Shmilly

Judging by the 'whole new world' part I'm expecting at the very least a Black 2/ White 2 style update to the Hoenn region. Although since the references in X & Y also mention a different region, what if this actually turns out to be the follow up to those too? Also Mega Groudon and Kyogre confirmed.

At its core it's a fairly simple puzzle game where you switch coloured orbs to make sets of three or more - the colour responds to the type of the monsters in your team, and so deleting the same colour deals damage to your enemies. The complexity comes in when every orb you move past switches place, so you can line up multiple matches on one turn. Furthermore, a set of 5 in any configuration causes all opponents to take damage of that colour. And of course, each monster has some kind of ability that takes so many turns to charge, and many also have a leader skill, which means selecting your lineup (and which friend's monster to borrow, since you also gain the benefit of their leader skill). Then there's a Pokemon like aspect where you can level up (and also skill up, thus taking less turns to charge) your monsters, and many of them can be evolved once they hit max level - providing you have the right materials to expend, which are rarer monsters. Add to this the cycle of weekday dungeons, random time special dungeons, a lengthy campaign of regular ones and also a high score table for the elite, and you have a huge and deep game which you can play entirely for free. Oh, and there's an egg machine each for points accumulated using friends' monsters, and one for the premium currency (which is given to you regularly for free anyway) which can net you some rare but random goodies. Do I sound too much like a maniac yet?

Me too! Ridiculously addicted to it right now. Still a little annoyed that the ultimate evo I need on my English version, is only available in the Japanese so far, while in my Japanese version, I need the materials from the English one... -sigh-. Please add some kind of trading feature, Gungho.

These covers are pretty awesome. Although I think if the GazettE disbanded it would put most of them out of the music scene, not see them split up into different directions. Being one of the most long lasting globally recognised and successful visual kei bands is a tough act to follow.

The film's a little complicated, but the basic premise is this: A teacher's daughter is found dead in the school swimming pool, and it turns out she was murdered by two of her students. Since they're too young to take any responsibility at court, she exacts revenge by injecting their milk with HIV-positive blood from her husband. It's called 'kokuhaku' (confessions) because the film centres around explaining the circumstances leading up to the event through the confessions of the main characters.

The file is too big to be downloaded as a free member, it clearly states you need to go premium.

But as the title says, West Japan. Tokyo is in the east, that's why most of the successful bands are based there.

On the furigana discussion, that's the band's intention I think. Their first album title when just listening sounds like 'demon lizard', but the way it's written is 'demon and shadow'. You can tell it's a play on the sound because the album cover features a lizard.

These guys are busy lately. Good news though, if it's a quality album next week I'll be excited for these too.

1: Do you buy multiple versions of releases, or buy at all? (Judgement-Free-Zone) I buy new and old releases all the time, but usually only one version. Since I'm a music person first and foremost, I tend to choose the edition with the bonus track(s) where available. I only have a couple of items in more than one version, and that's because I found an alternate super cheap while in Japan. 2: Do you collect cheki or other non-music related items from bands? Nope, this is what makes me a collector more than a fan. My interest in buying items is purely down to the discography. Live-dist and store exclusive CD/DVDs are the crown of my collection. I'm also a fan of lossless so the more I can get hold of, the better. 3: Follow them on Ameblo, Twitter? No, I don't have either of those. Occasionally I look through a band member's Ameblog, though usually for high-res album art or live setlists rather than much interest in their personal life. I have a bit of a thing for making playlists out of one-man setlists, particularly tour finals. 4: Would you follow them on the street? I want to say no, since I'm definitely not that kind of fan, but if I could be certain it was someone from one of my favourite bands or a musician or vocalist in the scene that I really respect, I would of course try to approach them for a photo or something. 5: Dig through their trash? (Judgment-Free-Zone) Nope, no interest there. Not really sure what people would aim to find there. I mean, it's unlikely they'd throw out something valuable like clothing or accessories in their regular trash. Especially in Japan, where it's divided into burnable and non-burnable, and that's it. 6: Does Visual Kei or other forms of your musical taste influence your style or personal life? Absolutely, music is such an important part of my life. I have some distinctly visual kei clothing, which I wear most to concerts and the like where I'll be with the crowd, but for the most part I like a more toned-down style - think DELUHI toward the end. That said, clothes are super expensive and with my music collector side I don't often get to buy a lot of them. 7: Desire to move or visit Japan influenced by music? Hahahahaha. This message brought to you from Hino, Tokyo. Welcome to the summary of the last few years of my life. 8: Do you read dirt-sheets of bands, like rumours, gossip, etc...? Only if it crops up on one of the blogs or forums like this site that I frequent. Like I said before, I have little interest in the band members' personal lives - I don't subscribe to celebrity culture and I hate the way 'famous' peoples' lives are so exposed to the media. It's really none of our business. 9: Ever fantasize about being friends with band members? (JFZ) Yeah, sometimes. It would be cool to hang out at a bar with a couple of the guys and just chat about the VK scene, have a good time. A friend of mine met Kihiro from UNDIVIDE/LOKA once and he sounds like a lot of fun to go out with. Meeting band members outside of their performance persona would be a really cool way to get to know them. 10: Do you want to be in a Visual Kei band (or any other kind of band)? Well I do still have that childhood dream of fronting a rock band, but at this point I'm pretty convinced it's not gonna happen. Thank God for karaoke and nights when I'm home alone then.

1: Don`t worry about others, is Visual Kei a genre, or a scene, or something else, to you? First and foremost, I would argue that visual kei is a scene, since a genre typically defines some quality of the sound or style of the music. What makes visual kei different is the 'visual' aspect. VK bands incorporate such a huge range of genres that it would be wrong to call them all 'visual kei' and be done with it. However, hypocrite that I am, I also personally find it convenient to think of VK as a genre too to some extent. I categorize my Japanese music for the most part into visual kei and non-, which then becomes rock, metal, or whatever umbrella I think the band falls under. 2: Most of the time can you tell the genre, or if you will like a band based on their look? It's difficult to tell exactly what kind of sound a band is going for based solely on their image, although as a long-time listener of visual kei there are certain characteristics that give you a hint. For example, lolita styled bands like Versailles tend to have a kind of classical, technical style, while dark outfits and gloomy makeup make me think Nagoya or eroguro. The poppy bands like oshare kei conversely dress very brightly. Despite obviously knowing my own taste in music though, guessing a band's sound from the outset is not the same as listening to their music and their look alone won't suffice to tell me if they're worth my time. 3: Do the looks matter to you? If the same band dressed in Jeans and T-shirts with short hair, would you be as interested? In a genre called 'visual' kei, of course the looks are important. But if my favourite visual band suddenly turned to casual clothing, that doesn't mean their sound would change too. The only thing that would stop me listening to a band I like is if their style changes too much to something I don't personally appreciate. If Signal had decided to switch to jeans and T-shirts, they would still be one of my favourite metalcore bands. I guess that's the difference - lose the visuals, and it's not really 'visual kei' any more. 4: Do you search for music by sub-genre, such as Nu-Metal, Alt. Rock, etc? I'm aware of the infinite sub-genres people try to define rock and metal music under, but it doesn't really bother me. I tend not to search for music much anyway, a majority of new bands I come across are from news forums like these, or recommendations from friends. I have attempted to some degree to categorize my non-visual library into the broader sub-genres, but as I said before, that's reserved for anything I haven't deemed 'visual kei'. 5: Do you get annoyed when others label your favorite music as genres which you don`t agree with? I haven't really encountered this. If I did, I think it would only bother me if it was clearly something very different from the style the band is going for. My real pet hate is people tagging Japanese bands in unicode for things like Last.fm, purely because it categorizes them uniquely. The only time you should tag a band name in unicode is if that is the band's official styling. Otherwise, well, you're tagging them with a different band name. Bonus: If a band starts as Visual Kei, even if they change, are they Visual Kei 4 Lyfe? I know this is a rule we enforce on the download forums here, but in my opinion, no. I can see how it is much easier in this case, where time is saved searching up bands' past releases, but there's no reason to continue calling a band visual kei if they lose the visual aspect. That's the defining feature of the scene, genre, whatever you decide to call it.

2014 Update! Onegai ~

Well this happens occasionally in iTunes for me, but it's easy to fix. Select all the files and either add or remove the 'album artist' field as necessary. That's all there is to it.

DaizyStripper also have a Tsumi na Batsu. It's almost the same... Ageha (the Japanese swallowtail butterfly) seems to come up a fair amount to me, in lyrics too. MUCC have an Ageha on their album Kyutai, and Sadie have Ageha no Nakigara (swallowtail's corpse) on MASTER OF ROMANCE.

Unfortunately the download button simply doesn't appear at all on Japanese videos. Oh well, I guess it can't be done.

But is it possible to download it somehow?

Occasionally I like to download the odd PV from YouTube to put on my iPod, but I recently encountered a problem. All the usual methods of downloading a video from YouTube don't seem to work - either the link is invalid or a download can't be produced. And I think it's because the video is region-locked to Japan. Since I'm currently in Japan, I could watch it just fine. Is it possible to download Japanese videos at all? For those wondering, the PV in question is the full version of abingdon boys school's WE aRE, which is actually different from the version on the single (trust me, I own it).

Wow, SingerSen has a really powerful voice and an impressive vocal range. I'm definitely going to give her album a listen. Asura really caught my interest. This is coming from someone who rarely listens to anything resembling pop. I agree, one to watch.

Japanese: ALSDEAD – Separator the GazettE – BEAUTIFUL DEFORMITY Jupiter – CLASSICAL ELEMENT NOCTURNAL BLOODLUST – GRIMOIRE ONE OK ROCK – 人生×君= Sadie – MADRIGAL de MARIA Sujk – ARKHELISM 2 ギルガメッシュ – MONSTER マキシマム ザ ホルモン – 予襲復讐 雅-MIYAVI- – MIYAVI Non-Japanese: Arctic Monkeys – AM Area 11 – All The Lights In The Sky Breakdown of Sanity – Perception Bring Me the Horizon – Sempiternal SingerSen – The world in my eyes Might add non-Japanese later. These days I don't listen to a lot of it. Edit: Updated at last. I'm counting full length albums here only - there's been a ton of great minis this year too.