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REVIEW: KPop Demon Hunters Anime Film Review

Fans of Revue Starlight, Baby Driver, and the “Stronger Than You” scene from Steven Universe will be filled with glee.

To be honest, I was surprised that ANN would do a review of this despite it not being a Japanese or Korean animation or not even adapted from a manga or manhwa/webtoon sources. I wonder why ANN chose to review this for despite what I said above?

Don't know, but it's probably because the film has become quite popular, and while it is an U.S. production based on South Korean culture, it has a lot of manga/anime influences in its looks, which is something that was confirmed by the movie's artists, and to be honest, while the main characters are K-Pop singers, the concept of Magical Idol Singers is pretty common in Japanese media, for example, Creamy Mami, Full Moon wo Sagashite, some of the Pretty Cure shows, the character of Athena Asamiya in The King of Fighters, etc.

To be honest, I was surprised that ANN would do a review of this despite it not being a Japanese or Korean animation or not even adapted from a manga or manhwa/webtoon sources. I wonder why ANN chose to review this for despite what I said above?

[...]

Do you think ANN is pandering to K-pop fandom

They have asked about Korean pop culture in the annual survey for the last several years now and there's plenty of webtoon stuff on the main page, so presumably the interest is there. It also seems anime-adjacent enough that ANN's readership by and large probably falls into the target audience.

I never imagined this movie would be covered by ANN, but I'm not complaining, while technically K-Pop Demon Hunters is a Sony Animation movie which takes place in South Korea, the anime influences in its visuals are pretty obvious. I'd say that as someone who has zero knowledge about K-Pop and only has some small knowledge about South Korean culture in general, you don't need to know anything about in order to enjoy it. As for the plot itself, I think something that caught my attention is that the main characters do manage to balance their duties as demon hunters and K-Pop singers with minimal problems, I thought they wouldn't be able to do both things at once and that would be a problem for them. I actually really like the interactions between Rumi, Mira and Zoey, but I do agree that the latter two don't have a lot of character, I didn't expect that the movie would be focused mainly in Rumi, spoiler[her being half demon was kind of a surprise to me], and I actually liked her romance with Jinu. Bobby was also a really funny side character, as well as Jinu's tiger and magpie familiars.
Speaking about the technical and artistic side of the movie, I really enjoye the stylized animation, I actually think it did a better job at imitating the sort of anime style compared with Pixar's Turning Red from a few years ago, and while I do not listen to K-Pop, the songs were really catchy, but it's not something I would listen in my phone.
I also have to mention that I watched the movie in its original audio in English, because this is the first Sony Animation movie dubbed in Argentina, which is also kind of rare for Netflix, since they always have sent their movies to be dubbed in Mexico. I listen to some clips in Neutral Spanish, and while the acting is fine, they adapted the songs into Spanish and the result wasn't very good to say the least, which is sad since many animated musicals, particularly Disney ones, get their songs adapted into other languages, including Spanish, and sometimes they sound incredible, but I think adapting K-Pop songs into other languages is much more difficult, that and the fact that the Argentine dubbing industry doesn't have people like musical adapters like the ones who work in Mexico, they should have kept the song's audio in English with subtitles.

dubbing in Mexico is mandatory by law to secure theatrical releases there,that's why 99% of the Latin Spanish dubs for theatrical releases are done there(this is why the Venezuelan cast of Teen Titans Go had to fly out to Mexico to record for the movie,for example).
Since this went direct-to-streaming,they probably figured they could dub it somewhere else,and Sony is no stranger to dub some tv shows and direct-to-video movies in Argentina

dubbing in Mexico is mandatory by law to secure theatrical releases there,that's why 99% of the Latin Spanish dubs for theatrical releases are done there(this is why the Venezuelan cast of Teen Titans Go had to fly out to Mexico to record for the movie,for example).
Since this went direct-to-streaming,they probably figured they could dub it somewhere else,and Sony is no stranger to dub some tv shows and direct-to-video movies in Argentina

I'd like to point out that Kpop legend Kevin Woo voices Mystery Saja, making this movie a must watch