Muma

I only have If These Trees Could Talk's album Red Forest from 2012, but it is fantastic. I like the dark vibe that runs through the entire album...I really should check out some of their earlier stuff. Glad to hear that you enjoy them, though.

I really branched out in terms of music this year I feel. I've been into Japanese stuff for about three years now I guess? The first year consisted soley of The GazettE, Dir en Grey, Alice Nine, Nightmare etc etc etc, you probably get a rough picture. The second year was more exploring the scene and just generally branching out into the scene and finding my own music rather that what is just 'more readily availible'. But still well in the category of more recent bands (read as active bands)
 
Life story over, this year I've been thrown into the world of 90's and early 00's VK music (in terms of new discoveries), the likes of Syndrome, Madeth Gray'll, La'Mule, Eze:qul and the list could literally go on, but these stick in my mind the most at the moment of typing.
 
But if we're going to mention specific bands then LuLu and NightingeiL are a definite for VK, along with Heisei Ishin's final album REVOLUTIONS to pull things over to a slightly happier note, and I normally can't get into full albums from bands with similar sounds. It's normally either a couple of songs/singles or a mini album.
One band that was a real surprise is Janna Da Arc's GAIA album. Not being a fan of ABC ('cept one song) and not liking the few JDA songs I heard before, primarily due to Yasu's voice. But somehow something changed when I listened to this album, courtesy of MH I downloaded it on a whim and oh boy, A+ decision -pats self on back-
Before I forget, Jupiter's amazing debut album was everything I wanted from Versailles and more. Although I was starting to listen to more Versailles, Jupiter just blew them out of the water and I might be hooked > . <
 
Kenshi Yonezu's album Diorama and amazarashi's Sennen Kofukuron, have to be more on the alternative side that pretty much manage to soothe my soul no matter what or just take me away to a slightly happier place, if only briefly > <
Still with the non VK theme and more recently, LITE. That's it. That's all I've got. I have no words to describe how hard I fell for them at first listen. And courtesy of our CAT... Luis Nanook. Reminds me a lot of Sigur Rós if you're into that kind of music, but I've been loving working to it and even got one of my 'japanese music hating friends' to like them which is A HUUGE BONUS in my book anyway
 
As far as non Japanese music goes...
Post-Hardcore/Punk Rocky-esque music (although I may have put them in my screamo thread WHOOPS) La Dispute and Defeater are two that stand out and are relatively easy listening for a lot of music within that genre hence fit with a lot of moods. On the more melodic side of Post-Hardcore I guess would be Landscapes which I also mentioned in that thread.
Last one before I bore you even more, Trivium's Ascendancy album. I asked a guy in HMV to recommend me some CD's because I wanted something new and this was on the list, and it's just a generally solid metal album which I highly recommend if that's your thing

Thank's ^^
Yes I like it this two bands too ^^

Hello people who probably don't know me! I am Manda. My job is to make things look pretty and function on the front end of Deadeyes-star.com (Kai gets the back end, hehehe). Here I present to you my first "Letter from the Designer"!
 
The past couple of weeks I've made huge progress in coding out DS's theme with pyrocms. However, we discovered the hard way that pyro is great for back end development and completely sucks for front end. There is little documentation on how to properly set things up functionally in regards to front end functions so it's been a whole bunch of trial and error and making shit up! So I apologize for my part of things taking a little long ;__;
 
As of right now we have the following functioning:
User login and login forms User registration and registration forms User Profiles and control panel User shoutbox "Featured" slider Articles and all article functions complete Category and site wide tagging system Commenting system Static Pages All of this not including the massive amount of work Kai put into building the custom module for bands. Before we can open to the public we need we need to finish up the following:
 
Index page set up Band profile layout coded Search Function MH to DS user accont integration
Once these features are complete the site can launch in it's test phase and designated staff can begin work on entering information into the database! SO EXCITING!
Adding in these features shouldn't take very long. I estimate less than a month if we can keep up a good pace with only a couple of brick walls to run into. 
 
And now I leave you with screen shots of progress!
 
 
 

 

 

Don't bother with amping unless the headphone really needs it

If you had a line of chocolate squares, all the way from 100% coco to 1% coco, would you be able to taste the difference in between? I don't know what the 1% one would taste like though, but probably like shit...
 
Back on topic, for example, no matter how long you stare at the hour hand on a clock apparently you'll never see it move because it moves too slowly. Kind of same with the missing blue analogy, where if you have a line of all the shades of blue but with one missing, can you picture the missing shade? Without going into detail, the ultimate answer for me is that the difference will be so minuscule that you wont be able to see the difference or hence even spot the missing shade hence a pseudo problem.
 
I'm  probably just bullshitting now, I can't even remember why we had to use that as an analogy in philosophy, and I don't remember writing down that conclusion i'm just warping it to however I see fit...

LOL am I really the only one so far who is genuinely glad and excited to hear new music from these guys? :'D

If we're not going for Prog specifically, can I direct you towards Protest The Hero...or everyone seeing this? They just released what is definitely the best metal album of 2013, getting amazing reviews all around by metal sites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=ppwWGTgGMMQ

So this is an EXTREMELY belated introdution! I've decided to be more active on this forum (hopefully) but all you guys seem cool and awesome and I get intimidated easily, also i'm not the best at describing music when I want to introduce others to it, so I tend to keep quiet because you guys are so much better at it! >< so you may see me lurking around on the chat occasionally, most likely being that one person who never seems to know what's going on and having to repeatedly ask and be awkward
I did come at first mostly because of the downloads section and I would love to upload stuff BUT I JUST DON'T HAVE MONEY GUYS hopefully a time will come when I can actually upload my own stuff and not just be a notorious leecher -sigh-
 
Anyway onto music, I don't really have any bands that I stick to religiously as music tends to reflect my mood a lot/ or reflects what I want my mood to be/ I just like finding new bands so I become obsessed with them for really brief periods of time and then find something else. Or maybe that's just because MH introduces me to so much good music I just want to listen to all of it...
Either way, a few bands that i've been listening to recently are
Plastic Tree amber gris Janne Da Arc Dir en Grey NightingeiL Alice Nine cocklobin D DELUHI Not sticking to VK i've been listening to
Kuroki Nagisa (due to MH THANKS GUYS!!!) school food punishment Asako Nasu Kenshi Yonezu GYZE Just in case you're interested, some English bands i've been listening to recently
Northlane The Antlers Rishloo La Dispute Ne Obliviscaris Lydia I listen to a fairly wide variety of music and it tends to change up a lot, I also have a tendency to ramble on a lot, excuse the ridiculously long post and lists, so i'm just going to stop here and I hope I can pluck up the courage to get to know some of you guys better
-flies away awkwardly-

but at the same time...
how to find a niche?! 
 
Constantly stuck between wanting to be REALLY good at something and wanting to be good at ALL the things, but then the logical side of your brain takes over like 'yooooouuuu....suck. And are not being realistic in the slightest and go master one of your interests and become FUCKING AWESOME AT IT.'
Then the short attention span kicks in... 'NEW SHINY THING OVER THERE! GO. TO. THE SHINY.'
 
or that's at least how it is for me

I found my old albums, so I think it was my best hllwn look ever.
2012. 
why no one want to show hllwn looks today? :c

from what I've read, well especially on here, I have concluded that this may be an unpopular opinion
 
I really liked The Gazettes Division, especially the second disc I think? Not 100% sure since I got the regular one so.... on that the first few tracks feat. GazeStep. Not a huge fan of the slower songs on the second half (or first disc??? so confusing man) II get halfway through the slower songs and then I just switch off. Some of them I really like but it begins to trail off towards the end
And a lot of people have regained a tiny bit of hope in them since Beautiful Deformity, but I listened through it once and...not since. It just didn't catch my attention at all and I can't even remember how any of the songs went. I'll probably listen to it again to *ahem* confirm this >< or not... you never know
 
actually that's a lie... I remember the guruguruguru bit in the notquitesurebutsomethngaboutaninsect song xD

Unpopular opinion: MEJIBRAY has nothing to do with the GazettE in terms of "rip-offness"
 
Sure, Tsuzuku is a fan of Ruki's and the GazettE's, admittedly. And this moderately shows in his visuals at times.
Sure, the band has some songs in their catalogue that seem to have some similarities to a few of GazettE's tunes.
...about 3 songs out of a total 48 (and counting).
...which usually only resemble GazettE stuff for like half a minute each.
(remember DIE KUSSE where everyone shouted "ripoff, hahaa!" only because of the introductory part that never ever repeats again? ;> )
 
So it's getting a bit weird and old to read all the "durrrr Gazetto copybando" stuff. Feels just like around 7-8 years ago when all I heard everywhere was "durrrr Gazetto sounds like Diru" (no they didn't, lol).

from what I've read, well especially on here, I have concluded that this may be an unpopular opinion
 
I really liked The Gazettes Division, especially the second disc I think? Not 100% sure since I got the regular one so.... on that the first few tracks feat. GazeStep. Not a huge fan of the slower songs on the second half (or first disc??? so confusing man) II get halfway through the slower songs and then I just switch off. Some of them I really like but it begins to trail off towards the end
And a lot of people have regained a tiny bit of hope in them since Beautiful Deformity, but I listened through it once and...not since. It just didn't catch my attention at all and I can't even remember how any of the songs went. I'll probably listen to it again to *ahem* confirm this >< or not... you never know
 
actually that's a lie... I remember the guruguruguru bit in the notquitesurebutsomethngaboutaninsect song xD

For the last two hours I've been trying to come up with something clever to say to this, but I'm just too overwhelmed by the immense stupidity and ignorance of this statement to come up with anything. 

girugamess 

aie + gara someone pls record this shit

A closed tagging system seems more...functional? Not the right word, something closer to 'useful'. At the moment a lot of the time I feel that it isn't really worth having tags due to the large variety and as you mentioned, tags like 'kote kei' and 'old school', within the context of MH anyway, seems to pretty much overlap. I also think that compulsory tagging would be a good idea, maybe more people will be inclined to read the rules then >< but I think more than one tag to be compulsory would be better, as visual kei is quite broad ><
 
I do like the idea of tagging mood though! This is presuming that tags will be included representative of all the different subgenres such as oshare etc etc... It would probably be helpful to have a kind of guideline to them. Not really sure angura kei consists of tbh and it would probably be useful for and if anyone is unsure then it would be a good reference point.
 
Maybe this is slightly influenced by my obsessive nature and want to put things into little boxes
But it'd be interesting to see what everyone else thinks

Some day I will switch off of iTunes and use foobar...maybe if there was a way to sync my libraries between the two, because my main problem is I still want to be able to manage everything on my iPod.

After well over a year's worth of work, I'd like to present to you all: RarezHut! This is one of the first international store for used visual kei music. Myself, along with my two associates, have been working hard to deliver a store to meet the needs of the international visual kei community, offering a wide selection of products at a reasonable cost. At the moment, RarezHut has over 600 items for sale, each of which includes a listenable/watchable sample! We've got a total inventory of well over 2000 items and will be working hard over the coming months to deliver updates(at least once a month) with as many items as we can stuff in there. Currently available are a multitude of CDs, DVDs, cassette tapes and VHS spanning over 200 bands.
 
Features of the store include:
"Fuzzy search" system: when you search for a band, it'll pull up any other items available by bands with members from the band you searched for in addition. Listenable/watchable samples for every item to give you a little idea of what to look forward to. Newsletter: If you create an account, you can opt-in for our newsletter which details all of the recent additions and will be sent out the moment they're added to the site, allowing you to get first dibs on any new goodies! Remember: once they're gone, they're gone for good~ Digital copies: along with any cassette/VHS purchases, we offer high-quality digital copies free-of-charge. We realize that not everyone has the means to play these aging formats, but we aim not to let that get in the way of you being able to enjoy them! In an effort to make sure that buying goes smoothly, all items added will have the digital copies ready before addition so that packages can be shipped out on the next business day.  
Thanks for taking the time to look at this and we sincerely hope you enjoy the store(and whatever goodies you buy from it )! Given the small nature of the visual kei community, we rely on word-of-mouth for most of our advertising, so any friends you can tell about the store will help us immensely <3
 
If you've got any questions/comments/feedback, feel free to post them here or send me a PM and I'll try to reply ASAP~
 
Update 3/13/2015
So we've finally joined the 21st century and started a facebook and tumblr! You can follow us on either(or both if you really love us <3) for product spotlights, updates, corgi pictures and more! To celebrate this, we're running a special 10% off sale from now(3/13) until next week Friday(3/20). To get in on this sale, just enter the code SOCIALSALE10 at checkout and you'll be on your way to (even) cheaper rarez in no time!
 
In addition, I'd like to welcome Rob(robkun) to the RarezHut team! He's been a huge supporter of our store since the very beginning and we're honored to have him as part of the staff! He'll be writing the product spotlights on both our facebook and tumblr pages, so definitely go check them out because they're really awesome

Nice introduction
 
welcome and have fun !

So this is an EXTREMELY belated introdution! I've decided to be more active on this forum (hopefully) but all you guys seem cool and awesome and I get intimidated easily, also i'm not the best at describing music when I want to introduce others to it, so I tend to keep quiet because you guys are so much better at it! >< so you may see me lurking around on the chat occasionally, most likely being that one person who never seems to know what's going on and having to repeatedly ask and be awkward
I did come at first mostly because of the downloads section and I would love to upload stuff BUT I JUST DON'T HAVE MONEY GUYS hopefully a time will come when I can actually upload my own stuff and not just be a notorious leecher -sigh-
 
Anyway onto music, I don't really have any bands that I stick to religiously as music tends to reflect my mood a lot/ or reflects what I want my mood to be/ I just like finding new bands so I become obsessed with them for really brief periods of time and then find something else. Or maybe that's just because MH introduces me to so much good music I just want to listen to all of it...
Either way, a few bands that i've been listening to recently are
Plastic Tree amber gris Janne Da Arc Dir en Grey NightingeiL Alice Nine cocklobin D DELUHI Not sticking to VK i've been listening to
Kuroki Nagisa (due to MH THANKS GUYS!!!) school food punishment Asako Nasu Kenshi Yonezu GYZE Just in case you're interested, some English bands i've been listening to recently
Northlane The Antlers Rishloo La Dispute Ne Obliviscaris Lydia I listen to a fairly wide variety of music and it tends to change up a lot, I also have a tendency to ramble on a lot, excuse the ridiculously long post and lists, so i'm just going to stop here and I hope I can pluck up the courage to get to know some of you guys better
-flies away awkwardly-

What kind of database are you using? Relational database?? CAN I QUERY THE SHIT OUT OF IT?!?!!?!?
It would be cool to do end of year statistics on how many new bands formed and how many broke up.
WOULDN'T THAT BE COOL?!? Then make pie charts and graphs and all that pretty shit.

I was tempted to put some of these songs in the -THE- song thread, but I felt i'd be throwing it off coures a little. Then again, some of these could go in the music and memories thread,  but I felt it was too general, thus...this atrocious pile of text was born...
 
This is more a stroll down memory lane for me, these songs don't necessarily have to represent the band as a whole, for me it's more a case of the songs which have managed to creep into your library. Creep in from where exactly? I don't even know myself sometimes, but now you actually think about it, they always bring a smile to your face. They're not necessarilly what the band is known for, but you occasionally think 'why does no one ever talk about this song!' Then you maybe think over it, maybe listen to the full album and start to doubt yourself, 'oh yeah, this one is more memorable' or 'I see why people like this one more' BUT IT'S STILL SO GODDAMN ANNOYING BECAUSE YOU WANT TO SCREAM THAT SONG AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS TO EVERYONE EVEN THE ONES THAT WON'T LISTEN
(optional story to go along with them, don't mind my rambling ><)
 
 
For me, my first introduction into the world of VK (or just music in general, but that's a different story) was Nightmare through...Death Note xD typical weeaboo answer I know, but can't change the facts. Before I digress, one of the songs I rarely see mentioned is Rakuu, it's one of those songs which I don't ever think i'll be able to delete from my life without deleting a part of my soul along with it. I never used to listen to musicfor the first 15/16 years of my life (basically my entire life okay), I used to do a lot of gymnastics and that basically was my life, but chronic fatigue happened and I had to quit. Then I found anime and hence 'music' and decided fuck the world and I let music touch me emotionally for the first time
 
But yeah, that song just takes me back to just discovering what the world of music had to offer, it was basically the starting point for me finding an interest where I could make new friends and be a part of a community, rather than humiliated by my coach in a very much individual sport. And it also showed me just what I had been missing out on due to insecurities. I'm only 18 now, which probably seems like a baby to most of you guys ><
 
Next up? Has to be about the Gazette, they normally manage to pop up somewhere. I got into the Gazette how many people did I think, mostly through their popularity in the VK scene, browsing through youtube videos and scrolling the comments and seeing this name popping up everywhere. Eventually I checked them out and I was kind of sucked into the whole fangirl wave (which i'm not sure when I left tbh). But that aside, i've not had much time to form many memories with music but Chizuru is one song that I can't see disappearing any time soon, being one of the few Gazette songs I still listen to... I still don't really know the translation or what Ruki is singing about, but I do know that that song  is what got me through a time where I wasn't really able to do much at all physically. I couldn't do much mentally either, but what I could do mentally just brought me further down the spiral of depression...<<dramatic elipses as I look thoughtfully into the sunset
 
First time i've managed to build up enough courage to make a substantial post on here >__<
I know i've rambled a bit but hope it's okay! in other words please be kind to me or i'll cry T___T

Since I can't stand the Mejibray/GazettE-stanning that's taken over this topic and has gotten away from the original intent, I'm bringing it back. I'm also giving you all something new to talk about since new unpopular opinions have ceased to surface over the last page or so.

Visual kei is not a genre or an aesthetic movement. It's a paradoxical manifestation of an anomaly against the negatives of Japanese culture.

This is closely related to the problem of "what is visual kei?".

Stolen shamelessly from Wikipedia, a genre is defined as
 
 
We can stop right here. Before you start processing the definition, ask yourself "what is visual kei"? We can have a ten page discussion about that in this topic right now and still not come to a consensus. Visual kei is an open-ended, ill-defined term exploited by both us and the bands in the scene to refer to whatever we please. We agree to disagree on what the term is supposed to mean and take it at face value when someone tells us that a band is or isn't visual kei anymore.

By definition, visual kei can't be a genre because we can only define it by what it is not, and very conservatively at that. The difference between newbies and veterans in the scene mostly comes down to context sensitivity determining band classification. What do I mean by this? Well, we can all look at a band or an idol group and very clearly say "this is not visual kei". But if we look at a visual kei band next to a band that uses theatrical make-up and aesthetic elements, we get into murky territory. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Newbies lack the knowledge to make this distinction, and utilize only the looks to say whether or not a band is visual. Then, they get lashed upon by fans of that band who "don't want to associate this band with those bands" for getting it wrong, and they learn. Eventually they learn only to label a band as visual kei if they describe themselves as such or if someone else before them says it first. [1]

The thing is, the newbies have the right approach at first. They get into the scene, they hear that it's a genre, and seek to classify it. But before long they realize that over the span of twenty years, visual kei has birthed bands that sound very, very different. Going off of sound alone, all bands that were ever considered visual kei can't be connected short of a definition so vague it's useless. So then we turn to the costumes and theatrics and claim that as a large component of what makes a band visual. But even there, we can piece together different bands that don't look anything alike - some bands which don't look remotely visual at all - and claim they are all visual kei. Hell, lynch. has looked like a normal band for quite some time and there's still a heated debate to whether or not they're visual kei. On the first page of this very topic, one of the unpopular opinions was that "Dir en grey is still visual". Once again, you now have bands that have very little in common aesthetic wise and short of a very vague, useless definition we have nothing to go off of.

So I've basically run through this problem, haven't given a solution and haven't explained my point (or have I?). What gives?

Well as a fandom we tend to separate visual kei bands based on decades, so let's do that:

- The mysterious late 80's, which most of us like to pretend doesn't exist, full of bands that play some form of rock or metal.
- The music of the 90's, which is usually thought of as bands inspired by Victorian and goth costumes playing...well, whatever they want.
- The 00's, which was populated by lots of flashy costumes, usually subdivided into subkeis to better be able to classify and understand bands but still full of bands playing whatever they want.
- The 10's, which seems to have a preponderance of electronic elements in the music but for the most part still full of plenty of different bands playing whatever they please.

And even here we tend to simplify this as to "80s HAIR METAL, 90'S GOFF MUZIK, 00'S KEI ON KEI ACTION/RAWRCORE, 10'S WUB-WUBCORE", which illustrates the points I made above. As a fan, you get to a point where you realize that the term can't be defined and thus you stop. The working definition is "If a band wants to be visual kei, they'll be visual kei. When they don't, they're no longer visual kei". [2]  So doesn't this describe a movement, which brings together people just as different for a common cause? Let's go through all of the things that should make a movement and see if it lines up.

Well let's see:

- Coordinated group action. Well, visual kei isn't very rebellious or subversive, outside of the low barrier to entry being offensive to some people's ears and the costumes being offensive to some people's eyes. Unless there is this entire "point" they all share that we've missed for forever and a day, I believe that most bands focus on staying functional over staying Stallman-esque in their beliefs. [3] And frankly, I can't blame them. Pragmatism rules. [4]

- A common cause. But what is that cause and do all bands share it? As I said above, we really don't think of visual kei as something as much as we do as an entity against something. But even that "entity" changes over time, reflected by the different forms of visual kei. So do the bands of the late 80's and the bands of today share the same goal? Yes and no. [5]

- People from different walks of life. We can't say too much because we don't know the details of most musicians. Note however that on a macro scale most visual kei bands are Japanese and many tend to gravitate around a few cities on the mainland. We also can surmise that a lot of these musicians are poor or struggling. We also haven't seen the scene take root in any other countries with similar situations. In this sense, it represents a truly Japanese problem - disillusioned youth versus "The System". If it's a movement here, it's on a small scale.

Visual kei is too anti-classification to be a genre and too inconclusive to be a movement. So what is it?

My admittedly semantic description of visual kei is that of a paradoxical anomaly. It exists, full of people perpetuating it unaware of it's purpose, fighting against an issue that plagues the Japanese society whilst embodying almost every characteristic of that society. What is that issue? Well, I believe the issue lies in the extreme conformity and deference to authority found in the society, coupled with high expectations placed upon every member of that society, along with a thirty year recession that has stagnated the Japanese economy and makes it hard to achieve the life every Japanese person feels it is their duty to obtain.

A strictly Japanese problem. [6]

Visual kei exists as an antagonist to everything in that society, even definition, because it refuses to conform. It's piloted by people who know full they may never see success but toil anyway as a gigantic "FUCK YOU" to their society. It's also mostly populated by young people with the drive and ambition to change their surroundings but no means to achieve that change (and older people who exploit these young people for the cash they'll never see, bringing the entire scene into territory so meta it hurts). When those kids grow up and lose their drive, as after years of fighting against this nebulous problem they watch it shift into something new but no less harmful, they give up, slip into the routine, and become working salary men that can't be identified. It's an anomaly that just is, and that anomaly happens to make noise that we like to listen to.

To pigeonhole visual kei into anything else misses the political and cultural significance that caused it's birth.

tl;dr - Visual kei is the Japanese "hippie culture" of the 60's, with no Vietnam War in sight to bring it to an end. [7]

Notes:

Here I extrapolate on points that I wanted to make above and didn't because I didn't want to go on a tangent and not come back.

[1] This is my personal belief behind why revival bands like Grieva and Ru:natic will never see a resurgence. The forms that visual kei took in the 90's was in resistance to the culture and expectations of the 90's. The world is an irreversibly different place and thus visual kei must change along with it. This is also why I believe that visual kei is not an aesthetic - the fashion world moves in cycles much shorter than 30 years. Visual kei hasn't repeated a phase to date. That's why I believe it supersedes such a definition.

[2] Not only does this loose definition work but it reflects a lot of what I get into later in my argument. Most importantly, that it gives an element of control back to the band. I've read in multiple places that the Japanese populace don't feel like they have much choice - they must succeed in school, get into better schools, succeed there, get a good job, start a family, etc. - and then must face a wall of depression when they realize that most can't get to the head of the pack and they didn't. By sticking to this definition, bands can have a say in a core element which defines them.

[3] Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project. Read up on him to see what ideals unbounded by pragmatism really is. Hint: it sounds like crazy.

[4] When bands have no motivation or have run out of reasons to continue they sometimes disband for no reason. On the other side of that coin, some bands are so tight knit that they feel as if they can't function if a member leaves. But at the heart of it all, many bands don't put ideals and beliefs over success. Those that have them use them alongside the visuals and their music - and even then if it becomes too hard they quit or if they become successful they tone it down or cut it out completely. See, NoGoD.

[5] Even more interestingly, visual kei itself tends to conform in ways, which subverts the point of the whole thing. It's like a military group led by a dictator attacking a dictatorial government for its evils. This is why I refrain from calling it a movement, because it itself embodies the very principles it seeks to combat.

[6] Which is why "overseas visual kei" will never take off. The societal conditions are not right for it to spawn. YOHIO and Seremedy are second-order simulacra.

[7] After WWII, Japan isn't allowed to have a real standing army so it isn't in it's best interest to get into conflicts. I meant it literally. In another sense, you could say that the counterculture of the 60's was against "The System" but manifested itself through the War. Once the War ended, the culture had little reason to exist. Since visual kei doesn't have such a clear cut enemy, it will continue on for much longer. This is also why visual kei can't "die".