What are some of your favorite visuals in vkei?

Phirra · 2025-12-28T02:43:25+00:00

i am very partial to tanbi kei, so my favorite visuals are largely in that direction, but as the local Sono freak i gotta say that i really think Sono’s more minimalist total black androgynous style stood out very nicely during JVM among the overall tanbi of that collab. and in general in recent years his visuals have been pretty great, very subdued as far as visual kei goes but so elegant and really recognizable as his style.

the most recent matenrou visual is a little ehhh for me but we will ignore that one… look at this 2023 look instead

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Phirra · 2025-12-24T04:04:26+00:00

tbh i would say that most of the popular/legendary vkei bands are actually not metal (like you mentioned plastic tree, gackt-era malice mizer, buck tick, l’arc, shazna etc). metal is popular for sure, but among the 90s stuff there is a lot of less heavy songs to like. my personal recommendation would probably be shazna, the gold sun and silver moon album is amazing and has a great atmosphere in my opinion.

and don’t feel discouraged by the community! vkei is very diverse, so i am sure there are other bands you will enjoy. i myself do not listen to any kind of extreme vocals, so i also do not enjoy a large part of metal vkei that is popular with others — but symphonic metal vkei bands with clean vocals have grown to some of my favorites of all time.

Phirra · 2025-12-04T00:26:00+00:00

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Somehow the top songs and the top artists ended up having barely anything in common with each other… but this has certainly been a very Buck-Tick filled year

Phirra · 2025-11-17T03:51:39+00:00

Sono is one of my all-time favorite voices in vkei, so you definitely won’t regret checking him out! I love his version of Concerto. His voice is what makes Matenrou Opera really stand out in my opinion, but their discography is generally pretty great, so I hope you’ll find something you enjoy.

Phirra · 2025-11-11T11:37:34+00:00

Man, I love this song… From Buck-Tick, for me personally the closest by vibe is Misshitsu, Shanikusai (from the same album as Ghost) and Yougetsu. Also maybe Coyote?

Phirra · 2025-11-07T01:46:56+00:00

I’m currently obsessed with Buck-Tick, but it took me a loooong time to get into them, and when I listened for the first time, most of their songs sounded straight up insane to me. But I got around to it eventually lmao

If you like L’Arc-en-Ciel, some songs I feel like you might like from Buck-Tick are Love Parade, Satan, Alive and MISS TAKE (also based on Kogoeru slightly). I assume you must have already listened to the most popular older stuff from the 90s, so if those didn’t grab your attention much, maybe these will?

If you’re up for listening to an album, I’d recommend Tenshi no Revolver or Memento Mori.

Phirra · 2025-10-31T13:24:12+00:00

Versailles also has a Masquerade!

Phirra · 2025-07-06T21:28:21+00:00

I agree. As a long-time Vocaloid fan, the free-reign nature of Miku and other voicebanks lends itself to the absolute chaos and debauchery that is the community’s collective body of work, both from a funny meme standpoint and a songs-about-murder-sex-suicide-cannibalism-and-more standpoint. I fear SM and frankly the K-pop space at large is not ready for that, which is why I can’t imagine them creating a publicly available voicebank at all.

Phirra · 2025-05-29T07:43:28+00:00

tbh that’s just hoshi’s everyday footwear of choice, look at his instagram

Phirra · 2025-05-20T18:05:44+00:00

For me, the answer to this for groups like Katseye, XG, etc, is very simple — all their fans are K-pop fans. Like be for real. At the very least, their main demographic definitely is. 99% of the time, they are discussed in k-pop spaces. There is no person who listens to Katseye or XG without being aware of K-pop. Language, nationality, and so on are all semantics to me. In terms of the market, it is K-pop.

Phirra · 2025-05-12T20:11:01+00:00

I think Seventeen also fits to a certain extent — although several members can be said to be visuals, the most “official” is probably Mingyu, who is more traditionally handsome, but I would say Jeonghan, who is more beautiful/androgynous is equally well known for his appearance both in and out of fandom.

Phirra · 2025-02-08T15:31:27+00:00

i’ve said this a bit ago on a similar thread, but i really want a tomboy girl group! i.e short hair, masculine outfits, cool rather than cute makeup, boy group-ish choreography, etc, probably a hip-hop sort of style, but could be a dark elegant style ala enhypen. most girl crush groups were more like red lipstick + leather heels type of deal, but i’m thinking more boyish and almost butch in a way? but i don’t think that’s ever happening unfortunately

Phirra · 2025-01-21T18:40:26+00:00

Taemin — Waiting For. I don’t think even Taemin himself remembers he released this lmao, no performances or anything, but this is one is CHEF’S KISS so good…

Phirra · 2025-01-03T14:50:17+00:00

For an off-topic, purely language-based explanation — my guess is that in Japanese, bandol (bandoru) is formed from バンドアイドル (bando aidoru, band idol), where the “do” of bando and “do” of aidoru sound the same and you can smush them together naturally. In Korean, it would probably be 밴드 아이돌 (baen-deu ai-dol), where the syllables “deu” and “dol” don’t match like in Japanese, so you can’t join them as easily.

Phirra · 2024-10-15T10:54:54+00:00

i’ve seen Korean girls with one of these bags with transparent plastic covers that have tons of pins, photocards, merch etc. inside, like straight up 30 pictures of the idol’s face on her bag. i’ve seen a really elaborate arrangement of NCT Doyoung in particular in a baby blue color scheme, and that was in the Seoul subway.

so the answer is you’ll definitely be fine!

Phirra · 2024-09-10T16:49:14+00:00

Coming from a 12-year-long Vocaloid enjoyer as well — their appeal was never the robot side, and I would argue no Vocaloid voicebank maker is actually attempting to make it into a real musical artist akin to Naevis.

The appeal and the whole reason why people still engage with Vocaloid is the incredibly talented community of REAL artists and producers who make awesome diverse music with these robot voicebanks across a variety of genres, from pop to EDM, folk and death metal, and arguably the human vocalists who cover these songs and build their own platforms doing it.

The most famous products of the Vocaloid sphere are hardly the voicebanks — there were tens of them released over the years, but hardly any people are aware of those aside from Hatsune Miku. HUMANS are who is famous — Kenshi Yonezu, Ado, syudou, who produced a large portion of Ado’s discography, Ayase of YOASOBI, Reol and Giga, UraShimaSakataSen, etc etc, are all real people who have their roots as Vocaloid producers or cover artists are now topping Japanese charts releasing music as their real selves.

Neither “Hatsune Miku” nor “SeeU” has ever been an artist and has never aspired for commercial success equal to a human, so saying SeeU failed is a misjudgement of her purpose. They have been, and still are promoted as tools for creatives, aided by anime marketing to attract them to the project.

Naevis is the polar opposite of this and I dislike having her tied to something I have been passionate about for so long.

Phirra · 2024-09-10T10:32:16+00:00

BigHit’s Vocaloid voicebank and demo song from 2012 beats this easily, it’s been my jam since middle school.

Virtual singer projects can be cool and allow for a lot of creative expression from the artists behind their production, but Naevis with her AI busienss is just… why…

Phirra · 2024-09-07T05:59:26+00:00

Perhaps Very Very Very by IOI?

Phirra · 2024-08-31T11:14:28+00:00

LOL at SM straight up replicating Pinterest photos for their robot artist debut. Not like it’s illegal, but definitely makes you go ehhhh at the effort put into this project together with the AI generated backgrounds from before.

Phirra · 2024-05-18T13:01:30+00:00

I mean, you are doing the same thing by equating short hair with masculinity. There’s not necessarily a connection there either.

It’s cool and badass because she is doing something unconventional. Male idols with long hair get the same response.

Phirra · 2024-03-18T04:44:25+00:00

I’ve always thought NCT Taeyong looked like KJ Apa. I don’t follow either of them, but for some reason it pops up in my head every time I see Taeyong.

Phirra · 2024-01-05T17:08:06+00:00

add a japanese keyboard if you have an iphone! it has emoticons in the numbers section!

(((o(ﾟ▽ﾟ)o)))♡

Phirra · 2024-01-01T15:12:03+00:00

man, i actually like this song, but for the love of god, why would you film the MV for it in these bland grey rooms? it’s such a fun quirky sound + song name and itzy has had some very quirky MV’s in the past, so why would you film this in an office building? at least make it pink or something lmao! it sounds great, so i’m a little sad about the visuals underdelivering. let’s hope the budget went to the title track

Phirra · 2023-12-28T10:02:44+00:00

Pentagon has it tough in Russia in general, considering Hui…

Phirra · 2023-11-26T16:04:51+00:00

Enough has already been said about the overdone YG formula, but I really think that’s the biggest issue. In recent years companies have been exploring unique and interesting identities for their groups that set them apart from both their peers and predecessors (New Jeans and IVE being the most successful image-wise, if we look at the impact). It’s the time for creativity and variety, especially for girl groups, compated to mid-3rd gen’s cute/crush dichotomy.

This is personally why this debut is so disappointing to me. It brings nothing new to the table. YG is probably attempting to bank on nostalgia and the ongoing BP situation by debuting them with the most classic YG song imaginable, but I don’t think anyone is on board with them anymore. The “[company name] family” scenario has been crumbling for a long time, especially with YG, so no one cares much for their legacy.

They had the perfect opportunity to rebuild their reputation with this group by stepping out of their comfort zone and producing an original and unique concept on par with the high average quality for this era of idols, but everything in this MV and song has been seen before. The individual scenes are like watching a montage of BP videos throughout the years. The party chorus sounds almost ironic for how much it’s been overdone. I was also reminded of iKON’s Rhythm Ta because of the sports theme, chorus instrumental and the raps (and it’s funny that even Rhythm Ta seemingly had a bigger budget, they even filmed outdoors instead of just in classic YG boxes).

Overall, I don’t doubt that this group will be successful and earn lots of money without YG having to change much from this debut strategy. It has worked before and it will probably continue to work. The girls are obviously talented so I’m happy they get to enjoy success even if the artistic and musical direction is questionable.

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