Rahzel

Bem vindo ~ ♥ Eu só era fã Mesmo na adolescência de Nightmare e Miyavi e eventualmente escutava coisa ou outra de outros artistas, minha paixão por vk começou meio tarde então sou super deslocada aqui. Mas boas vindas pelo que vale hahah

I've been listening to a lot of songs by a hip 19 year old japanese guy and enjoying it which is really sayin a lot about me

I think it's That Time Of The Year again when I suddenly feel nostalgic about 2000s internet and do lame stuff all day. I actually spent most of my month mumbling over how I should revamp my blog/personal website which led to me questioning what kind of persona do I want to present, which led to big Identity Crisis Time as I really want a professional blog but also really want to be able to post silly entertainment stuff and I cannot expect to be taken seriously as a professional if I do both in the same space, which led to, let's just keep my years old weeaboo blog in secret and create a new professional one - which, in turn, led to "am I even a weeaboo anymore? But I ain't that professional either so what even am I? Why is being an adult so boring and void of imagery and media related identity? I want out!!". The time I spent looking at fanlisting collectives this weekend while wondering if I (still) would like to make something like that is ... Ungodly ; ; ; I guess it's just gotten to that point in life where it's hard to really cohesively merge everything together and one has to accept the uncohesiveness of living raw. It's a particularly stupid feeling because 2000s internet never really brought me anything great communitywise except for, uh, media, but I guess I crave the sense of familiarity and kinship people seemingly had. So basically I am feeling nostalgic for something I never really lived thankfully so.

Lol I'm going to have a 1-month vacation after 2.5 years working and studying full time and I am so happy I am finally going to have time for my own projects that I can't sleep and my mental health is unstable to an extent I ain't sure my brain is going to survive these 11 days and I'm managing to ruin everything I've built these years. Fuck it.

Não só eu tenho um ano de lista de coisas para pedir como fui olhar o que tinha na sale e lembrei de mais um monte de coisas ... Fodaaa. Querer eu quero, mas e a grana? Em observação, fui ver o que tinha na Sale e vi que tem CDs e DVDs de VK (que eu notei de bater o olho, DIAURA, DaizyStripper, DADAROMA, Codomo Dragon, linch, Xaa Xaa, Gazette, Mejibray, KAMIJO, DIR EN GREY, D, GLAY, JUPITER, BUCK-TICK, MAMIRETA, HYDE, Golden Bomber, etc.) então talvez valha a pena se estiver pensando em comprar, mas só vai até terça-feira. 😕 Tem inclusive coisas do Leetspeak Monsters, Nocturnal Bloodlust e Vivarush que eu queria comprar em promoção ... Pena que só soube agora

Yeah, exactly. I am realistic, I know things that you ignore may come back for you and being alone is sickening and not the best idea. Still, I feel it's better than whatever the other options are.

Bom dia para quem vai em showzinho em Janeiro!

I think I might be. I signed up on AVEN recently and have been doing a lot of reading because I am becoming of an age in which this is... slightly unusual the very least. I turn 26 on the 26th ... and haven't kissed in 5 years - and that was my first, to boost - still a virgin and no intentions of not being one. I'm no model but I'm not ugly to the point people might find my "secrecy" attractive or come off as seductive even intentionally when in fact it's just me desperately trying to hide the elephant in the dinner table. I'm a psychologist in a rather hypersexual society and never really managed to suppress my tiptoe walking or my disgust at being touched in ANY way by strangers. To any psychologist, it's ... A given. Yes, I am neuroatypical and a mysophobe since age 6, sorry guysss. And apparently with autism often comes asexuality. I was thinking of studying this too. My family tends to think of me as queer to the point of me getting actual gay silences pretty often but it's been like this forever, they always knew I'm ... different. I don't know if I could do it with a girl. I think I am maybe open to trying and failing miserably in enjoying it. I am indeed let down by my relationships with men but that's because they'd cheat on me. Lol, wonder why! Me being a fan of effeminate boy idols doesn't really help. I'm not really #blessed when it comes to relationships either, so I learned to avoid them altogether. It's always Big Crisis Time when someone falls in love with me so I make a point of looking femme les and be het ace enough to avoid people altogether. Sometimes it works. So for me you saying asexuals mock lgbt people somehow ... I am offended, because it's most definitely not my intention, and feel invalidated. Besides I seem to play no part in this war ever since "ew hets" became a thing. Can't relate to either, bro. Lastly but not least important I. A. that yes, um, lol remember priests who said homosexuality was a sin or a disease? Thank you for invalidating me as well! So I see asexuals not as lgbt but lgbttqiaa? Yea obviously so. And I guess I could fit that. Also, me in a nutshell: "I just feel very comfortable dedicating time and money to men who will please me in many ways yet will never push me to do the deed".

Oh really? I only follow him on Twitter, I didn't realize anything but the new single. These websites and channels for men's beauty maybe relate to the fashion brand they were aiming to create? I'm legit hyped for it Hopefully I'll be able to take a peek on this DVD!

This is really random considering that uh, the topic isn't really getting many updates aol lol but does anyone know anything about their new fashion brand? Iirc the members were supposed to release a fashion brand called "LUXY by midnight galaxy" by October, but October is ending and I didn't see any news. I really liked Alice Nine back in the days too (and honestly I just like how bold A9 is too) but I am all for fashion nowadays so I was just curious but lol, my Japanese only goes so far, like, 100m far.

I came back to see if anyone was discussing the subject further and I realized a I got plenty of reactions, and am finding it kind of funny, so maybe I should explain my point a bit further because it all seemed like a big wall of text without a clear point. I really wasn't saying a lot though, I just ended up addressing different replies without quoting. All I really wanted to say is, from the point of view of someone who really liked j-rock and despised k-pop for the better part of their lives, you can't really deny that there's always (and by always I mean in the last 20-something years of course because K-pop didn't exist before nor had Korea been too influenced by the US) been some degree of cultural overlap or influencing because that's what pop culture worldwide always does, and it's not really fair to compare or put one against the other as if they're Polar Opposites In A War because it's quite out of context, it's just not how it works. I mean, media and cultural industries do run deeper than that. So Japan started embracing Korea and Korean products because of dramas, AFAIK, and games and manhwa kind of found their way as counterparts (almost counterfeits, really) to whatever Japan had been doing ages before, before K-pop music emerged as one more kind of product. No real artistic appeal, but I did listen to Japanese music way back when BoA started becoming really popular. Japan was all over Namie Amuro or Ayumi Hamasaki and all of a sudden there were (the half-American) Utada Hikaru and BoA in the spotlight as well. And SME was pretty keen on exporting their artists since H.O.T. so after BoA kind of managed to Be It they made TVXQ debut alongside with her. And this is where the MV of Tri-Angle which I mentioned before kicks in. I'm no expert but I believe Japan had been exporting a lot of pop culture to SK for years and that was more a reply. Which was... quite a thing. And by thing I mean quite a cultural appropriation as the kids of nowadays would put. (Final Fantasy? Visual kei? You decide.) And it worked, lol, because soon enough (the fandom of TVXQ which was quite hugeee in Japan) Cassiopeia was formed, SNSD and SuJu (and Big Bang, etc) were pretty popular overseas as well and that's when the whole Hallyu 2.0 thing kicked in. So basically SK was just trying to export stuff - really, trying hard, because being so closely dominated by US and Japan-originated products Probably Sucks - and that's how we ended up with the most seemingly random but not really mix of cultural influences in k-pop. Because it worked, it sold, and yeah. Cue seemingly out-of-place Pocky/Pepero game levels of fanservice, colorful hairstyles and clear imitations of whatever j-pop boy/girlgroups were doing. And because there's always been this kind of insurgence of j-rock in j-pop music as well, it's thrown in the mix somehow. So when I did that video, it was more as a joke because I ... kind of started digging deeper for j-rock/visual kei music after years of just listening to ONE OK ROCK or whatever was "pop j-rock" at the time, and I was talking to a friend and we were like, oh, ok, it's definitely being influenced the other way around now. Understandably so, especially because since k-pop made successful breakthroughs into the US market and, with it being the biggest music (actually, general pop culture) market/export in the world, of course it's a huge influence to Japan as well. So we were kidding about how even visual kei PVs nowadays sometimes looked less like 2000s or 90s visual kei PVs and more like k-pop MVs, although they're still distinguishable to the non-casual viewer (but yeah, if you go solely by commonplace stereotypes like "k-pop artists don't create songs/play instruments", "k-pop has no Japanese language music", "k-pop has no foreigners", "K-pop is cuter", "but fanservice" "but makeup" etc... you're just prone to go wrong). As I was saying, pop cultures in general do overlap always, regardless of nationality. That's characteristic of, well, pop culture in a globalized world. But that's really as far as my enlightenment goes, lol. And then you have the western fans of Asian music whose preferences seemed to change, not so much because it did change, much more so because of the shift in East Asian music market and accessibility (I remember it was super hard finding subbed Korean videos back in 2008 so I was much more a NEWS fan than a TVXQ one, although I listened to both - but nowadays it's harder to find Johnnys videos because they're all taken down LOL) and promotion, stuff like that. What you subjectively make out of this is just what you make out of this, bro. I literally don't think I can delve any deeper than this.

I heard of melt these days and went back to old LTS times. Great times indeed ...

Commenting a bit on what was discussed here. Just my two cents, aight. Or, uh, a lot of cents. Sorry I'm terrible at Explaining. I don't know, I think the otaku/anime/manga fan crowd is actually quite keen on keeping up with Japan's youth, and Japan's youth has been listening a lot to K-pop too. I don't see a necessary overlap in fandom, but yes, there are people who like both. Although I think the cultural ties to these two as well as, say, AKB48 - idols, of course - sees reflexion in anime fandom as the plethora of idol anime/mobage products (started with Love Live and IM@S newer spinoffs, also UtaPri and now its Enstars, HypMic, Bandori, Dreaming!, Idolish7 ...), doesn't mean they enjoy the 3DPD idols of k-pop lol. Also, for international fans, k-pop is way more accessible than Japanese music nowadays. It's in every streaming platform, every twitter handle, every magazine, you don't even have to saerch. It's so easy to stumble into it so while back then people knew about K-pop because of Japanese music, now it's much more the other way around. I think most of the k-pop crowd - as part of it myself - is either like, 20%ish people on their 20s or maybe 30s who were formerly fans of Asian music in general (me!) and/or younger people who had incursions because of East Asian ancestry, and a majority of teens who are into k-pop because of YouTube and/or BTS or any overlap of these two. But yes, I definitely think that with k-pop being way more accessible - and presenting the same sort of "we are anime boys" fantasy that vk did a decade ago - it's not really surprising that some people who want to get a feel of East Asian culture are into it nowadays. Speaking of which, I grew up (in the 2000s) listening to a lot of Japanese music and watching anime and stuff, but even before BoA I've always been pretty immersed in SK culture as well because of MMOs so maybe this isn't even such a new trend. The media and pop cultures do overlap a lot at times. (*cough* do you know Tri-Angle *cough*) I also realized a lot of people who were dragged into K-pop through East Asian music market in general had a few favorite songs/groups - or even one favorite in particular - but since Korean TV shows love to mix the groups they end up discovering other acts and becoming a fan as well - I know that is my case since I used to say I hate k-pop for a good 6 years from 2009 to 2015. Speaking of cultural interchanging I think the most extreme of k-pop fans - at least in my experience since I am always biting my own tail by saying I don't like rap and proceeding to be a fan of every group with 3+ rappers in the market but maybe that's because they actually do rap and not just digdigdoo their way through the annoyingly obligatory rap sequence - actually end up listening to black music because that's what their idols are listening to, which I found so funny. Lastly, I have to disagree that k-pop sounds like Western music. I think the Apop market specifically has been pretty weak since, uh, probably the decline of Lady Gaga and the crash of Disney stars and you don't see such bubblegummy pop songs so much anymore even among artists who excelled at it before (like, say, Katy Perry or Jessie J) ; people who still do it, like, say, Carly Rae Jepsen are pretty much adored, but it's somehow not the trend anymore I think? So back then I thought that Apop was in many ways superior to kpop, but I don't think so anymore, not to my tastes at least - sometimes I'm listening to the radio and I'm happy when BTS comes up because this is the bubblegummy happy song I want. And you know what I mean when I say all k-pop sounded like uh fantastic baby naega jail jam nagagagagaga. (Also, I was talking to an online friend who happened to go through the same ~stages of Asian music~ as myself and we did notice a trend of, sometimes girl groups doing better and sometimes boy groups doing better. I think it was definitely like, -06 for bgs, 07-10 for ggs, 11-14 for bgs, 15-17 for ggs and now we're having a bg era again, or something to that effect, and she agreed with me.) But yeah, it's no metal nowadays either. Also, to whoever asked about other genres of music in the Korean market, Korean music isn't just k-pop (surprisingly, not really, as the same applies to music in pretty much uh every country) and personally I listen to a lost of other artists, from Alice Vicious to Norazo to Guckkasten to Epik High. They're just, well, not k-pop which is a very specific market with very specific rules. Another important thing to note is that most times these idols are basically trained - not for cheap - by the companies behind them, and they don't always follow their careers so closely and teens are left on their own to produce stuff. Not saying this happens to the biggest of them, but smaller companies? Definitely. And sometimes they end up spewing dumb racist/homophobic bullshit thinking it's cool, but it's not happening so much nowadays. I also think this shift from people from, say, Japanese music to k-pop has something to do with the decline of Being an emo kid is cool culture because, lol, music that actually hits your soul and makes you think about life? Pfft, let's go for the bubblegummy songs that promote sex exploitation, it's much better this way. I think it is just this global culture shift. So to me saying yes, VK and K-pop are similar because they're both music for fans of music, and it happens to be East Asian music! is the same as saying yeah, if you like Jay Z you'll probably like Billie Eilish because they're both American and seeking fans!, which is kind of... no. In many ways it's not similar. I think the shift is because of cultural changes and accessibility much more than because humans all of a sudden can't distinguish intricate music from pop music anymore. But yes, of course the "we look like anime boys with our perfect makeup and cool blue hair, please love us" aesthetic of k-pop is a thing that drags young people into it into k-pop, but I guess the same could be said for, like, hip youtubers. You can't really avoid the aesthetic of things, I guess. Says the grown up woman who has a picture of candy floss-haired k-pop boy on her profile picture. But take me as you will really. Funnily, I can say I am much more appreciative of vk for the aesthetics it presents - not just "oh, ok, it's hot boys and I can ship them!" but I mean the actual aesthetic in the sense of the culture/semiology it expresses - than I am of k-pop for these reasons. I swear I do not care for 17 year old girls being kawaii ( but man, I love some of the songs they have! Very Very Very is Astounding! Lipstick is Excellent! Likey is Quintessential! Russian Roulette is Classic! Bboom Bboom is Amazing! ) nor am I particularly interested in 20 year old boys flexing their excessively worked out abs - I honestly think of how bad their health must be before I can even try to appreciate the abs - but still I love some of the music they have. (FYI, my favorites don't fall into either, for the most part. I'm always with the kawaii boys crowd or the WAHRGAH ANGRY boys crowd lol.) I recently had my first few experiences actually being to k-pop concerts and ... suffice to say I had such a blast I'm actually considering to do research on it now. I'm a psychologist and happen to study cultural industries and workers health, and was precisely seeking a topic for my masters and I'm really considering dropping everything I had planned to do in order to delve into this phenomenon which I find to be the prime example of pop Asian music market being a lot more about visuals and the boyfriend experience than music lol. ("Are you trying to find an excuse to go to concerts more often?" Precisely.) Tl;dr: woman tried to enjoy k-pop but failed miserably in her teens, now is a graduated and practicing psychologist, sees all the problems with the industry but still can't help but be supportive of her fav k-pop boys, still unsure if it does more good or harm to them. As a footnote ... I did this thing a while back but never posted so here it is. It's just for fun but it really makes you think of what has become of the remnants of the VK scene and how cultures just overlap.

Man, that's literally me and my bff in queue for said live ... talking about the kids who knew k-pop through BTS and not BoA or DB5K. And to think it was a group with older dudes and my friend was older than the oldest. Lol. Feels sad. Yes, exactly that. And I do feel quite sad about all of it too. I mean, who am I to dictate anything but against all odds or anything my teenage self would do I do feel like creating an Instagram or something like that just to share my crazy outfits for those of us who still care, because I know we are few but not THAT few lol. But then again, Instagram is all about letting your real life friends know what the hinjinks you're wearing lately and I sure as hell don't want my boss to see it, so idk.

That's literally me every day lol. Except I recently went to a k-pop concert and am feeling like a teenager this week, but generally I am just like "let the old grandma reminisce the 2000s" . Everything is so different now but in a way I am feeling that the youth being too exposed to imagery sees aesthetic for what it is, somehow, not as groundbreaking or revolutionary as maybe past generations would. And visual styles are kind of just that, maybe. The trend in fashion industry really seems to be more about people worldwide dressing similarly ordinarily. Even five years ago it was easier for me to do my extra gyaru antics with fast fashion clothing than nowadays where everyone is rolled-up jeans and cropped sweatshirts lol. I miss the extreme visual styles too, or uh when dressing to express something wasn't really seen as uncool smh? But I guess it's healthier to realize clothing is just that lol.

Yeah, this is what I am talking about ... I did listen to AnCafe back in 2006 and maybe that's why I was firmly under the impression that decora style stuff among fans was still commonplace or at least acceptable but that doesn't seem to be the case! I suspect it's because in Japan fashion kind of developed A LOT as a thing of its own - Harajuku fashion scene and whatnot ... Nowadays girls worldwide know "kawaii" fashion at least - and a bit away from what it was in the 90s and 2000s, closely tied to music styles like americanized punk / yankkii stuff or visual kei itself which is more or less what I said in the beginning of the thread. But that's simply a wildddd guess.

Oh God yes

Heyy Man ... I should make a blog thing for the weird outfits I create

Ohh that is actually super cool and insightful, thanks a lot!! I have definitely seen 1, 4, 8 and 10 stalking bangya online and occasionally 5, 7, 9, even 3 and 12 (...ish? Granted these are more for cosplay purposes apparently) but everything else is kinda novelty to me that it happens. Oddly enough, I thought 6 would be popular amongst oshare kids but not so much? I miss the look ... (I was so oot fairykei ... )

Back when I was like 14 I used to listen to Japanese rock mostly but did listen to the occasional k-pop act i.e. BoA and DBSK ... but then again I was hugely into JE's NEWS and it was def not for the music or the right reasons at all ( the gossip was top notch lol ) Afterwards I spent all of 7 years into Japanese music fandom not managing to get the k-pop fad or getting into it more than one or two songs a year, but then I found out these boys because a friend insisted that I had to get into k-pop "because it is so diverse" and I watched her playlist and most of it bored me af, but I did get a lot into this group (almost miraculously so) and started digging. That's how I got into, aside from BlockB, also Orange Caramel, Royal Pirates (rip), Laboum and Seventeen a lot, and nowadays I do listen to k-pop kinda regularly but it IS often more for the aesthetics than the musical quality in itself which I find really lacking lol sorry guys. So there's the groups with bubblegummy addictive songs like even BTS and BP, and the ones I actually enjoy like the aforementioned which are far and few and require a lot of digging and listening etc. But same goes for every musical genre I guess. Also happy nowadays the self-producing idols thing is a fad in k-pop because I like when I'm a fan of people who actually write/compose/produce themselves lol. Basically still don't consider myself a fan of k-pop and you won't see me talking enthusiastically about it the same way that I do j-music but I AM a fan of certain acts and not so prejudiced anymore. So I'll be That Friend to whoever wants ... Here's my playlist ; ; Will update later

I see and it comes as a surprise to me actually ... I did see plenty of girls doing the "regular emo clothing" with loads of black and would never guess the goth/punky style wasn't popular anymore. Sure not the same as it was before, but I thought some variation of it would still be popular... It's cool to know! >Band cosplay is super rare nowadays minus the few bands where it's a common practice among fans, but there are some bangya who dress and style themselves like bandman/host-like. They're on the rare side, at least among the fans of the bands I've been going to the past 5 or so years... Not surprising either about the host dressing thing (heck I'd do dansou myself) but yeah I assumed cosplaying should be a little outdated too since people aren't so into the extreme visuals anymore I guess ... But even those oshare style fans aren't into the whole oshare thing for dressing up? It's nice to know ~ >Also lolita/aristocrat fashion really isn't that deeply connected to VK. Most Japanese people I know who are into that type of fashion aren't into vk. Hmm yeah, I really don't think it is. In the past however (back when Kamizkaze Girls was Really Cool) I think there was still some overlap esp. with gothic / shiro / kuro etc types of lolita outfits ... I don't follow lolita fashion too closely but whenever I see something nowadays it's usually from the lolita niche itself instead of the vk one so to speak, I really don't see any overlap nowadays. Even in concerts, I think back then were more lolita enthusiasts in general smh but idk >Rokku gyaru is dead (gyaru in general is kinda dead). All the brands that sold that style like Glavil, Ghost of Harlem, etc. went under years ago [...] Yea, I reckon. This was actually my question, did people actually do rokku gyaru to actual lives or was it more of "I'm gonna post this on the internet and go with sweatpants lol"? I feel that it's, I dunno, didn't really see it back in late 00s when it should have been popular supposedly ... But yes, that's true about punky in general isn't it... BPN also shut down long ago, Putumayo did later, I believe h.NAOTO remains online, but that's because they did plenty of cute too ... I dunno, the striking thing about their looks in general was def big eyes. Not simply circle lenses and fake lashes but full contouring and big shiny white parts looking like aegyo sals (ahem, edit, I forgot how it's called - byojaku). It's kind of extreme tbh and this is definitely a trend because of newer bands that do this imo, it wasn't around until 2010s at all iirc. Lol I like the igari though (and gotta admit it's Korean influences too) Still, thanks a lot! Very thankful for the insider insight, happy to know! ♥

Ok I'm starting this topic mainly because I am less than 48 hours away from seeing my favorite kpop boys live so I'm in SWOON mode and in order to calm my tits I am doing the other thing I like, namely, write about j-fashion So irl I am one of those big jfashion hos fans who probably owns more japanese brand clothes than in-house brands and so I decided to search for what's going on in fashion in vk fandom nowadays. I remember around a decade ago the whole vk scene still smelled of Mana doing MMM, full of lolita and esp. gothic lolita enthusiasts (NANA character Reira comes to mind too) and a lot of artists doing their fashion design brands usually after clothing designs for the band or something, but nowadays I don't really see lolita/ouji/aristocratic fashion as a big thing in Japan in general - which mayhaps has to do with the decline of vk as well - and so I wonder what do vk fans in Japan dress nowadays basically. Out of curiosity I started searching for random bangyas self-posting pics on Twitter just to see how they attended lives (This sounds like insightful research but I actually simply typed Vrzel in Twitter search and started digging lolll) the only ... pattern ... I am actually seeing there is they all do Big Anime Eyes makeup and love that creppy ass SNOW filter for making eyes big ...? Anyways, that's about it. But I wanted to see insighters' opinions as well, esp. from people who actually attend vk lives in Japan. Do people even dress in any particular style nowadays? Also, do rokku gyaru actually exist irl or is it internet fiction? Do people ACTUALLY dress up like that for rock lives in 2010s? Being this gaijin gyaru from day one I was simply curious and can def see how gyaru and agejo fashion/hostess lives/nightlife and visual rock scene might kind of overlap (ahem, sujimori hair) but generally I am also curious in knowing what other fashion trends might be here. Anyways, thank you ~

Era, e também Alice Nine, L'Arc, Gazette, Miyavi e etc. E ae do outro lado da força tinha as viúva do MM e X ...

Aww thanks bro! No, actually I was/am seeking something different, might as well post it ... I am a Japanese fashion enthusiast, so I was thinking about how in the past there were a lot of lolita in vk fandom cough back in the Malice Mizer and theatrical vk era cough while I am perceiving that nowadays bangya maybe look more like regular emo rockers or something lol also are rokku gyaru even an actual thing I Wonder? Been stalking some bangya on Twitter to find out but I just want people's insights. Thank vou!

I dunno man sometimes I am dandy and happy but sometimes the thought of not having been able to go see Miyavi live for a whopping four times he's been to my country in ten years really hurts Smh too unlucky In unrelated stuff. Is there even a thread for bangya fashion discussion?