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

[Anon308]

No, it’s ok! Wait, I didn’t mean kpop is made FOR foreign audiences though. I meant it is made and it happens WITH foreign audiences in mind (even if at the back of the mind) . The biggest companies of nowadays release MVs with English lyrics already. And yeah, hallyu isn’t only kpop but kpop is part of it, absolutely.

But yes, true. Maybe we just see it differently on an emotional level because of where we … live but of course. My confusion is, you acknowledge that kpop intentionally exports itself as a product, but then you say that both are “made for domestic consumption and open to foreign consumption” and to me these points seem to contradict one another?

Kpop is made “for domestic consumption” as much as any media (that isn’t Hollywood movies maybe) is made for “domestic comsumption” and it can’t happen any other way but it effectively has a global marketing strategy, because as you put yourself, it is government funded and stuff. Companies are fully aware that even “nugu” idols may have international fans. The bulk of the money is still circulating in Korea but for some groups, foreign participation is A LOT (as you probably know some kpop groups end up “making it” in Japan etc. ) .

And part of the strategy to make it global has been … acknowledge foreign fans. That, of course, is merely one in the sea of “marketing strategies adopted because it’s a government funded industry yadda yadda” . Obviously the “ohh I wish vk would adopt minimal strategies to go global!” is just my wishful thinking because I lived the 00s and wouldn’t mind living it again in that sense. So if I sounded nostalgic in the middle of what I was saying, sorry but that wasn’t even the point.

But my initial point wasn’t about any of this which has been extensively discussed before anyway (and it’s boring because the tl;dr is really “well they don’t wanna” so whatever) . I mean that because of this (= lack of any marketing/communication strategy aimed towards foreigners) a lot of things about the vk scene feel VERY Japan-only at least to me. Because it’s a (not particularly open) subculture inside a (not particularly open) foreign culture, but also a very complex one, as in, it has a long history and I do think that a lot of things are lost in translation because of so many layers. Accessing the scene as a foreigner is hard and no one (in the Japanese indie vk scene) bothers to explain (ie. a foreigner-oriented marketing strategy, that’s what) for instance. (of course with that comes propaganda before anyone goes “ohh but having the industry explain is bad because…” ; I am just saying there isn’t one.)

And again as I said before: I think foreign and local fans of vk may like it in tremendously different ways. It’s like it’s not even the same thing. (As a kpop fan I had the opportunity of being in translation groups with people from every corner of the world, and it’s a very … unifying? experience. IDK how to describe it. But we all shared the same kinds of feelings. Because it’s made with foreign audiences in mind and we went through similar experiences as an unified group of “foreign fans” . So I mentioned kpop as a personal experience, but it could be anything.) And thus my … confusion or something. Do you get it? When someone says “oh yeah, I like vk bands” it doesn’t really say anything about them to me because fans … may come from very different subjective places. And I think that is positive in a way that’s what I was trying to say.

Maybe I should have simply said “personally I think that non-Japanese vk fans are braver than the Marine, discuss” but that wouldn’t have addressed what I really wanted to say so meh. To me my initial message was clear enough. Not sure why people here don’t always get what I mean lol anyway.

[zeus]

It’s only been a day and I see the ripple effects of my latest post.

I get that things are always intense for the younger generation because y’all have always been exposed to an overly connected and hyper aware society and there’s no reference for what unplugging feels like, but this is still unacceptable and toxic behavior. This is the level of vitriol directed at band members that I described in my last post, except now at each other, and the trigger for this attack was inconsequential. Like almost always. The worst part is that nothing is going to happen because there’s absolutely no oversight or moderation so bullying like this goes unchecked and is just considered part of the experience.

Part of the experience? Yet Another Reason To Not Use Twitter. YARTNUT for short. I don’t understand how the rumor that JROCK ONE, Monochrome Heaven, and Batsu are/were toxic and elitist and run by Nazi apologists spread like wildfire on the same platform where someone can publicly do this. Sure, sometimes discussions get a little heated here, but people aren’t going for the jugular every time. Even the debate I started yesterday was leagues more civil than this!

This ad hominem is also undeniably rooted in delusion. Not only was this person active in the scene when most of us were watching Power Rangers or flagellating in a nut sack, they’re also one of the few old guard left. One of the few who can tell you how it used to be. And no, there will be no resume attached, just take my word for it.

I’m going to separate this and make it very clear: the “old guard” buying and importing CDs and cassettes in the 90’s and 2000’s formed the foundation of the international J-Rock scene, which is what the boom is based off of. There would have been no boom if there was no critical mass. The only reason why the scene is still around today is because of the efforts of all those who came before, even those who aren’t with us or into the scene anymore. I’m not even talking about myself because for as long as I’ve stuck around, there are people who were here earlier that I am eternally grateful to, because they laid the foundation for me to gain interest. Showing people basic decency is not a hard bar to pass, even if they’re new, but even more so if they’re one of the people indirectly responsible for you being in the scene. You should be saying thank you.

tl;dr - We all have a part to play. Don’t play The Fool for seven likes and three shares.

[M00n]

Twitter is an endless cycle of toxicity. People are always picking a fight over someone’s option you can’t even say “hi” without what feels like a war breaking out in the community.

[M00n]

I’m gonna rant…
You can’t exist in ‘Visual Kei Community’ on Twitter quotes because it’s not a community. Communities are, like Zeus said, ‘civil’ and have sanity but the so-called ‘community’ is a toxic hellscape (yes, like the environment from doom, best reference I got.)
Yes, there are a few genuinely nice/kind people sprinkled inside of the toxic cesspool, but a few less than a handful…likely three or less, and eventually, they all get tired of ‘drama/toxicity’ and leave. People even TikTok cesspool babies start in the ‘community’ friendly and asking for band recommendations, and it’s civil, but give it 2 days, and then it’s suddenly.

“@/xyz person supports the vocalist Lime from Kizu who did braids!!”
“Guys, you have to stop supporting and delete everything related to Honmono because the vocalist Maka has curly hair”

(said curly hair…is a clown wig)

“Guys, Kizu painted their faces black for 0 (song) look”…I don’t want to sound like blackface is acceptable because it’s not, but in Japanese culture, wearing black represents mourning the dead, and look at the song lyrics it’s a pure sui*cde song there is no if/and or but about it, and Lime has a bunch of metaphors and symbolism in new looks and music videos to help portray what the song is about.
I say that not to “oh, your reason to defend their blackface,” but because I did multiple music theory papers on Kizu and Lime songs and did as much sane human research possible and found Lime was never blunt with the lyrics but portrayed what the song was suppose to be about in many other ways.

“Guys, did you hear? This band did a live with Gulu, and you know what I (vocalist) did!”
“did you hear the latest drama? xy person streamed Jiluka’s latest album but didn’t buy a physical one”
"Tiktok discovered David (Sui) we have to gatekeep it! no, you can’t RT/Like, and comment on his stuff were gatekeeping him! gotta keep him away from that ‘cesspool’ (Yes some Twitter people refer to Tiktok as a cesspool but…there is also one)
“@/xyz person only likes this one band member and not the entire band”
“I know this is controversial, but you should buy physical copies of the band’s music but just saying”
“I can’t believe Visual Kei is built on racism”

This is the ‘community’ daily war. Yes, a war, not an argument or fight, is bigger than that. Every day it’s @/ this person doesn’t buy the physical/likes this band member/like this band or it’s “omg guys cancel this band/band member look they did curly hair/said a bad English word etc.” just recently people started to bring up that band members are braiding their hair, and I’m sorry but what is wrong with someone braiding their hair?! “because the type of braiding in American repeat American culture was used for-”
They are Japanese. People do know Visual Kei is made of Japanese people, right? What does American culture have anything to do with them?! And why is it only bands or band members that the little new babies or TikTok ones discover. A while back, I saw Tatsurou have braids for something he did with Mana, and nobody cried and screamed like a baby throwing a tantrum over him doing that.

God forbid you to try to support a dang artist because you like the music or because there hot/cute looking. No, the newborn cesspool babies of the Vkei community or TikTok have decided “Meto from Mejibary he’s canceled,” but oh lord, you find this really awesome band like MEME and decide to share it with them, they then throw a tantrum saying 'gatekeep him!! those tiktokers will find and ruin him!" and then it’s “oh god, Tiktok found him…we have to gatekeep even more.”

Japanese artists, more specifically the ‘hot ones,’ cannot read some 16-year-old thirst tweet/comment or RT about how thick their thighs or voice is. In fact, most artists cannot read or speak more than “Hello/Thank you/Goodbye” unless said artist is trying to reach overseas marketing because fans are there, and that’s a free chance at money.

I’ve been part of the ‘community’ for over 3 years and stayed silent and been part of zero drama, but recently it’s every 1 second a new war appears even if you bearly follow a single person in the community.

Zeus, if you think that’s bad, you haven’t even met the cesspool babies who at the mention of “sex” come running with torches and daggers at you (Not just those babies who got all pissy at that Nancy lady who thirsted for a member of Gazette)

Can the Twitter and Tiktok babies go back to sleeping on Visual Kei and return to the cesspool mother known as the Kpop community they were birth from “come on, children, it’s your nap time!” I’m sure the slave contracted- I mean, have total freedom artists would just love to see them reappear in notifications.

[etrange]

God bless japanese Twitter, the most friendly community in the world - all toxies and drama queens have their mental breakdowns and wet dreams shitposting on tanuki.

[Anon308]

Well, This first sentence right here. And if you’re dealing with teens it’s gonna be toxic.

It has got nothing to do with vk but I saw a tweet on my timeline saying something along the lines of “mentally disabled people shouldn’t call themselves disabled” and I replied something like “you do realize that ‘mentally disabled’ doesn’t always mean ‘mild adhd’ right?” and what followed were, no joke, replies by 13 angry teenagers, including one saying things like “YOU ARE ABLE BODIED AND MENTALLY DISABLED AREN’T YOU?” “aren’t you? 3 hours and no reply” “8 hours and no reply” “omgg this is sending” . Freaky. Imagine my surprise checking Twitter 3 days later only to notice that.

When people say “but twitter…” “but kpop…” actually, THESE kinds of cliquey people have little to do INNATELY with kpop or twitter. While I understand that kpop fandom gets all the hate here because kpop fandom is the closest “high school kid” thing you have to vk and therefore that 1) vk fans get to know a bit better and 2) has a lot of “mean girls attitude” now that it’s popular in the US it’s far from the worst fandom in that sense.

And I … could say a lot on “mean fandom kids” but I just want to say that they’re more just… the kids that try hard to be popular in high school OR graduated years ago but are still frustrated over not being popular, and try to make all these cliques online, “are you in or are you out? are you one of the cools or one of the dumbs?” kinda thing. In short: I hate mean girls attitude as much as y’all do but I can analyze things separately.

The point being (why do I always skip it?) : if you make Twitter your cozy home and only follow people worth following and leave the crazy kids to their own devices, it’s way better.

[colorfuljinsei]

It used to be where you had to put some effort into finding & participating in certain communities, which meant you needed at least half-a-brain and a bit of motivation. With the lack of centralized social media, most personality-clashes and tantrums were relegated to the corners of the internet where a quick banhammer would shut them up for a bit. Kids are still in the process of learning, so some of that behavior is an expectation, but the problem is now they’ve been raised and are adept at SNS with each one having their own megaphone (the latter being applicable to more than just teens .) Combine all of what I mentioned with a dash of Western exceptionalism, and you have a recipe for batshit crazy.

Anyway, that is my why-i’m-also-not-on-twitter TED Talk.

---

@zeus

I don’t understand how the rumor that JROCK ONE, Monochrome Heaven, and Batsu are/were toxic and elitist and run by Nazi apologists spread like wildfire on the same platform where someone can publicly do this.

The toxic/elitism comments likely come from the more disgruntled members of MH who were banned and probably took to Twitter or r/visualkei to vent. That being said, I can see from certain perspectives how people might’ve not liked how the forum(s) were conducted which can boil down to a few points:

• At the top are definitely personality clashes and misunderstandings. We’ve had a fair share of comedians on the forums who inevitably butt heads with more serious personalities. Also, vice-versa with individuals who are particularly blunt or rude about what they don’t like whether it be a language-quirk or not. Should additionally mention the diverse age ranges of forum members also added a lot of variability to attitudes, etc. Also trying to corral any of it will catch the ire of at least one person.
• Relevant to the above is a lot of the off-topic threads that gave more opportunity for people to throw around their hot takes (it all comes full-circle muah ha ha). Giving people a good distraction is beneficial to an active community, but it always creates the potential for drama. I’m aware of previous MH regulars not coming back but shifting gears to more focused communities because of being burnt out or it feeling like a chore to juggle between topics they’re not particularly passionate about.
• Many got really salty over how Downloads were handled over time also including the major source of drama w/ how the iterations of the VIP subforum were conducted. There’s not much you can do about it, though. Fortunately, a lot of that is in the past with the huge shift to streaming in the past couple years.

To be honest though, all of that is so fucking tame compared to the current Twitter vitriol like you mentioned. I give myself the excuse of staying away b/c I feel “too old” for it. I also wonder if the great Tumblr migration had an impact on some of the Twitter attitudes in alt-communities.

[Arcana]

When people say “but twitter…” “but kpop…” actually, THESE kinds of cliquey people have little to do INNATELY with kpop or twitter. While I understand that kpop fandom gets all the hate here because kpop fandom is the closest “high school kid” thing you have to vk and therefore that 1) vk fans get to know a bit better and 2) has a lot of “mean girls attitude” now that it’s popular in the US it’s far from the worst fandom in that sense.

The underlying attitude had its genesis in the “socjus” circles on tumblr back in the early 2010s and before that they were a niche, but loud, group on livejournal so it wasn’t always bound to fandoms. Most fandom before the mid 2010s was full of drama as well, but it was not as politicized and americanocentric since performative activism in fandoms was rare. The socjus folk on LJ were a rare breed and mostly considered too extreme or crazy.

Everytime some sitewide rules caused them to mass-migrate to a new social media service their influence on unrelated groups and wider nerdculture and fandoms grew bigger and they also became more radical. Can’t remember why the left LJ originally, but on tumblr the exodus was caused by the adult content and porn ban that happened in 2018. That’s when they decided to go to twitter, because a lot of ex-tumblr artists and content creators where there. Tumblr has since become much calmer and saner, but twitter got really infected by the whole cancel culture and “offended over everything” shit.

From my subjective personal experience on tumblr (and I also was at one point something that would be condescendingly labeled “social justice warrior”) most of these people that spend too much time and braincells inserting their politics into fandom were indeed people with social anxiety that lacked basic social skills and probably had a hard time fitting in and making friendships and connections in real life. I know, I was one of them and tried to play keyboard warrior “debating” others online because it gave me that dopamine fix and high that i lacked outside the internet (I was very awkward and sociophobic and had no friends - only my hobbies and obsessions with certain media). It’s easy to act like you are so special and live out feelings of grandeur online than it is in a real life situation where you have to face people directly (and possibly get smacked in the face for being a rude piece of shit).

And it#s not just teens who fall for this act. I was freshly out of high school in 2010 when I joined tumblr and became insufferable. Plenty of twitter witch hunters are in their 20s and beyond. What’s true is that some Gen Z (and alpha) are starting to outperform their older peers in terms of nastiness. I think that’s less to do with their age but more that they grew up on the internet unlike us (I can remember a time in my teens where I didn’t have internet and the online world didn’t concern me). And I personally consider this whole phenomenon to be a result of people being mortally online.

(edit: fixed spelling)

[zeus]

I’m back with an update for this.

@zeus

With the death of the iPod touch, I can see them rolling iTunes into Apple Music as the next step, then phasing out the iTunes store so you can no longer digitally purchase music (they will say no one does it anymore but in all honesty they will make it so hard to do that piracy will be the easier option, and then they have numbers to justify this action), and then simplifying Apple Music so that it no longer reads from your local library. They want a future where everyone is paying a subscription to listen to music, and that’s what horrifies me. I won’t be listening to music on my terms, I’ll be listening to music on theirs.

The part I left unspoken is that they would push an update to “accidentally” brick devices, then say they won’t support the broken device because they no longer make them. Guess what I’m dealing with today because I decided to upgrade to iOS 15.6?

It hasn’t even been two months and I’m already dealing with this shit…

[Anon308]

yeah, exactly this. It’s not the same people, a lot of the cliquey and more aggressive types nowadays are teens who learned from the worst of cliquey annoying adults and outperformed them was my point. And add teen stupidity to that mix, it’s really bad, but you can avoid that by … not following them. Which is what I try to do.

We are probably the same age and visited the same websites (actually, the Russian invasion on LJ in circa 2012 was the last nail on the coffin made by Tumblr I think) but I “always” had internet and was never part of the cliques (probably because I was always “that weird kid from the developing world” who insisted on standing for different cultures instead of submitting to virtual neocolonization) so I guess this is why I stand as an observer who knows the crowd and has no big issues with them as long as they aren’t nasty to me just like I know the “anti” crowd and have no big issues with them as long as they aren’t nasty to me BUT the kids have been indiscriminately nasty lately because they genuinely don’t know better and the pandemic probably intensified that. (In any case I do remember a time when the internet wasn’t like that so I wouldn’t blame the internet for inventing herd mentality.)

But yeah, not all kpoppies … not all kids … etc. In fact, most older (25+) kpop fans that I know are from SEA and not very invested in this (very ethnocentric indeed) culture. And the army kids will be kids. (of course a lot of people aren’t gonna fall in either group, but generally…)

[M00n]

That is true and I know not all of the kpop fandom or it’s fans are like that it’s just what I would/still do see is a lot of the teens come from or are part of kpop fandoms but yeah not all of kpop fandoms are bad.
That is true Twitter is a lot better when you only follow those who are worth it but, I also tried doing that and it would be the older (more grown up) fans who would make tweets or be on TL like “ooo new drama/tea” “It’s not okay if you do/part of xyz (but not @/ anyone)”

[Baroque]

I would say that most japanese entertainment peaked from 1990ish to early 2000s, maybe up to 2010 to stretch it. Since then Japan has more or less been dead to me - and I even live in Japan. We are talking anime, manga, movies, dramas, music, video games.
You have to search really deep today to find something from Japan that is worth your time. That is my general impression even though of course there are some good mainstream stuff from time to time, like King Gnu’s Hakujitsu is good stuff.

Regarding jrock/vk I would say it peaked from 2000 to 2010ish. So many successfull bands, DeG touring in europe etc. Then it all kind of fizzled out to nothing. I guess the stubborn japanese labels not uploading new music videos on Youtube was a part of it. Today it feels smaller than ever and not even once popular bands like Merry can fill venues in Japan anymore… Its pretty sad.

Japanese mainstream pop music today is suuuper generic and stale, and it has been for at least 10 years now. Imagine going from this:

[MV] SAY YES / CHAGE and ASKA

to this

Snow Man 「オレンジkiss」/ Orange kiss MV YouTube Ver.

(might be an unfair comparsion but japan used to make so many good songs full of heart, now 99.9% is just generic crap)

I am not blaming people for moving on to kpop, at least the korean producers drop some catchy songs from time to time and are much more creative than the japanese. Heck, even the japanese people themselves are more into kpop than their own music recently. Same with dramas (always a korean drama on number 1 on netflix japan).

Well, thats my “hot take”. Feels like I could write an essay about the subject

[violetchain]

Lol, comparing Johnny’s to any other kind of music is really not indicative of anything. Johnny’s has always been about selling personality and charisma over music.

In all fairness to Snow Man as well, they’re one of the most dance-focused Johnny’s groups. They’re not really known for their vocals, and I mean, CHAGE and ASKA aren’t going to do this on stage:

[Dance Practice] Snow Man「Grandeur」

It’s a different kind of show.

[Baroque]

See it more a comparison between then and now, the japanese heart.
I especially miss when Japan made good dramas such as beach boys and gto. A bit before or early 2000s when Glay literally took over japan, those were the good times. Everything was good around that time.

Well well, that was just my hot take dont have to care so much about it

btw I have always had a theory what drained the japanese soul - and one part of it is how the japanese porn industry exploded in the 2000s. Currently it wouldn’t surprise me if they produce more porn than the US, per capita. Its from around that time they stopped releasing good stuff, and it keeps being like that today (again, not saying that there arent coming out good japanese things but its not even comparable with 90s/early 2000s).

[koutetsuhime]

I’m curious why you make the connection to something like the porn industry? If you were gonna connect something to the change, wouldn’t economical and cultural shifts make more sense? (Not saying those are the definite reasons but it would be my guess)

[Rena]

@violetchain

Johnny’s has always been about selling personality and charisma over music.

Isnt selling personality and charisma something all idols do?
But i gotta admit, yeah, johnnys is more known for charming boys/men than for their quality of music.

@Baroque fight me on this. But personally i think comparing something from the 90s compared to now is difficult to do. You can’t really say “it was better”.
There is a far bigger amount of competitors these days. Being original is getting more and more difficult too, because somehow… everything was there already once.
Just stuff like groups being supposed to perform ridiculous difficult dance moves, meanwhile still singing perfect. That wasn’t there back in the days.

Also the japanese music industry has a far bigger variety than what you can find in Korea. Which makes it a bigger and far more scattered audience.
I can tell you I listen to jrock and still listen to groups you have never heard or and vice versa.
I haven’t come across that problem that strong with kpop till now.

[gilnyangi]

I think this is the general consensus. That time period (2000-2010s) was the peak of the Japan craze overseas and as soon as something becomes popular, everyone tries to cash in on it by copying each other, diluting the good stuff. Japan has never really been known for innovation, let’s be honest, so once everyone got their fill of the good stuff, the craze kinda fizzled out. K-pop swooped in and did the pop stuff better while continuing to experiment and branch out, being the new trend that will probably fizzle out eventually, but is definitely working harder to compete internally.

[TinkyWinky]

@gilnyangi

K-pop swooped in and did the pop stuff better while continuing to experiment

Kpop is just the rerun of the 2000s western pop music. It’s a cope-genre that became popular with people that got fed up with western music being about getting f*cked to the point where you can’t walk (Ariana Grande)

[dude]

DEG’s early music is bad in my opinion (idk if it is a hot/unpopular opinion but ill say it regardless)
for me they are boring, repetitive and some of them sound like a bad mess, i think that style of music really restrained their potentials and it just wasn’t for them in my opinion.
and I actually think that they really peaked after that they got out of that phase and started experimenting and adding more elements to their music. Especially kyo like who thought that this little gremlin had an astonishing vocal range? it certainly wasn’t me
(btw this is my personal opinion I’m not attacking anyone that likes that era in any way or anything)

[zeus]

You’re gonna have to define “early” because that’s a different definition for a lot of fans.