gekiai

Yeah I agree on that, but if the band release songs we shall be able to judge these songs on how it sounds on CD, the person above say that if we haven't seen them live we can't judge the quality of them and that's pretty stupid to me 

Lmao that is a pretty stupid argument, if these songs are created for live performance don't release it on CD then

Sure, but it's not like seeing Mejibray live is just a matter of buying tickets and driving to a local venue for anyone outside Japan. 

You can't put a price on seeing some internet people act heartbroken and shocked over such an announcement from a band whom they claim undying devotion to yet....
 
..not devoted enough to know VK bands work. Like they are REALLY surprised as if they think some unforeseen tragedy has taken place to cause this.
 
They don't seem to realize how much in excess their output was... probably see no difference in the quality of releases either. I guess they assume songs just kind of write themselves if you spend enough time being cute and all. The boys do give that impression..
 
Stay on hiatus until their short-term attention span dies out, then quietly come back and.... try to build a better fanbase.
 
I'm a fan of MEJIBRAY and I think MEJIBAY fans deserve everything they've got coming to them in life lol

Tumblr is just full of fangirls whining as if they were going to disband. Also, hardly anyone in this fandom does anything for the fans and it's been like that for years, so don't count on the fanbase to translate anything at all. They prefer to spam the social media of band members and tumblr with riddiculous comments.

About time. Everything after 420 did not interest me, and seemed to be rapid fire releases in order to keep their popularity up and running.
 
I do believe this is the break they truly deserve. I have hope that whenever they do come back, it'll be something great and different.

yes because mh is full of whites. nothing but whites. this forum's color should be white instead of black.
 
Fucking idiot, living up to both his name and the band's name (Bataar, more like Pataar, amirite).
 

Patrik stop lurking.
 
 

Seriously, this mejibray hiatus has made the VK sphere the most exciting it's been in years. 
 
That or I just like to watch the world burn 

Probably already an overstated point for some of us, but just in case we get the inevitable "BUT... did the writer/lyricist mean/intend this??" objection (thankfully we haven't) - there's a landmark essay called "The Intentional Fallacy" by Wimsatt and Beardsley that has argued quite persuasively that it's immaterial what the author had meant to say. All we have at our disposal is the text, and what matters are the various readings the text opens itself to and makes possible as it circulates across different times, spaces, languages. We're not interested in (and can never be) plumbing the depths of the author's consciousness, so that's not the point of exercises like this  But if we really want to, we can satisfy ourselves with knowing that the band had knowingly alluded to Jean-Jacques Rousseau  
 
As for the song itself: while I generally don’t have much of an intuition for this kind of lyrics (I’m sure most MH people have more meaningful things to say on the lyrics directly), I found a ton of interesting ideas in the previous posts that I feel I can say something about so allow me to briefly chip in with some of my thoughts. More than a detailed reading of the lyrics per se it's kind of a running “commentary” with some indications along the way (hopefully) on why/how these ideas might hook on to the lyrics.
 
I'll limit myself to making one longer comment and a shorter one. My longer point reads more like an extended footnote to @chemicalpictures's post so I'll put it under spoiler tags:
 
 
And the shorter remark: I was going to comment on the ‘doppelganger’ effect in the lyrics (everyone who has said something so far has noticed a kind of echo, repetition, or doubling that takes place in the lyrics) but this post is long enough so I'll keep it to a few words:
 
In Rousseau’s philosophy, he makes a distinction between what he calls amour de soi (love of the self) and amour-propre (self-love). “Love of the self” is a regard for self-preservation independent of what other people might think or feel about me, while “self-love” is a ‘corrupted’ version which arose because we desire other people to see us in a particular way. This is related to the whole "passage from savagery to civilization" narrative that the Enlightenment was obsessed with (for Rousseau, “self-love” only emerged in a “civilized” society where we're compelled to enter into social/political relationships with other people) – but more important for our purposes is how this “self-love” operates on the basis of a kind of split subjectivity. What I mean is that Rousseau’s “self-love” assumes not one but two “I”, one that other people see and we want to make look good, and a more interior/primitive “I” behind the screen that’s making this judgment in advance and dressing up the first "I", as it were. In Chiaki’s lyrics we find a series of echoes: “デキタ。” (in Katakana) becoming “できた。” (Hiragana) – a repetition but in a different script – almost like a different (/same?) person repeating the same words. Also, the line “僕は「僕」と君とディナー” is precisely this doubling of the self that Rousseau’s “self-love” gestures towards: an (authentic) I, and a (spectral) “I” that exists as a second-order construction in language, set typographically here in quotation marks.
 

Oh boy, we are in for a ride!
 
To start, the title immediately got my attention. I think you are right on point when talking about Rousseau, and this brings me years back to my classes on the history of philosophy.
 
There's a philosophycal concept called 'State of Nature', coined by Thomas Hobbes, which in simplifying terms describes that humans living in a natural state, without being under a common acknowledged leader (governments or a king for example) will be in a state of constant every man for himself, and everyone against everyone. You can conclude that the raw state of a human being is someone egoistical, unpredictable, maybe violent and by all means, alone, distrustful.
 
Rousseau disputes that conclusion, and affirms that a Natural Human is neither a good or bad in modern society terms, he is simply a man of sensations, feelings and needs. In other words, that human is not intentional evil, he is simply unaware of such concepts. He will fill his basic desires (food, taking care of himself, reproducing). He is not hostile towards other human beings, he simply lacks the reason for society or rules.
 
If Chiaki is indeed talking about Jean Jacques Rousseau, we could assume that he does think Hobbes is correct, and Rousseau would be naive to think a human is not crude as described by Hobbes. I wanna hear more thoughts on this.
 
As such, I would interpret the PV as a person in its natural state described by Hobbes bounded by the rules of society, rebelling and discovering his raw state as a human:
 
- Using lipstick, which can be seen as an act of transgression/experimentation/reaching his true self and being chastised by his mother, the ruling figure;
- Killing butterflies, which may indicates his further urge as an evil, emotionless being, being again hold back by the figure of authority;
- Killing his partner, the ultimate transgression, and maybe eating his corpse, satisfying his most basic, raw needs as a human;
 
The scene of him puking after killing his partner and reminiscing his mother could indicate confusion between following his urges and the guilt of his despicable acts. And yet, he couln't help but trying to do it again. This sentiment is widely seen in movies or profiles of serial killers and psychopaths, which we could say are indeed "savage" human being, as their disdain for society rules.
 
Regarding the butterfly, I think @plastic_rainboware mostly right!
 
Some thoughts Genius-style:
 
"I want to destroy the murky future / I rub my hand over my aching stomach": I think there's a guilt theme to be explored here. the boy do what he does, he cannot help it, but he is filled with guilty. He wants it to stop, but he can't/won't do it alone. To end his life and erase his existence, commiting the same hideous acts as he did.
 
"I made a wish when I first met you / If possible, I want you to kill me gently / And save me from this world, without leaving any of my bones": The boy wants someone to kill him. He wants to find someone who is able to do it. If not, he will kill that someone and look for another person who is able to do it.
 
"Surely, you'll be boy A a few days later / Our "secret" with a best-before date": I believe this would mean that if the person does no kill him, the "deadline expires", the boy will kill person B and eat him, like he did with boy A.
 
"To destroy the murky future/ Sin will melt sin away": To avoid him keeping doing what he does, someone will kill him. His sins will be stopped by other people's sins;
 
"We, who loved solitude, are already inside a dream / "Into the mirror" / "Inside the mirror."": they, the psychopaths, do not see the world the same way as we do, they are already living in a different world, yet the same. like a mirror.
 
I think there's more to be said, but that gives a general idea. Or we could all be tripping balls, and Chiaki was just being gross for the shock value or something else. who knows...

Hello all MH users! With the suggestion of @chemicalpictures, I bring you an analytical discussion of a song lyric I've chosen, along with its PV. Seems like this is the first time anyone has done this here so to get things pumping, and hopefully make this a success, I chose to pick a song from the increasingly popular band DEZERT. Being quite well-known for their food-related themes, as you can tell from their song titles and album titles, DEZERT do not only bring a dark and grimy atmosphere, but also present an unpleasant and repulsive feeling to your gut and mouth. If you ever took the time to read their lyrics you may never look at food the same way again. But hey, I love them for this.
 
@Zeus Let me know if there's a better section for this. Since I'm discussing about both lyric and PV I thought I'd put it in the general section instead.
 
Let's get right down to it and take a look at the original Japanese lyrics for the song, 胃潰瘍とルソーの錯覚  from their album タイトルなし(Title Nashi),  which was written by Chiaki, and then the translation, which was done by me.
 
Kanji: 胃潰瘍とルソーの錯覚  -taken from rocklyric
 
English: Gastric Ulcer and Rousseau's Illusion
 
胃潰瘍とルソーの錯覚 is a song about love and the fear of the truth and the future, written in a grotesque manner. Looking at the song title, 'gastric ulcer' ties into the food and cannibalistic theme, and after reviewing the lyrics and PV several times I've concluded that the gastric ulcer represents a kind of punishment for one's sins. A punishment for killing the ones you love and eating them to the bone, obviously. It is there as a reminder of your sins.
 
Another piece of information we get from the title is the name 'Rousseau'. Who could this Rousseau refer to and why did Chiaki choose to use this reference? (Unless the word ルソー means something else?) The first name that comes up on google is a philosopher named Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Apparently, he advocated freedom politically and made an influence during the French Revolution. I can see how 'freedom' may play a role in this, but am still puzzled as to why Chiaki would reference him specifically. If anyone is willing to dig further into this, please do.
 
Something else worth speculating is the way Chiaki divides the lyric into (A), (B), and (A.B), like a story with chapters. But then why (A.B) at the end? Maybe it's a middle section between A and B? It's possible, but I think A and B might refer to Boy A and Boy B (since he mentions 少年A under the (B) section), where as A.B refers to them both of them together at the end. If you have thoughts otherwise, please comment below~
 
I know there's still a lot to speculate about the lyrics, but let's get to the fun part and explore the peculiar PV. As if the lyrics were crazy enough, here we have additional themes like gender, homosexuality, and the butterfly motif. A young boy puts on lipstick, kills butterflies, and gets together with other males as he grows older......to kill them for their flesh and bones.
 
 
The PV follows well with the lyrics, but what intrigued me the most was the butterfly motif. We see the butterfly appear when the young boy plucks its wings and smiles, and in a few flickering screens of an injured butterfly throughout the PV. Then, at the very end we see it once more in the form of a tattoo on the left arm of the man who kills the boy (see pic below). What an ironic turn of events, seeing a butterfly, which you have mistreated in the past, the moment you die. However, since the butterfly has been depicted as being weak, being robbed of its ability to fly, I think it also serves as a representation of his weakness for not being able to face the truth and the future. In Japan, people also believe that butterflies carry souls to the dead, or represent souls of the dead, therefore adding to the irony of his fateful death.
 

 
I don't want to write too much so I'll leave the rest open for discussion! I'm sure there are deep-thinkers here who have something more interesting to share. Or if not, point out something you find interesting and analyze it, even if it's something little. It could mean something more than you think. For example, you think those wire mannequins in the PV might represent anything? Or maybe it's just a piece of decoration. For those who have knowledge in Japanese, please share thoughts about the original Japanese lyrics and other possible translations too. Have fun! ^^
 
Feel free to leave any critiques as well~

That's true. 2017 vk has been pretty average, so far. The only release I believe is an actual stand out was ORCALADE's debut. Solid as fuck.
 
on unpopular opinions: DADAROMA gets more praise than they deserve. For each killer song, they have 5 or 6 that are forgettable at best. And its a shame, cuz I really liked Crazy Shampoo and NAINE...

I don't know how unpopular this is but K-Pop >>> J-Pop. God, I hate so much, I had forgotten about it until I went to a japanese music event and they put a lot of that awful J-Pop, then I remembered why I could never listen to that. The voices, I just can't do it, nope, they make me want to rip off my ears and the music is soooooo corny. At least K-Pop singers sound like normal people.

Not from my experience. I saw DEG back in 2013 and we had a pretty rowdy, moshy, (American) audience, and he didn't seem the least bit bothered. Perhaps it just depends...? (Or he's grown more into a grumpy old man since then, who knows).

@efuru@Original Saku@The Moon@gekiai@BrenGun@237Q@Masaki89 hey everyone, just as a head-up, @plastic_rainbowalready created the first thread for analysis, and you can check it here! We've been having a really interesting discussion, and I would love to hear your thoughts aswell!

this hashtag is floating around again cuz of fucking mejibray, what a surprise
 
shows how much these fucking whiteys and Brazilians really care about jrock; if one band suddenly decides to take a break, then god forbid IT'S THE END OF VK AS WE KNOW IT!!11

As sad as I am to see them go, I'm not particularly surprised about this.
 
I remember that long pause after they released Shuuen no Campanella, and from my perspective at the time, that was understandable since they were an up-and-coming band and all. Then all of sudden Crim left. When Chaos of Dystopia and War of the Dead Paradise was released, you could just tell their quality was dwindling. I was really excited when they announced their album, Apotheosis, though, since I still had hope for them. However, when I listened to it, I couldn't even finish it because the quality was so bad. After that, I kinda dropped the ball on them but still hoped that they would get better. Judging by their band history, I can see them coming back under a new unit and a fresh new concept.
 
This was mainly a tribute band to Megaromania, also my very first visual kei band, and that was why I really loved them. I was hoping they'd be almost as good as they were, but in the end, they couldn't live up to their hype of course. By the time they form their new band or whatever, I do hope they can improve their recording quality and hire a new sound guy, lol.

Not surprising since they stopped releasing songs as frequently as before. As much as enjoy some of what they put out I do hope they learn quality is more important than quantity.

About time. Everything after 420 did not interest me, and seemed to be rapid fire releases in order to keep their popularity up and running.
 
I do believe this is the break they truly deserve. I have hope that whenever they do come back, it'll be something great and different.

Am I the only one, who's not surprised? They've been releasing way too much, their music just sounds the same all the time, it feels like they're out of new ideas. A break will be good for them, because they've been too busy with shit. I highly doubt they would announce a hiatus if they were going to disband, stop being such drama queens.

Music wise this didnt sound bad at all.  Visually, its whatever. 
DECAYS had one of the best albums of 2016. Y'all niggas trippin. 

I don't even care about what little music is there, the aesthetic is nauseating.