Takarazuka Freshmen
Here’s a photo of the new batch of students for the famous Takarazuka Music School, which is the training institution for the all-female Takarazuka Revue Company.
Takarazuka Revue (å®å¡šæŒåŠ‡å›£) is a very famous musical troupe in Japan that has very lavish musical productions with women playing both the male and female roles.
Every year, thousands of young girls come for the audition and less than 50 are accepted. They are then trained in music, theatre, and acting.
They also have to live a very strict discipline life for 7 years. When I was taking Japanese Studies as one of my modules in the university, I was shown a video of the Takarazuka school. The way they clean their school and rooms every morning is just ridiculous. They have to like get down on their hands to mop the floor, use toothbrushes as cleaning tools.
But at the end of seven years, if they make it to the stage, they get to perform in really awesome musical production such as this:
The above musical is Rose of Versailles. As you have guessed it, Takarazuka has strongly influenced shoujo-based anime and manga. I think they are an awesome music company and I would like to see a live performance once in my life.
