I Am the Antichrist to You is about Nuclear War

1. Context

Readers may be most familiar with Kishi Bashi’s song I am the Antichrist to You from its use in Rick and Morty’s season 4 episode 3 A Rickconvenient Mort. Without spoiling the episode, it is one of the most resonant combinations of on-screen content and music used in the series. The song is hauntingly beautiful, standing as an extraordinary piece of music on its own, with an equally touching stop-motion music video accompanying it.

Online discussions of the lyrics cover many interpretations. The Genius annotations explain them variously as a dialogue between two angsty lovers or a recounting of Genesis, and others don't deviate much from this.

2. The Song

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the Antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms race

Lucid lovers me and you
A deal of matchless value
I was always quick to admit defeat
Empty statements of bones and meat

And my heart it shook with fear
I'm a coward behind a shield and spear
Take this sword and throw it far
Let it shine under the morning star

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the Antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms race

One for my heart and two for show
Three tears for all the souls below
One day we made them into figurines
Burned them all with all my favorite things

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the Antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms race

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the Antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms...

3. Common Interpretations are Incomplete

Interpretations of I Am the Antichrist as a love song between two ambiguous biblical figures are fine, likely intended as one interpretation, but there are a few stand-out lyrics that seem to suggest something else...

• From the chorus: “Fallen from the sky with grace / Into your arms race” — What arms race happens in the Bible?! Let alone between lovers?
• From the third verse: “One for my heart and two for show / Three tears for all the souls below” — Doesn’t quite fit the biblical interpretation... one what for your heart? One tear? In what setting does a crier keep only one of their tears?
• “One day we made them into figurines / Burned them all with all my favorite things” — When could this refer to in the Bible? And again, what setting does it make sense to “burn figurines” in an angsty relationship?

Further, why would Satan call himself “the Antichrist to you” – the Antichrist of the song must be someone who isn’t an Antichrist to everyone else. The song is framed as a dialogue, so this is a particular someone’s Antichrist. The song’s opening line, “Who am I, who am I to you?” is a question – only answered partially by the following line “I am the Antichrist to you”.

This poses a riddle. We know that the song is a dialogue between someone who is an “Antichrist” to someone else, but we don’t know who or what exactly these entities are.

4. Nuclear War

A potential thread between these strange lyrics is something to do with nuclear war, made clear by the mention of an “arms race”, and “falling from the sky”, but this has only been mentioned once in the discussions I’ve read:

Honestly I see this song meaning a few things. I at first thought it was a nuclear bomb and a person or city confronting each other. Sounds odd I know, but it's a different take I suppose.

The idea of telling a story from the perspective of an object (e.g. a nuclear bomb) is familiar to Shinto animism, which is also a recurring theme in Bashi’s work.

In an interview long after he wrote I Am the Antichrist to You, Bashi mentions Shintoism in relationship to his music:

I'm an American after all, and I didn't really understand the Japanese Shinto belief that things have souls. But through playing the violin that he made with such strong feelings, I think I've gradually come to understand that Japanese sensibility.

But the song being a dialogue between a nuclear weapon and some other entity is not complete either, as this verse segment suggests:

One for my heart and two for show
Three tears for all the souls below

“Tears” here clearly refers to the drop-shaped casings of the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs. Two similar objects show up visually in Bashi’s music video for the song, shortly followed by an explosion (links are time-stamped to the frames).

“One for my heart and two for show” would then compose “three tears”. This half of the dialogue can’t be from the perspective of a single bomb, nor each three bombs. One bomb is being held in someone’s heart and two are being “shown”. This heart would then belong to the Antichrist of the song.

Before the separate bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon was the Trinity test, placed squarely in New Mexico, the continental “heart” of the US. From here, it is not a leap to say that the song is a dialogue is between America and Japan, troubled lovers ensouled through Shinto animism.

What does it mean for America to be Japan's Antichrist?

In Christian political theology, the Antichrist is a figure that poses as a savior, not a direct antagonist. They make constant reference to a looming apocalypse that only they can prevent. To save you from this, they convince you to abandon your individual freedom and trade away your soul. In doing so, you give them full control, and that’s how they open the gates of Hell.

After the end of WWII, America would ally herself with a devastated Japan, decommission Japan’s military forces and take over with her own, spurring a skeletal industry, resulting in the Japanese economic miracle, all of this justified directly through the invention and one-time abuse of a technology capable of flattening the world, that would, just like Lucifer, arrive as a fallen star.

5. Verse-by-Verse Breakdown

Tying everything together, here is a verse-by-verse explanation under the interpretation of I Am the Antichrist as about nuclear war:

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the Antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms race

In this verse, America is the speaker, calling herself the Antichrist to Japan. As the first nuclear weapons fall, they set off an arms race in the capabilities of the technology, ultimately leading to hydrogen bombs thousands of times more destructive.

Lucid lovers me and you
A deal of matchless value
I was always quick to admit defeat
Empty statements of bones and meat

This verse is written from Japan’s perspective in the dialogue.

“Lucid lovers” is phonetically similar to “Lucifer”, and in addition the literary meaning of “lucid” is “bright or luminous”, likely a reference to the immense brightness of nuclear detonations.

“A deal of matchless value” – (tentative explanation, this lyric is the least clear to me) This likely refers to Japanese reconstruction during US post-war occupation, which could be seen as a non-negotiable “deal” costing hundreds of thousands of lives via the bombings.

“I was always quick to admit defeat” – Japan’s admission of defeat in the war came shortly after the detonation over Nagasaki.

“Empty statements of bones and meat” – My guess is that this would be a reference to the Kamikaze suicide bombers, and the other extremist tactics Japan adopted during WWII, which dually served to make “statements” about how far Japan would take its aggressive war efforts. The expenditure of soldiers that way, after Japan’s surrender, would then be made “empty statements”, nothing more than tragic deaths and bad strategy.

And my heart it shook with fear
I'm a coward behind a shield and spear
Take this sword and throw it far
Let it shine under the morning star

This verse is also told from the perspective of Japan.

“Take this sword and throw it far” – Japanese officers were required to carry swords during WWII, and many draft soldiers took with them their family’s heirloom swords. The sword is contrasted as useless symbolism against the “morning star” of a nuclear detonation in the next lyric.

“Let it shine under the morning star” – The Latin meaning of Lucifer is “morning star”, and the original Hebrew name of the devil is “shining one”, refering to the intense radiant light of the blasts. This is likely a coincidence, unintended by Bashi, but both nuclear attacks on Japan occurred in the morning – Hiroshima at 8:15 AM on August 6th and Nagasaki at 11:02 AM August 9th

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the Antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms race

One for my heart and two for show
Three tears for all the souls below
One day we made them into figurines
Burned them all with all my favorite things

These verses are told again from America’s perspective.

“One for my heart and two for show” – The Trinity test occurred in the heart of America, and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings also served to display US military advantage.

“Three tears for all the souls below” – The original nuclear weapons used drop-shaped casings, falling symbolically like tears over an unsuspecting human race, as it was thrust into the nuclear era.

“One day we made them into figurines / Burned them all with all my favorite things” – Nuclear weapons make people into relative figurines, burned along with the cities and cultural heritage they set alight.

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the Antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms race

Who are you? Who am I to you?
I am the Antichrist to you
Fallen from the sky with grace
Into your arms...

Ending chorus.