Ito

When you look back at the time you have spent here, no matter how long it has been, what is the album that has defines Monochrome Heaven for YOU? It can be the album you feel encompasses the mood of the forum, the album that meant the most to you during your time visiting here, that rare album that you finally found, or any other possible reason. Make sure you explain why it is as well!
 
For me, that album HAS to be D'espairsRay's Coll:set.
 

 
The dark and edgy mood mixed with excellent song writing was just what teen Ito craved and was looking for more off when he was setting up the the forum. I mean, if it wasn't obvious, just look at the forum's original name - Tainted World. Gee, I wonder where we came up with that idea from...

It's about god damn time we see Baiken!
She looks fantastic!

I remember coming across blog postings that would mention a web forum (Tainted World), that shared their love for Japanese Rock, many years ago.
I said to myself, “That forum must be full of losers”, and thought nothing more of it.
Sorry Ito haha.
 
I find it incredible that I would meet the creator of that very website (as I soon found out) here in Chicagoland years later, at an Anime Convention panel of all places, introducing his newly transitioned website “Monochrome Heaven”, and how great it would be if I joined.
It’s funny how fate works sometimes.
 
Honestly, joining Monochrome Heaven was one of the happiest decisions I believe I’ve ever made in my life.
I want to thank all of you.
I have joined many forums, and even helped moderate a couple too, but none of them were like this.
I didn’t expect to still be here, 4 years later, logging in with as much enjoyment as I did the first day.
I didn’t expect to meet incredible individuals, who love Visual Kei just as much as I do, and yet, live up to thousands of miles away from each other. Some of you make me happier after talking to, than many of my IRL friends haha.
MH helped me rediscover many music that I had heard growing up, being able to finally put some artists’ names and faces to songs that I never thought I’d hear again.
You’ve become part of my daily routine every morning, next to taking that drive to work, and drinking that much needed cup of coffee.
 
I owe this forum a great deal for being there, when I needed it the most, you have no idea. This place is my home away from home. 
Whatever I can do to keep MH here another 10 years, is the least I can do, in order to repay this great community.
 
Happy 10th Birthday, Monochrome.

Back in my lonely days of being a homeschooler out in the asscrack of nowheresville Missouri, I was a young annoying weeb who wanted to talk to other people who liked the Japanese bando men like me. So, I just google searched "visual kei forum" and here I am now.

Yeah...no.

So I may or may not have told @Ito that I would write a paragraph for the OP, then promptly forgot all about it. Oops >_>
 
Suffice it to say that, almost I'm not the oldest member here, I've been around long enough now to have a special attachment to the community here despite my music taste not always matching up with the majority. Here's looking forward to another ten years of VK memes and glorious shitposting! Who knows, maybe X Japan will have actually released their new album by the time the 20th anniversary rolls around.

I've only had an account here for about a year. I'd been a vkei fan for a lot longer, but even if I never lost interest I'd say my peak interest lingered somewhere between 2007 - 2011. Then I started pushing hard to get myself through college and other things kind of took priority. LJ died, a lot of the new sites I followed either went away or went stagnant, and a lot of the bands I'd liked went under (bar Gazette and Dir en grey). When I finally moved to Japan, I thought 'hey, prime opportunity, let's check out some indies vkei acts while I'm in Tokyo and see what they're like'. I really wanted to check out their music before I went ahead and got any tickets though.
 
One Google search later and I was here. At first I didn't even make an account, and even when I did, I mostly lurked. Granted, I've been creeping out little by little since this is one of the few places that still has the communication between fans that's kind of sorely lacking anywhere else. It's got the most up to date news, the most comprehensive uploads section, and it's a place worth coming back to. So congrats on 10 years, and kudos on being such a good resource.

MH/TW has a great community! Because of this, I was able to stop being a lurker and open myself up to the forum.
I am very grateful to the founder and all contributors of the forum that they made it exist for a decade! All the other J-rock forums on the internet just seemed to die out so MH is one of the most important channels for me to get connected with J-rock.

With the forum being around for a decade, a lot of you have changed your user names or had multiple accounts.  Add in the fact that you have probably changed your avatar a bunch of times, and it's going to be pretty hard to remember everyone across such a long span of time.
 
So let's share all of our old usernames below! And if you still have them floating on a hard drive somewhere, include an old avatar or two.

Ten years ago today, Spike760 and myself decided that we wanted to start a Japanese Rock forum. After a while of debating, we eventually settled on Tainted World (after the D’espairsRay song of the same name). Frankly, neither one of expected it to last all that long; this would hardly be the first forum that we had run together that didn’t go anywhere. But what started as a fun little project somehow blossomed into an amazing community. The fact that this site still exists after all this time has little to say about Spike and my’s original plan and everything to say about the members here. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping build this site into what it is today.
 
While I was one of the key founders of this site, Monochrome Heaven is so much bigger than just me. That became clear to me when we went under the transition from Tainted World to our current name back in 2011. While to really understand why this is so important requires more context, I don’t want to go into a full on history lesson. But since that point, so many members have stepped up and dedicated themselves to this site, putting in the time and effort (and money) into making Monochrome Heaven as great as it possibly can be.
 
To every member that has joined and felt like they were apart of a community over this silly niche interest we all have, I raise a glass to you. You all are what have made this place special. And to every staff member, current and past, no words can express my thanks to you - you are people that I have come to admire and consider good friends.
 
But this post isn’t about me, but about the Monochrome Heaven! I want to hear from all of you as to why this community is special, why you’ve becoming coming back for 10 months or 10 years. Or tell us one of your favorite moments from your time coming, whether that was a release you were looking for forever or a stupid meme that took over the forum.

Here’s some from other users to get things started!:
 
 
 
@-jibakurei-
 
@SEKHMET
 
@Ada Suilen
 
@Flame-X
 
@Seiji
 
@Platy
 
@efuru
 
@saishuu
 
@Furik
 

That is an amazing relic

With the forum being around for a decade, a lot of you have changed your user names or had multiple accounts.  Add in the fact that you have probably changed your avatar a bunch of times, and it's going to be pretty hard to remember everyone across such a long span of time.
 
So let's share all of our old usernames below! And if you still have them floating on a hard drive somewhere, include an old avatar or two.

That is an amazing relic

That is an amazing relic

I've been Original Saku for 12+ years, so that's always been the same... but I dig up some stuff on my ancient photobucket account from 10 years ago...
 

 

 

 

 
I'm pretty sure I used all of these in the very early years of TW, alos here's one that precedes this forum from myspace
 

 
also a bonus gem from the the old days when Jake (Spike760) was heavily into advertising (spamming) the forum all over the place.
 

There used to be a saying that 'anything you put on the internet stays on there forever' but megaupload's death showed us that its simply not true. If some guy put up an obscure indies vk single on a blog and say 100 people download that file, 5 years later, megaupload is down and probably only 50 people still have that file. Then out of only 10 people that are part of a community where such a file would be shared, only 1 would be willing to put in the effort to share but if no-one requests the file...
 
As time passes the chances of finding the file go down to zero. It might exist on someone's hard drives but in that case its not on the internet. You could track down the CD and buy it but what if the file was not a vk single but a fan made game or something?
 
The main lesson here is: back up any files you deem important.

Ten years ago today, Spike760 and myself decided that we wanted to start a Japanese Rock forum. After a while of debating, we eventually settled on Tainted World (after the D’espairsRay song of the same name). Frankly, neither one of expected it to last all that long; this would hardly be the first forum that we had run together that didn’t go anywhere. But what started as a fun little project somehow blossomed into an amazing community. The fact that this site still exists after all this time has little to say about Spike and my’s original plan and everything to say about the members here. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping build this site into what it is today.
 
While I was one of the key founders of this site, Monochrome Heaven is so much bigger than just me. That became clear to me when we went under the transition from Tainted World to our current name back in 2011. While to really understand why this is so important requires more context, I don’t want to go into a full on history lesson. But since that point, so many members have stepped up and dedicated themselves to this site, putting in the time and effort (and money) into making Monochrome Heaven as great as it possibly can be.
 
To every member that has joined and felt like they were apart of a community over this silly niche interest we all have, I raise a glass to you. You all are what have made this place special. And to every staff member, current and past, no words can express my thanks to you - you are people that I have come to admire and consider good friends.
 
But this post isn’t about me, but about the Monochrome Heaven! I want to hear from all of you as to why this community is special, why you’ve becoming coming back for 10 months or 10 years. Or tell us one of your favorite moments from your time coming, whether that was a release you were looking for forever or a stupid meme that took over the forum.

Here’s some from other users to get things started!:
 
 
 
@-jibakurei-
 
@SEKHMET
 
@Ada Suilen
 
@Flame-X
 
@Seiji
 
@Platy
 
@efuru
 
@saishuu
 
@Furik
 

Ten years ago today, Spike760 and myself decided that we wanted to start a Japanese Rock forum. After a while of debating, we eventually settled on Tainted World (after the D’espairsRay song of the same name). Frankly, neither one of expected it to last all that long; this would hardly be the first forum that we had run together that didn’t go anywhere. But what started as a fun little project somehow blossomed into an amazing community. The fact that this site still exists after all this time has little to say about Spike and my’s original plan and everything to say about the members here. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping build this site into what it is today.
 
While I was one of the key founders of this site, Monochrome Heaven is so much bigger than just me. That became clear to me when we went under the transition from Tainted World to our current name back in 2011. While to really understand why this is so important requires more context, I don’t want to go into a full on history lesson. But since that point, so many members have stepped up and dedicated themselves to this site, putting in the time and effort (and money) into making Monochrome Heaven as great as it possibly can be.
 
To every member that has joined and felt like they were apart of a community over this silly niche interest we all have, I raise a glass to you. You all are what have made this place special. And to every staff member, current and past, no words can express my thanks to you - you are people that I have come to admire and consider good friends.
 
But this post isn’t about me, but about the Monochrome Heaven! I want to hear from all of you as to why this community is special, why you’ve becoming coming back for 10 months or 10 years. Or tell us one of your favorite moments from your time coming, whether that was a release you were looking for forever or a stupid meme that took over the forum.

Here’s some from other users to get things started!:
 
 
 
@-jibakurei-
 
@SEKHMET
 
@Ada Suilen
 
@Flame-X
 
@Seiji
 
@Platy
 
@efuru
 
@saishuu
 
@Furik
 

Ten years ago today, Spike760 and myself decided that we wanted to start a Japanese Rock forum. After a while of debating, we eventually settled on Tainted World (after the D’espairsRay song of the same name). Frankly, neither one of expected it to last all that long; this would hardly be the first forum that we had run together that didn’t go anywhere. But what started as a fun little project somehow blossomed into an amazing community. The fact that this site still exists after all this time has little to say about Spike and my’s original plan and everything to say about the members here. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping build this site into what it is today.
 
While I was one of the key founders of this site, Monochrome Heaven is so much bigger than just me. That became clear to me when we went under the transition from Tainted World to our current name back in 2011. While to really understand why this is so important requires more context, I don’t want to go into a full on history lesson. But since that point, so many members have stepped up and dedicated themselves to this site, putting in the time and effort (and money) into making Monochrome Heaven as great as it possibly can be.
 
To every member that has joined and felt like they were apart of a community over this silly niche interest we all have, I raise a glass to you. You all are what have made this place special. And to every staff member, current and past, no words can express my thanks to you - you are people that I have come to admire and consider good friends.
 
But this post isn’t about me, but about the Monochrome Heaven! I want to hear from all of you as to why this community is special, why you’ve becoming coming back for 10 months or 10 years. Or tell us one of your favorite moments from your time coming, whether that was a release you were looking for forever or a stupid meme that took over the forum.

Here’s some from other users to get things started!:
 
 
 
@-jibakurei-
 
@SEKHMET
 
@Ada Suilen
 
@Flame-X
 
@Seiji
 
@Platy
 
@efuru
 
@saishuu
 
@Furik
 

That's what all of us know about his musical activities as of late. But one of the possible lineups if he ever forms a new band with could be his older brother, Nii (ex-Girugamesh) if you ask me.

Ten years ago today, Spike760 and myself decided that we wanted to start a Japanese Rock forum. After a while of debating, we eventually settled on Tainted World (after the D’espairsRay song of the same name). Frankly, neither one of expected it to last all that long; this would hardly be the first forum that we had run together that didn’t go anywhere. But what started as a fun little project somehow blossomed into an amazing community. The fact that this site still exists after all this time has little to say about Spike and my’s original plan and everything to say about the members here. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping build this site into what it is today.
 
While I was one of the key founders of this site, Monochrome Heaven is so much bigger than just me. That became clear to me when we went under the transition from Tainted World to our current name back in 2011. While to really understand why this is so important requires more context, I don’t want to go into a full on history lesson. But since that point, so many members have stepped up and dedicated themselves to this site, putting in the time and effort (and money) into making Monochrome Heaven as great as it possibly can be.
 
To every member that has joined and felt like they were apart of a community over this silly niche interest we all have, I raise a glass to you. You all are what have made this place special. And to every staff member, current and past, no words can express my thanks to you - you are people that I have come to admire and consider good friends.
 
But this post isn’t about me, but about the Monochrome Heaven! I want to hear from all of you as to why this community is special, why you’ve becoming coming back for 10 months or 10 years. Or tell us one of your favorite moments from your time coming, whether that was a release you were looking for forever or a stupid meme that took over the forum.

Here’s some from other users to get things started!:
 
 
 
@-jibakurei-
 
@SEKHMET
 
@Ada Suilen
 
@Flame-X
 
@Seiji
 
@Platy
 
@efuru
 
@saishuu
 
@Furik