Column SFF Bestiary The Power of a Cute Animal Sidekick We all know who the real stars of KPop Demon Hunters are… By Judith Tarr | Published on March 23, 2026 Image: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Netflix KPop Demon Hunters is an international phenomenon. Just this past week, on top of numerous other awards, it won Oscars for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song. The characters, the songs, the story, have taken over the world. It’s a great story. The king of the demons has been trying for centuries to conquer humankind and feed on their souls. There’s always been a trio of demon hunters holding him back with the magical barrier called the Honmoon, sustaining it with three-part harmony and the passion of their fans. Each group of hunters is a girl group, and they perform in whatever genre is most in vogue at the time. This time it’s K-Pop, Korean pop music, and Rumi, Mira, and Zoey set out to raise the greatest power of all, the golden Honmoon. That and that alone can drive out the demons forever. There are numerous complications and a number of reversals, some of them devastating, but we’re here for one beloved trope, and that is the Adorable Animal Sidekick (singular or plural). Walt Disney built an empire on it. Hero after hero, princess after princess, has a sidekick flitting around, cracking wise and offering advice and occasional chaos. From Jiminy Cricket to Mushu the teeny dragon to Sebastian the crab, no protagonist can be without this essential living accessory. KPop Demon Hunters gives us a pair of animal powers: a demon tiger and a six-eyed magpie. They’re not named in the film, but the creative team calls them Derpy Tiger and Sussie Bird. Both are very much a part of Korean folk culture, and they’re often seen together in lore and art. We first meet them in the demon realm, as ominous shadows attached to the demonic musician Jinu. As the film progresses, they emerge into the light. The bird is a geometric masterpiece in black and white with a tall-crowned hat, and the tiger is a vivid blue creature with enormous fangs set in a perpetual grin, and lambent golden eyes. Their primary function in the story is to serve as messengers between Jinu and Rumi. They can melt into the ground or the floor and rise up out of it, as they please. The tiger carries messages in a card on its tongue. The bird rides the tiger’s head or shows up on the sidelines, watching with its multiplicity of eyes. In spite of their dark origin and their foreboding introduction, neither the tiger nor the bird turns out to be evil. At worst they’re neutral. They have a job to do and they’re diligent about it. There’s nothing scary about them, though the tiger is huge—tiger-sized—and the bird is kind of weird. The power they wield is the power of cute. Cute is a great force in the world. Maybe the greatest. Disney knew. In Japan it’s an entire thing called Kawaisa, the Cult of Cute. Cute animals rule the internet and dominate social media. Cute doesn’t need to be small or fuzzy or harmless. It can be a tiny insect (jumping spiders, omg) or a big furry mammal. It can be a creature normally thought of as terrifying, like a shark or a snake. Humans can find cuteness in just about anything. It’s not without its dangers—hence the meme, “If not friend, then why friend-shaped?” It can be a hard lesson when humans fall for the cute but miss the real nature of a wild animal. But that’s getting away from the purpose of the tiger and the bird in KPop Demon Hunters. They’re there to show us that Jinu may not be entirely evil. The telling point for me is when Rumi asks Jinu why the bird wears a hat. “I made it for the tiger,” he answers, “but the bird keeps taking it.” A demon makes a hat for his companion animal. That’s such a human thing to do. There’s a whole subreddit of snakes in hats. (Also, cats wishing death on humans who try to inflict clothes on them, but that’s a different set of memes—and one of the underlying themes of another Korean genre film, The Cat.) It’s not just the sartorial choice that does it. It’s the way both Jinu and Rumi act around the tiger. An affectionate glance. A casual stroke of the hand. A purr in response. They’re showing us that they have the human impulse to bond with other species. It’s a form of empathy, and a manifestation of the capacity to love. That’s the heart of the film. It’s one of the things that makes it great, and an essential component of its success. The music and the characters could carry it on their own, but the tiger and the bird add that extra bit of something. I can’t imagine it without them.[end-mark] The post The Power of a Cute Animal Sidekick appeared first on Reactor.