REVIEW: ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Brings Beautiful Animation And An Even Better Message

Sony Animation continues to be a showstopper with K-Pop Demon Hunters. A Netflix Original Film, Kpop Demon Hunters is directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, produced by Michelle L.M. Wong, p.g.a., and features a screenplay from Danya Jimenez & Hannah McMechan and Maggie and Appelhans, and finally a story by Kang.

A Kpop girl group by day, Huntrix are trained hunters who track down and keep demons from stealing the souls of humans. When they aren’t selling out stadiums, Kpop superstars Rumi (Arden Cho), Mira (May Hong), and Zoey (Ji-young Yoo) use their secret identities to protect their fans from an ever-present supernatural threat. As they sing, they stoke the hope and love within their fans, strengthening the barrier between the human world and the demon world. But when the Saja Boys bust onto the scene with their viral hit “Soda Pop,” the girls start to lose their hard-earned fans.

Only the Saja Boys aren’t just Huntix’s rival; they’re a hot K-pop boy band that is made up of demons masquerading as your bias. Cast as core archetypes for boy idol groups, the group is led by Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop), Romance Saja, Baby Saja, Abs Saja, and Mystery Saja. Maggie Kang has shared that idols from BTS to ATEEZ, Monsta X, and BIGBANG all impacted the character designs and archetypes.

While the bubblegum style is leaning heavily into BTS’ “Boy With Luv” era, Abs Saja is clearly inspired by former Monsta-X member Wonho, and the boys’ final performance pulls heavily from ATEEZ’s darker style. When you also add in the different hair styles (not color) you can map them to counterparts across different boy groups, while the deep voice change for Baby Saja is a nod to Stay Kids’ Felix if I’ve ever seen one. 

KPop Demon Hunters captures idol culture and fandom with humor and understanding.

Ultimately, none of the Saja boys outside of Jinu has much impact outside of being hot. And to be honest, that’s okay. Even as Kpop Demon Hunters begins to hint at and evolve a romantic connection between Rumi, the film’s lead, and Jinu (which even includes a shipname to hit fandom hard), she isn’t reduced to that. And that is Kpop Demon Hunters’ strength as a story. 

With films like Lilo & Stitch (2025) and just about every Disney princess film of the last few years decentralize love from the story’s core, Kpop Demon Hunters embraces it. The connection that Rumi forms with Jinu is important, romantic, and it allows her to understand herself better, not just him. In fact, the way the film approaches love and relationships is by exploring what we find in them, not just what they look like on the surface. 

While the film’s synopsis focuses on the Huntrix girls taking down the Saja Boys and protecting the world from the evil Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun), the film’s heart is something more profound than that. Kpop Demon Hunters is ultimately a film about guilt and change. Rumi is part hunter, part demon. The more she falls out of step with her bandmates and questions herself, the more her purple demon markings grow. Having always hidden them, it becomes a vicious cycle of the marking speaking out only to make her more self-conscious and pull back from her girls, which then makes them spread. 

Sony Animation puts forward beautiful animation with an important message. 

Rumi is the heart of this story, and her guilt and shame run parallel to Jinu’s; ultimately, it’s what connects them. While Rumi’s identity as a part demon is just her circumstance, the spoon she was born with, Jinu’s demon identity is tied directly to his selfishness and his shame. Jinu abandoned his family and made a deal with Gwi-ma for a full belly and silk sheets in the palace, and when his time came to give over his soul, shame was all he was left with. 

Jinu is serving Gwi-ma in order to erase every last memory of his human life. His guilt isn’t something to make peace with and to atone for, it’s something to escape and hide. Kpop Demon Hunters takes a mature approach to laying Rumi and Jinu’s situations next to each other. While they are not equal, the result is the same. 

Whether your shame is caused by your own actions or the circumstances you were born into, the isolation and fear it creates, and how it debilitates you, is the same. Ultimately, Rumi and Jinu aren’t much different and if Rumi deserves to see herself as someone worthy of love despite her birth, Jinu deserves the ability to atone for his past. Redemption isn’t the name of the game; acceptance and choosing to pick a next step that leaves the world better is. 

Ahn Hyo-seop’s Jinu is a standout in KPop Demon Hunters.

In a time when we are so focused on throwing away people for a single sin, regardless of the intensity of it, we have to think of a world where people can change. Even Jinu doesn’t find redemption, but he does make a choice to be different and to stop being selfish. Jinu makes the choice to care for someone else. And that is just as powerful as Rumi choosing to love herself as she is. 

As Kpop Demon Hunters begins to illustrate its point in the third act, the demons begin to push the idol fans into a stadium, marching them to Gwa-hi to be consumed. In doing so, we see everyone, including Mira and Zoey, plagued by an inner voice telling them their worst fears and making them believe that they’re facts.

For Zoey, it’s that she is too much for anyone to love, but still not enough. For Mira, her abandonment issues start to surface as she isolates herself. And ultimately, it shows the audience what everyone, not just Rumi, was hiding from their friends. 

While Mira and Zoey could have used more detailing and depth, Kpop Demon Hunters is able to create an empathetic connective tissue between Rumi, her girls, and Jinu that ultimtately connects them to everyone in Korea. Whenit come to message, Kpop Demon Hunters is perfect. 

Rumi, Zoey, and Mira never lose their spotlight in the film. 

As an animated film, voice acting and animation are the last two elements to critique and here, they earn a near perfect score between the two. On animation, Sony Animation is using its boundary pushing animation style without replicating the Spider-verse aesthetic With such a recognizable visual style, it would be easy for Sony Animation to turn into a one-trick pony, something that has plagued Disney animation and Pixar films. However, the near stop-motion animation quality of the character models adds a charm to every frame. 

Additionally, Kpop Demon Hunter’s animation shines through how it captures complex movement. This is clear in the action sequences that are absolultey gorgeous. The acrobatics and comeplxity of scenes that features Huntrix and hordes of demons is just as fluid and detailed as those where the three of them fight a smaller amount of enemies. What sets this animated film apart however, is the dance choreography. 

Initially, going off of just the name, I was worried that the film would look to replicate the hits of K-pop without executing the nuances between different idol groups, and the different members within them. On stage, in performances, each character in the Huntrix and Saja Boys performances has a crafted stage presence. Additionally, the choreography between the two groups is vastly different, highlighting the gendered dance differences that are standard in the industry. 

Sony Animation captures dance choreography with as much detail as its action. 

The film captures elements of idol life including signings, comebacks, shipping culture, fan wars, and ultimatley the ways in which idols have to perform against their own feelings at times to keep the fans engaged. Ultimately, the film aims to give humanity to idols, and remind the audience the people behind the music in a way that works, and this is only possible because of how well the animation captures stardom and performance. 

When it comes to voice acting, the two standouts are Arden Cho and Ahn Hyo-seop as Rumi and Jinu. While this is definitely due to the weight of their scenes together, it’s still something to call out. Particularly because Jinu is one of Ahn Hyo-seop’s first English-language roles. While a staple in K-dramas as a leading man, Kpop Demon Hunters opens up actor Ahn’s career even further. And that is just exciting. For her part, Arden Cho is fantastic, emotive, and the heart of the film, as I mentioned earlier. 

If the film stumbles anywhere, it’s in its music. This isn’t because the song selection isn’t good. The film’s soundtrack, especially those performed in the last part of the movie, by both groups, is infectiously amazing. Whether it’s “Takedown” that was recorded by TWICE’s Jeongyeon, Jihyo, and Chaeyoung or the rousing final song by the Saja Boys in modernized hanbok, it all works. If anything, I want to add it to my Spotify playlist and play it on repeat. 

TWICE’s Jeongyeon, Jihyo, and Chaeyoung deliver one of the strongest songs of the film, but it leaves you wishing they did every Huntrix track. 

However, the vocal differences were too stark, primarily in the voice actresses and their singing voices. It often felt like there were more group members than on screen. This is particularly clear in the rap sections in the introductory song, with all three girls taking a stab at it, and then all three also working on vocal ballads as well. 

The fact that the speaking voices, particularly for Zoey and Mira, were so distinctive means that their singing voices stand out so much more than they should. While this wasn’t a problem with the Saja Boys, since the girl’s are the main focus, their mismatched pitches from speaking to singing is weird at first, but it’s easy to gloss over on the strength of the songs themselves.

Still, Kpop Demon Hunters continues Netflix Animation’s winning streak and is yet another film where Sony Animation is able to showcase the diversity that can be found in 3D animation. A film that can pull in all ages and ultimately captures the look, feel, and love of K-pop, this Netflix Original is an immediate must-watch. Beautiful animation that is met with an even more important message, Kpop Demon Hunters is a near-perfect film. 

Kpop Demon Hunters is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.