Post your "UNPOPULAR" Japanese music opinions! / aka "HOT TAKES" :P

Japanese Music
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I’ll split it if/when it gets bigger. I like to wait until there are about 7-8 posts so that a proper narrative emerges.

Potentially, but my thoughts come from a place of genuine concern.

There are three main things which bring traffic to JROCK ONE:

  • News about Dir en grey
  • News about the GazettE
  • News about someone dying

As an administrator, this kind of makes me a bit uncomfortable, if only because the majority of traffic revolves around two bands. If we take these two bands out of the equation, is what’s left enough to sustain a community? It bothers me so much that I brought it up with the staff about two weeks ago. And then this happens, which crystallizes my fears.

I say it all the time, but I came in the scene around 1999. It’s the equivalent of starting a book at the end of Chapter 5, where something significant happens and you don’t have enough context to understand why. You won’t find too many people in the scene today who can say they’ve been around so long because the scene underwent such a radical transformation that a whole generation of fans phased out and a new one took its place. We take that for granted, but that kind of transformation is very risky. We’re long overdue for another one.

Like I said, I want the GazettE to stick around forever. I love these guys, even if they are a little hit and miss for me. But I also know that the scene is forever changing, and if the scene changes enough will people stick with it? Will we have another mass exodus? What will that look like for this community? I really can’t say, but what I can say is that I don’t want to lose anyone. Y’all are too much fun to be around.

So if we’re getting uncomfortably close to the edge I feel like I have to use my miniscule influence to say something.

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528

dazzling bad, lol.

joke aside, I remember reading an interview from a few years ago that had someone (Aoi?) mention they were already discussing a very long term trajectory of what kind of music they wanted to make in like a decade away, if not more.

PSC were a respected indie label that got people in really good places, and a lot of them still work behind the scenes. I’m not sure if Nao from kaggra would slip on the nose band and step in right away, but the scene has quite a talent pool, and there might be new people auditioned for the part.

I think they likely will delay whatever is in the works, but I don’t think they’ll fold (they should have at least the lead single track getting ready for release by now, too - they tend to release something in the spring, but not this year so far.)

fame wise, right now I guess it’s dezert really making moves in the major scene, but not yet willing to tour abroad to get on the gazette/deg comparable level.
the other big band of the now, kiryu, is on the break.
I’m not sure last rockstars count as a new band, given the youngest member there is from gazette’s generation.

I’m still waiting on some girugamesh member activity update, but right now, sadie, dexcore and matenrou opera would be the established legacy-but-not-true-major bands I’m consistently keeping my eye on.

kizu seem to be in the major-tier league judging by the production and release milking scheme but i don’t follow their tour sales so idk?

burying VK altogether to me feels a bit prematurely negative, given that the genre actually has been just moving out of a very long stasis, but it needs both new people, more experiments that don’t suck, less jaw shave, and more new ways to bring income, which livestreaming concerts might potentially do once that trend picks up.

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529

This is the energy I want to promote, but I feel like I had to explain where I was coming from so maybe I came off overly negative. But “that very long stasis” period that you mentioned is exactly one of the things that concerns me a lot.

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530

Sometimes I think this scene needed an stupid award show so everyone can get together, celebrate an year of music, and fight about the best newcomer act or best single. Yoshiki I know you are lurking here, you know you will love to present this thing. Do it.

I always hated this scene aversion of Feats and collabs. Do more things together, I beg of everyone of you

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it’s not just vk, the economy sucks, and creative production gets hit v. hard every time there’s a slowdown. VK is actually kinda? privileged to exist in a bubble compared to other genres where sometimes you have the drive but the production and promotion are so terribly expensive it’s hard to recoup the costs. I’ve been listening to a lot of Azealia on the subject of funding music, and it sucks to be in the business w/o a taylor’s daddy kind of figure in the back.

oh by the way in regards to big bands - lynch were pretty much exactly on gazette’s level fame-wise a few years ago, and I don’t think they really fell off that badly.

well idk starwave does this, but VK is too cliqueish. dexcore does feat. singles, but for more conventionally VK bands, no one really cares.

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Its sad but i feel the same. It seems everyone has only eyes on these 3 things, no one has the lust for another bands and even buy their music or try to hear. JROCK isnt only dir en grey or the gazette!

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I started to check out mch forever ago as only a Naitomea stan, can’t count the number of bands i found directly thru here! I went to go see a couple whose name i hadn’t heard before clicking on their discussion thread here.

I get there’s spikes around bad news but recurring casual visitors are a thing too

After today try not to get too discouraged; i think running this site has directly contributed to more than a few bands, financially and viewershiply.

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I can definitely respect that pattern recognition. The only kind of threads that get equivalent heat are foreign tour announcements.

However, I think that’s because the board tends to attract the older VK crowd, who have to contend with adult responsibilities and can’t always devote time to learning about the newest bands.

Elsewhere in the online western VK space (Discord, Twitter and TikTok), the conversations are starting to become dominated by the under 21s obsessed with 2020s bands (although, a ton of this energy is also negative and toxic).

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535

I shall hold back from only screaming out “Fuck VK” and acutally write something productive here

vs the amount of bandmember that just want to fuck for cheap
Sorry, i had to say it. Its a problem a lot of scene’s have, but the whole way VK bands work and operate just pushes that thing to happen far easier.

But i do agree with you on the fact that a indie underground scene can survive and thrive too. Otherwise genre’s like Black Metal would have died out by now too probably.

MUCC took the worst blow, they went major :wink:

Gonna say that again Mucc still exist too and as @rsm_rain Nightmare exist still too

true, Jrock is also One OK Rock and Babymetal and so on
VK and JRock are different scenes, yes VK is a subgenre of JRock and there are crossovers but thats about it.
Just thought i should mention that.

According to my knowledge, VK bands make money easier than other, nonVK bands, mainly because they sell themselves as a product, and not only their music. So they can do stuff like selling chekis or selling the same album 5 times to the same person, so they can get a cheki for free with it.

That is actually a huge and big problem about the whole VK fandom. Internationally as well as the japanese fandom.

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True :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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I was mostly talking about disbandments and stuff but yes mucc did take a huge blow recently. I’m glad they are still active :sweat_smile::face_holding_back_tears:

Quotes of the year. 5 gold medals 1000% agree.

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538

I’m not familiar w. anyone in the western rock scene living the modest lifestyle of chastity and commitment. like, Moz? if public persona there reflects the private bedroom situation?

VK has the host infrastructure tied in + Japanese lack of hook up/NSA sex shame, but I’m hardly even surprised by anything happening in the scene these days, and like the subject of literal sex addiction itself in entertainment is a tea ocean tanker spill if you know where to look for it; the closest ~scandalous thing I can think of is lycaon’s label gossip that was posted here, which isn’t even about sex, it’s like power play as it is.

I’ve seen mucc sales of a few years ago, and while they were indie (meaning limited press runs) but they were indie on maverick, the l’arc en ciel label, and they were on the same lvl as miyavi, sub-1000 copies per release. lynch. typically hits 5k and tour like crazy.

for naito, I’m not sure where they are in terms of sales and venue sizes, since yomi’s health issues seemingly set them aback.

539

This is just the perspective of our closed western comminty here. I told the sad news of today to 4 friends which are not part of this forum but still listen to J-Rock. This forum is just a part of the western community.
Not to speak of the japanese community. Since I am plannig a trip to Japan I was looking for vk concerts in a time frame of a month on only one ticket site and got around 300 hits. I could see a vk act nearly everyday if I wanted. There is the summit in Osaka in May with over 60 acts. That means there is enough demand for all these bands. It’s a niche scene for sure and we can’t exspect some boom like X-Japan again because music scene all over the world has changed drastically since the 80s.

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As someone who’s been generally out of the loop on both the GazettE and Dir en Grey fronts the past several years, I don’t really think there is a need for anyone to take their places when the time comes. Honestly, we’re all getting old, including the main demographic of listeners and folks who pop in here exclusively when major news of either band comes up. Other bands have taken the spotlight domestically, since.

That being said, these two are basically the glue that holds this forum of 30+ -something foreigners together, and this isn’t exactly the most lively place for non-vk J-rock discourse (not really conducive to it either.) So yeah, that’s a thing.

We’ll always look back at these bands fondly, but the current scene consists largely of menhera, kirakira → idol, and homage bands.

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i would like to know where these other western community… i am in almost all underground vk communities and i never see a lot of activities between the members than here.

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Well thats why i mentioned, that other scene’s have that problem too. It happens everywhere, but its a difference if a scene has straightup enables that stuff by having stuff going on like Mitsu’s or a forum that is famous in the scene which has hook up threads etc

Also it’s not only bandmembers but the fans too.
I got that info from two different acquaintances who were in the VK scene and then changed scenes because of one of the problems being that most fans didnt care or even appreciate the music, but only wanted to have one of the bandmembers as boy friend or whatever.

And that is also where some of the toxic shit ties into the fandom.
When fans expect to be that special one for the band, they get pissed when the band aknowledges someone else.

I do fully agree on that one. Our forum in the end is a echo chamber, like pretty much any community.
I can see the exact same complaints over on r/metalcore, just with a different set of bands.

melokei discord, twitter, tiktok, r/visualkei is getting more members day by day too.
vkgy discord

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543

I dont consider twitter and discord as community like JRO. these ones u cant really control who comes and such freedom to say whatever is it without consequences same with rules and so on.

544

I don’t like discord as an community. Discord stuff stays in discord, it’s not open, indexed, available to everyone to see. I hate as it isolates discussion to enclosed spaces

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OMG @ the sun having a better write-up on the news of day than weeb-ish crunchyroll etc

Courtny i don’t know what’s ur @ here but i respect u

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This will be more about the forum though

but what was I going to say unlike the ones that actually are most talked about (like diru), not that many vk bands get such big discourse or attention around them. both currently active and the disbanded ages ago.

but indeed this same applies to j-rock in general, there a good bunch of old bands that make or made awesome stuff and barely saw a mention about them here.

also have caught sights of interesting bands in newer stuff but personally I have yet to dig more in current stuff

guess this a decent moment to say that I never understood this completely. but I think u had other points maybe like the stuff I said above.

Basically im trying to say that we should be fair to both vkei and j-rock. because I have seen some individuals being a bit unreasonable towards vkei in this forum for whatever reason.

And It should be understandable why I keep mentioning vkei and j-rock separately.

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