The brand film for ILLIT’s latest album, “bomb,” opens with a message embroidered on fabric: “ONCE UPON A TIME, WE WERE ALL MAGICAL GIRLS. NOTHING COULD STOP US.” Like a fairy tale, the story is told in past tense. The scene shifts, revealing a garbage truck filled with old magic wands while the sound of girls crying comes flooding out from a nearby building.

So many girls grew up watching the magical girl shows that defined each of their generations. They got the magic wands, held them tight, recited the magic words, and dreamed of being the fantastical magical girls they saw on TV. As Show Yanagisawa, film director behind the brand film, explains in the making-of feature, “At some point as we grow up, we start to forget the possibilities within us.” Girls grow up, face reality, and put their magic wands down. So where have all the magical girls gone, then? At the end of the video, ILLIT gives us a hint: “Remember the magic inside you.”

“bomb,” then, tells stories about the day-to-day reality of regular girls in the real world—one that’s far from beautiful and where girls have “little monsters” like sadness, anxiety, and fear living inside them. The idea of grabbing that bundle of monsters to “gobble it all up in one bite” might come across as playful lyricism, but it speaks to the reality many teenage and twentysomething women face today where they cope with repressed sadness and stress through food. In autotuned falsetto, the girls repeat lines like magical spells in the chorus, like “I don’t wanna know” and “eat it till you’re stuffed and this too shall pass.” It suggests that swallowing stress down is more of a fantasy or a delay rather than a way to truly bring change to their circumstances. In the lead single, “Billyeoon Goyangi (Do the Dance),” they ask, “Do you wanna dance?” and immediately follow it up with an assertive, “There’s only one answer / Say ‘Yes.’” But it’s clear how shy and unsure of their own feelings they are with lines like, “But why am I awkward / I turn into a rent-a-cat*.” Even after saying “dating’s all about attitude / That’s my secret move” and putting their love interest “under a spell,” it feels like they’re trying to put themselves under a spell to find some relief from “feeling so uneasy” at the same time. “For some reason” they “feel so insecure” in “jellyous,” too, where they can’t be sure about their crush’s feelings: “But what if it’s just a big misunderstanding?” The magic is inside. But magic like that can’t alter the real world.
*Rent-a-cat: An idiom referring to someone who feels out of place in a lively group and quietly keeps to themselves. It’s also recently become a meme.

Instead, ILLIT continues searching for their own kind of magic—something that can help them deal with the realities of life. In “jellyous,” even with the potential of the situation with their crush being “just a big misunderstanding” making them anxious (“There goes my appetite, not gonna eat”), they choose to lose themselves in fantasy instead, warning their “worries” to “back off” and choosing to “let tomorrow’s me handle tomorrow.” In “oops!,” they share their secrets with their closest friends, who collectively “kick our worries out for three days, shoo!” and find themselves “laughing till our stomachs hurt” and until the worries disappear. In “bamsopoong,” they go on “our very own night picnic” with friends, making the kind of memories they’ve always dreamed of (“Should we make it all come true?”) and making sure they can hold onto such precious moments forever (“Polaroid, click / Let’s make this moment stick”). No matter how confidently they face the world and conjure up “attitude” and their “secret move,” life is just as full of challenges they can’t seem to overcome. Even so, enjoying the small things in life, like a “square blanket and cookies and bubble tea,” working to stay positive despite feeling insecure, and holding hands with other girls by your side—that might just be the magic hidden inside all of us. As the lyrics to “bamsopoong” say, “When I’m with you / The whole world feels so special.” Sometimes, the way you can burst out laughing with a friend just by looking at each other is all the happiness you need.

In ILLIT’s world, energy and anxiety, sparkle and sadness coexist. The keyboard synths and beats that lay the foundation to “little monster” grow increasingly layered as the track progresses, becoming more and more dynamic the longer you listen. The group delivers determined lines like “Devour them all, finish them off in one big bite” in ironically delicate falsetto, and similarly, the words “I don’t wanna know” are repeated throughout the chorus not with emotional intensity or vocal bending but rather softly. The lead single, “Billyeoon Goyangi (Do the Dance),” similarly balances contrasting sounds—lush strings, a heart-thumping kick drum, and a lo-fi texture—to give it a dreamy but also toe-tapping vibe. Meanwhile, the descending melody and the elongated final notes in the line “Is it me or not? / The one in your heart” in the second verse adds a touch of tension. And look at “jellyous”: The old-school game synths, fast tempo, and lines like “hey, hey, hey” and “wait, wait, wait” sung right on the beat give the song a playful, excited vibe, but even here, the group members sing those lines like, “For some reason I feel so insecure.” Nothing contrasts the track’s otherwise upbeat mood more than toward the end when they abruptly drop to a lower register for an extra emotional, poetic punch: “Back off / Back off / Till tomorrow, back off.”

The magical girls we’ve seen in pop culture up to this point have often been shown facing different dilemmas. The idea of a young, delicate girl becoming a magical girl with fantastical powers has gifted countless girls with hope and fuel for their dreams. And yet, even while saving the world, the magical girls in many of these fantasy stories can lose love, companionship, and even themselves. In the “bomb” brand film, the ILLIT members eat monsters-turned-gummy candies and transform into magical girls themselves, soaring through the sky. Before that, they’d been sitting in their own rooms, emotionless or crying, but now, at last, they’re smiling. MINJU struggles to open a broken down old door, only to discover it’s actually made of cake, at which point the door is suddenly good as new. Only then does MINJU open the door and step out into a new world. No matter how hard you look for something sweet in an old door, the reality can still be a bitter pill to swallow. But where there’s girls, there’s countless others by their side. Even if you can’t make the uncertainty of the real world vanish with the wave of a hand, just being together with others can be enough to make you believe that everything will turn out alright in the end. At the start of the “Billyeoon Goyangi (Do the Dance)” dance routine, the ILLIT members join hands and help each other up. Each pointing a finger up and down, they trace a small circle in the air, then dance hand in hand again. The whole scene echoes those in cartoons about magical girls where a group of regular girls joins hands and then transforms. When they hold hands—when they lock eyes—that’s when these girls’ magic becomes real. This is the power ILLIT wants to convey as they transform and take to the skies—the unparalleled power of the strongest magic there is.