REVIEW · Music & Albums
Vaundy’s ‘Kaiju no Hanauta’: when a private memory becomes everybody’s chorus
A song remembered in private becomes a voice shared across a venue. The official music video and performances at Budokan and Tokyo Dome offer different routes into a chorus that keeps inviting participation.
Karaoke numbers
Some songs make a solitary moment more vivid the louder we sing them. Vaundy’s Kaiju no Hanauta, titled 怪獣の花唄 in Japanese, is one of them. Follow its moving band sound and broad chorus and a private act of remembering appears inside a song that can be sung together.
It is the fourth track on the debut album strobo, released May 27, 2020. Calling it a long-loved signature song is accurate but incomplete. It moves between holding a memory alone and giving that memory a melody many people can sing. The same chorus does different work in headphones and in a live performance.
A sound moving forward, a mind looking back
The first attraction is forward motion. Guitar and rhythm push the song along while the vocal opens its field of view toward the chorus. Rather than remaining in an extended explanation of a feeling, the music invites another attempt at giving it a voice. Even a new listener can first catch that movement.
But the destination is not simply a declaration of victory. The sense of a song someone used to sing remains inside it, along with the texture of time already passed. The music runs while the mind looks back. That mismatch keeps the bright rock sound from being exhausted by its immediate pleasure. Enjoyment draws us in; the trace of longing encourages another play.
Official music video
Vaundy · Watch on YouTube ↗
A music video without one answer to its monster
The official music video premiered July 3, 2020. In comments published with its announcement, director Yuichiro Fujishiro described leaving images unresolved, including why a childhood friend’s song returns to mind and who or what the monster might be. That openness is useful to remember when approaching the song too.
The unfamiliar pairing of words in the title need not immediately be decoded like entries in a dictionary of symbols. Different listeners can bring different people and periods to it. Treat the video as another memory produced by the sound rather than a solution to it. There is room for someone we know, or for a version of ourselves we had almost forgotten.
The chorus that moves into your own voice
The song’s reach involves not only listening but people singing it themselves. It topped JOYSOUND’s 2023 annual overall karaoke ranking, whose tracking period was January 1–November 15, 2023. This is a historical result, not a claim about the current chart.
A ranking does not decide a song’s artistic value for us. It can, however, mark the passage from hearing a recording to carrying it in another voice. The broad melody offers a place to participate. We begin by hearing somebody else’s memory and find ourselves putting our own into the tune. That transition helps explain the song’s popular appeal.
2022 Budokan Shinkokyu — official live
Vaundy · Watch on YouTube ↗
Budokan and Tokyo Dome: a changing space, a lasting centre
The first live selection is the official recording from the September 9, 2022 Budokan performance, Shinkokyu. The second comes from the 2026 SILENCE dome tour at Tokyo Dome. Together they offer the same song at different times and scales, making a useful sequence after the music video.
A venue’s size is not the only thing worth watching. Follow how a recorded chorus is addressed to people in a real space, and how voice and band sustain the energy of a familiar melody. Familiarity can leave us merely waiting for the big moment. Following the approach to the chorus as well can bring a repeated tune back to life.
2026 Tokyo Dome SILENCE — official live
Vaundy · Watch on YouTube ↗
What remains private inside a shared song
A singalong can sometimes become such a large slogan that it covers individual feeling. Kaiju no Hanauta leaves another possibility open. Singing the same melody does not require everyone to remember the same person or period. A song can be shared while the memories placed inside it remain separate.
That is why its expansive chorus deserves more than a description of simple optimism. An awareness of time that cannot return coexists with the ability to make a sound now. We cannot live the past again, but singing a song that recalls it can become a present action. When a private memory becomes everybody’s chorus, the song places those two times on the same stage.