BAND-MAID on Exploring Darkness & Justice in Powerful New Song ‘What is justice?’: Interview

On July 18, BAND-MAID digitally released their latest track, “What is justice?” the ending theme for the anime TOUGEN ANKI. Marking their third release of 2025 and their third consecutive anime tie-in, the song showcases the band’s evolving sound. Blending nu-metal aggression with piercing vocals and introspective lyrics, “What is justice?” dives deep into the concept of justice within the anime’s dark and violent world.  Billboard JAPAN recently had the opportunity to talk to the band about “What is justice?” and its creative process.

On July 18, you released your new song, “What is justice?” It’s the ending theme to the TV anime TOUGEN ANKI.

KANAMI (guitar): When I read the manga, the fighting scenes made a huge impression on me. I wanted to express that through music, so I play a ton of riffs in the song. In the second verse, I play riffs almost the entire time from the intro to the bridge. I don’t think I’ve ever played such a long run of riffs, so it’s another fun song for my repertoire. As for the melody, I always picture SAIKI singing at an OKYUJI (live show). I love letting SAIKI put it all out there. I wanted the song to have a melody where SAIKI had to put all her power into it, which is why the melody in the chorus turned out to be so hard.

SAIKI (vocals): Yeah. The whole chorus is pretty high-pitched, so at first I got mad about it. I was like “What the hell are you trying to do?!” (laughs) But KANAMI explained what she was thinking when she wrote the song, and I was like, “Okay, I guess the chorus really does have to be high-pitched then,” so I just put my all into singing it. I feel like it’s the culmination of all I’ve been doing so far. 

The drums and bass go all in from the very start of the song, too.

MISA (bass): For everything except the chorus, I put in a rock-solid bass foundation, but for the chorus I wanted to bring out all the qualities of SAIKI’s singing, so in that section, the bass line follows the vocals.

KANAMI: When we were recording, MISA was giving direction and demonstrating how to play, like “Sorry, one more time! Play it again, like this!”

MISA: It’s a really simple phrase, it’s just the same sound over and over again, but that’s what makes it hard.

KANAMI: That simplicity makes it hard, but MISA pushed through it. I think she evolved a lot as a bassist with this song.

Do you think that each song presents you all with new challenges?

KANAMI: With MISA, she just makes things hard for herself. (laughs)

MISA: (laughs)

KANAMI: I always feel bad for AKANE.

AKANE (drums): I keep getting all these hard requests on every single song. On our last song, “Ready to Rock,” I went wild, but this time, the drum arrangement is like the bass, setting down a solid foundation with a four-on-the-floor beat. But four-on-the-floor can tend to feel too light. I really dedicated myself to investigating what kind of sound production we could use to keep the drums heavy. Also, when we were recording, I focused on making it build up little by little and then explode during the chorus. I avoided the snare drum for the verse, instead using the floor tom to create the beat. Then I gradually started adding in the snare drum. I think this progression feels intuitive for listeners. I also used a lot of hooks to keep it from being too simple. There are a surprising number of little details, which I hope listeners catch.

This new song is your third anime tie-up this year. Were you working on all of these songs at the same time?

Kobato (guitar/vocals): We started working on this way back in early 2024, po.

SAIKI: Of the three songs we’ve released this year, this was the one we finished first. We recorded it between recordings of the songs on the album (Epic Narratives).

I didn’t realize you’d been recording it at the same time as the album. How did you write the lyrics?

Kobato: While the anime is about Momotaro, the main character is actually an “Oni” (an ogre, which Momotaro fought in the traditional Japanese fairy tale). The team producing the anime asked us to make the lyrics for the ending theme be from the Momotaro side’s point of view, po. I read the manga that the anime is based on, and it depicts a world in which people are divided into onis and Momotaros at birth, based on their lineage. The story explores the concept of justice, presenting the dilemma of Momotaros, for whom justice doesn’t simply consist of wiping out the Onis, yet who, by their nature, have to fight with and defeat Onis. It presents the struggles and tensions of having so much to protect, and having to fight for justice. So when I started writing the lyrics, those are the ideas I wanted to convey, po. That’s why we titled the song “What is justice?” I had this mental image of screaming out your emotions as you fight, so first off I wanted to repeat and emphasize the word “justice. But then I wanted to kind of negate it, like with “I have no idea.” I wanted to write about that aspect of the story about lying to yourself about your own feelings, which is how I came up with these lyrics, po. The story is fascinating, and it’s so easy to get sucked into that you can binge it all in one go. I think that allowed me to really think about the story’s themes and densely pack them into the lyrics despite having little time to work on them.

SAIKI: I remember Kobato saying that she didn’t get bogged down trying to think about it, but was able to take a more head-on writing approach.

Kobato: Right. At the time, Momotaro was the only thing I could think about, po. (laughs)

SAIKI, what did it feel like singing these lyrics?

SAIKI: When we recorded, I made sure you could get into the rhythm of the song even through the vocals alone. The hardest part was that the key of the song is so high, so it took some time to get ready for recording. Normally, there’d be some vocal direction, but we were working with a tight timeline and our schedules didn’t match up, so we went into recording without any vocal direction, for maybe the first time ever. I was also thinking about our live shows, so it was really a battle against my own limitations.

Kobato: We took on all kinds of battles, po. (laughs)

SAIKI: A lot of the parts of the songs were recorded in a single take. It was like we were focusing on momentum.

I’ve seen the video for “What is justice?” Where was that filmed?

SAIKI: It was a quarry that got turned into a cave. When we finished the song and heard that we’d be filming a music video, we made a request: “We’ve got to do this in a cave!” When I watched the anime, one thing that stood out were the transformation scenes.

Kobato: Parts of the characters’ bodies turn into weapons, po.

SAIKI: There are these “blossoming” scenes, and we wanted to reproduce them in the music video, so we did that using CG.