In the history of popular music, there has been no phenomenon as meticulously constructed as ‘girl groups’. Silk harmonies of The Supremes in the 60s until the irreverence of the Spice Girls, these groups served … as thermometers of femininity and commercial desire. However, it is on the Korean peninsula that this concept reaches an architectural dimension, which will over time become the vital economic engine of the country: with the debut of SES in 1997, precision machines are inaugurated which will evolve towards the aesthetic of Blackpink’s “girl crush”.
This line of women trained according to Spartan discipline to project an image of inaccessible perfection is the foundation on which it is built. “K-pop warriors”, it became one of the global phenomena of 2025, with an impact that has won over all types of audiences. When Sony Pictures Animation announced a project about Korean pop stars who hunt demons to protect the world, the most cynical critics anticipated an opportunistic marketing exercise. But what Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans have delivered is, in reality, a cultural exorcism.
The film became the most-watched film in Netflix history, surpassing 325 million views, and capitalizing on the furore, Sony and Netflix launched a ‘Sing Along’ version in theaters which broke the bridge: the weekend when it was screened in Spanish cinemas, it achieved an estimated collection of 1.2 million euros with a theater occupancy rate of 95%.
In Korea, the film was celebrated as an act of cultural patriotism, but in the West it served as a “Rosetta Stone.”
Inspired by the lighting of K-pop concerts and the aesthetic of ’90s anime like “Sailor Moon,” the team created a Seoul that oscillates between the hypermodern and the ancient, all drawn with glares in the style of “Spider-Verse,” animation’s newest “before and after.” “Las Guerreras K-Pop” has the ability to speak to three different generations. The grandparents see in the demons (inspired by the Dokkaebi) the fears of a past war; parents see the sacrifice necessary for prosperity; and young people see reflected the anxiety of a society which demands of them that they be perfect products.
In Korea, the film was celebrated as an act of cultural patriotism, but in the West it served as a “Rosetta Stone” to bring the genre to mainstream audiences. Families sit down to watch it, millennials and “Z”s find something in common, but there is an even more relevant audience: teenagers, who are currently a forgotten generation of cinema, and more particularly for animation. “The K-pop Warriors” saves them as a target audience and also shows three girls behaving as they are without being caricatures of themselves.
The trace of a true story
The protagonist, Rumi, could not be explained without the astonishing convergence of two realities that go beyond fiction. To give this hunter a soul, the production made a bold decision: separate her speaking voice from her singing voice, creating a duality that reflects the very fracture of idol identity. Arden Cho (known for “Teen Wolf”) provides the dialogue, but it is in the singing that the film reaches its emotional climax: the voice is that of EJAE (Kim Eun-young), an artist who was an ‘intern’ in the legendary agency SM Entertainment, experiencing first-hand the training system that the film criticizes.
Zoey, Rumi and Mira, stars of “The K-pop Warriors”
But the success of the soundtrack was the real combustion engine that transformed the film into a mass phenomenon, reaching milestones that seemed reserved only for the big names in Anglo-Saxon pop. The album not only debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200, But its breakout single, “Golden,” broke Spotify’s record for remaining in the global Top 10 with more than 1.5 billion streams in the first half of the year. In Spain, the fever was such that the album achieved Platinum certification, which is unusual for a soundtrack of this genre, while the official “trending” of the song on social networks generated more than 40 million videos. HUNTR/X is one of the most listened to groups of the moment who, in addition, have managed to make history by receiving several nominations for the 2026 Grammys, including Song of the Year (to “Golden”) and Best Pop Duo/Group.
The key to this triumph lies in the production of Teddy Park, who managed to distill the essence of K-pop into a format that functions as an evolution of the genre. Beyond the rankings, the impact has resulted in a commercial explosion of derivative products: in the last quarter of 2025 alone, sales of items related to the film generated an income estimated at $450 million globally. In addition, the South Korean government has strengthened its country’s brand image, reporting a 15% increase in international tourism to Seoul, with young people from all over the world researching the real-life scenarios that appear in the film.
The triumph of “Las Guerreras K-Pop” condemned the complacent animation model to death and ushered in an era of technical and thematic hybridization. The industry can no longer ignore that the public demands an aesthetic that abandons generic realism in favor of “radical expressiveness”. The success of the film forces the major studios to rethink their next five years: the future of animation no longer lies in copying reality, but in its fragmentation, using this medium to explore themes previously reserved for arthouse cinema, such as mental health, generational trauma and complex cultural identity. Thus a horizon opens where animation becomes the definitive language of transmediality, capable of merging live concert, video game and cinematic repetition into a single sensory experience that does not ask permission to be strident, profound and above all authentic.
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