Good job, John. Our pal John “Straight from Japan” Winner very honorably and not at all pushily convinced YouTube Reaction Industry participant Mac Ryan Mac to take in and, you know, react to PassCode:
“This is such a great combination of idol music and rock.” Yes it is.
If this cat seems familiar to you, it’s because he gave the same treatment to DEEP GIRL a little while back. In this case, while Showroom’s own idols got a favorable reception, I think my dude might actually turn to goo if exposed to the even heavier and/or face-meltier areas of PassCode’s catalog.
Also, Ryan: Her name is Yuna, the voice is real, and she’ll be the sweetest inhabitant your nightmares ever had.
Until you finally meet Ayuni D, I guess.
These react videos are the kind of thing that ruin a fandom. Please do not promote them.
Completely disagree. So we shouldn’t promote them to a wider audience in order for more people to enjoy them and get into the scene? Sounds like someone is trying to be a hipster and failing miserably. Music is to be enjoyed by everyone not just the select few who knew about said groups before they get popular.
How exactly do they ruin a fandom, that just sounds silly. If anything it will bring more folks into the fold. I can only see this as a positive for Japanese musical acts.
LOL, if you actually think any kind of idols are really “underground”.
As for video his reaction always seem to be very positive (I think I saw his Babymetal and Band Maid reaction videos previously).
I’m sympathetic to your spirit, friend, but I’m on the side of the others who’ve commented — this website’s supposed to be a tool for making more Western fans of “our” idols; even the ones who are legitimately in the underground can get a nice financial boost by dint of having more people willing to buy their stuff, even if it means traveling across continents to do so.
I couch “our” in quotes because that scenester thing, with fans wanting to have a position of ownership of artists and their work, is a net negative. Hard Times does a great job of skewering the mindset; once there are finances involved, which is true even for the most small-time of song-and-dance units, it’s counterproductive to cultivate a minimizing approach to fans, because fans are dollars (or yen); there’s a difference between changing what you do to have more widespread appeal and having what it takes to have more widespread appeal if only for want of exposure.
And at its core, idols or any kind of performer, they aren’t “ours.” They belong to nobody but themselves. Yeah, surges in popularity do tend to spoil the original fan culture around an act (why I stopped actively being an Internet Babymetal Fan, for instance), but if third-person you wants to preserve that, it’s up to third-person you to be proactive in those spaces and influence the behavior of others (which, granted, ultimately becomes a numbers game that even the most devoted gatekeeper will lose). Or the performers themselves can be instructive toward fans around wotagei and other behavioral things — if they care to.
But more specifically to this case, PassCode’s on the way to actual international presence; if somebody’s going to get an actual by-the-gods reaction video treatment, that’s probably the case anyway, or they’re at the very least well beyond the borders of the underground. The videos are more symptom than sickness, after all.
And if the root of your comment is really “I don’t like reaction videos,” fair enough. I don’t like most of them just because they’re often canned drama (I also dislike unboxing videos!).
“…surges in popularity do tend to spoil the original fan culture around an act (why I stopped actively being an Internet Babymetal Fan, for instance)”
Good Lord tell me about it. I used to be a very active participant in BM online forums, Reddit in particular, but pretty much all of them have become very toxic places in just a span of a little over a year. I had to leave that place alone because of people being hypocritical about elitism and some acting as if they were a martyr or a god to the fandom and I noticed a whole lot of the original quality posters left as well or don’t post as often, just sit back and watch the shitstorm.
BABYMETAL Facebook fan clubs are the worst though. You can’t even read a couple decent posts of substance without dealing with tired memes, people arguing over trivial things, the same pictures being posted 100 times, and folks getting mad about “haters” (aka a person/people who happen to have a different opinion about music than oneself).
One of the pitfalls of popularity I guess.
I was super duper afraid that the BM hordes would descend on the Best of 2016 stuff — even had a little behind-the-scenes conversation with Terry about it — and take it over as they’re wont to do with any and every poll that appears with Babymetal’s name on it, but folks kindly refrained from sharing and we were all spared (of course, the flipside was that BiSH won everything, but at least it was honest 🙂 ).
I was pretty active on Reddit, too, right up until Metal Resistance came out. I like the album, I really do, but holy crap there are people in that space who just will not tolerate any kind of suggestion that Babymetal’s capable of being anything less than perfect. Between that and the SAME FLARGIN’ FOOD AND TOMATO JOKES ALL THE GOLDURNED TIME, it was time to check out.
(Yui’s still my kami-oshi, so we’re all good with the Fox God.)
Yep that’s the main reason why I didn’t share it to any public forum too and rather to keep it within the bounds of the regular visitors to the site and contributors.
Ahh, Yui-chan huh. Nice, she’s great. For me Moa-chan is the most supreme quintessential idol out there. I’ll leave it at that or I will go on explaining my reasons forever haha.
Brining in more outsiders will result in a watered down product, it happens every time. Let us enjoy what we have, none of these idols are hurting for money.
outsiders? A lot of people here were once “outsiders” what sort of inane nonsense are you spouting? If a genre and “scene” don’t grow and evolve with the time they instead stagnate and decay, stop clinging to something that isn’t solely yours.
On a separate note if you think they are doing more then just “okay” financially your insane, next you’ll be telling me not to buy their CD’s or merch either cos they don’t need the money right?
I’m so done xD
The genre and scene will evolve just fine without the intrusion of a Western audience wanting to be pleased. This might be hard to comprehend for those new to the Japanese music scene, but it is a reality.
unless your native japanese?, you are just part of the intruding western audience yourself and as such are a massive hypocrite. Your hipster excuses don’t fly here bro.
Your arrogance and self-importance is staggering. Just how long is your beard and how tight are your skinny jeans?
All right, guys, the argument is fine, but we’re right up on the edge of ad hominem, so let’s keep things focused, okay?
Watered down product?
Most of the acts in this “underground scene”(lol) are actually just rock/metal watered down to be tolerable to wotas so that they can pretend they are “undergound rockers” when they pay to shake hands and take selfies with pretty girls.
As soon as this comment thread started, I wondered to myself, “Will this bring Mister Mister into the mix?” 🙂 Your dedication to iconoclasm is admirable.
Your name pretty much explains a lot. It is asinine to wish a group to stay unpopular so you can claim some twisted superiority to those who don’t know them. That is the hipster mentality and it only hurts the artists who make the music you love. Think this through… They stay “underground” (like you want) and can’t make enough money to survive or to keep the label happy. They get dropped or break up for the above reason. You no longer get the chance to hear new music or to see them live. This makes sense to you?
Hey, as a professional #IdolHipster, I resent the implications!
However, this is the right logic. Stasis is basically death in music.
Maniac, he already did BiSH and mixed in a bit of BiS on accident. Oh, the poor soul, he really got raked over the coals for that one.
He has also reacted to Ladybaby, as well as a bunch of VK and J-Rock/Metal bands. I find him quite entertaining, plus he actually takes the time to look up the bands/groups before he watches the videos.
I am now on a campaign to get him to watch Guso Drop and NECRONOMIDOL.
He did BiSH and nobody told me?! Gosh darn, son. If he does get to Necroma, I expect immediate notice. If he ever gets to Tsurezure, I want to know before it even happens!
I’m generally not a fan of REACT videos in general, but I honestly don’t see how they could “ruin a fandom”. Exposure means survival. well that and ticket, media, and merch sales, None of which happens without broadening the audience.
And on that note, PASSCODE doing Chiptune Idol is one of the most natural things ever. I hope they can go even further from here.
I want normies to go out of chika idol and stay go. Thank you.
[Maniac: Almost managed to keep the comment from getting deleted, but you just couldn’t help yourself, so l8er sk8er.]
The truth hurts?
No, you broke the rules.
To answer the question of the thread: I actually liked their songs at the beginning (2014) when I heard them through watching the MVs for it. But already the first time I saw them live, I changed my view and try to avoid them now; leaving the venue during their set, for example. It is just not my type of music and live their songs all result into noise in my ears.
Their fans at the show are another reason, though this doesn’t concern me too much, as you can easily just avoid them by staying in the back.
About the Hipster issue I also see a huge difference in introducing idol groups to open minded people that could become idol fans in the process (like through this site); in contrast to the general western public who wouldn’t get it and probably even want to destroy it (Already forgotten the infamous VICE clip?). So please have more tolerance for different opinions here that in most parts could be just some misunderstanding in the semantics. We are all wotas here!
If I’m thinking of the same VICE video you mentioned then yeah that was horrible journalism pairing joshi kousei cafes & osanpo services with idols, and it being Akishibu Project of all idol groups. I feel the producers of that segment really owe those girls an apology for throwing them into a negative light like that.