We Are X

Drafthouse Films | Release Date: October 21, 2016

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Maron07lysApr 17, 2023

It was a very anticipated documentary by all the X Japan fans. Through this film finally, we get many answers about what happened all those years. The documentary shows in their very unique style their rise as well as the struggles. As a fanIt was a very anticipated documentary by all the X Japan fans. Through this film finally, we get many answers about what happened all those years. The documentary shows in their very unique style their rise as well as the struggles. As a fan of the band it is a "must watch", and it might made you emotional in some parts. For the public that is not immersed in japanese culture and visual kei movement, it's helpful to abord it with a very open mind. Considerating the band cultural background, this is a very open and sincere documental.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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StevenXJan 23, 2018

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. "We Are X" follows X Japan, a glam-drama-thrash-cum-prog-drama-ballad band, as it prepares for a 2014 Madison Square Garden debut, despite being major-label superstars in their homeland since the late Eighties and surviving a 10-year breakup. Filled with drama (and melodrama), the main fault in the film is that it becomes more a vanity piece on the band's leader/drummer/main writer/pianist Yoshiki, covering all his highs and lows from an early age through to the concert while giving you the bare minimum on most of his bandmates. Some of the concert footage seems staged to the point of self-parody: Yoshiki plays so hard that he nearly dies after every show to hear them tell it, which in the US would put the rest of the band and the entire production team in jail for letting him writhe onstage without help. (You'd think since it wouldn't be the only death in the band, they'd be more worried.) He also pays a long-term price, living between pain shots and a mixture of jawdropping talent, drive and luck between shows. Singer Toshi gets a decent but much, much smaller piece of the pie, perhaps because part of his story is even stranger than Yoshiki's (though the film gives all the basics and next to none of the details). The film also nonsensically ignores a major event in the band's history, where they played a show with a hologram of a former beloved member. As for the band's output sonically and visually, "We Are X" both shows why they have sold 30 million albums mostly overseas and why they haven't in America - the wild hair, drama, costumes, and attack that fueled their initial rise hadn't been seen much in Asia by home-grown talent but had been well-done elsewhere by the likes of everyone from punk to Bowie to, well, Asia. The band also self-admittedly can't vocalize even their English-language tracks without being nearly indecipherable to English audiences, though Toshi progresses wildly in that area before the Garden gig. Yes, nearly the entire film is subtitled, songs included, and thank God for that.(A strange bit of cultural prejudice may also be at work here, not only because of the band's nationality but the fact that most of them still look like teens in their forties.) Once the band leans into a more widescreen, orchestral-influenced oeuvre, they seem more of a classical/rock soundtrack hybrid than a rock band, their sometimes-bordering-on-schlock bombast making Journey look like a folk combo, though Toshi's sunglasses rarely come off in a nod to all the rockers that they haven't become here. The band's talent is not in question, and their positive message is rare and exemplary, but their expectations on Yankee soil to date have been far too unrealistic. That desire to overachieve culminates in this film, a strangely suspicious, stilted "documentary" that, while captivating in many aspects, seems forced and steered in many others. Again, after you see this, you will know without a doubt why X Japan are big in Japan. You'll also know why they are not as big here.… Expand

0 of 2 users found this helpful02

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Toshi_inuMay 15, 2023

Gran documental de las leyendas vivientes, X Japan es mi banda favorita de todos los tiempo, si lees esto favor darle una oportunidad y escuchar su música, no se arrepentirán

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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