PV Review; Velvet Eden; Sad Mask; Band Review; Visual Kei
I just learned that there is a fat guy in Super Junior. One of Super Junior's many unnecessary members is a fat guy. But no time for that! I got PVs to review.
As you'll recall in my last entry, I said I would take some time to look back on PVs from Visual Kei's past, as well as Visual Kei's present. Basically, any Visual Kei PV that marks either:
A) a specific time and subgenre of the subgenre that was popular;
B) a more recent PV that showcases the downfall of Visual Kei as a credible form of musical expression; or,
C) a completely random and baffling video that makes absolutely no sense and dates itself totally while also managing to alienate its fans in addition to itself.
Today's PV is a mixture of A and C.
Once again in my last entry I mentioned how Malice Mizer was the ultimate band back in the day. Foreign Visual Kei fans adored them, and in Japan, Gackt and Co. (Mana, Közi, Yu~Ki and Kami) would appear on TV and in specials and all sorts of things a pretentious, overly-costumed band such as they should have nothing to do with. But it worked really well.
As you know, Visual Kei isn't nearly as popular with fans in Japan as it is with non-Japanese. Visual Kei bands go on world tours and promote heavily in places like Germany and Brazil, because foreign fans are extremely passionate about it, and many would listen solely to Visual Kei music (until Kpop came along). Not to say there aren't even more devotedly crazy fans in Japan, but there's more access, so it's spread a lot thinner, and not really as popular anyway. It's a very niche market. So when Malice Mizer (who by no means is the first band of its type, simply the first one to obtain popularity with girls I was pathetically crushing on in middle school, so I use it them as my example) would show up places in outlandish costumes, each with their own distinctively crazy flamboyant personality, girls went crazy too, and they were extremely famous within the circles of Visual Kei fans. They acted in interviews the way Lady GaGa does now:
Gackt: I am a vampiiiirrreee...
Mana: -whispers something to painfully casual assistant lady-
Painfully Casual Assistant Lady: He says he's happy to be here.
Közi stands there looking like an insane detective, Yu~Ki fiddles with his costume festoons, and Kami falls asleep.
Gackt: We drink blooooddddd...
The majority of what I take away from Malice Mizer really comes from their interviews on the show "Hot Wave". With all the huge costumes flying everywhere, the dead-serious way they take themselves, and the bland, drunk interviewer lady asking them questions like it's a completely normal pop group she's sitting down with, it's all just so absurd.
Fans loved it. Or at least, thought it was interesting. And their PVs were some of the best you'll ever see, to me very clear in their message, very ambient and theatrical. It really defined exactly what they were, and was just what you pictured when you thought of them, which is rare for a band. Their Illuminati PV stands out as one of the most famous, for capturing their current look, lots of blood and sex and violence, nudity which made it extremely notorious and only drove more people to try to see it, and a good song as well.
I feel strange explaining Malice Mizer right now. Kpop became hugely popular not a year or two ago, but that year or so ago, I still remember people obsessing over Malice Mizer. Now it seems like everyone has forgotten.
The funny thing is, I was not and am not even a fan of Malice Mizer. I've only heard a few of their songs and seen approximately three of their PVs. But there were just so omnipresent in the lives of some of my friends, that I just gathered this idea about them.
But the "Gothic" subgenre of Visual Kei was huge. So many bands looked like and sounded like one another, everybody in all black, or else Victorian fever-dream garb. You probably know of Gothic Lolitas and Gothic Aristocrats. That died in about 2002-ish, but before that it was the thing to cosplay. Clothing labels burst into existence to try and cater to the fans, and sponsor bands to wear their clothes (just like they do today, only instead of cool pants, they were shilling tiny hats and dresses with no less than twenty layers of black lace frills).
The room of the girl I liked was filled with skulls and bats and parasols and posters of the "Gothic Visual Kei" scene. Creepy dolls, and dress stands holding the pieces of the outfit she was cobbling together. Also roses and France and whatever the hip things were for Gothic Japanese rock people to cut into their PVs.
Today's band, Velvet Eden (actually, as with MALICE MIZER, it's VELVET EDEN, but that would be annoying as hell to type and read), is a shining example of Gothic Visual Kei.
And the PV I've selected is one of the worst I've ever seen in my life. At this very moment in time, before I go in search of more PVs to review for later entries, I will go on record as saying that today's PV is the worst Jrock PV ever.
Velvet Eden actually was kind of popular and (famous? no... heard of, at least) among the Gothic Visual Kei fans/scene. The members themselves are generally respected and still followed by fans (very, very devoted fans, Velvet Eden had). Velvet Eden Lineup #2 even included Hora, who would be in Schwarz Stein with Kaya (the fairy one) on Mana's record label. Gothic Visual Kei is marked by severe inbreeding.
But today's PV is from the first lineup, consisting of just members Kalm (who looks like an androgynous cyborg) and Dada (who gives Mana a run for his pantalooned money).
Once again, I know precious little about them, and am sure that their many fans and people who are much smarter and more interested in Jrock than I could explain all about them, but I'll do my best.
SAD MASK, ie, for purposes of this review, is Sad Mask, was released in the year 2000.
I have heard precisely two more Velvet Eden songs than I have heard Malice Mizer songs, and they're all pretty cool. Sad Mask reminds me of Lucretia, My Reflection, by The Sisters of Mercy. You know, that kind of distant, pathetically 80's music they play in the background whenever they show the goth kids on South Park.
I actually really like this song. It makes me laugh. Don't get me wrong, the arrangement and sound is great, as is Dada's singing, but... the lyrics. The lyrics.
I defy you to go to a high school, any high school, and find a kid dressed in a black band T-shirt, wearing eyeliner. Sit that kid down and ask him to compose a poem for you. No matter what he writes, the finished product will be Sad Mask. It's so clichéd goth music. Even me, when I try to make the most simpering, emo poem I can think of:
My mask...
Is a sad mask...
My faaaceeee...!
Here is someone's translation of Sad Mask.
Even with all the wretchedness of the PV, I'm watching it and hearing the lyrics, and just thinking "Buhhhh..." It's rough to slog through. But it's so bad, it's good, especially with the accompanying PV. So let's take a look at it!
PV Review - Velvet Eden - Sad Mask
Our PV begins with an establishing shot, which is a bad sign. It's some random Tudor house. Because, as you know, if you're a gothic band, you need to be creepily obsessed with Europe. And since France is out of Velvet Eden's price range, England will have to do. What's next?
Oh, Jesus.
No, I'm OK, it's just literally Jesus. A statue of a crucified Jesus. Because, as you know, if you're a gothic band, you need to get some confusing and possibly sacrilegious paraphernalia up in there ASAP.
Then we get a title card superimposed over a clock. Which is a really great idea if you're Plastic Tree and this is 1998, but Velvet Eden is nothing if not covering all their bases and trying to let you know what they are all about. It's why I said this was the worst PV I'd ever seen. I have a larger PV budget than these folks, and less J-goth artifacts thrown in for the sake of throwing them in. If you like, get a card and write out some overexposed gothic PV imagery, and make your own Bingo score card. Fill it in as we continue on with the PV. A sad mask is the free space.
Actually, keep that handy. Not only will you have Bingo five ways by the time we're done with this review, but it also works on any other Visual Kei PV, especially if you're concerned that you might in fact be watching a J-Goth band.
Next is a montage of a variety of creepy creepy dolls. Nude Renaissance-painting-looking arty dolls, ball-jointed doll heads (just like the ones that litter the floor of any Japanese goth girl!) baby dolls crammed in a glass case. Dada looking like a nice gothic lady. Also the titular Sad Mask itself, shooting at the camera. You can almost hear the editor and the director working out the shots:
"OK, so we have like 30 minutes' worth of creepy dolls?"
"Yeah, just show them all at once."
"The song is only five minutes long."
"Just have them all rush at the viewer really fast."
"All thirty minutes of this?"
"Really fast."
At this point, the actual singing begins. As for the "plot" of this PV... Shakespeare, it's not. We got Kalm (I am pretty sure it's Kalm), and he's dressed in his finest poet shirt and knickerbocker combo, you know. Some piss-poor pageboy hair-cut and those weird Mana lips everybody had during Malice Mizer's reign of popularity. Oh, and, just to round out our predictable imagery, he's got gauze over his eyes. But that's not going to stop him from trying to look his best! Eh? Eh?
He wanders about his tiny closet room, all painted black with a broken mirror and nice chair in the corner. He laments over his insanity, rocking his head around and doing that flailing dance that represents insanity in your average gothic Visual Kei PV. You know the one.
Yeah, you're scary, guy. It's like a student film. All the quick cuts of him jumping around the room and interpretive dancing direct to camera, his eyeball screaming "Ask me what it means! Ask me what it means!"
The Sad Maks twirl around his face, and he swoons out of his ivy-covered window. Because outside, in the forced solarisation effect of someone who has just set up Windows Movie Maker, in the dead leaves lays Dada in his finest fashion wig. I can't... really see, since this video from 2000 is more like an 80's video in which it takes the shoddy camera and throws all the special effects over it just to show that they can, sacrificing the viewer's ability to accurately be able to see what was going on before the filters kicked in.
???
But it seems that Dada, wearing Freddy Krueger claws, sifts through the leaves to find... ! The Sad Mask !
He spies on emo kid Kalm through the peephole, and suddenly appears in the closet room like he's the Batman. If the Batman chose to appear to some bi-curious goth kid.
I am the night.
He sexy dances around Kalm, and there's a sweeping montage shot of... I have no idea. Some stuff.
???
More dolls. A tarantula on a rose. This would be so original and revolutionary if it had been filmed in 1910.
The tarantula also crawls around on Dada's fashion wig, and then... they all fall down. Repeatedly. Dada puts the Sad Mask on Kalm, and everything catches on computer-generated sparkle-fire.
Kalm, with his new stretchy waxed face, wanders around the burning set of Plastic Tree's Tremolo, cursing the gods and flailing around again. I project onto this PV the plot of the film Tanin no Kao, "The Face of Another". He hated his old damaged face, but the new mask makes him into something he's not, someone he doesn't know! Also, lots of experimental psuedo-artsy crap. This PV is like that movie, only far less pretentious. Who'd have thought that the combined talents of Kyo "World's Best Actress" Machiko and Nakadai "I Am the Greatest Samurai" Tatsuya couldn't salvage something from the existentialist bullshit of that script? But I digress.
He tries desperately to cut off this monstrous mask, and save himself and Dada's finest Victorian garb from the flames, but it's too late. The mask has sunk into his face and has taken control, and in its destruction, it reduces everything to ash, including itself.
Dada, the instigator, stands alone in the dark aftermath of the fire, and blows out a candle.
Please note that basically all of that last part I interpreted myself, because, with the exception of Kalm flailing around and Dada snuffing out the candle, none of that is actually in the PV.
But... yeah, that's the video. Dolls, flailing, fire, end.
SAD MASK
It's laughably bad. Everything is cheap and thrown in for the sake of including lots of images without any real substance. The camera work and special effects are just awful, to the point that I don't know what I'm looking at for almost forty percent of this PV. But really, it's a great song, and this video definitely is well into the "so-bad-it's-good" category. I watched a few more Velvet Eden PVs in the process of this review, and they're just what you'd want a late-90's/early-2000's era Gothic Visual Kei PV to be. Malice Mizer PVs have waaaay too high a quality, which makes you feel like they took themselves so deadly seriously (which a few of the members did). Velvet Eden is just more fun, and interesting, and even though I only saw this video in 2006, it's still very nostalgic. The crappiness of the video and the painful low-budgetness of it just makes the entire experience of watching Velvet Eden rather endearing. This look and this music was dated at the time, so, in a weird way, it's not dated now. Does that make sense?
The Sad Mask PV is like a fan's interpretation of Plastic Tree's Tremolo. There are many similar visual elements, and Kalm is dressed just like Li'l Ryutaro, but Tremolo is quite possibly the most perfect PV ever made, capturing absolutely everything you would want from the song and appearance on every level. It's entertaining, artistic, nostalgic, modern, Visual, and represents the band and the song exactly, without taking literal cues over the entire thing, instead of Sad Mask's Random Gothic Imagery Video #86. But by throwing absolutely everything they could think of and/or afford into the PV all at once, coupled with the obvious lyrics, makes the whole Sad Mask PV very indicative of what sorts of things were popular at the time amongst the moody set.
So Velvet Eden is firmly on the "good" side of Visual Kei (and I'm aware there's some sort of categorisation to this whole thing and they aren't technically considered Visual Kei somehow? I don't care, I'm lumping everything in together and you can't stop me). It looks like you'd expect it to and it sounds like you'd expect it to, and it's arranged and performed by talented people and enjoyed moderate popularity. It's bad, but I am the type of person who never has taken Visual Kei seriously. Yeah, I know the girls I liked who liked it were seriously devoted to gothic things or Visual Kei things or rock music things, but I don't like Visual Kei music. My favourite bands (also admittedly crappy, but oh well) are not Visual Kei or even Japanese, and with the exception of traditional Japanese music and soundtracks or bands inspired by traditional Japanese music, I barely even listen to Japanese music at all. But I do on occasion like to listen or watch Visual Kei. Visual Kei holds a special place in my heart because, even at its most trite, it's enjoyable. It's fun to watch. And several are even good to listen to. You don't expect to find a musical genius dressed up in h.NAOTO, but you will find a hopefully interesting musician selling the clothes to the preteen fans who love them. It's Visual because the music is a part of the overall effect, but also because the music itself, like pop music, is more about the look and what's popular instead of who can sing the best or play the best. And since Sad Mask is cheap and predictable and bad, but not annoying and not a direct affront to my ears, it's the exact guilty pleasure thing I look for when I want to listen to/watch something Visual Kei.
And you can watch Sad Mask here.
What's the worst PV you've ever seen? The worst Visual Kei singer you've ever heard? Who's to blame for the reason you stopped listening? Give me some suggestions, and I might review them in an upcoming entry!
Just so you know, the next PV up will make me take back every nice thing I ever said about Visual Kei. In fact, it's enough to put us all off of music forever. You've been warned.
As you'll recall in my last entry, I said I would take some time to look back on PVs from Visual Kei's past, as well as Visual Kei's present. Basically, any Visual Kei PV that marks either:
A) a specific time and subgenre of the subgenre that was popular;
B) a more recent PV that showcases the downfall of Visual Kei as a credible form of musical expression; or,
C) a completely random and baffling video that makes absolutely no sense and dates itself totally while also managing to alienate its fans in addition to itself.
Today's PV is a mixture of A and C.
Once again in my last entry I mentioned how Malice Mizer was the ultimate band back in the day. Foreign Visual Kei fans adored them, and in Japan, Gackt and Co. (Mana, Közi, Yu~Ki and Kami) would appear on TV and in specials and all sorts of things a pretentious, overly-costumed band such as they should have nothing to do with. But it worked really well.
As you know, Visual Kei isn't nearly as popular with fans in Japan as it is with non-Japanese. Visual Kei bands go on world tours and promote heavily in places like Germany and Brazil, because foreign fans are extremely passionate about it, and many would listen solely to Visual Kei music (until Kpop came along). Not to say there aren't even more devotedly crazy fans in Japan, but there's more access, so it's spread a lot thinner, and not really as popular anyway. It's a very niche market. So when Malice Mizer (who by no means is the first band of its type, simply the first one to obtain popularity with girls I was pathetically crushing on in middle school, so I use it them as my example) would show up places in outlandish costumes, each with their own distinctively crazy flamboyant personality, girls went crazy too, and they were extremely famous within the circles of Visual Kei fans. They acted in interviews the way Lady GaGa does now:
Gackt: I am a vampiiiirrreee...
Mana: -whispers something to painfully casual assistant lady-
Painfully Casual Assistant Lady: He says he's happy to be here.
Közi stands there looking like an insane detective, Yu~Ki fiddles with his costume festoons, and Kami falls asleep.
Gackt: We drink blooooddddd...
The majority of what I take away from Malice Mizer really comes from their interviews on the show "Hot Wave". With all the huge costumes flying everywhere, the dead-serious way they take themselves, and the bland, drunk interviewer lady asking them questions like it's a completely normal pop group she's sitting down with, it's all just so absurd.
Fans loved it. Or at least, thought it was interesting. And their PVs were some of the best you'll ever see, to me very clear in their message, very ambient and theatrical. It really defined exactly what they were, and was just what you pictured when you thought of them, which is rare for a band. Their Illuminati PV stands out as one of the most famous, for capturing their current look, lots of blood and sex and violence, nudity which made it extremely notorious and only drove more people to try to see it, and a good song as well.
I feel strange explaining Malice Mizer right now. Kpop became hugely popular not a year or two ago, but that year or so ago, I still remember people obsessing over Malice Mizer. Now it seems like everyone has forgotten.
The funny thing is, I was not and am not even a fan of Malice Mizer. I've only heard a few of their songs and seen approximately three of their PVs. But there were just so omnipresent in the lives of some of my friends, that I just gathered this idea about them.
But the "Gothic" subgenre of Visual Kei was huge. So many bands looked like and sounded like one another, everybody in all black, or else Victorian fever-dream garb. You probably know of Gothic Lolitas and Gothic Aristocrats. That died in about 2002-ish, but before that it was the thing to cosplay. Clothing labels burst into existence to try and cater to the fans, and sponsor bands to wear their clothes (just like they do today, only instead of cool pants, they were shilling tiny hats and dresses with no less than twenty layers of black lace frills).
The room of the girl I liked was filled with skulls and bats and parasols and posters of the "Gothic Visual Kei" scene. Creepy dolls, and dress stands holding the pieces of the outfit she was cobbling together. Also roses and France and whatever the hip things were for Gothic Japanese rock people to cut into their PVs.
Today's band, Velvet Eden (actually, as with MALICE MIZER, it's VELVET EDEN, but that would be annoying as hell to type and read), is a shining example of Gothic Visual Kei.
And the PV I've selected is one of the worst I've ever seen in my life. At this very moment in time, before I go in search of more PVs to review for later entries, I will go on record as saying that today's PV is the worst Jrock PV ever.
Velvet Eden actually was kind of popular and (famous? no... heard of, at least) among the Gothic Visual Kei fans/scene. The members themselves are generally respected and still followed by fans (very, very devoted fans, Velvet Eden had). Velvet Eden Lineup #2 even included Hora, who would be in Schwarz Stein with Kaya (the fairy one) on Mana's record label. Gothic Visual Kei is marked by severe inbreeding.
But today's PV is from the first lineup, consisting of just members Kalm (who looks like an androgynous cyborg) and Dada (who gives Mana a run for his pantalooned money).
Once again, I know precious little about them, and am sure that their many fans and people who are much smarter and more interested in Jrock than I could explain all about them, but I'll do my best.
SAD MASK, ie, for purposes of this review, is Sad Mask, was released in the year 2000.
I have heard precisely two more Velvet Eden songs than I have heard Malice Mizer songs, and they're all pretty cool. Sad Mask reminds me of Lucretia, My Reflection, by The Sisters of Mercy. You know, that kind of distant, pathetically 80's music they play in the background whenever they show the goth kids on South Park.
I actually really like this song. It makes me laugh. Don't get me wrong, the arrangement and sound is great, as is Dada's singing, but... the lyrics. The lyrics.
I defy you to go to a high school, any high school, and find a kid dressed in a black band T-shirt, wearing eyeliner. Sit that kid down and ask him to compose a poem for you. No matter what he writes, the finished product will be Sad Mask. It's so clichéd goth music. Even me, when I try to make the most simpering, emo poem I can think of:
My mask...
Is a sad mask...
My faaaceeee...!
Here is someone's translation of Sad Mask.
Even with all the wretchedness of the PV, I'm watching it and hearing the lyrics, and just thinking "Buhhhh..." It's rough to slog through. But it's so bad, it's good, especially with the accompanying PV. So let's take a look at it!
PV Review - Velvet Eden - Sad Mask
Our PV begins with an establishing shot, which is a bad sign. It's some random Tudor house. Because, as you know, if you're a gothic band, you need to be creepily obsessed with Europe. And since France is out of Velvet Eden's price range, England will have to do. What's next?
Oh, Jesus.
No, I'm OK, it's just literally Jesus. A statue of a crucified Jesus. Because, as you know, if you're a gothic band, you need to get some confusing and possibly sacrilegious paraphernalia up in there ASAP.
Then we get a title card superimposed over a clock. Which is a really great idea if you're Plastic Tree and this is 1998, but Velvet Eden is nothing if not covering all their bases and trying to let you know what they are all about. It's why I said this was the worst PV I'd ever seen. I have a larger PV budget than these folks, and less J-goth artifacts thrown in for the sake of throwing them in. If you like, get a card and write out some overexposed gothic PV imagery, and make your own Bingo score card. Fill it in as we continue on with the PV. A sad mask is the free space.
Actually, keep that handy. Not only will you have Bingo five ways by the time we're done with this review, but it also works on any other Visual Kei PV, especially if you're concerned that you might in fact be watching a J-Goth band.
Next is a montage of a variety of creepy creepy dolls. Nude Renaissance-painting-looking arty dolls, ball-jointed doll heads (just like the ones that litter the floor of any Japanese goth girl!) baby dolls crammed in a glass case. Dada looking like a nice gothic lady. Also the titular Sad Mask itself, shooting at the camera. You can almost hear the editor and the director working out the shots:
"OK, so we have like 30 minutes' worth of creepy dolls?"
"Yeah, just show them all at once."
"The song is only five minutes long."
"Just have them all rush at the viewer really fast."
"All thirty minutes of this?"
"Really fast."
At this point, the actual singing begins. As for the "plot" of this PV... Shakespeare, it's not. We got Kalm (I am pretty sure it's Kalm), and he's dressed in his finest poet shirt and knickerbocker combo, you know. Some piss-poor pageboy hair-cut and those weird Mana lips everybody had during Malice Mizer's reign of popularity. Oh, and, just to round out our predictable imagery, he's got gauze over his eyes. But that's not going to stop him from trying to look his best! Eh? Eh?
He wanders about his tiny closet room, all painted black with a broken mirror and nice chair in the corner. He laments over his insanity, rocking his head around and doing that flailing dance that represents insanity in your average gothic Visual Kei PV. You know the one.
Yeah, you're scary, guy. It's like a student film. All the quick cuts of him jumping around the room and interpretive dancing direct to camera, his eyeball screaming "Ask me what it means! Ask me what it means!"
The Sad Maks twirl around his face, and he swoons out of his ivy-covered window. Because outside, in the forced solarisation effect of someone who has just set up Windows Movie Maker, in the dead leaves lays Dada in his finest fashion wig. I can't... really see, since this video from 2000 is more like an 80's video in which it takes the shoddy camera and throws all the special effects over it just to show that they can, sacrificing the viewer's ability to accurately be able to see what was going on before the filters kicked in.
???
But it seems that Dada, wearing Freddy Krueger claws, sifts through the leaves to find... ! The Sad Mask !
He spies on emo kid Kalm through the peephole, and suddenly appears in the closet room like he's the Batman. If the Batman chose to appear to some bi-curious goth kid.
I am the night.
He sexy dances around Kalm, and there's a sweeping montage shot of... I have no idea. Some stuff.
???
More dolls. A tarantula on a rose. This would be so original and revolutionary if it had been filmed in 1910.
The tarantula also crawls around on Dada's fashion wig, and then... they all fall down. Repeatedly. Dada puts the Sad Mask on Kalm, and everything catches on computer-generated sparkle-fire.
Kalm, with his new stretchy waxed face, wanders around the burning set of Plastic Tree's Tremolo, cursing the gods and flailing around again. I project onto this PV the plot of the film Tanin no Kao, "The Face of Another". He hated his old damaged face, but the new mask makes him into something he's not, someone he doesn't know! Also, lots of experimental psuedo-artsy crap. This PV is like that movie, only far less pretentious. Who'd have thought that the combined talents of Kyo "World's Best Actress" Machiko and Nakadai "I Am the Greatest Samurai" Tatsuya couldn't salvage something from the existentialist bullshit of that script? But I digress.
He tries desperately to cut off this monstrous mask, and save himself and Dada's finest Victorian garb from the flames, but it's too late. The mask has sunk into his face and has taken control, and in its destruction, it reduces everything to ash, including itself.
Dada, the instigator, stands alone in the dark aftermath of the fire, and blows out a candle.
Please note that basically all of that last part I interpreted myself, because, with the exception of Kalm flailing around and Dada snuffing out the candle, none of that is actually in the PV.
But... yeah, that's the video. Dolls, flailing, fire, end.
SAD MASK
It's laughably bad. Everything is cheap and thrown in for the sake of including lots of images without any real substance. The camera work and special effects are just awful, to the point that I don't know what I'm looking at for almost forty percent of this PV. But really, it's a great song, and this video definitely is well into the "so-bad-it's-good" category. I watched a few more Velvet Eden PVs in the process of this review, and they're just what you'd want a late-90's/early-2000's era Gothic Visual Kei PV to be. Malice Mizer PVs have waaaay too high a quality, which makes you feel like they took themselves so deadly seriously (which a few of the members did). Velvet Eden is just more fun, and interesting, and even though I only saw this video in 2006, it's still very nostalgic. The crappiness of the video and the painful low-budgetness of it just makes the entire experience of watching Velvet Eden rather endearing. This look and this music was dated at the time, so, in a weird way, it's not dated now. Does that make sense?
The Sad Mask PV is like a fan's interpretation of Plastic Tree's Tremolo. There are many similar visual elements, and Kalm is dressed just like Li'l Ryutaro, but Tremolo is quite possibly the most perfect PV ever made, capturing absolutely everything you would want from the song and appearance on every level. It's entertaining, artistic, nostalgic, modern, Visual, and represents the band and the song exactly, without taking literal cues over the entire thing, instead of Sad Mask's Random Gothic Imagery Video #86. But by throwing absolutely everything they could think of and/or afford into the PV all at once, coupled with the obvious lyrics, makes the whole Sad Mask PV very indicative of what sorts of things were popular at the time amongst the moody set.
So Velvet Eden is firmly on the "good" side of Visual Kei (and I'm aware there's some sort of categorisation to this whole thing and they aren't technically considered Visual Kei somehow? I don't care, I'm lumping everything in together and you can't stop me). It looks like you'd expect it to and it sounds like you'd expect it to, and it's arranged and performed by talented people and enjoyed moderate popularity. It's bad, but I am the type of person who never has taken Visual Kei seriously. Yeah, I know the girls I liked who liked it were seriously devoted to gothic things or Visual Kei things or rock music things, but I don't like Visual Kei music. My favourite bands (also admittedly crappy, but oh well) are not Visual Kei or even Japanese, and with the exception of traditional Japanese music and soundtracks or bands inspired by traditional Japanese music, I barely even listen to Japanese music at all. But I do on occasion like to listen or watch Visual Kei. Visual Kei holds a special place in my heart because, even at its most trite, it's enjoyable. It's fun to watch. And several are even good to listen to. You don't expect to find a musical genius dressed up in h.NAOTO, but you will find a hopefully interesting musician selling the clothes to the preteen fans who love them. It's Visual because the music is a part of the overall effect, but also because the music itself, like pop music, is more about the look and what's popular instead of who can sing the best or play the best. And since Sad Mask is cheap and predictable and bad, but not annoying and not a direct affront to my ears, it's the exact guilty pleasure thing I look for when I want to listen to/watch something Visual Kei.
And you can watch Sad Mask here.
What's the worst PV you've ever seen? The worst Visual Kei singer you've ever heard? Who's to blame for the reason you stopped listening? Give me some suggestions, and I might review them in an upcoming entry!
Just so you know, the next PV up will make me take back every nice thing I ever said about Visual Kei. In fact, it's enough to put us all off of music forever. You've been warned.