Customer Reviews

Gackt: The Greatest Filmography 1999-2006 - Blue

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the American release of Gackt's Filmography. It has English subtitles and is playable on any Region 1 (America) DVD player.

Blue contains Gackt's quieter videos and three live acoustic recordings off one of the yearly Platinum box sets. All the videos are gorgeous. December Love Song (juunigatsu no love) is set in New York in November 2001. It is a beautiful video tribute to the lives lost in 9/11. You really shouldn't miss the piano version of Last Song. It is just Gackt and the piano. And finally I cried when I saw the last song on the DVD, Love Letter. It is a heartfelt song to his fans.

This is a video must for anyone who is a Gackt fan. It is definitely worth the price.

I am a great fan of Gackt's work. Gackt is obsessive about quality and his concert DVDs are miles above typical Jrock concert videos from other artists. As such, it is distressing to see such a slipshod repackaging of his music videos, particularly since these are the first Gackt DVDs to be marketed specifically to a U.S. audience and folks new to this artist may get the wrong idea about the overall quality of his work.

The box indicates that these videos are "16:9 anamorphic widescreen," but most of the videos themselves have hard-coded letterbox bars on top and bottom. This makes it hard for many people with 16:9 displays that lack a vertical zoom feature to see the videos in their correct aspect ratio (fat head syndrome). Moreover, even if one's display *can* do the requisite stretching, it is likely to cut off the subtitles.

These music videos, long available to hard-core fans through other channels, really needed to be remastered to be 16:9 anamorphic and with 5.1 surround sound, as are all of Gackt's concert videos except for "Mars." (Even Mars, his first concert DVD, has surround sound.) The music videos in this DVD fall far short of the audio and video quality of Gackt's concert videos, which are world-class in every respect, and which should be made available to U.S. audiences -- hopefully without the compromises we see here.

This disc contains many of Gact's ballad oriented songs. I have to say that Last Song is a killer, and the rest are almost as good. The songs are subbed, with Japanese subs available. Quite enteraining listening and viewing. The price is quite good, also! Gackt is now available to the masses!

It's kind of a disappointment piece because both DVDs only contain music videos, and that's about it--and not even all of the videos Gackt's had done in the past 6-7 years either. It could have, at least, had him talking about his journal or something. No Gactk talking at all. I still love Gackt, though. But you can find all of those music videos on YouTube easily.

As a foreign fan of GACKT, I was happy enough just to have this. Really, I'm not much of a music video person. But with Gackts stuff, it's different. It seems enough of a privelidge just to get a regular Japanese release. This, unlike most of his vids, includes English subs. It includes various vids that fans have probably already seen. But this tangible item is English speaker friendly. That's a major plus. I'd be willing to pay a lot more for his stuff if they all had English subs. The price of this is less than half of the regular Japanese release. Usually import stuff is outrageously more expensive. And 'special edition' (e.g. foreign language subs) are even pricier for obvious reasons. However, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Ultimately, you get the best part: the videos. But, unlike almost everything GACKT releases, this packaging is lacking. GACKT usually has something special about even just the case itself for everything he releases. THIS is just your standard plain ol' DVD case. You get the DVD and the cover art with that. That's it. If I am anything like any other GACKT fan, this is understandably disappointing. It's all that extra that he works so hard to put into each release that makes it all the more special. If you don't mind not having all the extra stuff and just want the vids (or at least a copy of them with subs) then this will be just right. This would probably also be good for the fairly newer fans. Especially $-wise. It's a good place to start to help you decide whether you want to further invest into the addictive world of the egoist Mr. SSSSSSS....

The technical description and the DVD case itself both say this is 16:9 anamorphic widescreen, but this is not the case. The videos are 1.33:1 or widescreen footage embedded within a 1.33:1 screen.

As for the music videos themselves, they are excellent.

Gackt: The Greatest Filmography 1999-2006- Blue (the DVD) was perfect, just as I expected. This compilation has slower, more relaxed songs compared to the Red version and has some beautiful lives. In fact, at this price, the DVD would have been worth it even if the only performance on here was Mirror -Unplugged- (it was pricelessly fun!). So 5 stars for the actual product.
For the packaging, though... 2 stars. You'd think that they'd put Red and Blue in the same kind of DVD case, but they don't. Blue got the short end of the stick with one of those cases that doesn't actually have plastic behind where the product goes- just paper and a few plastic strips to keep the center button connected to the rest of the case. This means the DVD is more suseptible to damage and the case generally looks cheaper. Also, the cover art (paper insert) for Blue looks grainy compared to Red's. Manufacturer, WHAT IS UP WITH THIS?
Anyway, heed the warning on the packaging, but the DVD is GREAT, so the product still gets 5/5 stars, if a mite reluctantly.

This is a great DVD set. I would like to see more of these types of items.