Death Note: The Musical
Before Raggedy Ann or even Dave Malloy, the first musical I got into that wasn't one of the popular Teen Musicals was Frank Wildhorn's Death Note. This was the first ever full-on hyperfixation research mode of an obscure piece of media little baby Aster ever felt, and being on the cutting edge of new demo and script leaks was exhilarating.
Some background. For those who don't know, the Death Note musical started production in 2014 as a collaboration between the Japanese authors of the manga and anime (Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata) and the Americah theater creators Frank Wildhorn, Ivan Mitchell, and Jack Murphy. Wildhorn and co.'s previous musicals are a lot more popular in East-Asia than their origins in the US, the modern pop rock score and over-the-top design are very popular in transfers there. Wildhorn was sought out specifically, and 2015 saw the release of the first Japanese production. Proper proshot and album and everything.
In pre-production in 2014, a demo album was created. Many of the cast of Wildhorn's recent Bonnie & Clyde musical lended their voices to private workshops and a demo album not meant for the public. Early 2015, eight of these songs were published online. In 2017, the rest of the 19 songs recorded for the demo were leaked online. At the same time, a fan contacted Ivan Menchel to aquire the script, and begin a fan-translation of the 2015 Japenese proshot. This is when I heard of it.
This was before the online theater fandom at large had caught on to the fact that Jeremy Jordan was part of these demos.
I got in early! And created some of the first lyric videos for the full 19 tracks of the demo. I even have sheet music made by ear during lessons. I knew those who were working on the translation (though of course, I have long lost their contact, or, like me, they suffered many content strikes and are impossible to find). Interest in the show surged in 2020, as I could literally track the populairty of the song "Where is the Justice" through my youtube metrics as the combined political unrest and Jeremy Jordan fanbase skyrocketed during the pandemic.
Alas, my empire has crumbled nearly a decade later since the company who produced the Japanese cast albums nuked my channel.
But I can still write all my thoughts!
