I never really think of Animal Crossing: New Horizons as a great game for recreating other movies and music videos until I see the lengths some creators go to use Nintendo’s life sim as their movie studio. I’ve been obsessed with Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters for the past month, and several nights a week I’ll find myself scrolling through my feeds looking for reaction videos, covers, and other indulgences to feed my ongoing brainrot. Now, I’ve found an Animal Crossing channel that is recreating all the movie’s musical numbers in New Horizons, and I’m mostly just surprised at the creative solutions they came up with to make up for the game’s lack of fantasy weaponry and demons.
Anyone who’s played Animal Crossing: New Horizons knows that it has some pretty robust creative options in terms of outfit design, character customization, and even set creation. Where the challenge lies in recreating something like a KPop Demon Hunters music video is in finding animations, items, and characters that can at least somewhat emulate things that don’t exist in the game. YouTuber Magic Studios, who has recreated almost every musical moment in the film, has managed to use the tools in New Horizons to creatively represent actions like demon fighting and skydiving from a busted plane, and, to the best of their ability, tried to capture the film’s choreography.
Some of the most clever details will likely hit hardest for people who have both seen the movie and put an exorbitant amount of time into perfecting their New Horizons island, such as the money-loving tanuki Tom Nook representing Gwi-ma, the demon king final boss that the Kpop girl group Huntr/x faces in the finale. My favorite part of these videos, however, is seeing how Magic Studios recreated different costumes for both the main cast and side characters using New Horizons’ Custom Designs feature. Some videos are more elaborate than others, like the “Golden” music video which faithfully recreates the movie’s pre-performance hype cycle as the girls are promoting the upcoming single.
You can check out all of Magic Studios’ KPop Demon Hunters videos on their channel. The film is streaming on Netflix and is now the second-most-popular movie ever on the platform. If you can still grab tickets, Netflix is putting the movie in theaters this weekend for a limited-time sing-along event.