Gacktastic Vid of The Day - RETURNER

[karadin.livejournal.com]

Not only one of the most cinematic, and for its type, beautiful videos of recent years - GACKT as Sengoku era (1500-1600) warrior, and the same character as Shinigami - or Death God, returning to the place of his defeat.

*note, the costumes for this video were used in the film 'Heaven and Earth' about the warlord Uesugi Kenshin. Most of the budget was used on costumes. The video was shot in one 28 hour period in Nagano Japan, and professional stunt-warriors were used. Though Gackt was in production with the NHK taiga drama 'Fuurin Kazan' at the time, they had no involvement with this video.
(english subbed)

Comments

[wongkk.livejournal.com]

This MV is very special for me: it was the first Gackt disc I ever owned - bought it in Hong Kong in a cramped and grubby secondhand disc shop (where I was rummaging for Cantonese films) and then played it on the laptop in my hotel room whilst eating a huge muk gwa (papaya - maybe you call it something else)!

I didn't have subtitles and made up my own story for a poem called "Returner" which I pasted against a still from the MV. Can't cram it into the 400 pixel width here but I'll email it to you in case you're interested

This song and the other secondhand disc I bought with it (the Kimi no tame ni dekiru and CubeEP) made me realize that Gackt wasn't just a Sanzo-lookalike (Sanzo = character from the Saiyuki manga) but had real musical talent and original ideas. The song has a wonderful quality of adventure and noble failure which (cos I knew nothing of Kenshin or Gackt's Kenshin role at the time) I didn't understand but liked very much. This atmosphere was what I tried to capture in the narrative of the poem.

Thanks for posting this and bringing back the excitement of discovering Gackt for the first time!