Kabukibu!
The story of Anime Strike is a short and frustrating one. Started on New Year's Day of 2017, it was meant to be a way for Amazon to tap into the growing market for anime streaming. Within a short time, they managed to piss off anime fans by locking their shows behind a double paywall, using poor quality subtitles (when they remembered to subtitle their shows at all), frequent and inexplicable delays in their uploads, and little in the way of promotion for themselves and their shows. The service quietly shut down after a year, mourned by no one in particular and leaving little in the way of impact.
Anime Strike was a bad idea for many reasons, but its greatest disservice was to the shows they licensed. While some shows such as Made In Abyss or Land of the Lustrous were able to rise above Anime Strike's limitations, the rest were largely ignored by the service and anime fans alike. It's only now that some of them are starting to be rediscovered as they make their way to more accessible platforms. That was certainly the case for me with Kabukibu!, a series from the spring season of 2017 that has only recently made its way from exile on Amazon onto HiDive.
The premise of Kabukibu! is a simple one: Kurusu Kurogo wants to start a kabuki club at school. He's been a fan of it since he was a child, and wants to use the club to stage plays and share that love with others. Despite some initial resistance, he's eventually able to bring together his quiet, technically-minded best friend, the star actress of the drama club, a disaffected dancer, a rebellious wanna-be musician, an insecure cosplay costumer, and a handful of others together to achieve his dream and maybe even make some friends along the way. It's a premise that doesn't sound all that far removed from the dozens of other anime shows about high school clubs. What makes Kabukibu! different is how it addresses the matter of inclusion versus exclusion in art and how it handles its cast.
Like a lot of traditional artforms, kabuki has been struggling between the need to stay true to its traditions while staying relevant to modern audiences. The stories, costumes, and roles of kabuki have been shaped by centuries of tradition, but those traditions are far more removed from everyday life than they were 400 years ago, creating a higher intellectual bar of entry than other, more modern forms of media. It's a conflict that is not unlike what is happening now with opera in Western countries, but the result is the same: fewer younger people are participating and viewing this medium, and the surviving troupes have to find their own balance between tradition and accessibility.
Kabukibu! manages to address this same conflict in its own quiet way through the relationship between Kurogo and another student, Jin Ebihara. The latter is a traditionalist, the scion of a family of kabuki actors and an up-and-coming professional kabuki actor in his own right. To him, kabuki is serious business and he regards Kurogo's efforts as an affront to kabuki itself and below his notice. He's the closest thing this show has to an antagonist, but the show doesn't come down too harshly on him for his attitude. He's simply a teen boy with a lot of pride who could benefit both personally and professionally from loosening up and taking in some new experiences.
Meanwhile, the former takes a more inclusive approach to the artform. While Kurogo is incredibly knowledgeable about kabuki, he doesn't use it to gatekeep but instead to give context for the plays for his fellow clubmates. He takes advantage of the club's amateur status and the members' various skills to adapt the plays as he sees fit, whether that's by courting female actors, modernizing settings, or using digitally-projected subtitles. Under his gentle guidance, the club maintains a welcoming atmosphere that manages to win over everyone that crosses their path, be it Jin, their teachers, their peers, and even skeptical anime viewers like myself.
Kurogo's spirit of inclusiveness extends not just to club-building, but to his approach to friendship as a whole. Over the course of the show, we learn that most of the kabuki club kids have felt alienated at some point. Kurogo and wanna-be rocker Shin both lost parents; Tonbo the technician was bullied as a childto the point of panic attacks; Maruko suffered from poor self-esteem that was only aggravated by her connection to the world of cosplay; Hanamichi's struggle with his masculinity threatened his relationship with both other teens and for his preferred, feminine forms of traditional dance. Even Kaoru, arguably the most popular and stable of the lot, feels alienated from others by her popularity and the princely roles into which she's been stereotyped.
Kurogo wins them all over not only with his enthusiasm, but his willingness to accept them as they are. He encourages them to not focus on their failings, but to instead explore and nurture the talents they already possess within the world of kabuki. Kurogo accepts them all unquestioningly and helps them understand his passion, and his efforts are rewarded with a new group of friends and allies ready to help him make his dream come true. This isn't necessarily new emotional territory for anime, but Kabukibu! delivers it with an understated sort of sincerity that makes it different from the usual platitudes about The Power of Friendship.
Kabukibu! is a rather modest-looking show, but it has a suprising amount of talent behind the scenes. The director, Kazuhiro Yoneda, is best known for working on shows like Yona of the Dawn and Hozuki's Coolheadedness, which explains this show's low-key energy and quiet assurance of its own quality. The series composer, Yoshiko Nakamura, has a slightly more checkered past but did work on shows like Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun and Shonen Maid, so they are no stranger to adapting good written works into quality television. It certainly didn't hurt that they brought in famed mangaka group CLAMP to spruce up the original light novel's character designs. They look great, managing to even overcome what is otherwise a very average production for Studio Deen.
The biggest surprise for me, though, was the pair of familiar names doing the translation for the subtitles: Athena and Alathea Nibley. These twin sisters are manga translators by trade, having started like so many at Tokyopop and later working on titles such as Noragami, Land of the Lustrous, and the re-release of Fruits Basket. Their work here is excellent, lending not only the normal dialogue a natural flair but also the the formal, archaic language of the kabuki performances as well as a number of Japanese tongue-twisters that the club uses as vocal exercises.
Kabukibu! was never going to be a season-conquering blockbuster, but I feel like had it not been stuck behind Anime Strike, it might have been better known (and watched) at the time it aired. The only reason I knew about was because people like Dee (of Josei Next Door fame), Amelia (of Anime Feminist fame) and Guardian Enzo (of Lost In Anime fame) kept talking about it. Now that it's available on both Blu-ray and on HiDive, I hope that people will give it the chance it so richly deserves. It's an absolute gem of a show, one that rises above its potentially rote premise to become something sweet, comforting, and even educational. By the time the final curtain call plays out, hopefully you will have come to love it as much as I did.
Anime Strike was a bad idea for many reasons, but its greatest disservice was to the shows they licensed. While some shows such as Made In Abyss or Land of the Lustrous were able to rise above Anime Strike's limitations, the rest were largely ignored by the service and anime fans alike. It's only now that some of them are starting to be rediscovered as they make their way to more accessible platforms. That was certainly the case for me with Kabukibu!, a series from the spring season of 2017 that has only recently made its way from exile on Amazon onto HiDive.
The premise of Kabukibu! is a simple one: Kurusu Kurogo wants to start a kabuki club at school. He's been a fan of it since he was a child, and wants to use the club to stage plays and share that love with others. Despite some initial resistance, he's eventually able to bring together his quiet, technically-minded best friend, the star actress of the drama club, a disaffected dancer, a rebellious wanna-be musician, an insecure cosplay costumer, and a handful of others together to achieve his dream and maybe even make some friends along the way. It's a premise that doesn't sound all that far removed from the dozens of other anime shows about high school clubs. What makes Kabukibu! different is how it addresses the matter of inclusion versus exclusion in art and how it handles its cast.
Like a lot of traditional artforms, kabuki has been struggling between the need to stay true to its traditions while staying relevant to modern audiences. The stories, costumes, and roles of kabuki have been shaped by centuries of tradition, but those traditions are far more removed from everyday life than they were 400 years ago, creating a higher intellectual bar of entry than other, more modern forms of media. It's a conflict that is not unlike what is happening now with opera in Western countries, but the result is the same: fewer younger people are participating and viewing this medium, and the surviving troupes have to find their own balance between tradition and accessibility.
Meanwhile, the former takes a more inclusive approach to the artform. While Kurogo is incredibly knowledgeable about kabuki, he doesn't use it to gatekeep but instead to give context for the plays for his fellow clubmates. He takes advantage of the club's amateur status and the members' various skills to adapt the plays as he sees fit, whether that's by courting female actors, modernizing settings, or using digitally-projected subtitles. Under his gentle guidance, the club maintains a welcoming atmosphere that manages to win over everyone that crosses their path, be it Jin, their teachers, their peers, and even skeptical anime viewers like myself.
Kurogo wins them all over not only with his enthusiasm, but his willingness to accept them as they are. He encourages them to not focus on their failings, but to instead explore and nurture the talents they already possess within the world of kabuki. Kurogo accepts them all unquestioningly and helps them understand his passion, and his efforts are rewarded with a new group of friends and allies ready to help him make his dream come true. This isn't necessarily new emotional territory for anime, but Kabukibu! delivers it with an understated sort of sincerity that makes it different from the usual platitudes about The Power of Friendship.
Kabukibu! is a rather modest-looking show, but it has a suprising amount of talent behind the scenes. The director, Kazuhiro Yoneda, is best known for working on shows like Yona of the Dawn and Hozuki's Coolheadedness, which explains this show's low-key energy and quiet assurance of its own quality. The series composer, Yoshiko Nakamura, has a slightly more checkered past but did work on shows like Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun and Shonen Maid, so they are no stranger to adapting good written works into quality television. It certainly didn't hurt that they brought in famed mangaka group CLAMP to spruce up the original light novel's character designs. They look great, managing to even overcome what is otherwise a very average production for Studio Deen.
The biggest surprise for me, though, was the pair of familiar names doing the translation for the subtitles: Athena and Alathea Nibley. These twin sisters are manga translators by trade, having started like so many at Tokyopop and later working on titles such as Noragami, Land of the Lustrous, and the re-release of Fruits Basket. Their work here is excellent, lending not only the normal dialogue a natural flair but also the the formal, archaic language of the kabuki performances as well as a number of Japanese tongue-twisters that the club uses as vocal exercises.
Kabukibu! was never going to be a season-conquering blockbuster, but I feel like had it not been stuck behind Anime Strike, it might have been better known (and watched) at the time it aired. The only reason I knew about was because people like Dee (of Josei Next Door fame), Amelia (of Anime Feminist fame) and Guardian Enzo (of Lost In Anime fame) kept talking about it. Now that it's available on both Blu-ray and on HiDive, I hope that people will give it the chance it so richly deserves. It's an absolute gem of a show, one that rises above its potentially rote premise to become something sweet, comforting, and even educational. By the time the final curtain call plays out, hopefully you will have come to love it as much as I did.
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