It seems most major VKei bandomen and even the smaller ones have “side bands” apart from their primary band. To the surprise of no one, my favorite is Sendai Kamotsu and I’m fond of a few of the other Nightmare side bands (Jakigan, LSN, and Gremlins)
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Does Marvelous Cruelty count, since it’s a side band of #zekooo_lalala?
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Jakigan Meister is really wonderful. It’s probably Sakito’s true essence 
I think Gremlins is cool. I haven’t heard of them in detail but their recent clips remind me a bit of Hide 
I absolute adore Decays.
I also enjoy seeing the lineups of certain birthday session lives as well. It’s so fun to see who’s friends with who!
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First thing that popped into my head was lab./LAB.THE BASEMENT lead by cali≠gari guitarist Ao. Such a neat little bundle of post-punk, new wave, no-wave, punk and various indie elements. I’m still secretly hoping they’d release something again… 
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Cuckoo/Hector from Sharaku Kobayashi and Ao, XA-VAT from Ishii, Kozi and Sadie Pink galaxy are the ones that come to mind alongside Jakigan Meister, Floppy and Sukekiyo.
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Jakigan Meister is so good. I love how Sakito gets to do whatever he wants and look so cute doing it. And I guess they’re not really side bands but I also really like kein and gibkiy.
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i wouldn’t really call sukekiyo a side band anymore, they tour like just as much as dir, kyo is the only member who is in another band and so on
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I really wish to see Jakigan in person because I’d just evaporate from seeing him rock those heels irl…and also Ni~ya who’s always so earnestly supporting him 
Also anything Sakurazawa touches is gold :")
I honestly prefer going to see Jakigan over their main band, he’s just so stylish! I can’t decide if I wanna be with him or be him hahah
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I’m shocked that despite the level of Sakito love in the thread Seesaw hasn’t popped up yet!
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Because Shin is extremely mid admittedly. He just doesn’t sound like he has much personality
THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME!! I do like shin too, it is time for me to listen to them properly
I got into sukekiyo last year and I feel super late but it’s really one of my favorite side projects.
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I LOVED Shin during his ViViD days. And then ViViD broke up and he went solo… And his songs are just so mid. I just can’t get into them. I want him to do well but his solo songs are so boring.
Then Seesaw came along and I thought it was much better than Shin’s solo work, but then they suddenly stopped activities after I think a year or two? Maybe Sakito got tired of it or something lol.
I actually really liked these guys! I don’t have much to say lol i just hear them and think oh, this is nice
Played it for a friend who didn’t like vkei much and she says oh, these guys are way better than what you usually play lol
So maybe they’re a good bridge between vkei fans & our friends outside the scene!
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I think expectations for Seesaw were somewhat high but the project underperformed significantly. Why do I think this:
- The nature of the project: two members of two major bands that have significant following
- Conservative songwritting: their output lacks range of depth compared to their previous ventures (any Jakigan release has a lot more personality and variety than their album for example) this leads me to think they wanted to have a broad appeal with no rough edges.
- Music credits: supporting point number 2, music credits never pointed to a particular member it was all just “SEESAW”. This coule be because it was a very involved collaborative process… or because it makes it easier split royalties of highly performing music, again supporting the idea that it would attact a large audience.
- Whimper disbandment: no disbandment or pause whas ever announced on social media (maybe it was at a live or stream, but I don’t know, japanese fanbase reaction seems to point that it was since nobody was suprised on social media) and the only announcement published AFAIK was the end of their fanclub/priviledges program
Maybe I’m looking too much into it but I kinda think they were expecting pull off some LM.C kinda project and it never went there and they dropped it fast
Can’t deny that Sukekiyo is really doing so cool stuff.
But my personal favorite is The MICRO HEAD 4N’S Tsukasa doing his Enka thing as Mogamigawa Tsukasa and さくら前線 (Sakura zensen) where he is doing Enka together with D=OUT’s Kouki and Moi Dix Moi’s Seth.
It’s just something so diffrent and hilariously wholesome 
And I think it’s incredible funny that 3 bandomen decided this is cool.
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I agree with you, especially point 4.
They did lots of promotional events in the beginning, especially at littleHearts which has a hand in Nightmare’s production. The limited edition version of their first release came with a DVD and photo booklet that was pretty sturdy with like 32 pages or something. Their merch was pretty good quality considering that they were a new project. One of their first fancy items was a set of numbered champagne glasses.
Their producers obviously thought that this project would sell well. On paper, it makes sense. Shin’s popularity may have dwindled since his ViViD days, but he’s still a pretty good vocalist. Sakito is obviously a talented songwriter. They both have the looks to pull in a nice fanbase.
This was a nice mostly online project to do during covid, when Nightmare wasn’t as busy, and Sakito didn’t really have many live performances going on. But by the second half of 2022, covid restrictions on live performances were beginning to lift and it was obvious that Sakito would be too busy to continue with Seesaw, which wasn’t even performing that well. Just look at Nightmare (and Jakigan’s) schedule for 2023 - they had something going on almost every month.
The end of their activities was really disappointing. They had a christmas live, and then the very next day they announced the closure of their website. If we look at Sakito’s tweet after the christmas live, it says that he wrote a christmas song (presumably for Seesaw). I think they stopped short of announcing a disbandment just in case they wanted to revisit this in the future, but it’s not likely at all. The christmas live probably didn’t sell very well, either.
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I was following The Mortal super closely when that was a thing. Shame they only really had the one major release because the aesthetic was really strong and the composition was really different from both Buck-Tick and Sakurai’s solo work.
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I don’t see them revisiting it in the future, even the spotify profile was been recolonized by some other artist using the same name.