Visual Kei – Most significant about this genre is the flashy costumes, remarkable makeup, and sometimes androgynous aesthetics. The music is similar to glam-rock, punk, and metal. The first Visual Kei band is X Japan, in the late 1980s. The most successful bands include Glay, Luna Sea, Dir en Grey, and L'Arc-en-Ciel. Visual Kei is mostly popular only in Japan, although there have been occasional flare-ups around the globe.
Anime Music – Sometimes anime songs are borrowed from existing songs and simply modified a bit to suit the show, but mostly the show requests a song of the artist. These are almost always in Japanese. First there are opening songs (OP), which tend to be happy and bubbly. There are also ending songs (ED), which tend to be slow and slightly sad. There are also character songs and incidental music. Many anime voice actors have gone on to be singers, like Megumi Hayashibara, Mariko Kōda, and Rie Tanaka.
Video Game Music – This started out with 8-bit Mario Bros music, which was made to loop and had no distinct ending. Now, the Final Fantasy series has the most popular theme music of any video game. Most notably, songs sung by Nobuo Uematsu. The fan culture has expanded greatly starting from the 1990s and made remixes and MIDIs out of their favorite songs. Seeing as how video game music is computer made, it had complex synchronization between instruments, yet many people have tried to reproduce it live. There was even an Orchestral Game Concert, performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Boy/Girl Bands – These groups consist of several young girls or boys, and generally have coordinated performances in addition to their songs. The groups often consist of three to six people, who are picked by a “project” music company. Their songs are usually completely written and composed by their manager. Girl groups originated in the 1950s, considerably earlier than boy bands which began in the 1990s. Also, many boy and girl bands hold auditions each year and change members frequently. Popular bands are: V6, Morning Musume, Tokio, SMAP, and Speed.
Visual Kei – Most significant about this genre is the flashy costumes, remarkable makeup, and sometimes androgynous aesthetics. The music is similar to glam-rock, punk, and metal. The first Visual Kei band is X Japan, in the late 1980s. The most successful bands include Glay, Luna Sea, Dir en Grey, and L'Arc-en-Ciel. Visual Kei is mostly popular only in Japan, although there have been occasional flare-ups around the globe.
