Persona 3 the Weird Masquerade Lead Character Official Costumes

And they look exactly how you’d expect. The costumes are done down to the finer details to make them an accurate representation of the games they come from. To an almost insane degree, too. It’s probably obvious that Shouta Aoi and Kana Asumi don’t naturally have such blue and auburn eyes, respectfully. I wonder if it’s photoshopped for these promotional pictures or if they actually have to wear colored contacts on stage.

Other than that, I like the face Aoi is making. I’m sure he’s supposed to have the distant, cool guy look because that’s the main character’s primary personality trait, but he looks more annoyed that you’re taking his picture like a cosplayer who really just wants to sit down for a minute.

Still, they look very good. Now all CLIE has to do is show me their Junpei and explain how to turn a dog into a stage actor, and we’re good to go.

Persona 3 the Weird Masquerade ~Blue Awakening~ Lead Actors Announced

The P3 musical, The Weird Masquerade, will be running in classic theaters January 2014. Producing company CLIE has launched their official website, though the whole website at the moment is just the image you see right above here. They have posted the two actors that will portray the two P3 protagonist. Male Protagonist, possibly named Makoto Yuki, will be played by Shouta Aoi, and Female Protagonist, possibly named Hamuko, will be played by Kana Asumi. The two have acting experience, they were likely chosen because they’re singers and on the strength of their singing voices with this being a musical.

Here’s Aoi’s.

Aoi is decidedly feminine in vocals and appearance after stage make-up, though he dresses in pretty casual clothing for a concert. I’m not used to the idea of casual bishonen. I’m more used to glittery Takuto style bishonen with the absurdly fancy clothes. His svelte appearance and hair style will suit the P3 male protagonist role well, and I can see him singing for some of the more dour moments that a script based on that game would produce.

Here’s Asumi’s.

We didn’t play the PSP version of the game, so I don’t know how FProtagonist’s personality compares to MProtagonist. I wouldn’t have thought she’d go all bubbly idol, but that’s absolutely what I get out of Kana and her stage performances. Not to say she has a bad voice, far from it. I was just expecting more low key, I guess. She was in Devil Survivor, DS 2 and Persona -trinity soul-, so she’s in familiar territory. I’m sure she can handle it.

Persona 3 Live in December: The Weird Masquerade

Movies are never enough. Let’s have a musical too. This is a flyer for what will be the Persona 3 stage play PERSONA 3 the Weird Masquerade. It will be a live action musical put on by CLIE, a stage production company that does this sort of thing including collaborations with Nico, beginning its run January 2014.

The actors have not been decided on, but key parts of the production team have.

Director – Oka Shutaro
Screenplay – Jun Kumagai
Music – Shouji Meguro

Oka is an award winning director of both film and stage, garnering tons of praise for his originality, but the other two may strike names with Persona fans. Kumagai was the key writer for P4: The Animation and will be returning as the writer of Spring of Birth. As for Meguro:

Ah, that’s good. Meguro is the big time ATLUS composer who’s been working on Megami Tensei games since way back in Persona 1. He mostly makes the beautiful BGM, but he was also the composer for P4‘s ending theme “Never More,” so he’s all ready for composing for singers. He will also be returning for Spring of Birth.

CLIE is supposed to be setting up an official site soon. Whether that will be a section of their main site or a wholly other domain, I’m not sure yet. Keep an eye peeled.