"This feels like the kind of movie though where we're gonna get a happy ending" honestly made me giggle knowing the ending😭

As a grown man I was surprised that even I teared up at the end of the movie when they all cried 😂 like it was funny but also an emotional release moment

What I like about Jinu telling the real story to Rumi is that in the flashback when we see his reflection in the plate we can already see he's regretting his actions. It wasn't just after he became a demon that he realised he messed up, it was immediate

people kinda misunderstand when she says "im glad to see it destroyed". she wasn't saying that cause it was her demon side speaking, but because the honmoon was in a way flawed. her and other hunters supressing their flaws made it flawed, when they accepted their flaws plus her demon side they created a better honmoon, a rainbow one instead of golden the of. plus when she started embracing her demon side her voice got better.

The love between Rumi and Jinu is real especially at the very end where Jinu sacrificed himself to save Rumi.  Not everyone would die for their partner.  Jinu gave Rumi’s voice back while  Rumi gave his soul back.

"This is so K-Drama coded."

"Love, Maybe" by MeloMance was from the K-Drama Business Proposal (2022), with Ahn Hyo-seop (Jinu) as the male lead.

references to Korean mythology in this film:

- the first hunters are mudang, traditional Korean shamans using a combination of ritualistic weaponry and performance arts (song and dance) for exorcisms. The girls are basically a modernized version that switched up modern forms of music to continue connecting with the people so they can keep up the Honmoon (which translates to “soul gate”).

- all the weapons used by the girls are actual historical Korean weapons, mostly ceremonial weapons used for exorcisms. Rumi uses a sainchamsageom, or “Four Tiger Demon Slaying Sword” (called that because it was a ceremonial sword that could only be forged in the Hour of the Tiger, on the Day of the Tiger, on the Month of the Tiger, in the Year of the Tiger). Mira uses a Gokdo, an ancient Korean polearm design; Zoey uses a type of shinkal (“Divine Knife”) known as a daeshinkal (literally “Large Divine Knife”). Rumi’s second sword following Jinu’s sacrifice is a Chilseongkal (Seven Star Knife), another, much larger form of shin-kal.

- The flashback to Rumi’s childhood shows that Celine raised her on Jeju Island (and still lives there) based on the stone statue and the landscape. Jeju Island served as the last stronghold of Korean shamanism in the 20th century due to its isolation.

- the tiger and magpie are a reference to Jakhodo, which is an art composition featuring a stylized tiger/leopard/both (Koreans did not distinguish between the two until recently, and both animals are native to Korea though currently exticnt from there) and a magpie. The initial purpose of these paintings was as a talisman (the tiger would scare off demons and the magpie symbolized good fortune); later on they also became a form of social commentary, with the tiger representing the incompetent ruling class and the magpie the common people.

- The demons are mostly based on Korean folklore (the water demons for example are based on mulgwishin, aka ghosts of drowned people who try to drown living people, and the Saja Boys and Rumi’s father as revealed in concept art are jeoseung Saja/“underworld messenger”, whose job it is to bring the souls of the dead to the underworld).

This film was actually more about Korean mythology in initial planning, the K-pop aspect only came in later because the director had a bit of inspiration during the pandemic.

What I like is that Mira and Zoey don’t turn on Rumi because she’s part demon, not really. They’re more upset about the secret keeping and they feel like it’s a reflection of their worst insecurities.

Mira, for example, is very protective of her girls, of this family she’s managed to find for herself. She does everything she can to check in with them and make sure they’re okay, because she cares so much. So for Rumi to not confide in her, to not trust her, it feels like she made up their bond in her head. She doesn’t get to have a family, after all. She doesn’t get to be loved and trusted.

Zoey, similarly, felt like she belonged in Huntr/x. She felt she could share all the vulnerable parts of herself and her notebooks and words with them. But obviously Rumi didn’t feel the same, and then the nail in the coffin comes when Mira gives into her demons and abandons Zoey too. She was not enough to keep them together. She was not enough for them to stick around for. She was too much.

Not to mention her trusting Jinu, a literal demon she’d known about for a couple days, over them would have been a devastating blow.

The raising of their weapons is something I see as them half heartedly falling back on Celine’s training. I don’t think they’d actually ever be able to bring themselves to attack Rumi, but they’re in an emotionally vulnerable state… confused and angry and sad and that’s the only steady foundation they have. But even that cracks. Mira holds her gok-do loosely, not with any of the conviction we see every other time. And Zoey only summons two of her six shin-kal. Their hearts are not in it, and they regret it immediately once Rumi runs. …But they just don’t know what else to do. How do you fix this? Can you fix this?

And then what brings them back is Rumi’s openness, her honesty, her baring her soul fully and saying (singing) that she knows she should have trusted them, but she was scared and it had more to do with her (and Celine quite frankly) than it ever had to do with them. She’s here, she loves them, and she’s ready to do so freely. And that’s all they want too. They want their family back. They too just want to be loved. After their clothes change they even have translucent patterns on the sleeves to match Rumi.

Also, I love that Mira and Zoey keep accidentally reinforcing Rumi’s insecurities. Whether it be by repeating Celine’s words about hiding and fixing or making comments about “demons being demons so we kill it”. Obviously they can’t know the impact they’re having but it helps to keep Rumi from telling them because it feeds into her worst fear.

Smaller detail is that as far as Zoey and Mira knew, there are only two ways to have patterns. You either 1) are a demon (and they just saw a demon disguise themself as Bobby), or 2) you made a deal with Gwi-ma. Mentioning Jinu probably made them lean toward 2. Which just feeds back into their insecurities of “she made a deal with the devil and hid it from us because we weren’t good enough and we never even noticed, how did we not notice”.

The subversion with Celine was also really good. Usually the mentor/guardian realizes their mistakes and helps the hero win but no. Celine is so indoctrinated into her own fear and her own tradition of suppressing shame that she can’t see where she went wrong and doubles down.

KPDH is now THE MOST watched movie on Netflix of all time. Movie ya, not just animated. And Golden hit #1 in USA and UK.

I think it's so cool that Rumi gets her Buffy moment. (Remember when Angelus is like "No weapons, no friends, no hope. Take all that away and what's left?" and Buffy just responds: "Me.") Rumi's friends have rejected her, her surrogate mother can't accept her for what she is, Jinu has betrayed her and still she shows up determined to save the day. It's such a great moment. No wonder Jinu looks at her like that. She's so strong and amazing.

"I'm not supposed to be vibing. These are the bad guys." -- That's it! ))

The girls at the end singing are from the band Twice. They’re a super huge girl group who recently headlined Lollapalooza. They sang that song live and it was incredible!

Sometimes there’s fan wars but honestly a lot of people love multiple groups. Each k-pop group have their own light sticks and variety shows and fandom names. BTS’ fans are Army. BLACKPINK’s fans are Blinks. Seventeen’s fans are Carats. Stray Kids are Stays. Etc.

So sometimes people will say “I’m an ARMYCARAT” or I’m an “ARMYBLINK” etc.

Usually when you start liking one group, it’s easy to fall for a handful of others too.

So happy you liked it!!
One thing I love about this film is that it never mocks kpop fans the way so many do. It celebrates what is fun, sometimes silly, and always passionate about being a kpop fan! 🥹 I've seen some reactions of kpop fans to this film and we can all relate to some aspects of it haha. It's also quite a love letter not just to kpop but to Korean culture as a whole (with cultural details in the demon designs, the clothing, even in the kinds of weapons they use).
As for kpop fans, a couple of others said it here already but most people like many kpop groups. They may have favorites that they invest more time and money into, but majority of fans enjoy listening to many groups. Some chronically online bully-type fans will put others down for being a fan of more than one group, but that immature mindset is not very realistic outside of places like twitter lol.
The girl group at the end is Twice (three members out of nine!) they aren't the singing voices of huntrix but they did record their own version of the song takedown.
Thanks for reacting to this!!

32:02 I love this scene so much. And you can hear young Rumi singing the “We are Hunters, Voices Strong” woven throughout the score. Haunting. Devastating. And Rumi’s expression when she realizes Celine can’t see her as she is cuts so deep.

28:40:  The visual storytelling in this scene is tremendous (as it is through the rest of the film, but this one stands out).  We see demons kidnap Bobby, then we see the demons, and Bobby, revert to demon form and teleport away.  Then we immediately cut to the real Bobby, telling us that no, Bobby was not secretly a demon this whole time, and letting us know demons can shapeshift/glamour into specific people, not just a human disguise.  So that when "Zoey" and "Mira" show up next to Rumi when Takedown plays, we can very quickly catch on that these are actually demons masquerading as Zoey and Mira.  Just superbly well done, and trusting the audience to pick up what you're putting down.

I think I've become addicted to watching people's faces during the K-Drama shoulder-check scene XD

LOL that scene where he brushed off his shoulder WAS from a kdrama !! not only that it was from a Kdrama where the voice actor for Jinu was the main actor ! a fun one called "business proposal" !

It's not a kid's movie. It's an all ages movie that was meant for young adults, specifically.

In the defense of Jin-Woo, by the time he was ask to serve the emperor, you can't simple denied an invitation to be a servant, if you do that, all your family and you would be executed by disobedience, and you can't bring your family inside the palace, unless you were someone really important and not just a servant like Jinu, so yeah, he make a deal with the devil with good intentions at the beginning but he was jinxed to fail since the beginning, like make a deal with a Djinn, and you can actually see that probably his mother and sister were fine, because they were saved by the Mudangs at the very beginning, so in my head cannon, his sister became a Hunter too (yes Jin-Woo sister is the one who hold the hand of the lead singer Mudangs at the beginning)