Here's an english review of Moon Child:
from:
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20030417woad.htm
Moon over Mallepa
Aaron Gerow / Special to The Daily Yomiuri
Moon Child (three stars out of five)
Dir: Takahisa Zeze
Cast: Gackt, Hyde, Wang Lee Hon, Zeny Kwok, Taro Yamamoto
Movie stars have always been an otherworldly presence. They seem to dwell in the cinema firmament, high above us poor mortals who, instead of shining on the screen like they do, just passively gaze in the dark at their intense apparitions.
Gackt and Hyde are two such stars, contemporary rock phenomena appearing in their first film. Moon Child--appropriately titled--is very much a star vehicle, and the two stars are celestial presences who cannot be ignored.
At its weakest, Moon Child just duplicates the campily lunar qualities of Gackt and Hyde themselves. With non-Japanese stage names and a policy of refusing to divulge their origins, both stars play off the J-Rock genre of playing extraterrestrial heroes (witness Demon Kogure). That pretentious detachment ultimately unites their personae on and off screen. Neither really acts in this film, although Gackt, who cowrote the script, is self-parodic enough that he can at least act himself acting his character. The clumsier Hyde, however, just offers a series of dour poses that could only satisfy his most devoted fans.
What saves Moon Child is director Takahisa Zeze's decision to make this alienness the subject of the film and use it to play critically with his own stars.
Hyde's character, Kei, is the ultimate alien in this film: a vampire. He is no horror-movie villain or hero because, given Zeze's long interest in transnational mixtures (SF Whip Cream, Rush!, etc.), most of the characters in this film are also aliens, albeit of a different kind. This is a future world where Japan has collapsed and most of its residents have ventured abroad in search of jobs and fortunes. Many live in the Asian city of Mallepa, aliens inhabiting a foreign land. (Moon Child was filmed in Taiwan.)
Kei arrives in Mallepa and encounters some orphaned Japanese street kids, eventually using his own special--and terrible--powers to eliminate a man whose money they stole. Kei thus meets the young Sho, who, while knowing very well what Kei is, grows up to become his best friend. Now a stylish young hoodlum (Gackt), Sho teams up with Kei and Toshi (Taro Yamamoto) to commit a variety of crimes, the group acting with their guns and their bodies as if nothing in the world could hurt them--even though Kei is the only immortal among them.
On Toshi's instigation, one day they attack the office of the Gishinkai, the local mob, to steal the gang's loot, but there they bump into another young man shooting the mobsters. He is Son (Wang Lee Hon), out for revenge after his sister Yi Che (Zeny Kwok), a talented painter, was raped by one of the gang. The bunch team up on the spot, strafe the gangsters, and soon become good friends, with Sho admiring Yi Che--even though she has eyes for Kei.
While this is a multiethnic, multilingual pseudo-family, it breaks up because of alienness and chauvinism. When the Gishinkai returns for revenge, Kei reveals his horrible nature, repulsing Yi Che and eventually driving Son to join the mob.
Sho then battles Son in a cycle of violence that threatens to never end. Zeze underlines that this cycle is like the life of a vampire who must continually kill to live, but Kei rises above the gunplay by virtue of his memories and his desire to end it all.
If it seems Son and the others have forgotten their past camaraderie, Kei has not. The memory is symbolized by a photograph of the five on a beach. Taken in the dark, it is a symbol of cinema, and also reminds us that the most filmic of monsters, the vampire, is still an alien, unable to frolic in the sun.
Zeze's critical response to his lunar stars, if not to cinema itself, is to at the conclusion propel them towards this sun, to ironically eliminate their alienness and otherworldliness in the light after it's all over. In a world of continued discrimination and ethnic violence, Zeze tries to bring his stars down to earth and his audience into the light.
I can't wait for the movie XD