chuunin_archive | SO YOU WANNA SEE NARUTO SING, EH?

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On August 8th, 5 crazy English teachers went and saw the Naruto Movie. The next day, August 9th, they decended upon Universal Studios Japan for a LIVE ACTION NARUTO ROCK MUSICAL EVENT.

Guys, I am so not kidding you.

This picture does NOT do Sakura justice. SHE WAS REALLY PRETTY.

Allowed to take pictures, I discovered my camera sucks. But, thankfully, one of my friends had a REALLY sweet camera that took nice pictures.

It's pretty much about as campy as you'd expect it to be. I'm sorry that my description isn't about to be as awesome as my movie description, but this time, I will make up for it with PICTURES!

Also, remember how the movie lacked a Gary or Mary Sue? Yeeeaaaaah. This made up for that.

small ETA added to the end of the USJ show summary!

If this reads like the summary of a REALLY BAD fanfic. . . that's because in many, many ways it was like a really, really bad fanfic.

So, the story is this: There are some villains who kidnap Tsunade with this CRAZY trancy song (and let me tell you--Tsunade could SING holy crap she was awesome<3) that was quite amusing. I was surprised because while my friend who ordered the tickets knew it was a magical rock adventure, I did not. So when I heard music, I was like "Wow, it feels like they are gonna sing--OH HEY SINGING. WHAT THE FU--"

Ahem. So these villains are looking for a sword that will magically help them get revenge upon Konoha. (And they dress in gold lame. Or, really, multi-colored lame) Apparently, the main bad guy blames Konoha for killing his sister. Because LO, once upon a midnight dreary, he was a Konoha ninja. (Likely, there was a song about this. I do not remember) His sister died on a mission, and he blames Konoha.

So he wants to find this sword, and Tsunade knows where it is. It's hidden in a lake somewhere, and the villains have taken her to get this info from her.

Meanwhile back in Konoha, we get a MAGICAL SHOW of our cast of ninja. From Konoha, we have: Kakashi, Naruto, Sakura, Sai, Shikamaru, Lee and Gai. They gather together to hear Sakura sing a song (she also has an amazing voice), and decide to go after Tsunade.

The rest of the plot involves appearances by Gaara and Sasuke, manzai villains (manzai is a type of comedy style in Japan), and all sorts of crazy stuff. Our version of events had Sasuke on stage for all of two scenes, because of a technical malfunction with the set. (The sword they were looking for could rise up, but they couldn't get it back down. so they just ignored it. This was bad as the show started late and we had trains to catch. Ahahaha.) In the end, the bad guy finds out that his sister sacrificed her life to seal away the Sword of Revengefulness, and that's why she is dead. So the bad guy forgives Konoha, and all is well.

It's a really crazy, messed up and non-sensical plot with songs and dances. The music was really fabulous, and the stage, while limited, was used really well.

The stage they used is the same one that they use for the Monster Show, and probably used a lot of the same actors. (There were even foreigners in the back up singers. HOT DAMN their voices were good!) I was pretty impressed with how they used lights to make the stage look cool. Some of the effects were hoaky, but guys, let's face it: I WAS WATCHING A MUSICAL ABOUT NINJA.

Anyway, here. Have some pictures.

So they were giving away these hats at the station. And we were wearing them all over the park. Like, seriously. I would share proof but I just wanted to show you the hats, you don't need/want to see my bum self all over. YOU ARE HERE FOR THE NINJA, I SHALL PROVIDE!

Ahem. Now, stuff from the show!

The manzai villains dragged this guy up onto the stage and made him tell his wife that he loved her. And just generally poked fun before the show started. It was silly. They also tried to get him to join them, because they are villains and that is what villains in Naruto do. The guy refused, he was probably just at the show at the request of his fangirl wife. Ahahaha. He kind of didn't want to say it. It was silly and sweet.

Tsunade being kidnapped by villains! Oh noes!

The villains with speaking lines doing a song and dance around their Leader. I swear, this dance was hilarious. There was stage humping and speaker humping and general weirdness going on. SO WEIRD.

One of the better shots that we have of Team Konoha.

Ohhh Naruto. So cute. ^.^

Ohhh Lee. I think you are magically older than Gai. This terrifies me.

These pictures make Sai's abs look kinda fail. From where we were sitting, they looked pretty hot. And up close they looked pretty good too.

One of the fight scenes. AW LOOKIT HE IS PROTECTING HER. <3333

Sasuke, aka "Sir Not Appearing for Very Long in this Musical."

LOOKIT! A GAARA. 8D I think he was just there to lend aide to Konoha. Or because they knew that he would draw a crowd. THE CHOICE IS YOURS.

This was absolutely the best shot my friend took. Damn him and his nice camera! All my shots were kind of fail like WOAH.

More Konoha looking good.

The end. LOOK, THEY SAVED TSUNADE. ARE YOU SURPRISED? I KNOW I WAS. ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT, YOU GUYS.

Cast shot on the stage.

As you can see, the costumes were pretty cool. Everyone did really good nailing their characters, but I think the show was stolen anytime Gai and Lee interacted. They didn't say much, but they would just go off to the side and be very Lee and Gai-sensei. And whenever Gai and Kakashi were near each other. . .OMG. ETERNAL RIVALS AND AMAZINGMESS. In the curtain call at the end, they remained in character, they hugged and then shoved each other aside being all "NO WE ARE MANLY AND WE WILL FIGHT." Pretty awesome.

ETA: Also, since this was a stage show, the actors didn't actually sound like their characters, which was really jarring. With the exception of Shikamaru who was so dead on we're pretty DAMN certain it was his voice actor, they all sounded so weird!

We were fangirling pretty hard over Shikamaru. *_*

Also, during the curtain call, the actors ran around the audience and shook hands, being very awesome and IC. OKAY I WILL STFU AGAIN.

/END ETA

There were some other cool things floating around too! At the theater, there was a map of the Naruto world with pictures of Tsunade, Gaara and Raikage. Also, at USJ there were some signs hanging around and RAMEN FLAVORED POPCORN.

It was a pretty awesome display of Naruto stuff. We didn't have much time to take a lot of pictures (A shame, because we were in lolita, HAHAHA, lolita Narutards YES WE ARE THAT LAME), but it was a really awesome display. Hopefully it'll still be up when I see it again.

This is quite possibly the BEST PART of my USJ experiance. We lucked out and went to the USJ show the week when they were handing out the Gaiden fans as an omake if you belong to the Universal Studios Japan Club. VERY AWESOME, it's handing on my wall now, haha. I never said I wasn't a fangirl.

A sign for the show. I felt reeeeaaaaally guilty asking these two women to move so I could take a picture. But we're all fans, so yeah. It wasn't a problem, I just felt bad. ^^;;

Ramen flavored popcorn, with little naruto in it. The naruto were pretty tasty!

Pictures of the container the popcorn came in. XD Sorry that I didn't get a good shot of it all together, but it's a weirdly curved thing.

So that's all. In conclusion, I really hope that you enjoy this! I have one more set of pictures to put up, with the Sunshine 60 exhibit in Tokyo! I wanted to combine posts but I kind of take waaaayyy too many pictures to do that. SORRY! I hope I'm not spamming your flists too hard there!

Anyway, thanks for looking!

~Hiko

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Osafune, Japan
Current Music: I'm on a Boat ~ The Lonely Island