the appeal of ALIEN STAGE

How I fell into VIVINOS's animations and the ingenious reasoning behind them.

My art of Ivan/ALIEN STAGE. VIVINOS’s style makes for an interesting study.

Imagine a world without responsibilities. Filling out that feedback form is now no necessity at the wrong time, nor is going to work every day. Hobbies still exist, but there is no differentiation between work and play. Let that sink in. Homo sapiens are not the apex of the ecosystem. Let authority transition from the global level to that of the universe, where humans are not in charge, gods do not answer, and faith is dead. Remember that blank space, good or bad as its preconceptions may be. 

That world is run by alien oppressors.

What comes to mind? Lasers, spaceships, UFOs? 

While we damn our humanity, with some of us more monstrous than others, we forget that the worst kind of enemy would be an alien regime - no empathy, understanding, or communication possible. In VIVINOS, QMENG, and STUDIO LICO’s animated web series ALIEN STAGE, Earth has fallen to the whim of extraterrestrials that treat humans as pets. Homo sapiens grows up isolated, experimented on, and cultured under the constant surveillance of shock collars, drawn with a thick piece of metal that clicks closed around the throat and measures the slightest deviation in our pulses, emotions seen through green (tolerable) and red (undesirable) lights.

It’s terrifying, yes? 

We use those collars on animals, particularly dogs, to immobilize or stun, to punish unwanted behaviors like barking, acting out, biting, and jumping for food. Most descriptions advertising such collars claim that they help dogs learn better but have been debunked as anecdotal, not significant; negative reinforcement only temporarily represses behaviors rather than changes them, and running that 1 to 100 to 6000 volt current through your dog’s neck is really only going to have it associate you with pain. A device borne in ancient Mesopotamian civilization, collars show control, dominion, disrespect and dehumanization over tameable beings.

ALIEN STAGE establishes power structures with each episode of VIVINOS’s powerful direction, usually a “Round” of the titular Alien Stage, a long-running deathmatch alien entertainment reality TV idol show that eerily resembles the South Korean pop industry in fashion, system of sponsorships, and set up. Every “Round” focuses on a character. They sing a competitive duet, backed by the extravagant emotional atmosphere of a high-budget production and flashbacks to their past, often of the people they think of as they sing. VIVINOS utilizes six main characters - Mizi, Sua, Till, Ivan, Luka, and Hyuna - to explore themes like the ethics of performance, the violence of consumerism, the cannibalistic nature of marketability, selfish altruism, and (most appealingly) tragic love, balancing sacrifice with shattered personalities making the most of their dynamics under this specific flavor of dystopia.

Protagonist pink-haired airhead Mizi is introduced alongside her partner Sua in the first video, Round 1, through their duet MY CLEMATIS, portrayed by singers Rubyeye and C!naH. They are literally visually portrayed in their own bubble, singing heartfelt lyrics of devotion side by side, in all probability meant for each other. Line by line, they synchronize in a chord progression that starts low, goes up, descends, then rises in pitch to a high, pure sound, before returning to a note slightly higher than the first. Their harmonization always raises goosebumps off my neck.

At first glance, we can tell that these two characters have history. They stand side by side with shining eyes, unadulterated joy on their mirrored faces. The soft pink reflective glow, dancing sparks, and hard white stage lights add to the atmosphere, clearly implying romantic subtext. Their intertwined voices are a subtle slight of the rules of the round, where contestants are supposed to take turns singing the same song and be scored accordingly.

In contrast to their dreamy performance, the point-counters and profile pictures on the competition board hover chillingly over their heads in blatant guillotine flavour, Mizi grinning with her glasses on and Sua in the right side frame looking different from our first impressions, her gaze blank and grim. 

They meld except for one flaw: Sua skips a line.

Her score is one point lower.

VIVINOS skillfully pans to Sua’s final close eyed smile, then cuts to Mizi’s face, which shifts from joyous to blood-spattered in smiling despair, eyes widening, pupils constricting. This is the impetus of ALIEN STAGE’s plot, the death of Mizi’s God and universe, the discretionary gore shot that starts the plot as we know it. Her knees hit the floor. The aliens cheer, spittle flying. 

VIVINOS ends with a single raw shot: the collar buckling closed around Mizi’s neck as her dull pink hair sways around her lightless, pale, yellow eyes.

Aside from the gorgeous animation, Round 1 heaps subtle worldbuilding cues unveiled with VIVINOS’s Patreon-exclusive content. Mizi and Sua planned to tie the round, which is why their scores were so close together, but Sua threw the match and, either way, was resigned to sacrificing herself from the get go. Sua also sings Sweet Dream, the track backing the ALIEN STAGE Prologue video released after Round 1, and its (translated) lyrics are telling.

It's a sweet dream

It's happening today, wait for me

I'm going too, you'll see

Lord, please, when this song is over

Come and save me from this, please

Aside from these scenes and a few in the flashback of the MIZISUA video, Sua’s mysterious personality haunts the narrative. Doll-like Sua plays the role of a pet perfectly, showing few visible emotions except when she is interacting with Mizi. Videos only portray their relationship from Mizi’s point of view (because the dead do not come back), but Mizi’s grief compels her to delay the competition, go missing, and join the rebellion after escaping in a violent breakdown at the end of Round 5. 

The whole shebang is so sweetly ironic. Sua is what has kept Mizi within the alien institution, and with it Till (infatuated with Mizi) and Ivan (obsessed with Till), a love tragedy similar to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night but without the comedic will-they-won’t-they-they-will. The girls’ mutual understanding is what gives Mizi confidence that they will both make it out on the slimmest of unlikely margins, but it is also what motivates Sua to stop their harmony for the guarantee that Mizi will survive, a love that her fellow contestant Ivan calls mean and self-centered. (Hypocrite!)

Speaking of Ivan, who’s arc is so tragic it left the fandom in tears, let’s address Till. 

In Round 2, Till, voiced by AKUGETSU, sings Unknown (Till the End…) about his one-sided crush on Mizi and heaping abandonment issues (with a line that literally says, in English, “Don’t leave me”). I’m half convinced that VIVINOS designed Till as the embodiment of a sopping wet cat with the way most of his expressions are drawn, with sharp sanpaku eyes and scraggly hair that snarls at everyone except for the girl of his dreams, who never looks at him or interacts with him, and stays an angelic spirit in his head even after her Round 1 shock and Round 5 breakdown. Lots to unpack there. Out of all the main characters, musical genius Till is a fan favorite because of the specific alien hell he goes through, which either speaks to the sadomasochism that empathy creates in humans or the skillful sleight of hand VIVINOS plays when she depicts Till’s memories of Mizi and music throughout the song, only to reveal in the next video a LOT of missing scenes from another person’s perspective.

Round 2 Till is fiery, not stupid: even strapped to the stage by a string tied like a bomb under his collar, he understands the brainwashing mechanics that the aliens have incorporated into their education system and rebels every chance he gets. Through the rock and roll-esque drum/guitar riffs, we can practically taste the desperation in his voice. His words rush out passionately as he sings about the sweet smile of his affections, his love, screaming about his empty soul filled by Mizi’s melody. 

There’s no way for his opponent to get a word in edgewise. Till kills him with the alien guitar. The stage goes red and Till is knocked out bloody by the guards. VIVINOS offers the audience a last glimpse of Ivan, inscrutable, up next.

Ivan, Round 3, is animated to Black Sorrow. It’s pretty straightforward. He pulls the brand sponsorships, the freedom won from his obedience, the trust of the aliens and the greatest freedom a pet human can have, a more formal business relationship with his alien guardian. Ivan shines in an all-black getup to a plain black background, glittering with blue-white lit cell shading. Black Sorrow is my favorite song both because of its striking visuals (extremely space-appropriate) and the skill that singer Park Byeong Hoon pours into expressing every millimeter of Ivan’s unrequited longing. (Obsession? Fixation?) Sporting low octaves at D sharp, Park weaves his voice into a tapestry of drums and slow guitar, building to an intense, growly finish. It’s like the hills of the Sierra Nevada run through my ears. Glorious, especially when he hits that last E sharp note between his strong diaphragm-vibrating belt of the repetitive chorus, “black sorrow”. 

This song’s like coffee to my nose. Bitter, aromatic, and caffeinating. With the slow tempo, and concise chorus (“black sorrow” repeated 13 times), it’s also easy to learn!

The visual metaphor of black sorrow revives the cliche of sad colors. Rather than focus on how getting friendzoned makes you blue, lyricists STUDIO LICO and Manju instead emphasize the depth and width of Ivan’s stunted emotions, comparing his love to a “dark sea [that] gets deeper as you approach” and as black as “black can be”, maybe more than Vantablack, a striking mental image when paired with VIVINOS’s animation. VIVINOS fills Till’s unreliable narration using Ivan’s. Ivan’s side of his past with Till, the one “who shines” in Ivan’s eyes, runs wholeheartedly with a meteor shower motif, slick darkness warbling with stars. To me, the song relates to the suffering of longtime unfulfillment, when the effort of being in love with something, whether it’s a best friend, a hobby, or an ideal, never gets returned. 

Both in the flashbacks and on stage, perhaps due to the glassy nature of his blunt side-swept bangs, soft face and black eyes, Ivan appears calculating but besotted, resignation written across his features in a final plea for (unconscious) Till to hear him. It’s no use. Either way, Ivan’s performance earns him 90 points to his opponent’s 68, sending him up the ranks and against Till in Round 6. Delicious, delicious irony, scrumptious hypocrisy to come.

I believe that, unlike many decades-long shows and series, successfully depicting complex messages in the scene and the score is best done concisely. By taking the form of animated videos for an album, VIVINOS’s ALIEN STAGE forces the mediums of art and music to show their fullest emotion. VIVINOS, QMENG, and STUDIO LICO tie implicit criticism of the cutthroat South Korean idol industry to fantastical alien authoritarianism that, in a clever setup of mimicking humanity, gives the scenario both a believable and nonmaterial materialism. Making emotions tangible communicates the unavoidable connections between the hearts of the exploited, knotting threads of hypocritical miscommunication and selfish altruism to depict the essence of human relationships in short, acute bursts of colorful emotion.

While Round 6 is the best example of this, it’s confusing (to me) and too recent to objectively analyze. Let’s say that distorted guitar compliments the piano well. QMENG’s style matures the characters and brings out their most tender, heart-wrenching moments. You should watch it. 

Before I close, I can’t stop talking about the previous participants, Hyuna and Luka. Luka is all over Round 5, which pulled in most of the Western fandom before the bombshell that was Round 6. 

Round 5 begins with pastel pinks and warm tans. Peppy jazzy Ruler of My Heart, the delayed duet between Luka (sung by BL8M) and Mizi, still raw from Sua’s loss, sets Luka up as the alien favorite and previous winner for good reason. His slinking animations, particularly a poignant three-frame beat where he circles Mizi like a bird with his flaring dress-shirt, emphasize intense manipulative skill and painfully accurate acting.

Several points where BL8M’s sweet, soulless voice coupled with Luka’s ministrations fool Mizi into seeing Sua several times over the course of the song. Luka dominates spatially and vocally, with Mizi barely rising to his bait until he pulls out the shapeshifting card and pisses her off enough into beating him up. With her fists.

Here is where the pattern between the rounds begins to aberrate: Mizi’s fight confuses the guards, who act to pull her off to not kill Luka (a delay that is remedied the next round) but are deterred by a sweep of what everyone suddenly learns is a human rebellion which exists in this dystopia. The face of the rebellion is Hyuna, a more masculinely-drawn woman to Luka’s male femininity, cold and complementary. 

Hyuna’s got trauma, but she’s great at keeping it down with alcohol and cigarettes, healthy coping mechanisms that distract her ability to overcome the source of murderous stress called Luka. Let me get back to that after this short explanation. 6FU;’s ALL-IN is a song that is NOT a round, because Hyuna and Mizi are not part of the alien stage anymore, but still communicates a great deal of plot through unearthing Hyuna’s character, the Earth she lives in, and how the stage looks from the outside. 6FU; also belts two more songs about Hyuna that reveal her angry and alcoholic side, respectively, but that’s for you to figure out the hidden sides of her character and backstory. In the All-In video, Hyuna confidently expresses that she is living her life for herself, though it cost the loss of her sibling to her then-friend Luka for her to reject going onto stage. Isolation from the community that raised her and the knowledge that she was in danger if she stayed, coupled with bitter feelings about Luka’s betrayal, spurred her to run. The lyrical focus of this pumped-up rock ballad contrasts to that of every contestant so far, who sang about their obligations to other people! This, too, is another appeal of ALIEN STAGE, the variety of responses each character has to their unique situation, with hints of how they view the others in small comics and Patreon-exclusive side content. 

The fandom is small enough to get lost in detailed analyses and the pain about our mysterious, near voyeuristic views, knowing the characters more than they know themselves. This is the genius of STUDIO LICO, and the power of VIVINOS and QMENG’s animation. This is why series like ALIEN STAGE, which at its core tell stories about people - people in dire scenarios, but who are, in the end, just as miserable as we are - making their way in a world that profits off their appeal, which circles back in a meta way to the way ALIEN STAGE appeals to a surprisingly small amount of people in our world. YouTube is another stage in a world where the hype marketability of social media is at its peak, and content is both expressive and instrumental means to an end, blurring the lines between entertainment and professionalism in alarming, unprecedented situations. Open your Instagram or TikTok or whatever and almost 90% of the people are selling their faces, voices, and knowledge to you. You! You, me, and who?

If the pure joy of interacting with, creating, and sharing new ideas is branded, marketed, and sold like cattle, we kill an intrinsic part of our creativity under the weight of a living. By playing pet with whimsical corporations that damn our stories to oblivion, every day we tighten the noose around our own necks.

Buying is not owning, the self-made content creator chokes, and consumers cannot control their addictive intake of terrible gone worse. Who can choose to walk away? We must find an antidote to the alien poison disintegrating our communities. Can we offset the dissolving nature of privacy, art, and aging protocols from a universe separated by time? 

I hope so, because if we can’t, ALIEN STAGE shows us just how crippling our misery can be. Nobody can wait forever for change, because change will always come too late.