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Jack Jeanne Complete Collection - Interview with Ishida Sui and Towada Shin Translation

This interview is from the Jack Jeanne Complete Collection art book, it’s available on CDJapan and Amazon jp. You can also purchase a digital only version on bookwalker jp. I encourage anyone reading to purchase the game (if you haven't already) or the art book itself to support Ishida and Towada directly. 💕

This is a VERY long interview so I apologise for any typos or errors I may have missed.

~ ~ ~

An interview with Ishida Sui and Towada Shin, who both worked on writing the story of Jack Jeanne. In this interview they reveal what went on behind the scenes during production, rejected story ideas and much more. This interview was conducted remotely on the 9th of February 2021.

Interviewer: Yui Kashima

How did Ishida Sui end up making an otome game?

—How did the production of Jack Jeanne begin?

Ishida: It was sometime around Autumn 2015 I think… On an old personal site that I used to run, I received an email from the company Broccoli to an email address that I no longer use. It was a commission request for character designs.

—In 2015 Tokyo Ghoul was still being serialised wasn’t it?

Ishida: Yes. Usually job offers like that go through Shueisha first, so I contacted my editor asking why this one was sent to my private email… At the time, in addition to working on Tokyo Ghoul, I was also drawing illustrations for a tear-off calendar and very busy with various other things, so when my editorial department heard about the offer they seemed very shocked like "What!?".

—Why did you decide to accept the offer even though you were so busy?

Ishida: I would often receive offers asking for me to draw manga or illustrations, so I figured that this one was a similar case. However, some words in the email caught my eye. Like ‘Gender Swap’, ‘Takarazuka’ and ‘All Boys Opera'. When I saw these concept ideas, a dream began to swell in my chest and I felt like giving it a try.

I think if it had just been a normal character design job, I would have turned it down. However just from reading the short brief in the email my interest was piqued. While in discussions with the Young Jump editorial department, I also casually mentioned the kind of offer I’d received to Towada-san.

Towada: Yeah, Ishida-san asked me for some advice. I was also drawn to the ‘Gender Swap’ and ‘Opera’ concepts. I could easily visualise the setting of the story. Additionally, it seemed like it would be a story that included many different themes such as gender. When I thought about that, I figured that Ishida-san would be a good fit, since I knew he would be able to draw something that went beyond all genders.

Ishida: I’ve been drawing androgynous characters for a long time, so Towada-san and I talked and wondered if that's what they must be looking for. After that, I created my own proposal and submitted it to Broccoli.

—You created your own proposal, Ishida-san?

Ishida: When I looked at the original proposal that Broccoli had sent me, a lot of it differed from my personal tastes. It was a very upbeat and dazzling story. It would’ve been hard for me to match my art style to that, so in my proposal I noted things like ‘if it were me, I’d do something more like this’. I was interested in this unpolished gem of a story, so I thought it would be a waste to turn it down altogether. I wanted to at least try throwing my own ideas into the ring, so I spent a week creating the six main characters and sent them in.

—At that time, I heard that the game wasn’t titled ‘Jack Jeanne’ yet, but was instead called ‘Jiemarie’.

Ishida: At first, I wanted to try creating a word that doesn’t exist. So using French as a base, I came up with ‘Jiemarie’ as the game's provisional title. But then a month later when I was reconsidering the title, I looked at it again and thought, damn this looks lame. So I hurriedly called Towada-san on Skype and we entered a discussion that lasted about ten hours over what the title should be.

That’s when we decided on ‘Jack Jeanne’. The male roles take the name from the knight, or the ‘Jack’ in a deck of playing cards. And the female roles ‘Jeanne’ take from the word parisienne and Jeanne d’Arc. When these two terms are put together, I feel like you can comprehend what the game is about with a bit of nuance. Plus you can shorten it to ‘JJ’… That’s also the title of a magazine though (lol).

—Taking on another job whilst your manga was being serialised sounds like it would be tough on you both physically and mentally.

Ishida: I think I must’ve been a bit unwell (lol). My body was fine, but being able to work on something other than a serialised manga was a lot easier on me mentally. I may have seen it as a way to escape, so I didn’t feel that working on two projects at the same time was difficult. When it comes to game development, I can only create what I’m capable of, and there was no set release date yet. Of course, I would work on and submit things whenever I could though.

—What kind of things would you submit?

Ishida: I would sketch character designs, discuss and create story elements with Towada-san and try to put Univeils history into chronological order. Then I would share the progress with Broccoli and have meetings and such with them. In the beginning, rather than having to draw anything yet, it was mostly just brainstorming and planning. That’s why I think I was able to do it all concurrently with the serialisation of my manga.

~ ~ ~

How Ishida Sui and Towada Shin know each other

—Do you chat with Towada-san often?

Ishida: Well yeah, she is my older sister after all.

Towada: We talk a lot. When we both have the time we chat over Skype.

Ishida: Once we start the conversation can last up to five or six hours. We mostly talk about things that happened throughout our day. When I’m talking to someone I often bring up something that’s happened to me and ask their opinion on it. She became someone that I could chat with whilst working on my manga. Ever since my student days we’d talk until early morning, I usually told her about storyboards I’d drawn.

—At the Ishida Sui exhibition it was revealed that Towada-san had even given you advice on some of your earliest works.

Ishida: Yeah that’s right. It was a work I’d prepared for a 'bring your own work along' induction course in Tokyo that I attended back in my student days. It was a manga about two characters who eventually became the prototypes for Tsukiyama and Hori Chie in Tokyo Ghoul. It was only about 30 pages long, however when I showed it to Towada-san the day before the presentation, she told me that she thought my linework was too thin.

Towada: Yeah, the overall linework of the manga was thinly drawn. Once I told Ishida-san this thought, he began tracing over his linework and making it thicker. And then when he looked at it again, he said “Yep, I need to redraw the whole thing”.

The linework being too thin was only my personal opinion and the presentation was in Tokyo the next day, so in horror, I began hastily telling him, “You won’t make it in time, stop, stop!”

Ishida: All I could think about was that the lines really were too thin, so I wanted to redraw it. All of the screentones had already been affixed to the panels, but I didn’t want to bring something along with me whilst knowing it wasn’t the best that it could be.

Towada: Ishida-san handled the linework and I helped with redoing the screentones. We worked throughout the night and finished redrawing the whole manuscript. Once it was done, it wasn’t even comparable to the previous version, the lines were powerful and the characters' expressions conveyed a lot. I was seriously worried though (lol), I didn’t know if we’d complete it in time.

Ishida: I couldn’t think about anything other than the lines being too thin, so I wasn’t even worried about whether I had enough time or not.

Towada: I fell asleep halfway through, but you continued and boarded that Tokyo bound flight without having slept a wink, didn’t you?

Ishida: Yeah. I let Towada-san sleep and continued applying the screentones myself right up until the very last minute. I was still applying them whilst on the plane and also after my arrival in Tokyo. I used screentone number 10 a lot, so I remember the scenery around me gradually began to look grainy like the screentone. It felt as though I was hallucinating.

—Sounds like it was a tough manuscript to complete. Towada-san was also the author for the Tokyo Ghoul novels, has your relationship always been one akin to work partners?

Ishida: When it was decided that Tokyo Ghoul would be getting a novelisation, I was given other authors' works to look at. However, none of their styles really clicked with me, and they didn’t seem right for the series. I knew that Towada-san wrote, so I tried reaching out to her.

Although back in the days of Tokyo Ghoul’s serialisation, Towada-san and I didn’t talk as much as we do now. If I had any concerns I would just try and sort them out by myself. We’d always gotten along as brother and sister, however we didn’t really start to have a ‘work partners’ kind of relationship until we started working on Jack Jeanne together.

Towada: That’s true. Back then, we only occasionally conversed regarding the novelisation of Tokyo Ghoul. Before :re we only spoke once every few months over Skype. As Ishida-san said, it wasn’t until I started working on Jack Jeanne that we really started properly talking to one another.

—How often would you contact each other?

Towada: Depending on what stage we were at, we would bounce ideas off each other once every three or so days. Ishida-san would make a request like “I’d be happy if this part of the script was done within the next two weeks.” And then I’d present what I’d written and we’d discuss it and then I’d return to writing again. This process was repeated until Jack Jeanne reached its completion.

—Was Ishida-san the one that reached out to Towada-san to write the script of Jack Janne?

Towada: He didn’t ask me specifically to write the script, early in development he’d ask me to help with some research like “I’d like you to look up some information on this, could you help me?”. I’ve always liked ikusei games and within that genre I also enjoy romance and otome games. So I think that’s why it was easy for Ishida-san to consult me about it. We’ve had a common interest in games ever since we were kids.

Ishida: Back then I played games like ‘Pinnochia no Miru Yume’ and ‘Angelique’. I wanted to try and conquer Marcel in Angelique but it was one difficult game, so it was a tough task. Before I could even raise any flags with him, the training aspect of the game was so hard that no matter how many times I played I never got any good at it.

Towada: I’m the type that loves playing games, so after talking with Ishida-san, I went on to play every popular otome game that had been released around 2015, as well as every Broccoli published otoge. I completed every single character route in those games. I began analysing otome game trends and Broccoli’s brand identity and relayed my findings to Ishida-san. After that, I went along with the Jack Jeanne production team and Makasano Chuuji-san from Shueisha, who was the scriptwriter of the Tokyo Ghoul anime. We all visited the city of Takarazuka for research.

Ishida: I was also supposed to be there for the Takarazuka trip but since I had my manga to worry about, I had Towada-san go and take in the atmosphere in my place.

Towada: I did have to gather material but I think I visited Takarazuka a total of five or six times. From morning I would watch the Takarazuka theatre from afar and simply watch the guests move about, soaking in the atmosphere of the city.

Along with the Takarazuka plays, I also watched student plays, in total I probably went and watched one hundred shows. Theatre shows that are performed by professionals are fully realised and flawless. So getting to see the contrast to student plays, where they progress and improve until the show is complete was a very helpful reference.

I’ve always enjoyed watching plays, so everything I had to research overlapped with my own hobbies. I still shared my own input with Ishida-san though.

Ishida: I’d never formally been asked to write a script before… I felt like a fraud (lol). I think it’s because I’m not very good at being considerate of other people. I don’t think I’d be able to work with anyone other than Towada-san on something.

—Why is that?

Ishida: Well, for one I don’t want to talk to anyone for long periods of time (lol). Because Towada-san understands what aspects of a story are important to me, she’s also able to comprehend what I mean when I talk in abstract concepts. We could save time by not needing to have any pointless discussions.

Towada: Back then Ishida-san was still very busy publishing his manga, so bringing in all sorts of new people to work on the project probably would’ve put quite the burden on him. That’s why I wanted to help him out in some way.

After researching all sorts of things, I ended up participating in a production meeting for Jack Jeanne, but I was not expecting that I myself would end up being in charge of writing the script. Rather, I was more just looking forward to getting to play a game made by Ishida-san. As things progressed though, I was asked to try plotting things out, or to write part of the script to be used temporarily. Eventually I came to think, why don’t I just write the scenario myself?

I’d never written the script for a game before though, so that’s what had been holding me back. Unlike novels, it’s commonplace to not have to write descriptively. Novels are made up of dialogue and descriptions, like describing the setting and characters' expressions or emotions. So I had to spend a lot of time working out how to write to properly convey a story through dialogue alone.

When I first started getting the hang of it, I tried writing a script that still included descriptions but I quickly stopped. Jack Jeanne is about theatre, so I figured that it would be easier to convey the presence and narrative of the story through conversation. I usually write novels, so I was uncertain, but since Jack Jeanne has sprites of the characters on screen, I thought that I could do it. I suppose it’s closer to writing for a manga rather than a novel.

~ ~ ~

The rejected character routes

—Before Tokyo Ghoul was completed, what kind of things did you work on?

Ishida: The first two years were mostly spent creating the game’s world and mechanics. Like deciding how many performances there would be, how the plays would be presented. Would it be a dialogue drama? Would there be mini games? Things like that. We also had to decide whether summer break would be included or not, how raising affection would work and how the choices would be presented. Those are the sort of things that were talked about first.

—You got to watch over the entire game’s development then.

Ishida: At first, I got carried away and envisioned a stage play game full of skill mechanics that I personally enjoyed. A busy game full of specs you can raise and improve in mini games, however when I explained these details to a friend of mine, they were like “You’re just imagining a game that you would like, right?”.

They asked me if that’s what the eventual players of Jack Jeanne would be looking for. That same friend said that since it’s a story that deals with the theme of theatre, it would be better if the player could witness the performances themselves. So I took that advice and the prototype of the current Jack Jeanne was created. I told all of this to Towada-san and had her handle the script.

Towada: You can’t write a script without knowing how the game’s system works after all.

Ishida: Now that I think about it, before Tokyo Ghoul was finished, rather than build the game's foundation, all I was really doing was scattering the sand to prepare for said foundation.

When Tokyo Ghoul entered its endgame especially, I really had to concentrate on it, so I took a six month break from Jack Jeanne. Ending a story requires a lot of energy and attention, so I left the practical work of Jack Jeanne to Towada-san and only supervised the music production and attended any important meetings.

—So during serialisation you were making preparations to jump right into it afterwards?

Ishida: Yes exactly. I wasn’t able to do much practical work, so I had Towada-san prepare the script in advance for me. And for the time being, create one character route.

—Which character was it?

Towada: It was Shirota. I wrote about the equivalent length of a short book and it was more or less complete. In the end, we scrapped the entire thing though… Because the atmosphere in the beginning was quite dark.

Ishida: It was dark because I was too used to Tokyo Ghoul. It included issues like a troubled household and severe bullying. Reading something like that wouldn’t put the player in a happy mood.

Despite it being a story about the theatre, my attention drifted to other topics which didn’t fit. And it was me who had asked Towada-san to write something like that… A couple months after the Shirota route had been completed, I read over what Towada-san had written for me once again and realised that it was a bit too gloomy. I’d forgotten what prompt I’d even given to her in the first place (lol).

The first character portraits and CGs that I created were for Shirota too. The reason being that Shirota is the only second year student and he was already a complete individual, so he was easy to create for. As for the third year students, there’s three of them, Fumi, Kai and Neji. Along with Kisa, Suzu and Yonoga are also first years, so continuity and character relationships need to be taken into account in order to create them, so they were a little more complex.

—How did the other characters come to be?

Ishida: At the proposal stage, the first character that I created was Kai. It’s a game where characters will be falling in love and confessing to one another, so first off I wanted a character that was handsome. Then I made Fumi who would be Kai’s partner. After that, I think Shirota was next.

Towada: At first you created the characters by basing them on plays didn’t you?

Ishida: I’m a fan of Yamamoto Shugoro’s work ‘Kikuchiyosho’ so Shirota was created using that as a base. In Shirota's case the genders are swapped, but Kikuchiyosho is a story about a girl who is born into a samurai family and raised as a boy. It has an element of androgyny and portrays the confusion and anger concerning gender quite well.

—How did you select the plays to base the characters on?

Ishida: I chose plays that lots of people are familiar with and would be easy to assign characters to. Kai is ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, Fumi is ‘Salome’, Neji is ‘Faust’ and Yonoga is ‘Shintokumaru’. Kisa and her classmate Ootori are ‘Don Quixote’. Ootori ended up becoming a side character though.

—So Ootori was originally meant to be a main character?

Ishida: Yeah. If I were to compare it to Tokyo Ghoul, Ootori is in the same position as Tsukiyama. I wanted a pompous character like that in Quartz. However I may have made him a little too unique (lol).

I received feedback from Broccoli that they want the main six characters to be an elite group, so a more easy to approach character would be better. So I moved the bright and cheerful character that I had originally made as Onyx’s Jack Ace over. That character was Suzu.

Making the characters personifications of plays started to become difficult to stick with though, so I abandoned the idea entirely halfway through.

—Despite appearing glamorous, the characters are all dealing with their own issues, like certain complexes and family troubles. I think that they’re all conflicts that are easy to sympathise with, how did you decide what the backbone of each character's conflict would be?

Ishida: First I created the character's appearance and then decided what personality would match them. Like with Fumi, when I began to think about making his story about the unique struggles that come with being born into a respected family, if becoming a successor was going to come into question, then he needed to have a brother.

In this way, I worked backwards from the vibe of his appearance and created his home life. I did the same with the other characters too, thinking things like ‘to have a personality like this they must not have parents, or they must struggle with expressing themselves’.

I think that if you let your characters do human-like things, then aspects of them that are easy to sympathise with will be born.

Jealousy, setbacks due to failure, inferiority complexes… Each and every character naturally ended up having some form of theme attached to them.

—I feel as though Kisa had a different sort of personality than that of a typical heroine.

Ishida: To put it simply, I want my protagonists to be fighting something. If they’re not giving it their all, then it’s no good. If they’re just standing around, then you can’t empathise with them.

—There’s times where she draws others towards her or supports those around her. She also has some masculine aspects to her.

Ishida: I think that I’m moved by characters who make me think “This kid’s really admirable”. That’s why I made Kisa a girl who works hard no matter the difficult situation that she’s in. I like Kisa and I’m sure Towada-san feels the same way.

Towada: She’s the result of both of our preferences. While due to the game’s setting, she of course has struggles related to being a girl, but I was careful to write the main thread of her story in a way that transcended gender and instead simply showed her charm as a human being.

—Regarding gender, I was impressed by how neutrally it was portrayed.

Ishida: Yes. Originally, I was going to make Shirota a character with a feminine personality, but I ended up scrapping the idea. In the end, he ended up having more of a masculine mentality. The premise of Jack Jeanne is that boys also play the female roles on stage, but it’s not a metaphor for anything and I didn’t want it to raise any questions. I simply wanted to give it my all creating plays with that setting and create something new and refreshing.

I don’t struggle with any gender related issues myself, so it’s not like I can fully understand what it’s like, but in general I’ve never considered gender to be a very big deal. If someone born male were to tell me “I have the heart of a woman” then I’d just think ‘ok cool’.

To me it feels strange to place so much weight on such an issue. I don't see why others need to be bothered by someone else's gender, I'm not since I myself am not able to speak for such experiences.

Towada: At first, it was possible to take that direction with Shirota but as I continued to write, I came to realise that there was no need to exaggerate any emphasis on his gender identity.

To those looking from an outside perspective, it may seem like a unique identity such as that is a person's defining trait, when in reality it's only just a portion of their whole self. If you consider it to be all they are, then you end up denying the other aspects of that person.

Whilst considering the individually of each character, I kept in mind to write them in a way that seemed natural for them.

—The side character, Tanakamigi Chui of Amber, had a very striking presence. How did you go about creating him?

Ishida: I wanted someone that’s easily understood to be the antagonist, so I went ahead and tried to draw someone who looked like an unstoppable genius. Despite being a second year, it’s as if he controls the school. I wanted an enigmatic and intriguing character like that. Once I named him Tanakamigi Chui I felt as though he was complete and his inclusion in the story was quickly decided on.

—On the flip side, were there any characters that you had a hard time creating?

Ishida: I had to think a little harder about the other members of Amber. They needed to have the aura of the enemy but since they’re only villains in the context of the stage, they’re not actually bad people. So it was hard to find that balance between them.

Visually they’re edgy and have a talented vibe, but they also have their own individual quirks, they’re not all homogeneous. I struggled with Kamiya Utsuri especially, I wanted him to visually look like he could be a Jeanne while also still looking like a boy, so it was difficult to get him right. I didn’t have to do many redesigns though and all the other characters came to be without much trouble.

What I actually had more trouble with, was the fact I made the cast too large. I initially created almost double the amount of first year characters, but when I looked back over the script that Towada-san created, I told her “There’s way too many characters, please cut some of them out.” To which Towada-san replied, “Ishida-san, you’re the one who created them in the first place.” (lol).

Towada: That’s because the cut characters had already appeared in the script (lol).

Ishida: I feel that when there’s too many characters a lot of them get wasted, so just like that I end up creating and scrapping a lot of my characters. I think even Broccoli were surprised by the amount of times I’d suddenly tell them “Oh that character doesn’t exist anymore.”

—Apart from characters, were there any other aspects of the game that were abruptly discarded?

Ishida: The performances I suppose… Originally I had wanted there to be a larger variety of shows, but if you were to put all of them in the script it probably would’ve ended up being three million characters long.

In the beginning of development, I had originally planned for each character's route to have a different final performance. There’s six main characters, and including Kisa’s route, that would total to seven unique shows.

Before that there’s the newcomers, summer, autumn and winter performances, so I arranged to have a script written for each. Basically I wanted to include more shows and increase the amount of sub stories, but that would be confusing to play through and development would never end. The game engine has its limits too, so I decided to keep it simple.

Towada: It would’ve been difficult to play through all that as well (lol). For the final performance, we settled on it being one show and letting the player enjoy it from each character’s perspective instead. And even then, there’s still over 20 different endings to the game, so it still took a long time until everything was fully complete.

—Newcomers, summer, autumn, winter and the final performance, were these five show’s scripts all original?

Towada: Yes. However at first, like the characters, we had planned to base them on famous productions. Like Shakespeare or fairy tales. We figured that players would find it easy to get immersed in plays that they were already familiar with.

Ishida: For the newcomers' performance, I thought we could have a show called ‘House of Biscuits and Candy’ based on Hansel and Gretel. I had also originally planned to use each character's motif to base the plays on.

Towada: Like Shintokumaru, right?

Ishida: Yeah yeah. I even went as far as getting permission to use it, but if the show were to be following a story that already exists, then the script would be bound to it. Once I understood that it would make it difficult to relate the stories to Univeil, we decided to create the plays ourselves.

Since I acquired the permission to adapt Shintokumaru though, maybe I’ll have to make a manga about it someday…

By the way, the one who was saying “Let’s do this” and then changing it to “Nevermind let’s not” was all me. I’ll start on something wholeheartedly thinking that it’s the right choice before realising halfway through that I can’t actually take it anywhere and stop. Jack Jeanne’s development was full of trial and error.

Whenever I’m about to start something, Towada-san will express her concerns with my ideas but I always end up pushing on with them only to ultimately scrap it.

I probably have at least ten books worth of scrapped drafts alone. I had no real knowledge of how to properly craft a story. I hadn’t drawn anything other than Tokyo Ghoul, so even though I had no idea what the fundamentals of storytelling were, I misunderstood that I could write other kinds of stories too. This time around I studied and revised each time… I really learnt a lot.

Towada: You learn things by doing them, so I think I just got used to it (lol). Also, you don’t commonly see stories presented within stories, I thought that it was a rare case for a game especially.

~ ~ ~

The story behind ‘Lyrics: Ishida Sui’

—You also wrote the lyrics for each of the songs used in the performances didn’t you, Ishida-san?

Ishida: Yes, that’s how things ended up. It goes without saying, but no one, including myself, thought that I’d be the one writing the lyrics.

Originally Broccoli brought in several professional lyricists and had me look over what they’d written. However I couldn’t help but feel that they were lyrics I’d heard somewhere before, or they at least didn’t leave a unique impression on me. I did feel the finesse of a professional, and they were beautiful lyrics that fit the story in one way or another… But the words used didn’t touch on the core of the story.

The songs in Jack Jeanne are stage songs that Neji wrote for the members of Quartz. So unless you’re familiar with the setting and understand how the characters are feeling, then you won’t be able to write lyrics that perfectly fit the scenario.

While I knew that my lyric writing technique would be far from that of a professionals, I thought that no one understands and loves these characters more than me, so I approached Broccoli about it. I’d poured my heart into not only the character designs, but also the story and system of the game, so I didn’t want to compromise on the lyrics and have them pale in comparison.

So, to the best of my ability, I wanted to at least try my hand at writing them. I had Broccoli check whether or not what I’d written was viable and asked them “If there are no problems, then please let me write the lyrics.”

—Did you sing the temporary vocals for the songs too?

Ishida: When I submitted the lyrics to Broccoli, I got the normal response of “Thank you, we’ll leave the temporary vocals to you.” Along with this message they also wrote “You can hire a professional vocalist if you’d like, or you could record the temporary vocals yourself.”

Because of this I started thinking that maybe I should record them myself. Similar to how one wouldn’t be able to write lyrics for the songs without a deep understanding of the story, if you weren’t the one who wrote the lyrics, you wouldn’t know how they’re supposed to be sung either.

So, after deciding that I had to be the one to do it, I made preparations to acquire some audio recording equipment and downloaded some editing software. I divided up the parts and harmonised with myself and over the course of three days, I finished recording the temporary vocals. That’s more or less how I did it.

—When recording yourself singing, being self conscious about it can interfere, can’t it?

Ishida: I don’t think I was possessed by him or anything, but… When I tried to go all out, as expected I felt a bit hesitant, so I began recording whilst imagining I was Neji.

In the game, Neji is the one who writes the scripts, so surely he would also write the lyrics and subdivide the song and do everything himself. So I got through it thinking like that. In that pumped up mental state, I sent in the temporarily recorded songs but all Broccoli said back was “Alright, let us know your upcoming schedule”, I got so carried away that I was somewhat bewildered by the cold response (lol).

~ ~ ~

Recruiting via DM, gathering specifically selected creators

—It appears the creators you gathered to handle things such as the concept art and music are all people whose work you enjoy.

Ishida: Yes. Almost everyone was sent a targeted offer. For example, I’ve always loved the concept artist Lownine-san’s work ever since I was a student. I suppose you could say I was jealous of how high quality their artwork is… They’re someone who I thought I'd never be able to beat in my entire life. Lownine-san is an amazing artist who is especially good at blending characters into their backgrounds.

When we were creating Jack Jeanne, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to pull something like that off, so I definitely wanted to recruit Lownine-san for the job. After getting permission from Broccoli, I reached out to Lownine-san myself through Twitter DM’s. I had only appreciated Lownine-san’s work from afar, and we’d never actually interacted before, but we did both follow each other. I received a reply that Lownine-san was fully on board to accept the job.

Towards the end of Jack Jeanne’s development, I got the chance to speak with Lownine-san, so I asked them “Could you teach me how to draw?” They gladly accepted this request and taught me how to draw whilst screen sharing over Skype. However, in about 10 minutes, they’d already drawn such an amazing piece that I felt I should just put my pen down (lol).

Towada: You were a little down after that, weren’t you?

—Had you been a fan of Kosemura-san, who was in charge of music, since you were a student as well?

Ishida: Yes, I’ve listened to Kosemura-san’s music a lot since I was a student. When I was brainstorming what kind of music would fit Jack Jeanne, Kosemura-san’s ‘Light Dance’ immediately came to mind, since it fit perfectly. Because I didn’t have any personal connections to Kosemura-san however, I didn’t know how to get in contact with him, so I made the request through Broccoli. I only found out about this recently, but apparently Kosemura-san almost turned the offer down*, I was quite shocked to hear that (lol).

*When the initial request was sent, it was under wraps that the game was being made by Ishida Sui, and since Kosemura-san didn’t have much experience in writing game music, he wasn’t optimistic about the offer. However, later, when he learned that it was a game being made by Ishida Sui, he readily accepted the offer.

—How did Seishiro-san, who was in charge of the choreography, get chosen for the job?

Ishida: A very long time ago I saw the group Tokyo Gegegay appear on a program called DANCE @ HERO JAPAN and I remember thinking ‘this group is crazy good’ and I was immediately charmed by them. After that, whilst I was looking through more videos of Tokyo Gegegay on YouTube, I happened upon a studio workshop video and discovered Seishiro-san.

—What about him caught your eye?

Ishida: Whilst first and foremost his dancing was super sexy, it also had a certain strength to it. I remember thinking that he danced in a way that embraced the best elements of both masculinity and femininity. And that had stayed in my memory ever since. When Seishiro-san was recording motion capture for the game, he allowed me to interrupt and even taught me some of the choreography.

(note: you can watch Seishiro dance here, he is also the choreographer behind this RADWIMPS music video!)

—I hear you’ve known Gyudon-san, who was in charge of making the movies, since your Tokyo Ghoul days.

Ishida: Yes. Around the time volume 13 of Tokyo Ghoul was set to be released, we held a still image MAD (Music Anime Douga) contest. The grand prize winner of said contest was Gyudon-san, who at the time was still only a student. The way they made a video by manipulating the manga panels to move so fluidly was really cool and stood out from the rest.

Around when Tokyo Ghoul had ended and :re was about to start, I had Gyudon-san make a minute long video for me. After that, Gyudon-san grew in popularity and became someone whose work is in high demand, so they seemed very busy.

However when Jack Jeanne was announced, we were able to have them create a promotional video for us. Since I’ve known them since Tokyo Ghoul, I figured I couldn’t go wrong entrusting the job to Gyudon-san. They didn’t just deliver their finished work without a word either, Gyudon-san also made a variety of suggestions and worked on the project with a positive attitude. For the videos used in the performances, I was asked to provide materials and became very involved in the process. I think it took about two weeks… Despite the really tight deadline, Gyudon-san allowed me to catch up and was super helpful.

I was also the one who reached out to Touyama Maki-san, who was in charge of creating the in-game chibi characters and the 4koma manga used for promotional purposes. During Tokyo Ghoul’s publication, Touyama-san would draw short comics for the series as a hobby, I thought they were a nice person for doing so. Their art was great too and I was very thankful. So when it was decided that we’d be displaying chibi characters during the game’s lesson segments, I wanted to leave it to Touyama-san and sent them the offer.

(note: this is the MAD that gyudon won the contest with, they now regularly make moving manga CM's for jump titles, they make the Choujin X ones too!)

~ ~ ~

The winter performance moves into Quartz’s ending, and the divergence in the story since the beginning of the year drastically branches off

—The performances, packed full of each of the character’s skills, continue for a year and pass by in the blink of an eye. Once the new year breaks, it feels as though the atmosphere of the game drastically changes. What were your intentions behind this?

Towada: That’s when the character route specific endings begin. So we packed all the needed material to set them up into the winter performance.

Ishida: The winter performance is like an ending for Quartz as a whole, so we packed it full of good lines and scenes without holding back. I may have used up all of my cards but by using them all without compromise, we were able to make the story reach a nice peak. After that, the story switches to focusing on each character's individual ending.

Towada: We used a lot of great material in the winter performance, which meant the final performance would have to be even better still. In a good way, it gave us a higher hurdle that we now needed to overcome.

—So you needed to create even more anticipation heading into March?

Towada: From January to March, each character’s route is completely different. From the new year onwards I needed to create seven different scripts, so it was very challenging. The amount of text for the last three months of the game alone just about eclipses the amount of text from up until the winter performance. There was so much to write that I began to fear I wouldn’t even be able to finish it.

Ishida: Having more choices that drastically change the ending of the game makes the player feel more involved. So, despite it making things tougher on ourselves, around the time we were working on the autumn performance is when we began thinking about how the game’s big branches should work. Along with the main routes, we also planned for there to be the option to deepen your bonds with the side characters.

—How did you go about creating the confession scenes?

Towada: Before the winter performance, to some extent each character has already grown closer to Kisa, so I kept in mind not to disrupt that flow. Since if I didn’t make it a confession that respected both Kisa and her suitor’s feelings, then I felt it would spoil the fun.

—Is that how you approached the ‘realising Kisa’s a girl’ scenes as well?

Towada: Yes, I suppose so. As I was writing the script, I knew that a point was going to come where Kisa would have no choice but to acknowledge the fact that she’s a girl. There’s characters that realise her true gender once their bond deepens and on the flip side, there are some who don’t realise it at all. There’s also the case of Yonaga, who knew Kisa’s situation from the beginning. I guess you could say each reveal followed one of these three patterns. Those who came to realise it, those who didn’t notice anything and those who knew from the start. I think they ended up being nice variations and I put careful consideration into writing them to make sure none of the realisations felt forced.

Also, the beginning half of the story is akin to that of a sports drama about teenagers putting on shows together, so the room for romance to be added is limited. That’s why, when I first started adding romantic elements to the character routes, it felt strange to me, so I discussed it with Ishida-san. I wasn’t able to effortlessly soak the story in romance. I think I had to rewrite Shirota’s ending at least three times…

Ishida: Shirota was who you tried writing an ending for first after all.

Towada: Shirota and Kisa aren’t the sort of people who’d be all flirty, and Shirota’s initial route was already muddy, so it was difficult to pull everything together. However, once I stopped trying to write in a way that forced romance on them and instead wrote them becoming closer as partners, things went more smoothly.

It may not be a stereotypical sort of love, but it was a human love. I thought that the natural way these two would be drawn together wouldn’t be through whispering sweet nothings to one another, but instead by coming to understand one another without having to exchange words at all. Once I’d completed Shirota’s route, to some extent, I continued writing the other routes in a similar way.

Ishida: While it’s true Shirota acts like that, the other characters all act differently. To the point some aren’t even comparable. In contrast to Shirota, Suzu’s route ended up being more of your stereotypical kind of romance. I thought that it would be nice for each character to have their own unique form of love.

Towada-san’s strong suit is writing a love story with your more classic otome guys like Suzu and Kai. I have no idea about that kind of thing, so I left Towada-san to pour her own ideas into their routes. On the flip side, characters like Fumi and Neji were dyed more with my own ideas. Neji’s way of flirting especially were mostly lines that I requested.

Towada: He’d say “Make him say something like ��Try seduce me!’ Because I want this CG to appear.” (lol).

Neji especially plays with his words a lot, so unless Ishida-san told me what wordplay to write, I wouldn’t have been able to expand on it. Ishida-san has a very unique way of phrasing things, so I asked him for advice a lot to make sure I was making Neji speak in a Neji-like way. I then arranged the lines and created events in order to reach the intended goal. I constructed the route in a way that wouldn’t disrupt the flow of the story. As for Fumi, Ishida-san wrote his route himself.

Ishida: Yes, I wrote it all myself.

—Well isn’t this quite the exciting plot twist?

Ishida: I turned into quite the young maiden myself (lol). Even though I’m clumsy at it… I began wondering why I ended up loving writing it so much. I added some lines that have more of an adult and deeper meaning to them, so when I played the route myself I was like “Woah!”.

Towada: It’s more interesting if at least one character is that way. From the early days of production, I’d quietly wanted Ishida-san to write a character himself, so I was happy. I was unsure how to deal with Fumi too, so it was a big help that Ishida-san took him on. His route ended up being a lot sweeter than I’d been expecting though, it got my heart racing (lol).

Ishida: I was also the main writer for Kisa’s solo route. There’s no romance in it, but it’s an ending where long lasting friendships are born and it ended up being the kind of story you’d see in an uplifting shoujo manga.

Towada: It’s full of Ishida-san’s flair, I loved it.

Ishida: If love is a lie, then how do you face that lie? That’s the sort of thing I thought about. Kisa is lying about her gender and pretending to be a boy, but Neji, Suzu, Fumi, Yonaga and so on, are also hiding lies within themselves.

The fact they’re all hiding their true motives is something that they have in common with Kisa. Whilst hiding, the two grow closer. I think that a confession is a scene where all these lies intersect and burst open. Everyone is lying, and I thought that was like a play, without realising it I think that slowly became the theme of the work.

As people, we meet others whilst lacking something and some people end up becoming a necessary part for someone else. I wanted to see a drama like that. Despite it being a game with confession scenes, I wanted it to be a story that both women and men alike are able to identify with.

~ ~ ~

From thorns to rounded edges, how the style of work transformed

—If there was a small novels worth of rejected material, then how many books worth of words made it into the final game?

Towada: In terms of paperback books, probably about twenty volumes worth.

—Because as well as the main scenario, there’s also the sub scenarios and the stage plays?

Ishida: As much as time allowed, I put my all into creating the game. However there was a deadline for things like the voiceline recordings, so I was working both day and night to get things done in time.

Towada: I was only getting around three hours of sleep. I feel like at one point Ishida-san didn’t sleep for four days.

Ishida: I was in a serious pinch so I don’t remember it well, but when I was writing the script I would hole myself up in a manga cafe for around thirty hours at a time. Multiple times a month. Once I felt as though I’d written to a good point, I’d go home only to return to the manga cafe again. Why? Because I was sleeping in the manga cafe. I mays well have been living there…

Towada: Once Ishida-san had finished writing his part of the script, he’d have me check it. So at the same time, I’d have Ishida-san check what I’d written.

Ishida: For a period of time it seemed like Towada-san was always awake. Whenever I would send a check request she always responded right away regardless of the time, so I figured she must not be sleeping.

So that my productivity wouldn’t be affected, I made sure to sleep at a regular time, however I’d be awake for like 30~40 hours at a time and then sleep for 10 and then be awake again for another 40. My sleeping patterns would repeat in this cycle. During Tokyo Ghoul’s serialisation my sleeping patterns were similar, so to some extent I might’ve gotten used to it.

—That’s just like Neji-senpai, isn’t it?

Ishida: Yeah yeah, I worked in a similar way to him. However in Neji’s case, he can complete a script just one day after coming up with the idea for it, so he works way faster than us. It took us around two months to write parts of the script, so Neji really is a genius isn’t he? I was writing whilst wishing I could be like Neji.

After experiencing writing a script, I’ve come to have a lot of respect for authors. Writing is completely different from drawing. When writing I need to really concentrate on it, I can’t multi-task or think about anything else. Whereas with drawing, there are some things that can be done as long as you can move your hand, so I can talk to someone whilst drawing or watch a movie in the background or work whilst thinking about other things. I can’t do that when I’m writing though, I was starting to wonder if I really had to think so deeply about everything I wrote.

—During the production of Jack Jeanne, as you worked on the script or the lyrics etc, did you notice any changes in how you worked?

Ishida: For Tokyo Ghoul, I was always consciously adding things, meaning I would draw everything that I came up with. I thought that it was fine to only put 20% of my output into the characters and dialogue. However, when I was working on Jack Jeanne, I began to think that my method of just adding things was incorrect and that I should also consciously remove things. It’s ok to just be left with what’s necessary. My way of thinking ended up being the exact opposite to before.

—What brought about this change in thinking?

Ishida: It was early in production, when I had asked Towada-san to write Shirota’s route for me, I got concerned about the ‘sharpness’ of the story. As I mentioned earlier, I ordered Towada-san to add this and that and sent her walking on a long journey. Except, what lay completed at the end of that road was such a painful story that even I myself was shocked by it. When I looked down at the world I had created it was as if I’d received a psychological shock. I think I even smelt the faint scent of blood.

—From thorns to rounded edges. I still remember the comment you made during a press conference saying, “I was careful to not kill off any characters”.

Ishida: Stories where characters die are usually fast paced with high stakes, however, the kids at univeil are living a different kind of story. I had to consider the best way to create drama in that kind of setting. I thought about it a lot and it may have only ended up being possible because of the fact it was a game.

—Why is that?

Ishida: Because of the flow of the dialogue, backed by Kosemura-san’s music while it's being read out by all of the voice actors. It all comes together as one… That’s what I think at least. Writing and illustrating are Towada-san and I’s main domain of expertise, but I think that it was thanks to all of the other various creators involved that we were able to create something new.

—Do you think anything about yourself changed, Towada-san?

Towada: It came down to the fact I wanted to create something for Ishida-san whilst there were also things that I wanted to add myself. This dilemma caused me trouble at times, however when I started to consider what components I should add, or which ones I should remove, I began to discover what elements I liked and what my own skillset was.

The way that Ishida-san and I go about creating stories is different. I came to understand that Ishida-san’s strong point is creating impactful scenes, whilst mine is plotting and world building. Ishida-san being in charge of the pivotal scenes would make things more exciting, so I concentrated on writing everything else whilst keeping the balance in mind. Through working on Jack Jeanne, I’ve become able to say that my strong suit is being able to create a story that flows well.

It may be true that by working with other people, you come to understand more about yourself. Starting with Ishida-san, I also looked at what the other creators were doing and thought ‘so this is how they interpret the story.’ Seeing what they came up with made me notice different approaches that I hadn’t thought of.

I’d write whilst listening to Kosemura-san’s music and decide which way to take a scene. Or I’d watch Seishiro-san dance and think about how I could make the performances more exciting. We were all connected in some way. Novels are usually written alone by one person, so I came to learn the thrill of working on something in a team.

—The way you all came together as gears to create a single work sounds similar to the story of Univeil.

Towada: True. I never thought I’d experience something straight out of my youth again at this age. Being helped by other team members or being supported by them, being motivated by simple phrases like “It was great” or “I like this idea”.

For example, when I was working on the final phases of the story, I was just writing and writing with no end in sight, I couldn’t take it anymore and my pen just stopped moving. During this dire moment so close to the end, my proofreader messaged me saying, “You’re almost done.” And with that simple message alone, it was as if a burst of light appeared before my eyes. Everything had gone pitch black, but they lit everything back up again. Ishida-san also wrote some of the script, so I didn’t feel as alone.

Ishida: At that time I left all my drawings alone and decided to solely focus on the scenario.

Towada: Yeah, because I hit a point where I wasn’t able to write it on my own anymore… When Ishida-san sent me the script he’d written, it was interesting and I let out a breath of relief. I felt the joy of being able to see someone else's work. I was the same as the Univeil students who find joy in performing with others. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do it if I was alone.

Ishida: You’ve got that right. I think that if anyone was missing from the team, it wouldn’t have worked out. Not to mention that in my case, everyone’s contributions were directed to me, and they were all people that I’d personally gathered.

With manga, even if it comes to the worst case scenario, at the very least it would all just fall on me. However this game isn’t just something I made on my own, I need to contribute as much as I can or the efforts of everyone around me will go to waste as well. There was a moment where I felt afraid of having such a heavy responsibility placed on me. However, if I had tried to do it all on my own, I think I would have given up.

By listening to wonderful music, reading interesting scripts and moving forward together with everyone, I was inspired. Coming together with fellow creators to make one work came with a lot of challenges, but it was fun. It was refreshing being in an environment working alongside other people, and because of it I was able to experience something new.

—Has working alongside other people changed the way you work at all?

Ishida: Right now I’m still in the state immediately after being swept away by the raging waves of a storm, so I’m not sure how I really feel yet. I’m in the phase of just watching what becomes of Jack Jeanne as the waves subside.

Even though the script and illustrations were done, like bonus stages lots and lots of new tasks kept popping up. So I was still busy with work up until the beginning of October last year. When I looked at some of the thoughts people had on the demo version of the game, it felt as though what we’d all been working so hard on had finally taken shape, and I was relieved.

Working on this project I’ve come to learn both the hardships and the fulfilment that comes with creating something with others. So, I suppose I’ve started considering working on something by myself again… I’m not trying to say that it’s in my nature to want to work alone, I think I’m just experiencing some kind of aftershock. I think the waves are returning.

Towada: I’m still working overtime and supervising Jack Jeanne (lol). Like checking content that will be posted on social media, as well as the 4koma manga. Content is still being released and there have been bug reports from some people who played the demo… Meaning that my journey is still not over yet. I think that things should calm down once the game has been released for a while.

Ishida: Yeah, probably after around five months (lol).

—After their final performance, the members of Quartz all threw a party to celebrate. Did you and the rest of the creators do the same upon the game's completion?

Towada: I celebrated with Ishida-san as siblings. And then afterwards we got swamped with work again (lol).

Ishida: Yeah, we didn’t end up meeting with the other developers or the voice cast. Big project after parties aren’t as common these days, but I do want to hear everyone’s stories of any struggles they had.

Towada: There were way too many people involved in total for me to be able to speak with them all, but I’d still love to convey my impressions to them. Like letting them know what I thought was good, or letting them know that a certain thing really helped me out.

Ishida: Ideally I would like to gather everyone and really have it feel that ‘this is the team of people that created Jack Jeanne’ and I’d like to express my gratitude to them all in person. I hope that an opportunity like that will come one day.

~ ~ ~

#jack jeanne #sui ishida #towada shin #translation #jack jeanne translation #jack jeanne interview #sui ishida translation #otome game #jack jeanne art book

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myr31r31 · 4 months ago

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I added another floor to my Takarazuka Revue inspired Sylvanian Families home and wanted to share <3

I started this project in 2022 and initially, it was a 2-story home.

But recently I got to update the wallpapering/painting of the original house, and add another floor, so this is the result:

The only difference to the front of the house is the signage ("takarazuka home" to "sylvania revue"). I walled off the balcony and instead put a photo of Hoshigumi's '21 RomJul there (the balcony scene, for obvious reasons LOL). The roof is orange to mimic the Takrazuka Grand Theater (it took way too long to paint but honestly? I'm glad I bothered to do it in the end).

The third floor was made in 2022, and the motif I used was Watson and Sherlock's living room in Soragumi's "Sherlock Holmes- The Game is Afoot!". I later found out that Yukigumi used the same wallpaper for Sherlock's office in "Sherlock Homes- Boiled Doyle on the Toil Trail", so that was interesting, haha.

This floor is probably the most accurate to the furnishings on the set of the play, the other floors are more inspired than a 1:1 replica. I repainted the furniture and drew/printed out the wall/furniture patterns while using stills from the play as a reference (hence why the colors aren't 100% accurate).

Details (1):

Details (2):

The second floor is a "birthday party at home" theme inspired by Hanagumi's 2016 production of "Ernest in Love" (one of my all time faves <3).

I drew the wallpaper to be the same as Ernest's dressing room in the opening scene but there's not much else besides that's a direct motif.

The first floor is a "nursery" theme inspired by Hangumi's 2023 production of 'Utakata no Koi".. specifically the Vetseras' parlor.

Aside from the wallpaper and piano there's not really any other similar props, but I spent a lot of time on that wallpaper so I'm honestly still pleased lol.

Full shot during the day (ft. my other Sylvanians incl. Gwendolyn and Ernest)!

Just to clarify- I am awful at sewing, so the clothes were custom ordered on Etsy or bought made-ready from other Sylvanian fans on the Japanese website Minne. Most of the props/furniture are either official Sylvanian items or from Re-Ment.

There's never any craft I'm 100% satisfied with (painting and coating the roof and walls were difficult..), but honestly? I'm still happy with myself for the effort I put into this one. Someday, I'd like to make a scale replica of a Takarazuka stage set instead of just something inspired by it <3

#takarazuka #takarazuka revue #sylvanian families #calico critters #is it just me or does anyone else find sylvanian families to be a cuter name than the american calico critters?#i think i might upload some other crafts I did on here too #moon.post

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axel-mania · 10 months ago

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Something you might have noticed if you've ever looked at old joshi, particularly AJW in the 80s, is that nearly half of the wrestlers are either androgynous or outright masculine. I've heard the explanation for why we got the Beauty Pair, that they were casting Jackie Sato as the Takarazuka otokoyaku and Maki Ueda as the musumeyaku in order to sell CDs to teenage girls. This was queer-coded, obviously, but acceptable to mainstream society as Takarazuka is a transient and exaggerated performance. (Its purported goal is for girls to perform masculinity so they can empathize with their future husbands... lol and lmao.)

However, that clearly wasn't the formula they were following for the Crush Girls: they're both butches! And so I've looked at the idol culture at the time that AJW's rival JWP explicitly tried to emulate, which is very different from today. Girls groups actually tried to appeal to teenage girls and not just adult men, with a youthful girlishness that did by avoiding sexuality often seem fairly androgynous. At least, that's my impression from looking at them, and maybe I'm totally off base. So we could posit that to appeal to teenage girl fans, wrestlers similarly had to look accessible in spite of their muscles and scariness. The alternative is too crazy to think about. That being that they promoted so many fucking butches to appeal to the kinds of girls that grow up to be lesbians! Which is when I present exhibit A, "Boy".

AJW, what is this? Well, it's a photobook by a wrestler named Kanako Nagatomo, who wrestled at the same time as the Crush Gals and was apparently very popular. Here's another insanity inducing tidbit, a video of her in a suit holding flowers and looking like your highschool boyfriend about to pick you up for the school dance. It's kind of the ultimate expression of the contradiction here, a constructed package for us to buy into yet only really emphasizing the looks these wrestlers chose to adopt every day of their lives.

How else do we explain this? Genuinely? Because we know there's always going to be queer women interested in handsome butches. The peculiar thing is this being broadcast on mainstream television on a channel for mothers and their children. What strange historical factors gave us such mainstream queerness in a way we'll likely never have again? I know why we don't have it anymore. Rossy Ogawa, who climbed up the ranks of AJW management, and then started his own promotions after its demise, thought joshi could only grow by marketing to men and dropped all the show business meant to appeal to women. And now our big joshi promotions are Stardom and TJPW, where almost everyone is extremely feminine and we release sexy photobooks (which I do enjoy, don't get me wrong).

Anyway, this is what Nagatomo looks like now. (Sona and I both immediately thought "Blue hair and pronouns??") Still androgynous by choice, but married. Maybe the simplest explanation is the wrestlers saw their peers presenting a certain way and liked the look of it enough to copy it, without anything else in mind.

#ajw #joshi puroresu #kanako nagatomo #lesbian

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nakanotamu · 1 year ago

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good day madam, i am a hungry lesbian in need of your gayest wresting moments. can you spare me a cup of gay?

Anon you have come to the right person. Everything's been leading up to this. This is what it's all been for. This will probably be long.

Anon I got so excited about this I even solicited my friends for THEIR gayest moments so I'll do those first. You were recommended:

Mahiro Kiryu briefly getting a takarazuka gimmick in TJPW's Hyper Misao produced show HYPE

Giulia vs Konami from the 5 Star GP 2021, which was described as "the first match I remember watching and going OH MY GOD KONAMI AND GIULIA ARE FUCKING", and their feud did later give us a promo where Konami was like "Hey Giulia, you know how I bully you and you like it?" and Giulia was like "Ahaha, yeah?" and Konami was like "Well that's basically our entire relationship, so there you go." She did have examples.

pretty much anything with Raku/Pom Harajuku/Yuki Aino in TJPW, who my friends have lovingly dubbed the Pomycule

Okay enough from them though. You didn't ask them, you asked me and I asked them. Now for the me. I think it's important to note as well, anon, that not all of the gay shit in wrestling happens in a match, or even in the ring. Sometimes it's just shit on social media, a lot of the time it happens at press conferences, you must maintain constant vigilance. Anyway.

Whatever the fuck Syuri and Utami have going on, which I wrote about here.

There was the time Himeka kissed Syuri last year

There was Komomo enjoying getting beat up by Saki Kashima a Little Too Much, which I wrote about here.

There was the exchange between Utami and Syuri at the press conference for Stardom Gold Rush last year

There was Tam Nakano starting an entire faction to, in her own words, surround herself with women with big boobs (their focus has since shifted)

There was AliKaba, the tag team of Giulia and Syuri, which was basically just one long enactment of gay longing from Giulia

There was the time Giulia posted this picture with the caption ^-^ and then deleted it

There was the time FWC, the tag team of Hazuki and Koguma, spent 5 hours in the bath together (sadly they just talked about that I don't have pictures)

another time FWC both got matching bruises at the same time, and then later confirmed that yes they got them together. In the bath again

There were both Cosmic Rules matches at Stardom in Showcase 1 & 2 which I unfortunately don't have any great screenshots of but I'm positive were inspired by lesbian porn

There are constant small exchanges like this that don't even have a lot of context they just happen all the time

There was the time Hikari Noa had a hardcore match against Nao Kakuta and after they did this

There was the time Mina Shirakawa spat on Saya Kamitani and then licked her face

There was this shit in Act Wres Girlz, which for the record kind of depressingly does not do gay stories super frequently but has legitimately I think the highest percentage of out wrestlers I've seen in any company

There was the brief Tam Syuri feud which shockingly somehow did not involve anyone kissing but had the vibe that they were kissing mentally the entire time

There was every single exchange Tam and Natsupoi had before they realized they were still in love with each other but ESPECIALLY their cage match

And, for my money, the gay moment that lives the largest and dearest and most bittersweet in my mind was when Tam and Unagi had their singles match as part of the 5 Star GP last year, which was, unknown to us at the time, something of a farewell tour for Unagi before she went freelance, where afterwards they hugged in the ring for two minutes and then kissed.

I'm gonna cut myself off there but trust me I could go on and on and on for way too long but that's why I think you should watch for yourself. Wrestling is always moving and new gay stuff is always happening. In conclusion,

#long post #sorry I have low energy so this is just a shotgun blast of content rather than like real curation or explanation lol #I hope it works anyway #my magnum opus

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nakoayas · 3 days ago

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Especial Time: Minami Maito × Maisora Hitomi (from GRAPH 2020 May) 🩷

Scanned from my personal collection.

Translated interview by @yuzukahibiscus under the cut!

Minami: This time I requested Maisora for the interview, because...

Maisora: Wah~ I’m so scared! (LOL)

Minami: Well, every day I’m angry… no, no, I’m kidding (LOL). You were so busy and I was wondering if this would be okay to ask for you, but since I have this chance, I decided to have this interview with Maisora who’s very active now (LOL).

Maisora: Not at all~

Minami: We spent a very meaningful time together during Senhor CRUZEIRO!, and we also went on the national tour together in Melancolique Gigolo / EXCITER!! 2018 and when I thought we’re going to spend more time in the future, at that time Maisora left Flower Troupe. So I requested to have you for the interview, just to ask how you’re doing now!

Maisora: Thank you for inviting me. So what should I do to help…

Minami: Oh, and now you’re asking me in return? (LOL). “What should I do!?”

Maisora: I mean, because this is Minami-san’s invaluable special coverage in these pages!

Minami: No, I mean thank you for being in this interview (LOL). When Maisora first transferred to Flower Troupe, I remember that she was a really cute girl.

Maisora: Not at all! But for a while, there weren’t any opportunities when we were in the same performance.

Minami: That's true.

Maisora: Maybe, that’s why we didn’t talk much (LOL). We’re surprisingly shy people.

Minami: Yeah! I’m not the type of person that would go to the underclassmen and call out to them like “Hey!”

Maisora: That’s why, I always found Minami-san with such a cool impression.

Minami: No, come on!! I feel distant from you all, so I’d be watching from afar thinking, are the underclassmen doing fine? Am I intimidating?

Maisora: Huh!? No, not at all. You give me the feeling of “It’s Minami-san!”

Minami: What does that mean? (LOL)

Maisora: When I was still a fan I had been watching Flower Troupe performances, so when I was assigned to Flower Troupe, it was so satisfying to feel that I came into this world I so admire every day. But what’s more is “I’m seeing the REAL Minami-san!” (LOL).

Minami: (LOL). That’s why at first when we first worked with each other in CRUZEIRO. We just went, “Ah, hi…” like that (LOL). But when we started having tango lessons during the Tokyo performances of The Poe Clan we realised that it wasn’t going well since we didn’t match with each other. So we started to be serious about it.

Maisora: Even the way of walking in tango is difficult…

Minami: And even after the closing day of the Tokyo performances, right on the next day I said, “Sorry, could we practice again!!” and we practised together.

Maisora: Yes. When our rehearsals started, Minami-san had so many scenes and things to remember, but you still took the time to practise with me.

Minami: Yeah, because all we can do is keep practising. Normally in Takarazuka, the otokoyakuk leads the musumeyaku step by step, but you can’t do that in tango. And especially because we hadn’t danced with each other before, so in a good sense, I’m grateful that there wasn’t too much we worried about.

Maisora: I couldn’t say I wasn’t worried about anything though… This was my first time partnered with an otokoyaku in dancing. And so, I saw how solid your body balance is during rehearsals. I couldn’t do that…

Minami: No, that’s because otokoyaku take the lead in tango. But musumeyaku also have tough skills to learn.

Maisora: No, no. I don’t remember how many times I stepped on your foot (LOL).

Minami: Don’t mind it, just step it (LOL).

Maisora: I’m so sorry… For every move, you’d always say “it’s different now!”, or” let’s do it again.”

Minami: Even after we started performing, we still had reflection sessions every time. Those were such meaningful days. That’s how we naturally became close… Did we become close!? (LOL)

Maisora: (LOL). I guess we were just doing our best depserately…

Minami: We were desperate about it. But there were rarely times that I didn’t tell you my thoughts, because we were really synchronised.

Maisora: You think so? Every day, I was endeavouring my best and concentrating on the tango scenes. Because I knew if I lost focus, I’d dance something wrong. Then on the closing day…

Minami: Yeah!! I can never forget it. The audience never stopped clapping… Even thinking of it now gives me goosebumps.

Maisora: It was as if time stopped.

Minami: I thought to myself, “We did it!” that I was so overwhelmed with this love, that even at the time when I knew words were not enough to convey, I tried my best telling how I feel to the audience. I believe that was a moment when I returned to the primal source of joy as a stage performer.

Maisora: Really… I was in my 3rd year (ken-3) at the time, and taking on a great challenge was such a precious experience to me. I fell in love with dancing even more after that performance, and wanted to work harder and I think I was transformed after that performance. All of our performers worked our best with Minami-san and I am also happy to be one of the members.

Minami: That’s the same for me. It’s not because I was starring in this performance, but because I was fortunate to be with this company of members.

Minami: The national tour performance was also meaningful. Hana-chan (Hana Yuuki) and you were the double female leads. It must have been challenging to pair up with me and Rei (Yuzuka). During rehearsals, we wanted to look more compatible and we got closer.

Maisora: That’s for sure! It was difficult for us two, but thankfully there were many lessons which we stuck together to practise…

Minami: We already told you that we can return first, but you waited for us after we finished rehearsing. While we felt sorry, I guess with two cute girls saying goodbye to you in the end, I returned home with that warm fuzzy feeling inside me.

Maisora: Ahaha (LOL)!

Minami: The two of you are different in terms of your personality and your cuteness, and since we’re performing with both of you, we are also inspired by you. Imagine when four people get along and have chemistry. It’s quite busy for us! (LOL)

Maisora: Yeah (LOL).

Minami: When we’re traveling by bus, both of you were moving a lot and clinging on just to talk to Rei. I found both of you very dependable, but at the same time it’s cute to see both of you talk (LOL).

Maisora: (LOL). Even though there wasn’t much acting between us in the play, we danced in some scenes together in the revue show. I love EXCITER!! since I was a fan, and the Havana scene was especially my favourite, so I was truly blessed to dance that scene with Minami-san.

Minami: When otokoyaku and musumeyaku are paired together, of course we dance while appreciating how wonderful our partner is, but with Maisora, I can be natural as ever. The Havana scene was really fun.

Maisora: Yes! And the tango in the prologue too!

Minami: Both of us were guessing if we could be paired up together? So when it was decided, we thought YES! (LOL). From then on, we suddenly had this ambition that we’re striving to look cooler than any other couple! (LOL).

Maisora: As the others were also working with each other as pairs, Minami-san also called me over to discuss.

Minami: I was so serious about it! “We should look stronger” or something like that. But it didn’t work that well (LOL).

Minami: When you transferred, I went to watch Kurenai (Yuzuru)-san’s Sayonara performance, at that time it was already decided that you and Co-chan (Rei Makoto) would be the next Top Combi. Since this classmate of mine is not only our pride, but also the most humane and amazing super strong Co-chan, I was delighted that you would be her partner. I do feel a bit sad at first, but after seeing the Star Troupe performance, I felt that I could be relieved to see your new path.

Maisora: Thank you. At first I was also nervous, but everyone in Star Troupe including Coto-san (Rei Makoto) had welcomed me so kindly and warmly. I’m grateful to become a Star Troupe member in this important graduation performance of Kurenai-san and Kisaki (Airi)-san.

Minami: Yeah.

Maisora: I learnt so much from Kisaki-san! While I knew that I’d be following Coto-san with all my heart in the days to come, when I saw Flower Troupe’s Asumi-san’s graduation performance, I was deeply moved by the stage created by you all. So I decided that I have to work even harder!

Minami: And just earlier, I went to see your debut performance, and I was so emotional over the debut performance of my classmate Co-chan and the adorable Maisora. Of course other of my classmates are also active, Ayaki (Hikari) also did great when she transferred to Star Troupe too, and I look forward to how Star Troupe will continue to thrive. Flower Troupe will also follow close, and I want to keep being inspired.

Maisora: Coto-san was already so perfect, but it was so amazing to see her pursue higher heights… I want to do my best to support her even the least.

Minami: Both of you are a fantastic Top Combi. I could see that both of you were really happy in the duet dance. You showed us how your hearts connected in the dance, so I was sobbing in the audience (LOL).

Maisora: I’m yet to be that excellent, but I can’t thank Coto-san enough for allowing me to experience my heart’s liberation when I dance with her. I want to always remember the heart to convey a stage that will make the audience feel just as happy. It’s just like the applause on the last day of CRUZEIRO!, but the duet dance made me return to the primal source of being a stage performer and working ever diligently for the audience. And with her, I can learn more from her… like this (gestures her arms to tell Minami the message).

Minami: (LOL) I want to take a video of you now!

Maisora: I’m so bad at expressing myself in words (LOL).

Minami: I’m so bad too! But you can’t just show me that without words (LOL).

Maisora: (LOL). Anyway! As a Star Troupe member, I hope to give Coto-san even a bit of support and I’ll work hard.

Minami: Yes! Do your best (LOL).

Maisora: When I watch Flower Troupe performances, those were fun times too. Even though I can’t meet everyone, I still feel your kindness.

Minami: What can you do if you couldn’t meet us (LOL).

Maisora: Fine, I felt how brutally honest you are (LOL).

Minami: Ahaha (LOL). It’s the first time we’re talking like this today. I had a feeling that you must have felt that way at the time, but I had never properly expressed it in words, so it was a bit embarrassing. (LOL).

Maisora: (LOL). That’s because there wasn’t much time we could talk in private either… I always approached Minami-san either in the rehearsal classrooms or through the stage, and we talked about dance and performing arts together. Would you say that you said it properly? Is that what you wanted to say?

Minami: Of course! (LOL) We talked plenty. It was so fun to reminisce about our past, and let’s continue to work hard even in different troupes.

Maisora: Yes. I’m really glad to talk about those old days when I was in Flower Troupe.

Minami: I look forward to Maisora’s activities and your growth. And when I come and watch you, I’d probably think, “Wow?” and also strive to work hard.

Maisora: I’m not that brilliant yet~!!!! (LOL)

BONUS!!

#takarazuka #maisora hitomi #minami maito #star troupe #hoshigumi #flower troupe #hanagumi #takarazuka revue #takarazuka translation #tag: graph scans #tag: graph translation #the nakoaya fan posting #maimai combi #(if you will)#maitii is just like us!!! a cotonako fan!!!

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yuzukahibiscus · 6 months ago

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Retirement Conference Q&A: Takarazuka Revue Moon Troupe Top Star talks about the finale of the Sayonara Show, "It's good to end it with just the two of us"

(Source from Sanspo)

Takarazuka Revue Moon Troupe Top Star Tsukishiro Kanato embraced the closing performance on the 12th for her graduation performance "Eternal Voice"/"Grande TAKARAZUKA 110!" at the Takarazuka Grand Theatre on the 12th, bidding goodbye to the homebase. After the Sayonara Show, she appeared at the press conference. The following is the Q&A.

Q: Why did you choose the black tails?

Because there's still the Tokyo performances, and I'm still a Top Star, I'm still an otokoyaku, and it's far from the day I'm not living as my stage name and returning as myself yet. I chose the black tails to graduate at the Takarazuka Grand Theatre. Hayama (Kiomi)-sensei (a choreographer who passed away last June) always said, "Black tails is a costume without extra ornaments. That's the best thing to showcase in otokoyaku", so I wanted to present that myself too, and chose the black tails without other special design.

Q: You mentioned the god of stage in your speech.

I was able to finish the performance successfully today, that on the closing day I can enjoy this performance with my troupe members, and see the performance end without fail. As Top Star, I've always hoped that every performance would conclude successfully, but today as a graduating member, this feeling also stayed true, that when I'm able to embrace this closing day successfully and as a graduating member come down the grand staircase and give a speech, I think it's the god of stage watching over us, giving power to the graduates and also everyone in the troupe.

Q: How was the scenery on the grand staircase for the last time?

The graduates who went before me and other members were watching over me closely, and the graduates' faces were bright when they heard their name being called. Rather than the scenery before me when I came down the staircase, I'd say even now I remember much of how the underclassmen looked. Everyone looked so bright with beaming smiles, and that gave me strength to come down the staircase

What were you talking with Rei Makoto-san on stage?

It's a secret, I hope you understand.

What are your thoughts for the Sayonara Show?

The most memorable to me was when the graduates sang "Compass of Your Heart" (Rain on Neptune) and that was very good. It's a song with amazing lyrics, so rather than my song, this first comes to my mind. In the finale, it was my hope that it would be great if it were to end with just the two of us (with Umino). There are many Sayonara Shows that end with all of the troupe members or (the Top Star) alone, but now this is a Sayonara Show with Umino Mitsuki who has been with me until now, so I wanted to choose a song that was the most memorable to the two of us.

What does the Takarazuka Grand Theatre mean to you?

There's a great warmth filled in the Grand Theatre. A theatre that has such large capacity of power. There's the scenery from the opening day of my debut stage, and all of these experiences were in the Grand Theatre. All this time, I had been growing up with these various memories and experiences in this theatre. So it's a theatre that encapsulates so much energy.

What do you want to tell the next Top Star Houzuki An?

I don't have much grandeur to tell her, but during this time, I've had the chance to go to the Takarazuka Hall of Fame and I realise how many people have been part of creating Takarazuka till now. I think that all of that led to what we are today, and I felt proud and happy that I am affiliated as a member of (Takarazuka), so I believe this will continue to be relevant as Takarazuka continues to be loved by many when there are new Top Stars. That's what I think is so warm and amazing of Takarazuka.

#tsukigumi #takarazuka revue #retirement #graduation #tsukishiro kanato #houzuki an #umino mitsuki #hibiscustranslation

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zukadiary · 6 months ago

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hello, I hope you are doing well

I am someone who only recently learnt about Takarazuka, but someone that really caught my attention is Yuki Amami. I was wondering if you could tell me some information about her time in Takarazuka since it's quite difficult to find information in English. I know she didn't stay for long time and that upon leaving she built a career for herself in the entertainment industry. My inquiries are about how like big she was, what she known for, what sort of persona did she embody, what her time was like as a student, any anecdotes about her time with revue honestly anything you could offer me would appreciated. Thank you for your time

I'll do my best! I'm definitely not an Amami Yuuki expert, but I can give you a bullet list of things I know off the top of my head:

She's the youngest top star ever, she became top when she was still of age to be in shinjin kouen. This probably won't ever happen again.

Fun trivia re: above, her classmate Shizuki Asato had the shinko lead for Amami's Gone with the Wind. That's also probably never going to happen again (with otokoyaku). She and Zunko were very close friends.

More fun trivia re: above, it's very rare for a troupe's nibante to be senior (class wise) to the top star. Until this year, Amami's nibante Kuze Seika had been the only such nibante to actually take over as top afterwards (Hozuki An will be the second when Tsukishiro Kanato finishes the Tokyo run of Eternal Voice).

Amami's extreme popularity is hypothesized to be due to her unusually natural acting style (unusual for stage performers at the time). I've seen Japanese articles talk about the improvements in on-stage microphone technology that grew popular during her Takarazuka career, and how not needing to project with her natural voice to the back of B-seki may have helped her both develop and popularize this style.

Her acting style is what garnered her attention in the larger entertainment industry. It's suspected that the reason she was made top star so young is the company guessed she would choose to leave early for greener pastures on her own anyway, so they opted to capitalize financially on her popularity while they could.

She is the noted fave of many other big-name Takarazuka actresses who came after her (e.g. Nanami Hiroki and Nozomi Fuuto, who even addressed her childhood diary as if it was written to Amami Yuuki).

She's such a prolific actress that she has an IMDB page

#q&a #amami yuuki

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darkosomatsuconfessions · 3 days ago

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All matsus' are all pro-lgbtq+ but in the worlds most convoluted and insane ways possible.

1. All of their base opinions are formed by fujio akatsuka's 80s sex ed book so they are extremely pro-bdsm but all their ideas on what makes people gay and lesbian are based on 80s psychology. They think child abuse turns people gay. They think watching too many theater shows as a child makes people gay too.

2. They are all bisexual and in deep denial. Except Karamatsu. He's not in denial. He thinks high school theater club infected him with being gay but because it happened so late he also likes women. He thinks he's very special and unique for this.

3. They are all pro-trans but in a completely clueless, kinda chaser-y/shitty way. They think that being attached to trans people (ALL OF THEM. EVERY SINGLE TYPE.) still makes them straight. Even a single conversation with a real, living trans person would fix this.

4. They think Chibita is trans and accept him and have never said anything bad about that to him. Chibita is actually cis. Even seeing his cock their whole lives at the bathhouse did not convince them

5. When nyaa chan and totoko get together they lose their minds because they didnt know that they were like karamatsu, or that whole three people worldwide are bisexual. They wonder if totoko and nyaa became half-lesbians because they watched a takarazuka revue performance.

Usually I don’t comment but this made me laugh out loud

#osomatsu san #karamatsu #totonyaa #chibita #safe

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yume-fanfare · 10 months ago

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Ok I'll bite. What is kageki shoujo about

(I did look it up! It's just that imo those synopses tend to be misleading or incomplete in one way or another... If you wouldn't mind, then asking someone is better)

i'd love to explain!!!

have you heard about takarazuka revue? it is an all-female japanese theater troupe founded in the 1910s that perform extravagant broadway-like musicals, where both female (musume-yaku) and male (otoko-yaku) roles are played by women. it's a counterpart of sorts to kabuki, a classic form of japanese theater where only men are allowed to perform.

most of their productions are adapted from western literature or manga, and their most iconic play is based on the rose of versailles, a manga about the french revolution. our protagonist in kageki shoujo is sarasa, a 15 year old girl whose dream is to be the main character in that play. and to achieve that, she joins the troupe's boarding school to learn theater! though in this anime takarazuka is named kouka for some reason

and if you've read synopses you might have also heard about sarasa's counterpart and other main character, ai, a girl who was forced to quit her idol group after a scandal and enrolled the school as well. the show focuses on these two, but also their classmates and some seniors. the characters all have really interesting and developed storylines, i really enjoyed that aspect of it

so, to sum it up, kageki shoujo is a slice of life drama manga about a musical theater school! the anime is a really good adaptation too that i definitely recommend checking out. adds build up in just the right places and everyone's singing voices are wonderful, even if it cuts out some things here and there. really really good piece of media as a whole

^ the main girls!!!

extra yet important note: if you look up the manga, you'll notice there is kageki shoujo: the curtain rises and kageki shoujo!!. you have to read curtain rises first, they're separate mangas because there were some magazine publishing problems. the anime is titled kageki shoujo!!

however! and this is important: while this manga is mostly a shoujo, the curtain rises was originally published at a seinen magazine. because of that difference in target audience, the curtain rises treats some darker and much more sensitive themes, such as csa and eating disorders. while well-handled, it's still rough to read so take care! the rest of the series is much nicer.

#very nice cast very nice story very nice execution #def recommended #i watched the anime first and am now reading the manga and it's a pretty good order 👍#kageki shoujo #kageki shoujo!!#anonymous #preguntas

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vital-information · 9 months ago

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“Early Summer is about the difference between the married and the unmarried, how the married try to persuade or (worse) coerce the unmarried into getting married, and how maybe that isn’t always such a good idea. This theme is explicitly called out more than once in the film.

Early Summer further implies that there may be a good reason why some unmarried people, including Noriko (but not just Noriko), don't want to marry: they may be “that type of person,” as the young lesbian Fumi described herself in Takako Shimura's manga Aoi hana. This subtext rises briefly to the level of text at least once before being ambiguously dismissed.

Both Ozu and Hara remained unmarried until their deaths, and to my knowledge neither were ever credibly reported as having a romantic relationship with anyone. Per Donald Richie’s commentary on the Criterion release (referenced in the next post), Ozu was reported to become angry at any talk of his marrying. Meanwhile Hara, though termed “the eternal virgin” by a film producer for her film image, in real life had close friendships with many women, including a hair and makeup artist whose friendship with Hara began early on and continued after Hara retired into obscurity at the height of her career.

In modern terms we could therefore hypothesize Early Summer as a queer film subtly but firmly protesting compulsory heterosexuality, made by a (possibly) queer director and starring a (possibly) queer actor.

…

Early Summer opens with three establishing shots: first a shot of a dog walking freely on the beach with the ocean in the background, then a shot of a single bird in a cage outside, and then a final shot of birds in cages inside a house. This is the house in the oceanside town of Kamakura in which Noriko (Setsuko Hara’s character) lives, along with her brother Kōichi (Chishū Ryū), his wife Fumiko (Kuniko Miyake), Noriko and Koichi’s father (Ichiro Sugai) and mother (Chieko Higashiyama), and Kōichi and Fumiko’s two young boys.

If we wish, we can interpret the first and third shots as showing a strong contrast between freedom in nature on the one hand, and the restrictions imposed by society and the Japanese family system on the other. In this interpretation the second shot represents Noriko, who has a degree of independence that her mother and Fumiko do not have, but is still constrained by the bonds of family and society.

In the following scenes Kōichi takes an early train to his job as a physician, while Noriko goes to the Kita-Kamakura station to catch a later one. There she meets Kenkichi, another physician who works with Kōichi and who (along with his mother) is the family’s next-door neighbor. Kenkichi tells her that he’s been reading a book, implied to have been recommended by Noriko. The Criterion release describes it only as “this book,” but the BFI release names it as Les Thibaults.

Les Thibaults (published in Japanese as Chibō-ka no hitobito, and apparently relatively popular in Japan at the time) is a multi-volume French novel that begins as one of its protagonists is discovered writing passionate messages to a fellow schoolboy — something Ozu himself was apparently falsely accused of — and is then separated from his friend. Later volumes describe their diverging paths in life. Why might have Noriko recommended this particular novel to Kenkichi? Hold that thought.

We then see Noriko at work, as a secretary and executive assistant to the head of a small firm (Shūji Sano). As she talks with her boss regarding café recommendations, her best friend Aya (Chikage Awashima) arrives, there to collect payment for the boss’s spending at the restaurant her mother owns. Noriko’s boss wonders when they’ll both get married, and refers to them as “old maids.”

(Before becoming a movie actress, Chikage Awashima was a musumeyaku top star in the Takarazuka Revue and occasionally played “pants roles,” i.e., as a female character dressing as a man for plot reasons. Osamu Tezuka was a fan of hers, and she supposedly inspired the main character Sapphire, “born ... with a blue heart of a boy and a pink heart of a girl,” in his manga Princess Knight. Why might this be relevant to Early Summer? Again, hold that thought.)

After work, Noriko meets Kōichi and Fumiko for dinner. While they eat, Kōichi complains about post-war women (“[They’ve] become so forward.”) and Noriko corrects him: “We've just taken our natural place.” Kōichi then claims that’s why Noriko can’t get married, and she rebukes him: “It’s not that I can’t. I could in a minute if I wanted to.” (Note: a bit of foreshadowing here.)

Next occur the two key events that set the main plot in motion. First, Noriko’s great-uncle (Seiji Miyaguchi) arrives for a visit. He wonders why she isn't married yet. “Some women don't want to get married,” he tells her. “Are you one of them?” Noriko laughs and leaves the room, but the seed has been planted in the minds of her family.

Noriko’s boss also thinks it's time for her to get married, and he has just the man for her: “He’s never been married. Not sure if he's still a virgin.” Her boss has photographs to show her, and won’t leave her leave without taking them.

Meanwhile Noriko and Aya mercilessly tease one of their married friends, and after attending another friend’s wedding have dinner with that friend and another married friend, with a side dish of sexual innuendo. One of the married friends brags about how she spent a rained-out honeymoon playing with a “spinning top”: “My husband is very good at it.” Her friend cautions her: “You shouldn't flaunt it in front of the single girls.”

However, Aya is not impressed with the implied amazingness of heterosexual intercourse: “Silly! We don’t play with tops, do we?” Noriko enthusiastically agrees with her: “That’s for children, isn’t it?” The debate between the married and the unmarried continues, after which Noriko goes home, where Kōichi and Fumiko are scheming regarding the marital candidate proposed by Noriko’s boss.

Kenkichi’s mother then visits Noriko’s mother, and tells her that a man from a detective agency has been asking about Noriko: “I realized it was about her marriage.” We also learn that Kenkichi’s wife died two years ago (leaving him with a young daughter), and that he's not interested in remarrying: “All he does since his wife died is read books” (like Les Thibaults). Finally, we learn that Kenkichi’s best friend, Noriko’s brother Shoji, went missing in the war.

We now come to the climax of the first half of the movie. As Noriko’s nephews and their friends play with their model train set downstairs (one nephew asking if their father will buy them more train track), Aya visits Noriko and they talk in her room upstairs. Their married friends have made various excuses for why they couldn’t also visit; Noriko recalls how close they were at school and laments their drifting apart.

Throughout the first half of Early Summer Noriko and Aya are shown as mirroring each other’s gestures and speech. That mirroring continues in this scene (for example, they sit down next to each other at the exact same time and in the exact same manner), and then a very interesting thing happens. Ozu’s typical modus operandi is to continue a shot until someone stops speaking or moving, or even until they leave the room. But here he cuts immediately from Noriko and Aya simultaneously raising their glasses to drink, to Noriko’s father and mother simultaneously bringing food to their lips, as they relax sitting on a street curb in town.

If I were to speculate about what this juxtaposition might mean, if anything, I’d speculate as follows: that Ozu intended to show that, whatever Aya and Noriko might be to each other, they are as close, secure, and happy in their relationship as Noriko’s mother and father are in theirs — as much a couple as any other in the film, but not formally recognized as such.

Noriko’s father tells his wife, “This may be the happiest time for our family,” although he’s sad at the thought of Noriko leaving. They continue their conversation, and then are interrupted by the site of a balloon rising into the sky. “Some child must be crying,” Noriko’s father remarks. “Remember how Kōichi cried when he lost his balloon?”

…

The good times continue as Noriko brings home a cake to eat with her sister-in-law Fumiko, and their neighbor Kenkichi drops in unexpectedly and is invited to share it with them. The scene re-introduces Kenkichi and brings up the subject of his remarrying — something he doesn’t want, but his mother (played by Haruko Sugimura) does.

…

In the meantime Noriko’s brother Kōichi has been pursuing the idea of a marriage between Noriko and an unseen bachelor first suggested by Noriko’s boss, including asking his friends and associates for more information on the proposed groom. The results are “very promising”: “He’s in the social register, and seems to be a fine businessman.” “How nice,” replies his mother, but, “how old is he?”

…

Then Noriko’s boss asks a few questions that we’ve been asking ourselves. While Noriko is away from work, Aya stops by, and the boss questions Aya on whether Noriko will go through with the match or not: “I don't understand her ... Is she interested in men?” Aya at first demurs: “What do you think?” Noriko’s boss has seen indications both ways, and presses the question: “Has she always been like that?” Aya responds in the affirmative. The questioning goes on. Aya tells him that Noriko’s apparently never been in love, “but she has an album of ... Hepburn photos this thick,” holding her thumb and forefinger about 4 centimeters apart.

Here we have the first of two translation issues. Aya actually refers to “Hepburn” without mentioning a given name. The Criterion subtitles — by Donald Richie, who should have known better — make this a reference to Audrey Hepburn, who’d had only small roles by then. It’s almost certain that this is instead a reference to Katherine Hepburn, who was a major star by the time Noriko would have entered middle school. Was the teenaged Noriko besotted by the androgynous beauty of Katharine Hepburn (who would have made a stunning otokoyaku)? It sure looks like it.

The subtext now threatens to become text, as Noriko’s boss learns that “Hepburn” refers to an American actress, and asks the obvious follow-up question about Noriko. In the Criterion subtitles it’s translated as “So she goes for women?” The BFI translation puts it more bluntly: “Is she queer?” What is Noriko’s boss really asking? Japanese speakers can correct me here, but I believe his actual question uses the term “hentai.”

Western fans are used to thinking of “hentai” as referring to pornography. However, my understanding is that at the time of the film “hentai” in colloquial Japanese would have referred specifically to sexual behavior that was considered abnormal. So if Noriko’s boss did use the term, another possible translation might have been “Is she a pervert?” Both the Criterion and BFI translations soften the question; in particular BFI’s “is she queer?”, while defensible, risks projecting our current ideas about “queer” (including its positive connotations) onto a film created in a different time.

In any case, Aya is determined to shut down any discussion of Noriko’s proclivities. “No!” she firmly replies. Noriko’s boss is apparently unconvinced: “You can never know. She’s very strange, in any case.” His prurient instincts aroused, Noriko’s boss then envisions another solution to the problem of Noriko, and queries Aya about it: “Why don’t you teach her?” “About what?” “Everything.” “What do you mean, everything?” He pats her shoulder and admonishes her: “Don’t try to be coy,” as we viewers pause to consider the implications of what he’s asking her to do.

Aya rejects this line of inquiry as well: “Don’t talk to me like that! That was rude!” Noriko's boss laughs, offers a half-hearted apology, and then (after telling Aya that Noriko won’t be back that day) invites her to lunch and quizzes her on her preferences in sushi: “Tuna” she says. He continues, “How about an open clam?” (which Donald Richie's commentary helpfully informs us is a euphemism for the vagina). “Sure,” she replies. “And a nice long rice roll?” “No, thank you!” His final words are, “You’re strange too,” and again I think I hear the word “hentai” enter the conversation.

…

Recall that Kenkichi decided to accept an offer as a department head in a hospital in Akita, several hundred kilometers north of Tokyo and on the opposite coast. Noriko meets him in a café before her brother Kōichi is to host him at a farewell dinner party, and they talk about Shoji, Noriko’s other brother who went missing in action during the war. Kenkichi recalls how he and Shoji were best friends in school, often eating at this very café, indeed at this very table. Kenkichi tells Noriko that he still keeps a letter that Shoji sent him, with a stalk of wheat enclosed (probably indicating that Shoji was deployed in northern China). Noriko asks if she can have the letter, and Kenkichi agrees.

Afterward Noriko visits Kenkichi’s mother, while Kenkichi himself is still at his farewell party. Kenkichi's mother tells Noriko her secret dream (“please don’t tell Kenkichi”): “I just wish Kenkichi had gotten remarried to someone like you.” She apologizes and asks Noriko not to be angry (“It’s just a wish in my heart”), but Noriko stares at her with an intense expression (her usual smile absent), and asks her, “Do you mean it? ... Do you really feel that way about me?” Kenkichi’s mother apologizes again, but Noriko presses on: “You wouldn’t mind an old maid like me?” Then before Kenkichi’s mother can respond, Noriko speaks: “Then I accept.”

Kenkichi’s mother is incredulous. She asks Noriko several times to confirm what she’s saying, thanks Noriko effusively and weeps tears of joy at her good fortune, but continues to question Noriko about her decision even as Noriko leaves to go home. (Incidentally, this scene features a bravura performance by Haruko Sugimura.)

After she leaves the house, Noriko encounters Kenkichi, just returned from his farewell party. Noriko exchanges some small talk with him, but says absolutely nothing about what she just told his mother.

Noriko's decision then plays out across multiple scenes:

At first Kenkichi doesn’t understand what his mother is trying to tell him (“She accepted.” “Accepted what?”). When he finally gets the message (“She agreed to marry you. To become your wife!” “My wife?” “Yes. Isn’t it wonderful?”), he looks absolutely gobsmacked. His mother breaks down in tears again telling him how happy she is, and how happy he should be. He tries to play along (glumly echoing, “Yes, I’m happy”), but he looks for all the world like a man who would sooner eat nails than enter into another marriage.

Kenkichi’s mother doesn't understand why he’s not happy. She concludes, “What an odd boy you are.” The Japanese word here appears to be “hen,” which I understand to be a softer adjective than “hentai,” and not sexual in nature. But note that Kenkichi is now the third person after Noriko and Aya to be referred to as not normal in some way.

Meanwhile Noriko is interrogated about her decision by her family, especially by Kōichi, in a beautifully framed and shot scene — Noriko in white, her head bowed, her brother in black, barking questions like a prosecutor cross-examining a criminal. Noriko is unrepentant: “When his mother talked to me, I didn’t feel a moment’s hesitation. I suddenly felt I’d be happy with him.” Her parents retire upstairs to chew on their disappointment — Noriko walking silently past them on her way to her room — while Kōichi tells Fumiko, “What could we do now? She’s made up her mind. You know how she is.”

…

Meanwhile Noriko and Aya have their last scene together. It starts by echoing and completing the action at the end of their previous scene: then they raised their glasses together to drink, now they lower their glasses in a simultaneous gesture. Aya tells Noriko that she can’t believe Noriko would ever end up like this: she thought Noriko would be a modern woman living “Western-style, with a flower garden, listening to Chopin,” “wearing a white sweater, with a terrier in tow,” and greeting Aya in English — “Hello, how are you?”

Instead Aya now imagines Noriko wearing farmers clothes in rural Japan, speaking the local dialect. She playfully imitates country speech, and Noriko responds in kind: “Ya don’t look it, but ya talk like the locals.” “I figure to live in Akita when me and my man get hitched.” The subtext here I read as follows: Noriko knows how to pretend to be something she is not — a conventional heterosexual woman in a conventional heterosexual marriage — and she will accept doing so in her self-imposed exile from Tokyo, the price she must pay for avoiding what she considered to be a worse fate.

The tone then turns serious. Aya recalls meeting Kenkichi when they were in school, on a hiking trip with Noriko and her brother Shoji, and presses Noriko about her choice: “Did you already love him then?” “No, I had no particular feeling for him. ... I never imagined myself marrying him.” Noriko evades Aya’s questions about how she came to love Kenkichi, refusing time after time to acknowledge her feelings for him as those of love. Instead she insists, “No, I just feel I could trust him with all my heart and be happy.”

But trust Kenkichi for what? we want to ask Noriko. To respect her for who and what she is? To not want a conventional relationship with her? To not press her for sex or for children (after all, he already has one)? To keep her secrets, as she might keep any secret of his?

…

The family then gathers for one last commemorative photo. Without Noriko's salary they can no longer afford the house in Kamakura, so they break up: the parents to live with the great-uncle; Noriko to Akita with Kenkichi, his mother, and his daughter; and Kōichi, Fumiko, and their sons to some other less-expensive dwelling (perhaps an apartment in the Tokyo suburbs).

The parents recall when they moved into the house: “It was spring and Noriko had just turned 12.” Kōichi remembers that time as well: "She used to wear a ribbon in her hair, and she was always singing." But “children grow up so quickly,” her parents remark, and living together forever, "that's impossible."

Her usual smile nowhere in evidence, Noriko takes it all upon herself: “I’m sorry, I’ve broken up the family.” Despite reassurances from her father (“It’s not your fault. It was inevitable.”) she flees from the room, goes upstairs to her own room, and cries her heart out, distraught about the turn that her and their lives have taken.

The final scene shows Noriko’s parents at the great-uncle’s house, far from the sea. They glance at a wedding procession walking through the fields (“Look there. A bride is passing by. I wonder what sort of family she’s marrying into?”), think of Noriko, and resign themselves to the family's fate: “We shouldn’t ask for too much.” “We've been really happy.”

— Frank Hecker, “Ozu’s Early Summer Seems Pretty Darn Queer to Me”

#yasujiro ozu #ozu #queer history #setsuko hara #early summer #film criticism #queer film #gay subtext #queer coding #long post

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