Dear readers of Arlequin Magazine,
I want to start off this letter that I really don’t want to write to you with “no, Arlequin is not ending”. Because I can imagine that is your first thought when you see something like this appearing instead of a scheduled review or other article.
Instead, I want to give you an explanation on why the update schedule is, to put it nicely, all over the place. I didn’t want to talk about this situation at all, and I still don’t. But I do feel like I owe it to all of you to give you some insight into why it’s such a mess.
I started 2026 with a ton of ideas and ambitions. One of those was to add German as a permanent publishing language since Rudolf (who you haven’t met yet) so kindly offered to join the team as a translator next to Margaret (Spanish) and Misaki (Dutch). Several interviews were in the works – of which you have seen a few already (LOVEBITES, Ryo Trackmaker and the immensely delayed second interview with SLEIPNIR), but everything suddenly came to a grinding halt overnight.
The reason why
From the first day I started Arlequin my mother was my biggest fan. She encouraged me to learn and grow as a photographer and journalist, and loved hearing about my experience as both of those, even though she didn’t always agree with my decisions to go to a show further away from home. On May 4 I received a message from my dad that he was on the way to the ER while mom was being taken there by ambulance. I don’t want to go into detail about her condition or the events that followed, but the end of the story is that my mother passed away almost two weeks later. I didn’t get to speak to her since the evening of May 3rd, and my main priority at that time was to support my dad, who wasn’t able to take care of himself due to the emotional blow this has been. All of it came out of the blue, and blindsided both him, me and even mom herself entirely.
The interviews with Ryo Trackmaker and LOVEBITES were published during this time, and the promotion for them on our social media was done later than usual because I wasn’t able to do it at the time of publishing.
I tried to pick up with SLEIPNIR’s interview in early June, and again with the reviews for THE THIRTEEN’s “A World of Villains” and ザアザア (XAA XAA)’s “ちぎれちゃう” (Chigirechau), but perhaps you’ve noticed me missing the publication date on July 26, and now you’re getting this instead on August 2nd.
The second blow was one of my bunnies, who I had for nearly 10 amazing years, passing away from old age in mid-July as well. It was something I saw coming, but didn’t expect to happen so quickly. If you know me as a person you know how much my animals mean to me, so this was a huge mental setback for me as well. One I still haven’t processed or recovered from at the moment I’m writing this.
The future
As I stated before: no, Arlequin is not ending. I’ve worked on this project for almost 20 years by now. The ヴィジュアル系 (Visual Kei) genre has grown to be such a big part of me as a person, it’s not something I can close just like a book I’ve finished reading.
However, I can’t promise a proper update schedule for the time being. As much as I want to stick to the schedule of ‘a new article every first and last Sunday of the month’, it’s not something I can guarantee at the moment¬.
What I can guarantee is that there will be new articles. Just the ‘when’ is going to be a bit of a wildcard. So I apologize for all of the publication dates I have missed already, and all the ones I am going to miss in the future. (Since at the moment I am the sole contributor to this project.)
Another major hurdle for me is social media as a whole. That’s why this message is here, and not there. It’s also the reason why our Facebook page was updated to a Facebook group instead – so Misaki can keep this under her umbrella of tasks.
I don’t say this nearly as often as I should, but to all of the readers of Arlequin Magazine: thank you.
Thank you for not just reading my work, but also for enjoying the artists in this incredible, diverse genre.
I’m not leaving, I just need time to get myself together. So please wait for me. ♥
– 雪 (Yuki)
Arlequin Magazine, Photography & Creations’ owner