Dang idk if this is directed at my earlier comment but “tourists shouldn’t share their experiences” wasn’t my point at all. My beef is with certain people who make “how to bangya” guides online when they don’t even speak japanese well / have only a narrow experience with the scene.
I’m a bangya but i don’t go to minor lives / unknown bands. I’m not familiar with all the drama that comes with no-name session bandmen, so it would make no sense for me to “educate” people about how their lives work. But i’ve seen people who only go to minor lives go on the internet and say all vkei lives are like this and this when their experience isn’t universal.
Plus a lot of these guides are made by very visibly foreign people, who aren’t even subject to bangya “culture” in the same way as japanese or japanese-looking people. If my white friends go to a show and stand in between rows, they get a pass because they “don’t know any better”. If i do that, i get pushed and someone will deliberately make fun of me within earshot. It’s a whole different world out there depending on how much you blend in and how much japanese you speak.
Lol no sorry I specifically @ 'd you because I wanted to let you know it’s not - you share a lot of faves with me so because of that I happen to read your stories a lot and enjoy them so you’re the ‘please keep them coming’ crowd
Yeah, that was my point in my last post - “how to bangya” guides sometimes come from
a good place (sharing what little they know with people who know even less - this is what I was talking about in the sense of defending them and saying well if you don’t like it then go ahead and correct them for the sake of all of fandom )
a “please make my social media grow so I can go to Japan again pls pls” place - essentially clickbaiting (can’t blame them for needing money I mean same but yeah if someone disagrees its fair )
the sort of place that makes stories like those weird German stalker organizers happen - the sort of “please notice me Honmei please pleasepleaseplEASEPLEASEPLEASEAAAAAAAAAAAAH” place
The “sake of all of fandom” bit is the key bit in my point I feel
It’s directly related to whatever I said about local kpop and jpop concerts being more organized than the vk wild west - perhaps because those fans don’t have nearly as much of an illusion that Honmei Will Notice Them among the thousands, or whatever other reason IDK fandom experience ends up being way more about the fandom and not nearly as much about the dude noticing you as you Expect they won’t. Of course speaking super broadly as different vk bands can be VERY different experiences etc.
I suppose foreign concert guides don’t really exist specifically because there are no set rules.
Even in standard Western shows with western bands, there is no one unified way to enjoy a show.
So, it’s not really for me to say that fans must behave a certain way at a foreign show, but it’s more like a call for a collective Reality Check.
Such as, if someone’s going to the Imminence/Landmvrks/Jiluka show, it is not a “VK” show. It’s a metalcore show.
It’s not Jiluka’s show, it’s Imminence’s. Talking about how Jiluka’s headlining shows go has no relevance at all to this situation. But I feel like a lot of the people asking these questions aren’t being clear enough, so they keep getting misleading answers. On Reddit, for example, someone was asking what to expect at a Jiluka headlining show (without mentioning at first that they meant Europe), and ten different people started going over Japanese rules.
Honestly? Probably a mix of both. The person later clarified “I’m talking about Europe”, after I had posted “Well, if you mean Europe, then most of the other advice that you got doesn’t apply”
Uhh oh okay. Yea … lol I’m just laughing here because I think I’ve been around long enough to know how like vk fans just come from very different walks of life and yeah I personally can’t imagine a concert overseas that doesn’t feel like the wild west but if the trend of fans following Japanese concert customs overseas catches on thats going to be an interesting phenomenon for sure. I am not against it - love my idols and even if I don’t join the fan projects I think it’s cute - but I can imagine the clash in more metalcore concerts lol
For real, there are many things I do at Japanese shows that I would never do overseas. It’s not that I’m not getting into the band, but there are certainly optics concerns when in mixed company that don’t exist at lives in Japan (ironically, me as an obvious foreigner).
Furi, as a prime example. It’s something that you generally do in groups. But if I’m at an overseas show, most people don’t know the furi so I don’t participate. Same with encore calls. No problems at all in Japan, but if you’re at a show where not everyone is in on the context, it can come across as yikes to an outsider. Same with member calling.
I think I remember the reviews of Anime Atlanta where Jiluka made their international debut, someone reported that a girl started barking at Sena. Now, was this actually barking or was it a poor attempt at “deathvoice” member calling, which can honestly sound a lot like dog barking? Who knows. But does anyone really want to be “that person”?
Sometimes I forget I live in a multicultural place and need the internet to give me perspective let me share some stuff I personally witnessed this year:
the audience gets to ask questions to Japanese seiyuu, one guy who’s rightfully angry at the translator was goes ahead and delivers the question in Japanese and everyone else follows suit, some really can’t speak properly tho
sizable crowd in a corner of the Wasuta concert waving their branded member penlights coordinately (thanks google for reminding me what’s their lightstick called) while the adults were vibing to their Sailor Moon OST cover
people loudly applauding one of the organizers of the Miku tour way more than Miku himself - this was just disrespectful IMO but no questions asked on my part
the canonical event of fanbase members giving glowing bracelets and stuff like that on a queue but not having enough time to explain how the project is gonna work plus most people not bothering to read the rules and just doing whatever they want (been to enough concerts to know it’s a canonical event … when there are fan projects. often there are none because Who’s Idol Culture )
it’s just … the usual? like in the kind of place I live in you could do ur furi alone and no one would bat an eye it would be literally like ‘oh that guy knows their furi neat! back to enjoying however I want’ lol some people will yell encore or (insert oshi-kun’s name here) and it’s just. the life
some people will headbang. some places will moshpit. I don’t even know what the rules are. venues have no idea what’s going on every single time and organizers will be struggling to make people SOMEWHAT follow the customs from wherever the idol comes from just enough so they won’t be traumatized for life lol
I wish more vk bands would promote their stuff in English. Either have subtitles on videos or songs in English. Spanish too since a crap ton of vi fans I’ve met are from Latin America. That English and Spanish stuff is why a lot of these younger bands are selling out and touring the world than most older bands ( daizystripper and d=out I’m looking at you.)
I absolutely prefer japanese songtexts, but english subtitles for things like promo videos, interviews, behind the scenes stuff and so on would be very appreciated.
But regarding Live: Whenever there is some (for me) new band I want to check out, my first step is to search for live concert footage on youtube. I usually prefer live as it tends to be a little “dirtier”, less polished, which I prefer. So I always look forward to live albums or - even better - live DVDs.
Also, live footage is a good way to determine how good the band or musician actually is. Might be controversial, but in my opinion: if musicians are bad on stage they are just not good in general.
I love live versions as a dvd or YouTube videos for the reasons you describe, but I never listen to them as audio only, so when live tracks get added to a normal release just to bump up the track number it drives me crazy. There’s live-only audio albums for that purpose. I end up removing those tracks from my collection and keep only original recordings of songs.
Huh? Is that really something that is weird in your country? All overseas in Germany I can recall had “encore” chanting. I think no one is irritated because it is commen to chant “Zugabe, Zugabe” (German for “Encore”) the same way you chant “ankoreeee”. Both has 3 syllabys even. So even if someone does not know the word encore or it’s japanese version, it’s easily understood that it is the japanese “Zugabe”.
Sometimes I amuse myself by imagining me and my friends started this thing in the vkei scene Because when we did it in Japan at the end of 2009 everyone around us looked at us like we were absolutely crazy and it definitely got the attention of the bandmen (who also looked at us like we were crazy lol). We only did it because we wanted to participate but had no idea how to do the high voice the japanese girls did
Don’t know this event at all but … if putting on a fake accent to try to speak a word in a language you don’t really speak that well was a big offense I’m sure most of not all bandomen would be in jail
damn at the risk and all the bad optics at being a white american defending other white americans, i think there’s a very worthwhile distinction between “attempting a Japanese accent” and “speaking in kana”
You’re in Japan yourself, right? So i’d imagine you know kana well enough?
Anecdotally i was in a station one time confused about train 6 but the word 六 slipped my mind, and i was repeating “six, six” to the helpful attendant to no avail - but as soon as a lightbulb went off in my head and i said “shikkusu (シックス, English “six” written in jp sounds (for anyone else reading this))” it was an instant “ah yes, right over there!”
So i hear a non-japanese person speaking non-japanese words in kana (eg berii (ベリー) instead of berry, with high-low pitch, 1:1.5 timing, and that tongue-on-the-roof り rather than the American bunched-tongue “ri”) - and my thoughts aren’t “this is an imitation of an accent” but “that’s kana”
I mean were their efforts misapplied? Sure, maybe, i have no idea the reasonability of marketing so within Japanese syllabary and language at the expense of all the languages you’re around without …necessarily being around the language you’re speaking/marketing in
And like okay just with the Gallo i’m very prepared to be wrong if like something comes out where they’ve made some terrible videos in actual mocking accents and i just don’t know about those, like swapping every English L&R with no reason other than just to be wrong, or a wild jumping of pitch that has no relevance to spoken patterns
But i just can’t see using kana reasonably and correctly, when surrounded by sentences in Japanese, as anything other than “making an attempt to get the language right & be understood”
But again, very open to the idea that this whole goal might have been misguided. I don’t know them, i’m not simping or vouching for them i just think it’s neat when people learn other languages
Because when we did it in Japan at the end of 2009 everyone around us looked at us like we were absolutely crazy and it definitely got the attention of the bandmen (who also looked at us like we were crazy lol). We only did it because we wanted to participate but had no idea how to do the high voice the japanese girls did 
