Why Takarazuka and English Projects Blend So Well

[krysyuy]

First off, Sena Jun = ♥. XD

I have one too many obsessions. I have so many different anime/manga/video game fandoms that sometimes it makes my head spin.

I've mentioned this before in a previous LJ post, but Takarazuka is my newest official permanent obsession. I see my love for Takarazuka lasting a long while. And I totally adore the feeling when you're getting into something new. There's so many things to get excited about - to squeal over. I am fangirling way too much over my favorite stars in Takarazuka (be it top stars, retired top stars, seconds, thirds, guppies, etc). They just rule way too much.

And I think I just fell in love with it all over again.


Explanation? My friend mooglechan and I had a class project we had to work on together for our ENG-250 Introduction to Fiction class. Now, this would be our final class project. Our class emphasized the quest story and its elements. We were to go around Chapman to different buildings, going on our own personal quest while finding symbols to represent each stop. We could make our presentation in any form we wanted to.

The assignment was interesting enough. mooglechan and I are both Creative Writing majors, so already, ideas were churning through our brains. Problem was, how to present it to the class? Just narrating our quest to the class would be boring. I recall commenting that something visual would be great, just so our classmates wouldn't get bored and would actually pay attention. But I couldn't act, and mooglechan couldn't act. We aren't Film majors.

Then mooglechan came up with the most absolutely fabulous idea. We would take Takarazuka clips to show our quest, placing false English subtitles. The idea immediately peaked my interest, but I was understandably hesitant. I didn't know how to add subtitles to videos, and we still didn't really have a quest figured out yet. But mooglechan mentioned she had a subtitling program, even though she didn't know how to work it. I volunteered to figure it out, and suddenly, it was really happening. Despite the ton of work we knew was ahead of us, we were going to tackle this project.

And suddenly, everything just became so much more interesting and fun and absolutely wonderful that I knew Takarazuka wasn't just some passing whim. This is something I'm going to love for a long time. Everything for the project just started to fall into place. We made some of the stars from the theater troupe our characters in our story.

Title: Princess Prince ~ A Musical Quest
Heroine: Jun -> Sena Jun
Magician/Love Interest: Cyrus -> Ozora Yuuhi
Guide/Traitor: Bunbury -> Kiriya Hiromu
Guide: Phantom -> Wao Youka
Guide: Cathedral Guardian -> Haruno Sumire
Evil Uncle: Kaiser -> Todoroki Yuu

I just want to emphasize again just how much fun this was. I don't think I ever had so much fun with an English project before. Granted, there were technical difficulties. In fact, many technical difficulties. >>;; But I don't regret ever deciding to do it. I was so nervous that the class wouldn't think it was funny - we were both worried.

But we were worried for nothing. Our class loved it. They were laughing practically the entire time. =0D It made me feel so much better. I'm not trying to be arrogant or anything, but our project was the best. You could tell how much time we both put into it. Though I do applaud mooglechan for writing some of the best dialogue and choosing just the right clips.

Our presentation just turned out to be perfect. (I wish I hadn't stumbled over my narration though. *embarrassed*) I keep watching our clips over and over again with the subtitles. XD Goodness, it makes me lol so much. I would upload the clips, but I don't know if anyone would want to see them and I'm not sure of mooglechan's feelings about it, so I won't post anything yet, except for this poster I made for our presentation!! XD

See and look at the pretty. *_____*

Edit: Just realized our names were on it. >>;; I'll post it once I take out the names... XD

So why this long post about it? I just had to squee about how well our presentation went today. It gave me the warm fuzzies. And it made me realize just how much I really do love Takarazuka. Not just the plays, but the dance revues and everything else. It made me determined to study Japanese even more seriously. I want to know what they're saying for myself! (But much love to mooglechan's lovely sister for translating Takarazuka so far for me and the others. *not sure if she can mention real names or not*)

Time to hit the kanji books. ^_~