Korean and international netizens have labelled आई यू a pedophilia-obsessed sociopath after पढ़ना the lyrics to “Zeze” and a quasi-analysis of the lolita concept on Pann द्वारा a supposed photographer.

No, seriously, that’s basically what is happening.

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Etc.

I’ve honestly not been much of a प्रशंसक of IU’s cutesy, quasi-ballad concepts in the past, so I certainly don’t have much of a vested interest in defending her almost daily for no reason, but I find some of the stuff put out there about her so odd to me.

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Here are the lyrics to her song, “Zeze”.

“It’s amusing,
Look at the tail of your lips rising,
I can tell द्वारा your laugh,
You’re definitely mischievous.

Ah, ah, your name is really pretty,
I want to keep calling it,
The things I cannot say,
Those bad thoughts are lovely.

With your small fingers,
आप touch the sounds,
With that ticklish voice,
आप sing those रंग and landscapes, yeah.

Zeze, hurry and come up the tree,
Put your lips on the leaves,
Don’t joke around,
आप can’t hurt the trees, आप can’t,
Zeze, hurry and come up the tree,
Take the youngest leaf here,
Take away the one of a kind flower.

Climb up me,
Climb up me.

Like a फूल bloomed,
Look at the two cheeks turned rosy,
You’re really innocent,
But you’re definitely cunning.

आप seem transparent like a little child,
Something about आप is dirty,
There’s no way to find out,
What it is living inside you.

Right now, above your head,
There may be a floating sun,
But I vaguely see,
Dark clouds filled inside you.

Zeze, hurry and come up the tree,
Put your lips on the leaves,
Don’t joke around,
आप can’t hurt the trees, आप can’t,
Zeze, hurry and come up the tree,
Take the youngest leaf here,
Take away the one of a kind flower.

Climb up me,
Climb up me.

I want to touch आप one और time,
I wait for आप here everyday,
Come and take everything,
I want to call for you.

I wait for आप here everyday,
आप sneak away,
But you’ll come to see me again tomorrow night.

Zeze, hurry and come up the tree,
Put your lips on the leaves,
Don’t joke around,
आप can’t hurt the trees, आप can’t,
Zeze, hurry and come up the tree,
Take the youngest leaf here,
Take away the one of a kind flower.

Climb up me,
Climb up me.”

“Zeze” refers to the character from ‘My Sweet नारंगी, ऑरेंज Tree‘.

Unsurprisingly, आई यू doesn’t actually intend to sexualize the boy, rather she says she finds his duality interesting (which coincides with the theme of her album) and wrote it from the perspective of a jealous tree, as she explained in another interview on V app.

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Of course, that interview doesn’t flow with the narrative, so it’s ignored, but संपूर्ण, कुल मिलाकर it goes with the concept of her entire album quite clearly.

*As an aside, the “sexy” part is referring to something appealing या intriguing, not necessarily something she wants to have sex with. I feel like netizens accusing her of being a pedo are confused about this या are being purposefully obtuse. This is supported द्वारा the fact that she never calls the boy sexy but refers to the duality as sexy.

And here’s the Pann analysis of her accompanying lolita concept.

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The पुस्तकें behind her are “Leon, Delicate, Discipline”
Leon is a famous film with a lolicon concept. Delicate is used to describe a “weak girl who is easy to be tricked sexually” in lolicon context. Discipline means an adult man disciplining a girl sexually. The three words are infamous clichés of lolicon.

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White dress and messy hair
The photographer says these two pictures are clearly lolicon concept

She sings, “I’m going to be a moist woman” and pours दूध on a doll in the संगीत video. In the film ‘Leon’, Mathilda tells Leon, “you need to feed me with water if आप want me to grow.” In this context, ‘water’ translates into ‘cum’. “Raising a girl with water” is an infamous lolicon cliché meaning “giving cum”.

Other than the fact that the interpretation of that line from “Leon” is a stretch and a half, I don’t get what there is to criticize here. The usage of lolita imagery is there not to promote it, but to subvert a lot of the connections that stuff has with her early image.

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If आप look at everything she’s done at just face value, then yeah, she’s using a lolita complex, making lolita references, and sexualizing children.

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And a lot of people sing “Born In The U.S.A.” as some kind of MURICA FUK YA nationalistic song, use “Every Breath आप Take” at their weddings, and don’t get basically hundreds of songs about drug use या sex (“Follow Me” is one people sing gleefully).

I mean, I get why it’s perceived that way या why one might see it that way, I just see it as sort of missing the point.

The way I see it, the entire album is built around references to herself and her past image and how that contrasts with how she really is या was. One doesn’t even need to infer anything to come to this conclusion since she mentions it in the lyrics over and over and over again.

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The fact that netizens keep mentioning things like her dressing up as a kid and continually post a GIF of her sucking on a baby’s bottle is the whole goddamn point. She’s not glorifying pedophila या the lolita image, she’s critiquing it and the people (like uncle fans) who wanted her to remain in a certain image and a certain way, thus boxing her in द्वारा only allowing her one image.

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Rather than being damning evidence that she’s “problematic” because of her lolita stuff, it’s damning evidence that they don’t have the slightest clue what is being conveyed in ANY of this. She’s calling out exactly what they’re complaining about, and alluding to what those प्रशंसकों were actually supporting.

The fact they have all this lolita stuff pointed out to them now and are so disturbed द्वारा it being front-and-center is the point. It’s even और ironic that after she’s made it blatant, now people have started to recognize the problem with it, even though nobody spoke up about it before when she was underage and doing it. Funny that.

Look, a lot of songs and their lyrics and themes are open to interpretation, but this? The जवाब to these accusations are right in the goddamn criticism of her itself. “I’m going to be a moist woman” is a lyric the Pann post complains about, but it doesn’t mention the line before that is “I wanna be a child forever” while she’s sucking on the bottle. The whole point of that exchange is to reject the innocent, pure, baby-like image, and I don’t see how she could’ve made it और obvious, but people amazingly have still manged to miss that obvious point and god knows what else.

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Personally, I thought there were so many mentions, references, and allusions to her resentment over her past image and how a lot of uncle प्रशंसकों (and the nation at large) viewed her that it bordered on being heavy-handed. I thought she could’ve benefited from और subtlety and believed she had room for improvement as a songwriter, because at this stage in her maturity she was still too direct and not creative enough with it.

However, upon seeing the टिप्पणियाँ about her songwriting and the fact that only one other person in the whole टिप्पणी दे section seemed to see what I saw, I’m just amazed. Amazed that I was apparently completely wrong about how obvious she was making everything. I mean, this wasn’t Nell taking a seemingly chill song about a walk through the forest and turning it into a song about how adulthood is misery because the joy is gone and leaving suicide as a potential option. So maybe there was a reason why आई यू had to be so direct after all? Then again, I’m not sure if appealing to the lowest common denominator is ever be an acceptable way to look at the creative process.

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But hey, maybe I’m totally off-base here and I really am in the overwhelming minority of people who can look at her concept/album objectively and come away with the impression I’ve spelled out above. Just seems to make sense to me.

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Update

People at Netizen Buzz are apparently gloating that the Korean publishing company of the book didn’t like what आई यू did with the work.

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That’s not what I कहा though? और importantly, it wasn’t the point of me लेखन this लेख at all.

My reference to explaining what she कहा about “sexy” is to contradict the people saying she’s a pedo, which is why that’s in the शीर्षक of the लेख itself. It seems like those people hung up on that just took what commenters wrote about what I कहा and assumed that’s what I wrote.

The main concern on the part of the publishing company is that they don’t like her interpretation of the song and how she’s using it to tell a story of her own. That’s not dissimilar from the many people who disagree with me on her usage of the book/character for the album, which is fine, but I’m not entirely sure what Netizen Buzz is celebrating about other than the fact that the publishing company is putting an official tone to what they already thought या argued about and so they now feel validated, much the same that they are accusing Asian Junkie readers of doing.

Like I said, I don’t mind people not seeing this the same way या disagreeing, but the hysteria always struck me as odd and comical.

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In any case, I’m sure a forced apology या something is coming sooner या later cause they need to stop the tide somehow. Enjoy that, I suppose.

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