‘Naruto’ Live-Action Play Reveals Madara Visuals

If you ask someone to share their thoughts on live-action anime, you can expect to get some hesitant replies. Over the years, Hollywood and Japan have tried to bring anime to life, but few attempts have gone over well. Still, Japan is doing its best to diversify the kind of adaptations out there, and Naruto will help do that this year with a stage play.

However, its visual for Madara Uchiha are not what fans had expected.

Recently, the folks behind Naruto‘s upcoming Kabuki play shared its latest round of character visual. The live-action project shared images of Sasuke and Naruto awhile back. Now, Madara is taking to the spotlight, and his looks are more than eccentric.

As you can see above, this live-action look is vastly different from how Madara appears in the anime. The baddie has replaced his black hair for a whitish-teal dye job. His costume also ditches its red-black scheme for a more ornate one. However, it does look like Madara’s black staff is still the same (via Otaku Mode).

Madara is being played by a veteran actors for the kabuki project. Ichikawa Ennosuke I and Kataoka Ainosuke VI will take turns bringing the baddie to life on stage. So far, the actor will be joined live by Bandou Minosuke and Nakamura Hayato who play Naruto and Sasuke respectively.

For those unfamiliar with Kabuki, theses character posters may seem a bit strange. However, its over-the-top costumes and aged actors is expected by the genre. The traditional medium dates back as far as the early 1600s, and it is known casually as avant-garde theater. Actors are known for wearing bold face paint, over-the-top outfits, and pulling exaggerated expressions. This style of theater has become an increasingly popular one for anime series, and fans have One Piece to thank for that trend. Eiichiro Oda’s classic series has had several Kabuki plays, and they have become so popular they are often filmed for theatrical releases as tickets sell out extremely fast.

What do you think of this project’s out-there designs? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics, k-pop, and anime!