MUCA Magazine PUNEW&SMIN interview

1. You once said, if there’s chance you want to make Daylight BGA, and you did it. How do you feel about this?

- Well it has been my hope for a long time and chance finally came but there were some real world problems that happened, and I feel a little bit said that it was not enough quantity as I thought in the beginning.
I hope to extend the world further, not just limited to BGA.

2. Personally, the story came a bit shocking. Can you explain what Daylight story tells?

- From “Raise me up”, I was trying to show just really bright and happy story and
In “Daylight”, I wanted to tell really dark story. No hope, no dreams.
The settings of Daylight is post-apocalypse world almost ran out of all resources.
Deep learning AI, of course created by man, figures that the ultimate reason for running our resources is the presence of human. Then they start a project to extinct human, and the project is called ‘Reboot’.

That made war between ‘human’ and ‘human encroached by AI’.
Then there comes a genius scientist couple and parents of Day and Light. Yohan and Borah.
They find out the reason AI came to ‘Reboot’ is based on fact that ‘Human only uses resources and human has no ability to restore the used resources’, so they develop some form of complete restore technology, hoping to end ‘Reboot’.
However, AI foresees the conflict between humans wanting for the technology, and categorizes the technology to be forbidden.
That’s why AI try to capture Yohan and Borah. While in the mission, Borah gets captured and Day and Light, who were categorized as ‘unnecessary’, gets killed.
To secure and rescue Borah, Yohan creates war-androids using the DNA of his two daughters.

Well, as I say, this interview seems to be keep delayed, so to summarize,

In “Daylight”, I portrayed the missions of “Day’.

3. What does DAY’s Death mean? (=WHY DID YOU KILL HER?)

- Day’s mission was to get through the defense wall that surrounds AI’s base.
Day has excellent battle abilities, and it is impossible to pierce AI’s defense walls, without miracle.
Personally, I don’t like word ‘miracle’. Never happens for me when I need them. (….)
So, I tried to focus on ‘possibility’ rather than ‘miracle’ to process this dark story, and ended up with self-destruct.
Well Yohan thought all of the possibilities and added self-destruct function when he created Day.
It would be best if she survived, but as she stacks up data of AI’s defense, she felt there was no other possibility. So she acted only way she could succeed, and that was self-destruct.

4. PUNEW’s work are connected and shares same background, and it’s really interesting and makes enjoyable to watch. How you did create DAY and light?

- There’s no special reasons. When I am assigned with a song, I just plainly and roughly think of characters and stories after looking at the track’s title.
Daylight was a track that was assigned to me when I was so into TWIN and post-apocalypse, so I just cut the title in half and made Day and Light.
Well, Light was not in the eyecatch.
To tell you a short story about other tracks,

■ Deborah : borah seems like a good name, let’s make it Day and Light’s mother.

■ Raise Me Up : A wizard appears to a storyteller who yearns for magic, but not believe in the presence of magical world.

■ Running Girl : Genius wizard but desiring normal working person’s life, Daly. (Running Girl–> Girl who runs in Korea (Da-li-neun-so-nyeo à Daly) (Daly is made by the first two syllables from Korean word, running girl)

■ Starlight Garden : Story of Rophe, the fan of missing storyteller(Heroine from Raise me up)’s last work, ‘Story of wizard who’s power comes from the stars’ (Formerly known as Byeolsooni well I am used to make a name not meaning much, but I feel bad for it.. Byeolsooni.. Byeolsoo..)

5. Watchpoint

- AI Drone’s smoo-th attack scene even added with 3D Modelling and incredible work by SMIN.
And the last scene of Day.

6. It was your first time working with SMIN. How was it?

- I don’t know, he really carried the work!
Black and white illustrations and he put life into them.

7. Any last words to the fans?

- There were people saying Korean Music games will not be popular like all DJMAX Portable, TAPSONIC, TECHNIKA 1 days without a miracle,

But as long as we keep our love and interest, I think it’s possible!

1. Your last work was End of Mythology in DJMAX RESPECT. How did you feel about this work?

- Well recently in TWC, one of my work was updated, ‘Brown Eclipse(Brown Dust)’. ^^;
I feel a bit nervous but also fluttered.

2. Is there any special points in this BGA?

- I worked with 3D to show more directions with AI drone called XO, even though PUNEW gave me illustrations. Someday I hope we can show those unused resources. Also I spent a lot of time thinking about how to show the storylines.

3. I heard there were interesting episode while you are working on M/V. What happened?

- Prior to the start, I was lectured of detailed storylines and the background by PUNEW. At the time, I was aware of them and thought, ‘oh it’s so cool’, then when I actually got onto working, I could not remember a thing. I worked with just some key words (hacking, android, explosions, etcf.) and tried to show the most as possible. I hope the PUNEW’s story are well explained to the fans. To be honest, I worked on this 3 separate times, so it was hard to remember all details.

4. Creating M/V must be hard since it has to tie music and story together. What are the most troubling factors?

- Having to include all information within 2 minutes is really hard and I always hope the story could be easily understood by users. I always try to do that by simplifying as possible, without crossing any of storyteller’s thoughts. Also, I don’t know if it’s actually effective, but I always check muted BGA. If I can understand the story without sound, it means it’s even better with the sound

5. Watchpoint

- I hope users see the storylines of Daylight, connecting with Deborah.
As I kept watching on Deborah, I was able to understand story of Daylight a bit better.
Also, for the ending scene, I just showed the original resources as it came to be.
I hope users will wonder, what would this mean? After watching the ending.

6. It was your first cooperation with PUNEW. How was it?

- To me, PUNEW makes me think of ‘restaurant trip’ rather than ‘illustrations’.
When I was in a college, I first met PUNEW in a restaurant. I thought, ‘this person has the same name?’ and I didn’t know he was PUNEW. It’s funny that such relationship lasted this far. It was fun working with him, communicating with each other.

7. Any last words to fans?

- First, there’s not many chance for me to communicate with fans, so thank you MUCA for having this interview. I hope there will be more place for me to talk to the fans.

I always hope to provide many stories and works to the users, and I hope users will feel that from my work as well. You can check my other stories through my SNS below:

Twitter : https://twitter.com/smin_aroma