idol group, “mistress” who have disbanded on 9/30, have released their last single, “StartingOver”.
However, fans of The GazettE called the girl band out on their lack of respect as they have noticed a striking similarity between the unfortunate cover art and a flyer for the memorial live of bassist Reita, who passed away earlier this year.
Please don’t harass the band or their jacket designer.
there’s nothing more to say; they’ve been tweeted at at length in Japanese by Japanese followers.
a good point i saw made is (allegedly, idk this group) they brand themselves alongside vkei, which would make it hard to say they didn’t know.
i can’t personally see it as anything but a misstep; hope the singers, label, and art director can handle it w/ grace and move on to good work in the future.
anecdotally, things like this are things i try to think about often. Like, i don’t know if anyone, esp the singers, meant any of this with malice. But even when looking across an aisle as narrow as idol → vkei, sometimes misreads of situations can come off as real wrong.
i think the jacket designer’s just adding more fuel to the fire now with all his responses and new tweets attacking the understandably angry gazette fans. even if it wasn’t done with malice in the beginning, it definitely looks trashy now. Doubling down is not a good look. Saying it was a coincidence is miles better than whatever they’re doing right now.
And of all the vkei posters out there, they just HAD to rip off one that was used for a memorial live. Just plain disrespectful.
According to what I had read and seen, the photo of the hands is much earlier than Reita’s death, right? They used it again afterwards.
How often do we see similar covers over and over again? Surely GazettE has one similar to a previous one by other artists. I suppose that all this is due to the current meaning of that photo. I’m afraid to face the current GazettE fanbase.
they could at least idk color grade it or just take a different picture, the typical “doe stare in the camera holding an amaryllis twig”
like even AI slop would been a better choice over this
when is VK idol fad going to be over
Maybe it’s because I just woke up and the brain isn’t fully on, but what exactly are people mad about? The similarities?
You know I love Gazette more than any other band however I hadn’t heard of that before.
Nevertheless, yeah it stings seeing this.
Personally, even if they took that picture before and even if they, for whatever reason, didn’t know about Gazette’s usage after Reita’s passing (I think I had seen it before and I’m not Heresy so it must have been around before and they could have known, even been inspired and that were alright), the only way to react now is to apologize. Any justification is an apology that’s not worth anything. Mistakes can happen. But then apologize (and mean it) and act accordingly.
Gazette fans hating that disrespectful act = avoiding vk idol groups in the future. That’s I like!
But that were illogical.
It’s not the fact that they were an idol band this happened. That could happen with every VK band as well.
(I don’t say it won’t happen, lots of people act pretty illogical.)
My logic makes sense because many people will now have a bad first impression of this group and probably of the next ones. I don’t like idol groups and I think they’re a waste of talent.
If u don’t think like that it’s fine. But I’m anti idol-groups 
Oh I’m fine and it wasn’t anything against you. I know that lots of people act that way even though from a purely logical standpoint it doesn’t make sense because it’s been people not a music scene that made the mistakes (and mistakes happen). So avoiding a scene ain’t basically logic. That it happens anyway is another story. But that doesn’t make it any more logical.
However, I’m sorry if you got the impression I was criticizing you by this, that wasn’t my intention at all.
I really don’t mind about what u said. What makes sense to me is that nowadays fans hate certain things, cancel people or bands for various reasons. And then they get this bad impression and rejection of giving the person, music group or genre another chance. And with that I’m happy because I don’t like idol groups, the less popularity or a less good impression is good as far as I’m concerned 
Basically some fans of The Gazette are mad that the idol bands featured photo (above) and the gazette’s flyer photo (above) look the same. They were calling the idol band disrespectful since this is the photo they used for the memorial live of Reita’s death.
It’s the memorial part that runs people the wrong way, yeah. Any other photo? They could get away with it being a homage. The memorial concert that happened just four months ago? Yeah, no.
I’m a gazette fan and ain’t triggered by it. Cos on the bright side other band designed their cover similar to the memorial live flyer because Reita was a legend.
But why is everyone saying its disrespectful?? What if they did this in tribute to show their respect for Reita and his legacy and their appreciation for him and The Gazette in general? People are so fast to jump to the most negative conclusions. Haha.
because they didn’t. when asked to explain, the idol’s official twitter deleted the picture, ignored everyone’s tweets for 3 days, then reuploaded by tagging the jacket designer.
The jacket designer then came and argued with all the gazette fans who pointed this out, saying, among other things, “I didn’t know about your [stupid] band”, and “will you get off my back if I died?” “these band obasan(aunties) are so annoying”.
Then obviously, the gazette fans got even madder, and then the idol’s official twitter came out with a statement saying that they had no idea about the gazette, that the photo just happened to be taken when the idol group’s members were just “playing around”, calling the whole thing a coincidence and “if it offends you just don’t look at it”.
Anyone with eyes can see that it’s a posed photo, by the way.
Just PR misstep after misstep. Then, someone also found that the jacket designer who claimed to not know the gazette at all, had shared the gazette pvs to his twitter in 2015 and 2016, so he obviously knew who the gazette was.
do you still think, after all of this information, that it’s an homage? that this isn’t disrespectful?
duh
Hahaha! Unbeliveable! It is the EXACT same hand position, also in black and white. They are so hilariously bad at lying…
Definitely a way to go
Good luck to you now “startingOver”
But seriously how can a group fail so massively in its marketing and organisation.
The line between disrespecting and affectionate referencing can be very thin and unclear but you hope at least that the people then know how to handle it when it comes across as disrespectful.
Apologise and move on.
