Japanese pop star in drag Ladybeard on his Chinese fans, and his teenage kawaiicore bandmates in Babybeard

Since 2013, Australian Richard Margarey – aka Ladybeard – has performed with a series of ‘kawaiicore’ bands – a genre blending elements of J-pop and heavy metal

Most of his Japanese fans, he says, come from the J-pop world, and he has many fans in China because ‘Chinese fans found my images and decided they loved me’

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Richard Margarey (centre) as Ladybaby in kawaiicore band Babybeard with bandmates (from left) Suzu and Kotomi. While J-pop fandom can be intense, Ladybaby says he can escape whenever he wants because ‘I take off the dress, and I look like other white guys’. Photo: Babybeard

Published: 5:45pm, 23 Apr 2021Updated: 5:45pm, 23 Apr 2021

Just now, Japanese pop/heavy metal star Ladybeard might be the celebrity the world needs.

Onstage a five-year-old girl, offstage he is Richard Margarey, 37, from Adelaide in Australia. Since moving to Japan in 2013, he has performed with a series of so-called “kawaiicore” bands – a genre blending elements of J-pop and heavy metal, the most famous of them called Ladybaby.

He lived in Hong Kong from 2006 to 2012, working among other things as an actor (his biggest role was as baddy Rambo in 2011 wrestling comedy The Fortune Buddies), a martial arts stuntman and a professional wrestler. He did the latter in drag as a schoolgirl, and he would perform heavy metal versions of Canto-pop songs during bouts – at which point, taking his act to Japan seemed like the logical move. Since then, China has become his second biggest fan base.

Now he’s back with new band Babybeard (a name that suggests that, should he ever form another band, he will struggle to find a name for it). Like Ladybaby, it consists of him and two Japanese teenage girls: Kotomi and Suzu. They describe themselves as “an adorable assault on the senses”, with Ladybeard adding (with a straight face) that they’re “modelled on cupcakes”.

Onstage a five-year-old girl, offstage he is Richard Margarey, 37, from Adelaide in Australia.

“Since the end of Ladybaby, it has become very clear to me that what the world wants from me is me screaming and shouting alongside two Japanese girls,” he adds, the sweet spot coming from the yoking together of apparent opposites: bouncy and accessible alongside shockingly loud and raucous. “It was clear people were unhappy when we split up – I got messages about it every day.”