I feel like we have gotten a glimpse into this reality in one of the covid interviews. My vote is on Kyo and Die
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I have always found the dynamic of this band quite interesting as I kinda feel like if youve lasted as a band for 25 years surely the amount of time you spend with each other you cant help but become somewhat friendly surely? Like seems they get on but just arent that close, i remember somewhere reading they arent really friends and that they rarely hangout work aside. I think they even live as spaced out around Japan as pretty much possible.
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I think just kyo and Shinya are actually friends nowadays, everyone else seems like business partners. But I don’t really think they are at the “we can’t stand each other” level
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if you followed them closely, even just seeing most of their social media posts, you’d know that (that sounded way too condescending but…) they are very much so friends. it’s hard to say which of them are the most friendly with each other, but nonetheless the trio of die-toshiya-kaoru is the most social, at least. kyo has always been a weirdo loner (positive) but nonetheless gets along very well with everyone, shinya has always been the most distant of them but that just comes down to his personality that i tried long to describe but can’t lol. (shinya also thought of quitting the band somewhere around 2007)
i guess it just depends on what different people consider “friends”. like, if your definition of a friend is you see them at least once every two weeks and just hang out and do whatever then sure, i suppose they aren’t friends, but they’re all pushing 50, have busy lives (esp. kyo, jeez) and have known each other for over half of their lives. i feel like no matter what your relationship with a person like that, you kind of end up in the situation where they are. as cheesy as it sounds i’d most compare it to a family member, a sibling or a close cousin or something? you don’t see each other every month and god forbid every other week, and when you do it’s mostly for stuff you “have to go to” but still want to, like holidays etc. but you still enjoy seeing them and hang out during those times and very much care for and love them.
it just irks me whenever i see people say that they don’t like each other or stuff like that, seriously it couldn’t be farther from the truth. if they really did only tolerate each other, would they really do segments on their fanclub magazine where they go bowling and other activities like that? joke around with each other on social media? just the past month during the US tour die and toshiya went around together sightseeing and posting photos about it.
i guess the “coworker” thing works, but again, it’s like coworkers with whom you’ve built a massive company from the ground up, worked together for half of your lives, still meet with regularly outside of work with. i don’t think they’re different at all or less friends with each other than any other regular band.
if you want to see a band where the members really only tolerate each other for the sake of the band, look at the L’arc~en~Ciel 30th anniversary documentary lol
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What’s the likelihood we see a new concert dvd before we get a new album or even single?
very low unless they finally release the EU tour movie as a home video
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This is 100% correct and should be required reading material for every fan, especially those of younger age who have yet to make the realisation that their school friends won’t stay their friends forever, or even until they’ve graduated, and who haven’t made any “work friends” yet.
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funnily enough the most people i see saying that stuff are the older “metalhead” fans. i think the younger fans (myself included) in general follow the band’s non-music activities more closely. probably stems from the fact that this was most frequently going around, and originated, a few years after the bands pivot to western metal sensibilities. i’m not 100% sure if it was something that was from interviews or from any official materials, or if it was just something the fanbase thought up.
if it was from official sources, then my conspiracy theory is that the management (and the band) made all that stuff up to further the bands association from the vkei-prettyboy-fanservice that was definitely hindering them from metalheads taking them seriously.
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It boggles my mind how often this topic gets revisted and how much care is invested in it. Its safe to say these guys are indeed friends with an added level of professionalism cuz of what they do.
Between touring, music, DVD releases, etc, there’s a good amount of bread to distribute amongst the 5 of em.
Sure its hard to tell because we only get a glimpse of their interactions. But I think that glimpse is good. It helps create a boundary between them and us, which i will always champion. If these guys have been in the game this long, without us hearing about any major issues, Its safe to assume these guys are homies. Homies that know the fine line between work and play and know how to handle things in house. Id actually be more concerned if they were overtly out there with their friendships like a lot of K-pop groups are. To me a lot of that stuff seems performative and solely to pander to their fans who eat that shit up like its the second coming of Christ.
I say all that to say, dawg…they good.
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I feel like it’s a combination of multiple factors. Misinformation like the whole “they hate each other” stuff has been present in the fandom since forever, even before I joined. It most likely stems from mistranslations of interviews, the cultural differences between Japan and the West, and just hearsay that got spread around the internet and lost a bit of truth each time it was repeated.
I think the best example of this is the long-sustained untruth that Kyo lies in all his interviews. This has never been true, not now and not back then. There are some interviews where he’s giving joke answers or maybe replied in a sarcastic manner, but I’ve never seen any straight-up lies in reply to serious questions. Except of course for the question about his real name, which ironically is the one lie that all the fans still believe even today.
And it’s the same for all the other stuff. The members say “we don’t meet much outside of band activities” and the fanbase exaggerates it into “we hate each other so we never hang out”. Kyo says “I don’t like going abroad because of the food” and the fanbase turns it into “Kyo fucking hates touring overseas so he’s constantly pissed and doesn’t enjoy a single second of it and all the smiles and fun on stage is fake”. The band says “we’ll play select songs from albums X and Y, mixed with more recent songs” and the fanbase claims it was advertised as “we’ll play mostly songs from albums X and Y with two or three more recent songs”… ._.
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I.e. V系 Karens.
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i too remember dir en grey tvtropes
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While we are at it, what are the chances of them releasing the EU tour movie to the wider public? Have there been any comments on that?
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In regards to the “if they’re friends” stuff, Context clues should start ringing louder at some point. You’d think after the recent US tour and live DVD’s (especially MODE OF) where the band had so many moments of comradery, those suspicions would’ve been quelled.
But in that same vain, I def fall into the category of the 3rd paragarph. The Tour promo wasn’t no exaggeration. Dawg, we just saw a Poster, and tagline saying DEG coming back to the US, and Mode of.
We just ain’t read the fine print lmao. If no one else will admit that, i will hahaha.
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This band is just exceptionally affected by all the foreign fan conjecture from when they first blew up here and it’s still persistently chugging along probably because 1. there’s still a lot of new converts who read what has been written before but haven’t gotten into vk enough to develop critical salt dispensing faculties regarding the shit people say online 2. certain misinfo really fit with the metal fan copium narrative that they actually weren’t japanese trannies in their hearts after all but wear cargo shorts and backwards caps and hate all their old stuff. I see this stuff way less now than back in the day but sometimes when it’s that time of the year when I go on reddit or youtube to read what people write, I bump into one of those.
at least they don’t have their version of gazette’s “this song is about ruki’s ex gf who did X, Y and Z” tier stuff but Tooru Nishimura comes close
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And who can blame you. They did a real mode of in Europe shortly before so I would have assumed the US leg would be one as well.
But I wonder why they decided against a real mode of in the first place.
They did these polls online so they had some data to work with… hmmm
Oh… o.o that’s a thing? I try to avoid youtubes comment section… for reasons 
but wouldn’t have exspected that…
Wild…
Definitively this was a big thing back in the day, but it became obviously harder and harder to keep the theory on life support once they started deliberately performing their older material in themed lives and recordings came out of it from 2014 onwards. In reality, they never dropped their old catalogue from their setlists. Even the Finnish shows of the 2007 euro tour featured tracks from Kisou, Macabre… Even Gauze material was played at some shows in the US before mode of Gauze was a thing.
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And they also got back to a more visual style. And honestly…Kyo’s instagram looks like he’s absolutely enjoying it.
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excuse me, Kyo in fact DOES hate everyone and everything and the only joy he has in life is shopping for washer’s and dryer’s at appliance stores.
I refuse to accept any other explanations.
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Omg, I bet these kind of people totally jumped on the merch with the old photos that were named “photos the members won’t like”.
It was SO obliviously a joke but some people didn’t get it to the point that kyo tweeted about it being his idea 
Still mad I forgot to order the towel… 
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