#100: We Are X by X Japan & Stephen Kijak [film review]

[Karma’s Hat 3107]

 

 

Directed by Stephen Kijak

 

Starring 

 

X Japan

 

 

 

June 30th came and went, and while we may have not gotten the album, we might have gotten something arguably more interesting. To the misfortune of the initiated non-Japanese speaking fan of visual kei, there is an inarguable drought of first hand accounts outside of the handful vague magazine articles that are passable at best; and it is to this need that a film about X Japan would seem like an heaven-sent. I still think that the most interesting aspect of the whole story of visual kei is how it exactly got started, and what the people involved were feeling at the time of its inception. "We are X" would seemingly be able to fit the bill, seemingly. I was able to see that it definitely wasn't going to live up to expectations based on its short runtime alone, but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy a good A&E music documentary so either, and the X story is definitely very interesting. So how does it fare? 

 

We Are X” is a moderately entertaining and a rather brief 90 minute promotional package for Yoshiki’s upcoming world conquest ( it’s still coming you guys. ) that is simply not what it could be. The basic gist of the film is Yoshiki reminiscing about everything that happened in his life leading up to their long awaited [citation needed] debut at the Madison Square Garden, encompassing his thoughts on life, death and all things Yoshiki with bits of historical retrospective sequenced in between. You know what you’re in for right from the start, when the film opens with such grand spectacle that’s only befitting of a man of Yoshiki’s stature ( if you ask him, that is ); dramatic piano music wailing under a Yoshiki monologue lead up to the graphic designer and pyrotechnics ejaculating all over video deck all at once, and after the initial shock of the grand spectacle of it all, it becomes apparent that the film starts to work in two different ways; the slick albeit dripping with cheese rockumentary with interesting historical footage on the one end, and the absolutely stunning character worship of Yoshiki on the other. Although there’s something to be said about the devil reading the bible, I think a cynical reading of this glossy piece of PR is if not perfectly warranted, then at least an amusing exercise for the viewer.

 

The way the story is told is through Yoshiki’s own biography and musings and, the film’s story arch spans X’s career from the beginning to the show at the MSG largely from his perspective, and from here we are beset with the greatest structural problems of the film that completely slaughters it from being of great interest. X and the other band members are established only as they come into his story and information about them is related only in a manner as it specifically relates to him. A central feature of X’s story, which is the Toshi’s cult debacle, gets so much time only because it plays a role in the breakup and reformation, and the way hide is presented is that his greatest asset along with strange magnetism and philanthropy was being Yoshiki’s “producer,” as it was told. Heath and Pata each hardly get word in; is it because they didn’t want to, or that their input is inconsequential to the narrative? Who’s narrative by the way, X’s or Yoshiki’s? Or is Yoshiki X? These characters are attached to the spine of Yoshiki’s project through which they are even allowed exist in this film. You can probably already see what’s going on here.

 

The lost opportunity of having comprehensive member bios becomes perfectly evident when Yoshiki’s own childhood and early bijuaru years are reflected on, and what little was shown of it was easily the highlight of the film. Their lives at this point were danger, death, excessive drinking and the most thrashing cockrock around, so what caused it? What were the motivations, influences and the rest of it? Yoshiki’s dad dying and him getting a drum set. After this he conjured willing and able session members from the nether realm - & Saver Tiger - and he invented X in the vacuum of his own persona! Poor fucking Pata gets literally nothing, probably ending up sharing the same total screen time with Yoshikitty or the hide doll. A proper biography of hide is unjustly totally omitted, and while the whole Toshi cult debacle does occupy a central position the last third of the film, it is terribly vague the way it goes about; he married an unspecified woman and joined an unspecified cult that brainwashed him in a rather unspecific manner for unspecific ends. The film also goes over no songs or albums in any detail, and I mean there is hardly word said about any single note of music they’ve done in specific, nor about their influences and creative process for that matter. For a music documentary it’s exceptionally light on anything musical, except when it’s something that particularly relates to the story of the visual kei grand wizard Yoshiki.

 

Another aspect of the story that is completely absent is a proper survey of visual kei. The culture is hardly explored in any way, nor does X get drawn into the larger context of things and is merely portrayed as a hugely popular rock band that was quite influential in the domestic market. I have a theory on why this is so: the film is aimed at an all-American market as a promotional piece: the 90-minute mark cannot be exceeded under any circumstance, and visual kei may only be brought up as an object to prop up the band. One segment of the film has a few lines by members of bands such as Dir en grey, Luna Sea, Mucc etc. and the total of what they were allowed to say was: “ekkusu kakkoi sugoi desu ne.” One might have been able to set this aside if it weren’t for the fact that a couple of minutes later Yoshiki’s American entourage gets MINUTES of screen time, including Gene Simmons who even gets to have a personal anecdote on how X would be huge in the west if it weren’t for the Anglo-centrism of the American audiences. 

With these direction choices in mind, I feel that X was portrayed more in the way that the American public would like to digest the band: a big insular arena rock sensation that’d be the biggest band in the world if it weren’t for unfortunate circumstance. This doesn't kill the film exactly, but it makes it of lesser importance and interest. 

 

Now why the film is like this is because all this is after all, it is a promotional package for X’s long delayed triumphant conquest of the western music market. Its structure is built around the MSG show, with the original attempt at the west sequined in the latter middle part of the run time so it could be later brought up as a setup for their return. After going through the disbandment and the tragic deaths set to an image of Yoshiki being outrageously portrayed with wings behind him, it’s right at the end of the film where he is still standing defiant and fully convinced that he still has to do it, he has to besiege the billboard and he must do it for hide and Taiji; and then cue to an awesome cringe inducing montage of weeaboos wearing bootleg shirts and an assorted collection of Yoshiki’s cool celebrity “friends,” as they were called. It depends on your point of view whether this is amusing or just simply enraging. At this point, I admit to subscribing to the former school of thought. 

 

So, for people who are interested in visual kei and X, it falls short of expectation. What does it have for the outsider? Well, it’s a mixed bag. First of all, it is a cheesy TV documentary level production made by a guy who’s previous documentary was about the hardcore musical renegades The Backstreet Boys, so the emphasis is on the word production; and still despite all this it occasionally appears to assume general knowledge from the viewer while totally catering to people who’d be exposed to X for the first time. The music isn’t spoken of and only clips of it are played, so you either must know it beforehand or take the word of everyone in the film that X is this great band from Japan you haven’t heard of. Obviously, my memory isn’t 100% but I’m fairly confident that the only song mentioned by name in the film was Art of Life.

I’ll have to say that it’s not boring though, because the bare bones of the saga are interesting and all the early X stuff is awesome. So considering that anyone with the misfortune of having read this is most likely quite well versed in the bijuarus, I can say there's worse ways of spending your time. I'd watch a Japanese record store employee telling about the best selling vk records for two hours ( probably rather than this, actually ) so I'm definitely biased towards everything even remotely related to visual kei. You’re should be good as well if you go into it with the same mindset you would have watching some Vice documentary on a Sunday morning while eating breakfast.

 

                                                                               

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

If this film was centrally focused on their MSG performance, that means @ShanethVarosa and I are technically featured in it.

 

AMA

 

I'm both disappointed and not really surprised that all the juicy bits (the cult, impact on the visual-kei scene as a whole, anything about any members other than Yoshiki and hide tbh) are glossed over or omitted. I'm hoping this sparks enough of a KAKUMEI to inspire some insider-tell-all from someone disgruntled  version, á la "Mommy Dearest," in the somewhat near future. 

Edited July 6, 2017 by Peace Heavy mk II

[doombox 4421]

I wish I had something more interesting to add to this but I found myself nodding along to basically everything you said. Since it was a small (second) intro for X to the American market I'm not too surprised they didn't delve into explaining vk, or that the only parts of the Japanese rock scene in general were to prop X up as their champions. It was fluff but it was nice to see fluff relevant to my music tastes. 

[Ito 2438]

Whelp this for sure tells me that I am not going to need to make an effort to watch this.

[zaa_zaa 208]

Yeah, I am dissapointed with this documentary.

I actually read Yoshiki's biography (released in 2009), and, oh boy, was it interesting. How much he trained, situations when he was hospitilized and had around 5% of fat due to his constant training, the way they refused Sony in the beginning and so many other stories, the way they performed, drank and were touring in Japan - that was powerful, that was interesting to read.

 

This documentary - meh. There was NOTHING epic. It was absolutely plain.

[Zeus 7997]

4 hours ago, zaa_zaa said:

Yeah, I am dissapointed with this documentary.

I actually read Yoshiki's biography (released in 2009), and, oh boy, was it interesting. How much he trained, situations when he was hospitilized and had around 5% of fat due to his constant training, the way they refused Sony in the beginning and so many other stories, the way they performed, drank and were touring in Japan - that was powerful, that was interesting to read.

 

This documentary - meh. There was NOTHING epic. It was absolutely plain.

Interesting that you bring these points up when according to @Disposable very little of it is in the movie. I'd probably have to read + watch for myself but I am interested to know how much of the biography dove tails with the movie.

[Karma’s Hat 3107]

The bio most likely has a larger emphasis on everything that I thought was interesting in this movie. Need to check if it's in english

 

Since it was brought up, what I want from vk is one of those gangland type documentaries with that deep voiced narrator

[Jigsaw9 6783]

I'm a huge fan of music / band documentaries, so this was pretty mediocre and a let-down. Agreed with most of Dispo's points. Ultimately, it was shallow and pointless.

[Licio123 181]

Meh, i liked it a lot. Though it's more "We Are Yoshiki", and fans of the band probably know 99% of what was shown, I am not so much into them to know the terrible things that happened with Yoshiki, the cult thing, and all.

[Axius 2019]

This in my opinion i believe was more of a documentary of the band itself not as much visual kei scene/genera despite he is in every way tied to the scene. However I believe it was there intention to focus on the band  and its history and origins more so then anything else. I wish they did go over visual kei aspects more so and other things in more in detail but they didn't but overall in my opinion an amazing documentary on "the band" honestly believe people got what they paid for. I dont know if he has had any documentary's in the past mainly because i haven't really went digging when it comes to this band but All things considered i also think the documentary was just intended to up popularity to the band in general along with the history and other stuff in it. I feel as tho that they should have aimed this documentary more on visual kei instead maybe his opinions or something to do with the styles/themes used throught the years or his style the X Japan uses and seeing that hes been doing this for so long im sure Yoshiki Might have experience in this. Who knows.

[jaymee 405]

I've only seen the trailer for this at VJS (and several times there, because X Japan... er Yoshiki... had it play over and over again while they were 30 min+ late to start their show per usual), but yeah it pretty much looked like an entire documentary fap to Yoshiki.

 

I like X and don't deny how important/influential they were to the scene, but I get tired of Yoshiki/X acting like they were they only band or even first band (because it's so debatable) that started VK, which is something he states in the trailer. I feel like some humility would go a long way, and could only add to the respect Yoshiki/the band has.

[qotka 433]

On 2017/7/6 at 9:56 PM, Disposable said:

a big insular arena rock sensation that’d be the biggest band in the world if it weren’t for unfortunate circumstance. This doesn't kill the film exactly, but it makes it of lesser importance and interest. 

This is the main message of the film imo, to sell them as the biggest thing in Japanese rock heading towards world domination. I think that in this aspect, X are trying to have their cake and eat it. They invented visual-kei - that's all you need to know, the pioneered a movement of sorts that sounds cool and groundbreaking, which paints them as heroes. But giving more screen time to the scene would expose them for what they are - in the end, X Japan and visual kei will always be a niche. They can fill Tokyo Dome 10 times and appear on Kohaku on New Year's Eve, but they're by no means Japan's darlings/national treasure/symbol/whatever the hell it is Yoshiki wants to portray them as, and their music might be great but it's irrelevant to what happens in the charts these days, or even to what's happening in visual kei these days. They're legends to visual kei fans but telling America/the rest of the world how legendary they are/were out of this context is dishonest at best, and I think this is one of the things that bothered me the most about this film, even though I enjoyed most of it as a fan of the band.

Edited July 10, 2017 by qotka
English idioms man