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Most of my writing output centres around a trio of badass young women who sing in a vocal group together and have their sights set on the planet's adoration - as well as its soul.

If you've watched Netflix at all this summer, or if you know any girls under the age of 8, or any weebs or K-pop stans, that premise probably sounds quite familiar.

This is K-Pop Demon Hunters. If you've not seen it, and you trust me, you should read no further and go watch it. Right now, ideally.

If you need some more information, there is a trailer but this music video probably works better:

The rest of this blog post will contain spoilers. I really would urge you to go watch it first, the blog can wait.

Ok, waiting done, I'll assume 100% of people who've read this far have seen both movies and everything is fine.

So you probably noticed some similarities between 2025's K-Pop Demon Hunters and 2014's Rainbow Rocks.

That's ok. They're both amazing movies. We can notice common elements without either needing to feel threatened by the other. I'm just glad that so many of the things that made Rainbow Rocks so great are being passed on to the next generation. If Demon Hunters were an inferior copy, I'd be a bit miffed. But, as I said, both are fantastic.

But it got me thinking: Of the two, what aspects did Rainbow Rocks do better? And what did K-Pop Demon Hunters do better?

So here's my rundown of various points. But first I would just draw attention to two things:

1. This is not a fair fight. To begin with, the work that came later is free to see the work that came first, to analyse its predecessor and adjust itself accordingly. Demon Hunters can learn from Rainbow Rocks' triumphs and mistakes. Also, I don't know the exact budget of Rainbow Rocks, but it wasn't [i]that[/i] much more than a few episodes of the series, which were about $230k each. Even the 2017 MLP movie, with its worldwide cinematic release and Hollywood cast, only had a budget of $6.5 million. And Rainbow Rocks emerged only 15 months after Equestria Girls, giving it a very short production time by movie standards. In contrast, Netflix gave K-Pop Demon Hunters a budget of $100 million, and the film took nearly a decade to make. So, as I said, this is not a fair fight.

2. I might as well say this up front, because the number of bullet points each side has makes it obvious, but K-Pop Demon Hunters wins this battle (of the bands!), and by a serious margin too. That's ok. Think of it this way:

Rainbow Rocks walked so K-Pop Demon Hunters could fly.

But what was the ultimate theme behind Rainbow Rocks? Creativity isn't a competition. Both have all the value they could want, in their own right. And it's still interesting to study where each had their successes and pitfalls, even if the end results aren't even.

With that in mind, let's start the list.

Being Netflix's flagship property for the summer gets you a lot of promotion. As does that gigantic budget. I'd take a wild stab that K-Pop Demon Hunters has reached about 100x the audience that Rainbow Rocks did. If you're a studio executive, that's nice for money things. If you're on the creative side of the film, it's a wonderful vindication of everything you worked hard for. But most importantly, the film has had a much larger impact on culture.

I'm writing this on September 1st, so the movie has been out for more than three months already. And what do I find when I look at the Billboard charts, the top 100 songs being bought in the US right now? Guess who is number 1, and has been since its chart debut nine weeks ago.

Same in the UK charts. While you're at it, you could probably also guess who's at number 4. And 5. And 10. And 20, 23 and 25. I think that's the entire track listing of songs performed in the movie.

This is gigantic. It's everywhere. It's hard to imagine what the world would have looked like if Rainbow Rocks had this level of success. Oddly enough, the one place it seems to be absent is fimfiction. I've seen only one MLP crossover story and no discussion of it. I guess we're a generation behind when it comes to what young girls are watching.

But you remember what it's like at Bronycon, where everyone has seen and loved the same show? Well it's a bit like that, but everywhere. There's a very good chance your friends will have seen this. They almost certainly know someone who has, or has been talking about it. And as a shared experience, that's huge. It was worth us travelling across the world to conventions for, and now people get to have that effortlessly. That's quite a thing.

So this first point is rather obvious and one-sided, but it shouldn't be understated.

I don't know about having the first two points in a row both be the newcomer, but again this one seems so obvious it's best to get it out of the way. I can't quite find the right word for it. 'Budget' is quite a good fit, not in terms of the money itself but in terms of what that buys you. 'Quality,' but that sounds rather derogatory to Rainbow Rocks, which it shouldn't be.

MLP is based on Flash animation. It's like South Park in that respect. It's designed to churn out episodes quickly and efficiently on a comparative shoestring budget. Even if the money were the same, it's also 11 years older, and technology has come quite a way since then. K-Pop Demon Hunters is a mainstream-movie-sized team of animators working on a bespoke project for several years. Something would be very wrong if it didn't look dozens of times better.

But by Hell it does look good. The wide shots, most obviously, are as expansive and detailed as you could wish for. The lighting effects in the stage performances are exactly what's needed to show the biggest in-universe band in the world. The direction is dynamic and exciting, putting you in the middle of the fight scenes and wonderfully enhancing the emotions the characters are going through. The VA performances are all great, and the animation is so full of little details bringing the characters to life. It feels like a movie where they really had the time to get it right, nothing was ever just the best they could do within the constraints. The special effects, the environments, even the dance choreography, it's all impeccable.

And that draws you in more, and makes it feel more real.

Celine Dion changed the world in 2001 with Believe, introducing us to autotune. Rihanna changed it more in 2007 with Umbrella, pushing pop music towards simpler, repeated phrases. Autotune becoming the norm in pop has happened alongside the rise and integration of hip-hop as the dominant genre. And the trend has gradually moved towards melodies that are more monotone. They still have some complicated rhythmic elements, but there are often sections within songs where the melody only involves one or two notes. Look at something like Midnight Run by Example or Heat Waves by Glass Animals. The two poppiest Taylor Swift songs I can think of, Shake It Off and Look What You Made Me Do, are probably also among those with her narrowest range of notes and most repetition.

And, alas, K-Pop Demon Hunters falls prey to this at times. Clearly the cast have some amazing singers with huge ranges, but there are definitely some sections where someone with a five-note range would have done just as well. This is true to the modern K-Pop genre, by the way, which has a big hip-hop influence. Listen to something like Whiplash by Aespa, a brilliant song but a very limited tune.

Rainbow Rocks rejects this trend and tends to go for much wider-ranging melodies. Awesome as I Wanna Be would be a good example. I put this down to MLP's history doing songs more influenced by musical theatre, where Demon Hunters draws directly from pop, so we're used to the more tuneful melodies.

Both films have great songs, but those in Rainbow Rocks have fewer weak moments when it comes to their tunes.

This is the most important one. Again, it's not fair, because boundaries have shifted in 11 years, and Rainbow Rocks is chained to a very particular age demographic and a family-friendly socially-inoffensive image to maintain its toy sales.

But you remember the sentence I opened this blog post with? Well in K-Pop Demon Hunters, the trio of badass young women are the good guys. Musically they're a little further up the hardness scale than the Dazzlings, with their opponents in similar territory. The Rainbooms wouldn't get a shoe in. There is one light, fluffy song, but it's clearly deliberately not taken seriously.

So, although the K-Pop singers play the role of the Rainbooms in the narrative of Demon Hunters, in terms of aesthetics, songs, individual and group dynamics, they're much closer to the sirens. Just reflect on that for a minute. The things we were warning against a decade ago we're now actively embracing.

That's certainly the area in which I notice the overlaps with Rainbow Rocks the most. Mira is an 'overly blunt, short-fused, highly aggressive' lady with a twin-tail hairstyle. Zoey is easily-distracted, eager to please and generally the peacemaker of the trio. And lead singer Rumi has her eyes locked firmly on the horizon and is just trying to keep things together long enough for them to reach it. If you made the Dazzlings nice enough to pass as hero characters, this is what they'd look like.

Plus there's then a whole lot of physical violence on the demon slaying side of things.

This matters, because it strips away the squeaky-clean wholesomeness that the Rainbooms had. It makes me want to root for them, as I always have for the sirens. I think it's the key reason so many adults have embraced the film.

I find happiness or lightness so often makes things seem cheesy. I can't stand most serious works when they try to go happy. As you might imagine, that got depressing after a while, and I needed something happy. So I found ponies. But the point for me about MLP was that it was so far outside the norm that the happy spots didn't ruin it. Of course they're happy, they're cartoon ponies aimed at small girls.

But I think that was what most people outside the fandom struggled with with MLP. It was such a shift, going from something else they might watch to this sugar-sweet land of friendship, that it turned them off.

Because K-Pop Demon Hunters deliberately brings in darkness and edginess, it doesn't seem 'other' in the same way.

The real skill is in how they've managed to do that without making it unsuitable for children. The opening song mentions napalm and Rambo, and young children flooded to cinemas when Netflix released a singalong version.

Ok, so the Rainbooms pony up from time to time when they play. And their singer friend is a princess. But, that aside, they're just normal high school girls. The Rainbooms is a band that you could join. They're a band your year at school probably had an equivalent of. Their total lack of exposure or commercial success has no bearing on how good they are or the show they put on when they perform.

And the same is true of the Dazzlings. Ok, magical voices and amulets. But their voices aren't actually doing anything real singers can't do. You could put together a Dazzling-ish group for a school talent show no problem.

This is a different message to K-Pop Demon Hunters, one that is healthier and more useful. East Asian idol culture is really quite a thing. Very intense, very high demand, but also very high reward. Probably the best example you'll find today of people being put on pedestals. The trio in Demon Hunters connect with their fans by being nice to them. The Rainbooms connect with their audience by being like them. The average person in the K-pop audience might love the band, but they don't believe they could ever be like them.

That sends a different message to impressionable young girls. I'd much rather they looked to Rainbow Dash in that respect.

Pinkie Pie is very funny. There are lots of funny moments in Rainbow Rocks. Basically every time Sonata opens her mouth she's hilarious.

But I never really got the impression the movie was a comedy. Most of its jokes were more about characterisation (largely Pinkie and Sonata again) than about tone. Whereas K-Pop Demon Hunters has plenty of jokes and gags, even during otherwise serious moments, because it's that kind of film. That's the vibe they were going for. We will slay demons with knives, swords and polearms while preventing them from spilling our ramen, and we'll do our makeup while jumping out of a crashing plane.

And everyone likes to laugh, so that's a point in the film's favour, one that attaches people to it. The simple fact is that I think Demon Hunters is the funnier of the two films. And like two points above, the really impressive thing is how that doesn't interfere with the requirements on the other side, like when it has to deliver sincere emotion.

The art style of Friendship is Magic is one of the most important things about it. The ponies are adorable. And when they tried to Disneyfy them for the 2017 movie, it didn't look nearly as good. But, in what may be the most controversial bit of this blog, I don't know if that adorableness carries over to Equestria Girls. In a few moments, sure. But ponies are a lot cuter than humans. And so it's not such a selling point with the human characters.

So Equestria Girls is tied to an art style that doesn't really work towards their goal. And sadly combines that with the bobble-head thing.

I think that gives K-Pop Demon Hunters the edge in art style. It lets them show the beauty of the modern music video and the ugliness of carb-loading. Some of this comes back to the earlier points about time and budget, of course, because the characters and their animations can be so much more detailed, but all that could have counted for nothing if they'd gone for the wrong art style.

I really struggle with musicals. Always liked the music, but they rely on a central, massive suspension of disbelief: that characters will break into song at a given moment and sing to the world about how they're feeling. Most of the time I cringe and hate it.

Something I always loved about Rainbow Rocks was how it avoided that problem. All but one of the songs in the movie take place as performances on stage in a setting where breaking into song would be completely normal. The sirens sing about the audience being under their spell because they're on stage and that's exactly what anyone would sing if they were the sirens at that point. The finale is a little unrealistically good for something Sunset is improvising, but it still works that picking up the mic and singing is exactly what she would do there, no suspension of disbelief required.

The one exception, by the way, is Battle of the Bands, where the Dazzlings just burst into the canteen and start singing. But I think the magic amulet thing lets them get away with it.

K-Pop Demon Hunters mostly gets away with it too. Mostly. Some songs are full in-universe performances in front of live audiences. Sometimes the song carries on in the background while they cut away to other scenes like interviews or rehearsals. But there is one in particular where two characters alone in a scene together burst into spontaneous song. It works, because it's a very, very good song. But still.

Netflix has apparently been promoting the film in places with billboards saying, "Yes, everyone can hear you singing along to Golden in your car." There are memes about the same thing, tik tok videos and more. My friends have seen it, and we each came to it independently.

This never happened with MLP. It was too much of a children-only thing, and adults who liked it were considered odd. K-Pop Demon Hunters seems to have overcome that barrier, probably down to all the above points it's come ahead on, like edginess, humour, art style and exposure. There are so many covers of the songs on Youtube, many of which are in heavier styles. And we're talking mainstream, established, conventional artists, not the homegrown musicians of the MLP music scene. The sort who would have scoffed at or fled from the thought of covering something from MLP.

I can suggest this movie to people without looking weird, and both quite nice and massively expands its scope as a cultural phenomenon.

One of the interesting touches about Rainbow Rocks is how the Rainbooms represent the organic end of the musical spectrum and the Dazzlings represent the produced, artificial side.

The Rainbooms' songs feature real guitars, bass and drums, played there live on stage. Their stage shows are spontaneous, and one track even has a guitar solo. The sirens, however, sing and dance to a backing track, and, while there are some guitars on their records, synths and synthetic/sampled drums are a lot more prominent. The Rainbooms also showcase the individualism of the different musicians, with each person's on-stage pose and antics dictated by their familiar personalities. Whereas the Dazzlings move as a single unit, dancing in unison.

It works to amplify the idea that music is nice as something made with your friends, created between you as a product of all of your labours and individual contributions. A lot of their lyrics are about how much they love making music and want to have a good time. Whereas the Dazzlings' lyrics show that they know that they're good at their craft, but with very little mention of them actually enjoying it.

The Rainbooms are in it for the music, the sirens are in it for the rewards. And that's a great little dimension to include in their conflict, never openly stated but so often implied. And it's an element K-Pop Demon Hunters barely touches, other than suggesting the hero songs are deeper and more meaningful than those of the villains.

The biggest problem with Rainbow Rocks is its accessibility. Its story and worldbuilding elements are hugely tied in with both MLP and the first EG film. When I was trying to persuade a friend to watch it, I had to send a three-paragraph summary of what he needed to know going in for it to make sense. Some of it can be figured out from context clues and the title sequence, but there's a lot there to grasp. Equestria, mirror worlds, Princess Celestia, Princess Twilight, Sunset's role in the previous film, Equestrian Magic, ponying up, not to mention all the characters themselves.

K-Pop Demon Hunters has none of this hangup, being an entirely new IP and giving you everything you need to know as it goes. This is the biggest reason Rainbow Rocks won't see much of a resurgence in Demon Hunters' wake, because you can't recommend it as a similar film about battling bands unless people want to commit to watching a lot of other MLP stuff first, or reading a long and bizarre-sounding summary.

I've never tried to take over the world. Or pathologically needed the adoration of others. Or been exiled from my world and had to adapt to a new one. But nevertheless, I've been Adagio in that band, trying to lead and keep the others in line with little more available than words. Even without the rest of her, her position in Rainbow Rocks was the thing I related to the most. Aria's 'Or my lead' and their general unhelpfulness. Yet unhesitatingly backing Adagio up against an outsider when the situation needed it.

K-Pop Demon Hunters doesn't do this. The lead villain is sympathetic and tragic but not as relatable, and the behind-the-scenes dynamic within the opposing band is barely seen. Perhaps that's a good thing in some respects, and makes it less likely you'll root for them instead of the heroes. But I do appreciate Rainbow Rocks being able to show two different approaches to being in a band, both of them familiar.

MLP has always taken the view that if your heart is pure, your songs will be true. Get your emotional ducks in a row and sort your head out, and the technical skill of singing and songwriting will follow. So Bad Counterspell is off-key because metaphorically so are the Rainbooms, but Sunset's ending in Welcome to the Show is in tune because she's resolved by that point.

As someone who has spent years and years learning to sing, this is a little frustrating and patronising.

K-Pop Demon Hunters goes into much more depth on the struggle to write a song and also the struggle of a singer maintaining their voice. We see the trio brainstorming their lyrics in moments of inspiration, filling journals with lyrical ideas, sitting around together frustratedly trying to come up with the main hook, and analysing and adapting the problems when something they've come up with doesn't quite fit. And if a singer struggles to hit the high notes a couple of times, it's treated as a very big deal indeed, with all plans put on hold until the voice is back up to full strength. It's good at showing the toil and the ups and downs of the creative and technical processes.

The flipside of the K-Pop trio being superstars where the Rainbooms and the Dazzlings are nobodies is that Demon Hunters can explore the problems that come along with that. The constant pressure from fans wanting the next thing and publicly complaining when they don't get it. The need to deliver the ideal performance for a huge audience. The need to write the right song for the right moment, not just writing what you want to. The need to wear disguises in public for something as simple and essential as visiting a doctor. And the idea that the public image should always be perfect. Any cracks or stumbles should be hidden, which makes it hard to call yourself authentic.

Demon Hunters is right to raise this because it's the audience who supply most of this pressure. It was Aespa's fans who demanded their frontwoman break up with her boyfriend. Not just lone deranged fans, who have always existed, but a mass movement within the fanbase. This is an area where a little understanding, a little self-awareness of their level of staggering entitlement, would go a long way. And while K-Pop Demon Hunters goes out of its way to show how much the band love the fans, there are half a dozen different instances of their behaviour changing completely the moment they realise there are fans watching them. The need to be PR-savvy has been hard-coded into them, and the limits that places on them is central to the theme of the film.

When FIM does a song or a musical episode, everyone sings. Every character can sing beautifully, and that's what we're told music looks like. I don't really know what percentage of the population can sing reasonably, but there must be a sizeable contingent who can't. Rainbow Rocks isn't about that. While it's true that every Rainboom sings, they also each play an instrument. And, notably, when they mention singing to Sunset after the end, her immediate reply is that she also plays guitar.

I also don't know what percentage of the population would consider themselves to be singers. But the portion who consider themselves instrumental musicians is undoubtedly far larger. Rainbow Rocks gives that much larger contingent something to connect with in the film. MLP has a whole episode about how Fluttershy enjoys music but she's too shy to want to go on stage. Rainbow Rocks gives her something she can do to contribute musically without needing to be the centre of attention.

There's also that, even now, the music industry has a chronic shortage of prominent female musicians. Can you name five female drummers, ever? Meg White, Karen Carpenter, who else? It gets even worse when you take out all-woman bands. Famous female guitarists, not counting those from the Donnas, Kittie, Girlschool, Haim or the Runaways? That would be Nita Strauss, Jen Majura, Merel Bechtold, Charlotte Hatherley, and that's all I've got.

Well, now impressionable young girls can add Rainbow Dash and Sunset Shimmer to that list. They're teenage girls, and they form a rock band. And no one acts like that's in the slightest bit unusual. It's a really great thing to see.

K-Pop Demon Hunters, on the other hand, is all vocal. It does show the trio using instruments while songwriting, but we only hear them play a few notes. And on stage, and in their videos, it's all them singing to backing tracks. This is completely true to the K-Pop genre, but it's still a shame.

While it's true that Rainbow Rocks does mention rock specifically in its name, the genre is so huge that you've a very poor chance of finding anything like the Rainbooms if you come away from the movie and google 'rock bands.' Google K-Pop, on the other hand, and you'll get Blackpink, BTS, Aespa, Twice, New Jeans, IVE etc. And generally, it's Blackpink, the biggest K-Pop act in history, who sound closest to the band from the film. The stepping stones from film to genre fandom are neatly laid out.

We would have given so much in 2014 for more songs like those of the Dazzlings. Now fans have all that waiting for them at their fingertips.

Perhaps this is another to be considered unfair, but, K-Pop Demon Hunters is set in Korea! And strongly Korean flavoured! It's not just yet another movie of yellow lockers in American high schools, prom dates, diners and the same traditions and norms we see in movies every day. While the omission of Kimchi is frankly heretical, the food we do get to see is all authentic Korean dishes. The road signs and shop fronts in the background are largely in Hangul. The first meeting between the lead singers of the respective bands is a riff on the classic K-drama meeting scenario. There are multiple rooftop scenes, another K-drama staple. The animal companions are straight out of Korean folklore, and the male lead is a genuine K-drama leading man.

Not only does this make it seem fresh, new and unexpected, but it gives a general atmosphere of 'more.' There's more to take in in each scene, each environment, because it's less familiar. More new information and experiences are presented than would be expected in a more familiar setting. How often do you have to pause a movie and skip back to look closer at what characters are eating? How often does something as in the background as the setting of a movie help you learn new things and experience new cultures?

There's a little line mentioned somewhere in the accompanying material for Rainbow Rocks. I forget if it was on a featurette or something I read on Wikipedia or elsewhere. Whatever the source, one of the creative team said they were proud of the accuracy with which they portrayed the Equestria Girls characters playing their instruments, and how rare that is to see in cartoons. And I kept an eye out for that when I rewatched it, and of course they were absolutely right. I hadn't cottoned on the first time because of course that's how it should look. You tend to only notice something like that when it's wrong. Rainbow, Applejack, Pinkie, they're all exactly matching their movements to the sounds their instruments are creating. It looks how it would if a human played those parts right in front of you in real time.

I skipped back to check the one K-Pop Demon Hunters scene mentioned above where they're sitting with instruments, and what Rumi is playing does match the sound coming out. But it's a few notes in one scene, and that's all we get.

This is a cool thing for Rainbow Rocks to have paid attention to. Rock and metal put a high emphasis on authenticity, and it's details like this that help Rainbow Rocks earn its movie title.

This is a short one and perhaps it's a low blow. Over time it has become apparent that Best Pony among the Mane Six is undoubtedly Rarity. And unfortunately she's Rainbow Rocks' one weak area. She's not in it all that much (same with the 2017 movie), and when she is she's one-dimensional. But more to the point, she gets one moment to shine, and she...

Wow, Rarity. I support you in your endeavours. And I know that the EG version of you is still in high school and just starting out finding her fashion voice. But Jesus. Look at them.

There is one person in this picture who doesn't look like an Australian's nightmare and she's the one who Rarity didn't make an outfit for!

Huntr/x here to show you how it's done:

See how the gold is reflected in all three of their outfits, but the other colours are more individual? The commonalities of the bare midriffs but the big difference in sleeve and leg lengths? This is how you separate their separate identities while still making them obviously all members of the same group. It's a level of edge and flamboyance that pop stars might legitimately wear on stage in this era without looking ridiculous.

MLP has always had a bit of a hard time with makeup, because the animation isn't so good at showing it. We know Rarity wears eye shadow, since her eyelids are pale blue rather than white like the rest of her face. We see them putting on makeup in one scene, I think it's in Equestria Girls when they're getting ready for the Fall Formal. If I remember rightly, Rarity puts on her lipstick, the camera zooms out and her lips look the same colour they always do, with the lipstick making no visible difference. The only characters we see definitely wearing makeup in Rainbow Rocks are the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

So either the takeaway is that the Equestria Girls cast are always wearing makeup, on-stage or off-, or they never are. Or that the difference between the two is so subtle that it can't be seen.

And that's fine and just something you have to go along with if it's beyond the reach of your art style. But it does mean you miss out on powerful moments like this:

Again, consider the age, gender and impressionability of a big chunk of the audience. This representation, this display that it's ok for confident, competent women to choose whether or not to wear makeup in a setting, and to show them feeling comfortable with and without it, this is important.

I've always written on fimfiction as if the Rainbow Rocks shorts are non-canon. Why? Because the musicianship displayed when Rainbow buys her guitar, Applejack gets back her bass etc is some real expert level stuff. Reaching that level at their age would be virtually impossible for anyone but a virtuoso. The idea that Rainbow Dash would have time to practise that much [i]and[/i] be on the football team is ridiculous.

Of course the in-universe explanation is that it's magic, but that's boring and makes for boring fanfic spinoffs too.

It's also a bit strange, since the musicianship displayed in Rainbow Rocks itself is absolutely of the level achievable by teenagers. The drum parts, the bass parts, the keytar parts, they aren't hard. Even Rainbow Dash's guitar solo isn't that tricky. It's the sort of thing I'd expect someone her age who'd been playing for a couple of years to be able to master. And the singing parts, too, aren't hard. They don't require a huge range, a lot of power or breath or specific techniques like grit. Ok, Aria has some tricky harmonies that demonstrate she's very skilled. But with a bit of practice, you'd be able to sing them along with the recording. Likewise, Adagio's performance, particularly the opening line of Battle, is very present in the moment and really living the spirit of the song, and that does take quite a lot of time and practice to get down. But that's still the kind of thing that you can enjoy singing along with even if you don't totally nail her delivery. It's still very accessible.

The same cannot be said for all songs in K-Pop Demon Hunters. The characters are in-universe expert, experienced singers, and some of their performances reflect this. Some bits are easier, absolutely. But some bits really aren't.

It's the high notes in the Golden chorus that have made particular headlines with how technically demanding they are. I don't know what happens at the singalongs during those bits. Certainly as a man with a tenor range I can't even hit them at the highest limit of my falsetto register. I did try.

Then there's the rapping, which is fast and with some complicated polyrhythms. Delivered with the confidence of rappers who know they'll be taken seriously, which I can assure you is surprisingly challenging if you aren't already established as such a rapper.

Oh, and then there's the fact that almost all of the songs are bilingual, and the average Westerner doesn't speak all that much Korean. And since some of those Korean segments are rapped, they're fast.

I'm completely onboard with the characters having this level of expertise in their abilities. It's appreciated, and their stardom would feel a little cheaper and less earned without it.

But the musicianship of the characters in Rainbow Rocks is a lot more relatable.

And it's such a shame because the rest of the plotting in Rainbow Rocks ties together very well. There are very few superfluous scenes and very few other plot holes. It's all the more frustrating because the sirens’ plan succeeds, so by rights they should win. It's a deus ex machina that saves the day.

This could have been done a lot better, of course. Vinyl could have been shown more prominently earlier as being immune to the sirens' song. And we could have had some hint she might not be just a background role, which we've been trained to expect because that's all she's ever been in several previous appearances.

Then there's the transforming car thing. I try not to think about that. But, suffice to say, there were lots of other ways around that problem. Like instead they just use the amps they set up there to begin with.

So anyway, K-Pop Demon Hunters resolves its plot points purely with internal characters who you already know and expect to be participants in the narrative. The good band, the bad band, and their three respective bosses/managers. That's it. The drama will unfold between just these characters, so that any consequences feel earned.

I really don't know what the Rainbow Rocks team were thinking with the Vinyl scene.

Almost all pieces of music have a beat behind them. Not as in a drum beat, but a steady pulse that the rhythm is built on. This is as true for Mozart as it is for Britney Spears. I estimate about 90% of musical pieces are built around a repeating pulse of four beats. The musical term for this variable is a Time Signature, and the common pulse of 4 beats is known as the time signature 4/4. It varies genre to genre, and with more programmed genres like Trance or Drum & Bass it's closer to 99% 4/4, but even when not quite as high it's the overwhelming majority time signature in almost every genre out there.

Of the 10% that's not in 4/4, 99% of that is in 3/4 or 6/8, which are two different varieties of rhythms divided into groups of three.

So we've accounted for 90% and then 99% of what's left.

The remaining percentage belongs to Irregular Time Signatures.

These are rhythms that don't feel natural. Rhythms built on pulses of 5 or 7. Even more rarely, 11 or 13.

I mentioned the US Billboard Chart earlier, which has been listing the top 100 songs by record sales in the US every week since 1958. 100 songs a week for 67 years. And in all that time, exactly two songs sporting irregular time signatures have made it in. One was the Beatles (All You Need is Love), the other was Pink Floyd (Money).

Other than that, you've perhaps heard these time signatures in Gustav Holst's Mars, The Bringer of War from The Planets suite, in the Isengard theme from Lord of the Rings, and in the Cybermen theme from Doctor Who (all three of which are in 5/4). You might have heard 7/4 in the Eleventh Doctor's theme. The only track I can think of for 13/8 is the Becoming by Nine Inch Nails.

The reason for these being so rare is that, as stated, they don't feel natural. So while they're not really that difficult to write, they're exceptionally hard to make sound catchy, danceable and not weird.

They really didn't have to include an irregular time signature in Rainbow Rocks.

K-Pop Demon Hunters, the Greatest Showman, Repo: the Genetic Opera - these all feature climactic third act in-universe 'this is the show!' moments, and they all opt for conventional 4/4, despite often being sung by villains. Be Prepared is in 4/4. Phantom of the Opera is in 4/4. Macavity and What You Feel are in 6/8 or swung 4/4. These are all triumphant, look-at-me anthems of villains being evil. But they stayed in commonplace, obedient and respectful 4/4.

Rainbow Rocks went for 15/8. The main riff from Welcome to the Show is unhinged.

But it's still catchy. The siren melodies still sit over it comfortably. It's still easy to play on the bass guitar. It aptly demonstrates both how there's something not right about the sirens and how good they are at disguising that fact.

This was a very bold move that few others would have dared to take, but Rainbow Rocks fully committed to the idea. They took the risk. And they delivered on it.

You wouldn't have thought that the spinoff from Friendship is Magic would lose on adorableness or cuteness points. I wouldn't have thought that possible. And perhaps, if more actual ponies had been in Rainbow Rocks, there'd have been some competition.

But against Sunset and the girls, even Sonata, K-Pop Demon Hunters takes this one. Not because of the girl band. Or the boy band.

But because one of the characters has two pets, and they're the best two characters in the film. I don't have many words to say about them other than that they're wonderful and I would like them both very much.

I saved the best for last.

I've never connected with a character anything like in the way I do with Adagio Dazzle. Not Spitfire, not Malcolm Tucker, not Spike (the vampire, not the dog), all of whom I've written for before. When I read stories about bad things happening to her, it feels like they're happening to me. One-off cartoon villains with about 15 minutes of total screentime aren't meant to have that kind of impact.

K-Pop Demon Hunters doesn't have that. Not for me. Judging by the volume of fanfiction already written, maybe it does for others. I hope so.

But I think there was something very special about Adagio. The real value is in how much she obviously sees, but how little she lets on, so you never know throughout the film when she's putting on a front and when she's being open. This means her real character is almost entirely unseen and therefore left very open to personal interpretation.

As an antagonist, you know she's ahead of the Rainbooms, but you're never quite sure how many steps ahead. She can clearly pick up on small details quickly and extrapolate from them, and formulate plans on the back of this and put them straight into action. She is very clever, very perceptive, and there's never a suggestion she'd let anything like mercy hold her back.

Rumi, Adagio's K-Pop Demon Hunters equivalent, has charisma, humour, vulnerability and a huge emotional range. Her journey through the film is powerful and engrossing, and I was moved to tears by its conclusion. This emotional weight makes her a shining frontwoman for the trio.

But she's still ultimately a scared child trying to run from her problems. Adagio, on the other hand, we don't know enough about to reliably ascribe details like that to. All we know is that our familiar heroes have what she wants, and there doesn't seem to be much she can't do to get it. And the magnetism that brings when she sings is unparalleled.

It seems unlikely I’ll connect that strongly with a character again. If I ever end up writing a novel, well, hopefully something like that’ll happen. But other than that, I doubt it. I will always be thankful to Rainbow Rocks for Adagio, and I think my life has been richer for having seen it.

I like to think that Adagio would be happy with the global success of K-Pop Demon Hunters. That someone else has been inspired by her work and taken it to stratospheric levels. And yes, narratively, the two films are quite similar, and the force taking the Dazzlings’ role in the story is not the female trio but the five-piece male villain band, who fail just as the sirens did.

But the heroes are an all-girl trio. One edgy, one quirky and one determined. The first has amazing hair, the last even more so. In terms of aesthetics, personalities, interactions and music style, they’re closer to the Dazzlings than any other two bands across the two films. The only real change, in terms of character, is that the new frontwoman is a lot less acerbic than Adagio. I think even Adagio would accept that as necessary if she’s to be portrayed as the lead hero.

It’s uncanny at times. One scene in particular just brings to mind for me the way Naiad writes the sirens. And I think if, a decade on from Rainbow Rocks, Adagio was still languishing, still under the radar and with a relationship with Aria and Sonata that never quite recovered, she’d feel Rumi’s plight on a visceral level.

And the plot thread about them having a song in them that they couldn’t get out is very familiar siren ground for me.

Maybe it’s because of the years I spent involved with a story in which Aria and Sonata had moved out for a time that the climax of K-Pop Demon Hunters hit me with such deep emotion. The writers could so easily have got it wrong and gone the Disney route, making it about the girl and the boy. But they stayed strong and kept the focus on the relationship between the trio. Between each woman and her found family. It’s wonderful to see the film recognise that that’s where the weight lies. This is the bond that matters, and this is how they get through.

The three of them then defeating the villain together isn’t the emotional climax of the film. It’s nice, and it’s a testament to what they can do together, but it’s not the key moment.

And however rewarding it is, them being celebrated the world over not just for winning, but for openly being themselves isn’t the emotional climax either.

The three of them reuniting is.

That’s the happy ending.

And I think to Adagio, that would be everything.