This interview with brand new Top Star Tamaki Ryou and Top Musumeyaku Manaki Reika was published in the January 2017 Kageki issue, timed with the opening of their first Grand Theatre show, Grand Hotel/Carousel Rondo.
Since they were in TMS together for a year and spent their entire careers in Moon Troupe there are a lot of cute details about their beginning days!
chemicalperfume kindly helped with translating and editing.
New Moon Troupe Top Combi interview: If we’re all together we’ll do fine!
Tamaki: When Chapi (Manaki) was a Lower Student at TMS, you were just so slender, almost as if you were about to vanish, but all my classmates would say you were super cute.
Manaki: No, no, no (laughs). I don’t remember a thing about that.
Tamaki: Well, I don’t expect anyone would have told you directly. It was just a thing that spread among the Upper Students. Anyway, though Chapi started out as a musumeyaku, you switched to otokoyaku halfway through your Lower Student year, right? When that happened, all my classmates were shocked – one after the other they were like ‘Her hair’s short now!!’ ‘She’s becoming an otokoyaku!!’
Manaki: Gosh, really?
Tamaki: But once you became an otokoyaku, you became really sharp and handsome.
Manaki: No way. At the entrance ceremony I caught sight of Tama-san (Tamaki), so I ended up being a bit aware of you.
Tamaki: No! Seriously?
Manaki: You had your uniform on, and you were like my image of THE Upper Student, with your hair all slicked back (laughs).
Tamaki: Of course (laughs).
Manaki: You were so tall, and I was like ‘that’s what an otokoyaku is~’ I really admired how you looked then.
Tamaki: I see (laughs)
Manaki: And after that, when I was a Lower Student…
Tamaki: The Salad Incident!?
Manaki: Yeah (laughs)
Tamaki: During an orientation session you started feeling really bad. I was like ‘Oh no! She’s gonna collapse!’ so I went right to a convenience store and bought a salad to give you – I was thinking ‘At least she should get some vegetables!’ (laughs)
Manaki: Even though we weren’t at all acquainted or anything before I started at TMS. After that I thought of you as the ‘Salad Onee-san [Older Sister]’ (laughs). I was really grateful to you for helping me back then. And then when everyone’s tasks were assigned, I was chosen to be exempted.
Tamaki: Right, right. There were various different cleaning tasks, so while that was going on after the Upper and Lower Students had returned to the dorm, there was time to hang out and chat, so there were a bunch of you I would talk to including Chapi.
Manaki: I really remember those times.
Tamaki: When we joined the Revue and were junior actresses in Moon Troupe, otokoyaku Chapi was a real go-getter, you were like ‘no matter what, I’ll give 200%!’ I thought you must love the stage and being an otokoyaku. In Last Play you had a little comical scene, and you gave it your all; I thought you did really well (laughs). And of course since you still had a very cute, childish look, a lot of the senior actresses were very fond of you so they’d be like ‘Chapi, Chapi~’
Manaki: Not at all. Actually, I feel like I was too obstinate and went too far sometimes.
Tamaki: In the junior performance of Prince of the Land of Roses you had my role, right? Hummingbird.
Manaki: Yes. I remember following you around through the whole performance run. You hadn’t changed much at all since you were an Upper Student – you were really clever and worked hard.
Tamaki: That’s not right (laughs)
Manaki: You gave me a lot of really clear, precise advice.
Tamaki: Oh?
Manaki: When you were in ‘on mode’. But when you were in ‘off mode’ you were more, I don’t know, gentle? Tender? That kind of feeling (laughs)
Tamaki: (laughs) After you switched to musumeyaku, when we had the Junior Performance of Edward VIII together, Chapi seemed really overloaded.
Manaki: Probably. I don’t have any memories of it.
Tamaki: While of course it’s great to be given such a big role, it was probably too much of a burden for you back then. Since you seemed to be desperately trying to hold out I tried not to make you exhaust your energy. I thought ‘since we’re just one class apart, it’d be good if we can just work together without overthinking things or having to be nervous around each other’.
Manaki: I could really tell that you were trying to look after me, but really, it was just so much that I could hardly manage anything. And besides, the play was really tailored specifically for Kiriya (Hiromu)-san, and Aono (Yuuki)-san.
Tamaki: It was hard! I remember in the second half, there was a scene in a bar or something where we both come a little undone and say what we’re really thinking, a really adult scene – that was really difficult and I remember we had to rehearse it over and over again.
Manaki: Yes. It wasn’t something kids could get (laughs).
Tamaki: Yeah, a ‘would you be my mistress?’ kind of conversation (laughs). It was like ‘what kind of mental state should we be in to deliver these lines when we’re ken-4 and ken-3?’ (laughs) We both grew a lot during that, and we went for the rehearsals wholeheartedly. But when Chapi became Top Musumeyaku, we didn’t interact much any more. When I’d see Chapi I’d be like ‘there’s our Top Musumeyaku!’
Manaki: No way, why~ (laughs)
Tamaki: Last year, for the national tour of Passion: Jose and Carmen and Apasionado!! III, we had a ton to do and very little rehearsal time, so this time it was my turn to have a lot on my plate. But ever since you were a junior actress you’ve been able to act from the heart, so I was always looking forward to see what you would do with comments from Director Sha and how you would change yourself. My role is a really challenging one but I actually formed a vision of how I wanted to do Jose rather quickly, so while I worked on that, as I saw the direction Chapi’s Carmen was taking I would think ‘I should rethink what I’m doing.’ It was really fun.
Manaki: I struggled a fair bit, so it took me over a week and a half (laughs), maybe two weeks, before I finally had a grasp on things and was able to relax somewhat, but then too I felt like Tama-san was being really generous and waiting for me.
Tamaki: In the revue, I really like the sort of drama-like ‘Valentino’ scene where we danced together. For the lions scene, in the first place the distance we could go varied by the theatre we were at (laughs), so that was a struggle.
Manaki: We had to run like animals, didn’t we? Well, they were animal roles in the first place (laughs).
Tamaki: Ever since then I’ve really felt how awesome it is to do the duet dances together, like the exhiliration of the moment where our energies completely synchronize, and the feeling of making the scene together. I really enjoyed the finale duet dance as well; it was like sparks were flying.
Manaki: Me too. I’ve loved duet dances ever since I was a fan, so I’m super fussy about them (laughs). Therefore I’ll go all out no matter what the duet dance is.
Tamaki: Really. During the tour once, when we were on the bus you gave me some sweets, right?
Manaki: I found some sweets that you like so I thought ‘I have to give these to her!’
Tamaki: And then in order to return the favor, I gave you some iron-fortified juice (laughs) I was like ‘should I pick this?’ (laughs)
Manaki: I picked up on the message that I should be getting more iron (laughs).
Tamaki: And then there was that one bit in Legende du Roi Arthur (laughs)
Manaki: Right! (laughs)
Tamaki: We hadn’t had such a ‘stereotypical’ Takarazuka script before, either of us. Lines like ‘Ow! My heart!’ were a bit embarassing at first (laughs)
Manaki: When I saw the dialog for that scene the first time, I was like ‘huh!?’ When I said it I hesitated a tiny bit first.
Tamaki: Neither of us can do affectations like that.
Manaki: That was really hard.
Tamaki: There was kind of a strange atmosphere in rehearsals.
Manaki: We’d be like ‘sorry, can we have a time-out?’
Tamaki: We kept bursting out laughing, and when we couldn’t figure out what kind of feelings we should be putting into the lines, we went to Takarazuka mega-fan Wakaba (Saotome) and she told us what the fans’ point of view would be.
Manaki: We were like ‘so that’s it!’
Tamaki: It was a real struggle, but the fans who came to watch and our classmates from other troupes said it was really adorably romantic, so I think we did manage to get hearts racing there.
Manaki: I wish I could see that scene from the audience. It’s totally impossible though (laughs)
Tamaki: No, I get it (laughs). Right now we’re in rehearsals for the New Years’ show1, and as we were rehearsing the play I came to the bitter, awestruck realization of exactly how wonderful everyone in the first production was2 and I really took that to heart. Though I felt a lot of pressure to get the foundations down or I wouldn’t be in time, I was full of anticipation to be working together with Chapi. Earlier you said something like ‘it’d be nice if we can keep going on and having fun together!’ I also have a lot of hopes and desires for new challenges in the future.
Manaki: here used to be times when I pondered about how I should be in this brand new Moon Troupe, but right now I don’t have time to spend on that, since I’m so busy with the rehearsals. Every day, I can feel how much everyone in the troupe is concentrating on putting the show together and I think it’s a wonderful thing. Just recently, when we were working on the prologue of the revue, the directors said we were all sparkling, and I was so happy to hear that!
Tamaki: I was really happy too.
Manaki: While there are a lot of things we have to do, I’m really excited.
Tamaki: Right. While we struggled a lot together, and sometimes we had nothing but worries…of course it’s not like we don’t have any worries at all even now, but I think if we’re with everyone in Moon Troupe we’ll do fine. They’ve made it so we can keep going without changing. I think a lot about how I can repay the love I’ve received from everyone. I think I want to put myself out there, without decoration, and take on both the troupe and the show – I mean that in a good way. Especially now, I really want to give 120% in every task I’m given and always do my best!
1 – Grand Hotel/Carousel Rondo.
2 – Suzukaze Mayo’s 1993 production of Grand Hotel.