How to make Visual Kei popular again?

[nekkichi 6043]

6 minutes ago, GreatNorthernVK said:

That might apply if they were trying for the bro-metal scene.

 

Post-hardcore/metal-core was a different beast entirely.

[CAT5 9075]

If we knew how to make VK popular, MH would have a billion users and the staff would be sittin' pretty off dat ad monneh.

 

@Zeus - what saith you?

 

[Zeus 7997]

6 hours ago, CAT5 said:

If we knew how to make VK popular, MH would have a billion users and the staff would be sittin' pretty off dat ad monneh.

 

@Zeus - what saith you?

 

You can't make something popular again if it wasn't popular in the first place.  Everyone looks back at 2007-2010 as the heyday of the scene, but I think we know more about the scene now than we did back then. A lot of it was people trend riding Dir en grey, the GazettE, and a whole host of other popular bands until they jumped ship for K-Pop. Even when I go to shows abroad, people in line hardly know as much about the band or the scene as people here on MH do. We are in our own bubble and we have to learn to look beyond that bubble to see the scene as a whole.

 

It's a sad fact that the scene is small and will stay small, but I rather like it that way. Visual kei is the definition of anti-mainstream. Think of how many bands are subjected to the stigma of "going major" and losing their identity. Now, imagine that happening to the entire scene at once! That's basically what it would be like to "get popular" again. Not a good look. I don't know what it is that makes visual kei tick, but I'm fine with leaving things the way they are.

I'm aware this reads like a gigantic gatekeeping post but that is not my intention. Let people find visual kei naturally is what I say! The site continues to find and support both new members and old, so the hooks to get drawn into the scene are still out there.

[Himeaimichu 1535]

22 minutes ago, Zeus said:

You can't make something popular again if it wasn't popular in the first place.  Everyone looks back at 2007-2010 as the heyday of the scene, but I think we know more about the scene now than we did back then. A lot of it was people trend riding Dir en grey, the GazettE, and a whole host of other popular bands until they jumped ship for K-Pop. Even when I go to shows abroad, people in line hardly know as much about the band or the scene as people here on MH do. We are in our own bubble and we have to learn to look beyond that bubble to see the scene as a whole.

 

It's a sad fact that the scene is small and will stay small, but I rather like it that way. Visual kei is the definition of anti-mainstream. Think of how many bands are subjected to the stigma of "going major" and losing their identity. Now, imagine that happening to the entire scene at once! That's basically what it would be like to "get popular" again. Not a good look. I don't know what it is that makes visual kei tick, but I'm fine with leaving things the way they are.

I'm aware this reads like a gigantic gatekeeping post but that is not my intention. Let people find visual kei naturally is what I say! The site continues to find and support both new members and old, so the hooks to get drawn into the scene are still out there.

I agree. Visual Kei has an interesting sound and aesthetic that mainstream J-Rock and western Rock/Metal just doesn't have. No offense to mainstream J-Rock or western Rock/Metal, but it doesn't stand out like Visual Kei does. Try as you like, but you won't find many bands like Mist of Rouge in western Thrash Metal and Punk, Kuroyuri to Kage in Western Nu Metal, etc. You'll find bands with some similarities, but not the full package. As Visual Kei fans, we've come to love and accept this uniqueness and for Visual Kei to get popular, it would have to adapt very closely to mainstream trends, making it lose it's identity, and possibly taking away what we love about the scene.

[Karma’s Hat 3107]

It's actually nice that we got a definite thread for this topic, and musing on some of the posts above I'll also go ahead and say that the vk boom in the west about ten, fifteen years ago consisted of

 

10% was X's gigantic popularity landing on western shores due to word of mouth and tape trading and what have you. Lots of people in the metal community knew about vk even some 20 years ago, and some went on to be converted into visual kei fans that travelled to Japan. These people were real music fans™ that were willing to learn and study despite the challenges and were unlikely to trend hop later on to the next big thing. These people did do a lot of preliminary work for the fad that was about to come by setting up databases online and etc.

 

90% a by-product of the big anime and manga culture craze that had thirsty weeaboos take anything Japanese, internalise it and then finally project themselves unto it. It had very little to do with the fandom in Japan, but more with the ( the teenage female variety, not the 4chan alt right one we see now lol ) anime fandom and the culture specific to that one ie. people switched their sasukes to uruhas and as soon as that trend stabilised the cultural moment was gone. It also helped that we were still living the outer reaches of the post-Linkin Park alt metal age that's pretty much dead now. 

 

Visual kei is very unfriendly to beginners and takes a lot of legwork to really wrap yourself around. It's culture is completely foreign to gaijins and musically also pretty unusual to people with limited musical vocabulary and experience. It got big by complete accident and caught everyone off guard. That won't happen again and like in some of the posts before me, that's completely fine with me. I think the way the scene is going to develop in the future will depend solely on its internal economical circumstances that are then of course tied to the economics and cultural situation in Japan. Visual kei has already proven that it will live in its own way completely in spite of western fads and it's quite impressive that somewhere in the world there is a music scene that's still making bank playing stuff that's not at all popular anywhere else anymore. Sometimes it reaches into its past ( Ains, old bands like MUCC and Deg looking visual again, Starwave ) and sometimes it tries to look into the future with rather umm... mixed results ( Royz, Realies, Heisei Ishin all those bands with neon colors and funny synth. ) And then some dudes decide to hop on the culture while playing what's pretty much X influenced* metalcore while slowly fads like the nu-metal riff creep into its DNA. It's a world onto itself that keeps on doing what it wants to do at its own pace, and that's pretty cool. Unfortunately like I said before the time when all those legendary big bands retire it is definitely going to be felt in the amount of boys who want to play this kind of stuff when the knowledge about this scene starts slowly getting more and more underground and other idols replace the old rock glam gods of the past. Still despite all that, there's going to be at least a few 7/11 clerks with long hair who are willing to give it a shot, if only just to get laid. 

 

 

 

*I maintain that vk's fondness of ballads and guitar solos is still leftover from X's influence.

[nekkichi 6043]

19 minutes ago, Disposable said:

It had very little to do with the fandom in Japan, but more with the ( the teenage female variety, not the 4chan alt right one we see now lol ) anime fandom and the culture specific to that one ie. people switched their sasukes to uruhas

**mangay

 

Kaori Yuki and CLAMP era manga stans and hormonal l'arc en ciel yaoi larp-girls overlapped a good decade (if not two tbh) ahead of the widespread gazette shipping

 

which was also p much v-keis peak in Japan as well, the moment manga artists dropped the moaning BL angel aesthetics it all went south for the music scene too

Edited January 10, 2020 by nekkichi

[Arkady 396]

1 hour ago, nekkichi said:

which was also p much v-keis peak in Japan as well, the moment manga artists dropped the moaning BL angel aesthetics it all went south for the music scene too

💕💕

 

How someone can be so right and yet creating Art with a simple sentence? The only thing I'm not sure is if the mangaka dropping it were the cause or instead also an effect of a big cultural switch.

Edited January 10, 2020 by Arkady

[Romlaw 82]

2 hours ago, Himeaimichu said:

I agree. Visual Kei has an interesting sound and aesthetic that mainstream J-Rock and western Rock/Metal just doesn't have. No offense to mainstream J-Rock or western Rock/Metal, but it doesn't stand out like Visual Kei does. Try as you like, but you won't find many bands like Mist of Rouge in western Thrash Metal and Punk, Kuroyuri to Kage in Western Nu Metal, etc. You'll find bands with some similarities, but not the full package. As Visual Kei fans, we've come to love and accept this uniqueness and for Visual Kei to get popular, it would have to adapt very closely to mainstream trends, making it lose it's identity, and possibly taking away what we love about the scene.

One of the thing I love about it is how you don't know what kind of chunni you will find. Kamijo's Castrato lore is cringe as hell but at the same time I LOVE seeing someone do the shit he loves to do without fear of judgement. I know people who can't handle seeing other people doing "embarassing" things, but I just feel at home when I see a frontman doing edgy poses thinking he is cool as hell and that he has some kind of special power lmao

[TheTrendkiller 68]

The reason why the VK hype came to an end after 2010 was because of the lack of original music and ideas. There were tons of bands coming out with the same copy-paste formulas, both visually and musically. People including me just got bored of listening and seeing the same uninspired vk-copycat bands. 

 

The reason why nobody cares about VK right now is not because VK is bad but because those bands play rock music. Face it, rock music right now is pretty much dead in the whole world, not just VK. What is popular with teens right now? Yes, Hip-Hop/Rap/Pop/. It's definitely NOT rock music. I'd go as far as to say that few people under 18 listen to any kind of rock . They'll rather play fortnite and listen to the latest Post-Malone, Billie Eilish, Machine Gun Kelly, ASAP Rocky, Travis Scott tune.THOSE are the rock-stars of the zoomer generation.

 

Imho K-Pop is a lot closer to this style of music than VK so it's only natural that people can get into it. I'd say the people who are into K-Pop now are basically the same demographic that would be attracted to VK. But unless rock as a genre makes a comeback, I don't see a VK revival any time soon. 

Edited January 10, 2020 by DerKnecht

[Rahzel 110]

I really think the last post is basically /thread but just to add 2 cents.

 

On 1/8/2020 at 8:51 PM, inartistic said:

Hot take:

 

The initial seed for a lot of people is seeing cute boys in crazy makeup. We need to start spamming Twitter threads with slow motion gifs of [insert guitarist here] sticking his tongue out while looking to the side.

This really might work if you wanna try that. I know a handful who'd ask at least "what's the name of the k-pop band?"

 

On 1/9/2020 at 7:50 AM, reminiscing2004 said:

Thinking back on all the instances where I mentioned Visual Kei to non-VK fans (usually people who listen to a wide variety of genres, or even to people who love certain subcultures of other J-music), I've had this cumulative sense that the biggest barrier to entry for people is the VOCALS.

 

I think it's easy to think the least accessible part of VK is the visuals, but that seems more like a positive draw nowadays, considering how increasingly trendy anime and Japanese cute aesthetic shit is in mainstream youth culture. I believe there is something about the general style of how VK singers sing that is kind of uncomfortable and dramatic for western rock or metal fans, who otherwise like the instrumentals.

 

Of course, there's a gradient of how guilty vocalists are of this, and I think the more normal (to western ears) vocalists tend to be the bands that do better with general music, but not vk, fans. 

 

To help think about how to better communicate this, I clicked shuffle play based on the tag 'visual kei' in my library. Sure enough, a Due le Quartz song comes up, and it has

1) seductive sounding vocal fry spoken word throughout

2) sudden ultra deep voice ad libs coming from far left and right

3) falsetto ghostly vocals

4) whispers

5) gasps

6) whistles

7) occasional gag screams

 

...on top of the normal sung vocals, which have a typical vk vibrato fetish.

 

Also, I would say bad engrish vocals sound weirder than japanese lyrics to foreigners.

You know what, I've never considered myself exactly a fan of VK although I am very much a fan of japanese music (sorry guys, not all japanese music is vk, hope it doesn't come as a letdown to some out there) and I can relate to this. Do not ask me to enjoy Due le Quartz or even Dir en Grey but boy did I enjoy vk of the AnCafe / L'arc / Miyavi / Nightmare / occasionally others? variety back in the mid 2000s. It was there on my mp3 alongside, idk, Mami Kawada or Uverworld or (insert random anison). Because... at the end of the day - and again, sorry to say - vk isn't all headbanging metalheads although it is probably how it got popular worldwide. So I only really dug deeper because my friends enjoyed vk and I wanted to at least not be a hater, and for that to happen I had to find bands with vocals I enjoyed. Occasionally I realized there was a lot of vk that wasn't what the fuck is this guy groaning just like not all metal is insufferable guttural noises.

 

On 1/9/2020 at 4:18 PM, nomemorial said:

That's the thing, though - I think that a lot of visual kei fandom is rooted in buying merch/etc. when that's just not how most music fans operate these days. The problem with visual kei's accessibility doesn't begin and end with their merch-selling capabilities - it starts with getting people on board in the first place and keeping them engaged. I think a lot of that is rooted in a strong internet presence.

 

As unfortunate as it is, we're not living in the era of CD sales and purchased merchandise any more - at least outside of live shows (and even then, arguable) - and while I understand the importance of those things (trust me, I spent 10 years of my life on the road as a down-on-my-luck-broke-as-a-joke DIY musician), I think we're expecting far too much of the average consumer to conflate fandom with opening one's wallet. (again, not arguing for rightness, just reality)

 

Past that, I still find that a lot of the lack of international interest in VK is that it is classically very difficult to enter and navigate as a fandom. Not only are fans classically elitist (visual kei is one of the only fandoms I've encountered where people have actively hoarded content from their faves with the explicit purpose of keeping it from others), the artists do not follow the same sort of cues that most other bands do and they don't engage their fans in the same way, either.

 

I mean really, this conversation can extend into the realm of photo-free gigs and cheki sales - things that I absolutely understand, but are likely doing more harm than good in the long-term nowadays (an easy buck to make from the aforementioned horny fan, but something that simultaneously makes these artists feel very distant and "unattainable," which just isn't sustainable in a world where the concept of the "rockstar" has basically been deconstructed entirely.) Add that to too-expensive albums and merchandise and no matter how interested one is, it requires a lot more cash and die-hard effort to support someone you enjoy. 

 

Again, most of this is being analyzed from a strictly Western point of view, but really just trying to answer the opening question. Japan clearly functions very differently from the rest of the world when it comes to music, but VK still feels even further removed. I highly doubt we'd ever see some major international renaissance focused on kote kei groups or something - stuff like that is and always will be incredibly niche - but there are a lot of bands in the game right now that have HUGE crossover potential and if paired up with the right artists would skyrocket in popularity on an international scale.

... Again, as I am not exactly a "fan of vk" in the, uh, western sense or understanding of the clique ... maybe I don't have a say in this but I do think it's a good thing it doesn't try to mingle. Because it works somehow and maybe it wouldn't work otherwise. And ngl I'm so fucking happy about it. I'm from Brazil and while most of the music I actively listen to is either Brazilian or Japanese I am exposed to a lot of American and Korean music (actually, it's probably 50/50) and I feel kind of obliged to enjoy the fandom around these types of music - I mean, how can you listen to (insert American artist here) but not know she has ties to Kim Kardashian? Similarly how can you like (insert k-pop artist here) but not vote for them obsessively in random awards number 17818? - so, ironically, I think it's a lot more natural for me to ... enjoy music that's just about the music, because I really couldn't care less about the rest so I think the lack of pressure, so to speak, in western vk fandom exactly because we know the market isn't really counting on us in any way is... a relief. Maybe I'd grow out of it altogether if it was any different. And, again, it goes back to what was being said - I'm in my late 20s, I'm not the bulk anymore, vk was the peak when I was the bulk, I don't expect it to go back to that point unless we start spamming vk dudes licking guitars on stan twitter. etc. And let's face it lol it's not about being menhera enough to enjoy vk, it's because we were mostly horny teens in the early 2000s when every kid was all about anime hair androgynous eyelined guys and those days are gone.

 

tl;dr I honestly think it would do more harm than good for these acts to go and try to mingle lol it's like you're the bullied menhera kid in school and now you feel like you gotta go and mingle with the other kids because some dumb adult said so, and the second you try to get in you're mocked to never return. I mean sometimes it does go well but it's 10% of the time. The other 90% you're more fucked than before because of some dumb adult who thought they knew shit. And let's face it, we're the dumb adult in this situation. Also, the menhera kid was often the right one of the bunch.  

 

Edited January 10, 2020 by Chell

[Komorebi 2193]

6 hours ago, DerKnecht said:

 

The reason why the VK hype came to an end after 2010 was because of the lack of original music and ideas. There were tons of bands coming out with the same copy-paste formulas, both visually and musically. People including me just got bored of listening and seeing the same uninspired vk-copycat bands. 

 

There was a shift in genre and I’ve noticed most people tend to blend sounds they aren’t emotionally attached to in their minds. 

You might say every BTS song sounds the same while to a fan they all sound completely different. Most 90’s and early bands are totally cookie-cutter to me, it was just a different cookie-cutter. And if you ask me a ton of European epic metal bands sound just like Galneryus xD

[saishuu 3220]

On 1/9/2020 at 7:50 AM, reminiscing2004 said:

To help think about how to better communicate this, I clicked shuffle play based on the tag 'visual kei' in my library. Sure enough, a Due le Quartz song comes up

I have nothing of substance to add to the discussion other than that this is absolutely sending me

[Doesn'tEvenGoHere 121]

"You can't make something popular again if it wasn't popular in the first place " was my initial thought when seeing this thread. We could aim for a revival of the scene we had in 2010ish, but even back then it wasn't actually popular. At least not at the level of things like Kpop or the emo music scene. And if "making it popular" meant morphing it into something it's not, I'd rather it not get popular. The 2010 boom happened naturally and a number of factors were lined up just right for it to happen. Fabricating something to intentionally make it popular (like the kpop scene or the kardashians got done to them) sounds like we might lose some of the things that make vk unique in itself. 

Edited January 11, 2020 by Doesn'tEvenGoHere

[Doesn'tEvenGoHere 121]

12 hours ago, DerKnecht said:

The reason why nobody cares about VK right now is not because VK is bad but because those bands play rock music. Face it, rock music right now is pretty much dead in the whole world, not just VK. What is popular with teens right now? Yes, Hip-Hop/Rap/Pop/. It's definitely NOT rock music. I'd go as far as to say that few people under 18 listen to any kind of rock . They'll rather play fortnite and listen to the latest Post-Malone, Billie Eilish, Machine Gun Kelly, ASAP Rocky, Travis Scott tune.THOSE are the rock-stars of the zoomer generation.

 

Imho K-Pop is a lot closer to this style of music than VK so it's only natural that people can get into it. I'd say the people who are into K-Pop now are basically the same demographic that would be attracted to VK. But unless rock as a genre makes a comeback, I don't see a VK revival any time soon. 

I always bite my lip when this comes up in general discussions about rock music because I never want be or sound like the sour adult who's mad that a scene they loved is dying out, but this, from what I observe, is true. I don't know what it is, but rock music doesn't seem to be picking up with the zoomers like it did with previous generations (yes, rock music has always been an alternative scene, but it still had a notable presence both in the charts and in fans). Now add that to the fact that once rock stars like Radke and Barker have implemented hip hop to their work and rock music aesthetics have been adapted by rappers and other pop music musicians, and it feels like our presence is nearing irrelevancy further than ever. 

 

It's also a hard yes to what you mentioned about how what would have been the present-day vk western fandom is now just another part of the kpop fandom and that point hits an emotional string in me because it was that realization that first made me notice how a taste for rock music seems rarer than ever with today's kids. I worked as a substitute teacher when I was in university and got to work around middle schoolers frequently and at some point it dawned on me that all the kids who were really into anime were also really into kpop. If I thought about that crowd in my day , that would have been the crowd where you would find the vk-fan kids (which as mentioned in other comments were in large responsible for the perceived popularity vk had around 2010). Anime is more popular than ever/Japanese fashion is more mainstream in the west than ever, and scene/emo fashion is popular again. All these trends are moving along. What's not being taken with them is rock music. And that hurts like heck to write. All of that being said, I would love to see zoomers make me eat my words and have them experience a proper rock movement of their own. But at the moment, that's just not what I'm seeing. Mind you there are some kids who still like rock music and vk, but their numbers are considerably lower than what we had in the 2000's.

[donwea 13]

I think the fatal blow to visual kei, at least in Japan, will come when Kiryu disband, after all along with R-Shitei (RIP?) are the most important bands that emerged from 2007 to now

[nick 10212]

this may be off topic but this topic reminds me of what i always wanted to say about mh.

 

idk what we overseas fans can do to make vk more popular than what it is, but one thing i think doable is to make mh become more popular.

vk may be dead one day but mh should live on after that. personally i always see mh as a very underrated japanese music forum that has high potential to grow bigger.

 

if the stats on similarweb aren't lying, it's very impressive that we have around 1.3m page views monthly (from 200k total visits * 6.6 page views per a visit). what i mean is mh already has a huge user base in hands but the engagements of the content on the forum are a lot less compared to it. for example, we have very few concurrent registered users online as you can see from the image below. it's only ~20 members online. (700 guests are mostly crawlers i believe). i know that it's taken at a random time of a day but usually it's still not significantly more than this either considering we have over 9.6k members registered. additionally, we can have more followers on facebook and twitter from our daily visitors if we want to. (it hurts to see that mh which is the source of almost everything japanese rock related has far less likes than random j-rock pages on facebook even demon android's one.)

 

 

moreover, traditional forum software like IPB is kinda 2000-ish, but i'm just saying. i have nothing against it. IPB is not bad though. it regularly gets updates and bug fixes. but nowadays there are a number of better open source alternatives as well; e.g. discourse and nodebb. converting the database from one to another is such a pain though if we ever do it.

 

sysops are one of the most important roles that almost nobody notices the effort they put behind the scenes. we have had only 3-4 sysops since the inception of mh and now there is only one left. it's a vital position that needs to recruit too. what'd we do if they're all gone? it'd even mean the end of mh. (not sure about how recruiting a new sysop is going, but it seems difficult to get one to begin with.)

 

at the end of the day, staff are all volunteers. finding a suitable staff member who is willing to spend their free time is hard already but finding one who is dedicated to the community is even harder. one day the current staff members will be rotated as well. so we're not going anywhere if we don't expand the user base. we can find more talented people from a bigger one.

 

this is my two cents:

 

it's time for mh 4.0. sooner or later mh has  to change too. otherwise, the community will be gone if we don't do something beforehand. if i were the founder, i'd rebrand "monochrome-heaven" to something else shorter, easier to type and pronounce, and easy to remember esp for non-english natives. having a dash (-) in a domain name looks unprofessional for a brand imo. just like when "thefacebook.com" becoming "facebook.com". the former is not a professional brand name compared to the latter. they bought it once they had the money to afford it and became the "facebook" we know nowadays.

 

rebranding mh may be too much for those who're familiar with the name but it'd be a big step to be known better. by rebranding i mean changing the look of the forum too whether it be a new skin or even new forum software that's more modern. we can still stick with vk just like before and be more open to the general japanese rock scene which is more lively and has a wider fanbase like ruling it all online not only on here but also on other social networks.

 

yeah, i know that it's easier said than done. it takes a lot of effort and is very challenging to accomplish, but knowing the potential mh has not being used is wasting as well.

Edited January 13, 2020 by nostalgia

[Cereal Killer 13 25]

On 1/12/2020 at 10:32 AM, nostalgia said:

we can still stick with vk just like before and be more open to the general japanese rock scene which is more lively and has a wider fanbase like ruling it all online not only on here but also on other social 

I'd be more active if there was more discussion on bands outside of vkei. A lot of the time I'll search for specific bands and I see that they have fans here but there are never topics made about them.  I came out of lurking because of a non vkei band having a thread made about two of the members. 

[deedlitmurata 86]

I'm not exactly sure what people are sad about, there's plenty of good jrock music out there, vkei too, there are some decent bands, newer and older that still remains. In regards to Japan making things popular, as some people mentioned before, the Japanese artists are starting to take advantage of twitter, youtube, instagram, spotify, apple music etc. that is recent, I mean, even Arashi did history last month I think (or november) with the opening of all the SNS accounts, they even have a Netflix documentary with subtitles in all language. As Japan opens more to the new ways SNS works, the artists will have more reach to overseas audiences, big acts like Arashi will be the ones to create interest in global audiences to look at what Japan is doing.

 

Our generation back in the 90's were used to investigate/dig more, but young people nowadays do not investigate.. they just consume what's in front of them in the SNS, so it's important for Japan to follow that transition, even if it's a bit late. But the bands are still there doing good music, so we can just enjoy it while it exists the major income for bands is concerts, and all the active bands do a lot of touring around Japan, that is enough for have sufficient earnings and continue their music activities.

 

Also, Japan is the 2nd biggest music market, they really don't need the global market that much, so it's still a good thing to see what they are doing to penetrate SNS more, even when they don't need it.

[Zeus 7997]

23 hours ago, Cereal Killer 13 said:

I'd be more active if there was more discussion on bands outside of vkei. A lot of the time I'll search for specific bands and I see that they have fans here but there are never topics made about them.  I came out of lurking because of a non vkei band having a thread made about two of the members. 

You have to be the change you want to see.

[Cereal Killer 13 25]

2 hours ago, Zeus said:

You have to be the change you want to see.

Everyone loves to say this but is it really that easy? 

[sleepy coffee 1476]

Not to sound like a hipster but i usually associate with stuff becoming more popular also becoming more bland and boring (with rare exceptions) so I'm kind of happy with this being as niche and small as it is. Last thing I'd really wanna draw in is crowds that act like kpop or ariana grande fans lol

[Zeus 7997]

29 minutes ago, Cereal Killer 13 said:

Everyone loves to say this but is it really that easy? 

In life? No. On Monochrome Heaven? Sure. You've already made 26 posts; that's larger than the majority of the user base tbh.

 

Posting is the easiest thing you can do. You want to see topics about your favorite bands? Make them! Start discussion topics and write reviews. I can't read your mind and do it for you (although I really do try). When you put in genuine effort, you will be surprised by the response that you get. Maybe that response won't be immediate, and that response won't be what you thought it was or in the way you thought it would be, but it will be there. A lot of people lurk on this forum, so eye ball real estate is just as important as text responses. 

[Ruri 278]

if vk becomes popular in the west, what will i use to scare people away when i don't want them to talk to me

[Zalemu 236]

@ this whole thread

 

[Deru 1]

VK'll never be really popular in the western world if there isn't a western scene to begin with. What there is are western fans of a Japanese indie music scene, but there isn't something you'll heard and say "That's your typical Western visual kei", a V-rock adapted to western tastes. (Which is never going to happen because most fans are a bunch of elitist who are still crying about the old times™ and shitting on every band that 'dares' to be VK outside of Japan)

 

And, really, when was it actually popular? Never

 

 

Yes, there was a JFashion trend in the 00's that made a lot of people interested in the scene, but it was all people who was already interested in Japan (culture, language, anime/manga, etc). 

 

It's always been a niche thing, weird music weird people listen to, and will always be.

 

Nothing that comes from Japan will ever be as popular as K-pop, simply because Japan's attitude over what it produces is completely different from South Korea's

 

Korea's been putting a lot of money and resources into making K-pop and everything related to de hallyu a popular thing worldwide and even trying to make K-pop an international genre that stands on it's own by attempting to make groups outside of Korea 

 

Japan, on the other hand, is pretty much content with it's own public and cares little to nothing about having an big fan base overseas.

 

Now, I want to know: Does it really need to be popular? Why should it be? What does visual kei have to offer that would make it stand alone in the Western mainstream media? 

 

A bunch of people weirdly dressed people playing some type of rock? You've got a lot of those already