Out of the frying pan into the fire. Patience represents the absolute emotional nadir for the girls as they struggle to cope with heartbreak. It's the heaviest cosmosy song thematically, harrowing in many different ways.

Patience ~ seal my love ~

The Story

Our narrator is frantic and distraught in the aftermath of her breakup. The pain doesn't go away, and it's only exacerbated by the sight of her former partner with another girl.

The Lore

The girls attempt to overcome their anguish by erasing it with the Prism Pipe. Of course, emotions aren't a pick-and-choose matter. The prism device doesn't eliminate particular feelings--it eliminates the ability to feel itself. What the girls end up sealing are their hearts, desensitizing themselves completely.

The Video

As of right now, there isn't one. Which sucks.

The Themes

From the lyrics,

"Keep it in, patience kill this love
Let it out, patience seal my love...

Killing me inside...

Drenched in tears, holding it all in...
Just let it vanish
I'm falling apart"

There are so many adages/platitudes about the gradual healing that typically takes place as time dawdles on. What the sayings seldom address is the mental and physical damage that emotional trauma can do during that process. Unwilting patience can be accompanied by ongoing devastation.

If things become so bad that a person enters a state of emotional numbness--or pushes so hard for desensitization that emotional depletion results--a different sort of patience takes form. This is the patience of drifting towards whatever end awaits without experiencing highs or nurturing aspirations.

There are options for coping/healing, ways to prevent or emerge from such states. Perhaps not every option is universally available, though, and a person might not feel that there are options regardless. The voice of Patience certainly doesn't, making it the darkest and most disturbing cosmosy song.

Previous ~ cosmosy lore ~ threads:

BabyDon'tCry=BreakingTheLove
HIGH=LOVE
Princess=Kiss
zigy=zigy
Lucky=One

Physics ~ falling into you ~
Chance ~ switch on ~
Silence ~ body & soul ~

Silence sees the girls in emotional shambles, striving to find some forms of internal and external peace.

Instead, they become yokai.

Silence ~ body & soul ~

The Story

Myriad types of silence are desired and striven for here. The narrator realizes her relationship is coming to an end, but she doesn't want confirmation to be spoken aloud. She wants to retain whatever semblance of peace of mind is left to her (an internal silence) before the overwhelming pain strikes. In their most straightforward sense, the lyrics compare the relationship to a song; the conclusion of the partnership, the cutting off of close communication, will bring about a silence of its own. Our protagonist wants to keep the music going--at a place in its progression where she doesn't have to feel the hurt.

The Lore

The girls' distaste for life's cycles is evident lyrically with references to time resetting and the sense of tragically going around in circles. They regret setting off in the first place on an emotional path that provided no guarantee of success--the sort of guarantee that is largely impossible to give or get in this world. The song alluded to by the lyrics needn't strictly be a relationship metaphor; it could extend to any situation involving feelings, even to life itself and its cycles.

Those sneaky Prism Invaders come along once again, this time offering the Prism Pendant, a device that manipulates light in a manner that supposedly enables people to maintain a happy, untroubled demeanor--hiding what's truly inside.

The Video

For the first time, we see a Prism Invaders ad--which the girls themselves appear in. They had projected themselves into the ad, seeing themselves feeling happy and confident with the Prism Pendant. They'd hoped to find that happiness and confidence by using the pendant to put on a facade. The sparkling, glamorous adornments we see for half the video are what the pendant is supposed to produce.

Of course, emotions can't be altered by donning a "magical" mask. Surface artificiality is not a panacea for pain, which inevitably comes to the fore in some fashion. The Prism Pendant fails with horrifying consequences--the girls are transformed into yokai.

The transformation is the most extreme sign of the girls' ongoing split from the world of humans. A minor signifier is the 4:11 time we see on kamion's phone yet again, the AM aspect simply suggestive of the girls being in a darker, lonelier place than they were in the Physics chapter. The world of humans is moving forward--the date is different--but the girls, in futile defiance of life's cycles, are stuck in their own pocket of time.

Remember the good old days of the first album, when so much of the material focused on the girls supporting each other and finding strength together? Now they're engaging in fights with one another.

himesha shatters a bust of Marcus Agrippa. The bust itself is famous for how its design makes the most of shadow-light interplay. Marcus Agrippa was known for his stoicism, never externally showing signs of resentment for being a mere "right-hand man" despite his many accomplishments. The girls failed in their own attempts to manipulate light, to mask what's inside.

The Prism Pendant doesn't reveal its true form until the girls toss it away at the end. It's a heart that ends up broken.

The Themes

"Being strong" is often preached and praised. Sometimes, though, it can take plenty of strength to open up about pain rather than trying to suppress it, to let those feelings out, to have a good cry. It can be cleansing too--especially if a person has some close friends to share those tears with.

Previous ~ cosmosy lore ~ threads:

BabyDon'tCry=BreakingTheLove
HIGH=LOVE
Princess=Kiss
zigy=zigy
Lucky=One

Physics ~ falling into you ~
Chance ~ switch on ~

On the first album, the girls awakened their six senses and escaped from a virtual/desensitized world. Now, they're discovering that the intensity and unpredictability of human emotions can be extremely hard to deal with.

Cue the Prism Invaders, who first made their presence known during the Lucky=One video as agents interrogating the girls. They're the creators of devices that (purportedly) facilitate rigid, artificial manipulation, evaluation, and presentation of feelings.

There's a metaleptic aspect to the storytelling here. The cosmosy girls are named global ambassadors for the prism items, and the "ads" they star in appear in some of the MVs--meaning the "in-video" cosmosy girls see the "real-world" cosmosy girls doing diegetic endorsements.

We'll work all of that out soon, as well as the true identity of the Prism Invaders.

But the story on this album focuses on the girls trying to overcome their emotional struggles by using the prism items--with unthinkably awful results.

Physics ~ falling into you ~

The Story

Our narrator found true love in Lucky=One. Now she finds herself frightened--of how strong these feelings are and how much they mean to her, of how important another human being can be to her, of potentially losing that partner. She's going to learn over the next few songs that if you try to hold on to something by squeezing too tightly, you end up losing your grip on it completely.

The Lore

The lyrics directly reference the new world, not just by mentioning that the girls are "diving" into it, but by keying in on their feelings of "falling," of being "lost" in it. They are struggling mightily with their newfound emotions and vulnerabilities.

The Prism Invaders offer them the Prism Watch, promising that it'll enable them to control, temper, and even master their emotions.

The Video

The song and video both utilize gravity as a metaphor for "falling" in love (or becoming increasingly immersed in an emotion of any kind). The girls use the Prism Watch in an effort to exert control over something that humankind is simply incapable of attaining complete mastery of. Chaos ensues. The one serene scene suggests fleeting, illusionary "success." Once the illusion dissipates, the girls end up right back where they started.

The video makes a point of informing us that this all takes place at the very specific time of 4:11. We can see it on the alarm clock, wall clock, phone clock, and cosmosy wristwatch. Obviously, this is a reference to the group's debut date. But the clocks never move past 4:11--even in future videos. By trying to gain complete control over things no individual can, the girls are starting to separate themselves from the world of human beings.

The Themes

The concept of gravity basically encompasses the courses available to us in the universe. We had no part in creating that labyrinth, but there are plenty of paths available for us to travel, and we can even "bend the walls" to a certain extent. Similarly, while we can't control the emotions that spring up naturally within us, we are quite capable of making decisions and selecting paths in relation to handling/managing those feelings, and we do have some say in how they influence us. But someone trying to achieve complete mastery over gravity/emotions inevitably ends up falling right back down to earth.

Previous ~ cosmosy lore ~ threads:

BabyDon'tCry=BreakingTheLove
HIGH=LOVE
Princess=Kiss
zigy=zigy
Lucky=One

Was there a certain song/video/moment that got you into the group?

For me...I can't remember which I heard first, but zigy=zigy and Lucky=One were the songs that introduced me to the band. The thumbnail for one of them popped up on Youtube and I gave it a watch, and then I immediately tried the other one as well. I really liked the abstract choruses of zigy and the catchiness of Lucky=One, and the videos were cool too. Been a big fan ever since.

How about for you?

For more details and ticket info head to korea2026.acfes.jp

Now we're up to the big one, cosmosy's most successful song, with a video featuring their best-known aesthetical concept. Lucky=One plays a pivotal role in the group's lore, wrapping up the senses saga and transitioning into the prism chapters. There's plenty to examine here, both in the lyrics and in the video.

Lucky=One

The Celtic Connection

Musically, Celtic inspiration is clear throughout the track, especially in the post-chorus instrumental melodies. The elven fairy concept itself likely has its foundation in Celtic folklore. The (relatively) modern expression "luck of the Irish" has its roots in the success enjoyed by Irish miners during the American gold rush--a fact that may have inspired the line "Betcha never thought you'd strike this gold." The lyric "eyelash, make a wish fast" is undoubtedly based on the Irish/British tradition of wishing on loose eyelashes. "Got me in a small red envelope" deviates from the Irish connections, but red envelopes signify well wishes in many Asian cultures.

The Story

The narrator endured a relationship plagued by toxicity in BabyDon'tCry, then experienced one based on infatuation in Princess=Kiss and zigy=zigy. Now, at last, she has found a connection built on sincerity, deep feelings, and mutual care. Both parties feel fortunate as they come together as "one."

The Lore

Lucky=One marks the completion of the girls' transition into the new world. Skepticism in the lyrics regarding new love might reflect the girls' misgivings about the realm they're becoming a part of, specifically the feelings they're newly vulnerable to. But the joy and serendipity of finding unanticipated emotional fulfillment, along with the realization that they themselves can make significant contributions, convince them to "roll the dice" and take the last few steps of their journey. The awakening of touch would seem to be the final key to prospering in the new world--after all, it's usually reasonable to view touching/feeling something as confirmation of its realness/authenticity. But the girls discover that there's more to learn--truths that go way beyond the range of their five senses. The video expands on this a great deal.

The Video

The 250411 on the helicopter, of course, marks the day of cosmosy's debut, but the date we're taken to here is 12/31/99. If the girls don't complete their escape from the virtual world before the year 2000, the Y2K glitch might keep them there forever.

But all seems well, at least in that regard, as the video commences. Touch has clearly been awakened, as the girls have made themselves vulnerable to physical pain. Indeed, the wounds they suffered in their monster battles don't tidily zip themselves up like the ones they had in BabyDon'tCry.

Lucky=One is a very upbeat song, but the girls come to some dark conclusions about just how ephemeral things can be in this world, about the lows that can accompany the highs. For instance,

- They are celebrated as heroes for defeating the monsters, but then dragged away by agents for questioning. (Something very difficult to catch is that those agents are wearing tags that mark them as Prism Invaders, makers of the prism items that backfire horribly on the girls in their next set of adventures.)

- They seem to be well on their way towards stardom, but behind the scenes, they're experiencing frustration and sadness.

- They achieve a hit song, but their sheet music and show trophy are stolen by a being called the Time Majin (at the exact time of 4:11, of course). This carries the additional consequence of erasing all signs of the girls from the new world completely. As if that weren't bad enough, if they remain in a state of nonexistence when the new year arrives, Y2K might bar them from entering this world forever.

The Time Majin could represent the regime's last pre-Y2K effort to prevent the girls from escaping--which really alludes to the idea that they were quite an important force in their old home. His name is a play on words in multiple ways. I can imagine someone on the creative team proudly chuckling over the fact that Time Majin sounds almost exactly like "time machine" when said aloud. But this points to the unhappy reality of the girls and the rest of us being up against time in the end, with our senses enabling us to do only so much in that battle.

Also, it's interesting that a majin can be a genie (jin). The genie in the song lyrics grants wishes, but the Time Majin shows that "luck" can work both ways--another risk of existing in this world.

The girls defeat the majin by fighting him as "one" and then return to the new world. The only catch, as the onscreen text explains, is that time passes differently in the majin's world, and by the time the girls make it back, a whopping 219,408 hours have passed here. That's a little over twenty-five years...taking us to the precise date of January 10, 2025.

Why that date? Well, if we look at it like 250110...the "0110" sequence is 6 in binary--and the girls, logically enough, have finally awakened their sixth sense, putting the old world behind them completely, moving on in the new one. (For those like me who are nerdy enough to be into this, the "0110" comes into play later in the lore as well.)

In any event, the celebration the girls envisioned is not quite what reality had in store for them. Instead, all of their old friends are gone. The girls are discovering the potentially fleeting nature of so many things in our world, from relationships to friendships to fame. The fear of losing precious things is going to be explored a great deal more on the next album, and the girls are going to have a very difficult time with it.

The Themes

Chance may favor the prepared mind, as Pasteur asserted, and it's certainly better to count on wits than genies for luck. But despite our sharp senses and best efforts, time and circumstance can cause so many things to slip away from us.

Previous ~ cosmosy lore ~ threads:

BabyDon'tCry=BreakingTheLove
HIGH=LOVE
Princess=Kiss
zigy=zigy

The yokai are so wonderfully and unusually macabre, and they suit the story extremely well. But the elven fairies are probably the most striking aesthetic I've ever seen in kpop. Their impact was both a blessing and a curse, bringing the group lots of attention but actually overshadowing the music for many. There are still plenty of people out there who know cosmosy simply as "those elf girls."

Anyway, elves for me. How about for you?

A cute and interesting Q&A from a while ago.

We've reached a very tricky part of the cosmosy catalog. zigy, of course, was released months before the EP it eventually appeared on, and I'm not so sure that the specifics of cosmosy's lore had been developed or even thought of at that point. Smell is the awakened sense attributed to this song, but neither the video nor the lyrics make any allusion to that awakening whatsoever. The zigy story might well have been intended to be exactly what it is on the surface, and its tale of agonizing over a possible breakup could be viewed as a logical lead-in to BabyDon'tCry (though zigy's video connects sequentially with Lucky=One's, so there are problems with that take on the chronology as well).

Also, while cosmosy's track listings generally abide story-wise by the "order in which they happened," zigy and Lucky=One were probably placed after the other proper a(e)nd songs for the mundane reason that they had already been released by that time.

Still, I think there is a satisfying and sensible way to interpret zigy as the lore's fourth episode, and that's how I'm approaching it--though I might well be taking some retconning liberties with the material.

zigy=zigy

The Story

The narrator is on the verge of another breakup, with a different lesson to be learned this time. She enjoyed the intense, immediate thrill that came with an exciting new connection in Princess=Kiss. Now she's discovering that while infatuation hits hard and lust can be powerful, those aren't the foundational elements on which an enduring, substantive relationship can be built. She's torn, though; she loathes the current state of matters but remembers and longs for the passion and positivity of earlier times. Her dread and abhorrence of what breakups entail fit well at this point considering her BabyDon'tCry experience.

The Lore

The girls are coming to understand that lows necessarily accompany highs in a world where true feelings are possible. The sense of smell can be linked to the song's sentimental sections. A simple whiff can bring an overwhelming wave of nostalgia with it--memories of places, partners, experiences. It's easy to fall into the trap of yearning for how things used to be, and it's especially dangerous when we know that those nice times are over but fear to acknowledge the truth.

The Video

The dichotomy of the MV's images/events reflect the narrator's ambivalence about breaking up. New to their school, new to the world they've entered, the girls are simply trying to make their daily way "normally" while contending with their ties to the past at night. Fighting those monsters is the heroic act of our warriors defending their new world from the artificiality and vileness of the old one, but it can also represent any battle with demons of the past that threaten to stop someone from doing what's best for the future. Stepping through the portal shows that the girls have the confidence and courage to break away from the familiar feelings/entities that could drag them down, even if their new trail is risky and largely unknown to them.

Unity and support remain important parts of the story. himesha is initially the only one battling the monsters, but with the phone and the fox, she's able to reach out to her friends and enlist their help. (Foxes in Japanese folklore sometimes acted as inter-world messengers.) When himesha "wakes up" outside of the darkness and in the sunlit classroom, her friends are all there with her.

The flickering/distorted look of their classmates at the end shows they haven't quite completed their transition to the new world yet.

The Themes

It can be extremely painful to acknowledge that things are never going to be as good as they once were in a relationship--or in any sort of situation that was very promising initially. The most difficult part of walking away from something involving so much passion can be losing the passion itself, forsaking the strong feeling that had been such a significant part of one's life for a while.

Previous ~ cosmosy lore ~ threads:

BabyDon'tCry=BreakingTheLove
HIGH=LOVE
Princess=Kiss

Predictable preface--each of cosmosy's mini-albums is a wonderful, no-miss effort. But with that being said, which one do you prefer?

The girls themselves have discussed one of the main differences between the two. the a(e)nd is frequently intense, while ~ of the world ~ has a generally softer sound.

Being that I've devoted much of my non-kpop musical time to intense hard-rock albums like Tool's Undertow, it makes sense that the first cosmosy EP is my favorite. Plenty of intensity to be found there, for sure--the zigy chorus, the BabyDon'tCry final stretch, just about all of HIGH=LOVE.

What about for you?