BABYMETAL Turns Tragedy Into Beauty | 'Monochrome' Meaning Explored 

Despite our bad history between Indonesia & Japan was back... but Because of this tragedy "Hiroshima & Nagasaki" Atomic bom was happens in 06 Aug 1945... We "Indonesia" have big moment to easier setting up Our "Independence" Decralation in 17 Aug 1945... Just our deep "Condolonces" to the all the Victim of this Tragedy... BTW nowdays Japan & Indonesia gladly kind like have best relationship ever between two countries & started to moving forward together reach for a bright future... hhe... #Experience making our better

広島に限定せずにウクライナなどの、全ての反戦メッセージだと思います。

Great thoughts about the song after your exellent research into the meaning . As always BabyMetal give an uplifting message . 🤘🦊🤘

Excellent content, thanks! I found out about this on my third or fourth watch (I follow a methodology: first a general watch focusing on the music, then the lyrics, the visuals and so on). And I was so shocked that I wasn't able to organize my thoughts and even less to tell it publicly until I was more or less 100% sure about this theory or interpretation.

Just like SuMetal said at end: _"Just smile"_ 🙂☔☀️🌈 Obviously Suzuka Nakamoto didn't experienced the nuclear blast event, but she's the granddaughter of Hiroshima's survivor and also she did suffer the Japanese earthquake in 2011 destroying a lot of building around her hometown, she even broke her piggy bank with coins of 1 yen and donate to help her city, that must be a moment when she realizes how devastating could be such a tragedy moment in the community and everyday life, and probably could get a glimpse from first hand how it was what her grandparents and her city suffered. Didn't know about this alternative channel. Thanks for sharing this lyrics insight and see you next time.🦊🤘

Nicely done man! Loved the video and thanks for the shout out. I hope you are feeling better! Take care of yourself 🤘🦊🤘

Thanks for the follow up video. In the end the song is about tragedy and horror and then hope at the end. Peace.

Monochrome is the antithesis song to all wars.

This was a great video. The song and video by Babymetal are packed with beauty and meaning, yet they are also topical, with North Korea launching and ICBM that landed just over 100 miles from Japan yesterday, to say nothing about Ukraine. It's a song of hope. As Koba tweeted the other day "Never ending story ☔☀🌈" One thing that is apparent to me in two songs, is how incredibly mature they have become. And musically, they seem to be delivering songs that will appeal to a wider audience. They are reaching for new kitsunes and megitsunes. I think that's worthy of note too

I like the slightly more serious way that the current songs are taking, telling stories and touching on serious topics in a subtle and well expressed way, very good quality in every way. I can't wait to hear the rest of the songs of the album

It might be inspired by a tragedy of the past, but seeing the world's climate now, it can be a tragedy of the future. Or maybe I'm being edgy..

They didn't took 1 year break just to come back with something simple. Of course they will come back with some masterpieces💙 Great Video!🔥🤘🦊

Wave, that's really great that you dove back in and talked about some of the wider context of this song. Su moved to the Tokyo area when she was 13, with her Mom and older sister Himeka so the girls would be closer to work. Himeka had become an original member of the Idol group Nogizaka46, and Su was in Sakura Gakuin and BABYMETAL. She was very surprised when the the annual anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing came around, and there was no mention of it on the local news stations, as well as not having a moment of silence like she was used to on the Hiroshima news.

Great breakdown and I think you covered a lot of elements that the song is trying to show us. My own take is that the underlying meaning behind the Hiroshima references and the Ragnarok references is rebirth after destruction, and that no matter how bad things seem, life prevails. This is exemplified in the rebirth of the city of Hiroshima and it's people (with Su as the living embodiment of that idea), and the rebirth of live that occurs following Ragnarok.

love your take on the meaning and i do agree with you. to me when they talk of the rainbow colored sky, to me this is about peace. also it is a song of hope and positivity when the song has the words no matter how long the night the morning will come. to me this means no matter how bad it is in a dark place at some point the light will take the dark away. just like in Brand New Day, it means that no matter what happen today tomorrow is a brand new day as it starts over. also just like No Rain No Rainbow you can not have a rainbow without rain so to me it means you cant have good unless there is bad also. Epilogue from Lovebites has these meanings to when it says how can you love when you have not been loved, how can you have success unless you have failure. i agree with you that Babymetal if you dig a little into each song and the lyrics you will find a different feeling about the band because they hit you on such a positive vibe that you cant help feel happy and feel hope and positive even on a song that talks about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Your video title fits shockingly well. They have indeed created something very beautiful, based on a tragedy. The lyrics and images of the video left from the beginning little room for doubt that the song is about anything but an 'ideal world'. And at the latest since I read the first comments that reminded me of Su's origin and the events from the past, and also what is happening currently here in Europe's neighborhood and the danger that history could be more present than we might think, I can hardly listen to this song without having a pretty thick lump in my throat. For me, definitely one of BM's most important and best songs. _____________________ 「 _'Our rock never dies ever. Forever!'_ 」 --- *BAND-MAID* 'Manners' 🕊

Excellent research and content Wave, thank you. The detail and thought that goes into many of BABYMETAL's songs and the lore (it can be frustrating when we get cryptic messages we can't understand, but it all adds to what makes them special) are among the reasons they get so much love and support from all around the world.

Nice bro, love this 🖤

Thanks Wave-Metal. Forever THE ONE ❤🤘🦊🤘

Darn Wave, I wanted to comment, but I’m chocking up too much for a long comment. The more I listen to this and other reactors like you delve into the (probable) meaning the more I tear up. I wish everyone, whatever their taste in music may be, would listen, enjoy and learn! Peace be with everyone.

Great review. I agree with what you ssid and I'd add the one of the last images, Su with the umbrella where both are white, there's a famous wall in Hiroshima with a white shadow of a person at the instant of the explosion.

Glad you took a deeper look. It's rather typical of Babymetal lyrics to have lots of deeper meaning which usually is implied rather than directly stated, so open to various interpretations, bit of a Japanese trait using implications rather than directness, probably one of the hardest aspects of Japanese culture that foreigners struggle with. Just another flavour to Babymetal that they offer 🙂

Babymetal always takes different ideas and combine them in new ways, it's fun hearing it from different fans what they've possibly discovered. I always return to what Kobametal said in an interview in 2013: What was the inspiration for creating something so different? “[I was hoping] to incite that strange feeling that makes you go ‘what is this?’” KOBAMETAL explains, going on to give a concrete example; “Like the movie Kill Bill. I think Tarantino probably really likes Japan, and he worked hard on reproducing that in the movie, but it’s just slightly off, right? Still, it has a lot of originality.” For KOBAMETAL, that’s where the entertainment is. “[If] we were to do just straight metal-having the girls screaming-it probably wouldn’t be as interesting!”

Ty for the video! I also think the video is about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

All the songs from BABYMETAL are explained inside their own lore and mythology, that's the first layer. This events that are shown are already explained in the story segments of the Hiroshima show from 2017, and it seems like a song in the same space as No Rain, No Rainbow. (Maybe Monochrome is a SU solo?). But that doesn't mean that they use their songs to imply stuff that is happening in real world on a double or even more layers. Koba seemed pretty worried with the situation in the Donbass region in their latest interviews so I bet they have an intent to speak about war in this darker times we live in; after a pandemic, and with a big war in the world with thousands of youngsters dying every week. Even some of them probably their own fans in any of both sides. I understand the message of this video like "guys if you do war this is what happens". It has a special meaning with someone from Hiroshima telling you. This whole album already feels more somber and harsh than anything they have done. Divine Attack already felt different than a similar song in theme like Road of Resistance. In DA we are not going happily to battle anymore. We have to fight yes, but in that song we are not celebrating it.

Slight correction regarding Hinakujumoko. It isnt 1 tree that survived the bombing because there were many. It's the name for any tree that survived the bombing. That same wikipedia article mentions that many different pecies of tree survived.

'hanabi' means firework but because it's a combination of 'hana' (flower) and 'hi' (fire) you could also interpret it as 'flowering fire' or 'fire flower'. That would contextualize the flower-like images seen during the second chorus (from 3:30 in this clip, the second one looks like a lily). They are colorless, glowing and seemingly billowing flowers, so (in Japanese) they are 'monochrome fire flowers' literally and 'monochome fireworks' figuratively. I don't know if this next bit was intended by BM, but you could tie the fire-flowers in with the survivor-tree/Yggdrasil to create a sort of plant motif where the fire-flowers represent destruction/decay and the tree regrowth. Because decay and regrowth are part of the natural cycle of plants you can even wonder if those things are two sides of the same coin: can you have one without the other? Or, a bit more in keeping with the positive message of the song, after destruction there will always be regrowth (mirroring the lines 'No matter how long the night/the morning will arrive' ). But yeah this might be going way past the meaning in the song and video edit: just read a comment about the meaning of No Rain, No Rainbow, how you can't have (or know) the good without the bad, and yeah maybe the decay/regrowth thing does make sense

When i first listened to this, I was a a bit Meh! Too Radio friendly. The more I listen and understand the lyrics, the more I have fallen in love with this track! The new album is supposed to visit 10 metalverses, one for each track. For me, the Monochrome Firework, is the bomb that devastated Su's home of Hiroshima! The tree, in the video symbolises, "Yggdrasil, in Norse cosmology, is an immense and central sacred tree. Around it exists all else, including the Nine Worlds." The lyric video also mentions Ragnarok "In Norse mythology, Ragnarök is a series of events, including a great battle, foretelling the death of numerous great figures , natural disasters, and the submersion of the world in water. After these events, the world will rise again, cleansed and fertile, the surviving and returning gods will meet and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors." I think that fits with the final imagery, of the the video, where we go from the Black Rain, of a nuclear explosion, to the colourful hope of the future.

Nicely done, Wave. It's something I've been exploring ever since the video was released, though it didn't strike me immediately, only when someone mentioned the possibility did it all fall into place with the visuals they created for the song. For some related history, Babymetal held a pair of concerts in December 2017 in Hiroshima, dedicated to Su-metal's 20th birthday (the traditional age of majority in Japan), and in terms of spectacle and ceremony it may have been their most compelling. In it, amidst a mythic story they told during parts of the show, they briefly referenced the _aogiri_ survivor tree(s) of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a 2022 interview their producer Key Kobayashi said this about it: _"The memorial ceremony was held by fusing the fantasy story of BABYMETAL and the real story including more serious content, engraved here in the city where Su-metal was born"_ - referring to a monument in the Peace Memorial Park, built on an open field that was created by the explosion, and just a few blocks from the concert venue.

well incase you havent noticed we are very close to WW3 which would make heroshima look like a tiny little Baby nuke.

Interesting...but, of course, as for what it all means there can only be one real answer - Only The Fox God Knows! 🦊🤘🤘🦊 There is a Camphor tree in Nagasaki that is visited as a memorial to the A bomb that devastated that city too. It's story is well-known in Japan, as is the Hiroshima tree's, and was written down by teachers from Nagasaki and published in English as 'In The Sky Over Nagasaki - An A bomb reader for children.'

excellent content Wave-Metal

To the the Creator, please forgive those for what they have done, and forgive us for what we are about to let happen. 🙏 ✌♥️🇬🇧

Thanks for posting this...I didn't watch it the other day (not a metal fan and ran out of time) - so will give it another go...!

👍 👍

Agreed with your commentary. I've listened to this song many times, as well as Divine Attack, and I'm becoming more convinced that this is indeed about the atomic bombs used on Japan in WW2. It's not just the rain and umbrellas, but almost all of the imagery connotes this. They have other song lyrics that indicate the same. For example, "Gimme Chocolate" was one of the first bits of English that starving young women would learn to say to occupying U.S. soldiers indicating they were willing to do anything for food and a place to sleep, as they were often starving and homeless.

Good research. tread more on the history of Babymetal, the girls are awesome.

When I heard the intro of this song I was immediately reminded to "The Dragon cries" and what followed has similar character and meaning for me. Btw. this is the first song by Babymetal, that I really like.

Got a bit of a rock vibe going. Be interesting to see babymetal moving forward without the kami band and YUI or will it continue on as the SU-show.

Great analysis Wave! I agree with all what you said, the song combines the tragedy of the Hiroshima bombing with the Nordic story of Ragnarok, both Doomsday events, but end with a positive message “Just smile” and blends into a colourful picture of the world tree. At first I didn’t really liked the song, but after a view more listenings it hit me and now I think it is a great song, especially if you consider that Su is from Hiroshima. ❤