Visu Navi

VisuNavi was a directory and proto-social networking service (that began even before Myspace in the US, which was generally considered the first true "social networking service") in Japan for Visual Kei musicians and bands to be listed, to promote themselves and their music, and to engage in some limited degree of interaction.

Mostly, it consisted of advertising and promotional content for Visual Kei artists and their upcoming music releases or live shows, but it also served as a bit of an archive of who was who in Japanese Visual Kei - the more promoted a band was on there, generally, the more popular they were, though this was not always the case.


 * Ambiguous Gender: Justified Trope, being that it is a directory of Visual Kei artists.
 * Archive Binge: If you could read Japanese, the site tended to be very welcoming toward these. Perhaps even if you couldn't, since the imagery was worth a look in and of itself.
 * Bishonen and Biseinen: Most of the artists.
 * Bifauxnen: Some of the female artists.
 * Female Gaze/Male Gaze: Why you were likely looking around, if you couldn't speak Japanese.
 * Flame War: Had likely hosted a few in the social networking services part, but moderation kept these down a fair bit. It was not 2Ch Tanuki.
 * Flog: Arguably so in some places, and Justified Trope since the point of the site was artist promotion, with archiving and other purposes being a distant second.
 * Visual Kei: It was the first place to go if you wanted to see Japanese VK artists, at least from an artist-promotional point of view.