The Angura Kei Poser Guide
Angura Kei is a term that gets thrown around a lot. Some people claim it's a very real thing, some people claim it's an entirely made up thing, and nobody can decide whether it's separate from eroguro-kei or not. As an Angura Kei expert[citation needed] (delusional fanatic) I think I am qualified not only to settle the matter but to teach all of my adoring fans how to truly become Angura Kei.
To become Angura Kei, you need to dress the part like all good fans do. In fact, dressing the part is perhaps the most important part of the whole affair. You can throw the bands out entirely as long as you claim to listen to SEX-ANDROID. Of course, Angura Kei bands dress all sorts of ways, but to be Angura you should do shironuri (paint yourself white). How will we know you come from that angura (mutilation of "underground") Kabuki-theatre Visual Kei scene?
Please ignore the several bandmen who show up on stage with their own skin tone and the Angura bandmen with little or even no makeup. You will do your white make and you will be happy.
So, let's give you a shironuri tutorial, photos and all. I'll teach you how to turn yourself from a barefaced wreck into a true bandman doppelganger, because you probably saw a Muchi Muchi Anago cosplayer on Pinterest labeled "Gloomy bear girl" and used that photo for your pinned Tweet while not knowing shit about Hachiyama Yuumi.
My shironuri process is very simple and very quick. I can get my makeup done in less than ten minutes and I barely need a mirror. That is because my makeup is generally awful, but why wouldn't it be?
Step one: Prepare your face
Get clean. Feel good, or the best that you can out of shironuri (the makeup is certainly a mood booster no matter what). Being clean is important, so I recommend cleanse your face while you shower. It doesn't matter if you have some mild acne as long as you dedicate yourself to it.
If you wear glasses, get contacts. If you don't have contacts, your glasses better be thin, and you better be willing to pack a lot of setting powder where they touch your face. My glasses are way too thick, so I wear contacts. This is what I'm working with:
Now, before you get started, if you have hair get it the hell out of your eyes. Right now mine is overgrown and needs to be cut and/or straightened. You can use a headband or a snapback for this; I use this Chiikawa eye mask I wear at night which I got from a gachapon machine in the city because I'm a cheap bastard.
Step two: Supplies
You'll need to prepare your makeup supplies. Here's what I use:
- Setting spray and powder: Maybelline (bought off Amazon)
- Powder brush: aliexpress
- Makeup sponge: Kmart
- White makeup: Kryolan TV paint stick, in white
- Black lipstick: aliexpress
This is about all the makeup I own, save for an eyeliner crayon which I use if I want to wear makeup without shironuri (I'm too scared of liquid stuff but guyliner ftw) and a few eyeshadow palettes I straight up don't use.
Before you say anything, Kmart still exists in Australia and is run by a different company. Everything here is unbelievably cheap, save for the paint stick, which ran me about 70 Australian dollars. You can cheap out on everything except the actual white makeup itself, which I know isn't what you want to hear, but it's the truth. My many apologies. I have friends who use stuff off AliExpress, but as someone who regularly wears shironuri for 12 or more hours straight in one day, longevity is important to me, and all the cheap stuff I've tried starts cracking within a few hours.
Step three: paint your face like a primary schooler using a gluestick
I'm not joking. Push your little paint stick up like it's glue and rub it all over your face. It's gross. You might feel gross. You might feel like it's too much or that you're wasting makeup, but paint yourself until there's only small bits of blank space left. This is killer for your consistency and for your makeup's longevity.
When you do your eyebrows, make sure to go in the opposite direction of the hair right over them. The downside to this is that it REALLY sticks in there, so be sure to wash your face well when you shower next, or else you'll never get it out. Wipes are... not enough.
If you have piercings but you want them to retain their shine and not get covered in white, take them out before this step. If you have your septum done, flip it right up to keep it out of the way.
After you do this a few times, you can become very fast at it. It's not a hard task nor is it time consuming. Become a small child drawing on the walls because they're a little shit a misguided creative genius. The world is yours.
Step four: blend it all out & set it
When you're done with that, grab your sponge and use the flat part to tap around your face very quickly to blend things out and make sure there are no missed spots. Do not rub; let the sponge pick up spare makeup and put it back down where it needs to go. Use this time to blend any spare down your jaw, too, if you're not painting your neck. You need a mirror for this, especially if it's your first time. Believe me when I say your phone camera isn't enough, especially if you have a vampiric skin tone.
Stretch out your lips while you do this so that it gets into the cracks and looks more uniform. When you're done with all of that, it should end up looking something like this:
Set your makeup. If you're lazy like me, use spray and fan yourself extra hard. If you have time, use powder. Baby powder or cornstarch are both viable alternatives to this, because we both know you're broke. Either way, fan your face for a while until you feel like it's fine.
Now's the time to do your teasing, hairspray, and so on so that you look properly Angura Kei. You're a poser who saves cosplays of bandmen to Pinterest believing they are the real people, after all, and hair is important! It completes the look! But this is not a hair tutorial, mostly because my hair is unwashed and I am feeling lazy today. I'm not going to bother to style it if I don't want to, because after all, I am a poser too.
You can leave your face alone at this stage, if you want. On many days I do exactly that. However, if you want to give your face a little more definition and a darker look, that's more than doable. Let's move onward if that's you; if it's not, skip the next step and go right ahead.
Step five: Panda eyes and lipstick
Somebody with more makeup experience than a hetero (often accused of homosexuality) male like me could probably do something that not only looks way better and has colour to it (red lipstick is an Angura staple!) but also makes them look like a proper bandman who possibly has a stylist. As I do not have that makeup experience, I will teach you how to do the worst panda-eyes on Earth instead because that is what I like to do for my regular look.
Take your black lipstick (again, mine is from AliExpress, you can cheap out on this) and you can put it right over your white face. I do my eyes first because I'm a wreck. I like to follow the natural shape for the inside of my eyelid, but I like the square out the outside part. I either picked this up from a bandman or a Hiromu Toda cosplayer I saw at age 16. Don't know which it is.
I'm sure you can figure out how to do your own lipstick, but if it's fighting with the white makeup, just apply it several times. I like to only apply it to my bottom lip and rub my lips together because the transfer onto the top lip is enough for me.
Step six: go outside and take poser photos
This might just be the most important part of your new Angura Kei lifestyle. You get bonus points if you post yourself on Tiktok with lots of unrelated hashtags, or if you put it on your Instagram story with a song attached by a band you definitely don't listen to. You can complain that your favourite bands "just aren't on Spotify" to circumvent any allegations, but you will never ever EVER sign up for last.fm, lest people discover you only listen to Dadaroma.
You should listen to music (doesn't have to be out of the Angura scene because that's not important as long as you searched Shinjuku Gewalt on Pinterest once) while you are outside so that you don't have to pay attention to your surroundings, and keep an antisocial personality because you think it makes you seem mysterious. Because you have no real life friends, you will have to take your own selfies, so be careful. Or maybe you can convince your mother to do you the honour.
As I'm a true and honest Angura Kei fan, I'm obviously wearing band merchandise to show that fact off: the shirt is from Muchi Muchi Anago and the bag is Shinjuku Gewalt. If you're feeling lazy, you can wear your Devilinspired ouji pieces or cheap clothes you bought off AliExpress during the Kote Kei phase you had three weeks ago, because it's OK if you're a broke neoVKslop fan underneath your Angura facade but aren't willing to go thrifting because that's for the lower class. You're trying to farm followers here, not actually grow any passion or live sustainably. That would be disastrous. Imagine being into something unique!
Make sure it's a gloomy day, for the Aesthetic. If it's rainy, even better, but if your makeup is even a centimetre ruined by the water then you should just call everything quits and go home. Remember, you're outside to look good, not because you actually enjoy being out of the house.
Today I went outside for the express purpose of buying cornstarch because I was running out of setting powder. Of course, whenever I go to the shops, I have to walk around for a while and make people stare at me first. Again, there's no point if you don't do this.
TIP: you should stare into a law firm and make them uncomfortable because their windows are one-way mirrors.
Pick up your cornstarch (again, you're broke, we both know this) and an energy drink, then go find somewhere to read. If it's rainy like it was for me, sit on a wet bench under your umbrella and read off your Kindle, because it's 2025 and the book you're reading was released three days ago as an E-book and not in print.
Remember, theme your accounts around obvious cosplayers and never bother to find new bands. You're a Shinjuku Gewalt fan now, but you would NEVER EVER EVER pirate their music with Soulseek. Not because you would never pirate music (you listen to Malice Mizer as podcasts on Spotify and you use Soundcloud to listen to music after all) but because you don't know how it works and think it's too hard to learn.
NOTE: this entire article turned out extremely mean-spirited. I apologise for that, but if you are hurt, all I can say is... go become a real-life angura fan. You can always mail me for recs. ^_^;