Bangtan Boys always makes great music and they always look absolutely killer in their MVs, but from Boy In Luv to Danger I've had a few... qualms about the light in which aggression is shown in relation to sexuality. This time though, I have no such issues and I'm delighted to say that this one is a slam dunk of awesome. Aesthetically speaking, the washed out, unsaturated look suits the mood of the MV and therefore I like it (even though you know it's the first thing I harp on in most cases). The story line is a bit chaotically depicted, but it does give a generalized narration of guys getting over their doomed love affairs and rekindling this platonic relationships as they struggle to come to terms with the end of their romantic ones. The burning flowers look like lilies to me, symbolic of a rather torturous purification of the soul, you know cleansing via fire in a very phoenix-like manner. Throughout the video there are shots with imagery specific to symbols of growing up and moving on that go beyond the burning flowers of lost innocence: throwing away the lollipop (I'm assuming Rap Monster's not littering), burning pictures, getting rid of pills, etc. Hell, even the shots where they stop to get gas is a maturity-image, since their only modes of transit before were bikes and school buses. Over all the video's good but not amazing; it's visually attractive, but not ground breaking. And Honestly... I'd have liked to see at least SOME of the choreo...

            First of all, I feel the need to scream to the world that EVERY SINGLE INTERACTION that the girl has with any of the boys is BLATANTLY ABUSIVE to the point of utter harassment, END OF STORY. Even the lyrics have a very violent turn to them, and I am honestly quite frightened of the fact that even as my head is screaming at me that this is atrocious, I love it. It still looks hella hot and it's frankly presented to be quite appealing. THIS IS NOT OKAY. From physical abuse of teasing and very apparently unwelcome ruffling her hair (~2:48), to the hold in the hallway she clearly wants to escape from (along with the horrifically sexual-stalker evaluation {the upskirt peek and gestures border on obscene} and the following predatory chase) (~2:51), to the locker scene with the possession manipulation (he takes her personal possession, the locker, and acts entitled to treating it as if it was his own) and bodily subjugation when he attacks her, forces up-looking eye-contact to impart an idea of superiority, and then proceeds to drag her physically across the school while she's fighting against him (reminiscent of a warrior parading a conquest through the streets to be shamed) to a room that's empty save for Pack members (~3:15), to the predatory public proposal invoked by the presence of the rest of this horrifically abusive clique (~3:44), to the literal predatory-pack stalking of her present throughout the entire video. The last bit, about the public proposal, might be a bit harder than the rest to understand, but honestly it's one of the worst cases of emotional pressuring I've ever seen: public proposals are emotionally abusive, and in the context of being entirely surrounded by the overtly aggressive friends of the guy doing the proposing, I doubt the girl would have felt safe saying no, let alone how painfully awkward the peer pressure to smile and sweetly say yes must be...
             Sweet Shisus, the MV ... it's a WRECK in terms of human rights and even when counting myself as a rather weak-willed feminist, I found the whole of it disturbing. And the fact that I found it enjoyable and full of hella-hot eye-candy (instead of simply being outraged) made my skin crawl . . . I'll say it again, this sort of valorized and validated depiction of romanticized violence IS JUST PLAIN WRONG AND IT IS NOT OKAY TO PROMOTE THIS SORT OF CULTURAL IDEAL.             THIS.          IS.        RAPE.       CULTURE.   
             I think one of the most frightening aspects of it is the thread of comments on YT (and other sites with the embedded video) following the idea "He pushed her against locker like he was going to kiss her and then dragged her off to a different guy! WTF?!? Like screw that for messing with my feels! That should have been a kiss, it would have be so hot" . . . because THAT is the result of rape culture, thinking that it's hot to be thrown about like a rag doll and sexually assaulted at every turn. *shivers* It's frickin' creepy is what it is. It's not the boys' fault, not entirely, but it's still not something they're entirely blameless for; there are lines that really shouldn't be crossed. SOMEONE should have stopped this. Their company's slogan is "Music & Art for Healing" for heaven's sake. This MV is definitely NOT healing in any way shape or form...
            Also, I think it's important to make a delineation between the Rape Culture harassment in Boy in Luv and the attacking-the-oppressor violence of N.O. because they are very different things. I've seen people justifying Boy in Luv by saying that none of the fans (or much of anyone at all for that matter) spoke out against the violence in N.O. which is true enough, but that doesn't validate the violence in Boy in Luv at all. For N.O. , the attacks were more obviously aggressive and flat out obviously violent: starting around 1:45 or so, things get very violent in N.O. However there is a massive difference between a subjugated people rising up against their oppressor and a predatory pack of aggressors victimizing a subject with less power than themselves. In N.O. the boys are rebelling against their oppressors, in Boy in Luv, THEY ARE THE OPPRESSORS THAT NEED TO BE OPPOSED.
            Now, I'm meant to be making an objective analysis of the way in which the MV has been made and is pulled off, so I can set most of the Rape Culture issues aside, but you can be sure that they're responsible for a lot of the points I've deducted.
            The MV's story is delivered through pretty standard methods and the styling for it all is gorgeous. The lighting plays off every detail and it highlights the nitty-gritty feel of the track (and also of the sense of underworld violence). It frames the boys in beautifully angsty heroism, taking their feelings' negative impacts on their lives into consideration and showing off their collective cleverness and a sort of sweetness in braving a confession. All the shots line up to pose the boys in a grand depiction of power (lots of low angle shots and aggressive close-ups), and along with the epic choreography, it stands well to highlight the physical prowess of each member. I really want a dance version, not just a practice vid (though I do want one of those too), but a full on multi-set dance version, because some of the cuts, and choreography moves paired to set-transitions that tie them all together, are absolutely SPECTACULAR. I mean really, the filmography is beautiful.
            The track itself is kickin'. The beat rocks and the transitions are beautiful, perfectly timed. The track and melody evolve, harmonies slide neatly in and out, the bridge lets a drop of tension push the track over the edge. The high energy of the pre-chorus isn't a traditional vamp, but it does the job way better than any usual power-up could have, creating stress-tension for the chorus to blow away. And the high line in the last swing of things adds a fabulous feel of stretch to it, allowing the track to resolve in a smoothe cadence without lengthy lead up but still allowing a bit of a tail for the different elements to trail off piecemeal.
            The Lyrics are an interesting look at how sometimes crushes aren't actually welcome, and the idea that falling in love is actually incredibly disruptive to life as a whole and generally rather unpleasant. Other than the threats of violence laced within the lyrics, I love them. They depict a very well-thought out position on the matter disliking of love that very few songs have ever looked at, the unfairness of it all and the ways in which crushes are really not that much fun. It all resolves happily though, which I feel runs counter to the main message of the song, but hey, who doesn't love a happy ending?
            All in all, I would love to give this release a 9/10. Even with the aggression in the lyrics and one or two of the transgressions in visual violence, an 8/10 might have been possible for the fact that the track and the MV are both extremely well produced, and incredibly addicting. However, the sheer number of moments where I had to step back and think about how utterly not okay this MV is makes giving it such a score impossible. Music has the power to change the world and it's time people started respecting that. I'd almost want to give it a 0/10, simply because I'm more than just insulted, I feel sick seeing how enjoyable they've made watching such blatantly wrong actions. But the release IS extraordinarily well made, so the final score must reflect that. 
            I've pretty much just decided to split the difference.

            This is what I want out of music.
            No punches pulled, no sugar-coating, no undue simplification . . . just taking the world as it is, representing it in a dramatic form of art, making a statement, enacting change in a call to action that if nothing else makes people think for a moment. There are two schools of thought on the issue, one that says 'Ars Gratia Artis' and holds that the only way to achieve true Art is to make art for its own sake, and one that says 'Vitam Ars Causa' and holds that life is itself Art, is caused by Art, and is reflected by Art (ie, that Art simply IS). I'm in the second camp. I think that Art must be good on it's own and held against it's own self to determine if it's good, but at the same time, whether or not art is good, it can be valuable, particularly in terms of how it relates to and affects culture.
            What Bangtan Boys has done here is changed the game for kpop. Making statements about culture, and about how it needs to change, in music isn't something new, not even new to kpop really. (Seriously, I mean, F.cuz had Dreaming I... pretty recently, which actually gets at the same idea as this release from Bangtan Boys). But what this video does that the other statement-making attempts in kpop have failed to do is that it has made the issue at hand hurt to ignore. It's directly challenging the status quo, explicitly calling out the problems therein. In most other cases, in the kpop that I've seen at least, the subversive comments are made quite quietly, layered in thematic metaphor and a storyline that distracts any unfavorable critics. Bangtan Boys have released something that refuses to be ignored or brushed aside like that, and that is something to really applaud. It's a ballsy thing to do anywhere, but South Korea's pretty dang conservative . . . MVs can be banned simply because people with weird haircolors are shown as being successful in school with 'normal' kids. This . . . makes a pretty bold-faced argument, one much more aggressively controversial than anything I've seen in the past like it.
            I really hope that this does actually influence a new era of Kpop music, pushing kpop to move beyond performance art and transcend into protest art that is Art in and of itself, and good art at that. It's possible. Big Hit Music's little slogan is something like 'Music & Artists for Healing' right? Well, here's a chance for others to latch onto the idea and start healing society from the inside out.
            That having been said, including the fact that I cannot lavish on enough praise for this in a twenty page analysis, let alone a quick review, I do have some critiques of it. The song is okay. It's got a decent dose of drama to it, but mostly in what it's saying, not how it's saying it. I love the orchestral elements, but the overall form is pretty simple and there's nothing to really make it stand out as a track. The Pre-chorus vamp is fantastic, real tension is built and energy and angst, but it all falls sort of flat in the chorus. I'd have liked to hear a more heart-wrenching, aching sort of summation to it all rather than the rather less than dramatic release . . . My thoughts personally went to GD's chorus in Crooked, how the aggressive call and response in that one feels so much more intense than the one found here, and how it keeps the energy up better. These angsty sort of real-world pain depictions shouldn't have the release of tension found in other sorts of songs, there's nothing to warrant a release of tension until the final resolution. The chorus should be a culmination, a breaking point, the limit reached just before everything falls apart and tumbles into the bridge before a modified chorus fully releases the tension for the outro.
            Lyrically, it's fabulous. And it makes an excellent point. There's something truly broken about the world's educational system these days . . . some places are better than others, but seriously, once we started being more concerned with the grades than with the actual experience of learning and developing a viable skill set, 'school' as an institution began to decay. It's tricky to deride the educational system without bad-mouthing education as a whole, and I feel that NO does a pretty solid job of it. (I also particularly enjoy the irony of the situation that is the reason I'm late in posting this is that school is working me to death and taking over my life and what I'm posting is a review about a song explaining how it's not right that school works you to death and takes over your life...).
            As for the MV itself, the visuals are definitely striking. There's a fantastic drama to it all, a staging meant to really draw a viewer in and to force them to acknowledge the state of the real world by over-playing it in a metaphoric world. I'm not a terribly huge fan of the way the sets were incorporated into the plot-line (especially the hands and the clouds one), but they're not too terrible. And I would have had the boys develop more as characters; they start out as identical robots, and they pretty much end up nearly as identical... a few hats are added, sunglasses, some jewelry, but not really enough to delineate them if you don't already know who they are (as I found out quite acutely in trying to show the mv to a friend...) and I think it could have benefited thematically from more marked evolution. The choreography is glorious. Bangtan Boys is definitely my Baby Band of the year, I've decided. The choreography here is spot on perfect for this MV; it's aggressive, it's emotive, it's perfectly in sync and fantastically worked into the plot and the lyrics. I love it.

Okay. The upright bass makes me happy. VERY happy. But it fits neither the concept nor the song. I have to say, the raps are pretty impressive, but there's no real shape to them. The chorus lends the track enough melody to keep it out of the straight rap category. It's also nice and catchy. I'm still just not really a fan of it. I liked the member introduction bit, but they went through them too quickly for them to really be useful and they did it before giving the members solidly identifying features. The members are all individually impressive (and adorable). And the song gets better as it goes, but it's still not something I'm fond of having stuck in my head. It does get stuck in my head though, so I'll be the first to admit that it has appeal. It's very B.A.P sans power-melody, or old-school Big Bang. So I'm game for watching how it evolves. I haven't listened to the whole release yet so, I'm thinking it could be good.

I'll also admit that their choreography has appeal, but there's still nothing in it to make it really stand out from the crowd. Very aggressive and strong, but nothing particularly dramatic. I did like how they used each other as props and launchpads, that was pretty cool, but it has been done before and it wasn't done here in such a way so as to make it unforgettable.