Trivia / BABYMETAL

• Breakthrough Hit
  • For Japan, BABYMETAL × Kiba of Akiba (2012). This single reached 3rd place in the Oricon indie charts and number one in the Tower Records Shibuya weekly indie ranking.
  • For the West, "Gimme Chocolate!!". Earlier videos had gained attention from some of the metal press and blogs, but this one was big enough to get noticed by mainstream media.
  • For some of Asia, "PA PA YA!!". The use of a Thai rapper performing in his native language for an international band was considered a tremendous gesture of respect and watershed moment for Thailand's music scene and Thais responded enthusiastically. Although initially disliked when the studio version leaked a few days early, the music video quickly changed people's minds, racking up over six million views in its first month.
• Colbert Bump: Subverted somewhat since they had become viral before appearing on his show, though that performance certainly helped raise their profile in the USA (the girls were already popular in the UK).
• Content Leak: Happened with some tracks in Metal Galaxy a few days before release.
  • Some fans also managed to tap the radio frequency of Su-metal's in-ear monitor during lives and released the recordings.
  • A staffer at The Forum livestreamed a large part of Babymetal's soundcheck to the fans gathered outside (a rare time that the band's famously loud soundcheck was not audible outside an American venue), showing that Momoko at least was there – it had become a game to fans during that tour to guess which of Momoko or Riho would be onstage at a given show; this one used both of them at different times.
  • Pictures of the members in normal clothes, such as Su and Moa relaxing at a hotel poolside in Los Angeles – yes, fans managed to find the exact spot; and Su, Moa, and Momoko with Galactic Empire's CJ Masciantonio on his birthday, have also circulated on the web. Given that fans have long wished for glimpses of them off-stage (like in their earlier documentaries and Sakura Gakuin shows), these may or may not be intentional by the management.
• Development Hell: In 2016, Warner Bros and Babymetal announced a collaboration to create a hybrid live-action/animated short series based on the band. Aside from Babymetal performing the opening for Cartoon Network's UniKitty!, nothing was ever released.
• Extremely Lengthy Creation: The group's creator and manager, Key "Kobametal" Kobayashi, is known to be a perfectionist, so most of the songs end up as this.
  • For "Road of Resistance", the guitarists from DragonForce who played on the studio version^* Herman Li and Sam Totman mentioned they started work on their sections a year before the single was released.
  • During the gestation of "Megitsune", the song was sent back and forward 36 times between the arranger and Koba before the latter was satisfied.
  • Koba admitted in 2019 that the Metal Galaxy song "DA DA DANCE" began its gestation around the same time as "Megitsune".
  • Some of the songs on their fourth album The Other One (released in 2023) have been in development since before their first album (released in 2014).
• Fan Community Nickname: "Kitsune" in English. "Mosh'sh Mates" in Japan. Collectively and officially, the fanbase is called "The One".
• Follow the Leader: Babymetal's domestic and international success seemed to kick off a trend in the Japanese underground music scene of bands that fuse Heavy Metal and Japanese Pop Music together. Usually as female fronted bands (may or may not have multiple singers) with vocals not too far removed from standard J-pop, but will have instrumentation of heavy metal and Harsh Vocals. Bonus points if they do choreographed dances. Passcode, Broken By The Scream, Hanabie, and Ladybaby are some of the more notable examples, but far from the only bands playing this style.
• The Merch: Aside from the usual like T-shirts and towels, there have been dog leashes, baby bibs, baby onesies, and masks (to fight the COVID-19 Pandemic). There have also been two special edition guitars, the massive ESP E-II MF-9 Babymetal (the brand's first nine-string model) and smaller ESP E-II Arrow-7 Babymetal.
• Missing Episode: The 2017 show at the Hollywood Palladium was recorded but never released, most likely due to a rights issue with Warner Bros.
• No Export for You: One of the band's more popular songs, "Syncopation", was left off the international release of Metal Resistance in favor of "From Dusk Til Dawn". By that same token and in an inversion, "From Dusk Til Dawn" is not on the album's Japanese edition and has only been performed live once to date – at the Hollywood Palladium in 2017.

  • "Syncopation" was finally played live outside Japan for the first time at the band's Brixton show on July 2nd 2019, over three years after its debut.
  • "From Dusk Til Dawn" was played live at the band's 2021 show in the Budokan arena in their native Japan.

  • Both Metal Resistance and Metal Galaxy have one song apiece which are bilingual on the Japanese album but completely in English on the International version – "THE ONE" for the former and "Elevator Girl" for the latter, though the Japanese version of Elevator Girl is available as a single via iTunes.
  • The International version of Metal Galaxy is missing two songs which are only on special editions that must be imported from Japan, namely "BxMxC" and "↑↓←→BBAB". The "regular" Japanese edition also lacks these songs.
    • Worth noting there are five different versions of Metal Galaxy in Japan, all of which have different cover art and differ subtly in their tracklists. None have the all-English cut of "Elevator Girl".
• Paying Their Dues: While Babymetal's rise to fame did not take as long or go as far as Perfume's, they still count.
  • When Koba first formed Babymetal as his pet project in 2010, it was just part of Sakura Gakuin – other clubs like Twinklestars (Baton Club, which incidentally Yui & Moa were also part of) and Mini-Pati (ditto from 2011-2015) got far more attention from the higher ups. Their first costumes were made up of a combination of their own clothes, hand-me-downs from other members, and a lady who worked down the hall loaned Suzuka the red jacket. The Doki-Doki Morning music video was similarly No Budget – those backup dancers were Amuse office workers (and possibly Koba himself) who were taught the choreography by the girls. Iine! might have had an even lower budget.
  • While Babymetal × Kiba of Akiba was an unexpected success that allowed the girls to perform shows independent of Sakura Gakuin, their first was in a literal underground club that holds about 250. Their first performance (of thus far seven) at SummerSonic, they played the smallest stage next to the concession stands. No one even bothered to film them – only a few stills survive. Koba got them a live band in Fall 2012 for the Legend-I and -Z encores, but that was ironically enough a gimmick. Babymetal only earned the Kami Band as we know them today once they'd been performing for three years, and it took another half a year after that (plus the first full album) to have them for an entire show: Budokan.
  • They've also had to Win Back the Crowd. When Yui missed the 2018 tour without forewarning or explanation, fans were a tad miffed. This translated to poor reviews for most of the 2018 and early 2019 singles – horrendously poor timing hurt both "Distortion" and "Starlight". It's Short, So It Sucks! was one of the few reasonable complaints ("Elevator Girl" is 2:45, for example). Things finally started to turn around in fans' minds when, for the Singapore and Australia shows in December 2018 they only brought along Saya Hirai and restored the "trinity" formation. The group's resurrection was complete with the announcement of the long-awaited third album plus a real world tour, a successful pair of shows in Yokohama, and a workable solution to the Yui problem that was communicated in understandable language.
• Production Posse: The members and touring dancers are mostly people who have worked with Mikiko-metal before. The Chosen 7 were members of her dance troupe Elevenplay, Avengers Kano and Momoko were in Sakura Gakuin, and Riho studied at Actor's School Hiroshima with Su (although Riho started earlier).
• The Red Stapler: A struggling sake brewery in Aichi Prefecture enjoyed a boost in sales after Babymetal fans discovered their Saiai (最愛) brand sake, which is written with the exact same kanji as Moa's given name.
• Similarly Named Works: There are many songs titled "Brand New Day", including one by Sakura Gakuin subunit SCOOPERS.
• Viral Marketing: The first few singles, which had little or no marketing other than having the full videos on YouTube and the occasional plug by Yui and Moa on Japanese morning shows (short skits in which Sakura Gakuin girls made regular appearances).
  • For the rest of the world "Gimme Chocolate!!" is the obvious example of this. To the point that it was the song played on the band's Colbert appearance instead of the actual promo single from Metal Resistance ("Karate"). Both songs are all but guaranteed to appear on a setlist.
• What Could Have Been: After Babymetal "closed its Seal" and went on hiatus in April 2021, Momoko Okazaki – by that point the last Avenger – went to Korea to compete on MNet's survival reality show Girls Planet 999, whose winners would become Girl Group Kep1er. Despite her popularity, especially internationally, she was eliminated in the fifth episode during the first big purge. So Momoko could have become a K-Pop Idol instead of Babymetal's replacement third member.

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