ILLIT’s Brand Film For Comeback Sparks Divided Opinions Due To Use Of Japanese

ILLIT recently released a brand film for their comeback, I’LL LIKE YOU. The girls talked about each of their dreams in the video. Moka dreamed about being larger than life.

Iroha dreamed of being a boxer.

Minju experienced sleep paralysis.

Wonhee dreamed of freedom atop an eagle.

Yunah talked about how she feels better after a warm shower and eating good food.

The video was narrated in both Korean and Japanese to match the girls’ nationalities. While most did not have issue with that, what rubbed some the wrong way was how there were Korean and Japanese subtitles hardsubbed into the video. Most of the time, videos would have English and Korean subtitles.

• Is this Japan? Our country has a history of being stolen by the Japanese and forced to only speak Japanese, so of course we’d f*cking hate Japanese…
• What’s up with the Japanese subtitles? Not even English?
• The video is nice LOL. Everyone is so cute heh.
• It’s weird. Why must it be Japanese? It won’t go over well.
• Why must it be Japanese…
• Other groups have Japanese members too, but they don’t put Japanese in like that openly… Seems like HYBE uses Japanese whenever there are Japanese members LOL.

As soft subs or CC captions are now widely available, hardsubbing subtitles into a video becomes more of an aesthetic choice rather than a practical one. While many netizens have expressed support for the girls, they wonder about the creative choices of the company. You can watch the brand film below.