Hyde and Gackt...Vampires?

Moon Child is a movie made by Hyde (of L'Arc~en~Ciel) and Gackt Camui. To be perfectly honest, I only wanted to watch this because of Hyde but it ended up to be a fairly nice movie. It's not something that I would call exceptionally good because it's mainly fan service for females, considering two bishounen playing the lead parts. It's entertaining enough to merit a second, a third -- well I watch it again and again from time to time.

This post contains spoilers from here on. You've been warned!

Moon Child's plot happens during the year 2014 in Japan. It's mostly an economic crisis so the Japanese had to live in China, in a city called Mallepa. Three brothers, Sho being the youngest one, lived in the city who had to steal just to survive. One night after stealing from a gangster, Sho finds a man who's at the brink of death. Sho rescues the man and brings him to their house just as the gangster came after them. The rescued man saved Sho and his brothers from the gangster -- the rescued man, known as Kei, is a vampire.

After Sho discovers that Kei is a vampire and Kei's surprise that Sho isn't afraid of him, the story fast forwards to the time when Sho's a grown man (probably in his late teens to very early 20s). They're still robbing but they hooked up with a Taiwanese man, Son, who is out to get revenge for his sister. Incidentally, Son's target is also the target of Kei and Sho's robbery.

After a series of incidents, Kei lands in prison. After nine years, Sho is a prominent gang leader and married to Son's sister while Son is a member of a rival gang. Sho hears about Kei in one news report and decides to help him. Fast track a bit and we find Sho deep in despair, wanting to go back to his friend, Kei. Kei, as soon as he hears about Sho's troubles, revives his will to continue living.

I'll stop at this point as the story is spoilt enough. Mind you though, that isn't the end of it yet. Moon Child is pretty much thought-provoking, dealing with issues of life and death. Pretty obvious since one of our main characters is a vampire. As both our lovely bishounen are singers, it's impossible for Moon Child to not have at least one song. It does! and in the form of Orenji ni Taiyou and a good, deep song at that. (Do get the song if you can!)

One thing I'll make clear though: I've heard some people say that Kei and Sho had a relationship beyond that of friendship (i.e. they're gay). I don't think that's true though. I did get the idea since their characters are really close but at the end, I realized that they pretty much treated each other like brothers, best friends oh and the fact that Kei was Sho's mentor already imposes a different sort of relationship between them.

As I said earlier, it isn't much of a great movie. When you decide to watch it, make sure to leave any expectations and enjoy the movie as it is. You might find out that you'd want to watch it again like me. Or maybe not ^_^