L’Arc~en~Ciel ( The Rainbow in French) is a Japanese rock band that formed back in 1991. The band has seen many changes across its long career: it has changed its bassist and drummer, but the core has remained the same. L’Arc~en~Ciel is operatic with their sound. Instrumentals are excellently dark and dramatic. Hyde’s (the lead…
Category: Culture
Blind Beast
“Blind Beast” has to be one of the most bizarre movies I’ve ever seen. It follows the story of Aki, a successful if controversial model, who is abducted by the blind sculptor Michio and his mother. The pair take Aki to Michio’s warehouse studio, where things really start to get weird. See the walls are…
Halcali
Halcali is an all female pop and hip-hop duo from Tokyo. Halca and Yucali have excellent harmony but are too “bubblegum” for my taste. Their album Halcali Bacon was the first album from an all female group to top Japan’s Oricon charts. The duo is remarkably flexible; they have been able to change with the…
High and Mighty Color
High and Mighty Color started as a Metallica cover band and worked their way up to fame until they broke apart in 2010. Honestly, I didn’t know Japan had Metallica cover bands. The band started in Okinawa like many other bands. American and Japanese music traditions mix and swirl on that island apparently. (Perhaps to…
Cure
When starting this Japanese horror project I did a bit of research into what films were considered the very best of the genre. Several top ten lists later I noticed one name besides Ringu, Ju-On, and Audition kept cropping up: Cure. So naturally I wanted to watch it, but for whatever reason it took me…
Hatsune Miku – Vocaloid
Hatsune Miku is computer software made in Japan that can produce singing by just typing in lyrics and a melody. Technically the backbone of the Hatsune Miku is Yamaha’s vocaloid software. Vocaloid even has released albums. The singer is known as Hatsune Miku and is an anime girl around the age of 16. Yeah, that…