AROUND YOU - music video theory analysis thread:

Now that Around You is out in gorgeous 4K, I thought I'd look through and see if there were any little hidden moments in the music video that I wasn't able to see or find in the past. I've posted a theory regarding the video on the Loona subreddit but have more info now to share

A lot of this is really just speculative, and is more about uncovering potential leads rather than having a solid front to back theory. Also, Around You is obviously one of the oldest music videos & from an era of Loona where the content was arguably less theory-laden

For those reasons I'd suggest you take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt. HOWEVER, this is also the only music video that doubles as a short film, suggesting it may be very important, especially considering its Loonaverse connection was established by the See Saw MV

So starting off: The general story of Around You is typically agreed upon - Hyunjin is seen writing letters to someone but is interrupted by a broken ceramic in her home. She finds a bracelet mysteriously given to her by Go Won somehow, smiles, and leaves home to visit a boy

On the way, she sees what is presumably a cat or other small animal, and holds out the postcards/letters she was writing to it for some reason. She then visits this boy's home/workplace but leaves and sits at the top of his stairwell.

Her head is then replaced by a cat and she is seen with multiple dopplegangers around her home before finally meeting Heejin at a bench.

The first confusing thing I'd like to focus on are the letters Hyunjin carries with her. The main theories I've seen are that 1) they were love letters to the visited boy that she was too scared to give or
2) they were letters to Go Won that are sent via kitty-mail

Although both these theories make sense, I've always been confused by the fact that the letters look extremely antiquated, and not like anything you might find today. The paper & handwriting look old and vintage and not like modern stationery in my opinion

What's stranger is that right before the climax, there is the scene of Hyunjin sitting at the top of the stairs. At nearly the exactmoment that the final chorus and high point of the song starts, Hyunjin's postcards come into perfect focus and one becomes perfectly readable

Here's where things get a little psycho-rabbitholey. That postcard is a vintage one for the Springville Motel in Utah. This is clearly strange for a number of reasons, but primarily because Hyunjin isn't in the USA, the postcard is from the 30s/40s, and the motel no longer exists

The inside of the postcard mentions 12 rooms which is a little spooky. There's also an LA office address on the inside for the manufacturer of the postcard. A location that is nearby to some of the marked ones on the Girl Front map, which also links Hyunjin mysteriously to LA

This naturally led me to look more into Hyunjin's presence in Girl Front, where I found more spooky things: the map that OEC uses to find the other Loona members is not a modern map of LA. It's a vintage map of LA from... Wait for it... The 1930s, the same era as the postcard

This led me to look for each of the locations on the Girl Front map on Google Street view. However, tracing the locations from an old map got extremely difficult, and I only got through about 3 or 4. However, the marked locations I did look at all had motels/hotels/inns

It's totally possible that this is coincidence, as LA is a metropolitan area with plenty of need for hospitality services, and it's totally possible other marked locations will disprove any correlation at all. However, the motel I found at Hyunjin's location was this one

It's called the Hollywood LaBrea Motel, and strangely enough, it's an old old motel, for which I was able to find a postcard from the same Era as the one seen in Around You and the map in Girl Front

The fact that OEC decide to run around looking for Hyunjin and the other members using a map that's almost a century old is strange and weird enough, and the postcard thing makes it even weirder. Much of xx and # theories have been surrounding time travel... Could this be a hint?

But back to Around You... I also found it strange that we never see the face the of the boy that Hyunjin goes and visits. I remember reading a theory that said that men in the Loonaverse don't exist, and male characters are representative of other members

If so, who could this boy represent? Maybe Go Won, as they are the two members with the most laid out connection who are never explicitly shown together. Maybe Hyunjin recognizes this boy because she knew him/her in a different timeline..... Say the 1930s for example

Maybe the sadness and loneliness she sings about as a result of not being noticed by the one she cares for is because she met that same person in another timeline, but in this timeline they don't recognize her. She considers giving him the letters but he won't know what they mean

That's a stretch, I know. But that brings me to the most frightening piece of evidence I found in the Around You video, and the reason I believe that boy is meant to represent Go Won or at least a yyxy girl

When Hyunjin walks up the stairs and enters the boys home/workplace, we get a bunch of shots of his home, filled with knick knacks and memorabilia. But one of these photos has an item in it that should be blaring alarm signals the moment you see it

An apple... As a piece of decoration... In an apartment. That was the point where I knew that even if 95% of my ramblings were crazy I had found something. That makes zero sense outside of the context of the Loonaverse. Below is another shot of it from when she leaves the apt

I got such goosebumps finding this and I'm so excited to share it. I do have some other thoughts on strange things but I have very little confidence in anything after this point

The last strange thing I found was this stack of papers pinned to the wall, titled Hanger Holic. It mysteriously has an image of a cross on it, but I'll let yall make the connection to Go Won from that since it seems a little tinfoil hatty

Strangely enough, a Google search found that that image is actually an amalgamation of two different images made by a Japanese artist who (from what I was able to gather from translations) collects strange clothes hangers. The title and body come from two different prints however

I have ZERO idea what any of this means, and I'm tempted to assume it's absolutely nothing. The only reason I'm holding a sliver of doubt is how many regular and weird clothes hangers there are inside this workplace/apartment, and how easy it is to make out the sign in the shot

I can't really make any sense of that or much else and I highly doubt it means anything at all, but it's a strange little thing if anyone wants to look into it. Anyway yea so that's the end of this, please let me know if you have thoughts and thanks for reading!

OH ALSO last thing that isn't really a thing, never really thought about how LA is the city of angels considering how much angel & fallen angel imagery there is in LOONA but I don't have time to think about what that means

Oh my god it means LOONA is remaking Tropico