I have been thinking about this and is there a possibility?
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Iâd say itâs âmainstreamâ in Japan.
Outside of Japan and especially in the US and Europe, definitely no. It was the most popular from 2006-2009 with lots of media reporting about it, music labels and vk magazines etc emerging, extensive tours of the smallest fart bands nobody knows and yearly tours in europe of bigger bands like dir en grey, mucc, girugamesh, moi dix mois or an cafe and big events featuring 7+ well known bands like Jrock revolution in the US or Jshock and Jrock invasion in Germany.
Maybe in 20 years when the generation after gen z will ârediscoverâ the old records in their parentsâ and grandparentsâ cd shelves lmao
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I donât think itâll consistently reach the peaks it did with bands like Laputa and emerging Diru in the late 90s/early 2000s (and ofc X). If a nostalgia boom were to happen in the mainstream, Iâm pretty sure that would have happened already.
But, there could always be something random that elevates VK back to the Japanese mainstream. I donât think itâs likely, but a trendy piece of media could memeify VK back into relevance.
Outside of Japan? No chance.
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someday we will get another but 50% less original Tokio Hotel clone in Germany, who claim to have the same japanese groups as inspiration as Tokio Hotel (from what I have heard one appearantly was Born(?!?!)), for trying to hide the obvious fact that they are just a tokio hotel clone. And then we have another japanese âgothicâ hype but this time toned down because japanese pop culture became already so relevant. And then media does once again talk about Visual Kei for one episode of Galileo (German show for wanna be intelectuals) and then we get a rise of indie German Visual Kei bands no one asked for, and they disband in typical Visual Kei fashion after two singles.
I seriously could imagine this scenario, but I doubt we get any time soon a new popular German group with own personality, we are far too much focused and reproducing American Pop shit.
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i feel like vk as a whole reached itâs mainstream peak in the 90s and 2000s, we might see more mainstream bands as the newer ones get more popular, but as a scene as a whole? prolly not
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In Japan no, anywhere else, no. It was at its peak overseas during the days of MUCC etc in the Taste of Chaos tour.
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Outside of Japan? Probably not. Seeing how VK hit itâs peak around the 90s, I donât see how itâll revive itself. But, I could be wrong, and it could become mainstream in the next 20-30 years or soâŚ
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Visual Kei likely wonât be around in thirty years.
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Youâre most likely right, but I can only hope itâs still around haha
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If the power of tiktok canât make it mainstream, nothing will. Idk, I feel like a visual kei song might someday be used in a show like Stranger Things or whateverâs trending and revive the scene overnight. I do feel like something similar could be possible.
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Even Yoshiki meeting Biden at the White House wonât have an effect.
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No, they had their chance when DeG was playing at musical festivals in europe in the early 2000s. Then they dropped the ball with those weird ass nazi-japanese copyright laws. Normal people wonât download .rar files from some maniac site just to get to listen to a new release.
Its dead today and not even popular in Japan.
If you meet a normal japanese person and say that you like visual kei they will 1. wonder wtf you are talking about 2. slowly start avoiding you.
Foreigners might think VK musicians are cool but in Japan they are just considered a bunch of failured high school dropouts, at least in 9 out of 10 cases 
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I see visual kei as the Japanese equivalent to emo, theyâre both long dead since around 2010 or so and itâs only hyped up by posers these days.
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I donât see how tiktik, ran by mentally ill pronoun-people and mainstream music labels, benefits anything creative
this is not a good time for any rock music, and VK actually fares better than many other current acts; thereâs actually growth, and a fair amount of legacy acts came back to life over the past few years.
mainstream fame though?
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I think that while the pathologies and psychological patterns and mechanisms attracting people to these subcultures are growing with each new generation, they will always find novel and âdifferentâ ways to express themselves and I donât ever see vk being one of themâitâs too specific a set of preferences, cultural influences and zeitgeist to repeat.
Iâve always felt that especially for the western fandom, the strangeness, mystery and vagueness of it all made it such a good backdrop for projections of loneliness, wistfulness, nostalgia, feeling lost and unwanted, searching for a sexual/gender identity etc⌠typical teenager struggles that, during the western peak of vk in the mid 2000s, oftentimes lead down the path of vk thanks to trends like anime and the rise and spread of internet forums as well as platforms like YouTube. It was sort of a sweet spot where there was just enough information available online for people to be able to follow the breadcrumbs down the rabbit hole but not as much as to demystify the whole thing.
Also, the whole boys looking like pretty girls shtick, which is arguably the single most important feature of vk, has gotten pretty old. Back in the 2000s (and depending on your country/city) it was still perceived as somewhat of an act of rebellion for a boy to wear makeup or dress up like a girl but now it seems weâre pretty much past that.
Iâm not entirely sure to what extent it applies to this case but Iâd like to think that people are capable of understanding and transcending certain patterns and the specific ways in which they work and manifest (not just personally but in a way also generationally) and that the emotions and psychology behind it all just donât go as well with cheesy and dysfunctional microcosms like vk in the same way that certain movies wouldnât be made today.
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Not only considered⌠they are⌠for a part of 'em. Look at how many of those âmusiciansâ will drop music after one or two years and go back to a trash job because their band wonât make enough tickets or sales⌠thatâs not how music works, thatâs not being a musician. I can get why you leave your band because you want to marry someone and start a family and make incomes $$$ to feed them (well, from a japanese pov), but those who want to be ârockstarsâ and quickly hit the wall because they ainât good enough or because they do what everyone else do, then realise they shouldnât drop school/work at first because outcomes > incomes in a band and that YOU NEED a backup, I wonât feel sorry for 'em.
About the topic, VK had its mainstream years back in ~2010 for us, now itâs a living dead musical movement followed by nostalgic listeners, played by foolish remnants who want to be the next DEG/MUCC/The GazettE/girĂźgamesh (or who want to be the âmost extreme br00tal metal VK bandâ)
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Probably depends on the age and person. Some people will just associate it with the big names like Lâarc~en~ciel/HYDE, X Japan/YOSHIKI, BUCK-TICK and LUNA SEA, not ASSânâARROW, PLUNKLOCK or SPLENDID GIRAFFE.
I donât think the average person is even aware that these college dropout bands (still) exist.
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It was in Japan back in the early 2000s, part of why it had so many toxic fans more than any other era of itâs existence cough modern kpop stans cough
Srsly tho, I donât think I want it to become mainstream EVER in Western Countries. I donât want a lot of peopleâs passion being seen as a cesspool with a shitty fanbase.
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AND THANK THE VISUAL GODS FOR THAT
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Iâve seen posts about Visual Kei get up to 200k likes on TikTok, it has enough of a community to where itâs not niche but not necessarily mainstream
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