All About Fangirl/Fanboy Culture in VK

Here’s the place to share your opinions on fan culture in visual kei.

How does fan culture differ overseas and locally? Is it possible to enjoy the scene without engaging with other fans or is sharing with others necessary? Does having a honmei/honmei band elevate your experience as a fan or do you think it is detrimental to a person’s social life? Does this extreme favouritism exist in other music or entertainment spheres? Is it encouraged by bands and even fans themselves or is it just an inevitability of the scene?

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I think especially as a newer fan having a community makes it easier to learn about vk culture. It makes it more enjoyable in my opinion but it’s not 100% necessary. But having a honmei/ honmei band makes it enjoy it more but it’s up to the person.

Also the Idolism (idk how to describe it) kind of structure makes it easier for toxic fans and a lot of miscommunication

This may be an unpopular opinion, and come across as gatekeepy, but…

Major Ephiphany from the trip- Most of the international/online scene is using the term “honmei” incorrectly.

It doesn’t mean “the guy whose music you like the most”, or even “the guy whose pictures you like the most”.

A honmei-fan dynamic is basically along the lines of a host-client relationship. It requires at minimum, some base amount of effort on the honmei’s part to form a personal connection with that fan in particular. And typically, that means in-person interaction at shows/instores/fan meetups etc. Now, more band guys are interacting online with people and could hypothetically develop an online bond with a fan, but their bread and butter will always be in person gya.

That’s what is actually meant by “you don’t choose your honmei, your honmei chooses you”. Because his interactions with you make you feel personally seen and acknowledged by him. So as reciprocation for that attention paid to them, fans form a connection with that band and that man in particular and keep coming back.

A purely one-sided fan relationship where the guy doesn’t even know you exist from halfway across the world is just parasocial projection.

And honestly, the radicalization process of developing a honmei, while it can get addicting…is not all it’s cracked up to be. Some of these people get truly lost in the sauce. I hope that my reports can show the downsides as well as the benefits of the scene through the lens of a nearly middle aged outsider.

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But the real question is…

Can just anyone call themselves a bangya? :smirk:

You nailed it well and unfortunately it does sound gatekeeper af but it just is :woman_shrugging:t2: Bands make the most money at their concerts. They feed off the regulars. I didn’t understand why I saw a lot of girls at concerts with suitcases but I realized they must’ve been traveling up to Tokyo just to support their favorite bands.

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I always thought the suitcases were to load up on merch, lol. If I’m travelling from city to city with anything larger than my purse, I would just drop it at a hotel or store it at the station.

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The discussion was directed here from the other thread so I brought a quote from @ridley with me.

I agree that most of the international fandom is using the term honmei wrong. Online I see most people use it to just mean “favourite” when it actually has a much deeper meaning. Although not quite, because it seems some of the original connotations are still there, like it is generally agreed you can only have one and there is an expectation that it never changes. I see this constanly causing problems when people call their current top favourite bandman their honmei and then have a whole crisis if they start liking someone else more.

Now I absolutely do not claim to be an expert and I might be talking completely out of my ass but I also don’t think that what @ridley and @GreatNorthernVK described above is quite what a honmei is either. I think those describe just the general oshi-dynamics. You can have multiple oshis but only one in each band and yes, it kinda has that host-dynamic going on based on what I have heard.

But to my understanding honmei is still a bit more than your “top oshi”. An oshi can definitely develop into a honmei and depending on the person/band, there might a personal relationship there as described by @GreatNorthernVK but I don’t think it is necessary.

My understanding of honmei is more like a “soulmate” through art. Not in a delulu “I am going to marry him” -sense (although I am sure you can find those types too) but in the sense that you feel a deep connection to their music, concept and art in general. Probably to their personality (what you know of it anyway) to some extent as well since I find it difficult to imagine feeling that deeply about someone’s art but disliking them as a person. Art is a way to express yourself after all :woman_shrugging: And that is why not everyone has a honmei, you generally can only have one and it very rarely changes.

Typically you will also go out of your way to support your honmei but it is genuinely hard not to if you feel a connection like that to their art. Some might also have a more personal relationship with their honmei if they are small enough that you get to interact with them regularly but that is probably not possible if your honmei is someone like Gackt or Kyo. And yet I am certain their art has touched more people than a tiny Vkei group still doing only taibans (no hate, I know there is amazing talent there too but this is inevitable just based on reach).

Like I said, I do not claim to be an expert and I am not quite sure that there is one completely agreed upon definiton among the japanese fans either because that’s just how terms generally are. Like if you were to ask a dedicated bangya in the dominor scene they might scoff at the idea that you could have a honmei you don’t meet regularly. But then an older ex-bangya who lived through the glory days of MM and still dedicatedly follows everything Gackt does and draws comfort from his music daily might be equally offended by the idea that someone could have a honmei who learned to play the guitar seven months ago and whose band has only released three songs :woman_shrugging:

Oh also @KDJ since you were part of the discussion in the other thread.

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Replying to myself like an idiot because I think I maybe made it sound a bit too dramatic. Sorry about that, I went to the Kamijo school for flowery bullshit and sometimes it has consequences :face_with_hand_over_mouth: I also need to emphasise that I don’t actually know anything, this is just the understanding I have gotten and I might be completely wrong here :woman_shrugging:

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Thanks for bringing me in here. I’m morbidly fascinated by this and didn’t know how messy it was. :thinking:

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I don’t understand why some people spend so much money bringing a band to Europe just to get close to them. It seems costly and often comes across as unprofessional. What’s the point? Just to have a private moment to talk and do some sightseeing? It almost feels like you’re buying their time.

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Along those lines I see some international fans wanting attention just for being a foreigner at a Japanese band’s concert. Not everyone is like that of course (I see way more that are just there for the music) but some people are out to be the main character.

Maybe they are buying their time but if a concert comes out of it in Europe good on the promoter and concert goer I guess.

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yes, it’s nice to see bands in Europe again. But most fans acting like promoters are unprofessional, unfortunately. I feel a bit sorry for the bands.

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Oh that Madsman Espirit thing was wild with how those fans made up rules :rofl:

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Yeah, I’ve heard of a couple of incidents that ended badly because the fan just had some money but no real experience with promoting. That’s why it’s important for the bands and labels to network with the local music industry in wherever they want to go instead of just relying on the word of an over enthusiastic fan.

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Honestly, sometimes all you need is to be visibly foreign, find the right band, and then just exist and do the furi at the concert and bands will notice you. Plus to you if you get loud during call and response.

The very first time I saw Zeke Deux, it was in a room of 25 people, and I had no problem just walking into the second row. I just let loose, had a blast, screamed/chanted along, did the Saizen ramming, helped hold the guys back when they leaned back into the audience, and Haruka and Maya are practically handing their picks directly to me.

There’s no need for them to act like a dick to get noticed. If the band isn’t super into getting mitsus, some male foreign fans have reported getting even more special attention than female foreigners, just because it’s a rarer occurrence.

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Re zeke deux: gosh my friend had the same experience with them except that she didn’t even move, and we were standing waaay in the back.

I’m not visibly foreign so i got zero attention from them lol, but kakeru basically stared daggers into my friend the whole time.

She didn’t even do any furi, but he still attempted eye contact the whole time lol. Though i think zeke deux are pretty good with eye contact since their crowds are so small. They’re always so polite when they hand out flyers too. I hope they’re not secretly awful people or something lol.

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They are all nice guys :slight_smile: And they are giving their best with fan service. Not only to foreigners, but everyone

I don’t get the impression that they’re secretly bad guys at all. Maybe Kakeru just reeeeally likes foreigners, lol

Usually you gotta be the right kind of foreigner too :rofl:

By my background I’m perfection. Born in Europe, raised in the States. I fall into the same hole as @rukarukaruka by not being visibly foreign.

My fck@ss accent did start the honmei/fan relationship since we’re both foreign tho :tipping_hand_woman:t2:

Meanwhile metalcore bands got their shit together by promoting with local bands overseas, being on overseas labels, or just promoting with other bands in general (Prompts, Hanabie, Sable Hills, SBTW, Earthists)

Jiluka has been following that as well. I don’t know why so many vkei bands just go for broke on their own and hope for the best

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I think Majyu is worse

“if I help him along the way, he will recognize my true love for him and we can get married and be a happy family”

Something like that would be my guess

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