Line #11 Awesome/BABYMETAL


1	* The fact that Babymetal in general (and Moa in particular) hold records as the youngest girls to ever perform at several stadiums and festivals, including Budokan and Tokyo Dome, as well as being the first (and so far only) Japanese group to headline Wembley Arena.
2	** They do not have this distinction for Saitama Super Arena. Suzuka, however, does, as the youngest member of Karen Girl's (11) at their farewell performance which, not coincidentally, Yui attended. See more on that below.
3	* Suzuka is not physically large – 5'3" and slender. No one in their right mind would expect a voice ''that'' powerful to come out of such a small girl, yet it does. This same small girl has such a formidable stage presence (and DeathGlare) that she can get a crowd to do just about anything she wants: she motions à la Moses and the crowd parts to form a Wall Of Death; she twirls her wrists and she gets circle pits; she asks for call-&-response, she (usually) gets it. This is one of the big reasons fans call her The Queen.
4	* Their "big" concerts in Japan are known for extremely theatrical stage designs that are awesome to look at on their own. See Legend 1997, Budokan, SSA 2015, Yokohama Arena, Tokyo Dome, and Legend S.
5	* Budokan Red Night, held March 1st 2014, nearly self-destructed towards the end. During the middle of "Headbanger!", the next-to-last song, Yui fell off the stage at least 8' to the concrete floor – on the Blu-ray, one can hear her yell as she drops, and after that only Moa is audible. For the rest of the song, Su looks like she's about to cry (from her vantage point, she might have seen Yui fall). Yui, merely stunned, shook it off and was back on stage for the final song.
6	** After the house lights went down at the end of the song, fans started chanting Yui's name to encourage her (part of this is retained on the Bluray). When the lights come back on for the last song, "Ijime, Damè, Zettai", revealing Yui to be fine, there is audible applause.
7	** Score another for perseverance – during the death-run at the beginning of IDZ, Moa slipped and injured her left leg. She spends the rest of the song holding back tears fighting the obvious pain she's in (footage shows her leg visibly twitching and/or giving out when she puts weight on it). During the fight sequence, she falls backwards and ''Yui'' - who barely escaped much worse injuries just a few minutes earlier - subtly asks if ''Moa'' is okay via looks and nods. After the song is over and the trio do their victory lap around the stage, Yui and Moa start off hand-in-hand. How's that for awesome teamwork?
8	* The entirety of [=SoniSphere=] 2014. Originally booked to play a side-stage, fan response to the booking led to them being switched to the main stage, in front of more than 50,000 British metalheads at a festival notorious for bottling acts they don't like. The Kami Band's sound check got the crowd interested, but the girls won them over. By the time their 30-minute set was over, people were chanting "We want more!"
9	* The story of Yui's dream, which led to her being in Babymetal, is pure undistilled awesome and makes one respect and love the poor girl even more. Here's the story as told by Yui in her 15th birthday Sakura Gakuin blogpost, paraphrased…
10	** By 3rd grade, Yui was already a child model and had been in a couple of commercials. But then one of her close family members (possibly a parent; she doesn't say) contracted a life-threatening illness that required weeks in hospital, including the ICU. They refused to let Yui in to see her sick relative because she was too little, forcing her to spend each afternoon after school in the hospital waiting room, becoming more and more depressed. One of the doctors suggested she listen to music that cheered her up. That just so happened to be the ''Manga/PsychicSquad'' OST, particularly "Over The Future", sung by Karen Girl's – which included Suzuka and Ayami (Yui was already a fan of Ayami's). For the next month or so, Yui listened to Karen Girl's on repeat. She also watched the DVD with the music and dance videos for "Over The Future" and "My Wings" on loop to learn the choreography.\
11	Eventually her ailing relative recovered, and Yui attended the Karen Girl's farewell concert in March 2009 with her family. She was near the front and danced along. Given the stressful year Yui had been through, her manager and family encouraged her to take a break from entertainment. Her response was the polite little Japanese girl equivalent of Screw That: "I want to be a Karen Girl's too!". She worked harder than ever before and was accepted into the Amuse Kids (where she met Moa). In 2010, she and Moa auditioned together to be the youngest members of Music/SakuraGakuin's inaugural class by dancing to "Over The Future"… leaving Suzuka's spot empty. Her precise dancing and absurd work ethic she had fostered over the previous year-plus, in addition to her chemistry with Moa, was one of Koba's reasons for adding her to Babymetal – she and Moa were (then) tiny ''and'' could keep up with Suzuka, something very few others could do.\
12	On December 20th 2012, for Su's first Babymetal birthday concert (she turned 15), they performed a metal remix of "Over The Future" with Su[[labelnote:*]] (now the oldest and tallest of a trio instead of youngest and shortest)[[/labelnote]] front and center. 18 months later, Yui wrote that her childhood dream came true at that concert. How awesome is that??
13	* The girls' attempts to learn English in order to reach out to the international fanbase. By 2017, Su's English had become surprisingly good, [[{{Engrish}} though she still sometimes has grammar flubs]]. For "Legend S", she had recorded all of the narration – several minutes worth of it – in English (as well as singing "The One" in English as per usual). Native English speakers praised her for how far she'd come in just three years.
14	** Moa has a thick accent, but good comprehension. She has shown several times she'll try her very best even if she gets tongue-tied ("I love [[{{Engrish}} twirlin… torwari …Solly]]. I love ''trying'' new foods!"). Her English has improved since the interview that quote is taken from.
15	*** Yui's English is, uh… we love Yui. Seriously though, while her English skills are often thought to be near nonexistent, people who have met her say she is conversant at the least. She's just a perfectionist who often second-guesses herself, and her shyness doesn't help. Still, she was willing to push herself in Sakura Gakuin by singing Music/CyndiLauper's "True Colors" for her acapella – the first SG girl to do a song entirely in English. Sure, she sang with a heavy accent, but it's easy to tell how hard she worked at it.
16	** Herman Li of Music/DragonForce praised the girls' language skills during a video message saying "Every time I see you, your English gets better and better."
17	* At the 2016 AMPA's (Alternative Press Music Awards) BABYMETAL performed their single "Karate", after which they were joined onstage by Rob Halford of Music/JudasPriest. He and Su-Metal proceeded to demolish two Judas Priest standards, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD85aM0VQ3o "Painkiller" and "Breaking the Law"]], while [=MoaMetal=] and [=YuiMetal=] may or may not have played electric guitars[[labelnote:*]] (those guitars are designed to connect to an amp wirelessly; Moa, who owns her own guitar and has practiced casually for years, likely ''was'' playing – whether it was '''''audible''''' is another matter)[[/labelnote]]. The voiceover introducing Halford only amped up the awesome:
18	-->''"THE FOX GOD and THE METAL GOD! Their meeting was not a coincidence! Nothing happens by accident. When BABYMETAL, the Chosen Ones by THE FOX GOD, are awakened by THE METAL GOD, a new LEGEND is born, right now at this moment!"''
19	* Bit of a less happy one, but Yui was forced by her doctors to pull out of ''Legend S - Baptism XX'' at the very last minute, leaving Su and Moa to perform without her. It was too late to alter the setlist or choreography, so Su and Moa did what they had done during "Headbanger!" at Budokan Red Night (when Yui fell off the stage) – they went on without her and performed as if she was there. Watching Moa singing Black Babymetal songs solo and dancing alone – even her side of the "fight" during IDZ's bridge – giving an effort percentage far beyond 100, is sad yet awesome.
20	** More awesome is the crowd constantly shouting encouragement to Moa ("Ganbare, Moa-chan!") while she's alone, and eventually singing Yui's parts to make the situation feel slightly less awkward.
21	* Another "Sad, but kinda awesome" thing — On December 30th 2017, Mikio Fujioka, one of the main guitarists for the Kami Band since 2014 (amongst '''''many''''' other professions, including teacher), fell off an observation platform while stargazing; he died from his injuries a week later. News of his death was not made public until after his funeral. Almost instantly, nearly every musician in the world who had met him – there were dozens – sent their condolences on the loss of the "Little God".[[labelnote:*]] Mikio was very short for a Japanese man – 158cm (5'2") – and he used his own twitter handle to poke fun at it. He was also called the "Happy God" because he often smiled contentedly while playing, and was known to gush to anyone who would listen about how much he loved his wife and kids.[[/labelnote]] Many posted photos they had taken with him. His bandmates in Japan, some of whom (like fellow Kami and Kari Band member Takayoshi Ohmura) were trained by him, have said publicly they will do everything they can for Mikio's widow and daughters.
22	** Indeed, as of 2019, a year and a half after Mikio's death, Takayoshi is still organizing benefit concerts for his late friend. This is one of several reasons he has stepped back from Babymetal and was confirmed not to be on either the North American ''or'' European legs of the Metal Galaxy tour (he ''was'' at Glastonbury and the 2019 London show, however).
23	* Babymetal's return to form in 2019. After an extremely difficult year where bad PR for the US/EU tour snowballed into a crisis that even impacted Amuse's stock price and which caused some fans to tune out except to occasionally come back and complain that a Yui-less Babymetal isn't worth following, no-one really had much faith when they released a cryptic [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion Eva]]-inspired picture and a trusted press outlet said to expect "Big Things" that year. When Babymetal finally awoke in June, people quickly learned not to underestimate the group.
24	** "PA PA YA!!" was intially met with mixed reviews when it leaked a week before its official release. However, its live performance, followed by a kickass music video, quickly turned opinions around.
25	** Koba ''finally'' managed to find a solution to the Yui problem: a trio of Avengers, all of whom have previously worked with Mikiko-sensei, including two Sakura Gakuin members. One Avenger would be chosen for each performance to complete the trio on stage... except during the two-day ''Legend - Metal Galaxy'' live in Tokyo, where all three Avengers appeared for the final song each night.
26	*** The "Avengers" format of June 2019[[labelnote:*]] (technically it began in December 2018 with dancer Saya Hirai joining Su & Moa on Babymetal's tour of Australian music festivals, but the "Avengers" lore didn't start until half a year later, by which time Saya had joined performance troupe Torahime-Ichiza)[[/labelnote]] to January 2023 was far more positively received by fans than the quad formation (with Minami Tsukui and Minako Maruyama) from the group's "Dark Side" 2018 tour. Additionally, Su and Moa returned to their signature hairstyles – they'd worn their hair down in 2018. Moa's pigtails and Su's ponytail are SeriousBusiness to some.
27	*** Worth noting that all three Avengers are known to be good singers. Better than Yui, in fact, so some fans have expressed mild disappointment that they're not mic'd to help out Moa.
28	** When, after their Glastonbury set, a couple of music outlets decided to interview Su and Moa, the girls surprised everyone by showing they hadn't been bailing on their English lessons.
29	** Momoko ''finally'' became a full member of Babymetal after working "anonymously" alongside Su and Moa for over three years (counting the hiatus), pleasing many fans – [=#GiveMomokoAMic=] was a not-uncommon refrain posted on the band's social media pages in 2021, as Riho and Kano were known to have already left.
30	*** The only people ''not'' happy were the tiny minority who still hoped Yui would return, as this put an end to that once and for all. But, when Babymetal finally ended its hiatus in January 2023 and announced "A New -Metal Will Be Born", the logical assumption was that Momoko, who made her first public appearance since failing ''Girls Planet 999'' 18 months earlier, would be elevated to a full member.
31	* More evidence that Babymetal's influence is spreading to the States, Music/PostmodernJukebox released a cover of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69bid4gUOHQ "Gimme Chocolate"]].

Context Awesome / BABYMETAL