helcchi

There's a few things I want to point out while the topic is still young.
 
This is only reliable to gauge foreigner interest in visual kei. I do not know if Japanese fans of visual kei use Google, a different type of search engine, or if they avoid the process altogether and share privately. We have to combine this data with some other sources of data for more info. But this is a great start. The focus is on March 2009 but the rate of decrease is at its highest in 2010 roughly a year later. Then it peters out. What gives? Well, that's when Tainted World died off and we had to navigate to our ZetaBoards replacement. We used it until the end of 2010-2011 when we are able to get some real hardware and hosting providers (before we were running on total crap and the forum could barely stay up...oldies remember that). In that time I imagine a lot of people's interest died off since they couldn't get free music anymore. Tour managers shitting the bed bringing visual kei to the masses; fans shitting the bed asking for bands to come and then not going to the concerts. The sound changing. 2009 is where I'd peg the overall direction of visual kei to change to what it is today. I can't describe it aurally but we all know VK in 2016 isn't the same as VK in 2006. I think this lost a lot of people too when their favorite bands disbanded and there was no one to fill the void.

Noticed something interesting when I was exploring worldwide trends for the search term "visual kei" on google - that tiny spike earlier this year just happened to be when youtubers react to visual kei came out:

 
So visual kei is dead. And at the rate it is going now, will be even dead-er; A scene stagnating on the same looks and sounds, rarely venturing out musically if at all. But it wasn't always that way. Although it would be  appropriate to refer to the 90s golden era of vk to remind us of how opulent the scene once was, I want to bring back memories of 2009.
 
In October 2008, Kerrang ran a feature on jrock, publishing an article predicting jrock to go big in Europe in 2009.
And sure enough, google trends highlighted the correlation clearly, confirming that the search terms "j-rock" and "visual kei" did indeed peak between January and March 2009.
 
However, following vk's brief global success was a period of near-exponential decline - to what we see now as the lowest point of popularity vk has ever experienced in a 12 year time-span. Even that spike in August wasn't enough to break above 2004's lowest point.
 
Personally, I'd been a passive fan of visual kei for many years prior to 2009, but it wasn't until 2009 that I became fully engaged. One prominent catalyst was Japanese blogging platform Ameba launching its virtual community ‘Pigg’ that year, becoming a game changer in the way fans and bands could interact. Popular musicians were also given accounts powered by ameba, a la twitter's verified personalities.
 
I remember 2009 as a year that several vk bands were going major and gaining international recognition. It was no surprise that vk reached its global height by being much more accessible through social media and other digital channels. This momentum seemed to be gaining quickly until 2010 brought a sharp turn of unfortunate events within the scene and the emergence of kpop poached a large part of the international vk audience.
 
However, the situation in Japan is a bit different, as vk has been pretty steady since it had already declined by the turn of the century. The search term "ヴィジュアル系" on google trends says as much.
 
A few years ago, major labels published all those visual kei cover albums probably in an attempt to raise the relevance of visual kei, but the hype had pretty much died by then. The drought of talent and variety meant that each band was no better than the other, and was enough for many people to lose interest. Stricter piracy laws also meant that music had become less accessible, with people being reluctant to pay the exorbitant prices of some CDs. Not to mention the discontinuation of many vk magazines as an indication of the scene's current degradation. Marketing and business models that worked in the 90s and early 00s struggle to find significance in the present day, yet management has not evolved to adapt to current trends (or have done so poorly).
 
Now that the last of the influential underground vk labels is defunct, vk doesn't have the backing and budget as it once did. X Japan and Luna Sea are like the only lifeline left for vk - there can't even be a vk festival without either X Japan or Luna Sea in the lineup.
 
I remember reading an interview where Yohio mentioned that he kinda killed western interest in vk, but I don't particularly attribute that to those western vk acts damaging the reputation of this uniquely japanese scene. Bands such as D'espairsRay, girugamesh, the Underneath, Rentrer en Soi, Dio, UnsraW and Black:List etc who laid the groundwork for vk to make its mark in the west are no longer around. I'm surprised lynch. didn't carry the torch.
 
I don't want this thread to sound too much like #resurrectvk, but instead I want ignite a discussion (and maybe create a dialog) - how did the vk boom of '09 affect you in your country, what could've been done differently, or the best things to come out of  that little modern renaissance of vk history.
 
 

Well, I got into VK in like 99. I'd say the 09 boom was definitely a high point because you could find almost anything on a multitude of sites though granted the quality wasn't as good as it is today. (128bitrate all over). It was a fun ride, and the ride keeps going. WE are here and we like visual kei. As long as the core group remains it shall never die in America.  It's our job to bring it to those who are interested, and that doesn't just go for visual kei but Japanese music in general. Even otonomai/yorukaze/younmai is gone now, besides shitty blogs holding the last remnants of years gone by, this is the core site.
 
#RideOrDieTogether

I'm surprised that 2009 was the peak. It was already around that time I was complainin' how there's no good shows to attend lol. With that said, those shows that we did have sold very well and a few bands could even venture to have gigs in the second largest city of the country as well. 
I reckon the pop culture peak of visual kei in Finland was in 2007-2008 when the odd few bands made the telly and got gifted some magazine space. Shows were packed, the fashion was wild, no koreans gnawing in on the real estate, events that were associated with visual kei could actually be held at relatively low risk.
 
 
What's up for debate though, is how the new fanbase of the peak years wasn't able to recover from the crucial wave of hiatus', disbandments and stylistic changes that the most popular bands went through around the turn of the 2010's. Everyone should recall how often one heard people lamenting on the state of the scene with ambiguous claims of a lack of X, Y and Z, setting the scene for the gradual petering out either to the clutches of the koreans or just general normalcy. This is the way of the flesh for a fad certainly, and nobody is able to sustain creative output nor popularity for an extended period of time, but that's not all that there is to it. I suppose among great many other things, it's not unjust to consider public merely as fickle if their visual kei habit was dependent on the existence of Dio and Unsraw. Visual kei on the internet had good enough infrastructure to allow these people to discover new and old bands with relative ease, but one should still never underestimate the stupidity and the incapability of the rank and file to utilize such tools perfectly well in their disposal. There are still people who'll waltz into a conversation, feigning willful ignorance, saying "OH THESE BANDS OF TODAY AREN'T LIKE THE GIRUGAMESH OF YORE. SO WHAT HAPPENED WITH THAT VISUAL KEI?". This means that relative interest is there; they haven't forgotten about it, so what gives? 
 
A certain contributing factor that I don't think gets brought up enough is the bush league organising and the sheer ineptitude of the promoters. The fad really blew its wad during the two years it was at its peak, and it wasn't sustainable. Absurdly dumb, dead certainly set for failure, shows got booked even as late as 2015: and anyone with a lick of sense ought to know that in the long term a no-show is always better than a small-shit show. When you're flopping the proper course of action is never to keep on flopping until you can flop no more, but to change the approach. Rest assured a lot of money and contacts have been squandered by idiots already one foot out the door. Unsraw's European tour is a classic example, and Merry's a more recent one. If you're not able to project that there's no demand, and that by booking this there'll be no demand in the future, then you're simply not helping.  
 
The networking on the local level wasn't great and at its worst there were even open divisions between the fanbase of privileged rich blogger cunts and those who took the train to shows from their shit provincial towns who could barely afford the mcdonald's and second hand converse ( I confess my dislike of the former, but I'm not merely projecting it. I heard many other people voice it also, completely unprovoked by yours truly. ) When enough shows and events are abjectly booked to fail with a lack of camaraderie to match, the rot is aggravated to spread into the brain, and eventually even the life support in form of a Gazette european tour won't do you no good. Their 2016 show in Helsinki did not sell out. That's equal to the sky falling out in visual kei terms.
 
A curious example of grassroots level organising seemingly done correct: take a look at the pictures of SANA's recent solo tour from from the backarse of eastern europe. Going through all those pictures you'll notice that while the central and western European crowds are only a handful at best, the Russian and Ukrainian shows pull a kind of a crowd that man of SANA's stature has no right of pulling. I'm terribly interested to find out how they've managed to do this. The only reason I can manage to come up with by speculation alone is that the fans of "Japanese stuff" are so organised, if not rabid, that when something is organised, enough effort is done that it'll pull enough solidarity to maintain the scene's health. I swear to God one of those Sana crowds has equal heads to what EAT YOU ALIVE or heidi had here in the past three years. It can't be that there's more fans of this shit there than in here just by sheer chance, luck and coincidence. 

Noticed something interesting when I was exploring worldwide trends for the search term "visual kei" on google - that tiny spike earlier this year just happened to be when youtubers react to visual kei came out:

 
So visual kei is dead. And at the rate it is going now, will be even dead-er; A scene stagnating on the same looks and sounds, rarely venturing out musically if at all. But it wasn't always that way. Although it would be  appropriate to refer to the 90s golden era of vk to remind us of how opulent the scene once was, I want to bring back memories of 2009.
 
In October 2008, Kerrang ran a feature on jrock, publishing an article predicting jrock to go big in Europe in 2009.
And sure enough, google trends highlighted the correlation clearly, confirming that the search terms "j-rock" and "visual kei" did indeed peak between January and March 2009.
 
However, following vk's brief global success was a period of near-exponential decline - to what we see now as the lowest point of popularity vk has ever experienced in a 12 year time-span. Even that spike in August wasn't enough to break above 2004's lowest point.
 
Personally, I'd been a passive fan of visual kei for many years prior to 2009, but it wasn't until 2009 that I became fully engaged. One prominent catalyst was Japanese blogging platform Ameba launching its virtual community ‘Pigg’ that year, becoming a game changer in the way fans and bands could interact. Popular musicians were also given accounts powered by ameba, a la twitter's verified personalities.
 
I remember 2009 as a year that several vk bands were going major and gaining international recognition. It was no surprise that vk reached its global height by being much more accessible through social media and other digital channels. This momentum seemed to be gaining quickly until 2010 brought a sharp turn of unfortunate events within the scene and the emergence of kpop poached a large part of the international vk audience.
 
However, the situation in Japan is a bit different, as vk has been pretty steady since it had already declined by the turn of the century. The search term "ヴィジュアル系" on google trends says as much.
 
A few years ago, major labels published all those visual kei cover albums probably in an attempt to raise the relevance of visual kei, but the hype had pretty much died by then. The drought of talent and variety meant that each band was no better than the other, and was enough for many people to lose interest. Stricter piracy laws also meant that music had become less accessible, with people being reluctant to pay the exorbitant prices of some CDs. Not to mention the discontinuation of many vk magazines as an indication of the scene's current degradation. Marketing and business models that worked in the 90s and early 00s struggle to find significance in the present day, yet management has not evolved to adapt to current trends (or have done so poorly).
 
Now that the last of the influential underground vk labels is defunct, vk doesn't have the backing and budget as it once did. X Japan and Luna Sea are like the only lifeline left for vk - there can't even be a vk festival without either X Japan or Luna Sea in the lineup.
 
I remember reading an interview where Yohio mentioned that he kinda killed western interest in vk, but I don't particularly attribute that to those western vk acts damaging the reputation of this uniquely japanese scene. Bands such as D'espairsRay, girugamesh, the Underneath, Rentrer en Soi, Dio, UnsraW and Black:List etc who laid the groundwork for vk to make its mark in the west are no longer around. I'm surprised lynch. didn't carry the torch.
 
I don't want this thread to sound too much like #resurrectvk, but instead I want ignite a discussion (and maybe create a dialog) - how did the vk boom of '09 affect you in your country, what could've been done differently, or the best things to come out of  that little modern renaissance of vk history.
 
 

Noticed something interesting when I was exploring worldwide trends for the search term "visual kei" on google - that tiny spike earlier this year just happened to be when youtubers react to visual kei came out:

 
So visual kei is dead. And at the rate it is going now, will be even dead-er; A scene stagnating on the same looks and sounds, rarely venturing out musically if at all. But it wasn't always that way. Although it would be  appropriate to refer to the 90s golden era of vk to remind us of how opulent the scene once was, I want to bring back memories of 2009.
 
In October 2008, Kerrang ran a feature on jrock, publishing an article predicting jrock to go big in Europe in 2009.
And sure enough, google trends highlighted the correlation clearly, confirming that the search terms "j-rock" and "visual kei" did indeed peak between January and March 2009.
 
However, following vk's brief global success was a period of near-exponential decline - to what we see now as the lowest point of popularity vk has ever experienced in a 12 year time-span. Even that spike in August wasn't enough to break above 2004's lowest point.
 
Personally, I'd been a passive fan of visual kei for many years prior to 2009, but it wasn't until 2009 that I became fully engaged. One prominent catalyst was Japanese blogging platform Ameba launching its virtual community ‘Pigg’ that year, becoming a game changer in the way fans and bands could interact. Popular musicians were also given accounts powered by ameba, a la twitter's verified personalities.
 
I remember 2009 as a year that several vk bands were going major and gaining international recognition. It was no surprise that vk reached its global height by being much more accessible through social media and other digital channels. This momentum seemed to be gaining quickly until 2010 brought a sharp turn of unfortunate events within the scene and the emergence of kpop poached a large part of the international vk audience.
 
However, the situation in Japan is a bit different, as vk has been pretty steady since it had already declined by the turn of the century. The search term "ヴィジュアル系" on google trends says as much.
 
A few years ago, major labels published all those visual kei cover albums probably in an attempt to raise the relevance of visual kei, but the hype had pretty much died by then. The drought of talent and variety meant that each band was no better than the other, and was enough for many people to lose interest. Stricter piracy laws also meant that music had become less accessible, with people being reluctant to pay the exorbitant prices of some CDs. Not to mention the discontinuation of many vk magazines as an indication of the scene's current degradation. Marketing and business models that worked in the 90s and early 00s struggle to find significance in the present day, yet management has not evolved to adapt to current trends (or have done so poorly).
 
Now that the last of the influential underground vk labels is defunct, vk doesn't have the backing and budget as it once did. X Japan and Luna Sea are like the only lifeline left for vk - there can't even be a vk festival without either X Japan or Luna Sea in the lineup.
 
I remember reading an interview where Yohio mentioned that he kinda killed western interest in vk, but I don't particularly attribute that to those western vk acts damaging the reputation of this uniquely japanese scene. Bands such as D'espairsRay, girugamesh, the Underneath, Rentrer en Soi, Dio, UnsraW and Black:List etc who laid the groundwork for vk to make its mark in the west are no longer around. I'm surprised lynch. didn't carry the torch.
 
I don't want this thread to sound too much like #resurrectvk, but instead I want ignite a discussion (and maybe create a dialog) - how did the vk boom of '09 affect you in your country, what could've been done differently, or the best things to come out of  that little modern renaissance of vk history.
 
 

Noticed something interesting when I was exploring worldwide trends for the search term "visual kei" on google - that tiny spike earlier this year just happened to be when youtubers react to visual kei came out:

 
So visual kei is dead. And at the rate it is going now, will be even dead-er; A scene stagnating on the same looks and sounds, rarely venturing out musically if at all. But it wasn't always that way. Although it would be  appropriate to refer to the 90s golden era of vk to remind us of how opulent the scene once was, I want to bring back memories of 2009.
 
In October 2008, Kerrang ran a feature on jrock, publishing an article predicting jrock to go big in Europe in 2009.
And sure enough, google trends highlighted the correlation clearly, confirming that the search terms "j-rock" and "visual kei" did indeed peak between January and March 2009.
 
However, following vk's brief global success was a period of near-exponential decline - to what we see now as the lowest point of popularity vk has ever experienced in a 12 year time-span. Even that spike in August wasn't enough to break above 2004's lowest point.
 
Personally, I'd been a passive fan of visual kei for many years prior to 2009, but it wasn't until 2009 that I became fully engaged. One prominent catalyst was Japanese blogging platform Ameba launching its virtual community ‘Pigg’ that year, becoming a game changer in the way fans and bands could interact. Popular musicians were also given accounts powered by ameba, a la twitter's verified personalities.
 
I remember 2009 as a year that several vk bands were going major and gaining international recognition. It was no surprise that vk reached its global height by being much more accessible through social media and other digital channels. This momentum seemed to be gaining quickly until 2010 brought a sharp turn of unfortunate events within the scene and the emergence of kpop poached a large part of the international vk audience.
 
However, the situation in Japan is a bit different, as vk has been pretty steady since it had already declined by the turn of the century. The search term "ヴィジュアル系" on google trends says as much.
 
A few years ago, major labels published all those visual kei cover albums probably in an attempt to raise the relevance of visual kei, but the hype had pretty much died by then. The drought of talent and variety meant that each band was no better than the other, and was enough for many people to lose interest. Stricter piracy laws also meant that music had become less accessible, with people being reluctant to pay the exorbitant prices of some CDs. Not to mention the discontinuation of many vk magazines as an indication of the scene's current degradation. Marketing and business models that worked in the 90s and early 00s struggle to find significance in the present day, yet management has not evolved to adapt to current trends (or have done so poorly).
 
Now that the last of the influential underground vk labels is defunct, vk doesn't have the backing and budget as it once did. X Japan and Luna Sea are like the only lifeline left for vk - there can't even be a vk festival without either X Japan or Luna Sea in the lineup.
 
I remember reading an interview where Yohio mentioned that he kinda killed western interest in vk, but I don't particularly attribute that to those western vk acts damaging the reputation of this uniquely japanese scene. Bands such as D'espairsRay, girugamesh, the Underneath, Rentrer en Soi, Dio, UnsraW and Black:List etc who laid the groundwork for vk to make its mark in the west are no longer around. I'm surprised lynch. didn't carry the torch.
 
I don't want this thread to sound too much like #resurrectvk, but instead I want ignite a discussion (and maybe create a dialog) - how did the vk boom of '09 affect you in your country, what could've been done differently, or the best things to come out of  that little modern renaissance of vk history.
 
 

Noticed something interesting when I was exploring worldwide trends for the search term "visual kei" on google - that tiny spike earlier this year just happened to be when youtubers react to visual kei came out:

 
So visual kei is dead. And at the rate it is going now, will be even dead-er; A scene stagnating on the same looks and sounds, rarely venturing out musically if at all. But it wasn't always that way. Although it would be  appropriate to refer to the 90s golden era of vk to remind us of how opulent the scene once was, I want to bring back memories of 2009.
 
In October 2008, Kerrang ran a feature on jrock, publishing an article predicting jrock to go big in Europe in 2009.
And sure enough, google trends highlighted the correlation clearly, confirming that the search terms "j-rock" and "visual kei" did indeed peak between January and March 2009.
 
However, following vk's brief global success was a period of near-exponential decline - to what we see now as the lowest point of popularity vk has ever experienced in a 12 year time-span. Even that spike in August wasn't enough to break above 2004's lowest point.
 
Personally, I'd been a passive fan of visual kei for many years prior to 2009, but it wasn't until 2009 that I became fully engaged. One prominent catalyst was Japanese blogging platform Ameba launching its virtual community ‘Pigg’ that year, becoming a game changer in the way fans and bands could interact. Popular musicians were also given accounts powered by ameba, a la twitter's verified personalities.
 
I remember 2009 as a year that several vk bands were going major and gaining international recognition. It was no surprise that vk reached its global height by being much more accessible through social media and other digital channels. This momentum seemed to be gaining quickly until 2010 brought a sharp turn of unfortunate events within the scene and the emergence of kpop poached a large part of the international vk audience.
 
However, the situation in Japan is a bit different, as vk has been pretty steady since it had already declined by the turn of the century. The search term "ヴィジュアル系" on google trends says as much.
 
A few years ago, major labels published all those visual kei cover albums probably in an attempt to raise the relevance of visual kei, but the hype had pretty much died by then. The drought of talent and variety meant that each band was no better than the other, and was enough for many people to lose interest. Stricter piracy laws also meant that music had become less accessible, with people being reluctant to pay the exorbitant prices of some CDs. Not to mention the discontinuation of many vk magazines as an indication of the scene's current degradation. Marketing and business models that worked in the 90s and early 00s struggle to find significance in the present day, yet management has not evolved to adapt to current trends (or have done so poorly).
 
Now that the last of the influential underground vk labels is defunct, vk doesn't have the backing and budget as it once did. X Japan and Luna Sea are like the only lifeline left for vk - there can't even be a vk festival without either X Japan or Luna Sea in the lineup.
 
I remember reading an interview where Yohio mentioned that he kinda killed western interest in vk, but I don't particularly attribute that to those western vk acts damaging the reputation of this uniquely japanese scene. Bands such as D'espairsRay, girugamesh, the Underneath, Rentrer en Soi, Dio, UnsraW and Black:List etc who laid the groundwork for vk to make its mark in the west are no longer around. I'm surprised lynch. didn't carry the torch.
 
I don't want this thread to sound too much like #resurrectvk, but instead I want ignite a discussion (and maybe create a dialog) - how did the vk boom of '09 affect you in your country, what could've been done differently, or the best things to come out of  that little modern renaissance of vk history.
 
 

what about fork-kei? don't forget fork-kei.
 
bands: the gallo
 

A few years ago, Megan Pfeifle from JaME conducted a case study on visual kei that was published in the George Mason University's peer reviewed journal:
https://issuu.com/gmreview/docs/gmr_vol21_full/76?ff=true&e=3279065/1255060
 
At the same time, she adapted her case study into a 13 week webseries called "Globalizing Visual Kei" for JaME. You might find some useful content there.
You might also like to check out her dissection of Nagoya Kei.
 
 
True for avelcain. Early deathgaze embodied the nagoya kei music and style. To some, they might still be considered one of the last nagoya kei bands but the lineage sort of ends with them.

@TakadanobabaalienI don’t disagree, I hate pigeon-holing genres. And what once distinguished Nagoya Kei isn’t isolated to that scene anymore, as the looks and sounds have assimilated into the wider visual kei spectrum. It’s pretty obsolete now.
I don’t think any source is definitive of the subgenre - even english wikipedia cited Asahi Shinbun’s article on Nagoya Kei, but that doesn’t make it closed to interpretation. 
 
Side note: Apparently the term Nagoya Kei predates Visual Kei, so @haiironoanemoneyou might consider this if you’re excluding kotekote
 
Having said that, what about...
art-kei - moran, amber gris, more, sioux zetsubou-kei - avelcain food-kei - dezert homage-kei - grieva, gossip vk-djentcore - jiluka grandpa-kei - chaos system, number mouse, the piass chikasen-kei - every under code band ever

Unfortunately, that little fact doesn't make it any more interesting. But get that money Leda.

for those interested, Leda played guitar on the title track.

| If the gimmick works farm it; don't ditch it for something boring.
 
It's no secret that I fawn over everything Wagakki-Band has done. Let it be known that I also encourage musicians to have side projects and fully express their creative tendencies. But given the timing of it all, I could be forgiven for viewing Yuko Suzuhana's solo career as a power play. My gut reaction was that Wagakki-Band was still too young of a band for her to tire of the traditional aesthetic - even considering her past activities with Hanafugetsu - and deduced that CRADLE OF ETERNITY would break from the aforementioned aesthetic completely. I never doubted Suzuhana's vocal excellence, and she sounds beautiful on every song. But without the traditional bend to her music, something different but equally as compelling has to take its place. CRADLE OF ETERNITY is too safe; a cold, calculated, manufactured slice of unoffensive corporate pop that doesn't stand out.
 
There's a lot of competition in the pop scene. If you want to make it, you have to stand out. At one point in time, Jun Togawa, Shiina Ringo, and most recently Seiko Oomori have broken into the mainstream by bucking the trend, but remaining accessible. CRADLE OF ETERNITY  does the complete opposite; it's musically excellent but devoid of spice. There's no excitement, no surprises, and the album plods along at the same pace for ten tracks. At the end there's a piano solo of lead track "永世のクレイドル" and an even slower version of "Remains" - the most interesting songs on the album - because what the album needed to do was go even slower. There was plenty of room for experimentation with darkwave, electronic, the traditional influence she is purposefully shunning, or even classic rock, but CRADLE OF ETERNITY settles for only the safest brand of pop. It's shallow and one-dimensional, if not superficially pretty all the way through, and that's about it.  
 
I want to like the release more based purely on who is involved and how good she can be at her best, but CRADLE OF ETERNITY does Yuko Suzuhana no justice. She needs more than tracks that sound like generic anime openers on Prozac. This is a modest start to a solo career that won't take off until the music direction changes. At the very least, it's money for her and I'm happy about that. For me, it's the newest entry to the pile of music that I'll forget about soon.
 
 
Support the artist!

Amazon (JP) | Play-Asia

(Before that, I’m so sorry the length of this introduction reads like an essay but please bear with me ><)
 
I have many interests, but let’s talk about visual kei as this is the one constant that has taken up most of my life.
 
2009 was a time of change for me and visual kei. Ameba launched its virtual community Pigg, which instantly sucked the life out of me and as it turned out, so many vk bandmen had no life as well.
 
t's embarassing to talk about it now, but as teenagers with nothing better to do with our time, my friends and I would send as many friend requests as we could to band members and ‘stalk’ them whenever they logged online. Suddenly vk had become so much more intimate as we could interact with vk bandmen in real-time like never before.
 
But pigg was more than that. Some of my fondest memories have been the designated VK showroom where you could stream youtube videos to a crowd, meeting new people in the club rooms who share a common interest and of course having to witness the silly antics of some of those bandmen. I got to know a lot of bands that I would otherwise never had found out about, had conversations, learning about their personalities and interests. I also got to learn that some of the musicians in the darkest and heaviest bands have the cutest personalities behind the keyboard, fawning over the colourful array of virtual fashion items pigg had to offer. 
 
(Asanao from lynch. case in point)
 
It was a fun and unique experience. And at the same time, information was not only more accessible than ever before, but more abundant as well, and keeping up with blogs, news, forums, and playing pigg consumed every moment of my every day which back then, I had the time and youth to do so.
 
But eventually, I burnt out.
 
I attributed my losing touch with vk to information overload. It’s been more than 4 years since I stopped going on pigg and ameblo for good, but those few years of intense dedication, even today, felt like an aeon. 
 
I used to make a lot of parodies of bandmen, and loved deduction and connecting the dots - which bands had photoshoots at which set and making 6-degrees of separation connections between members of different bands and loved hearing stories from the past.
 
I also had a enthusiasm for drawing, having drawn over a ton bands over the course of 2 years between 2011 and 2012, but suddenly it’s 2016 and all I have are 3-year-old drafts and unfinished sketches. 
 
Everything had been halted because life kinda got in the way… shattered-tranquility had long stopped being my home page and my internet’s search history doesn’t remember vkdb.jp anymore.
 
Hmm.
 
So in that gap between about 2012 and now, I had the mother of existential crises, questioning whether I was really going to follow vk for life.
 
But my passion in the music is genuine and still alive.
 
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve been disconnected from the community that I love for far too long, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to forget the memories I’ve made, the bands that I’ve followed, the stories I’ve heard and the things I’ve learned along the way - be they good or bad. I don’t want my interest of VK to die, and I don’t want to stop making funny content about VK forever.  
 
(And most importantly, I don’t want to be the only VK fan in Australia that I know. So if you’re from Sydney, please hit me up so I don’t feel lonely :3)
 
I want this to be the place where I can share my knowledge about vk so ask me anything and I hope to relearn what I’ve lost these past few years. And once again, I’m astronomically sorry about the length of this introduction (I hope it was bearable).
 
Merry Xmas btw

Wow, that's interesting.
 
Merry Christmas for you too!

Nice story!
I can pretty much relate to it (except maybe for the Ameba part, since the fun I could get there was strictly limited due to my lack of japanese skills :'D)

But I really hope you will have a good time here aswell

Your story is quite touching, I guess many people here can relate to it.

I hope you find more fans in Sydney!

@IGM_Oficial Thanks! The amount of set un-originality these days is kinda overwhelming lol. One day I might start a thread

(Before that, I’m so sorry the length of this introduction reads like an essay but please bear with me ><)
 
I have many interests, but let’s talk about visual kei as this is the one constant that has taken up most of my life.
 
2009 was a time of change for me and visual kei. Ameba launched its virtual community Pigg, which instantly sucked the life out of me and as it turned out, so many vk bandmen had no life as well.
 
t's embarassing to talk about it now, but as teenagers with nothing better to do with our time, my friends and I would send as many friend requests as we could to band members and ‘stalk’ them whenever they logged online. Suddenly vk had become so much more intimate as we could interact with vk bandmen in real-time like never before.
 
But pigg was more than that. Some of my fondest memories have been the designated VK showroom where you could stream youtube videos to a crowd, meeting new people in the club rooms who share a common interest and of course having to witness the silly antics of some of those bandmen. I got to know a lot of bands that I would otherwise never had found out about, had conversations, learning about their personalities and interests. I also got to learn that some of the musicians in the darkest and heaviest bands have the cutest personalities behind the keyboard, fawning over the colourful array of virtual fashion items pigg had to offer. 
 
(Asanao from lynch. case in point)
 
It was a fun and unique experience. And at the same time, information was not only more accessible than ever before, but more abundant as well, and keeping up with blogs, news, forums, and playing pigg consumed every moment of my every day which back then, I had the time and youth to do so.
 
But eventually, I burnt out.
 
I attributed my losing touch with vk to information overload. It’s been more than 4 years since I stopped going on pigg and ameblo for good, but those few years of intense dedication, even today, felt like an aeon. 
 
I used to make a lot of parodies of bandmen, and loved deduction and connecting the dots - which bands had photoshoots at which set and making 6-degrees of separation connections between members of different bands and loved hearing stories from the past.
 
I also had a enthusiasm for drawing, having drawn over a ton bands over the course of 2 years between 2011 and 2012, but suddenly it’s 2016 and all I have are 3-year-old drafts and unfinished sketches. 
 
Everything had been halted because life kinda got in the way… shattered-tranquility had long stopped being my home page and my internet’s search history doesn’t remember vkdb.jp anymore.
 
Hmm.
 
So in that gap between about 2012 and now, I had the mother of existential crises, questioning whether I was really going to follow vk for life.
 
But my passion in the music is genuine and still alive.
 
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve been disconnected from the community that I love for far too long, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to forget the memories I’ve made, the bands that I’ve followed, the stories I’ve heard and the things I’ve learned along the way - be they good or bad. I don’t want my interest of VK to die, and I don’t want to stop making funny content about VK forever.  
 
(And most importantly, I don’t want to be the only VK fan in Australia that I know. So if you’re from Sydney, please hit me up so I don’t feel lonely :3)
 
I want this to be the place where I can share my knowledge about vk so ask me anything and I hope to relearn what I’ve lost these past few years. And once again, I’m astronomically sorry about the length of this introduction (I hope it was bearable).
 
Merry Xmas btw

(Before that, I’m so sorry the length of this introduction reads like an essay but please bear with me ><)
 
I have many interests, but let’s talk about visual kei as this is the one constant that has taken up most of my life.
 
2009 was a time of change for me and visual kei. Ameba launched its virtual community Pigg, which instantly sucked the life out of me and as it turned out, so many vk bandmen had no life as well.
 
t's embarassing to talk about it now, but as teenagers with nothing better to do with our time, my friends and I would send as many friend requests as we could to band members and ‘stalk’ them whenever they logged online. Suddenly vk had become so much more intimate as we could interact with vk bandmen in real-time like never before.
 
But pigg was more than that. Some of my fondest memories have been the designated VK showroom where you could stream youtube videos to a crowd, meeting new people in the club rooms who share a common interest and of course having to witness the silly antics of some of those bandmen. I got to know a lot of bands that I would otherwise never had found out about, had conversations, learning about their personalities and interests. I also got to learn that some of the musicians in the darkest and heaviest bands have the cutest personalities behind the keyboard, fawning over the colourful array of virtual fashion items pigg had to offer. 
 
(Asanao from lynch. case in point)
 
It was a fun and unique experience. And at the same time, information was not only more accessible than ever before, but more abundant as well, and keeping up with blogs, news, forums, and playing pigg consumed every moment of my every day which back then, I had the time and youth to do so.
 
But eventually, I burnt out.
 
I attributed my losing touch with vk to information overload. It’s been more than 4 years since I stopped going on pigg and ameblo for good, but those few years of intense dedication, even today, felt like an aeon. 
 
I used to make a lot of parodies of bandmen, and loved deduction and connecting the dots - which bands had photoshoots at which set and making 6-degrees of separation connections between members of different bands and loved hearing stories from the past.
 
I also had a enthusiasm for drawing, having drawn over a ton bands over the course of 2 years between 2011 and 2012, but suddenly it’s 2016 and all I have are 3-year-old drafts and unfinished sketches. 
 
Everything had been halted because life kinda got in the way… shattered-tranquility had long stopped being my home page and my internet’s search history doesn’t remember vkdb.jp anymore.
 
Hmm.
 
So in that gap between about 2012 and now, I had the mother of existential crises, questioning whether I was really going to follow vk for life.
 
But my passion in the music is genuine and still alive.
 
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve been disconnected from the community that I love for far too long, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to forget the memories I’ve made, the bands that I’ve followed, the stories I’ve heard and the things I’ve learned along the way - be they good or bad. I don’t want my interest of VK to die, and I don’t want to stop making funny content about VK forever.  
 
(And most importantly, I don’t want to be the only VK fan in Australia that I know. So if you’re from Sydney, please hit me up so I don’t feel lonely :3)
 
I want this to be the place where I can share my knowledge about vk so ask me anything and I hope to relearn what I’ve lost these past few years. And once again, I’m astronomically sorry about the length of this introduction (I hope it was bearable).
 
Merry Xmas btw

(Before that, I’m so sorry the length of this introduction reads like an essay but please bear with me ><)
 
I have many interests, but let’s talk about visual kei as this is the one constant that has taken up most of my life.
 
2009 was a time of change for me and visual kei. Ameba launched its virtual community Pigg, which instantly sucked the life out of me and as it turned out, so many vk bandmen had no life as well.
 
t's embarassing to talk about it now, but as teenagers with nothing better to do with our time, my friends and I would send as many friend requests as we could to band members and ‘stalk’ them whenever they logged online. Suddenly vk had become so much more intimate as we could interact with vk bandmen in real-time like never before.
 
But pigg was more than that. Some of my fondest memories have been the designated VK showroom where you could stream youtube videos to a crowd, meeting new people in the club rooms who share a common interest and of course having to witness the silly antics of some of those bandmen. I got to know a lot of bands that I would otherwise never had found out about, had conversations, learning about their personalities and interests. I also got to learn that some of the musicians in the darkest and heaviest bands have the cutest personalities behind the keyboard, fawning over the colourful array of virtual fashion items pigg had to offer. 
 
(Asanao from lynch. case in point)
 
It was a fun and unique experience. And at the same time, information was not only more accessible than ever before, but more abundant as well, and keeping up with blogs, news, forums, and playing pigg consumed every moment of my every day which back then, I had the time and youth to do so.
 
But eventually, I burnt out.
 
I attributed my losing touch with vk to information overload. It’s been more than 4 years since I stopped going on pigg and ameblo for good, but those few years of intense dedication, even today, felt like an aeon. 
 
I used to make a lot of parodies of bandmen, and loved deduction and connecting the dots - which bands had photoshoots at which set and making 6-degrees of separation connections between members of different bands and loved hearing stories from the past.
 
I also had a enthusiasm for drawing, having drawn over a ton bands over the course of 2 years between 2011 and 2012, but suddenly it’s 2016 and all I have are 3-year-old drafts and unfinished sketches. 
 
Everything had been halted because life kinda got in the way… shattered-tranquility had long stopped being my home page and my internet’s search history doesn’t remember vkdb.jp anymore.
 
Hmm.
 
So in that gap between about 2012 and now, I had the mother of existential crises, questioning whether I was really going to follow vk for life.
 
But my passion in the music is genuine and still alive.
 
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve been disconnected from the community that I love for far too long, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to forget the memories I’ve made, the bands that I’ve followed, the stories I’ve heard and the things I’ve learned along the way - be they good or bad. I don’t want my interest of VK to die, and I don’t want to stop making funny content about VK forever.  
 
(And most importantly, I don’t want to be the only VK fan in Australia that I know. So if you’re from Sydney, please hit me up so I don’t feel lonely :3)
 
I want this to be the place where I can share my knowledge about vk so ask me anything and I hope to relearn what I’ve lost these past few years. And once again, I’m astronomically sorry about the length of this introduction (I hope it was bearable).
 
Merry Xmas btw

(Before that, I’m so sorry the length of this introduction reads like an essay but please bear with me ><)
 
I have many interests, but let’s talk about visual kei as this is the one constant that has taken up most of my life.
 
2009 was a time of change for me and visual kei. Ameba launched its virtual community Pigg, which instantly sucked the life out of me and as it turned out, so many vk bandmen had no life as well.
 
t's embarassing to talk about it now, but as teenagers with nothing better to do with our time, my friends and I would send as many friend requests as we could to band members and ‘stalk’ them whenever they logged online. Suddenly vk had become so much more intimate as we could interact with vk bandmen in real-time like never before.
 
But pigg was more than that. Some of my fondest memories have been the designated VK showroom where you could stream youtube videos to a crowd, meeting new people in the club rooms who share a common interest and of course having to witness the silly antics of some of those bandmen. I got to know a lot of bands that I would otherwise never had found out about, had conversations, learning about their personalities and interests. I also got to learn that some of the musicians in the darkest and heaviest bands have the cutest personalities behind the keyboard, fawning over the colourful array of virtual fashion items pigg had to offer. 
 
(Asanao from lynch. case in point)
 
It was a fun and unique experience. And at the same time, information was not only more accessible than ever before, but more abundant as well, and keeping up with blogs, news, forums, and playing pigg consumed every moment of my every day which back then, I had the time and youth to do so.
 
But eventually, I burnt out.
 
I attributed my losing touch with vk to information overload. It’s been more than 4 years since I stopped going on pigg and ameblo for good, but those few years of intense dedication, even today, felt like an aeon. 
 
I used to make a lot of parodies of bandmen, and loved deduction and connecting the dots - which bands had photoshoots at which set and making 6-degrees of separation connections between members of different bands and loved hearing stories from the past.
 
I also had a enthusiasm for drawing, having drawn over a ton bands over the course of 2 years between 2011 and 2012, but suddenly it’s 2016 and all I have are 3-year-old drafts and unfinished sketches. 
 
Everything had been halted because life kinda got in the way… shattered-tranquility had long stopped being my home page and my internet’s search history doesn’t remember vkdb.jp anymore.
 
Hmm.
 
So in that gap between about 2012 and now, I had the mother of existential crises, questioning whether I was really going to follow vk for life.
 
But my passion in the music is genuine and still alive.
 
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve been disconnected from the community that I love for far too long, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to forget the memories I’ve made, the bands that I’ve followed, the stories I’ve heard and the things I’ve learned along the way - be they good or bad. I don’t want my interest of VK to die, and I don’t want to stop making funny content about VK forever.  
 
(And most importantly, I don’t want to be the only VK fan in Australia that I know. So if you’re from Sydney, please hit me up so I don’t feel lonely :3)
 
I want this to be the place where I can share my knowledge about vk so ask me anything and I hope to relearn what I’ve lost these past few years. And once again, I’m astronomically sorry about the length of this introduction (I hope it was bearable).
 
Merry Xmas btw

So this is something I’d completely forgotten about - Nokubura’s Masa had my artwork as his lock screen one time in 2012. And for some reason, “rediscovering”  it four years later, I’m way more excited about it now than I was back then. But not only that, back then the only place I uploaded it to was deviantart with no mention of any of the bandmembers and how Masa was able to find it is anyone's guess.
 
I know many of you will not care and have not seen my artwork, but I was most artistically active between 2011 and 2013, having drawn about 60 bands in that timeframe. One of the reasons for my eternal hiatus after that was the amount of art theft that started to kill my motivation. And as I got older and busier, it’s not easy finding the time to do these hobbies as I used to. However the other reason was my own fault, seeing no real improvement in my art style and subsequently sitting on a shitload of unfinished drafts from 2013.
 
But enough of my life story because I finally decided to pick up that tablet again and so here’s to my first band artwork in almost 4 years - Jiluka
 

 
If I have the guts, I'll be posting them onto my social media accounts in the following days, but this forum gets to see it first I hope you enjoy this "advanced screening"  (Suggestions are welcome!)