Part 2: ViViD

I named this site "The Butterfly Effect" after the ARTMS song (one of the groups consisting of former LOONA members), but also after the concept itself. The butterfly effect is what the Loonaverse is built on, directly referenced within the story itself. Small, seemingly meaningless things, which end up being far more significant than one first realized...

With that in mind, let's start from the very beginning.

First off, I want to bring up the name "LOONA" itself. It is taken from the Latin word for the moon, "luna." In Korean they are referred to as 이달의소녀 ("Idarui Sonyeo") which means "Girl of This Month." This is usually translated as "Girl of The Month," but "this month" is more accurate. This refers to the group's concept, where each month a new member of the group would be revealed.

The introduction of LOONA to the world came on September 25th, 2016, with both the first video on the official YouTube channel and the first tweet on the official Twitter account being posted. Both were teasers for the group's first member, Heejin.

Let's briefly discuss Heejin's basic attributes before we jump into her teasers. Heejin is the first member of LOONA. Her representative animal is a rabbit, and her representative color is a shade of hot pink, officially referred to as "vivid pink." She is associated with Paris, France.

Nine teaser photos were posted on Twitter, all on the same day. The caption for all of them was simply "LOONA," along with hashtags of the group and Heejin's names. As shown in episodes of LOONA TV (a behind-the-scenes/vlog series), all of the photos were taken in Paris.

(FYI, I will be mentioning some other members' names when discussing the usage of color in this material, but I don't expect you to be familiar with them. We'll cover them later and I'll revisit these possible connections at that time. For now, this will be extremely surface level mentions of them.)

In the first teaser image, Heejin lays on the white sheets of a bed, wearing a white dress with an open back and greenish collar, and pearl earrings. The color green can be connected to both Haseul and Go Won, members who we will talk about later.

The pearls have possible significance as well, as their round shape is often compared to the moon, something which LOONA is strongly associated with. Pearls are said to be symbols of innocence, beauty, sincerity, spiritual transformation, and motherhood. Heejin's name is written in her signature vivid pink color, but other than that, there isn't much to glean from this one.

In the second teaser image, Heejin wears a lacy peach-colored dress and sits atop a table. She is holding what appears to be a white rose, although I'm not 100% sure on that. There are white flowers behind her, and arrangements of pink and purple flowers beside her. White is Choerry's sub-color, but Heejin has sometimes been associated with it as well. Purple is Choerry's main color, and then of course pink is Heejin's color, but this lighter shade of pink is closer to ViVi's color.

There's various silverware and two plates of food; what appears to be brownies, macarons, and other desserts. There are also white, pink, and blue flowers in the foreground, blue being Jinsoul's representative color.

The entire room is very fancy, with the ornate wall behind her and the reflection of the chandelier in the mirror above her. This can be connected to later material, but I'll leave this here for now. Heejin's name is strangely written in blue this time, although it's a very light shade of blue that doesn't at all resemble Jinsoul's dark blue.

Heejin wears the same lacy peach dress in the third teaser image, standing in some kind of garden with light pink flowers behind her.

While not visible in the teaser images themselves, she is actually wearing earrings shaped like crosses, as seen in LOONA TV. Her name is again written in her representative vivid pink color.

In the fourth teaser image, Heejin wears a different lacy dress, this time fully white. She is standing against some kind of statue or wall, and her name is in vivid pink.

The fifth teaser image shows her in the same white dress, just in a different position, and her name is once again in vivid pink.

The sixth teaser image is a bit different from the previous ones, with Heejin being in a more casual environment. She is riding a carousel, with her head leaned against the pole and her eyes either nearly or entirely closed, almost like she's fallen asleep. She is wearing a white dress with a green/blue collar, and her name is written in the same light blue color from the second image.

The seventh teaser image is taken from the same scene as the second, with Heejin in the same peach dress in the same ornate golden room. She is still sitting on the table, as shown by the white flowers behind her. Her name is in vivid pink.

The eighth teaser image is the biggest break in the pattern so far, with a completely different vibe from the rest of them. Heejin is dressed far more casually, in a pink dress covered in what looks to be blue roses. She is leaned against the door of a building, seemingly a shop of some kind, and is holding a pink ice cream cone. Her name is in light blue.

Finally, the ninth teaser image shows Heejin again in the peach dress, sitting in a garden with bright pink flowers behind her. Her name is in vivid pink.

Overall, while there isn't anything particularly of note in any one photo, the overall picture they paint is fascinating. In most of the images, we see Heejin wearing fancy-looking dresses in very ornate locations. She has a sort of distant expression in most of them. However, the sixth and especially the eighth teaser photos break this pattern. In these images, Heejin appears much more like an average girl, riding a carousel or eating ice cream in the city.

Already, before we even watch her music video, we are presented with two sides of Heejin: a mature, almost royal woman, and a much more normal seeming girl. Keep this in mind as we continue.

Now we get to our very first video, and the first video ever posted to the official YouTube channel, that being "[Teaser] 이달의소녀 LOONA's 1st Member 'HeeJin' SeoulTeaser".

This teaser is very simple, showing advertisements for Heejin's debut all over Seoul, South Korea. At the end, Heejin herself approaches one of the ads and smiles at the camera. The music that plays in the background is the instrumental for ViViD, her solo.

All of these ads are the teaser images we already looked at before, so there isn't anything to talk about there. In between the ads and the footage of the city however, we do get a few shots of Heejin herself.

The first shows her in a white or light blue dress, standing on an ornate golden staircase. This obviously fits in with the royal theme of most of the teasers.

Next, we get a look at the photoshoot for the first teaser photo, being able to see the room behind her. There's a building of some kind on the pillow behind her, but otherwise there doesn't seem to be much of note.

Finally, there's the end scene where Heejin walks up to the teaser image of her with the ice cream. She smiles at it, and then we get a shot of her smiling at the camera before the video ends. Here she's wearing what looks to be a schoolgirl outfit; this is actually IRL Heejin's school uniform. There's also a lens flare/burning film effect on the last shot before it goes to white.

The tweet promoting this teaser reads (via auto-translate): "Check out the identity of #이달의소녀 [LOONA] we met at a bus stop in Seoul!"

While there isn't much to glean from this teaser, we are once again presented with these two sides of Heejin. The first two scenes show her in fancy dresses and locations, while the last one shows her in a plain schoolgirl uniform. Again, keep this in mind as we go along.

Next, we're given "[Teaser] 이달의소녀/희진 (LOONA/HeeJin) "ViViD,"" our first look at the music video for Heejin's solo. The promotional tweet for this teaser reads (via auto-translate): "Check out the teaser video of #HeeJin full of one color now :D"

The music for this teaser is the instrumental of ViViD (Acoustic Mix Version), which was released as a b-side alongside ViViD. Almost all of the footage in this teaser is taken directly from the music video, so I'll save the analysis for then. In the future, many teasers will be their own unique videos, but for now this is just a simple sneak peek at what we'll be seeing in the music video itself.

Before we can finally get to our first music video however, there is one more teaser video for Heejin, titled "[Teaser] 이달의소녀/희진 (LOONA/HeeJin) "Paris."" This is actually a teaser not for the ViViD music video, but for the acoustic version's MV.

We see Heejin in the same dress from the ice cream teaser image, standing in front of some red flowers. After a landscape shot, we see her in the white dress from the fourth teaser image, gazing at the camera. We get another simple shot of her, then one of her in a white outfit with a beret and a set of cross earrings. These are actually different from the ones she wore in the teaser images. Here we see her staring up at the sky, then smiling at the camera.

We get a few more simple shots of her, and then a shot of the Eiffel Tower. Again, there's not much of interest of here; this is a compilation of photoshoot clips more than anything.

But now, we've reached the end of the teasers. While they didn't have too much of interest, we're now at our first music video and with it, the official start of LOONA.

Before we actually watch the music video though, let's go over the description. Video descriptions are incredibly important for understanding the Loonaverse, as they often give details about the story that may not be apparent just from the videos themselves.

However here, there doesn't appear to be anything other than hashtags and links. And this will be the case for all of the solo music videos up to ViVi's, as well as Love&Live. But these descriptions do exist. They're actually taken directly from the album descriptions of each release on Korean streaming sites, but they only started to appear in the video descriptions with the release of Eclipse. User "litelljohnn" of Team Subbits translated all of these missing descriptions, which can be accessed here.

Heejin's doesn't have much relevance to the story, until we get to the part about ViViD specifically. It is described as a "colorful-feeling lo-fi track," but more importantly, "it tells a story of meeting a person to love in a repetitive and colorless routine, and only then finding a vivid color within oneself."

This is important to keep in mind as we go through the music video, but also remember that this is describing the story of the song, not necessarily the MV. While often the lyrics of the songs relate to the music videos, and thus the Loonaverse, that isn't always the case. As a general rule of thumb, the visuals are almost always more important than the song itself when it comes to lore, and the two won't always be directly correlated.

With that out of the way though, let's finally jump into the beginning of the Loonaverse with Heejin's solo, ViViD.

(Turn on the captions for the lyrics! Personally, I recommend watching MVs without captions first to better process the visuals, and then watching a second time with the captions turned on. But do what you like!)

While simpler than a lot of the MVs we'll get in the future, there's still a lot to discuss here, especially as it's our first real piece of Loonaverse content. First, let's go through the MV and song, and then we'll discuss what the main takeaways are.

Right away, the way the video opens seems to mimic someone opening their eyes. This could perhaps symbolize the viewer opening their eyes to the beginning of the Loonaverse. We see various rooms of a house, a blurry silhouette, and a rabbit all in black-and-white, before Heejin opens her own eyes and the MV transitions into color.

In this MV, we see two Heejins: one playing the role of a maid or caretaker, and the other a wealthy homeowner. Homeowner Heejin, who I'll refer to as simply "the homeowner" from now on, wears a fancy black outfit, accessorized with a white rose.

She speaks in French, which translates to: "I'll be heading out, please clean up. The tools are over there." She points to cleaning supplies, and then we see her silhouette in front of a door and a shot of Heejin through a door, showing that the homeowner has left the house.

In the shot of the cleaning supplies, we can see a clock which appears to read around 12:18. This can connect to the 12 members of LOONA, and perhaps also the fact that the full group would end up debuting in 2018.

Once the homeowner is gone, Heejin looks around the house seemingly in wonder. She dusts things a little, before seeming to grow bored/tired and resting on the couch. She sings about how everyday feels the same, asking if she should hide or run away.

This is when we first see the rabbit painting on the wall. In its first appearance, it contains 15 rabbits. Suddenly, a real rabbit appears in front of Heejin, which causes her to get up from the couch and pick it up.

Now the painting has only 1 rabbit, and we see 7 more real rabbits on the floor, as if they've escaped from the painting. Art is invading reality.

In the bathroom, various spray bottles, glasses, and other items are floating in the air. Along with the blue lighting, this may represent it being "underwater." Heejin looks around, seemingly confused. This seems to confirm that she isn't the one causing this, at least not intentionally.

We get shots of her looking bored or lamenting, while she continues to sing about everything just feeling the same. In particular, she mentions that "this world without any colors, it's boring" and asks "would you change it with your fingertips?" as she sings about various colors. We see her with a rainbow across her face, further getting across the importance of color in this MV.

We then see the rabbit painting again, only now it's completely blank. It seems as if all the rabbits have escaped.

Heejin picks up a golf club from a bag, with what looks to be a dog stuffed animal on it. This has some possible deeper significance related to future material, but for now I'll focus on its purpose in this MV. Golf is symbolic of a rich lifestyle, further showing the wealth of the homeowner.

In her yellow outfit, Heejin hits a yellow golf ball across the floor, which appears to land in a large pile of them. However, when Heejin initially hits the ball it rolls flat on the floor, while it bounces into the pile, which could suggest that these are actually two different shots simply being match-cut together.

This is strengthened by the fact that Heejin herself is sitting in the ball pile when it arrives, in a completely different outfit. Somehow, her own shot came to her at a different time, though it's unclear whether the shot somehow continued for a long time and hit her later on, or if it somehow went back into the past or something.

A simpler explanation could be that again, these are two different shots being match-cut together and that the second shot was perhaps made by someone else besides Heejin. Either way, something strange is clearly happening here.

Above the golf balls, there are three lights which appear blue when turned off. While this technically relates to things revealed later, I think it's best to say this now, especially since this has already been mentioned elsewhere. These three lights could perhaps represent the three subunits of LOONA, and/or the three different worlds that they reside in.

A little bit later, we see one of the rabbits enter from a small white door, as Heejin peaks out at it from a larger white door, thus mirroring it. Is she simply observing it, or is she perhaps emulating its behavior? Her animal is a rabbit, after all.

Heejin moves onto a blue room, full of clothes and shoes. She opens the closets, rifling through the homeowner's clothes, and eventually decides to start trying them on.

We see more yellow golf balls join the pile, and the three lights all turn on one at a time, now red. This happens right after Heejin starts trying on the clothes, so perhaps it somehow symbolizes her abandoning her job and giving into temptation?

Now in the homeowner's clothes, the room starts to melt all around Heejin.

We see her on the floor like we did before, but now there's a large red spider on her right eye. I'll talk about the symbolism of this a bit later, when we go over the MV's meaning as a whole.

After more shots of the room melting and Heejin in various parts of the house, we see her sing in front of three mirrors, with each of her reflections acting independently from each other. This could perhaps again relate to the three subunits and worlds, and does connect to some things we'll see much later, but for now it just serves as another instance of the overall strangeness going on.

Immediately afterward, we get another shot of the floating items in the bathroom, only this time via a reflection of them in another mirror.

A bit later, we see the homeowner again. This time we can actually see her face, showing that this in fact Heejin as well, if it wasn't already obvious.

After more shots of previous scenes, we see Heejin in the bathroom with the floating items, only this time it's in black-and-white, like the beginning of the MV. This seems to conflict with what we've seen up to this point, with all the strangeness only taking place after things become colorful. It's unclear exactly when this shot takes place.

We see more shots of the homeowner from the beginning, again in black-and-white, and more previously shown scenes. Once we get to the bridge, we see Heejin sitting at a table with various objects on it. There's a hair dryer, calculator, phone, iron, and multiple clocks and lamps. The one clock that's visible reads about 10:10, which could connect to Chuu, the 10th member. The rabbits from before climb on and around the table.

Throughout this bridge, Heejin sings about wishing for a new day every morning when she wakes up, and how she doesn't want to become numb to everything. She also mentions that she is "without the light", or as the ColorCodedLyrics translation puts it, "me, who has lost the light." This could mean that Heejin was once able to enjoy her life, but now she's just bored of it and wishes for something new.

We then see Heejin picking up a pair of the homeowner's shoes from the blue room. On the shelf, there are 12 pairs of shoes, which connects to the 12 members of LOONA. The colors and styles of the shoes don't appear to have any significance, but Heejin picks up the 9th pair, which could connect to Yves, the 9th member.

As we enter the final chorus, the entire room from the beginning suddenly becomes covered in various vivid colors, taking on the appearance of a painting. We see the bathroom undergo the same transformation, and after more shots from before, we see the table Heejin was sitting at before, only now she's not there.

She reappears right afterwards though, with that room now being transformed. After more repeat shots, now Heejin herself is enveloped in the paint-like colors as she lays in the bathtub from before. We see more of the now-colorful bathroom, then Heejin on the floor with the spider over her eye being transformed as well, and then her holding one of the rabbits with the same effect.

Eventually though, we see the colors fade away. Things go back to how they were in the beginning, and after we see the shot of the homeowner leaving again, we get our final shot, perhaps the most important to understanding the MV's story.

We see Heejin in the same green dress she wore from the scene with the golf balls, sweeping the floor with a broom. There are bags and clothes on the floor around her, the same ones from the blue room. She looks towards what is presumably a door opening, perhaps the homeowner coming back, and the music video ends.

With this ending, it becomes apparent that in all likelihood, the events of the MV didn't actually happen and were just part of Heejin's imagination as she cleans this house. Throughout the video, we can see that Heejin longs for this rich lifestyle. She uses the homeowner's golf clubs, tries on her clothes, etc.

More importantly though, the song's lyrics alongside this paint (pun intended) a clear picture of Heejin's current feelings. She is dissatisfied with her life, finding it repetitive and boring. Rather than specifically this lavish lifestyle, what she really wants more than anything is just something different. For the boring black-and-white world she currently lives in to be filled with color.

This ties back into the song's description: "it tells a story of meeting a person to love in a repetitive and colorless routine, and only then finding a vivid color within oneself." While it's unclear if in the actual story this change is caused by Heejin actually meeting someone and falling in love with them, she is stuck in a repetitive and colorless routine, and eventually finds a vivid color within herself over the course of the MV's events.

This also leads us back to the spider we see on Heejin's eye. Spiders can symbolize many different things, from patience and persistence, to tricksters, to fear. However in regards to this MV, I think the most fitting symbolism is that of creation and creativity.

Spiders are often related to creation myths, as the spinning of their webs can represent the creation of entire worlds. This can connect to how Heejin is using her creativity and imagining this whole different world. Spiders are also often associated with women.

Overall, we see Heejin imagine her boring circumstances suddenly interrupted by a series of strange events, like the rabbits in the painting coming to life, the bathroom flooding, the rooms melting, etc.

Something else important to mention is that this MV is obviously inspired by Alice in Wonderland, with Heejin taking on the role of Alice. Alice's world is average and boring until she meets the White Rabbit and enters Wonderland, just like how the strange events of ViViD start with the appearance of a white rabbit. The big and small doors are a clear reference to the story as well.

At the end of the story, Alice wakes up and it's implied that Wonderland never really existed. However, it's shown that Alice has grown in some way after her adventures. Similarly, it seems like none of the fantastical events of this MV actually happened, but perhaps in some way Heejin matured from them as well.

If you need more proof of these parallels, the background for ViViD at the LOONA Premier Greeting: Line & Up event was images of playing cards, which appear prominently in Alice in Wonderland as characters.

With all this in mind, let's go back to Heejin's teaser images. As mentioned before, they depict two sides of Heejin, a fancy mature woman, and a more normal girl. This can be connected to the two Heejins we see in the MV, the wealthy homeowner and the maid. What Heejin wishes she was, and what she actually is.

Considering the homeowner is also played by Heejin, the question then arises: Is the homeowner even real? We do see Heejin cleaning at the end, with the same clothes from before on the ground, but that doesn't necessarily prove anything. Either the homeowner is real and Heejin simply imagined her in their place, or perhaps this is actually her own house that she's cleaning, and she imagined the entire premise of her being a maid. After all, the one "real" room that we see that at the end doesn't look particularly fancy, so maybe it is just her own house. Either way, what matters is that Heejin imagines a fantastical adventure, while in reality she's just mundanely cleaning.

With this music video, we get a good grasp of Heejin's character and circumstances. An average girl who longs for more, who wishes that the world was more strange and magical. And perhaps soon, her wish might just turn out to be true...

But for now, that's the end of our discussion about ViViD. We've still got one more video to go over in this part, and that's the MV for the song's acoustic version.

The lyrics of the song are exactly the same, so we don't have to worry about analyzing that. The MV itself also doesn't have much to go over, since it's mostly just behind-the-scenes footage of photoshoots and other IRL events that don't have relevance to the lore.

Still, there are a few things to point out, so let's get into the MV for ViViD (Acoustic Mix Version)!

Overall, the video has a sort of old-fashioned vibe, with the smaller, low-res shots. In the Loonaverse, this often indicates that we are seeing something from the past. While that's a possible interpretation here, I don't think it has much relevance since again, this is really just IRL footage.

At one point, there's a shot of just a chandelier. This has connections to later videos, but for now, I'll just say to keep it in mind.

We can see here that the shot from the Seoul Teaser of Heejin on a staircase is actually of her on the stairs leading up to a merry-go-round, presumably the same one from her teaser images. We don't get any footage of her actually riding it, but we do see it in motion. At one point the footage is played in reverse, so the horses appear to be going backwards.

Later, Heejin looks at herself in the mirror. This could be connected to the three mirrors from ViViD, and thus some future material that I will bring up later. Again, just keep this in mind.

There's one more part of this MV that could possibly have lore significance, but once again it is in connection with future material, so we'll leave it here. The video ends with a visual effect of an old film reel reaching its end, which fits in with the old-fashioned aesthetic of the MV.

And that's really all there is to say about this one. With it, we've now reached the end of Part 2. We've met our first member, Heejin, a normal girl who dreams of more.

Now, it's time to move onto Part 3 and introduce our second member...