Part 10: You and Me Together

On March 13th, 2017, LOONA 1/3 released their debut EP, Love & Live. It consisted of the title track Love & Live, which we talked about in the previous part, and four other songs.

This is the first instance where we have a few songs with no accompanying music video, but I'll still be talking about them if I think they might have lore significance. We'll get to those later however, as our main topic is the song You and Me Together, which did get a music video in the form of additional footage from the Love & Live MV.

There's no teasers to go over with this one, and the album description doesn't mention anything significant about it, so we can jump straight into the music video this time! (It doesn't include the entire song, so it's not very long.)

As you probably noticed, a lot of this MV is behind-the-scenes footage — i.e; not lore-relevant. I'll be skipping past everything that's clearly not in-universe, aside from shots which show us any interesting cut content. There's also a few shots that I'm unsure how to categorize, so I'll go over them too just to be on the safe side.

We first see shots of all the girls from their singing scenes, then choreography scenes — both ones we see in Love & Live, as well as ones that ended up not being included.

There's one of them in their blue uniforms, performing in what seems to be the same field that Vivi ends up running through near the end of Love & Live. (It could also be on the track, since all we can see is trees in the background, but I'm pretty sure it's the field.)

There's also one of them in their track uniforms performing in the middle of the track field.

This shot is more behind-the-scenes footage, but it's interesting as it shows Heejin on top of the same structure that Hyunjin is seen sitting on throughout Love & Live. Hyunjin is the only one seen sitting on it throughout that entire MV, so it's interesting that we see Heejin on it here instead. Couldn't tell you if that has any lore significance, especially since it was technically "cut," but I wanted to mention it anyway.

This is the first shot that's clearly in-universe and not behind-the-scenes footage. We see the girls sitting together outside in their red uniforms. Haseul, Hyunjin, and Heejin are seemingly asleep, resting their heads on each other, while Vivi sits as the sole one awake. Heejin has her arm resting on Hyunjin, and Hyunjin has her arm on Haseul's lap. Haseul, however, keeps her hands on her own lap, only touching Vivi with her head.

Vivi is wearing her battery backpack and sits perfectly still and poised, looking right at the viewer. She then turns over to look at the sleeping girls beside her, with her usual blank expression.

It's hard to determine what Vivi is feeling here, if anything. Fondness for her friends? Jealousy that she isn't human like them? It's unclear.

If nothing else, I think it gets across that the other girls do care about Vivi, even if they often end up excluding her. They're all clearly very close.

We get more behind-the-scenes footage (including an outtake where Vivi fails the basketball shot lol), and then we get this shot of Haseul:

We've actually seen this one before! Or at least, one very similar. It wasn't in the normal Love & Live MV, but it WAS briefly included in the vertical version:

It's clearly the same scene, but the expressions are different. While this one from the vertical version of Love & Live shows Haseul smiling with what I interpreted as a slightly confused but proud expression, the one here in You and Me Together instead shows Haseul squinting and frowning.

As I said in the previous part, because this shot comes right after Vivi starts running off the track, we can assume that this is Haseul's reaction to her doing that. The difference in expression then is quite interesting. While the vertical version makes her look confused but proud of Vivi, here she looks much more concerned.

My assumption is that she's still reacting to Vivi running off the track, and they filmed a few different takes with Haseul reacting differently to choose from during the editing process. Thus, I think the "canon" version of this scene is the one where Haseul is smiling, and the other is just an alternate take they included here for the hell of it.

This is of course just an assumption though. It's interesting how her reaction changes the context of the scene. This frowning one to me feels much more like she has no idea what's going on with Vivi, while the smiling one fits better with the interpretation that she and the rest of 1/3 know that Vivi is an android. We still don't know whether that's the case, though.

Next, we see the girls sitting on benches at the basketball court where they filmed some of the choreography scenes. There's three attached seats per bench, and Heejin, Hyunjin, and Haseul sit together on one talking and laughing with each other.

Vivi sits separate from them, alone on the other bench with her battery backpack sitting next to her. As usual, she sits perfectly upright and still, staring forward blankly as if she isn't even aware of the others' presence.

The others get up and walk offscreen, still talking with each other, leaving Vivi by herself. She doesn't move or acknowledge this in any way, just continuing to stare blankly.

We see a bunch more behind-the-scenes footage, and then we come to a sequence that's a bit hard to interpret.

First, we see a new shot from the scene of Vivi alone in the empty classroom from Love & Live. Here, she walks away from the window, then turns around and walks back to face it. Her movements are sort of awkward — it looks to me like someone offscreen is directing her where to stand. Thus, I'm pretty sure that this is just another behind-the-scenes shot.

We then see the same shot of Heejin peering through the door at her that we saw in Love & Live, and then it cuts to the shot of Vivi's neck where she plugs herself in.

However unlike the final shot we saw in Love & Live, here she seemingly has trouble locating the cord, fumbling around trying to find it behind her. Again, I would assume that this is just an outtake and non-canon. But it's the shot right after that makes me question this entire sequence.

We cut back to Heejin at the door, where she seemingly sees Vivi having trouble plugging herself in and smiles/laughs to herself in amusement.

My question is: is this Heejin the idol or Heejin the character here? I would assume that these are all just outtakes, but these shots were assumedly filmed separately and then edited together here to make a sort of continuous narrative. (That being, Vivi failing to plug herself in and Heejin laughing at her.) Which makes me doubt this assertion ever so slightly...

The thing that makes me conclude they are just outtakes, though, is the fact that these shots cannot coexist with the order of events we see in Love & Live.

Here's a gif of the sequence as shown in Love & Live so you can see what I mean:

We see Vivi successfully plug herself in, and only afterwards does Heejin pass by the door. When she looks inside the classroom, Vivi is already "sleeping." Thus, my conclusion is that the shots seen here in You and Me Together are simply outtakes that they stitched together to make an amusing moment for this MV, separate from the actual story.

That, or originally Heejin was meant to see her earlier and they changed it for the final MV. Either way, canonically, Heejin only sees Vivi once she's already "asleep" at the desk.

We get a little more choreo, and then we get to another in-universe scene. This one I think is especially important.

We see Vivi (seemingly) sleeping in the hall, with her battery backpack sitting next to her. This is the same hallway we see in a few shots from Love & Live, which I'll talk about in a moment.

Hyunjin enters through the door and spots Vivi, running up to her rather hurriedly.

Hyunjin plugs in the backpack's cord, and then promptly leaves without a word.

As she leaves, Vivi opens her eyes and seemingly watches her leave.

Aside from just being sweet, this scene raises some very interesting questions. Does Hyunjin know that Vivi is an android? It seems like it from her plugging in Vivi's backpack, but I'm not sure the answer is as straightforward as it seems.

Note that Hyunjin plugs in the backpack, not Vivi herself. As we saw in Love & Live, the backpack plugs into the wall to charge, and then Vivi plugs into the backpack to charge from it. We know the cord plugs into the back of her neck, so considering her position here in relation to the backpack, she isn't charging from it at the moment.

Thus, technically all Hyunjin sees here is Vivi next to her backpack with a cord, and simply plugs in the backpack. It doesn't necessarily mean that Hyunjin knows the backpack's purpose.

This doesn't disprove the idea that Hyunjin knows Vivi is an android, but I don't think it proves it either. In my opinion, I think it's still up to interpretation whether or not the other girls in 1/3 know.

Regardless of the answer, it once again shows that the rest of 1/3 — or at least Hyunjin, anyways — do care about Vivi.

There's more to discuss about this scene though, and that's its relation to the shots of Vivi in this hallway that we see in Love & Live. Let's revisit those real quick.

We sit Vivi's backpack sitting by itself in that same spot. Vivi walks up and looks at it, before bending down and unplugging it from the outlet on the wall.

The backpack's screen flashes "DISCONNECTED" and then starts a countdown of 5 minutes, which we get flashes of in between other shots.

After a bunch of other shots, we see Vivi run out of the hallway, presumably on her way to the track field for the final sequence where she runs off the track. She leaves the backpack behind in the hall.

(Also just as a reminder, I concluded that the end of the backpack's 5 minute countdown doesn't literally happen at the same time that Vivi becomes human at the end of the MV, but rather is shown alongside her running to symbolically represent the fact that she no longer needs a battery.)

So, the order of events is:

The question is, when does this scene with Hyunjin take place?

Well, it should be pretty easy to figure out if we take into consideration the status of the backpack. In the scene with Hyunjin, the backpack is not plugged in, since she has to plug it back in herself. In this scene, when Vivi bends down, the backpack is plugged in, and then she unplugs it.

Clearly, the part where Vivi sees the backpack has to happen before Hyunjin arrives, since she's sitting next to it when Hyunjin sees her. And the backpack has to be unplugged when Vivi leaves, since we see it counting down.

Taking everything into consideration, this is the only order of events that I think makes sense:

Obviously we're assuming there was time between these shots, but I don't think that's too much of a stretch since we see them in between other shots anyways. However, if you want a cleaner explanation, it's always possible that the scene with Hyunjin could've taken place at a totally different time, just in the same location. I don't think it changes too much.

Regardless of the exact timeline of events, this shot raises an interesting question: why was Vivi's backpack unplugged here?

Vivi sits with her battery backpack against the wall, right beside a power outlet. But for some reason, it isn't plugged in when Hyunjin arrives, and she has to plug it back in.

Now, this could just be something totally innocuous. Perhaps the plug fell out of the socket on accident. This wouldn't even necessarily be a problem since, as established in the previous part, Vivi's battery and the backpack's battery are separate. But there's reason to believe otherwise.

For one, Vivi doesn't seem to have actually been asleep, considering how she opens her eyes right as Hyunjin leaves. (It's unclear if she actually falls asleep while she's charging, or if that's just what it looks like.) If she was awake, why didn't she plug in the backpack herself? Did she not notice?

Hyunjin also rushes over fairly quickly when she notices Vivi, like there's a sense of urgency. (Again, it's unclear if she actually knows about the backpack's purpose, but still.) And we already see Vivi unplug the backpack herself before she leaves the hallway.

With all that being said... is it possible that Vivi knowingly unplugged the backpack herself? Or to be more specific: Did Vivi unplug her backpack battery in order to let it (and by extension, herself) run out of battery?

This isn't necessarily the case, but I definitely think it's a possibility, and one I want to explore here. Vivi just sitting next to the unplugged backpack, without being plugged into it herself, really is quite odd. Especially since she's right next to an outlet. She can easily charge it, and yet she seemingly doesn't. Just sits there.

If this is the case, I'm sure you could come up with multiple explanations as to the why. (Maybe she thought it would turn her human somehow?) But the one that comes to my mind, that I can't help but think, is that it was in a way a kind of suicide attempt.

We don't know what happens to Vivi when she runs completely out of battery. Assumedly, she'd just be unresponsive until she was charged again. So it wouldn't really be her "dying." But still, it's Vivi letting herself go into that state, and it's not exactly guaranteed that someone would find her and know to plug her in. Vivi clearly isn't visibly an android, and it's unclear if anyone knows she is one. If they saw her lying there, completely unresponsive, would they know to find the little socket on the back of her neck and plug the battery into it?

We see all throughout Love & Live that Vivi is clearly unsatisfied with her life as it is. She isn't like the other girls. She can't do the things that they can, and the things she can do are seen as strange. This ultimately culminates in her running off the track and "becoming human" at the end of the MV. But was that the first thing she decided to do about it?

Again, this isn't necessarily what happens here. But I can absolutely see Vivi, tired of existing the way she has been, just... giving up. It's not that it has to have been a planned, deliberate act either. There is such a thing as being passively suicidal, after all. It could've been that the cord did slip out accidentally, and she just... didn't plug it back in.

This adds far more weight to Hyunjin plugging the backpack back in, as knowingly or not, she'd be saving Vivi from this fate. It's an act of kindness that reminds Vivi that the other girls do care about her, and, under this interpretation, may have literally saved her life.

You might think that something that dark would be far too out of place in an MV like this, but I don't think that's necessarily true. Although we haven't gotten to it yet, there are plenty of LOONA music videos that feature dark subject matter contrasted with more lighthearted music and aesthetics. So I don't think the song and MV generally being very happy and bright inherently goes against this interpretation.

Still, it is just an interpretation. I'm not saying that this is for sure what happens here, nor will it be taken as fact for the rest of this analysis. But I wanted to bring it up, as I think it's a valid reading of the text.

Getting back to the MV proper, right afterwards we get this scene, which is the same setting and framing as the post-credits scene of Love & Live, just with the girls facing left instead of right. They're still in debut order though.

Here though, their practice is interrupted by a guy pushing a large cart getting in their way. Vivi stiffly moves out of the way, with Haseul guiding her, while the others awkwardly look on. After he's gone, they move back into place, with Haseul again guiding Vivi back to her spot.

At first this might appear like an outtake, but I highly doubt it is. The girls still seem to be in-character — specifically Vivi, with her awkward, robotic movements. And I'm not really sure why this guy would be here if they were actually trying to film for real.

I think this is a "fake" outtake that was intentionally filmed. Y'know, like when some animated movies would have blooper reels, that clearly aren't actually bloopers because the characters are animated.

After that, it's just more behind-the-scenes and choreo footage. The lyrics don't have much to speculate on — though I do want to point out that the lyric "When the warmth spreads in my heart" is sung right when Hyunjin plugs in the backpack and Vivi looks at her. Cute!

Overall, this MV doesn't have that much lore in it, but it still includes some important scenes. There is of course the question as to whether scenes included in this MV are "canon," since they're technically cut footage from Love & Live. But I don't think that necessarily means they aren't canon, especially since they were still chosen to be shown to the audience. For my purposes I'll be considering them as canon, since there's not really any point in ignoring them, but do keep this in mind.

Speaking of cut footage — there's actually another scene that wasn't included in Love & Live OR You and Me Together, which I want to briefly mention here. The only reason we know it exists is because there's a brief glimpse of it in an episode of LOONA TV.

We see 1/3 seated at a table together, in an arrangement that should be very familiar at this point: Haseul, Hyunjin, and Heejin sat together, with Vivi sitting separate from them off to the side. They're wearing their red uniforms, and Vivi has her backpack on.

The girls each have a cup of fruit in front of them, except for Vivi who has nothing. Haseul has red grapes, Hyunjin has cantaloupe, and Heejin has watermelon. In the shot itself that we see on the camera screen, it seems like the other girls are side-eyeing Vivi, but it's so low quality that it's hard to tell.

This scene only really gives us information we already have — that being that Vivi doesn't need to eat, and that there's a sense of distance between her and the other girls in 1/3. I imagine this is probably why they cut it, since the scene of the girls drinking lemon tea already convey the same thing.

There's actually quite an interesting parallel between this shot and one we'll see in the future. But I'll talk about that when we get there. For now, let's move on.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this section, with the release of LOONA 1/3's first EP, this is the first instance of there being songs without music videos. I'll go over each one, even if there isn't anything lore-relevant.

Track 1: Into the New Heart

This is simply the intro track for the EP. It doesn't feature any lyrics, aside from snippets of the beginning of Love & Live, where Hyunjin sings "With all my heart / I miss you / Now."

It's described in the album description as "a heavy-metal track which may be remembered as the most unique intro in girl group history." Aside from being a kick-ass intro though, there really isn't anything to say about this one.

Track 2: Love & Live

See Part 9!

Track 3: You and Me Together

We've already talked about this one, of course. Next!

Track 4: Fairy Tale

This one is described in the album description as "gently [flowing] to the ear with a melody that's like a bedtime fairytale from childhood."

There isn't really much to dig into with the lyrics of this one, but I do find them somewhat interesting: (via ColorCodedLyrics)

Besides the general ideas of the sky, the stars, and dreams appearing a lot in the Loonaverse, I don't really have much to say about them though.

Track 5: Valentine Girl

We've already talked about this one, of course. Next!

We briefly talked about this one in the previous part! As I stated there: the song's Korean title is "3월을 기다려" which translates to "Waiting for March." Within the context of the song, it's a reference to White Day, a holiday celebrated in many East Asian countries on March 14th, one month after Valentine's Day. Traditionally, girls give boys gifts on Valentine's Day, and then the boys reciprocate by giving gifts to the girls on White Day. It was also used to tease that LOONA 1/3 would debut in March.

As the album description describes further: "It is a happy-tempo track telling the story of gifting chocolate to a boy on Valentine's Day, then hoping to hear confessions of love from that boy on March's White Day."

The lyrics don't really have anything of note, but I do want to mention the little conversation between the girls at the end. Haseul asks Heejin if she "gave him the chocolate," and Heejin replies "Of course." Hyunjin teases her saying, "oh, then you have a boyfriend now?" and Vivi says "Whoa! I can't believe it" before they all laugh.

Who knows if this conversation is meant to be canon to the Loonaverse, but it certainly would fit in with 1/3's vibe as "normal girls." Though Vivi sounds quite expressive here, so if it is canon, it'd likely be after she "became human" at the end of Love & Live. That plus there being no indication of Heejin pursuing a boy in any of the music videos makes me think that this is probably meant to just be part of the song and not related to the Loonaverse. But it certainly could be, so I wanted to at least mention it.

Just like the solo releases, this EP also came with a photobook, but as far as I could tell there isn't anything lore-relevant contained within it. I do like this photo of them all holding hands, though.

That's about all I have to say for this EP. We've gotten a little more info about LOONA 1/3 — particularly Vivi, though she remains as mysterious as ever. Especially since we haven't gotten a solo from her yet...

That will change in the next part though! I'll see you next time for Part 11, where we'll finally cover Vivi's solo MV!