♪ (punk rock music) ♪
♪ (catchy pop beat) ♪
Is this K-pop?
K-pop. I can already tell.
Or is that K-pop-- I mean, J-pop?
Is it K-pop, maybe?
♪ (singing in Japanese) ♪
Look at how beautiful their music videos are.
It's like Destiny's Child, but a different minority.
♪ (tempo speeds up) ♪
It's like Daft Punk.
That guy literally has colored pieces of plastic paper stuck to his face.
♪ (singing in Japanese) ♪
What's in the briefcase?
Is he a bad guy?
♪ (singing in Japanese) ♪
What?
Mini Me!
Oh, is he gonna do the Robot?
♪ (beat becomes intense and repetitive) ♪
What?!
Was that a polar bear? (laughing)
Yes!
What world does that make sense?
So Japanese.
(snapping along)
What's the apple thing?
Oh, watch out. It's a bomb!
Really? He's distracted by an apple?
What?!
He turned into a stuffed animal.
Aww, and he's so cute now. We're gonna keep him as a pet.
All that for a little gold thing?
We don't even know what they're after. It was just something gold.
What just happened? (laughs) That was so awesome!
♪ (electric guitar riff) ♪
More magic people?
Yes, sparkles, okay!
♪ (singing in Japanese) ♪
Where do they come up with creative backgrounds and colors?
This reminds me of Kingdom Hearts.
♪ (singing in Japanese) ♪
That's a lot of people. Are they all in the band?
That's way too many people in one band.
♪ (catchy pop beat) ♪
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of girls fangirling over them right now.
Oh my god! And they're talented too!
They can dance.
Ooh, they are good dancers.
Okay, this is just a lot of arm flailing.
Okay, who choreographed this? That guy needs to get fired.
Whoa!
They got the moves like Jagger.
Ooh, killing 'em.
♪ (singing in Japanese) ♪
I love really, really, really good guy dancers.
Okay.
(laughs) That was interesting.
That was awesome.
That was kind of amazing.
One, two, three, four!
♪ (bubblegum pop) ♪
Ooh, I like that.
♪ I want you (I want you) ♪
Ooh, this is so colorful!
I love this so much.
♪ I want you (I want you) ♪
This is actually a fun music video.
Their music videos are better than ours.
This is what every guy thinks a girl sleepover is.
For the record, this is not what sleepovers are like.
They all look 12, which makes this very weird to watch.
- ♪ (singing in Japanese) ♪ - I wanna sing.
Is this supposed to appeal to guys?
♪ I need you (I need you) ♪
- ♪ I love you ♪ - This is so good.
I could do this [bleep].
♪ I need you (I need you) ♪
Okay, I didn't know there was a mirror there.
This is, like... getting a little suggestive.
- ♪ I love you ♪ - Is that English? "I want you".
♪ I want you ♪
Now they're in the tub. Why not?
Calm down, everybody.
Okay, that wasn't a mirror! That was not a mirror.
I-I dunno.
♪ I want you (I want you) ♪
So are those girls in the band too?
Or are they background dancers?
♪ I want you ♪
I don't know who the artist is. Everyone's singing.
Unless they have a band of 30 girls.
I just wanna be one of them now.
I wish I spoke the language just so I can know
what they're singing about.
- ♪ (singing in Japanese) ♪ - Oh, so we were peeping through the door.
All right, that's a little weird.
That's kind of messed up a little bit!
It was cute, and then it got weird.
That one's actually really cute.
Girl power.
♪ (punk rock music) ♪
(Finebros) Okay, so what we just showed you
was three different bands that are actually part of J-pop.
Oh, that was J-pop? I am so sorry.
I was incorrect.
(Finebros) Have you ever heard Japanese music before?
In anime.
Yeah, because I took Japanese for three years.
No, I've never listened to Japanese music.
I have not.
That was an experience for me.
(Finebros) So before we go into specifics,
how would you describe what you saw and heard, overall?
It's very different, depending on what artist you watch, I guess.
They put a lot of effort into their music videos.
Bright and bubbly.
Lots of people.
There's really awesome cinematography and pageantry.
You don't really know what's coming up.
You think you're going left, then you go right.
It's trippy.
It just seems like it's always so positive and happy
that, like, it makes me happy.
(Finebros) So the first group we showed you was Perfume.
What do you think of their song and music video?
I think I liked that one the most.
That one was cool! I liked their music video.
It was very random and had a polar bear in it.
They mugged a polar bear. That's horrible!
I was trying to see a deeper message,
but I didn't really ever come to a conclusion.
(Finebros) Next were the boys of EXILE,
who have sold more than 20 million records.
Holy crap!
That's all of them?!
There's, like, 20 of them!
All the fangirls don't have to share now that much
'cause there's 19!
(Finebros) What did you think of their video and song?
The song was cool. Their dancing was cool.
Like, the pop and lock kinda stuff-- thought that was pretty cool.
It was kind of Lord of the Ringsy.
Loved it.
They created a whole planet and they had a utopia on clouds!
(Finebros) So the last group is arguably the most popular
J-pop group of all time.
Here is AKB48.
There's so many of them too!
Let's see how many pretty girls we can fit into a band!
That's too many mood swings right there.
(Finebros) They currently have over 130 members.
Why do you need that many?
Oh my god! That's a lot of girls.
May day!
(Finebros) With the idea that they can all be performing
or doing meet-and-greets at the same time in different locations.
That's crazy.
That's money.
(Finebros) And they have their own theatre where you can see them perform
- pretty much daily. - Oh, wow.
From a marketing point of view, I guess that would be a good idea.
It's borderline genius.
If people are just there for the music,
they're gonna get the music.
Then you're looking for the group,
not so much the individuals that are in the group.
It's like a whole new different way of putting on a show.
I wanna go.
If we had that in America, that would be huge.
I think a lot of people would think that's really cool.
(Finebros) Though we can't talk about all aspects of J-pop,
one part is called Idols, who are performers picked out
of auditions and built into stars.
And part of what audiences love is to watch regular people
grow from inexperienced to professionals.
- What do you think about that idea? - That's cool.
That's actually really cool, watching someone start out
and then they just kinda become this huge sensation.
That's why X Factor's so popular, and those talent shows.
It's kinda like YouTube, where you subscribe to a YouTuber
and then you can see them grow throughout the years
and how they change.
Then it's kinda hard for independent music artists
to try to even make a big name for themselves.
Basically, it's a lot harder for people who wanna do their own music
instead of following a company.
(Finebros) There's a lot of rules to be in an Idol group to abide by,
or you can get fired or demoted.
For example, in some of the groups you're not allowed to date.
What?!
And one of the AKB48 members, not that long ago,
ended up in a scandal where she was seen coming out
of a guy's place from another group, and she got demoted
and ended up cutting off her hair and releasing an apology video
for it, where she was crying.
- What do you think, hearing that? - That's pretty harsh, I think.
That's intense.
Okay, that's too much.
That's waaaay too much.
Jeez, extreme much!
They should get three strikes or something.
The culture is completely different.
To feel that much guilt over doing something that
most teenagers do on a weekly basis is weird.
It's probably good for the younger people in Japan
'cause they could look up to them because they're so pure
and amazing and everything, but it has to be hard
on the actual band members.
It makes sense that she did that.
It's just that I feel sorry for the girl.
It's understandable, coming from Asian culture.
If I do something bad, I have to do something to show
that I show remorse.
But she signed that contract herself, so she put herself in that position.
(Finebros) Some Idol groups have a graduation system,
where they're in a group for a certain amount of time,
and then when the time comes, they'll do things like pursue
their own careers or sometimes they'll just be let go
thanks to what they call "graduating".
The rest of the group keeps going.
- What do you think about that? - It's probably the eternal boy band.
Imagine N'Sync going with different pop stars right now.
It makes it seem like it's not coming from the heart of the performer.
It's coming from the producer.
I feel like what you just said described Teens React in a way.
You guys get new members and it's still Teens React,
even though the cast is different.
So that's like the same thing!
So it's not so weird and not so different.
(Finebros) So last question, now that you have listened
to some J-pop, are you going to start listening
- to any of these groups? - Ye-- No.
No.
I don't think so.
It's just not my type of music.
I'm actually interested in J-pop.
Yes, I like it a lot! I like it so much.
Not really. (laughs)
Not on my own free will.
I don't really like pop music.
No.
Nah, I'll stick with Drake.
I will probably go home and look some of them up.
You know what? Yeah!
When I'm sitting in the car with my friend
and I'm playing some hip hop, I can change it up
and play some J-pop!
Thanks so much for watching another episode of Teens React.
Let us know in the comments what video we should react to next.
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Goodbye!
♪ (punk rock music) ♪