Persona 4 Arena Ultimax Stage Details

Recently I have been dragged back into what I dub as “butai hell,” and as I prepare to write about the Persona 3 musicals I wanted to quickly mention about this little upcoming gem. For the last couple of months, staff have been working on Persona 4: The Ultimax Ultra Suplex Hold Stageplay, the sequel to the 2014 Persona 4 The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena Stageplay. While some of the cast was announced back in February, it wasn’t until now that the promotional visuals and photos of characters in costume have finally been revealed. June was a fine time for stage and live action announcements it seems.

The performances will run from July 6th to July 10th, 2016. Based on the time frame from the last play and the home release, Arena Ultimax‘s DVD release will probably be early next year as it takes longer to add subtitles.

The cast reprising their roles are as follows:
Keisuke Minami as Yu Narukami
Eiji Takigawa as Kanji Tatsumi
Makoto Koichi as Chie Satonaka
Shiki Aoki as Yukiko Amagi
Natsuko Aso as Rise Kujikawa
Yuki Asakura as Naoto Shirogane
Kaede Aono as Labrys
Asami Tano as Mitsuru Kirijo
Kaon Miyahara as Aigis
Asami Yoshikawa as Elizabeth

The new cast members:
Miyagi Koudai as Yosuke Hanamura
Tomotsune Yuuki as Sho Minazuki
Sayaka Fujioka as Kikuno Saikawa
Mitsuaki Madono as Tohru Adachi

Appearing as 3D video only:
Shoichi Honda as Shuji Ikutsuki
Yuuki Fujiwara as Akihiko Sanada

I’m taking a stab in the dark and assuming Teddie’s Japanese voice actor, Kappei Yamaguchi will reprise his role as well, probably through video like Akihiko. I expect Teddie will just appear in bear form at some point.

Basically everyone except for Yosuke are reprising their Persona 4 Arena roles. Ikutsuki, who is a new addition to this play from the Persona 3 side, is reprising his role from the musical. Adachi is a special case because he is being played by his original Japanese voice actor from the video games and anime. So that classic sadistic Adachi laugh? It’s now real life for real. Hooray! […]

The other additional cast members are all veterans to the stage world. Sayaka is the current Sailor Neptune in the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon musicals while both Tomotsune and Miyagi come from the Prince of Tennis musicals (though it took me a while to figure this out because Tomotsune uhm normally does not look like that). Even though Persona 4 Arena is not categorized as a musical, I think it’s safe to assume that the cast will be covering the opening and endings songs to the game. Or at least I hope so because I really like “Break Out Of…”! Kanji please use your chair as a guitar again.

Like the first play, Fuuka, Dojima, and Margaret are still unfortunately not present. Despite the bigger Persona 3 presence has in the actual Persona 4 Arena Ultimax game, we’re missing half of the cast. Now we won’t know the reason until the play actually performs but I will miss Genki (from the Persona 3 musical) as Junpei being… uh… himself. I assume they really weren’t going to find someone to be an older Ken and Koromaru is not canon in the stages (more on this later).

Because this stage is going to handled by the same staff as the first play, I strongly believe when home release comes along, it will be subtitled into English, hence the long period between the final performance and DVD release. So for now, here’s to a successful stage run! When the time comes, I will be here to review it.

Again Japan, please consider a Persona 4 Dancing All Night musical. The game literally asked for it. Half of the game is done for you.

Links:
Official site | Twitter