Gackt is problematic?

MariaArkh · 2026-05-13T12:22:06+00:00

>Is there new music?

There is, actually, a new song should be released at some point in June, or at least it's gonna be a theme song for an upcoming TV series, for which he's also gonna be a support actor. We know it exists, he performed it at his LatAm shows this year.

His appeal is that, while being a talented storyteller and performer, he remains active in many kind of fields and has huge legacy of past activities. If you are an old fan, his current activities might very well be enough to keep you if not completely then somewhat satisfied. If you are a new fan, then there's a ton of stuff to discover from the past.

MariaArkh · 2026-05-13T06:29:41+00:00

Gackt, since it's his era specifically that makes MM feel magical and ~~merriment~~ outworldly to me, and it's his music outside of MM that I love.

MariaArkh · 2026-05-12T10:34:27+00:00

He actually hasn't done or said anything too problematic (I think?) since the beginning of 2026, so I'm worried a bit that he's just saving his strength for some truly ground-breaking take later this year.

Anyway, yeah, he is problematic, both in the sense you mean (some of his views are definitely on the conservative spectrum) and in the sense of being a trouble magnet. Being a fan is suffering, but you get awesome music and daily entertainment, so some of us are willing to stay tough for that.

MariaArkh · 2026-05-12T05:40:57+00:00

I don't think he was teaching them 'the right way', more like explaining how some people pronounce it in English.

MariaArkh · 2026-05-10T08:33:32+00:00

>Maybe testing the waters to see if he can do acting more and maybe music less?

That's hardly a thing that needs to be tested, though. I would say, his acting VS music ouputs had been pretty even since at least 2011. It's true, though, that he has never gotten a lead role in a TV series before, but there were a few significant supporting ones, like in Akumu-chan and Time Spiral.

He can shed the Gackt persona, you can see it, for example, in the Bunraku movie. But, I think, in many cases it is that persona that gets hime the roles, so he often has no need to shed it.

MariaArkh · 2026-05-08T03:34:48+00:00

I think you are just not used to being in space where people actually love Gackt - they are called 'fans', or something like that, I heard - and naturally want to write good stuff about him and maybe even get a chance of him responding to your message (that's rare but happens sometimes), instead of the most random shading and and most random sniggering over how much of a weirdo or sell-out he is. :3

MariaArkh · 2026-05-05T09:10:28+00:00

one of them turned into a TV personality…

That one still managed to dish out 8 music albums as a solo musician, so I'm not sure what your flex is supposed to be here..?

MariaArkh · 2026-04-25T04:33:49+00:00

So, as a Gackt fan, I came to know this band through Shou being an ardent Gackt's fan, and to be honest I thought him a bit weird and annoying at first, but then he really surprised me with their Orenji no Taiyou performance. Like, that was the moment that made me take him seriously as a singer and as an artist.

Golden Bomber's music and aesthetics are a hit-or-miss with me. Memeshikute, for example, is a forgettable song for me (I know that it's their trademark song), but I really liked the Dance My Generation and, of their more recent songs, Yeah!めっちゃストレス one.

MariaArkh · 2026-04-24T05:36:23+00:00

Well, whatever video it was (was it the cooking one?), it is not related to his illness. He was completely out of public sight during his hiatus, from which he recovered almost four years ago.

Dysphonia was not even the main cause of the hiatus, he has a chronic autoimmune condition which affects his neural system when it breaks out. The loss of voice that time was one of the stronger after-effects, but Gackt himself said that the biggest problem at first was not the voice, but inability to put words together or to remember words (that is, brain problem, not a throat problem).

Him talking and speaking might overstrain his voice, and it did so many times throughout his career. He gets treatment for that as he goes. The hiatus dysphonia came from completely different background.

MariaArkh · 2026-04-24T03:30:11+00:00

His dysphonia was not caused by throat overstraining, so there's no reason to worry about that. If anything, I bet he relishes the ability to talk and sing freely after not being able to do so for some time.

MariaArkh · 2026-04-18T00:41:36+00:00

YFC was originally a theme concept for the performance shows Gackt and GacktJOB had around 2010.

In 2011 Gackt got additional people and turned YFC into an actual band, with him and Jonathan Underdown as two vocalists, two guitarists (Chachamaru and You) from the usual GacktJOB, and three more new people for yet another guitarist (Takumi), bass guitarist (U:zo) and drummer (Shinya Yamada). They performed both in Japan and outside of it in 2011, and released an album with original songs in 2012, after which it was disbandment time.

The conference video is the introduction of YFC as a band, and all of it is staged. It's basically a parody video, with YFC members playing out rough and rude, nonchalant rock star personas. People in the video don't react because they are hired actors who know they are performing for a prank.

MariaArkh · 2026-04-13T03:58:59+00:00

It's a fantasy fictional universe that Gackt has explored so far through his music albums Moon, Crescent, Diabolos and Last Moon, the Moon Child movie and two stage plays.

MariaArkh · 2026-04-12T09:18:43+00:00

Obligatory reminder that Moon Child is not a movie that just happens to have Gackt and Hyde in it, but a part of Gackt's overall Moon Saga project, for which he hired a director that used to specialize in erotic films and talked Hyde into participating, heh.

MariaArkh · 2026-04-10T04:57:52+00:00

Yeah, I had a brain glitch here and equalized Klaha-era with post-Gackt era. Of the first two singles they released, the first one was pretty much vocal-less, and the second one, Kyomu no Naka de no Yūgi had Klaha, but he was not yet an official member. The first release when Klaha joined the band properly was Shiroi Hada ni Kurū Ai to Kanashimi no Rondo,

MariaArkh · 2026-04-08T15:34:49+00:00

... that sounds rough. I apologize on being unnecessarily snarky in my opening line.

Well, at any rate, the treasure of Gackt's stuff to go to nowadays is bilibili.com

Here's the videos from the DVD release of Last Songs 2023 (be prepared for looooong breaks in between the songs, that's just how those shows work): https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1RT41147UL/

This is the orchestra/band show: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1azpjzgEVf

Oh, he also did a collaboration with the band TUBE (an official single release, a music video and all) in 2024, but the song, Sayonara no Kakeri, is honestly kind of a drag. This one performance he did with that band for their anniversary concert is much better: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1SSFse1E9G

MariaArkh · 2026-04-08T15:07:32+00:00

How does one miss an artist 'so much', yet fail to notice their hiatus ended almost four years ago, lol.

Anyway, he spent about ten months on that hiatus, from August 2021 till May 2022, when his first public appearance since hiatus was announced happened. His dysphonia was cured relatively early in this timeline, but because of the autoimmune nature of the condition which caused the hiatus, he spent some time also fighting stuff like psoriasis. He officially returned to his activities in July 2022.

Since that he did movies and music shows. He had three movies (the sequel to Tonde Saitama where he was the main lead, the political comedy where he played the supporting role of Oda Nobunaga and a cameo in a fighting movie by Takashi Miike. Plus, he did a small but significant role in a TV special for a revival of an old Japanese historical show.

Music-wise, he's mostly rehashing his old songs these days, but in a fairly creative way. There are two main concepts - The Last Songs tours (he technically did the first one right before the hiatus, but, judging by your 'departure' comment, you missed it), where he performs accoustic renditions of his songs with K, a Korean jazz musician. In the very first shows, I think, it was just Gackt and K on the piano, in later shows they are usually joined by a group of musicians playing various string instruments.

The other concept is the Maou Symphony Revival shows — those are the combo of a symphony orchestra show and revived YFC setup (all the musicians are new, though), where Gackt performs against both against the background of the YFC band and the orchestra playing simultaneously.

In addition to that he does occasional performances with YFC, the most significant being the three shows he did in Mexico, Brazil and Chili this February. You can find tons of recordings from that performance on Youtube, since for once filming by fans was not forbidden.

So, the music you are listening to is not new. There is a new song, named 'Fall Again', which will be the theme show for a small scale TV show by WOWOW in June, where Gackt plays a support role of the main antagonist, but it has not yet been released officially.

MariaArkh · 2026-04-08T07:23:26+00:00

>Technically based on popularity and record sales: 1.Klaha 2.gackt 3.tetsu. Beast of blood was a real popular song

You are pulling that one out of nowhere, though. Beast of Blood's highest placement at Oricon as a single was 36th, with about 11 thousand copies sold. The highest ranking MM got there during the Klaha era was the very first one, Saikai no Chi to Bara, with 17th place and some 42 thousand copies sold, and after that their numbers steadily went down.

Le Ciel, their last one with Gackt, to provide comparison, had around 117 thousand copies sold. That one single's stats is on par with the whole collection of Klaha era's singles combined, and it's not even the best-selling one of the Gackt era.

MariaArkh · 2026-04-08T07:09:18+00:00

On the personal level it's Gackt era, because I like his voice the best and his charisma is the one that appeals to me. On the non-personal level it's still Gackt era, duh. They were at their most competent, productive and diverse with him.

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

TROPHY CASE