I never made an introduction, and I’ve been here for a couple of months already! I’m not good at these.
Hi, a long-time fan in my 30s, got into a mess called v系 back in … 03-05ish? when I was way too young to have done so (picture an elementary school kid watching Diru’s raison detre PV). Got to meet a lot of really fun people IRL and online, was around on the old forums and such (w/ different nicknames), went to a bunch of lives when the bands were coming to Europe like multiple times a month back in '06-'11 or so and it was a huge part of my life for my teenage years. Dropped out of the fandom because life was a bit too much, but it was still the majority of my music consumption.
Got back into it around '16-'17 and since then it got even worse : ) From around that point I’ve started going to lives in Japan and getting ever-so-deeper into the scene in a way that my friends who I starry-eyedly looked at did when I was a teenager. I’ve had to either move to or not-technically-move-to-but-spend-a-whole-bunch-of-time-in a bunch of countries for job reasons (this might end soon, we’ll see. the career, not the moving around.), which has often helped with being a part-time bangya when that country has been Japan (and sometimes even when it hasn’t 
). Has also resulted in me speaking no languages (including my native one) particularly well but nine passably.
My first big band was diru, back in the day, and I still adore them, as well as pretty much anything that’s still active from those mid-noughts years, but I also listen to a lot of newer dominor groups (whoever says that you won’t find good new music in your 30s needs to find out about v系). Since post-pandemic ended up following a lot of メンヘラ/ラウド系 bands (but not at all exclusively those!! but that somehow ended up being a thing that changed my… focus as it were) and went to a bunch of said lives which the keen-eyed following the forum might have gathered (my autocorrect wanted to say 麺ヘラ which those familiar with bangya jargon might find amusing). From the non-v系 side, some Johnny’s that a friend infected me with about 10 years ago, a fair bit of indies rock, math rock, post rock, few bits here and there, but honestly it’s v系 and almost everything else except for Coaltar of the Deepers and ELLEGARDEN is “oh wow I haven’t listened to [BAND] in like two years, they’re really good!”.
I love v系 especially, above all, for the indies live scene, love doing 振り付け and how intense yet coordinated everything is. Also something of a CD hoarder, I have 100-something in my current apartment and 600++ back in my home country, waiting for me to one day find a place where I’ll stay for a bit longer.
(and that’s such a funny way to find them to me!)