THERE'S A JAPANESE SAILOR MOON MUSICAL COMING TO A THEATER NEAR YOU
I went to South by Southwest to get the scoop on the ambitious global push behind Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live
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Sure, a Japanese-language musical adaptation of a popular manga and anime franchise can be a hit in New York. But will it play in Peoria?
That’s what Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live aims to find out, as a transpacific producing team takes a stage musical adaptation of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon—the hit manga and anime franchise colloquially known in the States as Sailor Moon—to 21 cities across the U.S. this spring.
Opening Saturday in Austin, Texas, after a March 12 preview in Pittsburgh, The Super Live won’t actually play Peoria. But it will play smaller markets like Sugar Land and Midland (two cities in Texas that I had, uh, never heard of?), not to mention Dayton, Ohio, in addition to bigger cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle.
That varied itinerary is by design. After their runaway success last fall with the New York engagement of Attack on the Titan: The Musical, producers Makoto Matsuda (founder of Japanese production company Nelke Planning) and Kumiko Yoshii (of New York-based Gorgeous Entertainment) have reunited for a tour of The Super Live that will test the popularity of manga and anime-based live entertainment across a wide range of regions and market sizes.
With a Japanese cast of 12 and a touring crew and management team of 14 Americans plus two from Japan, The Super Live represents the most ambitious U.S. outing yet for a growing genre of Japanese musicals that’s starting to find success abroad. In Japan, musicals based on comics (manga), animation (anime), and videogames—collectively dubbed 2.5D Musicals by fans and creators—comprise a whole category of live entertainment that earns a major percentage of the nation’s musical theater box office.
For the full backstory on the global growth of the genre, check out my story from October with all the relevant data points—including the fact that in 2022, Japanese sales for 2.5D Musicals accounted for no less than 40% of the nation’s total musical theater box office:
MEET JAPAN'S $175 MILLION MUSICAL THEATER SUBGENRE
2.5D Musicals are huge in Tokyo—and with the New York run of Attack on Titan, they've set out to conquer the world.
Since I wrote that story, Japan’s PIA Research Institute has released updated numbers showing further growth in the genre, with 2.5D Musicals reporting ¥28.3 billion (~$190 million) in total sales for 2023, up 7.9% from the prior year. Attendance rose 5% to hit 2.89 million, a new high that breaks the 2.78 million record set back in 2018.
And in New York, Attack on Titan: The Musical was a sold-out success for both the show’s producers and its local presenter, New York City Center.
All of that momentum contributes to the new, global push for Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live. In addition to testing the broader American market with the U.S. tour, a separate production of The Super Live, from the same producers, is now in the midst of a lengthy London engagement that wraps March 19.
Last week, in conjunction with the upcoming Austin opening of The Super Live, I moderated a panel with the show’s creators at South by Southwest, the sprawling, annual conference/festival that encompasses all manner of tech, business, arts, and culture. I spoke with three of the major creative forces behind the show—and picked up some behind-the-scenes intel along the way.
In this SPOTLIGHT STORY, I’ll share insights from my conversation with the three panelists:
Fumio Osano, an original editor of the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon manga who is now a steward of the franchise (and the guy who first suggested that our heroines wear sailor suits),
Makoto Matsuda, the Super Live producer who is also the chairman and founder of the Japan 2.5-Dimensional Musical Association, and
Riko Tanaka, the actress playing the protagonist Usagi—the teenager who transforms into the titular cosmic heroine Sailor Moon—in The Super Live.
Here’s the rundown on this Japanese musical’s big swing at the U.S. market.
BUT FIRST, A LITTLE BACKGROUND
Written and drawn by Naoko Takeuchi, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon is a serialized shōjo manga, or comic aimed at young female readers, that was first published from 1991 until 1997 in the magazine Nakayoshi. Comprised of some 60 chapters and spinoff tales, the full story is now collected across 18 volumes.
The plot follows a group of girls with superpowers who protect the Earth from the forces of evil. At the center of the tale is Usagi, a Japanese schoolgirl who transforms into the cosmic guardian Sailor Moon.
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon is one of the most enduringly popular—and globally recognizable—manga and anime franchises around. In its 30+ years of existence, the manga alone has sold 46 million copies worldwide and been translated into 20 languages.
Its first screen adaptation was one of the biggest titles in the wave of anime that brought Japanese animation to global prominence in the late 1990s. That TV series ran for 200 episodes that were broadcast in Japan from 1992-1997; it started appearing in the U.S. as early as 1995, and gained further Stateside popularity once it began airing in 1998 as part of Toonami, an influential block of programming on Cartoon Network.
Screen adaptations of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, including two anime adaptations and a live action TV series, have been seen in 40 countries around the world.
THE SUPER LIVE IS FAR FROM THE FIRST PRETTY GUARDIAN SAILOR MOON MUSICAL…
Back in Japan, they started making theater based on Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon almost as soon as the manga became popular. Since the first show hit the stage in 1993, the franchise has generated a steady stream of musicals, with an initial batch produced by toy manufacturer Bandai (1993-2005) followed by a fresh crop from the franchise’s current stage producer, Nelke Planning (2013-present).
In all, there are 40 musicals based on the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon IP so far. That’s not a typo. In Japan, the franchise has such a storied history onstage that fandoms have formed around the multiple actresses who have played Sailor Moon (and other characters) over the years.
… BUT IT’S THE FIRST STAGE ADAPTATION CREATED JUST FOR INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCES
“This is something we developed specifically for a global, overseas audience,” Matsuda said (speaking, as all the panelists did, through a translator). Its storyline, based on the first arc of the manga (known as the Dark Kingdom arc), requires no prior knowledge and eschews many of the complexities of the Sailor Moon lore, telling its full story in a quick 95 minutes.
“For those who are not as familiar with the original franchise, this can be enjoyed immediately for the first time seeing it,” Osano added. The accessibility extends to younger audiences, whose enjoyment of the show in London seemed particularly gratifying for creators.
THERE WAS AN EARLIER VERSION
The first incarnation of The Super Live played Tokyo and Paris in 2018 and then had a brief runs in 2019 in Washington, D.C., and New York City (where The Super Live sold out three performances at what is now the Palladium Theater, the Times Square venue to which the show will return for five performances next month). It played Taipei in 2023.
In the first version of The Super Live, “we had very limited, minimal speaking components,” Matsuda said, in order to broaden the international accessibility. That’s because…
IT’S PERFORMED IN JAPANESE BY A JAPANESE CAST
Despite being intended for global audiences, The Super Live hasn’t been translated for any of the territories it’s played. Both the earlier incarnation and this new version are performed by a Japanese cast in Japanese, with accompanying supertitles.
“There are anime fans all over the world, and over the years they’ve been really positively receiving the Japanese language,” Matsuda said. “They’re very used to it.” The original language also lends the show additional texture and cultural authenticity, an important factor to many of the fans turning out for the production.
In fact, international audiences have proven so open to Japanese language productions that the creators have beefed up the dialogue for this latest outing: “We felt like we could do more with the acting and speaking components, so we added more Japanese dialogue to The Super Live for the new version,” Matsuda noted.
THE NOSTALGIA ELEMENT IS AN AMERICAN THING
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon has been around long enough in the States that The Super Live benefits from a boost of nostalgia for the millennials who have grown up into one of the prime demographics of live event ticketbuyers.
But the nostalgia angle isn’t really there in Japan, where the franchise—and the musicals it’s spawned—have been ever-present. “For us, there’s not specifically a sense of, ‘We will pull out something from the past and bring it back,’” Matsuda said. “It’s more like it’s been going on and has been strong all along. But we’re very happy it’s the case that here in America, there’s new recognition and appreciation for the classics.”
THOSE SKIRTS ARE REALLY SHORT
Tanaka, the actress who plays the show’s title character on the U.S. tour, wore her full Sailor Moon regalia to the SXSW panel. The skirt of the costume—and of all the costumes worn by the five Pretty Guardians—are just as short as they look in the anime, with high waistlines that make the actresses’ legs look even longer.
Tanaka said it took her some time to feel comfortable in the outfit, but by now she’s well used to it. The Super Live is her third stage production playing Sailor Moon, after Princess Kaguya’s Lover (Kaguya-hime no Koibito) in 2021 and 30th Anniversary Musical Festival -Chronicle- in 2022. (She’s called “Riko-Moon” by the franchise’s die-hard fans, to distinguish her from other actresses who’ve played the role including Yui Yokohama, or “Yui-Moon,” of the London production.)
It’s also not so easy to sing and dance with those long, long pigtails—she’s had to learn special choreography just to manage them. “They get caught up in everything!” she said with a laugh, demonstrating the ways they can get twisted around her forearms.
DID WE MENTION IT’S NOT A MUSICAL?
I mean, it is, in that it’s a story told onstage with both dialogue and song. Nearly all the songs in The Super Live are new, with tunes by anime composer Go Sakabe and KYOHEI and lyrics by Kaori Miura, a veteran of the 2.5D Musical genre (Musical: The Prince of Tennis, Tokyo Revengers The Musical) who is also the director and book writer of The Super Live.
But because there have been dozens of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon musicals in Japan, its creators insist on referring to this one—the streamlined one aimed at international audiences—as The Super Live, not a musical. The distinction is mostly about branding, as far as I can tell, but The Super Live is unlike the previous musicals in one other respect, too: The last 15 minutes of the show are a megamix-style concert that includes a song or two that fans will recognize from the anime series.
IT’S AN AMBASSADOR FOR A WHOLE GENRE
Or at least that’s what its backers are hoping. For one thing, it’s an international calling card for the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon franchise that could, in success, grow and sustain the fanbase around the world.
That potential certainly seems to be on the mind of Osano, who oversees the legacy of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon as an exec at PNP Inc. “To do the show in the U.K. and in America, where it’s most popular—that’s always been a dream,” he said.
At the same time, Matsuda, the producer who’s bullish on expanding the reach of 2.5D Musicals around the world, is hoping that everything they learn from this tour of The Super Live will help shape future international itineraries for more Japanese musicals based on manga and anime.
There’s an element of national and cultural pride that figures into it, too. “It’s like bringing the core essence of Japan itself,” Matsuda said. “Productions like this are one of the treasures of Japan.”
FURTHER READING
You know who else has gotten into musicals based on manga and anime? The American composer Frank Wildhorn, who’s written a handful of such titles for Asian producers. I talked to Wildhorn about it in this interview from last year:
THIS MANGA IS A FRANK WILDHORN MUSICAL
While he was away from Broadway, this American composer became one of the most popular theater creatives in the world. Now he's readying his return to New York and London.