Due to its messy history, LADYBABY needs a timeline simply to explain its incarnations. This is a work in progress intended to eventually move as much information from the primary "Music" page as possible.
Pre-Debut
It all began in the Fall of 2014 at the annual MissID contest. 16-year-old gravure Idol Rie Kaneko was one of the top winners. A younger but more experienced model and singer, 13-year-old Rei Kuromiya, was one of the runners-up.Worth noting that Rei, in addition to being a very underage swimsuit model (seriously, do NOT image-search her on a work computer – nothing illegal, but her kid-era gravure photos will definitely raise eyebrows; we'll let the record show right now that Rei has said she is NOT ashamed of these photos and DOES NOT consider herself a "victim", putting that argument to rest), had also been since age 11, the singer for her sister Aya's rock band BRATS. While BRATS was originally just a side-project of the Kuromiya Sisters and their friends, it would evolve over many years into something more, with Rei herself becoming a guitarist in her own right. Rie has said that after meeting Rei, she quickly became a fan of BRATS and often attended their gigs, usually standing in the front row.
SO, Rie and Rei met during the competition and hit it off immediately… as in, there's a photo from that time of the two kissing on the lips. Even those who didn't witness that moment saw their chemistry. Someone at costumer Clearstone, for whom Rie occasionally modeled, showed them a photo of Ladybeard (real name Richard Magarey), a cross-dressing Australian pro-wrestler who had recently taken his shtick from Taiwan to Japan, and asked the girls if they were interested in working with him. They said yes, and the rest is history.
Also during this time, Rei and Rie starred in a short film connected with MissID called "Escape Dream".
In early 2015, the Ladybaby Youtube channel and social media platforms were launched. Rick would say years later he didn't like the name and had suggested "Babybeard". This would become important for him and everyone else down the line. Not long after, in March 2015, the very first teaser videos for the Ladybaby project posted – no music yet, just Rie, Rei, and 'Beard chilling in a room playing karafuta …with a 14-year-old Rei literally smacking 'Beard upside the head (while on his back) and calling him an idiot before he finally lost his cool.
LADYBABY 1.0 (July 2015–April 2016)
On July 4th, 2015, Clearstone uploaded LADYBABY’s debut song, “Nippon Manju”. The song quickly went viral due to its weird combinations of cute and harsh. As of 2023, the video has garnered over 35 million views, an impressive feat for a Japanese Idol video created on No Budget.LADYBABY’s viral success managed to convince the managers to commission more songs for the trio, all popular, though none managed to have the same impact. Still, it was enough to have them invited as musical guests to various shows and conventions, including New York ComiCon which happened to coincide with Rei’s 15th birthday. Ladybeard’s ability to jump language barriers — he can speak English, Japanese, and Mandarin — made it easier for the group to play internationally. Worth noting Rie is also multilingual — she’s half-Filipino and speaks Japanese, Cebuano, Tagalog, and English, although she freely admits to not being proficient in English. Rei was and remains monolingual Japanese.
The group continued on performing in Japan at whatever venues would have them, including their first set with a live band at the end of 2015. Multiple videos and photos from these shows featured Rie and Rei kissing each other on the lips. Also Rei flipping off cameras. Following the release of their third single, “Renge Chance!”, the trio performed a live band set in April 2016 that would be filmed and later sold on DVD. However, no one knew then that this would be the final time Rie, Rei, and Ladybeard would perform together.
To hear Ladybeard’s side of the story, they had to sign new contracts after this show. Because LADYBABY had become so popular, he noted more stakeholders wanted in, meaning he found himself dealing with multiple men in suits rather than just a couple like the year before. Rie and Rei, who had come to enjoy performing together, signed new contracts quickly. Ladybeard, however, held out. He maintains that, every time he gave his demands, an executive would verbally agree, but then the contract presented to him a few days later would be completely different, requiring him to, as he put it, “do things [he] wasn’t willing to do and not paying [him] enough for it.” Eventually he realized that one or more of the executives had decided to use his work visa as leverage against him — it was up for renewal in Fall 2016 and, in order to legally stay in Japan, he had to be employed. Unwilling to be a proverbial hostage, Ladybeard chose to walk away at the end of July 2016.
But, as noted above, Rie and Rei were already under contract. What to do?
LADYBABY 2.0, a.k.a “The Idol Formerly Known As LADYBABY” (September 2016–November 2017)
In September 2016, Rie announced via Youtube the release of a "Memorial" album titled First Year Best featuring all but two of the songs they had recorded with Ladybeard, and that she and Rei would continue to perform, but now as “The Idol Formerly Known As Ladybaby. No one has said if this was for legal reasons or artistic ones to separate themselves from Ladybeard. Regardless, the duo continued to record songs and release weird but well-received music videos and perform live, including at Tokyo Idol Festival 2017. Whenever they performed 1st-generation songs, Ladybeard’s voice would be on the backtrack, which even they admitted took away some of the charm.Some of this era’s songs also had disembodied screaming — “Pelo”, “Easter Bunny”, and “Pinky! Pinky!”
Music videos continued to be almost hilariously low-budget except for, of course, the costumes.
One song from this era stands out from the others: "Lady Baby Blue", composed and written by Rie’s friend Seiko Ōmori, is a pop-rock song unlike previous LB output whose video consists entirely of B-roll footage curated and edited together by Rie, showing herself and Rei being incredibly close (they kiss no fewer than eight times during the video). Yes, it is one of the gayest live-action things to ever come out of Japan. When the two performed the song live, it often ended with them breaking down in tears.
Behind the scenes, though, things began to fall apart as Summer ended. Rei's voice had become raspier and it turned out not to be because she was growing up (Rei was 16 at the time and she sounded noticeably deeper compared to recording "Nippon Manju" two years earlier). Performing in both Ladybaby and BRATS put serious strain on her vocal cords. In September, BRATS announced a hiatus to allow Rei to rest her voice. Ladybaby's management, however, insisted on continuing their scheduled activities, which would eventually lead to a tour at the start of 2018. We don't know what the conversations between Rie and Rei were like at the time, but fans noticed a distinct lack of their trademark chemistry during their shows beginning in late September, the two keeping their distance from each other when normally they would be very close to each other if they weren't dancing or interacting with the audience. They had also stopped communicating on social media (they were known to tweet hearts at each other plus other cute interactions). On October 27th, they held a show with a live band, which would end up being their final performance as Ladybaby's girl-duo.
On November 17th, 2017, shortly before her 17th birthday, Ladybaby management announced Rei's sudden departure from the group. The reasoning given then was that Rei could not continue any longer without permanently damaging her voice, plus she was simply sick of being an Idol. This wasn't entirely untrue – Rei had said in multiple interviews that back in the day she hated being around other Junior Idols because she thought their conversations were vapid – but nobody believed that that was the full story. While it was a given that she would return to BRATS once she could, and she did in Spring 2018, Rie's future along with that of the project was left vague. Most people at the time believed that Ladybaby was no more.
Not long after, Rie posted two tweets on her personal feed: one a professional photo of herself and Rei in their "Pinky! Pinky!" costumes about to kiss captioned, in Japanese, "Never forget love"; and the other a cellphone photo plus a message insisting she was okay (she was obviously not okay).
On December 17th, the day before her 20th birthday (the age of full adulthood in Japan at the time), she posted a video on Youtube from a new account/project she'd created called "trolleattroll", featuring her singing a song called "lost" in which the English word "nineteen" is repeated multiple times in the lyrics, an obvious nod to her aging out of her teens. For this and her other song "blues", she looked not merely sad but extremely depressed. Still, her fans were glad she hadn't completely stepped out of the spotlight, even though she was clearly Not Over It regarding Rei.
LADYBABY 3.0 (February 2018–January 2020)
On January 8th, 2018, which was Coming-Of-Age Day (a tradition in Japan to celebrate everyone who had reached adulthood during the previous year), Rie held her first fan-meetup since her breakup with Rei. She performed acoustic renditions of a couple of Ladybaby songs. At the very end, she announced a second "Memorial" album featuring all the songs she recorded with Rei (not all had been released). Then she dropped a bombshell – Ladybaby would hold auditions for new members. This was, unsurprisingly, met with gasps and applause by the people there.What Everyone Did After
- Rick Magarey, ever eager to keep his "Ladybeard" shtick going, began a new project called Deadlift Lolita just a year after he parted ways with LADYBABY. It featured the powerful but tiny female wrestler Reika Saiki providing the cute – she was known as the "Muscle Idol". Deadlift Lolita continued until 2019, when Reika suffered a broken jaw after a wrestling stunt went wrong.
With Reika unable to continue in wrestling or Idol, Ladybeard took some time off, eventually deciding – probably not coincidentally shortly after LADYBABY itself went into what was then an indefinite hiatus – to bring back the original Ladybaby formula and aesthetic from 2015. He declared the formation of BABYBEARD (remember that name from the first section of this?), "An Adorable Assault on the Senses", in 2020 and set about recruiting two girls to flank him. Eventually he found aspiring Idols Suzu Nakayama (D.O.B 1998/08/12) and Kotomi Hinata (D.O.B 2000/10/10), revealing them in September 2020. Their debut single "Nippon Kara Konnichiwa" ("Hello From Japan") premiered in April 2021 but, due to the pandemic, it would be over a year before they could perform together and shoot music videos.
In July 2023, Kotomi announced her departure from Babybeard, but made clear she would stay until after Suzu's birthday celebration that August, as they had become good friends during their time together. Marimo "MAHRI" [family name unknown] (D.O.B 2000/07/11), a "returnee Idol" who is fluent in English and Spanish (here's Mari's personal channel),
replaced her.- Reika, though unconnected with LADYBABY itself, is worth more mention. Following her retirement from wrestling and being a bit old for Idol, she has tried to become an actress. Despite being past 30 (as of 2022) and out-of-practice, she can probably still beat the crap out of men twice her size.
- Rei Kuromiya continued to perform as the lead singer for BRATS, just as she had before Ladybaby. They released two studio albums and a live album until the departure of lead guitarist Hinako, who had been with them for six years, eventually led them to a creative rut.
- Nana Ikeda returned to her fashion and modeling work. In 2023, she joined underground Idol group NARLOW.
- Emily Arima created her own independent project, SHADES, for which she serves as lyricist and screamer. She joined alt-Idol group PassCode in August 2021 after that group's original screamer, Yuna Imada, retired due to failing health. As of this edit, Emily still performs with them and by all accounts enjoys it.
- Fuka Karasawa is, as of 2023, not active in entertainment, though she still posts to social media from time to time and has been seen hanging out with Emily whenever Emily is in Tokyo (PassCode is based in Osaka), even contributing vocals to one of Emily's songs.
- Rie Kaneko, the one constant LADYBABY had from its inception to its original end, continued making music with the contacts she had made in the industry, including releasing a solo album under the alias iLie. In early 2022, completely by chance, she encountered Rei. After much reported crying, the two eventually decided they could work together again and wanted to. On New Year's Eve 2022, they announced REIRIE, a dual-Idol project not unlike what they did during Rei's final year in Ladybaby over five years earlier. They also announced Rei's BRATS work (if any) would take precedence. As of this edit, they continue to perform together with new music. Here is their channel.
LADYBABY 4.0 (November 2023–present)
On January 8th, 2023 – five years to the day after Rie announced her intention to reboot the group following Rei's departure – Ladybaby management put out this video announcing auditions for a fourth incarnation of the group. As noted above, the re-formed group would have ZERO members from the previous run. Nonetheless, management eventually announced a quintet of girls, including Sakura Tsubaki, an idol trained in death-voice by Emily herself. They would make their debut on December 1st, 2023. Emily and Fuka publicly expressed their support, with Nana soon saying she might also attend the re-debut, prompting an excited reply from Fuka.
