Arkady

I prefer to say my farewell with a bittersweet laught, so I'm choosing "Dance my Generation", since the "End of an era" theme is fitting.
 
 

I prefer to say my farewell with a bittersweet laught, so I'm choosing "Dance my Generation", since the "End of an era" theme is fitting.
 
 

- April Fool's News Threads
 
- Reading people's reactions when BABOO crashed into the scene with some bonafide baby-diaper-ageplay-kei goodness which they've now removed from youtube (crying), but you can remind yourself by checking out 3:05 here
 
- A certain Italian Lady sharing her ghost stories and j-rocker related dreams
 
- The never-ending search for Maria Cross' movies and kisaki nudes
 
 
I haven't met as many people as some of the European folks, one time @WhirlingBlack and I *almost* went for drinks, I hope I can go to your club some day. I had the pleasure of hanging out with @monkeybanana4 at a couple of concerts and watching a hilarious shitty movie with @ghost  
 
I've made some really good memories here and hope to continue having laughs with some of you. I can't wait for teenage intellectuals and spiritual gurus to keep targeting whichever platforms we move onto 🙏
 

 
 
 

Certified iconic MH moments:
- the entire "k*w*** m*np** and the near death of the download section"-saga
- the entire ebmort saga
- the nigh-on entire community joining hands to dunk on yoshiki whenever he does some new stupid shit
- communally dunking on kisaki whenever he's acting up again
- Dispo's Mcdonaldsposting
- "I SWEAR I'M QUITTING THIS SITE FOR REAL THIS TIME" "nvm i'm back" 
- scandal heaven
- visual kei animorphs edits
- that brief period when the mh premium account joke was funny
- "it's out x"
- the pokemonposter / yohimbe defender saga
 
If you weren't here to witness at least 4 of these you have not been into VK long enough. please remember this.
 
Certified uniconic MH moments:
- that period when MH simultaneously turned into both Jordan Peterson Heaven & Redditwitter at once

FUCK IT, DOUBLE POST.
 
Figured since I'm stuck with my old PC now I might as well do a deep dive in hopes of coming up with some funny images from days of yore. Unfortunately it didn't yield a haul as big as I anticipated...but anyway, here are some things I dug up that I found funny (or that were funny at one point in time).
 
While MH closing got us like...
 

 
...let us think of the good times. Remember when Akane from D.I.D. expressed his religious views, even tho nobody asked?
 

 
But he wasn't the only one to be brilliant on social media. THE HAKKIN were pretty lowkey but they managed this whopper once:
 

 
Remember the MOO album from DEG? Or DOGEMA from the GazettE? Or...
 

(ok I know I'm the only one who still finds doge funny in 2020 idc)
 
Anyway, when it comes down to it, love is the answer. Let that special someone in your life know your true feelings.
 

 

 
...or you can just get to the point.
 

 
Sadly I don't have many screenshots from MH itself, but for some reason I kept this gem by @Tokage:
 

 
Closing off, let's remember that through all the good, bad or strange times it has always just been about the music, maaan. We're just a bunch of people going crazy over some (mostly) random underground fan-exploiting-or-worse weirdos who probably don't even know or suspect we even exist. Opinions are opinions, no need make a big fuss over them, but... I think we can agree that visual kei at its peak has made us all feel a bit of what @Shaolan974 once formulated that has stuck with me to this day:
 

 
Adios once again, MH.

It's a been a long ride. I've been on here for 11 years, close to 12. Everything has to come to an end and I honestly can't say where I would be without this place. Without any hesitation I can say that Monochrome Heaven, or Tainted World as it was when I first joined, changed my life. I'm genuinely curious how that makes people like Zess and Ito feel that they've had such a significant impact on a person's life just by making this place and running for all these years. The current trajectory on which my life is on was set by all the friendships I've made in this place over the years, and through everything I went through this place was a constant companion. Zess, Bear/Sumostig, Junna, Shizu, Whirlingblack especially have been significant to me and I'm grateful. Who knows how deep I'd be in normiedom without these people influencing my taste in the way they did. If it wasn't Christmas with the family I wasn't as tipsy as I was, I'd probably have a whole lot more to say about this than I do now. Me and Whirlingblack started really hanging out proper in the beginning of 2017 when I decided to just bail Finland. I stayed at his place for some time and I don't remember what we did together, but what I do know for sure is that it was the kind of debauchery what we would we doing together and independently to this day. Shizu is another person that by his existence has assured me I'm first of all not entirely alone in world with my tastes and interests. 
 
But it wasn't just the few people that one stuck around with all these years that made the place, but also all the characters that've come and gone over the years. There is so much stuff to dig out of the annals of monochrome heaven and tainted world that in my case it'd be a book. 
 
What the new people on here don't know, is that this place had a tremendously active chat back in the days that was integrated into the website. Almost every was there at one point, and during its heydays absolutely nothing was going on my life, so I was there almost every minute or every single day.  In my country you have to take dancing lessons for the prom for like six months, and in 2012 when I went through that thing most of that time I'd be giving live status updates throughout the whole experience. Before and after I'd be sitting in Mcdonald's drinking coffee and it became a running joke that I was always online, always people watching in Mcdonald's. Probably some of my best memories from the board are from the chat years. Shoutout to everyone who was there to experience it
 
So much stuff has happened on this board that new people have no idea, because so much has been lost to chat logs, private messages and purges over the years. The forum as it stands rn is only a tiny fraction of all that had taken place. 
 
I'm too drunk right now to remember any of this stuff, but it means so much to me and I'll cherish all of these memories forever. Here is some of people I've met irl over the years from here in a random order 
 
wb, marcus, jigsaw, shizu, saltofstones, allisapp, panda, pretsy, hyura, slsr, stylelover, 237q, gaz, tokage and many, many others I've met for a minute or two during gigs. 
 
I proofread none of this
 
Those who don't have me anywhere can follow me either on here https://twitter.com/SoderlundAleksi or just add me on fb Aleksi Söderlund
 
Everyone who I've shared this place with. 
 
I love you all. Good bye and thanks for the memories, all those i've laughed or fought with. 

**same direction as new XJapan album appurrently:

 
c u in 2030!!!!!

I have always had a feeling that stuff like overdoses are more often reported in terms of the physical issue caused by the overdose.
Not to say I think every brain aneurysm or hemorrhage is a case of kakuseizai or anything, but any combination of smoking/heavy drinking/upper use puts you at a bigger risk than other people in the same age bracket. Plus like Zeus said, throw stress into the mix and it's all the more dangerous.

There is a pretty big example where a member of a very popular band passed away and the family asked for the reason not to be disclosed. The director of his label casually let slip the cause of his death was suicide in an interview online. Fans were very, very troubled to find this out, and a lot of them said they wished they had never seen it. There's definitely a tendency to not disclose suicide but since no one else has mentioned it yet I think it's in part to prevent fans from doing the same (hide copycats being an illustrative example of this happening). It's a real danger in the best of situations, but the themes and image of visual kei attract self-harmers and people who aren't always in a great mental state on top of that.

i literally have no idea who that even is, so if it was then it's a diss coming from the astral plane or some shit tbqh
Also @Zeus, to add to that, I sometimes wonder how many of these undocumented deaths may or may not be related to alcohol- or drug-related causes, 'cause god fucking knows there's been enough rock musicians from the western world dying due to accidental OD's and shit like that. I can especially see how that sort of thing could be seen as 'shameful' by the victim's families in such cases

Jasmine You Found Alive at Business Meeting in Dubai

The links may be dead but with a quick PM to the original poster or the many people who downloaded it, I've found that you could often get someone generous enough to upload it again. I would say it worked for me 50% of the times here, not bad when I consider some of the downloads I asked about had been dead for years.

For the rarer/obscure releases, the dead link on these pages aren't so much of the tragedy to me, it's often the information by the original poster and the subsequent conversation that is just as important. When I'm on the hunt for the music or want to find out more about the band, all of those scraps of information help considering there's little to no information in English about a lot of the bands that have been discussed here, whether it's the download page, a news article or even someone who sold something 10 years ago here, it all made a difference in knowing what was out there.

When the average shelf life of a fan is a few years, it's almost critical the posts stay alive because the people who posted them are long gone.  With a death of a forum, most of that deeper stuff gets lost and very unlikely to be carried over by anybody to the next place. I've seen many come and go over the last 20 years and something like discords, which is seemingly the direction newer fans are taking to share information, will never really act like a good substitute to the dusty old forum platform IMO.

And I agree, as someone who trawls discogs, YJA, mercari, and Japanese webshops for a vinyl, CD or tape, I don't mind that everyone doesn't have download access to everything. If people really want it, they'll find a way to buy it but the information is the part that needs to stay alive and accessible. Again, having seen many forums and websites come and go, there's plenty of things (YJA listings, images, html files, etc) I've saved about a particular band that I could never find again.

Please stop saying stuff like this like you have any idea what you are talking about. You assume so much and you are always, and I do mean always, wrong. 
 
If you want Various, find it on second hand sites.

Well, it seems like there are two options who this person is:
- a troll - a good one, btw, can feel the vibes of image boards like 4chan.
- a completely ignorant fangirl who is obsessed with defending Lets. Gives me the vibes of that Irkutsk chick who managed to convince Dimlim to come to a town in the middle of Siberian nowhere.
 
Regardless, I like how mods are generous enough to not ban a member who is not adding anything constructive to the discussion.

Ok - I'm going to chime in here. I do not know you and I am not going to make assumptions about you, but people are trying to get you to analyze your own actions so you can more productively contribute to discussion. I do not think you realize how you come off, but your posts read very contrarian and combative even when you're not being approached that way. There is a difference between defending a fave and ignoring/downplaying any/all criticisms. Criticism can be a good thing - everyone here is trying to show you this in regards to yourself and the band.

I just checked all the likes for their premi-ere-um live on twitter, and it's all vk-inclined Japanese people and weebs. Those mythical math rock fans were not present, so I guess they don't use twitter—or they could be off-the-grid too, so to speak, because they don't seem to play DIMLIM much on Spotify either, since all the artists that "the fans of this band like" are vk bands. Maybe the stats haven't updated yet idk
 
Lets brought this on himself with his complete lack of self-awareness and people skills. Their fans started making fun of them for not having a bassist only because Lets is doing his best to pretend that it's not an issue. One tweet going "we're looking for a new bassist please be patient kittekudasai and sunimaseenn" and no one would mention it ever again. 
Under normal circumstances I would have no sympathy for entitled gya either, but Lets should be aware that if you get backlash for something from the people you depend on, the solution is not to double down on everything that got you the backlash in the first place while blocking people left, right and center. I don't have anything against such an abrasive outsider art approach to PR either, but it's obvious that they still rely on those fans to even have a career. It's indisputable that all the people who bought their tickets in America are weebs and I won't listen to anything saying otherwise.
 
If he just made one self-deprecating tweet about this whole thing then it would all be over and people would stop shitting on them and go on waiting for new music, but no, Lets is his own biggest mark and he'll instead focus on the E S S E N C E, which is biting the hand that feeds you. People didn't shit on Yeti when Emiru moved on to play indie rock for a non-vk crowd. If they didn't do this shit and have their one-member street team here, then this topic would be dead. Now people are just enjoying the ride before it crashes.

Didn't you know?
 
Saying your opinion is trolling. Unless you're saying dimlim is the second coming of christ. Then you may state your opinion. Anyway, beware of this new rule cuz I'mma have to start giving out warnings and bans around here
 
(Lets has my family hostage. send help)

They're too busy TALKING ABOUT THE ESSENCE to pay attention to worldly things like that.
 
That said, if it rly was a free thing on regular Youtube, I might peep it too. Hoping they play some CHEDOARA material in there somewhere.

They could've just done a live stream of the concert (even if pre-recorded) and opened the floor for donations like every other vk band this year, rather than barring people behind the YT Premium gate (you're welcome Retsu)

what a joke

DIMLIM is what you get when you order DIR EN GREY on wish.com.

I think it kind of depends on where the person is coming from.
 
Metal Crowd: Versailles, Jupiter, Matenrou Opera, X (First 2 albums only)
 
Pop or those that just want to see Kawaii J-Rockers: They might like Oshare Kei bands, ViVid, vNue, DaizyStripper
 
Regular rock fans: Gazette, Mejibray, Phantasmagoria, Dezert, Miyavi
 
Somebody else can chime in with more emo bands, I only ever followed Sadie
 
We have tons of chug-chug bands. We got some indie sounding bands too.

tfw u r looking for a safe space to drag MH for being toxic and ultimately decide towards reddit as overall appropriate
 

I don't get that elitist feeling on here at all, not when I first joined, not when I was browsing this site just for news a few years back, and not now. The VK fandom in general has a steep learning curve but unless you're a very sidelines casual trying to make false/unresearched comments in here then no one's gonna call you out or anything.
 
And of course you will see people who dislike your favourite band, even legends like Malice Mizer and Dir en Grey have their detractors lmao. Being able to agree to disagree with people on subjective things such as music taste is an important life skill. With the rise of social media like Twitter that can create these echo chambers/circle jerks, a lot of sad, sad people go berserk at the sight of someone dissing their favourite band *cough Kpop Stans cough*. As long as you can defend your positive opinion about a band in a polite manner then almost all the members on here will hear you out or agree to disagree themselves, I can guarantee that. I do that in threads myself. Unless the Reddit OP (deleted user, that's a good sign) is talking about the joke posts or the forum jokers on here, in which case I can only say that OP is being disingenuous by pretending to his feewy-weewies hurt by that one user who called his Honmei "The Kenny G of Visual Kei" or whatever
 
There's people who've been on this site since TW. There's people who have been VK fans since I was learning long division in elementary on here. And guess what? They have been nothing but kind to me so far. I went on another music forum (for western music) and my intro thread was mostly people grilling me about their fav bands who I never heard of and people making fun of me. Go onto any intro thread here and you won't find that at all. I would know because I try my best to welcome new users there myself. This place is great, and I don't agree with anyone who says otherwise. 

Every forum has dicks, you have to be deluded if you think there is a forum where everyone is all loving and peaceful. haha. But tbh from my experience here I don't feel this person at all, yeah there's the odd nob but generally it's good vibes and I enjoy chatting about all these awesome bands with everyone sooooo....

WOW it's me again, this time I finally finished scanning volume 29, from 1995.
I go on and on about it on the actual blog page, but for anyone who looks through it; it's really interesting to see the beginnings of certain themes and concepts in visual kei, especially the 'cyber' visual that became popular nearer the new millennium, and also there's some nods to the more heavy visual style of kote kei that was developing. There's great graphic design from DIE-ZW3E, a very old Shazna ad (with Katsura on drums, who as we know later joined BAISER), Laputa, Penicillin, THE DEAD POP STARS, etc. etc. A long Hyde feature is there also; Tetsu-era MALICE MIZER too, Genkaku Allergy ... it's a good volume. My favourite find is a miniscule picture of SAKRUN, they're fantastic.
 
Here's some previews:
 


 
If anything's unreadable, let me know. I'll re-scan pages by page since I don't think it's worth re-scanning everything that's a little blurry.
 
Here's the blog page, the file size is 1.66 GB. enjoy!