I don’t know if this got mentioned already here or in the other thread or on Discord, but I just watched the film Confessions (Kokuhaku) after reading the novel and in the film adaptation, they seem to attribute a VK band to praising a middle school student for killing her family with poison. There’s two incredibly quick snippets of a vocalist with the “lunacy incident” logo behind him and a video of them playing live. I’m super curious who this is, though he looks a bit like Yuuki from UnsraW based on the aesthetic/makeup. Of course it’s impossible to hear “lunacy” and not think of Luna Sea, though, this minuscule plot thread isn’t ever mentioned in the book.
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I instantly thought Yuuki as well. Not just the style but the facial features look like him too I think?
Oh shit! He’s super recognizable! The film won a bunch of awards and was even short-listed for an Oscar, so he can officially say he was in an award-winning renowned film. haha!
My favorite example of VK popping up in other media that took me completely off guard is still those random references to X JAPAN (and hide) in some late '90s issues of the Spawn comic books, of all places.
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There is an episode of the TV series ‘Bones’ in which VK is briefly mentioned in a sublot about a girl being a super fan of Japanese rock or something like that (more specifically Visual Kei) and there is even a “VK look alike” character whose gender is debated many times throughout the episode
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I talked about this in the random thoughts thread, but I think I have to include this here too. Some time ago, I watched a video from Doctor Mike about the eyeball licking fetish. While explaining its origin, he cited an article from BuzzFeed which says that it all started in the music video for “Spiral lie”, from Born. Obviously, I was caught off guard and cackled a little. But then I remembered that Suehiro Maruo made drawings that depict this fetish, and they’re way older than the song, and wondered why they mentioned Born’s song instead.
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Not visual kei but it would be interesting I think…
80s underground meets manga, collected and edited by me, hehe.
I may forgot something, but if you’re interested I’ll check my archives.
G-SCHMITT and SADIE SADS in the debut manga of one of edwarda’s staff (she’s still drawing! And she’s still bangyaru in her 50s!)
AUTO-MOD’s Genet
L to R: MADAME EDWARDA’s Zin, SODOM’s Zazie, G-SCHMITT;s Syoko, SADIE SADS;s SAD
Kusumoto Maki’s essay about 80s scene specifics
She also made a flyer illustration for punk events
R.Arimura and PT, also by Makisan
Arimura, young Sakurai (Ao) and Maki
誰のだろう、looks like Morikawa from ZOA / YBO2? Or Kitamura, FOOLS MATE chief editor and YBO2 vo/gt…
Special bonus: Hakuei as Kanon!
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Pretty simple but, Animal crossing has vk outfits:
There are “visual punk” dresses and wigs. In the German translation of AC they’re called “Visual kei […]” (instead of “visual punk”) so I’d assume it’s the same in the original Japanese version.
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Also this! G-SCHMITT;s Syoko in 妖怪天国 - ゴーストヒーロー - (1990)
Offtopic but it reminds me of…
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This reminded me of this ridiculous article by Cracked, which is just, ugh. You can tell it sucks in the very 1st paragraph when they tell you it’s from the perspective of some horny weeb from fucking Europe.
And in this other article from the same sensationalist website the author is rude AF due to his shallow view of japanese subcultures in general, which you can tell he knows nothing about and based his shitty opinion on some quick Google search to write clickbait BS for that crap, cuz, ya know, Japan = bizarre. The headline of this article on Facebook is “The “news” tells us that Japanese kids are all about to start going blind from licking each other’s eyeballs. Expect braille to become the next hot thing” and in it he even writes that, because of VK, “In about five years, real-life Japan will look exactly like a Final Fantasy cutscene.” The article is from 2010 
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best part is stil the " musical prostitution rings" 
I kinda wonder thou, who the f was sonya??
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This reminded me of this ridiculous article by Cracked 2, which is just, ugh. You can tell it sucks in the very 1st paragraph when they tell you it’s from the perspective of some horny weeb from fucking Europe.
I mean, most points are definitely true, but the one with prostitution is just wild.
And it’s funny that he chose this picture to prove how much money being a vk fan costs:
Ah yes, REVO/Sound Horizon, my favorite VK artist! Especially because there’s enough expensive garbage merch out there, but it’s definitely not the artists’ fault that people re-sell something for a high(er) price on ebay…
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those articles gave me an aneurysm and probably a bruised face from repeatedly facepalming
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The first article reminds me of good old times, 10-12 years ago, when 10 of 10 european vkei fans studied in japan were girls, 9 of 10 pretended to be gyaru and all of them were hardcore vkei fangirls.
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Did anyone here ever read or hear about this book?
It’s called ホームレスヴィジュアル系 (Homeless Visual Kei), and, as the title suggests, it tells the true story of how all the members of SHAZNA went into deep financial trouble after their 1st disbandment, so much so that their bassist/leader/guy that formed the band literally became homeless for a while. Apparently, they were also victims of scams and all sorts of malicious stuff done by their label, managers, etc, so that’s why, but bear in mind they were one of the best selling bands in Japan in the late 90s/early 2000s and their major debut sold over 1 million copies. A very rare feat for VK bands.
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Wait- SHIT, seriously?!!! They went Homeless?!!!
Mmm, While not nessisarily VK, here’s some FUN FACTS for you: So before Der Zibet had even Officially made their major debut to the Japanese music scene, (which would have been with the release of their 1st studio album, “Violetter Ball” ,) Vocalist ISSAY made his major debut in the 1985 Makoto Tezuka-Musical Cult Classic, “The Legend of The Stardust Brothers,” in which he starred as one of the film’s main antagonists, Kaoru Niji, (and he was only 23 years old at the time! ^ ^) It was actually thanks to this movie, when Der Zibet were asked to perform a Few song’s at one of the film’s big promotional events that the band were able to land themselves a Record deal.
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A bit far-fetched, but idk where else I could post this
Infuse Into casually playing in the background in some Finnish documentary
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Issay was also in this TV show, aitsu ga toraburu. He plays a villain there as well.
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