It's no secret that Blog-Tick has a lot of readers in Mother Russia. In fact, according to our statistics program, after the United States, Russia is where the largest percentage of our audience is located.
We also continued to have a strong suspicion that Buck-Tick based most of the imagery for the Arui wa Anarchy album and tour on Russian Constructivist art and Soviet iconography. But some of you readers took issue with this idea. Soviet Pioneer scouts? Red flags of revolution? More like dreams and blood, you cried...but you got us thinking. How could we settle this question once and for all in a way that would be believable to our readers? We realized that the answer had been staring us in the face the whole time. "Pics or it didn't happen" is a generally accepted Rule of the Internet. Clearly, what we needed to do was buy ourselves a nice camera, and pay a fangirl to fly to Russia to investigate.
It wasn't hard to find volunteers. After paying off the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Tokyo to give us an expedited visa as an Official State Envoy of This is Not Greatest Autonomous Republic of Buck-Tickistan (an honorary member of the CIS doncha know?), we put this girl on a plane and sent her off to Russia to do our dirty work for us. Isn't she cute?
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Now, let's take a look at what she found.
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First, here's the silver bracelet from Buck-Tick's Arui wa Anarchy tour goods collection.
Aaand....here's a silver star on the top of a tower in Moscow. Note the Soviet hammer & sickle insignia, for good measure.
And here's a similar star in a Moscow metro station!
And here's the same star on the wall of a metro station in St. Petersburg!
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Now, remember those groovy squares and lines from the Keijijou Ryuusei PV?
Well, here they are on the floor of that same St. Petersburg metro station (note the stars in the background.)
And again, in Moscow this time!
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Now what about that plane in the Arui wa Anarchy promo photo?
Here it is in a mosaic on the ceiling of that same metro station in Moscow! (Russia wins at metro stations, apparently.)
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In fact, our dear fangirl saw red and white lines just about everywhere.
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...but what about stripes? Stripes could come from anywhere, right?
Maybe Imai just pulled those stripes out of his ass?
...or maybe he stole them off the gates of the Peter & Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. This fort was built by Peter the Great to defend the Neva River from a Swedish invasion. It's about 300 years older than Imai!
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Here are some more of those stripes, pictured with the Russian flag, for extra realness.
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These shadows on Hide remind us eerily of the shadows on the headquarters of Ivan the Terrible's Oprichiniki.
In fact, Russia seemed to be full of suggestive shadows.
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But what about that final shot in the Keijijou Ryuusei PV?
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Isn't that what this tour t-shirt was inspired by?
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Maybe it was. Or maybe it was inspired by this secret passageway in the Peter & Paul Fortress wall. I dunno about you guys, but for me, this picture certainly raises a lot of red flags!
Here it is in black and white, for good measure.
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Those of you who've been keeping up with the tour goods may have noticed that Buck-Tick have just released a new tour t-shirt. The name of this t-shirt is "Pioneer."
It's named after the Pioneers, the Soviet Union version of the Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts (pictured below. We do not own the rights to the below image.)
Do Buck-Tick's red scarves make more sense now?
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Pioneers were the subject of many Soviet promotional posters.
Acchan-chan wants in.
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All right, that's all well and good, you say. Your lolita friend got a nice Russian vacation and maybe possibly exchanged star charts, drank vodka and ate selodka and pickled beets with Lyudmila Putina (here at NGS, even the lolitas drink vodka!) But we still refuse to believe that red flag symbolizes anything other than dreams and blood.
I mean, just look at that bloody melancholia!
This is totally definitely not a flag. This is SYMBOLISM, man.
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Well, we can't disagree with you there, and neither can Russia.
Red flags: symbolizing revolution in Russian politics since 1917. What have your Bolsheviks done for YOU lately?
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(For those of you who've been living a quiet sheltered life under a rock all these years, in 1917, the Bolshevik revolutionaries overthrew the Russian tsars after centuries of autocratic rule. This mosaic in Baltiskaya Station, St. Petersburg, depicts the successful revolutionaries hoisting the flag over the city. Look familiar?)
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In conclusion: this has been a Not Greatest Visual Historical Retrospective Photo-Essay. Special thanks to our Russian-speaking lolita-for-hire Maria Anastasia Hisashiyevna Sakuraina for her willingness to travel to Russia to make our dream a reality. We couldn't have done it without you.
