Problematic Kei
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oh honey this ain’t it
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real tawk tho, the people cancelling them over this are absolute morons and know absolutely nothing about them besides listening to less than 5 songs or so
they’re supposed to be weirdos (or at least they were the majority of their career) but of course the average 14 year old jiluka listener wouldn’t understand that 
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Eh, I’m done with the concept of blackface in visual kei more than I am done with MERRY. This won’t be the first time a band I listen to does blackface, and this certainly won’t be the last just because I said something once online. Thing is, I don’t think it comes from a place of hate, just a place of ignorance. Japan is very homogeneous ethnically, and does not have the centuries of racial strife my country does, so to ask them to understand why blackface is offensive is a reach. I would be glad if they did, but that’s just an unrealistic expectation and I have to temper those.
I’d be very interested in asking the band members about WHY they chose this look, because this doesn’t come out of nowhere. What is their inspiration? Why the blackface? Why naked Gara with no blackface? Why the album name Strip? These are the questions that are important to me, but they don’t have to be answered.
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Thank you for the perspectives! I’m sorry if I came off presumptuous, this is a band that’s very important to me and I’m just trying to process.
If I momentarily pretend to delete the concept of blackface from my head and try to read the image, I’m getting purity vs corruption. Like, the Merry members can represent society. Then Gara is actually half covered in ink too, but he has his clean side to the camera, so it isn’t noticeable immediately. Presenting an image of purity and hiding being tainted. There are scrapes on his legs, so it implies a violent process to get the black off. "Strip"ping of the world’s corruption. The clothes of the members are in gold - money - and red splatters - blood.
I don’t know, I’m talking out of my ass. I hope someone who speaks Japanese gets to tune into the livestream and reports if the members say anything.
The thing is though, if blackface was not the intention, avoiding getting the wrong reading would have been pretty easy. Get rid of Nero’s red drawn-on lips, for one thing. Make the black more like paintstrokes, not complete coverage. And I find it hard to believe they never foresaw there could be a problem.
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I’m really curious if they’re going to touch on the meaning of the look in the interviews, or whatever else, during the PR cycle for this.
I can understand if their response for this would be “oooo u have to come and see our TRU3 DVRK side, our rill darkness, like, erupting from inside!!! check out our wild’n’sexay vocalist throwing around some naked bussi while u r at it!!!”
even that wouldn’t excuse not using, like, any other color too. just mix some greens and purples and smudge it over to your hearts content if you want to remind us you used to do bodypaint fifteen years ago.
don’t make it look so much like an Uncle Tom sketch from an obtuse NHK comedy show.
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I think they tried to pull off something like African style tribal wooden sculptures inspired look maybe.
Something like this maybe:
In the end it’s just harmless makeup. It’s sad that it has negative connection to the past. I think it looks cool.
Summary
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Adding this from twitter.
I disapointed but not surprised.
Their youtube live had the comment section closed. So no one was able to ask or talk about it.
(I followed the drama over twitter only, so the info is from fans of merry, i am not a fan merry, but its still disapointing)
(also mentioning, if the person of that twitter account is a member here, sorry, for screenshoting)
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“Love”. The fact that this makes even less sense than my bullshit reading, I want to laugh.
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In the end, I bet it all boils down to the ultimate answer from the Visual Kei Bullshit Generator™:
“𝒲𝑒 𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝓉𝑜 𝑒𝓍𝓅𝓇𝑒𝓈𝓈 𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓊𝓃𝒾𝓆𝓊𝑒 𝓌𝑜𝓇𝓁𝒹𝓋𝒾𝑒𝓌.”
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it looks vile to me because of how smug Nero looks on this and because Japan still has no problem kicking actual local black artists away from performing for shit like olympics for no reason. like not sometime in 1995, like, right now.
thanks merry for telling us it’s all LOVE tho!!! 
that made so much sense!
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If they just didn’t have Nero wear the red lipstick, then I don’t think this would have blown up as it did. And I do think that it deserves to be on blast for that, believe me. That being said, lots of bands and solo acts have done the dark face makeup look, from Kyonosuke’s which doesn’t even resemble blackface in the slightest to that time David;Shito AL basically straight up did it and the only reason they didn’t get cancelled is that they only have like 300 fans. I don’t get why some get put on blast and others just fly by with no one giving a shit, other than popularity. Except there’s always weird exceptions, like how Daisuke, Ryutaro (one rare-ish photoshoot only a few western Kurage know about, apparently?), J, Kozi, One of the members of Lynch (forgot his name okay), Kenjirou Murai and a whole bunch of other bandomen wore dreads/cornrows and NOBODY gave a shit, yet Gackt and Ruki got #cancelled for wearing them? Don’t get it.
I just wanted to get that off my chest. I hope Merry really rethinks and changes the look, specifically Nero’s, it’s just not good…
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I remember Tsuzuku wore blackface for a magazine cover with Aki (Arlequin), but even though people lost their shit over it, he never once got canceled.
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Nero puts makeup on the same way he plays drums: while falling down the stairs.
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I mean tzk is not the highest bar to aspire to in terms of integrity in general, and mejibray fans are the type whose hormonal urges are the one to decide if someone’s getting cancelled or not.
I’m very sad merry did this, otherwise I don’t even waste time being disappointed by young indie douchebags doing edgy shit - most of them will be gone within like two years with all their clownery of the moment.
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There is a full interview about it on their youtube channel but well fully in Japanese, without any good subtitles. so if anybody could translate it or could summary it.
People here judge anything way to fast, without even know the reason behind anything…
Not everything is RACISM. black can stand for anything, after all it’s just a color…
Just please don’t say we have to BAN the color black now too…
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no one is saying the color black in itself is wrong, lmfao.
the problem here is nero (is that right? i’m not into this band) with the red lips
i’m sure they don’t actually have a racist intent behind it, nobody is saying they’re horrible racists. but the fact of the matter is, even if unintentionally, he ended up doing very offensive blackface.
there’s very tasteful ways i’ve seen black paint be incorportated for art into modeling! it can be done! just this wasn’t it.
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From twitter:
Comments on the youtube livestream (that you linked) were closed. Fans expressed disappointment that Merry didn’t address the controversy. After the free livestream, the one on Galacaa followed. Fans brought up the blackface in comments there.
(This is the comment screenshotted above, the author has unprivated their account since, so I’m linking it here as well.)
I’ve been thinking and the root of the issue is, with a band like Merry, integrity is key. If we let sneak in the suspicion that they intended the blackface, well, what else did they get a free pass for? Was the rising sun flag not just a prop? Were the characters in songs not just characters? Or were they just trying to push all buttons they could without regard for the consequences?
I do mean it when I say I love this band. I want to believe their intentions were good and this is just a misunderstanding, fueled by ignorance and stubbornness. Guess we’ll wait and see.
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Wow. Ridiculous…
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