This article contains spoilers for KPop Demon Hunters and the first Mistborn trilogy.
Look, I knowKPop Demon Huntersprobably wasn’t inspired by Mistborn. If someone was looking to compare the hitNetflixanimated film to one of fantasy author Brandon Sanderson’s works, the Asian-inspired Yumi and the Nightmare Painter would be the low-hanging fruit. It similarly features a young woman on a divine mission that she accomplishes through her art, whose life is controlled by a female mentor figure, and whose normal life threatens to fall apart when she becomes entwined with a young man with a similar, yet distinct, supernatural mission.
Okay, you know what, maybe I should write that article, too.
Demon Romeo And Demon Hunter Juliet
But those similarities are definitely present. As I watched KPop Demon Hunters this week, my mind kept returning to the originalMistborn trilogy. These thoughts first popped up during a scene in which demon hunter Rumi, the leader of the pop girl group Huntr/x, meets up with the demon Jinu, the leader of boy band Saja Boys, on a city rooftop.
Jinu knows Rumi’s darkest secret: despite dedicating her life to demon-hunting, Rumi is actually half-demon herself. Rumi tries to fight Jinu, but ultimately finds freedom in this relationship since she is barred from discussing her parentage with her bandmates by their mentor, Celine.
This scene of a superpowered young man and a superpowered young woman on opposite sides of a conflict meeting up to fight and flirt immediately brought me back to one of the most important conflicts in Mistborn: The Well of Ascension.
In Sanderson’s sequel, the heroine Vin tries to find her place in a new world. She spent most of her life as a street urchin, barely scraping by with the help of her protective (but abusive) older brother, Reen. She was aided in these years through something she thought of as her ‘Luck’, her ability to push for positive outcomes in conversations.
As the trilogy begins, she discovers that this mysterious power actually came from her ability as a Mistborn, a powerful magic-user who can ingest and ‘burn’ a variety of metals to unlock supernatural powers. In bending other peoples' emotions, Vin was actually using ‘emotional allomancy’.
These abilities get her noticed by Kelsier, a charismatic Mistborn intent on getting revenge on the evil Lord Ruler, who has reigned for a thousand years. Like the demons in KPop Demon Hunters, Kelsier is identifiable through markings on his arms.
In his case, though, they are scars from his time spent mining a valuable metal for the nobility.
As part of Kelsier’s plan to defeat the Lord Ruler, Vin must pretend to be one of those Noble elites, wearing dresses and attending extravagant balls. During one of these events, she meets Elend, a Noble who dreams of a better, more equitable future for Vin’s people, the second-class Skaa.
Vin And Elend And Zane And Rumi And Jinu
Over the course of the first book, Vin falls in love with Elend and, when Elend becomes Emperor after the Lord Ruler’s defeat, she is torn between two possible futures. She can take her place at Elend’s side in doing the boring, intellectual work required to govern this new world. Or, she can stay out in the mists, protecting Elend through her work as a Mistborn. Queen or bodyguard? Noble or skaa? Woman of leisure or woman of action? Like Rumi, who is half-demon, she is torn between two different identities.
As Vin is in the process of wrestling through this identity crisis, she meets Zane, Elend’s half-brother and the bastard child of his Noble father, Straff Venture. Vin sees something of herself in Zane. Throughout the Well of Ascension, Luthadel — the capital city and base of Elend’s power — is besieged by his father’s armies. If Elend represents nobility and intellectualism, Zane represents the things that come more naturally for Vin: violence and action. As she meets him in the mists, she is recognizing a part of herself that she can’t allow herself to see when she’s with Elend.
Vin’s history as a poor girl on the street isn’t as dramatic as Rumi’s demonic heritage, but Mistborn and KPop Demon Hunters use their heroines' relationships with someone who shares their background in a similar way. Ultimately, both Rumi and Vin need to move beyond their background and the circumstances of their birth and pursue heroism. One does that by playing kickass KPop music; the other does it by ingesting metal. But both are cool as hell.
