This weekend, I attended a performance of the limited run of Attack on Titan: The Musical. I can only hope that more anime musical adaptations follow in its footsteps.
Broadway has, for a long time, struggled with attracting young people to theaters. While theater audiences are getting slightly younger and more diverse, and apparently Gen Z is very curious about the offerings on Broadway, these changes are coming by degrees: according to Broadway League, the average age of a Broadway audience is 40.4 years old. By contrast, walking into the New York City Center theater, I was immediately struck by how young everyone around me was. I’ve been lucky enough to see a few Broadway shows because my mother-in-law loves theater, and I’ve never seen so many twenty- and thirty-somethings in attendance. I say “lucky” because Broadway is also extremely expensive, with many tickets starting close to $100 for the worst seats in the house, and only going up from there. Attack on Titan: The Musical, by contrast, was only $45.
(If you want to be technical, New York City Center is on 55th, making this an off-Broadway show.)
Attack on Titan: The Musical belongs to the “2.5D” musical genre, which refers to adapting a two dimensional anime into live theater. It’s a relatively common practice when a show is sufficiently popular; there have also been adaptations of anime like Naruto, Yowamushi Pedal and Haikyu. Go Ueki, the director of Attack on Titan: The Musical, has directed other 2.5D musicals as well, like the adaptation of classic manga Cyborg 009. He’s joined by a cast of veteran 2.5D players, as well as dancers he’s met from his background of breakdancing. This is one of the first times that a 2.5D show has been performed in America. In 2019, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon played for three performances at the PlayStation theater. All three performances were sold out.
Attack on Titan: The Musical seems to be following in its footsteps, with its run completely sold out as well. Given how popular the source material is, that’s not a surprise. While it’s not as complex as some Broadway shows I’ve seen—the staging is sparse, mostly making use of projections and moving platforms alongside puppets and balloons to portray the titans—the level of performance was impressive. The dancing was especially cool to watch, with the core dancers backflipping over each other and one guy spinning on his head for like a minute straight.
“I hand picked the dancers because some of them I worked with for like a whole month for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,” Go Ueki told me through an interpreter. “Some of them I encountered through dance battles, and I really liked them. … I am an actor myself as well. So I got to perform in Grease, Music Man and High School Musical, so some of the actors and actresses I performed with in those musicals, and I really enjoyed working with them.” Ueki has a background in breakdancing and has performed and battled internationally.
While the West has always had a slightly fetishistic relationship to Japan (see also: The Last Samurai and Memoirs of a Geisha), this is the first time I’ve seen the cultural exports of Japan imported wholesale and accepted into our pop culture. Shogun, a television show led by Japanese actors, swept at the Emmys. The best baseball player in the world is the Japanese Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers. Megan Thee Stallion had a mega-hit song with Mamushi, which featured iconic Japanese rapper Yuki Chiba, who she even brought to the stage during her performance at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards.
To Ueki, bringing Attack on Titan: The Musical to American audiences is about respect, something he says he learned about from hip hop culture, which he first encountered in the fifth grade. Breakdancing and hip hop have allowed him to travel the world and learn about different kinds of people.
“I traveled around England, of course, the United States and Germany. Everywhere I went, it was full respect, everyone had respect for each other,” he said. “I also love rapping, and Public Enemy taught me a lot. Their music taught me respect, and it really connected me to others. After any kind of dance battle, it doesn't matter which country you're from, you would shake hands after the battle, right?”
During a press event before the show’s opening, Ueki and the cast said that this was their first time in New York, and that having the show’s first overseas premiere in New York was a no-brainer.
“New York has Broadway, and anybody in the theater industry would love to be on Broadway,” he said. “We're so proud of the Japanese culture of manga and anime, and it's really nice that we get to connect with the audience.”
The audience was certainly enthusiastic ,even before the show began. One fan I met in line for merch, Anthony, told me that he’d been a fan of Attack on Titan since the very first episode and bought tickets for the musical without knowing what to expect. He was dressed head to toe in cosplay for the Survey Corps, the elite military division that main character Eren Jaeger joins in the show. Another fan, Chris Gbogi, who is the co-founder of a tristate area social group for anime fans, said that this was the first musical he’d ever been to, anime or otherwise. He said that after seeing this show, he’d definitely go to another 2.5D production.
“I think it’s about how they wrap this story into a musical,” Gbogi said. “We know what the longer story is, but they really give you the key beats on it, and you're also able to enjoy the music. … We were all together gasping as they hit it into the music style of it.”
Although the audience in attendance were mostly people who had already seen the anime, Ueki said that he also took care to try to make it legible for newcomers.
“I paid close attention to making sure to incorporate anything that was included in the original work, whether it be emotions or a shock or surprise I was in the original piece,” Ueki said. “I made sure that anybody who came to this piece newly would experience that.”
I’m not entirely sure that the 2.5D production is appealing to the core Broadway audience of 40 year olds and my mother-in-law. Because these are adaptations of very well known works within a devoted niche audience, they’re often geared more towards appealing to an established fan base rather than making sense to everyone in the room. That said, the established fan base was there, and they were extremely hungry for this show. When I tried to buy a commemorative t-shirt, I learned that they had totally sold out on the opening night the day before.
Ueki said that it’s his hope to bring more 2.5D productions to America.
“2.5D is something unique to Japan, but now it’s here and it seems like everybody loves it,” he said. “I hope that we can come back, and I hope we can connect again through this 2.5D musical.”
After the show, as I was putting myself together and watching the throngs of theatergoers take pictures of each other and gush about the performance, an older woman came to stand next to me. She had a slightly stunned expression on her face—she told me she’d never seen the anime before and bought tickets for the show blind.
“That was incredible,” she said as she put on her coat. “I cried.”
