[report] GACKT's 43rd BIRTHDAY PARTY
July 4th was GACKT's 43rd birthday, and there were two fanclub events held on that day to celebrate. I only started writing this on July 7th and didn't take any notes, so I've forgotten quite a lot of what happened and what was said. Sorry!
The event was in the banquet hall at the ANA Intercontinental Hotel.
There was a display set up with all of GACKT’s stage costumes from the LVL shows on mannequins - they even had Marrow’s nails, his guitar from MIRROR and the arrows still stuck in Yoshitsune. Photographs were unfortunately not allowed. The chair from the Setsugekka performance was also there, set up on a piece of the stage and thankfully photographs were allowed of this, and you could even have photos taken sitting in the chair.
The first hour or so of each event was the meal. Each course was named after a song from the LVL set list, and it was a little difficult to see how some of the names matched the food, but never mind… The food was decent enough.
Lunch menu
Dinner menu
Lunch
The lunch talk event started with a shortened version of the first video that plays at the LAST VISUALIVE. It picked up from Yoshitsune on the battlefield, going to face his brother and they cut some of the dramatic closeups to make it shorter. They showed the arrows flying, Yoshitsune standing to take them, and then ARROW started playing, the same way it does during the show. However, instead of GACKT standing on stage, singing in his Marrow outfit, it was dancer Madoka singing very, very badly while wearing a copy of the Marrow outfit made out of black trash bags.
Madoka introduced himself as the MC for the event, and then introduced the panel members one by one. Each member came through the doors at the back of the hall and walked through the fans to the stage, with each member taking a different route. The dancers came first and then the band as an instrumental version of WhooHa played. Last to come through was GACKT as Kimi no tame ni dekiru koto played, and GACKT had a little trouble getting through the tightly packed in tables as so many people were just grabbing at him. He kept smirking though, and made his way to the stage eventually.
First activity - stories and haikus
Dancer U-ma dressed in a kimono over his suit and sat seiza style on a pile of cushions. Madoka introduced him as Matsu Basho, a very famous haiku poet. For this part, one of the panel members told a story and GACKT would judge whether it was good or not. If he said not, then they had to drink a shot of this foul smelling and tasting brown liquid. After each story, U-ma had to say a haiku too. Haikus are supposed to be three line poems that follow the pattern of 5 characters, 7 characters, 5 characters. I don’t think U-ma got a single haiku to fit the pattern, and had to drink the stuff every time.
Chacha told a story about training, and it was pointed out that he sometimes falls asleep during training. A photo was shown on the screens from a recent training session where GACKT was giving instructions to the members but Chacha had his eyes closed and wasn’t paying attention.
Whenever anyone drank the drink, they all pulled faces at the smell and complained of how foul it tasted. Apart from YOU. He had no reaction to the smell and said it tasted good.
At the end, GACKT had one of the drinks and was going to drink it, until he sniffed it properly and pulled a great face because of how foul it was. After he’d gotten over the smell, the first thing he did was turn to YOU and ask him what was wrong with him because of how he’d tolerated the drink.
Instead of drinking it, GACKT got two of the dancers to restrain Val, and he tried to pour it into Val’s mouth. He only managed a few drops as Val was struggling a bit. He did this to a dancer too, I think it was Tac?
Second activity - babanuki
Then they played a couple of rounds of babanuki. This game is also known as Old Maid - players match cards to make pairs, but there is one card that doesn’t match. Whoever ends up with this card is the loser. The version they played at the birthday party was a reverse babanuki - the winner was the person who was left with the odd card, in this case they used the joker. The pack of cards they used was the one given as the premium ticket present for the LVL shows.
An extra element was added to the game as each player had two trick cards that they could use when it was their turn if they wanted to. I can’t remember all of the trick cards, but they included things like everybody switch cards with the person to your right, look at the cards of the person next to you and take whatever card you wanted, collect all the cards together and redistribute them evenly, the top and right person switch cards, whoever has the joker has to give it to you, and so on.
The first game was played in a room backstage. GACKT chose the four players, and picked YOU, Sato, Yuki and Tac. They went backstage and there were cameras set up on each player's cards so the fans could see exactly what was happening. While they were playing backstage, Madoka, GACKT and the panel were still on stage and commenting on what was happening. The game was a lot more interesting and entertaining than it probably sounds like! Tac was the winner.
While the game was being played backstage, staff set up a second game on the stage. Like backstage, there were cameras on each set of cards so the fans could see. For this game, the players were Tac, GACKT and two players of GACKT’s choice. He chose You-suke, because You-suke is the best card player and has the best luck. GACKT chose him because he would be hard to beat. The fourth player he chose was Takumi.
As they didn’t want the players to hear the commentary from the other panel members or the reaction of the fans, each of the players was given headphones that were playing music to wear. This lead to much confusion because the players couldn’t hear any instructions, so Madoka was trying to get them to play rock-scissors-paper to chose who went first but nobody was looking at him and couldn’t hear him. The same happened when he tried to get them to start. Eventually, GACKT took off his headphones to get the instructions and pointed out how dumb it was to get them to put their headphones on before finishing the instructions. Madoka and GACKT decided that the fans would signal when to start, and eventually the game started.
GACKT took advantage of the headphones and was teasing Takumi all the way through by calling him “hage [bald]” and chanting it at him. Takumi was oblivious to it all. GACKT’s words of You-suke being the strongest were true, as he won the game. When people were picking his cards and trying to read his reaction to the card they were touching, You-suke was pulling gorilla faces, so he was impossible to read.
After the game finished, they showed off the giant Gakucchi to the crowd and decided to give it away! You-suke played a variation of rock-scissors-paper with the crowd, where instead he would pick a number and whoever had the same number could stay in. A very lucky lady won the Gakucchi, and it really, really was huge.
Third activity - LVL test
A video played on the screens of the band and dancers arriving at a… I guess training center is a good thing to call it? They all sat down in this room, two people to a table, and Madoka came in later. He told them he was the teacher, that they would sit an LVL test and asked what LVL meant. One of the dancers said “Last Visual Live” but this was wrong. This time, it means Last Vaka [baka = idiot] Lesson. He gave them all a test paper and they quietly started doing the test.
GACKT arrived later with Takumi, but on his way to the center he was distracted by some uchiwas for sale outside a stationary shop. He picked up a cool looking one with fireworks and kanji, and also a Totoro one and agonised over which one to buy. He went in the store and spoke about how much he loves stationary and stationary stores.
After buying some things, he went to the center with his new Totoro uchiwa (of course he bought the Totoro one). GACKT also sat the test. It was funny to see GACKT, the band and the dancers all with their heads down, silently doing this test. They showed some clips of how they were answering the questions, and GACKT was adding bits to the questions so that he could make his answers funnier.
U-ma finished first, followed by GACKT. Madoka announced that there was only a minute or two left, and GACKT stood up.
(this dialogue is paraphrased, not direct quotes)
GACKT: “I’m leaving now.”
Madoka: “You can’t leave. The others haven’t finished yet. We’re a team!”
Everyone else: “Yes! We’re a team!”
GACKT: “Bye!”
And then he left, leaving everyone including Takumi behind.
Takumi was sitting next to Yuki, on a table behind Val and Sato. Takumi and Yuki both poured cold water into their hands out of a water bottle and threw it at Val. Val shrieked a little and called over Madoka.
(again, paraphrasing)
Val: “Help me! I’m being bullied! They threw water at me!”
Madoka: “There’s no bullying happening here.”
Takumi: (hides water on the table behind him) “We don’t have any water!”
Val: “I’m being bullied!!!!!!”
Of course, as soon as Madoka left they just threw more water at him.
After the test had finished, Madoka announced that the results would be given at the birthday party. The members didn’t react to his announcement and he fluffed his lines a little, so they did a take two and showed both.
The video finished, and Madoka explained that the top score on the test was GACKT, who scored 120% (or something equally high). Basically, the right answers were what GACKT wrote, not what was actually correct. The test was split into four categories - Japanese, social studies (this covers things like history, geography etc), science and English. A couple of wrong answers from the panel members were given for each question, and also GACKT’s answer.
I don’t remember all of the questions or all of the answers, but here’s some that I do remember. If there is a question mark after the name, it’s because I’m not 100% sure I have the right person.
Firstly, for Japanese they were given a word or phrase that had four kanji, but two kanji were missing and they had to fill in the blanks.
The first was _金_玉. Those two kanji, 金玉, without any spaces mean “testicles” in English.
GACKT: he blacked out the two spaces and just left it as 金玉/testicles.
The second was 神_ _斗 . The real answer was 神威楽斗 - this is GACKT’s full name, Kamui Gakuto, in kanji.
GACKT: 神??斗 and he wrote “I don’t know” as an explanation for his answer,
For social studies, they were shown the flag of Bangladesh, which is a red disk on a green background, and asked to name what country it was.
YOU (?): old Japan
Takumi: green Japan
GACKT: mouldy Japan
For English, they were asked to translate ほくろ [hokuro] into English. It means “mole”, as in the type of mole Val has on his face.
YOU: black moon (everyone thought this was cool)
Takumi: dot (everyone thought this was stupid)
GACKT: Val’s cancer
The fans were asked who they thought gave the most stupid answers. Takumi was the winner, and he was crowned the LVL idiot.
Birthday celebrations
There were birthday video messages from Yoshiki and two others I didn’t know (one was a comedian, I know that much.) GACKT gave a message to the fans, thanking them for the birthday wishes and their support over the past seventeen years of his solo career. He also spoke about doing it all again next year.
As is customary, the panel members gave GACKT a birthday present by singing one of his songs to him. This time, it was “Kimi no tame ni dekiru koto”. The singing ranged from good (Chacha and Yuki) to passable (YOU and Sato) to purposely awful (Val and Madoka). Some people forgot the lyrics, and after the song finished GACKT chewed them out for it. “You only had to sing two lines! It’s my birthday!! Try harder!!”
The lunch event was scheduled to finish at 16:30. It finished around 18:10.
Dinner
The doors should have opened at 17:45, and the food should have began being served around 18:30. Obviously, this didn’t happen because of how the lunch session overran. The staff rushed through serving the food and the talk event started around 21:00. The event was scheduled to end at 21:30, so of course we were in for another late finish.
This time, it started with the acoustic U+K version they use to introduce the band. It was a different voiceover, as it introduced the birthday party and asked everyone if they were excited. The voiceover was in English again, so nobody reacted to anything because they largely couldn’t understand it… GACKT’s introduction was the same as at the lives, but it was Madoka who came on stage and sang ‘ONE MORE KISS’ very badly (again).
Like before, the dancers, band and GACKT all entered through the crowd. I think that there was more staff with GACKT this time, as he had an easier time getting through and people were being held back better. Some of the panel had different suits compared to the lunch, and some didn't. GACKT did, of course!
First activity - stories and haikus
This was the same as at the lunch, only with different people telling different stories.
The best part was when the staff member who was bringing all of the drinks on stage screwed up his timing and bought the drinks on stage before GACKT had passed his judgement. GACKT made him drink one too.
One of the dancers told another training story, and an Instagram style video was played of GACKT and (I think) You-suke training. It was similar to a recent video GACKT posted to his Instagram, and he was sitting on You-suke’s back and had a rolled up towel around his face, like it was a bridle on a horse.
At the end, GACKT had one of the drinks and dunked some tissue into it. He got one of the dancers (Tennen maybe?) to be restrained by the others and shoved the soaked tissues up the dancer’s nose. He did the same to Hiroki too, and this turned into a game of GACKT asking “do you want me to put this up your nose?” and Hiroki answering “yes” and then changing his mind.
Second activity - babanuki
Again, same setup as at lunch.
The game in the backroom this time was between Val, Chacha, Yuki and because he won at lunch, Tac. GACKT said that out of all the members You-suke had the luck, but that Val was really clever. He said some really nice things about how clever Val was, and I remember thinking that it was a shame Val was backstage and couldn’t hear what was being said, as GACKT had spent every MC on the LVL tour making fun of him (I’m sure that was all in jest).
This game was really tense at the end, as it went down to Val and Chacha and they traded the joker between each other about eight times before Val eventually won.
The next game was out on the stage. The four players were Val (because he won the first game), You-suke (because he won at lunch), GACKT (because he’s GACKT) and YOU (because GACKT picked him). Before the game started, each table of fans was asked to pick who they thought would win. About half picked GACKT. Any table that picked the winner, would win a postcard.
As they were setting the game up, I’m pretty sure that GACKT said this game would be included on a future Platinum Box. If you don’t want to be spoiled, just in case, skip the next paragraph!
Val started off very badly, made many pairs and was down to just two cards really quickly. GACKT was like a shark smelling blood, and played one of his trick cards to make Val’s situation worse. Val was down to just one card. Then YOU, Val and You-suke all played trick cards in succession, and each one backfired on GACKT and made his situation worse. GACKT went from having the most cards and the joker, to having only two cards himself. The look on his face as his situation just kept getting progressively worse was amazing! But, the game wasn’t over there and eventually GACKT won.
All of the tables that picked the correct winner were asked to stand, and they all played the number version of rock-scissors-paper against GACKT for a chance to win the smaller Gakucchis. It went down to two ladies, and they agreed to split the prize and took one each.
Third activity - LVL test
The same video played as before.
Again, I’ll go through the questions I can remember. Question marks after the member’s names mean I’m not 100% sure on who said it.
For social studies, they were shown a photo of Barack Obama and asked for his full name. He’s really just known as Obama in Japan.
Chacha: Madoka
GACKT: Madoka
For science, they were shown a photo of a petri dish and asked what it was called.
YOU: magnifying glass
Yuki: ashtray
Wang: glass plate
What does Au mean? [It’s the chemical symbol for gold]
Chacha: Australia
Val: Ayumi Hamasaki (the entire panel shouted at him that she’s known as Ayu, not Au)
GACKT: I’m not with AU, I’m with Docomo (AU and Docomo are the names of two phone companies)
For English, they were asked to translate some words into Japanese.
Word - Exile
Sato (?): dancers
GACKT: I don’t have any friends in Exile.
Madoka was going to announce who had the lowest overall score, but he mistimed his announcement and said the name before the dramatic drumroll had happened, so it ruined the suspense slightly! The “winner” was Yuki Kimisawa. Before GACKT gave Yuki his robe, sash and crown, he made Yuki strip half naked and take off his jacket, tie and shirt. After GACKT had finished crowning him, the other panel members stripped Yuki of his trousers too, leaving him in just his boxer briefs and cape.
Birthday celebrations
There were messages from Golden Bomber’s Kiryuuin Sho, Daigo and Hyde.
KiriSho said that he was happy to be able to celebrate GACKT’s birthday again. Daigo said that GACKT was KSK - kakkoi, sugoku kakkoi - “cool, really cool”. This was a play on how Daigo proposed to Keiko Kitagawa, as he also said to her KSK, but that time it meant kekkon shite kudasi - “please marry me”. Daigo said that GACKT had been invited to the wedding party, and it was a shame he couldn’t go due to being on tour. GACKT was in Hokkaido for the LVL tour at the time.
Hyde’s video was a bit long and rambling, and I left halfway through it… But in the part that I did hear, he spoke about meeting GACKT 15 years ago and how GACKT was mysterious and beautiful then, but is now more like a scary brother. He also spoke about going to GACKT’s house to read the Moon Child script and was surprised by the lack of lights, and how GACKT’s interesting choice in underwear was just hanging around in the bathroom.
I didn’t hear anymore than that. At this point it was about midnight, and the last train from the subway station near the hotel left at 00:13. Apparently the event finished around 00:15, which is kinda ridiculous when it was scheduled to finish at 21:30...
Timing issues aside, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the babanuki games the most. It got really tense when the players were trying to chose what card to take and were trying to read each other’s faces. Being able to see what cards they were picking on the screens helped ramp up the tension.
Each talk event ran about three hours, so I guess it was value for money...? Hahahaha.
The event was in the banquet hall at the ANA Intercontinental Hotel.
There was a display set up with all of GACKT’s stage costumes from the LVL shows on mannequins - they even had Marrow’s nails, his guitar from MIRROR and the arrows still stuck in Yoshitsune. Photographs were unfortunately not allowed. The chair from the Setsugekka performance was also there, set up on a piece of the stage and thankfully photographs were allowed of this, and you could even have photos taken sitting in the chair.
The first hour or so of each event was the meal. Each course was named after a song from the LVL set list, and it was a little difficult to see how some of the names matched the food, but never mind… The food was decent enough.
Lunch menu
Dinner menu
Lunch
The lunch talk event started with a shortened version of the first video that plays at the LAST VISUALIVE. It picked up from Yoshitsune on the battlefield, going to face his brother and they cut some of the dramatic closeups to make it shorter. They showed the arrows flying, Yoshitsune standing to take them, and then ARROW started playing, the same way it does during the show. However, instead of GACKT standing on stage, singing in his Marrow outfit, it was dancer Madoka singing very, very badly while wearing a copy of the Marrow outfit made out of black trash bags.
Madoka introduced himself as the MC for the event, and then introduced the panel members one by one. Each member came through the doors at the back of the hall and walked through the fans to the stage, with each member taking a different route. The dancers came first and then the band as an instrumental version of WhooHa played. Last to come through was GACKT as Kimi no tame ni dekiru koto played, and GACKT had a little trouble getting through the tightly packed in tables as so many people were just grabbing at him. He kept smirking though, and made his way to the stage eventually.
First activity - stories and haikus
Dancer U-ma dressed in a kimono over his suit and sat seiza style on a pile of cushions. Madoka introduced him as Matsu Basho, a very famous haiku poet. For this part, one of the panel members told a story and GACKT would judge whether it was good or not. If he said not, then they had to drink a shot of this foul smelling and tasting brown liquid. After each story, U-ma had to say a haiku too. Haikus are supposed to be three line poems that follow the pattern of 5 characters, 7 characters, 5 characters. I don’t think U-ma got a single haiku to fit the pattern, and had to drink the stuff every time.
Chacha told a story about training, and it was pointed out that he sometimes falls asleep during training. A photo was shown on the screens from a recent training session where GACKT was giving instructions to the members but Chacha had his eyes closed and wasn’t paying attention.
Whenever anyone drank the drink, they all pulled faces at the smell and complained of how foul it tasted. Apart from YOU. He had no reaction to the smell and said it tasted good.
At the end, GACKT had one of the drinks and was going to drink it, until he sniffed it properly and pulled a great face because of how foul it was. After he’d gotten over the smell, the first thing he did was turn to YOU and ask him what was wrong with him because of how he’d tolerated the drink.
Instead of drinking it, GACKT got two of the dancers to restrain Val, and he tried to pour it into Val’s mouth. He only managed a few drops as Val was struggling a bit. He did this to a dancer too, I think it was Tac?
Second activity - babanuki
Then they played a couple of rounds of babanuki. This game is also known as Old Maid - players match cards to make pairs, but there is one card that doesn’t match. Whoever ends up with this card is the loser. The version they played at the birthday party was a reverse babanuki - the winner was the person who was left with the odd card, in this case they used the joker. The pack of cards they used was the one given as the premium ticket present for the LVL shows.
An extra element was added to the game as each player had two trick cards that they could use when it was their turn if they wanted to. I can’t remember all of the trick cards, but they included things like everybody switch cards with the person to your right, look at the cards of the person next to you and take whatever card you wanted, collect all the cards together and redistribute them evenly, the top and right person switch cards, whoever has the joker has to give it to you, and so on.
The first game was played in a room backstage. GACKT chose the four players, and picked YOU, Sato, Yuki and Tac. They went backstage and there were cameras set up on each player's cards so the fans could see exactly what was happening. While they were playing backstage, Madoka, GACKT and the panel were still on stage and commenting on what was happening. The game was a lot more interesting and entertaining than it probably sounds like! Tac was the winner.
While the game was being played backstage, staff set up a second game on the stage. Like backstage, there were cameras on each set of cards so the fans could see. For this game, the players were Tac, GACKT and two players of GACKT’s choice. He chose You-suke, because You-suke is the best card player and has the best luck. GACKT chose him because he would be hard to beat. The fourth player he chose was Takumi.
As they didn’t want the players to hear the commentary from the other panel members or the reaction of the fans, each of the players was given headphones that were playing music to wear. This lead to much confusion because the players couldn’t hear any instructions, so Madoka was trying to get them to play rock-scissors-paper to chose who went first but nobody was looking at him and couldn’t hear him. The same happened when he tried to get them to start. Eventually, GACKT took off his headphones to get the instructions and pointed out how dumb it was to get them to put their headphones on before finishing the instructions. Madoka and GACKT decided that the fans would signal when to start, and eventually the game started.
GACKT took advantage of the headphones and was teasing Takumi all the way through by calling him “hage [bald]” and chanting it at him. Takumi was oblivious to it all. GACKT’s words of You-suke being the strongest were true, as he won the game. When people were picking his cards and trying to read his reaction to the card they were touching, You-suke was pulling gorilla faces, so he was impossible to read.
After the game finished, they showed off the giant Gakucchi to the crowd and decided to give it away! You-suke played a variation of rock-scissors-paper with the crowd, where instead he would pick a number and whoever had the same number could stay in. A very lucky lady won the Gakucchi, and it really, really was huge.
Third activity - LVL test
A video played on the screens of the band and dancers arriving at a… I guess training center is a good thing to call it? They all sat down in this room, two people to a table, and Madoka came in later. He told them he was the teacher, that they would sit an LVL test and asked what LVL meant. One of the dancers said “Last Visual Live” but this was wrong. This time, it means Last Vaka [baka = idiot] Lesson. He gave them all a test paper and they quietly started doing the test.
GACKT arrived later with Takumi, but on his way to the center he was distracted by some uchiwas for sale outside a stationary shop. He picked up a cool looking one with fireworks and kanji, and also a Totoro one and agonised over which one to buy. He went in the store and spoke about how much he loves stationary and stationary stores.
After buying some things, he went to the center with his new Totoro uchiwa (of course he bought the Totoro one). GACKT also sat the test. It was funny to see GACKT, the band and the dancers all with their heads down, silently doing this test. They showed some clips of how they were answering the questions, and GACKT was adding bits to the questions so that he could make his answers funnier.
U-ma finished first, followed by GACKT. Madoka announced that there was only a minute or two left, and GACKT stood up.
(this dialogue is paraphrased, not direct quotes)
GACKT: “I’m leaving now.”
Madoka: “You can’t leave. The others haven’t finished yet. We’re a team!”
Everyone else: “Yes! We’re a team!”
GACKT: “Bye!”
And then he left, leaving everyone including Takumi behind.
Takumi was sitting next to Yuki, on a table behind Val and Sato. Takumi and Yuki both poured cold water into their hands out of a water bottle and threw it at Val. Val shrieked a little and called over Madoka.
(again, paraphrasing)
Val: “Help me! I’m being bullied! They threw water at me!”
Madoka: “There’s no bullying happening here.”
Takumi: (hides water on the table behind him) “We don’t have any water!”
Val: “I’m being bullied!!!!!!”
Of course, as soon as Madoka left they just threw more water at him.
After the test had finished, Madoka announced that the results would be given at the birthday party. The members didn’t react to his announcement and he fluffed his lines a little, so they did a take two and showed both.
The video finished, and Madoka explained that the top score on the test was GACKT, who scored 120% (or something equally high). Basically, the right answers were what GACKT wrote, not what was actually correct. The test was split into four categories - Japanese, social studies (this covers things like history, geography etc), science and English. A couple of wrong answers from the panel members were given for each question, and also GACKT’s answer.
I don’t remember all of the questions or all of the answers, but here’s some that I do remember. If there is a question mark after the name, it’s because I’m not 100% sure I have the right person.
Firstly, for Japanese they were given a word or phrase that had four kanji, but two kanji were missing and they had to fill in the blanks.
The first was _金_玉. Those two kanji, 金玉, without any spaces mean “testicles” in English.
GACKT: he blacked out the two spaces and just left it as 金玉/testicles.
The second was 神_ _斗 . The real answer was 神威楽斗 - this is GACKT’s full name, Kamui Gakuto, in kanji.
GACKT: 神??斗 and he wrote “I don’t know” as an explanation for his answer,
For social studies, they were shown the flag of Bangladesh, which is a red disk on a green background, and asked to name what country it was.
YOU (?): old Japan
Takumi: green Japan
GACKT: mouldy Japan
For English, they were asked to translate ほくろ [hokuro] into English. It means “mole”, as in the type of mole Val has on his face.
YOU: black moon (everyone thought this was cool)
Takumi: dot (everyone thought this was stupid)
GACKT: Val’s cancer
The fans were asked who they thought gave the most stupid answers. Takumi was the winner, and he was crowned the LVL idiot.
Birthday celebrations
There were birthday video messages from Yoshiki and two others I didn’t know (one was a comedian, I know that much.) GACKT gave a message to the fans, thanking them for the birthday wishes and their support over the past seventeen years of his solo career. He also spoke about doing it all again next year.
As is customary, the panel members gave GACKT a birthday present by singing one of his songs to him. This time, it was “Kimi no tame ni dekiru koto”. The singing ranged from good (Chacha and Yuki) to passable (YOU and Sato) to purposely awful (Val and Madoka). Some people forgot the lyrics, and after the song finished GACKT chewed them out for it. “You only had to sing two lines! It’s my birthday!! Try harder!!”
The lunch event was scheduled to finish at 16:30. It finished around 18:10.
Dinner
The doors should have opened at 17:45, and the food should have began being served around 18:30. Obviously, this didn’t happen because of how the lunch session overran. The staff rushed through serving the food and the talk event started around 21:00. The event was scheduled to end at 21:30, so of course we were in for another late finish.
This time, it started with the acoustic U+K version they use to introduce the band. It was a different voiceover, as it introduced the birthday party and asked everyone if they were excited. The voiceover was in English again, so nobody reacted to anything because they largely couldn’t understand it… GACKT’s introduction was the same as at the lives, but it was Madoka who came on stage and sang ‘ONE MORE KISS’ very badly (again).
Like before, the dancers, band and GACKT all entered through the crowd. I think that there was more staff with GACKT this time, as he had an easier time getting through and people were being held back better. Some of the panel had different suits compared to the lunch, and some didn't. GACKT did, of course!
First activity - stories and haikus
This was the same as at the lunch, only with different people telling different stories.
The best part was when the staff member who was bringing all of the drinks on stage screwed up his timing and bought the drinks on stage before GACKT had passed his judgement. GACKT made him drink one too.
One of the dancers told another training story, and an Instagram style video was played of GACKT and (I think) You-suke training. It was similar to a recent video GACKT posted to his Instagram, and he was sitting on You-suke’s back and had a rolled up towel around his face, like it was a bridle on a horse.
At the end, GACKT had one of the drinks and dunked some tissue into it. He got one of the dancers (Tennen maybe?) to be restrained by the others and shoved the soaked tissues up the dancer’s nose. He did the same to Hiroki too, and this turned into a game of GACKT asking “do you want me to put this up your nose?” and Hiroki answering “yes” and then changing his mind.
Second activity - babanuki
Again, same setup as at lunch.
The game in the backroom this time was between Val, Chacha, Yuki and because he won at lunch, Tac. GACKT said that out of all the members You-suke had the luck, but that Val was really clever. He said some really nice things about how clever Val was, and I remember thinking that it was a shame Val was backstage and couldn’t hear what was being said, as GACKT had spent every MC on the LVL tour making fun of him (I’m sure that was all in jest).
This game was really tense at the end, as it went down to Val and Chacha and they traded the joker between each other about eight times before Val eventually won.
The next game was out on the stage. The four players were Val (because he won the first game), You-suke (because he won at lunch), GACKT (because he’s GACKT) and YOU (because GACKT picked him). Before the game started, each table of fans was asked to pick who they thought would win. About half picked GACKT. Any table that picked the winner, would win a postcard.
As they were setting the game up, I’m pretty sure that GACKT said this game would be included on a future Platinum Box. If you don’t want to be spoiled, just in case, skip the next paragraph!
Val started off very badly, made many pairs and was down to just two cards really quickly. GACKT was like a shark smelling blood, and played one of his trick cards to make Val’s situation worse. Val was down to just one card. Then YOU, Val and You-suke all played trick cards in succession, and each one backfired on GACKT and made his situation worse. GACKT went from having the most cards and the joker, to having only two cards himself. The look on his face as his situation just kept getting progressively worse was amazing! But, the game wasn’t over there and eventually GACKT won.
All of the tables that picked the correct winner were asked to stand, and they all played the number version of rock-scissors-paper against GACKT for a chance to win the smaller Gakucchis. It went down to two ladies, and they agreed to split the prize and took one each.
Third activity - LVL test
The same video played as before.
Again, I’ll go through the questions I can remember. Question marks after the member’s names mean I’m not 100% sure on who said it.
For social studies, they were shown a photo of Barack Obama and asked for his full name. He’s really just known as Obama in Japan.
Chacha: Madoka
GACKT: Madoka
For science, they were shown a photo of a petri dish and asked what it was called.
YOU: magnifying glass
Yuki: ashtray
Wang: glass plate
What does Au mean? [It’s the chemical symbol for gold]
Chacha: Australia
Val: Ayumi Hamasaki (the entire panel shouted at him that she’s known as Ayu, not Au)
GACKT: I’m not with AU, I’m with Docomo (AU and Docomo are the names of two phone companies)
For English, they were asked to translate some words into Japanese.
Word - Exile
Sato (?): dancers
GACKT: I don’t have any friends in Exile.
Madoka was going to announce who had the lowest overall score, but he mistimed his announcement and said the name before the dramatic drumroll had happened, so it ruined the suspense slightly! The “winner” was Yuki Kimisawa. Before GACKT gave Yuki his robe, sash and crown, he made Yuki strip half naked and take off his jacket, tie and shirt. After GACKT had finished crowning him, the other panel members stripped Yuki of his trousers too, leaving him in just his boxer briefs and cape.
Birthday celebrations
There were messages from Golden Bomber’s Kiryuuin Sho, Daigo and Hyde.
KiriSho said that he was happy to be able to celebrate GACKT’s birthday again. Daigo said that GACKT was KSK - kakkoi, sugoku kakkoi - “cool, really cool”. This was a play on how Daigo proposed to Keiko Kitagawa, as he also said to her KSK, but that time it meant kekkon shite kudasi - “please marry me”. Daigo said that GACKT had been invited to the wedding party, and it was a shame he couldn’t go due to being on tour. GACKT was in Hokkaido for the LVL tour at the time.
Hyde’s video was a bit long and rambling, and I left halfway through it… But in the part that I did hear, he spoke about meeting GACKT 15 years ago and how GACKT was mysterious and beautiful then, but is now more like a scary brother. He also spoke about going to GACKT’s house to read the Moon Child script and was surprised by the lack of lights, and how GACKT’s interesting choice in underwear was just hanging around in the bathroom.
I didn’t hear anymore than that. At this point it was about midnight, and the last train from the subway station near the hotel left at 00:13. Apparently the event finished around 00:15, which is kinda ridiculous when it was scheduled to finish at 21:30...
Timing issues aside, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the babanuki games the most. It got really tense when the players were trying to chose what card to take and were trying to read each other’s faces. Being able to see what cards they were picking on the screens helped ramp up the tension.
Each talk event ran about three hours, so I guess it was value for money...? Hahahaha.