oh no.
We were all holding our breath when Ookurikara was not on the list for Shinken Ranbu Sai 2018, and now with news of the re-cast, even more speculations abound. Are scheduling conflicts to blame? Or is it something more sinister? Many fans fear for the latter, and legitimately so. It is a frightening possibility that Zaiki was re-cast due to the incident earlier this year for being caught having an actual life. If it’s true, then shame on the Japanese “fans” for forcing his ouster and shame on the heads of Toumyu for caving into the demands of those “fans.” Either way, Zaiki’s smoldering glare will be missed. I wish Zaiki the best of luck in future success and look forward to seeing what his replacement, Makishima Hikaru, will add to the character of Ookurikara.
So while we were still reeling over Mihotose 2.0...
Genji Bros Shutsujin! Time to give Kashuu a break and let these two young’uns have the spotlight for a bit. This should be a fun show and I look forward to seeing Miura Hiroki flash his ballet skills and Takano Akira flip all over the stage.
Good move, Toumyu.
The Toumyu franchise is definitely a cash cow. All they need to do is recycle previous shows, re-arrange for some new shorter, spotlight shows, cap off the year with a Ranbu Sai and they will still sell out and pull in a fortune. With all the recycling and re-dos, one can’t wonder if they’ll ever add all new shows and write new story lines to add more Touken Danshis to the cast (Dategumis, please).
