Gizorz

Haha cute but you kind of are. Osare is a joke term for oshare so yeah Nyasagi is right. Oshare means someone who's really stylish, osare means someone who thinks they're really stylish, but in fact they're not.

Yes, it's really vague. But not so much because there is no 'criteria', but rather because you can't really categorize a band. You can categorize an outfit, a photo, a pv, a phase of a band but not a band altogether, like say phantasmagoria because they represented a slightly different image for every release.
Phantasmagorias Mikansei to guilt is pure kotekote kei so yes, they are (sometimes) part of this category, even though they might not be all the time.
 
When I first heard that term it was japanese fans using it and my 'criteria' for it is solely based on what they used it for. Or at least used to some years ago. So it might be forgotten by now, but it wasn't the overseas fans that invented it.
Kotekote actually means 'heavy' and they way I understand it it applys to 'heavy, dark visual kei'
 
And that was usually for the image and appeareance of a band, not that much about the music. It can be applied to visual kei fans, too. Some people I met would call a 'traditionally' gothy and/or elaborately dressed bangyaru a 'kotegya'.
I just tried googling コテコテ系 and it did come up with quite a few results, too. Like here or here
 
The definitions here are
 
-A band's look and atmosphere
-Heavy visual kei
-classic visual kei
-grotesque, decadent, aesthetic imagery
-lots of black and lots of leather and vinyl, very elaborate costumes
-very big and colourful hair
-Motives like crosses, blood, flowers....
-Try hard goth and try hard dark
-They are never really fashionable or really stylish, their appeal comes from 'too much' of everything
 
To me kuroyume just isn't real kotekei. They are the ultimate base of everything that is, but Luna Sea looked more kotekote then they did. At least for the most part. And by that criteria Phantasmagoria absolutely fits in.
 
This is also a term that wasn't invented earlier than 2002 and I think it was, since the very beginning, used for active bands as well. So I don't see a reason not to use it for the ones around today.

kyo-chan's qtest selfie to date

"People won't go to our shows if you share our live distributed stuff!!!"
 
No, actually, people just dont' go to your shows.
 

I don't like cosplay and I think it's especially silly to cosplay a real person as opposed to a character. I'd much rather see someone do their own style than directly copy someone elses, but people should do whatever they want. I don't attend cons either, maybe that has to do with it.

Haha cute but you kind of are. Osare is a joke term for oshare so yeah Nyasagi is right. Oshare means someone who's really stylish, osare means someone who thinks they're really stylish, but in fact they're not.

Haha cute but you kind of are. Osare is a joke term for oshare so yeah Nyasagi is right. Oshare means someone who's really stylish, osare means someone who thinks they're really stylish, but in fact they're not.

Haha cute but you kind of are. Osare is a joke term for oshare so yeah Nyasagi is right. Oshare means someone who's really stylish, osare means someone who thinks they're really stylish, but in fact they're not.

Oops I completely forgot about this, but I finished it~
http://macchalatte.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-raid-0-english-lyrics.html

Haha cute but you kind of are. Osare is a joke term for oshare so yeah Nyasagi is right. Oshare means someone who's really stylish, osare means someone who thinks they're really stylish, but in fact they're not.

Haha cute but you kind of are. Osare is a joke term for oshare so yeah Nyasagi is right. Oshare means someone who's really stylish, osare means someone who thinks they're really stylish, but in fact they're not.

Haha cute but you kind of are. Osare is a joke term for oshare so yeah Nyasagi is right. Oshare means someone who's really stylish, osare means someone who thinks they're really stylish, but in fact they're not.

Haha cute but you kind of are. Osare is a joke term for oshare so yeah Nyasagi is right. Oshare means someone who's really stylish, osare means someone who thinks they're really stylish, but in fact they're not.

Haha cute but you kind of are. Osare is a joke term for oshare so yeah Nyasagi is right. Oshare means someone who's really stylish, osare means someone who thinks they're really stylish, but in fact they're not.

Music always remains as an opinion, though. I don't think any band can be rendered as a bad band because there will always be someone who likes them. I think the talent lies in effort, bonding and striving for a goal to be achieved. It's not so much about the quality of the music itself but the people who make it live.

I actually do like the first release(s) of many bands. Note the -s, its not always the first release, but often the first releases.
I actually think the reason behind that is that bands have all the time in the world to write/work out their debut- but only 2 months to write the follow-up. Or whatever, their third or fourth, when they get signed.
Don't get me wrong as this isn't always the case, but there's so many bands of which I prefer the earlier stuff to the later stuff. That's not because I want to be a hipster or vndergrovnd, but because that's the sound I fell in love with, and sometimes bands change their sounds to something I personally don't like at all, sadly(here's to Mucc and all those others).

Oshare kei

Sure! I'll try to get to it when I have time

Do you have booklet scans?

What I meant to say about not specifically classifying those bands as VK alone, is how they (in that time of 80's and 90's) weren't labeled as your typical Japanese nutbags just trying to be over the top about everything. It was normal at that time, look at KISS, Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister... These guys fitted right in and their music reached out further than Japan itself and didn't only reach the distinguished fan of Japanese music at that time. X JAPAN, Loudness, they were being pushed right in to the glam rock label of that time and as this trademark died with the grunge era, the entire experience around it changed as well.
 
And well, the fanservice thing: it's been evident ever since Hakuei's thighs haha, but it wasn't a necessity to most people in those days. The job of being a fan changed a lot over the years, I am sure. As did the audience. I bet had you stood in a Penicillin crowd twenty years ago, the majority of the audience was male, because metal/rock used to attract a nearly strictly male audience rather than it did a female audience because of its toughness. When you look at it now, step in to a Japanese crowd of people at a VK concert, most are female. And it's not to create a negative image but I think it's safe to say that a lot of 'fans' these days do indeed only care about the 'Visual' simply because they are used to judging on looks.
 
Just because I didn't live through these years as an avid music fan as I am now, doesn't mean I haven't studied music of all sorts of genres for myself for the past ten years. My preferences range from the 50's up until these days and in a few years time I have seen and come to know a lot about music and the way it works. I've been to over 200 concerts, lived a few years fully high on moshpits and thrashing my way through every sub-label of metal you can think of. So yes, I think I have somewhat of an idea of how different the music scene was thirty years back from now and that 'specifications' didn't really matter to the eye.
 
-Also, sorry for offtopic, I tend to write a lot.

VK is more about the image than the music anyway. It's not surprising chekis became a standard way to make some extra cash at lives since fans are mostly superficial people primarily there for the image.
I don't think it's a bad thing, some have said why don't bands make enough from CD or merch sales. I'm under the impression it's the same situation that western bands run into. Most of the profit from initial CD sales is gobbled up by the middle man before it even reaches the band. So the band is stuck with making most of the money back from touring and selling merch and CDs at their lives. This is the case with metal bands and why I wait and buy CDs when the band is in town. If metal bands could make money by selling chekis I'm sure they would do it but instead it's guitar picks, patches and stickers.
If I could go to VK lives, I would probably buy their CDs and merch there in person and also pick up a cheki or two as a memento from the event. However I wouldn't buy entire boxes of them though because that's just crazy. It's no different than me grabbing a patch or sticker at a metal show. That's like me buying out all the stickers and patches the band has for sale.
Also posting from my phone so ignore typos and grammar :C

I think with your general pricing of Japanese merchandise, ¥500 is fairly reasonable. You often pay about ¥2200 for a single including three songs. That's over ¥700 for one song. If you start picking at every single thing in the Japanese music industry you aren't done yet in five years. 
 
What other merchandise other than t-shirts and mugs do you see from your average American band that isn't milked like huge sellers like KISS or the Rolling Stones? Shouldn't you be more grateful that there actually is something to collect for collectors? It's not like they have numbers and come in packages, but having a collection of cheki is indeed valuable to most people. See it as collecting baseball cards; technically there's nothing interesting about information you already know printed on a small card with a picture of an old man on it, but these things sold like crazy and the market was an insanely well-working business.
 
That's the same for cheki. Bands need to make a profit. And if you weren't aware yet; an actual business, if you do it right, is to slowly milk people of their money with smart marketing by bringing products on sale that people are interested in. That is business.

Why would you spend over 15$ if it was gazette? It's still just a picture isn't it?

I never said it was your duty as a fan to buy cheki. But let me paint a scenario for you.
 
Say you go to a lot of VK concerts in Japan. You discover a fairly new, very small band and you fall in love with them. After the concert you buy the only single they have. You're happy to have music you like. The band is happy to have a sale. Everyone is happy. You start following the band as much as you can, but every time you go see them you don't buy anything, which is perfectly reasonable. No one is forcing you. But the band only barely breaks even every time they perform. You want new music. The band wants to put out a new single or even a new album but they don't have the funds because they aren't making a profit. So now there's a problem. You can't get the only thing you want: music. Say you still wait it out, you follow them every concert for a year, or maybe even two years. They don't put out any new music. Now what?
 
Is it your responsibility to keep a band alive? No, it's not. But to say the only thing you care about is the music so you're not going to buy merch makes zero goddamn sense. I only care about the music. I don't even like cheki. But I buy them anyway because at least I know that money goes directly into profit and the band can use that money to *gasp* make new music.
 
But considering that some of the bands you are mentioning in this thread aren't small or indies, then I can see why you think cheki are stupid. But don't spread that across the entire scene. They exist for a reason, and bands are grateful when people buy them.

It's quite obvious from this thread who has and hasn't actually been involved in the visual scene lol. I'll also bet that everyone saying cheki are a ripoff are the same people who get just sooo upset when all the random indies bands die off after a year. Bands don't make money off music. It's pretty much a fact. They make money off merch, and actual merch is too expensive to produce for most bands, so cheki is the only viable option. If you *actually* want to support a band you buy their merch. It's not rocket science.