“Attack on Titan: The Musical” showed what a crossover between two seemingly different types of fans could look like.
There are a few things that New York theatergoers can always expect to see on Broadway stages: some Disney, some Sondheim, some Hollywood stars. One may not expect to see the Colossal Titan.
What is the Colossal Titan? That would be a giant, skinless humanoid creature, all red tendons and exposed ligaments, that has a taste for humans. This is basic knowledge, of course, for the legions of fans of “Attack on Titan,” the internationally popular Japanese manga that takes place in a dystopian world where people live in a penned-in society hidden behind towering walls.
About 2,000 of those fans, many dressed as their favorite characters, filled New York City Center to see “Attack on Titan: The Musical” on the first night of its recent run earlier this month. This particular brand of manga-based onstage entertainment, and the fans who enjoy it, may at first seem like a novelty, but that’s only true in America — and perhaps only for the moment. In Japan, anime plays and musicals are omnipresent.
Three sold-out performances later, it was easy to think that maybe the center of a Venn diagram between anime fandom and theater fandom is not as tiny or unusual a space as it may at first seem. Broadway presently banks on pop culture, already established intellectual properties and the fans who invest in them; the success of this performance of “Titan” made it possible to see a future in which anime doesn’t once again get mis-characterized as niche, or separate from mainstream culture, but rather as part of it.
In other words, who’s to say that in a few years, anime won’t be another standard sight on Broadway?
For now, it’s still uncommon to see what unfolded onstage earlier this month. Each time a titan appeared, it was a spectacle. Some materialized on a digital backdrop, crushing buildings and people below. Others were massive puppets, requiring a small battalion of coordinated handlers. And then there was the Colossal Titan, rendered with an inflatable head and arms.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
