butaibaka | REVIEW: BLACK PEARL

TITLE Black Pearl

DIRECTOR Oikawa Takurou

SCREENPLAY Komine Hiroyuki

MUSIC Asakawa Takeshi (FLOW)

RUNNING DATE April 7-11, 2010

While searching for Sengoku Basara stage play links, I stumbled upon this post of eldoow from LJ. It was a stage play about mafias, and since I’ve always been a big fan of mafia-related stories ever since Katekyo Hitman Reborn, it caught my attention.

I watched this without subs so my review might be a little off since I only relied on attentive listening and I am not quite good at Japanese. I can understand almost 50% of the stage so, it’ll do, I guess.

So anyway, again, the play was about an unnamed mafia group searching for a black pearl that was stolen from their boss. The primary suspect was detective Takizawa’s (Yanagisawa Takahiko) assistant slash a tutor, Mitamura (Hirama Souichi). Vodka (Uehara Takuya), the right-hand man of Tequila (the mafia’s boss who owns the black pearl), together with his assistants Amazake (Aoyagi Ruito) and Rum (Yoshizawa Ryo) demanded that Takizawa and Mitamura find the black pearl until the evening; otherwise they would send a legendary hit man to kill them. Chaos ensue when an unnamed thief (Yoshimura Takuya), a hit man named Dustin Godder Chandler (Mizuta Kouki), and high school student Shimamura (Sakamoto Shougo) got involved with Takizawa and Mitamura.

If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time that I watched a detective-meets-mafia stage play. Also, this is the very first stage play I watched which made me laugh from the start until the end. Sure, there are other stage plays which had a fair share of comical and hilarious moments but this one just topped them all. I even caught myself laughing almost every three minutes. The comedic scenes broke the stereotype action-packed stories like this that I only saw on movies and television shows. I think executing the act in a hilarious way despite its serious plot was what made it unique. There were even some funny lines even though the characters were serious while saying them.

That leads me to the actors’ performance. I honestly think of giving them a perfect 10. As I’ve mentioned above, even though the actors were saying funny lines, none of them had the urge to laugh as they were all dead serious. I also praise their gestures as even the smallest ones made me laugh.

Everything took place in Takizawa’s detective agency, as the timeline was set in just a day. But that fact alone must not be overlooked since there was a big twist and that involved the office. Of course it was hard to notice the first time, but the second time I watched it, I knew something was off.

Anyway, I highly recommend this stage play. It was full of hilarity and the sequence of events will keep your eyes glued to the screen.

Some screenshots: