ATTN: Fish Tank

Edit: If anyone else is getting ready to tell me all about how xenophobia is an ancient and noble part of Japanese culture, just like Pikachu and underwear vending machines, I first ask you to consider the following phrases: Muslim travel ban, "Build the Wall!", Brexit, Le Front National, Syrian refugee crisis. Xenophobia's on a buy one, get two free special all over the world, right this minute! What are you waiting for? Go stock up while you can!

Also, go read the comments section if you want some more of our choice thoughts on this matter. We were debating writing a second post, but upon consideration, decided we'd rather bring you some lifelike Hoshino Hidehiko gingerbread men and Buck-Tick addicted bunny rabbits instead.

Holy shit, did Blog-Tick just turn into a Japanese blog!? OMG halp! There's even a new banner! What the hell is going on here, Cayce?

Don't worry. The text at right is an open letter to Fish Tank, in case they check Blog-Tick. Ignore it as you see fit, or use it for Japanese practice, but don't let it bother you. It's not aimed at you.

As to what's going on here... for my next post, I had originally planned to bring you a light-hearted human interest story about a cute lil' bunny rabbit who just LOVES Buck-Tick, but then... this happened. 

You can see it all for yourself on Twitter, but it appears that our fellow B-T fansite proprietress Buck-Tick Zone received a cease and desist letter from Fish Tank threatening to cancel her fanclub membership because she shared images from the Fish Tank newsletter, and other images of the band. Now, the fact is that the most unsavory type of fangirl has been whining to Fish Tank for years to "crack down" on people sharing images from the Fish Tank newsletter online... their argument goes that if they paid money to receive the newsletter, then no one who hasn't paid money should be able to see it. It's been the cause of Japanese-language social media firestorms many times before now. So in a way, this isn't surprising. But let's examine what's wrong with the argument:

1) If Fish Tank are really so exclusive, then why do they let Fish Tank members purchase multiple tickets to concerts or multiple copies of fanclub-only DVDs? Oh right. They want money. But guess what, Fish Tank: in Japan, there's an expectation that if you want people's money, you should provide them with good hospitality and I'm not sensing a hospitable atmosphere right about now.

2) If we go to our friend's house and read her issues of the Fish Tank newsletter, are Fish Tank going to send that memory-erasing team from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to our house in retaliation, to erase the memories of the content from our mind, and erase all our memories of Buck-Tick along with them? Take that gun, point it at your own foot, and shoot it. Go on. Shoot it!

3) Is the point of joining Fish Tank paying money to see exclusive content? Silly me, I thought the point of joining Fish Tank was to get good tickets to the shows. This is the main benefit of the fanclub and it would be silly to pretend otherwise. The newsletter is just an added bonus.

4) Fish Tank/Buck-Tick management: I thought your job was to advertise the band, not advertise them as being the only band in the world whose management seem to actively hate their fanbase. Buck-Tick Zone has been spreading the Buck-Tick love for like 20 years now (and you thought our 11 years was long!) She's never received any money or glory for her work. The only reason she does it is because she loves Buck-Tick and wants to spread that love... which equals more fans... which equals more people spending money on the band. If the management weren't so fucking dumb, they'd realize that fansites are free advertising and they should be tacitly encouraged, not squashed.

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Anyway, if this makes you angry, I'm going to encourage you to do the following: 

1) Send Buck-Tick Zone an email, Twitter message, etc. telling her how you appreciate her work. This shit is very discouraging when it happens and I'm sure she'd appreciate moral support.

2) Write to Fish Tank. Tell them how much you love the band, and how you'd never have become a fan without the help from overseas fan sites. Beg them to consider starting an English language version of Fish Tank and/or making Buck-Tick's music available as digital downloads legally available in other countries. Tell them how excited you'd be to spend your money on things like that. If we're going to change their minds, they need to hear from as many of us as possible. I encourage you all to write! The text of the open letter above is basically words to this effect, however please do not copy and paste it, because if Fish Tank get spammed with the same letter again and again it might make them hate me more than they already probably do. Also, original letters in foreign languages will have more clout, I think.

3) If overseas fan sites played a big role in you becoming a Buck-Tick fan, leave a comment on this post.

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For those of you who fear that if Buck-Tick Zone's been targeted, Cayce will be next... for the time being, we're not worried. As a non-corporeal entity, we are very difficult for lowly meat-puppet beings to pin down. Fish Tank can try to figure out who we really are as much as they like, but we doubt they'll succeed. So this big fat raspberry is aimed at you, Fish Tank! Plus, we still remember how Imai took the name "The Dazzler" for his guitar right off this blog, and yet remains too shy to thank us/pay us for our translation. Run run as fast as you can, you can't catch us, we're in Buck-Tickistan!

Also, Buck-Tick Zone notes in her tweets the re-location of the Fish Tank office, and speculates that perhaps the Fish Tank management are new and overzealous. As a matter of fact, we can confirm through personal experience that this is the case. Without going into too much detail, we had a run-in ourselves with a new member of Buck-Tick's management in which the party in question treated us with a baffling level of unnecessary contempt and inexplicable rage. As it stands, we can't say whether this treatment represented the attitude of one angry staff member or whether it represents the attitude of Banker as an organization, but it was dismaying, to say the least. And to further fan the flames of scuttlebutt: it's not just us. A number of Buck-Tick's musician friends have reported being treated in a similarly contemptuous fashion by Banker at various points in time, for various stupid reasons. Buck-Tick's management is known in the industry as being one of the most uptight, paranoid management establishments in existence. They've engineered a monster they can no longer control.

Anyway, I'd like to point out that this has, in all likelihood, nothing to do with band members themselves. The reason Buck-Tick have a management office is so that the management office handles their affairs so they don't have to. Whatever it is the management gets up to when the members aren't around, the members may very well not know about. This is how Japanese industry works. So don't go worrying that Mr. Sakurai personally hates you all (even though it's true that he wrote a song called "I Hate You All," that was Jim Foetus's title, so it doesn't count). So let's place the blame where it belongs: with the management team, not with the band.

Oh yeah, and if you can't read the text on our new banner, it's that line from the lyrics to "Only You." It seemed relevant, somehow.