Takizawa Kabuki ZERO 2020 The Movie

Congrats to the release of “Takizawa Kabuki ZERO 2020 The Movie” on 4 December 2020. I bought the movie ticket some time ago and booked the 9:00 show on 6 December 2020 that comes with the live broadcast of the stage appearance with Snow Man.

Amazing Entertainment Show

Directed by Hideaki Takizawa, performed by Snow Man and IMPACTors (Johnny’s Jr.), the movie lasted around 2.5 hours with a combination of modern/sci-fi and traditional/kabuki elements. It’s really neither a stage show or a movie, seriously a new type of entertainment show.

Highlights

It’s my first time watching this show in full, and I have little idea what to expect. They started the show with a short clip on movie manners, played by the traditional Edo characters in the movie. Rumours has it that they will change this clip every week. (OMG!)

Abs…!

Even someone who doesn’t know the show will know that there is a famous performance called the “Fukkin Daiko” (腹筋太鼓) where all the boys are topless, showing off their abdominal muscles and performing on Japanese taiko. A lot of “fan service” shots here focusing on the abs of course. You can find a special trailer here too.

As this is a movie, there are many interesting camera work. Personally, I like the camera angle for “Make It Hot”, “Black Gold”, “9 Swordsmen”, “Kumikyoku (組曲)”.

New Song – Black Gold

“Black Gold” is a new song from Snow Man that really reminds me of Korean boyband pop song. Everyone is super handsome anyway. You can also see that they display the member colours during each person’s solo part.

My jaws dropped when Meme appeared with Abe-chan for the performance where Abe-chan was dressed as onnagata (female role). They look very good together. Personally, I think Sakuma-kun wins hands-down for his onnagata role. Just too pretty!

Maybe

The performance “Maybe” with Raul doing a contemporary together with Fukka and Abe-chan’s vocals is so beautiful too. Some months ago when I came across this performance from the DVD, I fell in love with the melody and realised it was a V6 song! It has been a song that I will keep on continuous loop from time to time.

Funny bits

The comical part of Gin-san (Shoppi) and Kin-san (Sakuma-kun) was too crappy and I think Gin-san laughed in the end too. It was a 1-second last shot but it made me think that maybe their crappy part was ad-lib.

Apparently, there are a lot of ad-lib parts for the Nezumi kozou by Omaru-san (played by Fukka). Strangely, I think Fukka looks really good in his female performance of Omaru-san. I kind of notice about this member from IMPACTors called Arata Sato, who looks really good in his traditional character look.

Overall

It was a very entertaining show if you look at it in parts since there is no one storyline to link up the whole movie. They did try to link with a boy played by Shosei Oda looking at the performance as part of a storybook.

During the credits, they did a very cute selfie movie of them singing “LOVE”. And I almost fainted when they did the “Crazy-Fresh-Beat” performance in their traditional Edo character costumes.

Live Broadcast

They have some stage appearance on 4 Dec 2020 to mark the opening of the movie, but they also have 2 shows, 9:00 and 12:50, on 6 Dec 2020. For the 9:00 show that I attended, the stage appearance was after the show.

The actual stage appearance took place in Marunouchi Piccadilly theatre, but the live broadcast was done across 120 theatres nationwide. It was a 30-minute talk show, starting with their self-introduction, some behind-the-scenes talk, and questions that they have collected beforehand via social media.

Great visuals

Everyone was looking very good in their own clothes. Every time I look at Shoppi, I seriously think I need to invest more time and effort into skincare. His skin just looks so brilliant today. Koji and Meme shared some episodes when they had to do some filming at Nikko, that they went to bath and played with water, and how Meme behaves like a kid.

Tower Records Special Panel Exhibition

After the movie, I thought I need to catch what the special panel exhibition is about at Tower Records. Lucky that I could catch it on the last day of this exhibition!

Thank you for the amazing show!

Fingers crossed for a Blu-ray/DVD release of this movie! I hope they include all the making of the movie, interviews and documentary. (Very greedy fan…)