Rainbow Sisters -- Kanashiki Weather Girl（悲しきウェザーガール）

 

I figured that I would be incorporating the weather forecasters from Japan's Weathernews at some point. For over a year, one corner of YouTube viewers has been following forecasters including Saya Hiyama（檜山沙耶）, Yui Komaki（駒木結衣）, Ayame Muto（武藤彩芽）and others not particularly because they are desperate to hear about the weather over Japan but because they are desperate in getting their daily dose of the cute and adorable talk and reactions from the ladies themselves. Hiyama, who hails from the city of Mito in Ibaraki Prefecture, was probably the first Weathernews forecaster that the fans fell in love with and I think that she remains the most popular because of her distinctive laugh, her love of cosplay, and the fact that she seems to melt into a puddle whenever famed seiyuu Natsuki Hanae（花江夏樹）speaks.

Not sure whether the Weathernews forecasters have reached the point of cutting a song in the recording booth yet but perhaps it's just a matter of time. Even if they did, though, they wouldn't be setting any sort of precedent because another group of female weather forecasters beat them to the punch decades earlier.

I can't quite believe that TV Asahi had that many forecasters in their weather department but then again, regular announcers in the network (or any of the commercial networks) have often been assigned to do the weather for a few years at least. Anyways, seven of them: Fumiyo Sako（迫文代）, Satomi Hama（浜さとみ）, Naomi Hasebe（谷部なをみ）, Mari Kurita（栗田眞里）, Asako Yoshida（吉田麻子）, Yuka Aoki（青木ゆか）and Mami Inoue（井上摩美）all got together to form a group called Rainbow Sisters（レインボー・シスターズ）to do a one-off song titled "Kanashiki Weather Girl" (Sad Weather Girl). By the way, I'm not completely sure about my transcriptions for the names above so if any of you have any concrete corrections or confirmations, please let me know.

Written by Akira Ohtsu（大津あきら）and composed/arranged by Toshiyuki Omori（大森敏之）, I gather that everyone involved wanted to get a bit of that 60s Spector pop flavour in "Kanashiki Weather Girl". As it is, the performances by the announcers aren't too bad at all...kinda along the lines of an Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）tune.

Returning to the present, this whole YouTube phenomenon surrounding the staff at Weathernews over the past several months reminds me of another Japanese pop cultural explosion which detonated on the same platform a few years ago. Sure enough, one uploader made the connection. Such is the wondrous power of the YouTube algorithm.