News roundup: Butai Sengoku Basara 4 begins its run today

The first pictures of the Butai Sengoku Basara 4 cast start to appear

The Butai Sengoku Basara 4 stage play will open for its first audiences later tonight in Japan, but since they held the final dress rehearsal yesterday we finally have an opportunity to get a sneak peak at the actors in their costumes! The celebrities and industry guests who were invited to the dress rehearsal seem to have enjoyed the experience.

I'm sure more pictures will appear in the morning but for now, here are some samplers courtesy of @shimazushintaro, @mihashireiko, @yanaikeiko and Conpetti. There are also some tiny pictures on the show's merchandise page now that it's been updated with more photographs.

It's difficult to judge how well the costumes work from still photographs - it's an extremely kinetic series - but I still enjoyed checking them out. Katsuie's armour looks great, especially in the shot on Conpetti. It looks as though they've actually made it look iridescent instead of compromising with dark green.

Edit: 4Gamer, Gamer and Famitsu have now posted full reports with galleries, and the Conpetti link above has added extra pictures. Fujita Ray posted a candid backstage shot of Sakon and Katsuie on Twitter, too.

A live viewing event will be held for the stage play's grand finale

The official Butai Sengoku Basara 4 website has confirmed that a live viewing will be taking place at 13:00 on 7th December 2014 to enable fans to watch the stage play's grand finale in 26 cinemas across Japan. The tickets for the finale have been sold out for a while, as have tickets for most other dates - the website hasn't updated to show the ticket availability recently but it's now impossible to purchase tickets for many of the shows. Thanks to the live viewing, people who can't travel to one of the four cities hosting Butai Sengoku Basara 4 can still see the stage play performed live without having to wait for the eventual DVD release. Basara Club members can purchase their tickets starting from today for ¥3,600; everyone else has to wait until general sales commence later on.

More guests are announced for next year's Basara Matsuri

The third group of stage play guests has now been announced for February's huge Basara Matsuri event:

Sakurada Kousei (Azai Nagamasa)
Tamaki Nami (Oichi)
Nitta Kenta (Ootani Yoshitsugu)

In addition, there are a couple of new seiyuu guests:

Ookawa Tooru (Tokugawa Ieyasu) will be at the afternoon performance only.
Nakai Kazuya (Date Masamune) will be at the evening performance only.

The website promises that there are still more announcements to come! I'm guessing we'll get the next update in the second half of November since they'll want to publicise the event again around the time that the general ticket sales are beginning.