Her American success stems in part from the West's ongoing fascination with "weird Japan." For more than two decades, Western media has highlighted and laughed at Japanese "strange" phenomena, from Gothic Lolita fashion and pre-Tupac hologram pop stars to more deviant subjects like used-panty vending machines and body pillows with anime girls on them (30 Rock poked fun at this one). It's an easy go-to story: Look at what bizarre stuff Japan is up to today—even if the subject is an extreme niche interest most ordinary Japanese people aren't even familiar with, or, alternatively, something that's culturally commonplace in Japan. Now, artists like Kyary are cashing in on this brand of foreigner curiosity.

The video for Kyary's first major single, last year's infectious " PonPonPon," certainly looks bewildering at first: Kyary, in a playroom surrounded by random knick-knacks, explodes into color as all sorts of surreal images enter the scene, ranging from pink tanks to Lisa-Frank-esque ducks to floating bread. The video has more than 27 million views, but most of the commentary ignores the music in favor of talking about the "wacky" clip. YouTube commenter pantoteiconoclasm sums up the consensus: "this is what you see if you could take the entire country of Japan and grind it into a fine powder, and snort it all in one go."

The "PonPonPon" video, though, isn't the result of any bad trip. It's a tribute to the Harajuku fashion scene that Kyary blogged about and modeled in before her pop debut. The seemingly random assortment of junk in the background reflects the fashion's guiding principle of being unafraid to mismatch items. Masuda Sebastian, a designer with prominent Harajuku brand 6%DOKIDOKI, designed the set, while her clothes bear the logos of other famous brands in the area. Even the hovering bread is just a pun: "Pon" is the word used to describe the sound of clapping, and it sounds a lot like "pan," which means bread. Harajuku fashion isn't common clothing across Japan, but most people know about it, meaning they would get what's going on. The West sees something bizarre and exotic in this, though—something American pop stars Gwen Stefani and Nicki Minaj (the self-proclaimed "Harajuku Barbie") have exploited as well.

Instead of scaling back, Kyary has only embraced colorful ideas that resonate with Japanese viewers and baffle Western ones (who promptly blog about it). Take her newest video for the single "Candy Candy." Viewers ranging from YouTube commenters to readers of The Hairpin wonder why she's running around with bread dangling out of her mouth, fighting a creepy version of herself, or firing a machine gun at a giant onion. Melissa Johnson on her blog The Mind Reels writes that nearly all of the images in "Candy Candy" are anime tropes, especially of a genre from the early '90s known as "girl's genre" (Sailor Moon being a good example). Where foreigners see "weird Japan," the Japanese see things that make them nostalgic.