Anti Kpop-Fangirl: [MV Review] BoA

Friday, September 14, 2012

[MV Review] BoA - The Shadow

Posted by zaku at 4:22 AM

BoA's follow up to Only One is The Shadow. Shadow of what you ask? Shadow of her former popularity, shadow of her hoobaes SNSD, or even shadow of young upstarts throwin dat shade perhaps. I've become horrid at these teaser sentences, so I should probably stop here or start stealing shit from Allkpop.

BoA's new MV is actually a storyline MV cleverly disguised as a simple dance in a box with closeups MV. The overall premise is deceptively simple. BoA, tired of all the shit SM's given her (or rather NOT given her lately, lol), has secluded herself in her happy zone where she proceeds to get higher than clouds, planes, and GDruggin himself. The resulting trip is the events illustrated in The Shadow MV.

I've taken the liberty of providing you with an abridged version of the story for those of you who might not have gotten it.

BoA's happy place is apparently the dead version of EXO's tree found in the Mama MV.
The blindfold is to amplify the feels.

She then immediately proceeds to get more baked than the Jews in the summer of '42.

She even has the camerawork stolen straight from Kid Kudi's Pursuit of Happiness to prove it.

At this point we realize that she must have added some trippy shit to her hash when she begins to hallucinate.
She sees her zebra bra-clad self dancing, and overcome, reacts like anyone else would.

The hallucinations intensify when she sees 2 copies of herself, immediately soliciting them for sex.

The climax comes when shit is truly and thoroughly fucked up.
Her trip immediately turns a 180 and sails straight into paranoia Twilight Zone territory.

Running into another copy of herself, she seeks to ground herself via sex.
However, this backfires horribly and she is forcibly woken up from her drug-fueled stupor.

As you can tell, BoA's MV is an ode to her narcissism. She is so in love with herself that even her druggie dreams are filled with orgies of herself having sex with her selves. SHE EVEN FAPS TO HERSELF. All the mirror motifs suggest a subconscious disconnect from her idealized self-image and the way she currently perceives herself, perhaps reflecting her fears of growing old and irrelevant in today's ever more youthful idol market. Even the title of her song, "The Shadow," can be seen as symbolically representing the denouement of her career being a shadow of its former glory or her own body as a shadow of its former supple vitality.

OR IS IT.

Anyway, old or not, BoA's still got it. Her stylists didn't fuck her over like they did in Hurricane Venus, and with the exception of those terrible genie pants, her outfits are jjangbak too. Plus she must have swiped Jessica's bra for this MV cause she looks way more perky than she usually does.

From what we get to see of the dance, BoA's choreography is definitely not as complicated as it was in Only One. With only a handful of technically complicated moves and formations, the dance is fairly straightforward and basic. Maybe it's because she doesn't have her posse of SEA/black/white/other non-Korean backup dancers for this one.

I was kinda impressed by this tutting routine, but this is sadly the height of dance for the MV.

Instead, we get this. Seriously, this Thriller shit got a full 5+ seconds man.

As for the song itself, The Shadow is a very solid release from BoA. Definitely going back to her smoother RnB roots but still keeping a bit of modern electro for spice, I enjoyed The Shadow more than Only One. Highlights of the song are definitely in the verses and particularly the chorus. I don't really have much to complain about this song other than the weird sing-talky bit building up to the climax. Okay, maybe there's not much of a real climax, but it works for this kind of song. I'll admit that the song is a bit on the basic side in regards to composition and melody, but it doesn't detract from the overall experience.

TL;DR:
Return to form for BoA via a drug-fueled joyride through her subconscious.

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