Milayou

Wow, now that's a feel. I played out my home made copy of Aliene Ma'riage's Les Soirée in high school and it was a shock to hear some of these songs again at a quality above 96 kbps when I revisited the album almost 10 years later.
 
By the way, you mention you're french, are you familiar with Tanja? She used to have her own website with live reports going as far back as 1998. That place was a goldmine for me back in the day and it still remains an exclusive source of info outside of Japan for some of the more obscure bands she covered.
 
EDIT: found it again, here's a link for anyone interested https://web.archive.org/web/20120427161556/http://lasteve.free.fr/blog/autres/listeconcerts01.htm

If we're gonna do video games, Shin Megami Tensei is well known for using japanese youth subculture as an inspiration and Persona 2 (1999 and 2000) happens to be pretty heavy on the VK. One character is a struggling bandman and another one is a gothy girl who sports a classic kotekote era hairstyle (I think Nao from La'mule is most famous for wearing it but you see it on a lot of other guys as well) :
 

 
Bonus video :
 

I haven't actively listened to any new VK since 9goats disbanded, they really were a very special band.
 
I looked through your posts real quick and didn't see a single mention of Plastic Tree, if you want shoegaze inspired VK you really ought to do yourself a favor and check out some of their stuff. They always had a history of flirting with shoegaze and taking elements from the british alternative scene but the most recent music I heard from them really cranked those influences up to 11.
 
 

I wish more songs had 10 seconds of church bells/footsteps/creaking door SFX thrown in the middle

I haven't actively listened to any new VK since 9goats disbanded, they really were a very special band.
 
I looked through your posts real quick and didn't see a single mention of Plastic Tree, if you want shoegaze inspired VK you really ought to do yourself a favor and check out some of their stuff. They always had a history of flirting with shoegaze and taking elements from the british alternative scene but the most recent music I heard from them really cranked those influences up to 11.
 
 

Had to do a double take when I saw this one at the mall. I never found a 1:1 reference picture for it but it obviously takes very liberal inspiration from "No Pains No Gains" Mana
 

Does anybody remember this band that was put together in Japan to be marketed in the west? They folded immediately after failing to garner interest and instead of listening to the fans telling them "this is not actually what we meant when we said you should bring VK overseas" the promoters blamed piracy culture for the death of their little experiment.
 
The whole period was a hilarious trainwreck on many fronts but that tiny bit of visibility still felt like such a ray of sunshine, little things like the PV for Saku getting voted all the way up to #1 on some european MTV chart really testify to how large and optimistic the fanbase was around then.

*I'm very bad at forums so please excuse my noobieness, and if there is any problems, please let me know how to fix them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwMQesqiF_g
 
This is the first time I've seen this VHS uploaded in its entirety online! Please enjoy the rip that was done by Panda from Rarezhut. 
I'm very happy as to how it looks, and it's very interesting seeing Fanatic's early sounds and visuals. 

Crow's demo tape before they became Kagrra is absolutely up there as some of the best music i've heard from that era

I think i've officially lost patience with DAS:VASSER, I tried giving their stuff a chance for years but they simply don't do anything for me. A lot of VK is derivative by nature but most bands manage to save face by having a little something special to offset this. I just don't get what that special something is supposed to be for them (and to make things worse the production on their albums sucks).
 
Also this could probably get me beheaded if I told the wrong people, but it makes me furious that the more elitist fringes of VK fandom will hype up middling crap like this yet deliberately overlook an album like Missa because they wouldn't be caught dead listening to DEG. I don't consider myself a hardcore Diru fan at all but "Kiri to Mayu" and "Aoi Tsuki" alone blow anything DAS:VASSER have written out of the water.

Had to do a double take when I saw this one at the mall. I never found a 1:1 reference picture for it but it obviously takes very liberal inspiration from "No Pains No Gains" Mana
 

Had to do a double take when I saw this one at the mall. I never found a 1:1 reference picture for it but it obviously takes very liberal inspiration from "No Pains No Gains" Mana
 

This is psychotic and I love it

There are some VK cosplay websites from 2000-2005 that are still up out there and it always made me laugh how the girls that are showcased always seem to take their screen names from real VK musicians so you get cosplay credits that go "Sugizo by Toshiya" "Hide by Sugizo" "Emiru by Emiru" and so on

Had to do a double take when I saw this one at the mall. I never found a 1:1 reference picture for it but it obviously takes very liberal inspiration from "No Pains No Gains" Mana
 

There are some VK cosplay websites from 2000-2005 that are still up out there and it always made me laugh how the girls that are showcased always seem to take their screen names from real VK musicians so you get cosplay credits that go "Sugizo by Toshiya" "Hide by Sugizo" "Emiru by Emiru" and so on

This is psychotic and I love it

Na, it was like this:
 

Had to do a double take when I saw this one at the mall. I never found a 1:1 reference picture for it but it obviously takes very liberal inspiration from "No Pains No Gains" Mana
 

Came here to post this, here's the reupload
 
 

I get the feeling that japanese dark wave artists that openly associate with VK will always be kind of rare since there's already a well established scene for them to operate in and they both already share the same melodramatic elements and extravagant visuals. It's essentially a niche within a constantly shrinking niche. There was a wave of them in the past but aiming to make it as "a VK artist" was a lot more profitable back then and hoping to reach broader audiences probably seemed like a more realistic prospect for the guys pulling the strings. I imagine there must have been more room to try things out and cross into different genres than there has been in recent times.
 
Also Shuji had to establish himself as a scene veteran first before he could start messing around and release music as Goatbed and XA-VAT. Basically you've gotta keep your fingers crossed that another VK daddy will come up with a new side-project where he gets to play whatever the hell he wants.