Ikna

Haha, yeah, that was quite a wild ride. Also when it turned out that Kisaki was an abuser and pedo… thanks to MH I lost all the respect I had left for him, lol. ––––– RIP Mh. Took me a while to write something… I know I didn't post much at the end, because I took a break from the internet and especially social media. I don't know if people really recognize me, since I am here only sporadically, despite being signed since a long time. I admit, I like lurking more than actually talking to other people. I still took part in some discussions and being the weird introvert that I am, I usually regretted voicing my stupid opinions afterwards. In the end I didn't delete any posts though, because I feel that's part of forum culture, owning up to the bullshit you say, even if it's cringe and letting it stay on the internet. Some disputes and lovely banter here was funny though and it fills me with a strange fuzzy feeling to know that i have been part of some fandom drama. It's like being part of an old folk tale, you know? Now I wonder how much of the drama will be even remembered in 10 years… Honestly, a year ago or so I believed MH would stay for much longer, since the forum managed to outlive most other de-centralized communities and websites. Seems I was wrong and it comes to an end sooner than I thought. I know there's a new community on discourse, but I have to admit, I don't like social media sites and centralized web hubs and places. I think discourse is a better alternative than having nothing, but MH's UI was miles better. MH also feels so much more personal… I cannot explain it. I just don't really feel the same thing when I go online on sites like reddit, facebook, etc. Everything's quite dull and surface level, particularly on FB. VK fandom communities on other sites are also rather meh… Anyway, before I start writing bullshit, I just want to thank all the people who kept the site alive for more than a decade. I discovered a lot of great bands and music here, some of the discussions were entertaining to read. Hope you are all doing fine, despite the train wreck of a year we had.

Everything was already said about this. But what i want to add to the discussion are my subjective observations. I have the feel with social media hubs slowly replacing regular decentralized online communities, message boards and forums there is a change in the way fandoms communicate and behave. My feeling is that especially the younger generations don't "get" forum culture and therefore misunderstand what's being said here. You see it quite often that fans on social media are foaming from anger because "someone said something offensive about my fave on some forum", when the thing that was said was in jest and not serious. Internet humour in general has changed a lot. There are a lot of jokes, memes and phrases I wouldn't post on twitter, because I know for 100% that someone will take it out of context and send their brigade after me. Now VK fandom was always very emotionally driven… that's why i usually tended to avoid fandom spaces, because I did not care about seeing people shitting on each other for liking one band more than the other. There was so much drama, fake friendships and backstabbing in the community, it was tiresome. Many VK fans are certainly very opinionated about anything and things can rub them the wrong way easily. And there was always the issue that some people's opinion weighted more than others' and they thought they had exclusive rights to brag about others, but screamed bloody murder when others did the same. My impression too is that the people who stuck around the longest became more "chill". Also reddit… is a pretty toxic and one-sided hell hole.

You know, I can understand why people are worried about the vaccine. It usually takes many years for a vaccine to be developed and also to be so tested and refined that it does not cause any harm. On the other side, there are some good points for why it's worth to take the risk. The way it looks, Covid will become endemic like the Spanish flu, meaning it cannot be eradicated and remains circulating in populations. It will ravish global human populations until eventually natural herd immunity will be reached. Once there, it will not vanish, but continue to infect people, albeit in smaller numbers. However, that is only if there really is any long-term immunity against the strain. We know people build immunity against H1N1 influenza fairly quickly and that it usually suffices for some time. There is no conclusive evidence that an infection with Covid always leads to the creation of antibodies, nor do we know that immunity lasts longer than a few days. It's very much possible that without a working drug or vaccine people will just constantly re-infect themselves and others with the virus. If that's the case we have to hope natural selection will cause only the less deadly mutations to survive, so that the virus gets weaker over time… but that's pretty much nature sorting things out, meaning many people will die. We seriously don't know enough about the virus yet, so who knows how bad it will be, but I can understand why scientists try hard to find a vaccine. Covid def isn't "just like the flu" and even influenza is very dangerous and can cause long-term problems (including triggering auto-immune diseases). The Spanish Flu, which was a very comparable disease (no vaccine or working drug) killed millions. However, I agree that no one should be forced to take the vaccine if they don't want to, for now… I usually don't hold this view when it comes to vaccines that are very old and therefore mostly safe - in most of the cases it's better to tale that polio or measles vaccine and not endanger everyone else - but a covid vaccine certainly will be very early and experimental. Also there is no guarantee that it will work (longterm). However, if it does help and if they can improve its safety, then sure, maybe in a few years I will take it. In good vaccines there are still potential side-effects, but the likelihood of getting them or that they are worse than the alternative is low, so it's usuallly always a better choice to vaccine than to catch a preventable disease. It's a matter of personal risk assessment - do you want to risk getting the side effects or do you want to go through the disease (that might kill you)? If we are lucky the virus mutates quickly into a weaker strain and we may not even need a drug or vaccine. In the worst case scenario it will just be like described above and many people will die the next years. Still too early to tell…

Yep…I planned to travel to so many places, since I never really traveled before and I just wanted to take it as an opportunity to get some time off and get away from all the shit back home… Sadly that's not gonna happen for a long time now. Well, at least I managed to see Diru in Munich. So I did get somewhere for a few days at least.

Shame that the other original members aren't part of the revival, but then again I love Yowmay's voice so much. It's probably Silver~Rose's most defining trait, so I am not entirely disappointed. Hope their sound will continue where they left off in case they release something new.

Hm, I see a similarity Guess Shuji's a fan of Gene Loves Jezebel Tbh, I haven't listened too much to either cali≠gari or goatbed… not sure how I was sleeping on them for so long. After enjoying Xa-Vat and seeing Shuji posting his really great musical influences on twitter I decided to check out Shuji's other projects. Still diving in, it will take some time…

This man's cringe-ass behavior is offensive, he really deserves to be cancelled. Jokes aside, I have come to terms with the album never happening years ago. It's best not to give Yoshiki any attention for being a douche, because that's the only thing that keeps him relevant. Also good for Toshi and what's left of the band for throwing in the towel and splitting, if true. It's clear as night and day that Yoshiki doesn't give a fuck about anyone but himself.

I bought the game right when it came out, yet I hadn't progressed as much as some people who seemed to sink 30-60 hours into it the very first week they got it. I think playing it so much at a time and unlocking most achievements and collecting all the stuff in the museum too fast kills the enjoyment of the game. Back in the old days when you didn't have as many possibilities and as much to do it wasn't unusual to take your time and approach the game slowly, and mostly check in to do your routine stuff and ofc for the events. I usually don't play more than a few hours a day, that way I still have enough to do to keep me occupied with the game for the next two years, because that's the time span nintendo announced online updates for. There is indeed a lot of hype atm and sadly also a lot of drama. Personally I don't care about what others do and wether or not they do time travel. I don't really watch others playing the game, unless I need tips for a specific thing, like an event. I know for myself that I don't want to rush it and slowly build my progress until I get really bored with it, hopefully in a few years.

Ok guys, sorry, I have to retract my statement from before about society getting better. Humanity truly is stupid. Are we doomed after all?

There's also https://oldvrock.blogspot.com/ for more oldschool VK (not necessarily general japanese rock, but many of the bands there are 90s softvi or melodic VK, so it could be of interest).

Eh, I won't get into this, I already regret writing my post. I'd argue that's not true for everyone or every era. Many early societies were built on slavery like Babylonia or Greece and they came up with their own stupid reasons why it was excusable. Are we to believe people who were literally raised and conditioned to think it was ok from birth to be really aware that their doings were terrible? But whatever. Sorry for bringing this up.

Possible controversial opinion incoming, but… I feel that renaming cities and places and removing statues of people we have retrospectively deemed to be "problematic" is going to hurt our progression as a society more than it will do good. We are essentially censoring history to prevent us from facing the past mistakes of our ancestors, just because some people may be upset and "triggered" by it. How the hell will future generations learn to take a critical view of their past and history and use that knowledge to prevent great atrocities from happening again? Yeah, sure they can read about it in their history books, but if we rewrite them too to fit into the narrative of everything being simply black and white, then it's bad… Imo it's important for people to know that it took humanity a long time to get where we are today and that we have improved a lot in just a century. I don't think that the historical revisionism of painting anyone who wasn't already as progressive as our society is today as evil is such a good, long-lasting lesson… it's important to know that it wasn't just famous dudes like Columbus were racist, but society as a whole was - and because we have thankfully improved enough we can point it out and talk about why it was bad. And being able to recognize that even supposedly "good" people who achieved great things for humanity can be shit people or be misguided. Also, the same people who make a fuss about this stuff will be part of the very same generation that will be criticized for being barbaric, problematic and not progressive enough in the future. Because that's usually how it goes - people in the future will look back at those that came before and talk about how shit they were. Well, that is if we don't fuck up and society descends into a complete regression. Edit: also sorry if this is too political… or if maybe I come over like some reactonary. That's not my intention and I don't want to stirr things up here, just feel like giving my own 2 cents about it. Obviously I don't condone any past crimes against humanity, I just feel the way we deal with them and our past atm isn't very ideal… y'all allowed to disagree. I'm posting this here especially since it's the only place where one doesn't usually get attacked for having an opinion.

I read this as Story of Tuberculosis at first and was like "Covid really is getting to us all"

2020 really is such a shit year… So many of my fav musicians have died this year, it's crazy. RIP You.

Let's be real: if there is one species that excels in hating and tormenting its very own kind, it's humans. Just take a look into recorded history to see how shitty we were, regardless where we were from. The only positive thing is that we have had a very strong progression in terms of social morales in the last century, though it's still very much restricted to certain countries and regions. That said, despite all the crazy shit going on atm, I am still happy to live now and not in the 1700s when I would have prob been tortured to death bc of some superstitious belief about witchcraft.

I am glad more bands are starting to embrace digital sales and share their music online via streaming. Also this band has me intrigued. I am normally not a fan of VK bands of this type, but I kinda like their style.

necroing this thread because I want to share my itunes purchases, however I lost my mac version of itms scrubber when I transitioned from my old Macbook to a new one and I can't find a working dl link 😕 If anyone has it and also can help me updating it I'd be thankful…

The people who were calling that the next fad to replace the Metalcore trend in VK would be KPOP and soundcloud music were right. Guess that makes 8P-SB true pioneers, lol. I know I am ranting and whining a lot about it that it's insufferable, but still… I am very bothered by the direction VK has taken in the last ten years. I know rock music has lost it's mainstream popularity and kids these days aren't rebelling by listening to edgy guitar based music, but by jamming to Billie Eilish and Lil Peep and whoever they are. But I feel VK's identitiy is so strongly tied to rock, even the stuff that was quite electronic (like Schwarz Stein) reflected it through its songwriting and -structure. That kinda changed with the advent of first western Metalcore copycats (which imo deprived VK of its unique blend of sound of post-punk and Heavy Metal) and then the introduction of annoying dance and electronic beats and shitty "synths". Now we reached the point where stuff like is so far removed from what VK was. Can't say if it's good or bad, it's evolving after all and that can't be stopped… but I am worried that VK, which is already meaningless and super niche in japan, will just completely dissolve and assimilate into this big pot of "hip" pop and microgenre stuff. Not sure if I make sense, it's a bit tricky to express what irks me.

kill it with fire

Décadadance sounds like a mashup of the most common kote kei clichés. It does also remind me heavily of a specific song, but I can't point my finger on which. Generally this single seems to have received a kind of Grieva-treatment, sounding more like covers of existing songs than really their own compositions. Not saying it's bad, but I think I liked Jaki's songwriting more, which gave La'veil that unique sound that sadiesmarry also had. They always were heavily on the matina worship, but now it's more obvious. Let's see where their upcoming releases go.

Sadly the guy is too well established in the VK scene, despite his shitty behavior. Imo it's not just that japan thinks differently of people like him, but guys like him have so much support behind their back they really can get away with a lot of shit. See also Marilyn Manson or Chris Brown. They too did some horrible, abusive shit and still have so many people cheering them on and excusing their acts. And this is why idolizing people, really any people, in the media and entertainment industry is wrong.

Despite google translate, that English wasn't so bad. Better than his music.

Found image of Kiryu's new lewk