This is because aespa is the first rookie to reach number 1 on the Melon chart, only 8 months after their debut. In particular, the Melon "24 Hits" chart calculates 24-hour usage cumulatively to determine rankings, and since a single user's stream only counts once per 24 hours, it is rare for idols with strong fandoms to reach the top ranks. Espa has even surpassed BTS.

The music video for "Next Level" also quickly increased its view count. It surpassed 100 million views on YouTube in about 32 days after its release. This broke the record of their previous song "Black Mamba" by 19 days. Prior to this, the "Black Mamba" music video had achieved 100 million views in 51 days and 12 hours in January, the shortest time for a debut song by a K-pop group, let alone a global rookie.

In fact, "Next Level" is also a song that showed aespa's direction and the future of K-pop that SM is envisioning. Espa debuted with the title of the world's first "avatar group." The team name 'aespa' is also a combination of 'æ', which expresses 'Avatar X Experience', and the English word 'aspect', meaning 'both sides'. 

Espa's worldview will also be produced into a movie. At the recently held "SM CONGRESS 2021," SM announced a new hybrid visual content genre called "CAWMAN," which compresses the "SMCU" worldview, with aespa as the main characters. It is a word combining C for Cartoon, A for Animation, W for Webtoon, M for Motion graphics, A for Avatar, and N for Novel. SM stated, "There are discussions about creating episodes in the genre of CAWMAN and adapting them into movies in Hollywood."

Article Source:  ⓒheraldcorp

These are English translations of articles from our GTTOUR Japanese website.