GACKT VISUALIVE ARENA TOUR Requiem et Reminiscence II Final ~Rebirth and Reunion~ Saitama
Firstly, my apologies on how late this is. I got to spend the Monday after these two lives in Ueno Hospital making sure I didn't have appendicitis....diagnosis = too much jumping and wowowowowooooo!!! - ing plus some kind of flu. Fwef!
Secondly in my high school English class today my Japanese students were trying to compose English haiku and I was asked to make an example so I will start my report with that.
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At summer's last live
his hand is raised to the sky...
tears slip from our eyes
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Saitama Super Arena Saturday July 11, 2009
For this concert my seats were on the floor, row fifth middle-ish stage-right (to GACKT's right). After spending 200 dollars on everything save the compact mirror and hair clip I made my way down to my seat. I met some lovely Dears, one from Shizuoka who was coming both nights and another who was there for her first premium seat. She spent most of the concert crying...it was awe inspiring.
When I went in Hakodate I could smell Platinum Egoist from GACKT himself but in Saitama EVERYONE was wearing it...to the point I almost choked. It was so bloody hot already I was dreading the turning on of the flame machines.
As the lights dimmed, only 30 minutes late and our fault for being slow at the goods stall...not GACKT's, we all screamed and enjoyed the same movie shown during the hall tour. The first half of the concert progressed pretty much the same as the other two I attended. Well...with the added heat factor of ridiculousness but yes....it looked amazing! I have decided that although Ju-ken's absence saddens me I really like Chirolyn's bass skills and he's awesome on stage!
I was also very pleased to note that Dears have picked up the crazy cheer GACKT started in, I believe Hakodate because he didn't do it the show before in Sapporo, of lifting ones hand spinning it in a circle and letting out a long whoooooooooo sometimes punctuated with extra whooo's in the middle.
During mirror, though, I couldn't help but note how extremely exhausted he seemed. There was a lot of teetering and stumbling and the silly boy screamed himself out way too hard. It was no surprise when he hit the floor hard as the lights went down. Something I don't like about Premium Seats is how well you can tell when he's gonna hit the stage...makes me very sad and wanna huggle him...
He eventually made it back out for the MC but notably ignored stage right (this continued for both days and brought me much sadness). I will never forget how cold the water was when it hit me in Hakodate haha!
He stumbled as he fired the guns with his signed plastic balls and took a while to focus but when he did it was a very moving heart warming MC.
He began with his usual crazy conjugation of various verbs like 'wait' and 'hot.' that makes me feel really useless at Japanese. He then taunted us folks in the arena by ignoring us and okaeri-tadaima-ing with the stands for a VERY long time. Stage-Left stand totally mopped the floor with us all however. We managed to get his attention by jumping and swinging our chemical lights furiously and whoooo-ing our hearts out.
"What's wrong Arena?" he asked us in that sexy voice of his and I REALLY wanted to kiss him then. He talked about his birthday live once we shut up and how much goddamn ki-ai (fighting love spirit) we all seemed to have.
We gave him (and I quote) some really amazing sex tonight and he had cum so thoroughly and satisfactorily that there was no way he was going to have a voice or any ki-ai for tomorrow's live.
He made cute faces and victory signs saying he was there with us ne and giving an awesome show. He then went back to discussing his birthday live and all the people who sent him wishes but then made his sexy angry face and talked about how Black Mayonnaise had promised to come to his birthday but hadn't! He ranted and then looked at us mischievously and asked if we would maybe like to help him punish them?
Of course we were more than happy to and he brought them out and made us dothe whoooo scream (which he has declared on many occasions extremely frightening). Black Mayo looked rather frightened of all of us. Then just to torture them GACKT started to talk in English!
(this isn't all he said I was just so *o* by the whole thing)
"Thank you for Oogata Ken. Thank you for all my Dears. I love them. Thank you for Black Mayo"
One fan to my right screamed "I love you GACKT" and he smiled while Black Mayo looked frightened. He then asked them to perform for us and while they were prepping for that I screamed "I love you too GACKT" and I am VERY certain he smirked whilst picking up his water bottle. Black Mayo did a routine, of which all I understood is that one guy was trying to get the other to sing Another World and GACKT was laughing hysterically. He then asked us if they had been punished enough and if we could invite them into our family. We chanted aniki a little and promised to support Black Mayo. They were humbled.
After that (I am sure there is more but I keep confusing the two MCs) we moved on to the member mic-less intros. Jun ji was adorable and GACKT was thoroughly amused by how hard he tried. Chirolyn was absolutely hilarious and screamed things like his age (44) and Saitama Super Arena all one word at a time to get maximum volume. He then screamed "my name is not (enter ridiculous Japanese name here)" until it got super complicated and GACKT spit a giant mouthful of water all over the floor and tried to shut us up embarrassed.
He then teased that we didn't care about Chacha but we screamed until he let him introduce himself. Not much to remember except a lot of "yeahs!". As with YOU's it's always hit or miss whether I will understand...talks about such random things...
For GACKT's intro he screamed we were family and we yelled Aniki. Some people, however, yelled Gakuchi and that then became a thing.
After that GACKT tearfully thanked us for everything, particularly our ki-ai and we moved through the rest of the show. He was, however, the most exhausted I have EVER seen him. He didn't come over to stage-right because he was in a daze for the rest and dropped the mic-stand during Flower. He spent almost half of that song on his knees (usually it's only a minute) until he somehow managed to stand and wobbled something vicious through kimi no tame ni dekiru koto. He was carried off for his costume change for Lost Angels. When I got back to my hotel I realized that due to the Gundam thing he had only slept one hour the night before...hence the level of exhaustion. The concert ended with more time to get to the train than I thought there would be and I went to be early to save up for the final!!!
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Saitama Super Arena Sunday July 12, 2009 ~FINAL~
For the final live (*cries*) my seat was row ten (end of the first section) very close to the side rail. I was grateful to note there were no cameras permanently set up there (but my wishes were thwarted by free-roaming dudes who were like AH foreigner!!...I will let you know if I am in the DVD when I see it....). I met a really awesome Dear who had also made the trek down from Hokkaido (Sapporo to be precise, further north but way more convenient than Hakodate).
When GACKT finally appeared on stage (only 20 ish minutes late...again our fault...) he seemed much more refreshed than the night before...thank God...either that or he just pushed himself for the DVD.....>_<.
I noticed a few subtle changes made for the DVD, like they had done some pre-filming of the soldiers during Sayonara etc. Also when he came out post first costume change for My Father's Day he just screamed "let's go" without any specific mention of place.
There was the usual water bottle, ball gun beginning and a whole lot of okaeri-tadaima again. EVERYONE was hardcore tonight no place got outshone. Of course he teased the crap out of Arena again....*huff* It's why I love him haha.
His MC was so sweet today. He talked about how for years when someone asked a Dear who her favourite artist was, and she replied GACKT, she would get a response of disbelief but now people responded with something like "oh yeah I know him he's cool" or something to that effect.
He also discussed how many men there were now (I actually got to watch a couple of them fanboy on the train home and it made me sooooo giddy). Because, GACKT said, he is the best man in the entire world and his female fans are the best women then his male fans must strive to be like him to deserve women like his fans. Cocky lovable bastard ;) .
He discussed how sad it was and unbelievable that the tour was actually ending and how amazing it had been. He said that we should stay there, together, fighting with all of our ki-ai until the foundation of Saitama Super Arena crumbled...our make-up ran down our faces...and our white shirts became very very pale (yum!). If we ever got lonely afterwards we could always return to this place (in our hearts, figuratively) and continue to fight and be together...
He again mocked the members and made a funny soundless impression of how their intros would look on DVD because they were weak. The member intros were very emotional and GACKT was wiping his eyes often as Jun ji screamed it was the best to have worked with GACKT, as did Chirolyn....who also made us laugh by trying (and failing) to use helium and claiming 2 months with GACKT was like 5 years. Chacha's "yeahs" were cute and YOU...the pervert...talked about how he hurt his neck, back, and butt and was thus useless...(very sexual).
GACKT's intro was suuuuuper long and he revealed plans in November to sell uniforms to camuigakuen (Platinum Box IX uniforms).
For Koakuma Heaven the Ageha girls were ALL there (so sparkly!!!) and it was super impressive. GACKT made it through everything with much more vivacity and spent the normal portion of Flower on his knees.
During kimi no tame ni dekiru koto GACKT finally came over to stage-right for the first time in Saitama and smiled and waved directly at my section (I would like to think me and my peeps) almost in apology for it. It was sweet.
I will probably never be able to listen to kimi no tame ni dekiru koto with crying again because even though he comes back for Lost Angels it was still hard to watch him disappear for the second to last time. I cried most of my way through the final movie and stayed for longer than Saturday, crying my thanks in English and Japanese...I hope he heard me...the staff were sure filming us....
We all looked pretty dejected as we headed out of the Arena and I dropped off my presents for GACKT and Job (the Olympic mascots for Vancouver 2010...I am Canadian after all) and then it was over....
I cannot WAIT until wowow to see how it all looks for the perspective that I had been used to for so many years (DVD) and hope I get another chance to go again!