Episode 174 - KPop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans, 2025)
KPop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans, 2025).
The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!
The final episode of the current series of the podcast addresses the phenomenon of KPop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans, 2025), the most watched original animated film of all time on Netflix whose global reach, critical and commercial success, and intensified fandom has positioned it as central to the contemporary ‘Korean Wave’ marked by the international visibility and popularity of cultural exports produced by South Korea. In this instalment, Chris and Alex discuss the diversity of aesthetic styles that defines KPop Demon Hunters and how its design fits into post-Spider-Verse computer-animated filmmaking; images of manufacture and performance, and how they contribute to a highly reflexive engagement with the industry and business of pop music; the emphasis placed on the labour of creativity at the expense of physicality; the politics of female friendship and big-screen shift towards the “girlfriend action flick”; how the narrative’s celebration of a Golden Honmoon illustrates the pleasures of communality, collaboration, and joy; and what the didacticism of KPop Demon Hunters has to say about the struggles in finding your voice and ultimately defeating your demons.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
**As featured on MillionPodcast’s Best 10 UK Animation Podcasts and Best 60 Movie Podcasts in the UK**
Suggested Readings
Dyer, Richard. 1977. “Entertainment and Utopia.” MOVIE 24 (Spring): 2-13.
Fan, Xin and Salas Supalakwatchana. 2025. “KPop Demon Hunters: Cultural Representation in Contemporary Korean Animation.” Asian Journal of Arts and Culture 26, no. 1: e16.
Holliday, Christopher. 2025. “The Girlfriend Action Flick” in Action Heroines in the 21st Century: Sisters in Arms, eds. Frances Pheasant-Kelly and Christa van Raalte, 184–208. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Winch, Alison. 2012. “‘We Can Have it All’: The Girlfriend Flick,” Feminist Media Studies 12, no.1: 69–82.
Yoo, Seung-Chul. 2025. “K-Pop Demon Hunters and Digital Cultural Diplomacy: Measuring Brand Identity-Image Convergence in Animated K-Content.” Tourism and Hospitality 6, no. 5: 236.