Funny / BABYMETAL

• The very idea of Babymetal at its inception. Extremely adorable idol music mixed with brutal and heavy-as-fuck, face-melting metal.
  • The fact that such a thing should have been the textbook definition of One-Hit Wonder. It Will Never Catch On, people said. One decade on, the girls are now adults and the group is still going, albeit minus one Yui.
  • In addition to being considered a breath of fresh air by many hard-rock and metal bands in the West, they also managed to help kick-start the Underground Idol scene in Japan, with PassCode and Ladybaby being two of the more prominent acts to follow in their wake.
• Watch this video. When the actual headbanging starts at 0:45, you're pretty much guaranteed to burst out laughing.
  "How does she not crack her head open on that dresser?" —pretty much everyone who watches the video
• Let's just say a first time listener is going to have at least one Mood Whiplash moment, with the only appropriate response as laughter. Regular fans are used to these moments however, embracing it as a part of their sound.
• The hip-hop breakdown in the middle of "Iine!", which is a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment even by Babymetal standards. Regrettably, they drop 90% of its lyrics during live shows in favor of call-&-response, though it invariably ends on the wonderfully adorable and memetic "Kitsune da o!".
• The song "Gimme Chocolate!!" – literally a paean to metal brutality… and it's about wanting candy.
  • Suzuka herself recalled having a "WTF" reaction upon hearing an early cut of the song and seeing Mikiko's choreography.
    Su: "And I heard it and thought, this is how we're doing the song?!"
• The bridge of "Uki Uki★Midnight" when one realizes it's a dubstep remix of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".
• The Black Babymetal song "GJ!" has a cowbell hit right smack dab in the middle of some of the heaviest riffs the Kami Band does. That the hit is punctuated by one of MoiMoi's cutest dance moves only makes it even more hilarious.
• Since at least early 2015 (probably earlier), Moa has had a habit of making funny faces (hengao) at other members when she's not facing the camera – something she also did back in her Sakura Gakuin days. Moa is just a natural clown.
  • Her original target was Hideki Aoyama, the drummer, who often responds in kind.
  • More infamously, she often uses the breakdown during "Megitsune" – when Su is holding the fox mask – to hengao and get Su to crack. At least twice, fan-cams have caught Su sticking her tongue out in response.
    • Fans of the hengao battles were sad when, at the Hollywood Palladium show, Su opted not to indulge Moa, instead giving her a dismissive stare followed by a quick smirk.
    • During the second night of The Sun Also Rises, Moa uses the "Megitsune" bridge to mime a kiss in Su's general direction. As Moa stands there with a satisfied smirk, Kano – just 14 at the time – sees it and her jaw drops while eyes bug out in shock.
  • Moa and Su also had a brief hengao battle during "Gimme Chocolate!!" on Colbert. The cameras were behind Moa, so we have no idea what she did, but Su responded with a puffer-fish face.
• If Moa is unsuccessful at getting Su to react during "Megitsune" (or even if she is successful), she has since 2016 taken to using a particular segment of "Gimme Chocolate!" where she and Yui point finger-guns at the audience through Su's flexed arms to instead poke Su's cheek or ear, just because she can. Watching Su keep stoic while Moa messes with her is a riot.
• Moa's Food Obsession has become a Running Gag, even for her. In interviews, the longer it goes on and the more time Moa gets to speak, the probability of her mentioning food approaches 100%.
  • To put this into perspective, when Loudwire asked her what she enjoyed doing when not rehearsing or performing, she (eventually) said - in English - that she loves trying new foods.
    • Photos exist of her earlier in the band's existence showing off concoctions like a quadruple-decker cheeseburger and an onion-ring burger.
    • When asked how she was enjoying New York City, she talked about how big her steak was.
    • At Rock On The Range 2015, she was asked what she considered a major difference between Japan and the USA that she liked. Her answer was that American food is richer and there's a lot more of it.
  • In an interview shortly before Babymetal's Wembley show, the interviewer asked whether they maintained a healthy diet on tour. The instant he mentioned pizza, Moa said "Mmm!" and gave a huge smile… completely ignoring the question.
  • During an interview Babymetal gave at the Carolina Rebellion festival, Moa nods at the camera while Su is talking …and almost immediately thereafter gets distracted. Given how she smiles whilst sticking her nose towards the wind, chances are very high she smelled food.
  • The Hedoban interview immediately after Babymetal's Tokyo Dome shows had this. The interviewer asked which festival she most enjoyed performing at. The first words out of Moa's mouth were, "Well, you know I love eating," and then talked about festival concessions for awhile before finally answering the question.
  • Moa has a "tell" when she's excited about food — she rubs her cheek(s) while smiling. She did this when asked what her favourite kind of chocolate is. ^Answer  Milk, White, and Bitter (Dark). Not mint.
  • She also likes strawberries. Her surprise 13th birthday party during a Tower Records Sakura Gakuin interview with her, Suzuka, Nene, and Rinon, involved a strawberry cake. As it was being wheeled back offstage so Moa could enjoy it after the livestream, Moa followed the cake before being dragged back to her spot (not before pinching one more strawberry).
    • During Babymetal's appearance on a Taiwanese variety show, the girls were all given giant pieces of angel food cake with strawberries. While all three girls enjoyed it, Moa is shown smiling in ecstasy.
  • At least a few jokes were made at her expense during Sakura Gakuin about her enjoying fried chicken cartilage.
  • She has professed a particular love for German foods.
  • In April 2019, the first interview she'd given in over two years, she admitted that while Suzuka remembered the venues and cities they'd performed in the previous year, all she could recall was what they had to eat.
    "I'm pretty sure Moa's favorite food is food." —Babymetal fans discussing the important question
  • Once again, Moa stated the thing she liked most about touring was getting to eat different foods.
  • After the USA leg of the Metal Galaxy Tour ended, the girls returned to Japan and gave a "100 questions" interview to a local magazine. This is how it started:
    Q1: "How are you feeling today?"
    Moa: "I'm hungry. I want some fried chicken."
  • Sometimes during the "Megitsune" bridge, instead of making funny faces at Su, Moa will instead say the name of a food she wants and/or is relevant to the area they're playing in – e.g. in Paris she was filmed saying "Crêpe-Suzette" while at another venue she said "Karaage!" (Japanese for "fried chicken").
• At one particular 2017 show where Babymetal was opening for Korn, the girls were performing "Catch Me If You Can". Moa miscalculated the slide under Suzuka's legs and, upon rising to do her cute pose, accidentally goosed Su in the crotch with her head. The brief look of shock on Su's face as she literally jumped away was priceless.
  • Made even better when, breaking with the choreography, Moa looks over at Su, causing the latter to crack up even more than she already had. It takes her about 5 seconds to recompose herself, at which point Moa looks over at her again with the same grin. It takes turning away from the crowd about 40 seconds later for Su to get her full composure back.
• Yui may have been the "shy girl" of the trio, but she was also the one most aware of the audience, willing to mug for a fan-cam if an audience member caught her attention. Fans considered getting a reaction from Yui – especially if she poked her cheek, known as "Puni-Puni Cheek" – to be one of the greatest honors Babymetal could bestow.
  • If something happened during a live show where Yui had no idea how to react, she would invariably respond with Jazz-Hands and/or mugging for the nearest camera. This famously happened at the end of Tokyo Dome Black Night where Su trolled Moa with her microphone. As Moa and Su had their laugh, Yui simply mugged.
  • Yui had a tendency to be slow on the uptake, lovingly called "Yui-lag" by fans. The most extreme example came at the end of a 2017 outdoor show. Su and Moa bow to the audience. This evidently did not register in Yui's brain, so she simply stood there in mild confusion until she noticed a camera offstage to her right and gave a quick friendly wave.
• Anyone who follows Babymetal long enough will notice many things that have become memetic running gags amongst the fanbase. These include but are not limited to:
  • All disc-based merchandise are "DeLoreans"
  • Moa's hengao battles with Hideki and Su
  • Yui-Lag, courtesy of Yui-Bot
  • How the girls act during most interviews – Su talks a lot; Yui looks at the camera; Moa looks at Su
    • After Yui's departure, once Su & Moa finally started giving on-camera interviews again, fans were relieved to see Moa still looks at Su. Some things never change…
    • Su also stares intently at Moa when the latter tries to speak English. Each one has their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to the language – Suzuka is better at vocabulary and pronunciation, Moa is better at grammatical structure. Fuse the two of them together and you'd get one girl reasonably proficient at English. As it is, fans just appreciate the two of them trying.
  • Moa's obsession with food, particularly meat and pizza (mentioned at great length above)
  • Yui's love of tomatoes
  • Su gets crucified on stage… again
  • Koba's inability to take a photo that doesn't look terrible
  • If you make eye contact with Yui, even through video, she steals your soul
  • The makeup artist taking advantage of BOH's baldness to paint relevant things on his head – one time when Babymetal and Red Hot Chili Peppers played onstage together, BOH sported RHCP's logo
  • The girls' English flubs. This has fused with the declaration of Su as "Queen" so whatever she says is correct even if it isn't (especially if it isn't) – therefore RHCP's Flea is now "Free" and the capital of the US state of Georgia was for two years "Atalant". Meanwhile, Babymetal's fans are guys amazing.
• In 2016, the band appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, performing "Gimme Chocolate".
  Stephen Colbert: I'm not sure what I'm about to see...but I'm pretty excited about it!"
  • After the song finishes and Colbert gives the typical plug for Metal Resistance, the girls do their goodbye message. Watching Colbert turn his head slowly to look at them in confusion is hilarious.
• In 2019, Babymetal's THE ONE website updated its contents for the coming fiscal year. However, one thing that was changed was the picture depicting prohibition of glowsticks – the Japanese still reads and the English originally read "Not A Fan-Club"; the update altered the English wording to "Not A Fun-Club". "Fan" and "Fun" are rendered identically in Japanese. However, many international fans who felt they had been taken on an unpleasant ride the previous year had a field day with it, claiming tongue-in-cheek it was a Freudian Slip rather than a case of Engrish.
• The live performance of Oh! MAJINAI, a collaboration with Joakim Broden (the lead singer and frontman of Sabaton), includes video footage in the background of Joakim singing and dancing. There is something very surreal about watching a Swedish man known for singing war-themed power ballads doing the can-can and the kazachok.

---