Are you Rumi, Mira, or Zoey?

Last night was the premiere of Netflix’s new movie Kpop Demon Hunters, which starts streaming on June 20 – was this movie made just for me? 

First of all, the cast is impressive. From the trailer, immediately you’ll recognise the voice of Yunjin Kim if you watched Lost (and also XO, Kitty) but Daniel Dae Kim is in this too. A Lost reunion! Plus Ken Jeong and Joel Kim Booster and also Korean acting legend, Lee Byung-hun, aka the Front Man in Squid Game. 

But here are the leads: Arden Cho, Ji-young Yoo, and May Hong who play Kpop superstars, band name Huntrix, who are also demon hunters protecting their fans from soul-suckers. Arden is Rumi, May is Mira, and Ji-young is Zoey. You may recognise Ji-young from the series Expats, in which she starred alongside Nicole Kidman. 

The girls are doing their pop girly thing, until the demons come up with a plan to disguise themselves as a rival boy band, the Saja Boys. Please. This is not that complicated, very unserious, and exactly what it f-cking should be! Which is, by the way, also a celebration of Kpop and its tropes. I was already all the way in when I saw how Huntrix was styled, each member with her own aesthetic personality, and the way the posing and the dancing has been animated is outstanding. But then I screamed when the Saja Boys showed up because… LOOOLLLLL, the hair, the dance moves, the clothes, and the way the aunties lose their sh-t, while wearing their supersized visors to protect their skin, it’s f-cking glorious. And hilarious.

Note also the boy band name, Saja Boys, has cultural meaning. The Jeoseong Saja is known as the Korean Grim Reaper, who wears black robes and a gat (a traditional Korean hat for men) and as you can see, when the boys in the band are in their demon forms, the costumes are inspired directly from that mythological figure. 

As for the leader of the Saja Boys, the character is voiced by Ahn Hyo-seop, I knew this even before I read the cast list because I could hear him, even though I’m used to him speaking in Korean from all the K-dramas I’ve seen him in. He’s a popular K-drama star who has Canadian citizenship but is now based in Korea. Also hot AF and looks like he could be in a boy band. 

Now if we were really going through all the tropes, we’ll soon be hearing rumours about which member of Huntrix might be secretly dating a Saja Boy, LOL. 

But also, we’re also going to be talking real soon about biases. Are you a Rumi, Mira, or Zoey? Right now I think I’m a Mira.