5

Visual Kei Fans Are Hardcore To The Point Of Insanity

Samuli Lintula/Wiki Commons

Every subculture has a set of unwritten rules. For Visual Kei fans, the chief rule is: "Look at my favorite band member wrong and I'll eat your soul." Sonya elaborates ...

"Some of the fans can be bloody mental. The girls can get brutal if they think you're moving in on their favorite member ... I once got head butted and broke a finger in three places. Another time, I got stabbed with a broken drumstick. It actually went in deep enough to leave a nasty scar on my back. I had an earring ripped out of my ear and I damn well know it wasn't an accident. That nasty cunt threw it back at me."

wetwebwork / Wiki Commons
"Next time I'm taking the ear part!"

"I've even seen girls get their hair pulled out of their head or purposely slammed into at shows so hard their ribs broke. I also know a fan who had her nose broken more than once. Mostly, though, if you piss off the wrong people, it starts off as cyber abuse. I escaped that by deleting a generous portion of my social media, but some fans have killed themselves over cyber-bullying ... According to another story I heard from an older friend of mine, a guy in some band was paying too much attention to one girl, so the other fans actually tried pushing her in front of a train."

Meditations / pixabay
It's one thing to love metal -- it's another to hear "Crazy Train" and get inspired to make one a weapon.

4

Some Visual Kei Bands Are Also Prostitutes

F3al2 / iStock

Hardcore fans of Visual Kei are known as "bangya," which is both a Japanese portmanteau of "band girl," and an accurate description of their hobbies. Sonya insists that a real bangya would never sleep with her honmei, even if they ejaculated free concert tickets. But there are still plenty of horny female fans out there who would, which is why some groups cash in by turning themselves into musical prostitution rings.

"We call this 'mitsu,'" Sonya explains. "Every month you send your favorite band member an amount of money. If you go low-end, it could be anywhere from [$200-400] a month. In these kinds of relationships, you get to maybe talk with the guy on the phone. The more expensive ones can go as high as [$1,000] a month. What you usually get with these are dates and sex. He will meet you, take you to Disneyland, bring you home, fuck you, and whisper how he loves you.

Rob Young/Wiki Commons
The Happiest Place Ending On Earth

I once met a girl who pays [~$5,000] a month, and for that, she had a song written about her by her honmei ... I've never done mitsu, and it gives me the creeps."

The whole practice is very hush-hush, but also widespread in the industry. That's why, according to Sonya, "A lot of bands are just in it for the pussy. Some literally don't even know how to play their instruments because they don't have to. When I ask my friends why they like this or that band, they talk about how cute the bassist is, etc."

Georges Seguin/Wiki Commons
Plucking at guitar strings is optional, but tugging at heart strings is mandatory.

3

Being A Fan Costs A Small Fortune

photoncatcher / iStock

A bangya is basically a music fan that was bitten by another bigger, more radioactive music fan. Their dedication is insane:

"I have probably spent somewhere above [$50,000] while being a bangya," Sonya says. "We have cheki, little Polaroids of band members that we trade like Pokemon cards. They cost about [$4] a pop. I once bought 100 of them ... Another time I traveled hundreds of kilometers to Nagoya just to pick up a [special edition] CD to make my collection complete. Bye bye [$250]."

eBay
You could go on eBay but where's the adventure in that?

Let's break down one of Sonya's recent expenses, mainly because it will make us feel better about dropping $50 on Kim Kardashian: Hollywood last week. "Last year, I did a tour for my band. It was 18 lives, with the tickets being about [$40] each. I traveled 12 times, with each averaging [$70], though there were two times where it was [$180] each. I spent [$30] per day on food and other basic expenses, I needed a hotel five times, while my cheki count for the tour in total was 82. At one live, I bought about [$120] in merchandise and [$250] in CDs."

2

The Bands Want To Be The Only Men In Your Life

Ceasol / Wiki Commons

Once you've seen a bunch of androgynous guys dressed in one square foot of leather and 50 square feet of lace, frantically gyrating while shredding a guitar behind their heads, your threshold for lust changes:

"I find myself on dates with nice, successful men, just staring at them and thinking 'You know, my favorite vocalist would fucking hate this little prissy-ass boy.' They broke my standards for men. Like, nothing feels the same as being at a concert and your favorite member smiles at you, and you know it is just for you."

Georges Seguin/Wiki Commons
Visual Kei's answer to Teddy Roosevelt, apparently.

1

The Band And The Fans Eventually Become Your Family

Dimitri Hakke / GettyImages

According to Sonya, it's impossible to recall every single nice thing her favorite band has done for her ... because it would reveal her real identity and get her murdered by an insane fan at the next show. But, for example: "When I popped over to Japan to attend a show, I didn't actually have a ticket, but my honmei put me on the guest list after I sent them a message. In the west, bands are rarely this close with their fans. Some of the bands I follow(ed) would often ask me (and only me) to hang back after the show with them."

NEO
When the heroes of every Final Fantasy want to chill, you dare not say no.

It's like getting to live in the friend zone with your favorite musicians. And for all the harping we do about the crazy fans, Sonya actually loves the fanbase at large. "We always have one another's backs. We give each other cheki, concert tickets, and we get drunk together. One time I was so drunk that they stayed with me until 2 a.m. until I got on my bus, even though they had a hotel and could have left me hours before ... Sometimes bands have shitty fans that all openly hate one another but most of us are only looking for a safe place to be ourselves."

And what do you call a group that cares for and loves you, despite all your faults? That's right: A family. And what do you call a family that also asks for your total devotion and all of your money? A cult. Or Visual Kei. One has better fashion sense than the other.

Melissa Fossum/PHX/Voice Media Group via Getty Images
It could have been worse. They could have become Juggalos.

Cezary Jan Strusiewicz is a Cracked columnist, interviewer, and editor. Contact him at c.j.strusiewicz@gmail.com.

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