wow, so much coolness!

Time for another metal release from Japan - Aion: Film Plasmatic Mania (1992) [BVLR-34]

It took me quite a while to find this rare title on laserdisc by the thrash metal band Aion who changed to a more melodic style around the time this was released:

Aion

In my opinion the best female vocalist I have ever heard from Japan is Mari Hamada.
In the early part of her career she focused on heavy metal style music but this mellowed out into more melodic rock by the late 80's.
Mari has a very powerful versatile voice which can easily sing a hard rock anthem or a beautiful ballad - in fact her voice is so strong she frequently sings without any accompaniment at all on stage. Even my dad was impressed by her stunning voice.
She is still going strong to this day recording new albums and DVDs on a regular basis. I have all her albums.

Mari Hamada

Sadly her early metal years are not available on laserdisc however they are available on VHD and have also been re-issued on DVD.





Her late 80's / early 90's more melodic period is well represented on laserdisc.
Be advised some copies of these MCA Victor LDs suffer from rot.
I had to buy a couple of each to get perfect copies but these are still worth tracking down. I love these LDs.



There is also a VSD of her single Heaven Knows released in 1990 to promote the Colors album which was targeted at the western world with English lyrics used throughout.

Personz:

I'd previously listed one live concert by the Japanese rock band Personz.
Included below are some additional LDs available by this same band along with a second copy of Personz: In Budokan - Dreamers Only Special (1990) [TELN-38015] this time featuring the red sticker OBI which was missing from my earlier copy.



My favourite out of that lot is the Singles video compilation called Singin'. One of those singles '7 colors (over the rainbow)' is also available on a 5" Video Single Disc (VSD):



Luis-Mary, Pearl & Kaori Okui :

Also shown are a few further j-rock laserdiscs I've picked up.

- Luis-Mary was a Japanese visual kei rock band. I managed to find one laserdisc featuring a live concert of this band Luis-Mary: Imperfect Crime [CRLR-30002]

- Pearl is a rock orientated band fronted by a female vocalist Pearl: Good To See You 1987-1993 Video Clips [SRLM 402]. The music is quite melodic and very commercial.

- Kaori Okui is the vocalist from Princess Princess who had a successful solo career after Princess Princess disbanded.
There are a couple of LDs by her (both of which I have) however the live special '97 Kaori Okui: KOTV Live Special '97 [SRLM 5610] is the only rock orientated title available. I personally found this very difficult to locate on laserdisc - probably because it is a late release issued in 1998. In fact I'd all but given up and had succumbed to buying the DVD version which is very easy to find when the laserdisc version finally turned up and I couldn't resist.

I have many new additions to add to this thread which I am only getting round to now.

First some 5" CDVs /VSDs from Japan of j-metal/rock bands such as Zi:Kill, Seikima II, Earthshaker, Show-Ya, Bi Sexual and Strawberry Fields:



The only one you're likely to encounter through regular scanning of auctions in Japan is the Show-Ya one and possibly the Strawberry Fields 5" if you check often. The others until this year I had never encountered before anywhere.

Here are some pics of the back of the two CDVs which both feature 4 audio tracks + 1 video.

Show-ya CDV:


The mega rare Earthshaker CDV:


The great thing about Japanese CDVs and VSDs is they always play perfectly - absolutely no rot.

Tracked down the two D'erlanger and Sly LDs mentioned previously from the BMG series.
Also added one of the rarer Ziggy LDs to my collection. Got another Ziggy in transit!
Also shown in the photo is the solo album by Kyo from Japan metal band Dir En Grey and also Sharam Q who look like a boy band but are actually a Japanese rock band.


Scanch are a colourful Japanese rock band I stumbled upon worth a mention as there are quite a few LDs available:


Added a few more Japanese punk rock bands such as 'The Mods' and 'The Stalin'.
The Stalin LD is an old pressing from 1985 but plays great still.


Marchosias Vamp is a Japanese glam rock band. Also added one by Buck-Tick LD - loads of other titles by this band to collect.
Also shown is a LD by Japanese rock band J-Walk.


A few LDs by Japanese rock band Strawberry Fields. Still more to go from this band!


The complete set of Jun Sky Walker(s) LDs which is a Japanese punk rock band.


A few LDs by Japanese rock band B'z:


Some LDs by rock band Luna Sea including the double LD live concert Lunatic Tokyo:


The rarer of the two LDs by Japanese rock band L'Arc-en-Ciel.
I have the other LD but just can't find it at the moment as my collection is a bit haphazard! When I do I'll post a picture.

Another day and another Ziggy laserdisc!
I actually didn't know what the cover for this Ziggy disc looked like so was surprised to find it was massive letters on a silver background and that's it.
Still it was easy to spot amongst the tens of thousands of laserdiscs I had been searching through.

Also shown is the Japanese rock band Body. Body features guitarist Takigawa Ichiro who also played in D'erlanger which was mentioned earlier.
There is a second Body laserdisc in my collection however I've misplaced it at the moment.

My favourite cover though is the Seikima II LD - Seikima II: New Video Clip Collection [KSL5 4008]
So tacky but I love it!

The final laserdisc is by the Japanese rock band The Alfee. Many nice futuristic covers by that band.

Earlier this year I mentioned about the Japanese rock band called Pearl.
There is one more laserdisc available by Pearl.
By 1989 all of the original members except Sho-Ta had departed so the band was renamed to Sho-Ta Pearl.
So this lasedisc is called Sho-Ta Pearl - Justice: Welcome to the Real World.

Time for another update on the old J-metal/rock/punk thread!

Strawberry Fields

I had been searching for a long time to locate the final laserdisc by rock band Strawberry Fields - an 8 inch LD single featuring several videos. I'd seen VHS copies knocking about for a while but really wanted the laserdisc version. Here is it at last:



By-Sexual

Also got a few more punk titles by visual kei rock band By-Sexual. I had previously shown a 5 inch VSD by them.
These are two 12 laserdiscs - one a concert and the other a music video compilation:



Both were released by Pony Canyon which did produce quite a few rotters. They are also both sealed and I haven't had an opportunity to test play them yet as they only arrived a few days ago. I will provide an update once I know more...fingers crossed they will still be ok. At least they were cheap.

The Brain Police

Another really obscure Japanese punk title is by The Brain Police.
I believe the title translates to something like 'All Things Gluten'.



Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi

The best of all though is this gem -Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi - Hungry:



Forget about how much money was spent on Michael Jackson's Thriller video. This Hungry video from 1985 is literally like a full blown action/war movie made up of music videos back to back - all of them really professionally filmed with action sequences, warfare, weapons, death. There is everything going on in this disc! This type of thing has been done on other discs like Don Johnson - Heartbeat or even one of the other J-metal titles I listed Earthshaker - Passion the Movie. It must have been a fad in the mid 80's. Don was claiming he was doing something really new but Japanese rock bands beat him to it by over 2 years! Fun titles to watch as you don't get anything remotely like this today as only the hugely successful bands/artists are granted ridiculously extravagant budgets for their music videos.

Here's the fourth and final Fence of Defense laserdisc:



It took me ages to find this one. For anyone interested the Japanese band Fence of Defense are almost identical to the canadian band Rush. 3 piece rock band producing very melodic music heavily synthesised, some of which is very commercial and other tracks are the polar opposite and very long. Definitely one of my favourite Japanese rock bands. Even the title of this laserdisc 2235 Zero Generation is kind of a play on the Rush album 2112 although the music from this period is more like Grace Under Pressure or Hold Your Fire era Rush.

Also located a few quite rare 8 inch j-rock laserdiscs by bands Aura, De+Lax and Buck Tick previously shown:

I'm still amazed by your collection and... by the fact that even though I spent countless weekends LD hunting in Japan from 2000 to 2007, there are still an incredibly high amount of releases that I never found in the "used LDs" sections!

I'm wondering at which quantity a LD production batch was profitable in Japan back in the 90's (including printing the jacket + insert + obi).

What is the starting quantity for LPs/CDs/DVDs these days? 100, 500?

Julien

I've only visited Japan once and it was a decade before I even starting collecting LDs so everything I've shown and thousands of others I own were all bought online from a multitude of sources. I'm not sure which is easier - surfing through thousands of LDs online (some of which are not even in the correct sections) or visiting actual stores. I remember going to massive music fairs in places like Wembly Stadium & Birmingham in the 90's and I was mentally and physically exhausted trawling through thousands of boxes and crates of LPs and CDs for a few elusive albums or singles. Looking back I'm convinced it is more relaxing and enjoyable doing it online but I'll never know for sure. My biggest regret is that I hadn't starting collecting laserdiscs earlier so I could have brought some rare LDs home in the late 90's but I did bring a box of very rare music CDs instead - all of which I still have!

Some pressings go as low as a maybe a few dozen if they are hand produced by the artist. I've spotted a few on discogs recently. The norm for a mainstream record company with a very limited release is typically around 500 and for a smaller label perhaps 100-200. I've no idea what the figures were for laserdiscs though.

Up until now all the punk Japanese bands I've encountered on laserdisc were from the 80's but this one isn't!:





Called Craze they formed in 1995 built around ex members from Zi:Kill, Body & D'erlanger (all featured earlier) so fit perfectly in this section. The packaging for these two Craze laserdiscs was quite unusual. It consisted of a really thick corrugated outer cardboard sleeve with a matt finish which houses a conventional LD jacket + disc as shown.

Also shown are a few laserdiscs by 80's Japanese punk band Laughin' Nose alongside Japanese rock band Kinniku Shōjo Tai (King-Show):

Recently located one of the missing Mari Hamada original VHDs - Misty Lady which accompanies the album of the same title from 1984. This one never made it to laserdisc:

I have a couple of anime LDs featuring Seikima-II which I managed to get autographed when they visited the US a couple of years ago. They were intrigued by the US-release Wanna-Be's disc, which they hadn't known existed.

Speaking of CDV-Singles/VSDs, there's one for Saint Seiya, music by "Make-Up", which seems to be categorized by the Japanese as a metal act. Of the various anime CDVs I've seen, it seems to change hands at about the highest price.

Didn't know about Seikima-II featured in anime - thanks for the info.

Only one of the music Seikima-II laserdiscs ever got issued twice - The Great Black Mass Tour.
Here's the other edition with the sticker OBI:

Yes, the frontman appears in "Wanna-Be's" as a minor character, & provided the voice of Munchhausen (a thoroughly nasty character!) in "Urotsukidoji" ; they did the theme songs for some other anime. Also there is the anime "Humane Society", in which they are the central characters. I thought you showed a copy of it on the first page, but perhaps this is a related concert video?

Yes that one is a full length animation. I'd entered it into the database about 3.5 years ago and then forgot about. I got it as part of a batch of other Seikima II LDs originally, several of which had no English writing on them so would have been hard to spot if they hadn't come with the set.

There's also a Seikima-II VSD, although I don't know what the content of it is.
Their name, if pronounced with "tsu" for the numeral (which is as close as the Japanese syllabary gets to the sound of English "two"), is a homophone for "the end of the world".

Correctly, "Seikima-II" (Seikimatsu,せいきまつ、世紀末)　refers to "The End of Century"