Gackt’s Dears FC Considers Opening to Overseas Memberships

It seems that Gackt is considering opening up his fanclub to overseas memberships. A recent MySpace blog entry, posted by his staff on April 1, is a link to a questionnaire for input on creating an overseas fan club for Dears. We’re hoping this isn’t an April Fools’ Joke!

The questionnaire asks some pretty general questions—your favorite Gackt song, whether or not you would join the fan club if it went international—as if to test the waters before jumping in. Some of the questions give pause, however, such as the one that asks how we’d feel about paying fan club dues without necessarily getting all of the benefits of a member living in Japan.

Obviously, we can’t expect Gackt to do a world tour just because the fan club is being opened up to overseas members. But at the same time, those who are familiar with how Dears works will be disappointed if they don’t get the same benefits as their counterparts in Japan. For example, if limited access memberships for non-native fans means not being invited to special appearances in Japan, the non-native international community won’t be so keen on signing up. Granted, even in Japan, event appearances on Japanese TV in Tokyo are next to impossible to get to even if you’re living in Osaka, let alone Oklahoma.

But special events are only a fraction of the events Dears offers. Other than handling pre-sale tickets and publishing a quarterly magazine, Dears also hosts annual trips to international locations and within Japan, such as 2007′s ski trip, or last year’s bus tour to the Uesugi Kenshin festival. Opening the doors to international members creates a potential logistics nightmare for Dears. Japanese members, for example, sometimes have to travel into a major metropolis hours away from where they live to accompany the tour group at its starting location in Tokyo or Osaka, even if its final destination (like Gunma prefecture) is where they reside! Will an Aussie pony up the cash to fly in to Tokyo if the destination of the fan club trip is New Zealand? Running international hubs for the trip outside of Japan seems like a massive challenge for Dears, especially if they can’t even keep the English-version of Gackt’s site up-to-date.

At a recent radio show appearance in Fukuoka, Gackt mentioned having received a large number of letters and emails from fans in South America. Well, North America—let’s make our voice heard, too. The survey is running through Wednesday, April 30, and only takes a moment to fill out.