Turbulence, Darkness and Tragedy
The hardest years of the project (2017–2018)
Yui's absence, the death of Mikio Fujioka and the definitive departure of YUIMETAL tested the very existence of the project. The darkest period in BABYMETAL's history.
Legend S: Baptism XX — the first sign
Every great story has a breaking point, and in BABYMETAL that fracture arrived between 2017 and 2018. What had until then seemed like an almost unstoppable ascending trajectory suddenly ran into a series of devastating blows that tested not only the group's stability, but the emotional fabric of the entire community around it.
At the end of 2017, BABYMETAL organized Legend S: Baptism XX in Hiroshima, a deeply symbolic show conceived to celebrate SU-METAL's twentieth birthday and mark her entry into a new vital stage. It was not just any show — it had something of a rite of passage, a ceremony of transformation. But that moment was marked by a painful absence. Yui Mizuno could not participate due to health problems.
In that instant, many fans experienced it as an alarm, but not yet as a rupture. However, as the months passed it became evident that this was not merely a temporary setback. That was the beginning of one of the most difficult and emotionally complex stages in the group's history.
Legend S: Baptism XX in Hiroshima, December 2017. Yui's first major absenceThe loss of Mikio Fujioka
Almost simultaneously, at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, another tragedy arrived: the death of Mikio Fujioka, guitarist of the Kami Band, after suffering an accidental fall. To speak of Mikio as a "backing guitarist" would be unjust and superficial. The Kami Band was never mere decorative accompaniment — it was the instrumental backbone that gave BABYMETAL an unquestionable musical foundation. In a project where external prejudice was always latent, the excellence of the Kami Band was decisive for maintaining legitimacy. Mikio was also particularly beloved. His death did not only impact at the artistic level — it left a real human wound in the history of the group. For the fan community and for those who had watched the project grow up close, it was a blow that went beyond any musical analysis. It was the loss of a person.
The Chosen Seven: reinvention in the dark
The year 2018 unfolded under an atmosphere of grief, tension and uncertainty. With Yui absent, the band reformulated its stage presentation through the concept of The Chosen Seven. From the outside it could be read as a new aesthetic stage; from the inside, it was also a response to a crisis. The number of figures on stage was expanded, the iconography darkened, part of the previous colorfulness was abandoned, and a more severe, more military, more ritualized tone was adopted.
That visual mutation was powerful, but it also revealed something: BABYMETAL was trying to move forward while not yet being able to fully close the loss of its original form.
The Chosen Seven era (2018): a darker aesthetic as a response to the crisisYUIMETAL's departure
In October 2018, Yui Mizuno announced her definitive departure from the band due to health reasons. That announcement had a devastating effect on a huge part of the fandom — not just because of the news itself, but because of the way it happened. There was no final show that was consciously the last. There was no stage farewell. There was no clear emotional closure. The entire process was wrapped in silence, speculation and distance. This is a key trait of BABYMETAL's history: the band learned to use mystery as a narrative resource, but in this case that resource came at a very high emotional cost. Yui's departure was not a simple lineup change. It was the breaking of the visual and symbolic heart of the project as the world had known it. The original trio was not just a functional formation — it was a foundational image. Losing it meant forcing BABYMETAL to reinvent itself from a much more fragile place.