A fangirl’s guide to… The Takarazuka Revue
Starting off a new series today! Think of this as a ‘building blocks’ series, where I give you a bit of insight into some of the historical things that influence your favourite media. Today, we are taking a look into one of the concepts that is most important to the shoujo genre- The Takarazuka Revue. From one of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon’s couples to the very existence of the ‘bifauxnen’ trope (more on that in a separate post), watch any shoujo anime and you will spot Takarazuka references left, right and centre. But what is Takarazuka? Let’s have a look.
The Takarazuka Revue is a Japanese all-female theatre company which contains 5 troupes: Flower, Moon, Snow, Star and Cosmos. Before joining the company itself, actresses attend a theatre school (if you have ever read ‘Kageki Shoujo’ then this is about to sound very familiar), in which they are divided into two categories: otokoyaku, meaning ‘man role’, and musumeyaku, meaning ‘daughter role’. After this point, their role is to perform a highly exaggerated version of this gender identity. These selections are largely based on the actresses’ existing characteristics; otokoyaku are generally tall, with stronger facial features such as thick eyebrows and a high nose bridge. Musumeyaku, on the other hand, conform more to traditional ideas of femininity, being shorter with higher pitched voices and overall ‘daintier’ features. Within each troupe, there is one principal position available for each of these, and this will again sound familiar if your have ever watched Bushiroad idol-inspired theatrical series, ‘Revue Starlight’: for musumeyaku, there is simply, ‘Top musumeyaku’, and for otokoyaku, there is the illusive, ‘top star’. A fun fact about top stars: in all Takarazuka productions, the staging is deliberately set so that the Top Star is always in the centre of the stage.
But why am I telling you all this? After all, this blog is not really about theatre. Well, if you read my most recent post, you’d know it was about Riyoko Ikeda’s Rose of Versailles. This manga has been adapted in many forms since its original release, one form of which being multiple stage musicals (I think you can see where I’m going with this). Not only have these musicals been solely performed by the Takarazuka revue, but they also introduced the ever-important top star system to Takarazuka, with Lady Oscar being the first Top Star role. This is where Takarazuka becomes especially important to shoujo. It’s no secret that the anime and manga ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena’ draw heavily on ‘Rose of Versailles’ in its frequent use of rose motifs but it also has a musical which, although it is not performed by the Takarazuka, is inspired by the company in its all-female cast. In other shoujo manga, you can find characters who are Takarazuka-inspired, who are mostly (but not always) part of the ‘bifauxnen’ trope. For example, in ‘Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon’, Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune are inspired by Otokoyaku and Musumeyaku respectively.
But what happens when you reference Takarazuka in a more on-the-nose way? In this case, you end up with ‘Kageki Shojo!!’ and ‘Revue Starlight’. The former of which is a shoujo drama which takes place in the sort of fictional ‘Kouka’ school. This fictional school is directly based off of the Takarazuka music school, and there are very few discrepancies between the two other than the name and number of troupes. Kumiko Saiki’s manga is as much a critique of Takarazuka as it is a love letter to it, with our wide-eyed protagonist Sarasa Watanabe admiring Kouka, only to be faced with some harsh realities once she actually gets there. ‘Revue Starlight’ is a more symbolic action-musical multimedia franchise which actually has stage plays of its own! It has a much more critical angle on Takarazuka as it depicts the auditions to become Top Star as literal battles between the girls. As someone who has watched both series (as well as reading the manga for the former and playing the game for the latter), I really enjoyed both of them and I’d recommend them both to any anime fans who like theatre.
Now you hopefully understand a bit more about Takarazuka and the media inspired by it. If you’ve found yourself all the way down here, thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please engage with it and follow me on here, as well as on my Instagram, which is in my bio. Goodbye for now!
