I saw maple gunman pv on YouTube and saw bou in the thumbnail and I said “hot diggity daffodil she looks hot” and a generous comment saved me from a fatal error, should’ve said no homo but, mistakes were made.
And the other was vistlip ozone pv and I said “holy shit he looks hot” that’s all I said.
For a long time I was listening only to bands like Korn or Slipknot, and didn’t care much for the rest of the metal genre. One day I decided to dig deeper to see what metal has to offer. I searched for most disturbing sounding metal songs and on some forum I found link for DEG’s Agitated screams of maggots remix.
The video and the sound captivated me. I searched the band and found out that they are Japanese. Because I’m fan of anime, manga and Japanese culture in general, I was pleasantly surprised that there is even rock/metal scene.
Since that day I listen mainly to Vk/J-rock.
It seems I’m quite new to this compared to most people, since I only discovered the VK/Jrock world about two and a half years ago, and it’s all thanks to Youtube. I was listening to something totally unrelated, but it decided to show Unlucky Morpheus - Black Pentagram in the recommendations, and I was like ‘yeah, why not?’. That was pretty good, so I bookmarked it and started exploring based on that and discovered Yousei Teikoku and Wagakki Band, and eventually Versailles, Gazette and Dadaroma, and then so much more.
I remember at first the androgynous looks made me slightly unconfortable, but it quickly clicked for me, and now I think it’s amazing. Later I found other ways to find bands, like forums (MH) and databases (like visual ioner), but it all started with Youtube. I guess it had to, since I don’t have friends who are into this, and I don’t watch anime, and have basically no other connection to modern Japanese culture (I am interested in their history and traditional theater (Kabuki, Noh), but that’s a different realm to VK). Nowadays the vast majority of music I listen to is VK.
I’ve always been a big fan of anime and around 2006 I started listening to anime theme songs after I discovered the existence of Japanese metal trough Maximum the Hormone on Death Note. I started searching for Maximum the Hormone songs on Lime Wire at the time and eventually happened upon Girugamesh. Sometime later my friend downloaded me a Girugamesh disco. from The Pirate Bay. And later through that I discovered last.fm, tainted world, and a plethora of vk bands. The rest as they say is history.
2011 discover Dir en Grey - OBSCURE Watching the PV Sadie - Ice Romance PV SCREW - Death’s Door PV
At THAT time Sadie was also activated ScreW PS COMPANY
UNDER CODE PRODUCTION NEGA other band.
The Saw franchise lmfao.
X’s first song after reuniting was I.V. for Saw IV, which I was a huge fan of at the time. That got me casually into X when I was around 12 or 13.
More broadly, I got into J-Rock around the same time after a friend in an Azumanga Daioh fan community recommended me Galneryus - which blew my mind, obviously. Incidentally, this would lead into me getting into DELUHI when they were together since that was Leda’s band after quitting Galneryus.
Then the Saw franchise pulled me back in, but this time with the Hageshisa single by Dir En Grey. I had heard of them a few years prior when they were briefly popular with Hot Topic preteens, but Agitated Screams of Maggots was too mallcore for me when I was super into “troo metal.” Hageshisa was much more my speed and got me into DEG from that era, plus random songs from their back catalogue. I didn’t get really into their whole discography until The Insulated World dropped, which reminded me that they existed and got me to do a deep dive. I got obsessed pretty quickly after that.
That eventually led to me getting into Sukekiyo, which made me join Monochrome Heaven since there weren’t many places on the English-speaking web to discuss them. Someone recommended cali≠gari to me in my intro topic. It took me a while for them to really click, but they did eventually, but they’re easily one of my favorite bands now - if not my favorite. Since they’re such a prolific and influential band in VK, my interest in them expanded more broadly to the history and subgenres of VK, plus whatever bands I find along the way while learning more about the genre.
Now I’m here, still objectively a noob to the genre - but now there are way too many expensive Japanese CDs and DVDs on my shelf, so there’s that at least.
Back in 2015, I was checking out some popular anime openings and youtube decided to recommend me GazettE’s Suicide Circus. I was never more invested watching a music video than back then, same goes for Inside Beast which I checked right after. I would watch these two pv’s for the next two days but I couldn’t tell if I was enjoying it or not, I was just kinda fascinated by them.
Fast forward to a couple months later, I suddenly remembered about this band that I once checked out so I looked them up. It was a bit after the release of UGLY, so I decided to check that one out this time.
And I frickin loved it.
The next day I was already a fan of DOGMA and was slowly but steadily diving deeper into their discography. I told my dad “listen to this cool band I found” and it was then that I found out my dad has been to a Dir en grey concert a few years ago lol
So then I went and checked out Diru’s Uroko and then Obscure and it was almost the same reaction I had watching my first GazettE videos, only this time I had no idea what I was experiencing 
It took me a long time to properly get into Diru but I will be forever grateful for being so stubborn as they (and GazettE ofc) managed to broaden my musical interests and made me a fan of the Japanese music scene which I am to this day
In 2017, I watched Black Butler and the opening of the second season was Shiver by The Gazette. I loved it so much I looked up the full song and the mv showed up and that was it. I instantly fell in love with vkei
Back in 2016, my 4th grade music teacher wanted the class to do a projects for music genres or our favorite singer / band. I didn’t listen to music that much, so I chose to make one for music genres. Because everyone was doing something with jazz, metal, rap, etc. I wanted to be original and do something different and I started looking for metal in different countries (originality 
). I wanted to do something with African music, but I found myself on a completely different continent, listening to the Gazette and doing presentation about metalcore 
.
In 2017, I only listened to Japanese music. 
Don’t even remember.
must have started in the late 1990’s with LAN gaming and file sharing, discovering japanese anime which leads to japanese music and then to jrock/VK. X-JAPAN was probably the first I heard, don’t remember the song.
I think that Pierrot was the band that made me get interested in VK. Then Malice Mizer. MUCC, Despa made me in love with the genre. And maybe 4-5 years later I made it my business to not just listen to these music but also work with it and I did 
A friend of mine was a friend of the band and they actually got casted. There’s a big German anime/manga community called Animexx and apparently they just looked for good looking vk guys on there and put them together.
I also recently randomly found out that one of them already died
Just like any 90s kid in Germany/Europe, I grew up watching a lot of anime. I bought an anime magazine called AnimaniA quite regularly and in 2004/2005-ish they started reporting on vk bands and concerts too.
There was a report about Dir en grey’s gig in Berlin in 2005: It was their first one outside of Asia and sold out within 72 hours without any advertising. It was in summer and many people ended up in the hospital after fainting due to dehydration or whatever.
After reading about this I was curious about how they sound and why they’re so appealing. Obviously neither Spotify nor Youtube were a thing back then. When I got my hands on their albums, I was really confused hence the different sound of GAUZE era and VULGAR era, but I was definitely digging it. Then I got into MUCC, Moi dix mois, Nightmare, 12012, HYDE,…
Back in elementary school when Death Note was airing. I was immediately obsessed with Zetsubou Billy and looked it up on YouTube. I got really into Maximum the Hormone and it sorta became my entry into Jrock (though I already knew of a few other bands from watching anime and whatnot). Visual kei happened when YT put Silly god disco by the gazette in my recs. This was back like in 2006-07ish I think.
The first band i met was The GazettE. I met her from the Kuroshitsuji opening. This happened in December-November 2018.
I liked listening to anime openings, so i remembered that one and looked it up. Then i started listening to more music from The GazettE because i really liked it.
Over time, because of all that, Youtube started recommending vkei music to me. So i met Dadaroma, Mamireta, Arlequin, Deviloof, Xaa Xaa and Kizu (bands that i still like. Lol).
I don’t know english, so i’m with the translator. Sorry.
MALICE MIZER. I think I would’ve come across anime intros on early YouTube and then I remember ending up watching Au Revoir so many times and being just completely obsessed with it. Back to back to back to back to back to back. That band still has me.
I loved how there were so many things going on at the same time musically. Then I ended up finding Baroque from Memoire DX and I was obsessed with that as well. And then like Bel Air. The thing I fell in love with about them most is the layers of music. Just… layers. I loved it. And then I found other bands and found that the whole visual kei scene seemed to have more of this in a way I liked than I would ever find in western music. Then I found that I seemed to prefer something about the way Japanese bands in general would compose songs. The progressions, mode changing, and everything. The structures of the songs.
I’m ancient, so I’ve heard first whispers about mysterious X-Japan in the late 90s, but my actual first foray has to be dated around 2000. That’s because I traded cassettes via snail-mail with my friend, and got a mix-tape that featured Malice Mizer and Gackt - the newest of the songs was Vanilla. It wasn’t until 2003 that I really took the bait though, I got my hands on a cd with nearly complete DEG discography and a few PVs. Rest is history.
The only reason I can be sure about the date is because Drain Away single was released along that time. And I still remember the Obscure’ocalypse that followed and broke forums apart.
Oh gosh. This is hella cringe for me xD
I first heard of Dir en Grey from some really trashy fanfiction back in the heyday of fanfiction.net around like 2007 (before AO3 kinda took over the scene). Don’t judge me too hard, I was just a kid in 7th grade at the time lmao
I didn’t think too much of it, and didn’t look into the band any further until a friend showed me the Obscure music video sometime in 2008, and although I wasn’t a fan of the song at the time I ended up feeling like I needed to at least try some of their other stuff, and from there found some other bands.
This was like, just as the internet was really exploding and becoming commonplace in our everyday lives. YouTube existed but was still small, Facebook was in its infancy stages, and I was only on a few small forums. So, sadly, I only really was able to branch out to a few other bands from there - Girugamesh, l’Arc en Ciel, the really big ones that everyone knew about.
one of my AOL friends sent me a few Malice Mizer songs in 1998
I’m a true relic
The first VK song i’ve heard was the word from Nightmare in 2008.
I was watching death note on MTV and i liked the opening and ending.
So i searched on the web the music and i’ve fall in love of Sakito’ look and guitar😍.
So in love that I decided to make my first guitar inspired by his. (i’m not professional, i only do it for me and my own pleasure)
It was black painted at the beginning, but the paint wasn’t good enough so i change the finishing when i was confined in 2020…
Since, i’m still fan of j music and VK style.
The year was 2008. I was 10 at the time. Found X Japan’s Blue Blood CD in my sister’s room. I liked it but I was into heavier stuff like Cradle of Filth so I quickly forgot about it. Fast forwarding to 2019 I had several personal music eras. Went from black metal to glam rock and from glam rock to goth rock (Sisters of Mercy etc not Evanescence). Eventually I got a little bored with my music and decided to find something new. Accidently stumbled across X Japan online and listened to them for quite some time. I still had no idea what visual kei even was. After a while I thought “man there’s gotta be more… more bands like this” and typed “japanese rock” into google. The first thing that popped up was The Gazette and the rest is history. I was hooked. The visuals, the music, insane vocals, melodies. Man, it was like I was searching for this music my whole life. It’s been 3 years now and I still love VK like I discovered it yesterday.
