Gackt Love
This page can be summarized as "I absolutely love Gackt and his music and just everything omg ♥," but you're welcome to read my tl;dr babbling.
The Beginning
There are three songs I remember as my first Gackt songs: "Vanilla," "Illness Illusion," and "To Feel the Fire." In short, the sex song, the circus-on-crack song, and the Engrish song. I think to some extent that's formed part of my opinion of Gackt: sexy guy, but sometimes as crazy as a circus on crack and sounds absolutely hilarious in English. There was one other song I had that was by Gackt: "ILLUMINATI," from his days with Malice Mizer.
My real introduction to Gackt came some months after that (I think this was in 2003, but I'm really not sure). I asked my parents for several different Japanese albums for Christmas. At this point in time I was basically clueless about what I was asking for — I recognized the names of certain bands and artists and asked for a few albums despite hardly having heard their music. I distinctly remember asking for Malice Mizer's merveilles or Bara no Seidou albums, as well as Gackt's Mars album. I ended up receiving only merveilles sometime in January, as it took ages to ship.
What I discovered in merveilles was a singer unlike any I had ever heard. I was intrigued by the instrumental introductory track, "～de merveilles," but I never expected the sheer beauty of the next track, "Syunikiss 〜二度目の哀悼〜" ("Syunikiss ~nidome no aitou~"). To this day, "Syunikiss" remains my favorite song of all time. Although I love the instrumentals, it's mostly because of Gackt's voice — the aspect of him I love much more than any picture I could ever see of him.
I don't think I could have possibly gotten a better present that Christmas. merveilles captivated me more than I ever could have imagined. I was stunned by the gorgeous pictures in the booklet (blissfully ignoring the fact that all of the men I was looking at looked a great deal like women) and more or less decided that Gackt was my favorite in Malice Mizer, despite still knowing next to nothing about him or the band. (I probably knew the band had dissolved, but I apparently didn't care. XD)
The Rediscovery
Despite loving merveilles to pieces, it wasn't until 2006 that I really became interested in Gackt. It happened in a somewhat roundabout way, but it worked for me. In late 2006, I discovered the game Final Fantasy VII and fell in love with it and its characters. I naturally became interested in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII (the collective name for the game and its sequels/prequels/etc.), and with that came Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-... for which Gackt did two songs, "REDEMPTION" and "LONGING."
"REDEMPTION" soon became my second favorite song of all time, and it fed my Gackt love until sometime in 2007, when I decided I needed to get into Gackt more. I eventually downloaded nearly everything iTunes has to offer from him and slowly but surely found myself becoming a truly obsessed Gackt fan. The point at which I found myself a complete Gackt fan was in November 2007 sometime. I bought his two filmography DVDs and found such incredible magic in his PVs — a kind of magic that could both make me laugh REALLY hard and fall in love with Gackt all over again.
Gackt as a musician
I have three favorite musicians: Ayumi Hamasaki, Gackt, and Nobuo Uematsu. The answer to the question "who's your favorite musician?" is always one of those three, but the specific answer tends to change from week to week. One week I'll be all about Ayu and will find myself discovering new favorites in old albums; the next, I might go on a Final Fantasy binge and listen to video game soundtracks nonstop. After that, I might go on a Gackt marathon. I listen to other musicians, of course, but it always comes back to these three, as my last.fm will attest.
Out of those three, though, Gackt earns the most respect from me as a musician. I have always been impressed that Gackt not only writes the music and lyrics to his songs but also produces them. I'll be the first to tell you that I really don't know much about music or the music industry, but from my understanding, it's quite rare for an artist to do so much of their own music. (I've actually been interested in this ever since I got merveilles — back then, I thought it was pretty neat that Gackt wrote all of the lyrics and wrote the music for "Le ciel.") Naturally, I still think Ayu and Uematsu are amazing musicians, but in this respect I'm most impressed by Gackt.
And, like I said before, my favorite overall aspect of Gackt is his voice. I've been mesmerized by his voice for years, and I have no doubt I'll continue to be mesmerized for years to come.
Gackt as an actor
I first saw Moon Child in December 2007 when some of my awesome friends sent it to me for Christmas. I'd heard about it, of course, but all I knew was that it starred Gackt and hyde (which by itself was a pretty big motivation to see it). The first time I watched it, I think I laughed too hard to pay much attention XD It's taken me several rewatches, but I've come to really like it. It's just that I think Gackt should stick more to music than acting. I don't think he did too badly — I think it's more the holy Toledo I'm watching GACKT ACT aspect that gets me. Needless to say, I'm very excited for 2009's Bunraku. (All I've seen of Furin Kazan are pictures — I have no idea how his acting was there.)
One of my personal favorites of Gackt's acting roles is actually Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII-, in which he voiced the character Genesis Rhapsodos. Genesis's CG model is directly based off of Gackt, and in playing Crisis Core I find myself increasingly amused by his long-winded speeches and general geekiness. (Basically, he reminds me of Gackt, which just makes me laugh really hard.)
Conclusion
I'm a huge Gackt fan. XD