#Tanaka Taketo

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Kimi ni wa Todokanai | S01E08

Japanese Drama - 2023, 8 episodes

Episodes | Viki | YouTube | iQIYI | WeTV | Tencent | Netflix | Catalogue

[psychodramajp]

A new generation is coming, so keeping only a single few favorites will be hard if not impossible (Part4)

A new generation is coming, so keeping only a single few favorites will be hard if not impossible (Part4) #浦上晟周 #田中偉登 #遠藤健慎 #倉悠貴 #小西詠斗 #兵頭功海 #鈴木仁 #井上祐貴 #鈴鹿央士 #中川大輔

It’s been a while since we’ve added to our long and clearly never-ending list – I mean, we have four (1/2/3/4) articles filled with them by now – of young Japanese actors, so why not continue with another batch of them? L-to-R: Uragami Seishu, Tanaka Taketo, & Endo Kenshin Uragami Seishuu (’99) Perhaps a weird choice to start with when you remember the guy left his agency earlier this year,…

[chibimyumi]

Dear @lunitamoon​​,

First of all, I am sorry it took so long to get to you, but thank you very much for your sweet compliments! The day you sent the ask was great, and so is today. I hope your life is good to you too.

But now without further ado, your question.

Uchikawa Reo

I think Reo is a very good actor. My first opinion of him when I saw him in Noah’s Ark Circus 2016 was that he has a lot of talent. Some of these talents were not polished yet, (his singing being one example, but given his young age I couldn’t possibly blame him), while other talents were already polished to a sparkling gem. When people talk about Reo, it is usually “cuteee, so tiny!!!” or compliments of the like. His looks make people shove his remarkableness as an actor under these irrelevant external qualities. That is a shame, so please allow me to highlight a few things that are remarkable about this boy.

Character interpretation and understanding

I think Reo understood the character of O!Ciel very well and he was able to deliver many of the nuances even his first time in the role. When hastily interpreted, O!Ciel’s character runs the risk of being taken for nothing but cranky, sulky and haughty. Reo however, even at the age of 12 managed to see that these three obvious traits have a much deeper root: ‘doneness’. O!Ciel is done with his butler’s sauciness, done with people around him imposing their opinions on him, done with the world. Uchikawa Reo managed to capture this fatigue quite well.

In the scene where Soma is altogether a bit too clingy, I think many would think O!Ciel would push the prince away or slap him away. Reo however, did not. He was trying to pull away Soma’s hands, but he never showed antagonism. Just doneness. Regardless of whether O!Ciel does or doesn’t see Soma as his ‘big brother figure’ and ‘friend’, he does care about him. Even when Reo-bocchan said: “I’m exhausted because of you,” there was no callousness in his voice; just irritation.

Reo managed to find a beautiful middle ground between ‘warm’ and ‘cold’ for O!Ciel, and that is exactly what I believe our Trash Baby Lord is. That is a lot more nuance in character study than I could possibly expect from most actors, let alone a 12 year old one.

Another example of Reo’s great understanding of his role is in the scene where he questions his butler whether he would be able to bring them to Baron Kelvin’s manor within an hour. Here he raised an eyebrow as he spoke. This raised eyebrow is very significant.

In the post ‘That Butler, Punchable‘, I discussed in detail how Sebastyun is constantly being very snarky at his master, presumably so because he did not consider the boy worthy of his full respect. In the scene of this example however, O!Ciel has earned the demon’s full respect, and he knows it.

Raising an eyebrow, O!Ciel shows that he has reestablished dominance as master, and that intellectually he is on the same playing field as the demon. He knows what he is doing, and unsurprisingly, the question asked was thusly phrased as a rhetorical one. Hence I did not translate this line as: “can you?” but instead as “you can, right?” Through this nuance, Reo-bocchan shows a great level of confidence and his grasp over the case.

Something else remarkable about 12-year-old Reo is his body-language. In the showdown between him and Baron Kelvin, Reo knew very well how to deliver his actions and the tension of the scene to even the people in the furthest back of the theatre. He takes his time to carry out every movement with meaningful decisiveness. One powerful kick. Re-assume stance. Walk behind his victim. Trap him under his foot. Point the gun at him. Had Reo just kicked Kelvin and stood on him in one consecutive movement, then the impact would have been broken.

I am not sure whether this was intentional, but before Reo pointed the gun at Kelvin, the hand that held the weapon was relaxed, which meant it would not attract attention away from his footwork. Only when the footwork was finished did Reo reveal his gun again from underneath his cape, effectively re-shifting attention back to the weapon when that should be the central focus again.  In theatre where audiences don’t view the production through edited and selected footage, it is vital that actors know where they should draw attention to, and reversely, where not to. Reo did well.

Reo’s natural flair for comedy is also noteworthy. O!Ciel’s character’s funniness is mostly his insane cuteness and inability to can at times; not because he has funny remarks to make. Trying too hard to be funny is a big theatre/movie sin, but Reo is luckily no sinner

As demonstrated above, Reo has an excellent understanding of his role and is careful in maintaining it even when the musical calls for comedy. Reo employed a very advanced technique of achieving comedy; namely discrepant solemness. He does not loosen up or start monkeying around; instead he maintains his usual up-tightness while tricking Aberline into saying his own name wrong. The brilliancy in this scene was not just Reo’s ability to employ this advanced comedy technique, but also that the nature of this skit was perfectly in character for this insidious, manipulative brat.

In Tango on the Campania Reo filled most of the ‘space for growth’ he still had in the previous musical. Even though Reo’s body language on stage was already great in Noah’s Ark Circus, he did have the tendency to stand idle when the scene’s focus was not on him. In the latest musical however, Reo would not forget to also act when he was in the background.

His singing also largely improved, and was able to prolong his notes as well as transitioning between the notes. He still had trouble hitting the highest of notes, but his voice would no longer die off mid-way in its ascending.

Fukuzaki Nayuta

I think Nayuta is a great actor too, and personally a seemingly very underrated gem. In the first run of the Lycoris that Blazes the Earth (2014) Nayuta was admittedly not the best actor ever seen in theatre history. However, he did up the game for Ciel actors even at the time. Acting style is more preference-bound, but undeniably Nayuta’s singing was more solid than any past Ciel performer before him. Despite him having outclassed past Ciels’ singing, Nayuta received a lot of hate from fans, most amounting to: “I can’t watch this, he is too ugly.” (Yes, very constructive, very legit. Ughum. The Kurofandom never fails to remind me how so many are here just for the pretttiiiiiiessss >_>)

In 2015, Nayuta’s voice was actively dropping, sending him in a constant swing between up-and-down. I don’t have experience with a dropping voice, but I heard from everyone who did that it is incredibly hard to control your voice in speaking, let alone singing. And yet, though his voice was rough at all times, Nayuta did manage to hit all the tones. I find that very impressive. I think technique-wise, Nayuta is the strongest singer among all Ciel stage-actors so far. I haven’t heard his singing after his voice-change was complete, but I can imagine him having become a very good singer now. His capacity for control over his voice is superb, after all.

Nayuta’s acting is very subtle but convincing. When Nayuta-bocchan was in his cage, he even added some little movements of the hand that would not be in people’s usual expectations given the situation. To me, this little quirk seemed to convey how despite already having hit rock bottom, the last straw had only fallen just now. This boy is not just scared and desperate, he is murderously angry and resolute.

Nayuta’s subtle and yet convincing body-language can be seen throughout the musical. To demonstrate what I mean by ‘convincing’, I wish to point at Tango on the Campania. Compare Nayuta’s shaking to the headbanging of the stand-in for O!Ciel... Nope. (This actress is not a child, so I can be harsher.)

Again, Nayuta’s acting is subtle, but it does mean it is easily missed, especially in a live theatre. (’Overacting’ is obviously a thing (see demonstration 1 above ⇈), but to the people who initially criticised Furukawa for “moving around too much”, that’s the theatre medium for you. Theatre was not made to be recorded and viewed in close proximity. Moving any less will basically be invisible in a theatre (see my analysis of Tamaki’s performance as Snake).)

Enough side-tracked, back to Nayuta. In the scene where Nayuta-bocchan just woke up, he performed the panic dying down slowly expertly. We can tell that the shaking and heavy breathing really got the better of him, but that the boy was actively trying not to show his butler.  This was probably not visible live, but we have footage of it, so let us savour the panic-dying-down for what it is.

Though I might go as far as to say Nayuta might be better suited as a film-actor than theatre-actor, what was not missed on live audiences was this iconic scene below ⇊ when it finally dawned in O!Ciel that he had been chasing the wrong tail all along.

The atmosphere he created was incredibly tense, and we could practically hear the gears grinding and suddenly coming to a shocking halt. Bravo. It is ultimately for this scene that I think Nayuta would make a phenomenal stage-actor with just a BIT more stage-oriented instructions from the director.

Another scene that also conveyed the tension excellently was when O!Ciel was putting up with the Viscount. Nayuta knew better than put on an insulting high-pitched voice in parody of “a girl’s voice”, instead he minded the intonation of speaking and subtler mannerisms girls are socialised to perform.

When the Viscount really got way too close, Sasaki’s acting was incredibly flamboyant and loud, and yet it never threatened to overshadow Nayuta’s performance. Nayuta knows very well how to keep people’s attention on him even when he doesn’t have lines to say. When the Viscount turned Nayuta-bocchan around, the boy’s facial expression spoke voluuuumes.

Sakamoto, Nishii and Tanaka

I don’t have footage of them, and I am not going to get them legally or illegally, so I will include no visual examples of them in this post.

I don’t want to be harsh on children, they all did their best I believe, but do allow me to say that I am not very enthusiastic about their performances.

Sakamoto’s performance of Ciel was not very memorable, but I think it mostly has something to do with his part in the script just not being memorable at all. To sum up; Ciel in ‘Friendship’ received some guests from Japan, played chess, and stared wide shifty-eyed until the case solved itself. Sakamoto’s singing was decent, though. I wish they capitalised more on that.

Nishii... I think many people were initially especially enthusiastic about him because he did not “look like Vincent Phantomhive”. He did his best, I could tell he had fun in the performance, but whatever acting-talent he might have, the musical never gave him any chance to shine. That musical gave his character ZERO nuance. Nishii’s singing was very unpolished, and in the mere 3 weeks of audition time, there was also no time to get it polished. But then again, the same goes for the singing of most of that cast.

Tanaka... I could tell he did his best, but perhaps he was doing his best not to f*ck up a bit too hard. The songs in this musical were rather challenging, and Tanaka always seemed very tense as he was trying to chase the notes. It was like he was desperately clinging to his spot within a safety-zone, which ultimately meant he didn’t explore any potentials outside the range of monotony. When it comes to acting, it also seemed like cranky outbursts were the only emotion he dared touch upon.

So that was that! Thanks for reading!

[kdramalands]

privacy? who is she?

[brand-upon-the-brain]

True Mothers (Naomi Kawase, 2020)

[animeonstage-blog]

Actor of the Day: Tanaka Taketo

Today’s Actor of the Day is Tanaka Taketo. Originally from Osaka, he was born January 24th, 2000. Despite his young age, Tanaka Taketo already has had a variety of experiences in the entertainment world. He got his start as a child model, and has since gone on to appear in films (like 2012’s Rurouni Kenshin as Myojin Yahiko), television shows (he appeared as Lapis in Kamen Rider Gaim), and of course on stage. His most prominent stage credit to date was Ciel Phantomhive in Kuroshitsuji - The Most Beautiful DEATH in the World-. Outside of work, he enjoys kickboxing and basketball, and brags that his special skill is being able to drink any number of cans of coke in one sitting.

Read more!

[ceilingcloud]

Take-chan (aka the most underrated Bocchan ever) appears in GLAY's PV "Hashire Mirei".

Since his profile is no longer available on the AMUSE website, i wonder what he’s doing now. Such a waste of talent :(

[deprotagonisten]

True Mothers

Recensie True Mothers ★★★1/2 - te zien op @picl en Vitamine @Cineville Een warme film waarin licht een belangrijke rol speelt. In het leven heb je niet altijd alles voor het kiezen! @cineart #TrueMothers

De dramafilm True Mothers gaat over Satoko en haar man. Zij adopteren een jongen, maar jaren later staat de biologische moeder op de stoep. Dit zorgt uiteraard voor spanning. Wat wij van True Mothers vinden, lees je in onze recensie. Continue reading

[shanghiman]

They're all grown up.

[genkinahito]

Ice Cream and the Sound of Raindrops アイスと雨音 Dir: Daigo Matsui (2018) screened as part of the #WeAreOneFilmFestival @WeAreOneGFF @tiff_english Ice Cream and the Sound of Raindrops アイスと雨音 「Aisu to Amaoto」    Running Time: 74 mins.

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Kimi ni wa Todokanai | S01E05

Japanese Drama - 2023, 8 episodes

Episodes | Viki | YouTube | iQIYI | WeTV | Tencent | Netflix | Catalogue

[recentanimenews]

Girls' Frontline TV Anime Brings January 2022 Premiere, More Cast, Staff, New Visual, Trailer to the Battlefield

  The Girls' Frontline TV anime is set to roll out onto Japanese TV screens on January 2022, Warner Bros. Japan announced today. Alongside the date, a new trailer and visual was released for the series as well as more cast and staff and the ending theme artist and song.

      Joining the already announced cast members are:

  Mikako Komatsu as Gentiane

  Nao Toyama as Carina

  Hitomi Nabatame as Agent

  Kaya Okuno as Scarecrow

  Shizuka Ito as Executioner

  Akio Otsuka as Krueger

  Previously, Shigeru Ueda was confirmed to be directing Girls' Frontline at Asahi Production with Hideyuki Kurata writing the scripts, Masaki Yamada designing the characters for animation, and Takashi Watanabe composing music for the series. The opening theme was previously announced to be yukaDD(;´∀｀) singing "BAD CANDY," with today, revealing that TEAM SHACHI will be performing the ending theme song "HORIZON" for the TV anime series. The rest of the staff include:

  Prop Design - Noriyuki Jinguji

Backgrounds - Goofy

Art Director - Taketo Gonpei

Color Design - Maki Saito

Director of Photography - Shota Kodera

3DCG Director - Hara Kazuaki

Editing - Yuki Honda

Sound Director - Ryo Tanaka

  Girls' Frontline adapts the Chinese mobile gacha game of the same name that goes by the title Dolls Frontline in Japan. The story is set in a war-torn future that has tactical dolls, also known as T-Dolls, fight out battles in the place of humans, of which most a dead. The TV anime is set to premiere on Japanese TV and worldwide through streaming in January 2022, though no streaming services have been confirmed at this time.

  Source: Press Release

  ---- 

Daryl Harding is a Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram.

By: Daryl Harding

[gotojobin]

#FireForce #炎炎ノ消防隊 #EnenNoShōbōtai #literallyBlazingFirefightingCorps #literally #BlazingFirefightingCorps #KingDevinJoseph #キングデビンジョセフ #おたく #Otaku #オタク #GotoJobin #後藤Jobin #デヴィンジョセフ王 #Weeb #WeebDar #王デヴィンジョセフ 1. Episode 9 Burning Malice Screenwriter: Taketo Kojima Storyboard: Terando Katsumi Director: Tokuno Yuji, Tanaka Orie, Maeda Yoshihiro, Saito Yoshiko, Kudo Yuki, Imada Akane, Inoue Mika, Fukui Maki It was Cinra who appeared in the place between the hair to have saved Tamaki who had faced the maximum crisis by a heartless fist of the leader of Lecca who was a senior member of the longing. Sinra is struggling but is going to hunt down Lecca. 2. Episode 9 Screenplay: Taketo Kajishima Storyboard: Katsumi Terato Directed by Yuji Tokuno Director: Orie Tanaka, Yoshihiro Maeda, Yoshiko Saito, Yuki Kudo, Satoshi Imada, Mika Inoue, Maki Fukui It was Shinla who appeared at the best moment to save Tamaki, who was facing the greatest crisis, by the relentless fist of the longing senior member of the company, Reka. Shinla keeps track of Reka while struggling. https://www.instagram.com/p/B2KwFuhn0ga/?igshid=17rdiqac4igjc

[kitten-and-crow]

Ciel Phantomhive - Tanaka Taketo

[ppppineapple]

same coat for Ceil since 2013

[xan-the-13th]

For those of you wondering how flexible Sasaki Yoshihide’s body is...

Let Tanaka Taketo tell you the answer. 

Get it?