platy

Yoshiatsu really does have a thing for that word huh
 
 
Anyway... Great news! Wonder how many songs in dadaism #3 will be past material?

Pamy explaining/demonstrating how to make their vivacraft things!! <333
 
In case you didn't know, you can buy these paper cutouts of the members in different poses:
each set is ￥1,000. If you buy all four sets (not including the anime version) you get a signed artist photo!! https://kerberos.theshop.jp/items/3480333
 
Everything is available on their webshop!! http://vivarush.jp/webshop/
 
Even if you're not interested in buying these, just watch the video. Because. PAMY <333
 
OTSUPAMI! OHAPAMI! OPAMIPAMI~~!!

some more gorgeous photos taken at their oneman yesterday:
 
 

tbh, VK has already hit that all time low in the 90s. It's popularity in Japan is debatable. As many others have noted, VK isn't totally obscure there (though I guess it has a bad rep, so many people wouldn't ever admit to like it) but not really as popular as it was. And no, I don't think Visual kei was always as niche as it is now in Japan. Back in the old times when VK wasn't such a widely used label bands of that caliber used to fill stadiums and had regular TV and radio exposure. There's a reason why some describe the early 90s as the band explosion era, particularity in regards to the Nagoya rock music scene.
 
But yeah, those days are long gone. hell, most of us gaijin folks have no real clue about it, since the time we got introduced to Vk it was already old hat in Japan. You had to be there for yourself in the early 90s to really see and feel it – but how many foreigners, save for a few, had the privilege and luck? When bands like Luna Sea started to kick off and Malice Mizer rose to fame I was in friggin' kindergarten. Sure, I like to diss the modern scene a lot (because I simply don't like the type of music the bands are playing now), but even I know that I am not a special snowflake and a "trvuer" fan.
 
But to get back to the core of the thread: it's true that in the west VK has lost attention and Fans. people in this thread have offered enough explanations and hypotheses for it's fade in popularity. I am just here to give my two cents on the extinction of the local VK scene in my country (if you can even call it that way):
 
As with others, it all started in the early 00s with the Manga and Anime boom. I really doubt any one in Austria and Germany could have known about VK without either moving to Japan, getting introduced to it via websites and communities specializing in Glam- or Japanese rock or Anime/Manga. Most of us peeps were too young and too poor to go to Japan and most of us had no internet at home. So that leaves us with Manga and Anime. I remember I used to buy these Anime magazines of which there were plenty on the market and many of these papers tried to market japanese culture to us impressionable youths. So they had lots of articles about japanese food, society and of course music. 
 
And some might also remember that Neo Tokyo's (a japanese Manga store in Germany) founded their music publishing label (?) Gan-Shin, which brought to us some of Dir en grey's discography. Only shortly after (or before? I don't remember that well) they started playing in Germany. And as stated before in this thread, due to the Anime fad being so closely related to the J-Pop and VK boom many Manga/Anime Conventions went a great deal to get some bands, including bloody the Gazette, to play at their conventions. And it was a self fullfilling cycle that simply worked: people got to japanese music via Anime and Japan culture based media, they participated in local communities; these were lured to leave their money at the conventions and these in turn invited bands to play to bring in the fans.
 
Then there were online communities like Animexx, where we weebs gathered en masse and talked about our bandomen all day and night, spent all our time drawing and writing shitty slash fanfics and Mangas. It was like paradise. But yeah, around 2009 the German and Austrian scene started to crumble like an old ruin. Suddenly all the people crazy about Moi dix Mois (of which there were MANY here. They even called it a "Manamania") switched from VK to JPop and what they deemed "more sophisticated" music. They also sold all their previously well treasured Moi-Même-Moitié dresses and Sexpot Revenge clothes to go either "normie" or "gyaru". I noticed weblogs of people who loved VK previously popping up with lamentations about how stupid they were for liking it, that it was just a phase and that VK is actually really dumb and shitty.
 
And of course there was also the huge amount of people bickering about how the post 2009s scene wasn't as good. Tbh I can kinda related to it, because in that timespan I also stopped giving shit about newer bands. But I still like to listen to my oldies. Many others for whom it was really just a short fad, stopped caring about it entirely. 
 
Indeed, Social media and the way we consume media and music today, compared to ten years ago, factor in this as well. But the once really big German-speaking scenes, which were infamous enough to be featured regularly in sensationalist  TV formats and press, already died before all these changes could have affected the decline of interest in VK. The truth is simply that liking Visual kei was a fad and it's success in the western world a short-lived hype. Most people have since moved on or hopped on the newest trendwagon.
 
And if I am honest: I do not miss it. I think it's just fine if VK stays obscure. I have moved on and no longer care about old skewl VK being dead. As already said, many music scenes have died and never came back, and that's a fate you have to accept . Though I disagree with the notion that the current goth revival is so bad. It's not the same as the 80s, sure, but it has some fun and redeeming qualities and it's not mainstream. So, if it comes back, it will probably never reach it's former glory. And that's okay too.  A friend of mine also once said that certain eras of VK needed a certain Zeitgeist. And that Zeitgeist is just strongly tied to that specific era. If that era is over than the atmosphere that made it special in the first place is gone too. Hence some of those old music styles no longer work outside the context of so called retromania. Of course, VK has the benefit of being a patchwork genre, it can and has to adapt to survive and it will probably carry on existing in some way (or will influence something else that exists in the future). But it will never be the VK we used to fall in love when we discovered it (and that counts for all eras).
 
I also do not think I ever want the local VK scene being as big again, because I remember that it was mostly a large collection of the most immature, hysterical and downright creepy individuals I have ever seen. Some of these self-called "Visus" looked cool, but were really uncomfortable to surround you with.

I never liked gackts voice or gackt himself. I used to not like miyavi but he sorta grew on me.

BRUUUUU

So I started watching a new anime this season called Kuzu no Honkai.  That title interested me because its (official) translation is basically "Scum's Wish" and that's not something you see everyday lol.
 
 
The trailer doesn't do it any justice; it makes it seem like any other romance anime so I wasn't sure whether to watch it or not... but hey, it's a noitaminA show so it's worth a try at least. In the end, it was different than I thought it would be! The main characters don't seem to be the nicest people and there's an interesting premise: they both are in love with someone who doesn't love them back, so they're going out with each other to be those people's replacement for each other. It's a bit messed up and surprisingly NSFW (especially for a noitaminA show), but strangely endearing. It has some light-hearted humor but not too much, most of the episode was narrated by the protagonist and that's nice. Some of the lines remind me of manga, and it's probably on purpose since there are also some manga-like panels thrown in. It was a good first episode overall, I'll definitely keep watching it. Apparently the manga is still being published, but the whole anime is set to have 11 episodes.
 
I also finally watched Litle Witch Academia's movies! I really like them, so I'm gonna start the TV series soon too.

I like it! Not as catchy as the previous single but still fun. I think this lighter vibe suits them better than a heavier style, so I don't have a problem if they carry on in this direction. 

I took this week to look for some manga.
 
"Ghost in the shell"?
Out of stock.
"Pokémon RGB"?
Out of stock.
The "Saint Seiya: the lost canvas" artbook?
Out of stock.
 
My patience?
Out of stock.

A while back, I tried a women-only dating app called Her for the sake of curiosity, but I didn't really see any interesting girls in my area. There were some girls that were hot, but they lived too far. However, I did catch the attention of a few girls and we chatted for a bit, but none of the encounters ever escalated beyond that, and there was literally no spark. I later deleted the app cuz I was bored with it (and it was basically a Facebook for queer women), and I was not comfortable with trans men being on there despite being a women-only app, and more importantly, the fact that my location was being displayed publicly.

took this before i cut my hair (which i immediately regretted orz)
 
 

- the Raid. is trash. The vocalist has such a punchable face. I'll never understand how they can draw such a crowd. 
 
-Fest Vainqueur >  complete disappointment. 

- the Raid. is trash. The vocalist has such a punchable face. I'll never understand how they can draw such a crowd. 
 
-Fest Vainqueur >  complete disappointment. 

The thing with visual kei is that like many scenes it will inevitably fade in and out of popularity. Might it hit an alltime low? Sure it could, but chances are it would rebound in a few short years, just like how the musical styles they play fade in and out of popularity. I wouldn't be worried about it at all, heck, visual kei even met a similar decline in the early 2000s before exploding again.

Last night I had a vision that Maria cross would make a comeback in 2017

I found one today !! You know that boring, generic jazzy kind of song that 90% of Jrock bands did ? Yeah. 

Unpopular opinions, this is my cup of tea.
 
Here I go...
 
Malice Mizer is overrated and boring. Moi Dix Mois is better. I get that Malice was a HUGE influence on VK and lauched Gackt’s career… but they bore me to death.
People moaning over MM’s disbandment and Hide’s death, when they’ve been listening to VK since 2004, are soooo stupid. You didn’t live it. Quit crying over a band you didn’t even follow while they were active.

Everything The GazettE released before Nil (or was Dim first) is crappy. Even half of Nil and Dim are crappy. Their mini albums are terrible, Ruki couldn’t sing and more than songs it was a jumble of sensless noise. I have gotten actual headaches listening to their earlier stuff and not even Deathgaze and Nocturnal Bloodlust combined have made my head hurt yet with their heavyness.
I’m judging quality solely on sound, not even going to touch lyrics or looks because I simply not care about a band looking edgy but sounding crappy. The new GazettE sounds way better, at least to my ears.

People who whine about VK being expensive and being “too poor” to buy a CD but spend a shitload of money on expensive VK-like clothing are cringe-worthy. “Yass, The GazettE is my favorite band in the world. I mean, I LOVE them. I WORSHIP them. I’d rape Ruki and if they disband I’ll suicide. What? Buy a CD? Nooo I download everything, I’m too poor” Says the fangirl who is wearing a $150 Sexpot Revenge shirt. 
In my country (Chile, that long noodle in the South American map) there actually is a VK “scene”, for lack of a better English word in my mind, outside of the internet. There’s places for VK fans to hangout, you can even go to Blondie club and “dance” (headbang) to VK one or two nights a month. I’ve seen a shitload of fans who claim to be “the number one fan” of band x or y, wear expensive clothing, have money to get drunk once a week and smoke pot more often than not, yet are too poor to even consider buying their favorite album from the band they claim to worship so much. Are they on the scene because they enjoy the music or just to become popular for wearing Black Moral?

I don’t like Dir En Grey. I never liked Kyo’s singing. I’ve heard some of their albums twice in an attempt of giving them another shot… there’s no use. 
I like Miyavi as a person waaay more than his music. XD I love what he does to bring Japanese rock to a more western audience, how he manages his personal life with his work, I follow him on social media and his daughters are the cutest thing out there. I just don’t listen to him

Someone mentioned types of voice and there was some sort of debate… I won’t get into compositions, but many bands sound similar because the vocalists have the same type of voice. When I first heard ViViD they sounded exactly like Alice Nine to me, same with the Lotus. Listening to more of their discography one comes to realize that they have indeed different sounds, but their vocalists do have the same type of generic voice you hear in so many other VK bands… Singers like Asagi, Juka and Sono do stand out because they have different voices from the average Japanese male. Another unpopular opinion: Kamijo’s voice in Lareine sounded like crap. And I’ve heard that in Versailles he got it… what’s the music equivalent of photoshop? Thing is, he doesn’t sound that great to me as he does for everyone else, though he does make good music XD

And I’ll rant a bit now.
Some people who claim everywhere they love a band but actually only like specific releases also get on my nerves. This one is a personal one. The Vice-president of the (unnoficial) D fanclub in Chile goes around spreading her undying love for Asagi, fangirling, running a fanpage and nagging me to translate every single interview and ameba post for her… and every release I ask her if she wants to buy the new CD with me and share shipping expenses and every single time she refuses and goes on and on about D’s musical quality decline (something I’ll not get into now) and how nothing will ever be at Tafel Anatomie’s level… and everybody on the community wonders why on earth she is going out of her way to keep a community active for a band she no longer likes instead of letting fans who actually are into the band’s current work step in for her. I know there are other people like that and I wonder if they are still on it because x bandmember is hot af or because they enjoy having a “position of power” over the rest of the fans.
 

Lynch and Gazette are boring me to death.

psc kei is worse than oshare

i hated stacked rubbish besides filth in the beauty. dogma and undying are my top faves but i can't stand anything else by the gazette tbh
 
btw i like mia

VAMPS is really not that great of a band, period. I tried listening to them but everything ive checked out is nothing short of mediocre, just boring rock. At least to me, it feels like a lot of their fan base our just blind Hyde stans...or people who miss L'arc and feel like VAMPS is the next best thing to cling to (which they aren't). 

This feels like when one of those really indie bands with like two fans disband lol

I'm  in the exact same situation...but I managed to hold back twice now (!) Just imagine how much merch WITHOUT shipping fees and import fees you'll be able to get once you're there.
You can do it