Musically, there might not be many similarities between the boy groups of Johnny’s Entertainment and visual kei bands, but in some ways these two Japanese sub-cultures are more closely related to each other than you might think. For example, the statement “pretty young men making music” applies to both.
While it might anger their fans to relate a Johnny’s group to a visual kei band and vice versa (as some things are just very touchy subjects, especially amongst visual kei fans), the visual kei artists themselves don’t seem to mind it much, and there are a few cases in which we find both scenes more closely related than expected.
For example, remember how Mana of Moi dix Mois/Malice Mizer once said in an interview that when he was still little, he wanted to become a Johnny?
Ruiza of D had the same idea in mind, but he actually persisted. In his teenage years, he auditioned to become a part of the successful Johnny’s Association, passed, and was a Johnny’s junior for a short time.
It’s not even uncommon for them to be friends. As a radio station phoned Subaru Shibutani of Kanjani8 during their live show, he happened to be visiting a friend called Ruka. He mentioned that his friend was in a band as well, and it turned out to be drummer Ruka of Nightmare! Our special reporter went to Japan to investigate it a bit further and managed to snap a picture of the two during karaoke!
So it seems to be a small world after all!
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Kay is the English version manager, aka editor in chief/executive editor and one of JaME’s vice-presidents. Between her job, second BA studies and random language courses, she’s able to find time to shout at her darling team members and write an article or two once in a while. If that isn’t enough, she runs a JRock company in her home country and occasionally organizes concerts of well-known Japanese rock acts.
Although she got into Japanese music through visual kei, she has now moved onto different sorts of music such as pop, alternative/indie rock and will talk your ears off about anything related to reggae in Japan. More information on this creature can be found at 
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thats so funny! I didn’t know that about ruiza
Funny drawing ^^; and funny post xD
Hahaha! Great post! xD
This was a good article!
If I remember correctly, a friend of mine told me that Yomi (Nightmare) and Tenten dropped out of school to audition to become a Johnny’s XD
lol! x’D Well i like both visual kei and johnny’s bands.. ^^’
I remember reading somewhere that Shinya of Dir en grey used to want to be a Johnny’s.
Hey that was interesting. Sure sometimes the obviously very different things have a lot in common.
Nice article.
Thanks a lot!!
Finally it’s proven that VK and JE aren’t totally different so I hope I don’t get any strange looks anymore if I say I like both *lol*
i’m not agreeing with this, Johnny stuff is some kind of uber famous status in Japan and the culture there is kinda focused on status. But the VK scene wasnt big and about status to begin with and especially not at looking good, that is something from the past years at major bands but smaller bands want to express something different. a lot of japanese artists also hate the johnny thingy.
Lin: You are not agreeing that the two scenes are more closely related than one might think at first sight?
Or are you just telling us your opinion that has not that much to do with the main point of the entry? ^^”
But sure, there are surely a lot of artists that dislike the manufactured idols anyway, but the mentioned cases, those are fine with it. It didn’t say that everybody loved everyone and I surely don’t expect them to do so either XD
A friend of mine told me, that Hiroto of alice nine said one, that he also wanted to be part of the “Johnny’s family” when he was… I don’t want to say young, but younger *laugh*