The LOONAVERSE is the storyline depicted in the content created by the girl group LOONA, with characters both based on the real-life members, and members chosen to best fit the group and character they represent. The storyline is presented in pieces and in Anachronic Order with a focus on a lot of complex Speculative Fiction tropes on top of references to fine arts, fairy tales, film, the Bible, and even documentaries, so speculation is rampant on what everything might mean. To avoid conflicting information, this page only lists canon information and material that can be gleaned from music videos, teasers, their descriptions, and extra material (such as yyxy's "one" and Cinema Theory videos).
This page is strictly for the LOONAVERSE depictions of the girls only, and not the group members in real life. Troping real-life people is expressly prohibited on the site, but it is acknowledged that the characters take some cues from the girls that play them.
open/close all folders
LOOΠΔ
LOONA as a whole
- Aerith and Bob: Quite a bit of
Fridge Brilliance.- 1/3's HeeJin, HyunJin, HaSeul and YeoJin all have normal Korean forenames, signifying the fact that they are ordinary high school students (initially, at least). The sub-unit's sole exception is ViVi, a human-turned-android.
- The ODD EYE CIRCLE girls seem to be akin to mutants/superheroes who were originally ordinary high school students like most of 1/3. To reflect this, their names combine elements of standard Korean naming with English words, which can be thought of as "corruptions" of normal Korean names:
- the surname Kim + Lip
- 진솔 is romanized as JinSoulnote
- the surname Choi inserted in cherry
- The yyxy members have names almost entirely foreign to South Korea:
- "Yves" is a French name.
- "Chuu" is Japanese onomatopoeia for "kiss."
- "Olivia" is a name of Latin origin, common in the Western world. Although there exists a Sino-Korean character, 慧, that's usually romanized as Hye, it is used for given names. As a surname, "Hye" is from Anglo-Saxon or Dutch. The order of "Olivia Hye" (forename first, surname next) is also nonstandard for Korean names. But it's worth bearing in mind that the syllable 'Hye' does appear in the real name of this member (Son Hye-joo), meaning this stage name is not as completely divorced from the Korean language as those of the other yyxy girls. This is similar to the way Odd Eye Circle members are named (likely, as Jinsoul appears in Olivia's solo MV and seems to have some involvement in her storyline).
- Animal Motifs: Each member has a representative animal that also appears in their solo song music video, but how obvious the relevance is to their characters... varies, and as such, only those that have been reliably figured out are listed.
- HeeJin's rabbit alludes to the White Rabbit that first leads Alice into Wonderland, symbolizing HeeJin's life taking a turn for the weird and fantastic. Additionally, giving the rabbit to the first girl in a moon-themed group bring to mind the Moon Rabbit of several East Asian mythologies.
- HyunJin's cat is meant to represent HyunJin's timidness before the person she wants to reach out to and also her tendency to still be around them, just not too close. The cat's ability to move around in places where most others aren't able to go also later on allude to HyunJin's hidden connections to girls beyond her home world.
- HaSeul's unspecified white bird is depicted as reminiscent of those used in sport hunting, and is compared to the fuselage of the Sólheimasandur plane crash (in other words, as something that perished in flight). The twist is that the bird's hunter is also HaSeul herself.
- YeoJin's frog motif is tied to the Frog Prince that her solo video references, but beyond that, it's unknown what it symbolizes.
- Kim Lip's animal is an owl, whose vivid red eye is used as another visual metaphor for the eclipse she is identified with.
- In real life, JinSoul brought attention to the blue betta's duality in that while it's a beautiful fish, it also has the natural tendency to battle other fish that it's kept in confinement with, and those traits are referenced in her solo which described JinSoul as "untouchably dangerous" but also shows her releasing the fish into a tank full of goldfish.
- Choerry's fruit bat is one of the most important animals, and she represents it with the visual metaphor of her being upside down and eating cherries. These take into account her links with mirrors and her ability to travel dimensions by eating them.
- Yves's swan is an allusion to Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling, hence why her plush animal is a shaggy stuffed duck. In the story, the duck despises itself, but soon transforms into a swan, the most beautiful animal of all, playing out Yves's transformation into a self that she likes better than before.
- Go Won's butterfly and its metamorphosis are referenced in her video as a symbol of rebirth, and the species of butterfly being the blue monarch butterfly also ties in with her motif of royalty imagery.
- Olivia's wolf is an animal with many depictions in old stories and especially parts of the Bible, giving it a dozen potential meanings to choose from, but the most likely depiction is that of the wolf who threatens the peace of the flock, echoing the danger of the blue betta and her enigmatic connections to JinSoul. Foremost of all, it depicts her as the "lone wolf", cut off from the rest of the group and left behind.
- The teaser "XIX" flashes 12 butterflies, presumably one species for each member. Some significant ones are as follows:
- Go Won's was already known to be the blue emperor, which is the first butterfly shown. It relates to her self-rule theme.
- JinSoul has the monarch, known for its iconic beauty but also being highly toxic; see Aloof Ally on her entry.
- "XIIIX" flashes what appears to be a pipevine swallowtail, also poisonous and which stays near its chrysalis once it reaches maturity, connoting Olivia's hesitance to leave Eden. In the XX era, her hair matches the butterfly's coloration (largely black with blue tails).
- HyunJin's is likely the Tiger Swallowtail that appears, which goes all the way back to her solo era in which it can be seen in "I'll Be There". Females use mimicry to resemble the poisonous pipevine swallowtail, which is funny because HyunJin and Olivia are noted to look extraordinarily alike. The name also likely references her image animal, which is a cat.
- Color-Coded Characters: Each of the girls has an image color, and all of them are used in different ways in the music videos the girls are featured in. For example, Kim Lip's color is the red of a lunar eclipse, Chuu's peach is the color of the walls of the Listening Room, which is the most significant painting referenced in her music video, and HyunJin's yellow is the complement of Choerry's, hinting at a connection between them only seen in Cinema Theory videos. The recurring idea of one being dyed with or mixing with another's color also features often in song lyrics.
- Color Motifs: Each of the girls' image colors can be used to identify them with a specific part of the world they live in. HeeJin, Haseul, and YeoJin of 1/3 use secondary colors as they originate from the world of 1/3. HyunJin uses a primary color, hinting at her connection to the world of ODD, while ViVi uses a non-standard color (pale pink), which is an early hint that she is from Eden, the world of yyxy. Kim Lip and JinSoul use primary colors as they're from the "middle cosmos" world of OEC, while Choerry, who originates from Earth with 1/3, uses a secondary color. The members of yyxy all use non-standard colors (burgundy, peach, eden green, black/silver).
- Debut Queue: The "Girl of the Month" concept that LOONA is named after planned for twelve girls to be introduced one by one with a month's span of time dedicated to each girl, plus the debut of the subunits as they assembled. (Note however that while there are twelve girls, there isn't a specific month assigned to each one.)
- Dress-Coded for Your Convenience: It's kind of a given that different units perform in different costumes, but notably, every unit has their own "school uniform" outfit with a different design from the rest.
- Image Song: The major basis of the predebut project was to give each of the members a song to themselves so that each girl would be known first as an individual and not just a part of a group.
- Literal Split Personality: Implied several times. Choerry can perform this as her power, HyunJin is possibly involved in it, and Olivia is implied to be both the same person as JinSoul as well as one of four personalities comprising one "yyxy" girl.
LOONA 1/ 3
The unit is unique in that, rather than as a unit, each of the girls had their individual solo promotions and/or music videos shot in different countries, and each of these locations represents them and their aspects of "Earth" in the LOONAVERSE.
Though YeoJin is included in this folder and is described to represent the slash in the name of LOONA 1/3, she herself isn't a part of the subunit when it comes to their discography and performances, being LOONA's unique "solo unit".
As Subunit
- Cosmic Motifs: Their songs' lyrics commonly reference the stars in the sky, as well as a "pink world". Aside from "life in pink" (more commonly referenced in French as "la vie en rose") being a euphemism for a happy worldview, it also references the color of the sky at sunrise.
- Family of Choice: 1/3 has a family-like dynamic, and the members treat each other like they live together.
- Meaningful Name: The 1/3 doesn't just signify that the group is the first out of three subunits or is made out of 1/3 of all the girls in LOONA, but also symbolizes the group structure: HeeJin, HyunJin and HaSeul make up the 3, ViVi the android is the 1, and YeoJin represents the slash.
- Ordinary High-School Student: Save for ViVi, they really were just regular girls until the universe decided it was time to make things interesting.
- Passionate Sports Girl: They're wholesome teenage girls who are school athletes, as shown in "Love and Live."
HeeJin
Solo Title: "ViViD"
Color: Hot Pink
Animal: Rabbit
Location: France
- Good morning, I wish for a new day each day I wake up
A (seemingly) regular girl, and HyunJin's best friend from school. The story begins with her wish for a more vibrant life, and she, alongside the listeners, watches as LOONA completes itself.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Her spider is an unnaturally vivid shade of red that does not occur in real spiders.
- Fairy Tale Motifs: Given her rabbit and the themes of her music video, HeeJin takes a lot of cues from Alice in Wonderland. Some live performances of "ViViD" even use playing cards as a backdrop. As noted above, the first girl's assigned animal in a group themed after the moon also makes her the Moon Rabbit of East Asian lore.
- The Fashionista: This is her character in her solo, along with Fun Personified: she dreams of a big mansion of many colors in which she has the ultimate wardrobe, decking herself out in tons of stylish outfits and singing about how she wants to be chic and walk down the runway.
- Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: "ViViD", the very first song by LOONA ever, centers around HeeJin, a regular Earth girl, lamenting how repetitive her life is and wishing that her life would be filled with color and vibrancy instead. And then the android shows up in school...
- Surrealism: Her solo invokes this, particularly such artists as Dali and Yves Tanguy.
HyunJin
Solo Title: "Around You"
Color: Yellow
Animal: Cat
Location: Japan
- I just leave again without a word
HeeJin's best friend from school, and seemingly just as normal as she is, though there are hints there and there that HyunJin is more entangled in the LOONAVERSE's hidden workings than her quiet demeanor lets on.
- Cannot Spit It Out: "Around You" is all about HyunJin being unable to speak to someone she yearns for, and how she can only ever watch from a distance. One of the lines in the song even mourns that she "can't spit those common words out".
- Cats Are Magic: The bracelet that HyunJin receives at her door in "Around You" was a gift delivered by a cat, from Go Won, who lives in another dimension.
- Fairytale Motifs: In "Why Not": following the Midnight Festival, HyunJin finds herself alone back on Earth, with one shoe missing; much like Cinderella.
- Grew a Spine: Around You 2.0. In it, she doesn't confess, but rather, she moves on.
- Introverted Cat Person: Cats are specifically used to represent HyunJin's shyness, because many tend to shy away from people, and she's seen playing with a bunch of them in her solo video and a few teasers.
- Love Letter: She tries to get a cat to deliver her letters to a guy she likes, since she can't bring herself to give them to him on her own.
- Motif: HyunJin subtly introduces rings and wheels into the lore of the world, and she is always involved in some way when they appear:
- She receives the bracelet Go Won made for her in "See Saw" in "Around You".
- She runs around the circular race track in "Love&Live".
- She is consistently shown behind a Ferris wheel in "Sonatine".
- A Ferris Wheel appears later in "Girl Front", which she appears in for a split second, and Choerry marks her on her map, signifying that she's been tracked down.
- She isn't referenced again until "One&Only", in which her cat appears and Go Won cuts a yellow ring, after which she's able to make contact with her.
- She and Choerry drive around in a taxi in "So What", and it's HyunJin who is behind the wheel.
- "Why Not" and especially "Star" frame her against wheels of light several times.
- Once More, with Clarity:
- Downplayed in her music video. Later shots of "Around You" are slightly different reshoots of earlier scenes, except with HyunJin wearing the cat head to emphasize her timidness. Coupled with the ending shot of multiple cat-head HyunJins surrounding a regular one smiling sadly as the camera, this shows that she'd been in this cycle of approaching and shying away for longer than this one video can show.
- The "See Saw" Cinema Theory video gives a background to the bracelet that HyunJin picks up at the door in "Around You", revealing that Go Won had it delivered to her by the same cat that broke the vase in HyunJin's house.
- Sequel Song: HyunJin has "Around You 2.0", a version of "Around You" mixed to lend itself better to live performances. The lyrics have also been altered, and describe how she'd given up and moved on from the person she'd been yearning for in "Around You".
- Shrinking Violet: Circa the pre-2.0 "Around You"s, she is this: a terribly shy loner. Judging by her face when she enters the den of her crush, she may not be used to interacting with people in general.
HaSeul
Solo Title: "Let Me In"
Color: Green
Animal: White Bird
Location: Iceland
- The moon rises, I eventually become you
The leader of LOONA 1/3. She has something of a mother figure-like role in the group, and doesn't let the boundaries between dimensions stop her from all looking after the rest of the girls.
- Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: Implied a few times. The teaser "XIIX" featured Go Won, whose signature animal is a butterfly, visiting HaSeul's Iceland shooting location and transforming a single white feather into a butterfly. In "So What", the end shot is Olivia turning her eyes towards the ground, where a white feather is burning in reverse...which returns at the end of "Why Not" as a butterfly flying up from the ground at HyunJin's feet.
- Fairy Tale Motifs: Her photoshoot concept for her solo album was "The Little Prince".
- Mythical Motifs: Daedalus and Talos. In the Greek myth, Daedalus murders Talos, but Talos is reincarnated as a bird. The female HaSeul in "Let Me In" slays the feathery HaSeul, who we later see, held in her hands, as a small white bird. This also makes HaSeul an indirect Icarus Allusion.
- Opposite-Sex Clone: According to outside 'verse commentary, the feathery, blond, short-haired HaSeul that appears in "Let Me In" is actually supposed to be a boy. This may mean that the boy she sings about is not the Love Interest, but another iteration of herself.
- Pretty Boy: Her extra self in "Let Me In" dresses femininely, with Boyish Short Hair, but in extra commentary on the photoshoots, is referred to several times as male and dressed as such. Several possible applications as to the gender of the bird version of HaSeul are possible.
- Team Mom: HaSeul has this role among the members of 1/3. It doesn't get too many chances to show, but she does care for her group members, and in particular is the one who most helps ViVi get used to Korea.
- Visual Metaphor: The diamonds she finds on the ground in "Let Me In", set against the black sand of Solheimasandur, creates the image of stars against the night sky. Later, a slingshot is used to hurl one of these diamonds at her other, feathery self, creating the image of a "shooting star". A lyric referring to shooting stars is sung by her later in "Sonatine", making this her very own Motif.
YeoJin
Solo Title: "Kiss Later"
Color: Orange
Animal: Frog
Location: Taiwan
- I'm not like one of those characters in a romantic movie, but I'm not just a little child either
1/3's boundlessly energetic youngest member. Soon after her introduction, she becomes lost in a forest somewhere in the LOONAVERSE, leaving it up to the other girls to find her so that LOONA can be completed.
- Anti-Love Song: Played with. YeoJin does say she loves Frog Face in her solo, but he acts in a variety of rude, manipulative, or pushy ways, intent on getting a kiss. YeoJin responds with exasperation and calls him out on his immaturity in the lyrics of "Kiss Later", declaring that she's ready to move ahead when she's ready, not when he is. It's a song about consent and boundaries.
- Fairy Tale Motifs: Her frog and the plot of her solo video are inspired by the Frog Prince.
- The Baby of the Bunch: She's the youngest and smallest in the entire group, and is treated at the "littlest sister" in 1/3's family-like dynamic. Her music video also revolves around youth and the right that a young girl has to wait until she's ready for romance.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: And "Kiss Later" is YeoJin's mission to avoid the man in question until he qualifies.
- Stalking is Love: The problem poor YeoJin suffers from under Frog Face's lovestruck gaze, and the reason for her solo song's lyrics.
- Wall Pin of Love: One of the Frog's methods for giving gifts to YeoJin.
ViVi
Solo Title: "Everyday I Love You"
Color: Light Pink
Animal: Deer
Location: Hong Kong
- Just thinking of you like a fool, the day passes again
A mysterious newcomer from Hong Kong. Though she first arrives in the storyline as an android who has a hard time fitting in, she soon becomes human in time for the group's completion. Among 1/3, however, she has the strongest ties to the other subunits, though it's unknown how much this factors into her time as an android, if at all.
- Dreaming of Times Gone By: The scenes in "Everyday I Love You" are ViVi's memories from when she was a human, but warped by her transformation into an android. Given what happens in "new", it seems to be implied that the boy in white that she dreams of actually represents Yves, meaning ViVi has been to Eden, if she wasn't from there entirely.
- Identity Amnesia: ViVi was a human before she was an android, but given that "Everyday I Love You" is all she had of her identity as a human while she was an android, the transformation seemed to have wiped that part of her past from her memory completely, and it's unclear if she ever got it back.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: What "Love&Live" is about. Despite 1/3's genuine attempts to include her, she still feels isolated and eventually runs away in frustration.
- Mark of the Supernatural: ViVi's left eye occasionally glows as if a cluster of stars is in them as a symptom of being an android... aside from the charging plug on the back of her neck, anyway.
- Mysterious Past: Who was ViVi when she was human? Was she from Eden? How did she meet JinSoul and what's their connection? Why did she turn into an android?
- Once More, with Clarity: Information came out on the day of Yves's solo, "new", about ViVi's solo, "Everyday I Love You", clarifying that the latter is a recreation of android ViVi's memories from her time as a human, and some details may be missing or incorrect. The former repeats scenes with the latter, showing that the love interest was actually Yves.
- Smash to Black: It's unknown whether this is part of the video editing or ViVi's own camera malfunctioning, but the video smashes to black at the end of ViVi's Letter to Hong Kong. She and HaSeul are visiting an aquarium as part of HaSeul efforts to make ViVi more comfortable in Korea when ViVi catches JinSoul in the crowd, in her "Sweet Crazy Love" outfit right down to the eyepatch. Accompanied by a Scare Chord.
- Super-Speed / Super-Reflexes: As an android, ViVi has abilities befitting her: she can maintain a fast sprinting pace without tiring and can land basketball shots that would make a pro athlete jealous.
- Unwilling Roboticization: Implied. ViVi was originally human, and is self-aware about her limitations as an android while she is one, seeking to become human again.
ODD EYE CIRCLE
In addition to their main image colors, which are more closely relevant to their characters than those of the other members, JinSoul and Choerry have a secondary grayscale color representing them. (Popular speculation has also listed the trio with their own unique superpowers based on "Girl Front", however these have never been confirmed.)
Collectively, ODD EYE CIRCLE's thematic location is Los Angeles, where "Girl Front" was filmed.
As Subunit
- Ambiguously Human: Choerry, at least, is confirmed an Earth native. Kim Lip and JinSoul however have unclear origins; they have unclear powers and the lore describes them as inhabiting the "middle cosmos". That world does not showcase any urban environments whatsoever.
- Cosmic Motifs: Theirs is the moon. Although LOONA as a whole are centered around a lunar theme, ODD EYE CIRCLE take it to the next level, with this symbol appearing commonly throughout their discography and videography. They are also specifically associated with the "dark side of the moon", which may be a physical place that they inhabit as the world of ODD.
- Homage: The sub-unit borrows a lot from comic book superhero tropes. The "LOONATIC" music video is probably the most blatant example of this, with its lyrics rendered in vintage-style comic book lettering and the video edited with animation effects that mimic classic comics' action drawings
. - Magical Eye: Their Odd Eyes give them special powers that let them interact across the two dimensions. A glowing crescent appears on the girls' eyes in their respective colors when they use it, with Kim Lip's and JinSoul's on their left eyes, and Choerry's on her right. They seem to be connected to the eclipse, as in "PTT", the girls' signature glowing eye crescents have waxed to full halos.
- Signature Team Transport: The trio gets around with a yellow pickup, but HaSeul also has a ride in it by herself in her solo video.
- Sphere of Power: Their representative shapes are circles, and they are the LOONAverse's superheroes.
- Superhero Origin: In "Sweet Crazy Love," they are simply roaming a normal modern setting as each ODD EYE CIRCLE girl starts to feel a strange sensation in her eye....
- Meaningful Appearance: Every unit has a distinct look and uniform, but ODD EYE CIRCLE warrant special mention for the Converse-brand shoes that are associated with them. The star on the ankle of the shoe is another one of their Cosmic Motifs.
- Supernatural Sensitivity: Seems to be another power of the ODD Eye. Kim Lip is able to track down a yet un-awakened Choerry with hers, and Choerry, after her eye first awakens, is able to make a map tracking down the other LOONA members.
Kim Lip
Solo Title: "Eclipse"
Color: Red
Animal: Owl
- I'll let myself bloom in your heart
The first member of ODD EYE CIRCLE. Not much is known about Kim Lip other than her status as the trio's leader, but her arrival in the storyline signaled the reveal of the LOONAVERSE's greater scope, and she herself seems privy to their world's stranger workings.
- Awesomeness Is Volatile: The awakening of her ODD Eye in "Sweet Crazy Love" is so powerful it breaks one of the neon signs behind her as she blitzes after Choerry's car, sending down a shower of sparks.
- Brought Down to Normal: Implied Trope in "Star," and "Why Not,".
- In "Star," she looks forlorn inside a room as Choerry and JinSoul roam the ODD EYE realm. She is the only member not shown traversing the ODD EYE realm in the MV.
- "Why Not" features Kim Lip looking confused and distressed in a green field as three moons (presumably representing ODD EYE CIRCLE) orbit around her. She cannot perceive the colors on the moons. She also sings about being trapped in a square room again (possibly the room in "Star").
- Fairytale Motifs: The "Star" music video is explicitly a reference to "Sleeping Beauty." Kim Lip represents Princess Aurora; she is shown with the famous spindle from the story.
- The Force Is Strong with This One: Kim Lip's ODD Eye appears to awaken when it senses the presence of Choerry passing by Kim Lip in the crossroads, after whom Kim Lip promptly gives chase.
- How Do I Shot Web?: A short scene in "Girl Front" shows her attempting to harness her super speed, but she finds herself stuck in a loop.
- Meaningful Name: The "Lip" part of Kim Lip's name is from the middle three letters of the word "eclipse".
- Motif: Eclipses. As the leader of OEC, the unique moon animation that precedes OEC's music videos (and "Eclipse" itself) shows a moon eclipsing the sun rather than waxing or waning. The red of a lunar eclipse is also where her image color comes from.
- Out of Focus: Unlike JinSoul and Choerry, Kim Lip has not appeared in any story-based LOONA media outside of her era; she vanishes after Sweet Crazy Love.
- Red Is Heroic: Of course the leader of the unit most resembling a team of superheroes is the red one!
- Whole Costume Reference: Kim Lip's hair, outfit, and set design in "Why Not?" are essentially airlifted straight from her scenes in "Love Cherry Motion" and the "Reveal" teaser for Odd Eye Circle.
JinSoul
Solo Title: "Singing in the Rain"
Colors: Blue and Black
Animal: Blue Betta Fish
- Guilty of swallowing the sun in the afternoon, I'm right here, heated up
A very... independent member of Kim Lip's team. Though JinSoul has neither Kim Lip's leadership status or Choerry's unique powers, her actions are integral to tying the girls together, and her deeper connections to the others are one of the story's bigger mysteries.
- Aloof Ally: Although she's often seen alone, JinSoul nonetheless works towards LOONA's common goal (freedom).
- Ambiguously Human: Motifs surrounding JinSoul, such as her Visual Metaphor that places her within the sun's light, resurface later with Yves in her solo, Chuu in "Why Not?", and Olivia Hye in her own solo. On top of implications that she is a "fallen angel" or possibly the same person as Olivia, these suggest that JinSoul may also be a "new type human" from the world of Eden.
- Cosmic Motifs: The new moon, shown in her solo and later in "Why Not?". Note that a total solar eclipse (the kind with the brilliant halo) can only occur in sync with a new moon.
- Eyepatch of Power: Downplayed in that she wears it for only a short span of time, but JinSoul sports a medical eyepatch during "Sweet Crazy Love", and she's described as "dangerous" on top of her evidence of having forayed across different dimensions on her own. Question is, was she like that before or after the eyepatch?
- I Work Alone: As stated, JinSoul is rather independent. Throughout "Hi High", she is the only member consistently shown alone, even though every other member is busy meeting up with the rest of the group.
- Motifs:
- Imprisonment. Throughout her own solo and Olivia's, she is shown surrounded by bars or contained in some manner or other, in parallel with the plastic bag and fish tank of the betta fish she has.
- Count how many times you see JinSoul framed in front of the sun, casting her in shadow. This is a Visual Metaphor of her "swallowing the sun", which is apparently the "sin" that got her imprisoned.
- The Leader: While Kim Lip is the one granted the title, JinSoul seems to take this role in "Air Force One", leading the crashing of the wealthy elites' party.
- Mysterious Past: Given the Anachronic Order of storytelling in the LOONAVERSE, it isn't even clear what parts of JinSoul's story are her past, but she's had contact with ViVi and has a connection to Olivia that has yet to be elaborated upon.
- Occult Blue Eyes: JinSoul's glowing blue ODD Eye, not seen since Sweet Crazy Love, finally returns in "Why Not?", in which LOONA are holding a witchcraft ceremony at midnight.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: It seems it must be difficult to focus a camera on JinSoul. Throughout her solo video, there are odd glitch-like distortions in the picture, and in a certain Cinema Theory showing, ViVi focusing the camera on her causes it to short out. Throughout "Sweet Crazy Love", at least part of her face is always covered by an eyepatch, shadows, or an eye exam lens. It even extends to her dance close-ups; while Kim Lip's and Choerry's are focused on their faces, hers are off-center and only show her arms or lower body.
- Sealed Badass in a Can: When JinSoul succeeds in reuniting her betta fish with the tank it belongs to, she is able to blast the bars of her cage outward as her solo comes to a close.
- Token Evil Teammate: Downplayed. In a team of superheroines, JinSoul presents as an icy, intimidating Anti-Heroine.
Choerry
Solo Title: "Love Cherry Motion"
Colors: Purple and White
Animal: Fruit Bat
Fruit: Cherry
- Love cherry magic, dreaming with you of paradise
ODD EYE CIRCLE's youngest but most powerful member. Though all three in the team possess the Odd Eye that allows them to interact with other worlds, Choerry, formerly a normal girl, seemingly has the ability to traverse worlds with a greater degree of freedom than the other two, and there are clues that her powers don't end there.
Choerry is also unique among OEC in that she also has a thematic fruit to herself, not unlike the members of yyxy, though rather than an awakening to her true self, more focus is placed on the cherry being what awakens her powers.
- The Call Left a Message: The cherry that first activates Choerry's powers to travel across dimensions was intentionally placed on a cake by JinSoul. The fact that Choerry would be the one to pick it up and eat it when HaSeul and YeoJin were also nearby may have been known and planned beforehand, because Kim Lip, who was chasing her in "Sweet Crazy Love", was waiting for her on the other side.
- Dimensional Traveler: Choerry's ability to travel across dimensions is the strongest and most-often used in ODD EYE CIRCLE, and she seems to be integral to assembling the group, going as far as having a map with everyone's animals on it.
- Foreshadowing:
- Choerry herself does an excellent job of foreshadowing the yyxy subunit. Like her, they eat fruits to travel dimensions, and their story revolves around their "other selves", just in a less literal sense than Choerry.
- Choerry's map also foreshadows future members. The map in "Girl Front" visibly contains stickers for 1/3's animals (rabbit, cat, white bird, frog, and deer). A closer look at it is available in "LOONATIC", which shows the bottom of the map contains stickers of an apple (Yves), a penguin (Chuu), and a butterfly (Go Won), along with the same frog sticker from before.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Although she may be the most powerful member of OEC and is vital to bringing all the girls together, she's also shown to be the least familiar with her abilities in her introduction. In "Love Cherry Motion," she's knocked out by her fruit and unconscious when she performs interdimensional travel. An interesting case, as the person who gets her to embrace these powers eventually in the video is... Choerry, but not quite — a parallel version of herself.
- Interdimensional Travel Device: Cherries. Eating one knocks her out, after which she awakens in the dimension of her choice. It's unclear if this is a function of the cherry itself or some type of Magic Feather, but JinSoul appearing with them in "Egoist" leans things to the former.
- Motifs:
- Upside down shots or objects. This represents her interaction with and movement through the Mobius strip, because due to its nature, anything that loops around it once is flipped over due to the twist forcing it to move to the other side. (It takes two loops to return to the same orientation, or exact location on the strip.) The same reasoning behind this symbolism is why her animal is a bat, which hangs upside down.
- Mirrors. On top of representing the other side of the Mobius strip in the same way as her being upside down, Choerry's friends (and later, Kim Lip) use mirrors to get her attention and call out to her, and the mirror placement in the other world in "Love Cherry Motion" is identical to the placements of the animal stickers on the map she uses to find the other girls. She also first sees Yves through a mirror in the "Starlight" Cinema Theory video.
- As a broad concept, duality and "other sides" in general are significant to Choerry. Her image color is a combination of the other two OEC members' colors, her solo song is a mix of two genres, even her Odd Eye is on the opposite side compared to Kim Lip's and JinSoul's.
- Power Incontinence: Cherry's power to travel dimensions seems to be something she's only able to access when asleep. She's shown at the wheel of a self-driving truck in "Sweet Crazy Love" while asleep, and her powers in Love Cherry Motion causing her to wake up in different places, seemingly with little idea of where she is or how she got there.
- Purple Is Powerful: Choerry is the most powerful member of OEC, possessing a combination of Kim Lip's red and JinSoul's blue.
- Self-Duplication: Essentially the first half of Choerry's power. She can interact with her own reflection, and works together with her reflected self in order to travel the LOONAverse in full.
yyxy
The members of yyxy each have a thematic fruit that represents their personal Eden narrative's "forbidden fruit". The "one" video also gives them representative emotions that fuel their desires to leave their utopia behind, while also expressing that somehow, yyxy is made up of four identities, but only one girl. The name "yyxy" refers to what Blockberry calls "Neanthropic chromosomes", representing a new type of human being.
Their thematic location is Hungary, the filming site of "love4eva".
As Subunit
- all lowercase letters: "youth youth by young" is stylized this way, as are its songs and album names. The solo song of the unit leader, Yves, also follows this pattern.
- Ambiguously Human: While 1/3 are all regular people (save for ViVi) and OEC are questionably so, yyxy are "a new type of human", having been born in a place beyond Earth and possessing the "Neanthropic chromosomes". How exactly this differentiates them from regular humans is unknown. On top of this, there are the implications that the group is actually a single girl, meaning three of them might not even be separate people in the first place.
- Biblical Motifs: Practically a given for a group set in a place called "Eden". Their own story arc is an echo of the story of Eden itself and their escape from it, and a lot of imagery featured in their videos make use of symbols popular in Christian iconography, like white feathers and rays of light. "Heart Attack" is even set during Christmas season, and the words "fallen angel" (written in Chinese) appear in a neon sign in "Egoist", not to mention Yves.
- Cosmic Motifs: Theirs is the sun. The sun takes heavy prominence within their lyrics and especially in Yves's and Olivia's videos. Just as the moon may be where the world of ODD resides, Eden may be the Sun, or close to it.
- Create Your Own Villain: Olivia Hye's solo is rife with baleful Luciferian imagery. "love4eva" shows that loneliness is a big factor in her likely being the Loonaverse villain (or at least the closest thing to it), with the other yyxy girls always excluding her and ultimately leaving her to her own devices in the bleak, stringent version of Eden whence they came.
- Defector from Paradise: Ditching Eden to find themselves is kind of their whole thing.
- Forbidden Fruit: They each have a forbidden fruit of their own, and are seen eating them in the music videos to represent their rejection of Eden. The twist is that this is actually depicted as a good thing, because in doing so, they're exposed to the truth, and fully realize themselves, taking the world into their own hands.
- Idea Bulb: Go Won's chandelier, which is later applied to the whole group in "love4eva" symbolizes rejection of Eden and embrace of the self. It's a Visual Metaphor for a crown, which in One&Only relates to the concept of self-rule. Later, the three members of yyxy who have denied Eden are shown sitting under a chandelier, while Olivia, who has not, sits off to the side.
- Mirror Universe: They are eerily similar in a variety of ways to the first subunit, LOONA 1/3. This is played up in the yyxy music videos, with each girl's 1/3 "counterpart" making a cameo there.
- Both subunits are comprised of four girls, with the last one being isolated from the first three. The difference is that ViVi's isolation is unintentional, while Olivia Hye's isolation is cruel.
- The hair colors are black (HyunJin, Olivia Hye), dark brown (HeeJin, Yves), light brown (HaSeul, Chuu), and blonde (ViVi, Go Won, ViVi having been a blonde at some point as per "new").
- The solo songs are thematic inversions of one another. Their subunit songs are "Love & Live" and "love4eva".
- Even their unit names play off of one another, with "yyxy" being another way to say "three of one, one of the other".
Yves
Solo Title: "new"
Color: Burgundy
Animal: Swan
Fruit: Apple
Emotion: Faith
- The new me learnt about me, always, always, all my life
A girl seeking to leave the confines of Eden, dissatisfied with its perfection. While her rebellious streak and curiosity over what lies beyond wins over Chuu and Go Won, Yves herself is a major player in the chain of events that lead up to LOONA's completion.
- Adam and/or Eve: Yves is the one who causes the other yyxy girls to abandon Eden, and her name is just a different spelling of "Eve".
- Ambiguous Gender Identity: Major aspects of the Loonaverse hint that Yves may be a trans girl. Her solo, "new," features lyrics about "her miserable appearances" and her euphoria when she sheds them for a "new face," which sounds like gender dysphoria especially when you connect it to the fact that ViVi misremembers her as a boy in the music video for "Everyday I Love You." This may mean ViVi met Yves before she transitioned and came out as a trans woman. In addition, her solo music video has her abandoning a traditionally masculine pair of sneakers for high heels, and in both the main one and the choreography version (even more so in the latter, where it's a pronounced detail of 1/2 alternating outfits) she is clad in shapewear (a corset).
- Call-Forward: The love interest from "Everyday I Love You" wears white over blue, loves to dance, and is shown cast in the brilliant light of the sun, all motifs that would later resurface with Yves.
- Even the Girls Want Her: Yves is apparently very charming. Chuu has a whole music video about her crush on her, and there are clues that ViVi and Olivia Hye may have felt similarly as well.
- Fairy Tale Motifs: Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling". In the story, the ugly duckling despises itself, but eventually transforms into a swan, the most beautiful animal of all—a swan being Yves's signature animal and a duck plush being an object of her derision in "new".
- Gender-Blender Name: "Yves" is a masculine French name meaning "yew." However, its pronunciation is similar to the ancient Hebrew name Eve, on whom her character is heavily based.
- Girliness Upgrade: Zig-zagged. Yves undergoes a transformation in "new" that sees her abandoning her sneakers for high heels and wearing more elegant, feminine clothing. In "So What" and "Why Not," however, her styling becomes even Darker and Edgier than it ever was prior.
- Icarus Allusion: "new" contains such loaded lyrics as "willing to get closer to the sun, the flapping of the burnt wings". Although she doesn't seem to have come out worse for it, Yves compares herself and her fall from Eden to the fateful soaring of Icarus, who flew too high and paid the price.
- Screw Destiny: It's implied Chuu tags along with Yves due to her romantic love for her and Go Won's incentive for dropping paradise isn't as defined, but Yves explicitly abandons Eden for this reason. From the description of her solo "new":Yves asks a question in Eden. “Is it really a bad thing to disobey God?” If someone has already decided our fate, wouldn’t it be a better life to stand up against that fate?
- Tempting Apple: The apple is the classic Forbidden Fruit, so it's only right that the first person to reject Eden has it to represent her.
- Whole Costume Self Reference: The colors Yves leans towards in her apparel match that of the love interest from "Everyday I Love You," essentially being a feminized version.
Chuu
Solo Title: "Heart Attack"
Color: Peach
Animal: Penguin
Fruit: Strawberry
Emotion: Hope
- Eventually I fall into you, you attack my heart
Another girl from Eden. Chuu is a bubbly, expressive young girl whose crush on Yves leads her to be the first to follow her example in abandoning Eden, but even beyond, Chuu continues to stay by Yves's side.
- Genki Girl: Chuu has a really wide smile and really bouncy body language, skips around, and spends a lot of "Heart Attack" hopping around and doing a whole lot of things over a short span of time.
- Fairy Tale Motifs: Parts of "Heart Attack" are based on Hans Christian Andersen's "Little Match Girl" story, particularly the part about the girl dying in the snow, grimly enough.
- Lipstick Lesbian: She loves Yves, and she's a classically cute, energetic girl.
- Longing Look: A whole lot of "Heart Attack" is of Chuu throwing this in Yves's direction, whether from behind a camera, through a window, or just within the same room.
- Satellite Love Interest: Played for Laughs. "Heart Attack" describes Chuu's every thought as bouncing right back to the object of her affection, and she literally orbits Yves in the music video.
- Stalker with a Crush: Boy is she ever. To be fair, Yves doesn't seem to mind all that much.
- Strawberry Shorthand: Is a bubbly, lovesick girl who's symbolic fruit is a strawberry.
- Visual Metaphor: A two-layer one:
- Throughout the "Heart Attack" video is a huge green apple. Multiple scenes relate the apple to Chuu's heart.
- At certain points of the music video, the apple within the Listening Room is replaced by a mirror. As the apple is representative of Chuu's heart, this means that Chuu is struggling, in her own way, with realizing the concept of self-love.
- Whole Costume Reference: Her lightened hair, red dress, and shawl combined with the snowy weather in "Heart Attack" call back to HaSeul's getup in "Let Me In".
Go Won
Solo Title: "One&Only"
Color: Eden Green
Animal: Butterfly
Fruit: Pineapple
Emotion: Love
- The only person that can shine a light in my heart is me, one & only
yyxy's resident princess (but not really). Though Go Won is the picture of Edenistic regality, she enters the story unsure of herself and what she can be. Through Yves's leadership she undergoes a literal transformation into her true self and abandons Eden with her and Chuu, but she seems to be the only of the realize that something is still amiss...
- Butterfly of Transformation: Go Won's signature animal is tied to her internal transformation, from her suppression of her real self to her embrace of it, and is accompanied by a physical change as well. She plays out her own transformation late into the video by hiding under a veil, before emerging as her blonde, happier self. This returns in the "XIIX" teaser, with Go Won leaving behind her old body behind as she continues forward.
- Ethereal White Dress: In "One&Only," which is very fitting. Her solo has a salient Haunted House aesthetic; she's an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette being hounded by Yves and Chuu, who are framed like scary apparitions, and her voice is given a ghostly reverb.
- Fairy Tale Motifs: Go Won's shadow acting on its own and developing a contrasting identity to hers seems to be a reference to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Shadow" story.
- Foil: She can be considered the Anti-Chuu. While Heart Attack is highly energetic and upbeat, and emits powerful waves of joy and love, Go Won's One&Only is Mood Dissonance taken to the extreme, with extremely eerie horror-movie-esque settings. Chuu is characterized, from her actions to her wardrobe, as child-like and naive, while Go Won is characterized as regal, fearful, and wise the same way. While Chuu's voice exudes power, Go Won sings with a soft, high-pitched tone.
- Foreshadowing: The rare, literal use of this trope. A keen-eyed viewer will realize that Go Won was involved heavily in "Sweet Crazy Love", in unknown ways. She is the person who touches her shadow on the wall and her butterfly appears multiple times.
- Gold and White Are Divine: Inverted. While Go Won is content with Eden, her hair and clothes are black. Once she's eaten her forbidden fruit and therefore rejected it, however, her outfit changes to white and her hair turns gold.
- Grew a Spine: Go Won is solitary and reserved through most of "One&Only", with her running and hiding from Yves and Chuu meant to represent her repeated denials of their quest to get her to leave Eden's oppressive atmosphere with them. By the end of the video, she joins them.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: The problem both Go Won and Olivia Hye face. Both of them do want to leave Eden with Yves and Chuu, but fear the consequences. It is Go Won who caves first, who joins the escape but looks back at Olivia regretfully.
- Light/Darkness Juxtaposition: Go Won is associated with shadows. In darkness, things can hide from the truth—and thus Go Won spends a lot of time enshrouded. But in the light, the truth comes out, and this is played out with Go Won's true self represented by her shadow, which dances on its own. Her hair is pitch black initially, but as she transforms, it changes to become as bright and golden as the sun. In application to the group, the mansion in "love4eva" and "one" is shrouded in darkness even during daylight, except during her own stroll through the halls, when it becomes brightly lit.
- Living Shadow: Hers dances while she stands still.
- Meaningful Name: "Go Won" is a Korean term meaning highlands, or terrae, in English, which are the brighter areas of the moon in contrast to the darker maria. The terrae predominantly cover the back side of the moon.
- Motifs:
- Images of royalty, especially in the context of princesses or queens, surround Go Won and things related to her character. Her butterfly is the blue monarch butterfly (also called the blue emperor), her music video is full of crown imagery in the chandeliers, actual crowns and even in her pineapple, she sits at the head of the long table (a place usually reserved for the most important person), and is explicitly crowned by Yves in the end of "One&Only". Even in the choreography of "Hi High", the crown is in her hands (though ViVi s the one who wears it).
- Themes of light and darkness are also present whenever she's particularly involved. In the first place, "One&Only" makes heavy use of light and shadow throughout the music video, such as her Living Shadow and the lights of her chandelier crowns, and throughout the Butterfly era, featuring her image animal, the costumes, videos and promotional themes made heavy use of black and white.
- Flowers tend to appear in relation to her. They populate the set of her solo, and she is often pictured holding them, or has flowers in her hair or on her clothes.
- Visual Metaphor: That set of spiky leaves atop a pineapple is actually called a crown, tying it to her queen imagery even further.
Olivia Hye
Solo Title: "Egoist"
Color: Silver
Animal: Wolf
Fruit: Blood Plum
Emotion: Anger
- Love myself today, let you go today
The final member of LOONA, an outcast among the rebel girls in Eden. While Yves was convincing Chuu and Go Won to leave Eden, their changing perception toward home distanced them from Olivia, who chose the order of Eden over their freedom. Left alone, Olivia is burdened with the resulting negativity and undergoes a transformation of her own.
- Ambiguously Evil: She's surrounded by lots of Satanic imagery, but also has very sympathetic moments, making it unclear if she's an Anti-Villain or just a Tragic Villain.
- The Big Bad Wolf: In Germanic countries, such as Hungary (where love4eva was filmed), wolves are associated with the devil. Combined with her Luciferian imagery, this makes Olivia's signature animal a very dark omen.
- Break-Up Bonfire: She is shown burning effects associated with Yves, who is hinted to be a figure quite important to her history and whose leaving she took very, very hard. In "So What", she does this to the moon, as well as HaSeul's world.
- Foreshadowing: She is the person who removed JinSoul's ear bud in "Sweet Crazy Love", as revealed in "Egoist".
- Fallen Angel: She's heavily implied to be one. The neon sign behind JinSoul in her section of "Egoist" reads "fallen angel" in Chinese, and Olivia is shown to have been dropped to the bottom of the incineration plant by Yves in the start of the video. Not only that, but the feathers around the mattress that were white when she first woke up turn out to have been red the entire time when she ascends and looks back down. An Instagram post of her even reads "You, who was sent by God; destroy all things without hesitation."
- Greyscale of Evil: Her image color, unlike all of her peers', is "silver", aka black, white, and all shades inbetween. This plays into her association with fire, as these are the colors of ash.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Her resentful attitude in "Egoist" is a result of what she underwent in "love4eva": isolation and abandonment by the only friends she had.
- Light/Darkness Juxtaposition: Like Go Won, Olivia has this going on. Although her official color is silver, she is always denoted with #00000 black, from the opening animatic to the silhouettes used to denote her before she officially debuted. However, she is also associated with the sun, the Call-Back in the rap verse of "Egoist" linking her to the sun JinSoul supposedly swallowed and the text behind JinSoul reading "fallen angel". The sun is given heavy prominence in her music video as it sets, falling over the horizon to mimic her falling from Eden.
- The Mirror Shows Your True Self: The end of "love4eva" and the teaser "one" imply that the four yyxy girls may actually all be one person, as Olivia sees them in her reflection in the mirror despite being alone in the room. Text declares "four identities, one girl".
- Odd Name Out: Downplayed given the group's stage names, but "Olivia Hye" sticks out as not just a full name, but also the only one written in Western order (with the given name first).
- Ominous Visual Glitch: Two. First, the screen in her videos has a habit of flashing into color inversion, casting things in a ghostly white. Second, events associated with her tend to suffuse into a red over-saturation. The effect is creepy, rather like the screen is bleeding.
- Punny Name: Olivia's name is a reference to the character from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. In being the twelfth "moon" to arrive in LOONA, she is literally the group's twelfth and final night. It also doubles as Meaningful Name in regard to the character itself: a character who locks herself away in her manor, yet falls for the local Sweet Polly Oliver (Yves herself being a woman who at once point took on the guise of a man).
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: She sports glowing red eyes in one shot of "Egoist", as a show of how dangerous she is once she's accepted her true self.
- Watching Troy Burn: Most of the girls can be seen reacting to the catastrophe caused when Olivia set the moon on fire; fireballs begin raining down, but there's implications this may not be a bad thing, at least in the grand scheme. Olivia herself is much more somber while sitting in the burning and smoking ruins of what seems to be HaSeul's world.
