For someone who accuses others of making straw-men arguments you don’t mind making them yourself. I never said you used so called hateful slang I said you used ad hominem attacks in the place of relevant commentary, which you did do. Who would argue that referring to a man as a “mannish woman” or “fellow/lady/genderless being” is not a personal attack or that it has any relevance to the quality of a music video. Whether or not you used slang or not does not change that. What is more your response still doesn’t back up your reasons for saying Gackt’s music videos and lyrics lack subtlety but instead rambles on about how important subtlety is as if anyone really needs an explanation on how important subtlety is in art.

As for my “objectivity and fairness,” you are making accusations without basis. I was “objectively paying attention” to the entire disc, as agonizing as it was for me to do. Subtlety is important in music. No, it is not the only metric with which to measure a song’s worth, but it is a crucially important one, for much of music’s appeal (as well as the appeal of just about any kind of storytelling or poetry) comes in giving the audience the chance to ponder and draw their own conclusions. None of the songs, not even the ones I wrote favorably about in the review, did this to any sort of meaningful degree. Like I said before, it is an attempt to stuff emotion down my throat. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like having my intelligence insulted, and I don’t give credit to music (or anything) that aims to repeatedly insult my intelligence.

Similarly, that’s precisely why I didn’t spell it out for people that the New York song was about 9/11. You can come to that conclusion on your own without needing me to tell you that. You could probably even do it without having seen the DVD, just by reading my review. And ultimately, it doesn’t even matter: 9/11 or not, the music video and the song were both subpar and mismatched.

When you weren’t making ad hominem attacks you resorted to broad generalizations accusing him of so called “spasming” even though this type of dramatic gesturing is not nearly as extreme or prevalent as you claim and appears only in a few videos on the dvd ,and even then, for short moments.

In many of the videos the focus is placed on the other actors and story as much if not more than Gackt. But of course pointing that out would require objectively paying attention to the videos and leaves less opportunities for making fun of how girly Gackt is.

You claim that Gackt’s lyrics lack subtlety (although the subject itself is inherently subjective) but in fact the lyrics to his songs are frequently metaphorical and often use detail, description, and symbolism to reflect emotion and are not blunt as you imply. Note also that subtlety is not the sole criterion in judging quality lyrics as you seem to believe. And dismissing them because of that one reason without giving any other reasons or examples, sounds less like an objective critique of his lyrics and more of an attempt to sound “knowledgable” while not actually caring or knowing anything about the subject at hand.

This review reads as if you hadn’t even watched the whole dvd ,but instead skimmed through the dvd watching maybe one or two videos and then stopping momentarily at any scenes that seemed conductive to your jokes and biased opinion. For example
“Everything for you” , is not about a “unhappy girl that he wants to love” its about the ways that someone expresses love for someone else. Nor is it in anyway like “My Story”.And if you understood that December love song was about 911 why didn’t you say that it was instead of “One took place in New York City, and featured people of many different backgrounds holding up peace signs” that would have surely been more helpful and relevant to the review. I guess saying such also left no room for snide remarks either. Also the the song “December love song” was written before the music video was decided it to be made in dedication for 9/11.

Humor can be a good quality in journalism. But not when it replaces objectivity and fairness.

I accept all criticism. In fact, I encourage criticism; I want it. And I will look over my review with your criticism in mind. Thank you for it.

However, I feel the need to defend myself when told that I have “pre-judged” the subject matter. I did no such thing. In fact, I had not even heard of Gackt until I had to do this review. I approached this disc fresh, with no preconceptions: I can honestly say that I didn’t even know what genre of music I was about to hear.

What I said about Gackt’s melodramatic spasms stands. There is no subtlety in the majority of his lyrics or actions; it comes across as an attempt to stuff emotion down my throat, instead of letting me feel it through the music itself. Where he deviated from his norm and actually managed to captivate me, I mentioned it in the review, clear as day. I call a spade a spade, and were there not any good in this DVD, I would have given it a flat out F.

Regarding NYC: the post 9/11 message did not escape me, nor would it escape anyone of sound mind. The video still did not mesh with the song’s subject matter, and the song itself was, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, subpar.

(side note: You know that video that “took place in New York City, and featured people of many different backgrounds holding up peace signs” that you mentioned? That’s a dedication to NY after 9/11. What a way to say “Thanks for thinking of us.” )

So here is my review of your review

A+ – for humor
B- – for keeping the attention of the reader, which only happened because of the humor
F – for being biased, uninformative and just overall lack of journalistic talant

So I guess it would actually be a “D.”

I’m sure that if Gackt had read this he would be able to take your criticism. Can you take mine?