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ILLIT in the bomb brand film and little monster music video
Still from ILLIT's official bomb brand film and “little monster” music video. Video: HYBE Labels.

RaeRae’s verdict: “little monster” gives anxiety teeth, puts it on a dinner plate, and tells ILLIT to eat it before it eats them. The song is cheerful enough to hide the ugly feelings in plain sight. The brand film is stranger, darker, and better than the usual album trailer. I wish the recording trusted its own discomfort for another thirty seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRU1XXHIpIc

Release File

The Monsters Are Anxiety, Sadness, and Everything Else Eating First

The official song description identifies anxiety, depression, sadness, and other internal stress as the monsters. The lyric answers by turning emotional self-defense into appetite. ILLIT will swallow the creatures, digest the fear, and keep moving.

That is an odd image. Good. “Believe in yourself” would have been cleaner and forgettable. Eating the monster lets the writing admit the feelings are already inside the body. Nobody can wave a sparkly wand and pretend they never arrived.

The food language also connects to a familiar stress response. People snack, binge, lose appetite, or joke about eating their feelings. “little monster” makes that behavior cartoonishly literal without claiming food is treatment for depression. It is a pop metaphor, not medical advice.

Jesse Shatkin Builds a Cheerful Trap

Jesse Shatkin’s production starts bright, compact, and slightly off-center. Percussion skips under the melody while synth details appear and disappear like objects moving at the edge of vision. The track is pop-forward, but small tonal shifts keep the smile from sitting perfectly straight.

The contrast between subject and sound does most of the work. A heavier arrangement would announce the monster before the lyric had time to make it funny. Here, the first listen can pass as cute. The second catches the appetite, fear, and determination under it.

The writing roster is crowded. Caroline Ailin, Jesse Shatkin, dyvahh, Bang Si-hyuk, Vincenzo, January 8th, 3!, Maryjane, DANA, Kim Bo-eun, Lee Kyung, So Do-yeon, Vendors CHILLER, Vendors Owl, Jo Yoon-kyung, bay, Miah, Lee Yi-jin, Ellie Suh, and Yoonchae are credited. That many contributors could have sanded away every strange edge. The central monster-eating image survived.

Five Voices Carry Different Kinds of Nerve

Yunah gives the more forceful phrases a necessary push. Her tone makes the determination believable instead of decorative. Minju’s lower color supplies shade whenever the track becomes too airy. Moka handles playful lines with precise diction and understands how to make oddness look intentional.

Wonhee’s rounder tone suits the apparent innocence of the melody. That makes darker words land with a small delay. Iroha brings rhythmic confidence to shorter phrases and looks especially natural when the visual asks the members to move through an impossible situation without stopping to explain it.

The song does not offer a giant vocal climax. It is an ensemble piece built from quick transfers. That works for the anxious motion, though Minju or Yunah could have used a longer late section to change the emotional weight.

The Song Ends Before the Monster Fights Back

At roughly two and a half minutes, “little monster” establishes the metaphor, runs through the hook, and leaves before the arrangement can become dangerous. The brevity protects replay value. It also keeps the conflict shallow.

A bridge with stripped percussion, a distorted return of the melody, or a final harmony could have made eating the monster sound difficult. The lyric says these feelings plague the speaker. The production treats the solution as quick.

The Brand Film Refuses to Behave Like an Album Commercial

BELIFT released the video eleven days before the album as both the bomb brand film and the “little monster” MV. Toshihiko Tanabe wrote and creatively directed the film, Show Yanagisawa directed it, and TYO handled production.

The film uses magical-girl language, practical sets, food, transformation, creatures, and visual jokes that remain a little uncomfortable. The members do not simply pose in five concept outfits while track names appear. They occupy a story with rules that are felt before they are explained.

That approach respects ILLIT’s established strength. Their best visual work puts ordinary girlhood beside one impossible detail and lets the combination become unsettling. The impossible detail here keeps multiplying.

Magic Is Inside Them, Which Is Helpful and Horrible

The Korean reporting around the film emphasized the positive message that magic exists inside each person. The video supports that reading through transformation and self-generated power. It also makes the inside of a person look crowded, hungry, and difficult to manage.

Those two ideas can coexist. Confidence is not the absence of anxiety. Sometimes confidence is deciding the anxious creature does not control dinner.

I am treating that as an interpretation, not confirmed lore. The film does not provide a legal document explaining every creature, prop, or transformation. A visual callback can be deliberate without having one official answer.

Yunah Gets to Be Large Without Being Called Too Mature

Yunah has occasionally looked trapped between ILLIT’s youthful concepts and her naturally stronger presence. The brand film uses that difference. Her sharper expressions and physical confidence give the group scenes contrast instead of requiring her to shrink into the same softness as everyone else.

Minju carries several quieter frames with her gaze. Moka makes the stranger comedy readable. Wonhee can turn a still expression into a question, and Iroha handles the movement-heavy magical beats without losing character.

The members are not assigned five isolated powers with trading-card labels. Their differences show through behavior, framing, and how each responds to the shared problem.

The Craft Received Real Recognition

TYO later reported that the film won Silver for production design at the 2025 CICLOPE Festival. It also received recognition at Japan’s 65th ACC Tokyo Creativity Awards, including craft honors tied to production management, art, and hair and makeup.

Awards do not settle whether a video works. They do confirm that the physical craft viewers noticed was built by credited people rather than generated by vague “visual magic.” The sets, objects, styling, and transformations have labor behind them.

The Film Is Better Than the Song, but the Song Is the Spine

The video has more development, surprise, and texture than the recording. That creates a familiar problem: viewers may remember the film’s creatures and transformations while forgetting the melody that carried them.

Still, “little monster” gives every image a purpose. Without the song’s internal-stress metaphor, the film would be a beautiful pile of weird food and magical-girl references. The track provides the body. The film lets the body misbehave.

What Worked

What Needed a Bigger Bite

The song leaves before its darker idea can alter the arrangement. Anxiety and depression are introduced as monsters, then the hook makes swallowing them sound almost easy. One musically uncomfortable section would have earned the cheerful recovery.

The enormous writing team also produced very little personal detail. The metaphor belongs to this song, but the speaker remains general. One verse tied to a school hallway, phone screen, practice room, or sleepless night could have made the monster feel lived in.

RaeRae’s Final Verdict

“little monster” is ILLIT using sweetness as camouflage. The song smiles while naming ugly feelings. The film opens that smile and finds an entire production-design department inside.

I wanted the music to bite harder. The monster already had teeth.

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