One of the yearly retrospective features from the December 2015 issue of Kageki, featuring Cosmos Troupe Top Star Asaka Manato.
Looking Back on 2015: Asaka Manato
This year I received a lot of things and I feel a sense of accomplishment. At the beginning of this year was the Tokyo performance of Oath of the Midnight Sun and Phoenix Takarazuka!!. This was Rika’s [Ouki Kaname’s] retirement show, and a lot of other Otokoyaku who were close to my year were retiring, like Oozuki Tooma and Kazehane Reia. It created a really strong feeling in me that I had to take over the Cosmos Troupe that Rika had put together. Despite his limited scenes, my character of Carl feels real, perhaps because his conflict is connected with everything else. It was a long time since we’d had an original revue show, so everyone was really into it. I felt a lot of responsibility as nibante.
In Top Hat there were a lot of things I had to do, especially tap dance, which I was basically a beginner at. It was really hard to get a feeling for it, but somehow I managed in time (laugh). Perhaps because they could tell that while I was enjoying myself I wanted to surpass my own limits, all the troupe members worked hard to put me at ease.
At the pre-event festivities before the opening of A Song for Kingdoms, I felt all the love the OGs had for the work, and once again felt I had to be worthy to take over those feelings. I was really nervous that day, but on opening day I was able to concentrate on performing. While I was performing as Radames I had a really odd feeling, like I wasn’t able to tell any more if I was myself or Radames. While I had some concerns since there were some confusing songs, I felt like everyone else in Cosmos Troupe supported me. I’m really glad that I had this work as my introductory performance.
In September, I appeared in the Takarazuka Japanese Dance Recital, and it was a wonderful opportunity to be able to participate in Japanese dance.
The national tour performance Melancholic Gigolo was another show by Director Masatsuki after a long while, and besides that my character’s relation with Yurika’s [Makaze Suzuho’s] and Misaki’s characters felt really fresh. In Citrus Breeze when we were performing “Energy for Tomorrow” I felt like the intensity and power of everyone backing me up was actually entering me.
Next year we open on New Year’s Day1, and I hope we are able to be a splendid highlight to the start of the year. Since the play is about Shakespeare, it’s a topic that people from many different areas are particularly interested in. For both the play and the revue show, we want to put together a good performance without making any compromises.
1 – This was the 2016 production Shakespeare and HOT EYES!!.