Set in a sanatorium isolated from the human world, the story concerns a group of young vampires. Sylvatica (Sakura Oda) goes missing and Lily (Riho Sayashi) resolves to search for her, but her peers have never heard of anyone named Sylvatica. A mysterious and quiet girl, Snow (Ayaka Wada), advises her to give up on her search. However, the truth of Sylatica's disappearance also brings forth the truth regarding the fate of these vampire girls.
The production ran from June 5 to 21, 2014. A soundtrack album was released at the theater's goods shop, and a complete edition was packaged along with the DVD release.
During a special reunion event in 2015, all the members of Morning Musume '15 and ANGERME (formerly S/mileage) performed a short play that served as a prequel to the events of LILIUM, called Nirinzaki. Most of the original cast members reprised their roles, while those who were not in LILIUM portrayed new characters.
This story employs notable plot twists near the ending. Be warned that this page contains spoilers!
LILIUM provides examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: Following the Japanese tradition of Western-inspired works, many of the characters' names range from normal such as Lily, Rose, and Margeureite to unusual names after objects such as Cherry, Snow, and False.
- All Myths Are True: Immortal vampires? True of Vamp? Ridiculous! That definitely never happened, except it did, and the legendary TRUMP is among them in the sanatorium. The old fairytale of a gardener who tried to create a flower that never wilts? A direct metaphor about TRUMP and the sanatorium, relating the garden and his garden respectively. This explains the Floral Theme Naming. The only difference is that unlike the gardener, TRUMP never dies, and he succeeds in creating an immortal 'flower' who never wilts.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Marigold. The other vampire girls taunt her brutally due to the fact that she is a half-vampire dhampir. It doesn't go well for them. Snow as well; The other girls actually sing a song about how they find Snow to be strange and standoffish and would rather just avoid her.
- Alpha Bitch: Marguerite is under the impression that she is a princess, tells the others they are dirty and stink, believes everyone to be jealous of her, and comes complete with a Girl Posse. She and her followers are especially cruel to Marigold. This also doesn't go well for them.
- Amnesiac Lover: Camellia to Sylvatica.
- Arc Words: "Don't forget me" or "Forget me not."
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Lily was the first to show compassion and friendship to Marigold.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Lily. When she snaps, she orders everyone to commit suicide.
- Blessed with Suck: False and also Lily. Even though it's mentioned that people have sought TRUMP's immortality in the past, to be immortal and ageless is treated like an absolute curse and is the cause of False's intense loneliness.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: When a vampire takes the "Initiative" of someone, this becomes the state of the victim.
- Break the Cutie: Lily again. The entire musical basically set her up for multiple gut punches. The missing friend she was searching for? Died 10 years ago. The girl who helped her? Was her best friend 800 years ago. Oops, she commits suicide too. Right in front of her. The friend she was shown to be on good terms with? Memory wiped and doesn't remember her at the end. Add all that to the fact that her entire life was essentially a lie because her memories have been rewritten over and over for the last 800 years, of course she snaps.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall:
- Cherry and Cattleya's comedic gag presentation.
- When False informs the audience that he and Cattleya aren't the only males in the Clan.
False: Just saying, even though it looks like the only boys around are just you and me... (turns to the audience) the truth is that in the story there's a boys' dorm with dozens of us around!
Camellia: What are you even saying? - Crapsack World : The sanatorium is a holding place where (mostly) girls of vampiric descent are kept, made to take medication which suspends their development and prolongs their deaths, and forced to repeat the same days over and over for upwards of eight hundred years. None of them other than Snow have any clue, until False's hold over Lily's Initiative fades away and she begins to notice that every day seems to repeat itself.
- Chekhov's Gag : In the first scene, Lily asks Silane and Lindou why it always rains in the forest, and Silane jokes that maybe someone has frozen time in the forest. Later on we discover that the Clan has repeated the same day for hundreds of years under False's Initiative, and both Silane and Lindou were in on it.
- In a conversation between Cattleya and False about what the Master of the Clan may look like—as neither of them of seen the Master before—False scares Cattleya by suggesting that the Master looks like a monster. False was the monster all along, and it turns out Cattleya actually called him one during the Sylvatica incident 10 years before.
- Chekhov's Gun : The high pitched noise that plays when Lily inadvertently throws Marigold, who is, unbeknownst to Lily, about to bite her, plays again each time once it is revealed that someone's initiative is being manipulated.
- Crosscast Role: Haruka Kudo and Kana Nakanishi play the male characters False and Camellia.
- Cry into Chest: Silane and Lindou.
- Darker and Edgier: This is not your usual Hello! Project theatre production, except perhaps for Stacies Shoujo Saisatsu Kageki, which was about girls turning into zombies.
- Dhampir: Marigold, who is shunned and outcasted.
- Don't Look At Me: Sylvatica when her body catches up to her true age after she refuses to drink to False's blood.
- Downer Ending: To destroy False/Sophie Anderson's utopia and end the Clan's suffering, Lily uses her Initiative to make the Clan commit mass Murder-Suicide before killing herself. However, False leaves the sanatorium stating he has all the time in the world to start over again. When you think the story has ended, Lily realizes the Clan is leaving for the afterlife without her, revealing that False succeeded in making Lily immortal.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: Eveyone's outfits. The prefects' outfits are adorned with pins.
- False Utopia: Yes, literally. Yes, pun intended. The sanatorium is uneventful but peaceful, and the girls while away their days dancing and exploring and playing with one another. All seems well and could very well last forever, if not for the fact that all of the girls are being kept as prisoners living what is essentially the same day on repeat for eternity, and their Laser-Guided Amnesia leaves them none the wiser.
- Final Love Duet: "Anata wo Aishita Kioku".
- Floral Theme Naming
- Flower Motifs
- Foreshadowing: Whenever someone takes hold of someone's initiative, a high-pitched noise is heard. The first instance of this occurs when Marigold attempts, unbeknownst to Lily, to bite her, and Lily unconsciously throws Marigold to prevent this. She quickly apologises, thinking she just threw her friend from a hug. Immediately after, False appears. Marguerite complains of a rat smell everytime False or Marigold are nearby. Other girls complain of it as well when they find themselves in False's laboratory, where his blood is being refined into the girls' daily medicine. If Marigold and False are both dhampirs, the fact that they both carry the same 'rat' smell makes sense. Another example is False's anaemia, which is due to blood loss since he gives his blood to the girls everyday. Camellia also has fleeting flashbacks everytime he wanders over to the girls' dorm, subconsciously looking for Sylvatica.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: Sylvatica, which sets up the premise of the story.
- Fun with Acronyms: The term "TRUMP" is short for "TRUE OF VAMP".
- Gaslighting: The girls are led to believe their Chrysalis period is driving them mad and that they must be medicated to suppress their symptoms. While this may be true in part, the medication they take serves to stunt their development and prolong their lives, and any madness they experience in the play comes mostly from the side-effects of False's manipulation of their Initiatives. This is also the case when Lily is told that Sylvatica is a figment of her own madness, and must be due to the symptoms of Chrysalis. Subverted with Marigold, who is actually a murderous madwoman.
- Go Mad from the Revelation
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Lindou is a kind and gentle big-sister/mentor figure to the other girls, while Silane is the strict disciplinarian often threatening the other girls with whipping for lateness and defiance. When some girls stumble into a restricted area and discover an important clan secret, Silane attempts to kill the girls on the spot while Lindou pleads with her to settle things peaceably.
- Gut Punch: The premise of the show is grim but with several moments of upbeat comedy, but it all really goes downhill once the characters are on the verge of discovering a major secret.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Vampires' past interactions with humans have not been pleasant. Humans think of vampires as monsters and try to ward them off with garlic and kill them by stabbing them in the heart, which, Camellia remarks, would kill anyone. The vampires now hide far away from human settlements, fearing what would happen if they are seen.
- I Will Find You: Lily's motivation to find Sylvatica.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Type 2: Almost everyone. When something unpleasant happens or any of the girls get too close to learning the truth, False causes the girls to lose to lose their memories of the event and continue living as normal. When Sylvatica rebelled and died, those memories were removed. Once Lily learned the truth about the clan, False again caused everyone else to forget about The Reveal as well as forget about her. This sort of memory also keeps everyone from realising they've been living at the sanatorium for decades, if not centuries.
- Loophole Abuse: Snow. She controls the Initiative of those bitten by False. Commits suicide by Marigold using the same loophole. Lily does the exact same thing, but on a bigger scale. Think mass induced suicide.
- Meaningful Name: The Floral Theme Naming comes from Hanakotoba, or the language of flowers, in which different flowers mean different things when gifted. The character's names correspond with their roles in the story. Lily stands for purity, virginity and youth. Sylvatica is another name for the Forget-Me-Not. Snow is likely short for Snowdrop, which stands for hope. Marigold stands for jealousy, cruelty, and sacred affection. Camellia stands for adoration and longing. Furze, which is another way to transliterate False, is a flowering tree that blooms all year round. It stands for good luck unless given to a loved one, in which case it means anger. Apart from the flower meaning, his name has the double-meaning of False, which implies the fact that his name is just an alias.
- No Indoor Voice: Cattleya. Second place goes to Cherry.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Sure, what False has been doing to the girls in the sanatorium for centuries is pretty messed up and unforgivable. But then again, he's been all alone for thousands of years. No wonder he went to such lengths.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Lily, when the Clan move onto the afterlife without her.
- Plot Device All Along: False's anemia. You find out that he has a very good reason for it. His blood is the base of the immortality medicine. Of course he's anemic, he has to dose them daily!
- Plot Parallel: Marigold and False. Marigold's obsession with Lily and False's obsession with Lily and Snow. Along with everyone else, really. Exaggerated because False is a dhampir just like Marigold. She even lampshades it by saying that they're the same, in the end.
- Really 700 Years Old : Everyone. Make that eight-hundred for Snow and Lily, three-hundred for the two prefect girls, and a whopping three-thousand-odd years old for False. Everyone else is at least a few decades old, but probably up in the hundreds. No matter what the number, absolutely everyone is much much much Older Than They Look.
- The Scream: False and Lily take this up to eleven in the ending.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Despite Snow's initial fear of death, once the Lily and the clan learn the truth, False removes everyone's memories, short of Snow and Lily's... only to have Snow restore Marigold's memories of her desire to kill her, so that Snow can face her fear of death and finally depart from the clan.
- Secret Identity: False is actually Sophie Anderson, who is a main character in the prequel musical TRUMP.
- She Knows Too Much: Silane attempts to shoot Cherry, Rose, Cattleya, and Nasturtium for discovering information they weren't supposed to know.
- Shoutout: During the Cherry and Cattleya's comedic break, their gags reference their groups, S/mileage and Morning Musume '14, respectively and collaboratively. This also takes place when Cherry, Cattleya, Nasturtium and Rose discover False's laboratory and mistake a vat of his blood to be "Juice! Juice!"... which leads to a slew of jokes relating to the names of every Hello! Project group. Another shoutout is made when Cherry meets up with her friends, and Nasturtium references Dragon Quest and mimics the music when someone joins your party.
- Shrinking Violet: Snow. As the first person to become immune to False's control over her Initiative, she recovers her memories of everything to have taken place over the last 800 years. This drives her to seclude herself from everyone, afraid to make friends because even memories of her most precious friendships are wiped from everyone else's minds. She is also paralysed by the fear of losing her life, which has caused her reluctance to open up to Lily about the truth about the clan, and caused her to obey False in order to stave off death.
- Small, Secluded World: The sanatorium.
- Stalker with a Crush: Marigold. She goes to absurd lengths to protect Lily's happiness. Such as attempting to murder someone for talking to her. Or mind-controlling people to do her bidding to achieve the previous aim. Let's not forget she also attempted to bite Lily and thus mind-control her too.
- Our Vampires Are Different: All the characters are not human, but their bites enable control over their victims, and they are not immortal.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: The whole reason False created the Clan and sanatorium was so he wouldn't have to live alone for eternity.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: When Snow tries to escape Marguerite's group, who are trying to kill her, she could much sooner have used Initiative to stop them in their tracks. False could have done the same thing when trying to protect pretty much everyone, but for some reason doesn't.
Nirinzaki provides examples of:
- Call-Back: To the first musical TRUMP when Lindou tells Peony that she has shown potential of becoming "the next Ul". Ul was the name of Sophie Anderson's school friend thousands of years before, during the events of TRUMP. He was the only student who did not shun Sophie for being a dhampir, believed in the TRUMP myth, and wanted immortality. At the end, Sophie discovers he is TRUMP, but is unable to turn Ul immortable to save him from dying. This means False has been trying to turn Clan members immortal to create a Replacement Goldfish of Ul.
- Doomed by Canon: The characters who don't exist in LILIUM have mostly likely been killed and erased from everyone's memory by False in the same way as Peony when he wants to see if any of his Unwitting Test Subjects have become immortal.
- Foreshadowing: If you go back and rewatch Nirinzaki, you begin to notice that no one other than Sylvatica is interacting with Lycoris. No one talks to her, or even looks at her, even if she talks to them. It's as if she doesn't exist and is only a figment of Sylvatica's imagination. That is, until the final scene, and we're given the Wham Line that tells us, maybe she WAS real... because she was Sylvatica's other self, and Sylvatica (and possibly everyone else) never knew this.
- Love Triangle: Between Sylvatica, Camellia, and Cherry. We all know how this turns out, except that Sylvatica was actually rooting for Camellia and Cherry, and it is because of Lycoris that Sylvatica and Camellia ended up together.
- Meaningful Name: Lycoris (spider lily) is a unique flower in that in the late summer, the leaves die and the flower blooms, but after the flower wilts and dies, the leaves grow back, and the cycle goes on. This makes sense, because Lycoris seems to be able to remember Peony's death, while everyone else, including Sylvatica, forgot. She then goes on to tell Sylvatica that even if she forgets things, she herself will remember, because they are "two in one".
- Prequel: It takes place 200 years before the events of LILIUM, and it instead focuses on Sylvatica and another girl named Lycoris.
- Talking to Themself: Sylvatica to Lycoris.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: It seems as though Sylvatica believes Lycoris actually exists outside of her mind, and never questions why no one responds to her when she's around. She didn't even notice Cherry's confused looks when she left with Lycoris.
- Twist Ending
- Wham Line: The last few lines spoken in the play.Lycoris: If something happens and we can't be together anymore, there's one thing I want you to promise me.Camellia: What is it... Sylvatica?(BLACKOUT)Lycoris/Sylvatica (together): Please don't forget me.
