Review: At the heart of Moon Child, we have a timeless tale of friendships lost and found. From brighter moments and thriving kinships, to an unraveling alliance and heartless fallouts, the relationships formed between the characters in Moon Child are truly the life force behind the story at hand. We have, at our core, the bond between Sho and Kei (Gackt & Hyde, respectively). The best of friends, yet a junior/senior relationship exist who’s deeper nuances fuel the emptiness and desires between the two. In a somewhat weaker aspect of the narrative we find established that Kei is damned to walk the earth forever in the form of a Vampire. This endless suffering, and the knowledge that all those around him will eventually die before his very eyes, is the driving force behind the actions and responses of this character. At times, Hyde’s performance as the weary vamp is played to an appropriate t, but several occasions throughout we find a somewhat fledgling exhibition rearing its awkward head. All in all though, the portrayal is fairly commendable considering the casting of the musician in this, his first thespian endeavor.

While on the subject of rockers turned actors, perhaps the more categorically apt creature of the night should have been the former gothic front man turned pop-rock crooner, Gackt Camui. Instead we find him in the role of the little engine who only wanted to be loved. Striving to be like his mentor/best friend Kei, we find Sho clinging to the love he has grown so accustomed to during his many years with the loveable bloodsucker. Throughout the course of the film we actually find the character of Sho experiencing the most overall growth. We follow him through his early youth as a small child pulling scams on the local triads, to his budding days of adulthood, still pulling scams on the triads (albeit of a more violent nature), and ultimately his position as one of the more powerful yakuza in the area. Gackt’s performance is a bit overdramatic at times, but overall extremely charming and effective. For the viewers out there who may already be fans of Gackt, we are shown a lighter side that is seldom revealed through his typically quiet, brooding demeanor. Fear not though, we are still graced with the signature “cool” that we all know and love. The chance to see Gackt smile from ear to ear as well as contribute to the films over the top gunplay is a priceless treat for any true fan.

The conflict between characters in this film is in part due to the difficulty in coping with Kei’s secret as well as the opposing threat of the triads. In the fictional town of Mallepa it is every man for himself, and the folly of stepping on a rival’s toes is not something to underestimate. A rather weak attempt at sub plot comes into play here in the form of nationalism between the Chinese born Triads and the Japanese born Yakuza. This was hardly entertained though, and it ends up coming across as something that was ill prepared and not very well thought out. Many aspects of the plot actually suffer from this ailment with a lack of flowing continuity, and we end up with a story that comes across as being a bit unbalanced. So much time is devoted at the start of the picture to establishing characters and their relationships that when the struggle for power ensues during the second half, the story ends up suffering from a sense of poor transition.