YMMV / BABYMETAL

• Awesome Music: TOO MANY TO LIST. "Megitsune", "Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!!", "Gimme Chocolate!!", "Iine!"... just the tip of the iceberg! "Road of Resistance", their collaboration with Dragonforce, is about as awesome as you could imagine. Meanwhile, "Tales of the Destinies", their clearest stab yet at Progressive Metal, has been compared favorably to Dream Theater. And with the release of Metal Galaxy, there’s "Da Da Dance", "Shanti Shanti Shanti", "Elevator Girl", "Shine", "Pa Pa Ya!!", "Starlight" and "Distortion" to only add to the iceberg.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Some of their songs will change genres partway through for no reason other than Rule of Cool.
  • The swag rap breakdown in the otherwise Power Metal-ish "Iine!". Worth noting that in live shows they don't perform the full song, using call-and-response instead of the original lyrics during the breakdown, though it still ends with the gloriously memetic "Kitsune da o!".
    • In a DVD Commentary on the music video, the girls openly wondered why they don't do the full rap anymore and expressed a desire to bring it back. So far, though, it hasn't happened.
  • "Song 4" has two reggae breakdowns in the middle of the song, plus what can only be described as a Black Metal interlude in between those. Oh, and there's a "boing!" sound effect thrown in there too – yes, Yui and Moa jump there.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Of the Japanese Pop Music scene, as they are the only ones so far to have successfully fused J-pop and metal and made it sound legit (and awesome) for not just J-pop fans but also for metalheads.
• Even Better Sequel:
  • Most reviews rated the second album Metal Resistance somewhat better than the debut.
  • The Other One was given a slightly higher rating by reviews than Metal Galaxy.
• Fan Nickname: The girls' "Angel" nicknames come in part from a series of promos the 2011-era Sakura Gakuin troupe did for Flet's Wifi where they all dressed as angels.^note  The angels were numbered by their seniority in the 2011 nendo – Suzuka was #4, Yui was #9, Moa was #10. Once it became clear Momoko had become the group's go-to backup dancer (and eventually Yui's replacement), fans tried to come up with an "Angel" nickname for her too.
  • Suzuka: Angel of Song; several variations with "Queen"^* (The Queen, Queen Su, Queen of Metal, Heavy Metal Queen, etc.), Metal Goddess
  • Yui: Angel of Dance; Princess Yui; Yui-Bot^* (due to her known perfectionism while dancing, her quiet nearly-monotone speaking voice, and also her tendency to be a little slow to react - lovingly deemed "Yui-Lag"), Tomato Queen, Chokotto Love
  • Moa: Angel of Love; Super Moa-chan; Princess Moa; Chairman Moa^* (this one comes from photographer John McMurtrie accidentally mislabeling one of his Moa◊ prints he put up for sale as "Mao"◊)
    • In addition, the kanji characters in her given name literally translate to "beloved" or, if read individually, "give more, love".
  • Momoko: Angel of Joy; Pumpkin
  • As mentioned on the Sakura Gakuin page, Moimoi (or MoiMoi) to refer to Yui and Moa collectively. Unusually, this is a self-invoked fan nickname.
  • Officially, the genre of the music they play is called "kawaii metal". But, some people have dubbed it "moetal", among other names. The girls themselves have been referred to by NHK as a "metal dance unit", suggesting a continuing connection to the Idol world that may or may not actually still exist.
  • During her time in Sakura Gakuin, Suzuka once guessed that the D in CD, DVD, and BD is short for DeLorean, so now all their discs are called DeLoreans.^*Aside from Back to the Future, she might have been inspired by the time-traveling text messages in the 2011 anime Steins;Gate known as "DeLorean Mails", or D-Mails for short.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Babymetal fans tend to get along with fans of Judas Priest and, of all people, Rob Zombie. It helps that in the former's case, lead singer Rob Halford has sung two Judas Priest staples, "Breaking the Law" and "Painkiller", live with the girls, and the latter has gone out of his way to defend the group against fan haters online and has even praised them for being one of the most energetic and engaging metal bands in recent years.
  • On the J-pop side, besides Sakura Gakuin, some Babymetal fans have also started getting into Nogizaka46 since Su-metal's sister, Himeka Nakamoto, was a member (she graduated in 2017).
  • Many STU48 fans are also fans of Babymetal, since that group has many ASH graduates who look up to Su-metal. In particular, Marina Otani is a longtime Babymetal fan, and many were pleasantly surprised when Arisa Mineyoshi performed "Ijime, Dame, Zettai" in the finals of the 3rd AKB48 Group No. 1 Singer Contest in December 2020.
  • With Sabaton, starting when Sabaton was one of the openers for Babymetal in 2018, continued later when Joakim featured on the Metal Galaxy track "Oh Majinai!", and solidified when Babymetal was one of the openers for Sabaton's Tour to End All Tours in Europe in 2023.
• Gateway Series: They have been known to be this into metal for more than a few J-pop fans, and also into J-pop for metal fans. For that matter, they probably provide an easy access point into both genres for people familiar with neither. As well as other Japanese female metal bands, such as Band-Maid, Doll$boxx, and Mary's Blood.
  • Amusingly enough, this is precisely what Yui once said she hoped would happen. Specifically, that Babymetal fans would be curious enough to check out Sakura Gakuin. She got her wish.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • They're popular in their native Japan, but they also have many fans overseas. They've performed sold-out headline shows in the USA, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Canada, amongst other countries – albeit in far smaller venues (Wembley Arena being the exception). They were the opening act for Lady Gaga (who is a self-proclaimed fan) during various concerts on her Japan tour. Even Mikael Åkerfeldt is a fan.
    • In fact, they are on the cusp of becoming the first Japanese band to truly break through to America, well known as the toughest music market in the world to access for a number of reasons (language barrier being only part of it). Their second album, Metal Resistance, cracked Billboard's Top 40, the first album by a Japanese act to do so since 1963. Note that X Japan and Dir en grey, both of whom regularly tour the USA and have a significant fanbase there, never had any of their albums chart on Billboard's main index. Kobayashi has made it no secret that one of his ultimate goals is for Babymetal to sell out Madison Square Garden.
  • They're the first (and so far, only) Japanese band to lend a song to a WWE event!
    • "Karate" played in the background of an episode of the series Altered Carbon, which brought in a few new fans.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Some metal fans' reaction to their music, though they do sound legit for a metal idol group.
• Moe: They are (or were) Idols after all.
  • Special mention goes to Yui, who is a Shrinking Violet, terrible at hiding it, unfailingly polite, and utterly adorable. She is a textbook example of the classic definition of the term.
    • To add to this, Yui's brain tends to function on a different wavelength, so she'll often be slow on the uptake, not reacting until she sees others do so (and sometimes not even then). Fans refer to this as "Yui-lag" and consider it cute.
    • Yui is a fan of Ariana Grande and the band has met and taken a photo with her. However, when Nylon's Mickey Stanley asked her if she could sing an Ariana Grande song, she became all flushed and seemed ready to run away at "Can you sing..."
  • Moa's no slouch in this department. She's far more outgoing than Yui or even Su, but wears her emotions on her sleeve. She's also the shortest (by 2cm) and youngest (by 14 days) of the original trio.
    • When she hurt herself during the beginning of "Ijime, Damé, Zettai" at Budokan Red Night and had to perform the rest of the (extremely taxing) choreography unable to put weight on her left leg, her face contorted in obvious pain even as she tried to smile, you just want to reach through the screen and comfort her, even knowing she was fine the next day.
  • Even Su, Queen of the death-stare, can become this if a foreign drummer unexpectedly gives her a cake for her birthday in front of over a thousand people.
    • Her true personality was showcased to a degree during her three years in Sakura Gakuin, and sometimes rears its head even in Babymetal despite herself. Suzuka is, at her core, a massive dork – a Motor Mouth who has No Sense of Direction^* (a brief video from a Chicago music festival shows her almost get lost on a straight path) and can't tie her own shoes^* (take a close look at the girls' costumes; Su's trademark 1" heels lack shoelaces – so does her Funko Pop figure) or ride a bike. She's also a huge music nerd – her older sister Himeka said that, when they meet, they'll often do karaoke together, singing up to a hundred songs running the musical gamut (Western and Japanese) until their voices are shot.
    • When the girls were still doing variety shows, they participated in a mystery box game in Taiwan where they had to guess what was inside the box, which turned out to be a large bullfrog. After the reveal, all three girls were terrified at first, until Moa - remembering she had already touched it - came forward and picked up the amphibian; Yui also eventually let it sit on her forearm. Su, on the other hand, couldn't touch the frog until the end of the show, and we saw one of the only times she's been scared in a public appearance.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • At the 2016 Alternative Press Music Awards, Su duets with Rob Halford on "Painkiller" and "Breaking The Law", with Moa and Yui playing guitar^* (maybe) on the latter. Link. Plus, doubling as a heartwarming moment, while it's not easily visible on the official video, fancams of the set showed Yui was incredibly nervous even by Yui standards, so Su walked up to her while singing and started swaying Yui's waist to calm her down. Later on in the set, Mikio knelt down next to Yui as he played his part to observe her guitar attempt (he was a teacher) and possibly distract her from the audience.
  • Honestly, several concerts that were key to their evolution count – SummerSonic 2012^* (their first festival appearance, playing a tiny stage next to the food court; youngest group ever to perform at the festival), Legend I^* (their first long-form show and the first appearance of Kami Band, albeit for only two songs), Budokan^* (their largest concert up to that point, the youngest ever to headline the iconic venue, the first time Yui and Moa sang completely live, and their first show backed entirely by the Kami Band), SoniSphere 2014^* (their first show in an English-speaking country, where they had to open the main stage and rock the socks off over 50,000 British Metalheads; and again the youngest singers to perform there), Wembley^* (their first arena show outside Japan and the first Japanese act to headline that iconic venue - they didn't quite sell out all 12,500 seats, though they came very close), Tokyo Dome^* (their largest show to date, at 55,000 per day for two days), and LEGEND S^* (Su's triumphant return to her hometown Hiroshima for her 20th birthday, with a set design that rivaled the stages at Budokan and Tokyo Dome; plus those elaborate costumes for "The One")
  • At 2013's Legend 1999 concert, Moa covered "Love Machine" by Morning Musume, of which Riho Sayashi was one of the most popular members at the time (to clarify, Riho wasn't the original singer, as she only joined in 2011; Morning Musume has been around since 1997). 6 years later, they got to perform together as Riho became an Avenger.
    • It has also been said that Riho, much more reserved during her teen years, often wished she could be a side dancer, as Morning Musume's center position which she held for much of her five-year tenure carries a lot of pressure. She got exactly that as an Avenger.
  • Momoko said during an early-2017 modeling interview that she would like to "dance for an artist" – i.e. be a backup dancer. She also said on a 2016 Sakura Gakuin LoGiRL stream that, given the chance to join any club she wanted (she was already in Logica? and Mini-Pati), she'd join juuonbu – in other words, Babymetal. She got her wish.
• More Popular Spin-Off: As mentioned on the main Music page, Babymetal started as a subunit of Sakura Gakuin, a fairly standard junior Idol group (sort of; see its page for details). By 2015, when Yui and Moa graduated Sakura Gakuin, Babymetal had become more popular than its former parent group in their native Japan, and eons more popular outside of it, where Babymetal plays music festivals all over the world but Sakura Gakuin is almost completely unknown. In an unusual twist, the growing popularity of Babymetal in the West has translated into some of the group's Western fans discovering Sakura Gakuin and following it too. Yui and Moa had each expressed hope that this would happen. Moa is known to get excited when she sees a Western fan with a Sakura Gakuin flag.
• Quirky Work: Three Idol Singers mix pop music with Heavy Metal.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: In a genre dominated by many derivative acts, their unusual approach has earned them their own niche in the J-pop and metal scenes, and better reception compared to their contemporaries.
• She Really Can Act: In this case, She Really Can Scream. As live performances have shown, the girls were fully capable of switching from the expected sugary singing to genuine death growls even BEFORE they grew over 16.
  • Suzuka was given acting training (in addition to singing lessons) during her time at Actor's School Hiroshima and twice took part in musicals. She also appeared as herself on a later episode of Psychic Squad along with Ayami and Yuika. She enjoyed the experience and has expressed a desire to do voice work again.
  • Yui was a child actress before ending up in Sakura Gakuin, appearing in commercials and a few TV movies. One of those had her character writing a angry letter to her mother – while she does just fine onscreen, the voiceover she provides is gloriously seething.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: What more than a few have said about Episode VII. The missing Yui (which would turn out to be permanent) and lack of forewarning about it, plus the radically different aesthetic, caused several longtime fans to become jaded. Some left entirely. Comments abounded declaring Babymetal "dead" or "sold-out".
  • When Yui announced she had left the band, the vast majority sent her off with well-wishes. However, many also declared that, regardless of how Babymetal rebuilds and moves on, something special was dead and gone forever, and that the band's golden years were now in the past (Tokyo Dome generally agreed to be the pinnacle).
  • The music videos for "Distortion" and "Starlight" got negative reception from a lot of fans because none of the girls appear in them^* (Suzuka and Moa actually do appear in "Starlight" at the very end, but in a close-up so extreme no one realized it was them until someone noticed facial moles Su is known to have), though Suzuka received praise for her vocals.
  • One complaint some fans have about Momoko – other than not being Yui – is that she is at least as tall as Suzuka^* (possibly taller, although K-Pop listings are known to be untrustworthy as they often add a centimeter or two to girls' heights; for the record, Girls Planet 999 listed Momoko as 162cm, 3cm above her final Sakura Gakuin measurement of 159cm – reality is probably somewhere in between) and not at all petite, throwing off the visual "balance" Su & Moa had with Yui, Riho, and Kano.
  • The addition of Western musicians to the Kami Band and the Kamis wearing masks to hide their identity were not well received by many fans (the latter was considered the bigger insult).
• Viewer Name Confusion: "Iine!" faces the same problem as "Ievan Polkka", with the initial uppercase "I" being mistaken for a lowercase "l".

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