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MYSTERY SAJA POUTING

Sorry the photo quality wasn’t great, you can find this scene at 1:20:30 in the movie BUT AHH LOOK AT HOW CUTE HE IS

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someone's probably made a post about this before, but i can't stop thinking about K-Pop Demon Hunters being a queer allegory (am i using that term right?).

the basics and most obvious being the Saja Boys' fandom being 'The Pride'. obviously Saja = Lion, and 'pride of lions', but you get what im getting at.

and then we have HUNTR/X having colors resembling the bi flag (not to mention the concept art where zoey had blue hair, so the three 100% had bi flag-colored hair), as well as rumi with her bi flag color eyeliner. even if it's not meant to be the bi colors, you can't help but think how much it looks like it.

onto the more not-so-obvious parts. my favorite scene in the movie is: "Why couldn't you love me?" "I do-" "ALL OF ME". i felt this scene so hard as someone who is trans-nonbinary, and ive heard countless stories of fellow queers and their families loving them, but not wholly and not for who they really are. especially stories of their families choosing to pretend that part of their identity doesnt exist.

we have rumi feeling shame over her identity, something out of her control, and being forced to hide that identity even from close friends, because she's afraid of how they'd react, and especially afraid of losing them. (i have personal experience with these myself)

ooh and another thing that stuck with me. in 'What It Sounds Like', rumi sings a line: "I tried to fix it, I tried to fight it." that is the experience most, if not all, queer people have when first finding out or thinking they may be queer. because we are taught growing up that being queer is wrong. so we try to "fix" ourselves, and we try to "fight" our identity

idk if KPDH was meant to be a queer allegory, but it 100% feels like one, and i cant stop thinking about it. if any of you have anymore examples to add on, feel free to share^^

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imagine never havingnthe magical feeling of drawing past midnight because you chose to inject a prompt instead 🙃

I'm not even gonna lie, the kpop demon hunters soundtrack has been playing nonstop in our household ✨️ I KNOW its the same for most of you too

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Another thing that KPDH has in common with the Trix besides the Huntr/x, is that Celine's voice in Brazilian Portuguese is the same person who does Darcy.

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KPOP DEMON HUNTERS (2025) dir. by Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans ↳ “Mira's my favorite. She's the visual and lead dancer. Nobody can move like Mira. Apparently, she was the black sheep of her family. I don't know why, because she's so cool. Who else could wear a sleeping bag to the Met Gala?”

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Omg

Actually

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Guys, something wild happpend to me today…

I heard “Your Idol” on the damn radio!

This was when I was on my way to work and I was so shock!

Good thing I was not the one driving, I was sitting on the passenger seat, because it shook me. I did not expect to hear that song on the damn radio omfg

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Ugly/meme face practice!!! Who better to test them out on than my two newest pookies 😌✨

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Rumi's father in concept art by Simon.

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KPop Demon Hunters (2025)

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In-universe Choreography + Boots

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Let’s idly muse about the story structure of KPop Demon Hunters, simply because I think it's fun to turn the movie over in my head some more. It’s simple, but I would argue well executed, except for parts of it.

There are a lot of frameworks for analysing story structures of movies, but I would argue the most useful is from Craig Mazin, writer of Chernobyl, The Last of Us (TV Series) and also the Hangover sequels. In the Scriptnotes podcast, he recorded an episode titled “How to write a movie”; you can hear it on Youtube or read the official transcript. KPop Demon Hunters follows it so closely that I almost think the writers listened to it.

Craig Mazin largely does not look at things like rising action and falling action and climax and call to adventure, which he argues are the result of structure, not the building blocks. Instead he posits that a movie is fundamentally the journey of a hero “from ignorance of the truth of the theme to embodiment of the theme through action”.

The theme, or central dramatic argument, is what the movie is about deep down. At the start of the movie, the character does not believe it, and they suffer because of it.

In Kpop Demon Hunters, the theme is “live as yourself, don’t hide the things you’re ashamed of”. At the start of the movie, Rumi, the protagonist, does not believe that. She may have heard it, but she believes it doesn’t apply to her. This hurts her; the lying separates her from her friends.

Rumi is wrong here, but she is rational, and she has found a way to deal with it. She has a plan. A clever fun bit about the movie is that it starts with Huntrix at the absolute height of their power in “How It’s Done”: End of a super successful world tour, their biggest concert ever, the most songs, the most fans, they arrived by jumping out of a plane and they looked good doing it. And they are rewarded: There is gold in the Honmoon. They are close to winning the fight they did all their lives.

This means most to Rumi in particular: She’s this close to being free. She can almost taste it. All she needs to do is perform one song, one final, perfect song (“Golden). It’s already recorded, they have a music video, she just needs to perform it live. Is it any wonder she cuts their vacation from two weeks to two minutes? Wouldn’t you?

Except it doesn’t work like that. Whether it’s spreading patterns or just plain old stress, her voice falters in a moment of dramatic irony.

Her initial goal is not reevaluate her relationship to the central dramatic argument; she doesn’t even know it exists. Her initial goal is to get her voice back.

Shenanigans ensue, and she ends up meeting Jinu, and he offers her the central dramatic argument: Hey, why not be open? At least with him? She’s encountering living in accordance with theme, and for a while, she enjoys it (leading up to “Free”).

(Aside: Craig Mazin keeps bringing up Finding Nemo as his example of a very well structured movie. Does this mean Jinu is Rumi’s Dory? Discuss.)

But she’s not there yet. She’s still hiding from her friends, and they are currently recording “Takedown”, arguably the anti-theme song of the movie: What makes you different and unique and broken, perhaps… must be destroyed! Kill! Kill! Kill!

So the story is a constant push and pull, both giving reasons to keep hiding and reasons to stop it, and Rumi feels torn. Every scene provides her new reasons to open up, and new reasons why she thinks it’s maybe best not to tell Mira and Zoey.

And it all comes to a head at the Idol Awards, where she manages to sing Golden perfectly. But it turns out Jinu wasn’t trustworthy, and confiding in him rather than her friends was probably a bad choice. Because she couldn’t commit to the theme, the worst possible thing she ever imagined actually comes true. Her patterns? Exposed. Honmoon? Destroyed. Zoey and Mira? Are afraid of her.

This is the lowest point of the movie, not just because everyone is about to die, but because Rumi is trapped between a rock and a hard place. She can’t keep on living like she did before. It’s become impossible, but even if you turned back time, just knowing what happened, she’s not able and willing to go back into that closet anymore. But she also can’t yet bring herself to commit to the new way of living. Maybe she could articulate that yeah, that’s probably better, but she doesn’t believe in it yet. This finds its conclusion when she hands Celine her sword.

And from there we finally get the defining moment when she embodies the theme through action, together with her friends, open about her heritage and what she was ashamed of (“What it Sounds Like”), and she defeats bisexual Calcifer and its glorious. Jinu gets a fitting end to his inverse mini-arc about opening up and not letting shame define you in a different way. And finally there’s the scene at the end, the denouement, where we see Rumi living in accordance with the theme, having learned her lesson. Great.

So now let’s criticise it a bit. Craig Mazin doesn’t really describe how we get from the lowest point to the point where our hero shows that they’ve internalised the theme, and neither does this movie. Does Rumi’s final confrontation with Celine count as the moment where she realises what she has to do? Maybe? But kind of not really. Instead of that moment we get… “Your Idol”. Which is a great song, but completely irrelevant. It’s just gloating. Here to make us feel a bit more hopeless for a few more minutes so that “What it Sounds Like” seem even better. It should not have been cut, but there probably should have been something more there in addition. In the concept art for cut scenes that we saw, there appears to be a flashback of Rumi remembering her loving parents (who were living in accordance with the theme), which would have fit perfectly here.

The second big criticism is that I’ve been able to do an okay summary of this movie while barely mentioning Mira and Zoey. Obviously this is cheating a bit, both characters are not just sidekicks and are allowed to drive the plot at various points (Zoey bringing them to the doctor, Mira’s various interventions). But at the end of the day, neither of them have an arc. They start the movie believing the same things they did at the start, no unresolved issues, no thematic arguments.

This actually ties in well with the first criticism, because the time between the end of Takedown and the start of Your Idol would have been a great opportunity to dive into their backstories and their issues. The movie even makes an attempt here, giving each of them a whole two lines to define their characters (“I don’t get to have a family”, “Always too much and never enough”). But they could have benefited so much from diving just a little deeper. Ironically this is also a moment where a flashback each would have been great. Maybe one flashback for each of them, then the flashback for Rumi when she finds, I dunno, her father’s old hat. We don’t even need to see Rumi be a big hero before “What it sounds like”; just a moment of her going “I guess I gotta try” would have been nice.

There are a few more things that could be criticised, like, are all demons victims of their own shame who can be redeemed, or just the hot ones? But at the end of the day I think the issues about the girls and their journeys (or lack thereof) are the most important part.

TL;DR: Everybody is saying the only flaw of the movie is that it is too short, and they’re right. And I think the way in which it is too short in particular is that there should have been about five more minutes between the end of Takedown and the start of Your idol. These missing five minutes are the only thing standing between this (very good, excellent) movie and complete perfection.

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'K-Pop Demon Hunters' vs 'Elio' on Titling Movies

if ur anywhere near kpdh, you've heard the complaints about the title of the film being embarrassing to recommend. and if you're anywhere in animation, period, you've seen comparisons drawn between the success of kpdh and the current crash of 'elio'

both are animated films by major studios, both with very minimal marketing before the film's release. and while there are points to be made about streaming vs theaters, i'm focusing on titles specifically.

'k-pop demon hunters' is a very blunt title. 'demon hunters'. yup. ok. got it. fantasy action movie. 'k-pop'. ok. musically based. got it. altogether, you have 'musically based fantasy action movie', and if u know anything about k-pop, it gives you further insight into the energy of the film.

it's sort of like the title of 'teenage mutant ninja turtles'. like, yes, that is what they are. they are teenagers, so it's probably going to be funny. mutant ninjas brings to mind a superhero energy, so it'll be action. and they're turtles. that's not just different, but it's interesting enough that it makes you want to see it. 'k-pop demon hunters' gives you a very clear read on what the film will be.

for audiences familiar with magical girl anime, this isn't a new concept of idols that fight evil, but they'll see it anyway because they like that sort of media. for audiences outside, this is very fresh and new. it's interesting. it captures your attention. the draws are the action and the music.

now, take a look at 'elio'. who is elio. what is elio? elio is obviously the name of the little boy on the poster. what does he do? he has a colander on his head. does he pretend to fight things? does he really fight things? is it a movie about imagination? maybe it's about actual aliens?

the main question audiences are left with is: "what's different about elio and why should i care?"

what is the draw of 'elio'? is it the aliens? because there are aliens in many movies. is it the message of family? because the character of the aunt was barely touched upon in the marketing. and 'elio' might be a really good movie, but pixar didn't seem to be proud enough to have trust in it. the most heart i saw in elio's marketing was elio talking about how he's a misfit, and that was a great angle to push! that makes me care about elio.

it's like if they named kpdh 'rumi'. who is rumi? why do i care about rumi? or if they called it 'huntr/x'. what is that? why do i care? why should i care? why should i see this movie?

and it seems disney has been going with these minimalist titles for a very long time, but that's because they had something else to back it up. the fairytale titles were actual, well-known fairytales. 'Cinderella', 'Sleeping Beauty', 'The Little Mermaid'. self-explanatory. fairytale movie. you know the story.

pixar had these going, too, but they were interesting. 'toy story', a story about toys. toys are alive? neat! what will they do? 'monsters inc.' monsters have a corporation? what do they do? do monsters have jobs? interesting! 'a bug's life' what do bugs get up to? this is the story of a bug. i never thought much about bugs! wow.

and i thought about the difference between 'brave' and 'elio' in terms of titling, because 'brave' is so simple. but it gives you connotations. 'brave' is a story about strength and perseverance. and not just that... 'brave' was everywhere! they had hella trailers and McDonalds toys and disney store presence to back it up! it was hard not to know the story of 'brave' before it came out! redhead scottish princess does archery. which is a huge oversimplification, but that's all audiences needed. it's an action film. it's fantasy. it's a quest!

what is 'elio'? and i'm not asking the actual plot of 'elio' from people who have seen 'elio'. i'm asking, what was i supposed to discern from the marketing we were given? i'm asking what you took from just the marketing of 'elio'.

say what you will about the title 'k-pop demon hunters', but at least you knew what you were getting. k-pop. demon hunters. yup!

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The Huntrix have their own Ramen cups?

Honestly, I think that might be common in Korea.

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Baby Saja Art

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im a weird person. you know why ? because i can understand all the memes and the inside jokes of all of marvel universe despite never watching a single movie nor series, due to the fact that i watch a ton of clips without the intention of ever watching the full movie/series

but i did watch k-pop demon hunters because that’s the first non sequel, non reboot and not live action adaptation that came out and that was actually good. so here’s everything that i thought would happen when i watched the random clips on youtube

the fact that they’re kpop idols has nothing to do with them being hunters and it was just to sell cd’s and stuff like that.

rumi is a demon hiding amongst humans because she never felt the need to consume human souls and her killing her own kind is her asking for forgiveness of being born this way.

jinu and rumi were ex’s turned lovers again when they’re reunited and that scene of Rumi saying “i’m gonna tell them… eventually” refers to her eventually telling the girls that Rujinu is a thing.

Bobby knows about demons and so the in the first scene he’s just like “girls i get killing demons and all of that but just because they try to kill you doesn’t mean you can be late to a concert”

The blue tiger is actually Rumi’s pet that took a liking to Jinu back when the two were dating and he’s trying to get his parents back together.

Huntrix started loosing fans because of TAKEDOWN since their fans thought it was weird that these grown women are making a diss track about a newly formed group.

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Doing studies of the boys and im SORRY I fear Mystery wears heels now idc