A Cross-Dressing Aussie Pro-Wrestler Is Fronting Japan's Newest Viral Pop-Metal Band

In case you're not obsessively keeping tabs on the development of the J-Pop movement and its increasingly questionable genre-smashing offshoots, then you need to know about Ladybaby.

If you're wondering why you need to know about Ladybaby, when Babymetal are already a thing, it's because of Richard Magarey, aka Ladybeard, a cross-dressing Australian martial artist and pro-wrestler that runs a cool sideline in acting, gender-bent cosplay and, oh yeah, growling like Satan's bowels themselves as the 'rough' vocalist for this fledgling and apparently rather popular pop-metal outfit.

Magarey got his start in the squared circles of Australia, wrestling in a dress under the Ladybeard name, a moniker and fashion sense that he also applied to his sideline pursuit of playing metal covers of J-pop songs ("and [trying] to look as pretty as possible whilst doing so," he told the Huffington Post).

To that end, it's somewhat unsurprising that Ladybeard found his true calling in the land of the rising sun, where all things kawaii and quirky are usually worshipped as manifest godheads — he recently told Bored Panda that he'd been attacked for his look before, "but I don't think that reaction could be called strange, at least not in Australia".

Whoever told him that he'd be huge in Japan freaking nailed it, too — it wasn't long before he would fall in with a pair of teenage girls to form Ladybaby, who are obviously blowing up in a big way, presumably on the strength alone of Ladybeard standing out like a sore thumb next to his diminutive bandmates, coupled with being the single-most batshit insane thing you will see or hear this month.

They recently released their very first video clip, for new single Nippon Manju, and if you can make it through the next four-and-a-half minutes without uttering some variant on 'What the fuck what the fuck WHAT THE FUCK' then you're a more measured critic than this writer.

Look, we know - the instinct here is to listen to this music and immediately write it off as the speed-fuelled ravings of an encephalitic studio executive, as we all rightfully did with the crunkcore movement. But there's definitely something impressive at play here, whether it's the unlikely pairing of beauty and the bestial, the earnestness that shines through despite the hyperactive sense of superficiality, or simply the air of 'local man does well' about the whole thing.

One thing's for sure, though - Ladybeard fucking crushes it as Chun Li, in a way that's still raising all kinds of very personal questions for us right now.