The Girl Group Collective: LOONAVERSE THEORY: How Odd Eye Circle Saved Music, Matching & More!

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Loonaverse Theory: part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 (current)

Sweet Crazy Love

"Sweet Crazy Love" is Odd Eye Circle's origin story. They are the superheroes of the loonaverse, and the source of their powers' is their heterochromatic eyes. "Sweet Crazy Love" shows us how the girls accepted their powers as new extensions of themselves.

Almost all superheroes have an origin story: a bedrock account of the transformative events that set the protagonist apart from ordinary humanity. […] To read stories about destroyed worlds, murdered parents, genetic mutations, and mysterious power-giving wizards is to realize the degree to which the superhero genre is about transformation, about identity, about difference, and about the tension between psychological rigidity and a flexible and fluid sense of human nature.

The Superhero Reader

Kim Lip, Jinsoul and Choerry began, we presume, as ordinary people. However, they found themselves at a turning point when, after scratching at their eyes like a buck rubbing its growing antlers, their powers come in. The girls' individual settings emphasize the turning point motif: Kim Lip is facing multiple possible roads to take, Jinsoul is riding the subway to a new location and Choerry walks up a staircase (and is there a basement door where she dances?).

Backpacks in tow, they are ready to move onward. But, they are bothered by the transformation of their consciousness. Something pulls Jinsoul's earbud, Choerry and Kim Lip just miss each other's gaze. Their unconsciousness wants them to notice each other and accept their newfound fate.

The girls are moving from society's "rigidity" to their new "fluid and flexible" sense of identity, and the pain from their eyes illustrates the "tension" of change. Like any normal person, they are scared of the unknown; they feel a itch and do not know why. The video emphasizes this with quick flashes of different scenes and spots, representing a blinking eye.

When they finally begin to embrace their powers, Jinsoul takes off her eye patch and Kim Lip starts running. "Frozen hearts wake one by one." They have accepted that their identities are fluid; they can lose parts of themselves and not the wholes. Their eyes have changed, but they are the same girls, just with a new, perhaps higher, mission. "Banter aside, all I can see are your lips." As I discussed in my articles for both "Eclipse" and "Singing in the Rain," to be a warrior, you need to be able to see the both the good and the bad, the whole. Now that Odd Eye Circle sees with clarity, they can be heroes.

"The love that exists only in fairy tales / that's us." Odd Eye Circle is living an actual fantasy. Their fated friendship is bringing them together. When they finally accept their new expanded selves, their world becomes colored in a different way, literally. Color surrounds them and they walk confidently. Ultimately, "Sweet Crazy Love" begins and ends with a fierce, empowering sound and bold lyrics: "come, I approach / don't know how to stop." They are transformed.

Girl Front

If "Sweet Crazy Love" is Odd Eye Circle's origin story, "Girl Front" is their celebration. The video plays with the concept of the mobius strip: the girls are guided by the reverse versions of themselves. With time travel thrown in for that extra twist or something? It is fun to catch all the references to other LOONA videos, but not really conductive to their loonaverse significance so I'm not touching that right now.

For added sass, the lyrics play with the word "cool:" "my heart like this [is] cool / would you cool me down?" They want to act "cool," but their bodies are far from being "cool." "My heart is pounding, cool." The word "front" also has a double meaning: "front" can refer to a physical space or the act of going first. It can refer to a value of time or space, together being spacetime, which is mass. Welcome to the Creation Folks...

Like in "Sweet Crazy Love" (which actually came after but I am allowed time travel too ok??) the girls are bothered by something, constantly missing it, being forced to play hide and seek. It turns out to be themselves and their destiny. It was important that they meet up so that they could go back and tell each other how to meet up? or something

but seriously, "Girl Front" is the spell of "Sonatine" finally materialized. It is first and foremost, a celebration of their meeting. Like all LOONA songs, it uses the diction of worldbuilding to talk about love: "I want to be in an endless place with you [...] I'll go anywhere you are."

You know what the universe it made of? God's love