puss_nd_boots | (no subject)

It looks like we kindasorta have another Gaze wank on Tumblr again. Somebody apparently posted something to one of those secret/confession communities accusing Ruki of being "too mainstream" and saying the person "missed the old Ruki." This led to a few long, angry rants being posted that amounted to "Don't blame Ruki for everything GazettE does! He's not the whole band!" (This was a bit educational for me, because I learned there had been a big wank about Shiver being used as an anime opening - the release of that song predated my entry into the fandom. Seriously - why is a band doing an anime theme a BAD thing? That's how the fandom grows - I wouldn't be into any J-rock at all, period, had not Alice Nine done the season 2 opening for Meine Liebe).

I'm just kind of baffled as to where they got "too mainstream" from. Visual kei, by its very nature, isn't mainstream - it's a niche culture, same as punk and Goth are here. Is it because GazettE toured South America and Europe? (International appeal doesn't equal mainstream. Anime is still considered niche despite having devotees all over the world). Does it have something to do with Black Moral? (Definitely not mainstream. Far as I know, you can't buy Black Moral in Hot Topic - dammit. It's still marketed just among the fans). Is this just the latest, veiled version of "OMG GAZETTE'S NEW MUSIC IZ TEH SUXXORS WHYYY CAN'T THEY GO BACK TO HOW THEY WERE!!111!!!1!!!!???"

Whatever it is, I hope it blows over quickly, because it's a pretty pointless wank. Come on - Ruki, who's an independent thinker and iconoclast, is about as far away from "mainstream" - especially the Japanese concept of the term - as you can get.

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I knoooooooow! It's ridiculous, right? *sigh* It's one thing to not like what the band or Ruki himself is doing right now, but to call them sell-outs and mainstream? o.O Like you said, they're VK and VK is NOT mainstream in any interpretation of the word! I think part of it could be that these people are so used to GazettE themselves, listening to the music every day, only hanging out with other fans, only talking about them online, filling their waking hours with the band in some form or another all the time... that they lose sight of the fact that most people around them have no idea what the hell the GazettE is. Maybe they miss the indie days, maybe they miss the titillation they experienced when they first started listening to the band? I don't know, just speculating to find some kind of logic in the craziness.

The uproar about Shiver was in parts about how the Gazefandom would suddenly have an influx of bad, icky anime fans! Ewww, anime-cooties!!! ;) The band was happy to get a new audience for this one song, but some of the fans were not because the GazettE is their band or something and anime fans are not worthy. That was the gist of it, and it was ugly as fuck. It's bad when Ruki has to address it, right?

What went around today all of a sudden, was a rumour that Black Moral was closing, despite the fact that Gaze staff, Ruki, Aoi, the BM twitter, OHP, etc and so on, have not said anything about such a thing happening. *sigh* It seems to have started with one person with too much time on their hands and a desire to upset people and cause wank, and then it spread quickly over Tumblr. As things tend to do. One reblog is all it takes, isn't it? And then the ball is rolling downhill...

I can almost see where the Black Moral rumor came from. Over the weekend, I officially joined Heresy as an overseas member. Now, the Heresy site has a link to the Black Moral shop. I brought that up, but I couldn't get past the front page. There was some untranslated Japanese there, which I figured meant "Come back when we post the goods for the 2013 Japanese tour" - which makes sense. So I shrugged and figured I'd try again once the tour was underway. Now, I can see a scenario where someone else did the same thing, didn't apply the "Oh, yeah, they're gearing up for the release of the new tour collection, it's probably closed until then" logic, thought "OMG BLACK MORAL HAS CLOSED!!11!11!!1!!" and posted it on Tumblr. Commence apocalypse.

I can also see the "tunnel vision" scenario you described regarding some of the fans - the ones that immerse themselves SO completely that they lose perspective. (Which also explains some of the wanks that break out - a distorted sense of what is and is not vitally important).

And, yeah, I can see where long-time fans can miss the days when the Gazemen were indie - but in that case, why not switch fandoms, or take on a second one? (Other than the fact that loving more than one VK band takes Careful Financial Planning. Trust me, I know). Mejibray is a very popular band right now that seems to be in the vein of early GazettE - why don't these people follow them?

The icky-anime-cooties thing is just SO ridiculous, especially considering that most VK fans start out as anime fans, or at least were anime fans at some time! Yeesh, that reminds me of the wank that broke out when the D. Gray-Man anime was licensed - "OMG OUR FANDOM WILL BE FILLED WITH NARUTARDS!!!!111!!!!1!!!111!!" (Never mind that at least half the fandom first found the property through Viz's officially licensed manga releases . . .)Why does it matter what route someone takes to a fandom, as long as they arrive there? Is someone who discovered a band through her friends MORE OF A FAN OMG!11!!! than someone who found them because they performed the theme to an anime, or because their music was used in an AMV that was shown at a con? Of course not. Geez.

Edited 2013-10-14 19:04 (UTC)

I love this.
All of it.
(I also died at "OMG GAZETTE'S NEW MUSIC IZ TEH SUXXORS WHYYY CAN'T THEY GO BACK TO HOW THEY WERE!!111!!!1!!!!???" so thank you for that)

<//3

Oh, I have seen SO much of that stuff on Tumblr, especially on secrets communities. It deserves to be parodied. (And it's not just GazettE, too - the Alice Nine fandom is just as bad with that, if not worse). I always want to say to these people, "If you don't like the work they're producing, why are you still in the fandom?"

Right but the thing is, you don't even have to consider yourself 'in the fandom' to start complaining... and in reality, 'in the fandom' is just a term. It doesn't mean anything.
People really should stop complaining and JUST ENJOY THE MUSIC!

<//3

Damned straight! You said it Sixth Gun Sista :D

\(^o^)/

<//3

I recently explained the GazettE's situation to a coworker as the following: "They're very popular at what they do, but what they do isn't very popular." (Was I channelling Wolverine there? Possibly. >_<) I do think the internet is to blame here - just because we know them and can get hold of their stuff easily doesn't mean that everyone in Japan knows who they are. Plus look at Twitter - Ruki has 200,000ish followers. Sounds a lot, but compare him to Gackt who has 600,000ish. So... Yeah. VK is still niche, and we need to remember that a bit more at times.

The Wolverine channeling is a very good way of describing it! You get a reality check about the position of VK in the Japanese music industry as a whole when you go to Tower Records in Shibiya. They had the floor display for Alice Nine's new release, for sure - but most of the main floor was taken up by idols, Johnny's, K-pop - and the same music we get in the West. (And I'm sure that VK bands that aren't in the top rank - i.e., GazettE, Alice Nine, Nightmare and possibly SuG - don't even get the new release floor display). They do have a VK section tucked away on the second floor, which is almost all major label bands - if you want most indies bands, you have to go to one of the VK specialty stores (we went to Like an Edison in Tokyo and Pure Sound in Osaka). Hell, I'll bet a lot of VK fans in less urban areas of Japan have to order all their CDs online like we do.

Oh honey, they can suck my dick and I don't have one LOL :D Fuck them! We are true Gaze lovers :D hehe :) <3