By Jan Lee

The members of all-female Japanese pop rock band Scandal are in their 20s, but they still dress like high school girls.

"Sometimes, as we grow older, we do feel different about the schoolgirl image but we're not bothered about it since it says that people think we're young," lead vocalist Haruna Ono, 24, and the oldest in the group, quipped through a translator at an interview.

The band were in town last week to play at a concert at *SCAPE Warehouse.

The other three are bassist Tomomi Ogawa, 22, drummer Rina Suzuki, 21, and guitarist Mami Sasazaki, 22.

They met when they were students at a dance academy, and under the influence of their teachers, formed a band in 2006 when they were still in high school. Hence, the image.

When asked if they adopted the high school girl image to attract male fans, Ono said: "We were high school girls when we started out, we're just being honest."

They gained an international following after they started writing and recording the theme songs of popular Japanese animation series, better known as animes, on television.

For example, Shojo S and Harukaze served as big-name anime series Bleach's tenth and fifteenth opening themes, respectively, and Shunkan Sentimental served as the song of another popular anime series Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood's fourth ending theme.

All three reached top 10 in Japan's Oricon charts.

Scandal are not bothered that international fans know them more for their anime songs, even though they do perform non-anime songs too.

In fact, they are grateful. As Ono explains: "Anime gets people to listen to our music."

For more, read Life! tomorrow.