Recap / Musical Touken Ranbu Shizuka No Umi No Paraiso

The seventh main installment in the series, following team Paraiso, consisting of Tsurumaru Kuninaga, Urashima Koutetsu, Ookurikara, Buzen Gou, Hyuuga Masamune, and Matsui Gou.

---

Tropes:

• A Child Shall Lead Them: Played With. Amakusa Shirou is touted as the leader of the Shimabara Rebellion despite his young, but is more of a symbolic figurehead than anything, as the one who waged the war in the first place is the adult Emosaku, and used Shirou to further his agenda by inspiring the masses. After he's killed off prematurely by the Historical Revisionists in an attempt to alter the course of history, the Touken Danshi adopt his name and role to ensure that events of the Shimabara Rebellion play out as historically intended, with Emosaku quickly moving on from the boy when he realizes he can simply use them for the same purpose.
• A Day in the Limelight: The story primarily focuses on the internal conflicts of both Tsurumaru Kuninaga and Matsui Gou, as well as their conflicts with each other.
• Ambiguous Situation: What exactly happened between Kishou Hongi and this play to trigger the dramatic shift in Tsurumaru's overall attitude, as well as his feelings toward Mikazuki Munechika?
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: After Tsurumaru orders Matsui to side with the Shogunate and participate in the murders of the Shimabara rebels, Buzen Gou confronts him angrily, giving him (and the audience) the impression that he is pissed that Tsurumaru would cruelly subject him to something so traumatic despite his knowledge of Matsui's past. However, he switches up his tone and admits that he's grateful to Tsurumaru for helping Matsui confront his trauma. Even Tsurumaru seems surprised by this turn of events, but agrees to leave Matsui in Buzen's hands.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • The older sibling is extremely protective of his brother and only participates in the rebellion despite his disagreement with it because he does not want him to starve. In the end, he also dies protecting him.
  • Inverted in the aforementioned death scene, as the little brother initially tries to protect his older brother by throwing rocks at Matsui, who he knows is there to kill them both.
• Breather Episode: Or breather segment, in this case. For the most part, whenever Izunokami's ignored and incompetent underlings appear on screen, the tone is lighthearted and comedic compared to the pretty depressing main events.
• Broken Tears: Everyone major character except Ookurikara and Buzen Gou breaks down into these at some point in the play.
• Call-Back: Tsurumaru references Mikazuki's message from Kishou Hongi about some people having to play tragic roles in history in both of his musings on Mikazuki.
• Contrived Coincidence: The story relies heavily on the idea that no one outside of Emosaku knew who Amakusa Shirou was or what he looked like so that Tsurumaru Kuninaga and Hyuuga Masamune can take on his role to correct the course of history, which makes little sense given that the rebellion was already in progression by the time they arrive in the time period, and the boy grew up in Shimabara, so surely someone knew him.
• Dead Person Impersonation: After he's killed off prematurely by the Historical Retrograding Force, Tsurumaru and Hyuuga take on Amakusa Shirou's name and role in the Shimabara Rebellion to inspire the masses to join Emosaku's cause and lead them to their destined deaths.
• Death of a Child: As is what happened during the real Shimabara Rebellion, children are killed in this musical, with the 17-year old Amakusa Shirou being the first.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • Urashima is the first to cross it after being forced to confront the atrocities of war, initially masking his sadness with a smile before breaking down and running away as Hyuuga tries to console him.
  • Urashima crosses it again with Matsui and Hyuuga after they witness the deaths of the brothers, although the younger sibling turns out to be still alive.
• Dirty Coward: Emosaku. After inciting the rebellion in the first place, he sells out his own faction by telling the Shogunate that they are running out of resources when his life is threatened, resulting in the massacre of the 37,000 people he recruited for his cause and leaving him as the only survivor. Unlike what happened historically, however, he doesn't get off scot-free for his betrayal here, as Tsurumaru makes it a point to torment him with the knowledge that everything that happens is his fault.
• Empathic Environment: The earth shakes and waves crash when Tsurumaru shouts at the end of his rant, adding emphasis to what he was saying.
• Establishing Character Moment: Matsui debuts in the musical singing about his obsession with blood… Not that it matters much in this play, as it mainly focuses on the fact that he doesn't want to kill anyone.
  • Hyuuga's debut song has him singing about pickled plums, which are all but stated to be his Trademark Favorite Food.
• Experienced Protagonist: Tsurumaru Kuninaga is pretty much the main character of Paraiso and he is revealed to be one of Honmaru's oldest swords in terms of both age and length of time living there and protecting history.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: On Emosaku's end, at least, as he recovers quickly from the death of the real Amakusa Shirou when he realizes that he can just use the Touken Danshi to spearhead his rebellion. makes you wonder if he cared about the real Amakusa Shirou in the first place.
• Full-Name Basis: Matsui addresses Tsurumaru by his full name, whereas the other swords simply refer to him as "Tsurumaru" or "Tsuru-san" in Buzen's case.
• The Ghost: Mikazuki Munechika doesn't make a physical appearance in this play, but is name-dropped several times before it's revealed in the end that he's been working behind the scenes to correct history with the help of his Mononobe recruit.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: While many innocent people were indeed persecuted during the rebellion, the story emphasizes that neither side was entirely blameless, as even those who joined the rebellion for the sake of their beliefs would slaughter innocents who doubted or refused to support their cause. One of the casualties was the mother of the two young boys whom Touken Danshi befriends, who was killed solely because she didn't want to join the rebellion.
  "There are no wars with clear-cut white and black sides. There's black in the white, and white in the black. Either may well have even red or blue. When you put it into words, everyone has their own reason for waging war."
• Hypocrisy Nod: Tsurumaru criticizes Mikazuki's tendency to do things alone, then laughs about how similar they are because he also prefers to do things alone and spends most of the play taking on the major responsibility of ensuring the deaths of the rebels in the Shimabara faction by himself.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How the older sibling dies; He is speared first, and then a group of other men rush in and begin stabbing him to death as he tries to protect his younger brother in his final moments.
• Indignant Slap: Or punch, in this case. Matsui punches Tsurumaru in the face for his apparent uncaring attitude after they all witness the brutal murder of a pair of child siblings. This punch ends up helping Tsurumaru better express his grief over the situation, which he offloads when everyone except Ookurikara has gone on ahead of them.
• Inelegant Blubbering:
  • Matsui, Hyuuga, and Urashima are reduced to tears after the witnessing the brutal murder of the pair of siblings they befriended. They recover when it turns out the younger sibling is still alive, just in time for one of Mikazuki's recruits to come collect him.
  • Emosaku also breaks down at the end of the play after seeing the corpse of the elder brother, finally realizing the weight of what he'd done.
• Innocently Insensitive: Everyone except Buzen Gou and Tsurumaru Kuninaga when it comes to Matsui's connection to the Shimbara Rebellion, as they went into the mission unaware that he has lingering trauma over when he was used to slaughter innocent people when he was still a sword.
• Interspecies Friendship: Urashima and Hyuuga befriend a pair of human boys after recruiting them over to Emosaku's cause. This ends tragically, however, as both boys were fated to be killed during the Shimabara Rebellion, although the younger brother ends up surviving because of his older brother and the Mononobe's intervention, with the latter meaning they'd be separated from the boy regardless.
• It's All About Me: Throughout the play, there is little indication that Emosaku cares about anyone other than himself. Even at the end, after all of the rebels have been killed, he asks Chiezu why he has to be the only one to survive to question what the point of the war was, despite having caused the war and the deaths in the first place.
• Karma Houdini: Subverted with Emosaku. He made it out of the Shimabara Rebellion with his life, but he's not happy about being the sole survivor, especially not after Tsurumaru drilled in his head that everything is his fault and that he'll have to live with the guilt in order to fulfill his "role." At first, he seems to be upset about having to live with the guilt of being the sole survivor, seeing it as a burden imposed on him rather than actually caring about the lives lost, that is, until he sees the corpse of the older brother, who has been misidentified as Amakusa Shirou, and has a breakdown as he realizes the gravity of what he has caused.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Hyuuga and Urashima were the only ones who had no idea what participating in the Shimabara Rebellion entailed, up until they received a letter from the Shogunate threatening to massacre their forces if they failed to surrender. It was only then that it dawned on them what the purpose of their mission was: to ensure that all 37,000 rebels die.
• Lying to Protect Your Feelings:
  • The older brother keeps the fact that the mother was killed by the Shimabara rebels from his younger brother, telling him that she just left them instead to protect his feelings.
  • Tsurumaru also purposefully keeps Urashima in the dark about their mission until he discovers it for himself.
• Mood Whiplash: In a fairly lighthearted scene in the middle of the play, Hyuuga pretends to be a relative of Hideyoshi Toyotomi in an attempt to recruit more rebels for the Shimabara faction, but the people he tried to recruit brush him off, saying he doesn't look like a monkey enough to be related to him, though they change their minds mid-discussion and admit he does look a little like a monkey, which slightly hurts Hyuuga's feelings. Then, abruptly, a group of Shogunate soldiers charge into the scene and brutally slaughter everyone except the Touken Danshi.
• Naïve Newcomer: Hyuuga Masamune, who has no knowledge about the Shimbara Rebellion and asks questions about it in place of the audience. Urashima also fulfills this role to a lesser degree.
• Necessarily Evil: The Touken Danshi have to knowingly lead 37,000 people to their deaths to ensure that history proceeds as intended. A lot of these people are innocent, which causes them nothing short of intense grief over the roles they have to play.
• The Needs of the Many:
  • Played Straight with Tsurumaru's team. They don't want to ensure the deaths of the 37,000 rebels, many of whom are innocent women and children, but they have to in order to preserve the future, which is their mission as Touken Danshi, no matter how painful it is for them.
  • Inverted Trope with Mikazuki Munechika, who goes along with ensuring the deaths of 37,000 people but sends in his recruit, who was likely also someone who was historically intended to die but was spared by him, to rescue the younger brother. This enrages Tsurumaru enough to rant at the crescent moon about Mikazuki's hypocrisy, though the rant itself was also laden with hypocrisy, as Tsurumaru very well could have found a way to save some people in a way that wouldn't alter history significantly but chose to ensure they all died while forcing his teammates to do the same.
• No Name Given: Neither of the young boys are named in the musical. This is relevant in the end, because the boys' anonymity to the audience and the characters in the story allows the elder brother who was killed to assume the identity of Amakusa Shirou in death, allowing history to (almost) fully correct itself^note The real Amakusa Shirou was executed and had his head mounted on a spike, but the characters don’t mention it .
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Tsurumaru hides his cunning and calculating nature behind a mask of playfulness whimsy, at least until he gets serious… or angry.
• The Punishment Is the Crime: Emosaku is one of the only survivors of the rebellion, but his survival is treated as a punishment for starting the war in the first place, as he will have to live the rest of his life with the blood of 37,000 people on his hands, questioning the war's purpose and whether it was worth having waged given that it accomplished nothing.
• The Reveal: The nameless man who relayed information about the Shimabara rebels to Izunokami was a Mononobe, a member of Mikazuki's faction.
• Stepford Smiler: Tsurumaru, full stop. He spends the majority of the musical pretending to be unfazed about the villainous role he has to play, but his mask cracks several times under the mental and emotional strain, until it shatters completely at the end of the play, causing him to tearfully lash out at Mikazuki Munechika, who is represented by the crescent moon in the sky.
  "Are you kidding me? "There are those in the flow of history who have a tragic role to bear?" What is history to you? The ones whose names went down in history aren't the only ones who made it, you know…?! Help them! Save them! All 37,000! They're not just a number! Each had their own life! They were alive! Take them with you. Take them to the tranquil sea, to Paraiso! If you can do it, then do it!"
• The Stool Pigeon: The Mononobe's role in this play is to snoop around the Shimabara faction and report any changes or findings to Izunokami so that he can take action against them. It is also implied that Mikazuki was telling him what courses of action the Shimabara faction would take so that he could inform Izunokami.
• Suddenly Shouting: Tsurumaru Kuninaga does this when Urashima and Matsui try to argue against him and the other Touken Danshi killing human beings.
  "If you have a problem with that-! …would you like to quit being a Touken Danshi?"
• War Is Hell: The Musical. It's probably one of the musicals that pushes this idea the most.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: When confronted by Tsurumaru about why he is choosing to massacre the troops, "Chiezu" tearfully admits that he doesn’t want to in the first place, but feels compelled to in order to maintain the peace established by Ieyasu, believing that if people grieve and regret what happened to Shimabara after they fought back, nothing like the rebellion will happen again. Tsurumaru sympathizes with his reasoning, and feels vindicated in having someone to share his pain with.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • The Historical Revisionists disappear from the narrative after killing Amakusa Shirou, with the true danger the Touken Danshi face from there becoming the psychological harm that taking part in the rebellion causes them.
  • The audience never learns of what happened to the younger brother after he's rescued by the Mononobe and taken to Mikazuki Munechika.
• You Will Be Beethoven: Amakusa Shirou dies early in the story, leaving Tsurumaru Kuninaga and Hyuuga Masamune to assume Shirou's identity and spearhead the rebellion in his place. Averted in the end, however, as the nameless older brother is mistakenly identified as Amakusa Shirou instead.