Final Fantasy 16 is getting a Japanese stage play next year.
Announced just earlier today by Square Enix, the Takarazuka stage play will be adapting the entirety of Final Fantasy 16 for the stage. The first run, which takes place between May and June, will take place at the Takarazuka Grand Theater, while the second run, which occurs between July and August, will be performed at the Tokyo Takarazuka Theater Performance.
Oh, and every single character in the new Final Fantasy 16 adaptation will be played by a woman. The Takarazuka format of stage play has every character played by a woman, which makes it sort of the exact opposite of the Kabuki stage play which you might've heard of, where every character is played by a man. Admittedly, we're not quite sure how Torgal fits into all this.
This doesn't mean Final Fantasy 16's characters will all now be women, just that all the actors will be women. So someone's going to have to put on a particularly gruff voice to imitate the Yorkshire tones of Cid, and they've got their work cut out for them if they don't feel like taking up smoking.
One final note is that the Final Fantasy 16 adaptation will be a musical. Sure, Final Fantasy games over the years have become pretty beloved in their own right for their music, but we'll have to wait and see just how the latest Final Fantasy game makes the transition from video game to musical.
If you want tickets, you'll have to wait until well into 2024 to bag them. The first run goes on sale on April 27, 2024, while 'advance tickets' for the second leg go on sale a few months later on June 9.
Square Enix also just announced that the Final Fantasy series has surpassed 180 million sales, which puts it on equal level with GTA 5.
