Save big on my favorite board games this Prime Day — up to 47% off on Catan, Risk, Exploding Kittens and more
Fret not, dear reader, as I've rounded up the best board game deals available right now on Amazon. If you're a fan of trains and want to compete against others to build your own railway network, I'd recommend Ticket to Ride which is currently 47% off at Amazon right now. But if Dungeons & Dragons is more your speed, the 2024 Player's Handbook is available for just $39 and it includes everything you need to get started.
There are many other board and card games to choose from, such as Monopoly, Exploding Kittens and more. I'll be updating this article as more deals pop up but for now, here are the nine best board games to drop your money on this Prime Day.
For more savings, check out our Prime Day live blog for the best deals as we find them. Whether you're after kitchen gadgets, TV discounts or new audio gear, there's something for everyone at a lower price!
All abooooard! In this railway-themed board game, two to five players compete to collect different colored train cards to build on railway routes in North America, a bit like what you do in Monopoly. You get points by completing Destination Cards, and by building the longest continuous routes. The game gets dramatic as train cards start running out while you are still competing to fulfil routes.
Who doesn't love a good ol' fashioned whodunnit? Clue is a classic murder mystery board game where you and up to six other players act as detectives to solve a murder. Determine who committed the crime, the weapon they used, and which room the crime took place in. Other players will try to ruin your strategy by using cards in their hands, and the first person to make an accurate accusation wins. This is the perfect game for fans of movies like Knives Out!
If, like me, you've sunk hundreds of hours into CDPR's hit role-playing video game, you'll love the Gangs of Night City board game. It's similar to Risk as you and up to three other players compete to conquer the ruthless streets of Night City. You need to be part of one of four gangs, each offering different customization options for diverse strategies and experiences. There are multiple replayable endings, and every choice impacts the narrative. And you can meet characters from Netflix's Edgerunners too — the perfect board game to accompany the show's renewal!
Catan is arguably one of the best board games of all time. This highly addictive strategy game for three to four players turns you into hard-nosed settlers, competing to conquer an island. Collect resource cards to build roads, village and cities, but collecting them heavily relies on dice rolls and trading with other players. Oh, and there's a resource-stealing robber too to spice things up. On average, one game takes up to 90 minutes. Are you up to the challenge?
Have you recently gotten into Dungeons & Dragons because of Baldur's Gate 3? I don't blame you because so have I. But D&D can be daunting and you may not know where to begin, which is why the 2024 Player's Handbook is a great starting point. It explains classes and subclasses, different types of enemies and combat styles, and features stunning artwork that will immerse you. It'll also help you level up your character creation and become a better Dungeon Master.
Pandemic is a fun cooperative game where two to four players must work together to defeat the worldwide affliction. I know none of us want to relive the years of 2020-22 but trust me when I say this game is extremely fun. You're part of the CDC and each player plays a different team member: medic, researcher, and the like. Your competitive edge will come in handy here, as you must act quickly to combat outbreaks around the world. Working together for the good of all.
Ever since my partner gifted me the Exploding Kittens card game, I haven't stopped thinking about it, and we play it when we can. This family-friendly card game combines strategy and humor where you must protect your kittens, avoid explosions and outsmart your opponents. This Party Pack Edition comes with 120 cards featuring original, hilarious illustrations by The Oatmeal.
My earliest memories of playing board games with my family take me back to all of us huddled around a table playing Monopoly. It's an all-time classic, where up to six players buy, sell and scheme their way to becoming the richest person alive. You can build houses and hotels and trade these if a player offers you a better deal. This edition includes eight classic tokens including a top hat, rubber ducky, battleship and more. One game of Monopoly can last hours and hours, so be sure to free up your evening!
Conquer the world by controlling armies and engaging in battles with up to five players to capture territories. Risk can get messy and chaotic, but it's always fun. You can attack players' territories and they must defend, and the outcome is ultimately decided by dice rolls. You can form temporary alliances with others too, but at the end of the day, only one person can rule the world. Combining luck, strategy and diplomacy, each round is unpredictable and intense.
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Tom's Guide
15 minutes ago
- Tom's Guide
I've watched 43 shows in 2025 so far — here's the 7 worth watching right now on Netflix, Hulu and more
After seeing 43 shows over seven months, my list of the best shows of 2025 so far is starting to solidify. I did this exercise back in March when I had only watched a mere 24 shows this year. Now, I've nearly doubled that figure, and that's not even counting my rewatch of "Call My Agent." Full disclosure: Just because I've seen 43 shows doesn't mean I've seen everything. I still have yet to see "Squid Game" season 3, for example. But still, 43 is a good sample size, especially given that more than a few of these recently earned Emmy nominations. I feel particularly vindicated in a few of my selections after seeing them secure dozens of nominations. As usual, these shows are all available on the best streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max and more. In fact, all but one of them are streaming originals. So, without further ado, here are the seven best shows of 2025 so far that you need to stream right now. Spoiler alert: it's largely changed from my previous list, so you definitely want to read to see what's changed. A quick peek behind the curtain: As I maintain my list of best shows (I do this for movies, too), I create tiers, in addition to ranking the shows in order. If a show is within a given tier, I could probably be convinced to reconsider its ranking, relative to the other shows in the same tier. I say this because "The Bear" season 4 is the only show in my top outside of my top two tiers. It's simply not as good as the next six shows. This season was a significant improvement from last year's season 3, though, which barely cracked my top 25 shows last year. Yes, it still felt a bit thin on story, but examining Carmy's (Jeremy Allen White) personal journey as a chef and as a person, and then bringing it to a close, was a worthwhile experience. I also particularly enjoyed the episodes "Worms," "Bears" and "Goodbye," even though I felt they never quite hit the heights of some of the episodes of a show like "The Last of Us" season 2, which "The Bear" season 4 just beats out in my rankings. Stream now on Hulu I loved "The Studio." In our Emmy nominations coverage, I declared it my top comedy series of the year ... and up until a few days ago, it was (more on that later). But regardless of what has moved ahead of it, that doesn't diminish how good this show is. The show's two-episode premiere was excellent, with the first episode establishing the world in which Matt Remick's (Seth Rogen) fictional Continental Studios exists. It never really dips in quality from there. The second episode, "The Oner," is a masterpiece and remains one of the best episodes of television I've watched all year. Its Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series is well deserved. I just hope that if it wins, somebody thanks Sal Saperstein. Stream now on Apple TV Plus "Paradise" was briefly my show of the year so far. It's been pushed down to fifth on the list, which just goes to show you what a great year of television 2025 has quietly been. The Hulu political drama stars Sterling K. Brown as a Secret Service agent to an assassinated president, and it's a masterclass in story building. It expertly layers twist after twist and manages to pay them all off by the season's end, while still propelling us into season 2. While it's ultimately dropped into a tier just below the final four shows on this list, it still has incredible moments. "Paradise" episode 7, "The Day," hits you like a nuclear bomb and will leave you feeling genuinely unsettled. I'm still shook by it, and that's no small feat. Stream now on Hulu I only just started watching "The Rehearsal" season 2 around the time it was wrapping up its run on HBO. I never watched the first season, and while I think show star/director/creator Nathan Fielder can be brilliant, I find some of his stuff can miss the mark. I couldn't even finish "The Curse." But wow, am I glad I watched this show. It's brilliant, expertly blending the genres of reality TV and scripted comedy in a way that constantly messes with your mind. You can never tell what's an act, what's real, and honestly, it doesn't even matter if it's all an act — because it's just so compelling. I can't tell you exactly where this season goes without spoiling it, and I don't want to do that. But the show starts with Fielder crafting a role-play simulation to examine why pilot communication failures lead to fatal airplane crashes. Ultimately, to fully construct his rehearsal, he creates a flight simulator, recreates a terminal of George Bush Intercontinental Airport and even stages a fake reality music competition within the show. He also crafts the episodes "Pilot's Code" and "My Controls," which are two of the five best episodes of TV I've watched all year. Stream now on HBO Max "Andor" season 2 started rough. A three-episode partial binge drop release schedule over just four weeks dumped 12 hours of episodes within a month. After the first three episodes underwhelmed me, I was ready to take a break and just come back to it eventually. But I'm glad I stuck with it, because the final nine episodes of this series were excellent, and if season 2 had maintained that level of quality across 12 episodes, it might be my No. 1 show of the year. Unlike last season, this season is covering four years within the "Star Wars" universe, with each three-episode arc covering essentially a weekend in one of those four years. The show hits its high watermark at episode 8, "Who Are You?", which is the best episode of TV I've seen all year and brings us the legendary Ghorman Massacre to life, a pivotal moment in "Star Wars" history. Stream now on Disney Plus "Adolescence" is not for the faint of heart. Consisting of just four episodes, each is an emotional gut punch, particularly the finale. The show revolves around the arrest of Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), a 13-year-old boy who is suspected of murdering his classmate Katie Leonard (Emilia Holliday). Over four hours, we watch this tear apart his family and learn what may have contributed to the alleged killing, particularly the toxic online environment known as the manosphere. It's a compelling story that presents more like a play over four acts than a standard scripted drama. But "Adolescence" is also a technical marvel. The story takes place over months, but each episode is an hour of real time and is comprised of just a single shot. This choice forces the show to take us away from certain characters and moments when other dramas would cut back and forth, but in "Adolescence," it's a choice that pays off. Despite the impressive technique on display, though, this show lives and dies on its performances, and it holds the No. 2 spot on my list because of two specific performances, one of which is Stephen Graham's emotional scene to close out the show. The other is the entirety of "Episode 3," which is almost entirely a dialogue between Jamie and forensic psychologist Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty). Both are incredible, but Cooper's performance as Jamie in this episode should be enough to win him an Emmy. It already earned the show a Tom's Guide Award for Best Streaming Original Show. Stream now on Netflix Last time I did this list, I started this blurb with a simple line: "'The Pitt' is incredible." Spoiler alert: It's still incredible, and now the Television Academy has recognized how incredible this medical drama is, nominating it for 13 Emmys, including Outstanding Drama Series and several acting nominations. For those who haven't seen it yet, "The Pitt" is part "E.R." and part "24." It stars "E.R." vet Noah Wyle as Dr. Robby Robinavitch and follows him and his colleagues at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital throughout a 15-hour shift. That means, like "Adolescence," each episode takes place in real time. But despite the first season covering just mere hours in the lives of the characters, it accomplishes incredible world-building and character development. The show also excels at being realistic and navigating ongoing storylines. In the first part of the season, storylines can run throughout episodes, sometimes taking an episode off only to come back and make you cry, as episode 8, "2:00 P.M.," does to me every time. But then in episode 12, suddenly everything compresses into a single storyline, and it's executed perfectly. Stream now on Max Malcolm has been with Tom's Guide since 2022, and has been covering the latest in streaming shows and movies since 2023. He's not one to shy away from a hot take, including that "John Wick" is one of the four greatest films ever made. Here's what he's been watching lately:
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
How Lioness Built A Sexual Wellness Brand Selling Women Their Orgasms
Lioness Sextech for Sexual Wellness 'When we started the company, I was still very scared of my body,' Anna Lee, co-founder and CEO of the sexual wellness company, Lioness Health, told me over Zoom. 'I very much was like, 'I'm never doing interviews.' I never wanted to say the word vagina, or anything like that. I just want to build this really cool vibrator.' Eight years later, this former Amazon mechanical design engineer raised in a conservative Korean household is now running a profitable company convincing women to share their most intimate biometric data: their orgasms. She's built a strong TikTok following by turning her own orgasm charts into viral content after a 30-day challenge to, if I may borrow from Seinfeld, not be master of her domain. July 31st marks National Orgasm Day. Yes, it's a thing, widely celebrated across six countries as an offshoot of International Female Orgasm Day, founded in Brazil in 2007. Its purpose is to promote sexual wellness education, reduce stigma around the female orgasm, and raise awareness about the orgasm gap. While 95% of heterosexual men climax during sex, only 65% of heterosexual women do. Thirty-nine percent of women always orgasm when alone versus 6% during partnered encounters. A final statistic shocking to no woman, 60% of women have faked orgasms. Twenty-five percent of men have also, though presumably with less acclaim Lee immediately saw an entrepreneurial opportunity in launching Lioness, a smart vibrator tracking biometric data during orgasms. 'I really thought I could build a better vibrator. How do we have self-driving cars and VR glasses, but our sex toys are literally a motor and battery? It makes no sense there's so little tech innovation in sex toys.' Building a company around female pleasure required navigating an industrial landscape where traditional marketing channels are off the table, manufacturing comes with byzantine triangulation, and mentioning the O-word triggers algorithmic censorship. Despite the big O's physical and mental health benefits, sexual wellness is still one of the most underdeveloped segments in the health economy. The global market for sexual technology products, or sextech, is projected to exceed $48 billion by 2033. Hearing industry standards for testing vibration intensity from the male founder of a sex toy company sparked Lee's quiet revolution. 'He told me the industry standard was to put the vibration on your nose and this is what a clitoris feels like!' Lee was aghast. 'All those times where if a toy doesn't work for you, and you're thinking something's wrong with me, why am I broken, but it's really because none of those toys were ever made with women in mind. They're meant for men to purchase for their significant other when they're trying to spice up their relationship.' If the industry was defining 'normal' without studying women's bodies, leaving women to quietly internalize design failures as personal ones, the only plausible solution was to go directly to the source: women's bodies. Sextech And Sexual Wellness The Lioness vibrator with data visualization app Most sexual wellness companies peddle pleasure. Lioness specializes in data. The company operates within the rapidly expanding sextech market, where technology intersects with taboo to fill gaps legacy science conveniently ignores. 'We wanted to take sex toys and make them not sexy, but very nerdy. Make it something that feels like you're understanding your body better, making you curious about your body. The same way people get obsessed with Fitbits, Oura rings, fitness trackers. Why can't you be equally empowered about sexual wellness?' At Amazon, Lee specialized in force sensors embedded in Kindles and tablets, precisely the technological expertise needed to detect pelvic floor muscle movement. If a touchscreen could register the subtle press of a fingertip, why not the contractions of an orgasm? She reverse-engineered this logic and built a sensor durable enough for intimate use while maintaining clinical accuracy. The Lioness monitors pelvic floor muscle contractions, body temperature, and movement patterns during orgasm, translating arousal into data visualizations via a companion app. Each device is assigned a unique ID connecting to an anonymous data repository, allowing users to track patterns over time. She had the perfect product, but her go-to-market strategy wasn't as easy as she'd hoped. Lioness launched into a market where it couldn't say what it was selling. Basic DTC and GTM playbooks recommend Facebook and Instagram advertising, Google Ads, and mainstream influencer partnerships. But when Lioness launched in 2014, the term sextech didn't exist. Sexual wellness products were categorized alongside pornographic content. Meta rejected advertisements outright; YouTube labeled educational content as adult material; payment processors flagged transactions; and even email marketing campaigns were threatened by spam filters. 'January 1st was probably the first time we were able to truly run ads for Meta,' Lee shared. 'This is the first time we're actually experiencing being able to do the traditional method of paid marketing. Before then, we were doing pretty out there things to get the word out, doing everything but paid marketing.' Those 'out there things' included scientific exhibitionism of the most intimate variety. During the pandemic, Lee launched a TikTok channel where she displayed her own orgasm charts. 'I wasn't even showing the vibrator. I was like, this is what data looks like in terms of my orgasms. If I drink coffee, this is what it looks like.' Her candor earned her 450,000 followers. Lee then escalated her commitment to empirical transparency by self pleasuring daily for 30 consecutive days, documenting the physiological variations, and posting analysis on Reddit's DataIsBeautiful subreddit. The posts went viral. 'There were days that was very stressful, because when you're forced to masturbate for 30 days, it is way more difficult than wanting to masturbate for 30 days,' Lee recalled. 'There's days you're like, 'Oh man, I don't even feel like it.' But you're just doing it because you're keeping your streak up.' While Lee charted her climaxes, her team churned out three to four educational articles a week, positioning Lioness as a sexual wellness thought leader while skirting the 'sex toy' label entirely. Lee spoke on every panel she could find, joined every discussion, and chased every earned media opportunity available. By the time Meta finally sanctioned Lioness advertisements in January 2025, coinciding with broader policy shifts surrounding the 2024 elections, the platform had become virtually pointless. Her organic strategy outpaced paid acquisition. Users acquired through content and word-of-mouth showed higher engagement and stronger lifetime value than any gained from those intrusive paid feed interruptions. Lee initially approached the product with an engineer's logic, but the emotional impact on customers caught her by surprise. Many buyers didn't just see Lioness as a tool. They saw it instead as a form of agency, a way to reclaim knowledge long ignored, outsourced, or medicalized beyond recognition. 'There was a researcher that did a study with the Lioness users on what this data means to them, why people buy the Lioness,' Lee said. 'Most, almost a huge percentage of people were like, 'this data helps me and helps other people learn about their body.' They felt this pursuit. They're pioneers in sexual health, helping contribute to the science of sexual wellness, getting more research out there, helping other women understand their bodies better by also contributing their data to science.' Lioness's Sexual Wellness Lab Lioness users opt in to share anonymously their data to researchers Dr. Dee Hartmann, PT, DPT, spent 27 years running a physical therapy clinic in suburban Chicago, specializing in treating chronic vulvar pain, an anatomical mystery patriarchal medicine dismisses. Since shifting her focus to research and education in 2017, she's become a global speaker, author, and co-founder of both The Pleasure Movement and the Center for Genital Health and Education. 'I've spent my life in women's pelvises,' Hartmann candidly told me over Zoom. 'And I'm very fascinated by what happens from a functional perspective. Physical therapists try to treat the cause of a problem rather than medication which treats the symptoms.' Her preliminary research with Lioness's real-time biometric data showed orgasmic contractions generate statistically greater force than voluntary pelvic floor muscle contractions. 'We possess negligible understanding in the medical literature regarding what constitutes a female orgasm,' Hartmann continued. 'Female sexual arousal was determined in laboratories with college students supine on tables with temperature and moisture gauges positioned internally. The clitoris received no consideration whatsoever.' Lioness users, meanwhile, have established an unconventional relationship with the company, anonymously contributing their data while enjoying the well-documented benefits of orgasm (better sleep, lower stress, improved immunity). Those who opt in further can share their device ID with researchers, who can then access physiological data from Lioness's mainframe. For Hartmann, the possibilities are finally catching up to questions she's asked her whole career. She dreams of studying cultural differences in physiological arousal, comparing, for instance, orgasm signatures from women in sexually repressive environments versus those in more liberal societies. And now, for the first time, she has a tool that could make those studies possible. 'My thesis is, I want to know the impact and the functionality of pelvic floor muscles and clitoral stimulation, and how it contributes to arousal and orgasm.' She pointed to one Lioness user showing dramatic variations between a 16-minute midnight session and a five-minute morning quickie. 'The studies we could do with this are just endless!' Hartmann enthused. Over in the Czech Republic, Dr. James Pfaus has also been working with Lioness in his research. Pfaus is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at Charles University Prague and Director of Research Division, Center for Sexual Health and Intervention at the Czech National Institute of Mental Health. 'The Lioness, I think, is truly detecting pelvic floor movements, which is the motor part of your orgasm,' Pfaus enlightened me during our Zoom call. Pfaus has already used the Lioness to develop new theories around women's sexual wellness. His analysis of 52 women across multiple sessions introduced three distinct orgasmic signatures: These signatures now inform broader theories about sexual response, reshaping how female pleasure is understood both in labs and bedrooms. 'It's very hard to get funding to study orgasms,' Pfaus lamented. 'Nobody wants to put money into understanding orgasm or orgasm problems because it's like, well, we have other things to study. There's cancer.' In the interim, Lioness is helping researchers like Hartmann and Pfaus bypass academic bureaucracy to continue their research until funding gatekeepers start realizing the $48 billion potential of this work. Takeaways for CMOs Navigating the Taboo Sexual Wellness Industry Lioness's GTM strategy invariably created very passionate consumers. When traditional digital marketing channels shut the door to Lee's ambitions, she created a window and strategically used her $1.2 million fundraise to launch Lioness. Unable to buy attention with advertising, she earned it instead through thought leadership backed by scientific credibility. Bootstrapping led to disciplined spending and creative problem-solving – such as her sharing very personal data very publicly, winning over Gen Z in the process, and their passion for audacity in sexual wellness education. For CMOs navigating restricted markets or taboo categories, here's how to copy her blueprint: 'As someone that was so scared of her own body growing up, the one way I found comfort in understanding my body was through science,' Lee confessed. 'There's a big mission drive for people purchasing the Lioness beyond just being like, 'Hey, this is a really cool vibrator.' They also feel that really big passion of what we have is to change the mission around sexual health and research.' Lee's arc from anatomy-phobic engineer to orgasm-data sexual wellness influencer is how taboo markets reward orthogonal thinking. In building a vibrator cum research device, she reengineered the narrative around female pleasure and redefined for women the passionate pursuit of luxury as the ability to own both their power and their pleasure.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
How 'KPop Demon Hunters' became the surprise hit of the summer
How 'KPop Demon Hunters' became the surprise hit of the summer NEW YORK (AP) — In the colorful, animated, musical world of 'KPop Demon Hunters,' everyone is a fan. The general public rocks T-shirts supporting their favorite idols. They hold light sticks and stare starry-eyed at stadium stages; they scream, they cry, they cheer, they buy the merch. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise, then, that the Sony Pictures/ Netflix film itself has inspired similar fanfare, having topped the streamer's global rankings. Fans have flooded the internet with art, covers, cosplay and choreography in response to the movie, which follows the fictional K-pop girl group HUNTR/X as they fight demons. And it's not just the film that's a summer hit. The 'KPop Demon Hunters' soundtrack has topped the charts — debuting at No. 1 on Billboard's Soundtracks chart and No. 8 on the all-genre Billboard 200. Here's how 'KPop Demon Hunters' became the year's surprising success story. Musical tradition — and K-pop — are honored The 'KPop Demon Hunters' soundtrack utilizes some of the best and brightest in the genre. That included a partnership with K-pop company The Black Label, co-founded by super producer Teddy Park, known for his work with YG, Blackpink and 2NE1 — empowered girl groups used as references for the film's protagonists, the trio HUNTR/X. It's one of the many reasons the musical film's soundtrack stands on its own. Filmmakers 'really did their homework,' says Jeff Benjamin, a music journalist who specializes in K-pop. Indeed, they did a lot of research. One of the film's directors, Maggie Kang, said that her team prioritized 'representing the fandom and the idols in a very specific way,' as to not disappoint K-pop fans. They pulled from a treasure trove of influences heard at every corner: The fictional, rival boy band Saja Boys' hit song 'Soda Pop,' for example, references the '90s K-pop group H.O.T. And it has worked. 'KPop Demon Hunters' is the highest charting soundtrack of 2025, with eight of its songs landing on the Billboard Hot 100. It peaked at No. 2 on the all-genre Billboard 200. To put that in perspective: Lorde's 'Virgin' and Justin Bieber's 'Swag' did the same. In some ways, it recalls Disney's 'Encanto,' which topped the Billboard 200 and produced a No. 1 hit, 'We Don't Talk About Bruno ' in 2022. Similarly, 'KPop Demon Hunters' embraces 'the original soundtrack, which is a lost art form,' adds Benjamin. Tamar Herman, a music journalist and author of the 'Notes on K-pop' newsletter, says the movie succeeds because it embraces animated musical tradition and authentic K-pop music production styles in equal measure. She considers 'Kpop Demon Hunters' to be 'a musical with songs inspired by K-pop,' not unlike a Jukebox musical, where the songs of ABBA are reimagined for 'Mamma Mia.' Audiences hunger for something new The novelty of the film, too, seems to be resonating. Where many animated films rely on adapting existing intellectual property, 'KPop Demon Hunters' is original. And it comes from an original perspective. 'It's not completely Korean, it's not completely Western and it's kind of right in that middle,' says Kang. 'It's like not pulled from one side; it's kind of flavors of both. So, I think that's what makes the movie feels a little different.' And 'the core story is what's drawing everybody in,' says Kang. San Francisco-based cosplayer and content creator Nanci Alcántar, who goes by Naanny Lee online agrees. 'It's not only a K-pop group, but it also tells a story of their journey, of how they transform into powerful warriors,' said Alcántar in Spanish. For her, it goes beyond K-pop — it's about the narrative. Kang's approach to cultural authenticity, too, may have contributed to the film's crossover appeal. Rather than explaining Korean elements like HUNTR/X's visit to a traditional medicine clinic or translating K-pop light stick culture for Western audiences, she opted for full immersion. 'We just wanted everybody to just accept that they were in Korea,' Kang said. The director said this method of 'throwing people into the deep end of a culture' breaks down barriers better than heavy-handed explanation. 'We just wanted to keep everything feeling normal,' she explained. 'If you don't shine a light on it, it just becomes more easily accepted.' Inventive animation connects Zabrinah Santiago, a San Diego-based longtime K-pop fan and freelance illustrator who goes by ItmeZ online, was so inspired by the animation style of the movie that she raced to make fan art. She sold illustrated fan cards of HUNTR/X and Saja Boys at her booth at the Los Angeles Anime Expo, held in July, two weeks after the movie was released on Netflix. And she wasn't the only one. A search of #kpopdemonhunters on Instagram yields thousands of fan illustrations of HUNTR/X and Saja Boys. Japan-based Youtuber Emily Sim, also known as Emirichu online, says the character designs and original plot drew her to the movie. Sim, with more than 3.5 million subscribers on YouTube, posted a 35-minute video about the movie. In a week-and-a-half, it garnered nearly 450,000 views. 'I love seeing all the fan art and just the ways that this movie has creatively inspired people,' Sim said. Kang says for 'KPop Demon Hunters,' her team wanted to bring together demons and Jeoseung Saja — the grim reaper in Korean mythology — for a film that could look both very traditional and modernized — what she says is common in K-dramas but not in animation. Herman compares the movie to another Sony animation: 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,' which also attracted a broad audience with its creative animation. 'And it's a fun, animated musical, which we haven't had in a while,' she says. 'It's campy, it's engaging, it's universal.' And K-pop fans see themselves represented Santiago was initially skeptical of the title 'KPop Demon Hunters.' 'I feel like with big companies they kind of like to use K-pop as a bait. They kind of like to take advantage of K-pop fans' sincerity,' said Santiago. 'But I felt like with this one, it was such like kind of a love letter to K-pop fans.' Indeed — if the film wasn't authentic to K-pop fans' experience, or mocked them, it is unlikely to have become so popular, says Benjamin. Instead, there are Easter eggs for the dedicated K-pop listener. Herman agrees, and says that the film has in-jokes for K-pop fans, not unlike a children's movie that features some humor meant to appeal specifically to parents. 'Figuring out what makes K-pop tick in a way that resonates with musical fans was really important to this movie,' said Herman. For Kang, that was always at the heart of the project. 'Fandom plays a huge part in the world being saved at the end of the movie,' she said. 'So, we were really confident that we were doing that justice.' ___ Karena Phan reported from Los Angeles. Juwon Park reported from Seoul. Maria Sherman, Karena Phan And Juwon Park, The Associated Press
