“Character-Change Chaeyeon”
Oh Minji: “I want to be reborn as the me I want to become.” In “Shugo Chara!”, the main character, Amu wishes for the courage to be reborn with the personality she wants. When that wish comes true, three Guardian Eggs appear by her side the next morning. She goes from just another regular student to a member of the student council group called the Guardians, someone everyone suddenly sees as special and different from the rest. “Character-Change Chaeyeon” takes an entirely different path. On stage, idol Lee Chaeyeon is always expected to be special. In “Character-Change Chaeyeon”, though, she looks like an ordinary person her age. Before she even launches her YouTube channel, she writes possible channel names and teaser ideas by hand on A4 paper. She hangs out with her real-life best friends to play this-or-that balance games, and they tease each other for going completely over the top with their outfits and makeup. On a hiking date with her dad, she calls out for him to slow down as he walks far ahead. Then she orders every single dish she has been craving, from acorn noodles to bukkumi, a sweet half-moon rice cake dessert, and happily eats it all. In an advice video filmed on a hotel staycation with her friend Notto, she listens to viewers’ worries. She tells one person to go ahead and confess to her “pretend guy best friend,” and for another whose self-esteem has been worn down by the negative comments of people around her, Chaeyeon gets angry on their behalf and speaks up, asking those people, “Why are you like this? What is wrong with you?” Sometimes she babysits the art academy director’s child, frantically sterilizing bottles and feeding baby food. She ends up stepping outside in elastic-waist pants, looking totally disheveled. That is why the Chaeyeon in “Character-Change Chaeyeon” is not introduced with special labels like “Lee Chaeyeon from that famous audition show,” “former IZ*ONE member Lee Chaeyeon,” or “solo artist Lee Chaeyeon.” The Chaeyeon we see now simply spends time with the people she loves, does things for the people who love her, and works on what she genuinely wants to do. In that way, “Character-Change Chaeyeon” unlocks Lee Chaeyeon as a real person.

OddRe: - “THE GOLDEN PROTOTYPE”
Hwang Sunup (Music Critic): If you only glanced at the artist name and mistook them for Mira (Audrey Nuna) from K-pop Demon Hunters, I have to ask you to put that disappointment on hold. The stylish, hook-filled tracks on this EP might lead you into a part of your taste that you have not discovered yet. To be honest, the blend of electronic music and band sound they are aiming for has already been defined by acts like muque and CLAN QUEEN. Even so, if you ask why you should care about a rookie group that has only just passed the one-and-a-half-year mark since debut, I would skip the long explanation and tell you to start with the first track, “FEVER TIME.” It opens with a guitar riff that instantly pulls your ear toward their sound. The vocal takes the baton and plays with the rhythm with total ease. After a brief build-up during the bridge, the song explodes into an energetic chorus. They keep the three minutes and forty seconds tight, with not a single wasted moment, and before you know it, you have already slipped into the next track. It is the first time in a long while a song has pulled me in this hard.

Even without mentioning that they come from the music school Voice(音楽塾ヴォイス), the same place as artists like Vaundy and Chilli Beans. once studied, this mini album is more fun, catchier, and more solidly made than any hybrid pop I have heard recently. “CRASH OUT!!!” showcases vocalist AirA in full force, her strong attack pushing the group’s mainstream appeal as far as it can go. “東京ゴッドストリートボーイズ,” with a beat that leans toward new jack swing, makes any strict divide between band music and dance music feel meaningless. These tracks are among the most instantly gripping on the record. On the other hand, you cannot leave out “Shiori.” It starts with an acoustic guitar in a tropical-pop mood, then adds a heavy, low-end synthesizer that slowly stretches the track into a distinctive, spacious sound. That kind of ever-changing side of the group clearly owes a lot to member SOI ANFIVER, who handles most of the creative work. With a carefully planned shortform strategy, “FEVER TIME” has already gone viral on TikTok, and the band has now secured a spot on the SUMMER SONIC 2025 lineup. Right now feels like exactly the right moment to get in early on this band.

“A Lot Like Christmas” (Connie Willis)
Kim Boksung (Writer): Once you learn to love curling up with a good book during the Christmas holidays, it’s a tradition you’ll never want to part with. It’s also worth celebrating the new, though, like adding hip hop holiday hits to your year-end playlist when you get tired of those old Christmas songs alone. “A Lot Like Christmas” is a collection of (surprisingly long) short stories about Christmas that’s been beefed up from a pre-Y2K collection. There’s now-retro throwbacks to ’90s tech and much older Christmas traditions like Secret Santa and timeless holiday movies, but it’s all speculative fiction with a look to the future, bringing in everything from androids to aliens, apparitions, and talking animals. These sometimes funny, often hopeful, and always clever stories put a very distinct twist on the customs we’ve all come to know so that it feels “a lot like Christmas” but one that’s unmistakably and delightfully skewed. With sci-fi takes spanning all the way from Christmas’ origins to AI, Willis’ writing, and one story in particular, has a lot to say about how the holiday has stayed the same in so many ways and changed in so many others. And for a season that’s always been loaded with tradition, making this book an annual read feels like the perfect addition.