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Music / LOONA

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ot12.png
The LOONA logo as of Feb 2018. Explained under "Fun with Acronyms".
LOONA was a 12-member K-Pop Girl Group project formerly managed by Blockberry Creative, a subdivision of Polaris Entertainment. On August 20, 2018, the group officially debuted with their lead single "Hi High"; prior to this each member had a month to herself in order to release a solo single and music video.

There were also three pre-debut subunits, LOONA 1/3 (with a pure image to draw in Korean audiences), LOONA/ODD EYE CIRCLE (darker, edgier and designed to appeal to Western listeners), and LOONA/yyxy (whose concept revolves around one's youth and ego). The full group's title tracks ("Butterfly," "So What," "Why Not," "Paint the Town," and more to come) generally revolve around a common theme of self-empowerment and the rise to an individual's full potential, particularly for young women — usually while making references to the lore.

The group is best known for its continuous storyline and worldbuilding; everything released under LOONA's name adds up to create a fantastical story occurring in the LOONAVERSE, a fictional universe in which the members reside. The main plot rotated around their struggle to find each other upon being scattered to different parts of this universe, but all members and subunits have their own mythology; for example, ViVi's storyline revolves around feeling isolated as an android amongst humans and Chuu's around her desire to be closer to Yves.

Other group ventures included an approximately 1 minute long and regularly uploaded show, LOONA TV, in which the cycle of photoshoots, travel, MV shooting and fan meets were cataloged. Most of the members also stared in a college romance webseries called ''First Love Story''.

In September of 2021, it was revealed that Blockberry Creative was in severe financial straits, owing almost $800,000 USD in unpaid wages, as well as employee taxes, insurance, and other owed expenses, leaving the group's future in uncertainty (although they have continued to release music after the news was announced).

On November 25, 2022, following months of rumored tension between Chuu and Blockberrynote , an announcement was made by Blockberry saying that Chuu had been kicked out of the group and her contract terminated effective immediately due to her "use of abusive language towards staff" and "power tripping behaviors", to which fans and the general population reacted with disbelief, and almost immediately people (including Hyunjin) began speaking up on Chuu's behalf and denying the claims.

Just days after Chuu's dismissal, it was reported that all but two of the remaining membersnote  had filed suit against Blockberry to withdraw from the group and have their contracts terminated. Despite Blockberry Creative denying that the members filed these lawsuits, the veracity of these reports was confirmed in January 2023, when the court ruled in favor of four membersnote  but against the rest, reducing the group to seven members.

The four members who won the initial injunction have signed with Modhaus Entertainment, the head of which being their former creative director Jaden Jeong (known by the fandom as the man who created the storyline and concept of the "LOONAverse"), and are launching a new project called the "ARTMS Strategy," in which Jaden hopes to reunite the rest of LOONA. The first release of this project was a new mini-album from Odd Eye Circle, the unit's first comeback since 2017, followed by the announcement of a new solo release from Heejin.

In addition, Chuu is now under a newly established label called "ATRP" as a soloist, and later confirmed to be releasing new music later that year. In May 2023, it was announced Hyunjin and ViVi won their injunctions and have left Blockberry. A month shortly thereafter, the two were revealed to have signed with another newly established label named "CTDE&M".

On June 16th, The Seoul High Court’s 5th Civil Cases Division ruled in favor of the five remaining members, viewing there to be a problem with Blockberry’s transferring of exclusive contracts to Japanese agency Universal Japan without the written consent of the members. Haseul, the group's leader, joined Modhaus, while Yeojin, Go Won, and Olivia (retiring her stage name to go by her birth name, Hyeju), joined CTDENM. The five formed the unit LOOSSEMBLE and later announced a mini-album release alongside a debut tour in the US.

Finally, Yves made the decision to go solo while still looking for an agency to sign with, currently focusing on her personal blog and producing her own music. On March 13th 2024, it was officially announced that Yves had signed with Paix Per Mil.

The group's future is currently unknown and it is unclear if the [0] EP, which was intended to be the group's comeback with 11 members in early 2023 prior to a boycott in response to all that had occurred up to that point, will see release.

ODD EYE CIRCLE, ARTMS, and LOOSSEMBLE now have their own page.

Each member had a signature colour and animal, at least one of which will appear in their solo music video. The last unit along with Choerry have fruits, which activate their passage into other dimensions when eaten. For reference:

  • HeeJin is hot pink with a rabbit.
  • HyunJin is yellow with a cat.
  • HaSeul is green with a bird.
  • YeoJin is orange with a frog.
  • ViVi is pale pink with a deer.
  • Kim Lip is red with an owl.
  • JinSoul is blue with a blue betta fish.
  • Choerry is purple with a fruit bat and cherry.
  • Yves is burgundy with a swan and apple.
  • Chuu is peach with a penguin and strawberry.
  • Go Won is Eden green with a butterfly and pineapple.
  • Olivia Hye is silver with a wolf and blood plum.

Not to be confused with this Loona.

    open/close all folders 

     Members (in order of solos) 

LOONA 1/3 note 

  • HeeJin
    • Name: Jeon Heejin
    • Birthday: October 19, 2000
    • Solo: “ViVid” - October 4, 2016
  • HyunJin
    • Name: Kim Hyunjin
    • Birthday: November 15, 2000
    • Solo: “Around You” - November 16, 2016
  • HaSeul
    • Name: Jo Haseul
    • Birthday: August 18, 1997
    • Solo: “Let Me In” - December 14, 2016
  • YeoJin
    • Name: Im Yeojin
    • Birthday: November 11, 2002
    • Solo: “Kiss Later” - January 15, 2017
  • ViVi

LOONA/ODD EYE CIRCLE note 

LOONA/yyxy note 

  • Yves
    • Name: Ha Sooyoung
    • Birthday: May 24, 1997
    • Solo: “new” - November 27, 2017
  • Chuunote 
  • Go Won
    • Name: Park Chaewon
    • Birthday: November 19, 2000
    • Solo: “One and Only” - January 29, 2018
  • Olivia Hye
    • Name: Son Hyejoo
    • Birthday: November 13, 2001
    • Solo: “Egoist” (feat. JinSoul) - March 29, 2018

     Discography 

Within the group:

Member Debut Singles

  • HeeJin (2016)
  • HyunJin (2016)
  • HaSeul (2016)
  • YeoJin (2017)
  • ViVi (2017)
  • Kim Lip (2017)
  • JinSoul (2017)
  • Choerry (2017)
  • Yves (2017)
  • Chuu (2017)
  • Go Won (2018)
  • Olivia Hye (2018)

LOONA 1/3 (HeeJin, HyunJin, HaSeul, ViVi)

  • Love&Live (2017)
  • Love&Evil (2017) (Love&Live reissue)

ODD EYE CIRCLE (Kim Lip, JinSoul, Choerry)

  • Mix&Match (2017)
  • Max&Match (2017) (Mix&Match reissue)

yyxy (Yves, Chuu, Go Won, Olivia Hye)

  • beauty&thebeat (2018)

LOONA

  • [+ +] (2018)note 
  • [X X] (2019)note  ([+ +] reissue)
  • [#] (February 2020)note 
  • [12:00] (October 2020)note 
  • [&] (June 2021)note 
  • Fl!p That (June 2022)
  • [0] (TBA)note 

Japanese releases

  • PTT (Paint The Town) Japanese ver. (June 2021)note 
  • HULA HOOP / Starseed ~Kakusei~ (September 2021) (Japanese debut single)
  • LUMINOUS (September 2022)

TV Programs

  • "POSE" for Queendom 2 (May 2022) note 

Outside the group:

Multiple members

  • "Not Friends" (sung by Heejin, Kim Lip, JinSoul, and Yves), a single made in collaboration with producer Ryan Jhun (Released September 2021)
  • "Masquerade" sung by HeeJin and JinSoul for the OST of Tracer (released January 2022)

JinSoul

Chuu

ARTMS

  • Odd Eye Circle - Version Up (Released July 2023)
  • Heejin - K (Set to release October 2023)

LOOSSEMBLE

  • LOOSSEMBLE (Debut mini album) (Released September 2023)

LOONA provides examples of the following tropes:

    General Tropes 
  • A Day in the Limelight: More than a day - each girl has her own month! Hence their Korean name, which literally translates to ‘Girl of the Month’.
  • Badass Adorable: Chuu. Cute as a button and a tae kwon do black belt. In general, she's Stronger Than She Looks, as demonstrated at the 2020 Idol Star Athletics Championship where her surprising strength was described as "unexpected power from a very small figure."
  • Big Eater: Most of the members could qualify as this since they all love food, and a lot of behind the scenes content features them either eating or talking about food.
    • Kim Lip: She's usually mentioning how hungry she is in LOONA TV episodes and said herself when she goes out to eat, she cleans her plate. A couple times over in fact.
    • HyunJin also qualifies: her first episodes in LOONA TV basically focus on her constantly eating or talking about food. Not to mention her obsession with bread, and more recently iced coffee.
    • Chuu: She spent a good amount of time in her vlog trip to Japan with fellow member HeeJin eating sweets, and YeoJin confessed that she had cleaned out a whole box of leftover chicken.
    • Olivia Hye: When the members went to Everland together, she had only one thing on her mind. Churros. She even used money the staff lent her and forgot to retrieve back to buy seconds.
  • Big Little Sister:
    • HyunJin is the 1/3 sub-unit's maknae (youngest member) but also the tallest.
    • Olivia Hye is the maknae of yyxy and LOONA's second youngest; she towers over the other members, being the second tallest as well.
  • Brief Accent Imitation:
  • Cast Herd: The 12 member group is divided into 3 subunits: LOONA 1/3, LOONA/ODD EYE CIRCLE, and LOONA/yyxy (Short for "Youth Youth by Young").
  • Celebrity Resemblance: HyunJin is endlessly compared to many of K-Pop's top beauties, such as Tzuyu and Seolhyun of AOA. YeoJin even wrote on a Weekly Idol questionnaire that her first impression of HyunJin was that she resembles a lot of celebrities.
  • Cheshire Cat Grin: Choerry in the "Reveal" teaser.
  • Cloudcuckoolander:
    • All of them have their moments, but HyunJin and Chuu take the cake.
    • JinSoul has her moments, as handily shown here.
  • Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: HeeJin to HyunJin, respectively.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Every girl has a signature color (see in list above).
  • Creator Thumbprint: As a group, incredibly complex dance routines that make clever use of room space and involve lots of deft formation changes. Even more so for the "Creator" part in the "#" era, because its main single's gruelling choreography incorporated ideas from some of the members themselves (namely HeeJin, Choerrynote , Yves, and Olivia Hye).
  • Dancing Is Serious Business: Is it ever!
    • Separate videos have been released for certain songs to focus on the choreography.
    • The Butterfly MV is especially notable not only for featuring LOONA dancing when the video focuses on them, but the choreography itself is among the most intricate and dynamic routines LOONA has performed. The music video also highlights several instance of intense choreography from dancers outside the group.
    • Three different dance covers have been released, which is unusual in that they're of male or co-ed dance groups (infamous for being much harder and more energetic than the choreography for girl groups). The members of LOONA, while they were trainees, also trained with many boy group choreographers, and were warned by the company that they'd be doing that style of dance rather than the cute, bouncy girl group style.
  • Debut Queue: How the pre-debut phase of the group is panned out. For the first 8 members, a solo video featuring one member would be released during their month, adding that member to the group roster. From Yves onwards, the remaining four members continue to have their solo debut on a monthly basis, just not necessarily in their particular month.
  • Dissonant Laughter: Dear God, HyunJin. She apparently laughed at parts of Joker that no one else in the cinema laughed at, and when LOONA finally got their first music show win in March 2020 (a very emotional moment, naturally), she went viral for doing this again as the other members were crying.
  • Fan Community Nickname: The fan community’s official name, "Orbit."
  • The Fashionista: YeoJin has the best fashion sense in the group, often gaining attention for her chic airport fashion.
  • Friend to All Living Things:
    • YeoJin has taken care of a lot of different pets, including a snail, a rabbit, a hamster, a blue betta fish, a turtle, a sea monkey, various types of stag beetles, a porcupine, and a lobster she caught with her dad in a creek, along with various plants and cacti, and even a marimo (living ball of moss)!
    • Choerry and Chuu are rather bizarre cases, each taking home a pet cockroach and slug, respectively.
  • Fun Personified:
    ViVi: They look like twins.
    Chuu: [holding a disco ball] Open your mouth!
    Choerry: [opening mouth, pretending to eat disco ball] Ahhhhhh—
    [Choerry and Chuu noises]
    "(New promising duet! Positive girls line!)"
    • According to the girls, Yves is this. While most of them thought she looked cold when they first met her, now they say she's the group's resident gag-man.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Oh, this is a cool one. An animated sequence for this appears in the opening for everything released under LOONA's name.
    • Take the group's Korean name, 이달의 소녀
    • Take the first sound in every syllable: ㅇㄷㅇㄴㅅ
    • Rearrange them like this: ㄴㅇㅇㄷㅅ
    • Flip the ㄷ sideways and substitute with either a Greek Pi or Roman N: ㄴㅇㅇΠㅅ or ㄴㅇㅇNㅅ
    • Replace the ㅅ with a Greek Delta or Roman A: ㄴㅇㅇΠA or ㄴㅇㅇΠΔ
    • And you're left with LOONA/LOOΠΔ!
  • Homage: HyunJin, Choerry, and Olivia Hye did a special photoshoot for K-Wave magazine in April 2020◊, the theme being "Three Sisters" as an explicit reference to Little Women (2019). (The three's resemblance to each other is also played up in the LOONA lore, in an invocation of invokedSeparated-at-Birth Casting.)
    K-Wave: HyunJin, Choerry, and Olivia Hye, who are famous for being like sisters, show various poses as if they are showing the joy and sadness of real sisters[...]. They appear to resemble each other but show completely different personalities.
  • I Have Many Names: ViVi has 4: ViVinote , Wong Kaheinote , Viian Wongnote , Hwang Aranote .
  • Ironic Name: Choerry's stage name is pretty ironic, as she actually hates the taste of cherries.
  • The Leader: Kim Lip for ODD EYE CIRCLE, Yves for yyxy, and HaSeul for both LOONA 1/3 and the group in its entirety.
  • Lighter and Softer: yyxy is one of the more serious sub-units; even Chuu's generally buoyant solo features demonic cackling near the tune's ending. But this sub-unit's girls occasionally perform out of character and something as heart-meltingly adorable as their Cover Version of 1/3's "You and Me Together" happens.
  • Light Feminine Dark Feminine: Played for Laughs in this special performance of "So What". Each member alternates between the light feminine and dark feminine, and their light feminine versions are decidedly unsuited to and/or more comical than the song.
  • Little Miss Snarker: YeoJin can sometimes come across as this in LOONA TV, being the youngest member with a very sarcastic yet playful sense of humor.
  • Loners Are Freaks: HyunJin provides a positive example. Chuu, Yves, and JinSoul have agreed that she's both very reticent and amusingly eccentric. According to JinSoul, HyunJin meows like a cat when things get awkward.
    Yves: HyunJin doesn't really reveal her inner thoughts that much.
    Chuu: She's just so absurd sometimes that you never know.
  • Manipulative Editing: HyunJin and HeeJin's stint at MixNine caused quite the controversy in their native South Korea, after HyunJin was edited to look like a mean bully towards HeeJin. This angle would certainly baffle anyone who follows LOONA, as HyunJin and HeeJin remain best of friends.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • ViVi's comes from the Latin root "vivere" (to live), which is significant as her storyline revolves around longing for a human life. It relates to Love&Live, the video in which she is introduced, and to "ViVid", the first LOONA single.
    • Yves is an alternate spelling of Eve, and her video as well of the rest of LOONA/yyxy have a motif revolving around "falling from Eden."
      • An "eve" is also the day before something (as in Christmas Eve), explaining why her B-side is called "D-1."
    • "Chuu" is the Korean onomatopoeia that refers to kisses, which ties well both with her role in the LOONAVERSE and her actual personality.
    • "Go Won" refers to the Korean term for "highlands" or "terrae", which is the light side of the moon in English.
    • Given that the caption on Olivia Hye's reveal photo was written in Shakespearean English, it's likely that the name is a reference to the character from Twelfth Night.
    • Choerry sounds similar to her real name - Choi Yerim - said quickly, and links to her signature fruit, the cherry, as well as her solo song “Love Cherry Motion”.
    • While Kim Lip was mainly given a stage name because her real name, Kim Jungeun, sounds too much like the leader of North Korea's, the name "Lip" isn't without meaning - it's derived from the middle 3 letters of the word "ecLIPse", and the word itself brings to mind her image color, red.
  • Out of Focus: YeoJin is the only member not in a sub-unit. note  Justified In-Universe in the description of the music video for "Sonatine", where it explicitly states that she is lost in the forest and not yet found by the other LOONA members.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Chuu, as beautifully demonstrated by her performance at the 2020 ISAC (a sports tournament for K-Pop idols). She's introduced by DaHyun of TWICE as the inventor of the biting heart meme and as the bundle of cuteness that she is, but proceeds to kick ass at softball.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: In terms of vocal ranges, this is what "See Saw" is all about. Chuu's voice overflows with power, and she sings a duet with Go Won, whose voice is incredibly soft. Before there was See Saw though, there was Love Letter by Kim Lip and JinSoul. Kim Lip's voice is not only soft, but leans high, while JinSoul has a very deep, husky voice full of power. This makes Kim Lip the blue to JinSoul's red, funnily enough, since that's the inversion of their assigned colors.
    • As far as personalities go, Yves and Chuu showcase thus dynamic pretty well in, and even out of, the LOONAVERSE - the XIIIX teaser exemplifies their Light Feminine and Dark Feminine contrast pretty well.
  • Rule of Three: ODD EYE CIRCLE's concept revolves around three girls and a trilogy of coordinated videos.
  • The Smart Girl: JinSoul has a reputation among Orbits for being "dumb".... Ironically, she has placed in top rankings for Mathematics for all of South Korea while in school and is currently the only member of LOONA who has successfully attained a university-level education.
  • Stage Name:
    • ViVi for Viian Wong, Kim Lip for Kim Jungeun, Choerry for Choi Yerim, Yves for Ha Sooyoung, Chuu for Kim Jiwoo, Go Won for Park Chaewon, Olivia Hye for Son Hyejoo.
    • Interestingly, Viian Wong is yet another stage name for ViVi. It’s her stage name for modelling, but her real name is Wong Kahei.
  • Team Mom:
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Give HyunJin bread and she may love you forever.
  • Vocal Dissonance: HeeJin's voice is surprisingly deep, which may come as a surprise since she tends to sing in a higher tone. Olivia Hye, on the other hand, has a fairly light speaking voice, but can reach pretty low notes.
  • Younger Than They Look:
    • Olivia often remarks how young she actually is because people may mistake her for one of the oldest members due to how tall she is, especially if you compare her to YeoJin, the only member that's younger than her and also the shortest. The actress who played the teacher in "love4eva" actually thought Olivia Hye was the oldest member of the sub-unit, to Olivia's dismay.
    • Likewise, a lot of people don't immediately realize Choerry is the third youngest (being only a few months older than 2nd youngest Olivia Hye, who was born in 2001, and only a year older than YeoJin) due to her more mature look◊ compared with members like the eternally babyfaced◊ HyunJin(born a year earlier, in 2000) as well as the fact that she's in the Darker and Edgier sub-unit ODD EYE CIRCLE.

    Music Tropes 
  • Alliterative Name: Subunit albums Love&Live, Mix&Match, Max&Match, and beauty&thebeat.
  • all lowercase letters: Yves's first solo song, "new", as well as all the songs in yyxy's beauty&thebeat album.
    • Averted with the full group's lead single, "favOriTe", despite its lowercase first letter.
  • Be Yourself: The video’s description for "new" states that it's a song where Yves realizes she wants to be herself and accepts herself for who she is.
  • Break Up Song: "Egoist," Olivia Hye's solo, as well as the group song "Day & Night," a hidden track on "#" (2020).
  • Call-Back: The oddly-constructed title of "favOriTe" is a call-back to "ViViD". Like ViViD, favOriTe is the first of its kind.
  • Call-Forward: Listen closely, and you'll hear the signature four-note whistle from "ADD" in "Singing In The Rain".
  • Christmas Songs: "The Carol" and "The Carol 2.0”.
  • Dream Pop: "LOONATIC", "ADD", and "Uncover", for ODD Eye Circle, and "Butterfly" for the full group, all characterized by a mix of electronic vibes and falsettos for an ethereal, otherworldly sound.
  • Epic Instrumental Opener: The "Love & Live" EP's reissue has the thunderous, theatrical "Love & Evil" as its Album Intro Track.
  • Face on the Cover: So far, the covers for each LOONA release have just been a photo of the relevant member or sub-unit.
  • Genre Mashup: Their Cover Version of "Love Battery" by Hong JinYoung on KBS 2's "Immortal Songs" starts off as a Softer and Slower Cover of a trot tune, then kicks off into Broadway-style theatricality, sliding in some EDM/hip-hop.
  • Genre Roulette: From HyunJin's soft ballad to JinSoul's future bass song, to Choerry alternating between TWO genres in one song (her initially cutesy solo has two bass drops).
  • Genre Throwback: While not their domain entirely (yyxy's Yves has a fairly '80s-sounding song for her solo), 1/3 deals the most with this in LOONA. The HyunJin and HeeJin duet "I'll Be There" is a '90s RnB throwback both in terms of the song and the video; the MV for ViVi's solo is steeped in '90s nostalgia as well. Sometimes crosses over to Retraux.
  • Gratuitous English: A frequent occurrence, perhaps the natural result of having English-speaking songwriters or producers on many tracks, as is standard practice in K-Pop. "Satellite" is filled with it: from the opening lines, to the English ad-libs snowballing by the track's end.
    Chuu: Fly! Oh no!
    JinSoul: Oh my God!
    Kim Lip: I like it!
  • Hotter and Sexier: As a group, "열기"/"Heat" from [+ +] is this.
  • Incredibly Long Note:
    • If there's a long note in a LOONA song, Chuu is likely to be the one carrying it. She does so in "Heart Attack", "Hi High", and "Satellite", and an epic one in "Frozen".
    • JinSoul is another go-to for belting, however. Her climactic high note in "So What" stunned many fans, and even more so when she began showing she can nail it with genuinely live vocals.
  • Intercourse with You: Everything about "Heat" screams the trope — the lyrics ("I'll invite you for this one day / Before my mind completely changes tomorrow / Leave the worries / You are carrying here / Leave now tonight"), the unusually breathy singing, the production, the choreography.
  • Ironic Title: "Egoist" is a deliberate one in reference to Olivia. The word "egoist" typically means someone who is self-absorbed and cares only about themselves, and carries a connotation of selfishness and arrogance. The lyrics and video content, however, show a much healthier (if chaotic) take on the idea of self-centered-ness as self love.
  • Lucky Charms Title: Almost all full-group album titles are symbols and/or numbers. Flip That is an exception, but even that is stylized as Fl!p That.
  • Melismatic Vocals:
    Chuu: Dangsini jjangirapnidaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...
    JinSoul: Dangsini jjangirapnidAAAAAAAA...AAAaaaAAAaaa...
  • Miniscule Rocking: "You and Me Together", at least the video provided by the Youtube channel and the live performance in 2017, clocks in at 1:44. Though to be fair, there's an entire extra chorus and several verses not included in those.
  • Mood Whiplash:
    • "Love Cherry Motion" is a light-hearted, energetic song... that is, until the beat suddenly drops after the chorus and the tune becomes darker, paired with whispering and bold visuals.
    • "love4eva" has three awesome official remixes of the dance break. The original dance break is pretty congruent with the rest of the song, but the remixes are total mood whiplashes:
  • New Sound Album:
    • Kim Lip started a Hotter and Sexier theme in LOONA. "Eclipse" and "Singing in the Rain", as well as parts of "Love Cherry Motion", are miles away from the cuter sound of YeoJin and the 1/3 subunit.
    • Their 2020 comeback mini-album, #, was produced by the CEO of SM Entertainment, Lee Soo-man. The trademark radio-friendly SM sound greatly flavors the record.
  • No Guy Wants to Be Chased: Soundly Inverted in the OEC track "Girl Front," which is about the girl asking a guy out first.
  • Ominous Music Box Tune: "Heart Attack" has the music in last bridge right become a tinkling piano-like melody that's overlayed by... demonic cackling? It sure adds a creepy atmosphere to an otherwise cheerful love song.
  • One-Woman Wail: Jinsoul delivers impressively powerful belting on her deeply melancholic B-side, "Love Letter." (Bizarrely, many fans have misattributed this high note to featured co-vocalist Kim Lip, despite it sounding nothing like Kim Lip's signature high-pitched voice.)
  • One-Word Title: "ViVid", "Eclipse", "new", and "Egoist" of their singles. "Twilight", "Rosy", "frozen" are also this, to name a few.
  • Perfectly Cromulent Word: "PTT" features the word "devilous."
  • Puppy Love: Some of the songs (e.g. "Love Cherry Motion" by Choerry, at least until the beat drop, etc.) The 1/3 sub-unit's sparkling little track "You and Me Together" may be the best example of this in the LOONA discography, however, with even the song length capturing the thrills of adolescent infatuation.
  • Rearrange the Song: ViVi's solo "Everyday I Love You" has a rearranged mellow version, "Everyday I Need You." The lyrical content remains entirely the same. The 1/3 song "You and Me Together" also sounds very similar to another 1/3 song, "I'll Be There". The lyrics are similar too, with ample references to an unseen boy and worlds turning pink due to Puppy Love in both tracks.
  • Retraux: The song, styling, and the way the music video for "Everyday I Love You" was shot is in the style of many South Korean songs from the late 90s/early 2000s.
  • Rule of Three: HeeJin, HyunJin and HaSeul performed as a trio for "The Carol", repeated a year later with ViVi, Choerry and Yves.
  • Self-Backing Vocalist:
    • Plenty of the solo tracks have the member doing background ad-libs and harmonies for themselves.
    • In her demo version for a self-penned track called "Blue," JinSoul does backing vocals for herself. Justified, of course, by the fact that it's a demo and there's only one singer doing the guide vocals.
  • Self-Empowerment Anthem:
    • Save for Chuu's solo, all of the yyxy subunit's song relate to self-love, albeit in different contexts.
      • Yves sings about breaking away from a desire to be what others have set for her, in favor of her own self that she will love and trust. Her self-love is defiant, and contrary to common modern themes of acceptance of one's self as they are, Yves strives for a better, new self—hence the title.
      • Go Won's "One&Only" is more declarative about her self-love, straight up saying the only person who can make her happy is herself, and that her true self is her one and only love. Her self-love is reluctant, but ultimately healthy and necessary.
      • Olivia Hye's expression of self-love is born out of pain and spite in "Egoist", demonstrating a tangible irony. Although her attachment to one who rejected her weighed her down, she resolves to cast it away—violently so—so as to love only herself.
    • Their 2020 mini-album "#" is filled with self-empowerment anthems, from the leading single "So What" ("I'm so bad, so what?!") to "Oh (Yes I Am)" (where Olivia Hye raps, "Who dares to thoughtlessly define me?"), along with an explicit reference to "the me within the veil", a Call-Back to Go Won's "One&Only".
  • Sequel Song: "Egoist", which was released after Singing in the Rain, features the latter's soloist JinSoul referencing a lyric from her own song in Olivia's.
  • Silly Love Songs: They have a lot of these in their discographies, among every LOONA subgroup. However, the music videos don't match the lyrics most (though not all) of the time, as in the case of "favOriTe." It's lyrically a love song, but the MV focuses on the girls' dancing abilities as a whole unit.
  • Spoken Word in Music:
    • In "Eclipse": "I feel sparks. It's just me. 'Cause, baby, I just got this feeling," and later, "You're the only one I want."
    • In "Singing in the Rain": "Hey boy. I've been thinking about us. Got me singing in the rain."
    • In "See Saw", the phrases "Which is right, I see or saw you? Which is right, I love or loved you?" spoken by Go Won recur twice in the song.
    • "frozen" features a section of spoken word poetry read by Go Won and backed by Chuu's vocals.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: LOONA have taken a while to work out the kinks in their Vocal Tag Team dynamic. The typical offenders are Kim Lip, Yves, Chuu, and HeeJin; this has been lessening as time goes on, with only HeeJin really remaining in this role and Go Won retaining the opposite.
  • Title-Only Chorus: The chorus of "Singing in the Rain" is just the title sung in various different ways by JinSoul.
  • Two Beings, One Body: Although the precise nature of these are to be confirmed and expanded upon, there are plenty of lyrics in the Loona discography with themes of two (or more) people merging into one person. HaSeul croons that "I am becoming you" in "Let Me In." JinSoul raps that "you are me; now, I'm you" in Olivia Hye's solo "Egoist."note 
  • Triumphant Reprise: Their final promotional stage for "So What" has increased energy, as it takes place the day after LOONA bagged its first music show win, and features an abundance of rose petals raining on the members as the song swells to JinSoul's melismatic high note.
  • Unplugged Version: The discontinued "100% Real Live" has HeeJin, HyunJin and HaSeul performing acoustic versions of their solo songs on piano and guitar.
  • Vocal Tag Team: A given in a group composed of twelve members. This showed up more frequently after pre-debut era.
    • "favOriTe" has the vocal tag team of Yves, HeeJin, JinSoul, and Kim Lip with the other members having bit lines or backing vocals.
    • "Hi High" has better line distribution but still favors the above with the addition of Chuu, Olivia Hye, and Choerry.
    • The final bridge for "So What" builds up to a flurry of belted notes from HeeJin, Chuu, and JinSoul. JinSoul's high note tops it all off — indeed, the official choreography for the song isolates JinSoul from the rest of the group when the part comes, just so she can belt her "YEAAAAAAAAAAAAH".
  • A Wild Rapper Appears!:
    • Both versions of ViVi's song feature a rap from another girl in the group - first HaSeul, then JinSoul.
    • In a version of "Singing in the Rain" HeeJin appears to do the rap part in lieu of JinSoul, recorded as a reward for reaching a view goal.
    • In "Egoist", JinSoul appears rapping after the dance break.

    Music Video Tropes / LOONAVERSE 
  • Action Girl: This is how the girls act in "Not Friends", complete with gun action and physical combat, even between members.
  • After the End: Following the World-Wrecking Wave in "So What," "Why Not" shows Earth in classic post-apocalyptic chaos. Shops have been raided for supplies, cars are stranded and scattered, the streets are empty, and the world is dimly lit.
  • All Just a Dream: Most of what happens in "Everyday I Love You" turn out to be ViVi's dreams from when she'd been dozing off on the job. Later on it's revealed that this isn't all there is to the video, in two ways.
  • Animal Motifs: Their signature animals will almost always feature in their solo MVs - from ViVi's desktop deer mascot in "Everyday I Love You", to HaSeul's subtle bird cosplay, to JinSoul legitimately sitting in a tank and becoming her signature blue betta fish.
  • Arc Symbol: With LOONA's ever-expanding, increasingly complicated lore, the arc symbols are often the details tying the story together.
    • The moon is the first Arc Symbol of the LOONAVERSE - it's in the name
      • Every LOONA official video starts with a full moon waning out into the logo.
      • The ODD EYE CIRCLE subunit takes this even further. The "O" and "D's" represent three overlapping moons as well as spelling out the word "odd". Kim Lip's "Eclipse" speaks for itself. "Love Cherry Motion", the video where all the members join together, features three moons that represent each member. The list goes on...
      • Which turns the name of the group into a cross between a Meaningful Name and a pun.
    • Butterflies were heavily featured during the era of the Butterfly title track:
      • The initial teaser flashed 12 butterflies at one point in the video
      • The lyrics and key choreo points reference butterflies
    • Loops, like things repeating, reversing, going in circles
      • LOONA has mentioned a Möbius strip since the introduction of ODD EYE CIRCLE, with the subunit wearing bands in the shape of a Möbius strip in the Girl Front MV.
      • Inverting the spelling of LOONA’s official website to dlrowehtanool will open a site with an image of the Möbius strip
      • The motion graphics of the LOONA logo for [X X] era videos have the previous album’s title + + rotate in circles like a cassette tape song on loop
      • Many fans have noticed that converting the Greek letters in "LOOΠΔ" (the official stylization) into their modern English alphabet counterparts gives you "LOOPD", as in "looped".
    • Running: these girls run so much throughout their entire discography!
      • Let Me In: HaSeul runs towards the airplane wreckage
      • Kiss Later: YeoJin runs away from her suitor who wants a kiss
      • Love&Live: The four members run track and field. ViVi runs right off the track and far away from the rest of the members in the last part of the song.
      • Singing in the Rain: There’s several moments cutting to JinSoul running for her life with a goldfish baggy in hand.
      • Girl Front: Kim Lip runs in the beginning in the video, and this coupled with the bloopers of LOONATIC imply she might have super speed in the LOONAVERSE canon.
      • Sweet, Crazy, Love: Kim Lip runs away from a sparking wire at the underground train station.
      • One&Only: Go Won gets chased by Yves and Chuu down a corridor twice, and runs with them at the end of the video.
      • love4eva: Yves, Chuu, and Go Won run away from the giant palace they original were schooled at to the forest outside leaving Olivia Hye behind.
      • Hi High: The video mostly consists of the members running if they’re not performing the song’s choreo, mostly likely towards one another to form the group for the first time in canon - Choerry and HyunJin running to high five each other, ViVi running in the same track outfit from Love&Live, Kim Lip running against Choerry and her running through sheets hanging from clotheslines to meet HeeJin, YeoJin and HaSeul running through a field together, JinSoul running from a shadowy parking lot into the light, the entirety of yyxy racing against each other in an empty, abandoned pool, Olivia Hye running and leaping into said empty pool, and finally, the video ends with HeeJin leaping off another building, but up towards the moon.
      • Butterfly: In the beginning a girl runs towards a wall and kicks it before the screen turns black. The end of the music video group shows numerous girls from around the world running, echoing previous MVs of the members running (particularly Hi High).
  • Arc Words:
    • For LOONA/yyxy: "I don't need no Garden of Eden." These were lyrics directly from Go Won's pre-debut single, "One&Only", and they repeat again for the "One" trailer.
    • The Butterfly era makes heavy use of "Fly like a butterfly." throughout the song and promotions.
    • The So What era features lots of burning imagery along with the phrase ‘burn yourself’.
  • Assimilation Academy: The school attended by yyxy seems to be one. "God" takes the form of an absolutely intimidating, cold, stern teacher. The length of each girl's shoe heel is designed to make them all look almost equally tall, rather than any one of them standing out in terms of height. This is all enough for Yves to pull a Screw Destiny and encourage Chuu and Go Won to ditch the place.
  • Bathtub Scene: HeeJin has one in the "ViViD" music video.
  • Boyish Short Hair: HaSeul as a bird in the MV for "Let Me In", and in some of her jacket photos. Returns for the [xx] era, but natural instead of a wig.
  • Call-Back: As LOONA's story started to get fleshed out starting from "Sonatine", later videos and songs make references to scenes in previous videos.
    • "Kiss Later" has the gift box next to YeoJin on the bed ("The Carol").
    • "Girl Front" features the same yellow truck and bird shooting scene from "Let Me In." The Stinger also references the cassette tape from "Everyday I Love You." Its choreography also incorporates dance moves from the ODD EYE CIRCLE members' previous songs. This was confirmed by LG V40 Thinq's Re-Cut of the MV, which utilizes a split-screen for dance moves plucked from OEC solos; including a snippet of the much sought-after choreography video for "Singing In The Rain" by JinSoul, which has not been released to this day.
    • "Sweet Crazy Love": The Stinger of the video is Book Ends with "Eclipse."
    • "new" references the golf club ("ViViD"); the cassette tapes and the roller skating rink ("Everyday I Love You").
    • "Heart Attack" references the gift box, HaSeul wearing the same outfit when she wakes Chuu up ("The Carol"); the penguin plushie that Yves captured in a UFO crane machine and later knocked away with a golf club, Yves' apple ("new").
    • "Egoist" references JinSoul's earbud being pulled out ("Sweet Crazy Love"); the UFO crane machine ("new"), cassette tapes ("Everyday I Love You").
    • "Butterfly" references elements from nearly every single one of the group's previous music videos to get across that girls around the world are all other versions of LOONA.
  • Call-Forward: The very last lyric of "Sonatine" declares that "a new world will be opened to [us]". This is the last video of the 1/3 era and the events of this song directly precede the introduction of Kim Lip, who quite literally comes from another world.
  • The Cameo: Also after "Sonatine", some of the previously-known members of the group begin appearing in videos.
    • "Everyday I Love You": During HaSeul's rap, HeeJin, HyunJin, and YeoJin are dancing behind her.
    • "Love Cherry Motion": HaSeul and YeoJin are seen hanging out with Choerry. After Choerry eats a cherry, Kim Lip is seen holding up a mirror to welcome her and later, both JinSoul and Kim Lip join Choerry's dance sequences during the Mood Whiplash beat drops.
    • "Girl Front": HyunJin appears in a Freeze-Frame Bonus scene near the end of the video (it's so brief that some fans only realized she was even in the video after one episode of LOONA TV showed her shooting said scene).
    • "new": There’s a shot of ViVi during the first chorus after Yves first bites into the apple. She is later seen tying up her roller skates at the bowling alley. Choerry also appears when Yves drops her an apple near the end.
    • "Heart Attack": the music video focuses on Chuu's crush on Yves. HaSeul appears at the end where she finds Chuu unconscious in the snow.
    • "One&Only": In the interlude to the first chorus, Choerry is upside-down in the hallway holding an apple. Yves and Chuu chase Go Won throughout the song and Yves eventually crowns her.
    • "Egoist": At the 1:40 mark, there are flashes of Yves, Chuu, and Go Won. HeeJin appears as the woman in white at the end. And, of course, JinSoul appears during her rap section.
  • Censor Suds: HeeJin has a neck-upwards bathtub scene in "ViViD". The LOONA TV episodes show she's actually wearing a dress.
  • Character Development: Olivia Hye goes from a Friendless Background (as shown in "love4eva") to wrathfully plotting revenge on the other yyxy girls to the "Hi High" era, where she protests to ODD EYE CIRCLE that she's "more egoistic than she's ever been" before relenting and becoming their friend. In "So What," she burns the moon, but it's not an antagonistic act; in fact, it seems to be something she and the other LOONA girls have worked on.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
    • Averted with YeoJin; she appears in "Love Cherry Motion" and got to host a few LOONA TV segments so that viewers following the predebut project wouldn't forget about her.
    • Played with regarding ViVi in the "So What" era. She got a surprising amount of prominence in the teasers and had several lengthy solo shots during the title track's video, but quite bafflingly sings almost nothing.
  • Clip Show: The music video of "LOONATIC" is mostly made up of outtakes, extra footage, and bloopers of previous ODD EYE CIRCLE member videos.
    • The "Special MV" for 1/3's "You and Me Together" is made up of behind-the-scenes footage as well.
  • Corrupt the Cutie: The yyxy sub-unit and their members have songs and music videos that are themed on the loss of innocence (Eden) and the Tempting Apple. Yves is the first to question it, as noted in the description for her music video. Chuu willingly follows her, and they both convince Go Won to join them. As for Olivia Hye, on the other hand…
  • Crapsaccharine World: Eden is literally paradise. It's governed by a "God" (though it's unconfirmed exactly who God is, and if the teacher in "love4eva" is meant to represent God). The facilities are pretty darn impeccable, too: a gorgeous, palatial mansion and of course, an expansive garden filled with blossoming flowers. Yet this God-governed paradise is a miserable, restrictive place with no warmth or cheer whatsoever.
  • Cross-Cast Role: Not many viewers realize it at first watch, but the blond, feathery HaSeul in "Let Me In" is canonically male. This Opposite-Sex Clone is played by the female HaSeul.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • After the first five members were introduced — with innocent, sweet concepts — the final seven' pre-debut videos took a dark turn to focus more on LOONA's story, starting with Kim Lip's "Eclipse", where some elements have created a Mood Whiplash in contrast to the previous videos.
    • Kim Lip, JinSoul, and Choerry's songs all have a darker setting with gritty, electronic beat drops. Zigzagged in "Love Choerry Motion" which is sweet and innocent until the first beat drop, returning to innocent again… until the second beat drop. This – specifically, Choerry's – is a reference to the fact that the OEC resides exactly on the bend in the Möbius strip, whereas the cuter 1/3 and the fallen yyxy each reside opposite from each other.
    • In the yyxy sub-unit, this is played with. Most of their solos, barring Chuu's "Heart Attack," are markedly darker or more mature.note However, invokedaccording to HeeJin, yyxy's concept is "cute" (as opposed to 1/3's, which is specifically lovely and innocent). "love4eva," yyxy's title track as a sub-unit, does showcase this cute concept, especially in stage performances. But it's more of a creepy cute concept than anything.
  • Deliberately Monochrome: Utilized in a handful of videos. A notable example is a scene of HeeJin and HyunJin dancing in kitschy, oversized suits in "Why Not."
  • Early-Bird Cameo:
    • ViVi was first introduced in the “Love&Live” video as part of LOONA 1/3, before her solo song.
    • JinSoul made a rap cameo in “Everyday I Need You” before her official introduction in her solo song.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Viewers who started LOONA with Kim Lip (which would be quite a chunk of them) would notice that the opening animatic of the waning moon always has the said moon in the color of the member who was being displayed. In the 1/3 era however, the opening animatic for all five of them was of a yellow waning moon, with a different color comprising the background around it. And that background color only corresponds to the member in two cases (bright pink for HeeJin and pale pink for ViVi). HyunJin got green, HaSeul got red, and YeoJin got blue.
    • In the first era of LOONA, all past members would feature on new members' singles and accompany them to fansigns. For example, HeeJin and HyunJin both joined HaSeul for "The Carol", and YeoJin's single contained two duets, one with her and HaSeul and one with HeeJin and HyunJin. By the time ViVi was introduced and the first subunit created, LOONA had obviously grown too large to continue with this, and from Kim Lip onward, members' b-sides and fansigns were limited to themselves plus the member immediately preceding them. But ViVi, Choerry, and Yves didn't even get that (aside from brief cameos), instead each getting two solo songs – which is then made up for by The Carol 2.0, with Yves, ViVi, and Choerry, so what exactly is the weirdness depends on when each individual person started following LOONA.
    • Their first release as a group, "Hi High," was performed with a young, cutesy concept they haven't touched since. Even the members admitted that their first impressions of the lyrics were not entirely positive, and while the concept fit certain members who had already had cute concept solo videos, particularly Chuu and Yeo Jin, members like Kim Lip and Jin Soul had never had a cute concept release and have not had one since, making it particularly jarring for newer fans to see them bouncing around in pigtails singing about how "love is even harder than college entrance exams."
  • Emerging from the Shadows: In the music video for "Hi High", the members of Odd Eye Circle emerge from the shadows and surround Olivia in a circle.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: In the context of the story, Yves has caught the attention of ViVi, towards whom she acts as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl as she drags her to go roller skating ("new"); Chuu, whose whole mission in her solo video was to get her attention ("Heart Attack"); Go Won, who Yves hugs and wins over to accompany her to leave Eden ("One&Only"); and Olivia Hye, who is hurt that Yves abandoned her and burns her uniform, a swan plushie, and anything related to her ("Egoist").
  • Eye Motifs: The most obvious meaning of the ODD EYE CIRCLE subunit refers to the glowing halos in the irises of their members that show up in the teaser for the subunit's debut and the videos for "Girl Front" and "Sweet Crazy Love".
    • There also ample emphasis on eyes in general in "Sweet Crazy Love" from an optometrist test to JinSoul wearing an eyepatch on top of the eye halos and close-ups.
  • Fairytale Motifs:
    • YeoJin's video for "Kiss Later" is a modern version of the Frog Prince story.
    • "Fairy Tale" on LOONA 1/3's debut album.
    • Heejin's solo video "ViViD" was stated to have taken inspiration from "Alice in Wonderland". Heejin even interacts with a white rabbit in the video.
    • During Haseul's photoshoot for her solo album, she stated that the concept was based on "The Little Prince".
    • Sans Olivia Hye, all the yyxy member's solo music videos reference one of Hans Christian Anderson's stories. Yves is "The Ugly Duckling", Chuu is "The Little Match Girl", and Go Won is "The Shadow".
    • The 12:00 era's music videos have fairytale motifs. The ending of "Why Not" is an allusion to "Cinderella" (HyunJin leaving one of her shoes after the Midnight Festival), and "Star" is explicitly named as a "Sleeping Beauty"-inspired video. Kim Lip is implied to be Aurora, as she appears with the famous spindle from "Sleeping Beauty."
  • Fallen Angel: The neon sign behind JinSoul in "Egoist" reads "fallen angel", symbolizing that Olivia Hye has something to do with being a fallen angel. "Egoist" also shows her falling from a high level in an abandoned factory warehouse, where she awakens on a mattress with red feathers scattered around her.
  • Fanservice: There's a considerable amount of it across their videos, especially with JinSoul and Kim Lip. The "Butterfly" era pretty much Averts this, however; fitting for a comeback revolving around a Female Empowerment Song, their uniforms for "Butterfly" and subsequent performances of the track are clean, dignified, and comfortable-looking black/white tops and black pants.
  • Foreshadowing: And how! Nearly every music video foreshadows another in some way.
    • The first solo number, "ViVid", does a great job of foreshadowing LOONA's upcoming events in its little details:
      • HeeJin sings about adding colour to a dull life - directly before the other 11 members are revealed, all of whom have distinct colours (Olivia Hye has silvernote , but you get the picture)
      • The scene where her expression appears differently in three mirrors precedes the introduction of three subunits, all with different characteristics.
      • There are 12 pairs of shoes in her wardrobe and 12 members.
      • The golfing scenes in which she golfs lemons are repeated later in "new" and “Heart Attack” and foreshadow the importance of fruit to the last subunit's members.
    • "LOONATIC" contains some scenes from Girl Front with more focus than the split-second versions for that video. Look closely enough at Choerry's map (which in Girl Front visibly contained stickers for 1/3's animals and YeoJin's frog, and you'll see four stickers on the bottom: the frog again, plus an apple, a penguin, and a butterfly – three of the four signature animals of the upcoming members who hadn't been revealed yet.
    • The sentence "To create something new, first you must destroy" is written on one of JinSoul's solo teaser images. The words "You, who was sent by God, destroy all the things without hesitation" appears on Olivia Hye's official teaser post. The idea of destruction as a means of creation is central to "So What," where Olivia Hye burns the moon in the girls' quest for freedom. The result is a World-Wrecking Wave that leaves the world in an apocalyptic state in "Why Not."
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: For LOONA/yyxy, which has four members:
    • Sanguine: Yves, who represents "faith", is the leader of the group and is the one who sways each of the other three girls into following her out of Eden.
    • Choleric: Chuu, who represents "love", is heavily devoted to Yves and does outlandish things to get her attention and stay by her side.
    • Phlegmatic: Go Won, who represents "hope", is a Shrinking Violet who hides from Yves and Chuu at first, but she quietly follows them after Yves chooses her.
    • Melancholic: Olivia Hye, who represents "anger", is prone to being pessimistic and becomes resentful and bitter when Yves abandons her.
  • The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The LOONAverse and its characters seem quite fond of threatening the viewers.
    • "Girl Front" has a scene where all three ODD EYE CIRCLE members are looking at their moon, smiles on their faces... and then they abruptly turn to stare into the camera with looks of displeasure, as if unhappy that someone is watching them.
    • One of the teasers for "So What?" features an audio snippet of a man talking. When reversed, the male voice says: "It is known to attack humans.... I'm sure it will." The clip happens to be addressed "to all LOOΠΔs around the world."
    • In "Why Not," YeoJin asks, "What are you looking at?!" Yves also sees the camera and kicks it so hard that the screen smashes to black.
  • Friendless Background: Olivia Hye is a "lone wolf." Her assigned animal is a wolf, and in "love4eva", her whole team ignores her when they talk and abandon her when they escape the school.
    • The extent that she and Go Won were friends is debatable. Go Won is the only one who turns and looks behind to see Olivia still there, and while she does still run away, Olivia is very clearly watching them and making no move to either escape, ask them to wait, or otherwise express that she wants in.
  • Gratuitous French: The music video "ViViD" opens up with the quote, "Je voudrais nettoyer. Il existe des outils là-bas." ("I would like to clean. There are some tools there.")
  • Held Gaze: Yves and ViVi have one in the "new" music video.
  • Hidden in Plain Sight: It won't become clear until after "One&Only" and "Egoist" that Go Won and Olivia were in "Sweet Crazy Love".
  • Jitter Cam: Used in "favOriTe".
  • Joshikousei: All of the members have different high school uniforms depending on which sub-unit they're in.
    • LOONA 1/3 wears variations of a blazer-style school uniform, with a white blouse, blue skirt, blue vest, and ties.
    • LOONA/ODD EYE CIRCLE wears white blouses, with skirts and bows in their signature color.
    • LOONA/yyxy wears plaid blazers with plaid skirts that resemble Cher's signature yellow plaid ensemble from Clueless.
  • Homage: ODD EYE CIRCLE borrows heavily from comic book superhero tropes. "LOONATIC" best exemplifies this, featuring lots of lettering and illustrations that mimic vintage comics.
  • Leap of Faith: Seen in the music video for "Hi High". Olivia Hye takes a leap of faith by jumping off a high diving board onto an empty pool but ends up on a shipyard with the rest of the Loona members. Heejin does this at the end of the video by jumping off a rooftop. Instead of falling down, she begins to ascend upwards as the video ends.
  • Living Shadow: In "One&Only", Go Won's shadow is seen dancing while she is standing still, as well as crowning itself.
  • Longing Look: Chuu to Yves, all throughout the "Heart Attack" music video.
  • Lyrics/Video Mismatch: "love4eva" is a song about someone crushing on another person from a distance and the jitters they get, but the music video portrays the story of Yves, Chuu and Go Won leaving Olivia alone in Eden under the strict and terrifying watch of their master.
  • The Mirror Shows Your True Self: The teaser for "One" includes the description "four identities, one girl." The video ends with Olivia Hye seeing herself with the rest of the yyxy members in her reflection.
  • Male Gaze: In "Eclipse", there are multiple shots of Kim Lip's hips and chest. The camera also focuses on the girls' lips a lot, with a pointed set of shots in "I'll Be There" of HeeJin's and HyunJin's lips as they sing.
  • Magic Dance: When the clock strikes midnight in "Why Not," all the girls start dancing passionately. This is confirmed to be a ritual by invokedWord of God and derives inspiration from the ancient Korean full-moon dance, Ganggangsullae.
  • Monochrome to Color: A couple of music videos feature this.
    • "ViVid" revolves around this idea of wanting more color to make HeeJin’s dull world interesting, going to the Color Motif - with every member introduced, there's another color introduced too, and the story of LOONA becomes more complex.
    • "Sweet Crazy Love" begins in completely black and white. Then it starts flashing in Kim Lip's signature red and after that, the video is suddenly in bright technicolor corresponding to JinSoul, Kim Lip, and Choerry's colors.
  • Mood Dissonance: "One&Only" is an upbeat song about self-love. In the music video, Go Won is constantly being chased by Yves and Chuu in dark hallways in a creepy manor where her shadows have a life of their own.
  • Mood Whiplash: ODD EYE CIRCLE's Kim Lip marked a Hotter and Sexier change-up, so if you're going on a binge, you're going to be hit in the face with this after leaving Sonatine. Then there's Love Cherry Motion, which revolves completely around this.
  • No Ending: "Butterfly" was heavily built up with no less than six teasers aimed at heightening the lore of the Loonaverse and the next step after Hi High. The music video itself features no expansion to the lore whatsoever. It does, however, go an extra step in representing women across the globe under LOONA's love.
  • Or Was It a Dream?: While "Everyday I Love You" reveals that ViVi had only been dreaming of meeting her crush and showing clear differences between her dreams and reality (such as the photo pin on her bag being absent in "real life"), the cell phone that she leaves behind displays a newly-received text message reading "I'll be back tomorrow."
  • Portal Network: The field Choerry steps into in "Love Cherry Motion" holds an abundance of mirror portals.
  • Power Dyes Your Hair: Go Won cuts the pineapple ring that holds her universe together and her hair immediately changes to blonde.
  • Queer Romance: ViVi/Yves is lightly implied in the music video for "new", but the video for "Heart Attack" drops all pretense, and features Chuu actively pursuing Yves.
  • Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: The girls, most notably HeeJin, HyunJin, HaSeul, Choerry, Yves, and Olivia Hye, are styled with black hair and pale skin in their pre-debut videos. Go Won has black hair and pale skin "One&Only" before turning blonde, but she comes off more of an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette instead because of the haunting nature of the video, and the fact that she's just a little too pretty as a brunette and ends up looking a bit too much like a horror movie doll for comfort.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot:
    • The descriptions of 1/3 in character generally match the real life counterparts (2Jin are best friends, HaSeul is the team mom, and YeoJin is the baby of the bunch). Furthermore, ViVi was made an android to communicate the isolated feeling of being an outsider due to difficulties with another language, as she is from Hong Kong and didn't speak much Korean when shooting her first videos. Said language difficulties were also probably why she and Choerry switched subunits (Choerry was initially going to be part of 1/3, but switched to ODD Eye Circle – whose members were older, but whose faster songs would demand a greater command of the language than ViVi had at the time. This is also why ViVi doesn't do her own raps in her solos). You can also see Chuu coming on much more strongly to Yves than Yves does to Chuu at first, though not in a romantic way, and Go Won and Olivia have gotten pretty close, mirroring Go Won's pleading stare at Olivia in love4eva.
    • HaSeul's real-life absence in 2020 was ostensibly written into the lore, with her character's plane crash in "Let Me In" being a Rewatch Bonus in the "Why Not" music video.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning:
    • Olivia Hye's eyes glow red as she stands in a hallway in "Egoist."
    • In "Why Not," a blink-and-you-miss-it shot reveals that Olivia Hye has seemingly been assembling a little pack of wolves-in-training of her own. The members all have glowing red eyes, like herself.
  • Rewatch Bonus: Their videos are rich with "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" scenes that usually relate to the lore, such as resident hanging fruit bat Choerry casually being introduced upside-down from 0:45 to 0:46 in "Girl Front" and the moon flashing for a millisecond in "Star" before the video's aspect ratio abruptly changes.
  • Robot Girl: Starting from the video description for "Sonatine", ViVi has been described as an android from Hong Kong. Her first appearance, "Love&Live”, also showed her as this, with scenes of her charging and doing things a human normally couldn’t do.
  • Rose-Haired Sweetie: ViVi has pink hair and she is very kind and gentle around the others. She's even in LOONA 1/3, a sub-unit that has a pure, gentle image.
  • Rule of Three: As seen in little details of music videos, for example:
    • There are three buttons on the wall next to the golf balls in "ViViD."
    • Three buttons on the claw machine in "new".
    • Three moons at the end of "Love Cherry Motion," which represent Odd Eye Circle. They later appear as three white orbs of light circling Kim Lip in "Why Not?"
  • Scenery Porn: "Let Me In" opens with a pan of the landscape of Iceland from the view of the Sólheimasandur black beach, and continues to feature wide shots of different locations near the plane crash HaSeul lingers around.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Snow Means Death: At the end of "Heart Attack", Chuu is found unconscious in the snow until HaSeul wakes her up.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: A lot of their songs are Silly Love Songs, but the music videos don't quite match the lyrics or only do so in indirect ways. An example is their debut track "Hi High," the MV for which is about the girls embracing The (Super)Power of Friendship. The song itself speaks of playful Puppy Love.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Chuu spends the entire "Heart Attack" music video watching and taking pictures of Yves from afar while singing a love song. To be fair, Yves doesn't seem to mind that much, and even gives her a smirk when she sees her, hinting that she enjoys being pursued.
  • Surreal Horror: Overlapping with Psychological Horror, LOONA/yyxy's music videos deal with the idea of "leaving Eden", and the videos are so haunting.
    • Go Won's "One&Only" has a lot of imagery of borderline desolation and loneliness, as when Go Won is hiding under a table as two ominous and unidentified pairs of legs go by, and the general feeling of the empty, black-and-white mansion is eerie when combined with the scenes of Go Won dancing, silhouetted, with a large group of people in a garden of dead trees.
    • Olivia Hye's entire music video. We know from love4eva that they lived in a mansion, and Yves, Chuu, and Go Won escaped to a fairly picturesque forest – and Olivia wakes up, sprawled and in a change of clothes, on a stripped mattress in an empty, industrial building, with an unidentifiable shadow moving just too quick to see on the top level. Taking it a step further, Chuu, Yves, and Go Won flash and replace her in her own body in some moments, hinting that they aren't even real, and she's made them up entirely.
    • One. Olivia finally bites that apple, showing that she's ready to leave Eden...and she doesn't change locations, but suddenly everything around her is made of concrete, crumbling and dusty. If that was Eden, what else was she seeing that wasn't there?
  • Surrealism: In abundance. Lampshaded in "Why Not." (Its MV is bizarre, appropriately, as LOONA music videos tend to be.)
    JinSoul: Feels like a dream, doesn't it?
  • Team Mom:HaSeul is described as a mother figure to YeoJin in the music video description for "Sonatine." Played with in real life, as well, since Yeojin was 14 when she debuted, and Haseul understandably wanted to keep her out of trouble and help her out. She even hugs Yeojin and takes her to a quieter, warmer place when she gets overwhelmed and starts crying after a long, long day filming her music video.
  • Tempting Apple: Played with. The apples Yves eats in "new" reference the biblical story of Eve biting into the Forbidden Fruit, only this Yves is aware of the consequences and apparently damns herself from Eden on purpose.
    • Chuu bites an apple in an attempt to make Yves notice her in "Heart Attack."
    • Choerry drops an apple for Go Won in "One&Only."
    • Olivia bites into an apple in “One”.
  • Twinkle in the Eye: ODD EYE CIRCLE in the "Reveal" trailer. The camera pans to each girl's glowing eye in turn.
    • In "Love&Live", ViVi's left eye is shown with galaxy-like sparkles in the iris to reveal her as an android.
  • Uncanny Atmosphere:
    • "One&Only" features Mood Dissonance, nonstandard and changing aspect ratios for the video, and haunting imagery like Go Won's shadow moving on its own and obscured figures in the background moving closer every shot. Even Go Won herself was noted to be excellent for the concept because of her doll-like face and Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette status.
    • "love4eva" is shot partially in bright natural light and partially in scant indoor lighting, giving an unsettling atmosphere to the scenes of Yves, Chuu and Go Won one by one deciding to leave Olivia behind and alone in the mansion. They all successfully sneak out without being seen, but Olivia is spotted the moment she walks in the door: what's scary is how quickly you realize that she has absolutely no chance. Olivia's isolation is shown through quick smash cuts where scenes with all four of them soon only show her, and cuts of the other three escaping the forest and eating rose petals are drowned in a surreal, dreamlike, purple filter.
  • The 'Verse: All the LOONA videos are connected within a universe called the LOONAVERSE that tells a story featuring all 12 members. Since the group has just debuted, how the videos connect and what they mean has yet to be determined.
  • Wall Pin of Love: The frog prince corners YeoJin against a wall in "Kiss Later."
  • Whole Music Video Flashback: "Sweet Crazy Love" is an Immediate Prequel Origin Story of sorts for the ODD EYE CIRCLE subunit. It ends with Kim Lip walking away into the beginning of "Eclipse".
  • Wham Shot
    • "Sweet Crazy Love" turns out to be the prequel to the solo music videos of Odd Eye Circle, as the final shot is actually the opening shot to Kim Lip's "Eclipse".
    • ViVi's video message to her parents in Hong Kong ends with a slow zoom in on Jinsoul standing in the background of an aquarium, in the same outfit she wears in "Sweet Crazy Love", complete with the eye patch over her eye.
    • Two cases involving Olivia in yyxy's videos. First, at the end of "love4eva" when the girls are all dancing for the teacher, after a brief cut to the teacher clapping in approval, it cuts back to now just Olivia standing alone. Then, in the video "one", after taking the bite of the apple, Olivia sees the other girls behind her reflection in the mirror.
    • "Hi High" ends with Heejin leaping and beginning to fly towards the sky.
    • "So What" has two. First is when we see the moon in the sky beginning to burn, resulting in fire balls falling towards Earth. Then after the song ends, Olivia looks down and sees burning white bird feathers being restored, a nod to group leader Haseul who was on hiatus.
    • "Why Not" also has two: Go Won floating high above the Earth in space overlooking a massive hurricane, and Hyunjin all alone in a deserted location, with one of her shoes missing.
    • The "Reveal" teaser for Odd Eye Circle shows that the one who put the cherry on the cake that Choerry eats in "Love Cherry Motion" was in fact Jinsoul.
    • Not everyone was expecting there to be lore in "Not Friends", so imagine viewers' shock when seeing the final shot of Heejin looking up at a gigantic moon which changes colors, a wolf's howl is heard in the distance, and the screen cuts to black with the text "To be continued."
  • World of Symbolism: The depiction of the LOONAVERSE plays with this; whereas typical cases of this trope uses concrete scenes to represent larger, more abstract concepts, the symbolism in LOONA music videos are the opposite, using abstract scenes to represent concrete events. For instance, Yves dropping an apple from her seat atop a steel container into the black space Choerry is in represents her meeting Choerry and handing her an apple in person.
  • World-Wrecking Wave: "So What," where Olivia Hye burns the moon. It's implied that this was a necessary evil, with the other members having worked with her to do it too.

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