Rahzel

if vk becomes popular in the west, what will i use to scare people away when i don't want them to talk to me

I really think the last post is basically /thread but just to add 2 cents.
 
This really might work if you wanna try that. I know a handful who'd ask at least "what's the name of the k-pop band?"
 
You know what, I've never considered myself exactly a fan of VK although I am very much a fan of japanese music (sorry guys, not all japanese music is vk, hope it doesn't come as a letdown to some out there) and I can relate to this. Do not ask me to enjoy Due le Quartz or even Dir en Grey but boy did I enjoy vk of the AnCafe / L'arc / Miyavi / Nightmare / occasionally others? variety back in the mid 2000s. It was there on my mp3 alongside, idk, Mami Kawada or Uverworld or (insert random anison). Because... at the end of the day - and again, sorry to say - vk isn't all headbanging metalheads although it is probably how it got popular worldwide. So I only really dug deeper because my friends enjoyed vk and I wanted to at least not be a hater, and for that to happen I had to find bands with vocals I enjoyed. Occasionally I realized there was a lot of vk that wasn't what the fuck is this guy groaning just like not all metal is insufferable guttural noises.
 
... Again, as I am not exactly a "fan of vk" in the, uh, western sense or understanding of the clique ... maybe I don't have a say in this but I do think it's a good thing it doesn't try to mingle. Because it works somehow and maybe it wouldn't work otherwise. And ngl I'm so fucking happy about it. I'm from Brazil and while most of the music I actively listen to is either Brazilian or Japanese I am exposed to a lot of American and Korean music (actually, it's probably 50/50) and I feel kind of obliged to enjoy the fandom around these types of music - I mean, how can you listen to (insert American artist here) but not know she has ties to Kim Kardashian? Similarly how can you like (insert k-pop artist here) but not vote for them obsessively in random awards number 17818? - so, ironically, I think it's a lot more natural for me to ... enjoy music that's just about the music, because I really couldn't care less about the rest so I think the lack of pressure, so to speak, in western vk fandom exactly because we know the market isn't really counting on us in any way is... a relief. Maybe I'd grow out of it altogether if it was any different. And, again, it goes back to what was being said - I'm in my late 20s, I'm not the bulk anymore, vk was the peak when I was the bulk, I don't expect it to go back to that point unless we start spamming vk dudes licking guitars on stan twitter. etc. And let's face it lol it's not about being menhera enough to enjoy vk, it's because we were mostly horny teens in the early 2000s when every kid was all about anime hair androgynous eyelined guys and those days are gone.
 
tl;dr I honestly think it would do more harm than good for these acts to go and try to mingle lol it's like you're the bullied menhera kid in school and now you feel like you gotta go and mingle with the other kids because some dumb adult said so, and the second you try to get in you're mocked to never return. I mean sometimes it does go well but it's 10% of the time. The other 90% you're more fucked than before because of some dumb adult who thought they knew shit. And let's face it, we're the dumb adult in this situation. Also, the menhera kid was often the right one of the bunch.  
 

I really think the last post is basically /thread but just to add 2 cents.
 
This really might work if you wanna try that. I know a handful who'd ask at least "what's the name of the k-pop band?"
 
You know what, I've never considered myself exactly a fan of VK although I am very much a fan of japanese music (sorry guys, not all japanese music is vk, hope it doesn't come as a letdown to some out there) and I can relate to this. Do not ask me to enjoy Due le Quartz or even Dir en Grey but boy did I enjoy vk of the AnCafe / L'arc / Miyavi / Nightmare / occasionally others? variety back in the mid 2000s. It was there on my mp3 alongside, idk, Mami Kawada or Uverworld or (insert random anison). Because... at the end of the day - and again, sorry to say - vk isn't all headbanging metalheads although it is probably how it got popular worldwide. So I only really dug deeper because my friends enjoyed vk and I wanted to at least not be a hater, and for that to happen I had to find bands with vocals I enjoyed. Occasionally I realized there was a lot of vk that wasn't what the fuck is this guy groaning just like not all metal is insufferable guttural noises.
 
... Again, as I am not exactly a "fan of vk" in the, uh, western sense or understanding of the clique ... maybe I don't have a say in this but I do think it's a good thing it doesn't try to mingle. Because it works somehow and maybe it wouldn't work otherwise. And ngl I'm so fucking happy about it. I'm from Brazil and while most of the music I actively listen to is either Brazilian or Japanese I am exposed to a lot of American and Korean music (actually, it's probably 50/50) and I feel kind of obliged to enjoy the fandom around these types of music - I mean, how can you listen to (insert American artist here) but not know she has ties to Kim Kardashian? Similarly how can you like (insert k-pop artist here) but not vote for them obsessively in random awards number 17818? - so, ironically, I think it's a lot more natural for me to ... enjoy music that's just about the music, because I really couldn't care less about the rest so I think the lack of pressure, so to speak, in western vk fandom exactly because we know the market isn't really counting on us in any way is... a relief. Maybe I'd grow out of it altogether if it was any different. And, again, it goes back to what was being said - I'm in my late 20s, I'm not the bulk anymore, vk was the peak when I was the bulk, I don't expect it to go back to that point unless we start spamming vk dudes licking guitars on stan twitter. etc. And let's face it lol it's not about being menhera enough to enjoy vk, it's because we were mostly horny teens in the early 2000s when every kid was all about anime hair androgynous eyelined guys and those days are gone.
 
tl;dr I honestly think it would do more harm than good for these acts to go and try to mingle lol it's like you're the bullied menhera kid in school and now you feel like you gotta go and mingle with the other kids because some dumb adult said so, and the second you try to get in you're mocked to never return. I mean sometimes it does go well but it's 10% of the time. The other 90% you're more fucked than before because of some dumb adult who thought they knew shit. And let's face it, we're the dumb adult in this situation. Also, the menhera kid was often the right one of the bunch.  
 

One of the thing I love about it is how you don't know what kind of chunni you will find. Kamijo's Castrato lore is cringe as hell but at the same time I LOVE seeing someone do the shit he loves to do without fear of judgement. I know people who can't handle seeing other people doing "embarassing" things, but I just feel at home when I see a frontman doing edgy poses thinking he is cool as hell and that he has some kind of special power lmao

I agree. Visual Kei has an interesting sound and aesthetic that mainstream J-Rock and western Rock/Metal just doesn't have. No offense to mainstream J-Rock or western Rock/Metal, but it doesn't stand out like Visual Kei does. Try as you like, but you won't find many bands like Mist of Rouge in western Thrash Metal and Punk, Kuroyuri to Kage in Western Nu Metal, etc. You'll find bands with some similarities, but not the full package. As Visual Kei fans, we've come to love and accept this uniqueness and for Visual Kei to get popular, it would have to adapt very closely to mainstream trends, making it lose it's identity, and possibly taking away what we love about the scene.

You can't make something popular again if it wasn't popular in the first place.  Everyone looks back at 2007-2010 as the heyday of the scene, but I think we know more about the scene now than we did back then. A lot of it was people trend riding Dir en grey, the GazettE, and a whole host of other popular bands until they jumped ship for K-Pop. Even when I go to shows abroad, people in line hardly know as much about the band or the scene as people here on MH do. We are in our own bubble and we have to learn to look beyond that bubble to see the scene as a whole.
 
It's a sad fact that the scene is small and will stay small, but I rather like it that way. Visual kei is the definition of anti-mainstream. Think of how many bands are subjected to the stigma of "going major" and losing their identity. Now, imagine that happening to the entire scene at once! That's basically what it would be like to "get popular" again. Not a good look. I don't know what it is that makes visual kei tick, but I'm fine with leaving things the way they are.

I'm aware this reads like a gigantic gatekeeping post but that is not my intention. Let people find visual kei naturally is what I say! The site continues to find and support both new members and old, so the hooks to get drawn into the scene are still out there.

they didn't lose any either & wouldn't gain any new fans out of the disgusting homophobic cloaca that is american metalhead fandom;
 
like literally the point I lost interest in the western white pig music scene was when a (married het) frontman from d*goba posted a halloween pic with guyliner on his bands IG and the moment aint shit comments from north america started flowing in he deleted the picture without telling the idiots to piss off.
I don't think lycaon or whoever was relevant in 2008 VK would have gotten much paying following out of the same breed of stans - they won't even know how to crowdfund their tour van if it got broken into in tenessee.
boo hoo bruised ego twat

Send Ru Paul Drag Race back in time, when rock music and Japan were the cool kids, and make Kaya win it. Profit. 😎

Hot take:
 
The initial seed for a lot of people is seeing cute boys in crazy makeup. We need to start spamming Twitter threads with slow motion gifs of [insert guitarist here] sticking his tongue out while looking to the side.

I translate for my fandom and no one reads nor cares and tbh it's too much time and effort I've invested over three years with 0 results for the band.
 
VK culture seems to be a huge turnoff for metal fans. I tried to lure a girl who kinda knew about MM and gazette bus is focused in western metal into modern VK and she got hooked on Dadaroma, Diaura and JLK. Lasted a few months and last night threw a tantrum after watching a few lives and claimed she was quitting altogether and when I tried to reason with her her reasons were "yelling encore is so tacky and I just can't with it" and "fandoms expect me to comment nice things on the members accounts and participate in fanprojects". Upon further reasoning as to why join street teams  if she didn't want to engage in fan activities the response was "I wanted drinking buddies". Every other male into metal I've tried to get into VK backs away as soon as they see the aesthetic, right after drawing every comparison possible with any Western act. There's just too much stigma currently around Japan's pop culture for normies to want to step in and a good portion of metalheads are apparently just too closed minded and stay within their own sub-sub-sub genre of metal (I've gotten complaints about bands blending genres and not sticking to one variant of metal) to want to give VK a chance.

So uh.These days I was listening to random music on Deezer based on my tastes etc. I just wanted to listen to anything. And it recommended MUCC which I've never listened a lot to but I've always thought of as a "meh OK band"? Really back in the days I LOVED this anime called Zombie Loan to which they played the ending song lol, and it was pretty cool but that's all I knew about them. I probably downloaded Gokusai some time in 2007, because it's the only album I know by name, it probably didn't catch my attention enough and that was it.
 
But then Deezer recommended me one song and I thought it was the dopest thing ever, for real. Then I listened to the whole album and ... I liked it. So I wanted to dig more of their discography, and then I realized it's That One Album every fan seems to dislike. Now I'm just sitting there like lol there's fifteen albums for me to listen and I ain't sure they're not going to be one let down after another. And if they're somehow still up to my tastes I am just going to get mad at my teenage self for not listening to more of them before, probably. Do I want to listen at this point? Idk bruhh

So I've fallen pretty hard into HiFi (High Fidelity) audio gear and lifestyle. I've amassed a pretty good setup and a nice collection of gear and was wondering if there was any interest here on the forum. We can pretty much just use this thread to post pictures of each others setups and stuff essentially as well as discuss different gear. I know we already have a headphone thread, but don't be afraid to post headphones/earphones in here as well, I'm aiming to make this a general audio gear thread, so post away.
 
post pictures of whatever you want your full setup or individual gear. Doesn't have to be limited to desk setups either, shows us your living- room setups and movie watching systems.
 
I'll start by just posting some pictures of my current desk setup .
 
 


 

 

 

 
that's enough for now, next time I'll get some pictures of my tv setup and maybe some of my portable gear.
 
 
 

Finalmente o esmalte preto comprado no halloween vai ser usado novamente.
 
Vai ser bom pra porra.

Uh, I certainly think OP is right in saying our tastes are coopted by modern marketing strategies online. Back then we had ICQ, forums and web circles to learn about weird Japanese cartoons abd androgynous metalhair dudes because... yahoo was not a very trustworthy web search engine actually lol. Then came Google and Facebook and Internet became mainstream and now the media conglomerates are more powerful than ever as are our tastes homogeneous. Honestly is thete a single citypop fan who did NOT find out about it through some weird youtube algorrythm that led u there through some mix of almost public domain japanese music made by a 18 year old online but by buying vinyl instead...  of. I do not know what the big idea is and I am afraid to know. 
 
But I feel that visual rock was always perceived as a weird uh community even in Japan. To this day there are Japanese bands that enjoy moderate success internationally (I think of One Ok Rock or Ajikan for instance) but I agree that with the decline of crazy extreme jfashion styles ie. Decora and gyaru as well as the general decline of popularity of anime aesthetic not only through anime and manga but also jrpgs and so (which as it turns out has always been an inspiration AND way of becoming popular for plenty visual rock bands) and the simultaneous ... Rise of shitty youtubers who think spewing " Japan is so weird lol " is cool and, well paired with new technologies that left then cutting edge Japanese technologies behind ... Thats all to amount for this failure of Cool Japan and, well, it really goes reeeeally deep. 
 
But theres a few things that come to mind that I wanted to share to add to the discussion. 
 
Lately I have been into an even more obscure kind of japanese fandom aka japanese seiyuu fandom lol. Theres this guy (there are definitely a few posts on this forum about his act!) called Tatsuhisa Suzuki who is himself in a rock band called OLDCODEX. It's a rather conventional indielike (because they started out indie although now theyre with Lantis) rock band with average rock songs, but the guys are great at performing ... Really passionate stuff. (Theyre good at the looking cool and otherworldly stuff that made Japan cool some decades ago tbh.) So he was voicing characters from popular (cough, with fujoshi) series for which this band performed ost songs. And so the band saw a big rise in popularity and has actually performed in Budoukan a few times. Really enthusiastic reception, pumped audience. But what had me interested is this: Their aesthetic ... Its no trashy garage metal band but not too idolish either. Theyre just at that point where it doesn't offend either crowd too much. The "Grandma probably wouldn't look too badly at anison bando" kinda thing, kinda like OOR or maybe less idolish. It's anime but not too anime, indie rock grawrhhh but Lantis ... Etc. I expected to see an audience full of fujoshi and seiota but that's not the case at all. What I saw were a bunch of youngsters getting pumped to the energy and powerful lyrics. It just looks really fun. So I realized, hey, it's not that rock is dead in Japan - sure it isn't as popular all over the world anymore but it still has a huge following of young people when the product is right (ofc Lantis... Helps). I dare say Japan is The place where poprock music still thrives and finds some good innovation. In fact my shuffle just now started playing amazarashi lol. 
 
But ... I think visual rock after lessening popularity definitely became a bit too "takadanobaba freakos shit" at this point. I mean the fact that everyone either grew weirdo or grew average normie and ran like a bitch from the scene (...sometimes grew traitor Miyavi cough) is not helpful at all I think. It just became too established to shock as it did in the past I guess. So it's one of those things... Revolutionary in 1800 so its just anime boys doing bl aesthetic ; ; ; but that's what I feel. And at the end of the day Japan probably realized a domestic strategy was better, so to understand this market I am not considering westerners opinions. 
 
Think of it... It strikes me as ... Very interesting, the case of Amai Bourypku which is one of the bands I listen to regularly when listening to vk. Their early songs beginning as Shounenki were in late 2000s/early 2010s. Those days I remember songs full of !! Emotion !! And !! Power !! Were the norm in jpop because thats what anime songs were and top popular songs worldwide were anisons etc. But at that time was starting this whole culture shift to yknow basic music produced by uninspired djs to publish on youtube fad and vk started dying down (lol being in seiyuu fandom also made me realize thats around the time Gackt Did Voice Acting bro) So their early songs were quite ... quality stuff, but at some point things probably fell short of their expectations and they disbanded kind of only to come back with a late 2010s aesthetic ... Which is precisely making trashy indieish songs pandering to problenatic girls who are probably the bulk of the vk crowd these days. I mean it's probably easier to make and sustain anyway. I realized this shit was seen in a negative light by the western vk niche but they seem to be enjoyimg some popularity in Japan with this crowd anyway. I think this might be ... Quite emblematic. Of what we actually crave, vs what Japan craves and what musicians in those places see as a way of reaching their aspirations be it money or whatever. 
 
In short, things are changing... I think sadly. I really love in a "always have and always will" way japanese music and these trends are being quite hurtful for, well, more complex music and Japan is falling behind because of it. 

https://www.tiktok.com/tag/visualkei
https://www.tiktok.com/tag/v系
 
...
 
 

vkei tiktoks, I'm telling ya

This is, for me, one of the key points on the matter.
 
2006-2010 was a period when the offer VK did was still innovative, diverse, and at the same time close to the on-going music trends worldwide (rock was still in their cool years). It couldn't not have a success, at least at a minimum, in a niche way. Even with their flops, because yeah, I agree with many of you here that Mucc, Dir, Giru, D'espa or Gazette's take on Western trends sometimes delivered cringe-worthy material, plus all that no-homo shit over getting rid of their queer aesthetics... but hey, isn't that what art is about, creativity? At least they tried to evolve, offer their worshipers something different and outdo themselves each time.
 
So, speaking of today, I don't care about whether the music of the VK scene will be taken or not by the mainstream media, but I certainly will care about the quality of it if that scenario ever happens at least at a minimum. It would be actually embarrasing to have someone you've previously told you like "vk" finding about Pentagon, Golden Bomber or Under Fall Justice after looking up for it in the web, or keep wowing over the same boring heart-munching blood-sucking perfos since  
Obscure's PV... 
 
That said, over the years it happened to me that the more VK band I discover, the more shitty stuff I find, like, the stuff that really makes the difference in a listen could be actually, let's say, a 30~40% of the whole VK releases, while the rest being cheap BL cosplay ost's that I will always prefer it stays on the niche it belongs.

Duet with Halsey or Dula Peep.

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

Life updates: I did waste my summer break away with this and it's the best thing I could have done with it.
 

Oohhh! Feliz aniversário (quase atrasado)!!

Awesome, we both found something new today. I was fine with Initial'L... initially (harhar) but to me it just seems to be getting worse and worse to the point where i still listen to new releases but the feeling isnt yay hype excitement its more "Oh no Yuuki, what are you going to do to me now?" dread. 
 
The sweet EEEEHHHHRRRRHHHHHEHEEHHHARRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEE of dial up.
 
Thank you for the warm welcome

Oohhh! Feliz aniversário (quase atrasado)!!

Oh boy no but listen, there is this old ass mixed media aka mangaanimegamenovelband pioneer bishounen aidoru thing called Kaikan Phrase and it's finally gotten in prime nearly-2020 the "set 20 years into the future" mobage spinoff it always deserved. I am getting so addicted to a silly Mario Party Meets Ensemble Stars mobage I might as well go full weeb again for it. I am seriously prone to becoming the kind of loserface fujoshi who tweets nonstop on her private twitter to 10 followers who could Not Care Less about her amazing 16 yo 2d husbando from a random obscure japanese only game BUT worth it. 
 
There's a hot guy voiced by Suzuki Tatsuhisa!!! Also local Lone Visual Guy In An Otherwise Normal Jpoprock Band TOWA aka mai husbando from the original cast went full Gackt in those 20 years? He's the member without (legitimate?) children, looks even younger, short blond hair ....... probs living in a mansion in Malaysia or sumth ...... Anyway I am having a blast with literally no one to talk to. Why the hell am I planning to waste my summer break away with this