Line #15 Trivia/XJapan


1	* BlackSheepHit:
2	** Forever Love. It's made it everywhere from an anime to a band member's funeral to a political campaign ....
3	** For the fandom - "Alive", which is a guitar-driven ballad as opposed to the usual piano-based ballads the band has. The fanbase has demanded countless times in recent years for Yoshiki to revive the song live.
4	* CashCowFranchise: At least with touring and the sales of rereleases and the like, enough to keep the band together.
5	* CreatorBreakdown: Everyone except Heath and Sugizo has seemed to have had at least one:
6	** Yoshiki has had six, as mentioned on his page and elsewhere. Both physical and mental.
7	** Toshi had ''one'' though it spanned roughly 11-12 years in happening: becoming triggered and depressed from too much work and too much focus on Yoshiki's dark lyrics, getting involved with Kaori Moritani and marrying her, then joining her ScamReligion and becoming {{brainwashed}} and finally BrainwashedAndCrazy over his years of involvement with it, before finally walking away from it.
8	** hide became bulimic, TheAlcoholic to an extreme degree, and a likely methamphetamine user, along with potentially suffering from Bipolar 1, and accidentally committed suicide due to the confluence of alcohol, drugs, and the absolute lack of care anyone in Japan at that final night of his life had for him.
9	** Taiji began to suffer from a dissociative disorder and went OffTheWagon with alcohol and either cocaine or amphetamine-class stimulants in the mid-90s when he left the band, the combination of which left him homeless and destitute (and as a result suffering an attack that damaged his face and nearly killed him at the time). He had a stroke that uncovered temporal lobe epilepsy, also likely as a result of stimulant abuse. He struggled with this and the effects of it, and eventually was likely murdered in Saipan and had his death implausibly covered up as a suicide.
10	** Pata, despite being the OnlySaneMan for the 1987-1998 years, became TheAlcoholic himself more and more over the years, especially after hide's death, and ended up suffering life-threatening alcoholism-related liver and gastrointestinal damage.
11	* DawsonCasting: Most likely used in ''Dahlia'' PV as the "young girl" there could have been 18 or 19 and young looking. Averted in ''Celebration'' where the protagonist was actually a nine year old playing a thirteen year old fan of the band, and in the open of On The Verge Of Destruction (the girl reading the book).
12	* DevelopmentHell: ''The new album''. While production has been quote/unquote "Done", several things still need to be added. Fans were ecstatic when it was ''to finally'' be released in 2016....but then Pata's life-threatening gastrointestinal damage occurred, which may have postponed the album's release. And even after ''that'', The album has been constantly kept away with Yoshiki insisting that it will be released, but at this point, fans are just becoming fed up at this point.
13	* FunnyCharacterBoringActor: Toshi. Even in his younger days when he was DarkerAndEdgier and a LargeHam playing up the metal singer stereotype, the word on him was that he was, offstage and out of sight, nice, normal, and yes, a bit boring due to that.
14	* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: The band has a number of hard to find demos and early live bootlegs that have been making rounds throughout the internet for many years. They also have a number of pro-shot concerts such as the Kyoto Sports Valley show that have never seen an official release and exist only as bootlegs. Add to this the number of various TV appearances from years ago that are frequently being discovered and you can see why the band's fan base has such an active trading community.
15	* OldShame: ''Vanishing Vision,'' for the cover that seemed to depict rape as erotic and sexy. "Kurenai" is the only track from the album to be performed after the band reunited, and it was also on ''Blue Blood''. Engaging in the BarBrawl, property damage, assaulting and threatening people, and similar behavior.
16	** For Sugizo, smoking tobacco.
17	** For Toshi his years with Home of Heart, and his music created for them.
18	* SimilarlyNamedWorks: X was allegedly forced to add the word "Japan" to their name after [[Music/XUSBand an American punk band of the same name]] filed a lawsuit against the Japanese band. However, the members of the American band [[https://www.laweekly.com/l-a-punk-legends-x-celebrate-40-years-with-four-shows-at-the-roxy have their own version of events]], in which the Japanese band's label threatened them with a cease and desist order first in 1984, even though the American band had been performing since the late 1970s. Ultimately, they claim there was no legal action between either of the two groups and the American band has no hard feelings towards the Japanese group.
19	* WhatCouldHaveBeen: In 1991-early 1992, Music/XJapan was set to break into the American Heavy Metal scene in UsefulNotes/LosAngeles after a planned show at Madison Square Garden in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity. The US release of ''Blue Blood'' and gigs were planned - then a confluence of events ensured that the band would not return to perform in the US for over 20 years. It began with a lawsuit by the LA punk rock band [[Music/XUSBand X]] over their name (allegedly) -- which forced them to change the name to X ''Japan'' and not perform in the US. Next, Toshi developed vocal problems related to vocal polyps ''and'' no US label was willing to take a chance on a vocalist with a Japanese accent. Finally, the issues between Yoshiki and Taiji hit their peak, and Taiji was kicked out of the band - leaving it without a bassist.
20	** One last attempt was made to debut ''Art of Life'' at Madison Square Garden in 1993 once Toshi's vocal issues were better. Nippon Columbia Records agreed to front, and Heath was the new bassist. It failed because by that time, heavy metal had experienced a major popularity reduction with the collapse of HairMetal. Being VisualKei, they unfortunately looked and sounded too much like HairMetal for the average listener of the day due to not being Grunge; no one "serious" was willing at the time to take chances on metal.
21	** An earlier reunion was supposedly planned (to begin in 2000) without Toshi but with hide taking over as lead singer. hide's death prevented that from happening.
22	** Music/{{Miyavi}} as lead guitarist instead of Music/{{Sugizo}}. While there were other candidates for the lead guitar position (including Wes Borland and Richard Fortus, who played as hired guns in at least one gig, and Kaoru of Music/DirEnGrey), the final choice came down to Miyavi and Sugizo. Sugizo was chosen of the two and has performed admirably as the lead guitarist, but Miyavi would have brought an entirely different and more youthful creativity and energy to the band more similar to hide's improvisational skill so it really is a tossup as to which one would have been best.
23	** Music/TaijiSawada's return to the band. Had he been brought on as a full member for all tour gigs in 2010 and 2011 (including the US tour), he would likely not have ended up in Saipan (and had he still gone, he would have had far more to work with to save himself). The band itself would have also sounded so much better as a double bass band featuring him and Heath both - the Yokohama performance showed just how much they complemented each other. Instead, with whatever happened, he ended up dead at the hands of either himself or someone else in Saipan, and the band is much poorer for him not being there.
24	** The biggest one of both: a combination of the two preceding: Miyavi having been chosen as lead guitarist and Taiji as bassist or second bassist. The combination would have put a ton of new life into the band, giving it three members capable of full attention and creative input including the most innovative person in the modern VisualKei scene and the person widely known to be second only to Yoshiki in the original development of X itself. Taiji would have likely never signed on with KT and never gone to Saipan and not died as a result, and it's arguable that X Japan would have been far different and yet far more active as a band and re its individual members. It's only speculation, but it could be arguable that Miyavi and Taiji and Yoshiki could have had a similar synergy as hide and Taiji and Yoshiki did in the first iteration, and if so, this could have had some very interesting results - and that it ''can't'' happen now because of Taiji's death makes it one of the saddest possibilities.
25	** Back in 1994 there were plans to make an X Japan animé movie. A short pilot was eventually made but nothing ever came out of it. The animation for the pilot was later used as an alternate music video for the song ''Rusty Nail''.

Context Trivia / XJapan