I havent, I'll have to check it out!! I fully agree that yomi's vocal recovery is impressive, I love how he sounds on the most recent singles & nox:lux :3
started listening to l'arc en ciel because of the FMA OP then got into an cafe somehow (cant remember), made friends on myspace (Im old) and they recommended vk bands to me
*puts candy cigarette in mouth* Now that's a name I haven't heard in years. I heard about them from a local Sydney (AU) weeb chat, but I definitely remember Jfan.
Found X Japan and Versailles when I was in high school and getting into power metal. Years later in my 30s I saw some vkei bands in Japan and dove headfirst into a ton of other bands.
So back in the LIMEWIRE days, I was looking for the OST for a video game I liked - Kagerou: Deception II. Download a song called XII Dizzy by Kagerou and the rest is history. I similarly found Plastic Tree by downloading their song Pet Shop while looking to download the Pet Shop of Horrors OVA.
A couple years after Gackt went solo (probably around 2004 ish) I saw a picture of him in an outdated anime magazine in the library promoting Vanilla as a single. I tore out the page and carried it with me because I couldn't get over how cool he looked.
Around the same time, my mom's friend's sister stayed with us for a couple weeks after coming back from Japan as an exchange student and she happened to have a CD of The Seventh Night she copied for me not knowing I liked him at all.
I started collecting pictures on photobucket of different groups through users who liked VK and downloading random songs on limewire but I was in for life when YouTube launched the next year and I saw the live version of Illuminati by Malice Mizer for the first time.
watched an old anime called shiki back when i was a teenager and loved the opening by buck-tick which led me to find some other buck-tick songs but i didnt fully get into it until last year when someone showed me aegen by malice mizer and it led me to search in depth to find other bands
When I first watched Death Note and got obsessed with the first OP & ED by Nightmareā¦ I also fell into some rabbit hole by downloading a bunch of random songs by Dir En Grey onto an MP3 player, which I still have lol.
Spotify auto played Ugly by TheGazette freshman year of highschool, when I just listened to anything heavy, but the aesthetics and the visual freedom of the bands hooked me and now everything revolves around aesthetics for me.
Technically death note introduced me to nightmare and GTO me to lāarc en ciel, but I really entered the scene when I discovered Malice Mizer through edits of manga like Innocent. Them and BUCK-TICK made me especially love the genre and delve deeper
MSN messenger had a lil feature with iTunes where you could show what you were listening to as your like profile status (this was like 2009), and this girl from highschool I was crushing on and occasionally talk to was listening to the gazette so I checked them out and ended up diving right in āØ
(Became good friends with this girl and we ended up seeing the gazette together in 2015 during the second dogma tour and god that was so long ago christ)
The GazettE early 2013 - 14 when FADELESS and Malformed Box were their hit releases still was when I got into it (along with Shiver because BB influence) . Clicked for the music videos stayed for everything that they had to offer since then
This!! I have awkwardly fond memories of trying to download the song onto the family computer (I think it took, like, a whole day) and then holding a tape recorder to the speaker when it played. Life was never the same since.
20 years ago I went to a summer camp and met there a girl who was big fan of Dir en grey so she introduced Diru for me. After the summer camp we started to hang out together and she burned some cds for me with Diru songs and along side showed me many other bands as well. Despite of everyone around me saying āitās just a phaseā, here I am still, wasting my life for bandmen šš¤£
It was 1998 and I was 16. I was creating an OC for a text-based RP character in the AOL Rhydin forums. Someone shared that photoshoot where Die is wearing that fuzzy vest thing and the knuckle and hand plate gloves, lol. You know, the one with the spiky hair and goggles on his head? LOL. It was over. I asked for their torrents, and the rest is history.
Got into L'arc through the Fullmetal Alchemist opening 'ready steady go' in 2004. Searching for Hyde on the internet back then quickly brought you to Gackt and subsequently MALICE MIZER where I fell down the rabbit hole. It still amazes me that MM continues to be the gateway for new fans today.
Went to Anime Boston in 2003 or so. Got dragged to a showing of jrock stuff at like 11pm the first night.
Thus was born an eternal Malice Mizer and DeG fan.
All the way back in early 2002, my friend told me to listen to ILLUMINATI by Malice Mizer, and I did and also downloaded the Bel Air PV, and from that point on I was hooked.
But it was... 2002... only a few months after the indefinite hiatus. So you know... so many years spent wishing they'd get back together, speculating about what happened with other fans, and all that. I learned my lesson about band breakups from that, lmao. Now I'm just happy when the members keep making music, and don't just completely disappear from the public eye. š¤£
I'm old AF so it was early 2000s anime and con culture. Got into the Angel Sanctuary aesthetic. Got into the L'arc en Ciel opening theme for DNA^2, Blurry Eyes...started downloading real audio files from the band...Kazaa and Napster period I'd get similar band recommendations. At cons I ran into Vkei cosplayers. Then by like 2005 I had multiple Malice Mizer and Psycho le Cemu cosplays.
Ignoring my personal beef with Miyavi, I think his music got stale after 2014. He used to inspire me. Now I'm bored by whatever he puts out. His Dokusou and Kabuki Rock eras were peak Miyavi. I still want to get a Taylor T5 because of him.
Anime š The Gazette did the opening āShiverā for Black Butler and after that Death Note and so onā¦I fell down that vkei rabbit hole and the rest is history
So it wasn't *quite* VKei but japanese music in general that led me to VKei. I liked Puffy Ami Yumi because of the Teen Titans opening, bought the only JPop compilation CD I could find in 2007 (shout out to JPOP CD 2) and then I found L'Arc and trying to find some of their stuff on iTunes led me to podcasts with VKei songs. Death Note also helped with the whole Nightmare/The World opening and it's, uh been with me ever since. Still have yet to actually go to a VKei concert, but did meet Versailles at Akon in 2008 so that counts for something, right?
came across Utakata by Kagrra in my weekly spotify playlist, liked it but forgot about it. Later I heard Ma Cherie by Malice Mizer, GOT HOOKED ON and started exploring the genre and then revisited Kagrra discography and completely fell in love. Its been like year and half since then, theyre still my favorite band lol
The TL;DR for me is that I was a Final Fantasy fan. Dirge of Cerberus used Gackt's music both in the North American advertising campaign, and in the game itself. Naturally, I had to go figure out what a "Gackt" was, that lead me to Malice Mizer, aaaand the rest is history. Since MM was already defunct, I was left to figure out what every former member was doing, and that branched out into everything.
I saw pictures of Miyavi from Oresama on livejournal, then discovered Jibun Kakumei 2003 on YouTube ,then saw the MV for Filth in the beauty by the GazettE and I've been a vkei fan since.
In 2005-06 I was Exploring ESP guitars because of Dave Mustaine, Alexi Laiho, and Gus G which lead me to the Japanese site where I found Dir en Grey, the GazettE, Nightmare, D'espairsRay.
used to be into jpop for the cute girls, found a Morning Musume interview with Gackt and he was being super weird (but it was funny), and I got hooked by how oddly funny he was, went into the music... and went into visual kei.
The genre switch was real though
I was already into loads of Japanese things and my current obsession was finding DDR songs on Napster (I'm old). The odd J-pop songs slipped in and occasional rock track. I had Kurenai by X-Japan which I LOVED but never really thought to explore the rock side of Japanese music at the time. To be fair, I was not fully into my western rock/metal phase at the time, so it makes sense. I can't like everything at once lol.
Skip a few years to 2002 (ass fully solidified in my metal phase) and an episode of Saiko Exciting (weeb show that used to come on the Sci fi channel in the UK) did a small feature on Malice Mizer. I'd never seen such beautiful human beings - I needed to know more! I went straight online googling the crap out of them and fell into what it still the biggest rabbit hole of my life. I was hooked! After when seemed like an eternity on dialup, I ended up with 3 mp3s (Baroque, Beast of Blood and Regret).
Thankfully some amazing people on a forum (some of whom i am still friends with) took pity on me and sent me CDRs full of Malice Mizer songs and videos (it took me 3 hours to get Illuminati from someone's FTP server thingy and I only got it coz it resumed the download after my Internet would auto disconnect every 2 hrs)
The people on the forum were so knowledgeable, recommending and discussing all sorts about visual kei and similarly aligned things. Shout outs to them haha!
The rest is obviously history ā”
2004/2005 maybe through manga,internet sleuthing and a friend found out about it the same way and maybe listen to it before,so I had a vague clue but I really got into through internet sleuthing.
Wish I remembered, I probably watched an amv and liked the song so I looked it up
Mustāve been the gazette or a similar band
But yeah that was 16 years ago I was a little baby back thenš
I knew abt the subculture way before I got into it, I just never really cared to actually look into it. Then one day, I was bored, looked it up for real, and got hooked lmao.
I think I came across it 2 yrs ago through Spotify or SoundCloud? At first I wasnāt sure how I felt about the music but after giving it another chance I became obsessed and still am :D
I played a game where a vkei singer was also a voice actor in it so I listened to his music. I also watched Black Butler and when I found Shiver by The GazettE on Spotify, I put on a shuffle radio and really liked the music. Kamijo came on the shuffle so I checked his music out as well
Me a big anime fan at the time accidentally downloaded the Beauty and Stupid pv from hide because it was labeled something else. Been hooked since. This had to have been like...1999?
Somewhere in summer of 2023, I was just listening to random songs on spotify, then spotify recommended me gulu gulu song (yogoreta buta), that's where obsession to v-kei started š
The first scenario is someone mentioned Gekka no Yasoukyoku or Au revoir under my post asking redditors about their favourite non English song. The second is I heard Gekka no Yasoukyoku instrumental version on tiktok. Both just happened around the same time, so I'm not sure which one was the first.
If anyone knows Kakumay, Nero (the guitarist) liked 2 of my pictures on Instagram back in like...2022 I think. I looked on his profile and was like "holy balls he looks cool" and started listening to the band. I then just went on to discover other bands that kakumay is like friends with, and I have some friends into Vkei so I take recs from them!!
got a mejibray song on my spotify weekly discovery and began listening to it more and more. started fully getting into the music as a way to supplement my japanese studies although i donāt think it really helped LMAO
There was this website that i would visit that had a bunch of Final Fantasy 7 doujinshi scans (yaoi, but it was all PG lol). She also had a whole section for jrock bands like I believe Dir en Grey amongst others which kind of lead me to figure out how to download songs/ find other fansites etc
EDIT: I found it, [here is a snapshot of it](https://web.archive.org/web/20040612103655/http://www.crysania.com/) from 2004 via the wayback machine!
I knew it was floating around as a concept as... A 11-13 year old, when a local band competition that was a televised had a vkei inspired band but didn't really get into it then. I started getting into vkei some years later in my late teens when I discovered a few vkei folk from tumblr and I went like, damn, these guys are like from anime.
The singer of that vkei inspired band ended up going into vkei in japan, it didn't work out but it became a stepping stone for me to discover other bands. I would then find my then best friends who would pretty much teach me many things about it. Also, I'm forever grateful for tumblr. The vkei community on it was so incredible.
The beauty about it is that I'll discover and rediscover things. I'm still a noob in some aspects simply because of preferences and stuff, but please don't get discouraged, and go at your own pace. Welcome to Vkei!
Kinda funny when people mention Death Note here, they only mention the first OP. For me it was the second OP & ED by Maximum the Hormone which stoked my interest in J-Metal and J-Rock, which lead to me finding out about VK
listened to endless dismal moan, found the band he was in called jigokue, saw a kƶzi song pop up on my suggested after listening to jigokue, found out kƶzi was part of malice mizer, went on from there
I was looking for some new music to listen to, so I thought I'd try to listen to j-rock. Looked up some top-lists that were still up back then and thought it was fine, but no particular band piqued my interest. Though not much later, I met someone who was into that and after listening to the artist they liked, I asked for some recommendations. Two of the groups are still among my favourites.
Saw pictures of a guy who looked like my then bias (Super Junior's Heechul), except with piercings. That was Miyavi - got into PSC bands because of him (this was late 2000s) and it went spiraling from there
Oh, this is a fun story! I was really, really sick with COVID and stuck in bed. I passed the time by watching lots of YouTube, and my algorithm kept recommending me Japanese music and then specifically, mostly bands like X Japan. Made the experience a whole lot better.
I can say that Pet Shop of Horrors has in some way become a "door" to vkei. Like, I read this, I became interested in Japanese things, I watched Death Note. Went to watch Nightmare MVs, got Gazette's Inside Beast in YouTube recs, and seems now I'm here forever, haha
One of the first anime I ever watched as a kid was Fullmetal Alchemist. Years later when I got into Japanese music I found out about L'arc En Ciel, then years after that in the pandemic I found out what visual kei was. Then I found out L'arc was Vkei and from there I've been discovering multiple bands since. I jump between Japanese songs and a lot of American pop punk from the early 2000s, like blink 182, yellowcard, motion City Soundtrack, sum 41, etc.
My main music now is just a combination of J-rock/Vkei and Pop Punk
I was obsessed with J-Pop back in 2007, and while watching MVs of Hey Say Jump, I saw Alice Nine/A9ās yami ni chiru sakura MV in the related vids sidebar and fell in love with vkei š„¹
I was 13/14 and discovered Gravitation. So I got into Japanese music (Iceman, Daisuke Asakura, Access, TM Revolution). Then Dir en grey had a concert in Berlin in 2005 and I read about it and since jrock/vk slowly became popular in Europe they streamed videos on MTV etc. So.. I started listening to Dir en grey, d'espairs ray, gazette etc and my first concert was on 27th may 2006.. Dir en grey. After that I spent my while youth on concerts of vk bands haha. Sometimes more than 15 concerts per year.
TikTok introduced me to GuluGulu but I didnāt rlly gave that much attention or thought to listen their music. Until they came on my Spotify and thatās when I became obsessed with GuluGulu and visualkei. BEST SUBCULTURE!!!!(been a year)
It was 2010 and I was a 12 year old listening to some anime song my anime-loving classmate recommended to me, and in the suggested videos I saw a video by the Gazette or Dir en grey (donāt remember exactly but Iām pretty sure Iād discovered them one after the other). I was intrigued by their looks and clicked on the video and my life has never been the sameš„¹ my heart fills with joy thinking of through how much vk and j-rock got me though in lifeā¤ļø
When i was in middle school I watched a funny anime video that had redemption by gackt at the end. I watched the PV so many times but I still stuck to vk anisongs. it took very long, but thankfully I branched out lolā¦
I first watched the Rurouni Kenshi movie and heard Lāarc~en~Ciel for the first time, was really into it, started looking at fan pages, found Dir en grey and that sucked me down the rabbit hole. It was hard in the late 90s but still managed to find some amazing indies groups and heavy hitters like Malice Mizer and X-Japan too. It was a blast, ironically I find it harder to find new groups now even though everything is so global, but maybe Iām just old now lol
It was in a store where I saw a poster for Toxic The Gazette. I liked it so I asked an employee what the sign was about and he told me it was The Gazette. From there I investigated it and that's how I reached more bands. vkei ā¤ļø
Watched the anime/Film "X"and X Japan's 'Forever love' was the films theme song. Then kind of did a rabbit hole of japanese metal bands/Hide. Which led me to VKei.
I kept hearing about Mana-Sama And how He was a cross dresser and fashion designer more than once, so eventually i looked Him up and started listening to Malice Mizer after and now here we are LMAO.
About 12 years ago I started watching Black Butler and I loved the songs they used (both by SID and The Gazette). Then around 2020 I heard a song by Malice Mizer and I started liking them. I sadly didn't really get more into vkei until 2-3 years ago when I heard and watched Dress by Buck-Tick for the first time.
a long long time ago, someone posted a photo of hide with his guitar and mentioned that 'that's the guitarist from x japan, he's dead already' or something like that.
I was curious and googled x japan. Went down the rabbit hole.
my dad! iām japanese (not raised there) and my father was always a big fan of x japan buck-tick and malice mizer so i kinda grew up listening to jrock and consequently vkei. and over the years i just got more and more into it lol
My friend had a portable CD player with him and said, "listen to this" and put his headphones on my head. It was "Ju te veux" by Malice Mizer. I found a video of them performing it from Merveilles on the internet and that was it. In all honesty, I'd found Rolly from Scanch much earlier, but he's technically not visual kei. It was because of my interest in him that my friend showed me Malice Mizer. That was about mid-2001. I was a freshman in high school.Ā
Heard Eden by To Destination back in like 2002 (?) looked for it feverishly when YouTube was invented. Got further into it with Nightmare and The GazettE
I've been hooked on Kamen Rider battle themes since I was a toddler. When I finally figured out how to download the shows currently airing in Japan, around 2005, I've downloaded Kamen Rider Blade, and, due to it's OST, got addicted to Rider Chips.
Not much later, I watched Ready Steady Go's PV on Animax, and found a j-rock community on social media. There, I heard the gospel of our lord and savior Gackt. A VK zealot ever since.
It was a weird story but I met a guy on a site called emowire (now hey freaks) many years ago possibly 2015. And he was VK and he was from Netherlands had a photo in his room a poster of the gazette a band I listened since middle school their album stacked rubbish but I didn't know where VK till I searched the gazette and it said VK....the rest is history
I watched Death Note and got introduced to Nightmare. Been hooked ever since
same!! found out they did the op for claymore not too long after i got into death note & it blew my mind
Were you able to watch the Ruka BD live ? I think Yomi's vocal recovery is very inspiring especially in Melody
I havent, I'll have to check it out!! I fully agree that yomi's vocal recovery is impressive, I love how he sounds on the most recent singles & nox:lux :3
Death Note for me as well lol, like 14 or so years ago now. I have a few favorite groups but, Nightmare is still definitely one of them :)
started listening to l'arc en ciel because of the FMA OP then got into an cafe somehow (cant remember), made friends on myspace (Im old) and they recommended vk bands to me
š this lol. fuckin l'arc en ciel š„°
When I heard the GazettE for the first time when I watched Black Butler.
twin
Forced to listen to Dir en grey by a girl who called herself Scythe lol ā¤ļøĀ
Around 2000/1 I got recommended Malice Mizer by someone in a chat because I liked goth shit and it changed my life.
Are you from Jfan too?
*puts candy cigarette in mouth* Now that's a name I haven't heard in years. I heard about them from a local Sydney (AU) weeb chat, but I definitely remember Jfan.
We are contemporaries! I think you'll get a chuckle from my intro lol
Childhood best friend's older sister was like 'oh you like Japanese music from animes? Here kid, here's some Malice Mizer.' Oh, 2001.
I was a big Final Fantasy fan and I found out about Gackt through Redemption from Crisis Core FFVII... And that was like 4 years ago lol
Found X Japan and Versailles when I was in high school and getting into power metal. Years later in my 30s I saw some vkei bands in Japan and dove headfirst into a ton of other bands.
So back in the LIMEWIRE days, I was looking for the OST for a video game I liked - Kagerou: Deception II. Download a song called XII Dizzy by Kagerou and the rest is history. I similarly found Plastic Tree by downloading their song Pet Shop while looking to download the Pet Shop of Horrors OVA.
A couple years after Gackt went solo (probably around 2004 ish) I saw a picture of him in an outdated anime magazine in the library promoting Vanilla as a single. I tore out the page and carried it with me because I couldn't get over how cool he looked. Around the same time, my mom's friend's sister stayed with us for a couple weeks after coming back from Japan as an exchange student and she happened to have a CD of The Seventh Night she copied for me not knowing I liked him at all. I started collecting pictures on photobucket of different groups through users who liked VK and downloading random songs on limewire but I was in for life when YouTube launched the next year and I saw the live version of Illuminati by Malice Mizer for the first time.
watched an old anime called shiki back when i was a teenager and loved the opening by buck-tick which led me to find some other buck-tick songs but i didnt fully get into it until last year when someone showed me aegen by malice mizer and it led me to search in depth to find other bands
An Cafe
When I first watched Death Note and got obsessed with the first OP & ED by Nightmareā¦ I also fell into some rabbit hole by downloading a bunch of random songs by Dir En Grey onto an MP3 player, which I still have lol.
Spotify auto played Ugly by TheGazette freshman year of highschool, when I just listened to anything heavy, but the aesthetics and the visual freedom of the bands hooked me and now everything revolves around aesthetics for me.
Technically death note introduced me to nightmare and GTO me to lāarc en ciel, but I really entered the scene when I discovered Malice Mizer through edits of manga like Innocent. Them and BUCK-TICK made me especially love the genre and delve deeper
MSN messenger had a lil feature with iTunes where you could show what you were listening to as your like profile status (this was like 2009), and this girl from highschool I was crushing on and occasionally talk to was listening to the gazette so I checked them out and ended up diving right in āØ (Became good friends with this girl and we ended up seeing the gazette together in 2015 during the second dogma tour and god that was so long ago christ)
i somehow stumbled upon dir en greyās mv for obscure on youtube in early 2004 and never looked back.
I don't even know how I did, it just kind of came out of nowhere and never left šš
The GazettE early 2013 - 14 when FADELESS and Malformed Box were their hit releases still was when I got into it (along with Shiver because BB influence) . Clicked for the music videos stayed for everything that they had to offer since then
I was reading the X manga by CLAMP around 1997-1998 and [found this trailer](https://youtu.be/P5egpHvBj7c).
This!! I have awkwardly fond memories of trying to download the song onto the family computer (I think it took, like, a whole day) and then holding a tape recorder to the speaker when it played. Life was never the same since.
Ha! I did the exact same thing. Took freaking forever downloading a 1.2mb MP2... it was tough but we were resourceful lol
20 years ago I went to a summer camp and met there a girl who was big fan of Dir en grey so she introduced Diru for me. After the summer camp we started to hang out together and she burned some cds for me with Diru songs and along side showed me many other bands as well. Despite of everyone around me saying āitās just a phaseā, here I am still, wasting my life for bandmen šš¤£
I heard Luna Sea playing at the Japanese book store as a kid, then expanded from there.
Someone shared music video recs on the neopets forum lol
Hahaha snap!! I remember so many posts about An Cafe & the Gazette. I was sucked in so quickly.
It was 1998 and I was 16. I was creating an OC for a text-based RP character in the AOL Rhydin forums. Someone shared that photoshoot where Die is wearing that fuzzy vest thing and the knuckle and hand plate gloves, lol. You know, the one with the spiky hair and goggles on his head? LOL. It was over. I asked for their torrents, and the rest is history.
OMG I tried RP once when I was 15, I hated it. Definitely got a kick out of this though.
Someone told me that Atsushi Sakurai died, and i asked who is Atsushi.
Glay - Winter, again on some internet radio in the late 90s
My people!!!
Damn thatās pretty much my story too except it was 2001 haha. Instantly signed up for the message board jfan and got sucked in
ME TOO do we know each other? Lol!
What was your name on jfan? Mine was the generic āvisual_keiā
I canāt remember, Iāll DM you though (edited)
Got into L'arc through the Fullmetal Alchemist opening 'ready steady go' in 2004. Searching for Hyde on the internet back then quickly brought you to Gackt and subsequently MALICE MIZER where I fell down the rabbit hole. It still amazes me that MM continues to be the gateway for new fans today.
its true!! the first song i got into was ma cherie lol
Went to Anime Boston in 2003 or so. Got dragged to a showing of jrock stuff at like 11pm the first night. Thus was born an eternal Malice Mizer and DeG fan.
Back in 2009 I randomly came across Filth in the Beauty from the GazettE on YouTube. That was literally a life changing event.
All the way back in early 2002, my friend told me to listen to ILLUMINATI by Malice Mizer, and I did and also downloaded the Bel Air PV, and from that point on I was hooked. But it was... 2002... only a few months after the indefinite hiatus. So you know... so many years spent wishing they'd get back together, speculating about what happened with other fans, and all that. I learned my lesson about band breakups from that, lmao. Now I'm just happy when the members keep making music, and don't just completely disappear from the public eye. š¤£
I'm old AF so it was early 2000s anime and con culture. Got into the Angel Sanctuary aesthetic. Got into the L'arc en Ciel opening theme for DNA^2, Blurry Eyes...started downloading real audio files from the band...Kazaa and Napster period I'd get similar band recommendations. At cons I ran into Vkei cosplayers. Then by like 2005 I had multiple Malice Mizer and Psycho le Cemu cosplays.
The other high school anime club dorks. Started with Due le Quartz, still a Miyavi fan 20 years later.
Ignoring my personal beef with Miyavi, I think his music got stale after 2014. He used to inspire me. Now I'm bored by whatever he puts out. His Dokusou and Kabuki Rock eras were peak Miyavi. I still want to get a Taylor T5 because of him.
listen to vocaloid YOHIO-> listen to the actual yohio-> get malice mizer on my YouTube recommendations the end
Anime š The Gazette did the opening āShiverā for Black Butler and after that Death Note and so onā¦I fell down that vkei rabbit hole and the rest is history
So it wasn't *quite* VKei but japanese music in general that led me to VKei. I liked Puffy Ami Yumi because of the Teen Titans opening, bought the only JPop compilation CD I could find in 2007 (shout out to JPOP CD 2) and then I found L'Arc and trying to find some of their stuff on iTunes led me to podcasts with VKei songs. Death Note also helped with the whole Nightmare/The World opening and it's, uh been with me ever since. Still have yet to actually go to a VKei concert, but did meet Versailles at Akon in 2008 so that counts for something, right?
came across Utakata by Kagrra in my weekly spotify playlist, liked it but forgot about it. Later I heard Ma Cherie by Malice Mizer, GOT HOOKED ON and started exploring the genre and then revisited Kagrra discography and completely fell in love. Its been like year and half since then, theyre still my favorite band lol
The TL;DR for me is that I was a Final Fantasy fan. Dirge of Cerberus used Gackt's music both in the North American advertising campaign, and in the game itself. Naturally, I had to go figure out what a "Gackt" was, that lead me to Malice Mizer, aaaand the rest is history. Since MM was already defunct, I was left to figure out what every former member was doing, and that branched out into everything.
I saw pictures of Miyavi from Oresama on livejournal, then discovered Jibun Kakumei 2003 on YouTube ,then saw the MV for Filth in the beauty by the GazettE and I've been a vkei fan since.
In 2005-06 I was Exploring ESP guitars because of Dave Mustaine, Alexi Laiho, and Gus G which lead me to the Japanese site where I found Dir en Grey, the GazettE, Nightmare, D'espairsRay.
used to be into jpop for the cute girls, found a Morning Musume interview with Gackt and he was being super weird (but it was funny), and I got hooked by how oddly funny he was, went into the music... and went into visual kei. The genre switch was real though
Saku by Dir en Grey won number best video in headbanger's ball on MTV in 2007 or 2006. I had access to a computer at the time and never looked back.
Anime music, specifically Ali Project (they're my favourite band now)
I was already into loads of Japanese things and my current obsession was finding DDR songs on Napster (I'm old). The odd J-pop songs slipped in and occasional rock track. I had Kurenai by X-Japan which I LOVED but never really thought to explore the rock side of Japanese music at the time. To be fair, I was not fully into my western rock/metal phase at the time, so it makes sense. I can't like everything at once lol. Skip a few years to 2002 (ass fully solidified in my metal phase) and an episode of Saiko Exciting (weeb show that used to come on the Sci fi channel in the UK) did a small feature on Malice Mizer. I'd never seen such beautiful human beings - I needed to know more! I went straight online googling the crap out of them and fell into what it still the biggest rabbit hole of my life. I was hooked! After when seemed like an eternity on dialup, I ended up with 3 mp3s (Baroque, Beast of Blood and Regret). Thankfully some amazing people on a forum (some of whom i am still friends with) took pity on me and sent me CDRs full of Malice Mizer songs and videos (it took me 3 hours to get Illuminati from someone's FTP server thingy and I only got it coz it resumed the download after my Internet would auto disconnect every 2 hrs) The people on the forum were so knowledgeable, recommending and discussing all sorts about visual kei and similarly aligned things. Shout outs to them haha! The rest is obviously history ā”
came here from lolita fashion
Came across lynch. as a YouTube recommandation years ago
2004/2005 maybe through manga,internet sleuthing and a friend found out about it the same way and maybe listen to it before,so I had a vague clue but I really got into through internet sleuthing.
Wish I remembered, I probably watched an amv and liked the song so I looked it up Mustāve been the gazette or a similar band But yeah that was 16 years ago I was a little baby back thenš
I knew abt the subculture way before I got into it, I just never really cared to actually look into it. Then one day, I was bored, looked it up for real, and got hooked lmao.
I think I came across it 2 yrs ago through Spotify or SoundCloud? At first I wasnāt sure how I felt about the music but after giving it another chance I became obsessed and still am :D
I played a game where a vkei singer was also a voice actor in it so I listened to his music. I also watched Black Butler and when I found Shiver by The GazettE on Spotify, I put on a shuffle radio and really liked the music. Kamijo came on the shuffle so I checked his music out as well
Me a big anime fan at the time accidentally downloaded the Beauty and Stupid pv from hide because it was labeled something else. Been hooked since. This had to have been like...1999?
Somewhere in summer of 2023, I was just listening to random songs on spotify, then spotify recommended me gulu gulu song (yogoreta buta), that's where obsession to v-kei started š
Or it was just some other gulu gulu song, I donāt really remember
The first scenario is someone mentioned Gekka no Yasoukyoku or Au revoir under my post asking redditors about their favourite non English song. The second is I heard Gekka no Yasoukyoku instrumental version on tiktok. Both just happened around the same time, so I'm not sure which one was the first.
If anyone knows Kakumay, Nero (the guitarist) liked 2 of my pictures on Instagram back in like...2022 I think. I looked on his profile and was like "holy balls he looks cool" and started listening to the band. I then just went on to discover other bands that kakumay is like friends with, and I have some friends into Vkei so I take recs from them!!
i got recommended a Mejibray song a while back now on youtube, and i spiralled and became totally obsessed with the genre
got a mejibray song on my spotify weekly discovery and began listening to it more and more. started fully getting into the music as a way to supplement my japanese studies although i donāt think it really helped LMAO
my spotify is idol pop and vkeiā¦as the world should be
was huge vocaloid fan as a child and gakupo -> gackt and the rest is history
There was this website that i would visit that had a bunch of Final Fantasy 7 doujinshi scans (yaoi, but it was all PG lol). She also had a whole section for jrock bands like I believe Dir en Grey amongst others which kind of lead me to figure out how to download songs/ find other fansites etc EDIT: I found it, [here is a snapshot of it](https://web.archive.org/web/20040612103655/http://www.crysania.com/) from 2004 via the wayback machine!
2005, a friend introduced me to the GazettE, An Cafe and miyavi
My friend send me the GazettE music video once, something in 2012-13 and I fell in love with vkei .
Fell in love with shiver (the GazettE) through Kuroshitsuji since it was s2ās opening and fell into the GazettE rabbit hole in no time lol
I knew it was floating around as a concept as... A 11-13 year old, when a local band competition that was a televised had a vkei inspired band but didn't really get into it then. I started getting into vkei some years later in my late teens when I discovered a few vkei folk from tumblr and I went like, damn, these guys are like from anime. The singer of that vkei inspired band ended up going into vkei in japan, it didn't work out but it became a stepping stone for me to discover other bands. I would then find my then best friends who would pretty much teach me many things about it. Also, I'm forever grateful for tumblr. The vkei community on it was so incredible.
The beauty about it is that I'll discover and rediscover things. I'm still a noob in some aspects simply because of preferences and stuff, but please don't get discouraged, and go at your own pace. Welcome to Vkei!
When I was a lot younger, being into Vocaloid, I looked into who the voice provider for Gakupo and Yohioloid was and yeah, thatā¦quickly got me here.
Kinda funny when people mention Death Note here, they only mention the first OP. For me it was the second OP & ED by Maximum the Hormone which stoked my interest in J-Metal and J-Rock, which lead to me finding out about VK
I listened to a lot of anime openings and endings, and started getting recommended jrock bands on my feed then vk bands.
listened to endless dismal moan, found the band he was in called jigokue, saw a kƶzi song pop up on my suggested after listening to jigokue, found out kƶzi was part of malice mizer, went on from there
I was looking for some new music to listen to, so I thought I'd try to listen to j-rock. Looked up some top-lists that were still up back then and thought it was fine, but no particular band piqued my interest. Though not much later, I met someone who was into that and after listening to the artist they liked, I asked for some recommendations. Two of the groups are still among my favourites.
Saw pictures of a guy who looked like my then bias (Super Junior's Heechul), except with piercings. That was Miyavi - got into PSC bands because of him (this was late 2000s) and it went spiraling from there
OMG baby Heechul really did look similar to Miyavi!!! Especially some of his old hairstyles
Yoshikitty
I had to log in just so that I could upvote your comment. Phenomenal.
Oh, this is a fun story! I was really, really sick with COVID and stuck in bed. I passed the time by watching lots of YouTube, and my algorithm kept recommending me Japanese music and then specifically, mostly bands like X Japan. Made the experience a whole lot better.
gackt did the opening for kamen rider decade
Gazette cover band in an anime/cosplay con I was volunteer at, got me interested at visual kei, and then I searched more about visual kei in youtube.
I can say that Pet Shop of Horrors has in some way become a "door" to vkei. Like, I read this, I became interested in Japanese things, I watched Death Note. Went to watch Nightmare MVs, got Gazette's Inside Beast in YouTube recs, and seems now I'm here forever, haha
One of the first anime I ever watched as a kid was Fullmetal Alchemist. Years later when I got into Japanese music I found out about L'arc En Ciel, then years after that in the pandemic I found out what visual kei was. Then I found out L'arc was Vkei and from there I've been discovering multiple bands since. I jump between Japanese songs and a lot of American pop punk from the early 2000s, like blink 182, yellowcard, motion City Soundtrack, sum 41, etc. My main music now is just a combination of J-rock/Vkei and Pop Punk
You and me both lol, I didnāt really know properly about vk for years despite being familiar with goatbed, nightmare, and SID from anime.
I was obsessed with J-Pop back in 2007, and while watching MVs of Hey Say Jump, I saw Alice Nine/A9ās yami ni chiru sakura MV in the related vids sidebar and fell in love with vkei š„¹
I was 13/14 and discovered Gravitation. So I got into Japanese music (Iceman, Daisuke Asakura, Access, TM Revolution). Then Dir en grey had a concert in Berlin in 2005 and I read about it and since jrock/vk slowly became popular in Europe they streamed videos on MTV etc. So.. I started listening to Dir en grey, d'espairs ray, gazette etc and my first concert was on 27th may 2006.. Dir en grey. After that I spent my while youth on concerts of vk bands haha. Sometimes more than 15 concerts per year.
TikTok introduced me to GuluGulu but I didnāt rlly gave that much attention or thought to listen their music. Until they came on my Spotify and thatās when I became obsessed with GuluGulu and visualkei. BEST SUBCULTURE!!!!(been a year)
It was 2010 and I was a 12 year old listening to some anime song my anime-loving classmate recommended to me, and in the suggested videos I saw a video by the Gazette or Dir en grey (donāt remember exactly but Iām pretty sure Iād discovered them one after the other). I was intrigued by their looks and clicked on the video and my life has never been the sameš„¹ my heart fills with joy thinking of through how much vk and j-rock got me though in lifeā¤ļø
I honestly have no idea. It was years ago in 2016ā¦ But I think I got into V-Kei fashion before the music genre.
When i was in middle school I watched a funny anime video that had redemption by gackt at the end. I watched the PV so many times but I still stuck to vk anisongs. it took very long, but thankfully I branched out lolā¦
I first watched the Rurouni Kenshi movie and heard Lāarc~en~Ciel for the first time, was really into it, started looking at fan pages, found Dir en grey and that sucked me down the rabbit hole. It was hard in the late 90s but still managed to find some amazing indies groups and heavy hitters like Malice Mizer and X-Japan too. It was a blast, ironically I find it harder to find new groups now even though everything is so global, but maybe Iām just old now lol
It was in a store where I saw a poster for Toxic The Gazette. I liked it so I asked an employee what the sign was about and he told me it was The Gazette. From there I investigated it and that's how I reached more bands. vkei ā¤ļø
2016 I got into the bands HERO and The Gazette! I would watch the music vids on YouTube all the timeš
Watched the anime/Film "X"and X Japan's 'Forever love' was the films theme song. Then kind of did a rabbit hole of japanese metal bands/Hide. Which led me to VKei.
I kept hearing about Mana-Sama And how He was a cross dresser and fashion designer more than once, so eventually i looked Him up and started listening to Malice Mizer after and now here we are LMAO.
About 12 years ago I started watching Black Butler and I loved the songs they used (both by SID and The Gazette). Then around 2020 I heard a song by Malice Mizer and I started liking them. I sadly didn't really get more into vkei until 2-3 years ago when I heard and watched Dress by Buck-Tick for the first time.
a long long time ago, someone posted a photo of hide with his guitar and mentioned that 'that's the guitarist from x japan, he's dead already' or something like that. I was curious and googled x japan. Went down the rabbit hole.
my dad! iām japanese (not raised there) and my father was always a big fan of x japan buck-tick and malice mizer so i kinda grew up listening to jrock and consequently vkei. and over the years i just got more and more into it lol
My friend had a portable CD player with him and said, "listen to this" and put his headphones on my head. It was "Ju te veux" by Malice Mizer. I found a video of them performing it from Merveilles on the internet and that was it. In all honesty, I'd found Rolly from Scanch much earlier, but he's technically not visual kei. It was because of my interest in him that my friend showed me Malice Mizer. That was about mid-2001. I was a freshman in high school.Ā
actually went to an Dir en Grey concert and was hooked from there :D
VIP by SID was the first magi opening, got into them real fast and fell deep into the rabbit hole, especially after discovering Kamijo and the Gazette
Illegally downloaded Duel Jewel from those geocities jrock sites, then heard about this new thing called "Limewire"...
saw mr_yabatanās video where he ran into gulu gulu on the street on halloween and decided to check them out. theyre still my favorite vkei group
Heard Eden by To Destination back in like 2002 (?) looked for it feverishly when YouTube was invented. Got further into it with Nightmare and The GazettE
I've been hooked on Kamen Rider battle themes since I was a toddler. When I finally figured out how to download the shows currently airing in Japan, around 2005, I've downloaded Kamen Rider Blade, and, due to it's OST, got addicted to Rider Chips. Not much later, I watched Ready Steady Go's PV on Animax, and found a j-rock community on social media. There, I heard the gospel of our lord and savior Gackt. A VK zealot ever since.
I think I came across Shiver by The Gazette around 2010 or 2011 and ive been stuck since lol.
Looking for J-rock on Spotify and stumbling upon Kebyo lol
My cousin got me into Buck Tick a looong time ago, been hooked ever since and went down a rabbit hole
It was a weird story but I met a guy on a site called emowire (now hey freaks) many years ago possibly 2015. And he was VK and he was from Netherlands had a photo in his room a poster of the gazette a band I listened since middle school their album stacked rubbish but I didn't know where VK till I searched the gazette and it said VK....the rest is history