Talk:Visual kei/Archive 1

message: I do not mean to be harsh :), but...
Could somebody please mention some Visual kei events or uses that are not related to music or explain further why Visual kei is not a music genre?
If Visual kei is not strictly a music genre, I would say that at least it is tightly bounded to Japanese music and J-Rock.
xDCDx 10:37, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: This article was pretty clear to me.  The point is its a term for a visual style adopted by bands, and not their musical style.  --Waltonics 01:33, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: First comments on page

message: I’ve added a section about the deaths that happened in Visual Kei during the 90s, I only know the basics so if anything needs fixing or information added, feel free to do so. - Deathrocker 16:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I think the information is more vaild on the respective band pages?  Such as Piass's and Hide's pages.  Hide's death had big enough reprecussions maybe to be discussed here, but its already fleshed out on Hide's page.  People die a lot in all genres of music and literature.  Denaar 02:33, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Deaths in Visual Kei

message: The reason added a 'fact' tage for this is that as it's presented as a quote it needs to be referenced. Who said it? When did they say it? Are they notable? At the moment it's not sourced at all. I'm going to add the tage back becuase we can't present quotes as important to the article as that without any sourcing. ShizuokaSensei 02:56, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's hard to source.  I don't know of anyone besides the Western fan community that thinks that, no one's ever said it officially, and it really comes down to a folk belief of sorts - it's in the collective consciousness because that's what someone told someone else, etc.  That's why I changed the beginning of the sentence, to make it clear that those are "so-called" quotes rather than  "direct statement" quotes.  Moreover, it's only important to the article in that it is a disprovable misconception. MSJapan 13:31, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Look at the Japanese wikipedia.  Most Visual Kei bands have a "theme" or "mission statement" (What is your band's theme is a standard interview question by most Visual Kei Magazines).  X Japan's statement was 「PSYCHEDELIC VIOLENCE CRIME OF VISUAL SHOCK」.  The genre name "Visual Kei" was taken from this statement.  Its hard to source because there isn't much printed material on VK outside of Japanese Magazines/other media. Denaar 02:22, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Almost single handedly" 

message: The article has been rewritten to better conform with WP:V. The notion of visual kei being a music genre, along with the corresponding infobox and category inclusions has been removed, the reasoning being that bands with visual kei aesthetics do not necessarily share any stylistic traits in regards of their music and that occurrences of such looks also appear in other media. - Cyrus XIII 11:16, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Should there be a blurb about X Japan sort of bringing the VK movement to the attention of the Japanese mainstream? I guess I don't have any evidence at the moment, but my impression was that they had brought attention to the VK movement when they released Blue Blood and became famous. Incidentilly, they (or at least Yoshiki) also produced many of the other notable VK bands that followed (Glay, Luna Sea, Dir en Grey), with I think the exception of Malice Mizer. I'm pretty sure I can find a source on that, but I don't have one yet. Should it go up, or would my effort be wasted? Vespertilio 05:03, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You might be right about everything you wrote but while the punk rock article offers reliable sources for its content, the old one about visual kei did not have any of that sort. Verifiability is one of the key principles of an encyclopedia, which should not be a place to collect personal views, preconceptions, or widespread rumors and hearsay. Hence this request goes out to you, Vespertilio and anyone else interested: Go out and look for references, with WP:V and WP:RS in mind, because this subject isn't any less deserving of a decent article than all the others on Wikipedia. - Cyrus XIII 07:14, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've located an article from Billboard(magazine?), dated september 5th, 1992, that discusses Warner Bros., MMG, and Atlantic Records' plans to launch X Japan (called "X from Japan" in the article) worldwide. This seems like a pretty good indication of their popularity, I'd say they're easily the first visual kei band to receive this kind of recognition. I could not however, locate an internet copy of this article, just a scanned image of it. Would that be sufficient enough evidence? I'm not sure how much else we'd be able to find >_>... Vespertilio 17:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks for the edit, I like it better this way. Vespertilio 02:04, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How much does Visual Kei owe to Kumadori paint styles?  That might be a useful comparison. Another way of saying that is, did Kumadori infludence Visual Kei? Bearian 19:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite 

message: I've heard that fashion and music in Japan seems to follow trends in the U.S., delayed about 10 to 20 years. Looking the the picture in the article, I can't help but think that Kiss and 80's hair bands inspired this "visual kei" movement. Surely there was some influence? ~MDD4696 20:22, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is so much similarity between the darker Luna Sea, Dir en Glay visual-kei seems so similar to UK and US Goth bands like the Cure, that it is difficult to believe there was no influence. Also Someone is claiming below that Lolita-Goth fashion style is almost synonymous with Visual-Kei look.--Timtak (talk) 01:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inspired by Kiss, or Goth? 

message: As Toshimitsu Deyama says in an interview on his webiste, X Japan never was visual kei so it's pointless to talk about X Japan here since they were just "visual", not visual kei. 
That's bullshit, look around for news footage for hide's funeral and death. You can hear the news reporters saying "Visual kei band X-Japan". 
Although I played rock music and was a visual rock singer...
and we were at the summit of so-called "visuals"
Darkcat21 12:51, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This distinction between "visual rock"/"visuals" and visual kei is semantic nonsense. - Cyrus XIII 14:59, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: More than that, it's the same thing.  What's the statement in Japanese? It's probably "something-something vijuaru", which is the same thing as visual kei. MSJapan 21:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  X Japan related text removed 

message: I think this page about visual kei needs to rewrite!!!!I have no malice about visual kei(I love X JAPAN and Dir En Grey)But I think Visual Kei is only a japanese name of glam rock,as their characteristics Are same!!!Some of the "faithful" fans may argue that glam rock clothing sucks while visual kei clothing is cool,so visual kei is totally different from glam rock!!!My opinion:But glam rock was a Genre arose in 70s,So THOSE CLOTHINGS suck are reasonable!!!yet in 1970,japanese were worse than England and America!!!If u've seen the video of the Blue Blood tour of X japan,you will find that X japan's dressing was similar to Kiss!!!!If someone still said that visual kei was arose by japan,it's actually a "cultural aggression"to glam rock!!!Also so,I know that there are lots of people think that visual kei and glam rock are actually the same thing,so I think that this page about Visual kei needs to rewrite!!!! Rpoon 15:19, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think visual kei may have it's roots in glam rock, perhaps it started as even an extension of the genre, but I think it's evolved into something quite separate. The current visual scene doesn't seem similar to bands like KISS musically or visually, really. Berserk798 22:23, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

text: It does not similar to band like KISS because those bands like kiss are the band from 1970s!!!Rpoon 14:02, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a tautology.  You might as well call Thomas Edison the American version of Archimedes, and claim that they're not the same because Archimedes is from the 3rd century BC.Mischal 07:37, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

text: (Kiss is not really a good example of glam rock either ... for most of their history, their image was too dark, black & white instead of colourful, masculine (well ... :P) rather than feminine. The people who took Kiss's image to the next level were instead black-metal bands like Immortal with their elaborate corpse paint and spikes. Bossk-Office (talk) 17:40, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

text: this whole page is bs, its all about "omg malice mizer is sooo awsome"   talk about bias  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.124.33.231 (talk) 02:27, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  REWRITE the page of VISUAL KEI!!!! 

message: User Denaar has recently cited a :International Music Feed feature about Japanese rock music as a source to deem visual kei a music genre. The feature consists entirely of statements by musicians and fans involved in the scene, during which visual kei is referred to as a genre at one point and a movement at another. The short video also spends about a third of its length to elaborate on the stylistic ambiguity of Japanese rock music in general.
While this source may signify the ties of visual kei to the Japanese music scene (which this article has pointed out at all times), it does not answer the question of defining musical traits of visual kei. A music genre without — to quote Peter van der Merwe's book Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music — a "basic musical language" of its own is nothing short of being a paradox and hardly encyclopedic.
Hence the previous wording of the subject's nature has been restored, along with some of the content Denaar recently removed. I'll leave it to others to decide whether this was a genuine effort to improve Wikipedia or an imitation of the policy-oriented content removal that has previously happened on the article, to illustrate detrimental effects of that MO (in other words point-making). - Cyrus XIII 14:43, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, we got a problem, and that is that independent sources are nonexistent.  It definitely has musical characteristics, but the problem is that visual has changed in stages throughout its history.  It's not consistently the same, but it is consistent on a phase-by-phase basis. MSJapan 16:21, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We have two sources - both the NY times article as well as the feed that descibe it as a "genre".  I will keep looking, because there are many more sources that say the same thing.  As I said before: If you take into account the the changes over time, the conflict over "style" goes away.  (PS: I have never been to a concert, or seen a concert recorded in a live video, where a Visual Kei drummer did not use Taiko drumming styles incorporated into the music.  That kind of drumming is one of the reasons I like Visual Kei.  Go to a Taiko drumming event and then start watching the VK drummers.  I would have to hunt to find a bass player that did not use running bass lines.  Ideal song lenghth for the radio is 3 - 3:30 mins, most visual bands are 4 mins and up.  Most bands have a "theme" or "mission" statement - which goes in the "why" behind the music which is just as important as the sound.  Check out Antic Cafe's interviews, they were constantly being asked "what is your theme" and they didn't have one (I believe recently they have finally given in and made something up to answer this question).  Most other interviews with bands will be asked what the "theme" is, and many list it on their site (check out Undercode's site - every band has a theme listed).  In a way, all visual bands are "theme bands". These bands are removed from American and Western rock music.  I was at Oni-con when Kisaki spoke about how he tends to make a choice on which cd to buy based on the album covers.  The kind of detailed information we have about rock and roll styles is not easy to access in Japan.  Therefore bands may use styles we consider 'separate' that they do not realize are separate because they are located all in one place in the record store under 'foreign rock' like the Third Stage does (they just have a "overseas" section) . The bands tend to have 5 members instead of 4 as most American bands do.  Bands tend to do a combination of "rush" songs and "ballads" - even bands like Dir en Grey, X, Luna Sea (visual period), Gazette, Antic Cafe - they all do/did it.  There are a lot of other conventions that are more style specific.  Music is usually done in a style that encourages dancing - during old X Japan concerts the fans would make an "X" over their head and jump in the air.  Then they switch it up with ballads to let the fans rest.  The best description I have heard of Visual was from Ryohei from Ayabie, he called his band's sound "dance metal" in a GAB magazine interview).  <-- A lot of the information in the () counts as original research which is why I haven't added it.  Denaar 17:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A music genre without musical characteristics 

message: Many of you don't seem to know what Visual Kei is, please learn Japanese and read about Visual Kei history (The Japanese article is a good place to start) It is much more creditable than this English version. (It has been updated to be more precise, but is likely to be undone by someone) As for the meaning of Kei, a reference to a Japanese dictionary has been provided to show it means System, and not Style. It is a type of rock music, the same way that Shibuya-Kei is a type of Pop music. Go to Japan, learn Japanese, and learn about Visual Kei from there. Stop posting rubbish! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.90.146.98 (talk) 
:I believe, I already provided you with most of these pages on :Talk:Skin (Japanese band), but just in case you missed that:
:* Wikipedia:Civility
:* Wikipedia:No personal attacks
:* Wikipedia:Verifiability
:* Wikipedia:Reliable sources
:* Wikipedia:No original research
:* Wikipedia:Consensus
:* Wikipedia:Three-revert rule
:* Wikipedia:Disruptive editing
:* Wikipedia:Vandalism
:* And one of my personal favorites: WP:DBAD
:These should help putting your recent editing here and on the :Skin article into perspective and show you in what ways they were inappropriate. - Cyrus XIII 12:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Before someone wipes the history section - most of it seems to be confirmed in the articles 219.90.146.98 just linked, so I'm requesting that section be left for a day or two, if people are ok with me going back and making sure we have a source for everything, line by line.  It does agree with information I have read in magazines about the history of Visual kei before. Denaar 14:55, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is Visual Kei 

message: I vaguely recall another ip revert warring on this article. Lets see how a 3 week semi-protection goes. Spartaz Humbug! 14:21, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi Protected 

message: "A genre is a set of rules for generating musical works." ... "Genres are, however, more intersubjective than subjective phenomena.  In each temporal and spacial context, there are certain genre definitions that are relevant and used by the most important groups of actors in the musical field: musicians, producers, marketers and audiences." Fornas, Johan The future of rock: discourses that struggle to define a genre
The following article is probably the best source I've read about style and genre.  The use of "genre" comes from journalists with "film, cultural, and literary studies" backgrounds. (This is why "classical" or "art" music is described in "movements," while "popular" music is described in genres). Style is the type of sound, genre takes other factors into account such as lyrics and subject matter. Categorical Conventions in Music Discourse: Style and Genre
Now, this source linked by Jun Kaneko Bounce.com Is number 13 series of articles to "teach" about different music types.  It does say that Visual Kei can be defined bands that use makeup, costumes, and a sense of presentation, as well as presenting a unique/pecuiliar view of the world. It does not have "one single music style" you can point to, however, it is considered a genre like in the same mannar as "Shibuya Kei" which there is no "cohesive" sound to. (Check out: All Music Guide). It says "Basically the foundation is New Roma and LA Metal sense of gender neutrality,  along with the image of goth etc, emulating all of the following - Lolita, Psycopath, and Occult interests, grotesque and taboo topics, with a radical sent of taste and individual sensibility. It started with a hard rock and heavy metal sound, as well as being influnced by Boowy's beat rock and punk.  Classical music and Industrial have also been big influences.
Then, it goes on to talk about the history, labels, important bands, and a suggestion of albums to listen to.  My translation was done way to quickly just as a way to get it down on this page, but this is definately a source that explains the genre in terms of substance (Lyrics and motivations) as well as describing the influences on the sound. Denaar 17:18, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They simply refuse to understand, and I believe those users can't speak Japanese.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jun kaneko (talk • contribs) 19:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I do actually speak a fair amount of Japanese, and I can assure you that although you view the Japanese article as being "correct", not all of its content is up to standard, the non-English wikis will never be a source for one another, and I don't see a single source within the Japanese article, implying that it could all be original research. The exernal links on the page (if those are to be sources) do not include the vast amount of information on the Japanese article. --Jacob Talk 20:39, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: To clarify: By article you mean the Japanese wikipedia article?  I was stating that the reference that I linked to in my comments covers most/all of the the information on the page that he modified here, I wasn't speaking about the Japanese wikipedia article. Denaar 01:25, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, none of that was directed at you, but rather "Jun Kaneko". Some of the material I was replying to has been removed or relocated though. Sorry for the confusion. --Jacob Talk 05:32, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

text: No objection to the addtion of a History section, but please maintain consistency with the current article in style and content. - Cyrus XIII 03:38, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is Genre, Part II 

message: I've just came across this page and I've changed the "literal" translation at the very top from the cryptic "visual system, lineage, group" to simply "visual style".  I see that there has been a somewhat baffling debate here, not much of which seemed to revolve around the meaning of -kei.  For the purists who may push this point, the absolute literal meaning of 系 is "string"; and system, linage, group and any other meanings you can come up with were all extended meanings from the abstraction of "string".  The problem with East Asian language is that you can hardly ever translate anything literally, because it would just turn into pure nonsense.  I've chosen the word "style" here because, much like the term -kei, it is quite vague and overused, and could fit in most context i could think of. o (talk) 04:46, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  new edit 

message: use of non-english sources for an english article is discouraged unless there is a translation or as a very last resort. --Neon white 02:02, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, that's not what the policy says: WP:RSUE - If English sources aren't of the same quality, non-English sources can be used. It doesn't state to provide a translation, however if one is provided, the original Japanese text should be available as well. Most the English sources we have are not extensively researched and tend to have a narrow focus (such as only current bands or only one band). The consensus on this page early on was that we needed Japanese sources. Only two are used for the article. Denaar 02:17, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of non-english sources 

message: "In 1992, X Japan launched an attempt to enter the European and American markets, but it would take another 8 years until popularity and awareness of Visual Kei bands would extend worldwide."
Although that is true, it might want to be noted that X-Japan themselves did gain some popularity in the U.S. towards the later part of their career (93-94) when they were first around, although not from the Visual scene. They had a following from Power and Progressive Metal fans, and have had videos on the original Headbangers Ball.JanderVK (talk) 01:28, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: X-Japan and Popularity

message: How is the picture of an alleged "fan" remotely relevant to the article?  If it was clearly visual kei inspired, then maybe it would have some relevance, but it's not. Panzertök (talk) 23:48, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm removing the picture.  If anyone objects please discuss. 128.6.30.197 (talk) 01:35, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The picture has absolutely no relevance in my opinion. The fan is also not dressed in visual kei. I took a look over history and the removal of the image is continually undone. I believe the user should discuss why the image is relevant to the article or be banned from further editing of this article. Follis (talk) 16:16, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Purpose of Picture?