女王蜂There is a word for the thing Queen Bee’s Avu-chan does on “HELTZ,” but it isn’t in English. The Japanese verb 込める (komeru) — to imbue, to pour feeling into — is the closest anyone has come to describing it. In a February 2026 interview with Natalie, a major Japanese music news site, Avu-chan drew a distinction between their old approach to songwriting (“describing”) and where they are now: imbuing. Not sketching a feeling from the outside, but pressing it into the song until the material itself holds the weight. “HELTZ” is a song that was imbued before it was written. According to that same interview, the chorus existed long before the rest of the track — a melody Avu-chan carried around waiting for the right body to house it. The verses, when they finally came, grew toward that chorus the way a letter grows toward the signature at the bottom of the page. A letter that, as the lyrics themselves confess, was never meant to be sent.
Queen Bee (女王蜂, Ziyoou-vachi) is a band that resists summary. Formed in 2009 in Kobe by Avu-chan and childhood friend Yashi-chan, they describe themselves as “fashion punk” — a tag that barely scratches the surface of a sound that has, over fifteen years, swallowed disco, art rock, electronic pop, theatrical ballads, and something close to enka whole. All members work under pseudonyms with their ages, genders, and nationalities officially undisclosed. Avu-chan, the vocalist and sole songwriter (credited as Barazono Avu), possesses a vocal range that moves from a whispered rasp to a piercing falsetto, sometimes within the span of a single phrase. International listeners likely know Queen Bee through anime: the ending theme to Tokyo Ghoul:re (“HALF,” 2018), the opening of Dororo (“Fire,” 2019), a Chainsaw Man ending (“VIOLENCE,” 2022), or the Oshi no Ko ending (“Mephisto,” 2023) — the last of which surpassed 100 million domestic streams, earning the band their first platinum certification.
But “HELTZ” isn’t any of those songs. It isn’t a tie-in. It isn’t a lead single. It is the B-side of the “PERSONAL” single released February 11, 2026 — a coupling track that, in Avu-chan’s own words, is “more intimately personal” than the A-side named “PERSONAL.” That kind of quiet irony is very Queen Bee.
It also arrives at a pivotal moment. In June 2024, midway through their fifteenth-anniversary tour, Avu-chan collapsed onstage and announced an immediate hiatus. They returned in January 2025, and the music that has followed — the album “悪” (Aku, “Evil”), the single “強火” (Tsuyobi, “High Heat”) and its B-side “いばらの海” (Ibara no Umi, “Sea of Thorns”) — has traced a path from raw desperation toward something gentler and harder to name. The Natalie interviewer described this new direction as carrying “a tenderness for the act of being alive.” Avu-chan agreed, noting that where they once wrote in a frenzy of unstoppable momentum, they now carve each line deliberately, one at a time. “HELTZ” is a product of this slower, more intentional era — a song that sits with its own feelings rather than sprinting past them. Against the band’s recent work, which has leaned toward melodic, mid-tempo arrangements with space in the production for Avu-chan’s voice to breathe, “HELTZ” reportedly fits as a companion piece to “いばらの海” — intimate, unhurried, and built more around vocal presence than sonic force.
「もしかしてもう会えないなら」— The sentence that starts before the song does
The lyrics open mid-thought, wrapped in quotation marks:
「もしかしてもう会えないなら」
「Moshikashite mou aenai nara」
“What if we can never meet again”
This is not the narrator speaking. These are words recalled — a phrase someone once said, or once thought, placed in brackets like a specimen preserved in glass. The Japanese grammar here is deliberately unfinished: なら (nara) is a conditional (“if”), but no consequence follows. The sentence trails into silence, a door opened but never walked through. That incompleteness sets the emotional key for everything that follows.
What comes next is a slow unraveling:
最後にと相応しい願いを
Saigo ni to fusawashii negai wo
A wish befitting the words “for the last time”押し込めていた晴らせずにいた
Oshikomete ita harase zu ni ita
Had been stuffed down, left unresolved強がる思いが解けてゆく
Tsuyogaru omoi ga tokete yuku
The feelings of putting on a brave face begin to thaw
The verb 押し込める (oshikomeru) is worth pausing on. It doesn’t mean “to suppress” the way a therapist might use the word — gently, clinically. It means to cram something into a space too small for it, like forcing a drawer shut on clothes that don’t fit. There is physical violence in this suppression. And 晴らせずにいた (harase zu ni ita) — unable to clear, unable to resolve — carries the meteorological overtone of clouds that won’t break. The narrator has been living under overcast skies they put there themselves.
Then: 強がる思いが解けてゆく. The word 解ける (tokeru) means to untie, to dissolve, to thaw. Not a dramatic shattering — a slow melt. The tough-front feelings don’t break; they lose their rigidity.
Chains removed in the dark
知らず知らずにかけていた鎖と呪いを
Shirazu shirazu ni kakete ita kusari to noroi wo
The chains and curses I’d placed without realizingそっと外してみたら
Sotto hazushite mitara
When I gently tried removing them
鎖と呪い — chains and curses. This is a pairing that doesn’t come from nowhere. In Japanese, 呪い (noroi, curse) shares a root with 呪う (norou, to curse/to enchant), and it’s frequently linked to self-imposed bindings in Queen Bee’s lyrical world. Avu-chan has written extensively about the psychic restraints people place on themselves — not just in lyrics, but in interviews about their 2024 health-related hiatus, when they were unable to eat, unable to sleep, unable to perform. The chains in “HELTZ” are explicitly ones the narrator placed on themselves (かけていた, kakete ita — had been placing), unknowingly (知らず知らずに, shirazu shirazu ni — without realizing). And the removal is tentative. そっと (sotto — gently, quietly) paired with てみたら (te mitara — “tried doing and found…”) gives the action the quality of an experiment. What happens if I let go?
The body of the chorus — frequency and flesh
The answer arrives in the song’s center:
抱き締めて交わしてはじめて
Dakishimete kawashite hajimete
Holding tight, exchanging, and for the first time誰とも違う温度で波打つあなた
Dare to mo chigau ondo de namiutsu anata
You, pulsing at a temperature unlike anyone else’s
温度で波打つ (ondo de namiutsu) — pulsing with temperature. This is a profoundly physical image. Not “warm” as a metaphor for kindness, but literal body heat that moves in waves. The verb 波打つ (namiutsu) means to undulate, to ripple — and it contains the kanji 波 (nami, wave), which reappears at the climax of the chorus:
僅かに揺れる
Wazuka ni yureru
Faintly swaying香り放つ
Kaori hanatsu
Releasing a scentそこにゆらめく
Soko ni yurameku
Flickering there風が吹く
Kaze ga fuku
The wind blowsこんなに恋しく
Konna ni koishiku
So achingly missed刹那溢れる
Setsuna afureru
A fleeting moment overflowing目にして映る
Me ni shite utsuru
Seen and reflected in the eyesこの波HELTZ
Kono nami HELTZ
This wave, HELTZ
These eight short lines are the heartbeat of the song, and they are built to feel like breathing. Each phrase is only four to five morae long — the natural length of a single exhale. The sounds themselves sway: ゆらめく (yurameku, flickering) is one of Japanese’s many mimetic words where the sound physically enacts the meaning. Say it aloud. The “yura” rocks gently between the open “a” and the narrower “u,” and the hard “k” at the end snaps the motion to a stop, like a candle flame steadying.
And here the title finally declares itself: この波HELTZ — this wave, HELTZ. The word “HELTZ” doesn’t exist in any language. It seems to riff on Hertz (Hz), the unit of frequency — the measurement of how many times a wave oscillates per second. Every person’s body hums at its own frequency. The narrator has found someone whose wave pattern is unlike anyone else’s (誰とも違う), and the title is the name they’ve given to that singular resonance. Not “Hertz,” which would be clinical. HELTZ — the Z making it something new, something named.
「なんてすてきな暗闇だろう」— The gorgeous darkness
The second verse pivots into something unexpected:
未来がこんなに見えないなんて
Mirai ga konna ni mienai nante
That the future could be this invisibleなんてすてきな暗闇だろう
Nante suteki na kurayami darou
What gorgeous darkness this is
I had to sit with this couplet. In a culture where the future is relentlessly planned for — entrance exams, career tracks, retirement savings, the weight of 将来 (shourai, the future) bearing down on every decision — to call blindness toward the future “gorgeous” is an act of defiance. The narrator isn’t pretending the darkness isn’t there. They’re reframing it. If you can’t see what’s coming, then for once you are not bracing for impact. For once you are simply here.
吸い込んでみたり
Suikonde mitari
Trying to breathe it inくぐらせてみたり
Kuguraset mitari
Trying to pass through it思いを馳せるだけで忙しい
Omoi wo haseru dake de isogashii
Just letting my thoughts run keeps me busy enough
The play here is in that last line. 忙しい (isogashii, busy) — Japan’s most overused word, the reflexive answer to “How are you?” — is deployed with deadpan humor. The narrator is so consumed by feeling that they’re “busy” simply experiencing it. It reads as both self-aware and sincere.
The shape of your fingers
Then the song does something startling. It drops from the abstract into the painfully specific:
あなたはまだその指の形を気にしているのだろうか
Anata wa mada sono yubi no katachi wo ki ni shite iru no darou ka
Are you still self-conscious about the shape of your fingers?それでも
Sore demo
And yetあまりにすてきな形と褒めたわたしの言葉を覚えてるだろうか
Amari ni suteki na katachi to hometa watashi no kotoba wo oboeteru darou ka
Do you still remember my words when I praised them as such a beautiful shape?
After all the metaphysics of waves and darkness, we land on fingers. Someone’s specific fingers. The insecurity they carried about them. The compliment the narrator once gave. It’s the kind of detail that proves a memory is real — too small to invent, too vivid to forget. In the Natalie interview, the journalist noted that “hands” and “holding hands” have become a recurring image in Avu-chan’s recent work, appearing across “PERSONAL,” “01,” and now “HELTZ.” Avu-chan confirmed this, calling it “a major metaphor” in their internal landscape.
The pronoun わたし (watashi) appears here for the only time in the song — a neutral, slightly formal first-person pronoun that gives the confession a composed quality. This isn’t a raw outpouring. It’s a carefully held memory, presented with tenderness.
Dancing toward ruin is easy — happiness is what terrifies
破滅へ踊ることは出来ても
Hametsu e odoru koto wa dekite mo
Even though I could dance my way to ruinしあわせへ挑むことだけは
Shiawase e idomu koto dake wa
Daring to pursue happiness alone wasどこか逃げていた恐ろしくて戸惑っていた背を押す
Dokoka nigete ita osoroshikute tomadotte ita se wo osu
Something I’d fled from, terrified and confused — now pushing me forward
The word choice here cuts deep. 破滅 (hametsu) — ruin, destruction, catastrophe — paired with 踊る (odoru, to dance). Self-destruction as performance, as something you can do gracefully, almost beautifully. Queen Bee’s catalog is full of this glamorous self-annihilation: the feverish energy of “催眠術” (Hypnosis), the bruised allure of “バイオレンス” (VIOLENCE). The band knows how to make destruction look good.
But しあわせ (shiawase, happiness) — written deliberately in soft hiragana rather than the standard kanji 幸せ — is paired with 挑む (idomu, to challenge, to dare). Happiness as an opponent. Happiness as something that requires bravery. The contrast lands because it is not theoretical. Avu-chan spent the first half of 2024 in a state of collapse — unable to perform, unable to eat, publicly announcing a hiatus from the stage of a concert that was supposed to be a celebration. In interviews about that period, they’ve spoken about how natural it felt to push past every limit, and how foreign it felt to stop. 破滅 was the comfortable direction. しあわせ was the dare.
And the line resolves with 背を押す (se wo osu) — to push someone’s back, the Japanese idiom for giving encouragement, for urging someone forward. Whatever this memory is, whatever this person represents, it is pushing the narrator out of the familiar darkness and toward the frightening light.
HELTZ
The title lands alone. A period at the end of a revelation.
「出さない手紙を歌うことが / やっと出来るようになりました」
The final verse contains the line that unlocks the song:
出さない手紙を歌うことが
Dasanai tegami wo utau koto ga
To sing the letters I never sentやっと出来るようになりました
Yatto dekiru you ni narimashita
I’ve finally become able to do
出さない手紙 — unsent letters. The song itself is one. Everything we’ve just heard — the remembered quotation, the chains, the body heat, the fingers, the gorgeous darkness — was never communicated to its intended recipient. It lived inside the narrator, folded and sealed. And now, not by sending it but by singing it, it can finally exist outside their body.
The verb form here is striking: 出来るようになりました (dekiru you ni narimashita) — a polite past tense of “became able to.” It is the grammar of milestone reports, of progress notes, of a child writing to a teacher. The formality is disarming. After all this raw vulnerability, the narrator straightens up and speaks as if filing a report on their own emotional growth. It reads as both wry and deeply sincere.
Asked directly about this line, Avu-chan told Natalie: “I used to feel ‘I’ll die if I don’t sing.’ Now I realize that what I love is not describing, but imbuing. Something fundamental has shifted — but it’s still connected to everything before.”
これが奇跡と言うことなんて
Kore ga kiseki to iu koto nante
That this is what they call a miracleとっくに判っているけど
Tokku ni wakatte iru kedo
I’ve known for a long time already, butうるさいくらいの積み重ねで
Urusai kurai no tsumikasane de
Through a stacking-up so relentless it’s almost annoying過去は蠢き色を増す
Kako wa ugomeki iro wo masu
The past writhes and deepens in color
蠢く (ugomeku) — to writhe, to squirm, to stir. It’s the motion of insects beneath soil, of something alive in a way that is not quite comfortable. The past doesn’t lie still. It doesn’t glow warmly in a photo album. It writhes, and in writhing, it gains color (色を増す, iro wo masu). This is not nostalgia. This is the past as a living organism that grows more vivid the more life you pile on top of it. Avu-chan, in the same interview, said it plainly: “The past does not betray. What I did before helps me now. Past songs I wrote push my back when I sing them today.”
The chorus returns one final time — the same eight short breaths, the same wave finding shore.
What “HELTZ” means — and what it doesn’t
This is a song about the terrifying vulnerability of allowing yourself to be happy, written by someone who discovered that dancing toward destruction was the path of least resistance. It is an unsent letter, performed — not delivered — and the distinction matters. The recipient may never hear it. The point is that the singer can finally voice it.
“HELTZ” sits in a lineage of Queen Bee songs that process Avu-chan’s lived experience through metaphor and physical sensation — not confessional in the Western singer-songwriter tradition, but confessional in the way a prayer is: addressed to someone, audible to everyone, answered by no one in particular. There is a secondary reading available here, too: that あなた (anata, you) is not an external person but a former version of the narrator — the self who once placed those chains, the self whose fingers were once held. The lyric 「出さない手紙を歌うことが / やっと出来るようになりました」would then become a message from the present self to the past self, an acknowledgment that they have finally grown into someone capable of articulating what once could only be felt. The evidence is moderate — the pronoun わたし appears so rarely in Queen Bee lyrics that its presence here feels pointed, as if the narrator is deliberately distinguishing between who they are now and who they were — but the song holds either reading comfortably.
Avu-chan told Natalie something striking about loss: “Having your heart torn open isn’t always bad. Afterward, looking back, those moments turn out to be epoch-making. And writing them into songs heals not just me, but other people who felt the same thing. ‘Letting go is also worthwhile’ — I can finally say that now.”
The title — this invented unit of personal frequency — suggests that what passes between two people cannot be measured in any existing language. So you make a new word for it. You call it HELTZ, and you let the wave carry what the letter never could.
📖 Read the full lyrics with English translation and romaji → /en/artists/queen-bee/lyrics/heltz/
📝 Learn the Japanese in this song → Coming soon
Song Information
- Title: HELTZ (HELTZ)
- Artist: Queen Bee (女王蜂)
- Lyrics: Barazono Avu (薔薇園アヴ)
- Music: Barazono Avu (薔薇園アヴ)
- Arrangement: Queen Bee & Tsukada Koji (女王蜂・塚田耕司)
- Release: 2026-02-11
- Single: PERSONAL
- Tie-in: None (A-side “PERSONAL” is the TV anime “Hell’s Paradise” Season 2 ending theme)
