Magnificent Malformed Box concerts
Attempting to condense five concerts into a blog size post is very difficult. So much happened on each day and so much of it are things that are specific to concerts of this genre of music that it’s hard to explain certain things without long explanations. I will probably make separate posts to explain Visual Kei and its fans in detail later, but this blog post is about the concerts so there will just be an overview.
Visual Kei is a subculture of Japanese music that uses make-up, costumes and concepts along with a band’s chosen style of music. There’s no restrictions of the genre of music the band chooses to use, it is the look that is most important. The band the GazettE is a Visual Kei band formed in 2002, whose tour, THE MAGNIFICENT MALFORMED BOX, I attended while in Japan. The band is made up of five members, pictured below from left to right Reita (bass), Uruha (guitar), Kai (drums), Aoi (guitar) and Ruki (vocals).
Image © PSCompany
I went to their tour dates in Osaka, Akita, Morioka and Sendai as well as the tour final, named CODA, in Yokohama. In October 2013, they released their new album BEAUTIFUL DEFORMITY so the setlist for each tour date had a lot of the new songs on it. The image below are the setlists for the first 4 tours I attended, the highlighted songs are from BEAUTIFUL DEFORMITY.
As you can see, there’s generally a pattern of new songs played and old favorites that are played almost every time. You’d think fans would get tired of hearing the same songs after going to multiple tour dates, but I personally didn’t get tired of any of them.
Fans travel from all over Japan to attend the tour, and some, like me, from all over the world. While I was there, I met people from France, Germany, Finland, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and America along with Japanese fans. Fans show their love for the band in various forms such as buying from the band’s merchandise label BLACKMORAL or cosplaying favorite band looks over the years.
The cosplay (コスプレ: shortened from ‘costume play’) of the band members are very impressive.
There were a few that I was too shy to ask to take their photos because their cosplay was almost unnervingly close to looking like the real thing.
Though the concerts didn’t start until 6PM on most nights, fans arrived at the venue as early as 7AM to stand in line for merchandise and to hang out with friends and other fans. It wasn’t uncommon to go into a restaurant near the venue and have it be completely full of fans and cosplayers hiding from the cold.
During visual kei concerts, it’s not uncommon to see 振り付け (furitsuke: choreography, often shortened to 'furi') of 手バン (te-ban: hand+ shortened form of banging. A play on 'head banging' to 'hand banging') that go along with songs. It may seem strange to see hand movements along with headbanging at a rock concert, but it’s a lot of fun to do. Some bands don’t like furi, while others help create certain gestures. The movements are often so synchronized it’s hard to imagine that the movements are created during lives. Though she has since deleted her blog, my friend Toki made posts about furi at the GazettE lives and can be found HERE and HERE. I personally learned many of the movements from watching recordings of lives, but I learned a lot of new ones during the lives I attended.
It seems a little odd to write a blog about concerts and not talk much about the concert and the band itself, but one of the best things about going to a GazettE concert is the fans themselves. I made quite a few new Japanese friends despite language barriers because of the concerts.















