ギャル(Gal) are a Japanese subculture that I have taken an unusual interest in. It all started with one thing, then another and the next thing I know, I’m looking at makeup tutorials.

My first experience with gyaru was through anime and…the other one – how most Westerners encounter them. My reaction to them was mostly neutral though…as in, it didn’t really lead anywhere.

I thought it was weird, but kinda interesting. But I’d gradually learn more…not through anime, but through Wikipedia of all things.

Since I didn’t know what gyaru were, I looked it up. From there, I found out ‘wow, there’s more to this than expected’…but then I found Gyaru-Moji, and that’s where my brain went ‘wait, what’.

But then I got into ParaPara. I think it started through Eurobeat. I kept looking for more and then started hearing weird references. Then I got recommended ParaPara…and that’s where it all went downhill.

From ParaPara, I started looking into the rest of the subculture and, well, here we are, today.

• Galture (ギャルチャー)
  • I found this by chance one day and I’ll be using it as my semi-primary source. I do, surprisingly, have some papers and books saved somewhere about Gyaru, but this seems relatively trustworthy.
  • Something I’ll say is that I was planning to make this article earlier, relying on this…but, well, it was in Japanese-only. My Japanese is not good enough to read this stuff. However, after checking it recently, I found that…it’s now also available in English. Nice.
• There is an English Fandom wiki on Gyaru, but I haven’t really considered looking at it too deeply…I’m just assuming it’s not reliable.