Separating the Bangtan Universe from BTS
When BigHit began sticking the Bangtan Universe (BU) logo on content they released, things got clearer in some ways and more convoluted in others. For example, so long as the BU logo is used consistently and on material that really is part of the BU, then fans have an easy way to figure out what content follows the story of Bangtan’s character counterparts. But at the same time, content that is released without the BU logo can be confusing—if it doesn’t fit into the BU storyline, then where does it go?
The way I like to think about it is this: The BU runs parallel to the real BTS and their songs/album releases. To explain further, the BU is a long-running, cross-platform vehicle for storytelling—something that enhances and expands upon BTS’s songs, messages, and album concepts. While the BU does encompass many of BTS’s releases, there will be releases that aren’t canon to the universe.
Take for example song lyrics and album concepts. Song lyrics are often written or co-written by BTS and cover a wide range of topics. Some of these topics overlap with the themes of the BU, but they are not themselves “canon” to this universe. Song lyrics and the album concepts that convey BTS’s messages are in line with BTS themselves—the BU and its storyline are, instead, in line with BTS’s characters.
Separate from the BU, we have the progression of BTS’s eras, which move through the School trilogy, the HYYH series, WINGS, and the Love Yourself series. This progression is logical and grew with BTS as they themselves grew up. They tackled issues related to each stage of a young person’s life—first the issues were related to school and society, then the pains of youth, then more growing pains of youth in the form of temptation, and finally the young adult’s struggle to love both others and themselves (which is of course applicable to a wide age range). Though this progression is applicable to real-world BTS and their messages, we see it reflected in the characters and storyline from the BU, which gives BTS and their creative team a way to further explore each theme.
We also have the Love Yourself series, which, while it thematically correlates to the BU (and the Highlight Reels are completely the BU), it follows its own storytelling progression of 기승전결 (Gi, Seung, Jeon, Gyeol), a method of storytelling known in East Asia. This way, we get a full storyline just with the albums and songs, which can be taken separately from the BU as a story that BTS wanted to put forth. The progression here goes from “Euphoria” to “DNA” to “Fake Love” to “IDOL” (and even “Answer: Love Myself”), giving us a story about blind love, a reality check, and finally, self-love.
It’s not clear how BigHit decides what will be canon to the BU and what won’t be, but it is clear that we should take specific releases as canon and others as non-canon, but thematically related. It’s an interesting way to present BTS as a group—they have the ability to tell stories with their music and album concepts, but they also have the ability to give us a larger story that they can do more with thanks to the BU.
With the existence of the BU, there is also room for error or misinterpretation. For example, the WINGS short films each used to belong to the BU, as identified by the note in their video descriptions on YouTube. These videos clearly relate to the BU storyline; however, for three of the videos, that distinction no longer appears in the videos’ descriptions. Some have noted it’s a glitch, but it’s also possible the descriptor has been removed on purpose. While I still take these as canon, it’s possible we may get information in the future that contradicts a detail put forth in these videos. Additionally, something could theoretically contain something that is canon while also containing something that isn’t necessarily canon. If that product receives the BU logo, we would have to take it as canon, even though there is potential for non-canon materials to be mentioned. This makes it difficult to navigate these tangled worlds perfectly, but for the most part, it’s easy to separate canon from non-canon materials, especially after viewing BTS’s body of work in its entirety.