Stage Report: If Or… VII

It’s another start of the year and with that comes Murakami Shingo’s anual one-man show, ” If Or …. “.

Originally, the play’s premise was ” What if Murakami Shingo was this or that “… He would assume a bunch of different characters and tell a story through these characters, putting him in various ‘different’ and, sometimes, bizarre situations. Over the years the play has evolved, becoming more concise with a solid story and central theme. This year is no exception.

VII’s takes us into the ” What if ” of Murakami Shingo being a spy. What if he was a spy? What would be his story?

The story is pretty simple — he’s recruited into a spy agency and on a mission to stop an organization called Guilt, the group who killed his father. As Agent IFOR007, he must track down a character by the name of Shimauma (Zeebra), who walks around in a Zebra mask and drives a zebra printed car, and stop from from continuing on his evil crime spree. He’s teamed up with his boss, Izabella, and through her he receives his missions and advice on how to be a better spy… But once she’s kidnapped, things sort of take a turn for the worst and from there its a high-pace action story as Murakami infiltrates the organization behind Death Chocolate.

Once he infiltrates the organization, he finds out that Izabella was working for them — making her a double agent. The resulting final battle is between him and her in a really interesting, and hilarious, never ending car chance (with graphics dating back to 1995). Sooner or later, he finds out that the leader of Guilt is none-other than his father and that Izabella and his father are behind Guilt. So begins Agent IFOR007’s life as a spy, in order to stop his father and Izabella from trying to cause chaos in the world.

According to the pamphlet, the reason Hina picked the spy theme was because he wanted to do something “simple” and “normal” for a change. Every time he’s done this play, its always had the weirdest of characters… But he never attempted a spy character. Not only that a spy character would be simple to do — not so over the top but still amazing. Coincidentally the seventh installment also, ironically, gave opportunity to milk the coincidence of VII having the same number as James Bond, Agent 007.

But my honest opinion, this has been the most active and engaging “If Or” I’ve seen yet. Hina hangs from a rope in the beginning, doing training exercises as if he’s coming straight out of mission impossible. He’s dodging bullets, doing a car chase, climbing up stairs, jumping off of sets onto the floor, running through the audience… Compared to last year’s “Robot Mom” theme and the year before’s “Magical Dating Festival”, the entertainment value was top notch and storyline easy to follow, yet fun to watch.

Of course, since the first “If Or”, Hina takes the middle half of the play to bring out his teacher character to give us a lesson on Johnny’s. In 2013, he compared Johnny’s to bento boxes from Hotto Motto. In 2014, he compared and translated Johnny’s names into English and Spanish. This year? He compares Johnny’s to the planets in the solar system and it’s pretty funny:

• The Sun – Arashi, because it’s always out there, always around, and people are always happy when its out
• Mercury – KisMyFt2, from far away it looks pretty but up close its god awful ugly
• Venus – Tackey and Tsubasa, because, well Venus
• The Earth – NEWS, because Tegoshi gets to go all over the world and its annoying
• The Moon – Kinki Kids, you never get to know who they really are. They are forever idols, never letting people into their personal lives. Much like how you can never see the dark side of the moon.
• Mars – TOKIO, because everyone is focused on Mars at the moment, like TOKIO. Also, Mars has rivers and mountains and a lot of other things like Dash Island and Dash Farm and Dash 0 yen kitchen and yeah LOL
• Astroid Belt – Johnny’s Juniors, a bunch of rocks waiting to get fame
• Ceres – ABC-Z, they try but they don’t get so far (ceres is a dwarf planet in the astroid belt, ABC-Z is a debut group still associated with Juniors).
• Jupiter – Hey Say Jump, because it looks like curry (HSJ is current doing a major instant curry campaign atm)
• Saturn – V6, because it has rings. And V6 wants everyone to dance in a circle.
• Uranus – KAT-TUN, because Uranus orbit is opposite to everyone else. It doesn’t know what it wants to do, much like KAT-TUN always trying to rebel. Hina mentions he did the planning for this play last year during the Tokyo shows and KAT-TUN are now trying to snatch his spy ideas (Kame has a spy movie out right now called Joker Game)
• Neptune – Sexy Zone, because Neptune is blue. And being blue is a saying in Japanese to be young and naive.
• Pluto – Johnny’s West, it was a planet and then it wasn’t a planet then it was a planet. Probably remarking on their weird debut and the hope that they’ll be recognized as Johnny’s.
• Halley’s Comet – Hikari Genji, because, well, Paradise Ginga. Duh lol And Hikari Genji was the shit back in their day. Much like how everyone went crazy for Halley’s Comet (at the same time of their popularity).
• The Galaxy – SMAP, because, well, SMAP.
• Blackhole – Kanjani8, because Kanjani8 just sucks up anything and everything forever and is pretty much a bad influence in general but
• Whitehole, Johnny’s and Associates — While a blackhole sucks in anything, a white hole releases good things.

There were a lot of video intermissions. One of them of Hina recreating Ohkura’s Anan photoshoot, lol. Down to every exact pose that he made in that book. At the end of every If Or, they show the behind the scenes and yet — Hina stripped down and they had Ohkura’s pics available for reference, lol.

There were a lot of jokes and references to people Hina works with, also jabs at his own “character”. The Gorilla reference was used heavily in this, to the point Hina enters and walks through the audience wearing a Gorilla mask. There’s were also a lot of fanservice — from Izabella in a bathing suit to him hanging off a rope in a tight black outfit. Hina knows what the fans want and he doesn’t show any shame in doing it for us.

At the end, Hina talks to us for a bit. Mostly about the fact that he’s now 33 and dealing with “generation gaps” and various other things (because in Japan, once ur 30, ur pretty much 95 years old). He also announced that he quit smoking around the time of 10sai because there were a lot of people concerned about his health… So he’s been clean for little over a half year. His voice was pretty hoarse during the performance, especially during the teacher segment. He’s been working a lot and talking a lot, so the quitting smoking was almost a byproduct of his apologies for the condition of his voice.

The rest of the conversation was about his love for pasta and that he didn’t realize he was eating it wrong until he found out from Yasu, who found out from Hiroshi Tachi that you don’t suck down pasta like its Japanese noodles.

He thanks us and then exits the stage.

Out of the three years I’ve been going to see If Or, this by far was the best. I couldn’t stop laughing and even though the characters of this play was down to only two (maybe three if you count the ending), the ideal of Simple is Best really brought out a solid story with a really fun plotline and great execution. All his other plays have had many characters and I think these characters sort of muddle the overall performance. Maybe he’ll stick to more “one character” shows and focus on solid stories with exciting results.

And here, have a bonus shot of the snow storm that made me miss the first 15 minutes of this play