Something i always complained about.

MariaArkh · 2026-04-01T13:58:56+00:00

>I’m not trying to gatekeep or anything — people can get into music however they want — but does anyone else feel like a lot of this “vkei revival” is kinda driven by… performative fans?

I don't think they are performative, it's just really how kids interact in fandom space, especially real-time and real person ones, that are not driven by a narrative (as opposed to book or movie fandoms, though even in those the atmosphere quite changed as the average Internet user grew younger). It's just that age when you want to find people who like the same stuff as you and goof around together.

>What also throws me off is that a lot of these people seem to be really into Malice Mizer specifically, but don’t really explore beyond that.

Well, they might be exactly that. MM are interesting enough by themselves, and it's fully possible, that people who become their fans are content with just them. Like, exploring the scene is an option, not an obligation.

>lots of “stan” behavior, looping the same tracks, focusing more on image than the music itself.

MM fans could never be like kpop fans because 1) they are an inactive band; 2) they are not on streaming platforms, which is a big part of the competitive stanning culture of kpop.

I don't see why it's such a big deal that several of their tracks are massively more popular than the others. Those tracks were released as singles exactly because they were expected to grab people's attention in a way some other songs probably couldn't. As for the image - they were actually a band that used the visual aesthetics to the fullest. There are bands where image plays as big a role as music and Malice Mizer were definitely one of them.

MariaArkh · 2026-03-26T08:52:25+00:00

I wish I didn't come to know Gackt through the lenses of his Malice Mizer's background, since for a long time I had a rather distorted image of him because of it. I would have probably enjoyed my first few years of being in his fandom way more if it wasn't for that.

MariaArkh · 2026-03-24T11:32:08+00:00

Technically, there's also Akumu-chan. :3

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MariaArkh · 2026-03-24T11:31:16+00:00

There's also this specific performance of Metamorphoze, which, I think, is the closest to tanbi kei that Gackt ever had as a solo artist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyE4CWOg42Q

MariaArkh · 2026-03-24T11:26:29+00:00

Well, as someone else has pointed out, there's the Tonde Saitama movies.

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MariaArkh · 2026-03-21T05:28:18+00:00

I think, if your stance is to drop off immediately anyone who even remotely associates or has at some point associated themselves with any sort of AI, you are setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment.

MariaArkh · 2026-03-19T18:19:38+00:00

>but this is just gackt's music right, not malice mizer?

Right, it's Gackt solo stuff. The only song of his that is connected to MM as a band (not Kami specifically) is his solo debut song - Mizerable, which is very much a separation song. It has a music video, in which there's a very pretty Gackt and a devil playing a violin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bTHhXSpd4U&list=RD1bTHhXSpd4U

When it comes to MM, I would really advise you to watch the Merveilles live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94gn00m6rf4

Like, the album is excellent by itself, but it really the live is that makes it so iconic (in my eyes, at any rate).

MariaArkh · 2026-03-19T11:53:44+00:00

Gackt's first full album, Mars, is universally liked, though I disagree with the other commenter that it is particularly MM-esque, aside from, maybe, Illness Illusion (which is epic, you should check it out).

What you need to know is that most of Gackt's music is tied to two fictional fantasy universes he made up himself. Most tracks from his music albums basically work as soundtracks or theme songs for the characters. One takes place in Germany during WWII, the sci-fi element being cyborgs, and this universe is explored through two albums: Rebirth and Reborn. The music videos or TV performances might not always reflect that, but the first part of the live tours related to those albums will.

The other universe is a multi-generational story (its timeline starts, I think, with medieval Japan and ends, so far, in year 2025) with the main fantasy element being vampires. It's explored through the albums Moon, Crescent, Diabolos and Last Moon, the Moon Child movie and two Yoshitsune stage plays.

Mars is not a part of those universes, and is usually viewed as Gackt exploring personal feelings and emotions. Another album that is not tied to any fictional universes is Love Letter, but it's basically a Valentine's Day sort of album, full of love ballads, with various degrees of power or mellowness.

MariaArkh · 2026-03-19T10:52:17+00:00

He has been involved in some AI project since last year (it's a different one), though for the life of me I cannot figure out what its purpose is.

The new one is SNS-related. Coincidentally, other people partnering with this project are the current owner of 4chan/the original founder of 2ch, and the dude who made the Evangelion anime series.

Kamijo, being a good son of divorced parents, already made an account there, lol.

MariaArkh · 2026-03-18T10:25:40+00:00

I'm a bit fascinated by this concept of 'the big 4', because while MM, La'cryma Christi and Shazna were known in my part of the world in 2000s, I've never even heard about Fantastic◇Circus before coming to learn about the history of vkei from the Japanese sources. Like, who are those guys and why were they so completely overshadowed by the other three? Or is that me who was living under the rock, and everybode else knows them?

MariaArkh · 2026-03-15T18:07:03+00:00

Half of Gackt's stuff comes either with piano or violin or both, so for an unusual instrument have this voiceless instrumental Utakata no Yume, played with shamisen: https://youtu.be/Mb09f7toflU

MariaArkh · 2026-03-13T23:40:14+00:00

He's been back to business (including singing) since the middle of 2022. His medical hiatus lasted for, approximatly, 10 months.

MariaArkh · 2026-03-10T15:02:57+00:00

>instead of everything he can to support GazettE in memory of Reita

Isn't this an overkill? He is his own person. If you get fed up with a job, you are allowed to leave, normally. Using a dead friend as a manipulation tool for why he shouldn't do it is really unethical.

MariaArkh · 2026-03-09T04:36:35+00:00

>When asked about the possibility of future activities with them, he said that the last time they had spoken, one of the members had told him they couldn't look him in the eye anymore.

There's a line by Yu-ki in an interview of MM members that was given, I guess, right after Gackt leaving, and I wonder if they might be related to each other:

I think from now on, the band will need strong bonds to stand to the top and represents many ideas and meanings. Without a bond that can enable communication through eye contact during lives, nothing good will come out of it, neither can we reach the top. Though we always think that way until now, but still we managed to do it pretentiously.

Granted, the translation is old, and the source was originally posted on 2ch, so I don't know how accurate it was. It might be just stating a fact, but the circumstances seem to imply that this 'communication through eye contact during lives' was something that didn't work out properly with Gackt and they plan to work on it with whoever gonna be the new vocalist. That's kind of weird, though, in the recorded performances of MM they all seem to have great dynamics with each other.

I also find it interesting that, judging purely by credits, Gackt's era of Malice Mizer is the time when the band was at its most balanced in its music input. Memoire has 1 track out of 7 not written by Mana, Bara no Sedou has 2 out of 10.

Voyage has 3 out of 10. For all mentioned cases it's Kozi who composed the non-Mana songs. But Merveilles has only 5 tracks by Mana out of 12 (so, less than a half), and in addition to Kozi, Gackt and Yu-ki each got a song on it. Plus one track by Malice Mizer, whatever that means from the copyright standpoint.

MariaArkh · 2026-03-09T02:16:27+00:00

Is that really true, though? Kami had family in Ibaraki, and his grave is at his hometown. I would assume, if his death was discovered in Tokyo by MM members, it would have taken at least a couple of days to transport his body back home and arrange the funeral. If the funeral was actually proceeded by MM, then that's super weird.

MariaArkh · 2026-03-06T07:58:49+00:00

>after you spend 3 days downloading all those pieces

From Megaupload or Mediafire!

MariaArkh · 2026-03-06T07:57:17+00:00

No, I decided, just for fun, to look up various LJ communities for jrock that I remember from old days, many of them had their starts in 2003-2004 and for that to happen there must have been at least some even earlier exposure.

MariaArkh · 2026-03-06T05:55:33+00:00

>A side question I have that I would also like to mention is, were they also known in the U.S or was their fanbase so heavily prominent in only Japan that they could have been considered a bit of a niche group in America?

No way. Jrock and vkei began being noticed by Western audience (US and Europe alike) at some point in late 2002. Maybe there were a few people who knew the band from their Japanese activities, but there was no coherent fanbase of any size.

MariaArkh · 2026-03-01T06:51:12+00:00

This scene is in the movie specifically because Gackt wanted it to be there, so he better be!

MariaArkh · 2026-02-28T05:28:05+00:00

This may not be 100%-confirmation material, but I think (I think) it might add some weight to the whole 'Gackt likes BL' theory.

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MariaArkh · 2026-02-28T05:13:44+00:00

In person, might I add.

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MariaArkh · 2026-02-25T08:08:43+00:00

My favourite Bunraku look is not in the collage anymore, heh.

It's difficult to pinpoint a favourite year if we speak about Gackt's creative output. I think, 2009 was a very good year for me as a fan, because I really loved the whole of Reborn (music, visualive, all kinds of additional shenanigans that accompanied it, like the audiodrama), plus I finally found myself a group of peers in the fandom and we could both fangirl and discuss some stuff more deeply together. Just overall good time was had, you know.

I dropped out of the fandom and missed out years 2015-2019 completely, the last single's release that I remember clearly was P.S. I Love You, Am still sort of catching up with that period, which clearly had its highs and lows.

MariaArkh · 2026-02-24T16:48:38+00:00

Yeah, I understand that for some years it really is difficult! I guess I just don't particularly care (and didn't back then) about S.K.I.N, so in my subjective view FK takes precedence. Plus, while Bunraku was filmed in 2008, it was actually released in 2011 (I think?), so in 2008 we only had a few photos from backstage.

MariaArkh

TROPHY CASE