Hero vs. Villain? karanoah’s New Song Is Both at Once
Everyone’s lost an argument with themselves. karanoah (カラノア) just turned that exact feeling into a song and handed it to a samurai anime as its new ending theme.
“ばけもん Bakemon” is the official second-season ending theme for TV anime Yoroi-Shinden Samurai Troopers, and it’s not the straightforward good-versus-evil anthem the title might suggest. The refrain “Bakemon vs Bakemon” literally translates to monster against monster, but karanoah isn’t writing about two different creatures clashing. They’re writing the same conflict from both sides at once.
One Character, Two Perspectives
The concept behind “Bakemon” is deceptively simple: protagonist and adversary, hero and villain, running the same emotional script without either one realizing it. That’s a far harder song to pull off than a standard character theme, and a far more interesting one to sit with.
The track earns its drama through sound design as much as songwriting. Traditional flutes, Wadaiko drums, and sword-slashing samples get pulled straight from the show’s world, then dropped into a modern arrangement sharpened by karanoah’s own audio-slicing production style — dense, fast, built to move. Loose, conversational phrasing runs underneath all of it instead of the usual grand character-song language, which is what keeps the whole thing feeling like a real person talking, not a theme song performing at listeners.
A Rollout Built Around the Concept
karanoah isn’t stopping at the song itself. A music video for “ばけもん Bakemon” lands July 14, giving fans a visual take on the hero-villain duality at the track’s core.
The band is also taking the concept further into live territory. karanoah just confirmed their first one-man live show in a while, also titled “Bakemon vs Bakemon,” set for September 23 at Shinjuku SAMURAI. The venue wasn’t a random pick — Yoroi-Shinden Samurai Troopers is set in Shinjuku, and karanoah locked the title and location together on purpose.
Whichever side of the fight listeners identify with, karanoah is betting they’ll recognize it.
