[SunshineSlayer]

Hey, just wanted to post my thoughts on Gackt's new DVD and the Avex move.

For Avex: I think its interesting and I think it will either be really great or a huge disaster. Avex is not known for its male artists or rock artists for that matter. I'm thinking the much improved Kamen rider single sales are partially behind the move.

For the DVD: Before I start, I'm a huge Gackt fan and I actually went to see the tour live.

Gackt has pretty much always had his vocals edited in his past dvds (even though it is totally unnecessary, so the fact that he does it never has made sense to me), but this DVD was seriously overkill. Had I not actually seen the concert myself and had no prior knowledge of Gackt, I would totally have thought this whole concert was lip synched. On top of that, the mix is really terrible - it does not give the impression of a live concert at all - probably because they are mixing a non-live vocal track with live music tracks and audience noise tracks. Everything just sounds so plasticky and manufactured. Ayumi for example also edits her vocals for DVD quite a bit, but Avex does it so professionally that it is often hard to tell when and how much she does it. So maybe at least in the DVD regard, him going to Avex might be a good thing.

My main complaint though is that they added about 100,000 sound effects that were not in the actual concert. Now I know why the DVD took so long to come out. All those robot effects and such I thought were really distracting and I would much rather just see the concert the way that they audience saw it.