This does not compute. I feel like there's something you should know about me that I probably should have emphasized more considering I've been writing on this blog for around a year or so. Well, better late than never, right? I have a very low tolerance for the cutesy-cutesy "We're kawaii-desu sugoii aidorus!! Doki Doki and stuff!!" type of idol group/music. Yes, I admit idol music probably wasn't the best genre for me to follow so intently considering 80% of idol music is pretty much just like that but what can I say? My brain works in strange ways. So yeah, I've never been one for cuteness; there's only so much I can take before I start throwing up rainbows. It might be because I babysit a lot of little girls who watch the most saccharine sweet kids shows (sans MLP: FiM) But every once in a while an impossibly cute, gimmick-y most painfully pandering cliche of a group walks into the room with their cute little skirts and idol-desu!! persona. Instead of rejecting that group and tossing it into the pile of idol groups I will never hear from or care about again, for some unknown reason I fucking love it. The last group I really felt that way about was Watarirouka Hashiritai 7 but that was mostly because of the omniscient presence of Mayuyu the Fantastic Creeper.
Weather Girls is one of those groups.
To fill you in on exactly who the hell these girls are, they're not only idols; they really are real-life weather girls. Kind of. They dance around a set presenting the weather so I guess that counts a being a weather girl in Taiwan. So yeah, the group is from Taiwan and Koi no Tenki Yohou is their debut single in Japan; I think I saw a picture of them on Arama many moons ago and paid them little to no regard. And maybe I should have because now I'm trapped in this endless loop of sugary sweet idol pop. I mean, I seriously wasn't planning on giving this group two shits but then I listened to the PV and oh my god I love this so much even though it's so cliched. It's like... Watarirouka Hashiritai 7 meets Kara meets Shoujo Jidai meets the Smile Dip from Gravity Falls. And I am loving every minute of it and I have absolutely no idea why. I think it might just be the impossibly high amount of energy an peppiness energy generating from this song. Even for songs I dislike, if a song has energy, I can still like it to some degree. And considering this song it bursting over the top with energy, I suppose it only makes sense that I would gravitate toward it! I swear, I don't know what these girls are on but whatever it is, I want some of it! And the song itself is so much fun to listen to; the verses have this very mischievous sound to them while the chorus sounds much sweeter and the two balance out and make this surprisingly awesome song. Another selling point of the song is that it is so. Very. Catchy. It has a few random snippets of English (like "Oh my oh my oh my gosh!!" and "So I say") and even a few simple Japanese phrases I can't butcher. When you have that in a song, there's no doubt about it that it's going to be in my head for a least a week. I have no idea how well their Japanese pronunciation is but they sound cohesive to me and I'm happy that they released an original song instead of a just something recycled like some groups that shall not be named.
But I still don't understand how is it I can latch on to this song so much when there are hundreds of other idol groups with this same schtick that will probably never catch my eye. Don't get me wrong, this song is a lot of fun and I praise it for having so much energy and enthusiasm but it's nothing special. It's not Electro World or Keibetsu Shiteita Aijou or even Kataomoi Finally. Actually... maybe songs like that are the reason I'm enjoying this song so much. Koi no Tenki Yohou is the opposite of the music I consistently listen to and when I spend a lot of time focused on that style of music I like best, I can get tired of it. And with the disappointment I had for UZA, maybe a cute, generic song that's the epitome of diabetically sweet idol music was just what I needed. It's a breath of fresh air from all the current music I've been listening because it's different for me. A lot of idol fans have probably heard this musical style a lot before but as someone who tends to ignore it, I find myself loving this song every time I listen to it and I can't stop myself. I have been sucked into the pink world of frilly idol music and I don't think I want to get out. Just listening to this song puts a smile on my face and makes me want to get up and dance. So despite the cliches, the sugary-sweetness, everything that would normally lead me to avoid something like this song like the plague, Koi no Tenki Yohou has proved to be a peppy, surprisingly amazing track. And for the record, the PV is just as cliched as the song. That's why I'm screen capping it!
BWAH! Too... much... pink.
So according to this voice-over guy, they're not Weather Girls; they're Waiter Girls.
I feel like I'm staring at the Barbie-fied version of a bowling alley.
I thought for sure they'd be broadcasting the weather being you know, Weather Girls.
Sweet Jesus, I feel like I'm looking at characters from a burlesque version of Candy Land!
And the record for shortest skirts worn in an idol PV now belongs to Weather Girls! Sorry S/mileage, the newbs brought upon that loss for you.
Ooh, star formation! I'm a sucker for star formations!
But Heroine ni Narou ka had a cooler one...
I'm trying to decide which outfit's worse: the Candy Land stripper outfits or the stipper!Smurf outfits.
Every move is so cliche so why do I enjoy it so much!?
SEE!? I've seen this move a bajillion times before!
Hello? Can we borrow your outfits for our PV? We hate dressing up like Candy Land strippers...
Ahaha, no. We had to dress up as stripper Santa's helpers back in our indie days. I think you'll live.
I wonder if classrooms would be more exciting if they were filled with hot, sexy singers every day.
I swear at first glance, Pigtails here looks like Gyuri from Kara.
That formation would look much cooler if they had better outfits!
Bad CGI snowflakes? Can't they wait until Christmas?
Wow! Where I live, regular classrooms are just about as barren as this one!
What are they doing, stroking imaginary cats?
So that's how this PV tied in a relation to the weather.
She's an airbender!
Yay! We can do sports! Now let's go run a marathon!
And now they're speaking cutesy idol Japanese. Somehow I am completely okay with this.
I'm even okay with the bad CGI hearts.
Those legs must go on for miles!
Maybe for their next PV, they'll dress up like
When you wish upon a heart... it lights up and gives you stripper Candy Land dresses.
Well, this PV was cliched, cheap, had terrible outfits, was painfully gimmicky, and I loved every minute of it. HELP ME.
I don't have much else to say about the PV since it's pretty much the same schtick I see in a lot of cute idol PVs with just a touch sexier. This PV presents nothing new to the table and I could swap them with pretty much any other idol group on the market right now and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I've seen these same moves, same cute little motions and gimmicks, hell even the set looks like a boatload of other dance sets I've seen. The biggest flaw of the PV though is the costumes that I so relentlessly made fun of in the screen-capping. It's just... they look like strippers from Candy Land! I'm not trying to be funny, they do! I could easily see them plastered on the board! Something about the pink and the corsets and the pink and the mini-petal skirts and did I mention all the pink? Yeah, I really hope you like the color pink when you watch this PV because they're so much of it, it's giving Pepto Bismal a run for its money. The blue outfits are marginally better but they don't work very well for this PV either. I'll give Weather Girls' designer the advice I gave to UFA: simplicity is not always bad. Okay, the sets were simple in this PV and they were pretty dull but that's not always the case! Oh, who am I kidding? Management has as much of a chance of seeing this as I do of meeting Perfume. Anyways, I actually like listening to the song alone over watching the PV but the dance is nice especially if you're a fan of long-legged females. This sure isn't one of the dark songs I'm used to hearing around this time of the year but nonetheless I fucking adore this song so much more than I thought I would. I think eventually I'll come to terms with the fact that I fell for such a tirade of cliched girliness. Maybe not now, but soon.
As for now, Koi no Tenki Yohou gets 3.5 apples out of 5 from me. Your mileage will vary on how much you like the song and you don't have to watch the PV to enjoy the song. The PV adds virtually nothing to the song and the outfits worn in it (sans for the uniforms and office-y outfits) are definitely on the more atrocious side of idol costumes. Truthfully, I pretty much looped the PV and didn't bother watching it just so I could hear the song! Still, I'll have to keep Weather Girls in mind when I'm scouring around for idol news and see if they ever release anything else that piques my interest of if this song was just a one-time thing. As for now, may the girliness and cliches of this song prevail on! ONWARDS AOSHIMA!
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