In early 2001, I was browsing for JRPG stuff, and some content creators were J-rock fans. One was mentioning Luna Sea a lot, another drew some MM fanart that caught my eye. Decided to give it a try, and it was down the rabbit hole from there.
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Honestly this:
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I watched the old talk show called “HEY HEY HEY” and Gackt was on it. it was right after Vanilla had been released, so he had the spiky blonde hair and was wearing a red suit. He performed the song and I was instantly hooked.
This was back when AIM was a huge thing, and I told my friend about this Gackt person, and she started showing me visual kei bands, Dir en grey and Miyavi to be exact. That’s where it began, I was HUGE into Miyavi and Diru (still am), and went and tried to find everything I could with them in it. I was also really into Gackt, and had a lot of his discography for many years.
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It was back into my high school time,
A friend recommend me to listen to the GazettE,
And my first song was Cassis, and I love their style,
the song was so great, so I go dig deep on the internet,
Then I was into VK until now! Kinda simple!
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This and Across The Border were on loop for like a week straight when I first found them.
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I have been only 5 years in this world.
Middle School: I was becoming a weeb and loved Post-Hardcore and Metalcore, so I came across bands like Crossfaith, Coldrain and SiM. Then a band called Dadaroma appeared in my YouTube suggestion and boom here we are.
My first favorite band was Mejibray.
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i got into it because of my mother (very cool). x japan were pretty big in hong kong when she was younger, and she would spend all her money going to japan to see them. the first time i went to japan i was a kid and she dumped me with her friend so she could go to the dahlia tour haha.
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Wikipedia is the answer 
And also running into one of the diru’s live videos with my friend. When one of those diabolical performances by Kyo scared the shit out of us. We were kids, so Impression was… Huge 
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I was a hardcore weaboo/otaku/thing (even started my own anime club in high school)
A manga called GetBackers was my favorite manga at the time, and PIERROT did a theme song for the anime that I just couldn’t get out of my head—Barairo no Sekai. I had already used to listened to a lot of anime theme songs for shows like Naruto and Inuyasha, but after hearing PIERROT, I fell in love with the band and wanted to explore VK in more depth. This led me to getting into 12012 and D’espairsRay big time, then other bands like GazettE, An Cafe and Kagerou.
I quickly ditched anime and moved onto J-Rock, and have been in love with VK for the past 14 years. I go through phases of various things, but the music and memories of my favorite VK bands have always been an active part of my life. They keep me sane, haha.
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Back in 2011 some friends of mine introduced me to Seremedy. I was already a fan of japanese music and pop culture (mainly vocaloid), so when I found out that there was a japanese-inspired band from my own country (sweden) i was immediately hooked!
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I was a huge HOT fan 
I was into K-pop before I was into Vk. I use to watch Music Video Heaven (MVH) on International Channel (which later became Asian Network) and then this show called Revolution came on and they introduced Kpop, Jpop and Tofu records music which had Laruku and most forgotten bands. Soon Dir en Grey, An Cafe seeped into my world and all was a fevered fetish from that point on
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When I was in highschool around 2008/9 started to like anime and in some point started to enjoy the ost tho … so downloaded songs that liked and searched more from them. My very first jrock bands were; Buck tick, One ok rock, and Mucc and on some point got into another bands by youtube suggestions idk like: Dir; mth; Miyavi, and some jpop, but never really liked visual-kei.
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I got into JROCK in early 2017/late 2016 so it’s only been 4 years. I got into it after seeing GazettE’s “GODDESS” live on youtube from an online friend and was super into their DOGMA album, then was so hyped for their “NINTH” album after binging their whole discography. I soon got obsessed with MEJIBRAY and it broke my heart they disbanded the same year, to this day MEJIBRAY is one of my fav bands. After that, it was Plastic Tree, BUCKTICK, DIAURA, and Deadman (my favs.) I actually recently got into K-pop too after listening to DREAMCATCHER’s song “You and I.” Anyway it’s been only 4 years and I’m still a teenager, so vkei has been one of the only constants in my life.
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I loved Pokemon when I was little and was exposed to other anime from the commercials on the VHS tapes, so as I got older I started looking for more anime to watch but never really saw many on tv. Once I started using the computer and watching them online I noticed the openings for a lot of shows gave me a nice nostalgia feeling. By that time I already knew I liked metal/goth/edgy bands so I searched for dark japanese band or something like that and came across the bands Blood and Moi Dix Mois.
Then when I was in 8th grade my mom made me do…I think it was called communion or confirmation at church and said she wouldn’t bother me to go anymore if I still didn’t want to after completing it so I agreed since I despised going to church(not that I have a problem with others going if they want but it just made me incredibly uncomfortable). On the first day I noticed a girl that was dressing in a Vk style (lots of make up, back of hair spiked all the way up, unique clothes) although at first I thought it was just emo. Since I never really talked to the other kids and just sat by myself in black clothes and nail polish listening to music and she never talked to any of the other kids and sat by herself listening to music I think on the 3rd day of it we started sitting by each other and talking and she told me her favorite band was Dir En Grey and that they were a Japanese band so I told her the only Japanese bands I really knew were Blood and Moi Dix Mois I’m pretty sure she knew who they were if I remember right.
When I got home I looked up Dir En Grey and enjoyed them which got me to look up a few other bands like The Gazette, Malice Mixer, D’espairsRay and Sadie. When the girl stopped showing up one day I went back to listening to my old music but I kept music by Dir En Grey, Blood, and Moi Dix Mois with me. A few years later I noticed Dir En Grey had a new album out (Dum Spiro Spero) and I put it on my iPod but didn’t listen to it right away, then one day while listening to shuffle a song from that album came on and I was like wtf who is this this is amazing but it doesn’t sound like any of the bands on my iPod so I checked and saw it was Dir En Grey. After that I looked into them way more, saw the mv for obscure, and they became my favorite band.
Then a long skip to a year or two ago, I hadn’t had a computer in forever and never looked for new music anymore but I wished that there was a genre like Dum Spiro Spero so when I got spotify on my phone I started looking for similar artists and happened to come across other bands like Deviloof, Nocturnal Bloodlust, Nazare, Dexcore, Insanity Injection, The Thirteen, Dadaroma, Madmans Esprit, and many many more and realized it was the perfect music for me by combining extreme metal, a look similar to early Marilyn Manson or other shock rock bands, mixed with the sound of an anime opening to give me a nice nostalgic feeling that western bands can’t do for whatever reason.
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Through Black Butler in 2016 but as i mentioned earlier i really got into vkei in 2020.
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Someone showed me a the Gazette music video, after that I also watched Bel Air from Malice Mizer. I remember that being extremely different for me, I was blown away by the fact that those people could be so androgynous. After a while I started liking the music and listening to more bands and things kept evolving after that. We even we had a brazilian Moi dix Mois forum (the brazilian -scape- lmao)
Edit: forgot to mention, this was around 2006~2007
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IIRC around 2002 I joined an anime forum online which had a lot of teens slightly older than me (I was like … 9 ?) and that’s where I learned basically everything I know to this day about the weeaboo life lol. A lot of kids were into lolita because of anime and then they knew about MmM and Mana and Malice Mizer and worshipped him and that’s how it went. But I wasn’t into it - as a younger kid my brand of jmusic was… Ayumi Hamasaki or something? - and until 2006 my impression of vk was "Satan music / forced onstage kissing / PLEASE STOP sending Gackt - Vanilla clips on MSN Messenger 2k4 
" . I didn’t know more than a couple tracks I got from friends / rotations so it was a prejudiced take.
Around 2006 I had friends who were crazy about vk and at the same time I became a fan of series that had OST by VK artists (from the top of my head, GetBackers, Death Note, Zombie-Loan?) and there was this influx of jrock in my mp3 player, guess the teens kicked in. Getting addicted to Nightmare was my punishment I guess. 
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I’ve been into the J-Rock scene since 2015 and I was listening to LiSA, SCANDAL, and FLOW. A year after that the Visual Kei scene came by and started watching MVs then their music such as the GazettE, SiD, and Versailles. I stopped around 2 years later when my music taste was in a mood of more lighter rock and K-pop. But as for now, I wanted to go back to my old scene because I prefer the music with true instruments rather than copypasta pop beats.
I personally don’t hate K-pop music very much but if it’s way TOO CATCHY then I rather skip some songs. 
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great question. for me i discovered VK existed untill late 2015 bummer for me teen years oblivious to such a genre it was a vk guy from netherlands who had a picture the gazette that stood out to me and i automatically looked up band and the rest is history from there!! i ended up finding out a song i listened to in middle school was from the gazette and was in japanese always had hardtime remmebering how to pronounce Ganges ni Akai Bara from stacked rubbish but i was shocked how i heard the gazette middle school and was oblivious to genre and scene till mid 20s i found out of music … i usually grew up listening to non vk bands but i listened to the gazette young age without knowing they were vk alot on last.fm . now years later after teen yrs and close to 30 i now see the genre spectacular and something i was missing my younger years VK bands… i once was mention band xjapan but thought it was like a movie or something else but overall i still say if never tlaked to netehrlands guy and his poster i never found the genre.
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I was really into theme songs of Japanese horror movies at one point in time but as time went on it got annoying since some songs were removed from Youtube and eventually my account got banned from Youtube so I lost my playlist and couldn’t be bothered to make it from memory. There were a few songs that I remembered so I decided to look up the artists. The first one was D and the song was 闇の国のアリス. Looking back I can’t believe that song was the one that got me into visual kei since I didn’t really listen to it again after that, especially compared to the rest of D’s stuff. I also got into Kagrra (咒葬)and the GazettE (千鶴)that way.
A lot of the theme songs I listened to were pop music (stuff like SCANDALand Miki Imai) and I’m not sure why I didn’t go in that direction instead. I guess I got used to those specific songs and other stuff from those artists didn’t really click with me. But that’s also true for some other visual kei bands that I never got into like L’arc-en-Ciel (finale) and Luna Sea (gravity). I would still listen to the songs I used to listen to but probably not to other stuff from them. Maybe it was the outfits that drew me in.
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