Kakurenbo with an Oni

Time to give the Kami band some attention. About half this song is taken by the instrumentalists' solos, and each one demonstrates very impressive abilities. Intricate fretwork from the dueling harmonized electric guitarists, and featuring one of a tiny handful of 6-string bass guitarists in Japan, and an incredibly fast drummer double-kicking double bass drums in double time. A very basic but totally skillful metal band without a doubt.

The song is 'Catch Me If You Can', based on the game of hide-and-seek (kakurenbo), except that the girls seem to be playing with an Oni, the seeker, who calls out "are you ready?" in a monstrous growl. The dance is choreographed to be cute and funny. The run movement is exaggerated to look like manga/anime running, taking gigantic steps with the trailing foot high in the air. While YUI and MOA play, SU stands in for the seeker, but when her vocals kick in, she becomes a player too.

Characteristic of BABYMETAL, the J-pop sound over metal is insanely catchy, the chorus yet another of the band's earworms that sticks in the head for days. The combination of feel-good music, plus the entire band's commitment and joy in what they do hits my emotional triggers in ways no other music has before. One song can make me grin from ear to ear, and another brings tears to my eyes, sometimes even both at the same time, and I can't understand why. As SU-METAL likes to say, "don't think, feel". So I suppose there is no explanation for it.

Yet I can't help but think a little deeper. If this were just J-pop, or pop in general, I would have blown it off as cute, but I wouldn't have dwelt on this song as much as I have. It's the metal that puts in the edge, the darkness, giving me a tiny feeling that there's more to this song than it appears.

It makes me reflect on my own mortality. After all, aren't we playing hide-and-seek with Death as long as we are alive? But Death is not scary, just inevitable, and he is patient. He calls out "Ooo... moo ikai, moo ikai?" to which we reply "Madda da yo!", and it's a fun game. As long as we're alive, there's no reason not to have fun. Even if we fall over, we don't cry because we are strong kids, and we can't wait to go another round.

The red shoes SU references are a bit of a puzzler. It apparently refers to a folktale about a child wearing red shoes who got kidnapped by a foreigner and is taken away on a ship, never to return again. To which I interpret as SU's advice to not do anything stupid and invite Death to cut short the game prematurely. An anti-self-harm, anti-suicide message embedded in this cheeky little number, perhaps? Knowing BABYMETAL's positivity, I wouldn't be surprised.

Edit: I hadn't noticed it before, but this song ends on the refrain, "madda da yo", meaning "not yet", and the final movement looks like a beautiful heart seizure over a drumbeat and bass note fading gradually to silence. Nobody is ready to meet their inevitable end, are they? Which makes the point about the red shoes a lot more poignant, now I think about it.