Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live musical in London – review

Nowadays there’s a host of TV adaptations to see in the West End, most of which aim at expanding the universe and reach of their source material, rather than just putting it onstage (think Stage/Fright from the makers of Inside No 9, or Stranger Things: The First Shadow).

Something quite different can be seen at HERE @ Outernet on Charing Cross Road (and also at KOKO in Camden Town). Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live falls in the more longstanding tradition of anime stage adaptations (from Ouran High School Host Club to Death Note: The Musical), immensely popular productions that adapt individual seasons or the overall arc of their shows. Sailor Moon has had a number of versions of musicals over the years, but this is the first longer run in the UK and then North America, utilising some of the original cast of its first staging besides new creative team members.

It’s not aiming for the same things as many new musicals. Running through a quickly sketched version of the first season of the anime’s plot, it’s not one for songs for each character, extensive sets, subtext or clever lyrics. At the same time, it’s kind of ironproof, even to a non-fan like me: a blast of colour and love. A lot of more conventional criticisms fail against it. The joy here is in seeing Yui Yokoyama’s unbelievably correct, ebullient posture in that school uniform-superhero outfit, in those wigs, a race through things familiar and cherished.

Touted as a “2.5D musical” (uniting anime and real life), it makes extensive use of its screen backdrop, with playful surtitles translating the Japanese spoken (but mostly sung). The narrative is pretty simple, rushing us through clumsy, loveable schoolgirl Usagi Tsukino’s double life as Guardian from outer space Sailor Moon with her friends and comrades in arms. Past life identities are uncovered, a romance blossoms (extremely quickly) with the elusive-yet-everywhere Tuxedo Mask, and the search for the Legendary Silver Crystal brings Sailor Moon into combat with the glamorously evil Queen Beryl. It’s formulaic because it has to be, squeezed into one and a half hours: tides of fighting and regrouping, despair to appreciating friendship and love anew.

At the helm is a new writer, director and lyricist, Kaori Miura, very experienced with anime musicals, and music by Go Sakabe and KYOHEI. Though individual tunes don’t necessarily linger, and there’s an initial adjustment to the plainly translated lyrics, there’s a tongue-in-cheek irony at play, particularly in the juxtaposition of Usagi’s everyday life with the world-ending consequences of the battles she fights (“I don’t want to go to school, I’ll get told off for being late” vs the many, many princess references).

Queen Beryl (Mayu Tsuyuzume) has a chucklingly jazzy number where she instructs her lopsided-bobbed minions to “Burn up the dance floor”, and the reprise of ‘We are the Sailor Guardians’ as the girls regroup and focus on revenge is a highlight, a roll-call set to fun, trashy pop. The original score blends well with music fans might remember from the anime, though it’s the cumulative spectacle of the actors in formation to it that activates it. The Sailor Moon theme song itself, when performed as it is bookending the show, can’t quite be rivalled, and allows the actors to do some front-facing choreography surely designed to catch on.

Though not just for girls, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live features an all-female cast (several anime musicals utilise genderbending casting, but it also calls to mind the legendary company Takarazuka Revue). Only Sufa plays a male character throughout (Tuxedo Mask, or Mamoru Chiba, Sailor Moon’s love interest), to quiet swoons throughout. Though it’d also be easy to come away assuming a man plays that role, there’s a slight playful homoeroticism in the repeated embraces between Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask, as well as the other Sailor Guardians’ devotion to their friend and leader.

There’s no real opportunity for much rounding out of characters here, though Marisa Yasukawa as Sailor Mars is a passionate standout with a powerful voice. Yui Oikawa (Sailor Mercury), Rii Tachibana (Sailor Jupiter) and Yu Nakanishi (Sailor Venus) are accompanied by an ensemble of briefly-seen side characters and enemies. It’s their costumes as the Sailor Guardians which bring more than half the magic: plumped up, shiny, adorable.

There are some pleasingly oversized props (Usagi’s terrible exam papers), but the musical is largely a stripped-down affair of backdrop and bodies, outside of later light tricks. Some flaming daggers – at first making the girls look like air traffic controllers – have surprises in store, while light-up ribbons seem slightly too heavy to wow. Toma Satomi’s choreography is very arm-focused, like the characters’ poses from the anime, most intricate in the battles or the concert ending of the show, and possibly better experienced as a standing audience member at the back than sitting, as the girls get into formation.

It’s an experience that should sparkle; it doesn’t outstay its welcome. This audience would gladly take a thicker show and more time with these characters. But everyone’s respectfully rapt, delighted just to be spending time in Sailor Moon’s orbit.