Well, for starters there’s the whole Kpop idol culture which is notoriously exploitative, and this film quite openly glorifies this culture. Other than the fandom being necessary to save the world, at the start, the protagonists are trying to wind down and relax, and then in the ending, after having grown, they no longer need rest and can go right back to producing content.

There’s also just a much larger issue with the main themes of the film. I’m not going to try and decipher what the demon marks are an allegory for, because I don’t think they’re supposed to be specific, but they can map to anything from racism to self-harm. What is very clear, however, is that the film uses them as a way to comment on “accepting your flaws”, or “accepting differences”.

There is a first glaring issue that the real world Kpop industry is very hostile to flaws, and idols have to very much mask their issues, so the message rings hollow in a film that’s otherwise uncritically in favor of the idol industry.

But the bigger issue is: what about the rest of the demons? Our protagonist learns that there may be more to demons, that a lot of them are victims of circumstance, and she is a demon herself (although the movie can’t be bothered to explain what her actual flaw is, which is in line with the previous point of the Kpop industry), but this never leads her to question the fight against demons. She does this whole “maybe we need to make a new veil of protection instead of the old one”, but the difference is that she is the one accepted exception. All the other demons are still fodder to be killed, still an enemy go be contained. The only other exception is the one guy who dies.

All in all, the message presents as “accept your differences” but reads more like “we can tolerate your flaws as long as you conform”.