Maybe the Real Friends Are the Monsters We Made Along the Way
by Mikayla Emerson
Kim Namjoon has not gone by Rap Monster for a long time now. Since November 2017 it has been RM—Real Me. From then on, the stage name Rap Monster has only been mentioned in a tongue-in-cheek way. In a 2018 interview, Namjoon even chides himself, “Hey Namjoon. Don't name yourself Rap Monster. You're a human. You're not a monster, okay?” We live in a constant cycle of shedding ourselves of old names, old faces, old friends, old mindsets, old identities. There is freedom in making something past tense. It pivots you into a spectator of your own life. You can step away from yourself, point, and say: that was me then and this is me now. I’m not a monster, okay?
RM photographed by Takahiro Mizushima
As a fan, it has been almost taboo to refer to Namjoon as Rap Monster unless it is in an ironic or endearing sense. The word monster itself is something I have avoided. It is like mispronouncing a friend’s name after knowing them for half your life. It is like digging in the dirt to find something they buried a long time ago. What kind of friend would that make you?
When RM’s music video for “Domodachi (feat. Little Simz)” off his 2024 album Right Place, Wrong Person came out, it felt like digging up that grave. The kids riding bikes, the crawling through gutters, the guardrails, the fence, the isolation in a crowd—when I saw “Domodachi,” I saw Hirokazu Koreeda’s 2023 film Monster echoing through every frame. It is a reference I did not expect and a word I have not related to Namjoon for a long time.
While “Domodachi” and Monster share multiple symbols, they exist in conversation with each other rather than as parallels. Their use of the bicycle works exceptionally well. Both pieces depict two boys riding their bicycles together, capturing a nostalgic childlike freedom. Both recollect a sentiment from “Bicycle,” Namjoon’s 2021 Soundcloud track, “When sad, let’s ride a bicycle / Let’s have the wind blow beneath our two feet / Oh, let’s ride a bicycle, / with our two arms spread out freely.” However, “Domodachi” sees the bicycle as a means to escape the world. It is a vessel to leave the dark, incessant crowds behind. You can go as far as your feet—wheels—carry you. The bicycle in Monster has the opposite effect. Minato Mugino and Yori Hoshikawa, the two children Monster follows, spend notable screentime riding their bikes. It provides the opportunity to capture their budding relationship, but it also emphasizes how much time and energy their freedom costs. You can only go as far as your feet carry you.
When the unnamed protagonist of “Domodachi” leaves his bicycle at a guardrail in the dark, ushered away by a larger group of children, he abandons more than just his bicycle. He leaves behind his vessel of escape, tugged along into a foreboding crowd. Namjoon raps over the scene, “All my friends wanna get around in O's, / all my friends wanna take another pose / Yeah, I'm knocked out, what a bullshit.” At this point, the title of the song clarifies itself. Namjoon distinguishes the word domodachi (どもだち) from tomodachi (ともだち), the Japanese translation for “friend.” To write domodachi, add two strokes, like quotation marks, to tomodachi. While tomodachi (ともだち) are friends, domodachi (どもだち) are like “friends.” They are fake friends. They pull him away from his freedom to circle him, watching him. They strike a pose, basking in the sensation of being watched. They care more about being seen with him as a friend than actually being part of his life. He realizes this, both Namjoon and the main character of “Domodachi,” but gets swept away in the ingenuity of society anyway.
In Monster, Minato and Yori leave their bicycles at a guardrail to go to their secret hideout in the woods. Like “Domodachi,” they leave behind what the bicycle represents—the obstacles of time and energy that bar them from freedom. Unlike “Domodachi,” they leave the bicycle behind and are finally left alone. There is no crowd, no parents, no principals breathing down their necks. In both pieces, the guardrail acts as a place to leave a past self behind. In “Domodachi,” the protagonist leaves behind the version that wanders life with “two arms spread out freely,” to be part of broader society. In Monster, Minato and Yori leave behind the versions that must hide from society to finally be themselves.
When the chorus of “Domodachi” starts with “We’re all friends, let’s dance here / (I’ll dance right now),” a young boy leads the protagonist through a storm drain to escape the havoc raging above them in red. This new character does not make a spectacle, so it seems he finally has a real friend to lead him out of the mayhem. At the end of the tunnel, they find a grossly long, metropolitan queue of people waiting for the train. Monster features a variation of this, too. The two boys navigate through a storm drain to reach their hideout—an abandoned train car. Again, the imagery is the same, but what it communicates is the opposite. In “Domodachi,” the trains allude to a broader, industrialized society and the chaos of never truly being your own individual in the crowd. The camera-pans jerk the viewer around, losing sight of the protagonist and his friend. Through jarring transitions, you get lost in the crowd with them. Meanwhile, in Monster, the two boys’ venture through the storm drain is serene. The sound of their shoes splashing in the water as they smile and talk comfortably is like a breath of fresh air from their suffocating, repressed lives back home. The abandoned train car alludes to a world where the hectic society of “Domodachi” has been forgotten. From there, Minato and Yori build their own world in the abandoned train car.
“Domodachi” does not follow the same path as Monster, here. Instead of building a life in the disorder, the train cars crash, and the crowds of people crush one another. The train conductor stands at the head of it all, staring into the darkness where a monstrous red eye peeks back at him.
The red eye is like the red dot of a recording camera. Both have the same function: surveilling those under its gaze. This scene is also a POV shot, situating you as the one staring at the eye. Like HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, it watches you. It judges you. But, before it can decide what to do with you, the friend pulls the protagonist, and you, away from the scene.
The brass instruments are a more subtle detail that appears at the height of turmoil for both “Domodachi” and Monster. In “Domodachi,” a short shot of a musician playing the saxophone instrumental shines like a light, offering a moment of relief from this dark tumultuous society. The music is a moment of freedom. The music is freedom. In Monster, the school principal teaches Minato how to play the trombone after he confesses for the first time. Quietly, like giving up, Minato finally admits what he has done. “I like someone. I can't tell anyone, so I lie. Because they'll know I can never be happy." The principal replies with words that I will take to my grave, “If only some people can have it, that's not happiness. That's just nonsense. Happiness is something anyone can have.” Minato then blows into the trombone, making noise more than anything. It is not particularly musical, but the disjointed sounds catch everyone’s attention—both in front of the screen and behind it. The appearance of the brass instrument in “Domodachi” feels like a tip of the hat to the same message from Monster. Freedom, like happiness, is something everyone can have. If only some can have it, it is not freedom.
In the falling action, “Domodachi” and Monster depict their characters at fences. Like the guardrail with the bikes, these fences stand as places to shed a past self. The world beyond the fence in “Domodachi” is simply the world the protagonist left behind at the beginning. Whereas, in Monster the fence is “the end of the line,” the world on the other side is one Minato and Yori cannot trespass in this life. The protagonist of “Domodachi” does not hesitate climbing the fence out of the darkness, waving goodbye to the friend who saved him, and then turning away. Minato and Yori do not cross their fence until the very end of the film. They run from their landslide-wrecked train car past where the fence once was into the light. In many interpretations, the two die at the end of the film, running past “the end of the line” and thus the end of their lives.
However, the original ending of Monster has Minato and Yori turn toward the camera at the sound of their names being called. This is the image on the film’s poster despite not appearing in the final cut. “Domodachi” ends with the same scene. Its characters, reunited on their bicycles, turn back toward the camera. Both pieces force the viewer to acknowledge their role as spectator at the end. The characters hold you with their stares as you cross your arms and try to decipher what happened. Did they live? Did they die? Who was the real monster? The credits roll and you turn to your friend to ask them what they think. The music dies down and you read the comments to see what other people are saying. This is how you make art into the past tense.
“Domodachi” concludes with its protagonist returning to the world he escaped, a complete diversion from Monster. In Monster, Minato and Yori run away. Here, in “Domodachi,” the protagonist decides to come back. There is often the illusion that we can escape from life into art and then step out of it to return back to life. We have the choice to venture into artistic worlds, and we have the choice to leave. “Domodachi” blurs this line of life and art by having its protagonist turn back. In life, unlike art, there is no choice. You cannot step out of what is going on.
In that sense, “Domodachi” is an echo of a lyric in Namjoon’s song “Yun (with Erkyah Badu)” off his 2022 album Indigo “I want to be human 'fore I do some art.” He wants to live his life before intellectualizing it. Writing your life into music does not mean freeing yourself of it. The protagonist of “Domodachi” returns back to the world he ran away from at the end, acknowledging that there is no real way to escape. Names change, people change, times change, but he is still him. Monster or not. Fake friends or not. Unlike film, unlike music, unlike art—life is not something you can simply observe. You must turn back and participate.
When Kim Namjoon announced his name change from Rap Monster to RM back in 2017, I thought the word monster would bury itself as something of the past. The word monster comes from the Latin verb moneo, monere meaning “to warn.” Monsters were viewed as warnings of the Gods’ discontent. When Rap Monster entered the rap scene, I would like to think the people saw it as a sign that the music world was about to change. Until 2017, I thought his stage name was endearing—an impressive proclamation and a courageous moniker. When Namjoon wrote he no longer felt like it portrayed who he wanted to be, my idolized version of him cracked for the first time. I was fifteen then. It was too easy to see him as this untouchable musician. However, in wanting to leave a past self behind, I thought about how he and I were not that different. He finally became someone like me, someone human. Seeing images of Monster in “Domodachi” felt like seeing the past in Namjoon’s new present. Life is one long pursuit of trying to escape yourself and then trying to find that person, that name, that world, you left behind over and over again. Here Namjoon is—going back to go forward. After all, perhaps a monster is not such a terrible thing to have been.