Trivia / LADYBABY

• Approval of God: When Ladybaby announced its "4th Generation" lineup in November 2023, Emily and Fuka responded enthusiastically, with Fuka stating she would (and did) attend their debut. Emily implied, and Sakura confirmed, that Emily taught Sakura how to death-scream. Emily did not attend the show only because PassCode was still on tour at the time.
• Creator-Driven Successor: Happened with the original LB members more than once…
  • In 2017 Ladybeard created a new group, Deadlift Lolita, featuring himself and a cute Japanese girl named Reika Saiki… who happened to be a wrestler and bodybuilder. Though she's only 4’11”, Reika is significantly older than Rie or Rei. ^note  Reika was born in May 1992, Rie in December 1997, and Rei in November 2000. Just for completeness's sake — Ladybeard was born in August 1983, Nana in October 1998, Emily in March 1999, and Fuka in October 2001.
    • Deadlift Lolita ended in 2019 due to Reika's jaw getting broken during a wrestling match. She and Beard remain friends but he decided to move on with a new project in 2020. Based on the same aesthetic as the original band – himself plus aspiring idols Suzu Nakayama and Kotomi Hinata – the project was revealed as BabyBeard - essentially taking the project back to its roots as Ladybeard plus two cute girls.
  • The post-Rei Ladybaby itself can be considered this as Rie was the only remaining original member, but the group's sound was more in line with what she was doing with Rei and Beard in 2015.
  • REIRIE, Rei's and Rie's post-Ladybaby project, has music in line with some of the "lighter" songs of their "Idol Formerly Known As" era, with a bit of BRATS influence in place of screamo.
• Doing It for the Art: Everything musical Rie does. Even before Rei left, Rie was on record saying that Ladybaby was the only thing she cared about and would dedicate her life to the project. This is the reason Rie decided to continue on after she and Rei broke up, in the face of opposition and common sense. Same applies to trolleattroll and iLie.
• No Budget: Many Ladybaby music videos are laughably cheap-looking, whatever budget existed going to costumes and perhaps the song itself.
  • "Nippon Manju" was mostly filmed with a selfie-stick in actual Akihabara stores – you can see real customers behind them in several shots – and nearby public areas, including a temple and a park. No one seems to notice them.
  • "Agé-Agé Money" was filmed at public places during Ladybaby's trips to New York City and Los Angeles, and constantly flips between locations. At one point they're dancing on Wall Street in front of the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall (fitting, considering the song's lyrics), but then it cuts to them dancing in front of Griffith Observatory, three time zones and nearly 3000 miles away.
  • "Easter Bunny" clearly had some effort put into its interior set, although it's tiny. However, its exterior shots have Rie and Rei running around what appears to be a dingy possibly condemned apartment complex, complete with dead trees, faded stop sign, and a blacktop surrounded by a rusty weed-encrusted fence.
  • For "Lady Baby Blue", Rie literally just edited together random B-Roll and cellphone footage of Rei and herself, some of which was misaligned. Granted, showing candid moments was exactly the point.
  • Rie's solo TeT song "blues" was shot in a small bathroom with a handheld camera and terrible lighting. Again, this was absolutely intentional for the effect she wanted.
    • In addition, the onscreen English subtitles are quite Engrishy, suggesting Rie did them herself and didn't run them past a professional to check for grammar flubs and typos (of which there are plenty). Unlike Rei, Rie does know some English and her pronunciation of what she knows is very good. However, she is far from fluent.
  • "Biri-Biri Money" was shot in a public park in Chiba and a nearby rock-climbing place.
  • "bite me" looks like it was shot on the set of Nadarezaka Rock, except they took down some of the wall swag, strung up some lights, and spread white stuffing and pillows across the floor. Fans have managed to pinpoint via GPS the exact bridge Rie et al run across at the very end.^*  It's in Yokohama, on an inland island about half a mile southwest of Yokohama Station.
    • Nana summoning a pizza and snacks is an absurdly cheap editing trick even by Ladybaby standards but it's hard to fault them because (1) Nana looks adorable doing it, (2) the girls are known to have shot the MV while in the middle of a tour, and (3) they got pizza and snacks – Emily in particular looks pleased about this.
  • Both "Hoshi-no-Nai Sora" and "Haten ni Raimei" are shot in an empty black room with focus entirely on the girls and their costumes (plus, for the latter MV, shots of The CHAOS band).
• Promoted Fanboy: Every new member of the 2018-era lineup counts to one degree or another.
  • Emily is the most obvious example, stating in a May 2018 Natalie interview that, being a longtime metalhead, she was very familiar with Ladybaby's music. When Rie announced open auditions to replace Rei, Emily immediately applied, hoping her previous experience as a growler for an underground band during her high school years would get Rie's attention (it did). She also said she never auditioned for bands, but did for Rie because it was Ladybaby.
    "Rather than saying I wanted to be an Idol, I wanted to be in Ladybaby."
  • Fuka, as mentioned below, had already been an Idol for two years when she auditioned for Ladybaby, but had long enjoyed Ladybaby's music and aesthetic, saying it was "cool". She said she wished to experience a different atmosphere than Warepuwa, a more traditional underground Idol group, offered.
  • Nana is an unusual case – while she had once mentioned that she wanted to be an Idol when she was younger (before her modeling career), she was much more a fan of Rie herself than of Ladybaby, writing in an old online diary entry, "Rie Kaneko is cute."
    • On the flip-side, Rie was excited to work with Nana. The two met once through their modeling work and Nana made an impression on Rie. After Rei left Ladybaby, Rie did an ego-search one night, found Nana's diary entries, remembered her from that modeling event, thought they might be able to work together and asked her to join, though she tempered it with, "If you really don't want to do it, you can refuse." Much to Rie's surprise and delight, Nana jumped at the opportunity and was very insistent about it.
  • With the Fourth Generation, revealed at the end of 2023, Mia Kanrei explained to the producers that her reason for auditioning was that she's a big fan of Rie Kaneko and, even though she wouldn't be working with Rie, still wanted to sing her old songs.
• They Also Did: All three of Ladybaby's original members had prior gigs and often did outside projects.
  • Magarey, as noted in the main page, is a professional wrestler who had made a name for himself in Hong Kong and Taiwan before going to Japan.
  • Rie is a Gravure model who has released several photobooks and videos of her shoots. She also sang two songs for musician Hajimetal^*  (he composed the Ladybaby instrumental "Overture Oversea" and serves as keyboardist for LB gigs with live backing band), and has appeared in other music videos, along with occasionally singing with J-Pop group Vampilla.
    • For years, she co-hosted a semi-regular show titled 「アイドル魂なだれ坂ロック！」 ^{Translation -}  (Idol Tamashii Nadarezaka Rock! or, literally, "Idol Soul Avalanche Rock!") with Ladybaby's choreographer Mikity.
    • After Ladybaby (seemingly) broke up for good in 2017, Rie started a solo project called trolleattroll. The music style is about as far from Ladybaby as one can get, and her first two videos – "lost" and "blues" – basically embody True Art Is Angsty.
  • Rei had a long career in Gravure modeling (much of it from before she hit puberty or during, so be advised it is not a good idea to image search her on a work computer or anywhere Chris Hansen can entrap you) and is a former junior Idol. She is also the lead singer in her older sister Aya's rock band BRATS and has been since the band formed in 2011 – she continued to perform with BRATS while still with Ladybaby, and her departure from the latter was due in part to her wanting to be with her old band full-time.
    • Rie stated in their 2017 Tokyo Girls Update interview that even before Ladybaby formed, she would watch BRATS perform, often from the front of the crowd.
  • Some of the 2018 newcomers also have other projects.
    • Nana is a popular model from Osaka who has appeared in several magazines.
    • Fuka had been a member of underground Idol group Warepuwa^*  (full title: Warera ga Puwapuwapuuwapuwa) since its inception in 2016, and remained affiliated with it concurrently with Ladybaby for over a year, though she kept her activities (and social accounts) strictly separate. That said, Ladybaby and Warepuwa held a Two-Man Live to celebrate Fuka's 17th birthday. As noted above, she ended up leaving Warepuwa not long after due to increasing stress and schedule conflicts.
  • Three of the 2023 lineup had previously been in other groups.
    • Rem was part of underground Idol group Chick-flick under the stage name "Kobato Asuka" (愛好 小鳩) from its start in October 2021 until they fired her in January 2023.
    • Mia was in Season2 – a group so underground finding information on it is difficult… but here is its twitter feed, and here is her old feed – from 2022 to 2023 under the name "Ray" (and sometimes "Rey"), and yes her color was White in that group too.
    • Sakura was a member of NUE, another HEROINES-run group, from 2019 to its end in 2020, then in EMPATHY from its start in December 2021 until November 2022. (her color in NUE was pink, in EMPATHY it was red).
• Troubled Production: It wouldn't be LADYBABY if this wasn't the case, but the best example is shown near the end of the 4th Generation lineup's "Our Trajectory" series. The re-re-debut had been set for September 2023 and four of the final girls had already been accepted by late Spring. However, none of them could scream, and neither could any other girl who had auditioned. The whole project nearly fell apart until the producers reached out to Sakura and asked her to try screaming. She did well enough that the debut could proceed, but she was brought in so late in the process that debut was pushed back to December 1st (with the unveiling one week earlier).
• What Could Have Been: Oh so much with this group.
  • During his explanation a couple years after the fact about why he left Ladybaby, Ladybeard insisted to his viewers that he wanted to stay on but the Suits made it impossible. Had they not been so unwilling to deal, Ladybaby would have continued as-was and the TIFKA-era would never have happened. Considering that real-life events led to the world getting to know Emily Arima, it's up in the air which timeline is superior.
    • Not long after Beard's departure, the executive who had irritated him the most left. Upon learning this from Rie in 2018, he readily agreed to cameo in "Biri-Biri Money".
  • Ladybaby's "Activity Suspension" in January 2020 was clearly intended to be temporary – the MV for "Misogi Island" even ends its post-song Wall of Text with, "We hope to see you again soon." Indeed, they had at least two one-off reunion lives planned – one on March 7th 2020 for Emily's 21st birthday, and another in May for a music festival. However, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Japan less than a week before the show for Emily could happen, and everything was cancelled. The girls remain friends and have met up since, but no talk of performing together again. Emily did release a song independent of PassCode with Fuka joining her, but that's about it.
  • Emily herself only joined PassCode because that group's original screamer Yuna Imada retired due to severe panic attacks she suffered during their Spring 2021 tour. Had Yuna been able to recover and resume performing, they would not have needed to hire Emily, and Emily – who never stopped loving LADYBABY – would have been available for a reboot, something to which she likely would have agreed even without Rie around. It's possible she could also have brought Nana and/or Fuka back with her.
  • Clearstone apparently did contact Rie about Putting the Band Back Together, but she turned them down on the grounds that "the others [weren't] ready" and she would not return without Emily, Nana, and Fuka. This was impossible because Emily had since joined PassCode. Rie did not tell them she had reconciled with Rei and they were considering restarting their duo career. This caused Clearstone to partner with Underground Idol producer HEROINES to build a new LADYBABY in 2023. Amusingly, REIRIE and Ladybaby announced their respective comebacks within days of each other.

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