History Main / VisualKei

* JustEatGilligan: Just pay your band members fairly/equally, because not doing so causes more trouble than it's ever worth. Same for paying taxes.

It is often considered a sub-genre of J-rock (a term referring to Japanese rock in general), with its roots in GlamRock, ShockRock, GenreMotif/{{Punk}}, HeavyMetal, and Kabuki Theater, though its use outside of Japan is making this somewhat an outdated definition. As is usual amongst more theatrical musical genres, the aesthetics are supposed to be as strong as the music in order to complement and enhance it, and although there have been many trends over the years there is no defining sound.

* ExplicitContent: It's everywhere, at least if you know where to look and can find translations/can understand Japanese. From the very beginning - while Music/XJapan may be better known for such ballads as ''Forever Love'' and ''Endless Rain'' now, a quite large amount of its work is IntercourseWithYou, including ''Stab Me In The Back,'' a song released in ''1987'' that was explicitly about the joys of male/male sex, and of course ''Orgasm,'' which is about ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. Music/BuckTick is nigh-famous for it, as a short browse of its page will show. SerialEscalation and SeinfeldIsUnfunny means that Music/DirEnGrey and Music/TheGazette have stuff that makes X and Buck-Tick look almost innocent in comparison. Almost the only part of Visual Kei that doesn't indulge (openly) are some Oshare bands, and even they have it, they just prefer to hide it behind a lot of innuendo, LyricalDissonance, or similar tricks.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: A common reaction to '80s Visual Shock and Kote Kei by modern fans. Oshare Kei is slowly getting this as of TheNewTens; almost everyone who is a fan of Visual Kei sees Oshare as exceedingly juvenile and cutesy host club music for {{Yaoi Fangirl}}s. That being said, styles in Visual Kei seem to be a CyclicTrope of sorts with the popularity of many styles being largely dependent on the PopularityPolynomial.

** In some cases, the bands themselves are a source of MindScrew, due to their bizarre appearance (relative to most HardRock[=/=]HeavyMetal acts anyway) and to an extent, their videos and live performances. Nagoya and Eroguro bands tend to invoke MindScrew more than other bands, but in a particular case of an entire band being MindScrew incarnate, there is the post-Visual Kei band Music/DirEnGrey, who use NightmareFuel, SurrealHorror and TrueArtIsIncomprehensible in their songs, videos, and live performances. Another band, Kuroyume, approaches the same level of craziness - but whether they kickstarted the whole MindScrew thing in Visual Kei or not is highly debatable

* {{Juggalo}}: Defied: most Visual Kei fans are ''not'' Music/InsaneClownPosse fans, and assuming a Visual Kei artist or even fan dressed in style to be a Juggalo (even if the makeup is vaguely clownish or mimelike) can make you look ignorant or seem insulting.

* CoolLoser: Early on, ''many'' Visual Kei artists were this - ex- or present JapaneseDelinquents, people who tended to be hard-drinking, hard-partying societal outcasts as opposed to easily marketable polished professionals.

** In some cases, the bands themselves are a source of MindScrew, due to their bizarre appearance (relative to most HardRock[=/=]HeavyMetal acts anyway) and to an extent, their videos and live performances. Nagoya and Eroguro bands tend to invoke MindScrew more than other bands, but in a particular case of an entire band being MindScrew incarnate, there is the post-Visual Kei band Music/DirEnGrey, who use NightmareFuel, SurrealHorror and TrueArtIsIncomprehensible in their songs, videos, and live performances ([[WidgetSeries and elsewhere for that matter]]). Another band, Kuroyume, approaches the same level of craziness - but whether they kickstarted the whole MindScrew thing in Visual Kei or not is highly debatable

* WidgetSeries: While it is rooted in HairMetal and other styles of music an fashion, the VK archetype is a uniquely Japanese development that is [[YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm difficult to explain through ordinary means]]. It has [[GrowingTheBeard matured]] so much and tied together [[GenreBusting mutliple styles of music]] in a way that makes it uniquely awesome.
** Marty Friedman once commented about Visual Kei, saying that it's "[[HairMetal glam]]-meets-{{goth|icMetal}}-meets-[[CostumePorn really, really extravagant]] heavy metal...Not Music/TwistedSister guys [[GlamourFailure wearing their moms' clothes kind of feminine]]...[[RuleOfGlamorous it's beautiful]]."

* "Maebashi Visual-Kei!" A 2011 Japanese film about a young man that left his rural life to become a famous Visual Kei artist. Known best for [[TheThemeParkVersion its romanticization and sanitization of the realities]] of Visual Kei, as well as [[WTHCastingAgency casting Johnnys Jimusho actors for everyone involved]] never mind that casting actual indies Visual Kei artists at least as extras could have easily been done.

* ChekhovsGun: Very common in PerformanceVideo - the ''literal'' gun version alone exists in almost too many to count, but most famously including ''Another World'' by Music/{{Gackt}} and ''The Final'' by Music/DirEnGrey - if a gun appears in a Visual Kei PV, it will almost always be used. The non-literal variants ''are'' too many to name, to the point that RedHerring being invoked instead (with what seemed to be one being absolutely meaningless/forgotten about) is often a shocking surprise.

** A lyrical case involves Music/DirEnGrey's ''Mazohyst Of Decadence,'' which, ripped from its context of abortion being a primary method of birth control in Japan, seems like a right-wing anti-abortion rant and UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming, when it's actually lashing out at a society that refuses to acknowledge the need for birth control and sex education and uses the ''most'' painful and traumatizing last-ditch procedure as a substitute for preventing pregnancy in the first place.

** Music/DirEnGrey has rearranged songs being considerably harder than the originals (some even going as high as 10 or 11 in terms of hardness). They've also released ''The Unraveling'', an entire EP of rearranged songs, save for the title track.

* GenreAdultery, GenreBusting, GenreRoulette and GenreShift: Fairly common, especially among the older bands that have lasted. Also a [[CreativeDifferences fairly common reason]] for bands breaking up or changing members.

** Whenever a band goes GenreBusting, [[GenreAdultery plays songs in genres other than rock or metal]], or [[GenreShift outright changes their musical style]], to some degree. As with the general rock/metal scene, GenreBusting is usually seen as bizarre and untrue to the spirit of the subculture and therefore, is not tolerated by everyone in the scene (though the VK scene is more tolerant of such artists and bands). Bands like Music/ExistTrace and Music/TheGazette gain fairly sizable {{Hatedom}}s for having changed their musical styles.

* GoingNative: Non-Japanese Visual Kei artists and the picking up of Visual Kei tropes and styles by underground metal artists outside Japan, and the creation of western Visual scenes, are such in a downplayed way. As in, they developed from admiration of the Japanese style and scene, but not all artists involved are OccidentalOtaku (and being considered as such for the "music only" ones may be a BerserkButton) and have major differences from the Japanese scene (e.g. more women and/or men with female bodies involved, no rules on what one may or may not disclose - for just one example, in the US scene, there are even some Straight Edge v-kei people that even shun drinking and sexual activity - which in the Japanese scene would make them AcceptableTargets for at least some major ribbing if not outright laughingstocks)

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: A ''lot'' of Visual Kei work appears to have been made under the influences of really, really hard drugs, or at least the quite free use of hallucinogens. That said, most of even that isn't made on anything beyond alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine if that. There are some producers and artists who are heavy drug users, but not even they are constantly under the influence while they work.

* IdolSinger: Visual Kei has the gender-inverted version: [[SpearCounterpart young men]] [[PrettyBoy that sparkle]]. More often than not, they are ex-band members or members of active bands who become [[BreakupBreakout breakout stars]], either through recognition for their sheer musical prowess or being chosen for their [[{{Bishonen}} handsome image]] and charismatic personality. Their careers are also more long-lived, lasting well over the typical [[ChristmasCake 25-year age limit]]. Good examples would be Music/{{Gackt}}, Atsushi Sakurai of Music/BuckTick and Music/TakanoriNishikawa.

* FromClonesToGenre: GlamRock, HairMetal, shock rock. Two of the founding bands (Music/XJapan and Music/SeikimaII) started out as Music/{{Kiss}} fans, with SeikimaII being outright clones.

** That said, don't make the mistake that you can necessarily tell someone's sexuality by how androgynous they are. As an example, Music/{{Kaya}} is out as gay and one of the most convincing crossdressers in Visual Kei, but [[Music/MaliceMizer Mana]], another of the most convincing crossdressers, is straight. Also, in Japanese culture, androgyny and crossdressing are not as equated with same-sex attraction as they are in the Western world - whereas being [[TheBear overweight or heavily muscled]] and [[MachoCamp hypermasculine]] behavior ''are'' (for an example, see BaraGenre and its page image).

* CloneByConversion: Accidental, perhaps, but one source of the FountainOfExpies for hide is that he is such an influential artist to the scene and that rightly or wrongly, ''many'' visual kei artists see doing tributes to him or looking like him as personally important for at least a while or to at least rake in a ton of cash from his fans. Therefore, the artists do this to themselves, accomplishing his physical looks and occasionally his mannerisms, for some, to the point of UncannyValley.

* OlderThanTheyLook: Almost everyone in Visual Kei, due to the interest in maintaining "ageless" appearances after early adulthood. For some, it almost reaches UncannyValley levels.

* JustForFun/OneMarioLimit: Yoshiki, Hide/hide, Gackt, Miyavi, Kiyoharu, and quite a few other StageNames and real names are SO attached to the people who became famous for them that people who are NamesTheSame are advised to change or add something to the name (e.g. people named Hideto have gone with Music/{{Hyde}} or [[Music/{{D}} hide-zou]] instead of hide) to avoid name confusion, lots of anger and drama from being seen as derivative off of fame, being assumed to be dead, or other undesirable outcomes.

* IconicLogo: Visual Kei bands have become rather well-known for their band logos, with the crowning examples being Music/XJapan's (it is arguable that the logo of ''Manga/X1999'' was based on the band's logo), Music/TheGazette's and Music/{{Versailles}}' respective logos.