'KPop Demon Hunters' cast says animation makes them 'way cooler'
1 of 5 | Huntrix are secretly demon hunters in "KPop Demon Hunters," on Netflix Friday. Photo courtesy of Netflix
LOS ANGELES, June 20 (UPI) -- The cast of KPop Demon Hunters, premiering Friday on Netflix, say the animated film added impressive attributes to their characters. Arden Cho, May Hong and Ji-young Yoo voice a trio of K-pop stars who battle demons with their music.
Cho, Hong and Yoo provide the speaking voices for Rumi, Mira and Zoey. In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, the actors marveled at recording artists EJAE, Audrey Nuna and REI AMI performing the film's songs combined with the animators creating their dance and battle scenes.
"It's such a pleasure to see the musical element of it and just what we built together come together," Hong said. "Then you're like whoa, I'm even cooler than I thought."
Cho agreed she felt "way cooler."
"I feel like that's the magic of animation," she added. "There's just so many talented artists working together to create something and you're just mind blown when it comes out."
Director Chris Appelhans said he and co-director Maggie Kang discovered animated choreography had to be "a little dialed up beyond real life" to make an impact in animation.
"It really took a lot of analysis to be like, let's make this snappy move even snappier, this straight line perfectly straight, this S curve really pushed," Appelhans said. "That took us down a route to really having to understand the girls as performers, what their strengths were, how they moved differently."
The three women make up the girl group Huntrix. Their latest enemies disguise themselves as a boy band to challenge Huntrix on the music charts.
Huntrix even writes a diss track called "Takedown," which seems out of character for them. Cho said the lyrics betray how tough Huntrix thinks they are.
"I feel like it's so cute," Cho said. "We can want to take them down. How dare those boys be so cute and try to steal the souls of our fans? How dare they? So we'll take 'em down."
With a demon boy band creating tension, it becomes harder and harder for Rumi to hide a secret she's been keeping her whole life: she is actually half demon.
To Cho, this is a good metaphor for anything young people may think they have to hide.
"I feel like we, in different chapters of our life, all experience something that we might be ashamed of or embarrassed about or confused about," Cho said. "I love that this movie is really about her being true to herself and not being scared of who she is and accepting all of Rumi."
Mira is the most aggressive of the trio. Hong feels, however, that Mira channels her anger in constructive ways.
"I think she needs it, actually," Hong said. "I think that the energy that she has and brings to the table is fierce, not just purely angry."
Zoey often tries to hold Huntrix together as a people pleaser.
"Was it obvious?" Yoo joked. "Yes, she is but we love her. She'll get over it eventually, hopefully."
Each role was recorded separately, with directors Appelhans and Kang playing the other two demon hunters in the studio. Cho, Hong and Yoo knew each other prior to the film through the industry, and now have a group chat together.
They also confirmed their K-pop fandom, with Yoo asserting she has been in the BTS Army since 2015.
Huntrix sings English-language songs, but Kang was proud to incorporate a few Korean words in the lyrics.
"Ultimately, our songs had to carry so much story that a lot of the lyrics were too important to not be understood," Kang said. "We didn't want to go the route of subtitling things for the songs. So a lot of it is in English but we did manage to sneak some Korean in there."
Reflecting on Huntrix's songs in the film, Yoo acknowledged that they have more success with the more positive song "What It Sounds Like" following "Takedown."
"Choosing kindness will always take you farther than choosing to make someone feel smaller for no reason," Yoo said. "So I think that's a great message, especially for young people to learn how to handle conflict."
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