"Ao no Ran" is the latest in the popular Geki×Cine series. To cut a long story short, Geki×Cine is a filmed stage production, but one done so meticulously that not a single moment of relevance or emotion is lost in the translating process.

What you see in this movie is what you would have seen if you had premium front-seat tickets to the "Ao no Ran" stage production — a notoriously difficult feat to pull off, since "Ao no Ran" is performed by Gekidan Shinkansen, one of Japan's most treasured theater groups. Tickets for these shows sell out in a matter of hours — or even less —but thanks to Geki×Cine, the stage experience can be savored in the movie theater.

Roughly translated as "The Battle of the Blue," "Ao no Ran" is elegance and extravagance rolled into one — the kind of production Yukio Mishima had apparently dreamed about when he went to New York in 1964 and was invited to produce his own noh plays on Broadway (unfortunately the project never came to fruition). Mishima had a deep and undiscriminating love of the stage, be it traditional Japanese or modern New York, and sought to merge Japanese minimalist aesthetics with Western production techniques.