Very first VK band you got into and how did you get into them?

[yurameki24 99]

9 hours ago, saiko said:

 

Very interesting! Love the sound and visuals!

 

I've heard that the usage of hair and make-up in Kpop was pretty inspired into vk bands of the 90s. Is that true?

Japan and South Korea exchange

[Ikki 807]

Waaaay back in 1998, I first discovered visual kei while I was staying at my then 21 year old sister's dorm room for the weekend.  This was the first time in my life I was ever on the internet.  I was searching on Yahoo or some other very 1998 search engine for Pikachu/Pokemon stuff since as a 9 year old kid, I was crazy about Pikachu.  I some how managed to stumbled upon an English languaged Dead Pop Stars fansite and was really weirded out that one of the members (Kenzi) was a huge Pikachu fan.  I totally forgot what visual kei was after finding that site until a year later.

 

So in 1999, we finally had a computer and internet at my house.  Also, I was now super into Digimon and was active in a lot of the Digimon EZ Boards that were around.  On one of these forums, I had two forum besties that were into visual kei.  One was a HUGE Glay fan and liked all of those visual kei bands that were more mainstream/not over the top looking groups.  The other one was more into groups like Malice Mizer and Dir en grey; the more over the top the group's look was, the more she liked them.  The one that was into the more over the top groups one day sent me a link to La'Mule's song "Inspired" that was hosted on someone's Geocities website.  I remember it took me over an hour to download the 96kbps mp3 file.  Oh the pain and the horror of dial-up internet.  But after I was able to download the song, I couldn't wait to listen to it since I thought La'Mule looked so cool and really wanted to like the band.  I don't remember my reaction was because that was like 20 years ago, but it was a positive one as I am still a huge La'Mule fan and I managed to stick with visual kei for all of those years.  I just try not to interact with the fandom that much in the last 10 years due to the toxicity that some times reeks the vk fandom.

 

[secret_no_03 959]

November 2004 I saw Full Metal Alchemist and discovered VK through L'Arc en Ciel, then from there I found DIR EN GREY on Amazon and imported Withering to Death which was my first album by them and still my favorite to date. From there I ordered the BOX collection by X Japan, discovered PS Company's bands, so MIYAVI, the GazettE, etc. I then moved on to other stuff like Moi dix Mois, GACKT, PENICILLIN, machine(can never find their stuff these days.) and the rest as they say, is history. I have a strong affinity to DIR EN GREY even after all these years because they changed their name from DEATH MASK to DIR EN GREY on my birthday lol, and although I have had a love/hate relationship with their stuff since Marrow of the Bone, I'm always willing to give each new release a shot, the same being the case for the GazettE as well since Dim.