least shocking thing from a guy who was clearly done with his own band
2 Likes
Yeah he was the only one who wanted to actually perform live it seems. The rest didnāt really care to rehearse much because they werenāt planning on performing as is (miming the playing and vocals)
4 Likes
Is Top dandy tokyo becoming a bandoman retirement home?
The fact that bandomen become hosts is nothing new, but it is surprising that I am seeing a familiar name now (Reno/whatever ex. SHiSHi is there too)
1 Like
the fact that he got negative comments about it and had to put his twitter on private 
3 Likes
Totally checks out. VK is just as guilty of all the bad live performance behavior as any other aspect of the music industry and itās accepted just as much by fans.
iād totally prefer a " bad " but honest performance over a fake and lazy one. Specially when you know that the members are actually pretty talented .. ( if itās really them playing on the studio version 
you never know )
6 Likes
This is what put me off buying any of their stuff, kinda sad they never really played live and just mimed everything, just seems so dishonest to me that I couldnt ever be sure they wrote/played studio recordings either. Never really wanted to support a band who just fake everything.
1 Like
@sayonara_blue I agree 100% but sadly thatās not what fans overall think. Not here on this forum, VK tik tok, twitter, or reddit and especially not VK fans irl.
2 Likes
I mean, kind of ironic coming from the VK scene to begrudge a guy chasing that bag in a slightly different way. Still, if I were a personal fan of his I would see becoming a guy who serves drinks for a living as a downgrade from a guy who performs on stage for a living (even if most of it is fake).
3 Likes
oh the negative comments from the fans were about the drummer of the band who after leaving it exposed them about faking their lives performances, not about Kanata lol
But then idk, I didnāt check his profile, BUT i honestly donāt think itād bother VK fans, if anything itād nourrish their parasocial issues and makes it even worse and theyāll just enjoy it !
2 Likes
I do have one Japanese friend whose commentary was basically āI donāt like that heās becoming a host. I donāt want VK conflated with hosts. But what can we do?ā
While I canāt say that I knew for sure that everything about Zombieās live performance was faked, I did get the impression that it sounded a little too much like the recordings to be fully legit.
2 Likes
The dude was working in a musical genre and half of his job was to cater to a female audience who are generally more mentally unstable than general population (generalizing, but you get the point). And now he does a job that simply doesnāt involve the musical part of it. And a far wider outreach to the same female mind but who were not fans of visual kei.
To be honest, thatās a very good decision ā he utilizes the skills from his bandman past and actually develops them. I donāt think that he would have to do much retraining. Furthermore, he gets to retain more of his audience who would move to his host part, so he would monetize them much better as opposed to trying to monetize them while being on a hiatus while getting a new band, etc. the same applies to other bandmen turned hosts, assuming they donāt have some other skills that can make them money. I dunno, I would take a host job in their position instead of 7/11, gas station or construction.
Plus the dude was seemingly part of an air band ā I guess, he is a perfect fit for being a host 
1 Like
I meannn, from this point of view i do agree. Itās cool for him and all, but from MY point of view as a fan of " Performer Kanata " , itās still such a pity ( putting aside my opnion on host life and how chaotic and gross it generally is ), because weāre not gonna be able to enjoy his voice and musical projects then. As far as I know, the most a host can sing/perform is when they do karaoke ( idk maybe ), or those dumb chants when the client buy some overpriced shit ( in private on top of that lol )
and the host client/VK fan is totally accurate btw Itās the same kind of scheme and mental illness just with a different font.
( although for VK you can say there are a few " normal " fans. Canāt say the same about host clients. )
Maybe iām not woke enough but i donāt see hosting as a profession deserving of respect. Hosts are manipulative. They donāt just serve drinks, they play with your feelings, they prey on women with issues, and leech off the sex industry. (Most host club clients are sex workers seeking relief from their stressful jobs.)
Now then, you might say, donāt bandmen do the same thing with their parasocial relationships? Kind of, but not to that extent. Some of them might be shitty to their tsunagari/mitsu and be a leech in private, but thatās not what theyāre selling. You can go to lives without taking 2 shots. I donāt know if itās become mandatory for dominor bands to have 2 shots after lives, but those are optional! And not everyone is a big spender, nor do the bandmen whisper in your ear and say, āwhy donāt you buy 50 tickets next timeā or something.
Back to Kanata. Zombie is a weird one. Midori is the one who makes all the music and writes all the lyrics. The rest of them are just there to perform.
I didnāt go to the last live so i donāt know specifically for that, but generally, the drums were live, the vocals were live, and the guitar/ bass were half and half. They played some parts and not all.
How do i know the vocals were live? Because they suckedš i first went to see them in 2018. My last time was in 2023. He sounded even worse in 2023 than in 2018ā¦ And now we know, thanks to reikaās tweets, it was because he didnāt want to practice.
And itās not that āvkei fans donāt care about the performance being fakeā at allā¦ They do! Why do you think Zombieās venues were getting smaller and smaller? Itās all those things - no new music, half assed playing, girlfriend drama with the vocalist) combined. Club Citta sounds good on paper, but the last live was seated. Thatās only 600 people, and they couldnāt even fill it. There were same-day tickets available.
On to Kanata in particular. His half assedness was a problem. He didnāt take the band seriously. (honestly, he was in it for almost 10 years and still had to work part time to support himself. Itās hard to stay motivated when your music career is getting nowhere.)
Him announcing his new job on his bandman account the day after the last live feels like a fuck you to the fans. Itās like heās saying āyeah i couldnāt wait to stop singing, hereās my new job. Canāt wait to start.ā
Of course people are mad, did the money they spent on your music career mean nothing to you?
Plus the fact that hosts have a reputation for being scummy + Zombieās previous vocalist atom also became a host and ended up getting arrested for something. Itās really not a good look overall.
Sorry this got long btw. I was a former fan and this whole debacle pmo so bad.
11 Likes
The context is good to know, thanks for giving us a run down.
Yeah, I would say that on the scale of respectability that VK bandmen rank above menchika, which still rank above hosts.
At the end of the day, what is the customer getting for all of that money spent?
The VK and Idol fans get a concert, merchandise, opportunities to meet the guys who make their favourite music, an optional workout, opportunities to experience new bands if itās a Taiban. Potentially other fans to have fun with.
The host clients getā¦drunk. With a guy who just guilt trips you into giving him money, dangling a kind of pseudo relationship in your face. Itās like āchasing the dragonā. You never catch it.
If they just want to get drunk and interact with a guy for a few hours, it would be a lot cheaper to just go talk to a random guy at a bar.
1 Like
Having scanned through the above comments I dont really get why people care that dude become a host. Whatās it to you? Literally doesnāt affect you sooooooā¦
Sure itās because we prefer the band members we follow to be upstanding members of society and not do such unbecoming things
4 Likes
we care mostly because we liked the band and we thought it was a shame to not have those artists in this scene anymore, not because we want to control them or whatever, but I honestly never saw them live, and from Rukaās testimony ( thaaanks ) it becomes obvious it wasnāt a big loss, so, farewell I guess.
1 Like
Im curious if the band had the same ideals of lazy/fake performances in their early career i would assume not 
1 Like
No one is forcing people to pay hosts or hostesses to do what they doā¦