Meow, meow, meow, nya.
The 5 girl Japanese idol group, The World Standard, or Wa-suta (わーすた) as they are known in Japan, released a music video for their new song “Wanna Be Famous” (ゆうめいににゃりたい – yumei ni nyaritai), which features the cat girl themed idols travelling through time.
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| Cat girl magic |
The video begins in a waiting room, which the girls have been in for 4 days. Yes, this doesn’t make sense but don’t think about it because things are about to make even less sense. So after being stuck in this room for 4 days, one of the members finally comes up with an idea about what they can do to entertain themselves. Her idea? Let’s go back in time. So, of course, they use their cat girl magic powers to do that.
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| Dance time |
The rest of the video features the girls singing, dancing and of course, going to different historical periods. Interestingly, part of being a member of Wa-suta means studying a language. Currently, all 5 members are learning languages (French, English, Mandarin, and Korean) and the costumes they wear in the video are in some way or another supposed to be related to the language that they are studying.
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| Cat ears explosion! |
As for the song, it has almost nothing to do with time travel. The song is, as you will be able to tell for yourself since the video feature English subtitles, primarily about wanting to become famous and making it big. It also features plenty of nya-ing (meowing) and talk about cat ears. Interestingly, a nya can even be seen in the original Japanese title, where nyaritai is used instead of naritai (want to become).
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| Cats don’t need money
In terms of musical style, the song is very much in line with Wa-suta’s previous work. It’s a somewhat strange and eclectic mix of various genres like, standard J-idol pop, denpa song, heavy metal, EDM and more that manages to be rather catchy in its own unique way.
Another notable example of the group’s peculiar style can be seen in their music video for their song “The Perfect Idol” (完全なるアイドル –
kanzen naru aidoru). |
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| Yep, there’s definitely too many idols
The video, which was released in August of 2015, features the members in a slightly more “gothic” look but still in full cat girl mode. The song itself is an interesting mix of standard J-idol pop and heavy metal inspired portions.
As of July 2016, the average age of the 5 members of Wa-suta was 16 (which makes this whole thing just a bit creepy) so it seems that we have a lot more of Wa-suta to look forward to. And given that they have a goal of “Spreading Japanese kawaii (cute) culture throughout the world through both social media and the physical world” it seems they will be making more and more attempts to gain fans outside of Japan.
Of course, including English subtitles in their videos is one excellent way to reach an international audience. However, another, perhaps even more interesting way that the group is trying to achieve this goal is by having each of the members learn a language. Not just any language, though, all the languages the girls are learning are spoken in countries where there is a lot of money to be made from selling Japanese pop culture to the locals so this is a pretty shrewd business decision on the part of the group’s management company. It won’t be long before these girls will be using those language skills to reach out to fans around the world so get ready because all signs point to a whole lot more Japanese cat girl strangeness coming our way in the very near future. Nya. Source: Natalie News |
